At 7:00 AM on Thursday, Mar. 27, the Office of the Provost announced that many non-tenure-track courses would be reduced in credit from 1 to 0.5. Provost Courney Coile’s plan is aimed at granting students opportunities to continue receiving credit this semester while the strike is ongoing.  As a result, students who fell under the 3-unit minimum, required to be fully enrolled, had to register for additional classes 8 weeks into the semester. 

Students and tenure-track (TT) faculty were made aware of the new academic plan at the same time, with the email announcement sent Thursday morning. 

Tenured faculty and department chairs told the News they were not informed of this plan ahead of time and had to inform the Provost’s Office of whether or not they would open their courses for registration by 6 pm that day.

A tenured professor in a STEM department explained that while faculty had a short Zoom with the Provost, many of their questions were still left unanswered regarding the credit plan.

 “Confusion remains about how theses and independent studies should proceed if students have BUE [bargaining unit employee] advisors or committee members,” they said.

Additionally, many departments could not find time to meet and discuss how to proceed prior to the response deadline. 

“Everyone had a full day of classes and meetings planned already with no open meeting times to call. We tried to triage it over email,” said the STEM professor.  

Nikhil Rao, Associate Professor of History and department chair, elaborated on the confusion among TT faculty on how to proceed.

“I interpreted the Provost’s email, which was addressed to all tenure-stream faculty, to mean that faculty members would decide for themselves whether to admit new students into their courses,” said Rao.

Banu Subramaniam, chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies (WGST) department, shared with WGST students that she was traveling for a talk and meeting out of state when they received the Provost’s message. Subramaniam did not receive a response to a request to the administration for more time. 

The Class Deans told the News that they were similarly informed on Thursday morning, attributing the timing of the notification to the College’s need to roll out the policy so quickly. 

“Given the pace of these developments, the Class Deans were not involved in the planning process,” the Class Deans Office said. 

The office told the News that the Provost’s Office met with the Class Deans on Thursday morning to share the details about the credit changes and registration policy.

Since then, the Class Deans have been in the process of supporting students. 

“[We] have responded to hundreds of student emails, participated in Zoom sessions, held individual meetings, and worked closely with campus partners to gather information and provide guidance.” 

Announcing plans

On Wednesday, Mar. 26, the Registrar’s Office sent a message to students telling them that if the strike began on Thursday, students in classes taught by striking instructors would “receive information from the Provost and the Registrar on Thursday morning about how to proceed.”

After the Provost’s email announcing the credit reduction plan was sent, the Class Deans sent an email at 9:40 AM telling students, “While we do not have all the answers at this moment, please know that we are working closely with campus leadership to navigate this situation as smoothly as possible.” 

In an email statement to the News, a spokesperson for the College stated that the reduced credit plan was put in place to ensure that the College would “be able to demonstrate to various outside agencies that our students are earning credits in a timely way in order to make progress toward their degree.” 

“Since the length of the faculty strike at Wellesley is currently unknown, the College has developed a plan that will be effective no matter what the duration of the strike may be,” the spokesperson said. “The plan must be implemented now for students to have enough contact hours to support the 0.5 credit.”

The College also noted, “We are depending on the tenure-stream faculty to offer these classes and on students to enroll in them.” 

Provost Courtney Coile echoed this statement in another email sent on the evening of Mar. 27. In this email, she stated that the policy was necessary for students to maintain full-time status for financial aid and visa eligibility purposes. 

A difficult choice for faculty 

Faculty reflected on the complicated decision to open up seats in their courses to students. 

A STEM professor described the plan as “an alternate way to make up for replacing labor lost when courses were canceled or put on hold”. They noted that while faculty had a “sense of urgent concern” for students whose financial aid or visa status may be at risk, there was no way for professors to know who these at-risk students are, making it “impossible to know who to make course seats for”.

Echoing this sentiment, a professor of Humanities stated, “I was conflicted between wanting to support my NTT [non-tenure track] colleagues and taking care of our students who are in danger of being deported or losing financial aid.”

Many professors have expressed concerns about the feasibility of adding students to in-progress courses and the increase in workload for tenured faculty. A STEM professor told the News, “There was a strong sense that adding students to classes would be disruptive among faculty who said they didn’t want to do it.”

Subramaniam stated, “There should be a path forward where we honor the legal right of BUE faculty to strike while not imperiling students or adding to the labor of already over-extended tenure-stream faculty.”

Faculty also argued that educational quality was being compromised in the administration’s credit reduction decision.

“A good education is not a collection of random curricular units. All of us have worked together to create an educational plan for you, and you have every right to be able to fulfill those plans,” Subramaniam said. “Forcing you to take an unrelated 0.5 unit course is not a sound solution.”

Implementing plans

The College scheduled course registration for the rest of the semester for Saturday, Mar. 29. On Friday, Mar. 28, the Registrar’s office and Class Deans hosted two drop-in Zoom sessions to answer registration questions. 

The Registrar’s office’s email on Friday night told students, “Later this evening, you will receive an email notifying you that these courses [for Saturday registration] are visible and searchable in Workday.” This notification would also indicate that registration appointments and personalized documents for each student enrolled in a course taught by a non-tenure track faculty member would also be available on Workday. 

At 7:09 AM on Saturday, Dean Shannon Butler-Mokoro sent an email saying that there were “some errors on last night’s communication,” telling students that if they saw errors in their unit status to email the Office of the Registrar, who could fix those issues. 

Registration later that morning was split into three time slots, allowing last-semester seniors, students at risk of falling below 3.0 units for the spring semester to register first at 10:00 AM. The second slot prioritized all other class of 2026 students, and the third slot prioritized all other class of 2027 and 2028 students.  

In Senate on Monday, Mar. 31, Provost Coile updated the community on Saturday’s registration. 

“After registration, only 30 students are at risk of falling below 3.0 units.” 

The Provost’s Office is following up with these 30 students individually. No number has been given on how many students were at risk before Saturday. 

Regarding the rushed registration on Saturday, Coile said, “Everybody did the best that they could.” 

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Sazma Sarwar and Valida Pau.

The “Associate Provost for Equity and Inclusion” at Wellesley recently became the “Associate Provost for Inclusive Pedagogy and Engagement.” 

In a statement to The Wellesley News, a spokesperson for the College said that conversations about the position title began informally in 2024, and the name of the position was formally changed on Feb. 1, 2025.

“The change was made so that the title would more accurately reflect – to people both on and off campus – the broad range of the work being done in this position,” the spokesperson said. 

The change comes after President Trump’s Jan. 21 executive order on “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.” In section five, the order states that within 120 days of its issuance, the Attorney General and Secretary of Education shall “issue guidance” to state, local, and higher educational institutions that receive federal funds about what they must do to comply with Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, the Supreme Court case that reversed affirmative action. 

The executive order, then, would entail that Wellesley College, as a higher education institution receiving federal grants and participating in federal student loan assistance, would receive this guidance. 

The spokesperson for the College maintained that the Associate Provost Office of Inclusive Pedagogy & Engagement position “is designed to support all faculty in departments across the College with our Inclusive Excellence commitment.” This includes developing curricula, teaching initiatives, and promoting a “vibrant and restorative community.”

The change in context

While the College did not state that the position title change was influenced by any current presidential administration policy, the change occurred alongside the presidential administration’s push to affirm its anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) stance. 

Two weeks after the change, on Feb. 14, the Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights of the Department of Education, Craig Trainor, released a letter condemning DEI in all its forms in all American educational institutions. 

The letter “provides notice of the Department’s existing interpretation of federal law,” and lays out the ways the Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action “applies more broadly.” 

Trainor says that “DEI programs, for example, frequently preference certain racial groups and teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not.”  

Trainor stated in the letter that federal law prohibits covered institutions from using race in decisions concerning admission, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarship, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies and “all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.”

The letter advises all educational institutions to ensure that their policies and actions comply with civil rights law and cease any efforts to circumvent those laws by indirect means. It concludes by stating that institutions that fail to comply will face potential loss of federal funding.

The News first reported on Feb. 5 that before the new College website was launched on March 11, the Wellesley website included a “Diversity and Inclusion” page with messages from President Paula Johnson, Dean Peach Valdes and their diversity recruitment team. That page has now been replaced with one titled “Where You Belong.” 

The College also previously told the News that their admissions process is already compliant with the Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College Supreme Court decision, and they did not anticipate any changes. 

A Department of Education letter

On March 10, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights issued a letter to 60 higher education institutions — including Wellesley College — to remind them of their legal obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
On Mar. 14, General Counsel Karen Petrulakis and Director of Nondiscrimination Initiatives and Title IX Coordinator/504 Coordinator Justin Bell sent a letter to the Wellesley community. 

In the letter, they stated that Wellesley continues to condemn antisemitism and all hate and discrimination and that “since well before this letter, Wellesley has taken action to ensure that all our students, including Jewish students, have a strong sense of belonging at Wellesley.”

The letter goes on to assert that the College is complying with Title VI policies through encouraging reporting of discrimination and harassment and establishing mandatory Title VI antidiscrimination training for students, faculty and staff.

The task force will include the Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services and “other agencies as it develops,” according to the press release. 

The Task Force comes as a part of President Trump’s Executive Order on Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism. The Jan. 29 order requires that within 60 days of Jan. 29, 2025 each executive agency must submit a report identifying all pending administrative complaints and court cases alleging civil-rights violations related to post-Oct. 7, 2023 campus anti-Semitism involving institutions of higher education. The US Attorney General is “encouraged to employ appropriate civil rights enforcement authorities to combat anti-Semitism.” 

The Justice Department said in the press release that “first priority will be to root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses.” 

Reuters reported that the Department of Education said it would be opening investigations of antisemitic harassment at Columbia University, Northwestern University, Portland State University, University of California, Berkeley; and University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

In 2023, as CNN reported in November, the Brandeis Center, a Jewish civil rights legal advocacy organization, filed complaints with the Department of Education alleging that Wellesley College failed to adequately respond to harassment of Jews on campus. The complaint alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act — which protects people from discrimination in programs that receive federal financial assistance, like Wellesley.  

Now, with the Executive Order requiring a report on all pending civil rights complaints post-Oct. 7, it is possible that Wellesley will be named in any report generated. 

Denise Katz-Prober, the Brandeis Center attorney overseeing the Wellesley complaint, told The News that the Brandeis Center’s Wellesley complaint is still pending before the Office for Civil Rights within the Department of Education. However, a new administration does not signal the end of the investigation. 

“Just because there’s a new administration, it does not mean and certainly Wellesley College should not think that this point is going to be forgotten,” she said. 

Wellesley has been in the news for accusations of antisemitism since Oct. 7, 2023. Fox News reported on events on campus after Oct. 7, and CNN reported on the Brandeis Center’s complaint against the College in Nov. 2023. However, Katz-Prober does not believe that only the most prominently featured schools will receive the brunt of the legal action. 

“It’s not just the Ivies, it’s not just the ones that are prominently in the news. It’s a wide range of different kinds of schools,” she said. 

The Department of Education also announced that it would be opening investigations of antisemitic harassment at Columbia University, Northwestern University, Portland State University, University of California, Berkeley and University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Katz-Prober spoke to the message she sees this Executive sending:

“What it signals to colleges and universities across the country, including Wellesley, is that this administration is not sitting back and just waiting for complaints to be filed. It is proactively addressing the problem of antisemitism as it sees it occurring on campuses,” she said. 

She also noted the greater scope these investigations present for prosecution.

“These directed investigations are initiated by the administration, and they also allow the administration to address the problem and direct their investigation more broadly,” she said. “They’re not confined to a narrow set of allegations in a complaint.”

The directed investigations are not the only proactive step the Executive Order allows for. The Executive Order states that “The Attorney General is encouraged to employ appropriate civil-rights enforcement authorities, such as 18 U.S.C. 241, to combat anti-Semitism.”

Under 18 U.S.C. 241, if two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person, they shall be fined or imprisoned for up to ten years. The consequences increase to imprisonment for any term and/or the death penalty if death, sexual abuse, kidnapping or any attempt to commit these crimes occurs. 

The executive order also requires the Secretary of State, Secretary of Education and Secretary of Homeland Security must also provide recommendations for informing institutions of higher education about how to monitor for and report “activities by alien students and staff” that would lead to investigations and potentially deportations. 

The statute referenced for this section of the order (8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(3)), which denotes security and related grounds for inadmissibility to the US and ineligibility for visas, states specifically that “an alien who is an officer, official, representative, or spokesman of the Palestine Liberation Organization is considered, for purposes of this chapter, to be engaged in a terrorist activity” that would make them inadmissible. 

A spokesperson for College Administration said that they were not aware of any Justice Department actions that might specifically affect Wellesley. 

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Jessica Chen, Sazma Sarwar, and Valida Pau

“Companion” fits neatly into the genre of “good-for-her” movies, where the girl gets the last laugh (think: Ex Machina, Midsommar, Gone Girl). Like many good-for-her movies, you’re pretty sure how the final scene will end. The film stands alone as a very solid, hair-raising but ultimately so-futuristic-it’s-just-good-fun revenge flick: girl meets boy, boy is evil, girl seeks revenge. But writer and director Drew Hancock’s script dredges up truly compelling background questions of love, violence, misogyny and personhood.

Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid) visit Josh’s friend Kat at the woodsy vacation home of her wealthy boyfriend Sergey. However, it quickly becomes clear that Iris is not human. Soon after, we learn that Iris is a “companion,” an android programmed to be Josh’s girlfriend. The crux of the film (and if you want to avoid spoilers, don’t read on!) rests on Iris killing Sergey after he forces himself on her and she refuses his advances. It later becomes clear that Josh and Kat planned this, and that Iris was essentially a weapon the conspirators would “kill” later. 

The idea that androids might be used as sex machines and weapons has been debated, typically on social media, over the past decade or so. “Women will be having more sex with ROBOTS than men by 2025,” read a provocative “Sun” headline from 2016. However, “Companion” presents a portrayal of love and violence which complicates the idea of robots experiencing pure subjugation from humans, by treating Iris as something quite close to human.  

Companion robots cannot harm humans with their factory programming. Thus, when Josh meddles with Iris’ programming to give her the ability to kill, he has already perverted the companion’s intended being. He, of course, only does it to make Iris a murderer. 

The companions’ inability to harm is juxtaposed against the human aggression shown constantly throughout the movie. Sergey’s assault on Iris is an obvious example, but just as powerful is the single line from an employee at Empathix (the companion manufacturer), who says that people use companions frequently for target practice. 

This pure form of violence — (sexual violence, target practice) rests on the dehumanization of the companions. The appearance of humanity greenlights conceptual violence against humans without moral repercussions tantamount to violence against other humans. 

But the violence Josh carries out against Iris is muddier — it is violence imposed while blurring the boundaries between Iris’ humanity and her machinery. Josh doesn’t merely disable her harm-prevention programming, turn Iris’ aggression up to 100 and tell her to kill Sergey. He engineers a situation in which sexual violence will be attempted on Iris so that she has a natural reason to kill Sergey. To fulfill his plot, he must bring Iris as close as possible to humanity, weaponizing the natural, predictable response to sexual violence. Superficially, Josh uses Iris herself as an object, no different than any other weapon. But she is not simply following orders; she is experiencing a deeply gendered, human experience that makes her a more human agent.

Josh’s violence extends to the weaponization of memory and love. Iris as a companion has implanted memories, including when she and Josh supposedly met and moments they had together. She is programmed to love Josh and to remember loving Josh. For all intents and purposes, she does truly love Josh. 

However, we learn throughout the film that Iris’s love for Josh is uncontrollable and essentially unconditional because Josh has ultimate control over her emotions. Josh’s actions grow from the tension between desiring a human relationship and desiring subjugation and ultimate control –– after all, Josh does not hesitate to lower Iris’ intelligence level when he thinks she’s become too aware. 

In the final few minutes of the movie when a physical fight breaks out between Iris and Josh, Josh says, “I don’t need an iPad to control you. I’m part of you.” It’s a chilling moment in an otherwise mostly lighthearted horror — there’s a second when one may wonder if Iris will spare Josh even after she’s spent over an hour trying to exact her revenge. Josh’s manipulation of Iris goes beyond the idea of the two as merely linked by fragile, malleable software — he can control Iris because they are linked by very real, human love. 

It’s a moment that deftly recasts the relationship as not just simply an ‘incel-sexbot’ situation, but a visceral and emotionally abusive relationship between two human beings. Josh’s weaponization of love is not so different at all from the manipulation of love by other emotionally manipulative partners. Josh genuinely believes that his manipulation –– with the backstop of Iris’ programming –– will make her unable to defy him.

Thus, when Iris is ultimately able to overcome her programmed love for Josh, she becomes utterly human. She has control over her reactions to the deepest, most complicated level of feeling which humans can have. Josh’s treatment of Iris stems from the weaponization of her body and the subjugation of her mind because she is originally seen as non-human. But in doing so, he inadvertently brings her so close to humanity that she becomes indistinguishable. 

While “Companion” is an exciting romp through the wishful-thinking-inspired consequences of sex robots for incels everywhere, it’s also a story about control over love and the self ––  perhaps that’s what makes us truly human. 

Contact the editors responsible for this article: Ivy Buck, Norah Catlin 

The Pope is dead. 

If you, like most people (myself not included), haven’t been anxiously awaiting the release of Edward Berger’s “Conclave” (2024), this is your sign to watch it. The drama takes place after the death of the Pope, during the conclave –– the private assembly of cardinals electing his successor. 

“Conclave” opens with the slow, deliberate fulfillment of the rites of the Roman Catholic Church –– cardinals pray over the Pope’s body, ceremonially remove and destroy the papal ring and seal off the Pope’s apartment. After the postmortem procedure, over 100 cardinals pour into Vatican City from all over the world, cigarette butts on the courtyard floor piling up by the minute.

At its core, the film is a story of doubt. Ralph Fiennes’ Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, the dean of the conclave, spends the film mired in his own doubts, of his own faith and ostensibly, the Church and its leadership – the catty, self-serving cardinals who have for the most part either partisan or selfish motives. Lawrence is left to navigate the treacherous landscape of shifting alliances, buried secrets, and unchecked ambition not-so-cleverly disguised as faith. As with all promises of great power, the most ambitious contenders are those least likely to use it well. 

Stories of doubt and subsequent faith are scattered throughout the Bible. “Conclave” calls to mind that of the apostle Thomas, from whom the phrase “Doubting Thomas” comes. In the biblical account, Thomas is absent when Jesus returns from the dead, and declares that unless he sees the wounds from the crucifixion nails in Jesus’s hands, and can “thrust [his] hand” into the wounds in Jesus’s side, he will not believe. 

In “Conclave,” Cardinal Lawrence is a textbook Doubting Thomas –– the skeptic’s skeptic (and only partially because of his conveniently apt name). While the biblical episode depicts Jesus present to offer Thomas proof, in “Conclave,” of course, the Pope is long dead, leaving behind mystery after mystery. There are reports that one cardinal’s final private meeting with the Pope before his death ended with a request for the cardinal’s resignation. The only person who could confirm the story is, of course, dead. An extra cardinal shows up in Vatican City for the conclave –– purporting to have been appointed by the Pope in pectore, without public knowledge.

In his opening remarks for the conclave, Lawrence says, “There was one sin which I had come to fear above all others. Certainty.” Noble, and yet, Lawrence is entirely unable to take his own advice.

Lawrence is questioning constantly, pulling the one proverbial thread that unravels the whole sweater. 

The conclave is sequestered –– the outside world is shut out. Monsignor O’Malley, Lawrence’s assistant, is the only link Lawrence has to the outside world, and he’s conflicted about whether to take advantage of it. Despite his claim that he wants to fulfill the cloistered ideal of the conclave, Lawrence’s questioning ultimately extends beyond secret meetings in shadowy stairwells and heated confrontations with suspicious cardinals, sending O’Malley to do his extracurricular investigations. The rabbit hole is irresistible. 

Lawrence is lovable enough, and the story is enticing enough that we as viewers get wrapped up in the chase. And yet, Ralph Fiennes’ performance evokes something so fatalistic: no matter how pure his intentions might have been at the outset, his limitless descent into the other cardinals’ deepest secrets draws him into the conspiracies and power struggles of the conclave. Watching the decent, unimpeachable cardinal slowly become embedded into the inescapable mire is hard to watch. 

There’s a moment when Lawrence is wearing all black, blending completely into the small black chair he’s sitting in, and the framing of the shot cramps him even further into the small room he’s in. It’s startling to see the determined cardinal suddenly look so small. 

“Conclave” navigates well the constantly evolving tensions between doubt and faith, especially in light of the cardinals’ distortion of faith to meet personal ends. The extent to which the film examines how we indulge and value doubt goes beyond the gossipy intrigue of the political thriller. Maybe I’m betraying a soft spot for anyone questioning their faith, but the film’s ability to balance both maximizing the tantalizing drama and leaving space for Lawrence’s very authentic slide into irreparable doubt and his consequent guilt is incredibly gratifying. 

That the Pope takes his secrets with him, with no easy road to clarity or closure, is perhaps in some way what this Church leadership deserves –– what gets buried will be dug up. 

Whether or not Thomas actually reaches his hand into Jesus’ wounds is unstated in the biblical account in the Gospel of John. And yet, the doubting Thomas of “Conclave” does, in fact, break the seal on the Pope’s apartment, reach into the torn headboard on the Pope’s bed, and find the evidence of an ambitious cardinal’s simony –– and that’s just what the Church needs.

Contact the editors responsible for this article: Norah Catlin, Ivy Buck

Last Tuesday night, students rushed to dorm rooms and academic buildings to watch the high-stakes debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

Students organized several debate watch parties on campus. In Cazenove Hall, over 100 students piled into the basement for a broadcast event hosted by Wellesley College Democrats and Wellesley Students for Harris. By the start of the debate, students were standing to join the viewing party.

Grace Hennessy ’26, the president of WCD, said that students’ excitement at the event was palpable. 

“I feel like we have, especially in these past few weeks as a school community, as the Democratic Party, separately as well, we’ve really been able to sort of like, turn this corner and bring a lot of joy and like passion and excitement really back into this election season.”

Wellesley College does not have an active Republican student chapter as of this year. Wellesley College Republicans last hosted an event in 2021, according to their Facebook page. 

Turning Tides: Wellesley students’ political engagement rises

Wellesley students and faculty alike have noted that since the 2016 election, students’ participation in politics on campus, both in student organizations and classes, has declined. 

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election in 2016, Professor Sarah Sklar,  a visiting lecturer in the political science department noticed a drop in enrollment and less engaging classroom attitude from students in political science courses. 

Sklar, who started teaching an introductory American politics class during the 2016 election at Boston University, said enrollment — once largely subscribed — plunged to the lowest level reported following Trump’s election. 

“In 2016, there was a lot of energy in the room,” Sklar said on students’ classroom participation. “And then after the result, there was definitely a sort of shockwave that they went through the community. The next year, they were so apathetic. No one wanted to talk about anything.”

A more general sense of disengagement with politics remained after President Biden was elected in 2020. Hennessy said that in the last two years of her involvement in WCD, turnout at events hosted by the College Democrats had been lower than expected despite strong initial interests.  

“I think people were feeling very dejected, unenthused,” Hennessy said. “I think people weren’t looking forward to the future, and there wasn’t a lot of hope. And so that translated, especially on campus, into a lot of indifference.’” 

This year, WCD has already noticed increased engagement. Hennessy said at least 105 people signed into the debate watch party. Throughout the debate, students also participated in a postcard-writing activity spearheaded by Wellesley Students for Harris, writing messages to swing state voters encouraging them to vote. 

The recent rise in student participation in election efforts is evident, according to Margaret Huai ’26, cChair of Committee for Political Engagement (CPE), the non-partisan committee of the College Government tasked with raising political awareness. 

“Activism is so powerful here at Wellesley,” Huai said. “I’m really happy to see people expressing their political opinions and finding safe spaces where they can discuss and process through all these heavy political issues weighing on our generation.”

Moving forward: events and engagement

At the onset of a key election, campus organizations can act as centers for engagement and sharing resources. 

WCD has more events in store ahead of the November election: a Vice Presidential debate watch party on Oct. 1 and setting up a voter resource table in Lulu Chow Wang Center on Sept. 25. 

Hennessy had seen a pickup in interest where students reached out about voter registration and absentee ballots. This year, she is hopeful that WCD can answer a call on campus for resources and community; she reported that several Wellesley students have reached out to her and other WCD members about election information, from voter registration deadlines to how to get an absentee ballot.

“We don’t ever want people to feel like there’s a barrier that they can’t go through – we want to be that resource,” Hennessy said.

CPE will also work to help students navigate the “fraught nature” of the upcoming election and keep themselves “informed and engaged.” 

“There’s just so much on the table, and a lot of important issues will be decided this year,” Huai said. “A lot of concerns over the economy and internal domestic tensions with increasing partisanship … have become very prevalent.” 

Given CPE’s political neutrality, Huai urges students to keep themselves informed, register to vote, research candidates’ policies and beliefs, stay respectful in political discourse and volunteer as poll workers. 

The CPE plans to arrange transportation for out-of-state students to vote in Massachusetts to promote direct engagement with the election. 

Looking forward, Hennessy spoke to the joy that she hopes will characterize some of the season. “This is a historic election, so … obviously we want people to take this very seriously, but we also understand that there needs to be a little bit of levity and joy to this, because this shouldn’t feel like a death march for anyone.” 

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Valida Pau and Sazma Sarwar

The open letter directly addressed four senior College officials, including President Paula Johnson, Provost Courtney Coile, Dean of Faculty Affairs Megan Núñez and Chief Human Resource Officer Carolyn Slaboden. As of 10 p.m. EST on Wednesday, the letter has been signed by 67 WOAW faculty members, 49 tenured and tenure-track faculty members, four faculty emeriti, nine staff members, 29 current students and 20 alumni. 

This January, a group of non-tenured faculty voted to unionize as WOAW and the union is affiliated with United Auto Workers (UAW), one of the largest trade unions in the United States. The College has met with the union for nine bargaining sessions since May, according to the College’s website. 

Under their proposal, Wellesley’s unionized faculty could file a grievance in response to harassment or discrimination. Unionized faculty members, then, could receive immediate assistance — WOAW offers examples of schedule flexibility, mutual no-contact orders and office relocation — that can help them continue to work. 

The proposal comes in response to current College grievance procedures that exclude harassment and discrimination from the grounds for filing a grievance. Under this policy, a faculty member can only file for a Title IX investigation.  

Under the WOAW proposal, grievances concerning harassment and discrimination could be filed instead of or in addition to Title IX cases — WOAW says that the two processes, while separate, are complementary. 

WOAW said that their proposal is consistent with the Department of Education’s stance on the scope of Title IX. The Department’s regulations do not prevent someone from negotiating a grievance process, regardless of whether they file for a Title IX complaint. 

While the Union said the College has pushed back on its negotiating term, they said the proposal is consistent with Johnson’s own Congressional testimony in 2019 as co-chair of the Committee on the Impacts of Sexual Harassment in Academia.

In a June 12 testimony, Johnson noted that the “increased focus on symbolic compliance with Title IX and Title VII” did not necessarily lead to effective policies and procedures in preventing sexual harassment but instead protected the “liability of the institution.”

One of four recommendations was providing “support for the target,” including access to avenues that allow for less formal ways to report information about the incident, minimal fear of retaliation and the target’s reintegration into the work environment. 

In the letter, WOAW said their proposal offered College employees “more options for speaking up” as they claimed many non-tenured faculty who had reported harassment outside the Title IX process never received a response from the College.

“To exclude these claims from the grievance procedure would be a step backward for Wellesley and a step backward for women in academia. We believe Wellesley College should offer more to its faculty than basic legal compliance,” said WOAW. 

In response to a request for comment to The Wellesley News, the College said that updates about the negotiation process are available on their website.

The College said they will review proposals and counterproposals and respond in future sessions, on a page providing an update on the September 5 WOAW negotiations. The College will meet the Union again on September 24 and October 8. 

The College also listed attorney Nick DiGiovanni of Morgan, Brown & Joy as a member of their bargaining team. The Bates Student reported that DiGiovanni successfully prevented unionization for full-time faculty members at Tufts University Medical School and Elmira College. Morgan, Brown & Joy LLP’s website notes that one of their areas of advisement is union avoidance strategy. 

Contact the editor responsible for this story: Valida Pau

Current CG President Ingrid Bell ’24 noted that this election felt different, in a way they said reflected changes to CG in recent years during the return to in-person events after the pandemic. 

“As we’ve sort of shifted all the way back to fully in-person Senate [and] in-person election events, I think we’ve seen total attendance numbers go down, but I’ve seen more in-depth questions be asked, so it’s that shift from virtual to in person that’s been really noticeable,” they said.

The Chief Justice position was unfilled, which Bell said is quite common — although it is relatively rare to have a position stay open all year, having to run a special election for one position is a fairly common practice. Since the position is only open to students with experience on the Honor Code Council, Bell reported that CG reached out to the Honor Code Council to request students write SOIs and that Wellesley will see students campaigning for the position after spring break in preparation for a special election.

Bell also said that the presence of write-in candidates is not shocking, but that write-in candidates typically run in cases where no one is running for a position at the outset of election week; this year, that was the case for Orgs Chair. Those candidates often win their elections, but if they do not, it is usually a result of not enough students being aware of their running. 

“Last year, the gendered language ballot caused a real uptick in voter participation which was great, but most people who were really educated about the ballot question weren’t as educated about the candidates,” Bell said. “We had some write-in candidates lose their races, not because people were opposed to them having that job, but because people didn’t know they were running and didn’t know what name to write in.”

In the case of the 2024 presidential election, a write-in candidate ran against a ballot candidate, which Bell recalled having happened the year before they came to Wellesley, when a contentious election for Student Bursar resulted in so many abstentions that it went to a special election.

“The phenomenon of having a write-in candidate run against a ballot candidate is less common, though not entirely unheard of,” Bell said. 

Bell reflected on their general outlook on this year’s election: 

“In some ways, [the election was] more contentious than we’re used to seeing, particularly the presidential election. I was glad to see more contested elections — I think it’s a good sign when multiple people run for a position because it means folks want to get engaged,” they said. 

They also remarked that the increase in participation leads to truer democratic representation at Wellesley.  

“It means we have a true democracy, where students actually have a choice of who’s going to represent them, which I think is a good thing,” they said. “A little bit of controversy isn’t necessarily bad; it allows us to talk about the issues we care about.” 

Mia Cadena ’25, this year’s CG presidential election winner, said that the necessity for student engagement was a driving factor in their decision to run. 

“There were a lot of people upset about the election being uncontested — and absolutely, our elections shouldn’t be like, ‘Oh this is the only person on the ballot, that’s your only option,’” Cadena said. “There was a campus-wide desire and call for another person to serve, and I was like, ‘Why not me?’”

As a write-in candidate, Cadena talked about how important her support system was during her campaign. Cadena decided to do a chalk-and-talk outside Lulu and host CGP Chats in the Tower, Stone Davis and Lulu dining halls for any students who wanted to talk to her about her candidacy. Cadena also said she drew on support from her friends to make spam.

“When we released the “WANTED” spam, [we thought,] ‘Let’s have fun, the campaign can still be fun,’ so [we put] a little western theme — I’m from El Paso, Texas, so that became part of the persona that we wanted to push for the campaign. It was like, I’m not just this candidate running for CGP — I’m one of y’all. It was super corny, but that was also what I was intending from the start,” she said.

Cadena said that much of her campaigning was focused on her as a person: 

“Given that I was a write-in, I didn’t want to submit an SOI that was like, ‘Here are my three points’ … It was more like, I have all these ideas but it’s something that I want to talk about more. It was more like, this is who I am as a person”

Current president Bell observed that the election cycle as a whole was not always so good-spirited, a tone especially marked on social media. While the return to increased engagement in CG affairs resulted in more in-person election events like those Cadena hosted, it also coincided with the rise of anonymous social media platform Sidechat this year.

“The way that Wellesley students’ use of social media has changed has affected elections a lot in particular … This year I feel like Sidechat has taken off in a way that’s really different — that ability to anonymously comment on things makes the meanest voices really loud,” Bell said. “I think most students care about each other and treat each other well in the real world, in person, but you see this online shift towards real rudeness that I think is actually perpetrated by a very small number of students but gets an outsized amount of attention. The majority of students I dealt with in person during elections week were remarkably kind, compassionate [and] understanding of the fact that all of the candidates are human people.”

In the future, Bell is hoping for a campus climate in which students can participate without being dissuaded by the negativity exacerbated on social media. 

“Criticizing candidates’ beliefs is obviously valid. These people put themselves forward – I’ve done it. When you run for something, you know you’re inviting the student body to criticize you, to ask you tough questions, but I think it’s a shame to see the kind of vitriol towards a person who, at the end of the day, is just a fellow Wellesley student that starts to develop on the anonymous internet,” they said. “I hope we can thread the needle to where more folks will feel engaged, folks will want to run without creating a situation where running for CG in any regard means opening yourself up to people being just horrible.”

Bell noted that CG elections at Wellesley have historically been occasionally negative.  

“I know before I started here, maybe a decade ago, there was a real trend of CG elections being awful — candidates being super negative, vandalizing each other’s spam, the debates being just ad hominem attacks on each other, it apparently was really terrible,” they said. 

In response, Bell said, Wellesley community members worked to tone down the negativity surrounding CG elections, implementing rules prohibiting candidates from saying anything about each other, positive or negative, to scale back the intensity of competition. 

However, Bell acknowledged that it has been a contentious year, both in the world and on campus, and that complicated elections are often a natural result. 

“Obviously the conflict in Israel and Palestine was a factor in how contentious this election was and has been a factor in what’s going on on campus this year, and so what happens here is a mirroring of what’s going on in the broader world,” they said. “I think you’re going to see more conflict between candidates, more conflict around CG elections when there are issues that people feel are really fundamental to who they are, fundamental to their safety, their well-being, than when the issues are less personal to folks.”

With elections now complete, with the exception of Chief Justice, Cadena is looking to her future as CG president. Cadena discussed in her SOI her goals to protect student-led spaces and decentralize CG. Her first goal is informed by her own experience in Instead, the residential feminist co-op on campus. Cadena discussed the administration’s recent decision to move Instead out of a house on East Side and onto one floor with members of SCoop. While she acknowledged that the administration’s decision was complicated, Cadena also noted that Instead and SCoop have different goals, and that the decision prompted her to evaluate the larger lack of support for co-ops on campus. 

“Being in a co-op has been so important to me, and seeing that lack of support is something you feel every day,” she said. “I’m going to be in spaces with admin where I can at the very least advocate for these spaces.”

Beyond advocating for SCoop and Instead, Cadena highlighted Hoop and El Table as student spaces that need more support.

“It’s not just the residential co-ops, it’s also our business co-ops. They’re the cornerstone of what makes Wellesley … [If] I’m stressed out, I’m going to go listen to some cool tunes in El and get a sandwich. After we got the news about the election results, we were like ‘Let’s go to Hoop!’ … I think that’s the perfect way to put how important it is to support these spaces — they really are there for you in all kinds of times,” she said. 

As for decentralizing CG, Cadena says she’s hopeful about the possibility of employing a decentralized conception of CG in her leadership. 

“It also connects back to the co-ops and my time spent at Instead because we practice a nonhierarchical, decentralized form of leadership where no one person’s above another … even though at its core, CG is hierarchical, I was hoping to maybe extract that a bit … To me, that’s going to be more of a dialogue with them this upcoming year.”

Despite the contentious nature of this year’s election cycle, Bell stressed how important it is to care about CG and its elections, whether or not they are exciting, since their decisions directly affect students, and participating in elections is necessary for maintaining them.

“Some of what we do that is boring bureaucracy is the stuff that makes sure orgs get funding, makes sure that orgs get recognized, [and] loans money to Hoop and El Table,” they said. “It’s really incredible that we have such far-reaching self-governance; that’s not true at every school … students being engaged is what protects our ability to govern ourselves, which I think is really important, particularly at a school where we’re so insulated — we’re such a small community, everything about our lives happens here.”

On March 11, a Senator presented an amendment that would add a clause to Article 14 of the CG constitution allowing for the release of results on ballot questions. In addition to reporting whether or not the ballot question passed (the current practice under Article 14), the amendment would require that “Ballot question analytics consisting of (1) the number of surveyed students and (2) the number of votes for each choice shall be made public to the student body within one week of the Election.”

In the Senate minutes from March 4, Dean of Students Sheila Shaw Horton defended the College’s existing practice of not releasing voting numbers to students. “She’s seen a lot of community pain and once the ballot initiative is done, she wants it to be done. Once you release numbers, the pain just continues, and she doesn’t want to see that. Once a decision is made, it is what it is, and then we move on,” the minutes read. While the administration’s desire to protect students from unnecessary pain is understandable, it is unfortunately not sufficient to justify not disclosing ballot numbers.

Not releasing specific analytics is simply a barrier to knowledge about our campus. The efforts by the administration to limit unnecessary pain may actually create more by exacerbating the feeling of polarization in an environment where people take to anonymous social media platforms to express frustration. 

There is often unnecessary pain attached to ballot questions and initiatives regardless of their outcomes. Anyone who has opened Sidechat knows that it is most often exactly what you might expect from an anonymous platform — a podium from which anyone can air their grievances without fear of the personal repercussions. 

Wellesley’s student body is overwhelmingly aware, involved and passionate about solving problems on campus. This involvement is naturally frustrating much of the time in the face of opposition and slow-moving change. When the appeal of the anonymous platform is coupled with the often-frustrating position of being invested in change at Wellesley, it makes sense to turn to Sidechat. 

However, Sidechat presents another dilemma: the most controversial posts — the ones that make your friends ask, “Did you see what someone said on Sidechat?” in the dining hall — seem to be the posts that start with one person’s opinion and spiral into disagreement in the comment section. Whether these posts come from feeling like almost everyone disagrees with you and wanting to put your opinion out there without facing backlash, or feeling like almost everyone on campus agrees with you and wanting to express frustration about the remaining obstacles to change, there is an underlying polarization that results from these usually unproductive discussions. A few conversations on campus outside of Sidechat will usually suggest that we likely aren’t as polarized as it can seem. However, this fact doesn’t often succeed in shaking the feeling that we’re a very polarized community. 

In our current environment, where an anonymous app is a mainstream form of discourse, these discussions — which are so often borne out of frustration — shape how students view and interact with their community members. When our perception of our community can be so skewed by anonymous content, we have a greater responsibility to make measurable information available.  

The community pain that Dean Horton referenced is real and should be handled with care. Ballot questions that put things like students’ identities up for public debate shouldn’t be taken nonchalantly. There is also a chance that having access to specific ballot question analytics for each option could be weaponized to inflict more pain on students. 

Even so, I have faith in Wellesley’s student body’s ability to have thoughtful and empathetic conversations about difficult questions. In my own conversations with Wellesley students, I’ve seen that it is possible to change people’s minds. Students who at first may have been adamantly on one side as a result of only seeing extreme takes on Sidechat born out of frustration can be persuaded by having a conversation that addresses their questions or concerns. 

Access to specific results also offers insight into how our campus community responds to advocacy and conversation leading up to voting on a ballot question. Publicizing simply a yes or no answer to a question doesn’t lend itself to an effective evaluation of what strategies we use to advocate on campus. 

The urge to respond to the results of a ballot question by saying “it is what it is” and then moving on is tempting but ultimately problematic. Questions big enough to necessitate ballot questions shouldn’t just be thrown by the wayside after the community has spoken. Students should have access to the knowledge of what conversations still need to be had and what work still has to be done. The idea that we have to completely avoid the harm caused by ballot question analytics being released undermines the ideals of Wellesley. Wellesley shouldn’t seek to matriculate students who are comfortable without access to all the information. Wellesley students are supposed to be able to have difficult conversations, successfully advocate for what they believe in, and seek as much knowledge as possible — having access to the numbers for ballot questions and initiatives is the first step.

“[Global anglophone is a] field that has really inherited the field of postcolonial studies. [It is] invested in challenging more contemporary conceptualizations of universalism, like human rights, cosmopolitanism, globalization, finance, multiculturalism, and all of the failed promises of those projects,” she said.  

Rich also discussed how she conceives of her own work in the larger context of global anglophone and in relation to the many themes under the umbrella of postcolonialism.

“I do want to stretch what counts under the rubric of global anglophone beyond the reach of the British empire – beyond the model of colonialism; the future of global anglophone is just a lot broader,” she explained. “[It functions] in conversation with Asian American and Asian diasporic studies, with transnational American studies, and also things like critical refugee studies or environmental studies.” 

Rich’s interests extend beyond global anglophone – the intersection between law and literature is another central area of exploration for Rich. She majored in Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought at Amherst College and said that law is one of the interests she’s carried with her since undergrad that continues to influence her research and teaching today. 

“A lot of the work in the field of law, culture and humanities is very much in tandem with the field of global anglophone literatures and postcolonial studies as well.”

In keeping with this interest, Rich will teach an English seminar at Wellesley entitled “Imagining Justice in Law and Literature: Rights, Reparations, Reconciliation.” The class, which is cross-listed with Peace and Justice Studies, considers jurisprudence after WWII, from human rights, truth and reparations to postwar criminal trials. 

“A mentor once said to me: ‘Law shouldn’t be left to the lawyers,’ and I think … it is a discourse that should be taught in conjunction with social sciences and humanities at the undergraduate level, not [waiting] until law school to have these conversations about law as a shaping force of human experience,” she reflected. 

Rich also plans to teach more writing courses on contemporary literature in the Fall and Spring on global fictions and representing war. Rich describes “Global Fictions After Empire” as an introduction to contemporary global anglophone literature, including Tsitsi Dangarembga’s “Nervous Conditions,” Jamaica Kincaid’s “A Small Place” and Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things,” in addition to works by Asian Americanists like Ruth Ozeki and Monique Truong. 

“[The course is] interested in what stories we tell to make sense of the world, how these narratives are shaped by history’s imperialism and independence,” Rich said. “[It’s] interested in what kind of critiques of empire the fictions that we’re going to encounter sustain, and also the flip side of critique: what kind of role do they play in establishing a sense of community, or shared language, or sense of place in [an] empire’s wake?”

Rich’s spring class examines representations of war in the 20th and 21st centuries, from World War I and II to the Cold War and the Global War on Terror. The class spans mediums and genres, covering novels, short stories, Supreme Court cases, poetry, graphic novels, films, journalism and theory. 

“The ways in which these armed conflicts are represented play a huge role not only in our collective memory of them but also in the way that we conduct ourselves in their wake,” Rich reflected. “I think it’s a pressing course to teach now to give a conceptual vocabulary to thinking about our own current conflicts that we are living in today.”

Rich’s first book centered on the inception of the modern welfare state in Britain after World War II. This investigation of war and postwar was the seed for her current research for her second project, “Children of Conflict: Cultural Forms of Transnational Adoption,” which examines transnational adoption and kinship during the postwar period. 

“[The project] draws on my core interest in thinking about the relationships of wars and their postwars and the kind of reparative imagination that gets attached to and activated during wartime … how transnational and transracial adoption has been figured as a form of repair for geopolitical violence as well as it has acted as a technology of empire,” Rich said. 

Rich, a transnational Korean adoptee herself, reflected on her own identity and the public-facing element of her research.

“Part of this project, because it is the second book and it’s a little bit more personal in some way, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to do this work in a more public-facing way,” she said.

As Rich looks to the future of humanities and her future at Wellesley, she is considering how to make this public-facing work a reality. She discussed the possibility of examining adoption archives and the use of archives in humanistic research and reflected on the potential to create a space to read one’s own adoption papers in community: 

“Public-facing work beyond writing has to do with creating community spaces where we can talk about the experience of adoption, in a way that is in conversation with its representation,” she said. “To have a space to say, how do we look at these? How do we read the absences and the silences or the information that might not be correct? What does that look like, to engage with that – because I think you have to do it in community.” 

Rich highlighted that Wellesley’s Adoptee Connections & Awareness (ACA) org speaks to the changing landscape of adoptee activism and community building. 

“Colleges are becoming a really vibrant and important space of adoptee activism … my heart warmed to see that such a group existed because a group never existed for me,” she said.
Rich was also optimistic that Wellesley’s English department had seen such consistently high enrollment numbers compared to other colleges and universities that have seen notable declines in English enrollment numbers. She spoke to the present and future of the English department at Wellesley and its faculty: 

“It’s part and parcel of the liberal arts ethos and the humanities, as spaces and forms of inquiry that really go hand in hand. Even though in some way this robust and multifaceted group of colleagues I’m going to join represents what we know and love about English, which is people invested in and engaging closely with literary form, I think they also represent where the discipline is going – into thinking about the synergies of literary criticism and creative writing. It’s a feedback loop. We have to think about both of those, both interpretation and making, together.”

Finally, as Rich prepares to join Wellesley this fall, she is excited about coming back to a liberal arts environment.

“One of the reasons I’m so happy and delighted and honored to be joining Wellesley is because it allows me to return to a small liberal arts college. I learned how to think – and read, really – in the spaces afforded by a small liberal arts college, and that type of community, and engagement and the intimacy of that space and the kind of concentration of that space is really important.”