When I read through my first draft of this article, incomplete, written over a month ago and forgotten in the crevices of one of my many draft article ideas folders, I nearly threw up my tea in my mouth. “On the dialectic of intellectual elitism and egalitarian accessibility” was my working title, and it just got worse from there on in. It was written in vague, hazy academese, with liberal arts college major words like “paradigmatic,” “praxis” and everyone’s favorite, “problematic”, cushioned in every single sentence.
There is always something a little magical about snow days. They are a serendipitous holiday — a fortuitous chance to enjoy the idyllic side of the winter season before the snow turns to grimy slush and ice — and for those of us who grew up in the northeast, evoke a certain nostalgia for grade school. Nonetheless, while many of us rejoiced at having our classes cancelled last week because of the snow, it is important to remember that not everyone got off so easy.
Many of us probably noticed the massive banners hanging from the front of Frost Library and Valentine Dining Hall last week. In prominent bold letters, they displayed the question, “When do you conform?” Ironically, the large size of the banners, their positions overlooking the campus’ main quads and their odd wording in the second person all gave them an eerily Orwellian feel, as if they seemed to be aimed at promoting the same sort of groupthink that the question was meant to address.
During my time at Amherst, I have heard many people applaud Angela Merkel as a remarkable politician, yet I feel very few people truly understand just how remarkable the current German chancellor is. Mind you, this article is not about her politics, nor written as a letter of pure adoration to Angela Merkel. In fact, I will openly acknowledge that I have rather mixed feelings towards her, but this does not influence my recognition of her extraordinary position as a politician with an incredibly uncommon background, but most of all a woman in politics.
A few weeks ago, President Biddy Martin and Amherst College joined a list of 245 schools that have formally opposed the American Studies Association’s (ASA) boycott on academic institutions in Israel. Every NESCAC school, institution which holds many similar values as Amherst, joins us on that list.
On Monday, Dean Larimore resigned as the College’s Dean of Students. The Student sincerely regrets his leaving. It was only a year ago, last February, that Dean Larimore was selected through an extensive search process to be the College’s new Dean of Students. Since then, he has established a genuine and meaningful relationship with the students, and many cannot help but feel that his resignation is both abrupt and perplexing.
On Jan. 7, two French brothers of Algerian descent stormed into the Charlie Hebdo offices in the 11th arrondissement of Paris and unleashed a barrage of bullets onto the magazine’s employees during a weekly staff meeting. In total, the attack took the lives of 12 individuals while injuring 11 others. The attackers, Said and Cherif Kouachi, proclaimed allegiance to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a group that has consistently coordinated attacks against Western interests.
