BY GABBY RAYMOND ’20
Unlike many other international students at Mount Holyoke, Kejing (Momo) Jin ’19, from Beijing, China, has lived in the U.S. for five years. Jin attended a test-oriented high school in Beijing that did not appreciate her drive for academic excellence or her participation in extracurricular activities. “[Students] had ten classes a day, six days a week and everything was about scores because in China it’s still all about your college entrance examination score,” said Jin.
BY CASEY ROEPKE ’18
After months of conflict and Twitter warfare between President Trump and Kim Jong-un, residents and visitors of Hawaii were greeted by what appeared to be the culmination of North Korea’s nuclear threats: an emergency warning message, reading “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”
BY EMMA COOPER ’20
Cape Town, the second most populous city in South Africa, is on track to become the first major city in the world to run out of water. According to TIME Magazine, once the city dams reach 13.5 percent capacity, municipal water access will be cut off for homes and most businesses, an occurrence that is marked as “Day Zero.” According to the city’s estimates, it will occur around April 16 of this year.
BY SAVANNAH HARRIMAN-POTE ’20
International students who choose to study at Mount Holyoke often travel thousands of miles from their home country to the United States, but their journey to the College begins long before they board a plane. According to the U.S. Department of State (DOS), citizens of other countries who wish to study at an institution of higher learning in the United States must first obtain a Nonimmigrant type F-1 visa.
BY GABBY RAYMOND ’20
Jhumka was founded in 2006 as the first fusion dance group on campus, according to the College website. The dance group mixes hip-hop and Bollywood styles to create unique student-lead choreography each semester. They perform at events like VariAsians, Himalaya Night, Diwali celebrations, Pangy Day and UMass Asia Night. Last year, they even performed at Drag Ball, and hope to repeat the performance this year as well.
BY SAVANNAH HARRIMAN-POTE ’20
Dec. 6 marked the conclusion of the C.A.U.S.E. board’s three-week long winter apparel drive. According to their Facebook page, the C.A.U.S.E board will now give all Mount Holyoke students’ donations of “new or gently used winter clothing” to their two community partners in Holyoke, Enlace de Familias and Nueva Esperanza.
BY VICTORIA WANG ’20
Cambodia
Cambodia’s six-person national figure skating team competed at the Southeast Asia Games in Kuala Lumpur for the first time in August, according to the BBC. Unlike other Southeast Asian countries, such as Nepal, which regularly compete in winter sports, Cambodia only formed its national ice-skating team in 2015. Sen Bunthoeun, 27 and Khiev Panha, 23, were the first Cambodians to represent their country in a winter discipline at the Southeast Asian Games and placed eighth and ninth respectively, out of nine individual figure skaters.
BY VICTORIA WANG ’20
Every Thursday evening from 7 to 9 p.m., a group of students eat and engage in discussions about global politics in the international relations lounge in Skinner 101 Some of these students study international relations or politics and some are simply passionate about global affairs.
BY VICTORIA WANG ’20
A protest campaign broke out in St. James's Square in central Barcelona on Friday, Nov. 3. According to the BBC, the protest was triggered by legal action taken late Thursday afternoon by a Spanish judge, ordering the imprisonment of eight former Catalan government members for supporting Catalonia’s independence.
BY GABBY RAYMOND ’20
The first international student studied at Mount Holyoke in 1839, just two years after Mary Lyon opened the doors to educate women from all over the United States, according to the Mount Holyoke website. In the 2016 – 2017 school year students from over 61 countries attended Mount Holyoke College. Because one person cannot speak for a whole community, the News seeks to tell the individual stories like that of Maha Mapara, a first-year from Karachi, Pakistan.
BY VICTORIA WANG ’20
The Mount Holyoke College Nepali Student Organization (NEPSO) hosted Himalayan Night on Friday, Oct. 27. The organization seeks to promote awareness about Nepali culture among the Mount Holyoke community and further contribute to the cultural diversity of the campus. Himalayan Night is part of the Mount Holyoke College Diversity Nights tradition, which include events such as VariAsians and other cultural nights.
BY SAVANNAH HARRIMAN-POTE ’20
According to Geo TV, a Pakistani television channel, Pakistan secured a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Monday, Oct. 16. The election was decided through secret ballot, and each candidate had to receive a simple majority of the 193 General Assembly member votes in order to receive a seat. Pakistan garnered 151 votes.
BY VICTORIA WANG ’20
China opened its 19th communist party congress in Beijing on Wednesday, Oct. 18. During the week-long congress, which is held every five years, the central delegates discuss keys issues which will project China’s future course of development for at least the next half a decade. As China continues to rise as a global superpower, this congress is particularly crucial to the global community, for it sets goals on China’s international participation in various aspects, as reported by Bloomberg.
BY GABBY RAYMOND ’20
Making the trek to Mount Holyoke every year can result in over 20 hours of flying time for students coming from China; so what motivates so many Chinese international students to study here? For Anran Wang ’19, it was her spirit of adventure that led her to travel from her home in Guangzhou, China, to South Hadley for school. Her family moved from a small town to the large metropolitan city of Guangzhou when she was finishing her elementary school years. She cited the switch to big city life as a turning point in her personality.
BY VICTORIA WANG ’20
The Trump administration announced its intent to withdraw from the U.N.’s Educational, Science and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) by the end of next year on Thursday, Oct. 12 due to an “anti-Israel bias,” as well as concern over mounting debt and the need for fundamental reform.
