President Biddy Martin announced April 7 that David Hamilton has been appointed Amherst’s new chief information officer. Hamilton served as Amherst’s director of web services beginning in 2006, as interim co-director of information technology after 2010 and as interim chief information officer since the fall of 2014.
Association of Amherst Students Senator Tasha Kim ‘18 presented a proposal last week for creating emergency cards that would provide important local police and transportation information to Amherst students. These neon yellow cards contain the numbers of campus police for each of the Five Colleges and also give students the last times for Pioneer Valley Transit Authority buses back to Amherst. The numbers for Safe Ride and taxi services are also provided.
Incumbent president Tomi Williams has been re-elected, the Elections Committee announced April 11. Online voting was open for 24 hours on Thursday, April 9. Five AAS executive board positions — president, vice president, treasurer, secretary and judiciary council chair — were on the ballot.
Williams won the presidency by a margin of 311 votes against his opponent Taylor Wilson ’16, garnering 83.11 percent of all votes cast.
In March, members of the Green Amherst Project met with members of the investment committee on the board of trustees to discuss their recent statement on sustainability. In their statement, the board articulated lofty goals that included plans to push Amherst towards “carbon neutrality,” the proposal of a green “revolving fund” and a commitment to “environmental best practices” in their investing policy. Paired with these three goals was a dismissal, though not a direct rejection, of the Green Amherst Project’s call for coal divestment.
Few phenomena of modern life are more inane than an accidental inter-office reply-all. And yet, the Amherst campus reacted passionately to Biddy’s school-wide email: “This is the wrong version. What happened, Pete?” On Facebook and via text message, to neighbors in class and among chatting friends in Valentine, we all — the whole campus in unity — pounced on Biddy’s email, recognizing it for its comedic gold. Unsatisfied with the competition for friends’ laughs and Facebook likes, students organized a protest in support of Pete.
By Joyce Wamala '18E, Contributing Writer
The scariest experience in life is knowing that something is wrong with you, when no one else can see or diagnose the fact that there is indeed something wrong with you. I was recently hospitalized for the first time in my life. It was two weeks of insanity, two weeks that could have changed the course of my very existence in this continent. It sounds highly dramatic, and that is because it was just that — dramatic.
There’s an old saying in politics: Laws are like sausages — no one wants to see how they’re made. Most American citizens want their roads plowed, mail delivered and bridges kept structurally sound. Yet, less than half actually show up to vote during the presidential elections every four years. That number drops dramatically for the state and local elections in which most legislation is actually passed. The candidates in many elections for crucial senate seats run unopposed as both they and their district have lost any of their original inspiration for change.
