Anna Hager ’12, Alexa Hetwer ’13, Gavin Front ’12, Kaytee Turetsky ’12, Jacon Powers ’13, Jillian Stockmo ’13 write in as part of the Amherst College Mental Health Task Force to inform the students about mental health on campus.
A worrying refrain among the comments on The Student’s website during the recent debates on heated issues on campus was that The Student should have censored or “hacked off” certain student voices, believing them to be irrational or offensive.
In the latest of a series of Town Hall discussions held at our Monday night meetings, the AAS opened its doors this week to three members of the Mental Health Task Force — Denise McGoldrick, Director of Health Education at the College, Kate Turetsky ’12 and Gavin Front ’12. The Task Force has been charged with exploring and providing recommendations regarding existing mental health resources and determining what additional resources should be developed to ensure the best possible mental health for all students at the College.
Apparently there is a new commandment that has been revealed unto the Republican Party. One that Jesus errantly left out of his parables and teachings and that Joseph Smith must have failed to read before he lost his special glasses or perhaps just forgot to pull out of his magic hat. It is “Thou shall hate the poor.” This new commandment dominates today’s conservative politics and discourse, reveals the turmoil at the heart of America’s public morality and shows the clear ideological choice before us.
Religion is not ignorance. It is not ridiculous superstition. It is not defined by hatred nor by antagonism to any other field of human endeavor. It is merely faith in something greater, in something beyond us that we cannot explain or control.
Before we get started, here’s a heads up: we will be using gender neutral pronouns in this article to allow for the inclusion of individuals who do not identify as women but whose anatomy includes a uterus and who are thus capable of being pregnant. These gender-neutral pronouns are ze, which corresponds to he/she, and hir, which corresponds to her/his.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Did anyone else smell the vitriol on campus this week? Among newspaper readership, it was most evident in Dan Diner’s article on secularization and Andrew Kaake’s column on abortion. Their recent newspaper submissions have prompted an outpouring of student responses. Infuriated and affirmed readers alike shared their honest concerns, sometimes boldly proclaiming their identity, but more often remaining under the cloak of anonymity.
