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Anti-Black slur discovered in Pearsons over Thanksgiving break

BY MADHAVI RAO ’24 & JADA JACKSON ’24 FEATURES EDITOR | STAFF WRITER

Content warning: This article discusses racism, racial slurs and white supremacy.

The discovery of anti-Black vandalism in a Mount Holyoke College residence hall at the beginning of the November Break period has prompted an investigation by the College.

Around midnight on Nov. 22, residents on the third floor of Pearsons Hall found a racist message scrawled across a community bulletin board. The hate message reading “no [N-word]s” expressed that Black students are not welcome at Mount Holyoke.

In the wake of this incident, Vice President for Student Life and Dean of Students Marcella Runell sent an email to the Mount Holyoke community on Nov. 22. “The College takes this matter very seriously,” Runell stated. “Please know that this incident is being fully investigated, and the College is actively exploring all avenues to address this matter.”

“To the Black students [at the College], I am so sorry that this happened,” Student Government Association President Maille Romulus ʼ24, who is Black, said in an interview with the Mount Holyoke News.

“And I am not sure what this means for [Black students] and our relationship to this institution. I hope we are able to find [the perpetrator] and hold them accountable for their actions. I wish peace for the Black alums, students, staff, faculty and future members of the community.”

The College has made several efforts to inform the community members about the incident in Pearsons.

Another email from Runell stated, “Following the report, Public Safety and Service launched a full investigation. I alerted the campus community and the Secretary of the College, Bett Schumacher, alerted the Board of Trustees.”

“The anti-Black racist act of vandalism that occurred in Pearsons Hall was horrifying, unacceptable and has no place on the Mount Holy-

Photo by Ella Shelton ’26 Students discovered anti-Black vandalism on Pearsons Hall on Nov. 22, leading the College to organize affinity spaces for Black students in response.

oke College campus,” the College wrote in an official statement to Mount Holyoke News. “The College, upon notification of the vandalism, immediately launched a full investigation. The investigation remains active and we urge anyone with any relevant information to contact Public Safety and Service immediately.

Both the Division of Student Life and the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are working together on a number of efforts for care and support of Black students, including: affinity spaces, making a Black-identified therapist available for students, Drop-in Talkin’ sessions and Be Well activities. We urge students to make use of any and all resources for their wellbeing and sense of safety and belonging on campus.”

Affinity spaces for students to process the incident, including one hosted by President Danielle R. Holley on Nov. 29 in the Beverly Daniel Tatum Unity Center, allowed Black students to voice their opinions and ideas. Cindy Ntembe ’27, another Black student and one of the few students remaining on campus over the break, attended several of these events. Ntembe told Mount Holyoke

News in an interview that she would appreciate it if the school administration would “utilize our already existing organizations and even our SGA. That was really a surprise to me that they didn’t try to contact them at all to have those conversations or those activities. It seems like the most direct way to reach students.”

Along with notifying Public Safety and Service of the vandalism, residents of Pearsons turned to social media to alert fellow students of the hate crime. In addition to sharing images of the vandalism on their Instagrams, students reposted an Instagram story message written by Romulus. “Don’t treat this as an isolated incident,” Romulus declared, along with a list of things for nonBlack students to avoid doing in response to the incident. “This is not the first time something of this magnitude has happened, and it once again shows who MHC was built for.”

“I bet 1000000% that the person who wrote that would never actually say it to a Black person’s face,” Jasmine Greene ’25 also expressed in an Instagram story post. “But if you’re going to write stupid [bullshit] like that then stand on it[,] show who

you are and face the proper consequences.”

Even before this most recent incident of anti-Blackness in Pearsons, there had been reports of anti-Black sentiments by Pearsons residents.

In an interview with Mount Holyoke News, Sabina Miezah ’24, a Black student, shared her experiences while living at Pearsons in the Fall 2021 semester.

“I encountered instances of microaggressions such as walking past white students and being snickered at or getting constantly reported to the RA for doing things that I had seen white students do,” Miezah claimed. “One of my Black upperclassmen got [Public Safety] called on them by a white resident at Pearsons for filming a short clip [for a class project] in the area.” Following this, Miezah applied for housing outside of Pearsons.

“In times of communion being with other Black students on campus has massively helped my mental health where we can dance, laugh, and be joyous,” Greene told Mount Holyoke News. Describing the experience of being a Black student at the College, Greene said, “It is like being

aware of constant racism but having to ignore it or else you won’t be able to function and deliver as a student.

If it weren’t for the other POC and Black students on this campus and the few professors who make me feel seen and safe, I would not have stayed.”

“To the non-Black community, I want to say that just reposting what other Black students have said is not doing work towards an anti-racist community,” Greene said. “Always remember that actions speak louder than a repost … Racism isn’t just a slur but can be seen in the ways you also interact with Black students on this campus.”

The incident on Nov. 22 occurred during President Danielle R. Holley’s first term as the first woman of color and first Black president of Mount Holyoke College. “[To] @daniellerholley as the first [B]lack president at mount holyoke,” Campbell Waters ‘24 posted on their Instagram story following the incident. “i implore you to speak for the 4% of [B]lack students on campus, you are our representative of higher education.”* Chief of Staff and Strategic Communications and Senior Deputy Title IX Coordinator Lauren Gaia works in the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the College.

“The Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is deeply committed to supporting Black students and fighting anti-Black racism and all other forms of oppression in our community,” Gaia commented in an email to Mount Holyoke News. “We have an open door policy. We are available to connect with students and will work diligently to address every incident of anti-Black racism that is reported to us.” At the time of publication, the College’s investigation into the incident is ongoing.

Editor’s note: the 4% referenced in this quote refers to the percentage of domestic students of color at Mount Holyoke College. It does not account for those students who identify as Black/African-American within the international student body population.

Senators meet to discuss end-of-semester events and deadlines

BY PAIGE COMEAU ’26 STAFF WRITER

Senate began on Dec. 5 with a reading of the Mount Holyoke College Land Acknowledgement and the meeting’s agenda, which included E-Board updates, an open floor and a closing note.

Beginning with E-Board updates, the senate leaders planned to speak on the Student Government Association Ways and Means Committee, affinity spaces, a Public Safety and Service department update and an upcoming SGA project.

First, one of the students on the Ways and Means Committee came up to the stage to remind everyone of the upcoming audits. They explained that any person in charge of funds within an on-campus organization has to come and meet with Ways and Means for their audit. If they do not, their organization’s accounts will be frozen for the next semester.

Then, the senate leaders discussed affinity spaces and upcoming intergroup dialogue sessions. Meetings will be held on Sunday, Dec. 10, with Jewish-identified students, Middle Eastern North African-identified students, Black-identified students, Muslim-identified students and students who identify as allies.

More information can be found in recent emails from the Division of Student Life.

After this, the senate announced a message from the Public Safety and Service department. In a previous session, a student had mentioned that the science buildings were not open for the entirety of their posted “open” hours. Senate leaders then contacted Public Safety, and they admitted it to be a mistake on their part. Moving forward, students should be able to access the buildings within their posted hours.

Finally, senate leaders announced that an upcoming SGA proj-

Photo by Emma Quirk ’26 The final meeting of the Fall 2023 senate occured on Tue. night with end-of-semester discussions.

ect would be taking place the week of Dec. 4. Every year, the leaders explained, SGA attempts to take on a project of thankfulness. This year,

they are looking to write thank-you notes to facilities and maintenance staff. SGA officials will be gathering on Dec. 6, 7 and 8 during dinner to

gather thank-yous from students and staff. Anyone is welcome to come and write a thank-you message.

Following E-Board updates, the senate turned to open floor, a time when senators and representatives can address any concerns and announce any upcoming events. Several representatives shared their end-of-year events, including STEMPOC’s study-a-thon on Dec. 10, the Jewish Student Union’s Hanukkah celebrations, Club Ice Hockey’s annual Krispy Kreme fundraiser and the English Handbell Ensemble’s winter concert on Dec. 10.

When asked if they had any concerns, a student senator representing 1837 Hall noted that the plastic shower curtains in the bathrooms continuously break. They asked if it would be possible to get thicker fabric curtains for the outer railing.

Senate leaders said they would bring the concern up to Facilities Management.

Rachel Maddow discusses Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism

BY KIERA MCLAUGHLIN ’26 GLOBAL EDITOR

Content warning: This article discusses antisemitism.

American television program host and political commentator Rachel Maddow opened the Nov. 15 discussion of her #1 New York Times Bestseller “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism” by reading a section of her book to the audience gathered at the Academy of Music in Northampton.

“Henry Ford’s antisemitism was rank,” Maddow read, “and it was unchecked. … Ford was hardly the only radical antisemite in the United States circa 1920, but in addition to his fortune, his famous name, and

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his iconic automobile company, he had a megaphone your average crazy-uncle theorizer lacked: a newspaper.”

The book traces the stories of federal prosecutors, journalists, activists and citizens who worked tirelessly to protect democracy in America against paramilitary groups, Nazi fascist leaders and federal representatives aligned with Hitler’s government.

Maddow continued to read from her book a description of Hitler being interviewed in 1931 as he stood before a framed portrait of Ford while stating: “I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration.”

The seats were packed for the in-person event hosted by the Odyssey Bookshop despite being resched-

3 A&E: Marriage Pact unites matches

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uled from its original Oct. 29 date because Maddow had COVID-19. The discussion also featured Kate Clinton, a renowned queer comedian.

By starting the talk off highlighting the influence of American antisemitism on the Nazi regime, Maddow set the scene for discussing the relationship that America has with fascist ideals and antisemitic hate.

With the help of historians, Maddow uncovers the stories of individuals who actively fought against the fascist campaign in the federal government.

Once she finished reading to the crowd, Maddow questioned the audience about the future of democracy CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

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Photo by Emma Quirk ’26 Rachel Maddow, above, spoke at the Odyssey Bookshop about her #1 New York Times Bestseller.

5 S&E: Can heavy metal deter killer whales?

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7 BOOKS: Dr. Vanessa Rosa debuts new work

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FEATURES

December 8, 2023

. Mount Holyoke News

Emo and hardcore genres mix at the Sour City Tapes Fest

BY CAROLINE HUBER ’26 STAFF WRITER

Amid a damp and cold winter evening, show-goers clustered inside Amherst College’s Marsh Arts House for the “Sour City Tapes Fest.” The show, which opened its doors on Dec. 1 at 6 p.m., featured a mixed-genre bill that spanned emo, hardcore punk and beatdown.

Beginning at 7 p.m., Brimfield Massachusetts’ Posthumous Obsession played the first set. Their music featured wailing riffs contrasting against a background of intense rhythms. The crowd responded with enthusiastic moshing — often at odds with the steady tempos produced by the band.

Posthumous Obsession’s drummer, Anthony Franco, described the band as incorporating the genres of beatdown and metal, saying that “characteristically, there’s a lot of breakdowns and slower sessions.”

Cole D’Onofrio, the vocalist of another participating band called Dishpit, said, “My favorite parts [of the show] were definitely [in] Posthumous Obsessions’ set. That was really good.”

Next, four-piece emo band Radical Joy played an enthusiastic set.

Catchy riffs, a mix of tempos and emotional singing augmented their performance. The audience responded with attentive swaying and bobbing, the occasional pushpit and an overall gentler environment than the one produced by Posthumous Obsession.

The band performed a set of group, who take their name from the originals, including the entirety of symbiote-Peter-Parker fusion featheir upcoming EP set for release in tured in “Spider-Man 3,” performed 2024. They concluded with a cover a passionate set, attracting many of “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd, enthusiastic fans. The band’s sound alongside an enthusiastic mosh pit is reminiscent of Midwest emo, with that they prompted and participated surfing riffs and impassioned singin. ing. They performed several songs This culminated in their lead from their upcoming EP and played guitarist, Shaye Marino, dropping their newest release, “Avatar: The her guitar in the chaos — something Last Crusade.” The band also feathat Ethan Kentured songs from nedy, lead vocaltheir first EP, As someone that goes to a ist and guitarist, “Pizza Time,” lot of shows out, here it’s jokingly cited as including “Peter his favorite molike there’s a sense of com- Parker … I Hardment from the ly Know ‘er!!” munity within the crowd. show.

Finally, four… even between the crowd piece deathcore Kennedy identified Radiband Dishpit and the bands. cal Joy as “a mix concluded the between power night with an – Anthony Franco pop and punk,” aggressive set, noting that the inciting the most band “take[s] a lot of influence from violent and rowdy moshpit. The emo music.” Members of the band band, who cited their inspirations mentioned Green Day and Nirvana as Suicide Silence, Lamb of God and as inspirations, with Marino noting Massachusetts’s own Killswitch Enthat they take inspiration for their gage, played numerous songs from stage presence from the hardcore their recent EP “S/T” alongside unband The Chariot. released songs, producing the angriKennedy added that the band est set of the night. enjoyed playing Amherst College beFranco, who attended Dishpits’ cause “The kids are fucking rowdy. first show earlier this year, appreciHonestly, like, I didn’t expect people ated their performance. “To compare to go as hard as they did. For all the what I saw tonight versus how they other ones [bands], it’s fucking cra- sounded their first show … they’ve zy.” gotten insanely good, and they’re Following this performance, just on this crazy uptick, I think.” four-piece emo band Bully MaguThe active Amherst punk music ire, based in Pittsfield, played. The scene and community, which fos-

Photo courtesy of @andershelsby Four-piece deathcore band Dishpit closed out their set at the Sour City Tapes Fest with a moshpit.

tered both Dishpit and Posthumous Obsession, drew comments from multiple artists. Franco said, “As someone that goes to a lot of shows out, here it’s like there’s a sense of community within the crowd. … even between the crowd and the bands.” Radical Joys’ drummer Sean Maclure also appreciated the involved audience. “I feel like the community for like the scene in Amherst [is] … pretty special … this is one of the only places I know where people just go to shows. … just go to, like,

hang out, [and] listen to music.”

Jeremy Devany, the guitarist of Dishpit, appreciated both the attendees and the music itself. “There’s bands that are doing very different genres really, really well. And so we’re kind of happy that people are just doing the kind of music they want to do, and they’re doing it very well, and it’s very unique and creative.”

“We just want to see more bands come out and hopefully some more venues too,” D’Onofrio added.

Dorm-estic Exploration: Visiting the three youngest halls

BY BETTY SMART ’26 STAFF WRITER

ident Kapper Wang ’25, who said, “I like how close Ham is to Kendall. I can go jogging around the lake every morning. It’s nice and quiet here.”

Fellow resident Sofia Rosen ’27 described Ham as “just the dorm, we don’t have any LLCs, not much happens. The walk is pretty annoying, but you get used to it. We’re far away, but not the furthest.”

How well do we all know the residence halls on campus? There are 18 dorms at Mount Holyoke College at the time of this article’s publication, gradually built following the fire that burned down the College’s original Seminary building in 1896.

A colorful bunch, each has their own distinct quirks and drawbacks. Your personal taste may affect how you see each one, but they all have something to offer that truly makes their residents’ experience unique. This past week, I visited three dorms that stand out in their modernity.

Creighton Hall The newest dorm on campus, Creighton Hall, was built in 2008.

It resembles a pleasant hotel, with soft lighting, abstract decorations, carpeted hallways, an absolutely adorable Golden Pear kitchen and a rotunda that joins North and South Creighton — which are not so well differentiated. A stone’s throw from Rooke Theatre and Pratt Hall, it boasts a beautiful backyard field that joins the massive dorm to Lower Lake. The four language learning Living-Learning Communities — including German, French, Italian and Chinese — are located in Creighton, each providing its residents with a sense of fun and community through events centered on speaking the language, and shared lounge space with plenty of books, games and a TV. Charlyn Rachner ’24, an international German student living in the

Photo by Zeyu Zhao ’27 Picture of the sign marking the newest dorm on campus, Creighton Hall, which houses four LLCs.

German language LLC, appreciates “[living] in a community that wants to learn about German culture and language. We don’t have the aesthetic of the old buildings, which is a shame, but I love having AC.” Emma Nguyen ’24 describes the Creighton dorm as “pretty clean and spacious compared to other dorms I’ve been in, and the rooms are very nice. It’s a comfortable dorm, with AC that works in the summer.”

Ham Hall Built in 1965 on the outskirts of campus, Ham Hall’s plain brick exterior is imposing — a contrast to its bucolic location at the top of a hill next to Upper Lake. Inside is an interesting mix of styles, with two

comfortable common rooms on the first floor. One is larger to accommodate the piano and fireplace, while the other is a cozier TV room.

Both common rooms adjoin a large stone patio, overlooking a beautiful view of Upper Lake and the sports fields outside of the nearby Kendall Sports & Dance Complex. Through an adjoining door is the Zowie Banteah Cultural Center.

Above this, dorm rooms branch off tight hallways with bright lighting, gray linoleum floors and pale blue walls. Each floor has a sadly inaccessible balcony that overlooks the lake and a single desk made up like a library carrel next to the kitchenette.

Ham’s distance from the main body of campus doesn’t bother res-

MacGregor Hall Built in 1967, two years after Ham Hall, MacGregor Hall is at the far edge of campus. Constructed right next to Ham, MacGregor can be viewed as its fraternal twin. The ground floor resembles a ski lodge, with a massive common space repurposed from the old pre-Blanchard Dining cafeteria, window walls and an unused grid of mail cubbies. The huge common rooms share the same stunning view as Ham, overlooking Upper Lake and the entire athletic complex area. Upstairs, the hallways remain quite similar to Ham. Notably, the kitchenettes are larger, with their own little ironing nooks and a strange closet that looks like a phoneless phone booth.

Anybody’s first year at college is going to be a big change, no matter who they are or where they’re from. Because of this, the First Year Experience LLC, located in MacGregor, appeals to many incoming firstyears with its mission to help them adjust to campus life. Resident Paige Jones ’27 appreciates having fellow first-years as neighbors. “The little basement is usually empty, and I can have a place to myself. The location

for sure is a bit far.”

Like Ham, the hilly distance definitely counts against it in terms of convenience and easy access. For some residents, though, having a community to come back to makes it worth the walk. The community of first-years makes MacGregor what it is. Residential Advisor Ku Paw ’26 describes MacGregor as being “active; there’s always a group of people talking in the hallways or watching a movie in the common room. It’s like a family at school.”

As someone who favors the older buildings, I was left feeling a bit of a disconnect visiting these three dorms — especially putting them up against the rest of Mount Holyoke’s residence halls. Creighton Hall seems to suit the campus a little more. While it’s definitely much more updated, feeling in some places like a hotel, the general softness feels more in line with founder Mary Lyon’s ideal of helping the students feel at home.

Conversely, I wish MacGregor and Ham had taken further advantage of their lakeside location, perhaps running with the ski lodge theme in their very nice common rooms instead of opting for a parking lot exterior and cold, plain hallways.

However, even though much of these dorms’ modernity was not to my liking, I was always heartened to see the charming bulletins from the RAs and the personal touch every resident had left on their door. After all, it’s the people who make a place what it is, and for many, this place is home.

The Odyssey Bookshop hosts Rachel Maddow at Academy of Music, cont’d u

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

in America: “What are we doing now? What will we do for our future generations?”

These questions are prevalent in her book, based on her hit podcast “Ultra,” where she uncovers the fight against fascism in the United States in the 1940s and during World War II. At a time when the far-right ideologies of public officials threaten democracy, this book provides insight into the successful fight against fascism that took place in the United States.

A prominent false narrative affirms that America was a place of strong democratic allegiance during World War II, but in reality, American soil was a site for internal fights against fascism.

Throughout the event, Maddow and Clinton had the crowd laughing with them. Between all the hard topics, Clinton provided humorous quips about the discussion, like

bringing up Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie and Maddow’s accomplishments throughout her career during her research for her podcast and book.

The talk also began with Clinton asking Maddow for her definition of fascism, which eventually led to a discussion about the “bad guys” and the “good guys,” as Maddow calls them in her book. In response to Clinton’s question about why bad guys are remembered more than good guys, Maddow responded that her goal for this book and publishing her research was to educate and to get the good guys, and more importantly, their strategies against fascism, remembered.

“I hope [this history] is interesting and engaging enough that it gets people thinking creatively about these problems in a way that’s just better informed. And that just gives us more to draw on,” Maddow said in an interview with Mount Holyoke News.

She elaborated on the role of the justice system when holding poli-

ticians accountable and the importance of criminal charges against violence. “The Justice Department cannot absent itself just because those crimes have been committed for political reasons,” she said. Then she pointed out that, when it comes to holding politicians accountable, people cannot, in turn, “count on the justice system to do it itself.”

One of the main narratives in her book and podcast concerns O. John Rogge, a Justice Department prosecutor who tried the senators and Congress representatives working with Hitler’s fascist government in court but ultimately failed to prosecute them. Nonetheless, with the help of journalists who covered his efforts, Rogge’s strong cases publicized the anti-democratic practices of the officials. Citizens then voted most of the representatives participating in the fascist scheme out of office.

In an interview on the podcast “Pod Save America,” Maddow explained that citizens need to believe their vote matters in order for de-

mocracy to work. When asked how young activists can defend voting rights and protect democracy by advocating for voting, Maddow told Mount Holyoke News, “If you’re trying to defend democracy, really the only tool you have is democracy.”

“You need to stand up for that system that’s being denigrated,” Maddow explained. She recognized that activists can start to feel “cynical or bored by democracy” and that “telling people [to] go vote is a boring end to a discussion about politics.”

However, she stressed that “if that’s the system we are trying to save, you have to save it not only by using it but by … giving people reason to believe in it.”

While discussing her research with Clinton, Maddow disclosed that she will continue her work in another season of her podcast, “Ultra.” Without specifying the content of the second season, Maddow made it clear that her research has not ended and that there is more to this story.

The crowd celebrated through applause and cheered for the idea of an addition to the original podcast, as Clinton read questions from the audience to Maddow varying from the cases against former President Donald Trump to her personal dayto-day life.

As the crowd called for an encore, Maddow ended the event with an extra question about paramilitary groups being a threat to democracy, referencing the ultra-right Christian groups from the 1940s in her podcast and book.

Many of the audience’s questions mirrored the one she asked the crowd at the beginning of the event: What should we do now?

At the end of the event, the audience filled the room with applause for Rachel Maddow and her work on “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism.”

“I think we’re wired to always think that the moment that we’re in is the worst or the first, and [it] very rarely is in either case,” Maddow told the Mount Holyoke News.

December 8, 2023

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

. Mount Holyoke News

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Marriage Pact returns, tests its matchmaking skills on campus

BY MELANIE DURONIO ’26 FEATURES EDITOR & MANAGING EDITOR OF WEB

On an unsuspecting fall afternoon, word spread amongst students that an Instagram account had posted for the first time in over a year with the caption, “Lovebirds. We’ve missed you.” Mount Holyoke College Marriage Pact was back, once again promising companionship for its followers.

The Marriage Pact is an annual matchmaking service that takes place on multiple college campuses across the country, describing itself as “at the frontier of applying science and technology to serve genuine, meaningful relationships.” Founded by two Stanford undergraduates in 2017 and entirely student-run, the service is designed as an alternative to dating apps that helps college students find their “best backup plan” for love.

Since its launch, the Marriage Pact has been established at 86 schools across the country — including all of Mount Holyoke’s fellow Seven Sister and Five College Consortium schools. The Marriage Pact has amassed 407,480 participants “and counting” nationwide, according to its website. This year, 631 of these participants were Mount Holyoke students.

However, the goal of the Marriage Pact is not to guarantee a relationship or perfect pairing. Instead, it is to match applicants with someone they are compatible with, whether that be as a friend or a romantic partner.

“We believe there are three types of relationships that matter in everyone’s life: your romantic

relationships, your friendships, and your relationship with yourself. In real life, you nurture all three of these types of relationships at once — so why is it that they’ve been kept in separate products since the dawn of the internet?” the Marriage Pact remarks in its official About Page.

Mount Holyoke’s Marriage Pact was advertised as such, with even “lonely firsties” being able to participate, as @mohomarriagepact stated in an Instagram post on April 1, 2021.

This semester, Mount Holyoke’s Marriage Pact opened on Nov. 13 and closed on Nov. 20 at 5 p.m., two days before Thanksgiving break.

“I think it’s a great idea. I think it’s really sweet, really well done.

And they were really quick to give us the matches,” Camila Juarbe ’26 said. She added that “the website was pretty” and the questions “were funny.”

Although she did not end up meeting her match in person, Juarbe still liked the experience. However, she felt the date of this year’s Marriage Pact could have been adjusted.

“I think that the time in which it came out could’ve probably been next semester, like maybe not before the break. Just because then people would’ve been able to meet up with their match,” she explained.

“I thought maybe I would be besties with my match because that’s how they [MoHo Marriage Pact] advertised it … But it didn’t turn out that way. [Though] I don’t know, I didn’t expect anything of it.”

Izzy Leake ’26 filled out the Marriage Pact with the hope of “meet[ing] someone really cool and be[ing] friends with them.” However, they also did not meet up with their match, having “realized it was more

about doing it for fun and because my friends did it … I also thought it would be funny to maybe match with a friend or acquaintance I already know, so since I did not know my match I did not feel the need to reach out.”

The service uses a survey of 40 to 50 questions to match applicants with a compatible partner. Questions pertain to a wide range of topics, including applicants’ political views.

Answers are given on a scale of 1 to 7 — strongly disagree to strongly agree — and are then processed through the Marriage Pact’s algorithm. Matches are calculated and assigned before being delivered to applicants’ inboxes, along with their compatibility percentage.

“I think a strength is that … [there were] pretty specific questions,” Juarbe said. “Some of them were funny, but others were about political views and stuff like that, which I think is really important if we’re going to really do a match.”

However, Leake did not find the questions to be as useful. “I feel like the survey should have focused more on things like personality traits and sense[s] of humor because those things can indicate whether you get along with someone. Instead, a lot of the questions were about values and preferences, which are also important, but I wish the main focus was on personality.”

Leake also found The MoHo Marriage Pact’s main drawback to be that it was not “reflective of [Mount Holyoke’s] culture,” feeling that one question asking “whether you would support your child if they were gay” normalized homophobia and was “out of place” compared to other questions.

Graphic by Melanie Duronio ’26

“It also rubbed me the wrong way when they had more options for how to describe [one’s] own gender identity, but not as many options for which gender identities you would want to match with,” Leake said. “I feel like the questions should have been more tailored to queer and trans people because that is a larger population at our school compared to most colleges.”

However, the Marriage Pact questions can vary. According to a graphic uploaded in a Stanford Daily interview, questions such as “I believe in star signs” and “My partner can be ‘just friends’ with an ex” were created by the original Stanford team, and both were included in this year’s MoHo Marriage Pact as part of a curated list.

“To arrive at [this] curated list, hundreds of questions are consid-

ered, and even some of the final ones are left out by some campuses with which they partner,” The Stanford Daily reported.

As such, Leake noted that there was no option to choose between searching for a friend or a “romantic connection” this year despite “[having] that option last time they did the Marriage Pact a few years ago,” indicating that questions do have the potential to be changed or added.

Overall, the Marriage Pact places no guarantee on matching students with “the one”; it can only promise a compatible match through a carefully crafted algorithm. Ultimately, the power is in the applicants themselves to decide whether or not their Marriage Pact match is truly right for them. “I think they should do it next year,” Juarbe said. “I would do it again.”

Sofia Coppola’s ‘Priscilla’ finally tells Priscilla Presley’s story

BY GABI PALERMO ’24 STAFF WRITER

Sofia Coppola’s latest film “Priscilla” gives audiences a window into the life of Priscilla Presley, based on the latter’s 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me.” The film’s story begins at a party in Germany in 1959, where a 14-year-old Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) and 24-year-old soldier Elvis (Jacob Elordi) first meet. As other characters point out the couple’s obvious age gap — “She sure is young isn’t she? Like a little girl” — Coppola begins the story of a young, impressionable girl caught in the trap of fame and fortune.

At such a young age, Priscilla is willing to do whatever it takes to be with Elvis. She leaves Germany to move to Tennessee and live in Elvis’ home while she finishes high school so they can be together. Elordi’s performance as the soft-spoken musician allows viewers to see how Priscilla fell in love with Elvis in the first place.

One of the best parts of the film is a musical sequence in which

Photo courtesy of ruthdaniel3444 via Wikimedia Commons Priscilla Presley, whose life is the film’s focus.

we get a glimpse of the good times that occurred between Priscilla and Elvis, with the song “Crimson and Clover” by Tommy James and the Shondells playing in the back-

ground. The most captivating part is a scene showing the couple with a group of their friends in a roller skating rink. The warm, colorful lighting, in conjunction with the slow camera movements following them around the roller rink, creates a dream-like sequence that makes viewers see the magical aspect of being young and in love.

We soon begin to see the dark reality of being the wife of one of the most famous musicians of all time.

As Elvis becomes addicted to drugs and alcohol as his fame and stardom grows, he is not present for the majority of their marriage. Though at times Priscilla seems to enjoy being nothing but Elvis’ wife, audiences see how her life begins to feel empty as she is constantly alone. In one scene, we see that Priscilla is given a puppy by Elvis to make her feel less lonely.

One day, Priscilla is playing outside with her puppy in the front yard when Elvis’ father (Tim Post) tells her to go inside, as she is drawing attention from fans and the press.

Even though she is like a princess in

a castle, her freedom is continually restrained, and she always ends up alone.

The film’s opening sequence shows different shots of Priscilla applying her makeup, doing her hair and getting dressed. There are closeup shots of her hair and her winged eyeliner, the two most iconic aspects of her look. Women getting ready is a motif present in many of Coppola’s films, such as “The Virgin Suicides” and “Marie Antoinette.”

These scenes highlight the themes of womanhood that are common in Coppola’s filmography. In “Priscilla,” this getting-ready scene highlights the performance of femininity Priscilla has to enact for the public. It also highlights her loneliness, as she is getting ready for a man who is not present most of the time.

Elvis denies Priscilla the opportunity to gain any sort of independence because of her status as a wife. In one scene, Priscilla asks Elvis if she can get a job, and he is vehemently against it because he says that is not what she is supposed

to do. Elvis tells Priscilla that, due to his lifestyle, he needs someone who can be at home and take care of him.

“I need a woman that understands,” he tells her. “Is that you?”

This conflict emphasizes Priscilla’s role as an accessory to her husband, and we see her begin to feel trapped in her life. Yet “Priscilla” places its focus on the titular character rather than her uber-famous husband. The movie’s soundtrack does not include any of Elvis’ music, as in the “Crimson and Clover” sequence.

With an 82% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, “Priscilla” has caught the attention of audiences. The film allows Priscilla Presley to reclaim her story, as audiences are finally getting a chance to learn about the life of a woman who was always in the public eye but never acknowledged. Emphasizing isolation, Coppola highlights how Priscilla felt held captive in a life she chose and sometimes regretted. This biopic allows viewers to take a peek behind the curtain to glimpse the life of a girl who seemed to have everything and nothing at the same time.

Gabrielle Korn’s debut novel focuses on queer love amid climate disaster

BY NYX CIEPRISZ ’26 ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR

Taking place in a not-so-distant future New York City ravaged by climate change, Gabrielle Korn’s recently-released debut novel “Yours for the Taking,” has been called “[a] t once a mesmerizing story of queer love, betrayal, and chosen family, and an unflinching indictment of white, corporate feminism,” by its publisher, Macmillan.

Korn spent 10 years in media in various roles, including as Netflix’s Head of LGBTQ+ Strategy on Social Media, Nylon Media’s Editor-in-Chief, Refinery29’s Director of Fashion & Culture and, more recently, author of the essay collection “Everybody (Else) Is Perfect.” With “Yours for the Taking,” Korn has made her first — and hopefully not last — foray into fiction.

Korn described the difference between writing this novel and her past work as “night and day.” “[W]hen you write for someone else, it’s not really yours, or at least that’s how I started to feel. Writing your own books is like giving yourself permission to say all the things you’ve been holding in,” Korn said in an interview with Mount Holyoke News.

In “Yours for the Taking,” Korn has refused to hold back. Her attention is focused on the immediacy of

climate change and social justice. “[A] few things converged at once for me,” she said while describing where the idea for the novel came from. “First was a couple of stats: one, that climate change is happening faster than humans can adapt to it, and two, that the climate change tipping points will pass before women have equal rights. I started trying to imagine what that kind of world might actually look like.”

Korn later said that to do so, “I did a lot of research into climate change and potential urban planning solutions, but most of it just came from the deepest, darkest, weirdest parts of my brain.” In addition to the ever-present threat of climate disaster, Korn found another source of inspiration in her career path, adding, “I was also working in women’s media, so I’m sure a lot of that environment inspired the book.”

It can be difficult to look at forces like climate change, capitalism and rampant inequality without responding with apathy or despair, but Korn rejects defeatism. In imagining what the future could look like beyond dismal statistics, she delves into the continuation of human connection through her characters. In a follow-up interview, she said that “the heart of the book is several overlapping love stories between different types of people. Queer women, sisters, and a mother and her

daughters. Those relationships form and shift and evolve throughout the book, but they’re always there, just like in real life.”

These relationships not only persevere through catastrophe but, according to Korn, provide a source of strength: “When things are at their worst we go on because we love each other, and that’s where the joy in the book comes from.”

Korn also spoke about the importance of accurate queer representation as a lesbian herself. “I also wanted to have an ensemble cast of queer women who come from different walks of life instead of having one queer person in a cast of straight people because that felt more true to life,” she told Mount Holyoke News.

“Yours for the Taking” is by a queer person, for queer people, and centers the story around queer characters rather than including them purely for the sake of representation. Korn added that “as queer people we tend to find each other, or at least we are always looking for each other…no spoilers but that is also a big part of [the book].”

The book is also, in part, a critique. “To me the book is about a group of people from different walks of life who come together to take down a TERF [trans-exclusionary radical feminist],” Korn said, referring to the character of billionaire Jacqueline Millender, who has “built

a whole brand around rethinking the very concept of empowerment” according to the book’s blurb. “[T]here is a certain kind of person who thinks that their personal success is a stand-in for rights for their community,” Korn said. “With white feminists especially, there’s this thinking that if you’re a woman who is in charge of something, that automatically makes you a feminist, or like, an activist.”

Jacqueline seems to both epitomize and complicate such a person.

“I was interested in the way someone might weaponize their own feminism,” Korn said. “She’s not always wrong; statistically, men are just a lot more responsible for violence and destruction. And in the case of climate change, I do think you have to look at the world leaders doing nothing and consider the gender element. Jacqueline uses this to her advantage in a way that’s not ethical, but I won’t spoil it.”

When discussing what she wanted readers to take away from her book, Korn said, “I hope they love to read it. My goal wasn’t to answer political questions, it was to pose them, so I hope readers walk away thinking new thoughts.”

By taking on the challenge of imagining what the future might look like in light of looming climate disaster, late-stage capitalism and challenges to feminism, Korn pro-

Photo courtesy of Lindsey Byrnes Gabrielle Korn, author of “Yours for the Taking.”

vides readers with much to think about. Yet “Yours for the Taking” also leaves readers with the sense that, whatever the future may bring, we will continue to find strength and solace in our relationships with those we care about.

4

GLOBAL

December 8, 2023

. Mount Holyoke News

Mount Holyoke College hosts Italian Consulate education directors

Photo by Tara Monastesse ’25 Ivana Marroncelli and Patrizia Calachini Motti, pictured above, tour the Mount Holyoke Archives.

BY TARA MONASTESSE ’25 MANAGING EDITOR OF CONTENT

As part of an ongoing mission to strengthen the offerings of Mount Holyoke College’s Italian department, the College recently hosted two education directors from nearby Italian consulates.

Ivana Marroncelli, education

office director at the Consulate General of Italy in Boston, and Patrizia Calanchini Motti, education office director at the Consulate General of Italy in Philadelphia, visited Mount Holyoke’s campus on Nov. 20 to participate in the Five College Pedagogy Symposium in the Ciruti Language Center, as well as familiarize themselves with the College’s current

Italian program and its historical ties to Italian history.

The annual Five College Pedagogy Symposium brings together Italian language faculty from Mount Holyoke, Smith College and the University of Massachusetts Amherst to discuss potential improvements for each institution’s Italian language program. By working with nearby Italian Consulate locations, the Department of Classics and Italian at Mount Holyoke hopes to expand its course offerings, invite guest speakers to campus, gain access to more funding opportunities and discover internship opportunities both abroad and in the United States.

“The purpose [of the visit] was to foster a sense of collaboration, to show [the Consulate] resources that we have and see how we can work together to provide more opportunity for our students and faculty,” Morena Svaldi, senior lecturer in Italian and faculty director of the Language Assistant Program at the College, said in an interview with Mount Holyoke News. A previous grant from the Italian government made it possible for Svaldi to teach a course called “Italian Excellence: Science, Arts, Design” at Mount Holyoke during the Spring 2022 semester.

“The experiences that the students can have coming in direct con-

tact with an Italian reality can show how important it is to know another language,” Marroncelli said in an interview with Mount Holyoke News.

“It opens the door to so many new experiences that you as a student can do, and to discover the new vision of Italy — not only [in] the traditional way but also the innovative areas in which Italy is prominent today.”

The visit also included a stop at the Archives and Special Collections in Dwight Hall, a tour of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum and an opportunity to sit in on a teaching of an Italian course.

Ombretta Frau, the College’s Dorothy Rooke McCulloch professor of Italian, worked with Svaldi to organize the consulate representatives’ visit and accompanied them upon their arrival. Their planning included a collaboration with the Archives and Special Collections to bring out a display of objects from the Valentine Giamatti collection.

This collection includes the belongings of Valentine Giamatti, a prolific Italian professor who played a significant role in broadening the College’s Italian program offerings during the mid-20th century. He left an extensive collection of antique copies of Dante’s Divine Comedy to Mount Holyoke upon his retirement

in 1973, which Marroncelli and Motti were invited to browse. Frau, who has worked extensively with this collection in the past, said it was important to take the consulate visitors to the archives to show them that, on Mount Holyoke’s campus, “there is a little piece of Italian intellectual history, too.”

“I think it is still a little bit unknown, the kind of relationship that the United States has with Italian culture,” Frau said. “It was important for us to show that Mount Holyoke was part of this big cultural phenomenon.”

The consulate members also visited the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, where they viewed modern art displays and traditional Mediterranean art. In the afternoon, they observed a course taught by Frau titled “Introduction to Italian Culture and Literature I: ‘Italian Food Culture.”

Marroncelli and Motti were both first-time visitors to Mount Holyoke’s campus.

“I really find [the campus] is a jewel in itself because it’s really compact,” Motti said. “There’s a lot of really wonderful pieces in the museum [and] in the [Williston Memorial] Library. And I wasn’t expecting that, to see editions from Dante dating back to the 15th century. That was really fascinating.”

Riots erupt in Dublin after a knife attack that injured 3 children

Photo courtesy of CanalEnthusiast via Wikicommons The injuring of three children due to a knife attack led to violent riots in Dublin on the evening of Nov. 23. It is estimated 500 people partcipated.

BY ELIZABETH MURRAY ’26 STAFF WRITER

Content warning: This article discusses xenophobia and child abuse.

Police in Dublin, Ireland, arrested 34 people on the evening of Nov. 23 after riots erupted in the city, the Associated Press reported. According to BBC News, the largest-ever number of riot-trained police in Irish history were deployed, with officers coming from all over the country to quell the unrest of an estimated 500 people participating in the riots.

The unrest occurred after a knife attack outside a school that injured

three children and a teacher’s aide took place earlier that day, the Associated Press reported. One child, a 5-year-old girl, was left in critical condition.

Bystanders were able to intervene and tackle the attacker. One of them, a Brazilian delivery driver named Caio Benicio, has been hailed a hero all over Ireland. By Saturday, Nov. 25, an online fundraiser thanking him had raised €330,000, approximately $355,000, according to The New York Times.

Speaking to Irish national broadcaster RTÉ News, Benicio said, “Listen, when you see a man with a knife with a little girl in his hands …

you don’t even think … you just act by instinct. I think all parents would do the same.”

Rioters are reported to have broken windows, looted shops and burned buses in the inner city, and police on the scene reported that farright protestors were chanting anti-immigrant slogans, clashing with police and setting vehicles on fire, according to The Washington Post.

While police did not immediately disclose the identity of the attacker, rumors about their nationality circulated online from far-right voices, The New York Times reported.

When RTÉ News asked him about the riots, Benicio said, “There

are protests against immigrants, and I am [an] immigrant, and I was there, right there to protect Irish people, you know … We are here to work. Most of the people are here to work hard. And make the economy of the country go better.” He continued, “The work we do here is good for the country. It’s good for themselves, you know, they just have hate.”

In a statement to the Irish Parliament in the aftermath of the knife attack and riots, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said, “I really would ask people to try and avoid connecting crime with migration. It’s not right,” BBC News reported.

He went on to comment that, “Of the five or six people who intervened to stop the attack, four of those six are migrants to this country. …

There are a lot of people, particularly people of color in Ireland, who are very afraid because of what happened on Thursday night.”

Irish police have begun investigating various social media accounts and posts to determine if they may have incited the violence, according to The Guardian. Some celebrities’ activities on social media have come under scrutiny.

Several posts made around the time of the riot by UFC fighter Conor McGregor, whose recent tweets have led many to believe he intends to run for presidential office in Ireland, were reportedly under investigation, The Guardian reported. Elon Musk posted on X — formerly known as

Twitter — in support of McGregor. “The current Irish government clearly cares more about praise from woke media than their own people,” Musk said.

In the wake of the riots, McGregor condemned the participants, telling The Guardian, “I am praying that the streets will remain calm and peaceful. We Irish are known for our beautiful hearts, and we have a proud history of not accepting racism.”

Tensions have been running high in Ireland, The Washington Post reported. The country is facing serious housing problems due to rising costs and lack of available shelter.

According to NPR, there has been a rise in anti-immigration sentiment in Ireland, along with a current wave in other European countries.

This year in Dublin, there have been protests against immigration, with some signs saying “Ireland is full.” In another instance in County Clare, protesters blocked off a hotel set to hold asylum seekers, NPR reported.

Since the riots, there has been a rally in solidarity with immigrant communities in Dublin, BBC News reported. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions organized the rally, representing more than 800,000 workers.

The rally took place four days after the riot and was attended by over 500 people, including a mix of union members and political leaders.

Swifties organize against far-right presidential candidate in Argentina

BY JENDAYI LEBEN-MARTIN ’24 GLOBAL EDITOR & MANAGING EDITOR OF CONTENT

not] not fight after having heard and seen Taylor give everything so that the right [wing] doesn’t win in her country.”

Javier Milei surprised many by The group also voiced, “As Taywinning Argentina’s run-off presi- lor says, we have to be on the right dential election in a victory over op- side of history.” In the case of the ponent Sergio Massa, according to recent election, the group saw being BBC News. However, The New York on the right side of history as opposTimes reported that while Milei ing far-right libertarian presidencaptured a large sector of the youth tial candidate Milei. The New York vote, his campaign faced a consid- Times reported that the statement erable enemy: Taylor Swift fans — had amassed 1.5 million views on X Swifties for short. as of Nov. 4, 2023.

A group of Argentinian proMilei, who was previously a figressives called nancial analyst, Swifties Against ran his campaign [The group] continued, Freedom Adon radical ideas stating that, “as Taylor vances — Freeabout reforming dom Advances the Argentinian says, we have to be on is the name of economy, acthe right side of history.”

Milei’s party — cording to CNN. In the case of the recent took to social These ideas inmedia to make cluded switching election, the group saw their dissent for out the Argenbeing on the right side of his political plattine peso for the history as opposing far-right U.S. dollar, cutform known. Created by 10 Taylor ting government libertarian presidential Swift fans, SAFA programs like candidate Milei. says they were welfare and ridmotivated by ding Argentina Swift’s own willingness to oppose of its ministries of culture, which inright-wing politicians in her home clude ministries on gender and educountry of the United States. cation, among others.

According to The New York These proposals come at a time Times, in a statement posted to X — of major financial strife and public the site formerly known as Twitter dissatisfaction with the Argentinian — the group said that they “[could economy. According to BBC News,

Photo courtesy of Paolo V via Flickr A group called Swifties Against Freedom Advances have taken to social media to make their dissent for far-right libertarian Javier Milei known.

at the time of Milei’s election victory, annual inflation was at 143%, and 40% of Argentinians were “living in poverty.”

Some of Milei’s more conservative proposals, however, are what motivated SAFA. According to The New York Times, Milei has denied the existence of a pay gap between men and women and infamously minimized the actions of the violent authoritarian rule of Argentina between the years of 1976 and 1983, calling the atrocities “excesses.”

This perspective, in combination with Milei’s promise to dismiss the ministries of race, gender and education, has landed him in hot wa-

ter with Swift’s fans, The New York Times reported.

Not all fans of Swift, however, agree with the group’s tactics. Barbara Alcibiade, a 22-year-old Swift fan who recently attended a concert in Buenos Aires, told The New York Times that “the reality of the United States is a very different reality than the one that we are living here.” Alcibiade continued, saying that while “it’s true that a large percentage of fans may or may not follow certain ideals or the values that she represents, but that doesn’t mean that represents everyone.”

Swift, who performed three sold-out shows in Buenos Aires last

month, has not commented on the election. Milei, however, did comment on SAFAs, claiming that he is “not the far right” and that “[the group] can express what they want,” according to The New York Times.

Former President of the United States Donald Trump has said that Milei will “Make Argentina Great Again,” while former President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro declared that, with Milei’s recent election, “hope [will] shine in South America,” BBC News reported. Both of these conservative politicians are up for reelection in their respective nations in the next three years, according to The Guardian.

December 8, 2023

SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT

. Mount Holyoke News

5

Precious Plastic MHC is turning trash into environmental optimism

BY SARAH GRINNELL ’26 SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT EDITOR

In a digital world inundated with doomsday headlines and constant reports of natural disasters, it can be easy to slip into a climate anxiety-induced state of dread.

One new student organization, Precious Plastic MHC, is on a mission to change this by taking the pessimism out of plastic and inspiring students to find joy in leading more sustainable lives.

In an email interview with Mount Holyoke News, Precious Plastic MHC President and Founder Natsumi Kiso ’26 said that the club is a “hands-on, action-oriented” org that aims to “create a closed-loop sustainable and fun way of recycling plastic within the Mount Holyoke [College] campus.” She explained that the club is a space where “students can learn a way to recycle plastic in a creative and joyful way.”

Precious Plastic MHC is inspired by the global recycling movement of the same name. According to Kiso, Precious Plastic is a “project that takes place all over the world,” and it is “open-source, meaning that all the instructions on how to reduce plastic waste are included on their website.”

According to the project website, Precious Plastic is a “combination of people, machines, platforms and knowledge to create an alternative global recycling system.” The project emphasizes “people as the key element to fix the plastic mess” and “bring about the necessary change” as opposed to “fix-it-all” technology.

The organization aims to “turn plastic into precious plastic” — hence its name — by recycling waste products into new items such as furniture, construction material, jewelry and more.

Kiso is following this model in her community by taking a creativity-driven approach to tackling the plastic problem here on campus.

“Here, I really want to emphasize the phrase, ‘Nothing without Joy,’ which is the fundamental motto of this organization,” Kiso explained.

“Often, environmental issues we are facing today are presented with a lot of pessimism, which I do not believe is the best way to motivate people to change their behaviors. The work of this project can create an opportunity for people to realize the ‘fun side’ of recycling plastic and visually see their contributions. This way, I believe people will be more motivated to reduce plastic waste on a daily basis.”

For Kiso, this motivation is especially important. “There is very little

or no education and student-led actions on sustainability here at Mount Holyoke, which I was very surprised about,” she said. “Although it is crucial for a generation like ours to actively participate in creating a change, it is very difficult to do so when we have everything going on as college students.”

Therefore, Kiso “wanted to create an opportunity for people to actively advocate for such an important issue in a joyful way.”

Kiso said this organization is particularly special because of its interdisciplinary allure, allowing students to “combine different areas of knowledge, aligning with the liberal arts education at Mount Holyoke.”

“Though all the student organizations are very active and amazing, I do not often see organizations that are interdisciplinary,” Kiso explained. “As an individual interested in engineering, philosophy, art, sustainability and many more [disciplines], I wanted to create a place where people can use different knowledge to achieve one goal, which motivated me to create this organization.”

According to Kiso, students in the club can expect to become familiar with the Fimbel Maker & Innovation Lab space, where the club holds its meetings and draws on various resources for its projects. Precious Plastic already has a major project in the works.

According to Kiso, the group is constructing a large injection machine “which injects melted plastic into a mold” to make a new product.

“An example of a bigger product we are hoping to create is the first-year planter pot; by the beginning of next fall, we hope to create hundreds of first-year planter pots made out of recycled plastic on campus for the first-year ceremony. This way, we hope to spread awareness for the use of plastic to the new students at Mount Holyoke, as well as introduce our organization,” Kiso said.

With the help of this new organization, Kiso hopes to attract students across all disciplines and instigate campus-wide excitement about recycling.

“Raising such awareness could lead to students separating trash on their own, which will increase the amount of recyclable trash that gets sent from Mount Holyoke to the local facility,” Kiso said.

Kiso has high hopes for Precious Plastic MHC. “This organization has a big potential to make students become more aware of their daily interactions with the environment by getting to know the potential of plastic recycling,” Kiso said.

Photo courtesy of Natsumi Kiso Precious Plastic MHC club members attend the Makers’ Fair, demonstrating the process of melting down plastic into a mold using an injection machine.

Desperate sailors turn to heavy metal music to deter orca attacks

BY LILY BENN ’24 STAFF WRITER

Heavy metal music can be used in more ways than one would think.

The genre is increasingly used as a killer whale deterrent off the coast of southwestern Europe, according to Focusing on Wildlife.

The practice is not scientifically studied or supported but rather began as a suggested trick for sailors to prevent these large marine mammals, also known as orcas, from attacking and sinking boats sailing off the Iberian Peninsula, a Business Insider article reported.

The frequency of Iberian orca attacks started increasing around 2020 when sailors turned to online forums on websites such as Telegram and Facebook to share their stories and to look for solutions, Focusing on Wildlife explained. Playing heavy metal songs on underwater speakers was one of the solutions online users proposed in these groups, Focusing on Wildlife stated.

One New York Times article detailed the experience of Florian Rutsch, the captain of a recreational boat who attempted to use this technique when a group of orcas approached his boat. Rutsch told The New York Times that he and his crew began playing a “Metal for Orcas” Spotify playlist underwater, but they were unsuccessful in deterring the animals.

Instead, the orcas became more aggressive and attacked Rutsch’s ship, causing damage to the rudder and incapacitating the crew’s ability to steer the ship, according to The New York Times.

This attempt was the second time Rutsch and his crew actively tried to deter the orcas from attacking their ship, The New York Times

Photo courtesy of Christopher Michel via Wikipedia Commons Sailors are now trying out new methods to deter orcas, including playing songs from a Spotify playlist called “Metal for Orcas” on underwater speakers. This technique is rumored online to be effective.

article reported. Their first attempt, which used a different approach, was successful. The crew threw sand into the water, which reportedly caused the orcas visual confusion, and immediately sped up the engine.

The strategy of quickly sailing away from an orca encounter is supported and recommended by the Spanish government, whereas the heavy metal music and sand techniques are mainly reported as successful in anecdotes online, according to The New York Times.

Some scientists have spoken out about how the heavy metal deterrent technique can be detrimental to the ocean environment and the organisms that inhabit it. Business Insider explained that not only does the sound make it easier for orca groups to locate and target the ships, but it also contributes to noise pollution.

According to Business Insider, because sound travels faster and across longer distances in the ocean than in the air, many marine species use it for communication, naviga-

tion, reproduction and to avoid predators. Andrew Trites, the director of the Marine Mammal Research Unit at the University of British Columbia, told Business Insider that playing such loud music would only add to the noise created by man-made objects, such as underwater mining equipment, large ships and wind turbines.

Renaud de Stephanis, a coordinator and biologist working for a nonprofit research group creating a satellite system to tag and track orca

movements across the coastline of Europe, said in an interview with The New York Times that the only feasible solution to escape an orca attack without causing harm to the orcas themselves or the ocean’s ecosystem is to leave the area.

According to Business Insider, orcas are possibly learning where sailors will be based on the sounds of their boats. Before a permanent solution is found, sailors are advised to avoid the areas where they have seen orcas in the past.

6

OPINION

December 8, 2023

. Mount Holyoke News

Bookworms, keep calm: Dystopian YA has returned

BY ELISKA JACOB ’24 COPY CHIEF & ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR

Maybe you spent countless hours scouring YouTube for the most recent compilation video of Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson, either in press interviews or sorrowful “Hunger Games” edits set against the song “Just A Game” by Birdy. Or, if you felt a need to categorize yourself with a fictional group as the basis of your prepubescent personality, perhaps you took the same “Divergent” faction quiz multiple times until “Dauntless” shined through your laptop screen, hidden under the covers on a school night.

Memories such as these feel distant and limited to the experience of today’s 20-something-year-olds, now almost a decade apart from the dystopian world of young adult novels and films that took the internet by storm in the early to mid-2010s.

Set against soundtracks filled to the brim with features from the most popular artists of the time, these dystopian worlds pervaded the minds of nearly every tween. And yet, the production of these novels and movies eventually burnt out, with the market becoming oversaturated with dystopian media that all became reminiscent of one another.

Their plots typically featured an aim to save society from some imminent downfall propagated by an evil leader, with a romantic trope between the two main characters carrying the films.

A former lover, or rather an obsessive fan, of YA fiction must ask themselves this question: Why in the hell am I now seeing so many clips of Coriolanus Snow shirtless? Why am I taken close to tears watching young kids gleefully engage with the fandom I once called my own? Could this be a resurgence of the 2010s YA dystopian culture? To your excitement or trepidation, I have come to tell you that, yes, the obsession with YA dystopian fiction has returned.

The November film release of “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” a prequel in the “Hunger Games” franchise, has spearheaded this resurgence. Coriolanus Snow, a member of the once-affluent Snow family, is responsible for training Lucy Gray Baird, a poor tribute set to fight to the death in the 10th Annual Hunger Games. Throughout various social media platforms, edits of Snow and Gray in each other’s arms, and mouths, run rampant. An adaptation of the eponymous book released in 2020, the film is arguably the first dystopian YA adaptation to spark such intense interest amongst young adults in the years following the genre’s boom in the early 2010s.

Social media accounts adver-

Graphic by Sofia Lopez Melgar

tising the film, including that of Lionsgate — the entertainment company that produced the film —have pushed out multiple edits that appeal to the humor, inside jokes and preferred meme formats of the younger generation. Beyond edits that center on the attractiveness of the actors or the film’s visually appealing cinematography, social media creators have posted analyses of the film, specifically focusing on how these dystopian themes relate to contemporary political and economic issues. Social media platforms allow discourse between creators and viewers to discuss these themes further, and fur-

ther establish a sense of community.

This engagement with YA dystopian novels echoes the practices of its predecessors, the individuals who utilized platforms such as Tumblr and Instagram to disseminate and engage with this mutual interest.

Beyond being ripe for engagement via analyses and memes on social media, the soundtracks that back dystopian YA films, specifically the artists that generate them, create further interest in connecting with the films. In the “Divergent” franchise, Zedd, Ellie Goulding and Tame Impala contributed to the first film’s score. In the original “Hunger

Games” soundtrack, artists such as Lorde, who wrote “Yellow Flicker Beat” for the series second to last film, “Mockingjay: Part 1,” as well as Taylor Swift, constructing the tune “Eyes Open” and collaborating with The Civil Wars to pen “Safe & Sound” for the franchise’s first film, “The Hunger Games.” These famous artists generated more excitement for seeing the films and listening to the soundtracks outside of movie theaters.

This format is echoed in Olivia Rodrigo’s production of “Can’t Catch Me Now” for “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” which has

already amassed nearly 60 million streams on Spotify. Rodrigo, whose debut album, “Sour,” boasts multiple songs with over 1 billion streams, is a figure who has become a staple in the playlists of today’s young adults.

Her participation in a dystopian YA film is alluring to dedicated listeners who may have otherwise not engaged with the film and its themes.

A larger demographic is thus drawn to this YA subgenre and subsequently finds themselves drawn to the fandom and their fanatics.

Perhaps the most appealing aspect of these films is the presence of attractive love interests, which has heavily guided its resurgence. The “Divergent” films saw Beatrice Prior (Shailene Woodley) and Tobias Eaton (Theo James) engaged in a relationship set in a world that desires to separate them, while “The Hunger Games” trilogy focused on Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark’s (Josh Hutcherson) hesitant romance within a love triangle with Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth). The addition of these romances added another layer of drama in an already dramatic, dystopian world. In this dystopian YA resurgence, Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler, who play Coriolanus Snow and Lucy Gray Baird, respectively, are yet another set of characters engaged in a form of “forbidden romance.”

These conventionally attractive actors often see a boom in their popularity with the release of these films, with a new generation of tweens swooning over them, desiring to either emulate their on-screen romance or fantasize about flirting with the characters themselves.

This obsession with the romantic interactions of attractive dystopian YA actors coalesces with the films’ dystopian themes to create a generally appealing story that many fans want to engage with. The films intend to embolden viewers with the bravery and courage necessary to affect positive change in an ever-becoming dystopian world, and, with this combination of the aforementioned romance and fearlessness, appeal to multiple facets of a young adult’s evolving personality.

While this resurgence of interest in dystopian YA novels has no set timeline, its impact thus far cannot be disputed and bears eerie similarities to the fandoms born of the 2010s.

Whether you engage with this subsect of YA literature because you enjoy watching borderline erotic clips of the protagonists engaged in forbidden, elusive intimacy or because you have found comfort in engaging in a community with a mutual interest that does not shame your excitement, one thing is for sure: For now, this resurgence is here to stay.

Letter to the Editor: MHC faculty call for ceasefire in Gaza We, the undersigned faculty members of Mount Holyoke College, join our colleagues from other institutions of higher education to call on college and university leaders to take a stand against state-sanctioned systematic violence against Palestinians. We call on President Danielle R. Holley to urge legislators to implement an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

We echo and expand on the calls from the United Nations Secretary-General and the Principles from the Inter-Agency Standing Committee to bring an end to the relentless and extensive violence being unleashed on Palestinian people that has resulted in over 10,000 deaths. We demand that full access to food, water, electricity, medicine and fuel be provided to the Gaza Strip, as well as access to humanitarian aid and U.N. protection. We regard the call for a ceasefire as a bare minimum — a reflection of our linked humanity that is not ideological and should not be politicized.

We also acknowledge that lasting peace and security in the region can only be established by condemning Israeli state operations that are defined by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and B’Tselem as apartheid. We are alarmed by the dehumanizing rhetoric of Israeli government officials, who have openly advocated for the collective punishment of the Palestinian population — a war crime, according to international humanitarian law. We call on the U.S. government to stop using our taxes to provide the Israeli state with billions of dollars of

unconditional military aid, enabling what scholars and experts alarmingly describe as genocide.

We support and join our students’ call on the Mount Holyoke College Board of Trustees to divest from companies or other investments that support the Israeli military. We request transparency and confirmation of a College plan for divestment. Our faculty commitment to educating students includes our responsibility to call for an end to unchecked state violence and to end the College’s financial support of these efforts.

Lastly, we call on President Holley to reaffirm her commitment to protecting academic freedom and free speech for (especially untenured and contingent) faculty, students and staff. It is crucial to affirm that critiquing the state of Israel or advocating for Palestinian liberation is not equal to antisemitism. Such a political conflation of all Jewish people with Israel’s state policies ignores the longstanding social justice organizing of Jewish solidarity with Palestinians and diverts attention away from actual antisemitism on the rise. President Holley’s support is especially important given that Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, Jewish and allied communities who are speaking for Palestinian liberation are experiencing extraordinary levels of doxxing, harassment, intimidation, racial targeting, censorship and firing.

Mount Holyoke stood with the oppressed of South Africa during the apartheid regime and can do so again by leading a chorus of institu-

tions of higher education in demanding a ceasefire and upholding Palestinian humanity.

Signatories (names will be added manually, as they come in) 1. Iyko Day, English and Critical Race and Political Economy 2. lucas b wilson, Economics and Critical Race and Political Economy 3. Justin Crumbaugh, Spanish, Latina/o and Latin American Studies 4.

Ajay Sinha, Art History and Architectural Studies 5. Renae Brodie, Biology 6. Andrea Lawlor, English 7. Vanessa Rosa, Critical Race and Political Economy 8. Elif Babül, Sociology and Anthropology 9. Alanna Hoyer-Leitzel, Mathematics and Statistics 10. Corey Flanders, Psychology and Education 11. Serin Houston, Geology and Geography 12. David Hernandez, Critical Race and Political Economy 13. Amina Steinfels, Religion 14. Wesley Yu, English 15. Lisa Iglesias, Art Studio 16. Mara Breen, Psychology & Education 17. Angela Willey, Gender Studies 18. Matthew C. Watson, Sociology and Anthropology 19. Ren-yo Hwang, Gender Studies and Critical Race and Political Economy 20. Sarah Stefana Smith, Gender Studies and Critical Race and Political Economy 21. Kate Singer, English and Critical Race and Political Econ-

omy 22. Anna Maria Hong, English 23. T Kira Māhealani Madden, English 24. Abhilash Medhi, History 25. Niamh Timmons, Gender Studies 26. Anonymous Visiting Faculty 27. Lauret E. Savoy, Environmental Studies 28. Mark Shea, English 29. Mary Renda, History 30. Christian Gundermann, Gender Studies 31. Nigel Alderman, English 32. Lynda Pickbourn, Gender Studies 33. Kevin Surprise, Environmental Studies 34. KC Haydon, Psychology and Education 35. Travis Hodges, Psychology and Education 36. Amy Martin, English 37. Sandra Russell, Gender Studies 38. Jacquelyne Luce, Gender Studies 39. Donald Cotter, Chemistry 40. Jackson Matos, Psychology and Education 41. Preston Smith, Politics 42. Adriana Pitetta, Spanish, Latina/o & Latin American Studies Department 43. Ayca Zayim, Sociology 44. Sylvia Cifuentes, Environmental Studies 45. Hannah Goodwin, Film and Media Studies 46. Cora Fernandez Anderson, Politics 47. Elliot Montague, Film Media Theater 48. Anonymous Visiting Faculty 49. Esther Castro, Spanish, Latina/o and Latin American Studies 50. Ali Aslam, Politics 51. Anonymous Untenured Faculty

Member 52. Carolyn Shread, French 53. Anonymous untenured faculty member 54. Ligia Bouton, Art Studio 55. John Tawa, Psychology & Education 56. Kris Camp, Fimble Lab 57. Anonymous Untenured Faculty Member 58. Anonymous Visiting Faculty Member 59. Meredith Coleman-Tobias, Religion 60. Anonymous Faculty Member 61. Bianka Ballina, Film Media Theater 62. Michelle Markley, Geology 63. Naomi Darling, Art History and Architectural Studies 64. Chassidy Bozeman, Mathematics 65. Derek Young, Mathematics 66. Audrey St. John, Computer Science 67. Kerstin Nordstrom, Physics 68. Justin Bauman, Biological Sciences 69. Craig Woodard, Biological Sciences 70. Anonymous Visiting Faculty Member 71. Anonymous Visiting Faculty Member 72. Lisa Ballesteros, Computer Science 73. Samantha Leonard, Sociology and Anthropology 74. Catherine Le Gouis, French 75. Rick Feldman, Economics and Entrepreneurship, Organizations, and Society 76. Amy Frary, Biological Sciences 77. Anonymous Visiting Faculty Member 78. Anonymous Non-Tenure Track Faculty Member

December 8, 2023

SPORTS & BOOKS

. Mount Holyoke News

7

Debby Ghezzi returns to Mount Holyoke College as interim athletic director after 24 years away

BY KATE VAVRA ’26 STAFF WRITER

After departing from Mount Holyoke College’s athletics department 24 years ago, Debby Ghezzi has returned to take on the role of interim director of athletics and chair of physical education.

Ghezzi planned to retire after serving as athletic director at Northfield Mount Hermon School, a preparatory school in Gill, Massachusetts, in her last position. However, she decided to return to Mount Holyoke to offer her expertise as the athletics department goes through the search for a new athletic director.

In the past, Ghezzi served as the director of athletic facilities and intramurals at Mount Holyoke.

In an interview with Mount Holyoke News, Ghezzi shared how she will be working to advance athletic initiatives on campus. One of the bigger initiatives she has planned is connecting with the Alumnae Asso-

ciation.

“We’re working on a couple fun things with the [Alumnae] Association to help us continue to make contacts with our athletic alumni,” Ghezzi said. “Those opportunities are great because a lot of folks love to serve as mentors to our kids for internships. A lot of them are in a place to give to athletics again, which we proved in the Day of Giving [fundraiser]. So to form those relationships and bring a lot of our alumni back into our athletic form is really important.”

Ghezzi also remarked on how much she has enjoyed interacting with the student body, whom she thinks she can learn from. “They see things from a different lens than I [and their coach] do … So I learn a lot from them and then try to take that back … how can we do things better in dining, in the training room, in my office and anywhere to make their experience better.”

When asked what her biggest

piece of advice for student-athletes is, Ghezzi asserted that passion is necessary for improvement. “I think we need to stay passionate about our sport and we need to stay focused on always improving. But if you’re passionate about what you do and you stay focused on getting better every day, you will see more victories, which is important,” Ghezzi said.

“The kids need to have a great experience, and I think all our kids are having a good experience, but they’re all going to say they want to win more. And I get that. And they keep score for a reason, right? As long as you’re passionate and you’re having a good experience, and you stay focused, eventually, that will change, just like everything else.”

Ghezzi stated that she grew up in the Cleveland area. She participated in both tennis and basketball while in high school and played Division I tennis at Ohio University.

In her early entry into athletics as a career, she coached Division I tennis

at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, for nine years.

After coaching various sports at various levels, Ghezzi fell in love with coaching basketball and became the assistant basketball coach at Case Western Reserve University and then Colgate University. Ghezzi then entered athletics administration and acted as the athletic director for various college and prep schools between Ohio and Massachusetts, where she eventually found her way to Northfield Mount Hermon School.

Outside of work, Ghezzi said that family is the most important thing to her. The person she has looked up to the most is her late mother, who she described as “the kindest, gentlest soul.” Ghezzi also stated that the

achievement she’s most proud of is raising her daughter, Emma, who is currently studying at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“The confidence that she has, the voice that she grew, it has been really just a great accomplishment.

I feel like I had a lot to do with that.

But watching her grow up has been just really, without a doubt, the greatest achievement,” Ghezzi said.

For Ghezzi, her favorite sport to coach is basketball, and she told Mount Holyoke News that she has found a new love for playing and watching golf. Even after 24 years, she said that Mount Holyoke still feels like home to her, with many familiar coaches and administrators still in the athletics department.

Game of the Week: Mount Holyoke Squash team faces off in match against William Smith College in Cambridge, falls 9-0

BY ZELLIE CALAVITA ’26 STAFF WRITER

Mount Holyoke College Squash was defeated 9-0 in a match against William Smith College at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Nov. 19, making the Lyons’ record on the season 1-1.

Tagyaa Parakh ’27 competed at the No. 1 position for Mount Holyoke, initially losing the first two games 11-3 and 11-5, respectively.

The third game was more competitive, with Parakh prevailing 11-9, but the match ultimately ended in a 3-1 loss after falling 11-1 in the fourth and final game.

The Lyons struggled throughout the rest of the game, failing to win any of their matches against William Smith. According to the College Squash Association, William Smith’s squash team is ranked 17th in the nation.

“I think the main thing we can

learn from this match is that squash courts are different in every place, so we will become better players by learning how to adapt in these environments as the season progresses,” Em Brandon ’27 said. “I also think that we learned there really is a wide range of skills we will be playing against, so we all have things we need to work on.”

“I was pretty happy with the team performance,” Kat Sloop ’26 said of the game. “Although we didn’t have any overall wins, everyone performed beautifully. Winning is nice, but we all set personal goals relating to squash that we all achieved, and I think that’s a testament to how strong of a team we are.”

Brandon added that they “think the team is doing really well.”

“I am impressed by the energy everyone had after the long trip to MIT,” they said.

Sloop went on to express their appreciation for the environment

that the team works to create. “The team atmosphere has been quite welcoming. With any group setting it can be difficult to adjust to varying dynamics, but the squash team has been an incredibly friendly place,” Sloop said.

“So far the team has been nothing short of wonderful,” Brandon said, echoing Sloop’s sentiment. “We are a fairly small team composed of a large group of new players — most of the team being first-years with a couple of people new to squash — and everyone is always so supportive.”

Sloop also hopes to see new faces on the squash court. “I also want to invite everyone to open squash on Monday and Wednesday evenings, 6:30-8:00 pm,” they said. “People really don’t know what squash is, so I encourage everyone to come and try it out.”

Squash’s next match is on Jan. 16 against Wesleyan University at MIT.

Photo courtesy of Mount Holyoke Athletics Mount Holyoke Squash was defeated 9-0 in the match against William Smith College on Nov. 19.

Lisa See’s newest book highlights the power of female solidarity

BY MIRA CRANE ’27 CONTRIBUTING WRITER

With “Lady Tan’s Circle of Women,” Lisa See has written a fictional book that also sheds light on a real historical figure: Lady Tan, a 15th-century doctor from China who wrote a book on medicine for women whose title is sometimes translated as “Miscellaneous Records of a Female Doctor.”

The main character, Tan Yunxian, is See’s fictionalized reimagining of the real Lady Tan. See is a historical fiction writer who generally centers her books around Chinese and Chinese-American history. Her books are almost all centered around female characters, so writing a book about Tan Yunxian seems like a perfect fit for See. “Lady Tan’s Circle of Women” fol-

lows Yunxian on her path to becoming a doctor despite the traditional societal structures that limit her opportunities. Yunxian struggles to manage her medical career with the challenges of her husband’s home, as well as challenges such as tough pregnancies and conflict with her mother-in-law.

Within the book itself, See does a great job in highlighting Yunxian’s motivation to be a doctor and its connection to her mother’s death at the beginning of the book due to an infection in her bound feet.

Footbinding was an aesthetic cultural practice in China until 1949 that involved tightly binding women’s feet starting when they were as young as four. Yunxian believes that her mother’s death might have been prevented if she had access to a doctor who understood the impli-

cations of her condition.

According to the book, male doctors in China at the time were forced to stand outside of the room or behind a screen when examining female patients. Yunxian wants to become a doctor not just because the condition that killed her mother runs in her family but because she has a personal mission to protect other women from her mother’s fate.

See often puts female relationships, whether with a parent, sister or friend, at the center of her books.

“Lady Tan’s Circle of Women” is no exception. The women in Yunxian’s life are very important to her development, including her father’s concubine, who watches over her after her mother’s death, her grandmother and her midwife friend Meiling.

Yunxian’s grandmother is a female doctor herself who encourages Yunxian to go into medicine and serves as an example to her of what a female doctor should be. Aside from teaching medicine to Yunxian, her grandmother also teaches her the importance of caring for the other women around her.

Yunxian and Meiling are brought together by Yunxian’s grandmother and Meiling’s mother, a doctor and a midwife, respectively. They quickly form a connection, and Yunxian teaches Meiling how to write, a skill she would not otherwise possess, given that Meiling is not part of the elite.

Meiling, in turn, tells Yunxian stories of life outside the compounds that Yunxian has been confined to. Their class difference is an important aspect of her friendship,

even though their connection largely transcends it. Their friendship extends into adulthood.

See’s focus in this book is on how the women around Yunxian have supported her and promoted her success as a doctor. She uses Miss Zhao, Yunxian’s father’s concubine who befriends her after her mother’s death, to convey this message, with Zhao describing herself as part of “the circle of good that surrounds [Yunxian].” Yunxian is without a mother, so Zhao and Yunxian’s other female supporters intend to help her and guide her throughout her life.

While there is a murder mystery subplot that feels slightly tacked on, “Lady Tan’s Circle of Women” is overall a well-written book that demonstrates the power of female solidarity.

Mount Holyoke professor Dr. Vanessa Rosa speaks at Odyssey Bookshop

BY ARIELLE CAI ’27 STAFF WRITER

A bustling crowd gathered at the Odyssey Bookshop for the unveiling of the book “Precarious Constructions: Race, Class, and Urban Revitalization in Toronto” by Dr. Vanessa Rosa on Nov. 15.

Rosa, an esteemed urban socialist and critical race theorist, is also the associate professor of Latinx studies and co-chair of the Department of Critical Race and Political Economy at Mount Holyoke College.

During the talk, Rosa shared that her inspiration for the book stems from her previous experience driving through New York City with her father. The inequality they observed in the neighborhood then triggered Rosa’s interest in gentrification and intersectionality, leading to a senior thesis and further research.

Photo by Arielle Cai ’27 Dr. Vanessa Rosa reads from her new book for the event hosted by Odyssey Bookshop on Nov. 15.

Rosa’s research concerns urban revitalization, the phenomenon where urban neighborhoods are torn down, rebuilt by private developers

and co-managed by private developers and public housing authorities.

Rosa’s book mainly focuses on the redevelopment of two public housing

neighborhoods in Toronto, Canada.

The original community in these two neighborhoods was replaced by mixed-income and mixed-tenure units, with new businesses and amenities introduced. During the event, Rosa mentioned that she spent over two years attending various meetings and community events, analyzing around 2,000 pages of documents published between 2002 and 2015.

She then held transformative interviews with various community contributors in Toronto. She says she was amazed by their generous sharing of their experience living in the community, and this gave her a deeper understanding of their opinions about living within the neighborhood.

In her book, Rosa structured the outcome of her research around three key themes: diversity, surveillance and participation. As the

professor explained, these factors all work together to legitimize revitalization. One of the themes of the book is to challenge and question these themes.

“Contradictions along the ways that residents navigate the planning process were found, and it comes out that the revitalization is not reflective of what the residents want,” Rosa said during the event.

Rosa explained that the book’s title questions the impacts of technologies on neighborhoods. “[It] captures the centrality of the material and to the discursive in revitalization, the ways that [the] built environment, planning documents and policy are interconnected and impact everyday life in something I believe is not considered enough in urban studies,” Rosa said.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 8

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COMMUNITY

December 8, 2023

TAROT EDITION

f HOROSCOPES f

Dear Readers, This week, we have decided to offer you some guidance in the form of a tarot reading. We have pulled a card for each sign and interpreted it accordingly. Tread carefully and whimsically, Mount Holyoke College!

BY PEARL YOUNG ’24 & SARAH PARSONS ’23 HOROSCOPE WRITERS

THE HERMIT Nov. 22 – Dec. 21

. Mount Holyoke News

STRENGTH Dec. 22 – Jan. 19

HANGED MAN Jan. 20 – Feb. 18

Sagittarius, the Hermit represents a time of self-reflection. Use this period of your life to reconnect with yourself. To find the answers you are looking for, you have to look within yourself instead of to other people.

You are experiencing a moment of courage and confidence right now, Capricorn. This period of your life hasn’t been easy, but you are finding a way to stay afloat. Your resilience will pay off in the future… perhaps very soon!

Have you been experiencing a lack of direction, Aquarius? Maybe you’ve felt suspended in this period of your life. Hold out; patience is key. If you’ve been waiting to make a big decision, don’t rush it. Things will fall into place eventually.

Do: Pensive walk | Don’t: Paranoia

Do: Dream of a lion | Don’t: Deep dives candles

Do: Candles | Don’t: Lottery tickets

TEMPERANCE Feb. 19 – March 20

THE TOWER March 21 – April 19

THE TOWER April 20 – May 20

Now is the time to exercise moderation in your life. Have patience, and you will be rewarded with balance and harmony! Good things will come, Pisces.

Aries, the Tower signals sudden changes in your life. You may be feeling chaos and instability right now, but it’s important to remember that destruction and endings make way for new growth. Decay brings fertile soil. Fertile soil brings abundance.

Do: Exercise moderately | Don’t: Microwaves

Do: Floral arrangements | Don’t: Fight fire with fire

THE DEVIL May 21 – June 20

EIGHT OF SWORDS June 21 – July 22

You might be feeling trapped right now, Gemini. Something is missing, and you need fulfillment. Perhaps you have fallen into a cycle and lost sight of balance and control in your life. Gaining control will help you to feel settled again.

This card is represented by a blindfolded woman tied up and surrounded by swords. But don’t feel powerless, Cancer; the key to your freedom is right in front of you. You may be choosing to stay blindfolded right now. You have the strength within you to free yourself!

Do: Clothes shopping | Don’t: Break your arm

Do: Light | Don’t: Squash courts

TWO OF WANDS Aug. 23– Sept. 22

TEMPERANCE Sept. 23 – Oct. 22

It’s time to put a stop to some things, Taurus. If something or someone isn’t working, make a change! Listen to the warning signs.

If the sign at the end of the road reads danger, turn back now!

Do: The rules of the game | Don’t: Instagram stories

PAGE OF SWORDS July 23 – Aug. 22

This time is full of energy for you, Leo. There are lots of ideas you want to put out into the world. Find an outlet to share your thoughts and ideas this week… this may come in the form of gossip.

Do: Livestream | Don’t: Oversleep

You are in a planning state right now, Virgo. Maybe you’ve been setting longterm goals? Strive and push forward; you are capable of achieving these things! Planning now will translate into future success.

KNIGHT OF PENTACLES Oct. 23 – Nov. 21

Honestly, Libra, this is a period of stability in your life. Through mastering the art of not letting things get to you, you have made progress in all areas of your life. Moving through your goals has brought balance, peace, harmony and serenity.

Do: Compass | Don’t: Forgetfulness!

Scorpio, stability will come if you put the work in. Stay in control of your energy and resources. Maybe a suitor is coming into your life; search for something grounded.

Do: “Dirty Work” by Steely Dan | Don’t: Airbuds

Do: Write down your ideas | Don’t: Second guess Hockey

Mount Holyoke News Mount Holyoke News is an independent student newspaper written by and for Mount Holyoke College students since 1917.

Event Highlights Friday, Dec. 8 5 PAN Potluck

Editor-in-Chief Mariam Keita ’24

Publisher Liv Wilson ’24

Managing Editors of Content Tara Monastesse ’25 & Jendayi Leben-Martin ’24

Managing Editors of Web Michelle Brumley ’24 & Melanie Duronio ’26

Join the Asian American Students in Action for an exciting 5 PanAsian Potluck where the flavors of the Five Colleges converge. The Five Colleges are now coming together to create this event, which will provide the space and opportunity for Asian Pacific Islander-identifying students to come together, network, build community, learn more about what 5PAN is and what to look forward to.

Based on interest, fleet shuttles will be provided for transportation to Smith College. A wide variety of food will be provided.

Managing Editor of Layout Jesse Hausknecht-Brown ’25

Business Manager Diksha Batra ’26

Davis Ballroom, Smith College – 5-8 p.m.

Copy Chief Eliška Jacob ’24

Human Resources Abigail McKeon ’26

Executive Board

Editorial Board News Nina Sydoryk ’25, River Dalley ’27 & Lilly Glass ’27 Arts & Entertainment Eliška Jacob ’24 & Nyx Cieprisz ’26 Opinion Max Rhoads ’25 & Gabriella Rodriguez ’27 Books Liv Wilson ’24 & Sophie Frank ’26 Global Jendayi Leben-Martin ’24, Shira Sadeh ’25 & Kiera McLaughlin ’26 Sports Emily Tarinelli ’25 & Genevieve Zahner ’26

Features Melanie Duronio ’26 & Madhavi Rao ’24 Science & Environmental Sarah Grinnell ’26 & Silas Gemma ’26 Photos Emma Quirk ’26 Graphics Gabby Gagnon ’24 Layout Editors Sophie Dalton ’25, Rachel Adler ’26, Leah Royes ’27 & Barbara Chen ’25

Web Editors Linlin Liu ’24, Yuke Jiang ’25, Elizaveta Kozlova ’25, Elle Zhao ’25, Scarlett Han ’25, Cynthia Akanaga ’25, Mia Kerchen ’24 & Adwoa Owusu ’26 Copy Editors Meghan MacBeath ’25, Max Endieveri ’25, Gemma Golovner ’25, Caroline Huber ’26, Liv Churchill ’26, Kate Koenig ’26, Emma Quirk ’26, Nyx Cieprisz ’26, Abigail Mckeon ‘26, Mae Law ’25, Emily Tarinelli ’25, Quill Leonard ’27, Maddy Broussard ’26, Gabriella Ton ’27, Sofia Ramon ’27, Oak Pryanichnikova ’27

Publication Guidelines Mount Holyoke News does not endorse any of the opinions or views expressed within the pages of the paper, excluding staff editorials.

All content copyright of Mount Holyoke News. All rights reserved. Mount Holyoke News does not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or age.

Advertising in MHN Interest in advertising in MHN can be directed to mhnews@mtholyoke.edu for pricing and deadlines.

MHN reserves the right to refuse submissions on the basis of, but not limited to, advertisements considered to be libelous, obscene, defamatory or discriminatory.

Subscriptions Mount Holyoke News is a weekly publication that prints weekly throughout the academic year. To join our mailing list, please contact the Publisher at mhnews@mtholyoke.edu.

Letters Policy Letters to the Editor appear exactly as they are sent to MHN, except for corrections to spelling, grammar and AP style. Letters cannot exceed 500 words. All letters must include the writer’s name and telephone number for verification purposes. Unsigned letters will not be printed. Names may be held upon request with the approval of the Editor-in-Chief. MHN reserves the right to decide which materials will be printed. Email submissions to mhnews@mtholyoke.edu by Sundays at 5 p.m. for publication the following week.

VISIT US: www.mountholyokenews.com www.facebook.com/mountholyokenews www.twitter.com/mtholyokenews_

Sunday, Dec. 10 STEMPOC Study-a-thon

STEMPOC’s annual study-a-thon, where students can come to study for finals, is coming up! Breakfast, lunch and dinner will all be provided along with de-stress activities, such as VR. Cassani Lounge (Shattuck Hall 102) – 9 a.m. - 9 p.m.