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Opinion

On Getting Away

Over the weekend, a swarm of prospective students surrounded our campus, full of questions and expectations. They struggled to differentiate the yellow Keefe Campus Center from the yellow Loeb Center. They paused by the dozens of identical brick buildings, trying to assess the merits and disadvantages of this school while

Residential Life Doesn't Care About You

If you are a student, you probably read the title and thought, “Obviously — what else is new?” This might stem from month-long unanswered emails from staff (my personal streak is 7 months), lack of housing accommodations for students, or recent controversies. What’s new is an opportunity to change Residential

If I May: The Complexity of Mascots

On Monday, Amherst College officially (and finally) announced its first-ever official mascot: the Mammoths. This change comes on the heels of the student body’s majority decision to reject the college’s long-time unofficial mascot, the Lord Jeff, because of Lord Jeffrey Amherst’s terrible and inhumane treatment of Native

"Thinking Revolution”: Muslim Immigration and Poetic Politics

My parents emigrated from Lahore to Brooklyn, NY in the early 1990s. I’ve often imagined their arrival in the U.S.: they settled in a country far from home, where people who looked nothing like them spoke an unfamiliar language, with little in the way of a support system.

The Measures of Success

American culture demands that college students experience immense personal growth during their education. Under such external pressure, how can we make our time and growth at Amherst meaningful? It can feel as if the worth of our education is often framed as dependent on how much we change or how

Why We Don’t Talk about Porn (But Really Should)

Watching porn at college always reminded me a little bit of Facebook stalking. Lots of people do it, many find it entertaining, and almost everyone would be embarrassed if someone caught them watching it. What’s different about porn is the way we talk about it — or maybe more importantly,

If I May: It’s Okay to Use a Tray

Earlier this year, I wrote an article for The Amherst Student titled “Try Tray-less.” In it, I urged those who were against the tray-less movement to simply give it a try and see if it really affected their dining experience in Valentine. I was driven to write this article because