On Nov. 16 at noon, hundreds of students walked out of class to the steps of Converse Hall in a demonstration against President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to “deport all criminal aliens.” Intending to declare the college a sanctuary campus — where students “commit to putting our bodies between Trump and undocumented students” — students raised signs with words such as “No human being is illegal” and chanted, “No borders, no nations, stop deportation.”
President Biddy Martin sent an email to the college community on Wednesday, Nov. 16 condemning two unauthorized posters discovered in McGuire Life Sciences Building on the preceding Tuesday. The posters depicted ideas related to phrenology, a study that uses differences in skull shapes and sizes to justify racial disparities. Phrenology has been widely discredited as an obsolete and unscientific defense of racism.
“I condemn the racism and cynical mean-spiritedness of those who hung the posters in the strongest possible terms,” Martin wrote in her statement.
The college welcomed conservative author, blogger and op-ed columnist Ross Douthat on Nov. 16 to give a talk titled “American Conservatism and Donald Trump.” The talk, which was open to the public and livestreamed, was held in Stirn Auditorium, where Douthat spoke for 45 minutes about the history and ideology of modern conservatism and how it relates to President-elect Trump’s success. After the talk, Douthat answered questions from the audience and signed copies of his book, “Bad Religion: How America Became a Nation of Heretics.”
In light of the recent national election, we might agree that climate change and environmentalism will not be a top priority come 2017. This is not to say that the climate will be ignored completely.
Grant Geddie is an architecture and environmental studies major. His thesis analyzes the urban planning and development of Indian cities in comparison with London in the 19th century, looking specifically at how water infrastructure and water resource planning have evolved.
I woke up in a state of stunned horror the morning after Donald Trump became President-elect: The States elected a man who is accused of multiple accounts of sexual assault and is an inspiration for growing white nationalist movements. To take my mind off of things, I decided to pick up the Amherst Student to read the opinion section. As I turned the pages of the newspaper, I saw a “Birthright” ad, which is always extremely uncomfortable for me to see as an Arab, especially because it tries to make Game of Thrones jokes.
We, Divest Amherst, stand in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux Nation, in support of their struggle for sovereignty and against the continued extraction of fossil fuels.
