Professor and Chair of Geosciences Phoebe Cohen became the subject of online criticism in mid-October after opposing MIT’s decision to invite geophysicist Dorian Abbot — who has critiqued affirmative action — to give a prominent lecture.
As the College navigates a local and national labor shortage, some members of the Dining Services staff say they are overburdened, lack confidence in the quality of their work, and are experiencing low morale. Of the eight dining hall workers who responded to an anonymous survey by the Record, seven expressed dissatisfaction with their experiences working in Dining Services this year.
The Record spoke with three Black players on women’s soccer who took significant time off from the team over the last two years, or, in one case, quit the team outright. They all emphasized that their experiences on the team were symptomatic of it being part of a majority-white college, of “having to navigate through white structures and white expectations,” as one player put it.
During spring 2020, despite widespread calls for support from term-limited faculty members, the College declined to offer a blanket extension of all term-limited faculty members’ contracts, citing financial uncertainty. Instead, it provided term-limited faculty members the option to take an unpaid research associate position to aid in the job search. While some term-limited professors were ultimately offered extensions on a case-by-case basis, others were left to face a beleaguered job market.
Two students have tested positive for COVID-19 after attending an indoor gathering at Gladden House on Saturday night, Dean Sandstrom confirmed to the Record today.
The two COVID-positive students who attended the gathering — along with another student who did not attend the gathering, as well as a faculty or staff member — are part of a larger cluster of four cases reported in the last week.
This week the script in R chose Weiwei Lu ’23, who discussed her love of Tunnel City coffee, becoming an accidental major in comparative literature and her character development over the past year. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
In October, two more students at the College tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total number of positive tests among students to five. Upon receiving their positive test results, the students were told they had to move to isolation housing, and their respective podmates, who were informed about an hour afterward, were given less than an hour to pack and move to Dodd for a two-week quarantine. The ensuing series of events, based on interviews with four students who were placed in quarantine across the two incidents, revealed a significant lack of communication on the part of the College.
(Photo courtesy of Mikaela Topper.)
Each week, we randomly select a unix from a list of all current students at the College for our One in Two Thousand feature. As long as the owner of...
As it does every year, the Williams College Jewish Association (WCJA) held a blowing of the shofar, a kind of horn, for Rosh Hashanah. As so many things do, the timeless tradition looked a little different this year.
This week the computer (using a script in R) chose Jacob Fink ’23, who discussed growing up in Williamstown, his experiences as a Duncan Robinson superfan, his interests in psychology and Malcolm Gladwell.
If you walk past Frosh Quad at 11 p.m. on a Friday, you’ll hear pounding music and see groups of first-years wandering between buildings. It almost seems like a regular Friday night — not one in the middle of a pandemic. In the weeks since students returned to campus there have been a number of instances in which students violated the College’s public health guidelines — which limit gatherings to groups of 10 — sometimes with gatherings of dozens of students. The College’s responses to different instances and types of violations have varied widely.
Hordes of yellow jackets have been harassing students eating outside because of COVID-19 restrictions. (Rachel Buccalo/The Williams Record)
It’s impossible to miss them. They’re drowning...
“I remember a white student complaining to me about how me and my black friends participated too much/too well to the point that we ‘dominated’ the class, and informed me how other non-white classmates felt the same way,” reads a June 30 post from the Instagram page @blackatwilliams. “It was as if he was asking me to give him a chance. And to top it off, it was an Africana course. His entitlement infuriated me.’”
At the top of the screen reads a simple prompt: “Hi, how are you really feeling today?” Posts, arrayed on a nature-themed user interface that practically screams calm, seem to take the question seriously,...
While an in-person commencement for the class of 2020 has officially been pushed to an unknown future date, some seniors, including Ennis and his friends, are making their own plans to celebrate their graduation off-campus in the weeks to come.
A note from the reporters:
In the weeks after students dispersed across the globe in light of the pandemic, the Record sent out a survey to 500 randomly selected students to get a sense of their...
Jesus Estrada ’20.5 lives with his mother and sister in Huntington Park, Calif. Estrada’s mother provides most of the family’s income, and as an employee at a fast-food chain, she’s classified as an essential worker. But she also has diabetes, a condition that makes her more vulnerable to serious complications from COVID-19.
While many students at the College have felt the effects of COVID-19 from afar — financially, emotionally, academically — relatively few have come into close contact with the virus itself. But for three students, it has become intimately familiar. Tania Calle ’20, Kalina Harden ’21 and Max Mallett ’23 all experienced telltale coronavirus symptoms and either lived in or passed through an epicenter of the virus.
At the beginning of the switch to remote learning, the Record spoke with a variety of professors about their thoughts going into online classes. This week, we followed up with some of those professors as the semester comes to a close after a month and a half of remote learning.
Hayden Gillooly ’21, who lives in North Adams, grew up steeped in small-town life. Every day after school, she would walk to her grandmother’s house.
“She taught me how to cook, and she...
Aanya Kapur ’20 lived in Horn Hall before COVID-19 began causing school closures. When the College shut down, she worried she would not be able to return home because her parents live in Australia, whose borders had closed.
Amidst the economic complications faced by the College as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Office of Financial Aid will continue to provide financial support at the same level as before the outbreak.
Each morning began early with two volunteers in full protective gear knocking on his door for a temperature check. The hazmatted figures, who only returned to his room to drop meals off, made Peter Le ’21 feel like he was in a movie.
Imagine you are a Williams professor. You care deeply for your students. You try to develop a high-quality, intellectually invigorating experience. But the College has shut down, and a pandemic threatens the world. You’re at home, perhaps with a child or two to take care of, and an elderly parent to worry about. Your only teaching tools are online — Zoom, Glow, Piazza — but you’ve never taught online.
JACOB POSNER/THE WILLIAMS RECORDCommunity members transcribe documents from the College’s early history at the Transcribe-a-Thon last week.
“The name of [the] Indian boy who lives...
PHOTOS COURTESY OF JULES CLARDY.In her Frosh Quad single (above), which smells pleasantly of herbs, Clardy said she has “completely maxed out all of my wall and ceiling space.”
Album...
Greg Parslow, who is no longer incarcerated, went to the Berkshire County House of Correction (BHoC) for selling narcotics. He had joined a gang at a state institution, but while at BHoC, he renounced...
Steve Simon, pictured with his cat Shoshie in the President’s House, has settled into life as First Gentleman of the College. (Ethan Dinçer/The Williams Record)
Steve Simon, President Maud...
At a Nov. 1 Williams Forum meeting, students broke into small groups and discussed alternatives to the Electoral College. (Jacob Posner/The Williams Record)
The atmosphere was oddly tense....
Photo courtesy of Jason Hoch.
“I was one of those alums who was here every year for something, so I was never far away,” Jason Hoch ’95 said. “I probably spent 10 years or so as a...
![Excited moviegoers queue up for tickets and popcorn. (Photo courtesy of Juan Baena [Osito Mountain Photos]).](https://williamsrecord.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Screenshot-2025-02-18-at-10.34.24 PM-1200x733.png)
