Europe as a continent and a society didn’t just teeter on the precipice of destruction, it fell off — twice. It is from this history that the European Union has become a living dream of nonviolence and proof of the possibility of redemption, created from a cry for harmony and the necessity for coexistence.
The AAS constitution needs a comprehensive non-discrimination clause. Sign the petition to ensure that illicit discrimination has no place at Amherst College.
Darrian Kelly no longer has any affiliation with the Amherst College chapter of To Write Love On Her Arms.
People struggle with many things in silence. Depression, anxiety, addiction and trauma are a common few. While many students ache for genuine connections within their college community, their isolation with these unvoiced realities often leaves them unable to gain a true stable sense of belonging. Community is often where healing happens. For those struggling, community allows them to know that they are not alone.
It’s hard not to feel empowered and inspired by Amherst students lately. Last Monday, somewhere between 250 and 500 students met on the steps of Frost to remember Michael Brown’s death with a moment of silence and a walk around the quad chanting “hands up, don’t shoot.” On Sunday, anyone on or around the first-year quad could see the group of UMass and Amherst protesters who walked through the town to raise awareness about the injustice of the non-indictment in the Eric Garner case.
Both within the “Amherst bubble” and beyond, loneliness has become a taboo word. No one wants to talk about it, let alone admit that they themselves are — gasp! — lonely. But silence only breeds ignorance, and ignorance gives rise to misinformation, fear and exaggeration. Claims that we’re now suffering from “unprecedented alienation” and that as time passes, we have “less and less society” — from a viral 2012 story in The Atlantic that spawned both outraged criticism and enthusiastic consensus — abound. So do links between loneliness and premature death, arthritis and heart disease.
Before I begin this article, I feel the need to digress from my main point for a bit. Over the weekend, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) paired up undefeated LSU and unworthy Alabama to play in their “national championship” game, while excluding one-loss No. 7 Boise State from a BCS bowl in favor of No. 11 Virginia Tech and No. 13 Michigan, both two-loss teams. Had I not written about the evils of the BCS in an article last year, this article would address the subject.
Gender-neutral housing is sweeping college campuses across the country. Over 50 American liberal arts colleges and elite institutions like Princeton and Brown have a gender-neutral housing policy, and the number steadily grows every year. Amherst students reignited a long-simmering debate with a recently-drafted online petition requesting Amherst finally join the club.
