Fast forward to the email each opt-out candidate of 2009 received from the Housing Coordinator & Assistant to Dean of Residential Life Luciana Fernandes stating: “I would like to preface this by saying that in light of recent budget cuts, the college has decided to close 5 dormitories. As such, housing is extremely tight this year. Although I was not able to fulfill everyone’s housing preferences, please know that the housing process was executed in the most thoughtful way in the time frame with which I had ... As it stands, there are not enough rooms to move anyone, and I do not believe I will be able to even have a room change process in the fall semester.”
You thought that we had it bad, until Gerchick’s article put things into perspective. We as students are actually lucky with our housing compared to how bad it was back then.
Unfortunately, most students at Amherst College are probably unaware of, or even totally oblivious to, the roots of our fine liberal arts college, making connections between past and present difficult. No need to worry. The purpose of this column is to enlighten and entertain us all. This week is just an introduction, as I hope not to scare the administration this early in the year.
Coming up with the idea to write a column about the history of the College was clear to me, but by no means am I a history major. I mean, who would have thought that when I opened up my father’s personal 1971 edition of The Student that I would be reading about a visiting Harvard student jumping out of Pratt Dormitory while tripping on LSD? No wonder there’s such a big dorm damage fine for tampering with those damn screens in our dorm windows! That must be Physical Plant’s way of monitoring the drug related suicides on campus because that’s a fine nobody wants to pay, dead or alive.
It makes me wonder, how would the student body in the 1970’s address this whole budgetary issue? The student body should be the engine on which the school runs. Without an engine obviously nothing can run, thus making the student body the most powerful aspect of the College. Trust me, if you continue to follow my column, you will learn that the students of the past have never been shy about expressing their opinions and making their voice heard, even in some radical ways.
If you were to delve into the dusty stacks of The Student from decades past, you would quickly gain understanding of how traditionally the College embodied the liberal in the term ‘liberal arts education.’ It was not the open curriculum but the students that did so. Okay, the hippie movement has passed and there probably will not be another Woodstock, but being radical as a student body will only keep up tradition that I feel has unnoticeably been slipping away.
There are many issues to be discussed throughout the school year by this newspaper, but the issues brought up in this column will focus on directly relating the present to the past. Most of the student issues that arise today have at least in some form been addressed previously. A better understanding of our roots should help better equip us today. Once we get a grasp on how the College evolved, it should make it easier to deal with our troubling student issues, such as dorm damage and other matters that require administrative attention.
I will not hesitate to highlight both the good and the bad of our great College’s history. As I bring up some articles in the past, I feel that I should apologize in advance if I offend any specific gender, race, ethnicity or sexual preference in writing this column, although I hope not to. Furthermore, we should remember that, at Amherst, women were not always accepted as students. Gays were also not necessarily accepted in the community. Hopefully, a quick reflection on some of the articles in past Student issues will help mediate any sensitivity by illustrating how such issues were or were not taken care of by our predecessors.