Inés Garcia ’26 is a prospective chemistry or English major from Palo Alto, Calif. She is the College News Editor and was previously a staff writer for the news section.
Students elected 11 candidates to the Williams Student Union (WSU) this semester, seven of which are returning representatives. Only the Class of 2027 had enough candidates for a contested election, and only two students from the Class of 2025 ran, leaving one of the governing body’s 12 spots unfilled.
The College held its annual Convocation for the Classes of 2024, 2023.5, and graduate students in their final year on Sept. 9 in Chapin Hall. During the ceremony, President of the College Maud S. Mandel presented Bicentennial Medals to six alums, highlighting their accomplishments in fields such as law and academia.
Between the notification of their acceptance and the deposit deadline, the cohort of accepted students had the chance to experience the College through Williams Previews — an annual three-day event organized by the Office of Admission where admitted students meet current students, faculty, and staff either virtually or on campus.
Former Texas poet laureate Emmy Pérez discussed excerpts from her poetry collection With the River on Our Face in an April 28 talk hosted by the Class of 1960s Scholars and the English department and moderated by Matthew Gonzales, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Latinx literatures.
In June 1969, the Board of Trustees voted to admit women. This, however, is merely one moment in the College's shift to coeducation in the 1960s and 70s.
President Maud S. Mandel delivered a speech on educational access at the 2023 Inter-Ivy First-Generation (1vyG) Conference — one of the largest first-generation student conferences in the country — at the University of Pennsylvania on Feb. 25.
In honor of Black History
Month, members of Muslim Student Union and the
Black Student Union hosted a talk titled “Black Radical Thought & Movement:
Islam in Black America” on
Feb. 18 in the Thompson
Chapel Muslim Common
Room.
The Williams College
Black STEM+ Student Association (BSTEM+) hosted LaShyra “Lash” Nolen,
the first documented Black
woman to serve as student
council president at Harvard Medical School, on Feb.
18.
At the start of the spring semester, students noticed something different about their professors’ syllabi and welcome-to-class announcements: Many included guidance on, prohibitions of, or encouragement to use ChatGPT — as long as it’s cited.
Special Collections holds hundreds of thousands of items. It is composed of two main components: the College Archives, which contain materials pertaining to the College’s history, and Chapin Library, which holds rare books and other special materials outside the scope of the Sawyer and Schow library collections.
At its winter meeting, the
Board of Trustees approved
the promotion of 11 assistant
professors to associate
professorships with tenure:
Alexander Bevilacqua, history;
Nicole Brown, classics; PeiWen Chen, biology; Brahim
El Guabli, Arabic studies;
Man He, Asian languages,
literatures, and cultures; Bill
Jannen ’09, computer science;
Laura Martin, environmental
studies; Sarah Olsen, classics;
Ben Snyder, sociology; Mason
Williams, leadership studies;
and Ricardo Wilson, English.
The promotions will go into
effect on July 1.
The Massachusetts Department of Transportation
(MassDOT) is conducting
the Northern Tier Passenger Rail Study to explore
the feasibility of passenger train service between
North Adams and Boston,
as called for by the commonwealth’s 2020 budget.
Vista, the College’s Latinx and Allies student organization, hosted a panel on Friday where six alums who participated in the 1993 hunger strike protesting the College’s lack of a Latino/a studies department spoke about their experiences and reflected on the changes the College has made and what can still be done.
The College hosted a community-wide vaccination clinic in partnership with Berkshire Health Systems and the Berkshire County Boards of Health Association on Friday.
