Since the #MeToo movement moved to the forefront of national conversation last October, a vast number of people, mostly women, have come forward with their own stories of sexual harassment and assault by people in positions of power. In an effort to process the movement, the sexuality, women’s and gender studies (SWAGS) department hosted a panel on March 6 called “Making Sense of #MeToo,” which featured Masha Gessen, award-winning journalist and John J. McCloy professor, and Loretta Ross, key player in the creation of the reproductive justice movement and a professor at Hampshire College.
National Book Award finalists Min Jin Lee and Carmen Maria Machado spoke at Amherst on March 1 as part of Lit Fest, a three-day literary festival sponsored by Amherst College-affilitated literary magazine The Common, the Emily Dickinson Museum and the Center for Humanistic Inquiry (CHI).
Lee is the author of “Pachinko,” a novel that follows four generations of a family, which first lives in Japanese-occupied Korea during the early 1900s and later lives in Japan from before World War II until the 1980s.
Crystal Sanders, an associate professor of African-American studies and history at Penn State University, spoke in Paino Lecture Hall on Feb. 21 about the Mississippi Head Start program in 1965 and its effects on the black community. The lecture was the fourth in the Amherst College Education Studies Initiative’s interdisciplinary series.
A draft of Amherst’s self-study, the first step in the process of renewing accreditation with the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), was sent to members of the college community for feedback on Feb. 9.
The process of reaccreditation began in Feb. 2016 when the Steering Committee on Reaccreditation, which is made up of a variety of administrators, faculty and staff, was first formed, according to Amherst’s reaccreditation website. Over the past two years, data on all aspects of the college have been collected and compiled into a 140-page draft.
Dianne Pater is a visiting assistant professor of biology and a consortium for faculty diversity scholar. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of New Mexico and her doctorate from the University of California, San Diego.
Following student feedback and trends in historical data, Dining Services has made several changes to its offerings this semester, including adding a daily lunch-time burger bar, serving hot food on Wednesdays at Grab-N-Go and extending weekend hours.
In an effort to improve traffic flow along Route 9, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) has begun a study to determine if changes to the B43 bus line, which a number of people in the Five-College community rely on for transportation, could potentially make travel easier and faster along Route 9.
The B43 is run by the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority (PVTA). Its route connects Amherst College, UMass, Hampshire Mall and Smith College. One of the changes MassDOT has proposed is having the bus run express from UMass to Northampton with no stops in Amherst.
