When I was around 15 or 16 years old, I witnessed an extrajudicial killing by Jamaican policemen outside my mother’s workplace. A black man was running from the police and attempted to scale the wall leading to the entrance of the premises. The authorities quickly pursued the man, and instead of attempting to arrest the individual, the police fired a couple of shots at him. I remember the scene and how quickly this man’s death came. I remember no hostility from this man as he ran fleeing for his life.
The common wisdom at Amherst is that you learn the most outside of the classroom. When we look back on our past years, what we will remember most are the late night talks in our first year dorms, chats with our professors over coffee and our favorite pieces of art at the Mead. Yet it’s hard to deny that, as much as we hate doing them, our essays, problem sets and exams are important too. They make what we’re learning relevant and important. Our grades hold us to our commitment to learn and push us beyond passive listening in class.
Let me tell you a story about a disease straight out of Stephen King’s darkest novels. Once you’re infected, there’s a high chance you’re doomed. But you won’t know it for a while. Instead, for eight to 10 days you’ll seem normal, talking to your friends, doing your homework, eating, sleeping and procrastinating. The usual. Even as the signs begin to show, you won’t know what it is. The dull thump of a headache and the mild warmth of a fever will tell you you’ve got the common cold. “I’m not feeling too well today,” you might say to your roommate. “I think I’ll sleep in a bit tomorrow.”
Until middle school I wasn’t aware that people could identify as anything other than heterosexual. Freshman year of high school was when I first met other people who were open about their sexualities, and when I began to realize that it wasn’t a bad thing. Junior year, I realized I wasn’t quite as straight as I thought I was.
There has been more than a century of continuous fighting in the Middle East between Israelis and Arabs. Over time, numerous attempts at reaching a peaceful resolution have been made and always resulted in failure. Currently, the proposition for peace focuses on the idea of a two-state solution. This proposal was brought forward in 1974 and attempts to create two independent states of Palestine and Israel, hypothetically allowing each cultural group to exist autonomously from the other.
Because of our open curriculum, diversity of extracurricular activities and number of athletic teams, Amherst students sometimes don’t have a lot in common. In many ways, we’re a community of communities. But one thing that is universal among us is Val. Regardless of your opinion of the food, everyone is brought together by the fact that (with the exception of the Zü) we all eat and socialize there. During Jamaican Jerk night or Asian Tuesday, when the pasta line extends out the door, food can spark up a conversation across almost any social divide.
The decision to institute bystander training as part of first-year orientation is, I think, a good one. Amherst has, after all, acknowledged that the problem of sexual respect does indeed exist, and it has found a method of ameliorating the issue: inform students that they have the power to act as individuals to help their friends and to ensure that they respect others. The message the trainers offered was not that each of us ought to act as neurotic vigilantes, but rather that we simply should know that we all have a duty to look out for our friends.
