“Last year was a very tough year to be in the [Massachusetts] legislature as one of only four Black women and, at the time, 13 or 14 people of color that were Black and Latino,” Miranda said. She has spent a great deal of time this past year working on police reform legislation, trying to protect her constituents. “I have a district that is 94- 95% of color. I have a district that is one of the poorest. And to see Black death continuously in the community and the media, and know that your district is over-policed. … [E]ven in my own family, my father and my two oldest brothers were incarcerated.”

Miranda’s involvement in her community is what brought her to Wellesley, and it’s what drew her back home again as a representative, too. She now represents the fifth Suffolk district, which encompasses much of Roxbury. A youth leadership program she was involved in as a young teen led her to serve as a tour guide for a peace and justice class visiting her neighborhood, which introduced her to the college she would one day attend. 

“I was the youth speaker giving the tour that day. So I became connected to Wellesley, I applied and got in,” she remembered. 

Once there, her activism did not stop; she became “very involved” with Ethos, Harambee House and the Africana Studies program. Wellesley, Miranda remembers, was the first time she “felt like a minority.” Her home community is nearly entirely made up of people of color, while, at the time, Black students at Wellesley “made up less than 5% of the population.”

At school, she fought to keep Ethos recognized as a closed organization by the College, and worked towards increasing recruitment of first-generation and low-income Black students. Then she made her decision to return home to Roxbury and serve the community that brought her to Wellesley.  

As Miranda moved towards graduation, she had the same thoughts many seniors might find familiar: “Do I go to graduate school?”, “Do I go work at some fancy company? Because it really felt like going back home might’ve been seen as failure. And it’s not failure.”

When applying for jobs, she began to think about the young people back home. “I was thinking about the young men and women, who were looking for someone to say to them … it’s okay to come back. … I got a great education, and now I’m back here trying to help you, paying back what people invested in me.” She became the first youth director at the same organization that she had been part of when she was young.

Flash-forward to 2019, Miranda was elected as the state representative for the Fifth Suffolk district, having been motivated to run after the election of President Donald Trump. Since then, she has served as one of only a few Black women in the Massachusetts legislature, focusing on progressive issues such as violence prevention programs, police reform and housing reform.

One piece of legislation that Miranda recently introduced is the “Homes for All Act,” which would, if passed, prohibit landlords from asking about potential new tenants’ criminal or arrest records. 

“Housing has often been used as a weapon against poor people, against people of color,” Miranda said. “Housing is a human right … we saw a 14 to 17% increase in the number of families that became homeless [in MA], and this was before COVID.”

According to a Homes for All fact-sheet, 15% of people who experience incarceration nationwide also experience homelessness within a year of being released. This contributes to what is known as the “revolving door” effect, where incarceration leads to homelessness, which leads to incarceration again. 

“All of these issues are interconnected,” Miranda said. “If you are hungry, you can’t go to work or school and do well. If you can’t go to work and school and do well, you can’t make the money you need to buy food … to pay your rent, to pay your bills. And if you don’t have shelter, how does that impact every part of your world?”

Miranda says that she used her Wellesley education to help communicate the interconnected nature of these issues. 

“One of the things I learned at Wellesley was understanding that when we fight for people, when we fight with people, we have to humanize them, and understand their story.”

I don’t think I took my first credit-non class until my first semester of junior year. I stuck, mostly, to the classes that felt “safe” — writing-heavy ones, in my case — and avoided taking anything that I thought I wouldn’t be able to easily earn at least a B in. My grades were far from perfect, but they were decent. The problem, though, was that I was slowly losing any enjoyment I had in school. And that was devastating: why had I traveled the thousands of miles to Wellesley from Missouri, if not to take joy in what I was learning?

It took me until my senior year to learn to enjoy learning again. I truly think it would’ve happened sooner if I’d been able to let go of my need to be good at what I was doing, and follow my curiosity instead. My senior year, I took an advanced CS class — having never taken a course in the department before — and, of course, credit non’ed it. I took a 300 level class in Spanish in writing nonfiction and turned in nearly every assignment late because of the fact that the course was grade-free allowed me to relax. I learned more in these classes than I have in the majority of my time at Wellesley because I was actually there to learn; without the stress of a grade, I could engage with concepts that I wouldn’t have the confidence to work with otherwise. I learned about the collection of feminist datasets, how different insect species interact in urban environments, and trends in Latin American long-form nonfiction. None of these are my “comfort topics,” but they were all worth it.

I wish that in my first year at Wellesley someone had told me there’s no benefit to being an overachiever here. Take the long-shot classes, but why bother making those classes part of your GPA when you don’t have to? Credit-non should be normalized, and beyond that, I assert that more professors ought to be abandoning letter-grading altogether, or getting as close to it as they can within Wellesley’s rules and regulations. There are a few professors at this school who do it to some extent — implementing “mastery grading” and systems of self-assessment for their students — and the rest of the faculty should be rushing to follow their example.

Study after study shows that grades, at any academic level, don’t really indicate the depth or meaning of a student’s learning. So, this isn’t a new argument I’m making. But it’s a worthwhile one to reiterate, anyway. So, Wellesley, as you return to whatever version of “normal” greets you next year, I implore you to consider the credit-non option, not as an embarrassment or a cop-out, but as an opportunity to explore, relax and actually, for once, learn something.

So, when you are trapped inside as the world continues to collapse around you, what is there to do but rewatch “Avatar: the Last Airbender”? The mid-2010s Nickelodeon children’s TV epic made its second Netflix debut in July, and suddenly, it seemed like half the young adults in the world were watching the show. And they talked about it, furiously tweeting out which characters they thought were gay, or who they thought would have voted for Bernie or would have been taken in by QAnon. 

“Avatar” tells the story of Aang, a 12-year-old monk with the unique ability to “bend” and manipulate all four elements — fire, earth, air and water. Only Aang, with his bending powers, can restore balance to the world, which has been overtaken by the genocidal Fire Nation. Though he is only 12, he gathers together a ragtag group of kids who go on to try and save the world. At the opening of the show, the condition of that world is pretty grim: the Air and Water Nations have experienced genocides, while the Earth Nation is being colonized by the Fire Nation, whose colonial officials mercilessly extract its resources. Between jokes and not-too-violent-for-Nickelodeon fight scenes, the show engages unusually serious political themes.

Over the 3-season arc of the show, the Fire Nation villain Prince Zuko realizes that he has been fighting his whole life on the side of the oppressors. He unlearns his father’s violence and plays a pivotal role in undoing the damage done by the Fire Nation’s imperialist policies. 

A younger friend of mine — we will call him Kyle — turned 18 this year. He also became politically involved for the first time, subsuming himself in prison abolition work in our hometown. He read and protested until his voice gave out, and learned to bail his friends out of jail and wash mace out of his eyes. Kyle spent the summer re-evaluating the beliefs his white conservative parents taught him, and began to imagine a world in which his own political involvement could (and should) be a force towards freedom and equity.

At one point in July, he too, rewatched Avatar, and said, with a sort of dawning horror: “I’m thinking we might be the Fire Nation.” It felt like watching Zuko’s character arc in-person. In life as in the cartoon, I watched someone realize how their past beliefs had harmed others, and change accordingly. 

Sometimes, it is easier to conceptualize the more terrifying parts of our current world through something as simple as a children’s television show. It is easier to answer Audre Lorde’s famous question: “What does it mean to be a citizen of a country on the wrong side of every liberation struggle on this earth?” when the fascist ethnostate in question is not the United States, but the very violent and very fictional Fire Nation.

“Avatar: the Last Airbender” is hardly a perfect or extensive political education. It is a show with a non-specified “pan-Asian” aesthetic, written by two white men, in which elements of Anglocentrism manage reliably to creep in, regardless of the fact that there are no white characters in the show.

But “Avatar” is a truly good TV show, and like all good entertainment, it adapts itself to different stages of our lives. The primary audience of Avatar in 2005 has grown up now. The eight-year-old American children who watched it when it was first released probably were not thinking about Audre Lorde and international liberation struggles. I know that when I would go to my friends’ houses in order to watch Avatar, I was not thinking about my role as a white U.S. citizen in worldwide systems of oppression. As Avatar re-emerged on Netflix this summer, though, many of us are looking at it with fresh eyes. Those of us in the US are most certainly living in the belly of the Fire Nation. But as we try to figure out how to construct a more equitable world, we could do worse than to have the Avatar on our side.

Though a significant portion of the school’s population is transgender — trans-masculine people have been attending the school since as early as the 1930s, when student N.E.B. Ostermann graduated and the school publically changed its admissions policy to allow trans women to attend beginning in 2017 — this is often unrecognized in the way the school presents itself to the wider world. The college’s admission motto is still “women who will,” and Wellesley’s official websites refer to it as a “women’s college.” Many students have taken up the term “historically women’s college,” to encompass both the school’s history as a place centering the experiences of women and its current reality. There aren’t any official statistics available on the number of transgender students at Wellesley, though a 2016 student survey in The Wellesley News estimated the trans student population to be around 5%, or about 117 students. 

The constitution of Siblings as an official student organization may start to change that. 

“On Wellesley’s official WEngage, which prospective students might look at, there’s going to be a mention of transgender students on this campus. That’s pretty historical,” Siblings organizing member Mar Barrera ’20 said. “Wellesley’s done a lot to subjugate and eliminate the gender diversity on this campus… [now] our organization exists, and we’re on paper, for anyone to search.” 

Dulce Gariepy ’22 agreed. “It was important that Siblings got constituted because it helps to recognize that not everyone at Wellesley is a woman and they deserve to be supported and recognized regardless of their gender identity,” Gariepy said. 

Though it has not been officially recognized on paper, the organization has existed since at least 2011 — it was founded, according to Barrera, by a class of 2012 alum. 

“It originally started out as a place for transmasculine people, and since Wellesley decided that we’re going to admit trans women to our historically women’s college, it’s become a lot more gender diverse,” Barrera added.  

Over the past several years, Siblings has taken on more of an activist role. In February 2018, they organized a protest of a speaking engagement by Alice Dreger on campus, funded by the Freedom Project. Dreger was on campus to promote the widely-discredited autogynephilia theory, which asserts that transgender women choose to transition primarily due to a sexual attraction to the idea of themselves as women. Siblings members –– along with members of BlackOUT, Familia, Tea Talks, QTPOCC (Queer and Trans People of Color Collective), QCAB (Queer Council Advisory Board) and SAGA (Sexuality and Gender Alliance) –– condemned the Freedom Project’s choice to pay Dreger, who is cisgender, to speak on this issue and organized a protest response.

“My first year, sophomore year, there was a lot of protest organizing, and a lot of trans people taking care of other trans people in a volatile environment,” Barrera said. “It was a fairly political org. A lot of responding to things Wellesley did — and it was a lot of individual people doing a lot of that labor.” 

To change that, the organization is focusing on building a healthy community for transgender students on campus this year, an objective that is supported by new LGBTQ+ Programs and Services Coordinator AJ Guerrero. “Our trans students need a gender identity -affirming organization for them to meet and share their experiences,” Guerrero said. 

“We’re trying to become more of a community building source rather than a politically reactive group,” said Barrera. Younger students like Gariepy have been reaping the benefits of that community. 

“Sibs gave me a community of people who listened and allowed me to express my gender identity in a positive and healthy way,” Gariepy stated in an email. The group hosts community building events such as brunches and dinners –– and, in the first event they were able to book their own space for as a constituted organization, a movie night.

The film of choice? “Shrek 2!” Barrera said. Some of the Olin student members of Siblings, they added, were able to use their engineering skills to build a pillow fort. This level of engagement is a legacy Barrera is happy to be leaving as they graduate this spring. 

“The first years and sophomores are all really engaged, and really happy. And it makes me happy to think that this is the standard we are leaving, and that’s the level of community engagement they’re going to expect for the rest of their time at Wellesley,” Barerra said.  

Siblings will be holding their annual Trans Week of Visibility event the week of Mar. 11th. The series of events will include a trans pub night, the distribution of pronoun pins around campus, a sex education workshop for trans students, and a workshop on how to be a better ally to trans students for cisgender students. Though the event happened last year, Barrera said, “It’s going to be a lot bigger this year” — and may even include a drag show and an as-yet-unannounced keynote speaker. All of this will be easier to organize as an officially recognized organization. 

Though Siblings is only now becoming constituted, Gariepy said, it has played a vital role on campus for a long time — and will continue to do so into the future. 

“Siblings has helped me feel validated and live a more authentic and fulfilling life,” they said. “Because of them I feel a sense of belonging at Wellesley that I did not realize I was missing before.”

During the event, students and faculty shared short statements and poems regarding the necessity of disinvestment and consequences of climate change, and organizers led the group in chant and song. Among those in attendance was College President Paula Johnson, who described it as “very moving.” While the organizers initially planned to present the petition, which had garnered 650 signatures, to President Johnson in her Green Hall office following the event, her arrival prompted the group to give it to her during the rally. 

President Johnson announced to the crowd that the Board of Trustees will take up the issue at their next board meeting, slated to occur in early February.  She referenced a schoolwide email Chief Investment Officer Debby Kuentstner sent a week before as indication of the school’s support for a discussion regarding divestment. The email requested that students, faculty and other community members submit any plans that they had for divestment to the Subcommittee on Investment Responsibility (SIR) of the Board of Trustees. Currently, Renew Wellesley is submitting a platform, as well as a group of concerned faculty led primarily by Environmental Studies faculty members. If either of these proposals are successful, SIR may recommend fossil fuel divestment to the full Board of Trustees. Schools such as the University of California system and Smith College have already pledged to divest.

“This has been an issue that has been on our agenda before the petition,” Johnson said. “And it’ll be an important moment for that subcommittee and the board to hear from students, faculty, and other members of the community, to help enrich our understanding of the community’s view, and as we dive deeply into the data and move forward together as a community.”

The protest occurred about a week after the school released a new policy on demonstration and free expression and followed on the heels of a similar demonstration at the annual Yale-Harvard football game. The organizers had been initially reluctant to follow the notification procedure because of a shared belief that such a policy should not exist in the first place, according to Claire Hayhow ’21, a member of Renew Wellesley and EnAct. But due to concern over police presence, which has been significant during the past rallies, the group reached out to Dean Horton exactly 48 hours before the event. According to Hayhow, the group was able to negotiate with the Dean and prevent police from attending. 

Moving forward, Renew Wellesley announced it would continue its efforts in the spring semester and expressed a willingness to testify in front of the Board of Trustees in order to further their cause. 

“I think it was very successful,” Hayhow said. “I was so happy to see all of the people that showed up. We had no idea that so many people would be here.”

The email credited WGST Professors Emerita Susan Reverby and Charlene Galarneau for designing the minor, which requires students to take WGST 150 Health and Society and four electives across a number of disciplines, including anthropology, economics, sociology and more. This year, fewer than one-third of the courses listed that satisfy the minor are being offered, according to Velenchik’s memo. The memo notes that visiting faculty members were hired as “short-run stopgap measures,” but longer term plans for the department did not include a continued focus in the public health field. 

The 2019-2020 academic year will be the last that WGST 150 and other health-related WGST courses are offered. Current students who have completed the course will be able to declare the minor until the end of the academic year. 

In the early 2000s, Professors Reverby and Adrienne Asch, who taught at the College for just over a decade, began advising students who were interested in pursuing individual majors in public health and healthcare. Professor Galarneau joined the faculty in 2005, and along with Reverby, continued to advise students after Asch retired. In response to growing student interest, CCAP approached Reverby and Galarneau about instituting the minor in the 2012-2013 academic year, and it was formally offered for the first time the next academic year. 

In any given year, approximately two dozen students are health and society minors. According to a 2017 report about the minor written by Galarneau, the program graduated 31 students in its first three years. There are currently 18 health and society minors at the College. 

WGST Department Chair Rosanna Hertz defended the College’s decision to suspend the minor. “Deciding to let go of the health and society minor was the right decision to make,” Hertz stated. “It is not in the interest of the WGST department to continue to have an additional minor that lacks either sufficient course offerings or regular faculty whose teaching interests are in this area.” 

Wellesley’s health and society minor is unique among liberal arts colleges, because it is housed in the WGST department, according to Galarneau. “I don’t think there’s been another school where that’s been true, though there has been interest in other schools in that,” she said. 

The minor’s directors have recognized the challenges the program faces since at least 2017. “An ongoing challenge for the H&S minor is having a sufficient number of courses with intellectual breadth and depth,” stated the 2017 report. 

Housing the minor in one department while utilizing courses from other departments has proved challenging for the program. “The health and society minor, unlike many other minors, is dependent upon courses across the curriculum. And every department makes decisions about what their priorities are. So this minor is at the mercy of many different departments’ decisions,” Galarneau said. 

Current students have already been impacted by the limited nature of the minor. Despite their continued interest in public health, Cal Bullitt ’21 is dropping the minor after this year because of a lack of faculty support. “Because of the fragmented and undeveloped faculty group of the minor, there isn’t much support. I decided to drop the minor before the College did, so I have a great segue to tell my advisor that I’m dropping,” Bullitt said. 

Others have expressed concerns that the methods of systemic analysis of health that they have accessed through the minor will no longer be made available to future Wellesley students. Mar Barrera ’20 credits the minor with “completely changing” their career path by encouraging them to move towards health advocacy for marginalized populations, particularly the transgender community. 

“The very pragmatic aspects of WGST were helpful for me personally, as a trans person in this society. The classes offered under that minor and the emphasis on public health policy really were applicable. So I think it’s really sad that they’re stripping away that specific lens of the department,” Barrera said.  

Ashley Wang ’20, who will be graduating with a health and society minor, said that it provided a valuable counterpoint to what is traditionally studied by students going into the medical field. “As someone who came into Wellesley on the pre-med track, the health and society minor provided an invaluable balance to the heavy STEM workload of the track,” she said.

Wang continued, “To me and many others, medicine and healing is not just labs and white coats but rather a whole world.”

Professor Galarneau was surprised when she received Velenchik’s memo. “When I left, I very much thought that there was a commitment to continuing [the health and society minor]. It is disappointing. I’m disappointed mostly for students. It was built for a set of solid reasons that are still there, but apparently there aren’t resources, or it isn’t a priority at this point,” she said. 

The move appeared to contradict what Galarneau perceived about student interest of public health at Wellesley. “There’s ongoing interest, and even growing interest,” Galarneau said. She cited the WGST department’s historical curricular strength in health and healthcare as a motivating factor in creating the minor. 

“I don’t know why it’s being dropped. [Velenchik’s] explanation is that faculty who did primary teaching in that area have left. And the College has been in an era of reducing the size of the faculty. But I can’t explain the prioritization of this — that’s a question for the administration,” Galarneau continued. 

Reverby was not surprised about the College’s decision to suspend the minor, and points to the ongoing financial difficulties the College has faced in recent years. “Given the kinds of cutbacks that have been in the faculty, both because of the retirement program and also the financial needs of the College, there hasn’t been hiring. I knew when I retired that I wasn’t going to be replaced exactly,” she said. 

The loss of the health and society minor comes in the wake of the Voluntary Retirement Program (VRP), a one-time retirement program that offered incentives to faculty and staff members over a set age and experience threshold. The VRP contributed to the administration’s efforts to achieve a sustainable operating budget. 

In spring 2018, President Paula Johnson thanked the success of the VRP in “streamlining” operations and cutting costs. “In order to accomplish the needed reduction in the overall size of the faculty, the majority of tenure-track lines vacated as a result of the VRP will not be replaced,” Johnson stated in her email announcement.

As previously reported, faculty across all disciplines were worried about the curricular effects the VRP. Thirty-four faculty members across numerous departments took the package, including Galarneau. 

“Those of us who were in that position back then, we had no idea what it would mean. We knew the College was looking to reduce faculty, but we didn’t know what that meant for any individual program, because no one knew how many people would actually take it,” Galarneau said. 

Reverby retired just before the VRP announcement, but still acknowledges its role, and retirement in general, as a key factor in the suspension of the minor. “The problem with the buyout is that it’s not purposeful because it’s up to people’s personal decisions, so one department could lose large numbers of people just on the age gradient. The College has to make hard decisions all the time about whose needs can they address,” she said. 

Despite the loss of the minor, students will still be able to incorporate courses related to public health into their studies. “All the intro courses talk about women’s health among the many other topics they cover.  So students who want to know more about these topics will still find them in our courses and in courses in other departments in the College,” explained Hertz. 

The degree to which students will be able to pursue those interests is unclear. As Reverby notes, students may need to pursue an independent major in the topics, just as students did prior to the establishment of the minor. “The memo doesn’t address the issue of whether or not students will be able to pull together enough courses to make a coherent major in health and society,” she said. 

Velenchik’s memo also notes that CCAP would consider alternative designs and departmental homes for a program derived from the health and society minor. 

The founders of the minor take hope in the continued interest across the student body. “There’s a lot of ways in a student’s curriculum to explore her interest in this area. I just want to encourage students to not feel completely discouraged by this,” said Reverby. 

“Disappointing as this suspension is, it’s heartening that it’s not a closure. I take hope in that,” explained Galarneau. 

Upatham will be replacing Janet Faulkner, who served as interim director of nondiscrimination initiatives and Title IX/504 Coordinator over the past year. Faulkner will be returning to private law practice. “Kate comes to the College with a depth of relevant experience as a civil rights attorney with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights and as an outside lawyer representing higher education institutions,” Johnson said in her email. “She has extensive experience serving as an independent investigator of Title IX and employment cases.” 

Upatham herself is excited to bring her years of legal work to Wellesley, listing some of her achievements in an email to the Wellesley News. “I became a lawyer because I was interested in making the lives of others better and ensuring that people are treated fairly,” she wrote. Upatham went on to list her employment as a civil rights attorney with the U.S. Department of Education and Office for Civil Rights in Boston, and work with a law firm that specializes in assisting schools in civil rights laws compliance. “I’m excited to bring this experience to Wellesley.”

One notable case in which Upatham was involved shortly before coming to Wellesley was of a Smith College custodial employee who called the police on a Black student who was eating lunch and relaxing in a residence hall living room in August 2018. Oumou Kanote, the student in question, told CBS News that the police told her the employee had called reporting a “suspicious black man.” Upatham was part of the team of lawyers from outside Smith who investigated the incident in October of that year, and, according to a report in Inside Higher Ed, “did not find sufficient evidence that the student’s race or color motivated the phone call” and concluded that “the caller provided a legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for calling the campus police on the day of the incident.” 

Upatham declined to comment on her role in making this report, but noted that she encourages students to feel comfortable reporting discrimination concerns to her office. “Some people might be reluctant to disclose concerns of discrimination because they are afraid that a response would not be private, or they are afraid that the response will mean a full investigation regardless of what they want,” Upatham said. “That is not the case. I take privacy seriously and will only share information with individuals who need to know about the concerns raised so that Wellesley can appropriately respond.” 

Wellesley hired its first full-time Title IX coordinator in 2016, after a report on sexual misconduct on campus highlighted several student concerns about how students who are victims of sexual assault and harrasment might seek safety and justice. 

Often, although not exclusively, the cases that Wellesley Title IX coordinators deal with involve parties from multiple colleges and universities. When asked how she would navigate that aspect of working on Title IX/504 disputes here,  Upatham said, “The discrimination or harassment people experience based on protected status are generally the same regardless of the school someone attends.” She also noted, however, that as a historically-women’s college Wellesley does face some more specific issues. “As an institution historically dedicated to serving women, Wellesley College has a longer history of being alert to sexual harassment which most often affects women, and people whose gender identities and sexual identities are less common. While Wellesley students may experience lower rates of sexual harassment and assault than students at other institutions, it still happens and work still needs to be done to address these problems.” Upatham also expressed a willingness to work with other schools’ Title IX coordinating departments, many of which are significantly larger than Wellesley’s. Harvard, for example, maintains a network of over 50 Title IX coordinators to Wellesley’s single coordinator. MIT’s Title IX coordinating department employs 17 people. 

Upatham notes that matters that cross campuses often also cross Title IX departments. “When an assault has happened on a different college campus, I can help our students report to that other college campus if they wish to do so,” she said. “If they do, I can coordinate with that school’s Title IX Coordinator to help provide information our student might have for an investigation, and to put protections in place for our student if they plan to return to that campus.” This is particularly relevant regarding schools such as MIT, where a large number of Wellesley students take classes and participate in extracurricular activities each semester. Conversations on sexual discrimination and harrassment have been on the increase at MIT in recent weeks, as multiple professors face allegations of connection to rapist Jeffrey Epstein. According to the Association of American Universities (AAU) Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Misconduct, among those involved in harassing behaviors at MIT, 18.1 percent are faculty members or instructors, as opposed to a national average of 9.6 percent. A recent community forum on sexual misconduct brought many of these student concerns to administrators’ attention. 

Aside from working on Title IX cases both at Wellesley and where Wellesley students are involved in other institutions, Upatham says she is particularly excited for the other aspect of her role–that of working on improving services for disabled students as 504 coordinator. 

“As a historical institution, many of Wellesley’s buildings were designed before our current accessibility standards and I was pleased to learn that Wellesley is working to make its facilities more physically accessible,” Upatham said, and suggested that students who are concerned about discrimination based not only on disability but on any legally-protected identity bring those concerns to her.  “If students or other members of the Wellesley community believe that discrimination has occurred based on race, color, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, or any other protected status (i.e., genetic information, pregnancy, veterans’ status, membership in uniformed services), they are encouraged to raise that to the attention of my office.”

On Monday, Nov. 18, Students for an Accessible Wellesley, an organization formed last year to advocate for the needs of disabled Wellesley students, held a workshop teaching the basics of American Sign Language. Approximately 250,000 to 500,000 people speak ASL nationwide. The workshop covered introducing yourself and signing names in ASL, which is currently not offered that isn’t offered at Wellesley, though we do have a population of Deaf and hard of hearing students. 

2019 Samuel and Hilda Levitt Fellowship recipients announced

This week, the recipients of the second yearly Samuel and Hilda Levitt Fellowships were announced. The Levitt fellowship supports the work of nine thesis students on campus; this year’s students selected were Chelsie Ahn, Maheen Akram, Edilla Foster, Rose Horowitz, Nayab Khan, Christi Li, Qing Hai, Bang Nhan, and Andjela Padejski. The students span disciplines, and are selected based on the feasibility and uniqueness of their thesis project. Applications for the next round of Levitt fellowships are due on April 29, 2020. 

Lennon Wall resolution voted down in Senate after weeks of discussion

The proposal College Government to create a John Lennon Wall on the CG spam board in support of protesters in Hong Kong did not pass senate when it was voted on Monday, Nov. 18. The idea was brought by a group of Wellesley students with connections to Hong Kong who said their goal was to raise awareness about the protests and engage students with the issue. The vote — in which 51.7 percent abstained, 32.8 percent voted in favor and 15.5 percent voted against — was first introduced Monday, Nov. 4 and was discussed at both senate meetings following its introduction. During conversation, senators brought up concerns regarding regulation of the wall, CG precedent of outside groups using the spam board, and what message it would send to international students.

 On Sept. 21, Kennedy formally announced the launch of his 2020 Senate campaign, running against incumbent Senator Ed Markey, who has served as the junior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts under presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren since 2013, and Shannon Liss-Riordan, a labor attorney.

During his most recent stop at Wellesley, Kennedy asked students which national issues they were most concerned with as 2020 approaches. A few of the issues Wellesley students raised included health care, climate change, gun control and student loans. Kennedy discussed his stances on these issues and also answered a few of the Wellesley News’ questions about his policies. 

Many recent Democratic primary races have been positioned as progressive versus establishment races, best exemplified by New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s defeat of incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in 2018. When asked whether he sees himself as progressive or establishment, however, Kennedy said, “That’s not what this race is.” 

“I think this isn’t so much a referendum on policy positions — Senator Markey and I have an awful lot of things in common — it’s about how you would actually approach the role of a United States Senator…it’s about leveraging the platform that comes with being a Senator from Massachusetts,” Kennedy said.  

Last week, Kennedy was criticized for not attending a proposed climate debate between the Democratic primary candidates that would be the  first-ever senatorial climate debate. Markey, one of the co-authors of the Green New Deal, has a strong record on climate and proposed the debate. Kennedy declined the invitation, citing scheduling concerns. “There’s a formal process where campaigns sit down at a table and try to hash those out. That’s not what happened with this one,” Kennedy said. 

“We have proposed more debates in any other campaign in modern history, senate campaign across Massachusetts, we’ve proposed a climate debate, and we’re waiting for Senator Markey’s team and Ms. Liss-Riordan’s team to agree on that same framework,” he continued.  

In an interview with The Wellesley News, Kennedy clarified a number of his policy positions. During the open discussion, Kennedy emphasized his desire to lift up the marginalized and build stronger and more secure social safety nets, and noted that he supports wealth taxation. When asked if he would support a Sanders wealth tax plan, Kennedy admitted that he had not read the plan, which features more and higher tax brackets that begin at a lower threshold than any other Presidential candidate’s. Kennedy stated support for Elizabeth Warren’s plan, the “two-cent tax,” which proposes a two percent tax on the 75,000 wealthiest families in the U.S. 

“Look, I think our government needs to take in more revenue in order to address the structural inequities that we’ve seen… There might be some other ones out there, Kennedy explained.  “In order to mke the investments that are needed, when it comes to early childcare, when it comes to investments in infrastructure, when it comes to ensuring that we address the generational equity that comes with putting 1.6 trillion dollars of student loan debt on a younger generation…all of those things and more can be addressed with the revenues based off a wealth tax.” 

Regarding immigration reform, Kennedy, halfway through a question about a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients, responded: “Yes. 100 percent.” 

He also answered a question about abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) The agency, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has been criticized for its role in the implementation of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies and directives. Lawmakers, including Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, have called for its abolition. 

Kennedy said he supports reforming ICE, but he is unsure whether abolishing ICE would be the way to do so. 

“You have to be sure — I come at this from a public safety perspective — if we abolish ICE and leave no federal law, federal authority in charge of enforcing immigration law, that means local authorities have to,” Kennedy said. 

He noted that this may lead to mistreatment of undocumented immigrants by local law enforcement. 

“So I think it’s critically important to separate those authorities out to make sure that federal authorities are in charge of enforcing federal law, and state authorities are in charge of the basic protections that you see across the country. If we abolish ICE and there’s another agency that can pick that up, fine. But I think that if you just, by abolishing ICE, you leave those responsibilities to local law enforcement, I think that creates a whole other series of challenges,” Kennedy concluded.  

The primary election is Sept. 15, 2020, and the general election is Election Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020. 

Chik-fil-A has announced that the two anti-LGBT charities that it has previously supported are no longer on their donation list. “If in fact they are genuinely backing off of being anti-LGBTQ, then I say welcome to Boston — but that’s a big if,” said Arline Isaacson, Co-Chair of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, according to the Boston Herald. Chick-fil-A has previously been blocked from opening any locations within Boston city limits due to their anti-LGBTQ policies. 

Boston to see highest Thanksgiving traffic levels since 2005

According to AAA, more than 50 million people are expected to travel over 55 miles from home for Thanksgiving this year. Locally, you should stay off the roads the Wednesday before Thanksgiving — that day, between 4:30 and 6:30 pm, is expected to be the worst driving time of the week. The HOV lane on I-93 between Boston and Quincy will have extended hours next Tuesday and Wednesday. If you are driving on Thanksgiving night, MassDOT will be serving free coffee at service plaza from 10 p.m. Thursday until 5 am Friday.

Boston considers rule changes in marijuana industry 

This week, a ruling that could bring major changes to the still-new marijuana industry in Boston will be brought to a vote. Recreational marijuana has been legal in the state of Massachusetts since 2016, and the first legal marijuana shops in the state opened in Boston almost exactly a year ago in December 2018. The ordinance was initially proposed by City Councilor Kim Janey in February to try to correct for the current marijuana law’s failure to help minority communities which did not get an equal share of the profits from the first rollout of the marijuana legalization. Janey’s proposal would give legal marijuana permit priority to applicants where over half of the leadership meet various criteria including being Black or Latino, having a prior conviction and living in Boston for seven years or more.