Seeing Double: Who Won?

Seeing Double Columnists Cole Graber-Mitchell ’22 and Thomas Brodey ’22 close out their long-running column with a debate of who is the better fledgling columnist.

Rants and Raves: Stop Whining About Amherst Dining

Columnist Thomas Brodey ’22 claims that Amherst students should discard their privileged complaints about Val food in favor of more substantial topics of conversation.

Seeing Double: Escaping the Rat Race

Seeing Double Columnist Thomas Brodey ’22 discusses pressure for career advancement, noting that it is in fact possible to romanticize the mundane.

Seeing Double: I Will Never Donate to Amherst

Seeing Double Columnist Thomas Brodey ’22 explains why he doesn’t intend on donating to Amherst after graduation.

Seeing Double: The Adventures of Tom and Dick

Seeing Double Columnist Thomas Brodey ’22 recounts his positive experience conversing with an alumnus to showcase why students should build better relationships with alumni.

Seeing Double: Reflections on Amherst Activism

Seeing Double Columnists Cole Graber-Mitchell ’22 and Thomas Brodey ’22 discuss what it means to participate in activism.

Seeing Double: Stop Pretending AAS Is Democratic

Seeing Double Columnist Thomas Brodey '22 argues that the Association of Amherst Students fails to live up to its democratic image.

Seeing Double: Amherst’s Diversity Mirage

Seeing Double columnist Thomas Brodey ‘22 argues that Amherst’s commitment to diversity is meaningless without the application of a fuller definition of the word.

The Elephant in the Zoom

Seeing Double columnist Thomas Brodey ’22 argues that Zoom classes should continue to be an option for students who need to be remote.

Satire: AAS Votes to Buy All Senators Horses

Columnist Thomas Brodey ’22 satirically comments on AAS’s recent expenditure vote to fund AAS jackets and jokes about President Martin’s iconic equestrian entrance on Bicentennial Day.

Seeing Double: “What Is Amherst Uprising?”

Seeing Double columnists Thomas Brodey ’22 and Cole Graber-Mitchell ’22 look back at the Amherst Uprising and question how the student body can maintain movements’ memories when their time on campus is so short.

Seeing Double: F*ck You, Foucault

Seeing Double columnist Thomas Brodey ‘22 attests that Amherst should produce idealists, however, its teaching of postmodernism has made idealism difficult to achieve.

Seeing Double: We Need Mammoth Student Loans

Seeing Double columnist Thomas Brodey ’22 touches on the worsening student debt crisis and argues that Amherst should give students the option to borrow tuition money directly from the college, so that students don’t have to turn to the merciless for-profit loan system as their last resort.

Seeing Double: Consensual Cannibalism?

Seeing Double columnists Thomas Brodey ‘22 and Cole Graber-Mitchell ‘22 debate the ethics of consensual cannibalism. Brodey argues that endocannibalism especially does no harm and holds significance to many the world over. Graber-Mitchell refutes, discussing where societies should draw a line.

Seeing Double: We Need More Mammoths

Seeing Double columnist Thomas Brodey ’22 advocates for a bigger Amherst by laying out its benefits that include further diversification and a better service to the public interest, as he points out that the expansion of the college is not only feasible but crucial.

Seeing Double: Seizing the Silver Lining

Seeing Double columnist Thomas Brodey ’22 spotlights the potential positive byproducts of climate change and argues that it is necessary to shift our perspectives, adjusting to the changing realities of our lives.

Seeing Double: Down With Admission’s Double Standards

"Seeing Double" Columnist Thomas Brodey '22 criticizes a double standard that he perceives between the college's treatment of its applicants, who he alleges were afforded little to no leniency during the pandemic, and its students, who received a number of accommodations.

Seeing Double: Your Netflix Habit is Ruining This Country

In recent years, many people — myself included — have blamed social media for exacerbating political divisions in the United States. With its echo chambers and algorithmic bubbles, social media undoubtedly deserves some of that criticism. But I believe that another culprit, one even more omnipresent in most people’s lives, has slipped under the radar. Online streaming, the world’s favorite pandemic pastime [https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-53637305] , is contributing to the sectarian

Seeing Double: Pros and Cons of Court-Packing

In October 2020, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made the controversial decision to fill the seat of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg with Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The move gave Republican appointees a six out of nine majority on the nation’s highest court, a balance that could have far-reaching consequences for national law. Since then, some Democrats have advocated for adding more justices to the Supreme Court, known as court-packing. Last month, President Joe Biden form

Seeing Double: Learn From the Rest, Not From the Best

One of my favorite guilty pleasures is reading and rereading “The Inheritance Cycle” by Christopher Paolini. I do this for two reasons. Firstly, the series contains many wonderful flashes of brilliance from a talented young writer. Secondly, the books are also deeply terrible. Reading “Inheritance” challenges the reader to sift through convoluted plot, shaky dialogue and other flaws in order to identify and appreciate the really good elements. It forced me to confront why I felt certain parts w

Seeing Double: A Dispatch From Abroad

Dated April the Thirteenth, in the Year of our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty-One While most Amherst students spend their semester tranquilly matriculating within the warm embrace of these United States of America, I have been living abroad. I’ve always wanted to dedicate a portion of my life to helping those needy billions who live outside our borders, and the experience has been a revelation. Although I have spent little more than two months abroad, already it feels like two lifetimes. In my ti

Seeing Double: The Danger of a Single History

Why do we teach history? History isn’t like chemistry or calculus — it doesn’t teach just one particular body of knowledge. Instead, history is inherently abstract and interdisciplinary. As a discipline, it must prepare future generations for the vast and unpredictable political, social and economic questions they will eventually have to face. That’s a pretty tall order, so we might naturally expect history classes in the United States to be filled with ingenious educational devices aimed at hel

Seeing Double: Bridging Amherst's Athletic Divide

Any student who has lived at the college pre-Covid has experienced the immense divide between athletes and non-athletes. Every evening, varsity teams would fill the back room of Valentine Dining Hall, while non-athletes would instinctively avoid that back room. It isn’t often that the dividing line between two groups is so obvious that it could literally be drawn on the floor. The athletic divide at Amherst pervades nearly all aspects of campus life, from Val seating to parties to study groups

The Influencers With Too Much Influence

In 2016, director Joss Whedon pulled together perhaps the most star-studded cast of all time to act in his latest film project. Was it a blockbuster movie? No. Whedon’s great brainchild was a political ad [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRp1CK_X_Yw&feature=emb_title] intended to persuade Americans not to vote for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. Yet despite its barrage of A-list actors, including Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Don Cheadle and countless others, the ad backfired

Is "All Star" The Greatest Song Ever?

I have a friend with whom I often argue about music. This friend of mine knows everything there is to know about music theory and is quick to judge the merits of different pop songs using this knowledge. He describes music in terms of how it sounds. In this way, I think he represents the vast majority of people who talk about music; people point out particular instruments, time signatures or lyrics to explain why they like any particular piece of music. But something about the way people descr

Seeing Double: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bot

These days, social media bots are everywhere. They ask deep, pseudo-intellectual questions [https://twitter.com/deepquestionbot?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor] like a blazed Michel Foucault. They write half-nonsensical jokes [https://twitter.com/HEADLINERTRON?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E997144752326922240%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vice.com%2Fen%2Farticle%2Fj5kmzy%2Fheadlinetron-comedy-twitter-bot] like a lobotomized John

Breaking the Ice with Breaking Bad

For the past three months, we have studied remotely from the hamlet of Gill, Mass., population 1,500. You’d think that since we can’t go anywhere, we would see a lot of each other, perhaps hanging out in common areas and bumping into each other in the kitchen. Though that’s true, it sometimes felt as if we had gone days without seeing each other — too often, we retreated into our rooms and our Zooms. So that’s why we decided to watch exactly one episode of “Breaking Bad” every night at 10 p.m. s

Seeing Double: The Great Spin War

Last Saturday, Nov. 7, media outlets declared former Vice President Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election, all but ending the race. Yet, even before the presidential race was called, another, equally significant one had begun: the race to write the history of the election. In many ways, public memory of an election is just as important as the outcome of the election itself, because the legacy of the election will determine the behavior of politicians and voters for years to come

November 3rd’s Unseen Stakeholders

Next week, Americans will decide which presidential candidate best suits their interests and the interests of the country. To make their decision, voters will examine President Donald Trump’s performance on a plethora of issues, from the economy to the pandemic response. However, there are many groups of people who won’t be voting but have a huge stake in the outcome of the election. These include undocumented immigrants, lawful permanent residents, and even children. But by far the largest of

Counterculture: An Amazon Prime Exclusive

Amazon Prime’s “The Boys” makes the case for counter culturalism in an irony so deep it extends to their ad campaign, as promoted on their website and pictured above. Screenshot courtesy of Thomas Brodey ’22. During quarantine, I’ve begun watching Amazon Prime Video, though I can’t say exactly why. Perhaps it’s because Amazon is taking over the world and I have a deeply-seated desire to side with the winners, or maybe just because of my unwillingness to pay for a new service. In any case, I spen

Seeing Double: Amherst’s Invisible Financial Aid Crisis (Part Two)

This is the second part of a two-part series about Amherst College’s financial aid program. Check out the first part [https://amherststudent.com/article/seeing-double-amhersts-invisible-financial-aid-crisis-part-one] here. Last week, we showed how Amherst College’s financial aid fails its students. Once we graduate from Amherst, we’ll have hundreds of thousands in debt, and thanks to those of you who reached out to us after our last article, we know we aren’t alone. Amherst’s student debt cri

Seeing Double: Amherst’s Invisible Financial Aid Crisis (Part One)

As we write, one of us is on track to graduate from Amherst College with $135,000 in student loan debt. The other will graduate with $27,000 of debt in his name and $110,000 in his parents’. And we aren’t alone: 28 percent of graduates in the class of 2019 had student loans averaging $22,629, according to Amherst’s 2019 Common Data Set [https://www.amherst.edu/amherst-story/facts/common_data_sets/2019]. That debt casts a dark shadow over our futures and is a source of tremendous worry for us and

Seeing Double: Confessions of an Accepted Student

I made a terrible mistake the other day: I read my old Common App essay. Like most Amherst students, I hadn’t given much thought to my personal essay since the day it had been ritually sacrificed to the gods of comedy at Amherst Voices. I can’t say what possessed me to open that Google Drive document, but as I sat reading it, I couldn’t help but visibly cringe. I felt as though I were examining the victim of a particularly vicious four-way car crash. The pain of examining my old essay didn’t ju

Seeing Double: Should We Mine the Moon?

As space travel becomes more advanced and efficient, many experts say that extraterrestrial mining operations are increasingly viable. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order [https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-encouraging-international-support-recovery-use-space-resources/] encouraging companies to develop technologies capable of mining the moon. The moon contains numerous valuable and useful minerals, but moral concerns about extracting

Seeing Double: Should Facebook Ban Political Ads?

In recent years, political advertisements on social media have become a hotly contested issue. Much of the criticism revolves around Facebook, which runs the vast majority of social media political ads. Some say that these ads help spread misinformation and weaken our democracy. Others say they are an important part of the free market of ideas. In light of the controversy, some companies, like Twitter and LinkedIn, have already banned political ads. Should Facebook do the same? Thomas’ Take So

How Amherst Students Can Make A Difference in November

When it comes to digital activism, there is no group more capable or savvy than Generation Z. In our hands, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and all their offspring have become tools to spread awareness and demand political change. For example, when scrolling through social media during an election season, I inevitably see dozens of posts demanding that viewers vote in the upcoming November election. But despite all its digital activism, our generation still has the lowest voter turnout of any age gr

Seeing Double: What To Do About Nuclear Warfare?

Since the United States’ first use of the atomic bomb in August 1945, nuclear weapons have threatened the survival of humanity. In recent years, some supporters of nuclear de-escalation have proposed a No First Use (N.F.U.) policy, which would require the U.S. to refrain from using nuclear weapons except in response to a nuclear attack. Some, like presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden, believe that N.F.U. would reduce the risk of nuclear war; others, like former Secretary of S

Seeing Double: Can Leaders Lie?

Lying is a major issue in American politics today. President Donald Trump is notorious for issuing false or misleading statements — over 20,000 of them, according to The Washington Post. Though Trump’s deceit is widely criticized by allies and opponents alike, it raises another, broader question: Is it ever acceptable for a political leader to lie? Thomas’s Take: Everyone lies. One study from the University of Massachusetts Amherst showed [https://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/article/umass-amhers

Seeing Double: Does Social Media Help or Hurt Activism?

In recent years, social media has played an important role in social and political movements worldwide. Social media offers many benefits to activists, including the ability to reach wider audiences and greater connectivity. At the same time, it also presents real engagement and security concerns. In this semester’s final edition of Seeing Double, we debate the question, “Has the rise of social media helped or hurt activism?” Thomas At first glance, social media seems like the perfect tool for

Seeing Double: The Battle for the Past

In January, the U.S. National Archives released a photo of the 2017 Women’s March as part of an exhibit on women’s activism. At first, there seemed to be nothing unusual about the photo, but at a closer glance, observers realized that it had been altered. Investigation revealed that posters and signs containing messages critical of President Donald Trump had been blurred out or erased. Keep in mind, the National Archives is the government body officially tasked with creating the nation’s histori

Seeing Double: A Guide to Living in Interesting Times

For many Amherst students, the COVID-19 pandemic is the most disruptive global event of our lives. As we all adapt to the sudden changes in our learning environments and lifestyles, it’s important to remember that disruptions like this are one of the few certainties of world history. COVID-19 may be the first global event of this magnitude in our collective memory, but it certainly won’t be the last. In the last 200 years, almost every generation has endured life-altering global events — some u

Seeing Double: On Foxes and Hedgehogs

As humans, we have an addiction to dividing the world into two kinds of people. The problem, however, is that no one can agree on what those two groups are. Even when we do organize ourselves into two groups, like Democrats and Republicans, the labels prove inadequate. Take the Editorial Board of The Student. Despite being a broadly liberal group, the Editorial Board strongly disagrees on essentially every political issue of the 2020 presidential race, as we saw in the editorial two weeks ago. A

Seeing Double: The Warrior and the Ivory Tower

Like many other Americans, I was transfixed by the United States’ confrontation with Iran last month. During the crisis, Google searches about the U.S. military and the draft skyrocketed, as we wondered how an international conflict would affect our own lives and those of our friends and loved ones. But after the dust settled, public interest died away as quickly as it had arisen. This isn’t a new pattern. The American public tends to only pay close attention to military matters during moments o

Seeing Double: Solving Our Climate Crisis

Socialism as the Solution Cole Graber-Mitchell ’22Columnist Right now, we have what we need to overcome the climate crisis. We have the the will: an overwhelming majority of Americans believe that climate change is both happening and dangerous, according to a 2018 study by Yale researchers. And we have the means: America is wealthy enough to make the necessary changes. The only barrier left standing is our commitment to capitalism. Over the last 400 years, capitalism has turned our pale blue d

Seeing Double: To Tutorial or Not to Tutorial?

Like many Amherst College students, I frequently wake up in the morning with a happy flutter in my heart, knowing that the value of my Amherst liberal arts education will melt away all the irksome practical realities of life much like the melting snow. Almost immediately, however, my simple tranquility is shattered by a horrible realization: Williams College continues to exist. Much like an evil twin, Williams holds many similarities to Amherst at face value. We share virtually identical sizes

Seeing Double: A Legitimate Political Party

The GOP: Increasingly IllegitimateCole Graber-Mitchell ’22 When Harvard Professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt searched through history to distinguish failed democracies from those like the United States, they found a crucial factor that prevented backsliding: strong political norms. Their book, “How Democracies Die,” starts with the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, the United States’ first political parties. In 1798, the Federalists passed the Sedition Act to target opposition ne

Seeing Double: How History Can Make You Better

Out of Amherst College’s 40 majors, a major in history can sometimes seem an old-fashioned, somewhat out-of-touch field. Between 2008 and 2017, the number of history degrees given to graduates in the United States dropped 30 percent, the most of any significant field, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. As a history major, I’m concerned by these trends, but in some ways I understand them. The writers of history have always held frustrating biases, and in today’s fast-movin

Seeing Double: Amherst’s $2.4 Billion Question

While Amherst students have spent the last few years studying, learning and debating which mascot should go on the mugs at AJ Hastings, the college’s endowment has been quietly exploding. In 1998, Amherst’s endowment stood at $528 million. In the following decade, the college doubled this hardly insubstantial sum, expanding the endowment to about $1.3 billion by 2009, according to the Amherst Financial Report. Over the past 10 years, that growth has continued. Last year, the college announced a

Rethinking Mental Health in Politics

As President Donald Trump’s administration becomes increasingly entangled with lawsuits, his mental health has become a popular topic of conversation among his opponents. George Conway, the husband of Trump’s former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, describes Trump as having narcissistic personality disorder. John Kelly, former white house chief of staff, supposedly called Trump “unhinged” and the White House “crazytown.” While Trump’s mental health may at times seem turbulent, these quotes a

Seeing Double: An Empire of Sand

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has reigned as the world’s foremost superpower. Americans hoped that we would use our supremacy to spread democracy and security to the rest of the world. Yet in the nearly 30 years since the end of the Cold War, it has become obvious that these goals are beyond the capabilities of the United States and often incompatible with the ideals of human rights and self-determination. If the United States wants a moral and effective foreign policy, it nee

Seeing Double: The Missing Ingredient

Global warming seems to be an unstoppable trend. The United Nations estimates that we now have only 12 years to reduce carbon dioxide emissions enough to prevent a catastrophic global temperature increase of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Despite the dire timeline, scientific consensus and widespread awareness, global carbon emissions have continued to rise. So why have these arenas shown such limited success? Scientists are not to blame. To combat the multitude of factors that cause climate ch

Yes We Can: Victory and the American Psyche

As anyone who has seen one of President Donald Trump’s rallies can attest, the president loves to talk about winning. “We’re going to win so much, you’re going to be so sick and tired of winning,” Trump said in a typical remark. Critics of the president often disregard such statements as childish and meaningless. Yet this criticism ignores the fact that Trump’s remarks strike a chord with a wide audience. Americans have a unique obsession with complete and total victory, either against an ex

Seeing Double: Stop Trying to Copy Scandinavia

As a dual citizen of Denmark and the U.S., few things make me happier than seeing American politicians praising Scandinavia. Figures like Bernie Sanders have held up the Nordic economic system as a model for socialist progress in America and the world. “I think we should look to Denmark and Sweden and Norway and see what they’ve accomplished for their working people,” Sanders said in 2016. It’s not hard to see the appeal. The Nordic countries, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland, are so

Seeing Double: An Introduction

Over 1.7 millions books have been published so far this year. 8,607 tweets are posted every second. And 75 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube in the 15 seconds it took you to read this paragraph. Most of those gigabytes of information will never cross our minds, but the fraction that do still overwhelm us. We have access to so much information in our pockets that it’s hard to develop our own ideas and personal values. Thinking for ourselves isn’t a new problem, especially at Amherst. Here

AC Democrats: Contributing to Extremism

Last week, the Amherst College Republicans invited the Amherst College Democrats to a political discussion. This would be the first official meeting between the two groups in months. However, the Democrats refused the invitation in a strongly-worded statement, saying that the offensive remarks made in the Amherst Republicans GroupMe (and subsequently published by The Amherst Student) made such a meeting impossible. The Democrats’ official letter said, “We cannot in good faith collaborate with th

The Terrorism Paradox

In the past two decades, terrorism has dominated discussions of American national security. Many politicians paint terrorism as an existential threat to America and argue that terrorists must be found and dealt with directly, both at home and abroad. While such a viewpoint is understandable and consistent with the traditional ways a state deals with its enemies, it also completely ignores the unique goals of terrorism. Terrorism is different from other forms of violence; its primary purpose is n

The Dangers of Celebrity Politicians

When Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy for president this past week, he sent a message to America. It is clear that Sanders intends to continue to lead the progressive movement, which he helped create four years ago and still exerts enormous influence over. While Sanders’ determination to see his agenda achieved is commendable, his insistence on personally leading the movement is harmful to progressive values in America. It is an ironic fact that populist movements tend to be

Why Amherst Should Pay Attention to Kasich’s Speech

Since former Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s speech this past Thursday, the reaction from Amherst’s student body has been one of skepticism. Most students seem to view his speech as a lecture from their grandfather: one that must to be listened to respectfully, applauded and then forgotten. Indeed, Kasich’s speech covered many topics guaranteed to cause eye rolls amongst Amherst students, from assurances that we are all special to a declaration that taxes on the wealthy should not increase. Many people