(Craig Campbell)– The discussion about changes to Keefe has quickly become a hot topic on campus. Students are voicing a litany of concerns that seem to have been on the tip of their tongues for quite some time. However, at this point an architect and interior designer are in the process of drafting a construction plan that allows the campus center to better serve the student body. While our suggestions are helpful, ultimately the opinions of professionals are the final word on reallocation of space. But the conversation the changes have generated testifies to the force of will of the Amherst student body and our general awareness of campus issues.

A few weeks ago, I was invited to an Oversight Committee focus group. We discussed the roots of campus social culture, both in general and how it pertains to sexual disrespect. We agreed that at as Amherst students, we have too much work to lead healthy, balanced lives. While this complaint is entirely true, it is not going to change. We chose Amherst for its intellectual rigor; we chose and continue to choose to lead these unhealthy lives. The time students spend studying displaces the more leisurely activities in which they would be otherwise engaged. Study time feeds directly off of social time.

Given these facts, the question becomes not how to reduce the workload but rather how to socialize the studying experience. While social bonds are typically formed in the process of shared dialogue, shared activities produce interpersonal connections of at least equal value. It’s for this simple reason that one feels a certain amicability toward a member of a shared course, despite little oral communication.

I’ll begin my analysis of study space at Amherst by identifying an ideal study room on our campus. The Rosenblum Study is one of two 2nd floor study rooms in Charles Pratt Dormitory. I did the majority of my schoolwork there freshman year. It overlooks, with its enormous floor-to-ceiling windows, Merrill Science Center and part of the Social Quad. It also has a view of the distant hills, over which a late-night studier is afforded a direct view of the sunrise. A table, the only thing occupying floor space in the room, provides seating for 10 people. The room’s electrical capacity matches its seating capacity. Gentle, non-florescent lights fill the space with comfortable luminescence. The wall opposite the exterior windows is entirely glass so that one can see into the room from all angles, inside and out, of Chuck Pratt.

My friends and I used the room for both studying and non-academic activities (games, food, etc.) With ten seats, entering the room in the presence of strangers was not awkward (like, for instance, sitting at a partially occupied table in Frost would). I formed many rudimentary friendships there with students I would have otherwise not encountered. Finally, the room occupies a residential space. The college constantly touts in its admissions literature that Amherst is a place that encourages the formation of vibrant academic communities – a common area that serves as a study space in a residence hall allows for exactly that.

Consider now the Marsh Library. I live in Marsh this year and am often disappointed by the lack of residential community in the building. The library is a popular alternative to the ballroom for smaller social gatherings, but fails as a study space. One table, seating at most four, sits in the middle of the room. None of the chairs quite reach the top of the table. The lights are too dim for effective reading, and none of the floor lamps work. But the single worst aspect of the space is its separation, by two heavy doors, from the rest of the building. With no casual reason to ever go into the library, entering the room always feels like – and often is – an intrusion.

Morgan Reading Room. Morgan Hall was the College’s library from 1855 to 1917.

Based on my observations of these and other study areas on campus, I’ve created five criteria that define a space conducive to effective study-as-socializing:

Outlets: Often laptops are left strewn about random corners of Frost, charging in the sparse collection of outlets. While the need for outlets in the library might not have been as important 20 years ago, they are completely necessary for any study space now.
Lighting: Lights can be both bright and soft. The space must be bright enough to read finely printed text without the headachy, unflattering brightness of fluorescent light. Natural light, provided by large windows, is especially effective.
Table space: Tables should be large enough to comfortably accommodate more than a couple students.
Visibility: In my opinion, a space’s visibility is the most important component of a social study area. As in the Rosenblum Study, a sight-line into the room should be direct and transparent so that one can quickly evaluate, from afar, its state of use. Visibility is an issue of comfort, and a common space is incredibly important to the formation of groups. Without having to specifically prearrange a meeting, friends should have an understood area in common. This is not territory – the idea is to create spaces of inclusiveness – but rather a sort of watering hole where someone is bound, at any point, to be working. Physical transparency into such a room fosters this kind of communal space.
Availability: Residential study rooms are by virtue always open. The same cannot be said for our libraries. (Meaning, every dorm on campus should be equipped with a good, self-sufficient study area.) Most students, I imagine, are still studying when the library closes at 1 a.m. on weekdays. The classrooms and other study rooms on campus close at 10 p.m. While placing oneself in the science library or pre-reserving a room in Seelye Mudd allows a student to work later into the night, the institution is simply unable to accommodate the late-night studying it demands of its students. Extending these hours should not be difficult. Alternatively, the rooms could officially close at 10, but remain available the students already working there, who would then lock the door behind them as they leave.

The path to the Noah Webster statue, now Frost Quad.

As it stands, most students study in Robert Frost Library. Although it is lacking in aesthetic appeal – it replaced the far more beautiful Walker Hall in 1965 – the facility provides all the resources one could want from an undergraduate college library. B and C level provide hidden alcoves, satisfying the need for silent areas free from distraction. A-level is a perfect example of a computer lab. In a high-ceilinged, open-air layout, the spacious surface areas of the desks and large screens lend well to writing assignments. While the cubicles maintain privacy, there is a sense of transparency and openness that is lacking in the rest of Frost. A-level also contains the underutilized Special Collections room, as well as private group study spaces – spaces that require socialization for their use. With the exception of Frost Café, the rest of the library’s study tables are hidden between the stacks, which instead of uniting students working just a few yards apart, keeps them separate and secluded from one another. If the stacks were rearranged to group the study sections together, each floor could develop a distinct community atmosphere.

There are plenty of spaces on campus that are better suited to group study than Frost (see below). But our main library is both the physical and symbolic center of academic engagement on our campus, and accordingly should be a physical and symbolic display of the values we claim to espouse, including the importance of community, both intellectual and social. Take a look at the black and white photos I’ve included from a different era at Amherst – what shift in attitude occurred that led to these beautiful, open study spaces to be replaced by the currently sequestered ones? I hope that, moving forward in our discussion of space and architecture at Amherst, we consider not only how to remodel the space, but also why it fails to serve us in the first place.

Finally, I present three rooms on campus that should serve as models for effective study spaces.

The Fitch Room, Converse Hall

2nd Floor Reading Room, Beneski Museum of Natural History

Rotherwas Room, Mead Art Museum

[Thanks to Mike Kelly, head of Archives and Special Connections, for the black and white photographs. The feature image is the Freshman Reading Room on the third floor of Williston, before it was renovated as a residential building.]

Originally published December 11, 2012

(featurecreature)– There are days, places, and moments in your life that you will never forget. For us it was a Thursday evening around 7:20 PM when our daughter called from campus. We knew she hadn’t been feeling well recently and we were anxious to hear from her.

This time the conversation was direct and began with a short, simple question:

“Dad, are you sitting down? Please sit down; I have something to tell you.”

I knew right away something was wrong but I didn’t know that from this point forward my life was going to change.

“Dad, I was raped.”

I still get chills today when I recall these words, these words that changed our lives forever. How do we go forward from here? As parents we learned how to feed, care for and protect our children. No one instructed us on how to move forward from here.

What was clear to us right away was that our daughter received support. Her call home informed us that help came immediately from the Peer Advocates of Sexual Respect on campus. She went to the hospital for a sexual assault examination and began one-on-one sessions with the school’s Sexual Assault Counselor.

Our daughter’s healing had begun.

We learned about the rape that happened 10 days prior. But this call wasn’t about any feelings of shame. It was about facing the tough call to Mom and Dad.

This call told us our daughter was not remaining silent. She was pursuing disciplinary action and the hearing was in three days.

The disciplinary process moved quickly. Our best hope was to make sure we had legal representation at the hearing. Our presence and the presence of our attorney in those three days delivered a clear message that we supported our daughter wholeheartedly.

We are survivors for one very important reason: the availability of a survivor’s  support network on campus enabled our daughter to receive the support she needed and wanted. It empowered her.

It made the difference between despair and resolution.

Students know what happens on campus long before the administration, campus police or parents. It’s this student network that first supported her.

The Sexual Assault Counselor also supported her and us—day and night. We found relief knowing we could call the Sexual Assault Counselor any time. I made that call at 1:00 am one morning.

I just got off the phone with my daughter. She was despondent and alone walking around campus. I was terrified and knew she needed help. A call to the Sexual Assault Counselor at 1:00 am mobilized a Peer Advocate to find my daughter that night.  Through her, we began to understand how our daughter was feeling and we learned how to respond. None of this was in our parenting instruction guide.

Survival for us has been a process and there were (and still are) many challenges along the way.

We seriously considered the decision to not come back to Amherst College. But, the reason for her decision to return was her support network on campus. As parents, it’s daunting to play the “what if” game. After the rape, we wondered, what if we didn’t go to Amherst College in the first place?  But we know we cannot play that game anymore.We have moved forward and are thankful that there was a support network for her and that caring professionals were there when she needed them.

Originally published November 28, 2012

You have to wonder, then, if the end of the world is really a fear, as it purports to be, or a desire. As selfish entities, obsessed as we are with our own mortality, we want everything to be over when WE are over. What could provide more closure for our own deaths than the end of the world? Moreover, in the same way that we need religion to create order, the End Days would have a last-chapter finality – all the loose ends of human existence would have a chance to be tied up neatly. We would know what we could ever know about the world around us and there would be an end to expansion. As humans, we long for a conclusion.

Joss Wheedon put this best (as usual because he’s a genius) in Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s high school graduation – season 3, episode 22. The mayor is asked to give a speech to the graduating seniors on the anniversary of 100 years of Sunnydale. In typical Buffy fashion, the mayor is actually planning to ascend into a giant snake demon during his speech. Before he does this, though, he reminds his audience that: “nothing will ever be the same. Nothing.” The moon eclipses the sun completely and the audience is submerged into darkness. We believe the mayor.

I watched this episode during the week that I was graduating high school and I remember that moment so clearly. It’s true: after you graduate from high school, nothing will be the same ever again in your life. For me, even though my mayor didn’t transform into a giant snake and eat my principle, graduating high school was terrifying. Like Buffy, forming an army out of her classmates and her vampire boyfriend’s vampire friends to defeat the horde of bad vampires assisting the demon mayor, I felt like I finally had to take charge and that was unnerving, to say the least. While we all crave to be in charge of our own fate, humanity has also spent so much time creating ideologies and institutions in which we don’t have to be. Instead, we subordinate our desires to a Greater Good.

Most importantly, though, in the last episode of season three, due to the heavy flaming arrow fire and the menace of the giant snake, the school blows up. This is crucial. Sunnydale High has lasted through three years of demons, vampires, and dark magic, but cannot resist the destruction of graduation day. Mr. Giles, Buffy’s mentor, calmly mumbles while surveying the wreckage that there is a “certain synchronicity in all this.”

Have you ever returned to your high school since you graduated? Don’t you kind of wish that it had magically disappeared? After all, how could an institution that was so formative for you keep existing, keep doing the same for other people after you’re gone?

We often deal with this by commenting that everything “looks smaller.” As if that small-ness could separate Us and Our Experience there from It, Now.

The destruction of the high school once Buffy and The Scooby Gang (the nickname for her group of vampire-fighting classmates) is microcosmically analogous to the way people have often thought about the world after their death. They would rather see it shattered and ruined than continued on without them in it. While the former would be difficult and painful the latter is almost unbearable.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve been watching to much sci-fi and fantasy TV since the summer started, or maybe it’s that one of the attacks happened right outside my grandmother’s house in Miami, but the whole zombie apocalypse has really been freaking me out. Earlier this week, B. Pilgrim wrote:

In the end, I suppose a zombie apocalypse is just like any other crisis. It helps us realize that our society is balanced on a razor’s edge at all times—that our entire sense of safety is based on faith.

I would argue that a zombie apocalypse is like any other apocalypse. Remember the May 21, 2011apocalypse? What about Camping’s book The End of Time published in 1992 that promised that this life would all be over by 1994? Not to mention the smaller scares, like the killer bees, anthrax, and swine flu. Thus far we’ve managed to make it through all of them, but that doesn’t mean we weren’t rattled. We’re scared, less of having our face eaten off by a rabid bath salt addict, and more of our own Last Day.

<3 ConstantLy

Originally published June 7, 2012

(James Hildebrand)– I grew up in California, meaning I went eighteen peaceful years without having to hear the words Exeter, Taft, or Hotchkiss. The first time someone told me they went to Choate, I was convinced they said chode. “I’m sorry, did you just say your school was called chode? You went to chode?” Similar confusion with “coxswain.” Oh, and rowing a boat is actually called “crew.” “ZOMG LOLZ, how could you not know that?!” On the East Coast, “Lax” means Lacrosse, high schools have sailing teams, and cigarettes cost twice as much.

I thought coming to New England for college would be a comfortable escape. Goodbye Los Angeles. Farewell traffic jams and club promoters and aspiring writers with nasty waitressing habits. So long oversized family, I promise to send angsty texts from Memorial Hill every Sunday night. But instead of casually sliding into my new world, I spent most of Freshman Orientation being reminded over and over again that I’m not from here. More like a Freshman Disorientation, am I right? (I’m sorry you had to read that).

I realize that this story is hardly unique – everyone feels like an Amherst outsider at some point. My problem, though, was that I didn’t feel like I had a good enough excuse for my anxiety. Coming from California isn’t the same as coming from China. Pulling the Culture Shock card at the Counseling Center would have felt stupid: “You just don’t get it, doctor. Everybody here drinks Poland Spring. They use ‘summer’ as a verb. People wear pants. I’m a fucking mess!”

So, faced with the social unease of an interloper, I resorted to the most important tool in my freshman emotional crisis utility belt: shameless hyper-romanticization of my hometown. Instead of thinking about how much it sucked here, I thought about how awesome it was back home. Surrendering yourself to that kind of sappy nostalgia is like putting a heavily-opiated sloth in charge of your central nervous system. Suddenly, every story becomes soaked in this soothing warmth that blankets your whole body – kind of like when you pee in the bathtub. You become convinced that In-n-Out really is the best restaurant in America. And that everyone back home smiles more and smells better. Even the shitty stuff from home becomes part of your Rifleman’s Creed of wistfulness:

“This is my emotionally-abusive Starbucks barista. There are many like him, but this one is mine. My Starbucks barista, without me, is useless. Without my Starbucks barista, I am useless.”

And so I spent fall semester peeing in the bathtub. In all fairness, the New England foliage was pretty. But winter was like mating season for my nostalgia sloths – a real no-holds-barred sex den of hot, barely legal sloth-on-sloth action. In fall, a few students very actively reminded me I wasn’t from here, but in winter it felt like Western Massachusetts itself was physically rejecting me. Snow is less fun in shorts. My hair turned brown. I got really pale. By spring break I looked like that sickly kid from The Secret Garden. I really wanted to be anywhere but the Pioneer Valley.

Like everyone, I eventually got over it. I realized that my experiences at Amherst were steadily becoming a part of my identity too. More importantly, I realized that not everyone born outside of Southern California is some Chauncey Worthington the Third who sustains himself with orphan tears and rides a yacht to school everyday. I slowly learned that simply attending a boarding school doesn’t make you a douche.

Still, in the process of “getting over it” I realized that there is a real power in feeling like you don’t belong on your campus. For better of for worse, being an outsider puts you in a position of perpetual critical analysis. (Though sometimes, “judgmental prick” would be a better a description). Regardless, feeling strongly connected to somewhere else gives you an “out.” It links you to something tangible outside of the Amherst Bubble. In other words, you don’t have to begrudgingly drink the Kool Aid on everything just because everybody said these are supposed to be the best four years of your life.

I’m not saying it’d be great if everyone walked around with a “fuck this place, home is better anyway” attitude. What I’m saying is that getting quietly acquainted with whatever makes you feel like an outsider here is important because it allows you to occasionally distance yourself in a meaningful, healthy way. You can break free, even for just a moment, from the oppressive mass hysteria that is the “Amherst Awkward.” When you take a minute to actively separate yourself from the larger community you can shift into a “This is not me – I am not just my Amherst identity” kind of mindfulness that invites more clear-headed analysis and criticism of our community.

Still, I’m not advocating for any extreme. Feeling like a perpetual outsider isn’t just psychologically painful, it can also be a risky state of mind – as an example, it really hamstrings the movement to prevent sexual assault on campus when people consider themselves “outsiders” and thereby not responsible for campus culture or the actions of their peers. The fact that we are all still here reveals that, in some way or another, we retain some fundamental connection to our campus community.

So yes, I’m saying that my West Coast non-boarding school inferiority complex has made me feel better equipped to tackle the issue of sexual assault on campus – I agree, it seems like a jump, but everyone has something that makes them feel a little alienated from time to time, and in the end, that’s a good thing. I’d still take LA Mexican food over Bueno y Sano any day of the week, though.

PS: This past winter break I found my official family tree. You can imagine my horror at discovering the oldest entry:

I guess I’m not as far from home as I thought.

Originally published April 15, 2013

(Ethan Corey)– A simple guideline for any policy should be that the policy does not do more harm than the problem it attempts to solve. Yet, in the case of the College’s policy on ‘alcohol and other drugs’ (AOD), the opposite seems to be the case. Where the policy should encourage safe behavior, it pushes students into risky situations; where the policy should recognize students’ right to make their own decisions about their bodies, it limits student autonomy; where the policy should work to help students with drug and alcohol problems, it takes a punitive stance that perpetuates alcoholism and addiction. On these and many other fronts the College’s AOD policy fails to serve the needs or interests of the students it is meant to protect.

Alcohol and drug use is an inevitable part of college life. According to the spring 2012 National College Health Assessment (NCHA), 79 percent of college students reported that they used alcohol, 41 percent reported marijuana use and nine percent said that they had used hallucinogens, cocaine or MDMA. While statistics specific to the College aren’t publicly available, anecdotal evidence would suggest that they’re fairly similar. Thus, a prohibitionist AOD policy (i.e. one that simply puts a blanket prohibition on AOD use) like we have at the College makes a vast segment of the student body liable to disciplinary sanctions, including parental notification, disciplinary probation, Room Draw or housing limitations, community service or suspension. One need only glance at the campus crime log to get an idea of how much time the College spends disciplining students for AOD violations.

While it’s certainly true that a first-time offense likely won’t result in anything more severe than referral to alcohol education (even if it’s an offense for marijuana, which seems strange to say the least), the severity of sanctions ramps up fast; second violations nearly universally lead to parental notification, and a third can lead to disciplinary probation and even suspension. The question arises, what does the College gain from having such severe penalties? There is virtually no evidence that the severity of sanctions decreases AOD use, and the sanctions often do more harm than good. If a student truly has a problem with AOD use or abuse, disciplining the student will likely only serve to make the problem worse; if the student’s AOD use is responsible and under control, then harsh sanctions will create a problem where none exists.

As a quick aside, the fact that the College is more lenient than some schools is largely irrelevant to this discussion; if the policies don’t work, why does it matter that other institutions are worse? Moreover, many of the College’s peers, including Harvard, Yale and Middlebury, have more tolerant policies than the College that focus on reducing the harms of AOD use rather than prohibiting use outright.

In addition, the prohibitionist model creates problems even when students aren’t being directly punished. Because students face the risk of punishment, students who use AOD must do so in relative secrecy, downing shots inside of their dorm rooms rather than sipping wine in the common room. In fact, evidence suggests that prohibitionist attitudes towards alcohol and other drugs actually encourages risky behaviors like binge drinking. Honestly, this just makes common sense — when you normalize social activities and bring them out into the open, it’s easier to promote safe behavior; when you push activities underground, you have no way to ensure that they are being done responsibly.

A prohibitive stance towards alcohol and drug use also infantilizes students and limits their autonomy. Nearly every student at the College is an adult, meaning that society considers us mature enough to vote, serve in the military, manage our own finances et cetera. Yet, when it comes to alcohol and other drugs, the College says that students aren’t responsible enough to make their own decisions about their body. Alcohol and other drug use primarily affects the user, meaning that, just as the College should have no say about what students choose to eat or whom students choose to have consensual sex with, the College has no business dictating what substances students are allowed to put in their body. If the College wants students to act like responsible adults, it should treat students like responsible adults. Telling students that they lack the maturity to make their own decisions about their bodies is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Perhaps more importantly, the College’s prohibitionist policies marginalize students who need help with AOD-related problems. The College has no specifically-designated AOD counselor, no programs for students struggling with alcoholism or addiction and very few educational outreach programs designed to promote responsible decisions about alcohol and other drugs. As the report released last month by the Special Oversight Committee on Sexual Misconduct noted, “in a college as selective as Amherst, the eventual pursuit of a life of consequence for our students is most likely to be derailed by issues of emotional and physical health including substance abuse.” If the College really wants to deal with binge-drinking and other AOD issues, it seems logical that the College would devote resources to address the harms created substance abuse and addiction, rather than waiting for students dealing with substance abuse or addiction to get themselves kicked out of the College.

At this point, I would like to address the issue of the College’s legal obligations. While some defend the College’s prohibitionist stance on AOD use by reference to the Drug Free Schools Act and other laws regarding AOD policy at colleges and universities, the College’s current policies go above and beyond its legal obligations. The Drug Free Schools Act requires that colleges and universities receiving federal funding “clearly prohibit, at a minimum, the unlawful possession, use, or distribution of illicit drugs and alcohol by students and employees.” Yet, as schools like Harvard or Middlebury show, prohibiting illegal activity need not entail harsh punitive sanctions or wide-scale enforcement efforts by campus police. The law does not dictate the severity of the sanctions for AOD, and it only mandates that enforcement be consistent, not omnipresent. The College can still prohibit illegal activities while creating an environment that respects students’ rights to bodily autonomy and encourages safe and responsible use of alcohol and other drugs.

In fact, the College appears to be failing to enforce AOD regulations consistently, in direct violation of the Drug Free Schools Act’s provisions. One need only glance at the College’s confused response towards beer pong to see this in practice. Last year, beer pong was largely ignored by campus police unless a party was broken up for other reasons; this year, a week doesn’t go by without at least one beer-pong crackdown showing up in the campus crime log, despite the administration’s claim that there has been no change in the College’s policy on drinking games. Additionally, sanctions for marijuana violations have been applied highly inconsistently over the past several years. Anecdotally, I know of several students receiving four, five and even nine citations for marijuana without receiving anything more severe than disciplinary for one semester, yet this year I know of one student receiving disciplinary probation until graduation for his third offense, and another who was suspended for his fourth.

Finally, I would like to re-iterate a point made by the anonymous letter-writer yesterday: the AOD policy creates an unnecessarily antagonistic relationship between students, administration and campus police. Ideally, the administration and campus police exist to ensure student well-being and safety, yet in practice the police spend more time shutting down parties and busting students toking on Memorial Hill than they do protecting student safety, and, if the crime log is any indication, the Dean’s Office meets with dozens of students every week for petty AOD violations.

The College’s AOD policy, simply put, is more of a problem than a solution. It fails to effectively limit unsafe behavior; it helps create a toxic and unhealthy social environment on campus; and it unnecessarily subjects students to the risk of probation and suspension for ultimately victimless ‘crimes.’ To better serve students, the College needs to undertake a wholesale reconsideration of its policies and procedures and gain a better understanding of why students choose to use alcohol and other drugs in the first place. I hope all members of the College community will consider how AOD use affects life on campus and how the College can create a policy to best serve students. Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Originally published February 16, 2013

“Joe Pesci,” one of Val’s many popular dinner menu items.

(Ryan Arnold)– [Trigger Warning: eating disorders]

Last week, Val officially launched the good ship “Grab-N-Go”, which made its maiden voyage in the fall. From what I can tell it has been thus far successful – students are grabbing and going, the sandwiches haven’t killed anyone, and people seem to appreciate the convenience afforded them by the diversity of options (we love the shit out of diversity at Amherst). Last week was also two other things: National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, which was mirrored here on campus by our own “My Body Is Beautiful” programming. The confluence of these three things gives us a chance to look at our relationship with food, and investigate the way that the institution that feeds us instructs our eating.

One way to start this discussion is by taking an inventory of what we’ve got. We’ve got Val, cast in this comedy as the idiosyncratic and haplessly well-intentioned boss who, despite a heart of gold, is fundamentally unable to meet the needs of the employees (Val is Michael Scott). Regardless of personal opinions about the tortured carnival of suffering that is the bi-weekly “Chili Festival”, Val is clearly trying to create varied menus that are both engaging and didactic to students (for example, I never knew that so many things could be called “chili”). However, Val’s fundamental failure is its size – we’ve outgrown it. Val can no longer meet the demands placed on it by the campus population.

Some of you are probably saying, “Fuck you, Ryan, I love Chili Festival. This is how we eat in my native home, the beautiful island of Chilitopia – Val’s diverse world cuisine accommodates me. If you don’t like it, don’t eat it.” Fine. Let’s have a look at the alternatives: in addition to the “Traditional” offering, there is also the “Lighter Side” – typically grilled chicken, steamed vegetables, and whole wheat pasta; the Salad/Sandwich bar, which sometimes has locally-grown produce (awesome!); further, you can eat yourself to death on Lucky Charms. By no means is anyone conscripted into eating anything they don’t want.

We constantly receive active and passive messaging from culture about how, when, and what we should eat – on campus, these come from the hours of dining hall operation, the wait times attached to different food options, the availability of menu items based on demand, and so on. “Grab-N-Go” complicates an already problematic set of signals – when a student grabs and goes, she or he may not subsequently swipe into Val; the reverse is also true. The hope, as I understand it, as the system for food provision is expanded, it will relieve some of the pressure that has been placed on Val’s inadequately sized kitchen. However, that these two options are mutually exclusive sends a pretty clear message to students about how much they ought to eat – that to eat more than what has been deemed an “appropriate serving size” is to over-consume and thus burden the school’s already-strained resources.

I hope to not be misunderstood about this – I don’t blame Val. I like Val. The food at Val is a lot better than other schools I have been to, and I think our Dining Services is genuinely aware of the responsibility they have to the community they serve: to take care of us. However, I think that as citizens of an age where disordered eating and distorted perceptions of weight are so brutally epidemic – an age where the stakes are as high as these – we in turn have a responsibility to challenge our right to eat when, what, and how we want, and to engender an attitude toward food that is has no flavor of shame or abasement. We should be encouraged to eat if we’re hungry, not prohibited from using any and all resources available to us.

For statistics about eating disorders and college life, visit: http://www.anad.org/get-information/about-eating-disorders/eating-disorders-statistics/

For general information about eating disorders, visit: http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/general-information

If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, visit: http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/find-help-support,

or contact the Amherst Student Health Educators for information or support: https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/health/education/staff/stu_health

Originally published March 10, 2013

(Gina Faldetta)– I had never heard the phrase “but actually” until I got to Amherst. I still don’t understand when the phrase became so popular, but since my first day on campus I was hearing it from people who had just arrived from literally all over the country, and maybe a few other parts of the world. After the initial moments of confusion and the feeling of being left out of something integral to my generation (how was I to know? Maybe this “but actually” was just the tip of the iceberg) I quickly erased all concerns by simply adopting the phrase and using it just as much as everybody else.

Later I wondered if this was how everyone came to use the phrase – simply
hearing it from one or two people and then appropriating it so as to stay hip with
the trends or whatever it is we young people do. But again, I may just be
embarrassing myself by admitting that I was late to that crucial rite of adopting the
ever-popular (okay, I haven’t heard it much since that first semester) “but actually”
that possibly was given to us on index cards in ninth grade and told to use when we
arrived at college.

The point is, I quickly realized that language, namely what you might call
“slang,” can spread like wildfire on a small college campus, and can even cross over
between schools like some sort of verbal STI. Upon realizing this, I saw my
opportunity. The moment I had been waiting for. Everything was clicking into
place. It was time to release the “pussy up.”

Now, the “pussy up” is not an original thought, but it is relatively unique as a
movement that I single-handedly tried (am still trying) to start. As in, I don’t know
how many other people read that great quote falsely attributed to Betty White in
high school, couldn’t get it out of their heads, and then forced their college friends to
subvert the way they called someone a wuss… but I definitely did. All I had to do
was pick my moment – about the middle of the fall semester – and then bring up the
ever-relevant point that saying someone’s ballsy doesn’t make any damn sense.

We’ve all had this conversation, but I’ll go over the main points just to be
clear. Saying someone’s “ballsy” or “has balls” (the size of the balls can even be
expounded upon depending on your enthusiasm level), to mean that they’re brave
doesn’t make any logical sense. Not that any anecdotal evidence is actually needed
to support this point, but at the risk of confirming any suspicions you might have
about how militant my feminism is (ask me about my “misandry” tramp stamp), I
have never seen a guy less brave than right about when my foot gets near his crotch.

The same illogic applies to the use of the word “pussy” to indicate weakness
or wimpiness. For those of us who use that word in a derogatory way (“stop being
such a pussy”), and who weren’t born in a Cesarean section, maybe we should check
our lack of respect. Because if pussies were actually weak or fearful, a whole lot of
us would not be here to talk about it today.

Of course, the issue goes beyond logical inconsistencies. Calling someone a
“pussy” for being timid or weak immediately associates those qualities with women
and further perpetuates negative stereotypes that women aren’t strong. You can’t
call your buddy a pussy for not being able to ask out a girl, or lift a heavy box, or win
a game of Super Smash Bros without implying that women are timid, weak, and
generally incapable.

Sure, people do use “dick” in a derogatory way, but what is that perpetuating?
The gender stereotype that men are kind of uncool and maybe not that nice? That’s
not even a gender stereotype that really exists, much less keeps men from getting
the respect they deserve in social and professional settings. Besides, there’s still the
whole testes-worship thing that tells us that “nutting up” will make us more capable
of dealing with difficult situations. Who cares if my penis makes me kind of
inconsiderate if my testicles give me the strength to confront my biggest fears?

I’d like to take a moment to clarify that in this discussion of diction and
gender stereotypes, I am by no means equating gender to sex – having a pussy
doesn’t make you a woman and having a dick or balls doesn’t make you a man. But
it is the case that these words are most commonly associated with those respective
genders, something we can witness from the interchangeability of “nut up” with
“man up,” and the impact of their usage on gender perception is a very real thing,
even if gender as a biological construct is not. So for the purposes of my discussion
of word choice, I will associate the word “pussy” to womanhood because that is
what the term is referencing, and I sincerely hope I do not marginalize any readers
in doing so.

So, what is there to do about the harmful representation of gender in
colloquial language? Well, there’s always just abstaining from using “pussy” in a
derogatory way. That’s as simple as remembering where you came from and
finding another way to tell your friend to stop being a useless wimp. But why not go
a step further?

Why not call your friend a scrotum instead?

“Hey, pal, stop being such a scrotum. The Grab ‘N’ Go line isn’t that long.”

Hear me out. It makes a lot more sense as a phrase, because few parts of the
body are more sensitive and delicate than the scrotum. And the intention is not to
create negative gender stereotypes about men, but rather call attention to the
existence of those about women. Besides, the usage of this word would not actually
create negative gender stereotypes. When I use the word “scrotum” in a derogatory
way, to imply weakness, I’m deriving that meaning from the actual characteristics of
that body part. That’s something that cannot be said for the usage of “pussy” in the
same way. Pussies obviously aren’t weak, so we have to assume that meaning
comes from the metonymy of pussy representing womanhood. But we can agree
that testes are sensitive to the point that the usage of that word does not go farther
than its literal meaning. You wouldn’t be making a broad statement about men as a
whole by using the word “scrotum” to imply weakness.

The unusual nature of these phrases calls attention to the implications of
the clichés we hear most often. If hearing someone being called a scrotum sounds
weird, maybe we should question why it sounds so normal when a word meaning
vagina is used. Does the phrase “pussy up” in the place of “man up” or “nut up”
sound unfamiliar? Let’s familiarize ourselves with the idea of women as strong and
capable.

The way we relate to one another influences the way we conceptualize
ourselves and those around us, which makes the language we use to communicate
more significant than we may realize. I’m not suggesting that we all have to subvert language in the same way I’ve chosen to. But I do believe that we should consider what we’re saying when we employ diction so strongly associated with gender. And I’m going to continue my “pussy up” movement, because I think it’s high time for women to be verbally associated with strength.

Originally published May 6, 2013

(Yasmina Martin)– I have been told the story of Martin Luther King Jr. countless times during my K-12 education. His use of nonviolent methods adopted from Gandhi and his calls to judge people “not by the color of their skin but the content of their character” were repeated to me often in my formative years. To me, King was always a familiar figure, a hero with a tragic story and someone I respected and admired. In school, we were taught that MLK was a pacifist, that he believed in love over hate, that he was, in a way, neutral.  It took going to college and exploring racist justice issues to discover King’s radical activism that had been hidden from the textbooks and dulled down in our classroom lectures.

MLK Jr. has become a near-mythical figure of American history, someone who is praised for his nonviolent actions while his political leanings and work for economic justice are totally glossed over.  His lifelong work has been reduced to an advertisement for colorblindness and his anti-militarism is never mentioned in the mainstream media or in our high school history textbooks. In fact, King himself wanted “radical changes to the structure of our society,” something that mainstream history ignores. What we see is the depoliticization of King’s worldview, changing him from “a radical anti-poverty activist into a charismatic integrationist.” [source]

The passage of the civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965 signaled a shift in King’s organizing activities. To him, absolutely equality was impossible without a project that approached the issues of poverty and class. King recognized the connections between race and class and was eager to rectify what he knew was a flawed society. More people are aware of the March on Selma than the Poor People’s Campaign, which aimed to address economic injustices for all Americans. The campaign, which began in 1967 after a tumultuous summer of race riots, focused on getting congress to sign an Economic Bill of Rights that guaranteed appropriate housing, a fair minimum wage, and more jobs for low-income Americans. After his assassination, the campaign continued with SCLC leader Ralph Abernathy at its helm. Protesters built a shanty-town on the National Mall called “Resurrection City” and spent almost a month camping on the site and demonstrating.  Although the campaign didn’t bring about much change in legislation, it brought thousands of activists to Washington D.C and its continuation allowed Coretta Scott King and the SCLC to honor King’s memory.  One can draw clear parallels between the Poor People’s Campaign and the 2011-2012 Occupy Movement that took the world by storm.

A PPC protest in Detroit, Michigan (Reuther’s Library)

King also made the argument that the United States spent a fortune fighting the war in Vietnam while Americans at home were living in poverty.  He presented his anti-Vietnam feelings in an 1967 address when he said, “It is estimated that we spend approximately $500,000 to kill a single enemy soldier in Vietnam, and yet we spend about $53 for each impoverished American in anti-poverty programs….the government is emotionally committed to war. It is emotionally hostile to the needs of the poor.” [source] King’s activism and political work goes much deeper than the popular integration notions that we’ve all come to know so well.

Why is it easier for some to accept the colorblind, peaceful King rather than the more radical figure he really was? Rosa Parks’ story  is diluted in the same way when presented in popular culture; as young students, we are told she was merely resting her feet, tired from a long day of work, and not a woman fed up with the mistreatment of Blacks in America and ready to make a change. Transforming these activists’ work into fables allows us to forget that their fight isn’t over.  It allows their image to become static and unchanging, a tool to be manipulated by feel-good liberals who adopt colorblind rhetoric and ignore institutionalized racism. These people are much like Hannah Horvath, Lena Dunham’s character in “Girls” who tells her black boyfriend: “You know what? I never thought about the fact that you were black once.” In many ways, King’s words still ring true today:

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.”

Originally published January 24, 2013

(Marie Lambert)– I have a very distinct memory from my childhood of being in music class and listening to the girls in my class talk about marriage. I was probably somewhere between second and fifth grade, and I remember sitting in a circle on the cold linoleum and feeling very odd. Everyone was talking about how many children they wanted, which genders, what they would name them—although we were no more than children ourselves. I sat in silence for a while until a pause arose in the conversation and I proudly announced that I didn’t want children, and on top of that, I didn’t even want to get married. And I was proud of this fact, this thing that made me different from the other girls (little hipster that I was). If marriage wasn’t good enough for my mom, then it wasn’t good enough for me.

But the responses I received quickly killed the pride I’d had. “That’s weird,” they’d said, because what little girl didn’t want to grow up to have a fairytale wedding with their soul mate and produce children as perfect as the porcelain dolls so many of us grew up with? They asked me why, what reason could I possibly have for not wanting to get married? I couldn’t answer them, but just turned red and stammered something along the lines of “just because.” I went home that night wishing that my single mother had gotten married like all the other moms at school.

Up until that point, I don’t think I’d really noticed how much marriage and the traditional family shaped the world around me, and how I seemed to be cut out from parts of that world. Up until the age of ten, my mother and I lived with her parents in their house until we could afford to move to our own apartment. For a long time, I told people I had three mothers: my actual mother, my grandmother, and my night-light shaped like the Virgin Mary.

Obviously, my concept of the nuclear family was a little skewed. But it wasn’t until after the incident in music class that I really began to notice it. And once I noticed it, I noticed it all the time. I hated having to be partnered with my instructor’s husband during the “father-daughter” portion of my dance recital. I was relived that Father’s Day was in June, after school ended, so I didn’t have to go through the awkwardness of watching from the side while everyone else in art class making crafts to give to their fathers, as we did on Mother’s Day.

I had friends whose parents were divorced, but that didn’t seem quite the same. At least they still somewhat fit into the standard that I believed was the only one existing that defined a proper family. It actually wasn’t until I came to Amherst that I met people who’d grown up in situations like mine, to whom families consisting of two married parents were in the minority.

But up until that epiphany, I was bothered by what I believed was a strict societal expectation for the entire world to be paired. Did everyone really have some sort of “soul mate” wandering around the world whom they were destined to find some day? How on earth were you supposed to find them? And if you did, how would you know it was them? What if they died, or didn’t want to marry you? The whole idea seemed highly problematic and inefficient.

As for marriage, I had trouble committing to one outfit for the day, so how was I supposed to commit to one person to spend all my time with? Why did we have to bind ourselves “forever” to this one person? The whole institution seemed flawed to me, and I might not be alone: only around 51% of the United States was married in 2010, compared to 72% in 1960. Despite these statistics, the country still seems to have a sort of obsession with marriage as an idyll—just look at reality TV shows like The Bachelor/Bachelorette or the Wedding Channel, or the massive commercial enterprise that is the wedding industry itself. We want to win, plan, or shop our way to real love, and then wonder why the divorce rate is rumored to be so high.

But I promise I’m not all cynicism. I recently returned from a wedding (hence the waxing philosophical about marriage), and although my confidence in the institution of marriage has not been completely restored, it’s at least been temporarily amended. Despite what society and Hollywood tells us, no one is ever guaranteed love, happiness, or a perfect match. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. The very complex human emotion that we call love takes many different forms and can create many different types of families, some all the more beautiful for their nonconformity.

Do we as a society put too much of a focus and hold unreasonably high standards for romantic love exclusive to marriage? It’s difficult to discuss this without the dismissal of inherent cheesiness and references to “All You Need Is Love,” but I think this is a real issue we should consider. Maybe a less selfish, individualistic love is what we really need to fill the collective hole that we seem to want to fill in our hearts.

Originally published October 15, 2012