In just two weeks, from July 8-22, the number of new U.S. COVID-19 cases jumped from roughly 23,000 to over 63,000, in a trend mirroring July 2020. (These numbers go up when we consider infections among populations in prisons are unreported in many states). Yet, just by looking at the measures taken by state governments, you would think COVID-19 has been all but eradicated.
The movie “Eat Pray Love” directed by Ryan Murphy situates the viewer in India through quick shots of crowded streets. Bikes and rickshaws furiously honk at each other over the evening traffic. Children run across streets with sheer abandon, and vendors prepare food for the gathering crowds. M.I.A.’s “Boyz” plays in the back as Julia Roberts enters the scene in a cab, eyes reeling at the reckless driving and noise around her. As the cab slows down, she offers her hand to the bunch of children gathered by her window, guarded. A sense of exasperation permeates both her and the audience at the sight of this chaotic surrounding. India, as seen here, is an impenetrable and uncivilized mess.
American children are bombarded with messages from every angle telling them that there is an ideal way to eat and that being thin is both healthy and desirable. The education that children receive about nutrition from parents, schools and the media involves policing food choices, regulating exercise and monitoring weight, often via the inaccurate and misleading body mass index measurement. These practices place moral judgments on what children eat and what their bodies look like. While efforts from adults to teach the youth about nutrition are well-intentioned, they often end up laying the foundation for children to develop unhealthy relationships with food and their bodies.
I grew up in a very small Vermont town; at the time my high school had less than 700 students. I was a junior in February 2018, when Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Even in Vermont, I was scared to go to school some days, and that fear didn’t dissipate until I graduated over a year later.
For many, myself included, religion is deeply personal. What makes this type of faith so intimate is its promise for inclusivity and a sense of community. The history of religious faith can be traced back to the sacred texts we read today and the rituals and festivals we celebrate. Yet, this very faith has seemed to challenge its promise of longevity. The rapid decline in religious affiliation that started at the beginning of the last decade has sparked a conversation that addresses a simple question: What changed?
As an outsider, the film industry represents the most glamorous and optimistic parts of reality. We go to cinema halls to escape from our ordinary lives — we obsess over celebrities and we dream of living a life with such opulence. Movies have proven to be the only permanence in this world of constant change or turmoil. But with the immense power to influence an audience comes the burden of social responsibility.
While around 250 million college students consider the four walls of the classroom their second home, the pandemic has resulted in a displacement of the regular learning process. The establishment of online schooling comes with a new set of rules and features, many of which consist of learning strategies for navigating remote learning. However, a number of students around the world, including myself, have found themselves questioning the efficacy and relevance of a lot of the in-person features being replicated online.
Whether we are considering political leaders or high-powered businesswomen, we have to be allowed to speak our opinions without ridicule. Calling the practices of a woman in power into question is not an attack — it is not stating the belief that they are a bad person or that they are not inspirational. In fact, it is our civic duty to question the people we put or want to put in power, regardless of their gender.
Rihanna is a cultural icon of the 21st century. Her list of successes is practically limitless, garnering her credentials beyond the titles of singer and actress through her pursuits as a businesswoman, philanthropist and humanitarian. Rihanna has been named by The New York Times as one of the 100 most influential people in the world twice, in 2012 and 2018. In particular, her Savage X Fenty lingerie line, as well as Fenty Beauty, her cosmetics brand, have received notable recognition.
By Kate Murray ’22
Staff Writer
Content warning: This article contains discussion of gun violence and hate crimes.
In the wake of several mass shootings last month, including the anti-Asian hate crimes in the Atlanta area, conversations about gun violence are resurfacing in political and personal circles alike. Having witnessed an exorbitant number of deaths from mass shootings in the past few decades, many Americans are still scratching their heads and wondering why the United States can’t seem to adequately address gun violence. For me and many others, the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 was the point of no return. If a mass shooting resulting in the deaths of 20 small children wasn’t enough to persuade politicians that we need stricter gun laws, it’s difficult to fathom what will. This prompted me to do a deeper dive into the gun control debate in America, attempting to get to the root of why our country is so hesitant to embrace gun control measures and, as a result, witnesses significantly more gun-related deaths than most other wealthy nations. The answer is more complex than it appears.
My curiosity first led me to investigate our Second Amendment right to bear arms, including its historical context and how it has come to be a talking point of modern right-wing groups to justify a lack of gun control legislation. Just like I remembered learning in grade school, the newly independent Americans in the late 1700s wanted to insulate themselves from tyranny as much as possible after suffering decades of oppression under the British monarchy. They wanted to ensure that citizens had a right to protect themselves from foregin invaders who may try to seize their property. Thus, they wrote in the Constitution, “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
For more context on how the Second Amendment has been interpreted throughout history, I spoke to Mount Holyoke Visiting Lecturer in Politics Anna Daily, a political theorist and professor of the American Political Thought course. Daily explained that the “right to bear arms'' has been lauded by both the political Right and Left at different moments in history for different reasons. “Guns are, in part, an equalizing force,” she told me. Just like early Americans wanted to protect themselves against powerful outsiders, groups throughout history, like the Black Panther Party in the 1960s and ’70s, wanted the right to possess weapons as a means of self-defense against their oppressors. According to Daily, their rationale was, “We need arms because we have to take care of us. As long as [the police] have guns, we need to have them too.”
In thinking more about the right to bear arms, I began to see how the gun control debate is about much more than just weapons. At the heart of this conversation are fundamental questions about political rights: what they are and how they can be infringed upon. Those who claim that legislations such as universal background checks are unconstitutional believe that simply making it harder to purchase a firearm is a violation of their liberties. On the flip side, gun control advocates believe that they have the right to be protected from mass shooters who are unquestionably unfit to wield a deadly weapon.
I also noticed how you can’t analyze the issue of gun violence and the right to bear arms without acknowledging the ways they intersect with other topics like race and mental health. The Washington Post found that there is a strong correlation between race, gun ownership and a person’s beliefs about guns. White Americans are much more likely than other racial groups to own guns and oppose gun control legislation. Many of them view gun ownership as integral to their national identity and a necessary possession for a good citizen. As Dr. Alexandra Filindra of the University of Illinois at Chicago writes in “Narratives of White Male Citizenship and the American Debate Over Guns,” “Guns are potent political symbols, and many people, especially white Americans, view guns as a defining component of political membership.” I also believe this to be a manifestation of white protectionism — the belief that whites are a threatened, marginalized group and deserve protection. For many white citizens, supporting the right to bear arms may be their response to the growing racial and ethnic diversity of the country, which they view as a threat to their dominant racial caste position.
In recent decades, mental health has also been at the forefront of the gun control debate. Stigmatizing rhetoric has been a key strategy of right-wing groups in the wake of mass shootings, turning the conversation about gun control into an individual rather than institutional problem. When the gunman is young and white, they are typically labeled as a “troubled youth” plagued by mental illness. Not only is it extremely problematic to be weaponizing mental illness, but framing the issue of gun violence in this way allows politicians to remain unaccountable for these atrocities.
Daily agrees with this point, saying, “The tools we have access to influence our actions. They’re not separate relationships.” By deflecting the blame onto the individual and pathologizing people with mental illnesses, the root cause of gun violence — a lack of gun control regulations — is left unaddressed.
The U.S. has a troubling track record of inadequately responding to incidents of gun violence, including mass shootings and hate crimes. Many more innocent lives, close to 40,000 a year, will be lost as our politicians continue to debate this issue. The pervasiveness of gun violence cannot be adequately addressed without considering many intersecting factors, including American history, patriotic symbolism, racism and mental health stigma. Perhaps analyzing the issue in a more holistic way will result in substantive change.
This month marks one year since I, along with most members of the Mount Holyoke community, packed up my dorm and left campus due to COVID-19. Like most people, I have experienced grief, frustration, anger and instability since then. There have been countless days where I wake up with an acute, dull ache in my chest for no obvious reason until I remember, “Oh, right. Your life has been turned upside down because of a pandemic.”
In January 2021, the global community completed one full year with COVID-19. After months of harsh lockdowns in India and New Zealand and days of rising cases in the United Kingdom and the United States, 2021 is, hopefully, the light at the end of the tunnel. With 11 vaccines having been authorized across several countries and a record of 205 million of these vaccines being administered globally, the pandemic is slowly becoming history.
As the spring semester came around this January, colleges across the U.S. opened their campuses to students. These institutions each laid out their own plans to combat the coronavirus pandemic’s spread and usher in their students safely. However, many colleges have seen uncontrollable case numbers in just the first few weeks, reflecting their inadequate COVID-19 measures. In light of this, Mount Holyoke’s gradual reopening policies and COVID-19 measures have proven to be comparatively far more successful.
When winter break ended this year, many students were excited to come back to campus for the first time since it closed last spring. The campus had reopened, though students had to agree to some restrictions for the sake of the community’s health, such as staying within a 10-mile radius of campus, biweekly COVID-19 testing, mask-wearing, social distancing and certain dining hall restrictions. MHC announced most of these restrictions early and clarified them in messages sent to students and families. But one thing that was never advertised were the changes to the meal plan.
The word “populism” is often synonymous with dictatorial regimes and authoritarian states. Adolf Hitler used the ideology of populism to carry out various anti-Semitic operations in the early 20th century. Joseph Stalin used his communist foundation and the ideology of populism as a way to justify his purges of and distrust in the bourgeois class. Despite this violent history and regardless of the increased number of democracies in the 21st century, populism has only increased in influence.
In January 2021, a high court in India made a startling sexual assault ruling, declaring that groping without skin-to-skin contact does not constitute sexual assault. The case has garnered outrage across the country, drawing attention to the unresolved problem of sexual abuse and rape against women and minors. Instituting a ruling like this undermines the progress that activists have made regarding children’s and women’s right to safety in India and bolsters an already rampant culture of sexual crimes within the nation.
On Jan. 21, history was made in the Oval Office when Biden signed 17 executive actions on his first day as president. Landmark decisions include rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement and repealing the Trump administration’s “Muslim ban,” setting an optimistic tone for supporters of Biden’s presidency. Moreover, after a turbulent four years for Indigenous rights and environmental activists, the nomination of Rep. Deb Haaland as secretary of the interior, making her the first Native American Cabinet member, and former Secretary of State John Kerry as the special climate envoy were seen to be major wins for these overlooked communities. These voices and protests were also recognized by the Biden administration when the Keystone XL pipeline project was finally blocked in one of the executive orders.
January 31, 2021
To whom it may concern,
My name’s Mariam and I’m a first-year low-income student who is on campus this semester. While speaking with some other low-income students on campus these past few weeks, I realized that many of us have been struggling to acquire adequate personal protective equipment (i.e. disposable face masks, rubber gloves, etc.) and cleaning products (i.e. paper towels, disinfectant spray, etc.).
Last week, students received an email from Residential Life stating, “Cleaning materials will be provided for you in all bathrooms starting tomorrow, January 26, 2021 or you can purchase your own. If you need assistance purchasing materials, please consider accessing the Safety Net Fund.”
While the Safety Net Fund does present one point of access for these materials, there are still some things to consider.
MHC has a limited amount of Safety Net funding available each semester that could hypothetically go towards acquiring personal protective equipment. However, there are a couple of drawbacks that come with this.
First, many of the first-year, first-generation and low-income students I have spoken to are simply not aware that these funds are available to them, nor do they understand how to access them.
Secondly, students may hesitate to tap into this funding for things like personal protective equipment when they have more urgent needs to be met. One portion of the Safety Net Fund application form reads, “Funding is not guaranteed, and students may be awarded less than the full amount requested. Each funding application is evaluated on a case-by-case basis. The Safety Net funds are available on a first-come, first-served basis until the fund is depleted.”
Additionally, the most recent “Dean’s Corner” newsletter reiterated that.
From this, I understand that I would be able to reapply for Safety Net funding later on. I also understand that I am less likely to receive the amount that I need every additional time that I ask. As a result, I am anxious to request funding for my immediate needs (read: personal protective equipment), lest something financially significant come up later on in the semester. Other students might echo this sentiment. I currently know of students who are planning to request funds for things like winter gear while still struggling to locate personal protective equipment.
Finally, there will undoubtedly be a delay between the time it takes students to request Safety Net funding and the time it takes the funding to hit their hands. This translates to a longer amount of time during which students do not have adequate personal protective equipment on campus. Any barrier toward the distribution of these materials is not only an issue of access but a risk to the entire campus community in the face of a global pandemic.
However, there are a few potential solutions to this problem. Another MHC first-year with whom I recently spoke suggested that disposable face masks and/or other materials be made available for pick-up at the Carr Lab during testing. This is an excellent idea, as it would be an effective and low-effort way to make sure these materials quickly make it into the hands of those who need them most. One institution here in Massachusetts provided a friend of mine with a set of 50 disposable face masks (which lasted her almost the entire semester) upon her arrival. They did the same for all students who were on campus in the fall. If MHC could replicate this model, even if only on a smaller, need-based scale, it would make the campus safer for everyone.
We have brought a significant number of students back on campus during a pandemic. With that, we need to make sure that they have access to adequate resources to live and thrive here safely. If we are going to “open the gates,” then we must do it with caution.
Best,
Mariam Keita ’24
Author’s Note: An earlier version of this letter appeared in the form of an email that was sent out to members of SGA, FLIP, Health Services and Mount Holyoke admins.
2021 is shaping up to be an eventful year, but one unexpected development was the GameStop short squeeze. After finding out that gaming retailer GameStop had the most shorted — or bet against — stock on the market, a group of Reddit users organized themselves and individually bought GameStop stock en masse. They drove up the cost of stock, forcing hedge funds that had bet GameStop stock would decrease in value and had hence borrowed stock to sell at a low price. This practice is known as “short selling” — buying borrowed stock back at a much higher value than anticipated, which created the “squeeze.”
