Amherst has many things to be thankful for: the Halloween-weekend Nor’easter affected a limited area, and the response took place immediately. Even though Facilities and our staff got Amherst back on track, we must admit: Amherst got lucky.
Around this time of the year, the admissions office is busy rifling through applications from all corners of the world. The process is carefully constructed and refined to choose students with the intention of creating the best possible environment at Amherst. Undoubtedly, diversity thus factors into the admissions process, but only in the context of the skills and achievements already presented by each applicant.
Aquick google search for “Amherst College traditions” uncovers a 1913 New York Times article about the College’s lively and numerous student traditions. Fast forward 98 years, however, and those self-same traditions have largely faded into obscurity.
Oct. 16 will be a very important day in the history of the College. That morning, we will inaugurate Biddy Martin as the College’s first female president. The ceremony should be a grand event, with the crowd facing the Holyoke Mountains while the band and choir proclaim the historic moment. Representatives from the other schools in the NESCAC, local leaders and other dignitaries will all be present as witnesses to the grand event. The ceremony sounds like a wonderful thing, save for one thing — it’s outside, and Massachusetts is rainy.
Defensive medicine is a practice that is both wasteful and costly. In order to protect himself from being sued, a doctor will perform expensive, complicated and unnecessary procedures. One of the goals of President Obama’s healthcare bill was to make it harder for doctors to be sued in order to eliminate this wasteful practice. Healthcare, however, isn’t the only place where one can find elements of preventative law intruding upon effective practice.
This past Sunday, Americans gathered to memorialize the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001. As a nation, we collectively remembered the shock, the anger, the grief and the loss felt when we saw the World Trade Center towers collapse – but we also remember the solidarity emerging in the midst of that dark day.
Welcome, class of ’15, to Amherst, the best undergraduate institution in America (no matter what U.S. News says). The next four years are going to be full of new, exciting and distinctly Amherst-ian things, such as hanging out with friends in the common room, joining strange clubs and, of course, developing a healthy dislike for purple cows. So, because the food at Val is unlikely to give you the typical freshman 15, we’re happy to fatten you up with 15 tips on how to get the most out of your Amherst experience.
