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Opinion

Amherst College's Culture of Busyness

The recently published draft of the college’s strategic plan addresses, among many other issues, the culture of busyness and high achievement that leaves students, staff and faculty short of the time and energy necessary to build the strong community Amherst could and should foster. Yet despite taking perfect aim

Understand the Past, Empower the Future

Ashley McCall ’12 teaches third grade at LEARN South Chicago. This past February, my scholars joined their peers across the country to celebrate Black History Month. Some content was new, some was review, but all of it was acknowledged as a representation of American history as whole. Black history is,

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’

We Can End the Banandonment: Why Reducing Food Waste Matters

In Valentine, I often see plates piled full of lasagna, General Tso’s chicken, macaroni and cheese or salad cycle through the dishwashing conveyor belt. Throughout campus, sandwiches perch helplessly on top of traffic posts. Defeated black bananas litter the snow, abandoned by students as if they are a joke.

Room Draw Sucks and There's Nothing You Can Do About It

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: You and your four friends are trying to get a suite in Taplin, but it only has four rooms. Perhaps your group will have to draw straws. Maybe you’ll all just decide whom to kick out based on messiness, sleep

Queeriosity: The Importance of Being Exceptional

Queeriosity is a biweekly column dedicated to discussing LGBTQ student life at Amherst College. If you are interested in contributing to the Queeriosity column, contact the Amherst College Queer Resource Center at qrc@amherst.edu. This is my first contribution to The Amherst Student and to Queeriosity, so I’ll

On (In)Accessibility at Amherst

Amherst makes a promise to its students: that it is small enough to treat us as humans rather than statistics or human capital. Like many students, my time at Amherst has been colored in shades of pain. In my most vulnerable moments, the school did not provide adequate support. Today,