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Daniel Greenman

807 Union St.

Thursday, April 14, 2022 | Concordiensis greenmad@union.edu

Union College’s Woman of the Week: Michaela Wood

Jackson Giamattei Staff Writer

Nominated By: Sarah Wright

Nomination: Michaela is an all-around good person. She’s the kind of person you can talk to about emergency situations at any hour of the day. She has really stepped up in Res Life this year to take on the challenge of maintaining Davi-Web as well as working on her thesis and maintaining friendships. I don’t know of anyone more deserving of Woman of the Week than Michaela. I will be sad to see her graduate this spring but I know she will go off to do great and important things in her life, no question.

What are you passionate about?

I am most passionate about promoting empathy and interacting with others. I pride myself on being a passionate person who deeply cares about others and continues to help foster opportunities for honest conversation. I love supporting others and helping those that I love, and even strangers, work towards becoming their best selves—which is why I am pursuing a career in Speech-Language Pathology. I am incredibly passionate about human interaction and studying language and culture. I’m also very passionate about binging tv shows and reading new books :)

Who do you look up to?

My mom is my role model. As a single mother and a teacher for Boston Public Schools, I have seen such resiliency, empathy, and cunning that I have never seen from another person. She has taught me the importance of perspective and the importance of family.

What does being a woman at Union mean to you?

Being a woman at Union is being an empathetic leader and being a member of the world’s future leaders. For me, this includes uplifting all people, offering my love and support to others, learning and unlearning to be a better woman (and human), and continuing to educate myself on how to be a better ally. Overall being a woman at Union means acknowledging our imperfections but persisting in breaking glass ceilings everywhere.

Michaela Wood ‘22

Courtesy of Women’s Union

Disclaimer: the following article is satirical, and meant to be a humorous and exaggerated expression of perspectives of campus culture for entertainment purposes. This article is not intended to offend readers or stoke controversy.

Potential merge between CS and MLL?

Jing Chen Co-Editor-in-Chief

The chair of the Computer Science Department has made a groundbreaking decision marked historic in the advancement of computer science education beginning in April. Chair John Rieffel has sent out an email announcing the exciting potential merge between the Computer Science (CS) and Modern Language and Literature (MLL) department. As Prof. Rieffel explains, this is in recognition of computer science as a liberal arts discipline. The new department would bestow the name of “Modern and Computer Languages and Litera degrees in Bachelor of Arts in including B.A. in Python, Java, and C, ARM Assembly, Fortran, COBOL, and LaTeX studies.

In support of interdisciplinary studies beyond MLL, each of these majors would collaborate with various departments on campus. For instance, ARM Assembly with the Electrical, Computer, and Biomedical Engineering department, Fortran with Classics and Physics, COBOL with Economics, and LaTeX with Math. Undoubtedly, these new degrees present breathtaking opportunities for not just students in CS, but the entire Union College community. To our knowledge, no other educational institutions have ever initiated such a compelling and promising program, and the Union College CS department would certainly impact computer science education forever.

Many students studying CS cheer for this decision. Jordan An ‘23 cried in overjoy because he “cannot wait to found a way to accelerate my LaTeX knowledge for it is my favorite language. I’m glad the CS department is hearing all the Math and CS double majors out there,” he compliments. Jason D’Amico ‘24 joined the happy sentiment forms to major in a B.A. in C because C is just so much fun” and he “cannot wait to build his degree around it.”

Five days later, Prof. Rieffel followed up with an email, which devastated many students. He explained that the newly born MCLL major was an “April Fools joke.” Many students were heartbroken and refused to believe the harsh reality. Angry students mobilized and stormed to to bring back the MCLL major, to which Prof. Rieffel only shrugged his shoulders. Out air as students grieved over the lost opportunities to major in fascinating languages like COBOL.

Emma Vu ‘24 was among one of the students, who weeped that “I literally dropped my phone after reading the email. As an Economics-CS ID major I was so ready

Jing Chen | Concordiensis

despair.

to major in COBOL.” Few students denied the truth of the email because Prof. Rieffel changed his email signature to “Co-Chair, Modern and Computer Languages and Literature,” only to realize that it has been switched it back to “Chair only of the actual Computer Science Department.”