For one political science course, POL1 210: Campaigns and Elections, taught by Professor Maneesh Arora, the 2024 election was a direct part of the course curriculum.

The course description for POL1 210 notes that the course addresses issues relating to the election and its long campaign cycle including  “the impact of voter apathy, civic education, and the interplay of national and local politics on the health of American democracy.”

 Students in the class had assignments related to the 2024 election.

“We’ve been looking at voter behavior and how it’s influenced by personal factors like personal identities and political factors like socioeconomic/political conditions,” said Eliza Karim ’27, a student enrolled in the course.

Semester readings have included academic studies alongside articles that delve into various factors of the 2024 election and each major candidate’s campaign tactics. Students in POL1 210 also participated in a nationwide competition called Election Madness in which players compete to accurately predict the winners of the 23 closest local elections and the 2024 presidential race. Students were assigned one of those local races to research in-depth and present to the class, and all researched the presidential race. Classmates’ findings were used to submit picks for the winners on the website. Finally, students submitted two research papers by election day — one for each race they looked at.

On Thursday, Nov. 7, the course met for the first time since the election was called. 

“The class was pretty obviously dejected post-election.” said Karim. “We just discussed how we felt about everything for about the first half of class. The conversation was pretty casual and it was just good to get some of those thoughts off our chests.” 

Other political science professors also prepared to cover the 2024 election. Professor Jennifer Chudy is teaching both POL1 337: Seminar: Race and American Politics and POL1 200: American Politics this semester.

“I had a lot of election readings early in the semester, so that by the time the election came around, students would have some political science tools to be able to understand the results,” said Chudy.

Professor Christopher Candland teaches POL 123: Logic and Rhetoric for Political Analysis and POL2 204: Political Economy of Development and Underdevelopment.

“I asked that we think about ways to help protect one another from harm,” Candland said in an email statement to the News.

In the English department, Professor Kelly Rich started ENG 334: Law in Literature on Wednesday, Nov. 7 with an activity where words were written on the board to represent peoples’ feelings about the election. Students were released for 20 minutes to write a journal entry about their feelings about the election. 

Professor Rich tied conversation about When the Emperor was Divine, a book about Asian American internment during WWII, back to the election and how everyday actions can be seen as a form of resistance. Professor Rich ended class by sharing the internet browser extension called “Make America Kittens Again,” which replaces Trump’s face with a picture of a kitten for all news sources and online websites. 

On Friday, Professor Smitha Radhakrishan asked her SOC 108: Thinking Global: An Introduction to Sociology class the question, “What is the world that we want to build?”

While initially reluctant to share, her students shared about the grief they were feeling, particularly in regards to how the election would influence their home states. 

As professors across Wellesley create spaces for students to process the reasons for the election results, Chudy offers some advice as a political scientist.

“There’s so many efforts to try to understand what happened and pointing to all these different factors with the candidates in the campaigns, but … you know, don’t miss the forest for the trees. Kind of keep your eye on these macro conditions,” Chudy said. “And that seemed to be salient to many students as they tried to reason through the results.”

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Sazma Sarwar, Galeta Sandercock, and Ruby Barenberg

By the start of the fall semester, the Tower-side dining hall was still under construction, with unfinished touches to certain rooms. Regardless, Tower Court welcomed students in time for move-in day in late August. 

The past two summers, Tower Court and Severance Hall underwent extensive renovations, including upgrades to the heating system, bathrooms and kitchenettes, and accessibility improvements, as detailed on the College’s web page.

To open the doors for students in time, the renovation timeline was altered to prioritize critical spaces. Construction on the seating area of the dining hall on the Tower side thus continued after residents moved in, according to Melissa Gagon, the project manager for the Tower Court renovation. 

“We just wanted to make sure we got the base scope work done … That’s why we pulled out the dining hall,” Gagnon said. 

The scope of the renovations caused further delay, due to an especially greater amount of work needed in Tower Court West, said Tower Court’s Community Director, Don Leach. The renovation made major changes to Tower’s common spaces, from the Great Hall to the dining hall. The renovation project also added more common spaces on the first floor, improved lighting, installed new ovens in kitchenettes and enhanced amenities in the shared restrooms.

“The increased common spaces for students is actually a huge difference,” said Leach. “The increased number of common spaces makes for a different living experience for residents, and a better one.”

A delayed move-in for student leaders

However, Tower Residential Life student leaders had a different experience when they had to move into temporary housing upon arriving on campus. 

Julia Xie ’25, the Tower Court house president, was living on the ground floor of Stone-Davis Hall when she first came to campus.
“We were actually really stressed, we were like ‘Is this project going to be done? Are they going to be able to actually move us in?’ And somehow, they did it, and it’s kind of magical,” said Xie.

Despite receiving prior notice about the delay, residential assistants had little turnaround time to prepare for residents’ check-ins. According to Jiya Singh, the resident assistant for the second Floor of Tower Court West, “We [the RAs] moved in a day and a half before everyone else did, so we had to get all our halls in order, all our rooms in order, in literally, like, 24 hours.” 

“Shakeout Period”

With the renovations finalizing on a tight schedule, there was little time for thorough testing. Gagnon described a “shakeout period” in which they responded to issues flagged by students.   

“When a building is used, we sort of do the ‘work, work, work’ right up until the end, everybody comes in and we have this ‘shakeout’ time period where issues are flagged. So now we’re sort of taking a step back, we see that issues were reported,” she said.

Common reports included broken outlets and missing rods in the closets. To help mitigate the issues, a separate work order form was created only for Tower residents. Residents first report issues to their RAs or Leach, and then reports would be sent and addressed by workers on Facilities and the project. 

The past month has seen more than five fire alarms, which could be related to the new renovation systems.  

“It seems like we have way more fire alarms than we used to and I’m not sure if it’s because they changed the system to make it super sensitive. I’m not sure and I think they’re trying to get it fixed because there’s so many fire drills going on right now,” said Xie. 

While most of the renovations were perceived as necessary, Xie wished there could be conversations taking students’ input and suggestions into consideration before the construction.

“The only part that I wish there was some kind of change to is that they consult students … Maybe we can ask students, like, ‘What is most needed?’,” said Xie.

Walking around the Tower, Xie said she had seen students coming into the Great Hall or touring the Tower voicing their appreciation and satisfaction with the new changes.

“What matters the most for the community is the people in it. And that’s the most important part, as long as people are living well together and are happy in this place,” said Xie. 

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Valida Pau, Sazma Sarwar, Lyanne Wang