Professors have an important responsibility to pace their classes correctly

By Danny Alarjawi ’28

Staff Writer

Classes should be taught as presented in the syllabus during the add/drop period. College students have a wide selection of classes they have to choose between and many priorities. An accurate class syllabus during add/drop is essential in helping students make the choices best fit for them. Because of this, a professor should be committed to delivering their class as promised throughout the semester. Different class dynamics, snowdays, sickness and other factors can get in the way, but it’s the professor's responsibility to manage the class and make sure to teach things as planned. At the very least, professors should teach the class’s most essential components during the course.

One of my favorite things about Mount Holyoke has been its professors, so I find it disappointing that important units have been cut out of courses at the last minute because of some professors’ lack of planning. Last semester I took social psychology — PSYCH-210 — a class I’ve been waiting to take ever since high school. I begged to get off the waitlist for multiple semesters before finally getting in. Though the course was fun, it lacked an essential unit that I had been most excited to learn about: Relationships. Studying relationships is very important to social psychology, as close relationships can play a role in intensifying other core aspects of social psychology like conformity and social influence. The topic of relationships is also really fun and interesting. Cutting this unit meant we didn’t learn about attraction, interpersonal relationships or attachment, which are essential aspects in the field of social psychology. As someone who was considering going into that field, I felt like I missed important pieces of information that would enable me to figure out if it could be the right path for me.

Because other units had run over time, the professor chose to skip the relationship unit. The professor justified skipping the unit by saying that there are other psychology classes at Mount Holyoke that discuss relationships. That is not only a weak excuse, but an irresponsible one. I didn’t take the class to hear excuses from a professor not teaching an important unit, or to be told to take an additional class. The point of taking a class is to learn what I signed up to learn. Other classes in the department wouldn’t explore relationships through the lens of social psychology, which was the reason I chose to take this class specifically. Additionally, the classes offered shift from semester to semester, so there is no guarantee that another class covering relationships will even be offered when I, or another student, could take it. Needless to say, I was incredibly sad, and I regretted taking social psychology over other important classes I could have taken for either of my majors or distribution requirements. This class isn’t the only one in which important content has been cut; however, for me, it was the most disappointing.

I’ve also noticed a related issue of professors being too “nice” and letting the class stray off topic. The issue stems from students providing unnecessary anecdotes during class time, which takes time away from more crucial content.This additional misused time contributes to the issue of missing important units.

For these types of situations, the professor should either stop calling on the off-topic student or recommend they come to office hours to talk about their thoughts instead. Letting that student continuously interrupt the class and take important time away from lectures restricts the amount of content being taught. If these interruptions are frequent, they are truly frustrating for the rest of the class. It is also important for the student causing the disruption to learn when their contributions are relevant and when they should consider going to office hours. This could also encourage these enthusiastic students to build a relationship with their professor outside of class. It is important to help them interrupt the cycle and understand that they can talk about these thoughts with their peers and friends or the professor at a later time.

I know professors can do an excellent job of teaching everything promised in their classes. I’ve been a part of many classes where the professors have managed to teach everything necessary in the course, even when there were unexpected interruptions in the schedule. This semester, I’ve been very lucky to have research methods (SOCI-225) with Associate Professor of Sociology Ayca Zayim. She’s probably the most organized professor I’ve ever had, with a beautiful syllabus and class schedule. Not only did the class teach all the topics necessary and planned in the syllabus, but Professor Zayim also taught statistics in a really fun and comprehensible way, which you know is really impressive if you’ve ever taken statistics before.

Zayim’s class schedule and syllabus together all explain when assignments are due and what each class entails. Having a snow day this semester was a big deal because of how important each class is, but the professor shortened some of the parts of a unit and explained it in a more basic way so we didn't have to miss out on anything too important and could still understand the big picture. Through this class, I’ve gained a lot of respect for her and her organizational skills and think that if every professor were a little more like her, a lot more would get taught.

Professors have a responsibility to teach courses as planned in the syllabus. It’s essential for students’ education to get what they were promised out of these classes. After all, these courses can influence the path a student might want to take in the future. It is also important to honor that students invested their time and money in these classes and that they deserve to be taught everything they signed up for. Letting the class stray off topic and allowing time management issues to get in the way of teaching the whole curriculum is unacceptable.

Madeleine Diesl ’28 contributed fact-checking.

‘Tell me why’: An open letter to a Trump supporter from college students

By Anna Goodman ’28

Staff Writer

Content Warnings: This article discusses ICE, political violence, transphobia, xenophobia, racism and the impacts of the Trump administration.

The toast is going cold and my shoes are soaked. I don’t notice. It’s 6:17 a.m. on Nov. 6, 2024. My friends and I are sitting together, curled up in a booth like little children hiding under their beds during a thunderstorm. The world tastes like adrenaline and wet asphalt. We’ve all been up for hours, but we can’t sleep. We are not disappointed. We are terrified. We are grieving.

And we aren’t the only ones. The entire campus is glued to their phones. Some people are still in shock. Some are full-on weeping. Some are already angry, already organizing. I am ten years old again, watching the world turn upside down.

Where were you? Maybe you were celebrating. Maybe you woke up your kids to tell them the good news. Maybe you looked at your phone like I did, and then went back to sleep with a shrug.

We are realizing we’re living on borrowed time.

I am told that Donald Trump is unprecedented. The truth is, I don’t remember a time before him. It was only when Biden was elected that I realized the fear that had seized my chest when I had looked at the news over the years before, wondering what rights would be under threat that day, wasn’t normal.

But it is difficult to quantify something so nebulous. Even more difficult when I, for all intents and purposes, am lucky enough to live in a bubble. To live in a place, like Mount Holyoke College, where he is so universally unaccepted. But not everyone has that. So I decided to interview college students from across the country, and ask about the ways they and their loved ones have been affected by the Trump administration.

“I’d been out as trans for several years [when Trump was re-elected],” Gráinne Beltramo-Dolan ’27, from Minnesota, said to me. “[The Trump administration] has certainly instilled a lot of fear. With all the framing trans people as the enemy, I always feel on edge and like I have to be preparing to leave [the country] at any moment. I never know if it’s about to tip over.” She added: “Also, I’m from Minnesota, and all the ICE activity there, especially a few months ago, that was tough to deal with. ... [Minneapolis] is quieter … there’s a lot of businesses and restaurants I love that are struggling because people are afraid to be out and about.”

“My grandfather’s visibly Hispanic [so] he carries his passport everywhere he goes,” Caleb Correa, a sophomore from Oregon, stated. “He’s 85 years old, he’s been here his whole life, you know, he doesn’t even speak Spanish.” He continued, “My mom is immunocompromised [and] she can’t get a measles vaccine. There’s a huge outbreak around us right now, and so I have to be worried. I’m not going to say it’s a death sentence, but she’s in a very vulnerable situation right now.”

“A couple of my friends are more or less fearing for their lives because of ICE at the moment. ICE has been showing up in Maine and patrolling our streets,” Miles Anderson, a freshman, from Maine, said. “It’s been hard to hear them talk about how they don’t feel safe here anymore.”

“My boyfriend’s family has run into lots of issues — with his parents both being psychology professors, [...] they’ve faced issues with what they’ve wanted to teach,” Mikayla Leach, a freshman from Colorado, told me. “My parents [who voted for Trump] have been finding issues with money. I’ve heard them talking about how gas has gone up, how much more expensive groceries have gotten, how they were really upset to find that nursing is no longer a profession paid for by the Department of Education. And my mom is saying, ‘Why is that happening? I don’t understand.’ And it’s hard to explain, but she does and doesn’t believe me [when I tell her that it’s due to the Trump administration].”

I try to temper my anger in my articles, even though they’re opinion pieces. I try to meditate, to breathe, to be an objective observer even when I would prefer to rage.

Still, I was stunned by how measured and calm so many of my interviewees managed to be in the face of such fear: For themselves, for their families, for their partners and friends. Perhaps they’re better people than me, because I am so, so angry.

I am angry that my friends are in danger. I am angry that I have no control over what happens to my body. I am angry that I wake up every morning with the fear of never knowing what will happen, that the night before Trump was inaugurated for a second time, I slept between my parents because I was too scared to sleep alone. I am angry that people are dying needlessly and I am helpless in the face of it.

So on their behalf and on mine, I would like to ask you a question: Was this all worth it?

Gutting our social safety nets. Demonizing vaccines and life saving medicine. Ripping children from their families. Dragging parents and grandparents and community pillars out of their homes in their underwear. Throwing people who have committed no crime into prisons better described as concentration camps.

Going after transgender children in a Lavender Scare-esque witch hunt. Murdering innocent citizens on the street. Sending our soldiers to die in a completely unnecessary war that most of us don’t even want. I could go on for hours and not even scratch the surface.

Maybe you think it was worth it. Maybe you think that those immigrant families like Caleb’s are all criminals and that trans children like Gráinne are all dangerous and that those soldiers like Mikayla, who came from a military family and was in Air Force training herself, all sign up for the danger of war. But I really don’t think you do.

Because I know you know someone who is an immigrant. Who is transgender. Who is a soldier, or who could get drafted. And I know you do, because every single one of my interviewees knew someone like you. Someone who voted for Trump. Even someone who still would.

It would be easier for me just to hate you. Some days I feel like I could live a hundred years on the strength of my own rage. But the truth is it’s too easy, too simple, to imagine you as different to me in some intrinsic way, when you are not. And dehumanizing each other is how our country got where it is in the first place.

The truth is you are just a person who made a decision that you thought, for some reason or another, was the right one.

At the end of our conversations, I asked each of my interviewees what they’d like to say if they could speak directly to a Trump supporter. To you.

“I would say, there is no such thing as ‘it’s too late’ or ‘you’re too far gone,’” Correa answered. “If you’re having regrets, you can make up for it by voting for an anti-MAGA candidate, whether that’s a Republican or a Democrat. ... You can always vote for someone who can stop it from getting worse.”

“If you have benefited [from Trump being elected],” Beltramo-Dolan said, “[ask yourself]: Is that worth the widespread terror that has been inflicted on the country?”

“I know what brought you to vote the way you did,” Leach stated. “I want to challenge you on that and ask, what did Jesus stand for? ... Do you genuinely think that the same Jesus we learned about in church would tolerate innocent people dying? Would he say that sometimes there’s just collateral damage? I don’t think he would.”

She continued, “Don’t let yourself be so close-minded that you won’t let yourself hear the people you’re hurting. It’s okay to be wrong and to admit you’re wrong. I know it’s a hit to the ego. Even if you can’t understand being personally impacted, try to understand where people are coming from. Because looking at the world that way, lacking empathy, lacking compassion, does a disservice to everyone, not only yourself.”

Maybe none of these words have convinced you of anything. Maybe I’m wasting my breath, my time, and the newspaper’s allotted printer money. And maybe you think it hasn’t affected you yet. But it will.

As journalist Kristen Radtke writes about her childhood friend, Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse shot and killed by ICE in January: “We have become familiar with being barraged by videos of people we do not know getting detained and ripped from their families and beaten by agents whose salaries we pay. As social media does its work putting bits and pieces together about each day of unfolding tragedy, more and more of us will realize that those pieces belong to someone we know.”

It is tragic, perhaps, that so many of us will only know the full scope of this breathtaking cruelty when it arrives at our doorstep in the faces of the people we love most. When it arrives with no warrant to take us away.

“Just be careful,” my aunt, who lives in Texas, texted me when I told her I was writing this article. “You know what happened at Columbia [University] … I just don’t want them revoking your degree.”

To which I asked her, “What kind of journalist would I be if I was careful?”

In another world, perhaps we could have the luxury of being careful. In this one, I am standing with one foot on either side of the fault lines between the bravery I claim to possess and the actions that are actually proof of it.

And if you are truly as American as you swear you are, you will know that our country was not made by being careful. That we were an idea whispered in between spies and writers and soldiers whose home was breaking under the iron fist of a tyrant. That the Declaration of Independence, written 250 years ago this July, begins by saying: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights: Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

That it says: “When a long train of abuses and usurpations … [reveals] a design to reduce [the people] under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.”

And I would argue that, though our world may be a different world than theirs, that we too have a duty to throw off such government. A duty to resist, just as our forefathers did. That we, the people who have any modicum of safety, of privilege, have a duty to use it to keep the more marginalized safe.

In 250 years, tell me, will your descendants look upon you as someone who continued that legacy of resistance? Someone who took their “Don’t Tread On Me” flag and stood by it? Or someone who stood off to the side and watched history happen?

You still have time to make that choice. I hope, for my sake, for yours and for everyone we both love that you make the right one.

Madeleine Diesl ’28 contributed fact-checking.

¿Qué es un milagro?: A story of love, perseverance, and choosing to live

By Anna Goodman ’28 

Staff Writer

Content Warnings: this article discusses death, grief, plane crashes, extreme cold, hypothermia, extreme starvation and weight loss, and (briefly, undetailed) cannibalism. 

Spoilers for La Sociedad de la Nieve (The Society Of The Snow)

Nothing grows in the Vallé de las Lacrimas (Valley Of Tears). It earns its name. 12,000 feet above the ground, surrounded on all sides by the stoic, near-vertical cliff faces of the biggest mountain range in the world, there is nothing for a dozen miles but blinding snow and blinding sun. It is always dead silent. 

And then a plane falls from the sky. 

“On October 13, 1972, an Uruguayan plane crashed in the Andes. Some say it was a tragedy. Some say it was a miracle.” Thus begins “La Sociedad de la Nieve,” or “The Society of the Snow,” a spellbindingly unflinching, often brutal, incredibly moving production that tells a story perhaps too unbelievable to seem real. Thus begins the question: ¿Qué es un milagro? What is a miracle?

The forty-five people on board Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 were headed to a rugby match in Chile the next day when their plane struck the mountain. A dozen or so were part of an amateur rugby team in Uruguay; the rest were their friends, their family, and a small crew. 27 left the wreckage alive.

I know what you’re thinking, but wait. Because this isn’t the story you think it’s going to be. 

The first time I watch “The Society of the Snow,” I’m eighteen and in the midst of a depressive episode, in one of those agonizingly liminal moments when you can’t decide whether to sleep or to keep your eyes open, only to stare up like the ceiling is going to give you the secrets to the universe. I don’t remember why I end up watching this movie, but I do. 

“Me llamo Numa Turcatti. Tengo veinte cuatro años,” our narrator says. “[My name is Numa Turcatti. I am twenty-four years old].” Numa is not a member of the rugby team, but three of his friends are, and they convince him to come along.  He doesn’t know most of the team well; he’s our point of view character for a reason — a quiet, compassionate observer that often shrinks from the spotlight in favor of louder personalities, like players Roberto Canessa or Nando Parrado. 

Our main cast begins their story as a bunch of college-aged rugby players in the early 1970s, who talk about women like they’re foreign creatures for conquest, and only touch each other to slap shoulders affectionately in the locker room or in millisecond-long hugs for photos. When their plane begins experiencing turbulence, several ask each other mockingly: “Are you scared?” and “Are you going to cry?”

But then they crash. 

Then society is gone, and they scream for their mothers. They ask to be held: the first night Numa begs his friend: “Hold me. Hold me tighter, Pancho”. They keep each other as warm as they can in a place where nightly temperatures can be under -30 degrees Fahrenheit. And when the elements rip them away from life, they kiss each other goodbye. 

They lay the injured on the side of the fuselage with the strongest sun and treat head wounds with snow wrapped in torn fabric. They string a hammock made of broken seatbelts to carry a man with broken legs and lace their hands together on his chest to ease the fluid in his lungs. They create a makeshift water purifier that magnifies the sunlight to melt ice into water, fix a broken radio with parts from a lighter, and fashion snow-blindness glasses out of the tinted cockpit windows. 

And they compose bad, sappy poetry to pass the time in the fuselage. They mimic bird songs to make each other laugh. They have a snowball fight in the middle of nowhere. They smoke 130 packs of cigarettes, because it’s 1972.

In short, they live in a place where, as Numa says, living is an anomaly. But it does not come without a cost. 

This movie is brutal; there is no use pretending otherwise. You are witnessing the characters become skeletons, with cracked, frostbitten lips and ever-growing sores on their arms. I don’t know if it happens at the same scene for everyone, but I clearly remember the moment when I thought to myself: These people are dying. 

You have already read the content warnings. “Cannibalism.” Yes. 

When, on the eleventh day, the crash survivors make the fateful decision that will define this story in the eyes of many, the film treats it with the gravity and respect it deserves. They recognize that there is no way to survive in a place that is only snow if they do not eat the bodies. Unlike many stories in this vein, the crash survivors kill no one, only scavenging from the already dead with as much care and dignity as they can; even still, they do not do this lightly. They agonize. They pray. They weep.

“If we do this, will God forgive us?” one asks. To which another answers: “God has nothing to do with this.”

And perhaps “the” God doesn’t. But “a” god does. 

“I think everyone has their own god,” my sister told me once. It was late July, but it was freezing; we were sharing a pair of earbuds, listening to Noah Kahan and rubbing our hands together inside her pocket, trying to make a starmap on top of a 14,000 foot mountain where the air is so thin that you’re out of breath just standing still. She told me of people with vengeful Old Testament gods, people with forgiving, nurturing ones, then confessed she didn’t know what hers was like yet. I told her then that I like to think God is in people. Looking back, I think that standing there with her was the closest I’ve been to understanding what “god” is. 

“I have more faith than I’ve ever had, but my faith isn’t in your God, Numa,” Arturo Nogueira says, even when his legs are broken and his heart is slowing. “I believe in the god that Roberto keeps inside his head when he comes to heal my wounds. In the god that Nando keeps in his legs, that lets him continue walking no matter what. I believe in Daniel’s hands … Fito’s strength. And in our dead friends … that’s the god I believe in.” 

Sometimes faith alone is not enough. Sometimes–

“Me llamo Numa Turcatti,” our narrator says once again, two hours in, once we’ve grown to love him and his quiet dedication and his settled compassion. Then, “I died on December 11th, 1972. In my sleep.” And you think, no. No, wait. Because after a point, you think you care for these people too much for them to die. That they are too young. That this could not happen. 

But you are wrong. That is not how death works. 

“I’m twenty-five years old, Pancho,” Numa says as he starts to fade. “I have my entire life left ahead of me. I want to see my siblings again. My mom, my dad. I want to dance.” 

“Numa, you don’t dance.” 

“I know. But I want to now. I want to do it all. I want to laugh. I want to cry.” 

“Then cry,” Pancho tells him. “Cry. Please.” So he does.

It is only at the moment that Numa dies, still in Pancho’s arms, that we realize the entire film is a tribute to him. It is only at that moment that I realize I’m crying too. I haven’t cried in months, and now I can’t stop, because I have never before been confronted by how deeply I want to live. But, god do I want to live.

And sometimes, it’s hard. Sometimes someone I care about dies and sometimes I’ll twist my ankle and sometimes I’ll throw up my hands and ask, what’s the point? 

On those bad days — though slowly, painstakingly, there are less — I think of mapping the stars with my sister on top of a mountain I could never have climbed alone. Of movie nights and microwave popcorn with my friends. My dad and his viola and his plaid shirts and his hugs. My mom and her forever changing hair color and her love for discovering recipes. And I remember that there are people who would give anything to live, to do it all over again, laughter and tears and everything in between.

That there are people out there somewhere who wanted to dance but never got the chance to.

That la vida es un milagro — life is a miracle.

In Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem, “To The Young Who Want To Die,” she writes: “Sit down. Inhale. Exhale. The gun will wait. The lake will wait … will wait, will wait. Will wait a week: will wait through April … You need not die today. Stay here - through pout or pain or peskyness. Stay here.”

The day after Numa Turcatti died, Roberto Canessa and Nando Parrado began a nine day, thirty-eight mile hike through knee-deep snow, three of those days up the cliffs surrounding their valley. On the tenth, they reached Chile, reached help, and promptly collapsed. 

Speaking to the Guardian, Nando said: “I said: ‘Come on, Roberto, I cannot do it alone. [Either way] I’m going to die looking into your eyes.’ Roberto was very weak. He gave everything that he had. Everybody gave everything that they had. He was the best associate, the best companion, the best friend I could have had in this expedition.”

Including Roberto and Nando, sixteen people survived, against all the odds, seventy-two days in the Vallé de las Lacrimas, where nothing lives and nothing grows. This gave the saga its name: “El Milagro de los Andes.” 

Every year, three days before Christmas, the 12 remaining survivors of the Milagro de los Andes — and their families — meet to mark the day they were rescued. “This is a story of life,” Nando said in the same Guardian article. “We celebrate the memory of our friends who didn’t come back.”

And together, the survivors, the families, and a team of passionate, dedicated actors, cinematographers, and directors created “The Society of the Snow.”

We are living in a world where hope is hard to come by, I know. I’m not here to tell you that it isn’t terrifying to stare the unknown in the face. And we cannot save the world. But we can save each other. We can be there for the people we care about.

“Keep taking care of each other,” Numa, still and forever our narrator, ends the movie saying. “And tell everyone what we did on the mountain.”

¿Qué es un milagro? On October 13th, 1972, a Uruguayan plane crashed in the Andes. Some say it was a tragedy. Others, a miracle. Perhaps it was both.

I would like to dedicate this article to the 45 passengers and crew of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571: 

Eugenia Parrado. Graziela de Mariani. Dante LaGuarara. Esther Horta de Nicola. 

Francisco Nicola. Julio Ferradás. Julio Martínez Lamas. Felipe Maquirriain.

Francisco “Panchito” Abal. Fernando Vásquez. Carlos Valeta. Susana Parrado. 

Gastón Costemalle. Ramón Martínez. Ovidio Ramírez. Alexis Hounie. Guido Magri. 

Daniel Shaw. Liliana Methol. Marcelo Pérez. Carlos Roque. Juan Carlos Menéndez. 

Enrique Platero. Diego Storm. Gustavo “Coco” Nicolich. Daniel Maspons. Arturo Nogueira. Rafael “Vasco” Echavarren. Numa Turcatti. Javier Methol. Jose Luis “Coche” Inciarte.

Daniel Fernandez. Álvaro Mangino. Roy Harley. Roberto “Bobby” François. Gustavo Zerbino. Eduardo Strauch. Ramón “Moncho” Sabella. Pedro Algorta. Adolfo “Fito” Strauch. 

Antonio “Tintin” Vizintin. Carlitos Miguel Paez. Alfredo “Pancho” Delgado. Roberto Canessa.

Fernando “Nando” Parrado. 

Madeleine Diesl ’28 contributed fact-checking.

No more waiting: MHC must add APA studies to curriculum

Sachiko Arai ’29

Contributing Writer

Mount Holyoke College prides itself for its “inclusive, pluralistic and free of discrimination” community. In fact, it proudly states those exact words on the college website.Yet, in light of the recent Asian hate on campus that has unfolded both in person and on online platforms such as Fizz, perhaps it is time for us to reconsider whether the college is actually keeping true to its word. 

In order to discuss this issue, I sat down with Michelle Li ’27 and Angela Kim ’28, the co-chairs of Asian American Students in Action, abbreviated as AASIA. Through the conversations I had with them, what became apparent was how the college has failed to satisfactorily implement Asian Pacific American — APA — studies in its educational curriculum. Not only does this impose negative impacts on the educational experience of Mount Holyoke students, but it has direct ramifications for our Asian American students’ overall college experience here at Mount Holyoke. Through our conversation, we discussed why it is so crucial for Mount Holyoke College to implement Asian American studies in its educational curriculum in order to protect Asian students who compose an indispensable part of the community. 

Michelle Li and Angela Kim were both born to be fighters. “I’ve always been kind of like a person who wants to fight the good fight … wanting to take actions … wanting to do something political.” Li told me. Kim also stated how she has “always been very action oriented.” 

The fact that they ended up becoming the co-chairs of AASIA at Mount Holyoke is in a way, not surprising at all. It was simply a continuation of what they had always been doing: Fighting for their own people. 

“It was pretty apparent,” Kim noted, recalling the moment when she had decided to join the organization. “I was like, okay, these are the bunch of people I can get behind.” 

Currently, AASIA is attempting to fight for two major goals. The first is to finally have the College hire a professor who researches the field of Asian American studies and Indigenous studies. The second is to get departments outside of the Critical Race and Political Economy — CRPE — department to also offer APA studies. 

They first realized that the Mount Holyoke education curriculum lacked APA studies last semester, when they compared Mount Holyoke’s fall 2025 course offerings between the other five colleges. All the other five colleges offered numerous APA studies courses, such as “Asian American Women Writers” taught at Smith College, or “Intro to Asian American Lit” taught at Amherst College. Mount Holyoke, however, offered none. 

Kim emphasized the issue that this educational curriculum “gap” causes. “APA studies is so intrinsically tied to everything … no matter what discipline, it also speaks to how it’s tied to the climate on campus. If you are not learning or teaching APA studies on campus there is going to be a hostile environment for the Asian students on campus.” 

Li also shared with me their personal experience where they were “mindblown” after taking Asian American studies at Umass, and then afterwards, discussing with their fellow CRPE majors at Mount Holyoke what they had learned. Oftentimes the other students would “have no clue” what exactly they were referring to, even if they hadn't tried to explain a complex academic concept. 

While they have been urging Mount Holyoke to revise its educational curriculum to include more courses within APA studies, so far they have been met with continuous opposition. Li mentions how despite the fact that the CRPE department at Mount Holyoke College has been attempting to apply for tenure faculty lines, he College has been rejecting the applications repeatedly. Even worse, the College has not offered any proper reasoning behind their decision. 

Therefore, Mount Holyoke College still has only two professors who teach APA studies, one who is a Five College professor who will likely soon retire, and the other, professor Iyko Day, who is currently on sabbatical. 

Their shock was only further increased when they started to rummage through the archives of Mount Holyoke College and learned the shocking truth: They were not the first to demand the college to "establish an Asian American studies program." In fact, there have been numerous protests by students in the past that demanded it. 

To this, Li could not hide their deep anger and disappointment towards the college. 

“In the archives, student protests in the past have laid out the demands that we want Asian American studies, and [so] why do we still not have Asian American studies?” 

While the battle is still ongoing, and one that is still anticipated to be rough, Li, Kim, and many other Asian American students still continue to be fighters. They have been continuously discussing the issue with the provosts at Mount Holyoke College, and have gained support from various people affiliated with the Five Colleges, or by inspiring Mount Holyoke alums such as Barbara Smith. 

“I really believe that you cannot be liked by the institution you’re trying to change.” Li states strongly. “I feel like these things need to be said, because students in the past have said them. That’s why we have the College we have today, and we have to keep saying them so the college can become better and better.” 

If Mount Holyoke College endeavors to keep true to its words of DEI statement, it cannot continue to keep silent about the absence of APA studies in its curriculum. We can’t keep on chanting “Mount Holyoke College forever shall be,” and fail to acknowledge the continued microaggressions that our Asian community faces at college. Until all members of the community are truly protected and recognized, our College’s DEI statement will continue to be untrue.

Madeleine Diesl ’28 contributed fact-checking.

AI on music streaming platforms is causing strife in song selection

By Quinlan Cooke ’29

Staff Writer

Spotify’s AI DJ was released in early 2023, but lately it has been causing some strife when it comes to easy listening. The AI tool was developed by OpenAI using their own technology. Users, like myself, report that Spotify’s dedication to customization and personalization does not come through with their DJ; instead songs you skip are repeatedly suggested and overplayed. 

Spotify’s DJ is designed to talk about the music it is going to play for you, then play 5 songs. This pattern repeats itself until you decide to turn it off, or to switch things up by hitting the designated button to stop the set of songs you are currently listening to. You can also request any prompt from the DJ, and it will do its best to comply. I once asked my DJ to play Garbage (the band), and it took it as playing music that it (or someone else) thought was “bad” or “garbage”. 

Sometimes, the AI DJ says nonsensical sentences, or pronounces artist’s names entirely wrong. My DJ, for some inexplicable reason, cannot pronounce Tyler, The Creator. It also cannot handle when artists have obscure or plural names: It almost never pronounces Arctic Monkeys correctly, or Cyndi Lauper. 

The main issue I find with the OpenAI DJ is that the songs which are consistently recommended are ones that I often skip, or even ask the DJ not to play. One in particular is “Rules” by Doja Cat. The DJ suggests this song so often that it winds up being in my “On Repeat” playlist that Spotify also creates. 

Spotify has rolled out another AI feature, this one to do with playlists. This “prompted playlist” feature allows premium Spotify users on the mobile to type a prompt, and Spotify will generate a playlist that best fits the parameters. It is unclear which AI system Spotify has teamed up with for this feature. 

Prior to this, Spotify’s closest feature to this was “Spotify Generated” playlists that users could not edit or request. These playlists followed very niche queues. These playlists are custom for each user, so the music in each playlist is skewed for each listener. This might sound thoughtful and ideal, however there are big issues with this method. If you look up a playlist and are wanting new music, you are unlikely to find it. 

These playlists constantly recommend music you already like, or artists you are familiar with. There are also playlists with different titles/themes that end up being almost identical because it leans so heavily on the user’s pre-existing music taste and listening history. 

If you are looking for new music that you have yet to hear and discover, I recommend finding playlists that other users have created. If you want to hear what Spotify recommends for something new, listen to one of their public playlists that do not say “made for you,” so there will be no bias towards the user listening. 

It is important to note and acknowledge the widespread use of AI in something so personal as making a playlist. There is no shame in taking advantage of one of these Spotify features, but I feel it lacks personality. Many people take pride in their playlists and underground song discoveries; but this is in danger if the same songs are recommended over and over again by playlists and AI DJs run by AI. Individual music taste could slowly be overtaken by readily available playlists and recommendations if people are unaware that AI has a part in their streaming. 

If you find yourself frustrated with AI infiltrating your music taste and want new music, ask other friends for recommendations and listen to a playlist on their profiles. If you want something niche, there are endless possibilities with searching other people’s playlists. Spotify users are very creative, with playlists ranging from being based on fictional characters to the most classical music you can imagine. Don’t feel that you need to depend on pre-made recommendations, there is endless music to discover; and isn’t that part of the fun? 

Madeleine Diesl ’28 contributed fact-checking.

Dorm water review: A comprehensive tasting guide to MHC dorm water

BY ISABELLE PETERSON ’28

STAFF WRITER

With the housing lottery season underway, many of us are scouting out potential dorms: Perusing floorplans, interrogating acquaintances and squatting in unfamiliar common rooms. But, while things like elevators and gold pears necessarily take first priority in the quest for a new dorm, have you ever taken water quality into consideration? When choosing between two roughly equivalent dorms, water can make all of the difference. After all, when it’s the middle of the night and you have a slight cold, do you really want to be drinking lukewarm tap water that tastes as if it came from a rusty, bug-riddled pipe? If not, let this list be your guide. 

Abbey: Elegant at first sip, it blends the redolence of a peach kernel with the youthful piquancy of mustard seed. The nascent floridness of this water is remarkable in its puerility, which is almost, but not quite, offset by its meticulously crafted length and depth. The aftertaste is persistent, fervently narcotic and rather fishy.  

Brigham: Brigham Fountain 2026 is sophisticated, expressive, and borders on the ambrosial. The clean, classic aromas of candied violets, motar, and jasmine recall the industrious whirring of an HP LaserJet Pro MFP 3101sdw printer. Its ashy, dynamic palette demonstrates oodles of energy, which is tempered by a more demure, underlying sense of puritanical self-effacement. Akin to a well-executed but unfinished watercolor portrait.

Buckland: Buff, vigorous and impeccably balanced, this explosive water is as acidic as a lab-engineered lemon. On the palate, it emerges as pungent and tactile, with scrumptious shades of cider, blanket static, red peppercorn and rhododendron. To enjoy this water properly, microwave it in a cardboard cup for roughly thirty seconds, then sip through a well-chewed paper straw.  

Creighton: Don’t let this blushing ingénue of a water fool you. Despite Creighton Tap 2026’s delicately sumptuous sweetness and creamy underbelly, it packs a powerful punch. Conadria fig, caramelized sugar and ripe Bosc pear mingle mellifluously with hints of crushed gardenia blossom, creating a truly magnificent experience.  

Dickenson: A water for the real H2O connoisseur. The color is glimmering, crystalline. An opening of damp straw ripens into the sweet succor of elderflower, then gradually blooms once exposed to the glands, tickling the taste buds with notes of aniseed, oat milk and burnt rubber.

Ham: A firm backbone of pomegranate, black cherry and brown sugar lends support to subtler accents of chalk and candied orange peel. Ham’s water is persistent across the palette, although a little too astringent and lacking in complexity. Fine for everyday drinking, but little else.

MacGregor: This refreshingly mild, medium-bodied water has a light, floral taste, with subtle undertones of petroleum, winter melon and almond. It is bright, and pleasantly dry, leaving a lingering, almost vegetal aftertaste. One of the few dorm waters that is actually cold.

Mandelle: The verdant pulse of Madelle Tap 2026 is irresistible. This smooth, unctuous water swirls together the exigence of rainier cherries, dried husks of yellowjacket wasps and honey-coated baked brie. A decadent, robust, completely hallucinatory experience.

Mead: This water is perhaps most comparable to a temperate forest floor in late August. The dominant notes are of blackberry, chanterelles and cedar, bringing to mind the insipidly sung courting call of a senile woodthrush. Fairly acidic, though lacking in tannins.

Pearsons: Whiffs of pressed olive oil, salted black licorice and pickled artichoke make for an exquisitely savory nose. The palate is predominantly citric, reminiscent of sun-baked Genoa lemons and bergamot oil. The second nose is more aggressive, with intensely contrasting notes of sea clay and tamarind. The third, fourth, and fifth noses respectively recall kaffir lime, kumquat and clementine. Superb bedside sipping water.

Pearsons Annex: Like a boiled ice cube. Or a grape that hasn’t yet become a raisin. There is potential for a genuinely remarkable water here, but it may take some time to come to fruition. I would give this water a few years before returning to it — or perhaps a change of pipes.

Porter: Whispers of sage, murmurs of honeysuckle, and scant traces of horse blanket define this earthy, aromatic water. The texture is decadent, buttery and utterly elegant. Reminiscent of drinking a lacquered chair with threadbare cushions.

Prospect: Like liquid diamond. A powerful nose that projects a romantic bouquet of hyacinth, vanilla, bone marrow and stone fruit. Chimeric, with an incisive acidity and clarity. Prospect Tap 2026 is a gastronomical roller-coaster that must be tasted before being believed.

Rockefeller:  A genuine classic. Aromas of raspberries, tangerines and pencil shavings are well-complimented by the indistinguishable fragrance of a dust mote. Rockefeller Fountain 2026 is a jammy, drinkable water, which, although to the uninitiated palette is first similar to many other aged, redbrick dorm waters, has a certain, exceptional spirit all of its own.

Safford: A truly kaleidoscopic water, tepidly melding khidri dates, golden raisins and pleather with a taste that can only be compared to extremely diluted grape cold medicine. The lingering brininess of freshly pulled mussels tightens tenderly around the salivary glands, leading to an utterly unremarkable finish that is altogether impossible to describe.

Torrey: Transparent, though far from translucent, this muscular water has a robustly rollicking mouthfeel, featuring notes of wet stone, oregano and dewy apricot. Its silky minerality pairs nicely with the metallic tang of a Klean Kanteen or the somewhat worn plastic of a well-traveled Nalgene water bottle.

Wilder: This absolutely transcendent water makes for beautiful day drinking. The perfumes of white grapefruit, musk melon and bay leaf coalesce into a nose that is saucy, yet fragile. Additional undertones of kerosene, laden with clover honey, create a taste that will tingle down your esophagus and transfigure your gastrointestinal tract. The smooth, balanced texture of Wilder Fountain 2026 is only undermined by its tentative, and altogether too-warm finish, which seems to waver between a querulous minerality and caustic acidity.

​1837: The hypnotic scents of heirloom apple, Venetian rose and sweet white currant crescendo into a veritable tempest of taste that trombones its triumphant twang to the South Hadley Heavens. Not a water you will soon forget. 

‘It’s not safe there’: lessons from a Chinese-American friendship

By Anna Goodman ’28,

Staff Writer

Content Warnings: this article discusses racism, xenophobia, police brutality, mass murder, and, briefly, school shootings, gun violence, and deportation.

I’m hugging my friend on the top floor of a history museum in a country that belongs to neither of us, when I am hit by the realization that I have been wrong all my life.

I’m American and she’s from China, so we’ve been here the better part of the afternoon, slowly combing our way through with the help of translators and a lot of tilting our heads at 45 degrees, as if the Korean language will make more sense that way.

We stop at an exhibit on student protest.

“They spelled it wrong,” my friend says, looking confused. “It’s Tiananmen, not Tiannamen.” And that’s when it dawns on me that she doesn’t know.

I sit her down. I find Brittanica. I hit the translator button, because I doubt they teach you the words for “massacre” and “government crackdown” in mandatory English class. I hand her the phone. I watch all the color drain from her face.

“I love my country,” she tells me finally. “I want to believe that we’re better than this.”

I first learned about Tiananmen Square in my 7th grade global history class. A series of organized workers and student protests, over a million people strong, in May and June of 1989 centered around Tiananmen Square in Beijing, with various smaller ones in other major cities.

Protests that ended with a martial law declaration and an infamously brutal government crackdown on June 4th that left, according to Chinese authorities, 200 dead and 3,000 wounded. The actual number of dead remains unknown, though estimates range from 1,000 to 10,000, with the number of those wounded and imprisoned likely much higher.

In the years since, this brutality has only become more infamous overseas, with China banning dozens of words that could have even a passing reference to Tiananmen: “Massacre.” “Square.” “Tank.” “Protest.” And the web closes tighter. “June 4th.” “That day.” “ 63 +1,” which adds up to “64” or June 4th, or any combination of 6 and 4 that comes just a bit too close for comfort. When attempting to assert control over your citizens, you can never be too careful.

But I’m not thinking about any of that when I first meet my friend on a sweltering summer day in Korea. I’m thinking that we are two foreigners, foreign both to each other and the country we’re standing in, and I’m thinking that she has a cool haircut and a cute phone case. I walk up to her with my aggressively mediocre Mandarin and say: 你好, 我是安娜. “Hi. I’m Anna.”

“Hi,” she says back in near-perfect English. “Nice to meet you.”

We bond over a mutual love of K-pop and a mutual disdain of the humidity at the peak of summer. We get brain freeze ordering bingsu — Korean shaved ice cream — and teach each other random idioms. (“Why would something being easy mean it’s a piece of cake?” “Honestly, I don’t know.”)

When we go our separate ways on separate planes, we cross our pinkies that we’ll stay in touch.

“Come visit!” she tells me. “I want to teach you how to make tanghulu and take you to the best hotpot and see the Great Wall.”

“Come visit,” I tell her. “I want to take you apple picking and introduce you to all the dogs I’ve babysat and show you how many kinds of people there are in New York City.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Perhaps it’s easy, simpler, to see us as two opposite people on opposite sides of the world. Perhaps in some ways we are.

I could tell you about the stereotypes. My friend had fourteen hour school days, six days a week, in uniform, from the time she was eight years old. She thought all Americans would hate her. She knew Tiananmen Square as only a place.

I grew up doing active shooter drills starting in elementary school. I was expected to pledge allegiance to my country, right hand over my heart, every morning. It was my parents who taught me about students protesting the Vietnam War, not my teachers.

As horrified as we were by each other’s experiences, our own were just normal. Saying “That’s the way it is,” was the common thread. Perhaps it’s a marker of childish ignorance that I was shocked my friend was so self-aware. That not every single person out of a population of over a billion blindly believes everything that their government tells them. That somehow, I had just never imagined that a Chinese person could both know the truth about Tiananmen and still love their country.

But I think it’s also the way I was taught to think. That I was told: This happens in other places. This happens to other people, brainwashed people. This doesn’t happen here.

But of course it does. I don’t need to tell you that there are eminently unqualified, disgustingly racist armed militias openly stalking our streets and brutalizing our civilians for absolutely no reason. And the people I know are screaming, “How did we get here?”

It started small.

Around the country, the Trump Administration is erasing African American history and LGBTQ+ history from national landmarks and parks, while simultaneously scrapping DEI programs in schools and passing a barrage of laws that target all kinds of minorities.

As journalist Angelo Villogomez put it for American Progress, “The Trump administration’s [recent executive order] flattens slavery into blameless abstraction, detaches the Civil Rights Movement from the forces that made it necessary, and isolates Black achievement from the context that gives it meaning.”

We are hurtling towards authoritarianism every moment. And becoming what China is now, a country where someone the same age as me doesn’t know something about their history that the rest of the world is painfully aware of, begins with sanding the edges off of history. Then with twisting it. Then with erasing it all together.

And it’s so easy, isn’t it, to look at China and say something like, “That would never happen here,” while ignoring what’s right in front of our eyes.

And it goes the other way too. My friend grew up learning about America’s police brutality and racism. Our deeply flawed healthcare system and the levels of obesity. Our astronomically high rates of gun violence. But nothing about her own history that was deemed less than flattering.

This faith Americans have that we are somehow eminently better than other countries, than China, than Chinese people, is just false.

We are not better. We have only been luckier. But we are no longer lucky.

And we are no longer living only in separate countries, an ocean away, with only our own media to feed us. In 2023, Chinese Americans made up over a fifth of the entire country’s Asian population. And here at Mount Holyoke College, they make up the majority of our international student population as well, second only in country of origin to America itself.

But the effects of long-planted beliefs are clear even here. This semester and the past one, Asian and Asian American Mount Holyoke students have been the target of xenophobic comments from fellow students and an appalling lack of accountability by administration, with Chinese students, as one of the most visible groups, facing much of this.

One student on the platform Fizz, in response to Mount Holyoke raising tuition, commented: “Can the Asian internationals please let us know why they came all the way to America for an education?”

Another added: “Maybe go to a more affordable institution in your home country if you were able to.”

In early March of 2026, three Chinese students from the Stop Asian Hate collective, JJ Guo ’29, Liz Li ’28, and Susan Jiang ’28 began a Change.org petition asking administration for an immediate response. None has been made, despite the petition receiving 572 signatures at time of writing: Over 25% of Mount Holyoke’s student body.

As Siggy Ehrlich ’26 wrote in a letter to the editor in the paper last semester: “[It’s] the responsibility of white students like myself to continue to evaluate our own privilege and behaviors ... Community requires work, support, and activism from all of us, not only for those that we share identities with, but most importantly for those we do not.”

And that kind of activism begins with understanding. With pushing aside our own biases and listening.

Because I love my school.

Because I love my country. I know that we’re better than this. And when you love something, you fight for it with everything you have.

Soapbox-y as it may sound, in a world that is consistently and intentionally becoming more divided, extending empathy to people from such different lives to your own is absolutely essential to building a better one. From the people you meet in a country you’ve never set foot in before to the people who share your campus and your classes.

And one day, I hope that my friend and I can make both of the places we love safe enough that I can eat hotpot with her in Shanghai and take her apple picking back home without either of us constantly looking over our shoulders.

“No matter what happens,” she tells me, “remember there’s someone on the other side of the globe who’s always missing you.”

I always do. 我也想你了, 我的朋友. I may not always be proud to call myself an American. But I am proud to call myself a journalist.

And I am prouder to call myself your friend.

Madeleine Diesl ’28 contributed fact-checking.

Mount Holyoke students must change our food culture to prevent waste

Graphic by Quill Nishi-Leonard ’27 via Canvas

BY SACHIKO ARAI ’29

STAFF WRITER

Don’t leave your food, it’s mottainai.

As an international student from Japan, I grew up constantly hearing the word “mottainai” repeated to me at home, at school and in workplaces. 

While it is impossible to properly translate the profound meaning this word

carries, it ultimately expresses the regret of wasting something: Feelings, time and, of course, resources such as food. 

From a young age, my parents would admonish me if I left even a little rice on my plate. Therefore, I experience culture shock daily in the Dining Commons. Every time I see plates with heaps of food, perfectly untouched, being shoved onto the dishrack, I feel both shock and disappointment. 

The food waste in Blanch is problematic for multiple reasons. Of course, the most obvious harm it causes is the severe environmental waste. However, it also insinuates that many students do not acknowledge and respect the endeavor that the dining hall workers and other community members pour into creating their dishes every day. As a student who works at the dining hall and sees the dedication the workers put into each dish, the latter is an equally important issue. 

Luckily, this issue has not gone unnoticed. Many members of the Mount Holyoke community have been continuously standing at the frontlines of solving the food waste issue. One of those people is Shawn Kelsey. Kelsey is the associate director of culinary operations at Mount Holyoke, in charge of overseeing all the operations in the dining area. 

“Food waste on campus is a major problem,” Kelsey stated, when I had the opportunity to interview him. 

According to Kelsey, there are two types of food waste: Pre-consumer food waste and post-consumer food waste. Pre-consumer food waste refers to waste such as kitchen scraps, which are often unavoidable parts of the cooking process. The problem, he notes, is that the majority of food waste falls into the latter category, post-consumer food waste. Food waste that people throw away, despite the fact that their trash is “edible, usable, and completely fine food.” 

“Some people are just unaware of what it adds up to, what it means and that our daily choices make an enormous impact,” Kelsey said, “It’s pretty astounding when you realize that you can feed over three hundred people a day with the food that we’re wasting.” He pointed out how post-consumer food waste does not simply imply a waste of the food itself, but also the waste of the energy and natural resources that were used to create it.

However, Kelsey also mentioned that the food waste issue has been gradually improving. He credits this accomplishment largely to an educational program that was initiated in 2024, in collaboration with Mount Holyoke students in the Food Recovery Network. The program is a food waste module that informs students about the food waste issue on campus, covering every necessary aspect regarding the issue. This module is presented mandatorily during all first-year seminars. 

“The numbers [that indicate improvement] are there,” Kelsey said. He shared his hope that by continuing the project, awareness of food waste would continue to spread, “moving the needle in the culture here on campus of understanding and awareness of what our food waste issue is.” 

Kelsey’s visions are indeed coming true. While the program has been in use for only two years, it has transformed the way students view and consume food at Blanch. One of those students is Vitalina Nam ’29, who took the food waste module during her first-year seminar. Even before taking the module, she was aware of the major consequences food waste had. Yet, she confessed that despite holding such knowledge, she and many other first-year students tended to waste food. “I’m not proud of it, but still I think it happened to a lot of first-year students,” Nam stated, mentioning how many Mount Holyoke students, especially first years, tended to throw food away after first arriving on campus while discovering their favorite dishes. 

After taking the food waste module, Nam’s attitudes changed. Not only did it deepen her understanding of food waste, but learning about it from a person who actually works at the dining hall made her feel more responsible for the issue. 

“After meeting a person who sees food waste, who sees my food waste every day, I felt even more responsible than before,” Nam mentioned. Now, she always makes sure to circle around all the food stations before selecting her dish, putting time and thought into the food she chooses to eat. 

As more students are deciding to participate in the reduction of food waste, more innovative ways to approach the issue have emerged as well. One of those people who is part of this movement is Violet Tedesco ’28, the social media coordinator of the Food Recovery Network. Tedesco, who has always been passionate about food justice and access, decided to join FRN in her very first year at Mount Holyoke. She described how members of FRN are always brimming with countless innovative ways to tackle the issue. They are planning to implement accessible composting on campus, create a campus food bank, and start a system to donate leftover food from Grab ’n Go areas, which she asks us to “stay tuned” for. She spoke on behalf of all the FRN members, saying that through such activities, they hope to encourage others to strive “for progress rather than perfection” when facing this issue. 

In the end, both Violet and Kelsey mentioned that while solving food waste appears to be an insurmountable goal, it’s really the small steps that matter. In other words, it’s crucial for each and every one of us to hold the mottainai mindset when eating at Blanch every day. 

“We just ask that people are mindful when they’re putting food on their plates,” Kelsey stated. “I know there’s a lot of really delicious food, and maybe you want to try many things,” he added with a little laugh. “Remember that those menu items come up again. So choose what you know you’re going to eat, and then you have an opportunity to try that other food the next time it comes up on the menu.” 

Whitney White ’28 contributed fact checking.

Beyond slogans: We are not speaking the same language

Graphic by Betty Smart ’26

BY BETTY SMART ’26

GRAPHICS EDITOR

What’s in a name these days? Increasingly, it depends on who you ask. With our country again at war — after months of domestic unrest over immigration, arguments about trans rights and a further economic tailspin — we are long overdue for a hard reset on understanding, particularly around slogans.

All over campus, social media, even clothes and bags, are statements like “ICE Out,” “Free Palestine,” “Black Lives Matter” and “Protect Trans Kids,” just to name a few. While I understand perfectly what these slogans represent, I’ve begun to question what’s really at the core of conservative backlash to the causes, and if the burden might be on us to clear the air.

Before I start, I want to make it perfectly clear that I am not trying to say liberal causes need to be more “palatable” to conservatives, nor am I  naively pleading, “Can’t we all just get along?” I draw a hard line at compromising with people who have nothing but pure hatred at the core of their beliefs; these people are not the ones I am asking you to try to understand. The people I’m talking about are the conservatives, center-right or moderate and undecided people who could be open to discussing and changing their views on certain topics, but haven’t had exposure to them beyond right-wing urban legends. 

So many words and concepts have developed radically different meanings depending on who’s using them. It’s insane to see how liberal causes are twisted in headlines on conservative outlets like Fox News, Breitbart, Town Hall or Red State. To borrow a concept from a Monty Python sketch, it’s like someone has replaced all the polite sayings in our translation books with dirty jokes. 

Slogans are a convenient way to sum up a cause, and their intended meaning is crystal clear to others who believe in that cause. Some people on the right know full well what these liberal slogans mean, and oppose them for exactly that reason. Other people, however, have been sorely misinformed by these distortions, which are deliberately amplified by public figures, and locked in by primal fears or resentments.

“Protect Trans Kids” has become “Give Five-Year-Olds Surgeries and Hormones”

“Abolish ICE” has become “Let Criminals In.”

“Free Palestine” has become “Hamas Rules.”

“Anti-Israel” has become “Kill All Jewish People.”

“Pro-Choice” has become “Abortion Always.”

“Gay Rights” has become “No Straight Couples.”

“DEI” has become “Unqualified Minorities over Anyone Qualified.”

“Black Lives Matter” has become “White Lives Don’t Matter.”

“ACAB” has become “Death to Law and Order.”

It makes me wonder if we’re even speaking the same language. In an age of incredibly harsh division, while certain causes are non-negotiable, sometimes boiling them down to slogans like these leaves them open to misinterpretation by people who might actually want to join them. America is not going to get any better if we don’t make more of an effort to make ourselves understandable to those on the other side of the divide. 

In this case, reaching across the aisle would NOT mean compromising your principles, especially around issues concerning human rights. What it should mean is being more proactive at explaining what these causes actually stand for and against, as well as why we believe in them.  

The other thing we need to do, if we want to get the other side to understand us, is to keep an open mind as to what is actually behind a person’s resistance to these causes. For some people, it may be a matter of clearing away the poisonous fog of misinformation, a big example of this is around issues concerning trans rights and queer children.  

I would also argue that some non-malicious opposition may not even stem from ignorance, but a genuine concern in the practice or ideology behind a slogan.  A person who cringes to see police officers generalized under “ACAB” may also believe that police brutality is a real problem and the police force needs to be reformed.  

In a more global example, the double meanings that have become attached to numerous slogans related to the Israel-Palestine conflict has made dialogue incredibly difficult to have.  People who attach different meanings to “Zionism” or “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” might actually find they share the same goal of a peaceful end to the conflict, with neither holding antisemitic or Islamophobic intentions.

So what can be done about this? I urge readers to think about the conservatives in their lives; maybe they’ve voted red but are unhappy, maybe they say they don’t like to get involved, or maybe they’re set in their ways because they’re afraid to change tents after so long and haven’t heard good things about the other one. Of course, the folks we’d be reaching out to would have to meet us halfway, and be willing to explain their own beliefs in the first place, beyond a like or dislike of a slogan or title. 

A lot is at risk in America right now, and I reiterate that we should not compromise with any hateful ideology. But at the end of the day, we can’t afford to keep writing so many people off as the enemy just because of a hesitance surrounding certain causes. Hesitance is not the same as hatred. If you know someone who doesn’t support a slogan you agree with, or vice versa, don’t jump straight to condemning them. Ask them why. Learn what information spurred their choices, and see if you can’t set the record straight. You might be surprised what a little clarity brings.

I’m not saying this would be easy. Political causes are very emotional for a lot of people regardless of affiliation, and the sad truth is plenty of people aren’t going to listen. But I believe there are plenty more people out there who will listen, if they were to actually see the cause behind a three-word slogan. We are the United States, and it’s about high time we started acting like it.

Whitney White ’28 contributed fact checking.

Mount Holyoke students must take action to create the world we want

Abby Paull ’28

Staff Writer

It’s a bird! No, it’s a plane! Well… almost. It’s actually a C - 5M Galaxy. Cool, but what is it doing flying over Mount Holyoke College? This giant plane belongs to the Air Force base that is located eight miles away from campus. Chicopee is known for its fire thrifting, good food, and interesting shops, but it’s also known for having the Westover Air Force base. This short distance makes it an easy drive for any government official to drive onto our campus. I’m not trying to fearmonger, but with the growing military presence in our country, we need to be mindful of what surrounds this campus. If we don’t do something, what will Mount Holyoke’s community legacy be? We can laugh and say that we’re “woke,” but are we? Can we call ourselves “changemakers” if we don’t speak up?

Lockheed Martin created the C-5m galaxy

“The C-5 Galaxy can carry more cargo farther distances than any other aircraft,” the official Lockheed Martin website states. And, oh boy, it sure does carry some cargo. No, it’s not to the United States; it’s going straight to Israel, according to a zine found around Willits Library authored by the Hidden Forces Project. Currently the U.S. and its trading partners are in support of Israel.

Whatever you may think about this, you’re sadly not the U.S. government and you don’t have control over taxpayer dollars. I discovered what the C-5 Galaxy was through this zine that has been circulating in LITS and the reading room. It takes on the question many of us have been asking: “What’s up with all that noise” on campus? As it turns out, the noise pollution we have been facing is directly caused by the Westover Air Force base and these C-5 Galaxies flying over our campus. The zine then goes into detail describing the environmental and political negatives of the aircraft flying over our campus. Any aircraft will cause air pollution, and the U.S. has historically not been good at avoiding pollution in aviation.

The United States is currently a major jet fuel user, more than one country should possibly be, and the U.S. military is a leading cause for this. Should we care that our country is poisoning our air in order to give foreign aid? For political reasons, many are concerned that this aircraft has been sending goods to Israel due to its occupation and genocide of Palestinians. Whatever you may think, politically or economically, this military might near the campus should be a cause of concern.

What does this revelation do to the Mount Holyoke Community legacy?

We call ourselves the “changemakers” and “innovators,” but are we? Have we become passive viewers like everyone else? What will we say to our children in future generations to come? What did we do to try and stop it? If we do not care even a little about a military base that goes deeply against many of our beliefs right next door, what do we care about?

This existential question reminded me of a conversation I had at the start of the semester, when I went to visit Visiting Instructor of Politics Ana Abraham. We had a lovely chat about the current political and economic states of the world right now. But she asked me a question that fumbled me: “We have Maduro [the former dictatorial president of Venezuela] in a U.S. prison, yet nobody seems to be reporting it; why don’t we care?”

I thought about it for a moment and then told her what I told many of my friends: “Girl, who cares?” But seriously, who actually cares anymore?

I ask the question to the general community, why don’t we care? I get that in the 21st century, we tend to focus more on ourselves, but we have to do something. We can’t be known as people who sit in their ivory towers trying to solve world problems for places they may never see. We have to think about our legacy coming out of the 2020s. We can assume as a viewer that Donald Trump is making all of these changes to America's national interest or ‘legacy.’ Mount Holyoke cares a lot about its legacy; if you take a walk around campus, you can see the school showing off their high achieving alums.

What will history have to say about us? That we posted Instagram infographics? What impact does that seriously have on change? I propose a call to action where we actually care. Being a politics major, the same trend seems to repeat itself over history, and people are stronger in numbers. If we use our phones to build groups that can communicate and actually see their ideas out to an end, we might see a future where we can make positive change for Massachusetts and the greater area: A future where C-5m Galaxies are not soaring above campus. If you gain one thing from this article, start discussing with your peers, “What America do I actually want to live in? Am I okay with my life getting more expensive? My Thirsty Mind matchas getting more expensive? Or myJellycats rising in price?”

You have to ask yourself if you want to get out of this mess, and if so, how.

Maeve McCorry ’28 contributed fact-checking.

All the snubs and all the dubs of the 68th Grammy Awards

Graphic by Audrey Hanan '28

By Quinlan Cooke ’29

Staff Writer

The 68th annual Grammy Awards were held on Feb. 1. The ceremony featured many surprises, including underdog winners, presenter mishaps, and performances. This famous award ceremony is run by the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, also known as the Recording Academy, and presents various awards to musicians in a variety of categories. The eligibility period for the most recent ceremony spanned from Aug. 31, 2024, through Aug. 30, 2025.

There are over 75 categories of awards to be given out, but only a select few are televised on primetime. The most coveted awards, known as the “big four,” are Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. These categories sum up the highest achievements of the eligibility period, and people are always eagerly awaiting the results.

Nominations for these categories are very prestigious. Record labels and members of the academy, months prior to the ceremony, submit who they think would be the best fit for certain categories. These suggestions are sifted through to just a few finalists to be nominated.

The first of these four categories to be announced was Best New Artist, and per recent Grammy tradition, the prior winner of this category announces the new winner. Chappell Roan opened this year’s envelope, announcing Olivia Dean as the winner. The other nominees were Katseye, The Marias, Addison Rae, Sombr, Leon Thomas, Alex Warren, and Lola Young. This was a shock to most. Dean has garnered a lot of attention on social media and a lot of play on the radio.

Some believed Addison Rae was going to win this category, as she was the most “pop-girlie”-esque of the nominees and has been building her image for years. However, my prediction had been Lola Young; she quickly rose to fame and has since been through a lot. In Sept., Young collapsed on stage while performing in New York. The blame for this was extreme stress from touring. Young did her first live performance since this unfortunate event at the Grammys during the “Best New Artist” medley performance.

I would say that all of the “Best New Artist” performers/nominees worked hard, and Dean was an underdog to me, but she earned the award and completed a stellar performance.

“Song of the Year” was a shock to just about everyone watching. The Grammy went to Billie Eilish for her song, “Wildflower,” which was released in May of 2024.It was open to Grammy eligibility because it was rereleased as a single in Feb. of 2025. Many were surprised to see this song nominated, let alone win. The other nominees were Lady Gaga with “Abracadabra,” Doechii with “Anxiety,” Rosé & Bruno Mars with “APT,” Bad Bunny with “DtMF,” Hunter/x with “Golden,” Kendrick Lamar — feat SZA — with “Luther,” and Sabrina Carpenter with “Manchild.”

Bad Bunny was the fan-favorite for this category, and many, including myself, were speculating Hunter/X to win. The sheer popularity of the animated movie made it such a strong contender, and it seems monumental to have a song from a children’s movie be nominated for such a prestigious award. I know I hear this song at least four times on the radio in a workday, and there were so many people of varying ages rallying for it to win.

“Record of the Year” differs from “Song of the Year” in the sense that “Record” refers to the production, engineering, and artistry of the song. “Song of the Year” is about the lyrics and composition. “Record of the Year” went to Kendrick Lamar ft. SZA for “Luther”. Their fellow nominees were Lady Gaga with “Abracadabra,” Doechii with “Anxiety,” Rosé & Bruno Mars with “APT,” Bad Bunny with “DtMF,” Chappell Roan with “The Subway,” Billie Eilish with “Wildflower,” and Sabrina Carpenter with “Manchild.”

I have yet to hear any opposition to this win; many garner it as well-deserved. There were so many nominees for this category that it was difficult to make predictions. My personal guess was Chappell Roan, but I may have a small bit of bias with this. There were so many strong contenders: Bad Bunny, Rosé & Bruno Mars and Sabrina Carpenter. It is important to note here that despite six nominations for the night, Sabrina Carpenter went home with zero awards. She arguably had the biggest snub of the night.

The most coveted award of the entire night is always saved for last: “Album of the Year” brings tears to the eyes of the contenders. The winner of this highly desired award was Bad Bunny for “Debí Tirar Más Fotos.” His competitors were Justin Bieber’s “Swag,” Sabrina Carpenter’s“Man’s Best Friend,” Clipse’s “Let God Sort Em Out,” Lady Gaga’s “Mayhem,” Kendrick Lamar’s “GNX,” Leon Thomas’s “Mutt,” and Tyler, the Creator’s “Chromakopia.” When Bad Bunny was announced to accept his award, he appeared to be in shock and started to tear up. His album was also the first non-English album to ever win this category.

I have only seen people celebrating this win and saying they understand and sympathize with the topics of the album. Some are even saying his acceptance speech was the best they have ever seen, and that is exactly why they believed he deserved to win. This win was hard-earned; the charting speaks for itself. I thought Sabrina Carpenter was another strong album contender, partially because by this point in the ceremony, she had no wins, perhaps because of her intense radio play. I also thought that due to how much buzz there has been since the last Grammys when it comes to Kendrick Lamar, he also had a strong chance.

Overall, this year’s Grammy Award ceremony brought a lot of surprise wins and losses, especially considering the sort of last minute and precarious nature of some of the nominees. Nevertheless, many of the speeches for these awards made viewers feel that the winner truly deserved their award, even if they did not think that prior. I enjoyed the ceremony, even though none of my personal favorites went home with awards, and I think that many others can share that sentiment.

Eden Copeland ’27 contributed fact-checking.

Never again, except when it’s us: Jewish identity and Gaza

Photo by Anna Goodman ’28

Some Mount Holyoke College students have been chalking on the roads and pathways around MHC’s campus with messages in support of Palestine.

By Anna Goodman ’28

Staff Writer

Content Warning: this article discusses genocide at length, as well as famine, antisemitism, mass murder, Islamophobia, and the Holocaust. 

I’m eight years old, swinging my legs because they can’t touch the floor yet, the first time I consider myself Jewish. It’s April 2015 and hours past my bedtime when a friend of my father begins the fifth of — what seems to me as — endless Passover readings, and I don’t understand why any of them matter.

I don’t go to Synagogue. I don’t speak Hebrew. I eat Challah bread on Friday evenings and pretend to like grape juice, and that’s about it. But that has never mattered to my family, because to us, being Jewish is not just a religion, but also about the preservation of our culture. In truth, an act of defiance.

Yet, despite my boredom, it’s at this table, at eight years old, that I start to understand that defiance. To grasp what the Holocaust was. And I don’t understand. How could anyone let this happen?

Later, it’s December 2023 and I’m sitting at my desk as my teacher recounts the week’s news. I sit there as my classmates debate terrorism and occupation and retaliation and who deserves to die screaming and who’s innocent. For perhaps the first time in my life, I bite my tongue. 

Because I am not thinking of the people in my class. I’m thinking of family. Of a man — a boy — I consider like a brother, who was drafted into the Israeli Army just after he turned eighteen. Who, for safety reasons, I will refer to by the Hebrew word אחי: “ach-khee,” literally “brother,” but in colloquial use, close male friend.

אחי is only six months older than me. He messaged me the other day and asked if I was also getting gray hairs. 

And a part of me feels for him. Another part doesn’t know if I should.

Just this year, several experts at the United Nations declared, “While States debate terminology — is it or is it not genocide? — Israel continues its relentless destruction of life in Gaza … massacring the surviving population with impunity. … No one is spared — not the children, persons with disabilities, nursing mothers, journalists, health professionals, aid workers, or hostages.”

In the six months since, the scale of destruction has only gotten more horrifying.

As of Nov. 29, 2025, “Palestine’s official health ministry has tallied the dead at over 70,000”: An already horrific number that many experts have stated is likely a severe undercount. 

By the Israeli military’s own numbers, every five out of six of those people were civilians.

“Every genocide depends on the dehumanisation of its victims,” Guardian reporter Owen Jones wrote, “Mainstream media outlets have airbrushed the truth about Israel’s genocide — whether that be broadcasters or newspapers. They’ve failed to report multiple atrocities, failed to show the horrific consequences, repeatedly regurgitated Israeli lies about their war crimes. ” 

Entire textbooks could be written about the horrifying dehumanization of Palestinian people, Palestinian children in particular. But I’ve seen much less said about the opposite: The almost gentle language and strangely subdued anger surrounding the people committing these atrocities. 

Every Nazi — from the guards at the camps who pulled the levers on the gas chambers to the everyday enablers who registered party membership just to keep their heads down and live, to those who shut their windows and turned away from the people with pinned yellow stars being dragged down the street — was a person who made a decision, just like אחי. 

And when we wave our hands and say things like, “well, they had no choice”, or “well, that’s not the same,” we clear the path for ourselves to expunge our own guilt. 

“I didn’t do anything!” But, see, that’s the problem, isn’t it? You didn’t do anything.

There’s a very famous poem called “First They Came” by German Pastor Martin Niemöller, that I’m sure many of you have heard before. “When they came for the Jews,” it says, “I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.” 

We read it every year at Passover. We recount the story of the Holocaust, raise our glasses to those it stole from us, dip our bitter herbs in saltwater. We promise them, promise ourselves, that we will never forget. 

Perhaps, the darkest truth is that we haven’t forgotten. And what does that tell someone? What does that tell not only the Palestinian students on our campus and across the country, but every Muslim person with the right to exist in a world that hates them for no reason? That they’re lesser? Unworthy of basic human decency? 

“The fact that you’re Palestinian, you have to prove that you’re not a threat, you have to prove that you’re not an extremist, you have to prove that you’re just a human,” Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia student whose arrest earlier this year sparked a whole spate of protests, tells Zeteo.

Did you know that the word אחי, brother, in Hebrew, is the same as أخي , brother, in Arabic? Why is my “אחי”  worth any more than theirs?

I am ashamed to say, in the last two years, most days I tried not to think about Gaza. I donated, I protested, I cried, I declared that I would do something. I decided my empathy made me morally superior. And most of the time I couldn’t bear to even read an article, much less write one.

The truth is, I could have written this any time in the last two years and I did not, because I was just too scared. And in a decade, in two, in three, how am I going to answer when one of my students raises her hand and asks me what I did when I watched a genocide happen in real time?

“I felt bad,” I’ll say. “I pretended that that meant something.” 

Now, it’s October 2025, and I’m eighteen years old. I sit down at my desk to write this article. My feet touch the floor now. It’s been 10 years since that first Passover, two years since this genocide began, and I understand now. 

It’s so painful to realize that you are now one of the people whose inaction you condemned, back when you didn’t have any reason to be scared. 

Through it all, I come back to אחי. Who got his friends to help him fake a scar so he could get a permit to grow out his hair. Who admitted to me once that his knowledge of Christmas is based on movies, and then asked for recommendations on the worst ones I could think of. 

Who I couldn’t tell I was writing this article, because it would get him thrown in jail. I see his shadow in every headline. I feel my stomach twist when I remember, every time we complain about our coworkers or share anecdotes about our moms, that his hands are bloody. 

And still I fear that someday I’ll wake up to a call from his little brother telling me that he’s gone, and I won’t know what to do with myself. 

Now, just imagine that same fear, that same agony, multiplied tenfold, for the people whose loved ones are, or, were, Palestinian. Who have crawled out of the rubble of the places they called home over the bodies of the people they called Mom. 

“Gaza has become a place where death is so constant and survival so compromised that even silence now speaks louder than any appeal for justice,” Muhammad Shehada wrote for the joint Israeli-Palestinian newspaper +972 on the second anniversary of October 7th. “And the legacy of this genocide will be with us for generations.”

The legacy of this genocide, as much as we would like to live our lives not admitting to it, is on America’s hands too. For the last two years — and decades before then — it’s been America’s bombs, America’s missiles, America’s money enabling the Israeli army to rage a campaign of abject violence and terror on civilians. Our tax dollars are killing people, and our government has been, at best, quiet, at worst, actively promoting it.

“The decision is stark,” the UN stated in its official report on Gaza: “[we can] remain passive and witness the slaughter of innocents or take part in crafting a just resolution. The global conscience has awakened, if asserted - despite the moral abyss we are descending into - justice will ultimately prevail.”

“Right now the Israeli government is waging a genocidal war on Gaza,” the organization Jewish Voice For Peace says in their mission statement,  “claiming the support of all Jews who live in the US… we say, ‘Not in our name!’”

And I may not go to Synagogue. I may not speak Hebrew. I eat challah bread on Friday evenings and pretend to like grape juice, and really, that’s about it. But when it comes to defiance, I am as Jewish as my ancestors. 

In his response to Niemöller’s “First They Came” poem, written in the wake of the 2016 election, American Rabbi Michael Adam Latz said, “Then they came for the Muslims and I spoke up—Because they are my cousins and we are one human family … They keep coming. We keep rising up. Because we Jews know the cost of silence. We remember where we came from. And we will link arms, because when you come for our neighbors, you come for us—and that just won’t stand.”

It would be naive to say that writing an article that will reach a thousand people at most will cause any tangible chance or will save any lives. But it is still something. 

I may be a child. But so is אחי. So were the countless people and their אחי s, their أخي s,  who have died at his army’s hands.

And I am Jewish. 

I remember where I came from. I remember all those Passovers spent listening to the stories of the Holocaust. I know the cost of silence. I know the power of linking arms. I stand on the shoulders of all that came before me, all those who lived and died and fought for a better world. And on their behalf, I say: not in our name. 

Angelina Godinez ’28 contributed fact checking. 

When life imitates art: Appearance and politics in ‘Wicked’ and the U.S.

Graphic by Betty Smart ’26

By Paige Comeau ’26

Managing Editor of Content 

Over Fall Break, I was able to spend some time with my family and visit our local movie theater to watch “Wicked: For Good.” While I’m generally not a fan of musical theater, my family are, and I did enjoy both “Wicked” and “Wicked: For Good.” However, despite my best efforts to give myself a break as a politics major deep in my senior thesis, I could not watch the film through a neutral lens. Rather, I found myself analyzing it as a piece of political commentary, which I would argue “Wicked” largely is. There are many prevalent themes throughout both films that deserve analysis: The use of scapegoats in politics, the way censorship and propaganda work to uphold non-democratic governments, and how activism can veer into extremism when actors are without hope, just to list a few. 

I found one theme in particular especially interesting, considering current discourse around the “Wicked” cast: The way appearance can be used for more sinister ends. 

This is rather obvious throughout both movies: Glinda is blonde, white and conventionally beautiful, so she is seen as good; Elphaba is played by an actress of Nigerian descent and her skin tone is green, so she is seen as bad. It is a cliché trope that is easily traced back to the racial prejudices of the time the original “Wizard of Oz” was written. In the real world, however, life is imitating art just a little too well, as the “Wicked” cast continues to endure heavy discourse around their appearances and what ideals they are promoting. 

Specifically, many of the female members of the cast, particularly Michelle Yeoh, Ariana Grande, and Cynthia Erivo are under intense scrutiny for their extreme weight loss over the last few years. Many photos of the cast before and after “Wicked” highlight the intense emaciation of the main actresses, all of whom sport protruding collarbones, gaunt faces, and a skin-and-bones appearance. Many fans are speculating on convoluted theories about the women, such as “on-set Ozempic swaps, eating disorder competitions among cast mates, or blind items alleging the actors tried to mimic Judy Garland’s harmful weight-loss methods from ‘The Wizard of Oz,’” none of which have any real evidence supporting them, according to Cosmopolitan Magazine. 

While this focus on the “Wicked” cast in particular is the most prominent discussion on thinness right now, it is by far not the only one. In fact, it is part of a larger societal trend of celebrities and influencers prioritizing the pursuit of thinness over body positivity. 

This has had noticeable effects on the content people consume, with more than 2.4 billion views on the TikTok hashtag #SkinnyTok and the amount of plus-sized models on runways diminishing from 2.8% in 2024 to 0.8% in 2025, according to Dazed magazine. This is particularly true in more conservative circles, where “trad wives” and “fascist fitness groups” are promoting extreme diets and weight loss as a part of their more political ideologies. 

Largely, society is beginning to see an ideological shift around body size that bundles appearance with morality, politics, and religion, not unlike that seen in fascist, eugenicist regimes like Nazi Germany, or even Wicked’s Oz. Considering the current rise in both conservative extremism and extreme thinness, it is worth taking a look at the reasons why these two ideologies are interlocked or reinforcing, especially if we want a chance of combatting either. 

Historically speaking, bodily appearance, and specifically thinness, has long been associated with oppressive, hierarchical regimes. In these societies, there is usually an idealized version of the human race or human body, one that is aligned with the people in power. Often, this version includes thin bodies, for several reasons: They are seen as the results of discipline and dominance over the body; they are seen as more likely to be able-bodied, and therefore more able to fight for or birth the dominant “ideal” race; and, perhaps most importantly, the thinness that is prized as ideal is the thinness of a white body, legitimizing the racial politics that have so often been the underlying force behind oppressive regimes. 

University of California Professor of Sociology Sabrina Strings highlights this in an interview with the Daily Kos blog, stating, “by the 18th century, race science was built out, expanded to include additional physical characteristics. To the extent that people were linking indulgence in the oral appetite to an animalistic inability to control oneself, fatness became linked to the racial group [judged] to lack the capacity for self-government: Black people.” 

Today, the conservative movement is reiterating such an ideology by tying thinness, and by extension whiteness, very heavily to morality. Like The New York Times opinion writer Jessica Gross says, “there’s a distinct idea that overeating or gluttony — which is one of the seven deadly sins — is immoral. And if your body size is not whatever society thinks is an appropriate body size, that is a sin.” This is especially true for white women, as “trad wife” influencers increasingly press the importance of a specific body type for the lifestyle they are promoting; that “feminine virtue lies in thinness, servility and domesticity.” 

These ideals of feminine thinness promoted by conservative women also help legitimize a sexist agenda pushed by many conservative men. If women are physically smaller, if they literally take up less space, they are not fit to be the ones in power; they should sit by while the larger, more dominant men make the decisions. Meanwhile, people of color are shamed for being larger and told they are incapable of taking care of themselves or others, making it seem as though they should also stand aside and allow others to take power. It is this sort of hypocritical rhetoric that has fueled many long-standing, majorly oppressive hierarchies in the past. 

So, conservatism promotes thinness, and utilizes an idea of ideal bodies to promote their political ideologies. But more than that, thinness and a focus on the body pull both men and women towards conservatism. For men, research has shown that the far right uses online fitness communities to recruit young men to their cause, starting with fitness tips before encouraging men to join closed chats where they push far-right ideology. While this is problematic in that this strategy utilizes people’s genuine worry about their health to entrap them into extremist groups, it is also problematic in the ways that it works. 

By utilizing wellness as their topic of recruitment, these groups ensure their members associate positive changes in their life with far-right ideology, creating a sort of pavlovian effect for fascism. Also, in doing so, they create soldier-esque group members who are more than willing to commit acts of violence on behalf of their beliefs. For women, this emphasis on thinness often results in an extreme individualistic focus on the body and their habits, encouraging disordered eating and exercise which can have an array of negative effects on a person; these effects create vulnerabilities that extremists target as a part of recruitment. For instance, disordered eating combines extreme obsession with personal appearance and a lowered capacity for critical thought due to starvation, making it very easy for such people to be convinced of the eugenicist, gendered ideology that conservative radicals push. 

In a community heavily made up of women like Mount Holyoke College, it is especially important that we recognize and combat such patterns; due to patriarchal norms, women are asked to place particular importance on their physical appearance, and are especially vulnerable to such messaging. Especially when public discourse makes it seems as though their favorite actresses, like Ariana Grande or Cynthia Erivo, promote a similar message. 

This is not to say that either Ariana or Cynthia are allies of the far right’s agenda; in fact, I would actually venture to say the opposite. However, it is important to acknowledge the slippery slope that their images promote. And it is also important to take a lesson from the movies these two actresses are most famous for. Appearance is not the most important thing about a person, nor is it always what it seems. Instead, it is important to look beneath the surface and see what people really stand for, rather than what they want you to think, about them or yourself. 

Maeve McCorry ’28 contributed fact checking. 

The Associated Press standards regarding Palestine are political

By Karishma Ramkarran ’27

Copy Chief

The freedom of press has always been viewed as a cornerstone of democracy. Journalists seek out what is concealed, corrupt, and entirely animus to the well-being of a nation and shed light upon it; perhaps they do not carry out societal transformations, but they are certainly the stimuli which sparks it.

To say my journalistic career began with this belief may be to admit a starry-eyed sense of naivety that imbued my perspective of American journalism. For my high school newspaper, under my staff profile, I once wrote that one “appreciates journalistic writing because of its unique ability to protect democracy by keeping the people informed. Journalists have, since the foundation of America, played a pivotal role in holding those in power accountable.”

Under the tutelage of John Stuart Mill and greatly inspired by my AP U.S. history class, my younger self saw the brilliance of American journalism. Journalists such as Ida B. Wells or Upton Sinclair only seemed to prove the power of investigative journalism by exposing the insidious injustices of a dominant status quo. To me, Wells’ campaign against lynching as a form of socio-political terror against Black Americans or Sinclair’s exposé on the stomach-churning working conditions of immigrants in seedy meat-packing factories confirmed that journalism was the inertia that pushed America ever closer to a hazy dream of egalitarian democracy.

To me, journalism continues to hold a monopoly on justice and democracy today. Still, the Wells or Sinclairs will not be found locked away in a room at the New York Times: They are in Gaza, risking their lives to tell the stories of Palestinians.

One does not need a degree or experience to be a journalist. As I sit in the Williston Memorial Library and write this opinion, I do not think of myself as more qualified than Renad Attallah, a young chef from Gaza who not only shares Palestinian recipes, but also the experience of hunger as Israel blocks aid from reaching Gaza. People become journalists everyday as they are subjected to the most horrifying and heinous injustices. That kind of journalism is often more valuable than the work of the most qualified journalists in America, simply because oppressed people have nothing to gain from whitewashing their own experiences to fit a dominant narrative.

Do these American journalists not feel some semblance of shame when we censor Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people, especially as journalists in Palestine are systematically targeted and killed? While we type away in an ivory tower of privilege, more journalists have been killed in Palestine than any other modern conflict.

On Aug. 10, Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh and cameramen Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, along with Gaza’s Chief Correspondent Anas Al-Sharif, were killed by Israeli forces in an airstrike on a tent near al-Shifa Hospital in eastern Gaza City. A statement by the Israeli military had confirmed that the killings were targeted; Al-Sharif was accused of being the head of a Hamas terrorist cell.

I cannot help but interrogate my own complicity in creating an environment in which journalists in Palestine — who are legally protected by international humanitarian law during times of war — are acceptably murdered by Israel. American journalism, through whitewashing and the policing the language around Israel’s genocide, has failed Palestinians.

Language is a powerful tool, and every word that we write has significant weight. No singular journalist has the superpower to be completely objective; our personal belief systems will always animate the spirit of our words. Yet the issue with American journalism is not a plurality of opinion, but a systematic and hegemonic framing that is subservient to a dominant narrative of American exceptionalism.

As copy chief of the Mount Holyoke News, I spend plenty of time making sure that articles adhere to a specific set of guides set by the Associated Press, a not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Although we often consult these standards for conventional grammar usage or how to refer to different subjects, things become murkier around the reporting of certain issues.

The Associated Press’ topical guide for “Middle East Conflicts” outlines how journalists should discuss the relationship between Israel and Palestine. Although it may seem like semantics, the way words are used always have political connotations to them, especially within the context of an active genocide.

As journalists, we are meant to refer to Israel’s genocide of Palestinians as the Israel-Hamas war. The term “war” in this context is meant to represent a period of armed conflict between two actors: In this case, the state of Israel and the militant group Hamas. The definition not only disregards the unique status of occupation that Palestinians have been subjected to since 1967, but also suggests that Israel only engages in war tactics with members of Hamas.

Israel does not engage in war with Hamas, but the Palestinian people at large. The ratio of civilians to combatants killed in Palestine is unprecedented in modern warfare: Five out of six Palestinians killed by Israeli forces have been civilians. Almost half of Gaza’s population are under 18 years old, and the U.N.’s Human Rights Office has reported that 70% of those who have been killed were women and children.

In a guest essay published in the New York Times, Feroze Sidhwa — a trauma surgeon in Gaza — described regularly seeing “a young child that was shot in the head or chest, virtually all of whom went on to die.” In the very same article, Sidhwa compiles the testimonies of 44 doctors, nurses and paramedics who had attested to seeing similar patterns in Israel’s war conduct.

To use the term “war” instead of “genocide” or “occupation” to refer to Israel’s actions in Palestine is to become complicit. Although the International Court of Justice has not made an official ruling on the case brought forth by South Africa, several human rights organizations, scholars of genocide and a U.N. commission have since found Israel’s actions in Gaza to amount to genocide.

On Sept. 16, the United Nations’ Human Rights Council reported that an Independent International Commission of Inquiry had found that Israeli forces committed four of five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. On Oct. 22, the International Court of Justice itself had issued an advisory opinion on Israel’s obligation as an occupying force, including “safeguarding the rights and promoting the best interests of the occupied population” while protecting “its security interests.”

Additionally, the Associated Press warns journalists not to even say “Palestine” to refer to those territories which are historically part of Palestine. One may not say “Palestine” or “the state of Palestine” but rather “the Palestinian territories,” which refer to the West Bank and Gaza. Palestine may only be referred to as a “nation” within the context of “the international bodies which it has been admitted to.”

The ramifications of such language are clear: Not only does it serve to diminish the struggles of the Palestinian people for self-determination, but also, more insidiously, to deny Palestine the legitimacy of being a nation in its own right. To be referred to as a legitimate nation is to recognize that Palestine should be guaranteed the rights that the international community promises to a sovereign nation — it is to ascend from the status of being a mere “occupied population.”

When exactly will Palestine be internationally recognized as an independent state? When its occupying powers allow it to be? If a state must have defined borders, a government or a standing army to be considered sovereign, how shall Palestine ever achieve that under the present conditions of genocide and occupation? Regardless, Palestine is recognized as a state by 75% of U.N. member states, Israel and the United States excluded.

Although there has been a ceasefire in Gaza, Israeli strikes have killed over another 104 people, including 46 children, across Palestine.

Will we, as journalists, fall into line with America’s aiding and abetting of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people? Or will we begin to question the way in which the very language we use encourages complacency to a dominant narrative?

Cat McKenna ’28 contributed fact-checking.

Editor’s note: Mount Holyoke News’ style specifics have been updated to deviate from AP guidance, and will hereafter explicitly refer to the State of Israel’s ongoing campaign against Palestinians as genocide.

Courses at the College shouldn’t be restricted based on class year

By Quinlan Cooke ’29

Staff Writer

With course registration quickly approaching, many are scrambling to find courses that fit their majors — or prospective majors — and that align time-wise. As a first year, it seems that because of my intended major, my options are quite limited.

ENGL-199: Introduction to the Study of Literature is one of the only English courses available to first years, and I am currently in it. As someone who is interested in taking more English courses, and who intends to major in English, I was looking forward to taking another course in this subject for the spring semester. Looking at the course information told me that the next course many English students take, Intro to Creative Writing, is limited to sophomores and above.

I understand that this gives upperclassmen a better chance to get the classes they need for their major requirements, but some first years might also want to get ahead. I feel that a solution to this would be adding more courses for all years.

For almost any class I would want to take, I would have to email for instructor permission. This can get really difficult to balance alongside advisor meetings and planning out backup classes. Instructors might also have further questions, or might not be able to respond to prospective students before advisor meetings. As a result, courses might have to be changed during the add/drop period, and some students might begin courses after the start of the semester, setting them behind on work.

Other classes open to first years and listed under a certain department might have prerequisites that are outside of that department, so there is still a delay when it comes to being able to take them.

For myself, I am starting my second semester with the classes from my first semester, alongside other college credits that I have previously accumulated under my belt. I will have to email several professors to forego prerequisite introductory level classes that I have already taken elsewhere, and I will have to request permission to take classes that other first years might not have the opportunity to.

Of course, these scenarios mentioned are the exception and not the rule – but, at a school that generally prides itself on rigorous academics, I would assume it would be more encouraged for students to try to challenge themselves when the opportunity arises. If a student wants a challenge, it should be encouraged, no matter their class year.

Another aspect of this is that advisor meetings were not required to register for first years’ first semester classes, but they are for the second semester. Perhaps first year students creating their schedules over the summer should be assigned a temporary counselor or advisor, so they become familiar with the concept of having help with their courses.

The Mount Holyoke College website says, “Whether it’s across disciplines or around the world, one thing’s for certain: You will achieve more than you thought possible. Along the way, you’ll be challenged. ” Perhaps part of the challenge is advocating for yourself, to prove that you belong in the classes that might challenge you academically, and to push for your own education in such a safe environment.

Cat McKenna ’28 contributed fact-checking.

New “Party Policy” will produce, not reduce, unsafe party behaviors

By Paige Comeau ’26

Managing Editor of Content

Beginning on Oct. 20, 2025, the Division of Student Life instituted a new “party policy” for Mount Holyoke College students and residents, aimed at “clear and structured guidelines to host fun, responsible and safe gatherings that respect all residents and residential spaces.”

In sum, the Party Registration Policy mandates for students to use residential spaces for throw parties, they must first register as party hosts, complete a host training, request use of the space they intend to have the party at, and comply with a list of other provisions regarding the actual party, the hosts, and the attendees.

For instance, parties must be confined to the pre-approved space, end by 1:30 a.m.,comply with public safety, follow very specific rules around alcohol’s presence and consumption, and may not exceed the space’s capacity, or exceed four hours in length..

Hosts in addition to registering themselves as party hosts and completing a host training, must remain sober throughout the party and agree to hold responsibility for: Ensuring the party remains under the max capacity, following all alcohol requirements, cleaning spaces within twelve hours of the event’s end, working with public safety, and upholding any relevant state and federal laws as well as College policies. Attendees must have received a personal invite to the party, and therefore know the host, and agree to follow all party policy guidelines as stated above.

While I understand the College’s desire to somewhat regulate gatherings on campus, especially in an attempt to secure student safety, I cannot believe that this policy is going to do anything except push students to make unsafe decisions in fear of getting in trouble with administration. Students are going to want to experience “traditional” college parties where they are in a dark room, dancing with two hundred strangers, and drinking out of red solo cups. If they cannot experience this safely and openly at Mount Holyoke, they are just going to find some other way to do so.

Let me explain further.

The first, most obvious option that students will take is to simply party somewhere else, either locally, or at one of the other Five Colleges. I have already heard students talking about beginning to host parties in the woods around the College or other local structures, like the Amherst Water Tower. Neither of these would be safer for students, or easier for authorities to access in case of emergency. And, while some students already go to other campuses for parties, I imagine the implementation of this policy will lead to a major uptick in this. This will like leading students to risk driving drunk or high since the PVTA’s schedule late at night and on weekends is largely unpredictable.

As Hattie Nichols ’27, a Mount Holyoke student with experience in harm reduction, said to me, “If you're going to a party in like, a campus that you're not familiar with, that's inherently a lot less safe.” This is only magnified when students are intoxicated. Recently, I had a friend badly break one of her legs at a Hampshire College party while being only slightly tipsy, because she was unfamiliar with their woods’ terrain. I can only imagine what sorts of things students will get into if they begin to go off-campus consistently for parties.

The second option, however, is that students will resort to holding parties in secret, acting recklessly to avoid being caught, and putting themselves and their friends in more danger than they would be at a normal MHC party. While the current Amnesty Policy at the College states no student will get in trouble for having or consuming substances should they call for help for themselves or their friends, it also states that students may still be held liable for other violations outside of substance use, such as property damage or, I imagine, not following the new Party Registration Policy.

Students are going to be less likely to call for help for themselves, their friends, or fellow students if they fear retribution for being at an unsanctioned party. This fear will only be magnified by the fact that the policy encourages students to police each other's partying, something that was made obvious to me in one of the frequently asked question answers on Student Life’s website. It says under, “What will enforcement look like?” that “a secondary goal of this policy is to encourage autonomy and advocacy among students in respect to their peers. Therefore, we hope that this policy also sets students up to intervene between one another in the event that additional steps need to be taken.”

Knowing that Student Life is actively encouraging other students to monitor me and my partying, I feel pressured not to draw any attention to myself, including by calling for help. I’m rather certain that other students will feel the same way.

When discussing this new policy, Nichols voiced the same concerns, stating, “ I feel like a big part of harm reduction is making sure that what you are trying to do is not going to inherently oppose what people are hoping to … do, and that you have to kind of work with it and, like, meet people where they are … [and] saying, ‘Let's do things in a safe space,’ right, or … in a place where we know that the people around us would help us. And by trying to not have parties here, you're taking that away from people.”

“It's so frustrating,” Nichols said, “It's kind of like when there's a big drug bust of somebody who's dealing a lot, then there's a bunch more overdoses, because everybody's going and getting different products, right? And so I'm like, thinking different things, but the same principle … we want to have fun.”

Cat McKenna ’28 contributed fact-checking

First year’s lack of experience with live music on campus

Photo by Marri Shaeffer '29

Pratt Music Hall

By Quinlan Cooke ’29

Staff Writer

As a first year student who has been on campus for less than two months, I can’t help but wonder if the lack of live music is something I should expect for the remainder of my four years. So far, there has been one live music performance on campus this semester: MHC Alt hosted three bands on Oct. 4. This performance was in Chapin Auditorium, and hosted by a student organization, not the College itself. As such, I believe that the College itself should host more live music events for the community and students.

Live music does wonders for communities. It brings people together as they flock to the sound. Music has also been widely known to engage the brain and be very stimulating. This means that music fits right in when it comes to a college setting. Mount Holyoke College is based in community, so much so that on the first page of the school’s website, there is a tab labeled “Build a Lasting Community.” This tab showcases how tight-knit the people here are, and is a focal point for prospective students. More live music on campus would only further help to strengthen this sense of community.

The College used to host mainstream artists for the annual spring concert, and tickets were available for students. A retroactively poor example of this would be when Kanye West performed in 2004. The only live music I have been privy to so far has been student musicians at Orientation-related events.

Music should be readily available for students to hear. There is always so much positivity and conversation drummed up when WMHC has a booth and DJson Skinner Green, so it is clear there is space for music here. There have been many thrift and jewelry pop-ups on Green, so why not more music? How mood-lifting would it be to walk by live music on your way to class? Or hear someone playing instruments and singing as you eat lunch on the Green? How nice does it feel to hear the song you queued on Rockbot while eating lunch with your friends? Or hearing a song none of you knew you all liked and having something new to bond over?

I always see fellow students walking around with earbuds in or headphones over their ears; if there was live music playing, students would not have to resort to their headphones. People do not talk to each other when they have headphones in, but if they were all listening to the same music right in front of them, there would be an invitation for conversation and community.

When you look up “music” on the Mount Holyoke College events calendar, the next event coming up is a tea with the music department, not a performance. When you search the same prompt on the CampusGroups app, there is only one event in December. Both of these events are indoors, and you would have to actively seek them out in order to be included. Music should also be something to stumble upon; You don’t find new favorite songs by searching for them, you find them by chance.

Music should be encouraged by the College, even if they have to bring in outside resources for it to be present for students. The live music we do have on campus should be more highly promoted by the school, and there should be a spotlight put on it. I feel that Skinner Green has a lot of potential as a casual music venue, even just in passing. Students deserve to reap the vast benefits of live music, especially on a campus where community is encouraged and so foundational.

Cat McKenna ’28 contributed fact-checking

MHC has a responsibility to make psychology classes more available

By Danny Alajawi ’28 

Staff Writer

The class registration process is stressful for everyone, but it’s definitely more stressful for some majors than others. Psychology classes are some of the hardest classes to get into at Mount Holyoke College, as it’s the most popular major here. Undoubtedly, the College should offer more psychology classes to make this process easier on students.

Psychology majors, particularly second semester first years and sophomores, struggle to get into the classes they want and or need for their major. Many students end up on waitlists, and have to plead their case to get into classes. It’s not fair that psychology students have to go through so much stress to try to get into the classes they need. It shouldn’t be normalized to have to beg professors to let you into classes. It’s a lot more than dignity that’s at stake, as the ability to get into required classes impacts a student’s ability to do a lot of things like study abroad, early graduation, double majoring. The impact of this is profoundly felt by Springies. Though these things are still possible with the psychology major, the stress and weight of these things on student’s minds becomes overwhelming, and is clearly a fault within the College’s system.

So, things are even more stressful when people are trying to explore 200 levels in psychology. Students may not realize they want to major in psychology until later on, which can make it really stressful to complete requirements when classes are so hard to get into. Even if someone is in a situation where they know exactly what they want to do, they aren’t able to knock requirements out of the way very quickly.

In writing this piece, I wanted to get the perspective of the psychology department, to see if they saw the same problems. So, I interviewed the Co-Chair of the Psychology department and a Mount Holyoke College alum, Professor K.C. Haydon ’00.

Haydon and I discussed issues surrounding people getting into classes and the way the system is set up. She talked to me about how she has worked closely with the registrar and knows they have a massive job at their hand. Haydon also spoke about the fact that we are dealing with a “limited resource environment,” as any college is, which makes it really difficult to fix these kinds of issues.

I’m a firm believer that the College should open more classes, and in talking about that with Haydon, it was clear that the department has considered that option. However, there are limitations. Haydon shared, “If we had more faculty, we would offer more courses, and we would have more seats. But that's not a viable solution for the College. We can't just keep adding faculty unlimited in an unlimited way, because each faculty member costs the College a certain amount of money. You know, if we add a faculty member to one department, the College can only afford so many at a time, and so that means another department isn't getting that. So those are very difficult decisions to make in terms of the allocation of faculty positions across departments.”

It was clear to see that the department nonetheless works really hard to meet the needs of the students. Haydon discussed the survey program: “The survey was a pilot program that we developed with the registrar and the provost office. The survey is for any student who is waitlisted in our 200 level area courses … If you show up on our waitlist, you get a ping from us. Our department coordinator, Janet [Crosby], sends out a QR code and a survey link to say, ‘Hey, you're waitlisted on this course. Fill out the survey.’ That gets populated to a Google form, and every registration period in spring and fall, the co-chairs and our department coordinator. So …[we] sit down and look through those by hand, person by person.”

As they do that, they consider each student’s circumstance to determine who they should move into classes based on need. The program is incredible because it demonstrates the care faculty has towards their students and the dedication they have to get people into the classes they need. Part of the problem, however, is that even though it’s very helpful in the long run, it doesn’t seem to reduce the stress of the students.

Another issue I have noticed this brings up is increased class sizes. Haydon explained that classes are expanded based on the needs of the students and gave an example: “Our course is capped at 28 but look, we have these nine people who really need this class this semester. We request from the registrar to expand that course to 38 and then we've moved those people with the highest need for the class into those nine seats.”

That’s not only understandable, but is helpful for so many students. However, it does change the dynamic of the class. When asking about the professor's perspective of this, if it was fair to the professor to have to take on more students, Haydon explained that “fair” is a tricky word. She shared that handling different class sizes is a skill that is developed by professors over time. But she also stated that “the more students we have in classes, the more recommendation letters we're asked to write, the more office hours we need to have, you know, and so it becomes kind of like, how do we deliver the same quality of experience on a larger scale? That's really challenging.”

I believe the larger class sizes have an impact on the students too. Haydon said for psych majors “the first chance [they] might get for a small class is the 300 levels,” which I find to be concerning. Mount Holyoke College is a small college and a big part of that attraction is small class size with 9:1 student to facility ratio. Of course, I would take a bigger psychology class over no psychology class any day, but should I have to? I don’t think so. More classes should be offered so more people can take them within smaller class sizes.

There's a financial aspect to consider too. The classes and the class sizes are reasons people chose to go to Mount Holyoke College College. They’re one of the things students are paying for, so I think it’s only fair that they get it.

When classes are desperately needed, new sections should be added and new instructors should be hired to take that on. People should be able to easily take the classes they need.

But it’s not just the very essential classes that are a problem. I talked to Haydon in detail about what people want to take. It’s clear at this point that people love to take 200-level psychology classes. Some need it, but some people want to explore or take something fun! The way I see it, psychology is a really expansive field of study. It makes sense that people would want to explore its different areas, and they should be encouraged to do so.

One of the ethical considerations we discussed was the idea of “super majors,” which are people who take more classes than required within the major. As a psychology student struggling to get into classes, I understand how that can be frustrating. I understand that frustration from the department, too, because one of the ways they’ve tried to navigate the problem is by minimizing requirements for the major, yet some people are still taking a lot of classes they don't need.

At the same time, I do think other, non-psychology students have a right to explore their interests to the extent they want. They struggled with this process earlier and if the system isn’t working, why should they have to stop themselves from taking a class that they're interested in now that they have the chance to register for it?

This expands to the people outside the major too. Some seniors in different majors chose to explore a psychology class or two because they find it interesting. As upsetting as it is to watch them take seats in a class they don’t need, while having friends in the psychology major be turned away, it’s not those seniors’ faults. Students have every right to explore their interests without feeling like they’re taking away opportunities from other people.

With that said, I want to make it clear that I don’t think it’s the psychology department’s fault. In speaking with Haydon, I gained a lot of understanding about the way the system works. I never blamed them for the issue, but now more than ever I see the way that the department truly cares. To me, that’s part of why this is such an issue. Not only is psychology incredibly fascinating, but the professors in the department are truly wonderful and are involved in incredibly fascinating research. I have been very lucky to have gotten to know some of the facilities in the psychology department and I have nothing but great things to say. So, of course people would want to take their classes.

The issue at hand is that the College needs to give more funding to the psychology department. I believe the department should be expanded to allow students to fulfill the major with less anxiety as well as to give students the opportunity to explore their interests. The funding the psychology department gets should reflect the need and interest of the students.

Cat McKenna ’28 contributed fact checking

Administration should stop holding Mountain Day on Friday

Graphic by Hale Whitney ’26

Abby Paull ’28

Staff Writer

“I hope the rapture doesn’t happen so we can still have a Mountain Day!” was the internal monologue of many Mount Holyoke students during the week of Sept. 21. Fortunately, the rapture did not happen that week, but Mountain Day did, on Friday, Sept. 26. The reception for this was overall poor. Some rejoiced that it had finally happened, while others were left confused.

Many students do not have class on Fridays, so many spend this day off campus or sleeping in and resting. Over the course of my day I heard many disappointed conversations. President Holley’s choice of holding Mountain Day on a Friday leaves out students who typically use Friday as a day off.

Mountain Day is a well-loved college tradition where every year, the president of the College cancels morning and early afternoon classes. On the day of, the clock tower’s bells ring a hundred times at 7 a.m., commencing Mountain Day. Students and faculty alike hike to the summit of Mount Holyoke, Joseph Allen Skinner State Park. Historically, Mountain Day has been held on a weekday, giving students a break from their classes.

However, by holding Mountain Day on a Friday, the majority of students who have few, if any classes that day, and who may have already had plans are left neglected.

The various issues associated with this year’s Mountain Day likely come from poor planning on the administration’s end. For example, the week of this year’s Mountain Day was also the week of ​​Rosh Hashanah, a Jewish holiday in celebration of the Jewish new year. The administration would have known about this prior to booking Skinner State Park for the week: Calendars exist for this reason.

There was also a torrential downpour the night before Mountain Day, Sept. 25. Despite this, administration still chose to hike the mountain. The planners of Mountain Day should have taken proper precaution after the rainfall. Rainfalls like this in Western Massachusetts are pretty awful mud-wise, which could have endangered students.

To plan Mountain Day better, College administration should have booked the mountain for a week where there are no major religious holidays or significant rain showers, both of which present limits and challenges to student participation.

The College puts an emphasis on community on Mountain Day. But how are we to have true community when most of the student body is off campus, attending to other matters? You are not giving students a break by putting Mountain Day on a Friday, because most students have already finished their academic week. Mountain Day should be held on a weekday — not a Friday — to give students a true break.

Mountain Day’s true purpose is meant to bring students out of their stress and remind them of their community. Mountain day can’t be perfect every year, but instead of holding it on the Friday after a major rain storm and religious holiday, the College should have eaten the cost and rebooked it for the next week. Friday is not a major academic day, so most people already have a break and use this time to go home or catch up on well-needed rest.

Either way, Mountain Day should not be on Friday.

Karishma Ramkarran ’27 contributed fact-checking.

Queer operas and us: Representation is important

Photo courtesy of Anna Goodman ’28

The all-Korean production of “Bare,” an American musical from the early 2000s, inside a performing arts center in the heart of Seoul, South Korea.

By Anna Goodman ’28

Staff Writer

Content warnings: homophobia, transphobia, queerphobia.

(This article uses “queer” extensively as it is how the author identifies; if this makes you uncomfortable, please do not read.)

It’s already past 6 p.m. and I’m standing at an intersection in the middle of Seoul, conspicuously blonde and conspicuously lost, when I admit to myself that this was a terrible idea. I’m searching for a performing arts center, and in it the all-Korean production of a show most people haven’t heard of.

“Bare” is an American musical from the early 2000s, and in many ways, it feels like it. Set at a Catholic boarding school in 1990s America — MHN’s entire queer readership is already wincing — it follows two boys, Jason and Peter, who are secretly lovers, in their final semester before college. It’s moving, it’s heartbreaking, it features a bewildering amount of Bible verses and Shakespeare quotes for a two-hour show, and, like most queer media of its time, its ending is undeniably tragic.

But why go? In an era with hundreds of hours of media at my fingertips that make it a point to emphasize queer joy, why am I sitting in this theater, hoping for a happy ending when I know there won’t be one? Thinking, “maybe it will be different this time?”

Well, the first time I listened to “Bare,” at the ripe old age of twelve, I had been teetering on the edge of telling my parents the truth for at least a year.

“911 Emergency” is a song written so long ago that its main hook is about putting change into a payphone and telling the operator to connect you. But its message — that your parents will love you anyway, and that you deserve to live as who you are — is evergreen. I replayed it more times than I can count. Because, finally, someone understood.

Peter picks up the phone. And so did I.

I soon began wondering if other people also felt this kind of deep, immediate emotional connection when seeing themselves for the first time. So I asked twelve people, six Mount Holyoke students, six not, ranging from ages 15 to 68, to name me queer media that meant something to them as a teenager or young adult.

The difference in their responses — which amounted to 34 separate pieces of media — is telling. The four non-students I asked, aged 36, 40, 53, and 68, took much longer to answer and had far less to choose from. Every one mentioned at least one work with what I’d consider a “tragic” ending, where at least half of the couple dies or where they do not end up together because of societal pressure.

By contrast, my fellow students, and the two other interviewees younger than me could point to any one of a number of shows, movies, musicals, songs, video games, et cetera, that fit their specific experiences. “Red White And Royal Blue.” “Heartstopper.” “Our Flag Means Death.” “Alien Stage.” “She-Ra.”

My mother, who’s roughly the same age as the writers of “Bare,” said, “When I was in high school and most of college [from 1985 - 1992] it was the time of the AIDS crisis … I don’t think the word ‘gay’ was said in any of my high school or college classrooms. If I try to think back I just picture, hazily, a few caricatures on TV and very serious news reports and films about people dying.”

“The queer media representation that came out of the AIDS crisis can be seen as a double-edged sword,” scholar Lillian Joy Myers says in an overview of the changes in queer media. “On one hand, the representation of this time was incredibly powerful and influential … [in describing] how this crisis shook the queer community…[yet] these depictions continued to perpetuate the queer trauma narratives of years past, maintaining a one-dimensional, negative view of queerness and the association between queerness and trauma.”

The effect growing up in this environment has on a queer person can’t be underestimated and is palpable throughout “Bare.” To this day, I come back to Jason’s lines at the end of Act 1 of: “Not all tales have happy endings …‘cause there's no such thing as heroes who are queer”. To this day I wonder how many children still grow up feeling the same way.

The answer: Too many.

But, hopefully, because of media like “Bare,” less.

Speaking to Playbill on the 15th anniversary of the show, “Bare” writer Jon Hartmere said, “I came out while writing ‘Bare.’ I didn't learn I was gay. But I learned it was okay.”

Hartmere’s characters may not have gotten their happy ending. But he helped create a world that meant that he could. He’s now openly gay, and still with his partner of nearly 20 years.

Hilariously, despite all of my preteen angst, neither my parents nor I remember the specifics of when I came out to them. It ended up being so unimportant in the grand scheme of things that the most any of us could remember was that I was probably still twelve.

And, despite the fact that I (thankfully) had what was probably the least eventful coming out in history, “Bare” has held a special place in my heart since. Not only as the capstone of my own journey, but as my reminder not to grow complacent.

In a way, it’s heartwarming that a show made almost thirty years ago can still connect with someone who is lucky enough to have never experienced what its protagonists — or its writers — have.

But it’s heartbreaking too. Because when I watch “Bare,” I don’t just see Peter and Jason. I see the little kids in each of my friends that aren’t quite healed from that feeling of growing up on their own. I see the kids of generations long gone — and far too recent — that never even had the chance to live the lives they wanted.

And then I see my friend Ella, who I often call my ‘honorary little sister.’ When I asked her about what it was like growing up seeing people like her on screen, she said, “Seeing so much casual queer representation at such a young age was amazing for me and my girlfriend … Nothing to make a huge deal about, just something that you are and can be happy with.”

Clearly, we have made progress. We have made change. But I can’t and won’t sit here and argue that we’ve made enough.

In 2024, GLAAD reported that the number of explicitly LGBTQ characters on television was 468, which, while an incredible change from thirty years ago, is still a decrease of over 100 characters since the year before, and less than 1 in 10 characters overall.

When you consider that over 1 in 5 of Gen Z identify as LGBTQ+ today, it’s clear that our media still lacks the numbers that would allow the diversity and humanity really present in our community.

As Myers puts it, in the same piece as above, “Queer characters and storylines are still underrepresented compared to … non-queer plots … Many of them still center white, cisgender, affluent, able-bodied, adult, and/or male characters… [there’s also] the continued use of stereotypes and the prevalence of queer tokenization.”

It's easy, especially for someone like me, to get so swept away in how far we’ve come that we neglect the fact that we still have so far to go. I have two very progressive parents who, despite the time they grew up in, have always made it clear that their acceptance does not come with an asterisk. I go to Mount Holyoke, a very queer-accepting college. I am publishing this in their newspaper. I do not need “Bare” in the same way my twelve year old self did.

But that’s okay, because someone else always does.

Back in Seoul, when I look to my left in the theater, I see something stuck between realization and fear in the eyes of the boy next to me. When I look to my right I see the palpable guilt in the faces of nearly every person old enough to have kids. When I look down at the stage, I see tears on the faces of every performer as the actors who play Peter and Jason hold each other one more time as the curtain closes.

So, I turn to that boy, with fear in his eyes, and we talk. And we keep talking. He’s 15. He walks me home and he complains about his math classes and I gripe about how terrible my Korean is.

I want to ask. I’m scared to ask.

It’s past midnight and I’m standing at an intersection in the middle of Seoul, when this boy tells me, quietly, half through a translator, half through hesitant English, about his best friend. When he stumbles over the words, and he just can’t say it. I hug him. I tell him I understand. That it’s going to be okay.

He’s just a kid. He should be allowed to just…live.

When my parents’ plane lands the next morning, I hug them harder than I have in a long time.

The truth is, I know how the story of “Bare” will end every time it starts, and still, every time, I think to myself: maybe it will be different. Maybe it’ll have a happy ending. And then I realize: Who says it can’t?

My mom grew up in a world that gave her stereotypes and fear; Ella is growing up in a world that gave her “She-Ra.” I’m not naive. I know it’s not easy. It’s a scary world out there, and it’s only getting scarier.

In just a few months, the Trump Administration has rolled back Biden’s protections of LGBTQ+ youth as a whole, made it even harder than it was before for trans youth to access gender-affirming care and surgery, cut federal funding for HIV research and treatment, and issued an executive order stating that that there are only two genders, based on “biological sex.”

They tried to erase us before, and they’re trying again.

But it will be different this time. Maybe not for Jason, or for Peter. But for Ella. For every friend who’s ever called me late at night on the edge of something they don’t understand or told me they were scared to go home. For the boy who hugged me in the middle of Seoul because he had no one else to tell.

For me and for you.

The people who came before us fought tooth and nail for us to be where we are today. And there is no way on this side of the grave that anyone is going to tell my children that “there’s no such thing as heroes who are queer.” Don’t let someone tell yours either. Call your mom. Hug your friends. Tell someone you love them.

Be brave. Be loud. And live.

Karishma Ramkarran ’27 contributed fact-checking.