The college released changes to the Party Policy, a set of rules governing expectations of parties on campus, on Friday, Jan. 26. These include determining occupancy by venue, expecting party sponsors to manage attendance with staff assistance and requiring party sponsors to clean up the registered party space within one hour of the approved end time. The new party policy, announced in an email to students from Senior Associate Dean of Students Dean J. Gendron, takes effect for parties registered for and after Thursday, Feb. 1.
Following student feedback and trends in historical data, Dining Services has made several changes to its offerings this semester, including adding a daily lunch-time burger bar, serving hot food on Wednesdays at Grab-N-Go and extending weekend hours.
The Mead Art Museum announced on Jan. 11 that it received a gift of $3 million. The donation by John Wieland ’58 and his wife Sue seeks to support the position of director and chief curator and help build the museum’s contemporary art collection.
“We are deeply grateful to John and Sue Wieland for this generous gift to Amherst and for their commitment to ensuring that the Mead’s exhibitions, educational programming and collection-building continue to serve and delight everyone in our community and beyond,” President Biddy Martin said in a press release.
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Young-Ji Cho ’18 is an art and English double major. For her thesis, she is creating a series of children’s picture books based on the lives of Asian-American figures. Her advisor is Betsey Garand, a senior resident artist in the department of art and the history of art.
President Biddy Martin announced the college’s membership to the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration in an email to the college community on Wednesday, Jan. 17. Her email follows the Alliance’s Dreamer Fly-In, a conference in Washington, D.C. at which college and university presidents urged Congress to pass legislation protecting Dreamers, undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and are protected under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
Peer Support Skills Training (PSST), a program formerly known as Student Support Network (SSN), was implemented in its new iteration this academic year. The program, created by Associate Director of Health Education/Mental Health Promotion Jessica Gifford, was offered in the fall 2017 term as an extracurricular course and an interterm course the week of Jan. 15.
In an effort to improve traffic flow along Route 9, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) has begun a study to determine if changes to the B43 bus line, which a number of people in the Five-College community rely on for transportation, could potentially make travel easier and faster along Route 9.
The B43 is run by the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority (PVTA). Its route connects Amherst College, UMass, Hampshire Mall and Smith College. One of the changes MassDOT has proposed is having the bus run express from UMass to Northampton with no stops in Amherst.
