Speaking and listening across political divide in these times is challenging. We are intent on bringing conservative ideas to liberal campuses, or bringing liberal ideas to conservative campuses. We are focused on pulling in thoughts beyond our standard lines of thinking. We seek to break the assumed bubbles in which we exist. However, these efforts are often ineffective due to an absence of true listening.
Valentine’s Day has come and gone, and however you feel about the holiday, it’s hard not to have an opinion about it. Tackling conversations about love can be difficult. They run the risk of falling into sentimentality; we might worry about annoying others or drawing ourselves into pits of rumination. Especially on Valentine’s, it can feel as if there is a concrete hierarchy of love, with romantic love reigning supreme.
In an interview on “Meet the Press,” presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway defended White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s false claims surrounding President Donald Trump’s inauguration. According to Conway, Spicer’s assertions that the 2017 presidential inauguration was the largest-attended in history are “alternative facts.” Rather than confronting the possibility that Spicer’s claims are false, Conway created a new philosophical realm of thought in which the truth can — or cannot — exist.
A little over a year ago, Mark Vanhoenacker ’96 gave a reading at Amherst Books from “Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot.” At the event, someone remarked on the ways in which Vanhoenacker’s writing reawakens his readers to the wonder of flight. He allows us to reoccupy the space of a child who boards a plane for the first time and watches, wide-eyed, as the landscape drifts away below. In our “grown-up” world, flight has become overly normalized (for a privileged segment of the population). It is easy to forget to look out the window and remark on just how small buildings look.
As the semester draws to a close, students hunker down to write final papers and prepare for exams. We look forward to leaving campus — perhaps because we are heading home or simply to another place, anywhere that is not here. Snow is starting to fall, and stick, and the tension that comes with exam season feels somewhat mediated by the faith that the holidays will soon arrive. In so many ways, the campus feels situated on an edge of an annual turn. Viewing the space that opens ahead of us gives rise to many different feelings.
In light of the recent election and where Amherst stands in its history with diversity, allyship has never been more pertinent. There are individuals at this college who have been scarred by racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-semitism, classicism, religious discrimination, xenophobia, etc. for most, if not all of their lives. There are also individuals on this campus who have never experienced any of those oppressions.
A week ago, Donald Trump was elected as the 45th president of the United States of America. Our campus reacted that night, and we continue to react in different ways every day. The feeling on campus remains somber. As we prepare for the peaceful transition of power and what the next four years might entail, it’s important to first consider the ways Amherst College, as an institution, has facilitated or stifled student discourse on the new government.
