On Saturday, the normally empty Johnson Chapel was abuzz. Older generations of alumni enthusiastically mingled about in the main congregation area of the building, while current students mixed with the alumni or kept to themselves. While younger students comfortably dressed in jeans or shorts with short-sleeved tee shirts, the alumni stuck to a less casual appearance of pressed khakis and a mixture of polos or light blouses with light cardigans on top.
The College hardly exudes school spirit. While a student at Williams can innocuously strut around campus dressed in a purple cow costume, most students at Amherst would rather don that same outfit than dress up as the mascot Lord Jeffrey Amherst (because honestly, despite its absurdity, a purple cow is by the far the more huggable of the two). The turnout at most athletic and extracurricular competitions rarely far exceeds the players or members themselves. And no, the first word of “A Hymn to Amherst” is not “what.”
Despite all the recent buzz over Twitter’s IPO, the College’s own quiet technological revolution has gone largely unnoticed. After years of pink slips and green sheets, it seems that the College has finally begun to embrace the 21st century.
It is a remarkable thing, that should I have the means and desire to do so, I could comfortably vacation in Germany. I could spend an afternoon in Berlin, walking along a path that once split the city for a generation. I could hike the Black Forest, see the castles of Saxony and drink myself silly at Oktoberfest. Or of course, as has become a rite of passage for so many Jews of my age, I could visit the remains of a Nazi concentration camp, skillfully preserved in displays and museums that are well-attended and funded by the state.
Last Thursday began like any other day for yours truly — find a quiet spot at Val to eat breakfast, look over the previous night’s psychology reading, and peruse the day’s issue of The New York Times. I was surprised to find the front cover of a gray-haired man in uniform, staring somberly ahead at the camera with a blurred background behind him and the caption below: “Remembering 9/11.” With merciless guilt growing in my stomach, I realized that I had forgotten Remembrance Day, but I was not alone in this.
On Saturday evening someone drew a swastika and wrote a racial slur near the entrance of Chapman Dorm. Dean of Students Jim Larimore took 465 words to communicate that information in a campus-wide email. He added, using perhaps the maximum number of words possible: “That this incident should occur within hours of the end of the observance of Yom Kippur, a holy day of particular significance for those of the Jewish faith tradition, makes it especially hurtful.” To summarize those 33 words in ten words, it happened the night after Yom Kippur, a Jewish holiday.
Statistically speaking, last year was not a stellar year for the College’s admissions. Total applications dropped from 8,555 for the Class of 2016 to 7,927 for the class of 2017, representing a decline of 8.2 percent. The overall admit rate increased from 13.3 percent to 13.7 percent.
