“Looking for a different angle on the election?” an email headline asked you on Oct. 3. Well, lucky you, because you have the opportunity to hear five young journalists who are (probably) all voting for Hillary Clinton come give it to you, Thursday evening in Johnson Chapel! Five young journalists whose publications haven’t covered the largest prison strike in U.S. history, whose collective coverage of the 2016 election doesn’t stray much from Trump-Bad-Clinton-Good, are here to give you one hell of a diversity of opinion on this coming election.
Critiques of social life at Amherst are nothing new. From the demolition of the Socials to various changes in party policy to the current glaring lack of diverse options, the search for solutions to the problems surrounding social life on campus has reached a new climax. It’s evident that the college experience extends beyond the academic and academically-associated extracurricular sphere. To hinder, rather than nourish, a portion of Amherst life that is undoubtedly crucial to the formation of meaningful relationships is unrealistic in today’s collegiate social climate.
To the Amherst Christian Fellowship:
We are a group of alumni that spent our college years deeply involved in the Amherst Christian Fellowship (ACF). Many of us went through the formative experience of First-Year Bible Study. All of us authors served as leaders with the ACF Executive Team or various Bible studies and in Disciple Links, Terras Irradient, Gospel Choir and other activities affiliated with ACF.
Trigger warning: This content deals with accounts of misogyny, harrassment and sexual violence, and may be triggering to some readers.
At the recent journalism panel Amherst hosted discussing the 2016 presidential campaign trail, one of the speakers mentioned the ways in which our consumption of media is predetermined by algorithms programmed to show us content that aligns with our own opinions. For instance, a left-leaning person’s Facebook feed would mostly include articles that align with the political left. The knowledge that this type of invisible system exists, a system that extends far beyond the methods of Facebook algorithms alone, implores us to think critically about how we consume our media.
Trigger warning: This content deals with accounts of misogyny, harassment and sexual violence and may be triggering to some readers.
Dormitory life is an Anglo-American peculiarity. Drawing on residential colleges at, for instance, Oxford and Cambridge, colleges like Amherst build their pedagogy on the firm belief that collegiate co-residence will produce a livelier intellectual atmosphere than would a university at which students go to class and then return to their separate homes. The idea is a familiar one: putting bodies together in houses and bedrooms will thrust the minds inhabiting those bodies into some kind of close-knit intellectual community.
