Mount Holyoke News — Nov. 19, 2021

Mount Holyoke News AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SINCE 1917 MOUNTHOLYOKENEWS.COM

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2021

College reinstates swipe access to Smith College eliminates residence halls with limited hours loans for undergraduates

Photo by Liz Lewis ’22 Mount Holyoke College recently granted students swipe access to every campus residence hall.

BY GILLIAN PETERARCA ’23 STAFF WRITER

“I’m glad that the Mount Holyoke administration has decided to give students access to all residential halls. … The common spaces are at the heart of the Mount Holyoke experience, so it is important students have access to them,” Lauren Gruen ’23 said. As of Nov. 9, residential students have swipe access to all residential buildings from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. on Friday, 10 a.m. to 1 a.m. on Saturday and 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Sunday. According to an email sent to the campus community by Residential Life on Nov. 9, the decision was made based on the results from the Guest Policy Survey that was sent out in October.

“One thing was very clear from the survey, residential students would like to have more access to other residence halls,” Residential Life wrote in the email. Despite student advocacy for access to other residential halls, the new policy has received mixed reviews from some students. “There is no logic behind the hour limit as a means of mitigating COVID[-19] risk. It is simply to control students, which is not necessary because we’re all adults and can make our own decisions about our movement on our own campus,” Eliana Peretz ’22 said. Though students cannot enter residential halls during the restricted hours alone, they are still permitted to enter during those hours if they are accompanied by a resident of that hall. “I think it is a good decision and

… I think we should have [had] that access from the very beginning of this semester. Not having access didn’t prevent us from entering other dorms because we can always ask a friend or wait for some residents to open the door, so I think that policy was meaningless,” Katherine Gong ’23 said. Hiba Nawaid ’23 agreed with Gong.“It is definitely convenient for hanging out with friends,” Nawaid said. “Even before this, people were letting their friends into their dorms.” Gruen said that being able to access other dorms helped her mental health. “I find baking is excellent for my mental health, so having access to an oven now is an excellent change,” Gruen said. For some, being granted swipe access again brings questions of potential changes to the guest policy next semester. “I think [the change is] a good thing. It gives us a little more freedom on campus than we had earlier in the semester. I think it’s a step towards a change in the guest policy, but I definitely think there’s a way we could implement the limited hours in [residential] halls for off campus guests as long as they provide proof of vaccination or a negative COVID[-19] test at least 72 hours before arrival,” Sarah Kossel ’23 said. According to Residential Life, the College is continuing to review the guest policy for the spring semester.

Kijua Sanders-McMurtry speaks at senate

Photo by Ali Meizels ’23 Smith College announced that they will replace loans with grants for undergraduates in fall 2022.

BY KATIE GOSS ’23 BUSINESS MANAGER & NEWS EDITOR

President of Smith College Kathleen McCartney announced on Oct. 22 that, starting in the fall 2022 semester, Smith will replace loans for undergraduate financial aid packages with grants. This upcoming change will be in place for all future students, as well as current firstyears, sophomores and juniors. Additionally starting in the same semester, new undergraduate students may qualify for an additional $1,000 in their financial aid package, called a “one-time start-up grant,” if their family contribution is less than $7,000. This is estimated to apply to about 21 percent of students, according to the letter sent out by McCartney to the College community. Seniors graduating in January or May of 2022 who receive need-based institutional grants can apply for a $2,000 “launch grant” to “help them

with the costs of transitioning to life after college,” according to McCartney’s letter to the community. By eliminating these loans, the College is working towards their goal to make education available to all students, regardless of their financial status. Additionally, the letter stated that because Black and Latine students, on average across the country, graduate college with more debt than their peers, this new initiative will work towards the College’s commitment to racial justice and equality. This decision is expected to help the College seek out the best students to enroll, regardless of financial status or resources. It will also help future alums graduate with either no debt or greatly reduced debt. “I was the first in my family to attend college, and I know from my own experience that financial aid changes lives,” McCartney said in the letter. “Higher education should be a right, not a privilege.”

Employee Emergency Fund passes one year of aiding staff and faculty financially BY TARA MONASTESSE ’25 STAFF WRITER

Photo by Carmen Mickelson ’24 Kijua Sanders-McMurtry, vice president for equity and inclusion, spoke at senate about a survey that was sent out to students about race on campus.

BY ELLA WHITE ’22 NEWS EDITOR

Vice President for Equity and Inclusion Kijua Sanders-McMurtry spoke to the SGA senate at its Nov. 16 session about an upcoming survey to be shared with students by the College. The National Assessment of Collegiate Campus Climates will ask questions about students’ experiences with race on campus, including in housing, classes and social relationships. The survey was created by the University of Southern California’s Race and Equity Center and is used nationally by various colleges. Sanders-McMurtry said the survey would “make key recommendations to [the College] about what … [the] institution can be doing to improve the climate at [Mount Holyoke].” “They can take this data from across the nation … look at how college students say they experience race on campus and provide that important data back to us,” Sanders McMurtry said. Sanders-McMurtry said the College chose the survey based on its caliber. “We could have developed our own survey,” she said. “But we felt very strongly that we should join with an external agency — one that is an expert in this area.” SGA Vice President Ananya Singh ’22 said the survey “might be

the stepping block that we need” to promote change in the experiences of students of color on campus. The survey will be released for students to complete anonymously this year and will remain open for a month. The College plans to survey staff in 2022 and faculty the following year. Sanders-McMurtry also stated that this survey is important for diversifying faculty and staff on campus. “If we want to diversify our staff and bring in more people of color, it’s important for us to ask questions of the people who are here now, so we can figure out how to improve conditions,” Sanders-McMurtry said. “We can’t keep recruiting and have people not able to share with us those kinds of details.” As the senate transitioned to announcements, SGA limited floor discussion to 30 minutes to reserve time for committees to meet and draft petitions. Among these was the announcement that Kendall Sports and Dance Complex will not transition to 24hour operations, as some senators had requested. EJ Jankovic ’23, chair of halls, credits this to concerns about staffing and energy wastage. From Nov. 29 to Dec. 4, SGA will host “Spirit Week,” which will include events such as “Pajama Day” and “Wacky Wednesday.” Spirit Week will conclude with “Small

Business Saturday,” during which senate will host various small businesses. SGA stressed that this was an opportunity for students to purchase locally and bond with each other. Autumn Larsen ’25, senator for North Creighton, noted that the speed limit sign by the campus greenhouse is differently colored than normal speed limit signage, making it difficult to see. Jankovic stated that Facilities Management was working to fix this problem. Larsen expressed that they hoped the College would stop using leaf blowers on campus, particularly because leaves decompose naturally. Kim Kindred FP ’24, senator for the Western Equestrian Team, argued that the campus grounds are considered a botanical garden, and should be thought of as such when considering the role of leaf blowers on campus. A delegate from the Model UN team noted that SGA limits conference fees due to COVID-19 guidelines, despite the College policy allowing participation in off campus conferences once again. A member of the SGA business office said the office may be able to work around these constraints. Senate will conduct its final meeting of the semester on Nov. 30, before adjourning until the spring.

CORRECTION On Nov. 12, Mount Holyoke News published an article titled “Mount Holyoke commits to land acknowledgment; repatriation.” In this article, we identified the group who proposed the land acknowledgment to the College as the Indigenous Cultural Student Association. The correct name of this group is the Indigenous Students Cultural Association, also known as ISCA.

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A&E: ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’ reactions

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In an email sent out on Oct. 27, the College announced that the Employee Emergency Fund has provided 163 employees with grants since its formal establishment in Oct. 2020. The fund, which is accessible to all regular full-time and part-time employees at the College, provides financial assistance grants in times of economic distress that can be requested once every fiscal year. A total of $81,500 has been distributed to employees since the fund’s inception, according to a report from the Department of Human Resources. After requesting funds through an online application available through the Department of Human Resources, the approved employees will receive $500. The application mandates documentation of how the funds will be used Eligible expenses include: “food, rent/mortgage, health care, dependent care and home/car repairs.” The fund will also consider additional expenses if they are provided. According to the College, approximately 86 percent of approved applications have some relation to the ongoing pandemic. The current fiscal year, FY22, began with a total of 247 grants available for employees. So far, 28 have been awarded. 86 percent of applicants who sought funds for FY22 also applied for FY21. The fund was initially created using credit provided to the College by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. The CARES Act provides an employee retention credit to eligible employers who pay qualified wages, in order to retain employees who may have had their hours reduced or been furloughed. Over

S&E: Indigenous environmental protections

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half of the employees who applied for EEF support reported being affected by these circumstances since the onset of the pandemic. “A lot of the burden of COVID[-19] was carried by staff, particularly furloughed staff,” Chair of History Desmond Fitz-Gibbon said. “The faculty made lots of sacrifices as well. For example, our retirement benefits were frozen for the year, along with the staff.” Fitz-Gibbon is the vice president of MHC’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, an organization he describes as a “vehicle for supporting faculty interests.” While the College’s AAUP chapter has not adopted a specific stance on the fund itself, faculty meeting statements produced by the chapter over the course of the pandemic have advocated strongly for increased financial support of College employees amid the uncertainty of the pandemic. The longevity of the fund is uncertain, as contributions to budget allocation beyond the initial credit are dependent upon donations from MHC community members. To date, approximately $12,000 has been contributed to the fund via community donation. The 28 grants of $500 provided so far this fiscal year have already exceeded that total. “It’s my anticipation that we will review the fund on an annual basis to see if gifts are sufficient to maintain it or if additional college funding will be needed,” Shannon Gurek, vice president for finance and administration, said. “The College added $100,000 to the fund this fiscal year and gifts have totaled almost $12,000. I think we will need two to three years of experience with the fund to learn what the ongoing funding CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

SPORTS: Fencing competes in Big One

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FEATURES

November 19, 2021

. Mount Holyoke News

Mount Holyoke College celebrates Indigenous Peoples Month

Photo by Jenny Yu ’24 The Zowie Banteah Cultural Center shares a building with the Eliana Ortega Cultural Center.

JESSE HAUSKNECHT-BROWN ’25 FEATURES EDITOR

Content warning: this article contains discussion of anti-Indigenous violence. From screening films to hosting Indigenous speakers from local tribes, the Zowie Banteah Cultural Center is prepared to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Month this November. Mount Holyoke College, which is located on the ancestral land of the Nonotuck people, is working to promote and honor these events. The Zowie Banteah Cultural Center supports Native and Indigenous students on campus throughout the year. “The [Zowie Banteah Cultural] Center is really a cultural space … [and] there’s also a real intentionality around having hours for students to collect and gather and spend time with each other,” Kijua Sanders-McMurtry, Vice President for Equity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer, said. The Zowie Banteah Cultural Center opened in 1995 under the

name Native Spirit. In 1997, it was renamed after Zowie Banteah ’96, who helped found the center. It is located in the same building as the Eliana Ortega Cultural Center for Latine students, at 4 Dunlap Place, near the Kendall Sports and Dance Complex. The center is moving locations next semester. However, the new location has not yet been decided. Mount Holyoke College occupies land that neighboring Indigenous tribes are still connected to. The College’s written land acknowledgment recognizes “the Nipmuc and the Wampanoag to the East, the Mohegan and Pequot to the South, the Mohican to the West and the Abenaki to the North.” Sanders-McMurtry emphasized that it is important for people to recognize that there are still Native people living in the area. “We got push back … when we put out the land acknowledgment policy … [that] some of our language made it seem like Native American people were removed, and they no longer exist,” Sanders-McMurtry explained. “Somebody wrote back and said, ‘Do not perpetuate this.’”

The Massachusetts government stole Native people’s land by passing the Massachusetts Indian Enfranchisement Act of 1869. In June 1869, the Massachusetts legislature declared “citizens of the Commonwealth … entitled to all the rights, privileges and immunities, and subject to all the duties and liabilities” of citizenship. This meant that, while Native people were granted citizenship, their land was made available for purchase by non-Native people. In the article, “The Massachusetts Indian Enfranchisement Act: Ethnic Contest in Historical Context, 1849-1869,” authors Ann Marie Plane and Gregory Button note the irony of this act. When Native Americans were granted citizenship in Massachusetts, they were also forced to give up a part of their identity. According to an article called “Sanctioned Theft: Tribal Land Loss in Massachusetts” from the Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine, during the late 18th century, white English settlers served as guardians of native land, supposedly in an attempt to protect and help Indigenous people navigate land negotiations. However, the guardian system didn’t allow Native tribes to manage their own affairs and led to more abuse and corruption at the hands of white colonizers. In 1833, the Mashpee people, presently known as the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, led a nonviolent uprising against the guardian system, according to an article written by Donald Nielsen in 1985 titled “The Mashpee Indian Revolt of 1833.” In 1834, the Legislative Joint Special Committee on the Mashpee Indians granted the Mashpee people the right to govern themselves without white guardians. This was a relatively rare success for Native people in the mid-1800s; other Indigenous peoples in Massachusetts still had

guardians, according to Nielsen’s article. Throughout its history, the College has made severe missteps regarding their treatment of Indigenous communities. The College only recently repatriated the remains of an Indigenous person which had been in their possession until this fall. “The College, at one point, had the remains of an Indigenous person that were really inappropriately given to the College back in 1918. Those remains were then really problematically treated all throughout the time they were at Mount Holyoke,” Sanders-McMurtry said. According to the National Park Service, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, passed in 1990, mandated that all institutions that receive federal funding, including colleges, universities, museums, state agencies and local governments, must return the remains of Indigenous people and any cultural artifacts to those who claim them. Federal institutions consult with linear descendants, local tribes or other Indigenous organizations to return human remains or cultural artifacts to the appropriate place. “There was a lot of misuse of Indigenous peoples’ remains and formerly enslaved African peoples’ remains,” Sanders-McMurtry said. “The goal of the NAGPRA legislation is to have tribes be able to reclaim the ancestral remains of their people that are at universities and colleges.” After holding the Indigenous person’s remains for over a century, Mount Holyoke, through a six year process, returned the remains to the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. According to Sanders-McMurtry, the remains were repatriated to the Stockbridge-Munsee with assistance from the Nipmuc Nation in October

2021. On Tuesday, Nov. 30, at 6:30 p.m., Larry Spotted Crow Mann, an activist, storyteller, musician and member of the Nipmuc Nation, will give the College’s Indigenous Heritage Month keynote talk entitled, “We Are Still Here, We Are the Story and We Are the Land: Honoring the Past, Present and Future of the Indigenous People of Western Massachusetts.” Before the talk, which will take place in Gamble Auditorium, there will be a private memorial for Native students to honor the Indigenous ancestor whose remains were recently returned to the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. “Then we’ll have more of a public acknowledgment and atonement for this past harm to Indigenous communities that Mount Holyoke participated in,” Sanders-McMurtry explained. When it comes to supporting Native students, Sanders-McMurtry, while recognizing that she herself is not Native American, emphasized the importance of “not treat[ing] anyone like a poster child.” “I think the first thing that students who are non-Native should do [is] say, ‘What don’t I know [that] I wish I knew?’ and then seek out resources,” Sanders-McMurtry remarked. Sanders-McMurtry has a list of things they want to do in the future to support Native students on campus, from hiring more Native faculty to bias education. “We’re really focused on hearing from the students what they believe is important, so we invite any students who want to come forth about any of the identity pieces that need to be supported,” Sanders-McMurtry said. “In particular, we’re really trying to open the door for Native students to feel like they can come forward and tell us [about] the experiences they’re having.”

Annette M. McDermott reflects on the interfaith community Emergency funding supports faculty and staff, cont’d BY LENOX JOHNSON ’24 STAFF WRITER & COPY EDITOR

Content warning: this article mentions antisemitism.

Annette M. McDermott, dean of the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life and co-director of the Office of Community and Belonging, loves radically. In her pursuit to connect neighbor with neighbor, McDermott has worked diligently to support and uplift the interfaith community on campus. The first sign of McDermott’s affinity to social justice work was at 12 years old. While visiting family in Trinidad, McDermott found herself deeply moved by the transcendence of the Black Power Revolution. When she arrived home, McDermott began to see the pursuit of justice intersect with Catholicism in a way she’d never observed before. Led by Mexican-American civil rights activist Cesar Chavez, nuns shed their habits and boycotted in support of the 1965 Delano Grape Strike, in protest of low-pay and poor working conditions for farmworkers in the U.S. “That was the moment I decided I needed to understand power and politics,” McDermott said. “That’s how I saw you could do something and create change. I realized that there was something in the Gospel that was about uplifting and liberating, and I needed to learn more.” McDermott later received a bachelor’s in political science and international relations from Fordham University and is currently completing her doctoral studies in political science at Boston College. While working towards her undergraduate degree, McDermott served for two years as an intern for UNICEF during the International Year of the Child, a social reform effort led by the agency to “promote the needs and rights of children and to provide an unprecedented level of services and support for the children of the poor,” according to the Academy of Political Science. This effort further drew McDermott towards community aid. Eager to continue her work with children, McDermott went on to teach history at Cathedral High School, a co-educational college preparatory high school in Springfield, Massachusetts. Following her time there, McDermott was employed by the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company as a public affairs analyst and later promoted to associate director of government affairs at 27 years old.

Photo by Jenny Yu ’24 Above, Sister Annette M. McDermott, the dean of the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life and co-director of the Office of Community and Belonging, poses in front of Abbey Memorial Chapel.

McDermott’s devotion to social justice work was solidified by the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983. While visiting her aunt, McDermott began work for a job training and employment program that helped address the issues of poverty in Grenada. “That sort of opened my eyes to [the fact that] I really wanted to do lifelong social justice work,” McDermott explained. Following her time in Grenada, McDermott became a Sister of Saint Joseph, furthering her philanthropic work. McDermott went on to work for Jericho, the Bureau for Exceptional Children and Adults, “a non-profit organization in the Diocese of Springfield which provides religious and social services through western Massachusetts,” Jericho’s website says. In this position, McDermott worked closely with disabled children, a cause she’d been drawn to since her high school years. Following her time there, McDermott worked for Catholic Campaign for Human Development, a funding program to empower organizing groups, aid low income persons and address systemic change in the region. She also aided the creation of the Office of AIDS/HIV Ministry and Child Protection and Youth Protection programs. McDermott later began working to expand Immigration and Refugee Services with Catholic Charities and helped start the Pioneer Valley project, a faith-based organizing project and union in Springfield, Massachusetts. McDermott has been a member of the Mount Holyoke Community since 2012. Joining first as a chaplain, her initial attraction to the College was in both its diversity and vast

community of multifaith students. The opportunity joined the ethical frameworks of social justice that McDermott had been working towards her entire life. “With such representation from so many different faith groups … [we can] really engage [in] a conversation that could have global impact,” she said. McDermott aims to create a safe space in which students feel welcome to explore their individuality, encouraging them to act autonomously within their faith. When students are told they belong, she wants to make sure they actually feel that sense of belonging. If a student does not have a single friend, McDermott is eager to be the first one. “I see the job is very much a privilege and [as] sacred,” McDermott remarked. “Come walk, I’ll be a companion on the journey. We walk with everybody.” The discovery of an antisemitic hate symbol in the 1837 Residential Hall on Oct. 6 left the interfaith community “incredibly hurt, shocked [and] disgusted,” McDermott said. According to McDermott, one student was “gutted” by the incident. Another described themselves as somewhat used to incidents of this nature, only this time, they felt comforted in having a community to fall back on, according to McDermott. “Don’t be afraid,” McDermott said. “[You’re] not alone.” The aftermath of the incident highlighted the resilience and strength of the foundation built within the interfaith community. McDermott was deeply moved by the Eliot House solidarity demonstration on Oct. 6 in which hundreds of students gathered for almost an hour of silence in support of the Jewish com-

munity affected by the incident. “I was in tears,” McDermott said. “That’s the hope I have for all humans, that we can walk with each other when we’re hurting the most. That if you’re hurting, you could hope that the same folks will be walking with you.” In the pain of those moments, McDermott saw students from across denominations demonstrate courage, affirming her belief that faith makes a difference in people’s lives. McDermott personally relies on a belief in something beyond herself, a higher power, something transcendent. “If it was two or three students I would have celebrated. A butterfly flapping in the wind can create a hurricane,” McDermott said. “It only deepened my belief that [as we] nurture faith and spirituality on the campus and deal in love with people and their pain … we get closer to the beloved community we dream of.” McDermott hopes that the wide response to the incident is an indicator that the compassion and tolerance they have been working to instill in the population is taking root. The Office of Religious and Spiritual Life is concerned with creating a space that all students want to live in. “We work hard constantly to make sure students are not only trained and aware, but that they would want to be anti-racist,” McDermott said. “This is why … so much of the training that the organizations are going through [entails] updating their constitutions [and] looking at ways that they can support and be engaged.” The Office of Community and Belonging strives to cultivate trust within and between all intersectionalities within faith and spiritual groups. According to McDermott, having both the cultural and religious pieces allows for the symmetry and engagement that the group hopes to keep deepening going forward. McDermott hopes that the community that students walk into at Mount Holyoke welcomes all aspects of who they are. She aims to help cultivate a spacious community that is not just hospitable, but homelike. McDermott hopes Mount Holyoke continues to find and sail with the energy of love and hope. “I really believe the purpose of life is to love and to have relationships,” McDermott said, “Yes, the degrees are wonderful … but in the end, believe me, it’s not [for] your degrees that people are going to show for your funeral.” Instead, McDermott philosophizes that the measure of consequence is, “How did you love?”

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needs will be.” According to Gurek, approximately 153 staff members have been affected by furloughs since the beginning of the pandemic. As of the beginning of the fall semester, all have been offered work on campus. When the on-campus Gorse Children’s Center was planned to shut down in June 2021, the College reported that funding initially intended to renew the center’s contract would instead be allocated to the EEF. However, the center’s contract was extended for another year following outcry from the MHC community, which emphasized the center’s importance as a place for College employees to access affordable childcare. In spring of 2021, President Sonya Stephens convened the Child Care Review Group to collect data on the childcare needs of College employees, in order to determine the center’s future going forward. In FY22, access to the fund was expanded to College employees whose children are not currently enrolled in childcare at the Gorse Children’s Center. Approximately 10 percent of employees awarded grants reported they would use the funds for child or dependent care since the option was added. “Many of the child care inequities are real and endemic in the U.S. We can’t solve them all within our community but at least we don’t need to make things worse,” Chair of Art History and board member of the Child Care Review Group, wrote. “I have spent literally thousands of dollars hiring babysitters so I can participate in shared governance meetings that go past Gorse’s closing time. … Basic stuff that shows awareness of the pressures on and needs of parents of young children … should be part of our culture, not an afterthought.”

OPINION 3 ‘The Morning Show’ returns with a disappointing season November 19, 2021

. Mount Holyoke News

Graphic by Laura Hinojosa ’23

BY JAHNAVI PRADEEP ’23 OPINION EDITOR

Content warning: this article discusses sexual assault. Apple TV’s second season of “The Morning Show” settles into a backdrop likely familiar to much of its audience in 2021: the COVID-19 pandemic. The first episode, titled “My Least Favorite Year,” opens with quick panning shots of New York City that ring with an eerie silence of empty streets and missing crowds, contrasting the city’s usual bustle. Against this setting, the show reintroduces us to characters from its first season, namely Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon), Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) and Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell), amongst a host of others. The season appears to promise to deliver something meaningful for both these characters and the show’s audiences, only to fall far from expectations. In both seasons, “The Morning

Show” is topical, discussing matters of grave importance over the past few years, namely sexual misconduct in the workplace and the #MeToo movement. While the show brims with the potential to create meaningful content, the second season resorts to sensationalizing storylines and belittling the gravity of the issues it attempts to cover. Set in New York City, in the fictional UBA network’s morning news program, season one follows the Morning Show after co-anchor Mitch Kessler is fired for sexually assaulting coworkers, and the subsequent politics that ensue at the network when Bradley replaces him alongside Alex. The season comes close to exposing the truth of how sexual predators are protected and victims of assault silenced by office politics — in a charged and sensational finale, anchors Bradley and Alex take to national television to expose the network’s toxic culture. This ending creates the expectation that the second season will pick up on this note and further emphasize

the power of the #MeToo movement. However, season two shifts its focus to the characters’ personal lives and identities, and, as Sarah Lyall of The New York Times charted, a “changing understanding of power, race and privilege in and out of work” in the context of the pandemic. In this new season, Bradley struggles with understanding her sexuality, Alex awkwardly grapples with her own past mistakes and Mitch contends with cancel culture and rebuilding himself. Other characters, such as Mia, the show’s producer, Yako, the weatherman and Stella, the president of the media company, sift through issues surrounding power and race. The first issue is that season two attempts to cover too much, unable to give any one idea due attention. Important topics become mere wall hangings for characters’ squabbles and tangents. For example, these are still the same characters from season one, who were, and still are, in the middle of the aftermath of sexual misconduct at UBA. Mixing a host of new topics and identity crises preoccupies the characters and obscures the place of the #MeToo movement in the show. In season one, the Morning Show co-hosts veer toward becoming upholders of truth but forget this intention in the second season, lost in petty arguments with one another about promotions and limelight. Alex, who calls for change in the workplace for women at the end of the first season, is painted as a one-dimensional character cracking under her personal life and irritated with her job. For instance, she is provided the chance to moderate a presidential debate for the network during the season’s fifth episode, “Ghosts.” However, Alex flees the debate, distraught over a book exposing her consensual relationship with sexual predator Mitch

Kessler. Portraying Alex in this light removes the ability to use her as a harbinger of change. Her characterization prioritizes melodrama and emotions over doing justice to real, timely issues that the show frames its narrative against. This dangerously erases the importance and need for structural change to deal with sexual misconduct and predators like Mitch. Instead of following that path, in a slew of misplaced priorities, in episode seven, “La Amara Vita,” Alex travels across the globe to meet Mitch where she confesses how she misses him, and they slow dance and play trivia in what reads like a tender reunion. Season one’s call for change becomes a classic case of ingenuity and performance. The most significant dismissal of sexual misconduct occurs by bringing Mitch back for a second season. Subject to cancel culture, Mitch hides out in Italy, using the time to reflect on his misdoings and finding ways to justify himself as a changed person. In a mock interview with Paula Lambruschini in episode five, “Ghosts,” Mitch confesses how he “fucked up,” accepting how his actions caused the death of Hannah Shoenfield in season one. However, Mitch proceeds to justify his actions, saying, “I was a scared little animal just trying to claw my way back,” he says, almost as if quietly begging for sympathy from the audience. Mitch’s confession should not sanction his previous actions and grant him a redemptive storyline. We watch as he proceeds to fall in love with Paula, and they consummate their love on screen in “La Amara Vita.” It feels highly inappropriate to include a sex scene with Mitch, and this maneuver ignores how it might feel for survivors of sexual assault to witness. The show’s focus cannot orient itself toward Mitch and his tryst with cancel culture when it has a larger duty of doing right by victims, which

is lacking. Women Mitch has been involved with, such as Mia and Hannah, never get complete backstories, but he does, which sits oddly. In an interview with Variety, showrunner Kerry Ehrin discussed Mitch’s character. “The whole show, to me, is about the complications and messiness of being human and people having both altruistic impulses and also self-preservation impulses,” Ehrin said. However, there is something horrifyingly unsettling about bringing this sexual predator back in a humanizing light. In focusing so heavily on portraying him as someone capable of change, the show erases the experiences of victims of sexual assault. Creators of “The Morning Show” seem to pride themselves on how they’ve constantly reoriented the show to include current issues. Season one was rewritten as the #MeToo movement exploded nationally and globally. Season two was rescripted to factor in the global pandemic that broke during the season’s shooting. They are doing right in considering vital backdrops and contexts in which to situate their show. However, the show’s climate cannot simply mirror and sensationalize the world we live in — to meaningfully add to the conversation, it must use its potential to educate its audiences to implement structural change. Sexual misconduct and the #MeToo movements are grave topics that the creators chose to discuss, and they cannot do injustice to them by sensationalizing the lives of characters and forgetting the real life implications of the matter. Streaming on a well-established platform and starring some of Hollywood’s most famous names, “The Morning Show” has the resources to do better — to move beyond scratching the surface of pressing issues and instead focus on engaging the audience with complex and real themes.

Women’s rights must be culturally adaptable, not monolithic

Photo courtesy of WikiMedia Commons Above, Lila Abu-Lughod, a Palestinian-American anthropologist, speaks at Columbia University.

BY ZORA LOTTON-BARKER ’25 STAFF WRITER & COPY EDITOR

Feminism has made great strides to become more inclusive, but there is still work to be done. Intersectionality within the feminist movement cannot merely be shaped by acknowledging the existence of marginalized groups, and must go beyond the confines of Western ideals. Rather than attempting to create universal feminist ideals, it would be more effective to allow feminism to be situational within the varying dynamics of cultural locations. The female experience should not be considered monolithic, and feminism cannot be centered solely on how certain Western feminists define liberation. Third wave feminism, as discussed in “Introduction to Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies” by Miliann Kang, is summarized as the idea that “feminists have increasingly realized that a coalitional politics that organizes with other groups based on their shared (but differing) experiences of oppression, rather than their specific identity, is absolutely necessary.” Even though third wave feminists strive to be inclusive of all identities in conversations on gender abolition, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, modern feminism is intrinsically Eurocentric as it was founded on Western values of selfactualization and individuality. In the first chapter of “Politics of Piety,” titled “Subject of Freedom,”’ Saba Mahmood argues that feminist scholars are only willing to give women agency when they are pushing against patriarchal instruments of oppression. “One of the most common reac-

tions is the supposition that female Islamist supporters are pawns in a grand patriarchal plan, who, if freed from their bondage, would naturally express their instinctual abhorrence for the traditional Islamic mores used to enchain them,” Mahmood said. Western feminism often fails to place the Islamic tradition within its cultural bounds, and instead polices the culture according to Western customs. By doing so, some feminist scholars distort the experience of Muslim women by misinterpreting cultural practices as a self-inflicted reinforcement of opression. Lila Abu-Lughod is another anthropologist who has analyzed Western feminism in relation to Muslim women. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Abu-Lughod wrote the article, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others,” in critique of the obsession that Western feminists had on the liberation of Muslim women. In regard to global events involving Muslim countries, public interest often focuses on cultural or religious differences, rather than exploring political and historical factors. Frustrated by this tendency, Abu-Lughod refuted the correlation between Muslim women and bombings in Afghanistan. “The question is why knowing about the ‘culture’ of the region, and particularly its religious beliefs and treatment of women, was more urgent than exploring the history of the development of repressive regimes in the region and the U.S. role in this history,” Abu-Lughod said. “Such cultural framing, it seemed to me, prevented the serious ex-

ploration of the roots and nature of human suffering in this part of the world.” Abu-Lughod exemplified her point by noting that the First Lady at the time, Laura Bush, spoke to the American public on national radio to attempt to justify an American invasion to save Muslim women. “Instead of political and historical explanations, experts were being asked to give religio-cultural ones,” Abu-Lughod said. “Instead of questions that might lead to the exploration of global interconnections, we were offered ones that worked to artificially divide the world into separate spheres.” To Abu-Lughod, concern for Muslim women was used as an imperialist ploy to justify the United States’ continued involvement in Afghanistan. “​​ We need to work against the reductive interpretation of veiling as the quintessential sign of women’s unfreedom, even if we object to state imposition of this form, as in Iran or with the Taliban,” Abu-Lughod said. Abu-Lughod warned against ascribing one attitude or way of thinking to mass groups of women. “We must take care not to reduce the diverse situations and attitudes of millions of Muslim women to a single item of clothing,” Abu-Lughod said. “Perhaps it is time to give up the Western obsession with the veil and focus on some serious issues with which feminists and others should indeed be concerned.” To create a world in which women are free from oppression, it is vital that one form of liberation is not given more value than another. The reformation of how women’s studies departments teach feminism is an important step to de-centering Western values in feminist scholarship. Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Sociology at Syracuse University, Chandra Mohanty gave a possible solution to the flaws of Western feminism in her essay, “Under Western Eyes” Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through AntiCapitalist Struggles.” Mohanty advocated for an “antiimperialist, anti-capitalist and contextualized feminist project to expose the various overlapping forms of subjugation in womens’ lives.” To Mohanty, this project would require feminists to analyze the “concrete effects of global restructuring” on all women within all spheres of society. She also promoted the “comparative feminist studies” model of teaching. This model “assumes a compar-

ative focus on the directionality of power, no matter the subject, and assumes both distance and proximity.” In all contexts, Mohanty claimed, differences and commonalities exist in relation to each other. She also noted that “there is an emphasis on mutuality, co-responsibility and common interest which then anchor the idea of feminist solidarity.” The lens of feminist solidarity that Mohanty promotes will be vital to decolonizing Women’s and Gender Studies departments across the West. The experiences of

women cannot be viewed through one ethnocentric lense. It would be hypocritical of feminists to acknowledge the overlapping identities that shape women’s experiences within the United States or Europe without allowing for the same nuance and complexity when examining the lives of women in other parts of the world. Efforts to liberate women cannot have a one size fits all approach, because the oppression of women is not uniform. Feminism must meet the needs of women within their context.

Letter to the Editor: Response to College no-guest policy To the Editor: I am writing in response to a recent article, “Students reflect on College no-guest policies since the start of the pandemic.” One important perspective missing from the article is that of disabled and neurodiverse students on this campus that might have need for support from the occasional residence hall visitor. As a student registered with the AccessAbility office, I have asked a few times for permission for a parent to come into my room, including on Family and Friends Weekend, but it is not an easy or clear process. The article made no attempt to explore or even acknowledge this. A quote was used that assumed that someone “snuck in family over Family and Friends weekend” without considering what may have been a disability, or the bureaucratic systems that I had to work through in order to receive a visitor accommodation. People with disabilities have been significantly and particularly impacted in transition from lockdown to campus life in a way that others might not understand. Isolation, and the various difficulties that come with a diagnosis, can mix together and create space for confusion, loneliness and unhealthy disorganization. In these cases, people might need extra support, and it isn’t fair to assume individuals’ motivations or privileges.

There are ways to make the process much easier for students that have legitimate needs. After many conversations in recent weeks with people connected with SGA, Residential Life, the Interfaith Council, Neurodiverse Students Association, Office of AccessAbility and the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, I suggest the following solution for next semester: Every student who feels they need a visitor accommodation should contact the office of AccessAbility, if registered there, or the Division of Student Life. Should either of these offices agree, the student and their guests would sign a contract saying that they will abide by COVID-19-related policies such as masking and adhering to the vaccination requirement. Upon arrival, a guest would receive an ID that clearly displays for others that they are a sanctioned exception to the no-visitor policy. At the end of their visit, which should not exceed three hours and should end before 5 p.m., they would return the ID. The AccessAbility office already has a policy in place, but the process is unclear and difficult to navigate. My proposed plan would be clearly stated, easy to navigate and available to any student — not only those registered with AccessAbility. Thanks to all who have supported me and helped work through this issue in recent weeks. – Talia Pott ’25

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. ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT Students watch Taylor Swift’s ‘Red’ era ‘Begin Again’ November 19, 2021

BY ROSE COHEN ’22 & LIZ LEWIS ’22 ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR | MANAGING EDITOR OF CONTENT

When Mount Holyoke News asked to hear from longtime Taylor Swift fans regarding the recent release of “Red (Taylor’s Version),” Addie Ray ’22 came dressed the part, sporting a black t-shirt featuring seven or eight images of the American singer-songwriter collaged together in bright pink wash. The many Swifts peeking out from beneath Ray’s open denim jacket hailed from all the distinct musical eras that have defined Swift’s career. Swift has re-invented herself and her music countless times, but the Nov. 12 release of “Red (Taylor’s Version)” signaled the re-invention of an old fan favorite.

“Red” memories Swift first released “Red,” her fourth album, in 2012. It was a shift in her career that blended her country roots with the sound of 2012 pop, defined by dubstep drops, catchy choruses and fast-paced, dance-friendly tempos. Like previous Swift albums, “Red” featured breakup ballads and revenge bangers, in addition to the upbeat singles, “22,” “I Knew You Were Trouble” and “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.” During a November 2020 podcast by Rolling Stone and Amazon Music, Swift called “Red” her “true breakup album,” saying, “This was an album that I wrote specifically about pure, absolute, to the core heartbreak.” In 2019, Swift announced her decision to re-record her first five albums after her record company, Big Machine Records, denied her the opportunity to buy back her masters. In a Tumblr post, Swift wrote, “For years, I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work. Instead I was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and ‘earn’ one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in.” Instead, Swift opted to record new versions of her past works — ones that she would own, no strings attached. “Red (Taylor’s Version)” features the same songs that appeared on the original album and nine unre-

leased songs that didn’t make the cut on “Red,” referred to by Swift and her fans as “from the vault” tracks. Long-time Swift fans at Mount Holyoke recalled their experiences of the album, reacting to its new incarnation with nostalgia and new perspectives. “I’m very attached to [“Red,”] in ways that I don’t really understand,” Ray said. “Those songs sparked something within sixth-grade me.” Ray recalled that during the album’s initial release in 2012, she was at the peak of her Taylor Swift obsession. She first became a fan of the singer when she attended summer camp as a kid in the mid-2000s, when her favorite camp counselor handed her a pair of earphones and played her two songs from Swift’s self-titled debut studio album. From that point forward, Swift’s music became a huge part of Ray’s life. Her middle school years were defined by Instagram fan accounts, DIY concert outfits and listening to “Red” on the bus to school as she watched the leaves change. “Those middle school years are so formative,” Ray said. “You’re still developing who you are, what your opinions are and how it relates to everyone else. To have this one album of 20 songs on repeat I think really influences your perspective.” Sarah Rixham ’24 found the album similarly influential during her adolescent years. As she remembered listening to “Red” when it first came out, she spoke about playing the album at home in her kitchen. “I had the volume all the way up, and I was rewinding so I could get the lyrics right. [I was] trying specifically to learn the lyrics to ‘I Knew You Were Trouble,’” she said. Owen Contri ’22 and his older sister had vastly different music tastes when they were growing up. While Contri preferred folk and acoustic music, his sibling favored rap and electro-funk. “The only music we could both agree on was Taylor Swift, so we would listen to Taylor Swift every day,” Contri said, recalling the times when his sister would drive the two of them to high school. When “Red” came out, Shloka Gidwani ’22 had trouble connect-

Mount Holyoke News

ing to it. “At the time, she was singing about relationships, and I didn’t fully understand that,” Gidwani said. “I was in middle school, what [did] I know about the human condition?” Even if she hadn’t yet grown into an understanding of the more mature themes in Swift’s music, Gidwani still connected to Swift’s lyrical style. “I sort of always knew that I was going to be an English major, and I knew she had a way with language that a lot of people didn’t,” Gidwani said. “She just has these zingers — she comes up with these lines that are really catchy and make you want to sing … it really resonates with people, and they’re often very clever.” Gidwani referenced the climactic line from the fan favorite “All Too Well” as an example: “You call me up again just to break me like a promise / So casually cruel in the name of being honest.”

Swift’s persona For Sarah Miller-Bartley ’24, “Red (Taylor’s Version)” unearthed some issues she’s had with the artist for a long time. Though MillerBartley has been a fan of Swift’s music since her self-titled debut, she saw the release of “I Bet You Think About Me (feat. Chris Stapleton) (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault)” as a misstep in the artist’s approach to her persona. The previously unreleased track sees the return of Swift’s southern twang, an inflection present in her earlier music. The song also characterizes Swift as a working-class underdog compared to an upper-crust ex-lover, with the lines, “I was raised on a farm, no, it wasn’t a mansion / Just livin’ room dancin’ and kitchen table bills.” Miller-Bartley said, “While artists are free to write fiction, the fictional persona of the ditsy, working class, boy-crazy Southern girl is downright offensive, especially when performed by someone who grew up quite wealthy in Pennsylvania.” She initially saw the re-recordings as an opportunity for Swift to potentially revisit and address the “glaringly obvious classism” in her earlier work, but was disappointed by this specific track. Miller-Bartley continued, “In actively choosing to not only

Graphic by Anjali Rao-Herel ’22

release ‘I Bet You Think About Me,’ but also emphasize it with a video, she has shown that she will not be having that conversation.”

Perfect timing For Rixham, the re-release of “Red” has come at just the right time. She discussed how Swift always releases music at the specific moment she needs it. With “Red (Taylor’s Version),” Rixham said she could relate to the songs in a way that she had not in the past. “I’m starting to … be able to relate my own life experience to [these songs],” Rixham said. “It’s going from … a story in my head to something that is relatable in my real life.” For Ray, the release of “Red (Taylor’s Version)” came at a moment of serendipity. “Right after I turned 21, I was in a creative writing class in the spring semester, and we had to write from our middle school perspective,” Ray recalled. “I started writing, and I kind of couldn’t stop, because there’s so much to unpack there. That girl that I was is so interesting and so genuine, and she is me, but at the same time, I think middle school and

high school really bruised me and tossed me around. But at the core, I think I’m still that 12-year-old.” Just when Ray was channeling this younger version of herself, Swift announced that she’d be rerecording “Red” — one of the most definitive works of art from that time in Ray’s life — later that year. The stars, apparently, had aligned. “21 backwards is 12,” Ray said. “And that’s what I’m going through right now.” In between those years, Ray’s tastes have changed. While she used to gravitate toward the “poppier, upbeat” tracks on the album, she now appreciates a slow build. “Sad Beautiful Tragic,” a down-tempo lament of a past love affair, is one example of a track that’s grown on her in time for the re-recording. “I feel like this album has — this sounds like something Taylor Swift would say — two lives,” Ray said with a laugh. “One being how it was viewed in my 12-year-old eyes, and now how it’s viewed in my 21-yearold eyes. When I was 12, I didn’t really like ‘Sad, Beautiful, Tragic,’ but now I love it. So I was excited to hear the ones that I now love, that I took for granted [then].”

‘Spencer’: an eerily beautiful film plagued by poor dialogue Snail Mail releases indie rock masterwork, ‘Valentine’ BY EMMA WATKINS ’23 COPY CHIEF & ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR

Content warning: this review discusses self-harm and eating disorders.

From her very first line — “Where the fuck am I?” — the Princess Diana depicted in Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín’s historical drama “Spencer” is established as gritty and unwilling to hold back. Scenic shots showing Diana driving disoriented in the English countryside make it clear that the Princess of Wales, played beautifully by Kristen Stewart, is lost. Literally, but also in spirit. As Diana gazes around at her surroundings, she asks a passerby, “How could I get lost in a place where I used to play?” This question epitomizes the tragic but heavy-handed dialogue that persists throughout the rest of the film. While “Spencer” features a stellar performance by Stewart, an appropriately eerie soundtrack and artful cinematography, the movie suffers greatly from a script that relies on cheesy metaphors and allows little room for subtext or interpretation from the audience. With “Spencer,” which premiered on Nov. 5, Larraín — who previously directed a biopic of former First Lady Jackie Kennedy — crafts a film that subverts the expectations of a more traditional, factually-rooted biopic. “Spencer” opens with the disclaimer “a fable from a true tragedy,” which alerts the audience that the film is a highly fictionalized account of Diana’s weekend of Christmas celebrations with the royal family. Though its promotional content made it seem like the film would be a historical drama by only showcasing the moments that stayed closer to reality and “true tragedy,” the film feels more like a psychological thriller. The plot showcases the declining mental health of the princess in graphic and disturbing ways. Often, it feels more like the American psychological horror film “Black Swan” than “The Crown,” Netflix’s historical drama series revolving around Queen Elizabeth II. This unexpected

Graphic by Gabby Gagnon ’24

shift in genre could have been the movie’s triumph, separating it from the many other depictions of the late princess. However, its reliance on sensationalized, uncomfortable and artfully-absurdist portrayals of mental illness veers nearly into the realm of body horror. These elements are gratuitous and undercut the story’s “true tragedy.” From the film’s start, viewers are introduced to the unsettling musical motif of choppy strings and other discombobulating instrumentals, arranged by composer and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. Similar musical motifs last throughout the movie, communicating Diana’s declining mental state. Diana’s moments of reprieve from the royals occur during time alone with her sons — Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and Prince William, Duke of Cambridge — and moments alone outside. Heavy-handed dialogue distracts from what could have been a touching scene when Diana muses to her sons, “Here, in this house, there is no future. Past and the present are the same thing.” In this line, Diana bluntly communicates her attitude towards her surroundings in a scenario where it may not make sense to do so, foregoing an opportunity for subtler, more complex characterization. In one of her stolen moments outdoors, Diana sits on some steps on the outskirts of Queen’s country house, Sandringham Estate, but is found by the ever-observing Major Alistar Gregory (Timothy Spall).

Gregory proceeds to tell Diana the story of an unbroken horse, to which she replies, “I hope your friend’s wild horse was never tamed.” Lines like this, which emphasize Diana’s isolation and repression upon entering the royal family as a non-royal, along with the plethora of caged-bird metaphors present throughout the film, reduce the nuances of mental illness and loss of agency to clichés. One of the most bizarre aspects of the film is the braiding of highly fictionalized reality with Diana’s morbid daydreams, showing her detachment from the real world. In a particularly striking scene, Diana discovers that her husband, Charles, Prince of Wales (Jack Farthing), gave her the same necklace he gave to Camilla, his then-mistress. Diana rips the necklace from her throat, sending the large pearls directly into her soup dish. She proceeds to shovel the now pearl-filled soup into her mouth, choking it down to the last drop. Seconds later, the camera’s gaze refocuses, zooming out to show Diana’s necklace in pristine condition around her neck and revealing that she imagined it breaking. This scene is immediately followed by one showing Diana’s experience with bulimia. While it is not entirely glamorized, this repeated depiction of the eating disorder may be extremely triggering to audience members in recovery. These depictions seem to serve more as trauma porn than necessary additions to the film due being overbearingly graph-

ic and frequent. Martha Williams, a Clinical Advice Coordinator from the eating disorder charity Beat spoke to Metro UK News about their concerns with the film, stating that they worry about the lack of information accompanying its depictions of bulimia and self harm. They also raised concerns about it glamorizing bulimia, explaining that “some aspects of the film, we felt, seemed to glamorize the eating disorder. [There] was an image of Diana wearing a ball gown and slouching over the toilet, and I think the issue with glamorizing eating disorders is that it adds to the stereotype. [It’s seen] as [an] illness of luxury and a middle class white female’s disease, which obviously just isn’t the case.” Other moments of Diana’s false reality involve an apparition of the second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn (Amy Manson), inspired by her late-night readings of a book about the royal, which is aptly titled “Anne Boleyn: The Life and Death of a Martyr.” In these “Black Swan”esque visions, Boleyn serves as a ghostly guide for Diana, encouraging her to break free of the restrictions and expectations the royal family places upon her. But until the very end of the film, in which their ultimate significance is revealed, the visions are cheesy rather than poignant, and are only saved by Stewart’s captivating delivery of the otherwise lackluster script. Stewart’s performance is one of the few redeeming qualities of the movie. Even in the very first promotional images, Stewart embodies the late princess. In an interview with the BBC, Stewart revealed that she closely studied Diana’s facial expressions and mannerisms, reading about her, looking at every photo of her and watching all the interviews she could find. Stewart’s dedication to studying Diana shows during a paparazzi scene where she masterfully mirrors Diana’s iconic head-lowered, eyes-downcast soft smile. Stewart’s performance is haunting, and rightfully so for a “fable from a true tragedy.” But her success in the role is overshadowed by the gratuitous, glamorized depictions of mental illness and moments in the script that are more cringeworthy than moving.

BY LUCY OSTER ’23 STAFF WRITER

Although you wouldn’t guess it based on the title alone, American singer-songwriter Snail Mail’s second album, “Valentine,” mostly covers love just as it begins to spoil. During the titular song, which is also the opening track on the album, Snail Mail, whose real name is Lindsey Jordan, sings, “So why’d you wanna erase me, darling valentine?” Jordan has always sung about heartache. Her previous record, 2018’s “Lush,” features songs about unrequited love and rejection. Heartbreak is a common theme for many musicians, but both albums are masterworks of indie rock because of their ability to exhibit that experience in entirely new ways, sonically and lyrically. “Valentine” has ten songs, making it a relatively short album, but it expands Jordan’s oeuvre exponentially. “Lush” highlighted Jordan’s angsty lyrics alongside relatively simple guitar, but the songs on “Valentine” elaborate on that. Some tracks on “Valentine,” such as “Headlock” and “c. et al.,” sound similar to “Lush,” but others go in different directions. “Ben Franklin” utilizes a hip-hop sound with synthy beats to a brilliant effect, while “Light Blue” takes a different approach, relying on a soft, lilting Phoebe Bridgers-esque sound. “Glory” has yet another distinct feel to it, sounding more like a 90s rock song, featuring the white noise of nonstop guitar. “Mia,” the last song on the album, has Jordan crooning to orchestral strings, reminiscent of children’s lullabies, slow and almost soothing in its sadness, with sonic elements similar to Lana Del Rey’s “Born to Die.” CONTINUED ON PAGE 8

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GLOBAL 5 VariAsians hosts Five Colleges Pan-Asian performances November 19, 2021

. Mount Holyoke News

BY SOPHIE SOLOWAY ’23 GLOBAL EDITOR

Every year, the Asian Student Association hosts VariAsians, the largest Pan-Asian performing arts showcase featured on campus. After one year without an in-person VariAsians event, the showcase returned to campus on Friday, Nov. 12. The night included catered dining, a fashion show and performances by student groups from across the Five College Consortium. Sarah Nam ’23, ASA co-chair, said the return of this event in an in-person capacity has been a high priority for the organization and for Nam personally. “I knew that when we returned to campus, I wanted to see VariAsians happen again in-person,” Nam said. “The board chose this year’s theme to be ‘hope,’ to serve as a reminder that there are better things to come, especially for the members of our Pan-Asian community.” According to Ayesha Binte Khalid ’23, the outreach coordinator for ASA, this return was welcomed by an energetic audience, especially after COVID-19 prevented the event the previous year. “People were tired of being home and online. So they just were so excited,” Binte Khalid said. “I felt the excitement more in this event than I saw it in the first

year because it was just after such a long time.” It wasn’t always clear that Mount Holyoke would host the event in this capacity this year, given continued concerns regarding COVID-19 safety. According to Binte Khalid, one of the largest questions revolved around the involvement of students from other campuses in the area. “It’s a big thing to invite off-campus people who are not involved in PCR testing,” Binte Khalid explained. “But, because Mount Holyoke has such amazing COVID-19 testing, we felt safe to involve all campuses.” Despite these concerns, the event was able to happen at a limited capacity. Community members from across the Five Colleges gathered in Chapin Auditorium to eat cultural dishes and view performances representing communities across the Pan-Asian diaspora. Binte Khalid reflected on the importance of the event, saying, “I think it’s just generally very important for our communities to get together and have a wholesome environment where we get together and share our common space and common ground.” She continued, “We’re able to share our feelings for one another, how it feels to be POC … [and] to live on campus, and even go through some struggles and prob-

lems all the time..” Julia Griffin ’23, ASA co-chair, said, “visibility of Pan-Asian cultures is important for Asian members of our community to feel included and celebrated. There’s a general lack of Asian visibility in mainstream American culture, so introducing others to Pan-Asian culture as well as providing this space for Asianidentifying members of our community is important.” According to Nam, this is what makes VariAsians special. “There are a lot of cultural events that occur on Mount Holyoke’s campus and on the Five College campuses, but VariAsians has a distinct history of bringing together the multitude of cultures across Asia in an attempt to build cross-cultural communal ties,” Nam said. “It’s important that VariAsians, and similar events, exist because they serve as a place where people, especially those whose home communities are far, should feel welcomed and appreciated.” In a joint statement, Nam and Griffin said, “The first VariAsians celebration began before the year of 2000, so it’s been around since before we were born. It’s incredible to be able to continue that legacy and hopefully pass it on to future generations at Mount Holyoke.”

Photo by Tasha Elizarde ’22 Students perform at the Asian Student Association’s annual VariAsians event on Friday, Nov. 12.

Thousands of migrants trapped on the UN condemns child border between Poland and Belarus marriages in Zimbabwe BY AMELIA LUO ’23 GLOBAL EDITOR

In hopes of crossing into the European Union, thousands of migrants from Belarus are trapped on the Polish-Belarusian border in makeshift tents under freezing temperatures, according to reports from NPR. Authorities from the Polish side have estimated that there are about 3,000 to 4,000 migrants who are currently gathering around the border. In an attempt to break through the border, some are using tools such as wire cutters and shovels, according to CNN. Belarus’ border marks the edge Graphic by Laura Hinojosa ’23 of the EU. As reported by the Associated Press, the EU is considering man for German Chancellor Anfunding a barrier on its border. Be- gela Merkel, accused Belarus of larus’ three neighboring states — intentionally putting pressure on Lithuania, Poland and Latvia — have its border by trafficking migrants plans to build high fences of steel with state-sponsored action. Seiband razor wire on their own borders, ert suggested that Belarus attracted according to Al-Jazeera. Poland de- migrants from the Middle East and clared a state of emergency and put Asia into Belarus with “false promup higher security measures on its ises.” The EU is seeing this action as border. On Oct. 29, Poland’s parlia- a retaliation against the economic ment passed legislation to build a sanctions imposed upon condemnwall on its border with Belarus by ing Belarus for its crackdown on next summer. The wall, equipped domestic dissent. Sabanadze agreed with motion sensors and a monitor- with this account. She suggested ing system, is 18 feet (5.5m) tall and that the sanction goes back to the estimated to cost the equivalent of Belarusian presidential election that $407 million, according to BBC News. was “completely rigged by LukashThe Polish government has also re- enko … who is often described as the inforced its border with 15,000 sol- last dictator of Europe.” The Belarus diers along with border guards and government denied this allegation a police force, the Associated Press repeatedly, but also stated that Bereported. Migrants who entered larus would not stop migrants from Poland successfully have been de- entering the EU. On Nov. 14, tained. Polish Prime “[Belarus President Alex“It’s a catastrophic humani- Minister Mateusz ander Lukashtarian situation. Belarus is M o r a w i e c k i urged the North enko] and the revery cold ... There are chil- Atlantic Treaty gime’s response Organization to has been very dren. There are pregnant take “concrete violent,” former women. They’re treated steps” towards EU Ambassahorribly from all sides.” the migrant cridor and Visiting sis on the PolishProfessor in InBelarusian borternational Re- Natalie Sabanadze der. Morawiecki lations Natalie also suggested Sabanadze commented. “In a way, I wouldn’t say [it] that the Polish-Belarusian border surprised the EU, [it] annoyed the crisis is not a simple migration criEU because they were actually in the sis, but may be politically motivated process of sewing relations with Be- with the intention of “destabilizlarus. They thought Lukashenko was ing the situation in the European turning around a little bit, [they have Union.” “The migrant crisis seems to me just lifted the sanctions], and things were going slowly [back] to normal.” like Lukashenko’s attempt to have Sabanadze continued, “What’s more his cake and eat it too,” Madhavi important from the European point Rao ’24, a history major currently of view is because Belarus is right on taking a course on Russian politics, the border of the EU. So [the crisis] said. “Under his leadership, despite protests by the people, Belarus has began to touch the EU as well.” “What is happening now is kept close to Russia and Putin. This, considered by the EU as a deliber- along with allegations of fraudulent ate hybrid attack … on security. It’s elections and Lukashenko’s autoaimed at the stabilization of at least cratic rule, have caused the EU and two European Member States, Lithu- NATO to impose sanctions on the ania and Poland. [It’s] instrumental- country. However, rather than facing izing foreign refugees to destabilize these consequences, Lukashenko the situation [within the EU],” Sa- has chosen to create a migrant crisis along the border with Poland and banadze explained. According to the Associated Lithuania as a way of pressuring the Press, Steffen Seibert, a spokes- EU to remove its sanctions. Lukash-

Not Brides. The public response to Machaya’s death pressured Zimbabwe to arrest Hatirarami Evans Momberume, Machaya’s 26-yearContent warning: this article dis- old husband, and Machaya’s parcusses sexual violence against mi- ents, Edmore Machaya and Shy Mabika, Zimbabwe police spokesnors and child death. person Paul Nyathi told CNN. “What you see today, a young Nyathi added, “Momberume is girl forced to marry, get pregnant facing rape charges, while her parand [die], is not an aberration. It ents have been charged with obis part of the same continuum. Fe- structing the course of justice for male persons are not seen as fully allegedly providing false identifihuman, with individual rights, cation documents to the police conchoice, rights to control our own cealing her real age.” News outlets bodies,” Zimbabwean feminist ac- had initially identified the child as tivist and the international head Memory Machaya, because Anna of Action Aid International, Ever- Machaya’s parents had falsified joice Win, declared on Twitter on her documents with those of her Aug. 6 in response to the wide- cousin Memory Machaya, who spread practice of child marriages is 22 years old. They are also acin Zimbabwe. She continued, “The cused of agreeing to provide Momage of the girl/woman is not the berume with a nine-year-old child issue, nor concern for these folks as a replacement after Machaya’s in these matters. It is the poten- death, CNN reported. The UN has been using public tial children that come out of her uterus they care about. And these denunciation to pressure Zimbaviolations happen because we are bwe to amend its laws, according to ZimEye. female.” Anna Chait One re“Part of the problem lies ’23, an internacent fatality in women being treated as tional relations linked to child major, commarriages in objects.” mented that Zimbabwe while “conwas the death - Lily Smith ’25 demning is anof 14-yearother good step old Anna to help these Machaya, who died while giving birth in July girls get out of these terrible situat Johanne Marange Apostolic ations,” she thinks “it takes a lot Church shrine, CNN reported. The more than just naming and shamcase has garnered publicity and ing” to solve the issue. To combat sparked an uproar from several the issue of child marriage, Chait women’s rights activists, includ- suggested a movement towards ing Win, condemning the policies “education and making [children] in Zimbabwe that allowed for this aware that this [isn’t] their only situation to go unchecked. As re- choice.” Lily Smith ’25, a student enported by Reuters, “One in three girls in Zimbabwe was likely to be rolled in a World Politics class, married before turning 18 years,” added that “an increase in political activism for women’s rights” according to the UN. Currently, Zimbabwe’s 2013 would help bring more light to the constitution protects the marriage issue as “a large part of the probrights of those 18 and above and lem lies in women being treated as prohibits forcing a person into objects or something that can be marriage. Zimbabwe has two mar- used for monetary gain.” In addition to condemning the riage laws, the Marriage Act and the Customary Marriages Act, ac- practice of child marriages in Zimcording to Reuters. “The constitu- babwe, the UN aims to “fast-track tion states that a person can marry the adoption of the Marriage Bill at the age of 18. The Criminal Law that recognizes child marriage as Act states that, at 16 years, a per- [a] crime,” Global Citizen reportson can consent to sex. The Mar- ed. Smith highlighted another riage Act sets the marriage age at 16 years. So, when we have laws underlying issue behind child that are not in alignment with the marriages, saying, “resolving [the constitution it creates a lot of prob- issue of child marriages] has to lems,” Fadzai Ruzive, a legal prac- include passing bills on a certain titioner with Women and Law in age for marriage as well as helping Southern Africa said, as reported the problem of poverty. I think that in Al-Jazeera. There is currently both have to happen for the probno law that explicitly criminalizes lem to be resolved.” Chait echoed Smith’s opinions, child marriages in Zimbabwe. The Apostolic church in which stating that “solving the issue of Machaya died is one of many that poverty would be a huge first step present the practice of child mar- in cutting down on the number of riages as a way for young girls to children that are forced to marry gain “spiritual guidance” by mar- for the sake of [their] family’s rying older men, according to Girls money.” BY CYNTHIA AKANAGA ’25 STAFF WRITER

enko is using people’s lives as pawns in his proxy war with the EU.” “[Lukashenko] would not have dared to do this without Russian backing. So, in fact, [this] is something that is masterminded by Putin via Lukashenko,” Sabanadze said. “[The migrants] are being taken to the border, promising different things, completely unaware … what [they] were getting [themselves into]. It’s a catastrophic humanitarian situation. Belarus is very cold. There are women. There are children. There are pregnant women. They’re treated horribly from all sides,” Sabanadze continued. “These are all human tragedies. They’re being mistreated and used in this way. It is pure instrumentalization and use of people in despair as a weapon to destabilize the EU.” “I think, apart from the kind of security dimension of this story, there is a very clear humanitarian dimension of this story. [The humanitarian side is] a little bit overlooked or less stressed in the official communication, [but] that is something that needs to be done,” Sabanadze said. “I think the EU, [being] true to its values, has to intervene to ease the situation on the ground.” As reported by BBC News, the United Nations stated that at least eight migrants have died on the Belarus border. As the area approaches winter and temperatures continue to drop, one 14-year-old boy was reported to have frozen to death on Nov. 12, according to InfoMigrants. “I think [the EU] needs to do better,” Sabanadze said. “The Eastern European Member States are particularly resistant to migration, [especially] in this case, because this is basically characterized as a hybrid attack. [Poland and other nations bordering Belarus] are in the mode of self-defense.” “Poland, Lithuania and the West are not completely free of blame either, in my opinion,” Rao said. “They have been put in a difficult position, but during the time of peril, they are choosing to allow innocent migrants [to] pay the price. It seems to me that, once more, it is the regular people who are caught between the large forces of the East and the West.”

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SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT

November 19, 2021

. Mount Holyoke News

Indigenous activists shape environmental protection movement

Graphic by Laura Hinojosa ’23

BY CATELYN FITZGERALD ’23 & ANOUSHKA SINGH KUSWAHA ’24 SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT EDITORS

The role of Indigenous communities is crucial to the protection of the environment: according to National Geographic, Indigenous people make up 5 percent of the global population but safeguard 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity. Throughout history, Indigenous communities have had to fight to reclaim their rights and assets to best practice stewardship of the Earth’s natural resources, according to the UN Environment Programme. Mount Holyoke News has compiled just some of the Indigneous-led environmental groups, activists, news and media that are shaping the global environmental movement.

Indigenous leaders pave the way for environmental action Quannah Chasinghorse is a 19-year-old land protector, climate justice advocate and model who has Alaskan and Canadian Hän Gwich’in and South Dakotan Oglala Lakota ancestry. She is focused on protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which, to the Hän Gwich’in people, is known as “The Sacred Place where Life Begins,” according to a profile from Green is the New Black. According to the profile, The Hän Gwich’in have resided in the Arctic for generations, but now climate change is impacting their lifestyle, making it difficult for them to continue living in their homes with rising temperatures causing food scarcity and increased food costs. Additionally, Chasinghorse is involved in climate activism and the movement for Indigenous sovereignty, alongside advocating for the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. In an interview with Vogue, Chasinghorse stated that she sees fashion as an “impactful, eye-catching medium” to express herself and her heritage to others. She is a member of the International Gwich’in Youth Council and the Gwich’in Steering Committee.

Her recent work, both as a model and as a land protector, is available on Instagram @quannah.rose. Jamie Okuma is a fashion designer and artist whose Indigenous ancestry is Luiseño, Shoshone-Bannock, Wailaki and Okinawan. She is a member of the La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians and lives and works on their reservation in Southern California. According to her website, Okuma displays her art at the Heard Indian Art Market in Phoenix, Arizona and the Santa Fe Indian Art Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Additionally, her art has been displayed in museums around the United States, Australia, France and Germany. She has permanent collections in the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American-Indian. In an interview with InStyle, Magazine Okuma stated that she wanted to become an artist after attending powwows at her grandmother’s reservation and wanting to dance at them. Okuma further explained in the InStyle interview that powwow outfits are traditionally personalized — designed and crafted by the wearer and their loved ones. Okuma continued, “I’ve pretty much had a needle and thread in my hand ever since.” Okuma also stated that she does not not consider her artwork and fashion design as a means for speaking for her tribe, explaining that tribes are made up of whole lots of different people. She goes on to state that through her work as an artist and fashion designer she wishes to honor her people. However, she does not wish to lay claim to any particular tribal motif, pattern or style in her designs so as to not assume ownership of traditions that belong to several people, not just her. Her work can be found both on her website and her Instagram @j.okuma.

Indigenous environmental groups push for a greener future Honor the Earth, a nonprofit organization, uplifts Indigenous voices

through music, art and other forms of media. According to their mission statement, the group aims to raise awareness of “Native environmental issues” and raise funds to support grassroots initiatives and organizations. According to their website, Honor the Earth was established in 1993 by Winona LaDuke and folk music duo The Indigo Girls. The National Women’s History Museum described LaDuke as an “activist, economist and author” who has “devoted her life to advocating for Indigenous control of their homelands, natural resources and cultural practices.” Since its establishment, Honor the Earth has given over $2 million back to the Indigenous communities through their grant program. One of their current focuses is on halting the construction of the Line 3 pipeline. According to Stop Line 3, the pipeline would transport tar sands from Canada to Wisconsin and would act as an expansion of existing tar sands pipelines. Seeding Sovereignty is a grassroots organization that focuses on decolonization, reclamation and preservation of Indigenous knowledge and practices. The group aims to increase Indigenous stewardship of natural resources, according to their website. One of their current initiatives is the Ancestral Acres Farm and Garden, which came from a partnership with Tiwa land stewards. The farm will supply free food and medicine to the local community as well as build food sovereignty through practices such as seed saving. Seeding Sovereignty also created Community Liberation and Land Defense, a series of trainings and resources aiming to help enable Indigenous community members to “proactively network and defend one another against state surveillance and arrest as a means to safeguard limited resources and prevent organizers from time in the carceral system,” as stated on their website.

Indigenous leaders’ priorities overlooked at the COP26 An opinion piece published in The Guardian following the global climate conference called COP26 a “conference that relied on dated colonial constructs and ignored Indigenous people.” The author, Tishiko King, who was in attendance at the conference as a representative of First Nations people, said that the conference failed to include Indigenous voices and offered empty promises under the guise of ambitious action on climate change. “First Nations people were locked out of discussions,” King said. According to the author, this ultimately resulted in decisions, or a lack thereof, that failed to address the climate crisis in a way that met many Indigenous delegates’ standards.

Books and films tell Indigenous stories “Inhabitants: An Indigenous Perspective” is a 2021 documentary directed by Costa Boutsikaris and Anna Palmer. The film showcases how Native American communities are responding to the climate crisis through the reclamation of their lands as well as their land protection, preservation and honoring practices. It follows five Native American tribes across different landscapes in the U.S. as they rebuild their relationships with their ancestral land and terrain that were disrupted by years of colonization. “Gather” is a film that follows Indigenous people from throughout the western U.S. as they work to achieve food sovereignty and reclaim traditional food production practices, according to the film’s website. The movie was first released in 2020 and became available on Netflix in Nov. 2021. According to the film’s website, five Indigenous trailblazers are featured in the film. Nephi Craig, who funded the Native American Culinary Association, which the film’s website says aids in “the development and preservation of Native American foodways,”

launches a cafe and “nutritional recovery clinic” in the film. Twila Cassadore works with community elders to preserve Indigenous food knowledge. Clayton Harvey promotes food sovereignty through his farm, The People’s Farm. The film also follows Samuel Gensaw and his work in the Ancestral Guard, an initiative to pass traditional fishing practices and other foodways on to the younger generation, as well as Elsie DuBray, an undergraduate student researching the health benefits of Indigenous diets. “Braiding Sweetgrass” is a novel by Dr. Robin Wall Kimerrer that was published in 2013. Kimmerer is a scientist, writer, professor and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, according to her website. According to Goodreads, the novel explores the relationship between humans and the natural environment can be healing rather than destructive. The book highlights the ways Indigenous languages and cultural practices treat flora and fauna as equal to humankind. “As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, From Colonization to Standing Rock” is a 2020 nonfiction book by Indigenous author, researcher and activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker, who is a part of the Colville Confederated Tribes. Gilio-Whitaker is also Lecturer of American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos. “As Long as Grass Grows” is a look into the history of treaty violations, food insecurity, protection of sacred sites and the role of Indigenous women in the struggle to preserve Indigenous heritage through land protection. The book aims to showcase the fraught long-term relationship between Indigenous environmental movements and the environmental movements of mainstream America. Gilio-Whitaker further argues that the current mainstream climate justice movement should look to historical Indigenous environmental resistance in order to create a better, more sustainable future.

Climate Activist Spotlight: Ruth Miller SPORTS: MHC fencing BY HELEN GLOEGE ’23 STAFF WRITER

Ruth Miller is a 24-year-old Dena’ina Athabaskan and Ashkenazi Russian Jewish member of the Curyung Tribe from the Lake Clark region of Alaska. According to SustainUS, Miller is a “climate activist, Indigenous rights advocate, traditional beadwork artist, storyteller and singer.” Miller’s advocacy work has included interning with former U.S. Senator Mark Begich at age 16 and attending various United Nations conventions, including the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the UN Youth Climate Summit, according to KCET. The source reported that she was also in attendance at the COP25. In an interview with the UN Foundation, Miller commented that growing up on Indigenous territory allowed her to better understand her interactions with the environment. In 2019, Miller graduated from Brown University. During her undergraduate career, she was involved in the Ivy Native Council Conference and was in charge of the student group Natives at Brown, SustainUS

said. In the climate justice movement, Miller aims to “fight with compassion,” she said in her Brown commencement speech, according to the University’s website. Miller is now the climate justice director for Native Movement. According to the group’s website, Native Movement is a grassroots organization that is “dedicated to building people power, rooted in an Indigenized worldview, toward health, sustainable and just communities for all.” Miller was inspired in part by her parent’s work as Indigenous rights lawyers and her paternal grandmother’s engagement with the United Nations, according to the UN Foundation. Miller described her experience at the recent COP26 as, “deeply difficult and extractive and tokenizing,” in an interview with NPR. She attributed this to her identity as an Indigenous youth, as they can be used to “demonstrate victimhood” and act as a photo opportunity for organizers. NPR pointed specifically to Miller’s invitation to speak at an Indigenous people’s event with the president of the COP26, Alok Sharma. Miller was unable to use the opportunity to highlight her ideas on the climate crisis due to lack of time. In her interview with the UN

team travels to Vassar BY EMILY TARINELLI ’25 STAFF WRITER

Graphic by Sofía Savid ’24

Foundation, Miller pointed to the importance of uplifting a variety of voices, especially those who may normally be left out of the conversation or are unable to access spaces where these discussions are being held.

Four foilists and four épéeists from Mount Holyoke Fencing represented the College at the New England Intercollegiate Fencing Conference Big One tournament on Saturday, Nov. 7. The competition, which was hosted by Vassar College, featured over 10 teams belonging to various NCAA athletic divisions, including Smith College, Dartmouth College and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In Women’s Foil, Captain Morgan Sammut ’22 won five out of six bouts in the initial pool rounds. Sammut advanced to the direct elimination round with a bye and an additional 15-1 win, securing a 10th place finish overall. Michela Marchini ’22 came in 15th place after winning four of her six pool bouts and two direct elimination bouts. Willow Gumpel-Jones ’24 followed Marchini with a 32ndplace finish, ahead of Maya Frey ’23 in 47th place. Sammut reflected on how they

personally strategized and prepared for the meet. “Before the competition, our coach [Dianna McMenamin] recommended that when we warm up [or] practice bouts … we use that as an opportunity to see what is working for us that day,” they explained. “For example, am I landing my attacks today? Are my disengages wide today? So I tried to keep that mindset throughout the competition and think about what actions were successful.” Marchini said that as her main strategy during the tournament, she focused on paying attention to how her opponents moved and how they responded to her actions. “I tried to watch as many of the people I was fencing before we got on strip so that I could have a sense of their strategy and the best way to go against them,” she said. Marchini said she was pleased to come in 15th place, the highest she had ever finished. She was also proud of her second direct CONTINUED ON PAGE 7

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November 19, 2021

BOOKS & SPORTS

. Mount Holyoke News

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Four Indigenous authors to add to Predicting the future: science fiction pulls ideas your reading list this November death. The New York Times called the book “strange, enchanting and funny: a work about motherhood, doom, regret and the magic — dark, benevolent and every shade in between — of words on paper.”

Darcie Little Badger

Photos courtesy of WikiMedia Commons (Left to right) Darcie Little Badger and Louise Erdrich each published a new novel this past year.

BY CAT BARBOUR ’24 & AND HALLE WYATT ’25 BOOKS EDITOR | STAFF WRITER

Nov. 1 marked the start of Native American Heritage Month, a time to recognize and celebrate Indigenous cultures and history. The movement to establish this time of reflection started in the early 20th century and the month of November was officially designated in 1990. To raise awareness of Native authors and celebrate their work, Mount Holyoke News has compiled a list of four Native authors who published this year.

Angeline Boulley Angeline Boulley is Ojibwe and a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of the Chippewa Indians. Her debut novel, “Firekeeper’s Daughter,” was released in March. A young adult mystery, the story follows a biracial Ojibwe girl named Daunis Fontaine who, while struggling with her identity, is suddenly called back home to care for her mother. As she re-enters her community, she finds that a deadly drug is threatening her people. After witnessing a murder, Daunis warily agrees to go undercover for an FBI investigation, and in her findings, learns how far she will go for her community. On Good Morning America, Boulley explained that the story is inspired by events from her high school. In an interview with Good Morning America, she says she sought to write the “Indigenous

Nancy Drew thriller [she] wished she had read as a teen” to give young Native people more representation. As reported by Diverse Books, before writing this book, Boulley was the director of the Office of Indian Education in the U.S. Department of Education, where she worked to improve the education of Native students at all levels.

Louise Erdrich According to the Poetry Foundation, Erdrich’s writing career spans nearly five decades. According to HarperCollins, she is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of the Chippewa Indians. Erdrich has published several novels, poetry collections and children’s books with HarperCollins. Her most recent release, “The Sentence,” which came out earlier this month, follows Tookie, a woman who withstood her long incarceration with a voracious reading habit. While working at an independent Minneapolis bookstore, a frequent customer dies suddenly on All Souls’ Day in 2019 and haunts the store for the year. Britannica describes All Souls’ Day, celebrated on Nov. 2, as the day where Christians remember those who are believed to have died and gone to purgatory to atone for “lesser sins.” In a work of fiction interwoven with recent history, “The Sentence” follows the store, its inhabitants and Minneapolis through a year of turmoil — from the pandemic to George Floyd’s murder — all while grappling with the mystery of the customer’s

Lipan Apache author Little Badger’s second novel, “A Snake Falls to Earth,” will be published on Nov. 23, 2021. The novel brings two worlds together: ours and that of spirits. Nina, a 16-year-old Lipan Apache from Texas, has always been fascinated by her family’s stories. Journeying to Earth, Oli is a cottonmouth snake-person whose friend, Ami, is dying as his species of toad is going extinct on Earth. They form an unlikely team to help each other within a narrative built from, what Kirkus Reviews calls, “two richly constructed worlds using a style that evokes the timeless feeling of listening to traditional oral storytelling.” With a bachelor’s in Geosciences and a Ph.D. in Oceanography, Levine Querido remarks that Little Badger brings Lipan Apache storytelling to topics of climate change, magic and family. “A Snake Falls to the Earth” was long-listed for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.

Danielle Geller Geller’s debut memoir, “Dog Flowers,” was released earlier this year. After her mother’s death from alcohol withdrawal, Geller begins an arduous journey to her mother’s home on the Navajo reservation. With heart-wrenching prose, Geller weaves together information about her family’s history using her mother’s diaries, documents and photographs. With this information, she also grapples with her identity and past, according to Kirkus Reviews. The Seattle Times warned, “this memoir requires some emotional fortitude to trudge through, let alone live through.” A member of the Navajo nation, Geller teaches creative writing at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. She has previously published essays in various magazines, including The New Yorker and Arizona Highways.

Mount Holyoke Cross Country places fifth in Mideast Regional Championships

BY NGUYỄN ĐẶNG THIÊN AN ’23 STAFF WRITER

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg recently announced the company’s rebranding as Meta, short for Meta Platforms, Inc. This rebranding demonstrates the advancement of technology, a topic that has been foretold in many science fiction and cyberpunk novels. According to NPR, the social media platform superimposes the digital world into the real one, allowing users to roam places such as concerts and workplaces, rendered in three dimensions. Cyberpunk novels such as “Snow Crash” by Neale Stephenson envision how the world might grapple with highly developed technology. The novel, published in 1992, coined the term “metaverse,” predicting current fascination with futuristic technologies such as digital currency and virtual reality as an escape from the dystopian world. The list below introduces newly released books that revolve around advanced technology.

“The Future is Yours” by Dan Frey Published Feb. 9, 2021 In archival-style prose — emails, personal text messages, testimonials and blog spots — Dan Frey chronicles the downfall of the friendship of two young tech entrepreneurs and the cost of revolutionary technology. The genius programmer, Adhi, along with his best friend and charismatic businessman, Ben, invents a computer which allows them to see one year into the future. The novel then turns into a techno-capitalist drama as their invention becomes one of the most valuable assets of Silicon Valley, according to Kirkus Reviews. Saturated with clearly explained technical terms, “The Future is Yours” explores how clairvoyant computers connect with the data of the future, eventually leading to a data disaster.

Photo by Rosemary Geib ’23 (From left to right) Hannah Rieders ’22, Lauren Selkin ’23 and Madeline Rieders ’22 win honors.

Cross Country was joined by several fellow Mount Holyoke student-athletes who made the drive to Waterford to watch the race. Many of them held up posters and shouted words of encouragement as the team ran the 6k course. Among these spectators was Lucy Sternberg ’23, an athlete on the Mount Holyoke track and field team. “Even as a spectator I felt so involved with the team as they were racing,” Sternberg said. “There was just this amazing energy and feeling to running around and trying to find as many good spots as possible to cheer on the team and watch them run. Everyone looked so good and you could really tell they were giving it their all,” she added. The team’s manager, Sophia Anderson ’22, also commented on the team’s performance. “It is amazing to see how this program has grown all the way from 39th place at the 2017 New England Regionals to [fifth],” she said. Anderson added that it was “great to see a program-best performance after seeing the team put in months of hard work on a day-to-day basis.” Nash expressed her appreciation for her classmates that came to watch the race. “It was amazing to have so many people cheering us on throughout

the course,” she said. Selkin will be closing out her penultimate cross country season at the NCAA Division III National Championship in Louisville, Kentucky on Saturday, Nov. 20. Selkin said she is “looking forward to racing against the top runners in the country and being able to represent Mount Holyoke.” While she is sad the cross country season is coming to an end, Selkin added that she is “very excited for the upcoming indoor and outdoor seasons” and “look[s] forward to continuing to work with [Cross Country Head Coach Chris] Kibler, being competitive and seeing what the track [and] field team can do.” “While we would have loved to qualify as a team for NCAAs, we are all so excited for [Selkin] to compete this upcoming Saturday,” Nash said. “After all the hard work we put in every day in and out of practice and how much we wanted it as a team, it was really tough to see the outcome that we did — losing to Smith by [five] points and having that slim margin be the difference between who gets to go to nationals,” Jacob said. “At the same time, I’m proud of the team for doing their best and still having a record-breaking season, placing the highest we ever have at regionals,” she added.

Frey is a screenwriter and novelist based in Los Angeles. “The Future is Yours” is his second novel.

“The Startup Wife” Published July 13, 2021 In “The Startup Wife,” author Tahmima Anam ’97 reimagines social media with meaningful human connections. According to Simon and Schuster, the protagonist Asha Ray creates an app called “We Are Infinite.” After its launch, WAI attracts many venture capital firms, press and millions of subscribers worldwide. Amidst marital turmoil and tensions in male-dominated tech culture, Asha Ray finds ways to mitigate damages to her users’ emotional investment. Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Tahmina Anam graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1997 and now resides in London. According to HarperCollins Publishers, Anam’s first novel, “A Golden Age,” was awarded the 2008 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book.

“First Woman: NASA’s Promise for Humanity” Published: Sept. 25, 2021 According to their website, NASA’s first graphic novel, written by Brad Gann and Steven List with illustrations by Brent Donoho and Kaitlin Reid, follows Callie Rodriguez, the first woman to set foot on the moon. Rodriguez explores a fictionalized version of life on the moon, alongside her trusted robotic assistant. Achieving many accomplishments in NASA’s Artemis Missions, Rodriguez is the role model for the Artemis Generation — the next generation of moon explorers. To further enhance the reading experience, readers can download NASA’s First Woman application to immerse themselves in the augmented reality outer space world. Through this app, NASA’s Orion spacecraft and the moon’s surface are within reach.

Fencing competes in Big One tournament, cont’d u

BY ROSEMARY GEIB ’23 PHOTOS EDITOR

Seven athletes on the Mount Holyoke College cross country team competed on Saturday, Nov. 13, at the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III Mideast Regional Championship hosted by Connecticut College. The team ran a six-kilometer course alongside the Long Island Sound at Harkness Memorial State Park in Waterford, Connecticut. With an overall score of 139 points, the Lyons placed fifth out of 24 teams. Williams College took first place with 90 points, Middlebury College came in second with 99 points, Amherst College placed third with 102 points and Smith College finished fourth with 134 points. This was the first time in the history of Mount Holyoke’s cross country program that three studentathletes collected All-Region Honors by placing in the top 35. Lauren Selkin ’23 was the first of the team to complete the course, earning a fourth-place overall finish with a time of 22:00.70. Madeline Rieders ’22 finished in 14th place overall with a time of 22:40.20, followed closely by Hannah Rieders ’22 in 15th place with a time of 22:40.30. Selkin, Madeline Rieders and Hannah Rieders earned All-Region and All New England accolades. Simone Jacob ’22 crossed the finish line with a time of 23:38.50 and Sydney Nash ’22 ran a season best of 24:20.10. Bridget Hall ’24 ran a course best of 25:22.60, followed by teammate Tessa Lancaster ’25, who finished the course with a time of 25:29.50. Selkin said she was proud of the team’s performance on Saturday. “I know each individual pushed as hard as they could,” Selkin said. She also expressed that she was pleased with her race. “I was happy with my strategy of starting out with the lead runners and trying to stick with them,” she said.

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elimination bout, which she won 15-11 within the first period. Unlike pool bouts, which are fenced to five touches in the span of three minutes, direct elimination bouts are fenced to 15 touches over the course of three three-minute periods, separated by a minute of rest in between each one. “I’m pretty sure that is the most intense bout I have ever fenced, so the fact that I was able to finish it and win was really exciting for me,” Marchini said. In Women’s Épée, Captain Eva Volckova ’22 grabbed 27th place, winning a direct elimination bout with a score of 15-6. Volckova was followed by Anneke Craig ’22 in 38th, Emma Pope McCright ’23 in 40th and Co-Captain Flannery Plum ’24 in 44th. Craig said she was proud of the several individual touches that she scored on her opponents, which she described as being “better-executed and more intentional than [her] touches a year ago.” “I think all of us went in with the goal to share a positive experience and get back into competing after more than a year apart,” Craig said. “In terms of strategy, we all took care to check in with each other and cheer each other on.” Reflecting on her experience, she added, “One of the things I really love about fencing is that, especially at individual competitions like Big One, even though you may be fencing other people, you’re really only competing against yourself.” Craig also expressed her excitement for the team’s next tournament, the Little One, which will be hosted by Mount Holyoke Fencing. The tournament is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 12, 2022.

“It is a smaller event, so the atmosphere is a little more relaxed. Everyone is there to have a good time and enjoy the sport,” Craig said. Sammut described their motivation to succeed this year. “Since this is my last season and we missed a whole year of competing, I really want to push myself this year … I want to fence at my best for both myself and for my team that helped me get to where I am,” they said. “We’re a club sports team at a Division III school, so I don’t think anyone expects very much from us and I want to make them all regret that.”

Photo courtesy of Dianna McMenamin Team poses for a photo after the competition.

Photo courtesy of Michela Marchini ’22 Anneke Craig ’22 and Eva Volckova ’22 fence in a Women’s Épée elimination bout.

8

COMMUNITY

November 19, 2021

Fred and Moose

BY SILVIE SCHLEIN ’23 STAFF CARTOONIST

. Mount Holyoke News

e HOROSCOPES e BY DAVID NEJEZCHLEBA ’22 COPY EDITOR & HOROSCOPE WRITER

March 21 – April 19

Is there something that’s been bothering you? An itch you can’t scratch? Perhaps you’re on edge for no reason. The clouds will vanish this week and the sun will shine through; look hard enough, dear Aries, and the answers will be clear to you.

April 20 – May 20

If you’ve found yourself frequently losing your train of thought, it’s because your headspace has been murky. It may feel very strange. There’s been some railway mishaps in that mind of yours, tumultuous Taurus, but this week, you can expect an appreciable change may have been neglecting yourself. Time for a check-in, and perhaps a check-up.

May 21 – June 20

Lovely Gemini, you’ve been swamped with work, and you may be finding it almost too much to handle. Be mindful of your grind-play balance, try to maintain your flame … lest you burn out like a candle.

June 21 – July 22

The song stuck in your head is there for a reason. Listen to the lyrics. Hum the tune. Try to find the meaning of words swimming in this musical lagoon. Care-free Cancer, this week you’re breezin’ — now is the time for your growing season.

July 23 – Aug. 22

Like plot holes in a story, there are parts of your dreams that you just can’t remember. So far, lively Leo, that might feel like all of November. Be conscious of time as it passes you by — listen to the tick of the clock hand, and Father Time will be at your command.

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Aug. 23 – Sept. 22

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They say that “you can’t step twice in the same river,” and this might be especially clear to you, valued Virgo, as of late. Change is hard for Earth signs, but nothing truly stays the same — the sooner you accept this, the sooner you understand your fate.

Executive Board Editor-in-Chief Declan Langton ’22

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Sept. 23 – Oct. 22

Lions may roar, wolves may howl, but mightier than sound is the stealth of a night owl. Your time for carol and cry will come, but for now, hold your tongue. Silence is a powerful message, level-headed Libra. Let your words brew within you like a song, unsung.

Oct. 23 – Nov. 21

Copy Editors

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Revisit your roots, your past has a message, O Scorpio. You are a tree: soft as a willow, sturdy as an oak, ready to blossom like fire to smoke. Tend to those parts within you that need healing, your younger self may need some love. With enough care, your branches will bless you and bear a bounty of fruit.

Nov. 22 – Dec. 21

Sagittarius is the name, passion and confidence is what brought you fame. This week, remember to maintain an element of elegance in your extravagance; you can control your fire without putting out your flame.

Dec. 22 – Jan. 19

Your friends may be giving you advice, curious Capricorn, and you would be wise to take it. Though it’s hard to admit, you can be wrong sometimes … and there is always a price to pay for defending your own crimes.

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Jan. 20 – Feb. 18

The stars are telling you to fly this week, or at least to make the leap. You can make yourself known — no longer do you need to maintain that alluring Aquarian mystique. Shed those layers of secrecy; let your wings beat against the wind as you soar to your throne.

Feb. 19 – March 20

There is nothing without use in nature — not because it has a purpose, but simply because it is. If you’re feeling lost, crossed, confused or emotionally bruised, try grounding yourself. Blink. Breathe. Eat. Sleep. Life can be as straightforward as that, peaceful Pisces.

‘Valentine’ is the perfect second album for Snail Mail, cont’d u

Graphic by Sofía Savid ’24

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4

Jordan’s lyricism has also grown exponentially since her last album. While she focused almost exclusively on complicated love with “Lush,” on “Valentine,” she has found new ways to write and sing about that topic. “Madonna” uses lyrics inspired by Catholicism. Jordan sings, “Body and blood, lover’s curse / Divine intervention was too much work / I don’t need absolution, it just hurts.” In an interview with Stereogum, Jordan discussed how some songs on “Valentine” venture into an entirely new thematic territory. “[Light Blue is] actually the first Snail Mail song written that doesn’t have a bitter edge to it. There’s no betrayal or sadness or anger — it’s just a love song,” Jordan said. The lyrics on Valentine are in-

tensely personal, containing lyrics the butterfly feelings. Some songs, about religion and rehab. Jordan like “Headlock” and “Ben Franklin,” was raised Catholic, and she tackles are about the period after a breakthat experience on “Glory” and “Ma- up. “Headlock” includes the lyric, donna.”Speaking “Man enough to to Stereogum, see this through / Jordan stated, “[Light Blue is] actually Man, I’m nothing “I’m actually very the first Snail Mail song without you.” But fearful of being most of the songs written that doesn’t have a cover love in the sacrilegious — that’s a big part post-honeymoon bitter edge to it.” of my Catholic period and its upbringing … I myriad difficul- Lindsey Jordan don’t go to church ties, such as “Foror anything … I ever (Sailing),” on guess being a gay person makes you which Jordan sings, “I love you from feel naturally separated from it.” On the city to the stars / But nothin’ “Ben Franklin,” Jordan sings about stays as good as how it starts.” another personal experience — her Unlike the opinion of relationtime spent in a rehab facility last ships expressed in “Forever (Sailyear. “Post-rehab, I’ve been feeling ing),” Jordan’s “Valentine” stays so small / I miss your attention, I good throughout its entire 31-minute wish I could call,” Jordan sings. runtime. Jordan took what worked Many of the songs on “Valen- well on “Lush” and expanded it into tine” focus on love — and not just something new and wondrous.