Sign in Subscribe

Shruthi Badri ’16

Contributing Writer

Reimagining Physical Education

To the Curriculum Committee, and (again) in particular, The Fundamental Skills sub-committee, The phrase “P.E.” evokes memories that vary wildly depending on whom you ask. Responses range from reminiscences of time spent playing with friends, away from the doldrums of the classroom, to shudders at the recollection of the

On Mathematical Intuition

To the Curriculum Committee, and in particular, the Fundamental Skills sub-committee, I am writing this letter, the first in a series, in response to the solicitation of feedback by the committee. Mathematics has had an unfortunate history, particularly in the United States, of being literature’s unloved sibling, not just

On Suffering Silently

Inspired by Nora Gayer’s excellent piece. We are all daily liars. Well, most of us are anyway, and some rather worse than others. It’s not quite our fault. At some point, we agreed (in that pesky social contract no one really remembers signing) that pain is personal. It’

Weary, Not Afraid: A Response to Judith Shulevitz

In her latest op-ed in the New York Times, [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/judith-shulevitz-hiding-from-scary-ideas.html] Judith Shulevitz identifies a recent trend in colleges towards sanitizing intellectual spaces (or as she more bluntly puts it, “hiding from scary ideas”). Shulevitz is one in a rising number

The Mystery of Missing Dreams

Amherst College is a place of abundance. We have a plethora of intellectual thought, an admirably high degree of social and economic diversity, a formidable endowment and a surprising number of vegan dessert options. The contrarian in me was thus tempted to look for that which we are missing. The

Peter Crane, an Endorsement

Elections are one of my least favorite times of the year. They are a time when beliefs are asserted with nonchalant indifference to present and past behavior, people are uncomfortably lumped into “voting blocks” and everyone involved leaves feeling vaguely defiled. As a senator, I’ve definitely had to cope

On Speaking English

One of the most difficult questions I’ve been asked during my time at the College is how I learned English and why I speak it “so well.” My instinct is to feel exasperation and indignation, which are immediately followed by guilt at my lack of generosity towards the well-intentioned