The Association of Amherst Students (AAS) held a town hall with administrators and students on Monday, Feb. 12 to address the Party Policy changes released on Jan. 26 and subsequent student backlash. The town hall took place in the Red Room in Converse Hall and was seated to capacity, with students crowding onto the stairs and standing in the back.
Data provided to The Student by a member of the Amherst College Emergency Medical Services (ACEMS) calls into question administrators’ assertion that the college needed to overhaul the Party Policy at the beginning of the semester due to a significant increase in risks to student wellbeing.
Student Affairs released an updated version of the Party Policy on Jan. 26 to student backlash. Changes include requiring one party sponsor per 20 people as opposed to the previous 50 and expecting party sponsors to work with staff to manage attendance levels.
The college released changes to the Party Policy, a set of rules governing expectations of parties on campus, on Friday, Jan. 26. These include determining occupancy by venue, expecting party sponsors to manage attendance with staff assistance and requiring party sponsors to clean up the registered party space within one hour of the approved end time. The new party policy, announced in an email to students from Senior Associate Dean of Students Dean J. Gendron, takes effect for parties registered for and after Thursday, Feb. 1.
Peer Support Skills Training (PSST), a program formerly known as Student Support Network (SSN), was implemented in its new iteration this academic year. The program, created by Associate Director of Health Education/Mental Health Promotion Jessica Gifford, was offered in the fall 2017 term as an extracurricular course and an interterm course the week of Jan. 15.
Renowned writer and activist Shaun King spoke at the college on Wednesday, Dec. 6 at 7 p.m. in Johnson Chapel. The talk, attended and live-streamed by members of the Amherst and Five College communities and the public, was organized by the Amherst College Democrats and co-sponsored by the Multicultural Resource Center, Women’s and Gender Center, Queer Resource Center, Muslim Students’ Association, La Causa and the Roosevelt Institute at Amherst College.
Amherst College filed an amicus brief on Sept. 7 supporting the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in a lawsuit filed against the university in 2011 by the family of Han Duy Nguyen, a doctoral student who died by suicide in 2009. The family is suing the institution, two professors and an associate dean, claiming that they did not do enough to help Nguyen even though they had known for months that he had ongoing mental health issues.
-itok=pOq9qAIV.jpg)
Christine Bader ’93 is a corporate idealist. Though she’s seen the best and the worst at the world’s largest corporations, including e-commerce company Amazon and oil and gas company BP, she believes that big companies can be “a force for good.”
