- "Completely agree" with Cottontales' comment #72
Are there any reports from current student athletes about the report, in particular the parts that question the future of some sports and possible hints of coaching shakeups? The Cross Country Coach resigned this week. Are the coaches in general okay with the report’s conclusions? How might this affect student athletes already being recruited in terms of a changed landscape?
Well, the following is loosely related to this thread.
Recently the housing office announced that there’d be a change in the room selection process, in that about 80% of the rooms would be designated as either male or female. Although not announced, the consensus was that this change was an effort to prevent athletic teams from “taking over” entire floors or multiple floors of a dorm during the room selection process. On each floor rooms would be designated such that there’d be enough of a gender balance to prevent male teams or female teams from taking over. Notably 20% of the rooms would not be designated for a specific gender, i.e., anyone could choose to live in those rooms.
But beware of the law of unintended consequences. Or put another way, may no good deed go unpunished.
Here’s a link to the article in the Amherst Student regarding the policy change:
http://amherststudent.amherst.edu/?q=article/2017/02/22/residential-life-announces-housing-changes
Read the comments. How dare the College do this to transgender and non-binary or fluid gender students? This policy excluded them from 80% of the rooms on campus. Claims of discriminatory and other malevolent intent were made. It didn’t take long for the school’s administration to tuck their tails between their legs and run. Just by coincidence as this snafu was reaching a crescendo President Martin issued a statement regarding federal directives vis-a-vis transgender students and included a mea culpa about this new policy by residential life.
https://www.amherst.edu/amherst-story/president/statements/node/676151
The policy was rescinded shortly thereafter.
P.S. to @EvelynEdna – My son is an athlete at Amherst, albeit in a sport that was unaffected by the recent coaching change and is in no jeopardy of being discontinued. He’s very happy at Amherst. Much of that happiness is unrelated to athletics, but he also really enjoys being an athlete there. And when stuff like this housing policy kerfuffle occurs he views it with a bit of bemusement, sorta like the ?outdated aphorism of ‘boys will be boys’ it’s now ‘SJW’s will be SJW’s.’ In fact, the rescission of the new policy makes it easier for him and several of his friends to live together next year. Also, he didn’t feel criticized or persecuted by the Report on Athletics. In fact, he was heartened by the pieces of the report that obliquely stated that the Amherst athletes are in measurable ways more successful than academically-matched non-athlete controls.
It does seem like hitting a pushpin with a jackhammer.
What the heck did the football team do to Hitchcock, I wonder?
@OHMomof2 – I’ll find out when we see junior during spring break.
@OHMomof2 I’m not sure you want to know, lol.
I asked d, she says they trashed it. IDK what that means exactly 
I am a non-athlete, international student with undecided major, torn between Georgetown College, Wellesley and Amherst…
I am drawn to Amherst for all the obvious reasons - faculty, small class size, diversity, beautiful suburban/rural campus, 5 college consortium, etc…I am ok with the snow and rural setting.
Just very concerned about the constrained social environment mentioned in this thread. I am not a party person but really want a healthy study-life balance. Would Georgetown college give me a comparable academic experience?
I can’t speak from personal experience to the party life at Amherst, but, holy cow, the city may be the best college town we visited. You’ve got Amherst, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Hampshire, and the MA state flagship – must be in excess of 30,000 college students in that relatively small town. I would think it would be an ideal and very rich place to go to college.
^^^@SwimDad99, you raise some good points. But not sure the best college town. It’s still western mass, a rural area, wouldn’t call it a city. But there is a similar LAC - Pomona College in the 5C consortium I would say is an ideal and very rich place to go to college, with a City nearby to boot!
@SwimDad99 Amherst is in a 5 college consortium, but the only college very close to us is UMass. And that’s a solid 15 minute walk…so most Amherst students don’t go to the others colleges (and, in my case, I never have).
But the town benefits from UMass tremendously even if AC students don’t go to their campus. You walk one block off AC campus and there are plenty of UMass kids around. There are far more restaurants, bars, bakeries, cleaners, ice cream shops, boutiques - EVERYTHING in Amherst - because of UMass.
You don’t have to take classes there or go to their frat parties to get the benefits of having so many students around.
I live in L.A. Pomona’s quite a haul to urban L.A. Great school in a very nice suburb, but a long rush hour drive or train ride to the city. Probably OK for weekend excursions, but you would need a car.
I didn’t need a car (recent grad of Pomona). Public transport has gotten better in LA, the train only takes 50 minutes to get to Downtown LA, and your train ticket gives you access to most of LA’s public transportation. A car makes it quicker and more convenient, and it’s a haul, no doubt, but the college is not isolated at all. Besides, LA is just the largest city in the huge SoCal basin; there are others that the college is much closer to (Pomona, Rancho Cucamonga, Ontario, etc- the latter of which have 150,000+ people each) which have malls, restaurants, and stores that any big city would have.
In response to Econmathematics and preppedparent, that all makes sense. And my son loved Pomona – the distance finally forced a reconsideration (we’re on the East Coast). But there’s no question that the Claremont McKenna consortium is the best by far in the US. Just fantastic. But I still liked the “college town” of the Amherst region better than the town of Pomona, though, of course, Pomona is under an hour from downtown LA.
@SwimDad99 The Claremont Consortium is very, very good. And I feel like it perfectly embodies the image of a consortium – all of the colleges are actually within (very short!) walking distance if I remember correctly. Had I gotten into CMC, I likely would have gone there.
The referenced document on sports at Amherst was interesting reading. I’ve cut’n’pasted a few notable paragraphs.
Section six is fascinating as well.
More likely to graduate. More likely to work in business. More likely to donate money and more likely to be a whale. With that many “more likelies”, what’s there not to like? Just a hunch but I’m guessing the more likely to go into business and being over-represented in economics is probably related.
And the high-profile men’s teams? They appear to be too fond of economics, history and politics. . .except they really aren’t. They used an irrelevant baseline (11.8% of all students vs ~23.6% for all male students; remarkably Amherst appears to engineer an even gender ratio) and it doesn’t factor in existing gender imbalance in the disciplines. All three disciplines mentioned skew male nationally (heavily for econ and polisci and mildly for history). Using economics as a relevant example, males outnumber females getting BS degrees in econ about 2:1 so a disproportionate male cohort is expected.
This is an interesting result. Based on the numbers in the report, they are allowed 67 athletic factor athletes so there are ~20 missing theses/year. This corresponds with another part of the report that showed they avoided majors that require significant lab time.
@fragbot Great analysis. Thanks for sharing.
antya21
My son is also making a comparable choice, SfS at Georgetown, Swarthmore or Amherst.
He was very excited about Amherst until the campus visit this weekend where he got a strong dose of what the Amherst Student describes as the toxic campus culture – kids who would not shake his hand or even say hello.
Really stunning. If that’s the acceptable culture, student affairs need to do more than talk about the value of teachable moments. For 70k, I think Amherst can do better.
My son came away with the sense that it was great to be rich, a varsity athlete, or an URM, but that there was no room for anyone else.
I PM’ed you @freetofall