33-year-old New York Times bestselling author and activist Elizabeth Smart visited the Mount Holyoke community on April 29 as part of the College’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month programming. Smart is known for her role in establishing safety legislation to prevent abductions, such as the national Amber Alert system. Smart promotes the possibility of “life after tragedy.”
In the fall of 2020, fully remote learning and the new module system meant professors were uncertain about what challenges the semester would bring. Remote learning continued through the winter into the spring semester as we witnessed rising COVID-19 cases in the U.S. Mount Holyoke is now in its final fully remote module, and the College community is able to reflect on the remote year: the difficulties, successes and new practices that we will implement moving forward.
Mount Holyoke has created strict quarantine procedures for students arriving on campus this semester. Students are required to get tested for COVID-19 and quarantine until they receive a negative result. Still, after this test, students are expected to remain on campus for two full weeks. This isolation limits what students have access to, including necessary health products. With van trips to CVS and walks to the Village Commons prohibited, resources are limited to what students can find on campus. For menstruating students, access to sanitary products is essential to staying focused during classes and functioning normally.
As the holiday season continues and classes end, COVID-19 safety is especially important. While the holidays often mean traveling and spending time with loved ones, limiting these actions as much as possible will save lives. It’s important to remember that these constraints are temporary and, if all goes well, this will be the only holiday season not spent around friends and family.
Across departments, professors have expressed that they have been feeling stress, anxiety and confusion, but also immense sympathy, for their students this module. Cramming what should have been a semester’s worth of information and growth into seven weeks is a challenge on both sides of the teaching and learning experience.
On Nov. 13, 2019, the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation announced that the proposed expansion of deer hunting to Quabbin Park in Belchertown, Massachusetts would be cancelled. The press release cited a need of further research. The Pioneer Valley is no stranger to controversy around the expansion of hunting in the area. The argument remains as to whether the hunting of deer should be expanded to more land or less, and how necessary the hunting of deer is for the environment.
This summer, I started to feel a bit hypocritical about my environmental footprint. I was having immense anxiety about climate change and was preaching that action needs to be taken to stop it, but was still supporting fast fashion and throwing away three single-use plastic water bottles a day. It’s not just about personally producing less waste; it’s also about not supporting the companies that function to pollute and produce mass amounts of plastic.
