Seniors were encouraged to invite a member of Mount Holyoke’s faculty or staff to join them in the rose garden behind Talcott Greenhouse on the evening of Friday, April 12, for the class of 2019’s first Faculty & Staff Appreciation event. With this event, the Class Board of 2019 kicked off the beginning of their end-of-senior-year events.
n the midst of the chaos at Hampshire College stands a 6-by-15-foot portrait of two symbolic Hampshire College activists: former professor James Baldwin and alum Cara Page. Both Baldwin and Page reflect values that Hampshire College has embodied such as community service and advocating for equal opportunity.
In the new Mount Holyoke Makerspace, sunlight shines through the large floor-to-ceiling windows from the lake outside and pools around alum Shani Mensing ’15. Mensing’s role within the newly constructed space is the Fimble Maker Innovation Lab Coordinator and Technical Specialist — but she was also there from the beginning, when the Makerspace was just a small room and a big idea.
When they arrived on campus in the fall of 2017, the members of the class of 2021 became the last to experience Mount Holyoke’s traditional dining arrangements before the renovated Dining Commons opened in Blanchard Hall in January 2018. Before this, Blanchard served several different purposes for the College.
BY KILLIAN DOBROTH
An older man in a blue overcoat and a gray vest stood by a translucent slot machine, ordering a drink. His face was spotted with brown freckles and wrinkles and he wore a pair of roundish glasses. “There’s an old adage,” said the man, John Tranghese of Chicopee. “It goes like this: ‘any port in a storm will do. This casino is our Pioneer Valley port in a storm.”
On Feb. 15 and 16, Mount Holyoke College hosted the annual Five College Philosophy Conference, sponsored by the philosophy department and the Philosophy Society. The first day consisted of a series of workshops geared towards philosophy students. On the second day, students presented their ideas on topics ranging from environmental ethics to just war theory.
BY SAACHI KHANDPUR ’22
Rachel Alldis announced in an email to the Mount Holyoke community on Feb. 5, 2019 that Residential Life is launching three new Living Learning Communities. These new additions contribute to a total of fourteen LLCs at Mount Holyoke, each based on a common interest or shared identity.
BY ANNAMARIE WIRE ’22, SAEE CHITALE ’22 AND SAM HERSH ’19
Student Government Association (SGA) Committees are student-run focus groups that work to solve problems to plan and to regulate systems that enable the smooth functioning of various aspects of the Mount Holyoke community. In honor of Committee Yourself Week, the Mount Holyoke News wanted to take the time to feature a few of the many committees that are now accepting new student members.
BY ANNAMARIE WIRE ’22
Mount Holyoke’s first chief diversity officer Kijua Sanders-McMurtry began her work with diversity at an early age. Raised in Pasadena, California, her parents were activists who belonged to an organization that was in part responsible for the founding of Kwanzaa. “I really feel like my parents being in this very radical organization, [that was] honestly misogynistic in the way it treated women, made me really question and interrogate [...] differences, culture and diversity,” she said.
