Last Wednesday, Feb. 17, marked Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent. Lent continues until Easter Sunday, and for many practicing Christians and especially Catholics, sacrifices are made for these 40 days in order to represent Jesus’ sacrifice when he spent 40 days praying and fasting in the desert. This year everyone has had to sacrifice many things due to the pandemic. Students, for one, have lost multiple aspects of their social and educational lives.
For college students, discovering how to navigate library resources effectively and efficiently is a crucial skill. Mount Holyoke College’s Library, Information and Technology Services has an abundance of research databases to utilize, but it can be difficult to know where to begin. LITS has an important resource available to any confused and overwhelmed Mount Holyoke student designed to make writing essays, working on a thesis or collecting data for research papers a little easier.
On Friday, Feb. 12, Five College Dance and Mount Holyoke College’s Division of Student Life hosted the final session of RACE AND...Dance, a six-session series that began in October 2020 and was designed to teach Five College students about a variety of forms of African diasporic dance and culture. RACE AND...Dance was curated by Five College Joint Lecturer of African Diasporic Dance Shakia Barron.
On Feb. 9, 2021, Professor Emeritus of Politics and Women Studies Thelma “Jean” Grossholtz died at the age of 91. But the impact her life had on Mount Holyoke and its community continues on. To commemorate Grossholtz, we at Mount Holyoke News have collected the stories of her life from Mount Holyoke community members.
The Mount Holyoke College Career Development Center recently added a new resource for students to make online connections within the alumni network: The Gates.
Associate Director of Digital Engagement of the Alumnae Association Danielle Lund described The Gates as “an online platform … [and] a virtual common space where alums and students can come together and connect.” Within The Gates, students can search for alums to connect with and filter by industry, location, major and other categories, including campus involvement, primary reunion class, whether or not the alum is a first-generation college student and more.
Inspired by a viewing of James Vanderbilt’s 2015 film “Truth,” Visiting Senior Lecturer in English Todd Brewster’s Introduction to Journalism class welcomed a surprise guest: American journalist and producer Mary Mapes. The film, set in 2004, follows Mapes, producer of CBS News program “60 minutes,” and its anchor, Dan Rather, as they cover one of their biggest stories: an investigation of then-President George W. Bush’s history of military service and how he avoided being drafted into Vietnam using his father’s connections.
As the struggle to diversify beauty standards continues, a new focus on body image has developed, drawing public attention to the societal struggles of plus-sized individuals.
Movements devoted to the acceptance of different body types have reached points of contention as their messages diverged, creating two entirely separate campaigns with different goals. According to Very Well Mind, the mainstream body image movement, known as “body positivity,” was meant to emphasize the self-acceptance of your body regardless of external influences like the media and public opinion. However, many, including Phoenix Georgiades ’22, feel that body positivity does not go far enough in advocating for plus-sized people and has veered away from helping individuals with diverse body types.
Just as COVID-19 has changed how we attend college in 2021, the Spanish influenza changed the lives of Mount Holyoke students in 1918. The stories shared by those students may offer some wisdom and perspective to today’s Mount Holyoke community since they suffered from similar struggles and, at times, extreme sickness. The epidemic of 1918 was documented in the Mount Holyoke News, where students freely shared their experiences and opinions about the situation.
Ten months after Mount Holyoke’s campus was forced closed due to COVID-19, many students have been able to return to the College.
Though a small number of students lived on campus during the fall of 2020, nearly 800 students are now physically at Mount Holyoke. For some new students, this is the first time they have ever seen the campus in person. For others, it is their final semester.
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.
Since March of this year, uncertainty about the future has become more inescapable than ever. However, in late October, Mount Holyoke students began to gain some clarity on what the spring 2021 semester could look like. On Oct. 28, Mount Holyoke College President Sonya Stephens announced in a letter to the community that up to 60 percent of the student body would be invited to return to campus — or arrive for the first time — for the spring semester, slated to begin in January 2021.
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.
Under normal circumstances, Mount Holyoke students are required to purchase a full on-campus dining plan each year. So when the campus closed in March, students like Naomi Brown ’21 were unexpectedly left with extra household responsibilities and no ready-made meals. Without the options of running to the dining hall between classes or visiting Late Night, Brown has spent the past six months cooking for herself, her family and her roommates. Her dishes, often inspired by music and memories, have even made an appearance on social media. Brown’s self-titled “Platterstagram” (@platterstagram on Instagram) showcases her homemade meals, inventive recipes and themed plates from inside quarantine.
Have you been listening to the same playlist or album over and over? Watching and rewatching the same TV show? Playing the same video game you’ve beaten before? We’re all kind of stuck. The tangible stuckness of being in our homes with the same people all day may be impacting the types of media we are interested in consuming. When life is unclear, we tend to lean toward and stick to what makes us comfortable. Even though listening to Mitski every night is making me sad, I do it because I still know all the words, and it’s familiar to me. When we end up stuck, we can start to feel helpless and depressed.
“One day, I’m going to just log off of Zoom and be in my bedroom and be alone,” Claire Glover ’21 said. “There's nothing to mark it being over at all.”
Glover is one of a handful of students graduating early from Mount Holyoke College this December rather than finishing their college experience after the traditional spring term. Students can apply to graduate in the fall if they have completed their major and distribution requirements and have enough credits by the end of the term. According to the Office of the Registrar, there are 78 undergraduate students and one graduate student scheduled to complete degree requirements midyear, a 2 percent uptick from previous years.
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.”
I’m writing this week’s edition with a bit of caution — it may be too emotional, too nostalgic. If, like me, you perform better in structures and routines, online classes aren’t ideal. Joining Zoom meetings or Discord channels for office hours just doesn’t cut it for the conversations that happen in professors’ actual offices flooded with books.
Art has been a feature of Skylar Hou ’22’s life since they were a child.
“Drawing has been such an important part of my life since I could remember,” Hou said. “I got my first digital camera when I was 8.”
For Hou, art has personal meaning. “Mostly, I draw and take pictures just to make memories last,” they said. “I have a sketchbook with me all the time so that I [can] draw things whenever I want. Sometimes it is a scene that makes me feel happy, sometimes it’s just a tiny random object, like a soda can. In the past two years at Mount Holyoke, I [have taken] so many pictures and I created a scrapbook and lots of art projects of the memories.”
