Members of the college community had the opportunity to see six new exhibits at the Mead Art Museum during a reception on Thursday, Sept. 8 celebrating the museum’s renovation. This is the first major renovation to the Mead under director David Little, who arrived at the museum in summer 2015. The last renovation of this scale took place six years ago.
A mascot committee comprised of students and alumni held its fourth meeting on April 29. The new committee is composed of students who were active in the mascot debate last fall and the members of the alumni executive committee’s mascot task force. Throughout the semester, the committee has discussed a potential timeline for democratically selecting a new mascot, as well as means of reaching out to alumni and students to inform them about the process and receive mascot suggestions.
Three senators were removed from the Association of Amherst Students due to unexcused absences after a judiciary council hearing on April 17. One other student, who was elected to senate but had never attended a meeting, resigned prior to the hearing.
These incidents represent an uptick in senator absences this semester. The AAS constitution states, “Any senator or member of the Executive Branch entirely absent from (3) meetings per semester shall forfeit his or her seat on the Executive Branch or the Senate and its associated committees.”
The Campus Activities Board announced X Ambassadors and Kehlani as this year’s spring concert performers on April 2. The board put up a video at midnight to reveal the artists. Spring Concert will be held at 9 p.m. on April 22 in Coolidge Cage this year.
Members of the college and town community filled Buckley Recital Hall to attend a talk by Charles Krauthammer, political commentator and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, on March 9.
Krauthammer is currently known as a nightly panelist on “Special Report with Bret Baier,” a political discussion show on Fox News, and also contributes weekly to the conservative opinion magazine The Weekly Standard. He worked in psychiatric research at Massachusetts General Hospital before re-orienting his career toward politics.
Congress sent Amherst a letter on Feb. 8 regarding the management and spending of the college’s endowment. Amherst is one of 56 colleges and universities that have been requested to provide supplementary information on their endowments. Congress sent the letter to institutions with endowments valued at over $1 billion by the National Association of College and University Business Officers. The college’s endowment is $2.2 billion, according to the most recent financial report.
The college welcomed Jesse Beal as the new director of the Women’s and Gender Center on Tuesday, March 1. Beal formerly worked as the acting director for the office of diversity services at Suffolk University. The center will hold a meet and greet with them (Beal uses the non-binary pronouns they/them/theirs) from 3 to 5 p.m. this Thursday.
