Here are three surprising facts. The first: Nuclear power is the largest source of carbon-free energy in the US right now, supplying 20 percent of US electricity.
Editorials
Holding the Record accountable: reckoning with race and its intersections with journalism
In our June 6 statement “In solidarity with Black Lives Matter,” our editorial board expressed support for the Black Lives Matter movement and called on the College, its students and its alumni to make monetary donations. We made a donation as well, giving to three organizations that support grassroots journalism and journalists of color: the Marshall Project, the National Association of Black Journalists and Unicorn Riot.
Opinions
Letter to the Editor: 100% Renewables is Doable
The way that we produce and consume energy is dangerously problematic. Evidence of climate change in Massachusetts is clear. Sea levels are rising, extreme weather events are occurring more frequently, and pollution-related respiratory problems are common, especially in vulnerable communities.
Opinions
Fair and lovely: Colorism in language
While researching skin-lightening creams, I started to wonder if fair as in “just,” fair as in “beautiful,” and fair as in “light-complexioned” were etymologically linked. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, these three usages emerged around the same time and share the Proto-Germanic root fagraz. It seems that, for English speakers in the Middle Ages, light skin was bound up with virtue and beauty, which isn’t surprising.
Featured in Category
For your consideration: Yet another Plan A
Dear Classes of 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024,
Today, when many of us are spending more time than ever in front of the computer, I would like to take a moment to talk to you about where we are and where we are headed in our academic lives together. I will spare you the broad and vague claims about how extraordinary these times are, or about the many disruptions to our familiar world. The question, however, of what to do in the face of these disruptions, remains front-of-mind for many of you as you decide whether or not to return to campus for the fall semester.
Featured in Category
The beginning of dreaming is the end of policing
In my intro course on blackness and mass incarceration, I ask my mostly seventeen and eighteen-year-old students how they would live their lives differently if abolition were achieved. Some say they would change their majors.
Featured in Category
A call for Black joy and an end to sensationalism
I care. Didn’t you see my repost? The message being sent by most non-Black people attempting to act as allies during the wake of George Floyd’s death, as the international campaign for the Black Lives Matter movement is reignited — unlike ever before.
Featured in Category
American Studies program pledges in the wake of police brutality and COVID-19 (June 2020)
“In the wake, the river, the weather, and the drowning are death, disaster, and possibility.” Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, pg. 105
Opinions
Juneteenth statement from Sisterhood and the Society of the Griffins
Juneteenth celebrates the abolition of chattel slavery in the United States of America in 1865. As we commemorate the anniversary of this glorious event on the precipice of Independence Day, we implore you to reappraise the true cost of the American dream. According to the Declaration of Independence, all humans are guaranteed life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Instead, white supremacy has robbed Black Americans of their rights using lynching, sharecropping, redlining, voter suppression, mass incarceration, environmental racism and healthcare disparities.
Featured in Category
Student groups, academic departments make statements in solidarity with Black Lives Matter
Following the anger and sadness that many in the Williams community are experiencing after recent acts of police brutality against Black people and ensuing protests against systemic racism, many student groups and academic departments have taken it upon themselves to write and release statements that state their values, reflect on current and past events involving racism and lay out steps they plan to take toward a better and more inclusive future.
Editorials
In solidarity with Black Lives Matter: Where the Record, and the College, have faltered, and necessary next steps
Breonna Taylor. George Floyd. Tony McDade. Ahmaud Arbery. Tamir Rice. Oscar Grant. These are the names of only a few of the Black people who have become victims of state-sanctioned police brutality. The deaths of these people are directly tied to the anti-Black violence that first brought enslaved people to Jamestown in 1619, and that has permeated this country ever since. This violence — a system directly enabled by white supremacy — is embedded in our nation’s institutional structures through mass incarceration, hyper-surveillance of Black bodies, economic inequities and inequitable distribution of wealth.