This week’s issue
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During his speech at the opening ceremony of “Inclusion in Action” on April 10, Anthony Jack, author of “The Privileged Poor,” recalled a quote from James Baldwin: “I love America more than any other country in the world,” he said, “and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
In January 2019, Daniel Hect was hired as the campus police chief for Smith and Mount Holyoke. After students from both schools saw the anti-immigrant, pro-Trump tweets he had liked and retweeted, they spoke out against the newly appointed Hect.
Opinions
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On April 18, an event called “Asian International Students Speaking Up” took place at Unity House. It was hosted by JSA and CSA, aiming to give all Asian International students a safe place to share the troubling situations or questions they have while studying in a foreign country that is culturally different from their homeland. Dean Marianne Yoshioka from Smith College School for Social Work was invited as a guest speaker.
In the dark, stressful times of finals season, there was a light. We call that light “Pet-A-Pet Day.” Pet-A-Pet Day is a beacon of hope amidst a shore of dread. Will we pass that test? How will we finish that paper? Are we going to get that summer job? For that precious hour, though, our minds can be free of such pressure, in favor of far more pressing questions like, “Which of these animals is the cutest?” Is Pet-A-Pet Day truly all puppies and kittens, though? I think that question is worth pursuing.
The polls are showing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the preference for democratic candidates lies with affable old white men. While it’s true that as long as Donald Trump is in the White House, the Democrats have a fair reason to want to “play it safe” with candidates who are palatable, we should try to unpack why palatable in the twenty-first century is still old, white men.
Features
Featured
Spring has finally arrived in the 413. Coincidentally, it has also arrived in the 603 where my friend Ryan is at Dartmouth. She and I exchange letters every now and then, discussing weird elitist traditions of the east coast, physics, relationships and sex. Ryan and I entered college last year basically as opposites. She, a gay woman closed off to relationships with men, and I, a straight woman unsure of relationships with women.
A few weeks ago, in Acting Studio 2 of the Mendenhall Center for the Performing Arts, a one-night performance was staged for a small but attentive audience. Emma O’Neill-Dietel ’21 describes her show “What?” as a solo, memoir-based performance about her experience growing up with hearing loss.
“I think people should learn a foreign language, period,” Professor Evgeny Dengub said when I ask him why students should study Russian at Smith. “Whether it’s Russian, French, Italian, Japanese or Arabic, it’s good for your brain. It’s good for your overall development and intellectual growth. It’s good for your soul.”
Arts
Featured
“Wild Nights With Emily,” a dramatization of the passionate and untold love life of American poetry icon Emily Dickinson, premieres in Amherst this spring at local theaters. Initially produced as a play in 1999, the film revels in Dickinson’s unacknowledged status as an infamous gay woman
While his office seems comfortable, with stacks of papers and piles of books customary to the English professor, Professor Michael Thurston noted: “I write everywhere except [in] my office. I do teaching stuff here, meet with students here and do college stuff here, but this is a place where I have never been able to write a decent sentence, either of academic prose or of fiction.”
Sports
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In an increasingly polarizing world nothing is as it seems and the fight for ideals bleeds into all aspects of life. A political statement can come from anywhere or anyone and the basketball court can be a platform for change.