Graduation: A Time of Silence

This is a slightly modified version of a speech given at the senior-speak off and intended to be a shortened version of a graduation speech. A character in some obscure British film I watched once said something that really stuck with me: the best way to forget something, he said, is to commemorate it. What does it mean to go out into the world with the experiences of four years at Amherst — and what does it mean to hold an Amherst degree? Graduation should be a time where that question presse

It's Time to Let Go of Val

This is a hard topic for me to write about, simply because too much ink has been spilled over it: it’s hackneyed, it’s cliched, it’s what we all say to make conversation with each other when there’s nothing to talk about. “So, how about that Val food, eh?” After four years here, we get it. Val’s food has a stereotype of not being particularly gourmet. Val’s been slowly and steadily improving. Val needs more vegetarian food. Val’s trying. Give Val a break. Why I want to bring up and discuss Val

A Love Letter to Anxious Ladies

I’m an extremely anxious lady. I get anxious about going to Val for lunch; I get anxious about giving myself five versus seven minutes to get to the bus stop every morning; I get too anxious to move from my bed to my backpack across the room to get a simple draft I could revise and send in five minutes out to work on. I get anxious about big things, like the future and my place in changing or being complicit in the evil capitalist order, and earning enough money for health insurance next year, a

Elitism, Academia and Journalism

When I read through my first draft of this article, incomplete, written over a month ago and forgotten in the crevices of one of my many draft article ideas folders, I nearly threw up my tea in my mouth. “On the dialectic of intellectual elitism and egalitarian accessibility” was my working title, and it just got worse from there on in. It was written in vague, hazy academese, with liberal arts college major words like “paradigmatic,” “praxis” and everyone’s favorite, “problematic”, cushioned in

Do You Take Up Space in the Classroom?

What is your favorite sitting position in the classroom? A. Legs spread, hand slung over the chair next to you, lazily twisting up your wrist instead of raising your hand to respond to a question. B. Slightly in front of everyone else, even when the class is arranged in a semicircle/round table/other ostensibly egalitarian form. C. Just sit somewhere, I guess. When a professor asks a question posed to the class in general, do you: A. Rack your mind frantically for something to say so that you c

What Does it Mean to Have a Radical Education?

Over the past few weeks, and over many conversations with professors I admire and whose politics have deeply influenced my own, as well as over conversations with close friends, I’ve tried to work through a very important question: what does it mean to have a radical education? And what does this imply for how we live and what we live for? Humanities students, and especially radical, leftist humanities students, are put in the hardest position in terms of fidelity to their own education. Econom

What Does it Take to Engage?

As you can probably tell from my articles, I believe in a pretty radical, leftist politics — not just on a theoretical level, but on the level of actual, practical activism and engagement. That is to say, I believe that studying and agreeing with leftist theory — whether it’s critical race theory, feminist theory, Marxism, etc., etc. — is hypocritical and incomplete without trying to synchronize what you study with how you live. Theory and praxis, academia and activism, must go hand in hand — an

The Lack of Leftist Discourse

There is a crucial, worrying and endemic lack of leftist discourse at Amherst College. I’m assuming — and I beg your pardon if I am wrong — that if you’re the typical Amherst student (and I beg your pardon again for generalizing), this statement has thrown you into dizzy confusion, if not outright outrage — Amherst College? Not leftist enough?! We’re a bunch of self-righteous liberals that shun any conservative voices that dare use racial slurs or tell us we can’t abort what we like! If anythin

Educational Responsibility and Intellectual Honesty

Hey, first years. Here’s a welcome: a belated welcome, nonetheless, but a welcome, from a jaded, opinionated senior who’s entering her final year with a strange combination of disillusionment and yet a stronger belief than ever in the power of the sort of education you can get, should you make the right choices, from your four years at this College. Although I plan to use this column, over the span of the next year, to talk politics, academics and social justice, I thought it’d be fitting to ina