Mount Holyoke News — Sept. 17, 2020

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College welcomes class of 2024 with virtual Convocation

BY LIZ LEWIS ’22 PUBLISHER & NEWS EDITOR

“This, Mount Holyoke, is not how Convocation is supposed to be,” said Mount Holyoke College President Sonya Stephens, addressing a virtual crowd on Monday, Sept. 7. “Or at least, it is not Convocation as we have known it.”

Mount Holyoke’s 183rd Convocation took place, like much of the semester so far, over Zoom. As students virtually filtered in, photos of past Convocations and calls to “Make some noise for the class of 2021!” flashed across the screen.

A short montage of photos submitted by students and other community members followed.

Convocation marks the College’s official welcoming of the class of 2024, represented by the blue lion, into the Mount Holyoke community. The College has yet to publicly release the annual set of statistics for the incoming class.

The program officially opened, as Convocation does every year, with a performance from the Five College West African Dance Ensemble. The drummers, all of whom were masked, were spaced several feet apart. Following the performance, Vice President for Equity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer Kijua Sanders-McMurtry began with a land acknowledgment before speaking on the goals outlined by the new Anti-Racism Action Plan, which the College rolled out in the wake of this summer’s nationwide racial reckoning. “Every day, we must work towards building a world where the racial injustices that we’ve seen in the United States this year are behind us and we can finally eliminate the racial hierarchies that are ever present,” Sanders-McMurtry said.

Next to speak was Chair of the Board of Trustees Karen Strella ’90. She was followed by Stephens, who began by acknowledging the visible difference between this Convocation and Convocation as it has always been.

Rather than seeing this event as a stripped-down version of the beloved tradition, Stephens urged students to allow traditions to evolve during these unprecedented times. “Engaging in Mount Holyoke traditions, like this one, is to ask

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how you might engage creatively with them, and to see in them the opportunities for our future and for our community,” Stephens said.

Much of Stephens’ speech revolved around the problem of how to approach tradition during this historical moment.

Many traditions are impossible to recreate virtually, but beyond that, Stephens believes it is vitally important to view a shared past through a creative lens rather than a rigid one.

“Without rediscovery, without ... invention and reinvention, traditions do not live on or grow, and they become history rather than legacy,” Stephens said. “Interrogating our history and traditions opens up new possibilities and horizons.”

To Stephens, the Mount Holyoke community must continue an “examination and renewal of our most beloved traditions — to bring new vision to what we know, to bring new questions to the legacies of history and time, to reject certain kinds of traditionalism in order to renew tradition.” Stephens believes this historical moment requires a flexible outlook on tradition, routine and community. “Instead of perpetuating traditions through adaptations that diminish their experiential value, I challenge our class to build our own new ones,” she said. “Let’s create new ways of being members of the same community.”

This sentiment resonated with Michela Marchini ’22, a member of the virtual audience. Though Marchini thought the event was well-handled, she also acknowledged that some traditions “need to be on campus.”

“I think we [should] see if we can make new traditions that are more suitable for a virtual environment, [but] trying to force traditions into a space online makes them lose a lot of what’s special,” Marchini said.

Director of the Miller Worley Center for the Environment Olivia Aguilar was the next speaker. As a relative newcomer to the College, Aguilar empathized with those trying to orient themselves CONTINUED ON PAGE 3

6 GLOBAL: Uighur Muslim suppression

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Photo by Kate Turner ’21 In the fall of 2019, students celebrated the beginning of the year at Mount Holyoke’s 182nd Convocation.

National Scholar Strike protests racist police violence

BY KATIE GOSS ’23 STAFF WRITER

“We are calling for a Scholar strike ... on September 8-9 2020 to protest ongoing police violence and murders in America,” tweeted Anthea Butler, a professor of religious studies and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania, on Aug. 26.

Butler’s tweet introduced the Scholar Strike to a larger audience. Inspired by the NBA and WNBA strikes against racial and social injustice in the United States and in response to recent protests against police brutality and racial injustice, the strike was designed to “raise awareness of and prompt actions against racism, policing, mass incarnation and other symptoms of racism’s toll in America,” according to the official Scholar Strike website. Faculty and students across the United States participated in the strike from Sept. 8 to Sept. 9. Canadian students participated on Sept. 9

9 FEATURES: Remote STEM courses, labs

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and Sept. 10.

In an article written for CNN by Butler and Kevin Gannon, the director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and a professor of history at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, the writers stated that the Scholar Strike is “a two-day action on September 8-9 where professors, staff, students and even administrators will step away from their regular duties and classes to engage in teach-ins about racial injustice in America, policing, and racism in America.”

The Canadian Scholar Strike website stated that “Many of the Black, Indigenous and racialized academics who work in Canadian universities are precariously employed; hired on only part-time or short-term contracts. The few that have been hired into full-time faculty and staff positions have found it difficult to remain in those jobs, they CONTINUED ON PAGE 4

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11 BOOKS: Increased reading levels

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EVENTS

September 17, 2020

. Mount Holyoke News

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

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Executive Board Editor-in-Chief Lily Reavis ’21 Managing Editor of Content Flannery Langton ’22 Managing Editor of Layout Rose Sheehan ’22

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Editorial Board News

Casey Roepke ’21, Kate Turner ’21 & Liz Lewis ’22

Health & Science Zoe Greenberg ’23

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Features Mimi Huckins ’21 & Tishya Khanna ’23

Opinion/Editorial

Sports

Nina Larbi ’22 & Libby Spy ’24

Gigi Picard ’22

Books

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Sidney Boker ’21

Meryl Phair ’21

Global

Photos

Saman Bhat ’22 & Sophie Soloway ’23

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Copy Editors

Karina Wu ’23 & Zoe Tang ’24

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Audrey Hogan ’21, Molly Kleinman ’21, Audrey Shannon ’22, Margaret Connor ’23 Kenna Hurtuk ’23, Zoe Latham ’23, Lauren Leese ’23, Rhitom Mishra ’23 & Kay Brown ’24

Web Assistants

Georgia Fish ’23, Shloka Gidwani ’22 Audrey Hogan ’21, Maggie Donovan ’23 & Aarushi Sharma ’23

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Email submissions to mhnews@mtholyoke.edu by Sundays at 5 p.m. for publication the following week.

Event Highlights Thursday, Sept. 17 “PLAYED: Music as Violence Against Black Girls on YouTube” – A Public Talk by Kyra Gaunt

Ethnomusicologist Kyra Gaunt uses song, scholarship, and digital media to disclose disconnects in music, culture, and technology that perpetuate violence against girls online.

Registration required through the Mount Holyoke College Music Department.

4:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

International Solidarity Now! #oustduterte and the Role of U.S. Imperialism in Philippine Politics

Join MHC Asian American Students in Action for a teach-in facilitated by Fil-am organizers presenting a brief overview of current Philippine politics and the influence of U.S. imperialism in them.

Zoom ID: 794 682 1150 8:30 p.m.

Thursday, Sept. 22 Buscando Futuro/Finding Future: Artist Hector Dionicio Mendoza in Conversation with Associate Professor of Latina/o Studies, David Hernandez

Registration is required through the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum.

4:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

The Zowie Banteah Cultural Center Homecoming

The Indigenous and Native American MHC community is invited to join this Homecoming event which will include fun activities to get to know each other.

Registration is required through Community and Inclusion.

4:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

Friday, Sept. 23 Racial Trauma: Supporting Black Students on College Campuses

In a facilitated dialogue, Dr. Thema Bryant-Davis will provide important resources on anti-racist pedagogical and support practices for Black students particularly in response to racial trauma.

Registration is required through the Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

September 17, 2020

NEWS

. Mount Holyoke News

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CAs on campus struggle with new responsibilities

BY CASEY ROEPKE ’21 NEWS EDITOR

The group of student residential staff living on the College’s campus this fall is drastically smaller than previous years and they are working in unprecedented circumstances. Abiding by the social compact, and in some cases enforcing it, the responsibilities of Community Assistants (formerly known as Community Advisors) and Residential Fellows (formerly Senior Community Advisors) have shifted in response to COVID-19’s interruption to campus life.

As reported by the Mount Holyoke News earlier this year, students were told they could not work their residential staff jobs remotely. According to Associate Dean of Students and Director of Residential Life Rachel Alldis, the on-campus student residential staff has been reduced to 14 students — five Residential Fellows and nine Community Assistants — spread across four dorms.

“Normally we have a staff of 92, so at this moment 78 are not working,” Alldis said. “But we are still exploring some potential remote options that I hope to know more about soon.”

For the CAs and RFs on campus, roles and responsibilities have changed from past experiences.

“Being a CA this year is very different from last year,” Alex Moreno ’22 said. Moreno is working in ResLife for her second year as a CA and RF in the Rockies. “One of the biggest policies implemented is a ‘no-knock’ rule. This means that residents are not allowed to knock on our doors as a means to get in contact [with] us, but rather should email us instead.”

The “no-knock” rule is not the only new policy to reduce interface between student staff and residents. In previous years, S/CAs were “on duty” four to six Friday/Saturday weekends and readings

Photos courtesy of Nina Gilkyson ’22 Signs posted around campus ask students to be mindful of College social distancing requirements, most of which are enforced by Community Assistants (CAs).

days per semester, conducting at least three sets of rounds from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., according to the Community Advisor job description from the 2019-2020 academic year. In contrast, CAs and RFs this fall are required to be “on duty” daily.

“When on duty, we hold a virtual Zoom hour where residents can drop in if they would like to talk to us or have a problem,” Moreno said. “All of my interactions with residents have been through Zoom and emails, which is very strange to say.”

Anya Chinniah ’21 has also been adjusting to a new system of building community in her residence hall, South Rockefeller. Instead of meeting residents in the hallways, Chinniah describes having to be on duty “every night instead of just on weekends where [residential student staff] have to stay on a Zoom call in case students have any questions.”

While the change in responsibilities has not been accompanied by a change in pay (except with a cap on student work hours), Alldis is aware that the residential student workers are facing different challenges.

“We are not as focused on programming, but on individual connections, and we have added more time on duty for

staff to help enforce the community compact and ensure the health and safety of all of our students,” Alldis said.

Moreno said that she and other ResLife student staff have been partially responsible for enforcing the social compact that all residential students signed before living on campus in the fall, but that they are trying to avoid conflict.

“We are responsible for enforcing the community compact to a certain extent, such as making sure residents don’t have guests from off campus or other res halls inside the building,” Chinniah said.

“If we are made aware of students leaving the 10-mile radius or not abiding by the community compact, it is our job to reach out to the resident of concern and talk to them before reporting it to the area coordinators.”

“Positive confrontation is a big part of ResLife, so we ask residents to email and talk — from a safe distance, i.e. email or 6 feet away — to each other if they see someone without a mask. … We try our best to confront those who may not uphold the compact but we cannot force anyone to act in a way they do not want to,” said Moreno. “ResLife does have a system for reporting instances of breaches to the compact but on-campus

Convocation goes virtual for 2020, cont’d CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

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in the Mount Holyoke community for the first time. “Having only arrived here myself in January, and only being on campus just a couple of months before the world turned upside down, I can relate to those of you embarking on a new journey in such uncertain conditions,” she said. Still, Aguilar emphasized that the joy of learning in a community can

transcend virtual boundaries. “We are here to learn together,” she said. “Not just about the disciplines, but to learn so that we may better serve. What a beautiful education to be a part of.”

Wendy Rua ’94 followed Aguilar with a speech in which she meditated on the line from “Alma Mater”: “Mount Holyoke forever shall be.” The spirit of Mount Holyoke, to Rua, can be found wherever there is community — “even if it’s over a Zoom screen.”

This sentiment was echoed by Maya Sopory ’22, president of the Student Government Association and the final speaker of the event. Sopory urged listeners to carry with them the “Mount Holyoke spirit of resilience and perseverance,” and to care for themselves and one another during this time.

“I firmly believe that Mount Holyoke is not just a physical place,” Sopory said.

“It is the friends, staff and faculty that make it what it is.”

students have done a great job so far at respecting and maintaining the compact.”

This reporting system is a form accessible online, and any student living on campus can report an instance of breaking the social compact.

“I do think that the College has provided CAs with a good support system,” Chinniah said. “The only thing that some of the other CAs and I were concerned about is that we do not have hazard pay.”

Overall, Moreno said that she feels safe and comfortable with the College’s changes to campus life, although it feels very different from past years.

“I think when it comes to living on campus, many of the students here didn’t have a choice. They came back as a last resort, myself included,” she said. “I am grateful for having stable housing and some stable income, but the financial aid office did not make it easy to come back. … Safety Net funding did not give me significant support either. Resources for [COVID-19] are much more than just testing and a well-sanitized campus and I am eager to see how else Mount Holyoke will disperse resources directly to students.”

Confirmed COVID-19 cases on campus: Students: 2 Employees: 1 Vendors/Other: 1 Total positive since Aug. 12: 2 Tests completed since Aug. 12: 2868 Since July 1, 2020, as of September 16, 2020 Infographic by Kate Turner ’21 and Casey Roepke ’21

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NEWS

September 17, 2020

. Mount Holyoke News

Faculty participation in Scholar Strike is mixed, cont’d an ideal opportunity to do some of that work,” she said.

She further explained that, in the have either been fired or laid off because of institutional racism and other forms webinar, participants discussed including more work from different parts of violence in the university.”

Those who participated in the strike of the world and making race a more across the two countries did so in a va- prominent topic when teaching all of the riety of ways. Some professors canceled early modern texts. “In other words, it’s class altogether and sent out materials not enough to just spend one day on race to educate students on the history of when you’re teaching ‘Othello’ during a racial injustice, police brutality and the 14-week semester,” Rodgers said.

Visiting Lecturer in Astronomy Jastrike itself. Others held class and chose to use the time to educate their students son Young used part of his class time on about racial issues either more general- Tuesday, Sept. 8, to watch a lecture about ly or specific to the subject they teach. racial injustice within the field of astronSome of those who decided to hold a omy and provided other resources about the topic for class centered his students around the ideas “While Mount Holyoke has made to read afof the strike also some new commitments towards terward. On used the time to provide an opporanti-racism, I believe that the institu- Wednesday, he dedicated tunity for in-class tion still has a ways to go to achieve an hour of discussion and diversity, equity and inclusion. I think class time to for students to have a discustalk about their it’s up to each of us as faculty and sion on the own experiences. staff to push the institution towards topic.

T h o u g h these goals and commit to doing that “I think Mount Holyoke our culture’s did not make work on our own as well. ” at a turning a formal statepoint, but I ment about the - Amy Rodgers also think strike, faculty that that will and students both acknowledged it within the com- only happen if folks don’t accept the stamunity. “I decided to participate in tus quo,” Young said.

He felt that taking a day to think #ScholarsStrike for two reasons. The first is that while Mount Holyoke has about the movie before returning for made some new commitments towards discussion made the following class anti-racism, I believe that the institution more productive. “I’ve never moderatstill has a ways to go to achieve diversity, ed a discussion like this, and I kind of equity, and inclusion,” Associate Profes- didn’t know what to expect, but it was sor of Film Media Theater Amy Rodg- really constructive,” Young said. “[The ers said. “I think it’s up to each of us as students], I felt, were very interested in faculty and staff to push the institution the topic and felt it was very important towards these goals and to commit to do- and wanted to participate in a discussion like that.” ing that work on our own as well.”

Students had their own thoughts Rodgers canceled class on Tuesday and linked a number of resources sur- about the two-day strike and how their rounding the topic of the Scholar Strike professors acknowledged it. Both of to her students to go over if they wanted Gina Pasciuto’s ’23 professors acknowlto. She felt it would not be beneficial to edged the strike.

“One of my professors canceled make going through the resources mandatory in any way, or to make students class on Tuesday and sent us the link to the Scholar Strike page, and the other feel they had to do so.

Rodgers specializes in what she spent Wednesday’s class showing us a calls “white- and male-dominated” 16th debate on representation and Black culand 17th century British literature. In an ture in the theatre, so we could discuss effort to learn more about these issues it,” Pasciuto said. “I was glad that my within her own field of early modern professors were acknowledging someliterature, Rogers attended a webinar thing so important.”

Another student, Julia Griffin ’23, about how to make classes and scholarship in her field more inclusive and rele- said one of her professors did not menvant to students of color on the Tuesday tion the strike at all. A second, her chemof her canceled class. “I still have a lot to istry professor, still held class, but relearn and unlearn, so this seemed like corded it for those who missed it for the CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

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strike.

“My chemistry professor sent updates through email and Moodle with links to an article on diversity and inclusion in [the chemistry field] and to the National Museum of African American History and Culture,” Griffin said.

Although some students seemed to appreciate the ways in which their professors acknowledged the strike, others voiced criticism in regard to how well it was implemented and advertised across the College.

“I personally don’t know how effective the Scholar Strike was because there was hardly any mention of it by administration. I think there was a missed opportunity to circulate this movement wider in the MHC community,” Griffin said. “I understand that administrators might not want to encourage a strike, but it should at least be acknowledged if the College is truly committed to being anti-racist. If we traditionally have Mountain Day off from classes, we should definitely have at least a day dedicated to fighting racial injustice.”

Although there was no email or message sent to students from the administration, the faculty did receive an email from the Interim Dean of Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs Dorothy Mosby and the American Association of University Professors providing information in regard to the strike.

“This is a significant moment in the nation and as academics we are in a unique position to have difficult and brave conversations about racial injustice and systemic oppression in our history, society, and in our campus community,” Mosby wrote in the faculty

email. She also urged faculty members to participate in ongoing campus discussions regarding anti-racism at Mount Holyoke.

According to Young, Mosby’s email was the first time he had heard about the strike. “The faculty did receive information about it, although only a few days prior,” he said “The email we received from the Dean was generally supportive of social justice and supportive of this idea [of the strike].”

Both Young and Griffin acknowledged that the strike might not have been advertised widely by the administration due to the fact that strikes are a withdrawal of workers’ services in a form of protest in order to stand for, or against, a cause. In the context of the Scholar Strike, all scholars were encouraged to strike at the universities and colleges, including the administrators.

Young also mentioned that the strike could cause a disruption in this accelerated pace with the new module system. “I thought that it was an important strike, but I also wanted to balance that with the fact that we are running twice as fast with the module system,” he said.

Rodgers also mentioned this issue of disruption with the strike; however, it did not affect her class. Instead, she moved assignments and readings around on the course syllabus to account for the missed class.

“This work can’t be done alone,” Rodgers said. “We have to be honest about what we don’t know and reach out to learn from and collaborate with scholars and teachers who have been doing this work for a long time.”

At Mount Holyoke News, our inbox is always open and we are specifically focused on highlighting the voices of students of color.

Any personal experiences, contributing articles, opinion pieces, testimonials or other journalistic works from BIPOC students can be sent to mhnews@mtholyoke.edu.

Any questions regarding the editing and publishing process may be sent to the same address.

September 17, 2020

. Mount Holyoke News

OPINION/EDITORIAL

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‘Settle for Biden’ movement compromises democratic elections

BY KAVERI PILLAI ’23 STAFF WRITER

Nov. 8, 2016. I remember sitting in my pajamas in the living room, my focus completely on the television.

I decided not to go to school that day because I wanted to witness something great — Hillary Clinton was going to become the first female president of the U.S. — and there was nothing that could stop me from believing that. But as I sat there and toggled between CNN and MSNBC, this feeling of certainty vanished. Donald Trump was now the 45th president of the United States of America. Four years have gone by and now we face a dilemma — to vote for the man who is every liberal’s worst nightmare or to vote for the man who, shockingly enough, matches the same description.

Former Vice President Joe Biden was officially nominated as the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate on Aug. 18 after winning 2,687 delegates, surpassing the minimum 1,991 delegates required for nomination.

With Biden now the face of American hope, many are questioning if they find this to be a desirable choice.

There is a new online trend that is garnering the youth’s attention: “Settle for Biden.” This is not just a hashtag young Americans are using for their election-year Instagram posts. It is a grassroots campaign created to acknowledge Biden’s flaws and simultaneously recognize that the nation will not survive four more years of President Donald Trump. “Settle for Biden” has one goal: to unite progressive voters to settle for a better presidential candidate. While I do morally disagree with the racist, homophobic and sexist ideology that Trump and his administration stand for, I also might not necessarily agree with the moderate stand Biden often takes on political issues.

“Settling” for the latter undermines the concept of free elections. This political compromise consists of a combination of sardonic millennial and Generation Z humor and substantive policy proposals. “OK, I will vote for Joe Biden” and “I ain’t perfect, but have you seen the other guy?” quotes glamorize Biden as

a candidate who is mediocre, to say the least. “Settle for Biden” is attempting to destroy the integrity of a democracy, to eradicate the right to choose.

What makes a democracy so valuable is the fact that we have free and fair elections. Pressuring and gaslighting those who refuse to align with this strong idea of settling for Biden mischaracterizes them as privileged and ignorant to the current political state of the country.

The moment one introduces the idea of choosing the lesser of the two evils, voter turnout will be affected. The same happened in 2016 between Trump and Clinton, with only 55.4 percent of registered voters voting, lower than the 58.2 percent of the 2008 election. Trump’s core message of “Make America Great Again” was contested in the most feeble way possible, as Clinton took the stance that America was already great. The lack of an individual message, or one that piggybacked on Obama’s message of hope, was uncharismatic in front of the message pushed by Trump.

Biden, like Clinton, has failed to set up a core message. He’s been portrayed as a transitional candidate who can be pressured by the public into overturning the regressive laws that were put in place by the Trump administration. He lacks the passion to take the fight to Wall Street and the urgency to defund the police, issues which upped progressive voter participation this year in the first place.

The Biden-Harris administration is already being painted as a duo who won’t bring anything new to the table, making them boring and undesirable. The negative connotation of “settling” and “not doing X” emphasizes the lack of creativity and change. If both candidates are being thought of as incompetent presidents, the small youth voter turnout of 2016 will be lower in 2020, regardless of how severe our political condition is now.

The current fight against racism acts like a catalyst in the debate to settle. Biden’s earlier accusation of the Black community not really being Black if they

Graphic by Anjali Rao-Herel ’22

had trouble in making a decision this general election was a tone deaf attempt at undermining the freedom to vote for people of color. As a woman of color myself, I understand the ramifications of the harsh legislation Trump has passed on immigration and minority status in the country. However, it is infuriating to see white upper-class people force their privileged, superficial and dominant group-minded opinion on who we have to vote for. On a personal level, “settling” acts like a double-edged sword. The issue of reifying certain immoral practices towards marginalized groups is contrasted with my right to choose.

An initiative like “Settle for Biden” fuels the ideological divide that already exists within Democratic Party voters and fails to meet its ultimate goal: unity.

This will inevitably divide votes, decrease interest in voting and result in a severe decline of faith in politics.

As a first-time voter, it would be encouraging to not have to “settle,” but to be proud to vote for someone.

Taylor Swift needs to calm down with performative activism

BY SHLOKA GIDWANI ’22 & LAUREN LEESE ’23 WEB AND COPY EDITORS

On July 24, Taylor Swift unexpectedly released her eighth studio album, “Folklore.” As Taylor Swift fans, we were beside ourselves with excitement that one of our favorite artists had blessed us with a beautiful quarantine album. However, “Folklore” is the latest installment in the career of a woman who wants to be a voice for change, but whose privilege causes her to center herself in situations where she should leave a blank space for the voices of marginalized people.

Undoubtedly, Swift has made valuable contributions in the fight for gender equity, vocally branding herself as a feminist on- and offstage. She risked her career to speak out about LGBTQ+ rights, as documented in her 2019 film “Miss Americana.”

Swift’s attempts to extend her activism into her music have been more mixed in terms of success. Her 2019 album, “Lover,” is her first work to contain songs with an explicitly activist bend. This is where Swift’s range as a privileged white woman starts to show its cracks.

In the fourth single on “Lover,” “The Man,” Swift

sings about how if she was a man, she would be respected for the things people attack her for. Double standards in the media are still a problem, but the message of “The Man” feels oversimplified when it comes from one of the most privileged white women in the world. The music video shows Swift dressed as a man, performing an exaggerated gender presentation. Among other things, she ogles a bunch of bikini-clad women and pees on a subway wall, which feels so over-the-top it’s almost meaningless. When sexism in the U.S. often presents itself in insidious microaggressions, a video of a single successful man being a jerk becomes almost a mockery of what modern-day feminism is trying to achieve. Further, Swift’s message with this video completely ignores the intersection of gender with class, race and sexuality.

Swift’s album “Lover” suffers from the same oversimplified presentation of important social issues.

“You Need to Calm Down,” a song which includes the reductionist lyric, “Shade never made anybody less gay,” went from questionable to problematic thanks to its music video. The video portrays Swift and several of her LGBTQ+ friends lounging around while a crowd

of Westboro Baptist Church-esque anti-gay protesters scream at them. Some members of the LGBTQ+ community at Mount Holyoke found that the piece presented the LGBTQ+ movement in an oversimplified light.

“My issue with the video was that it felt very tokenizing,” Isabel McIntyre ’22 said. “It also bothered me how she likened homophobia to her feud with Katy Perry. It felt like it trivialized the issue.”

“The music video looks like a commercial for a collection of tacky pride clothing at Target,” Sara Bartol ’22 said. “All it did was make some surface-level points like, ‘you should not be mean to gay people,’ and feature some of the LGBTQ+ celebrities that straight people are already familiar and mostly comfortable with.”

It must be noted that it’s not always easy to critique seemingly allo, cisgender, heterosexual artists’ explorations of LGBTQ+ issues. On Aug. 31, Becky Albertalli, bestselling author of the popular gay young adult romance “Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda,” came out as bisexual in a Medium post. She wrote that online bullying had pressured her into revealing her CONTINUED ON PAGE 14

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GLOBAL

September 17, 2020

Time zones most impact the remote learning experiences of international students

. Mount Holyoke News

China’s abuse against Uighur Muslims sparks anger

BY ADITI PARASHAR ’22 & SAMAN BHAT ’22 STAFF WRITERS

Photo courtesy of WikiMedia Commons While living in different time zones across the world, Mount Holyoke’s international students are trying to adapt to new class times and sleep schedules. Students in Ghana, Vietnam and China share their experiences on these adjustments to their life at home since the start of the year.

BY CORRINE CELUPICA LUI ’23 STAFF WRITER

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mount Holyoke announced the implementation of the Flexible Immersive Teaching model as a means of academic instruction for the 2020-2021 academic year. This model, as explained on Mount Holyoke’s “Opening the Gates” webpage, emphasizes synchronous classes to “ensure an immersive experience and inclusive excellence,” offering courses from 8 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. EST so that “students in different time zones across the world can participate.”

While the entire Mount Holyoke community has had to adjust to this new model of instruction, international students have faced unique challenges and experiences due to widely diverse geographic circumstances and time zones.

For Deborah Korboe ’21, who lives in Sakumono, Ghana in West Africa, time zone differences mean she attends her Module 1 courses starting at 5 p.m. and finishes at 2 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time.

“It has certainly been a tasking job,” Korboe said. “It helps that I have time during the day to do homework, but I have to change my [biological] clock to keep up with synchronous classes.”

Both Aurora Vo ’23 and Hongtian Wang ’22, who are 11 and 12 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time in Vietnam and China, respectively, are also taking classes late at night and have faced difficulties adjusting to time differences.

“For this module, I have classes starting from 7 p.m. through 11:15 p.m. every day, and all require students to attend in real time,” Vo explained. “Even though it’s only been three weeks, I am already tired because I stay up

late, making my sleep schedule a bit off.”

Wang also mentioned how it can be difficult to keep track of and calculate deadlines in a different time zone.

“There have been some difficulties for me in calculating deadlines,” Wang said. “I have made mistakes calculating deadlines, so I ended up turning in assignments late.”

Mount Holyoke has made efforts to maintain access to resources and community despite remote circumstances. “My professors try to put students in the same time zone into a group so it will be easier for us to communicate, and they also hold a virtual common room for us to do homework together outside of class,” Wang explained. “I feel very involved and cared [for], even living very far from the campus.”

Vo also noted how the tight-knit nature of the Mount Holyoke community is helping to maintain a connection to campus. “One cool thing about Mount Holyoke is that because our student body is not large, I have seen most of my classmates on campus before,” Vo said. “A big picture of Mount Holyoke is still there for me.”

For Korboe and Wang, however, the support and community felt in courses seems not to apply to extracurricular activities.

“It seems like [student organizations] won’t be a feature for me this semester, because meeting times are always in the middle of the night for me,” Korboe said.

“I just wish my colleagues would be a little more considerate.”

Wang noted that, because “I sleep early, I don’t participate in any events. That is a pity.”

While the FIT model marks a significant adjustment for the entire Mount Holyoke community, the experience of Mount Holyoke’s large international student population is important to understand in order to continue work on fostering community through the academic year.

“I hope they have already died because if they are alive it is worse torture for them.” Tahir Imin, a Uighur Muslim now in political asylum in the United States, told The Independent. He spoke about how his family has been detained due to his vocal dissent against the “reeducation centres” run by the Chinese government. Tahir Imin’s story is one of many that are slowly being released regarding the alleged treatment of China’s Uighur population under China’s Communist Party.

The Uighurs are a predominantly Muslim Turkic people with a population of around 11 million and live in China’s northwestern Xinjiang province. China has begun to receive global criticism for its alleged persecution of Uighur Muslims. Over the past few months, harrowing reports have surfaced describing millions of Uighurs detained in what Middle Eastern new source Al Jazeera calls “the largest network of internment camps since World War II.” Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have long accused the Chinese government of mass detention, torture and mistreatment of Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang.

On Sept. 9, 2018, HRW released an extensive report based on firsthand accounts of several former Xinjiang residents, detainees and relatives of detainees, detailing the abuses the population has suffered.

The report lists two violations of fundamental rights, including freedom of expression, religion and privacy, and lack of protections from torture and unfair trials.

There are an estimated 1 million Uighurs that have been detained in these camps; however, some have claimed that the number is closer to the 3 million range, according to the Save Uighur campaign.

Leaked official documents from within the region, along with firsthand accounts from former detainees, have helped expose what is happening inside these camps. Al Jazeera reports that Uighurs are subjected to systematic physical and mental atrocities, including being forced to consume pork and alcohol, both of which are prohibited in Islam.

Survivors have also spoken about their experiences of “electrocution, waterboarding, repeated beatings, stress positions, and injections of unknown substances,” according to a Foreign Policy report. This report also highlighted the mass female sterilizations happening in the region. “Anyone who has come out of [the camps] confirms they are worse than prisons,” claims the official Save Uighur website.

Ali Aslam, assistant professor of politics at Mount CONTINUED ON PAGE 7

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September 17, 2020

GLOBAL

. Mount Holyoke News

7

ICE over the summer: Policy changes create uncertainty

Photo courtesy of WikiMedia Commons Over the summer, the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency announced several changes to their visa administration plans.

BY JOCELYN ZHOU ’23 STAFF WRITER

On July 6, 2020, the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency announced that non-immigrant F-1 and M-1 students could not take full online course loads and remain in the United States. International students risked deportation if the college or university they attended switched to remote learning for the fall 2020 semester, which many had already announced due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This sizable

decision resulted in immediate backlash.

The policy stated that it would not apply to universities offering a hybrid model — a mixture of online and in-person classes — however, international students enrolled in a college with such a model were not allowed to take more than one online course. This left many international students unsure of their status in the United States, as several colleges had yet to announce their plans for the fall semester.

In response to ICE’s decision, Mount Holyoke College initially decided to adopt a hybrid model to help

students adjust to the new situation. However, some international students, like Nora Zhang ’22, had their doubts. “Before I got this policy, I [came] back to my hometown. But, this policy definitely made me confirm that I would not go to the U.S. for the fall semester,” she said. Ultimately, Zhang chose to take all her courses remotely due to continued uncertainty.

The policy also made it harder for international students to secure jobs in the United States. “My major concern was that taking a gap year would affect my SEVIS [Student and Exchange Visitor Information System] status because of this policy and the travel restriction so that I couldn’t apply for CPT [Curricular Practical Training, off-campus work authorization for employment] next summer, which means I have no internships,” Huiyun Peng ’22 said.

Peng also recalled the College’s response to the issue. “If I remember correctly, the school didn’t respond to the issues of CPT/OPT [Optional Practical Training] for international students, other than [saying] that it was all good,” Peng reflected.

Several universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, sued ICE over their decisions, ultimately resulting in them rescinding the restrictive F-1 student visa policy after one week.

After ICE rescinded the policy, Mount Holyoke College announced that it would be online-only for the fall semester.

“The main concern [with] online courses is the time differences for international students. I definitely felt tired and uncomfortable because of the time differences,” Zhang said. “However, I believe that it will be better than the worries and fear brought by the faceto-face courses now.”

China’s abuse against Uighur Muslims sparks anger, cont’d. u

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 6

Holyoke, discussed how the actions of the Chinese government represented an effort to ethnically cleanse the region of Uighurs. “The detainment, enforced labor, sexual sterilization and separation of children from their parents for the purposes of cultural indoctrination represent an effort at ethnic cleansing on par with Rwanda and Kosovo,” Aslam said.

Chinese officials have dismissed claims of ethnic cleansing and concentration camps, with China’s U.K. ambassador, Liu Xiaoming, claiming it is all “fake,” in an interview with the BBC. In addition, the Global Times stated that the tough security measures were necessary to prevent the region from falling to Islamic extremism. However, “experts say Beijing’s repression and subjugation of millions of Uighurs is vastly disproportionate to the comparatively minor terror threat in the region,” according to Vox. In July 2019, more than twenty countries, including the United Kingdom and Canada, released a joint statement to the United Nations High Commissioner

for Human Rights condemning the Chinese government for its “arbitrary detention” and “widespread surveillance and restrictions, particularly targeting Uighurs and other minorities in Xinjiang, China.”

The U.S. has had a mixed response to the camps.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that this was “a human-rights violation on a scale we have not seen since World War II.” According to CNN, Pompeo’s statement comes days after former national security adviser John Bolton charged President Donald Trump with greenlighting President Xi Jinping’s constructions of the camps, stating it was the “right thing to do.”

Although outrage has slowly been growing in the international community, Aslam claims other countries are not doing enough. “The international response to China’s genocidal campaign against the Uighur Muslim population in the far west territories has been tepid, when it has been registered at all,” he said.

He added that neither states nor corporations “are willing to voice an objection for fear of losing access to the Chinese economy.”

Elizaveta Lozovaya, chaplain of Mount Holyoke College and advisor to the Muslim community on campus, also expressed her deep dissatisfaction with the world’s response to the issue. “I invite everybody to learn more about the crisis and to act with whatever support they can offer to the Uighur community,” Lozovay said. “I stand against prosecuting all religious groups, and my heartfelt prayers go to my sisters and brothers of faith in China.”

As of August 2020, the United States has imposed sanctions on 11 Chinese companies over human rights abuses, including brands like the suppliers of Apple, Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger. According to The New York Times, these sanctions “only prevent U.S. companies from selling components or technologies to Chinese companies without a license, not from purchasing products,” leaving some questioning the effectiveness and severity of these measures.

Aslam believes that it is now up to ordinary citizens to speak up about the events taking place in Xinjiang. “Unless[,] as citizens and consumers, ordinary people speak up, this genocide will continue.”

8

FEATURES

September 17, 2020

. Mount Holyoke News

Clubs and organizations navigate the remote semester

Graphic by Anjali Rao-Herel ’22

BY ANSLEY KEANE ’23 STAFF WRITER

The majority of Mount Holyoke students are living off campus this academic year, including first-years and transfer students who have yet to experience Mount Holyoke in person. Methods of finding community have evolved and look radically different from years past. Despite the online format, many Mount Holyoke clubs and organizations are still up and running. The Virtual Involvement Fair was held on Sunday, Sept. 6, which provided organization leaders and students an opportunity to understand what their Mount Holyoke cocurricular experience might look like this year.

Unlike the traditional Involvement Fair held every September on Skinner Green, this year’s Virtual Involvement Fair was held on Embark, an online platform Mount Holyoke is using to centralize community involvement at the College. Students could talk to organizations via one-on-one message and group chat options on each organization’s Involvement Fair page.

Most organizations also had virtual booths in which students could enter a Zoom meeting with representatives from the organization, ask questions and get an understanding of what the organization will feel like this year. Haya Diwan ’21 and Khanh Ngo ’22, presidents of the Mount Holyoke Computer Science Society, noted in a collaborative statement that CSS managed to interact with a few students, but that “in a normal year we could always physically grab people to our booth to pitch them about our organization, which is impossible this year.” Diwan and Ngo also mentioned that it was “quite sad.”

This year’s Involvement Fair relied on students to seek out information about the organizations they were interested in rather than wandering around from

booth to booth, stumbling across different groups. Emily Gitlin ’22 is the co-chair of HackHolyoke, an annual student-run hackathon. HackHolyoke shared a booth with CSS. When asked about the turnout at the Involvement Fair, Gitlin said it was “way, way lower than a normal year.”

“In the past we were able to draw some serious interest in HackHolyoke during the Involvement Fair,” Gitlin added. “This year, that was much more difficult.”

On the other hand, Sonali Sikder ’22, co-chair of Taal, a Bollywood fusion dance group, found that the Virtual Involvement Fair “was useful, especially for recruiting first-years.” Turnout was low for all other class years, Sikder said.

Jess Moskowitz ’22, committee chair of the Mount Holyoke Outing Club, thought the virtual fair went well. “We had a few new students stop by our live video call; that was really fun to get to talk to new people and hear new members be excited about joining the club,” Moskowitz said.

Len Yeomans ’22, president of Knit Happens, said that Knit Happens “certainly did not have as many people come up to the booth to talk us as we normally would, but we got to chat with a lot of interested people and almost all of them ended up coming to our first post-Involvement Fair meeting.”

The dance group Taal is normally audition-only, but this year is “trying to engage first-years in all our online events,” Sikder said. “We’re trying to emphasize that these events are open to everyone, regardless of previous dance experience,” Sikder noted.

According to Ngo and Diwan, “CSS particularly cares about first-years, especially now that they are beginning their time at Mount Holyoke remotely. We are designing and launching a special buddy system which aims to pair upperclassmen with underclassmen (first-years and sophomores) so that they can stay connected.”

Moskowitz has been thinking about how to help new students connect with others while they are apart from each other. Moskowitz said that “I was a new transfer student last year and getting involved with the Outing Club and going on trips was a great way that I got to know new people.” The Outing Club is considering a few strategies for engaging with new students, including a Big/Little program or a pen pal project.

Yeomans noted that “over the summer, Knit Happens continued to have Zoom meetings [and] the majority of the members of these meetings (at least 12 of the 20 semi-consistent Zoomers) were members of the class of 2020 and 2019. So as the semester started we asked our alums to have their own separate meetings, for at least the first couple of weeks to help the new members feel comfortable and part of the club.”

Switching to remote operations after only running in-person meetings and events has presented some challenges to Mount Holyoke’s clubs and organizations. Not only have time zones become an issue, but some organizations, such as CSS, are finding it challenging to keep people motivated. However, an online format encourages the leaders of cocurricular activities to think creatively and come up with new ways of engaging their members and creating a community

within their group.

HackHolyoke also faces the challenge of creating community during events that have historically been face to face. “Social interaction would normally be a natural part of the event,” GItlin said. Now, “we need to take active steps to create a space where that can happen.” However, Gitlin shared that “there are also a lot of surprising upsides” to holding the event virtually. Attendees no longer have to travel to participate in the hackathon, meaning HackHolyoke has become more accessible in certain ways this year, and the HackHolyoke leadership team does “not have to worry about the logistical challenge that is hosting, feeding and ensuring the safety of 200+ college students inside of Chapin,” according to Gitlin.

For the Outing Club, being remote means completely redesigning the format of the club, as the organization cannot run trips right now. This semester, Outing Club is “focusing more on creating a club-wide community so that members feel more a part of an outdoor culture beyond one trip or event,” Moskowitz said. The Outing Club is acting on that goal by creating new avenues for members to connect with each other, including “a variation of a Flat Stanley Project (Flat Mary Lyon) as a way of connecting members with each other,” said Moskowitz.

The Flat Mary Lyon project involves members of Outing Club receiving a paper Mary Lyon in the mail, bringing it to their favorite outdoor spot and sending it to another member of MHOC. Moskowitz shared that being completely online is “forcing Outing Club to revisit the core of who we are and who we want to be as an outing club.” While Outing Club has traditionally focused on organizing trips for students to spend time outdoors with their peers, the shift to a remote setup has opened up the door for other possibilities, such as an increased focus on outdoor education and “getting to know each other through virtual events,” Moskowitz said.

While clubs and organizations are at the forefront of creating community for Mount Holyoke students, the Student Experience Emergency Response Team has also been thinking about how to translate the on-campus community to a remote format. Jane Kvederas ’22 and Lasya Priya Rao ’23, student members of ERT, both shared that they are focused on creating programming that students will want to take part in.

According to Rao, a big challenge for the ERT is figuring out how to offer engaging programming for students while also “recognizing Zoom fatigue” and “making sure students aren’t overwhelmed.” Both Kvederas and Rao noted that a benefit to creating a virtual community is the increased opportunities for collaboration and for alumnae to become involved.

Kvederas also noted that the Student Experience ERT has also made an effort to have “more deliberate programming geared towards first-years” to make them feel welcomed.

While current life as a Mount Holyoke student looks like nothing it has before, student leaders have continued their work to keep the sense of community alive and keep students engaged and connected, no matter where they are in the world.

September 17, 2020

. Mount Holyoke News

FEATURES

9

Online STEM classes bring unique challenges to remote learning

BY WOODLIEF MCCABE ’23 STAFF WRITER

In a world rife with technology, students are well set up to take courses remotely. Students now have access to Zoom, Discord, shared documents, digital whiteboards and YouTube videos. Despite this, both professors and students have run into technological issues with online learning this semester. Science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) classes have lost some of their most distinctive characteristics, and professors have faced some challenges redesigning the structure of their classes and labs.

After deciding to move to completely remote learning, Dean of Studies Amber Douglas and Associate Dean and Director of the Teaching and Learning Initiative Elizabeth Markovits worked to make the transition to this new format as smooth as possible.

Markovits said it quickly became clear that the 2020-2021 school year was going to look different regardless of where the learning was happening. “In order to stay true to who we are, which is an international inclusive community, we would have to [go completely remote],” Markovits said.

Mount Holyoke needed to find a unique strategy to accommodate the 26 percent of the student body which is made up by international students. The ideal situation for Markovits would be to have students online, but there were too many “what ifs.” What if a professor had to quarantine? What if students couldn’t get visas to come back to the United States? What if borders remained closed? Markovits sat down and spent months constructing an entirely new way of teaching.

Being able to take learning completely online was “the morally right thing to do,” she said.

Over the summer, Markovits worked with professors to make this new model possible. “The amount of work and the commitment to our students and the creativity that our faculty showed this summer and the fact that we can’t pay them for it…” Markovits said, tearing up.

Faculty have found a common chord of practical application: Class time is for problem-solving and discussion, and lecture content is asynchronous. In some form or another, the “flipped classroom” model has been applied across the disciplines. This model puts the lecture content ahead of the actual class period and leaves class time for students to ask questions and have discussions and for professors to go over things that they know are harder to grasp. Instead of spending time in class talking about the subject, students come prepared having read about or watched videos on the day’s lesson.

“If you’re going to record videos anyway then you might as well ask students to record and watch videos passively ahead of time,” Professor of Physics Katherine Aidala said.

Zoom classes are spent going over homework, discussing concepts and using breakout rooms to facilitate group work and personal connections. Professor of Chemistry Katie McMenimen believes that the class discussions occurring in the Zoom meetings are richer because the entire time is devoted to discussion. Managing the content of the classes is crucial, and profes-

sors are being confronted with the reality that not everything is going to make it to class time.

Lecturing in a Zoom class has proven to be difficult for many professors. “None of us like talking for much more than five or 10 minutes at a time,” Aidala admitted.

Professor Kerstin Nordstrom said, “Personally, I can’t pay attention to a Zoom meeting after the first 30 minutes or so.” Not only that, but it is far harder to see when students are confused and need the instructor to repeat something in a digital classroom.

While much of the content of many classes hasn’t changed, there’s still limited time to teach the same amount of material as before. Tory Halsey ’23 said, “There’s probably a lot of details that we aren’t going over … through this condensed module.” But the stakes are higher for staying on track. “We’re a day behind already, which is danGraphic by Anjali Rao-Herel ’22 gerous,” she added. of location, financial status and ability. Some students Those who have taken lab classes before know don’t have necessary materials at home to complete that labs can take up a three-hour block in their schedtheir assignments as instructed. For example, Halsey ule. “By any measure, that is another class,” Profesdoesn’t have a printer, yet her CHEM-150 class expects sor of Biological Sciences Martha Hoopes pointed out. students to print out the worksheets for their labs.

Professors have attempted to rectify the impersonal At the beginning of the module, the physics denature of these labs by turning the classes into several partment sent their students kits for class. The kits small breakout rooms that can watch the experiment included lenses and light sources as well as small and talk about it amongst themselves. sensors called iOLabs that can measure 12 different Halsey, a student in CHEM-150,, lamented the fact kinds of data from electricity to velocity. Other STEM that “the professors do all the work themselves and students have been given inexpensive tablets to aid in then we just do a worksheet.” This works fine for her, digital writing, since STEM subjects require a more a self-described “visual learner,” but this may not be scientific type of notation that often isn’t compatible the case for many others. In labs, students learn the with most word processing software. concepts for the class, but also the important skills of Moodle’s recent update and a wealth of materials handling lab materials, practicing lab safety and using like PollEverywhere, Kaltura, Miro, graphing calcuspecialized equipment. lator apps and the Google Suite, among others, make “There’s a learned ... component that comes with finding the materials for different courses’ specific the physical engagement with the material that you needs easier. Many classes have found open-source can’t replicate on Zoom,” Professor Katie McMenitextbooks that students can access through a URL or men, who is currently teaching organic chemistry, PDF. said.. “At the end of the day, it’s a demonstration, and AccessAbility Services is working to get students it’s not the physical experience of doing that lab.” the resources that they need, but the bureaucracy and “Working through that frustration ... is part of the increased demand could cause delays that effectiveway we learn,” Hoopes said. Now that many students ly put students further behind. With this accelerated are expected to return to the same class every day, schedule, missing one day could be detrimental for a there is no break. Coming back to the same class may student’s progress in a class. keep some ideas fresh, but, according to Hoopes, “it “College is not just about being in class, and it’s can take a while to learn things. Just because we have not just about learning your academic subjects. It’s the same amount of hours doesn’t mean we have the about figuring things out for yourself as an individsame amount of processing time.” ual and as an adult,” Hoopes said. “There are social Professor of Chemistry Jon Ashby said his biggest aspects that are way more important than whatever concern is burnout. According to him, “Everything you’re doing in your academics.” takes a bit longer when working remotely, which gives Despite all the new challenges the semester has the impression that you are continually working on brought, some students, like Halsey, remain focused coursework during all waking hours.” on a single goal. “I just wanna pass this class,” Halsey Professors are currently grappling over how to said. provide a level playing field for students, regardless

10

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

September 17, 2020

. Mount Holyoke News

Remembering Chadwick Boseman, iconic actor and director

BY HIBA NAWAID ’23 & KENNA HURTUK ’23 STAFF WRITERS

On Aug. 28, surrounded by family, Boseman passed away at the age of 43 after a four-year-long battle with colon cancer. Best known for his iconic role as T’Challa in Marvel’s “Black Panther,” his portrayal of Jackie Robinson in “42,” and his starring roles in “21 Bridges” and “Marshall,” Boseman has long been a key figure for Black representation in film. He graduated from Howard University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in directing (eventually directing two short films called “Heaven” and “Blood Over a Broken Pawn”), but became better known for his work in front of the camera.

Hollywood is not alone in mourning the loss of acclaimed actor and playwright Chadwick Boseman.

Politicians, activists, professional athletes and citizens across the globe have taken to social media to express their grief and shock at Boseman’s passing, as well as admiration at his impact. From young children holding mock funerals for their “Black Panther” action figures to major organizations making donations in his name, Boseman’s influence has extended far beyond the cinematic universes of his career. A statement issued by Boseman’s family read, “A true fighter, Chadwick persevered through it all, and brought you many of the films you have come to love so much. The family thanks you for your love and prayers, and asks that you continue to respect their privacy during this

difficult time.”

Boseman challenged racial stereotypes in film since his debut. He was fired from one of his first roles as Reggie Porter in the ABC soap opera “All My Children” after just one week, for refusing to play a stereotypical character. However, his suggestions for Porter were taken into account when selecting a new actor to continue the role. Michael B. Jordan, his “All My Children” replacement and “Black Panther” costar, said, “It’s hard to speak in the moment about how things we do can affect other people. ... And the work that we’re doing on ‘Black Panther’ is hopefully doing the same thing for the next group of actors that are coming up, just like our predecessors opened up doors and made things easier for us.”

In the wake of Boseman’s passing, numerous people took to Twitter to express astonishment at what he achieved while privately undergoing cancer treatments. Boseman was known for frequenting children’s cancer hospitals such as St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Tennessee. In 2018, during a SiriusXM interview, he talked about communicating with two terminally ill kids while filming “Black Panther,” a detail that becomes even more significant following news of his condition.

Despite his decision to maintain secrecy about his fight with cancer, Boseman’s passing has sparked a conversation about the perceptions surrounding Black disabled people who keep their conditions private.

Photo courtesy of Flickr Boseman played Marvel superhero T’Challa, known as Black Panther.

Boseman has catalyzed this conversation, especially considering he underwent treatment while filming an action movie. The Black Disability Collective pointed out that his experiences should be discussed through a disability lens. His experiences address the multifaceted nature of disability in a society that is heavy with stigma about visible disabilities.

Looking back on Boseman’s career, he has become the hero to a generation beyond the characters he played, and his legacy has more to come. His final film, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” is scheduled to be released posthumously. As for “Black Panther,” many fans are hoping the title will be passed down to T’Challa’s sister, Shuri.

‘Love in the Time of Corona’ ignores realities of COVID-19 quarantine

Graphic by Karina Wu ’23

BY ROSE COHEN ’22 STAFF WRITER

Remember the first few weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic? Maybe you grabbed a mask and trekked to your local grocery store, hoping to stock up on hand sanitizer and toilet paper. Perhaps you quarantined with a friend or significant other. In Freeform’s fourpart series “Love in the Time of Corona,” which premiered on Aug. 22, an ensemble of characters attempt to find love and connection during the early days of the pandemic in Los Angeles.

According to a CNN interview with show creator Joanna Johnson, who is also the executive producer of Freeform’s drama “Good Trouble,” scenes were shot inside actors’ real-life homes in L.A., and a small crew

sat outside in their own individual pod tents. They did everything without wires and let the actors take the cameras inside.

The filming process took approximately 15 days.

According to CNN, Johnson said, “It felt like it was a highly professional student film in the sense that there were seven of us, maybe, on the crew. We were wearing multiple hats and everybody was giving 110 percent and we were just getting it made.”

“Love in the Time of Corona” attempts to portray how the beginning of quarantine affected four different households. Real-life couple Leslie Odom Jr. and Nicolette Robinson star as husband and wife in the show. Odom, who played Aaron Burr in “Hamilton,” plays James, a movie producer who was rarely home before the pandemic began. Robinson, who made her Broadway debut as pie baker Jenna in “Waitress,” takes on the role of Sade, a stay-at-home mom to the pair’s 3-year-old daughter. James and Sade are deciding whether quarantine serves as the perfect moment to have another child.

In the second household, we meet James’ elderly mom, Nanda (L. Scott Caldwell), who is attempting to celebrate her 50th anniversary with her husband (Charles Robinson) despite the fact that he lives in a nursing home. He appears to suffer from dementia, which Nanda wants to deny.

We also learn the story of Sarah and Paul (Rya Kihlstedt and Gil Bellows), a soon-to-be-divorced couple who were still living together at the beginning of the pandemic. In the show, the two are forced to hide their recent estrangement from their daughter, Sophie (Ava Bellows), a freshman at Sarah Lawrence College who returned home once quarantine began. Lastly, viewers

encounter roommates and best friends Elle and Oscar (Rainey Qualley and Tommy Dorfman), who are hoping to find love during the pandemic, searching online and, later, closer to home.

Director Joanna Johnson told the Los Angeles Times that she didn’t want “Love in the Time of Corona” to be about the virus. “It’s really about the effects of quarantine on relationships that are old and new,” she said.

But Johnson’s statement seems puzzling. How can a show that’s set, written and filmed during the pandemic not be about COVID-19? Of course, Johnson has the liberty to create a series about how quarantine has impacted these different characters. Still, viewers only hear about the virus’ impact on the characters within their personal bubbles.

It will be easy to forget “Love in the Time of Corona.” The show fails to say much about how individuals experienced quarantine in the early days of the Coronavirus pandemic. A show set in the time of COVID-19 should instead address the feelings of loneliness and fear that many are still experiencing. Besides sharing the story of Nanda, who can’t visit her husband because of COVID-19, the show skips over many of the disastrous impacts of the pandemic. Many of the characters appear unaware that people around them are sick and dying.

The only reason to tune into this show is its talented cast, each of whom created a convincing storyline, even if they did fall short of reality. “Love in the Time of Corona” isn’t the most pandemic-encapsulating show, and leaves home that another will come along and better reflect the challenges faced during the early days of COVID-19.

September 17, 2020

BOOKS

. Mount Holyoke News

11

Reading is flourishing under pandemic-induced quarantine

BY CAT BARBOUR ’24 STAFF WRITER

After Mount Holyoke closed in mid-March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many students found themselves with more free time, uncertainty about the future and a new normal to adapt to. Even their reading habits had to adapt for the times. Gone were the days of strolling carefree through library stacks. While some bookstores offered shipping, most were closed in the spring. Readers had to get creative. Some finally had the time to turn to their ever-growing “to-be-read” piles at home. These are a few of their stories.

Adelia Brown ’22 spoke to the Mount Holyoke News over Zoom. She’s currently reading “The Most Fun We Ever Had” by Claire Lombardo, the story of four daughters searching for their own love stories just as epic as their parents’. Due to the pandemic, Brown is finding an issue with the books she usually likes. “I used to read a lot of post-apocalyptic and horror novels about society being decimated by plagues, and that’s just less fun now,” she said. Instead, Brown has turned to childhood favorites like “The Baby-Sitters Club” and other books that calm her.

With brick-and-mortar libraries closed, Brown began using OverDrive, a platform for accessing e-books used by 90 percent of North American libraries. Lei-

sure reading was a habit she lost after high school due to the amount of reading required for college classes.

In the past, Brown only had time to read on flights back home. Now, she can be seen pacing around her living room in Iowa, book in hand.

Throughout the past few months, Lynn Moynahan FP ’22 has also invigorated her reading habits. She is currently reading “Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which tells the story of two people who leave Nigeria for a better life in the West. Partly because of a reading-intensive class in the spring semester and partly due to her sudden increase in free time, Moynahan, too, has started reading more during the pandemic. Since quarantine shut down in-person book clubs, many turned to Facebook to connect with fellow readers, and Moynahan was no different. She was introduced to new books and perspectives through engagement with social media.

“It mostly started once there was a big revival in Black voices that need to be heard, that need to be read,” Moyanhan said. “I’ve made it a point to read more Black authors and Black stories. That’s one reason why I wanted to read Adichie’s book. I’ve been really enjoying it and it’s one of those things that I never thought about, how … not reading … is affecting how I’m seeing things.”

Aleah Larson ’24 was busy during quarantine —

she finished 50 books. She is currently reading “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” by J.K. Rowling, the third book in the series. Like many readers, she was worried that she had not read enough of the classics, so she used quarantine to remedy that.

Larson also made time to widen her reading horizons. “I think for people like me who are into classics, we’re used to books, like, by Jane Austen and stuff, and then you realize that there are other classics by other people about different things than just English society,” Larson said. “I think it’s opened my eyes to a lot of older books that are written by people who aren’t white.”

Larson and Moynahan are not the only ones seeking out new perspectives. According to The Washington Post, the five most-read authors this August were Brit Bennett, author of “The Vanishing Half,” Ibram X. Kendi, author of “How to Be an Antiracist,” Hilary Mantel, author of the Wolf Hall trilogy, Isabel Wilkerson, author of “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” and Jeanine Cummins, author of “American Dirt.”

Increased reading is also a trend throughout the nation. According to Fortune magazine, OverDrive has seen a 53 percent increase in e-book loans since midMarch, and 343,000 people have created digital library cards. While this pandemic has changed many things, a love of reading is not one of them.

Asexual voices must be spotlighted to fight poor representation

BY AMELIA SCARPONI ’23 STAFF WRITER

Erasure and underrepresentation in mainstream media are nothing new to the asexual and aromantic communities. Asexuality is a spectrum encompassing those who never or rarely experience sexual attraction or interest in sexual activity. Aromanticism is an orientation in which a person does not experience romantic attraction. While the publishing industry continues to seek out underrepresented and diverse voices, asexual identities remain nearly invisible in mainstream popular culture.

In the 21st century, sex and romance are often synonymous or used interchangeably. Movies, television and especially books rely heavily on the friends-tolovers trope and the satisfaction of sexual encounters, often while dismissing platonic relationships.

In Suzanne Collins’ trilogy “The Hunger Games,” there are hints that Katniss Everdeen’s identity falls within the asexual spectrum. Katniss is a strategist focused on self-preservation. The stress that arises from impending death would make anyone close themselves off from romantic relationships. However, this heroine might simply not be interested in sex or romance. According to Victoria McNally from MTV News, “Since the books first became popular, many members of the asexual and demisexual communities have embraced Katniss as a relatable hero for them to rally behind.”

Despite Katniss’ fan-theorized asexuality, the epilogue is puzzling. It candidly shows a married Katniss discussing the Hunger Games with her husband

Peeta and their daughter. How is it possible to marry and have children without romantic or sexual attraction? According to Kayla Gehringer from the feminist geek-culture publication The Mary Sue, “In the overwhelming majority of instances, marriage and having children are ​presumed​to require romantic and sexual attraction, which creates a sterile version of ‘normal’ and brands the opposite (platonic relationships) as abnormal.”

When ace characters are represented in fiction, they are often written by individuals who experience both sexual and romantic attraction. This leads to inaccurate and disparaging portrayals of people who are already marginalized and erased from society. There are many tropes and assumptions that non-ace authors base their characters on. For example, asexuality is often seen as a temporary problem that is only experienced by white, attractive, cisgender women. The 2012 film “The Olivia Experiment,” directed by Sonja Schenk, focuses on a 27-year-old woman whose friends try to convince her that she is not asexual; she’s just shy.

Lauren Jankowski, a writer at Bitch Media, states, “Not welcoming asexuals to participate in shaping the portrayals of asexuality in mainstream media has resulted in grossly inaccurate and damaging depictions of this orientation. Most allosexual people [people who experience any kind of sexual attraction] can name a fictional character who can be interpreted as asexual, but very few can name a single real-life asexual writer, director, actor or other artist.”

Rebecca Glines ’22, who is asexual, isn’t surprised about this lack of concrete representation. “There’s

Graphic by Trinity Kendrick ’21

a lot of shame rooted in not feeling sexual desire. It sometimes feels like we don’t exist,” she said.

However, more recently, asexual and aromantic writers have begun to enter center stage. In July of 2020, critically acclaimed author Alice Oseman released her fourth OwnVoices novel, “Loveless.” The book tells the story of Georgia Warr, who is 18 years old and romance-obsessed. However, she’s never had a crush, so when she travels across the country to start her first year of college, she makes a plan to fall in love and finally experience quintessential teenage romance. But as things fall apart, Georgia starts to question whether she might be on the aromantic and asexual spectrums, and what that means for her. Oseman states, “If anyone happens to pick up the book and feel seen, for the first time or not, then I’ll feel like I’ve done a good job.”

12

ENVIRONMENTAL

September 17, 2020

. Mount Holyoke News

Climate activism takes an online shape during COVID-19

Graphic by Trinity Kendrick ’23

BY HELEN GLOEGE ’23 STAFF WRITER

Staying home as a result of the pandemic does not mean staying silent about injustices. It has been nearly a year since the youth-led global climate strikes on Sept. 20 and much has changed. Climate strikes planned throughout the pandemic have been canceled, but the movement hasn’t disappeared.

With the upcoming Nov. 3 election in the United States, networks of youth climate activists have been regrouping with a focus on election campaigning through socially distanced methods including phone banks, social media and organizing. The larger youth-led Sunrise Movement in particular has been training young activists to canvass for candidates who are proponents of renewable energy.

For some activist groups, there has been a step back from demonstrations, strikes and protests and toward education on climate and those involved in climate activism. Website and Instagram account 1 Million Activist Stories showcases stories of various climate activists from around the world. On Sept. 22, the book “All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis” will be released. The book is a collection of

women climate leaders from 60 contributors including youth climate activist Xiye Bastida and Hadley-based researcher Susanne C. Moser.

The Re-Earth Initiative is an international youth-led organization that aims to make the climate movement more accessible. The organization’s first action was a global digital protest that occurred on Earth Day of this year and asked participants to make two climate pledges, one individual and one systemic. They then presented activities, toolkits, webinars and more to allow people to accomplish their goals.

The Initiative’s most recent action has involved launching an open letter urging Latin American and Caribbean governments to sign and/or ratify the Escazú Agreement, which is the first legally binding environmental human rights treaty in Latin America and the Caribbean. The agreement secures rights including access to information and participation and provides legal provisions to protect the rights of defenders of the environment who face persecution and murder.

The #FridaysForFuture movement began in Aug. 2018 after Greta Thunberg and other young activists sat in front of the Swedish parliament every school day for three weeks to protest against the lack of action on the climate crisis. Soon the movement went viral and now it is a worldwide phenomenon. The movement was partly digital before the pandemic and has continued in that direction. The #ClimateStrikeOnline action is another online movement where people are asked to post selfies from home with protest signs. Additional actions have included joining others across the world in mass calls, tweets and mass email campaigns.

This semester, Mount Holyoke students are scattered across the world. However, similar to global movements, this hasn’t stopped the organizing and activism of various environmental student organizations. Sunrise South Hadley and the Climate Justice Coalition are attempting to get around the hurdles and difficulties of online activism while the Student Government Association works toward the establishment of a sustainability commission.

“There is not a lot we can do collectively when we

are so far apart,” Emma Sullivan ’22, a Sunrise South Hadley organizer, said. However, they are still finding ways to be active while online. Sunrise South Hadley hasn’t yet gotten into the swing of normal meetings but some of the members are currently focused on phone banking in tandem with the national Sunrise Movement for various supporters of the Green New Deal.

Sunrise Movement and Sunrise South Hadley are currently putting all efforts into getting as many Green New Deal champions and progressives into Congress and voting President Donald Trump out of office. Sunrise Movement is also supporting the Black Lives Matter movement and has partnered with The Movement For Black Lives. Sunrise Movement has encouraged its members to follow Black organizers and leaders, to address white supremacy and support Black-led groups.

The Climate Justice Coalition has kicked off the semester with a goal for action despite the restrictions of COVID-19 and the need to work on a virtual platform.

The CJC hopes to continue creating a welcoming and supportive environment for new and returning members to foster a sense of community.

“We hope to make actions this semester accessible to everyone,” said Kayla Fennel ’22, a CJC member.

These actions include continuing to push for divestment through outreach to students and alums on social media and other platforms. They intend to turn theory into practice with various ideas, goals and tangible steps to support environmental justice. As an organization, they hope to make this semester one of the continued actions despite being apart. The CJC is listed on Embark, the virtual platform for student organizations this semester.

Also at Mount Holyoke, SGA is in the midst of their annual recruitment process and is working on a restructuring of student senate as part of last year’s constitutional review. As part of their reconfiguration, they will be exchanging working groups for commissions, which will research various courses of action for SGA. While the commissions are not yet in effect, one focusing on environmental issues and the College’s pledge for sustainability is expected to be formed.

The Atlantic basin experiences a record-breaking hurricane season

BY ABBY WESTER ’22 STAFF WRITER

Hanna. Isaias. Laura. These are the names of a few of the destructive hurricanes that we have already experienced in the Atlantic basin this year. The Atlantic basin consists of the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. Every year, from late summer to early autumn, this region experiences tropical storms reaching from the Caribbean Islands to the U.S. Coastal Gulf and up to the East Coast. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2020 has already been a record-setting active season.

The Atlantic hurricane season officially lasts from June 1 to Nov. 30. Storms are only named when they develop from a tropical depression to a tropical storm, which can then develop into a hurricane. An average hurricane season in the Atlantic basin produces 12

named storms, with six developing into hurricanes, and three of those becoming major hurricanes. Already in the 2020 season we have seen 20 tropical storms, seven of which developed into hurricanes.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, hurricanes in the North Atlantic have become more intense since 1970. There is some confidence among scientists that this is related to climate change.

However, scientists have not predicted that climate change will increase the number of hurricanes, which is what we are seeing in the Atlantic basin this season.

Although science has not proven that climate change is contributing to the number of hurricanes, Professor of Geography Thomas Millette reasoned that “since the earth is getting dramatically warmer, it makes perfect sense that we are getting both higher frequency and intensity of storms.” He explained that hurricanes “are one of the atmosphere’s mechanisms to

globally redistribute energy from areas of high concentrations to areas of lower concentration.”

Climate change is resulting in higher temperature, and according to Millette, “more heat and more water vapor in areas of tropical storm development are the key ingredients for stronger hurricanes. Climate warming in these source areas will likely lead to increasingly stronger hurricanes.”

While the hurricane season continues to rage on in the Atlantic basin, human activity that leads to warming, such as burning fossil fuels, has not ceased. As long as human activity continues to warm the Earth, we are bound to see environmental change. In the opinion of Professor Millette, “unless we find ways to reduce warming in the source areas for tropical storm development, we are likely to see increases in both frequency and intensity of tropical storms and hurricanes in the very near future and long term as well.”

September 17, 2020

SPORTS

. Mount Holyoke News

The latest with Mount Holyoke Athletics

BY GIGI PICARD ’22 SPORTS EDITOR

Despite a national trend of cutting athletic programs due to COVID-19, Mount Holyoke College Athletics has not eliminated any varsity or club sports teams. During the spring 2019 semester, seasons were cut short and the final game played by student-athletes was a lacrosse scrimmage between Mount Holyoke and Smith colleges, which occurred just before both colleges closed for the academic year.

In late August, athletes and coaches were reunited over Zoom for their traditional student-athlete barbecue. Led by Director of Athletics Lori Hendricks, the virtual Zoom event tried to bring back the lively spirit felt at barbecues from years past. One effort to bring the athletic community together was the classic “Y-O-K-E” cheer.

For Mount Holyoke Athletics, there are no in-person practices or competitions this semester. The College’s athletic programs this year will focus more on holistic community building rather than only the physical aspects of sports.

Hendricks worked on the New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) COVID-19 working group this summer, alongside several colleagues, directors of athletics, team physicians and athletic trainers. The purpose of the group was to develop plans and protocols for fall practices and competitions. Decisions were made at the conference level to host conference-only contests in the fall. Winter sport contests would be delayed until January.

For Hendricks, the future of the Mount Holyoke athletics department was a main consideration while working with the group.

Hendricks explained that the department’s priorities and strategic plan lie with “competitive success, recruitment and retention, diversity and inclusion, student well-being, community integration and physical education.” Hendricks highlighted the importance

of student-athlete safety during this time, as well as trying to find ways for fall sports to potentially compete in the spring.

According to Hendricks, the current plan is to work with the NEWMAC conference — Mount Holyoke’s athletic conference — and the NCAA. “We are working with the NEWMAC and the NCAA to prepare a proposed competitive schedule for our fall, winter and spring teams in the spring semester. For squash and equestrian, who have different governing organizations, we are looking to their national leadership to provide guidance on spring schedules.”

According to Associate Director of Athletics Erica Lemm, the Student Athletic Advisory Committee met during the summer to talk about the challenges presented by COVID-19 and other questions raised by the Black Lives Matter movement.

“SAAC just added a Diversity and Inclusion subcommittee as well as [a] Diversity and Inclusion representative to [the] E-Board,” Lemm said. “Most importantly, they’re laying the groundwork for important diversity, equity, and inclusion conversations to continue by creating a book club and discussing how best to have team dialogues,” she added.

Mount Holyoke Athletics has plans to address NCAA legislation, host a virtual version of the annual toy drive and continue to engage with Girl Inc., with whom they formed a partnership last year. The department also plans to recognize “teams of the week,” replacing last year’s regular “game of the week.”

“Soon I’ll be releasing programming for mental wellness, diversity and inclusion and leadership in conjunction with the NEWMAC,” Lemm said. “Additionally, we’re continuing with the Student-Athlete Leadership Team and our newest group, the First-Generation and Ethnic Minority Student-Athlete Group.”

The future continues to remain uncertain for spring sports. Any further updates will be provided by the Mount Holyoke athletics department and the Mount Holyoke News.

COVID-19 changes the game for college sports

BY GIGI PICARD ’22 SPORTS EDITOR

After the onset of COVID-19 last spring, colleges across the U.S. canceled end-of-the-season athletic competitions. The three divisions within the NCAA had to reevaluate plans for future seasons across all sports.

The future of football remained questionable because it is a contact-heavy sport. The Big Ten and PAC-12 NCAA Division I conferences originally canceled their football fall seasons. This sparked controversy and outrage among players and coaches. There has been pressure by the ACC, Big 12 and SEC conferences, all of which have begun their football season, for the Big Ten to play. The Big Ten recently considered revoting and starting a season. The return of other sports, whether they are played on the field, court

or in the water is questionable as well.

Another decision colleges had to make concerned their own athletic departments. Some colleges in all NCAA divisions cut at least three varsity teams due to financial trouble as a result of COVID-19. Schools such as Stanford University, the University of Connecticut and the University of Minnesota were among those who had to cut athletic programs.

Some sports that faced the chopping block included swimming and diving, tennis, golf, lacrosse, soccer, cross country, field hockey, rowing, squash, track and field and equestrian. These changes will take place after their 2020-2021 seasons.

Photo courtesy of Pixy.org

13

Team of the week: Mount Holyoke Basketball

Photo courtesy of Mount Holyoke College Athletics Head Coach Jackie Ward sits in a 2019 basketball team huddle.

BY GIGI PICARD ’22 SPORTS EDITOR

Instead of highlighting a game of the week, this semester Mount Holyoke News is going to highlight a team of the week in the Sports section.

Up first is Mount Holyoke Basketball. Captain Ireland Clare Kennedy ’21 and Head Coach Jackie Ward talked to the Mount Holyoke News about what Basketball has been up to.

According to Kennedy, Mount Holyoke Basketball has recently focused on team bonding.

“We had a few fun ‘get to know you’ sessions, played games online like Pictionary and Taboo and were even introduced to a cool ball-handling app that we encourage one another to get involved in,” Kennedy said.

Other basketball captains include Maria Delgado ’21, Kelly Lynch ’22 and Mikayla McEwen ’22.

“Now that preseason has started, we’ve been focused more on workouts and voluntary team lifts over Zoom,” Kennedy added. “We’ve continued our birthday TikToks and hope to kick team bonding into a higher gear.”

Ward stated that, starting on Oct. 1, coaching staff will be able to work with the players through virtual team practices which will consist of mental training, individual workouts and strength and conditioning, among others.

Moreover, Ward is hopeful for a basketball spring season. “It may not be the most ideal situation, but our coaching staff is determined to give our team (especially the seniors) the best experience we can.”

Stay tuned for the next team of the week: Mount Holyoke Cross Country.

14

COMMUNITY

September 17, 2020

. Mount Holyoke News

Taylor Swift activism, cont’d u

BY ANJALI RAO-HEREL ’22 STAFF CARTOONIST

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5

sexuality before she was ready.

Assuming Swift to be straight pushes a harmful heteronormative agenda, so critiques should not simply be that Swift is a straight woman singing about LGBTQ+ rights. However, regardless of the artist’s identity, it’s important to ensure the art itself is not misrepresenting an issue or perpetuating stereotypes about marginalized groups.

Even in “Folklore,” a relatively apolitical album, Swift tries to critique social issues that don’t affect her. In the song “The Last Great American Dynasty,” Swift compares herself to “middle-class divorcee” Rebekah West Hark-

ness, who was hated by her community for being a less-privileged woman who married rich in the 1950s. Swift likens herself to Harkness despite the fact that she is a wealthy white woman in the 21st century, making her one of today’s most beloved demographics.

Swift has contributed a lot of good to the world, both in terms of her political activism and her philanthropic efforts.

However, in many cases, her privilege means that she is unable to explore the nuances of a social issue. We would like Swift to exclude herself from a narrative that belongs to marginalized people and instead use her platform to boost the voices of those who need to be heard.

MoHome Sickness: A new column away from home

BY TISHYA KHANNA ’23 FEATURES EDITOR

Being away from campus is difficult and isolating. In this column, we’ll talk about everything we miss, big and little, about campus: your weekly hub of togetherness in bittersweet nostalgia. For the first edition, here’s a list of 10 things dearly missed about our campus.

Late Night at Blanch Ah, the pleasure of waiting in a mile-long line just to get the junk food that would lead to our slow decay. Jokes aside, I think it’s fair to admit that Brian at the Late Night pizza station has been the unspoken hero of our community, making delicious pizzas that fill our hearts and bellies with much-needed hope and cheese. But Late Night is even more than that. “I miss going to Late Night with my friends, eating an absurd amount of junk food and laughing at everything,” Ria Revani ’23 said.

The Lunch Rush and Other Annoyances Yes, really. I don’t know about you, but, in a bittersweet way, I miss sprinting across campus after class to get a table in Blanch during the lunch rush. Being away from campus has made some of us start to miss even the inconvenient things. On the edges of campus, Isabel Kadel-Garcia ’23 is lamenting about other things. “I also miss being able to complain about the little things that we experience mutually, like the sign that

says, ‘The yellow flashing lights have been activated. Cars may not stop.’ at 3 a.m.,” Kadel-Garcia said.

Chilling on Skinner Green Whether it’s a sunny fall day or a snowy winter day, Skinner Green always has its bounty to offer. Lie down on the grass and soak in the sun on the weekend, build a snowman and have a snowball fight with friends or accidentally pass out when you have class in 30 minutes — the Green is always there to serve you and make your day brighter.

The Library Spending hours studying, napping and procrastinating in the beautiful Williston Library with other students was so much better than sitting in front of the same laptop screen now used for everything. Getting lost in endless rooms full of books, discovering new corners out of boredom and getting a fresh cup of coffee from the Frances Perk cafe were some of my favorite things to do on campus.

Study Groups Even if you weren’t much of a study group enthusiast, the ability to just hang out with friends and get things done seems like a great asset now.

Studying and working alone tends to be isolating and discouraging. Having other people to work on difficult problems with is relieving and reassuring. Being engrossed in or frustrated with work is so much better when hanging out with friends in common rooms, academic

buildings, Blanch or the library.

Bumping Into Friends This one probably hurts the most.

Quarantine has meant the loss of the easygoing interaction with friends at random times of the day, whether it’s a short 10-minute chat or an hour-long extended lunch with a friend you haven’t talked to in a while. “I think the thing I miss most is the sense of community in our small campus,” Saachi Khandpur ’22 said. “I miss smiling at familiar faces and talking to people while walking from Blanch to our dorms or classes.”

PVTA Yes, you read it right — it’s the “pivta” and not “pee-vee-tee-ay.” From allowing us to hop on the late night bus to Amherst for some Insomnia Cookies or the morning buses to beautiful hiking sites, the PVTA has been our steady connection to the outside world.

As much as this is about the PVTA, in the COVID-19-ridden world, all comfortable, inexpensive and safe travel in public transportation is dearly missed.

The Gorgeous Campus and Western Massachusetts Rural Massachusetts has its own homey charm. For those of us stuck in cities (or not), the abundance of trees, hills and lakes is a long-forgotten dream. Whether it’s the night sky full of stars or crossing the little bridges on campus, beauty is everywhere. But the most beautiful of all are the Gothic-style buildings that never fail to stun you.

Well, the Classes Themselves Although online classes remind us of our resilience through these tough times, they can never replace the full experience of in-person classes. Discussions meant speaking to the person sitting next to you, the professors used actual whiteboards instead of Miro to explain concepts and some classes just meant spending time together with a group of people you will learn a lot from.

Jorge Unlike most people, it took me a while to understand the legendary Jorge’s charm. But seeing him glide gracefully on the lake’s water as the ducks worship him like he is their prophet was reassuring in its own way on tough days. These days, while struggling with online classes, a little bit of goose in our lives could really help us get through these tough times.

Photo by Ali Meizels ’23