“You are not alone. You are surrounded by people who care and want to help — your class deans, the Counseling Center, Religious Life, the office of Student Affairs … ”

The College Council distributed a survey to students through email regarding the college’s television programming on Wednesday, Sept. 20. Voting will remain open until Oct. 4.

Since 1997, Amherst has provided cable television in dormitories’ common areas. As usage of these televisions declines, the Council is giving students the option of reallocating some or all of the approximately $100,000 spent on cable to other student activities.

The college hired a new director of dining services this year, and along with this transition came a number of changes in the layout and structure of Valentine Dining Hall.

According to Joseph Flueckiger, who was hired in the spring of 2017, changes to the dining hall include expanding the fresh fruit display, opening a yogurt and fruit bar for breakfast, upgrading the spice station, installing temperature-controlled salad bar wells and removing salt and pepper shakers from dining tables so that the food can taste the way chefs intended.

Katia Perea gave a talk titled “Girl Cartoons, Bronies and the Princess Paradox” on Thursday, April 20 in the Friedmann Room, discussing the ways in which both classic and contemporary cartoons reinforce the gender binary.

A professor of sociology at Kingsborough Community College, part of the City University of New York system, Perea received her Ph.D. in sociology from the New School for Social Research. Her talk was sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Center.

Two weeks ago, I felt lucky to publish an editorial sharing my (primarily negative) experiences at Amherst’s Counseling Center. It gave me and, I hope, other students an outlet to express a deep frustration with the administration’s stubborn refusal to accept the prevalence of mental health problems on campus. This week, following an edifying conversation with Jacqueline Alvarez, director of the Counseling Center, I feel equally lucky to pass on information to students in need of help, as well as clarify a few points from my previous article.

During the inaugural State of the College Address on Wednesday, March 29, President Biddy Martin announced that Valentine Residence Hall will be renovated this summer.

In an email interview with Chief of Campus Operations Jim Brassord, the renovations to the dorm “will be a light-touch cosmetic upgrade of the interior finishes in the corridors and common areas.” The common areas will be repainted, carpeted and installed with new lighting fixtures.

Amherst alumna and MacArthur Fellow Dr. Kellie Jones ’81 spoke about her career and upcoming book “South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s” in a talk titled “EyeMinded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art” on Thursday, Feb. 23. In her talk, Jones outlined her efforts to bring the work of black and other marginalized artists to the spotlight and reveal the “hidden history of black people everywhere.”