On April 23, the Mount Holyoke Review, a literary magazine out of Mount Holyoke College, held a virtual publishing party for their second completed publication. With 51 attendees, the Zoom session featured nine of its published writers who read their work aloud. While the readers performed, the Zoom chat function was used by some to encourage and praise each other.
Graphic by Trinity Kendrick ‘21
By Tishya Khanna ’23
Staff Writer
Some of us keep our rooms messy, some tidy and some a mix of the two. Nostalgia creeps in as I recollect wanting to make space in my friend’s messy res hall room to listen to music, study or even just sit and chat. Usually we ended up sitting on the floor. When I didn’t feel like walking back to my room on busy days, a friend’s space was a haven I went to for my habitual afternoon naps.
I’ve never had a meticulously tidy or an entirely messy room. Well, it could be horribly disheveled at times, but it’s usually a combination of orderly and cluttered. I also barely live in my room. I like to think of the campus as an extended, lavish home — the Dining Commons is the kitchen, the library is the study, the Makerspace is the art room, the rooms in Blanchard Hall are offices and the dorms are living areas and rooms to sleep in. It’s a shared living space. There, your friends are your family — your community is your family.
I also miss the movement itself. Tired of studying? Walk to the Dining Commons, Grab ’n Go or the Cochary Pub & Kitchen to get a coffee or snack. Nice day out? Walk across the lakes. Can’t understand a concept from class? Take a walk to your professor’s building for office hours. Only five minutes left for class? Grab your bag and sprint.
Now, in quarantine, I appreciate having that space to move freely between places on our small map even more. I liked the freedom to allocate different spots for different purposes, unlike in quarantine, where space is confined. For many of us, our bedrooms are now for studying, sleeping, working, making art, living and everything in between.
I liked bumping into friends now and then — the casual domesticity of it, the dailyness, the mundanity. A benefit of shared spaces is that your daily frustrations dissolve more easily when others surround you than when you’re by yourself. We’re all struggling to keep pace with our hectic personal worlds: the module system, a pandemic that seems to have no end in sight, the never-ending work. Our common frustrations are now divided into individual ones. When trying to converse with a friend, we struggle to decide upon a time to meet. We have to make more effort than before the pandemic, when we could just walk up to their room or meet them somewhere on campus.
For some of us, the struggle extends further, to a difficult home life, the death of a loved one, declining mental health and more. College is a safe space that, for some, is more of a home than their own. The lack of a physical support system around manifests in wild, unpleasant ways. It’s easier to be kind to yourself when the people around you are kind to you too. An extended hand, a simple knock on the door or a genuine inquiry make an essential difference.
Our shared spaces offer shared emotions and shared tenderness. Sometimes shared misery is laughter. I’d rather be crying about the ever-growing list of things wrong with the world with a friend who’s just as miserable and willing to ease the pain through humor. Then we’d go to the Dining Commons and have ice cream with hot fudge.
Now our relationships translate to long phone calls and Zoom study sessions. If anything, it brings to light one of the hallmarks of being a Mount Holyoke student: our community. Even when we are miles apart from each other, the faculty and students alike come together with a diligent, ceaseless effort to preserve some virtual version of the shared space so many of us call home.
Pictured above: the No Man’s Land Film Festival Flyer
By Ansley Keane ’23
Staff Writer
On Saturday, Oct. 24, the Mount Holyoke Outing Club hosted an asynchronous virtual screening of the No Man’s Land Film Festival. The event was free and open to the public. It was also a fundraiser for GirlTrek, an organization whose mission is to use walking and leadership to empower African American women.
The No Man’s Land Film Festival is a Colorado-based festival that highlights women in adventure sports. According to their website, No Man’s Land “aim[s] to un-define feminine” and “connect like-minded individuals who are action-oriented, wish to support a shared vision of gender equality, have a desire to experience their passions and environments through a uniquely feminine lens, and above all, love adventure.”
MHOC’s screening of the No Man’s Land Film Festival included a variety of short films about female athletes. The screening opened with “Footsteps,” a short film about a young female boxer and her female coach. The two boxers discussed how they got their start in such a male-dominated sport and how boxing has had an impact on both of their lives.
The next film, “Refuge,” centered around a rock climber, Piseth Sam, who was born in a refugee camp in Southeast Asia but immigrated to the U.S. as a child. “Refuge” explored how Sam used climbing and nature to understand her identity. Sam described herself in the film as a “queer, woman of color, immigrant, American.”
Another film featured was “Frosty,” a short documentary about Anna Frost, a top female ultra runner. “Frosty” covered Frost’s experience racing in the Hardrock Endurance Run, a 100-mile ultramarathon that is known as one of the most difficult ultra marathons in the United States, as well as her experience with pregnancy and hopes for motherhood. The No Man’s Land Film Festival included a diverse program of stories. Overall, there was an emphasis on inspiring and empowering stories of driven women athletes.
MHOC, like all clubs and organizations, is looking for new ways of engaging remotely with their members and the Mount Holyoke community. However, according to MHOC Committee Chair Jess Moskowitz ’22, a film festival or film-related event was something the club had been thinking about doing for a while.
“We have been trying to come up with ideas of ways that people can be connected to a greater outdoor community,” Moskowitz explained. A central goal MHOC had for screening No Man’s Land was to “give the Mount Holyoke community and the public the opportunity to see some inspiring and interesting stories and narratives about women and people from gender minorities in the outdoors,” Moskowitz said.
MHOC chose to screen this particular program from the No Man’s Land Film Festival for a number of reasons, namely the ability to collaborate with new organizations and the access to “a broad range of films,” Moskowitz said. Additionally, according to Moskowitz, the program from No Man’s Land was the only closed-captioned program currently offered, and accessibility is a goal for MHOC.
Instead of simply hosting a film screening, MHOC also chose to fundraise for GirlTrek as part of the event. Moskowitz noted that “GirlTrek is an organization that is really in line with some of our goals as an outing club.” Unfortunately, Moskowitz mentioned that the fundraising aspect had not caught on as much as she hoped it would. “Trying to figure out how to fundraise prior to being remote was an issue, but now even more so, this is something we’ll have to figure out,” Moskowitz said.
MHOC’s No Man’s Land Virtual Film Festival screening aimed for students and members of the wider Mount Holyoke community to de-stress and learn about a diverse range of women who are pursuing their passions for sport and the outdoors. Moskowitz summarized her hopes for the film festival screening by sharing that, “overall, our goal is hopefully to give people a chance to see a broader swath of the outdoor community and think about their role.”
As Mount Holyoke traditions began to stray far from traditional, the suspicion of a reimagined remote Mountain Day arised. On Sept. 30, an “MHC This Week” update email was sent to students with a memo about Mountain Day 2020. Within the Mount Holyoke community, students had already begun making their own plans, creating Facebook events and listing their Mountain Day ideas in shared Google Sheets. Now, students are also able to share an official Mount Holyoke Mountain Day virtually with other students.
The majority of Mount Holyoke students are living off campus this academic year, including first-years and transfer students who have yet to experience Mount Holyoke in person. Methods of finding community have evolved and look radically different from years past. Despite the online format, many Mount Holyoke clubs and organizations are still up and running.
