The College faced the pressures of over-enrollment by the class of 2011, as 474 high school seniors accepted the College’s offer of admission for the fall as opposed to the 440 students the Admission Committee had targeted. According to Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Tom Parker, the Office of Admission was unable to accept the 20 students it had hoped to enroll from the wait list. The College has not gone to its wait list in three years.
Charles Pratt Dorm, formerly Pratt Museum, opened to rave reviews and can now house 117 students as well as one area coordinator. “The space is like some amazing kind of castle,” said Josh Nathan ’10, an RC there. “The common space and hallways are all very spacious, and the atrium setup of the dorm makes it feel very community-oriented. Views out the Memorial Hill side of the dorm are spectacular, and rooms are huge.” Newly renovated Porter and Hamilton Houses reopened. All three building projects finished on time and under budget.
Beginning next year, the College will eliminate loans in all financial aid packages in favor of grants. The College’s Board of Trustees approved the decision this summer. Students apply for federal loans such as Stafford and Perkins loans as well as Amherst College Student Loans as part of customized financial aid packages that also include scholarships, grants and job opportunities. Starting in the 2008-09 academic year, the loan component of the package will be replaced with scholarships and grants.
With the help of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, the College celebrated the official opening of the Center for Community Engagement. “We see this Center as an important new addition to a tradition of Amherst that goes back to our beginnings there on the quad,” said President Anthony Marx, speaking at the ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday evening in front of Keefe Campus Center. “It is a day, therefore, that we think will prove to be historic for Amherst and, we hope, beyond Amherst.” The CCE is located within the Campus Center, and comes as the result of a $13-million philanthropic investment from the Argosy Foundation, founded by John Abele ’59.
October
A number of RCs as well as other students employed by the College were called into the Dean of Students Office to determine whether or not they had breached the terms of their RC contract. The issue at hand was not their conduct or performance as counselors, as students or even as individuals, but rather the organization to which they belonged. Each student brought in was a member of Chi Psi, one of four underground fraternities at the College.
After being removed from display in front of Merrill Science Center in the spring, “Variations on a Theme, II,” a sculpture by local artist Russell Jacques, remained in storage behind the Physical Plant warehouse by the Hills Lot. Director and Chief Curator of the Mead Art Museum Elizabeth Barker explained that the metal at the sculpture’s base had rusted so thoroughly that it would be dangerous to the piece to return it to its original place in its current condition. The pedestal on which the sculpture was displayed has since been removed.
A delegation from the Ministry of Education of Singapore visited the College as part of a tour of institutions of higher education in the United States. Minister for Education Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Minister of State for Education Lui Tuck Yew and Permanent Secretary for Manpower Leo Yip, were among the 15-member delegation. “Amherst was meant to represent liberal arts colleges in the United States,” said Associate Dean of Faculty Frederick Griffiths.
In a story that garnered national media attention, it was revealed that Williams College has a poop problem. As first reported in The Williams Record, the Williams custodial staff had to conduct an alarming 24 “bio-cleanups” since the start of the academic year. There were six excrement-related cleanups at Williams within the first two months of the semester, several involving the smearing of feces. The article also describes a four-day span during which the Paresky Center, Williams’s new student center, required five vomit cleanups and repair of a broken urinal and a damaged bathroom mirror.
November
The College faculty endorsed the creation of an environmental studies major. Their proposal posited that the increasingly desperate state of the environment has made its study relevant and even vital to understanding today’s world. As proposed, the major consists of six core courses, with four additional electives offered in departments reaching from the sciences to philosophy, psychology and sociology.
ESPN College GameDay broadcasted its pregame show live from Williamstown, Mass. before the kickoff of the 122nd playing of The Biggest Little Game in America. The national spotlight wasn’t enough to encourage the Lord Jeffs to victory, as their record fell to 4-4 following a 20-0 loss in their final game of the season.
In light of the Supreme Court decision to uphold the Solomon Amendment, the College announced that it would no longer hold military recruiters to its policy requiring compliance with the College’s nondiscrimination policy. The prior policy, introduced in 1987, required any organization to sign the official non-discrimination statement of the College. If the organization refused to sign the statement, the College would oblige the organization to hold an open forum at which it would explain its policy and members of the College community could challenge such a policy.
Five Hampshire College students were physically and verbally harassed by a group of Amherst students while leaving the Gay Amherst Party in Crossett Dormitory. “Their way was blocked, they were shoved and there were some homophobic slurs,” said Dean of Students Ben Lieber at a Monday meeting with the College’s Pride Alliance to discuss the incident and its repercussions. “There were also some water balloons thrown from somewhere in Crossett.” The Amherst College Police Department investigated the incident. Pride Alliance responded by organizing a rally outside Valentine Dining Hall.
Seven Amherst runners earned the College its first Div. III national title in women’s cross country at the championship in Northfield, Minn., beating next-best Plattsburgh State by 39 points. Coach Erik Nedeau was named national coach of the year following the win.
December
Amid protests by Amherst townspeople, unperturbed former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton spoke on “Dealing with Rogue States after Iraq.” Marx stepped in, telling a protestor, “If America stands for anything, it stands for freedom of speech.”
Amherst’s emergency notification system received its first test following a technological makeover. With student landline phones virtually obsolete and e-mail recognized to be an inadequate primary notifier, the College has spent the past several years developing a comprehensive system that integrates multiple modes of communication. Thirteen horns across campus were sounded and a total of 4,300 e-mails, text messages and voicemails were simultaneously sent out in the seminal trial of the new system. “It was a very positive drill. Things worked,” said Amherst College Police Chief John Carter.
Six 12.5 by 30 foot triptychs with both photographs and oil pastel portraits were put up across the campus, as well as in the Mead Art Museum. Each triptych has a portrait or photograph of a student, a professor and an Amherst staff member and includes corresponding quotes. The installation was supervised by Artists-in-Residence Wendy Ewald and Brett Cook, and assembled by the seminar Collaborative Art: Practice and Theory of Working With a Community.
January
Students returning to campus following Interterm were shaken by the death of senior Jenny Kim. The College held a memorial service in Johnson Chapel and College administrators and Counseling Center staff visited with students in dorms.
A new “do-it-yourself” stir-fry station in Valentine drew rave reviews from students. Besides the stir-fry station, a fresh lineup of dining choices includes brand new panini grills and the option to use the waffle makers at all three meals. After listening to student suggestions, Director of Dining Services Charlie Thompson decided to add these selections in his quest to make meals more exciting.
February
Seven of the eight candidates for tenured positions at the College were granted promotion. Assistant Professors Robert Benedetto of Mathematics; Ethan Clotfelter of Biology; Jonathan Friedman of Physics; Maria Heim of Religion; Nassar Hussain of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought; Eric Sawyer of Music and Nishi Shah of Philosophy were all promoted to the position of associate professor. Assistant Professor of Theater and Dance Manuame Mukasa was passed over.
An overflow crowd packed the Cole Assembly Room for “Raising Our Voices: A Community Discussion on Intolerance and Inclusion.” The panel discussion was prompted by the discovery of a noose in Alumni Gymnasium last summer, the harassment of Hampshire College students who attended a Gay Amherst Party last semester and anti-Semitic graffiti in the basement of the Cadigan Center for Religious Life.
Members of the Multicultural Center Committee found the proposed site of the center—a closet of the Octagon offered by the Black Students Union—inadequate. They argued that the space was too small and isolated. Members of the committee were also concerned that the direct affiliation with the BSU might send the wrong message in terms of the overall inclusiveness of the center. The committee met with strong opposition when they proposed taking over the AAS space in the campus center basement.
March
Investor Dwight Goldthorpe ’41 left two-thirds of his fortune to the College, amounting to $23 million, the largest bequest in the school’s history.
As part of the continuing reaccreditation process for Amherst College, a team of evaluators consisting of top administrators from peer schools in the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) visited the College. The peer evaluation team met with administrators, different faculty committees and students, and worked through some 400 documents in order to develop a comprehensive report summarizing the overall strengths of the College and concerns that should be addressed in time for the NEASC’s interim report on the College in 2013.
On March 28, students from Middlebury College arrived on campus to compete with Amherst kids in the first nationally televised intercollegiate Muggle Quidditch match for the CBS Early Show. The soccer-like game from the Harry Potter novels, in which students run around with broomsticks between their legs and capes on their backs, was viewed by over 3.5 million people and was covered by The Boston Globe, NPR and other local news teams.
The College accepted 14.2 percent of all first-year applicants (including early decision), a considerable decrease from last year’s acceptance rate of 18 percent in what many called the most grueling college admissions year to date. The College admitted 85 fewer students than it did last year, out of a record large applicant pool (17 percent bigger than last year) in an effort to offset this past year’s unexpectedly large first-year class.
Acting on a recommendation made by the 2006 Committee on Academic Priorities, the Board of Trustees decided to make international admissions need-blind, making the College the eighth academic institution to have such a policy.
The College moved two historic houses following their sale to Hills House LLC. Potvine Farm House, formerly located at 23 Spring Street, and Tuttle Farm House, formerly located east of the bird sanctuary on South East Street, were moved to a developer’s lot on Gray Street in Amherst. There, they will be restored and renovated for domestic use by Hills House LLC, a local property developer that specializes in buying, renovating and selling historic homes.