The Great Goose Chase: Where is our beloved Jorge?

Graphic by Audrey Hanan ’28

By Quill Nishi-Leonard ’27

Editor-in-Chief

For many years, Unofficial LITS Mascot Jorge starred in new students’ introduction to LITS: The Great Goose Chase Scavenger Hunt. During the game — which took place during both fall and spring Orientation — students were encouraged to “solve puzzles and find clues” to locate Jorge “before he gets into TOO much trouble,” according to the event listing on Embark.

Following the real goose’s death in December 2024, Jorge continued to appear in spirit on LITS’ website, Instagram, and the spring 2025 scavenger hunt. However, in the days leading up to this semester’s Orientation, posts featuring squirrels began appearing on LITS’ Instagram. Then, on Aug. 29, LITS hosted the Mean Squirrels Scavenger Hunt. The new game was functionally similar to the Great Goose Chase, but saw Jorge replaced with a squirrel some have dubbed "Regina Forage,” according to LITS.

Mount Holyoke News interviewed some students about their thoughts on Jorge, Regina Forage and the title of LITS’ unofficial mascot.

“Now that Jorge is gone, campus does feel different,” Sophia Virgadamo ’27 said in a text interview with Mount Holyoke News. “A little bit of that mystical whimsy is gone which I will miss but never forget … Jorge was a beautiful icon and should remain the mascot as to honor his memory.”

Saturn Barnes ’27 has also been impacted by Jorge’s death. “[Jorge] was such a core part of my memories on this campus … I still get sad when I see the Canada geese without him,” Barnes said. “I totally get why they had to replace Jorge, and the squirrels are cute, but it doesn’t really feel unique to us.”

In an email to Mount Holyoke News, LITS wrote, “The squirrel … is, for now, only a character in our new student orientation Mean Squirrels scavenger hunt.” While Regina Forage has featured prominently in LITS’ branding this year, Jorge remains LITS’ unofficial mascot. 

“If there was ever to be a new unofficial mascot, we think it should grow organically out of the love of the MHC community like Jorge did,” LITS further clarified.

“I definitely miss his presence,” Barnes spoke about Jorge’s lasting influence on the College. “I feel like he could be a new campus myth or legend.”

For some students, Jorge has already ascended to the status of campus legend. Virgadamo and their friends decided to research Jorge’s history after his death: “After his passing my friends and [I] became even more dedicated to uncovering the truth to Jorge's lore, this culminated in a … visit to the archives where we discovered that according to school records Jorge has been the same goose for the past … 30 years.”

“In his death he may live on, every time we need help with the two factor authentication or some phishing scam gets into our emails,” Virgadamo concluded.

Madeleine Diesl ’28 contributed fact checking. 

MHC Board of Trustees to vote on retirement of PaGE

Graphic by Brianna Stockwell ’28

By Sydney Wiser ʼ27

Features Section Editor

Mount Holyoke’s Professional and Graduate Education — also known as PaGE — program has offered students in the education sector opportunities for higher education for 13 years, graduating 545 masters students as of May 2025 and serving 330 non-degree students in the past 5 years. The Board of Trustees will hold a vote to potentially retire the program in its entirety in October.

On Sept. 3, 2025, in an email from President Danielle Holley, reports from the College’s various 2024-25 working groups were shared with the Mount Holyoke community.

These working groups, composed of Mount Holyoke faculty members, were created as a part of President Holley’s MHC Forward Strategic Plan, and covered a range of topics from Career Readiness and Exploration to Supporting the Trans and Gender Nonconforming Community.

The Graduate and Professional Programs Working Group — abbreviated as GPPWG — began its first phase in between October and December 2024, and was part of the “Resource Stewardship” pillar of the MHC Forward Strategic Plan, according to the College. GPPWG, along with a consulting group, Hanover Research, was tasked with assessing “both current and potential future Mount Holyoke College programs against the dual benchmarks of reputational enhancement and revenue generation.”

In their May 2025 report, GPPWG found that the PaGE programs “represent an annual drain on College resources,” and that there were few reputational benefits to keeping them operating in their current capacity.

When looking at the net income of the PaGE program over the last four years, GPPWG projected a loss of $157,000 for the 2025 fiscal year. GPPWG also projected flat to declining numbers of enrollees for the 2025 fiscal year, following the trend of the last four years.

GPPWG also noted that while PaGE programs have seen a recent uptick of professional development contracts, which is in part how PaGE programs bring in revenue, “the current federal funding and regulation landscape makes the future of such programs (and revenue from them) uncertain at best.”

Based on their findings, GPPWG recommended the retirement of the program, with an emphasis on supporting PaGE staff, and further investigation into whether the College could adopt other academic programs in place of PaGE that would more effectively bolster the reputation and revenue of Mount Holyoke.

“This recommendation would allow the College to further focus on and support our undergraduate program, including our undergraduate teacher licensure program,” the College said in a statement to the Mount Holyoke News.

The College added that in anticipation of the Board’s decision, Mount Holyoke had paused applications for Spring 2026 enrollment and ensured current enrollees in the PaGE program would be able to finish by summer 2027 at the latest.

For current and former PaGE program students, the news came as a shock.

Alison Beattie, a 2017 alum of the graduate program, described the decision to close the program as “gut-wrenching.”

“To cancel a program where you help garner a workforce that is so deeply important I will never understand. It seems that MHC doesn’t care about investing in young learners in MA unless they are prepared to pay undergraduate tuition,” Beattie said.

Beattie also served on the alum panel when the program was set to be reviewed by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and noted that the program had received accolades like the department’s “Approval with Distinction.”

The day before the GPPWG’s report went public, current graduate student Evelyn Bushway ’24 received an email from Provost and Dean of Faculty Lisa Sullivan and Interim Executive Director of Professional and Graduate Education Programs Corinne Miller. “I just remember reading and being super confused and having a hard time understanding it,” Bushway said.

In the email, Bushway was informed of GPPWG’s recommendation to end the PaGE programs. Sullivan and Miller explained that the recommendation was supposed to “allow MHC to focus institutional resources on its mission and strengths as the leading gender-diverse women’s college for undergraduate education.” Sullivan and Miller also stressed that currently enrolled students who did not deviate from their plan of study would be able to complete their degree and encouraged Bushway to fill out a feedback form about the recommendation.

According to Bushway, she has not received any other information from the College’s senior leadership team.

PaGE alum Jazebel Bermudez, who received a master of arts in teaching in English as a Second Language from Mount Holyoke, heard about GPPWG’s report when she was considering returning to the College. Bermudez wants to become the director of a language program and was looking forward to using PaGE’s Teacher Leadership program to help her reach that next step. When she discovered the program might be shut down, Bermudez was shaken.

“My support system that I depended on is gone,” Bermudez said.

Bermudez began studying at Mount Holyoke in 2018 through a program called Urban Teacher Pathways, which helped Holyoke public school educators earn a master of arts in teaching, an initial general education license and at least one other license, including English-language learners.

As a first generation graduate of high school, college and graduate school, Mount Holyoke College gave Bermudez opportunities she did not think were possible. “If it wasn't for Mount Holyoke, I don't think I would be in the position I am today,” Bermudez said.

Bermudez emphasized how the diversity in her classes and her close relationships with professors supported her as she tackled being an educator, new mother and graduate student.

Having studied at the College for her undergraduate degree, Bushway knew the aspects of the College she would appreciate for graduate school. She emphasized the academic rigor she had grown familiar with at the undergraduate level, the support system Mount Holyoke provided through resources like the SAW center, and the opportunity to connect with groups of students with teaching experiences both domestic and international.

The College also had something that few other institutions Bushway knew of, had — a master of arts of teaching in mathematics. This program allows students to concentrate their teaching studies in mathematics while also studying for their masters in education. As someone who had always enjoyed middle school math, Bushway knew that this was the program for her.

“Having a master's that helped me dive deeper into mathematics and [see] how we can facilitate student discussions of math and help [students] have a deeper understanding of math was super important to me,” Bushway explained.

Before graduating from Mount Holyoke in 2024, Bushway already had a teaching job and a commitment to Mount Holyoke’s graduate school lined up.

After the recommendation to terminate the PaGE program was made public, alums and current students rallied together in protest. Across all 11 graduate classes of the master of arts in mathematics program, 46 alums sent a letter attached with written testimonies about the impact of the program to the College’s senior officials.

“Because of the nature of our work as educators, the work of every graduate multiplies exponentially through every student we teach, teacher we develop, and organization we lead. It is not an exaggeration to claim millions of students and educators have been positively impacted by this group of co-signers and the scores of other alumni of the program,” part of the letter reads. 40 alums of the program also replied to the email thread signaling their support.

Bushway put together a similar email for her graduating class cohort.

A decision will be made in October when the Board of Trustees votes on the recommendation from GPPWG. Regardless of the outcome, the College said, “Mount Holyoke emphasizes that PaGE graduates will continue to be a valued part of the MHC alum community. Their contributions to education and public service reflect the College’s enduring mission of lives of purposeful leadership, and the College will always be incredibly proud of their accomplishments and academic journeys.”

Karishma Ramkarran ’27 contributed fact checking.

Answering your questions about the College’s budget: Part one

Graphic by Betty Smart ’26

By Betty Smart ’26

Graphics Editor

The recent strike of Mount Holyoke College’s workers made me very curious about exactly how the College’s budget works. While the College’s annual financial statements are available for public viewing on the MHC website, for most students their only real exposure to the budget comes from experiencing increases in tuition. I sat down with the College’s Vice President for Finance and Administration and Treasurer, Carl Ries, to break down the budget.

Something important to know off the bat is that there are actually two budgets. One is the operating budget that directly deals with the ins and outs of the college, including but not limited to wages, benefits, supplies, and maintenance. The other is the capital budget, which is used for bigger infrastructure projects.

Where does the college get its money?

Ries explained to me that the College’s operating budget encapsulates “everything… from food to utilities to paying our employees … Our annual budget is … somewhere in the $165 to $180 million range, depending on how you interpret it. That is what it takes every year to run the college. We don't borrow money to run the college, we have to balance the budget.”

“Tuition, housing, and food is the majority of our revenue; so, let's just call it $100 million out of $165 or $170 million. The other $65 million, we have to find sources for that every year. The next biggest support is our endowment,” Ries said.

Mount Holyoke College’s endowment is a collection of individual funds that regularly invest in the markets, with each fund having their own restrictions on what they can be spent on.

“The endowment is basically protected forever … we really can’t touch that money because it’s permanently restricted, the majority of it. There’s some unrestricted, but this is how endowments work. The vast majority are protected … in perpetuity. So you can only take the earnings every year,” Ries continued. “Every year, the endowment does well in the markets… They'll spin off a little bit of money every year. And that money… we're allowed to spend. So we call it basically 5%... of the endowment value we can use every year to support the college… it’s about $50 million a year.”

“So you have 100 million in tuition, housing and food. You've got $50 million in endowment support, leaving [you] somewhere between another $15 and $20 million that we've got to find every year. So fundraising is about $10 million for what we call the annual fund. And again, this is money that just gets used to support the operating budget,” he explained.

“So that leaves like another … five to 10 [million] left.” Ries went on to describe other forms of revenue that make up this last amount, which included people paying to eat in the dining commons, the hotel, and summer conferences. All of these are categorized as auxiliary income, Ries finished.

What does the college spend its money on?

According to Ries, “Personnel, staffing, faculty, wages and benefits. So everything for … faculty, student labor, workers in the dining commons, facilities and maintenance.”

“Next… when we think about categories of expenses, you can start to think about things like utilities … gas, electricity, water, those kinds of things tend to be pretty pricey when it comes to the budget,” Ries said. “And then the other big piece is really the cost of all of our systems. So Workday, Colleague, all of the IT support and function services, that's a huge and increasing amount of our budget annually.”

He continued, “There are other things…just to shed light on sort of why we raise tuition. Utilities is part of it, but in the dining hall, those ingredients… are increasing exponentially right now. We saw a 20% increase recently in getting local meat, which [when] you think about like how much meat we actually use, can be significant… If an orange goes up 20%, [it’s] maybe not a big deal. But if all my groceries go up 20%, that makes a big difference. So, we do have to kind of constantly be aware of how that impacts our food and housing costs.”

Another operating expense is depreciation of the various buildings and projects on campus that are paid off a little at a time.

Does the end of the strike mean any big changes are coming?

Ries explained, “We generally expect expenses to go up between, you know, 2% and 4% a year based on inflation and increased wages. That's going to be the case even with the union deal… I think it's a great outcome for our employees. They're seeing significant wage increases in the first year, and then those wage increases slow in the second and third years of the contract. But I'd say that the outcome of the union deal is very much in line with what we expected from a budget impact, so there's not a huge impact.”

How will the college keep giving financial aid if tuition goes up again?

“First of all, Mount Holyoke is committed to making sure that we meet a student's financial need. So Student Financial Services works with every student based on their expected family contribution within the parameters of what they can afford and offers a package … Even when tuition increases happen, the amount that the student pays might increase, but it won't increase 100% of what tuition goes up because some portion of their whole education, if they have financial aid, is being covered by the college,” Ries said.

He gave an example: “Tuition went up 10% three years ago … And students who were basically getting a full ride, they didn't see any change … because they had 100% need. Students who had like a 50% need, they might have seen a small increase because part of their tuition was already being paid for by the College and part was being paid for by the family. So they didn't see an entire increase of 10%. They maybe saw 5% for some of those students. We try not to raise tuition as much as is possible, but we do need to raise for inflation.”

“...Over time, the College has offered significant financial aid to the point where a majority of our students are getting some financial aid… So part of what we have to do is…balance as much as we can trying to get a slightly higher average tuition per student because we have students that have more ability to pay full tuition on average. And so we try to balance the financial aid to provide as much access as possible, but knowing that we still rely on some full and fuller pay students,” he concluded.

Karishma Ramkarran ’27 contributed fact checking.

Mount Holyoke rings in another academic school year

Photo by Elizabeth Murray ’26
Students decked out in their class colors gathered in the Gettell Amphitheater to watch as this year’s Convocation began on a bright Tuesday morning.

Elizabeth Murray ‘26

Features Editor

It was a sunny day, and students enthusiastically filled the Gettell Amphitheater as the Five College West African Music Ensemble played. On Sept. 2, Mount Holyoke College held its annual Convocation to mark the beginning of a new academic year.

Convocation is a time-honored Mount Holyoke tradition, welcoming new and returning students. For first years, it's the wrap-up to orientation and their first campus-wide tradition. For seniors, it’s a great way to start their last year. “Everyone was cheering for all classes and faculty with catchy chants that made it hard not [to] join in! Not to mention some of the insanely creative outfits of some students that were a sight to see! I had such a great time and can’t wait for next year’s convocation!” Adrian Moncrief ’29 said in an email interview with Mount Holyoke News.

Although the Amphitheater’s ramp was blocked by construction, an accessible viewing was organized in the Gamble Auditorium. When asked about experiencing convocation indoors, Mia Gonzales Jackson ’26 said, “Folks in charge made sure we got water and beads, so we were well taken care of; [they] even made sure I made it back outside for the senior photo.”

Yet, despite many positive experiences, this year's Convocation was mired in controversy. Mount Holyoke College facilities workers, dining employees and housekeepers, who are members of the Service Employees International Union and the United Auto Workers Union, had gone six months without coming to an agreement on a contract. On Convocation, the workers protested the lengthy negotiations with a strike, during which the college hired outside staff for the post-Convocation barbecue. This was criticized as strike-breaking and prompted calls for a boycott in the days leading up to the ceremony. Many students chose to wear union pins and hold up signs expressing their support for the strike during the ceremony.

As the senior students and faculty came down the stairs, the usual convocation energy was high, and everyone took their seats. However, when Sally Durdan ’81, chair of the Board of Trustees, began her speech thanking the College’s staff for their hard work, the crowd immediately broke out into chants of “pay your workers” and “no Convocation,” interrupting the ceremony for several minutes.

Vic Klapa ’26, who had brought their own megaphone, led the chant and read a speech criticizing the college’s treatment of its staff. Eventually, President Holley came to the podium, at which point the Mount Holyoke Convocation Choir turned their chairs away from her. She stated her support for the College’s workers and her commitment to finding a solution. “We will never stay as a college that does not fairly engage with its workers. I promise,” she assured. President Holley also said that if the students did not wish to proceed with Convocation, she would respect that decision.

The crowd settled, and Convocation proceeded as normal. Durdan finished her speech and then ceded the podium to President Holley. In her speech, Holley announced that the theme for this year's Convocation was sustainability, “in every sense of the word.” Holley’s speech highlighted the College’s efforts to become environmentally sustainable through its geothermal project, as well as ensuring the Mount Holyoke community is sustainable through all the upheavals the world may throw at it. In her speech President Holley noted how in its 188-year history Mount Holyoke’s community has withstood natural disasters, wars, and pandemics, to name a few, and that it will continue on.

Next was a speech by Student Government Association (SGA) President Nathania Amadi ’26. Amadi spoke about making the Mount Holyoke College community stronger by continuously working to be inclusive and rejecting all forms of hate, prejudice, and bullying. She also highlighted SGA’s successes, such as providing free laundry in the dorms and free sanitary products in the bathrooms in Blanchard Hall. In a touching moment, Amadi called on all current and past members of the SGA to stand up and thanked them for their hard work and effort, highlighting that these wins were not a one-person job. She ended her speech by noting that growth is a continuous process, and encouraging our community to strive for it.

When asked about her feelings post-Convocation, Amadi said, “After the ceremony, I felt exhilarated, empowered, and excited to start the new year! Hearing the cheers from everyone whilst talking about change during my speech was reassuring that our great community will embrace and implement said change.”

After Amadi, Angelica Patterson, Curator of Education and Outreach for the Miller Worley Center for the Environment, spoke on the theme of sustainability and how it expands beyond environmental causes, encouraging personal growth and challenge. This was followed by the choir led by Colin Britt, lecturer in music and director of choral activities, singing “I. we have come,” a Persian song arranged by Abbie Betinis, based on the poems of Hâfez.

The final speaker was Olivia Aguilar, associate professor of environmental studies. Her speech tied back to this year’s common read, “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia Butler, comparing the novel’s plot to the issues facing our world today. In particular, she highlighted how the novel discusses climate change and how Mount Holyoke community members can learn to fight for a better future through our community.

The choir closed the ceremony with a rendition of the alma mater, and the seniors posed for their class photograph. In the end, a long-held school tradition marked by students making their voices heard probably made this year's Convocation the most Mount Holyoke of them all.

Leah Dutcher ’28 contributed fact-checking.