ARTS P. 9 'Support the Girls' inspires with feminist message
SPORTS P. 12 The Independent Student Newspaper at Williams College Since 1887 VOL. CXXXIII, NO. 3
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2018
Cross country gets second at Purple Valley Classic
Haystack monument defaced, perpetrators unknown By NICHOLAS GOLDROSEN EXECUTIVE EDITOR On or prior to Sunday afternoon, some unknown person or persons defaced the Haystack Monument and the surrounding grass area outside Mission Park. At 12:36 p.m. on Sunday, three Campus Safety and Security (CSS) officers responded to a report of the defacement from four visitors to campus, who stated that they were members of the clergy. Three concentric, semicircular trenches were carved into the ground between the Haystack Monument itself and the benches which face it. Additionally, dirt was smeared on the sides of the monument. On one side, a handprint of dirt was enclosed by streaks around it forming an oval shape. Besides the dirt, there did not appear to be any physical damage to the monument itself. CSS has not yet been able to determine who defaced the monument, when it occurred or the potential motive behind it. “We are unsure if this is a prank or an act of vandalism and have no further information to share,” Director of CSS David Boyer said. The Haystack Monument commemorates the 1806 meeting of a group of Williams students who would go on to later found the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). ABCFM was a major Christian missionary organization throughout the 19th century, sending missionaries to China, India, South Africa, Hawai‘i and various North American indigenous nations. The name of the monument comes from a story of the students taking refuge from a sudden thunderstorm underneath a haystack. The name of Mission Park also comes from their meeting.
NICHOLAS GOLDROSEN/NEWS EDITOR Last Sunday, Campus Safety and Security responded to a report of vandalism of the Haystack monument outside Mission Park. Officers have yet to determine the perpetrator(s).
“Unofficial guide” to navigating College life released in email Have you registered for the Congressional Midterm Elections!?
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By REBECCA TAUBER and SAMEUL WOLF NEWS EDITORS
On Sept. 7, the student body was sent an email containing an “unofficial resource guide” to life on campus. This guide, which was spearheaded by Eli Cytrynbaum ’20 and Katie Manning ’20 and included contributions from a wide range of past and present students, was designed to help others, especially marginalized and first-year students, navigate life on campus. “[T]he guide was created with the intention of supporting struggling students, especially first-gen [first-generation], PoC [People of Color], low-income, disabled, mentally ill, and/or first-year folks,” the email, sent by Cytrynbaum, said. “[H]owever, the guide is available for everyone and can be helpful for folks of all sorts of identities and backgrounds.” The guide itself, which noted that it was “imperfect and incomplete,” provided information on campus resources, gave suggestions on how to combat common student difficulties and supplied names of students who were willing to provide assistance in specific areas. For students who chose to provide their names, the guide included a disclaimer at the bottom of each page to “[please] not use [these names] as a substitute for professional support; we can’t enable williams to rely on student labor.” Topics discussed in the guide included anxiety and depression, sexual assault, financial aid and resources for marginalized groups. One section, entitled “who are these people you’re telling me to talk with???” contained assessments of a number of administrators that ranged from complimentary to quite critical. In addition, the guide contained links to additional resources, both internal and external to the College. The version that was sent on Sept. 7 was the second iteration
of the guide. The first version was sent in September 2017. The initial guide’s creation was led by Megumi Asada ’17 and Sarah Fleming ’17.5 and included input from a variety of students. In their email, the creators wrote, “This is the first guide in what we hope will be a series, each volume tackling a different set of common issues students might face at Williams.” Fleming’s own first year experience was key in her decision to spearhead the guide’s initial creation. “Williams has a lot of resources available to its students, but some of them can be really hard to find out about or navigate, especially as a first-year student,” she said. “I wanted to try to create a map of some of these resources, especially relating to mental health, chronic illness and taking time off. Basically, the goal was to produce a document that could point people to resources, provide some advice on how to use them and connect them to other students dealing with similar issues.” Fleming characterized the response to the initial guide as positive. “I sent the first one out as an all-campus email (after getting approval from the [College Council] presidents), and a number of people responded saying they really appreciated it,” she said. “Some also wrote back saying they would be interested in getting involved in expanding it.” Though the updated version bears many similarities to the initial one, it is more ambitious and far-reaching in its topics. “This summer, Katie Manning decided to update and expand the guide to include resources for first-gen students, students of color, low-income students and more,” Fleming said. The updated guide was met with controversy after claiming to have been endorsed by the 2020 Junior Advisor (JA) Class and the Minority Coalition (MinCo) steering committee. In a followup email on Sept. 9, the guide’s creators retracted the claim.
“The JAs were not consulted in advance, and many JAs do not endorse all statements made in the guide,” Cytrynbaum and Manning wrote. “Neither MinCo nor the JAs were involved in the making of the guide. MinCo shares the aims of the resource guide in its support of marginalized students on campus.” In the same email, Cytrynbaum and Manning also apologized for using language in the guide such as “mentally ill folk” rather than “people who struggle with SEE UNOFFICIAL GUIDE, PAGE 5
WHAT’S INSIDE 3
OPINIONS A response to the exhibit on colonization of Hawaii
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NEWS College remembers World War I
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FEATURES A behind-thescenes look at new Skyr flavors
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ARTS Noname releases evocative album
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SPORTS Men's golf hosts and wins Williams Fall Invitational
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