BY MARYA JUCEWICZ '17
This week Mount Holyoke News received a letter to the editor from Wayne Lela regarding the presence of “ignorant liberal bigots” who practice “sleazy discrimination” against conservative students and faculty on college campuses. In his letter, Lela urges students to welcome “intellectual diversity” to their campuses and suggests that colleges should institute affirmative action for the purpose of hiring conservative professors.
BY ARIANE GOTTLIEB '20
By now, everyone in Mount Holyoke has likely heard the story of professor Peter Rosnick. The math professor gave a short speech to his class about the importance of voting, and, though he offered no endorsement, every student understood that he supported Hillary Clinton. Unbeknownst to Rosnick, the speech was filmed and distributed to conservative outlets, causing massive backlash against the school on social media.
BY DANA KURZNER '19
For some, being disabled means having to be at a disadvantage for most of one’s life. Whether it be socially, emotionally or physically, people with disabilities can easily find daily tasks turned into seemingly insurmountable challenges. This is where the law and our school’s AccessAbility department, founded and headed by Deborah Cohen, who is leaving her role as the department’s director Oct. 28, steps in.
BY CHLOE JENSEN '20
As a cis woman at Mount Holyoke and throughout the world, my privileges compared to my transgender and non-binary peers are undeniable and obvious: I have never been misgendered, I have never entered a situation where I had ask myself if disclosing my gender was unsafe, I have never experienced dysphoria and despite all the misogyny I may face, I have always known, whether consciously or not, that the world will validate my gender and that I will never have to actively battle to prove otherwise
BY CHLOE JENSEN '20
As an avid Hillary Clinton supporter, watching one of my favorite women and biggest role models accept the Democratic nomination was absolutely inspiring. As happy and proud as I was to see Clinton accept her historic nomination, many of my friends (who are also liberal-minded millennials) did not feel the same way. Instead, they were inspired by Bernie Sanders and felt indifferent or perhaps even angry towards Clinton. Over these past few months, I have watched many of my friends and peers claim that while they are not excited about Clinton, they plan on voting for her, simply because she is ‘the lesser of two evils’ and ‘not as bad as Donald Trump.’
BY KATHERINE O’CALLAGHAN
The nailing of a condom machine to the wall of the student union corridor was one of the first controversies I encountered when I was working at a college newspaper in the mid to late 1990s (the ban on contraception in Ireland for anyone not married had only just been overturned).
BY FRANCIS MCKANE '17
Hillary Clinton is the bitter pill the Republican Party needs. The right lost the culture wars, and while they rail against the liberal media, the rest of the country keeps happily consuming it. Women are an enormous demographic and a winning vote in this country. The white men’s vote used to be enough to win national elections, but it isn’t anymore. Hillary Clinton will win the White House, in part thanks to her 19 point lead among women voters, but also to Donald’s Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric that has alienated many non-white voters.
BY HANNAH ROACH '17
I’m not a performer, and yet, a perfect stranger made me one when I was waiting in line at a field trip as a camp counselor. I had decided to dance and laugh with the campers I had been watching. The group of us were having fun; the sun was glaring down and my campers were drinking their weight in water, but we still managed to be silly. In the middle of a twirl, my eyes met a woman and her phone. She quickly shoved her phone in her pocket and looked away, trying to hide the fact that she had been recording me and my campers — a crime in the state of Massachusetts.
BY EMET MARWELL '18
I have admired and respected Abby Wambach since I began following women’s soccer around my freshman year of high school. At first, my admiration was due to her unparalleled ability to head a ball out of the air and straight to the back of a goal. Upon following her on social media such as Instagram and Facebook, I began to admire her for her character and activism as well. When she announced her retirement and my newsfeed on Facebook filled up with goodbye videos from and for Abby, I felt as if I knew her personally
BY SIDDHI SHAH '19
Like most American colleges, Mount Holyoke has that obligatory picture of a diverse group of students smiling warmly on the college brochures, standing as a testimony to the college’s diversity. Unlike most American colleges, however, at Mount Holyoke, these diverse groups of students don’t just exist on paper. In every class and student organization I have been a part of, there have been various students from different racial, ethnic, class, gender, religious and political backgrounds. At Mount Holyoke, diversity is not a myth.
BY NORA BARON '18
Mount Holyoke News dedicated its last issue to the rankings that Mount Holyoke College received from U.S. News & World Report. There were mixed opinions about what that meant and why it happened. So, I’m throwing in my two cents and writing about something that plagues much of the student body — laundry.
BY FRANCIS MCKANE '17
People who plan to vote for third party candidates, such as Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, are often told their votes are wasted, but not all votes are equal. Within the electoral college system, voters in swing states have a greater influence over the outcome of the election than voters in decided states. Decided states, such as New York, California, Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Alabama lean so heavily Democratic or Republican that they are considered uncompetitive. Swing states, such as Ohio, Florida and Virginia, are where candidates focus their energies instead.
BY SARAH CAVAR '20
Students, faculty, staff and visitors walking into the LITS atrium may have noticed a display table, on top of which rest piles of banned books. You may have read these books or you may not have. Either way, the books’ physical presence at our library, free for anyone to pick up and read, sends a powerful message: we have the right to read these books, in their original form. This is a right that is too often denied by censors, who think that they have the right to control the words we can read.
BY ODICHE NWABUIKWU '18
I’ll admit Snapchat and I got off to a rough start. I’m a more traditional social media user, which means that my experience is limited to Facebook (and that one time I tried Twitter three years ago). Plus, I hate having my picture taken, and my friends' pleas could not convince me to get an app that was crafted specifically for that purpose. It seemed that I would never use the app.
BY HANNAH ROACH '17
I love talking about my brothers. They are the kindest, most loving, most giving individuals I have ever known. I love bragging about them, speaking on their attributes, sharing stories of the funny things they’ve done or the loving moments we’ve shared. But, when I share these moments and memories, they are never greeted as I want them to be.