Recruited actors not quite enough

Colin Farrell plays James Clayton, an M.I.T. graduate with a penchant for drinking and not waking up on time. After nearly sleeping through a meeting with a Dell recruiter, Clayton is tending bar when Walter Burke (Pacino) approaches him. Burke is a gruff, aging CIA recruiter keen on bringing Clayton to “the Farm,” a double-secret CIA training facility. At the Farm, Clayton learns to be a young American James Bond. He even falls in love with the requisite female agent, Layla Moore, played maste

This Week in Amherst History: Nov. 11, 1991

The Council announced that the arts theme house would move from Marsh to Milliken and that the Asian Culture House (ACH) would claim Marsh for the next academic year. The fourth floor of Moore, usually reserved for the ACH, would be opened up for room draw, The Student reported. “The lack of space was the reason why the theme houses were up for re-evaluation,” said College Council member Megan Carr ’93 to The Student. “Both the theme houses have merit,” said Dean of Students Ben Lieber. “[But]

Cleaning up: We take a quick spin through the four best laundry rooms on campus

Moore Dormitory Moore Dormitory Moore, a monster of a dorm, quite fittingly features a rather spacious laundry room with four washers and four dryers. The laundry room is on the building’s first floor, downstairs from the Valentine-side entrance and right near the building’s elevator. The room also has vending machines, which like the washers and dryers, are tied into the AC Dollar$ swipe-card system. Nearby, there are more machines, featuring both juice and snacks to go entertain you while yo

Club Focus: Amherst TEACH

Enter Amherst TEACH, a student group dedicated to helping interested students find opportunities in teaching both at Amherst and beyond. “TEACH is an organization that is meant to serve as an aid in organizing resources and helping to unify the people at Amherst who are interested in tutoring and teaching while at Amherst, who are considering entering the teaching profession, or who are involved in the teaching certification program,” said Kathy M. Xiong ’04E, who, along with Deborah Hoshiko ’0

This Week in Amherst History: Nov. 19, 1947

Following an extensive survey of schools nationwide, Amherst and Smith were chosen to receive filmmaking and projecting equipment by the Motion Picture Foundation for Colleges and Universities. The Foundation was formed by actor Burgess Meredith ’30 and his wife, actress Pauline Goddard, to further the study of film in colleges and universities. Meredith, later known for his roles as The Penguin in the “Batman” TV series and movie and as Mickey Goldmill in the “Rocky” series, visited the campus

This week in Amherst history: Nov. 11, 1971

“While maintaining its historic tradition, the College will nevertheless continue to welcome qualified men as exchange students or visitors in residence,” said Chairman of the Board John L. Cooper in making the announcement. “This can give us the best of both worlds: an institution where the education of women can continue to be our major commitment, yet one in which we can explore numerous options and opportunities for exchange and cooperation.” Mount Holyoke President David Truman stressed th

Website of the week

Remember the first episode of “Seinfeld” that didn’t begin with Jerry doing his stand-up routine? Don’t you think that the show just went downhill from there? That, my friends, is an example of “jumping the shark,” the moment when something reaches its peak, and from then on, it’s better off left alone. This site catalogs when over 1,800 popular (or not) television shows reached their climax and jumped the shark, according to user votes. While you can browse the site’s listings alphabetically,

A picture and a thousand words

Newly-renovated Eli Marsh Gallery shows off art by 10 Five College faculty members On display in the newly renovated Eli Marsh gallery in Fayerweather Hall, “Five by Ten” features the work of 10 five-college studio art professors. Included in the display are works by Amherst’s own Professor of Fine Arts Robert Sweeney and Assistant Professor of Fine Arts DeWitt Godfrey, as well as Professors Thom Haxo and Mariangeles Soto-Diaz from Hampshire College, Marion Miller and Joe Smith from Mount Holy

This Week in Amherst History: Oct. 31, 1981

Though the fraternity blamed the rowdiness on townies and UMass students who crashed the hunt, four fraternity members were arrested by town police officers on charges of disorderly conduct and malicious destruction of property. “Amherst College security also confiscated a wide array of ‘contraband’ gathered over the course of the night,” The Student reported. The list of objects to be collected included Valentine silverware, flags from the choir room in Arms Music Building, a dog belonging to

Website of the Week

The global population has been estimated at over six billion. But how can any one of those six billion people have any conception of how immense that number is? This website, home of the Kill Everyone Project, attempts to put that number into some context by relating it to something familiar: mouse clicks. The site consists of a simple Flash application: a target marked “Click here” moves slowly back and forth across the screen. Each time any user worldwide clicks on the target, a “kill” is reg

Milliken, we hardly knew ye

Milliken, then called simply the College Infirmary, was built in 1937 and 1938, replacing the aging Pratt Health Cottage. At the time, the campus was rapidly expanding, with the construction of the Campus Police building in 1932, the new Alumni Gym in 1936 and the Little Red Schoolhouse in 1937. According to The Student, the infirmary was equipped with then-state of the art equipment and, in addition to the requisite examination rooms and posh waiting rooms (pictured above), the infirmary had a

Campus Conversations

Bill Cosby not included Jell-O is far from the favorite dessert at the College. Crowds of people never clamor around the trays of Jell-O in Valentine the way they devour ice cream sundaes or Rice Krispie treats. But last night, the servery entrance was clogged with people looking down from the mezzanine, no less, to Amherst’s finest square off in a Jell-O eating contest of epic proportions. To the winner went a $50 gift certificate to Judie’s. Second and third place got smaller prizes, but many

Website of the Week

“We watch the bad TV so you don’t have to,” claims this website, which tracks all aspects of the idiot box. The site features a calendar of season and series premieres, overnight ratings for all major network broadcasts, countless news tidbits, show-by-show information sheets for programs on broadcast and cable networks and “the Weekly Rant,” an editorial soapbox for the site’s editors. While the site holds archives dating back to the 1999-2000 season, daily updates keep the content fresh and a

This Week in Amherst History: Oct. 2, 1969

“The program … consists of two courses specifically designated as black studies courses,” The Student reported. “The rest of the courses may be chosen from a great conglomeration of previously existing courses.” The program immediately came under fire from students and faculty alike as unnecessary and self-contradictory. “Ideally, a black studies program would not be necessary,” said Wilburn Williams ’71, a member of Afro-Am, a predecessor to the current Black Student Union. “If all subjects wh

Website of the Week

www.aaroads.com How did you get to Amherst at the beginning of the semester? Did you fly here or drive? If you drove, chances are you took an interstate highway, if not just the Pike or I-91. This site, prepared by two self-proclaimed “roadfans,” details the history, present state and possible future development of the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. The nearly 45,000 miles of the interstate highway system traverse 49 states. “A road is not just a route to work or the groce

When a door is not a door

But so many of us are wholly unwilling to let the door remain as a six-foot by three-foot piece of varnished or painted wood (or green or blue metal, for those of us in the Waldorf or the Plaza). We love to decorate our doors, with photos, news clippings and the occasional crime log entry. But some of us aren’t content with the requisite nametag and whiteboard and some obligatory photos. There are those doors that make you stop and look twice, to laugh at a bumper sticker stuck over the peephole

Campus Conversation

Spring break brought a number of changes to our favorite on-campus non-Valentine eatery. Among the new additions to Schwemm’s “Gourmet” Coffee House are new coffee brewers to replace the ugly urns from the days of yore, or winter, at least. But the most visible change is a new, menacing, black box of a computer. The computer replaces the yellowed-with-age telnet terminals on which years, or it sometimes seemed generations, of students checked their emails. With the changeover last year to the e

Casino!

A night in Vegas? A scene from “Ocean’s Eleven”? No, it’s the Hunger Action Committee’s annual Casino! night. Instead of coffee and assorted colors of Powerade, plastic cups were brimming with yellow, green and lavender chips representing each player’s winnings. While the mezannine was a veritable hotbed of triumph and heartbreak, the rest of Valentine was anything but that. The annex was a dance floor featuring sophomore Casino! performers Doc Scanlon’s Rhythm Boys, who ran the gamut of crowd

Campus Conversation

While Friday night’s best advertised and most talked about event was The Vagina Monologues, the arts and crafts night cosponsored by the Asian Culture House and the Asian Students Association drew a larger-than-expected crowd. The night featured activities ranging from origami and lantern-making to calligraphy and sushi-making. “Our goal was to create a fun arts and crafts night, which involved a lot of hands-on activity,” said Eunice Koo ’04, who helped organize the event. “For example, instea

This Week in Amherst History- February 6, 1975

According to The Student, Dr. Melvin Crain, former CIA deputy director of operational research, admitted that government officials had opened and examined mail sent by The Student to the Soviet Union. A letter arranging a shipment of 1,000 copies of a January 1959 special issue to Moscow University was one of thousands of letters sent to communist nations that were opened by the U.S. Post Office. Paul M. Dodyk ’59, chairman of The Student, had written the letter in hopes of creating dialogue be

This Week in Amherst History- January 30, 1967

“This new machine, smaller and simpler than the 1130 … will be used almost exclusively for administrative work, leaving the 1130 for the more complicated problems of students and faculty,” reported The Student. Dunnington was quick to point out that the computer could be used for students and professors outside of mathematical disciplines. He explained that the computers could analyze literary style and write music, The Student reported. The computer was available for student use 56 hours per

This Week in Amherst History- November 15, 1884

The historic rivalry’s first contest, held at Williams, was far more one-sided than this year’s meeting. Unfortunately for our beloved Jeffs, the Ephs had the upper hand, and they left the Jeffs with an unpleasant 15-2 loss. The game itself, however, was rather uninteresting. “The most interesting part of the exhibition was the mud,” reported The Student. After an early Williams field goal, “the remainder of the inning was spent pleasantly, neither side seeming to have any affection for the oth

This Week in Amherst History

Twelve years ago, The Student reported that the College was prepared to break its silence and dedicate what would come to be one of the most coveted senior dorms in honor of capital campaign donor Donald Smith Cohan ’51. The College chose to delay the naming ceremonies until after Cohan’s daughter, Susannah Cohan ’89, graduated from Amherst. While many students find navigating Cohan more confusing than getting around Merrill, the dorm’s design won an award from the Boston Society of Architectur

Webstie of the Week

This week in Amherst history: April 30, 1952

As reported in an extra edition of The Student, the last two freshmen pledged in the wee hours of the morning on the day of the rushing deadline, under the College’s new “over-quota” rushing system, designed to allow more freshmen to live with brothers of their choice. House Management Committee chairman Lowell Shuman said that the new policy was “not expected to effect total rushing, but [was] a distinct step toward the ideal of getting every man where he wants to go.” The Student also tried

Senate Discusses Online Voting, Van Purchases

The Senate opened its session with a follow-up presentation by Ned B. Friend ’01 on this fall’s online elections. On the whole, Friend said that the elections were a success. According to Friend, the largest complaint was that the password-retrieval process was cumbersome. For this spring’s campus-wide election, Friend said that he hopes to implement a login system “just like the online facebook, where you enter your username and VAX password.” Friend indicated that the previous process of vot

CineMark Will Finally Open 12-Theater Cinema Complex

The CineMark 12 Theatres replaces the aging Hampshire 6 Theaters, first closed nearly two years ago for renovations, then later demolished. Constantly changing plans and broken agreements litter the theater’s history. Kansas City, Missouri-based AMC Theatres initially planned a two-story theater complex, to be built with the financial backing of Sears. Because the design would add a story to the mall, the Pyramid Company, which owns the Hampshire Mall, had indicated that it would pay for a new