Following months of negotiations with the Mount Holyoke College administration, and a lapse in contracted work, Facilities Management and Dining Services workers on campus have come to a consensus with the College. These recent agreements have resulted in across the board incremental wage increases during this fiscal year and over the rest of the three-year contractual period, according to a press release from the 32BJ chapter of the Service Employees International Union.
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.
The newest literary magazine at Mount Holyoke, the Mount Holyoke Review, published its first issue on Nov. 12. In celebration, the organization held a publishing party on the same day, during which the editors and founders of the Review spoke and some students read their work aloud.
“We are a place for Mount Holyoke students to submit their writing,” Morgan Sammut ’22, one of the fiction editors of the Review, said. “We mostly do creative works, so a lot of poetry, prose, and we have discussed if we would take essays. We haven’t gotten any of those yet, but we now have things to look forward to.”
By Rebecca Gagnon ’23
Staff Writer
Throughout the fall semester, Mount Holyoke created an array of virtual events in an effort to bring its community together online. One of the College’s new ways of creating community has been the formation of the Virtual Cohorts.
“Our Virtual Cohorts were really just intended to bring students together in virtual ways so they still felt that sense of community,” Associate Director of Students and Director of Residential Life Rachel Allidis said. “We do have data that shows students feel a greater sense of community in the Living Learning Communities than when they live in a residence hall.”
Some of the Virtual Cohorts’ themes are based on past LLCs, like transfer, first-year, art, outdoors and more. These are made to foster a greater sense of community in a time of need. There are also Virtual Cohorts based on students’ current geographical regions.
Lexy Lee ’23, the Virtual Community Ambassador for the arts cohort, shared the story of “someone who said, ‘What if we had pen pals but with artwork?’”
“Because there are people who are interested in all different types of artwork,” Lee explained, “we kind of just want to create a place where we can just make … a lot of different types of art and share.”
A Virtual Community Ambassador is similar to a Community Advisor in residential halls, in that they are the leaders of the different Virtual Cohorts. The VCAs were chosen out of the students who were already hired in the spring of 2020 to work for ResLife as CAs in the fall.
“They are able to do a lot of things your CA would do,” Alldis said. “They are having one-on-one conversations with the students, they are trying to bring together these smaller groups that are based on either what our LLCs are based on or regional ones. … I think it is off to a good start.”
Helen Roane ’23, the VCA of the Transfer Cohort, said, “I really wanted to be a part of trying to make the [Mount Holyoke] community still exist in the virtual setting, because it is a lot harder.”
“I know that it is really, really hard for people to find a community right now, especially for the people who are living at home,” Delaney Fowler ’21, the VCA of the Outdoor Adventure Cohort, said. “I know a lot of people are living either with friends in an apartment or some people on campus … and there is a community in both of those things in a way that there really isn’t when you are at home, so I really wanted to reach out to those people and try to help them feel some sense of community because it is such a big part of Mount Holyoke.”
Because of the transition to remote learning during the CA hiring process, there were a lot of uncertainties about the outcome of the application timeline. In the process of becoming a CA, one has to submit an application and complete both a group and individual interview. Normally, results would appear around February or March, but with the pandemic, the results took longer.
“We [went] through [the CA hiring process] and then the pandemic happened,” Alldis stated. “Then everyone left campus and we were a little delayed on letting people know who we wanted to hire and who we didn’t, but we sat down and we figured it out. We were then ready to make offers to people and then we were like, ‘Well, we want to offer you this position but we don’t know really what is going to happen.’”
“It was kind of stressful not knowing what was going on,” Lee said. “There was a period of time when I wasn’t really sure if I had the job anymore and it was a little hard. I understand that the people who were working in the offices, of course, had a lot of stress they were dealing with trying to figure out probably as well if we all had jobs still,” Lee added.
Even with all of the struggles, jobs were given and received and there is now a new community available to students if they so choose.
“I feel like the virtual community is really fun anyways but they will be more fun as more people want to join,” Roane said.
“I think that if people are interested in joining a cohort they absolutely should,” Fowler said. “None of it is mandatory — it is all sort of like you opted in. Even if you join it and you choose not to come that is fine, but I think that people shouldn’t be afraid to join just because they think they don’t have time because when you do have time, you can join. I think it might feel a little less isolating.”
The deadline for joining the Virtual Cohorts was Friday, Nov. 6, but there are other ways to stay involved in the campus community.
“We want the students to stay as connected as they want to stay,” Allidis said. “I really hope that they realize that Mount Holyoke is in their corner all the time. I know it doesn’t always feel that way but I wish that some people could sit in on some meetings that we have been to so they would know how much we talk about how this would impact the students and how hard it is to give them this positive experience. I just want them to know that we really are trying to do everything we can to make their lives easier and to provide the support [and the] resources that they need, and we miss them — so much.”
Photo by Ali Meizels ‘23
By Ansley Keane ’23
Staff Writer
At Mount Holyoke College, there is a particular emphasis on the idea of community. The College has a Community Center rather than a student center and Community Advisors rather than residential advisors. These sentiments are in line with the introduction of the new Office of Community and Belonging.
In the Oct. 16 edition of “The Dean’s Corner,” Vice President of Student Life and Dean of Students Marcella Runell Hall’s weekly newsletter, Hall announced the construction of a new Office of Community and Belonging within the Division of Student Life. In her email, Hall noted that the Office of Community and Belonging was created “in [an] effort to further Mount Holyoke’s commitment to building a greater sense of community and belonging for students.”
Associate Dean of Students for Community and Inclusion Latrina Denson and Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life Annette McDermott serve as co-directors of the Office of Community and Belonging. In a joint statement, Denson and McDermott explained that the Division of Student Life decided to create the Office of Community and Belonging during the summer of 2019. “During this time, we [began] working with an outside consultant to reimagine our work and conceptualize an integrated model for the Mount Holyoke College students,” the statement read.
The Office of Community and Belonging webpage states that “you can find your place at Mount Holyoke” and that creating a “beloved community” is a central goal of the office. Hall’s email and the office’s webpage both emphasize the importance of inclusivity and social justice on campus.
While the idea of a “beloved community” may seem relatively abstract at first, Denson and McDermott shared what it means to them. In a statement written by both deans, they explained that American author “bell hooks writes that a ‘beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.’”
They continued, “hooks’ understanding is one lens that gives us both inspiration and helps us pay attention to our campus engagement and student experience and see how we can encourage all of who you are to be — we want to celebrate and make space for the whole person who chooses Mount Holyoke College.”
The Office of Community and Belonging is acting on the idea of a “beloved community” by “provid[ing] programs that support social justice education, dialogue, celebration and identity development including intersectionality, as well as increasing understanding of the role that liberatory consciousness, religion, ethics and spirituality play when working toward reconciliation, racial healing and transformative justice,” according to the webpage. As co-directors, Denson and McDermott shared that they hope this office will mark Mount Holyoke as a place where “every student who enters the gates of MHC will see themselves as part of the community and over time [feel] a deep sense of belonging,” in a joint statement.
Denson shared that she is especially excited “about engaging more students of color affiliated with the cultural centers in spiritual identity development and the intersections of their cultural and spiritual identities.” She is also looking forward to “the opportunities to continue expanding the Intergroup Dialogue Program here at MHC in collaboration with not only our integrated areas, but Academic Affairs and our visiting lecturer, Molly Keehn.” Denson noted that her “role has been and will continue to be focused on social justice education and training, identity development, and the facilitation of dialogues across different experiences, beliefs, values, and identities. This role, as we reflect on the state of our global community and its impact on our diverse community, is more important than ever before.”
The Office of Community and Belonging is a collaboration between the Office of Community and Inclusion and the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life. Denson explained that “Community and Inclusion provide opportunities for identity exploration, education, and celebration.” Meanwhile, the Office of Community and Belonging will “[integrate] the model with Religious and Spiritual Life to place intentionality on an intersectional framework. It’s a frame that connects the curricular and co-curricular,” according to both deans. The Office of Community and Belonging will include “a frame where students will learn, grow, and feel like they matter,” Denson said. “We are not only creating an inclusive student community, but a community in which every single person can learn from each other, grow, and develop while feeling that they belong and matter,” she added.
Cultivating a lasting sense of inclusion and acceptance is not without its challenges, and students are a part of this work. The cultural centers, which are designed to serve as sanctuaries for and support students, the MoZone Peer Education Program, a student-led social justice education program and Intergroup Dialogue, a program that teaches students how to bridge cultural differences, are all part of the Office of Community and Belonging programming. While it is a very new office, it is already attempting to ensure that all students feel welcome at Mount Holyoke by providing a secure space for education and growth.
“The Office of Community and Belonging seeks to create a student culture of belonging throughout the campus that embraces inclusivity, diversity, and equity and celebrates all of who we are,” Denson and McDermott said in their shared statement. “Our programs and services are oriented toward meeting this goal of building a socially just community.”
“We want the students to know that Community and Belonging is a place where we not only encourage students to ask questions but to embrace their authentic self,” they continued. “A place where they do not have to leave one of their identities at the door, but bring their whole self, to practice, engage with [them] across differences to learn and grow.”
Graphic by Penelope Taylor ‘20
By Rebecca Gagnon ’23
Staff Writer
The Mount Holyoke Symphony Orchestra hosted its 10th annual Monster’s Ball as a virtual haunted castle on Oct. 24. The Monster’s Ball is a Halloween dance in which people dress in costume and dance to music played by the orchestra. This year, the virtual Monster’s Ball had about 60 participants.
“We are doing a very unusual Monster’s Ball this year where I have commissioned Lillie Rebecca McDonough [to compose],” Orchestra Director and Associate Professor of Music Tian Hui Ng said. McDonough is a film composer who got her start as a classical pianist. Ng explained that the students “set themselves up into groups and the groups came up with a concept that they would love to commission [McDonough] for.” Each of those groups then became a breakout room of the larger meeting, also representing the individual rooms in the virtual haunted castle.
In this unique Monster’s Ball, the orchestra started the dance, as they always have, with a waltz. Participants were encouraged to get up and dance together in the main Zoom room. After the song was finished, Elizabeth Ramirez, the stage manager, assigned every participant a haunted room and the audience would watch a performance by specific groups in the orchestra.
“We ended up coming [up] with … a constant rhythmic pulse of some sort, to bring intention to the piece, such as the clicking of the clock,” Sarah Day ’22, a music major and president of the Mount Holyoke Symphony Orchestra, said. “I guess from there it took a thematic turn, thinking about what other kinds of sounds we wanted present. It was more what we wanted to represent, which ended up being, ‘Let’s look at fall. What do you think of Halloween?’”
Day added, “You have the one side of warm, pumpkin spice lattes and good feelings versus the creepy, dark, magical, spooky Halloween.”
Day’s group became the Sugar, Spice, Creepy and Mortality room where the participants followed the storyline between good and evil. Some groups had a set storyline, while others used different techniques. One group, who called themselves the Witches, made ink dropping videos alongside experimental music. Another group did a live experimental performance by shining flashlights to create a haunting feel. A third performed traditional waltz music.
“I thought [the Monster’s Ball] was so cool and so interesting as a project,” McDonough said. “Depending on the brief, we really got to do different things together, and I could ask them questions about what sort of things they were hoping to play or how they wanted it to feel,” McDonough further explained the collaboration process with the students. “I took in all that information and got to work in my notation software, printed something out, gave it to them and then they basically all recorded at home separately.”
“If you can imagine,” Ng said, “the first week of the semester we had auditions, the second week we had the first meeting, the third week [McDonough] met us, to see who we are, the fourth week we decided on the instrumentation. The fifth week [McDonough] started writing and in the sixth week she delivered. In the seventh week we recorded and the eighth week, it was ready.”
“It was amazing seeing what happened when the music went back to them and they created these videos that were astonishing,” McDonough said. “It was so cool the way they picked up on moments in the music and then worked with it and did something cool. … I was very impressed with the care that they took with it and crafting their vision that really represented what they had in mind. I was blown away.”
“It has been an incredible journey of two months,” Day summarized. “It is hard to pack that much from both the composition and video side to the stage managing side to the board, to the first-years and everyone who keeps coming back. I think that is something we can be grateful for: the community that keeps coming together.”
Pictured above: Sarah Walker Amherst College Class of 2003
By Rebecca Gagnon ’23
Staff Writer
On Oct. 1, Amherst College hosted “Writing for TV,” an event that was extended to Mount Holyoke and Smith students. The panel, hosted on Zoom, consisted of Jenna Lamia, Amherst College ’98, Ashley Soto Paniagua, Amherst College ’11, Sarah Walker, Amherst College ’03 and Leila Cohan-Miccio, Smith College ’05. Carla Costa from the Loeb Center for Career Exploration and Planning at Amherst College served as the event’s host.
“Sarah Walker, who graduated from Amherst in 2003, actually reached out to me with the idea,” Costa said. “We had met before when I led the students on a career exploration trip to LA exploring the entertainment industry. Alums are often contacted by students and recent grads so they have a timely take on the questions and the concerns that people have about breaking into the industry.”
During the panel, students were able to ask the alums questions about what it takes to get one’s foot in the door of screenwriting. The advice applied not only to get a job writing scripts for television but also to writing-based jobs in general.
There were over 50 participants in the panel, including students from Amherst, Mount Holyoke and Smith colleges. Although the event was open to everyone, it was specifically aimed at people who are underrepresented in the industry, like women, LGBTQ+ students, students with disabilities and more.
“We have to take intentional steps,” Costa said, “to actually create change in the entertainment industry, and it starts at every level of professional development, including time as an undergraduate student.”
While creating this event during the summer, Walker was watching the impacts of the Black Lives Matter movement. “I saw that a bunch of my writer friends were reaching out on Twitter to read Black writers and making an effort to talk to underrepresented writers,” Walker said. “Amherst was the perfect specific, maybe even smaller but very specific place to me that I could make an impact,” Walker added
From this thought, Walker contacted Jenna Lamia and Leila Cohan-Miccio and asked them to be additional alums on the panel. Walker came to know Lamia and Cohan-Miccio because they all worked together on the show “Awkward.” Soon, Ashley Soto Paniagua, creator of the Raise the Percentage program, called Walker through Amherst connections.
The Raise the Percentage program was a week-long mentorship of coffee meet-and-greets between Black writers and TV writers. The program was created by Ashley Soto Paniagua, a woman of color who is now a writer for “The Proud Family” on Disney Plus, to help people who are currently underrepresented in the entertainment industry meet people who can help further their career. The name refers to the low number of Black writers on TV shows — 16 percent — compared to the number of white writers on TV shows.
Walker was one of the mentors in the Raise the Percentage program and was influenced to do something similar at Amherst. “[Paniagua] started that incredible Raise the Percentage program and I was like, if we could do a mini version of that at Amherst, why not?” Walker said.
“Entertainment is a very relationship-driven industry,” Costa said, “and for students who don’t come from backgrounds where there is already an embedded family network or other professional networks, it’s so important for them to be able to rely on alumni as the first kind of professional network.”
During the panel, the alums talked about making connections with an emphasis on kindness, because that kindness will help build a good reputation in the industry. Walker also talked a bit about how it is very rewarding but difficult work.
“When you start working in writers’ rooms, it is awesome. Usually, we work for 20 to 40 weeks, depending how long production is … so about a 30 week gig, awesome, but then, you are fully unemployed, like, it is not a vacation, you just don’t have a job and you don’t know when your next job is coming. That uncertainty and that waiting, not knowing what is coming next are really, really difficult,” Walker explained
However, Walker also explained the upsides of the field of work. “It is so much fun! You get paid to be creative and you get paid very well,” Walker said. “Being on a film set is one of my favorite things; it is such a rush. … It is very cool to see an episode you wrote on television.”
Costa and the alums stressed the importance of being prepared by doing all you can as an undergrad and having scripts and drafts ready.
“Go to the Career Development Center,” Costa said. “Talk to someone who can help you identify alumni you can connect with. Look at the tools and resources they have to support you in learning how to network. A frequently asked question yesterday [at the panel] was ‘What do I even ask?’ and those resources exist on the Career Development Center’s website.”
“You can definitely do it, you are fully capable of doing it,” Walker said. “You have to love it, you have to really want to do it. It is just a lot of trial and error in finding a community and finding people. Writing on your own time, whether it is a script or small pieces, submit to McSweeney’s. I tell everyone, ‘Submit to McSweeney’s, be prepared to be rejected a lot and learn how to deal with that. Try to keep confident and keep developing that voice.’”
Poster by Phoebe Murtagh ‘21
Staff Writer
On Sept. 21, a senate update was emailed to students that gave new information surrounding the structure of the Student Government Association and announcing the creation of District Senators. Typically, there is a Hall Senator to represent the residents of each residence hall in the SGA senate, but with many students living off campus this academic year, the SGA Executive Board established this new position. District Senators were created so off-campus students will continue to have representation in the SGA senate that relates directly to any concerns they have about their living arrangements. However, District Senators have not entirely replaced Hall Senators; students living on campus will still be represented by Hall Senators in addition to District Senators.
Phoebe Murtagh ’21 is the chair of halls on the senate team, which is part of the SGA Executive Board. As chair of halls, Murtagh oversees Hall Senators and District Senators in addition to communicating with the Office of Residential Life, organizing Hall and District Senator elections and a number of other duties. In her senate update to the Mount Holyoke student community, Murtagh wrote that “each District Senator will function as a Hall Senator would, representing their constituents’ concerns relating to their living spaces (wherever that may be).”
“We need at least a representative for off-campus students,” Murtagh explained. “That’s way too much work for one student.”
According to Chair of Senate Jane Kvederas ’22, the SGA Executive Board decided to create the District Senator role over the summer. “We were trying to figure out what Hall Senators would look like ... given [at least] half the population would be off campus,” Kvederas said.
The SGA Executive Board chose to create districts based on students’ last names rather than their geographic locations because, according to Murtagh, it was a clear and streamlined way to accomplish the task. Students’ last names are only one piece of data that the SGA Executive Board needed from the College. Using last names also allowed the creation of districts and allocation of District Senators to be as random as possible. Kvederas noted that ideas such as major and class year were considered as well, but the last names idea still had the least logistical issues.
Additionally, Murtagh made it clear that if the SGA had created districts based on students’ geographic locations, it was possible that certain districts could have more issues that needed attention than other districts. Murtagh gave the example that students living in cities might have fewer problems accessing the internet than students living in rural areas and, therefore, determining districts by last name was “a better way to make a fairly even distribution for the sake of the [District] Senators if we chose something that didn’t have that connection effect.” The SGA elected 12 District Senators and, according to Murtagh, there are around 200 people in each district.
While the District Senator position is a new role, it is similar to the roles of Hall, Organization and Class Board senators. “As with any Senator, the main responsibility is availability,” Murtagh said. Kvederas added, “We want our Senators to participate in senate meetings as much as possible” and that “we expect them to pretty much do as much as possible without stressing them out.”
The similarities between District Senators and Hall Senators appear to be by design. Murtagh shared that “it was important to me that students living off campus still have living-experience representation. … There have been a lot of issues that the administration hasn’t been able to predict ... because life is complicated.”
Murtagh also stressed that some Mount Holyoke students have faced challenges that might not be represented by the kinds of data that schools would normally consider. Therefore, it is even more important for Mount Holyoke students to have someone who can call attention to their living space concerns. On-campus students had the opportunity to vote for a Hall Senator for their residence hall and a District Senator for their district. Murtagh explained that “it was still really important that on a hall-to-hall level there was someone to contact,” and that on-campus students need Hall Senators in addition to District Senators because they have specific needs as students living in residence halls.
The establishment of District Senators in place of Hall Senators for off-campus students is another way Mount Holyoke has adapted to the challenges of the pandemic and a fully remote model. Kvedaras summarized the SGA’s goal for the District Senator role by noting, “We’re hoping that as many students as possible have the necessary support and coverage in terms of having their needs met and their concerns addressed in senate.”
The majority of Mount Holyoke students are living off campus this academic year, including first-years and transfer students who have yet to experience Mount Holyoke in person. Methods of finding community have evolved and look radically different from years past. Despite the online format, many Mount Holyoke clubs and organizations are still up and running.
