In 2019, many students were left without housing, and some students were forced to be housed in basement study spaces that were later converted into dorm rooms. The 2019 housing debacle spawned a larger conversation about housing issues and the need for renovations in dorm halls, which could have been a factor in the college’s decision to create the long-term dorm renovation plan underway today. However, despite improvements to residential life, issues like this week’s housing shortage continue to highlight the major ways in which housing at Wellesley is not built for students. 

We have seen Wellesley making major strides in developing our crumbling dorm infrastructure, and students applauded the renovations to Tower Court. However, while the college now works to improve its infrastructure, it fails to support students living in its housing.

The administrative staff in residential life at Wellesley has long operated as a business rather than supporting students. Financially independent students at Wellesley, whose permanent address is the College, were previously given housing through winter and summer breaks. Those students, otherwise homeless during breaks, were told abruptly in 2024 that they would no longer be eligible for summer housing. Despite independent students being charged the full cost of summer housing and buildings having vacant spaces, the policy has not been reversed explicitly. These students consider Wellesley their full-time home while attending, but have been thrown to the curb by residential life. Even student deans, who know the depths of students’ personal lives, have been unable to persuade residential life to make exceptions. 

In the past, all students could request summer and winter housing due to extenuating circumstances. “Gap housing” used to allow students to stay in their summer housing after their summer classes ended, sometimes because of an unsafe or unstable home environment or other unfortunate circumstances. Now, Residential Life no longer accommodates exceptions to their summer housing terms and they do not explicitly offer break or gap housing to students with extenuating circumstances. When I have attempted to request exceptions to the housing rules, I often received rude, dismissive and passive-aggressive emails from the residential life team, and few students have been granted exemptions to the new rules.

Students who do get the opportunity to stay in summer housing often end up regretting it. While AC in the past has been seen as an unnecessary luxury, global warming has made summers in Massachusetts more extreme. Intense heat waves raised the temperature in my summer dorm room to over 90 degrees for multiple days straight. This caused both my elderly cat and me to experience symptoms of heat stroke and dehydration. The only solution given by residential life was to sleep in common spaces, which often do not have enough space to house all students and also would not allow my cat. Despite the likelihood of temperatures and heat waves getting even worse over the next few decades due to climate change, the college has not added air conditioning to any of its dorm remodeling projects. 

It doesn’t end at misplaced, overheated and unhoused students who suffer from residential life decisions. Graduating seniors like me have to move out by 5 pm the day of graduation, while past seniors had more time to move out of their rooms.  After four years of hard work, seniors deserve to have at least more time to spend with their families and celebrate their graduation before rushing to pack or get on a plane just hours after they walk the stage. One day is not a huge ask, and Residential Life’s ridiculous timeline is lacking empathy or recognition of graduates’ feelings.

Many treasured social dorms and student spaces are left nowhere to be found after remodeling. The Tower Court apartments–a go-to place for students to relax, host events, and loosen up– have been turned into residential offices and non-private community spaces. While blocks used to allow students to build their own private communities on campus, the new block design is often strategically found in the middle of a large hallway or placed around a room with a Residential Assistant or a House President. This change chipped away at “small student-centered communities,” like single-only Beebe 5th-floor upperclassmen, to host private gatherings. Not to mention, themed and group housing such as the substance-free and Walenisi, which used to be on designated dorm floors to provide a safe space for students, were first reduced to smaller blocks or pods, and then disbanded entirely. Not only does this especially damage the ability of Black and POC students to live in communities that make them feel more comfortable, but it also directly goes against students’ needs and wants, promoting a less social and comfortable housing environment. 

What happened to the 40 unhoused students this week said it clearly, the college does not only have a shortage of singles, but of rooms as a whole. The availability of dorms, or the lack of it, has always been a developing issue. In the past, juniors, not only seniors, were guaranteed singles as well. Even though our enrollment has stayed relatively consistent over the last decade, only some lucky juniors can get a single and even a handful of seniors have stories of being forced into doubles despite a policy guaranteeing a single.  

Dower Hall, a small dorm known for spacious rooms and suites that housed up to 40 students, has still not reopened nor been scheduled for remodels. Additionally, Wellesley has subsidized off-campus housing that is offered primarily to faculty. However, this housing has tons of vacancies and is rarely ever fully utilized. Despite this, the college does not offer students the opportunity to rent out of this subsidized housing. Residential life instead operates on a very tight room constraint with almost no vacant rooms, which is an incredibly callous and risky move that leaves students experiencing major room issues, Title IX violations, or roommate problems with little to no opportunity to move. 

Quite frankly, Wellesley does not have enough rooms for its students to operate safely and comfortably. Despite this, it refuses to reopen Dower Hall, subsidize off-campus housing for students, or build new dorm living. It also continues to disrespect its students: dismantling our communities, leaving us with no dorm assignment, kicking out our homeless sibs from dorms, and forcing us to go directly from graduation to a flight across the country. In 2019, students and alumni took the housing crisis as an opportunity to call upon the college to make major changes to the dorms. As another housing crisis is happening, I implore us to call upon residential life itself to change, and lead with empathy and respect for students. Wellesley housing holds our lives, our communities, our Wellesley families and it deserves to be treated as more than a transaction. 

For this week’s column, I’m focusing on the question of what bringing your off-campus boy-toy into our sacred space entails, and sprinkling in some advice along the way. To inform this column I spoke with past and present boyfriend havers, observers/those who have never had or wanted to bring a boyfriend to our hallowed halls, and last but indeed least, a few current Wellesley boyfriends (their handlers were nice enough to let them out of their cages).

To set the scene, seemingly every other month a new post on Sidechat sparks outrage about boyfriends on campus. These posts usually range from girlfriends complaining about getting weird looks to observers expressing discomfort about having to see boyfriends in the dorms, particularly in the bathroom. In the words of Jesus, a house divided cannot stand. Today, I intend to install some columns and strengthen the structural integrity of our divided house, and maybe, just maybe, turn it into a divided home. 

As someone who has both brought boyfriends here (not at the same time #notpoly), and also frequently looks at boyfriends on campus, I’ve always been able to empathize with both sides of the debate. Maybe it’s because I’m generally oblivious, but I personally cannot recall a time when a boyfriend and I have received glares or weird looks; however, I can imagine how uncomfortable it would be to be on the receiving end of those stares. I remember when I first brought a boyfriend here, I felt self-conscious, I didn’t want to be seen walking with him to and from the alumni loco stop. It felt like walking down a poorly lit street at night, never knowing what cool gay person might pop out from the shadows and judge me. This feeling of preemptive embarrassment was echoed by most of the current and former boyfriend-havers I spoke to. This could stem from internalized heterophobia, or more likely a feeling of responsibility, both to our community and for our boyfriends’ actions. 

What if he does something wrong? What if he accidentally says something offensive? As a former girlfriend put it perfectly, “I have to media-train them before they get here.” At Wellesley, we hold ourselves to a high standard that even the most polite, well-intentioned woke boyfriend might not meet. To quell worries, I recommend reviewing the basics: remind him of your friends’ preferred pronouns and that we’re a historically women’s college. This will help ease his nerves, too.

100% of the Wellesley boyfriends who gave me a comment remarked that they feel nervous on campus. Another interesting data analysis reveals that 86% of Wellesley boyfriends have four-letter names. The mode of this data set is Mike, with three separate instances within the past year. I also find it not to be statistically insignificant that these names tend to be verbs like Drew, Will, Jack… interesting. Anyway, getting back to the nervous thing, one boyfriend describes his approach by saying “the best Wellesley boyfriend is the one you don’t know exists,” and his owner, sorry, girlfriend, adds that “he is frightened of being seen too often.” 

Feeling out of place seems to be a common theme, with one of the Mikes equating the awkwardness and uneasiness he feels to “when you go into a room expecting it to be empty, but it’s actually full of people.” How poetic.

Another girlfriend spoke for her man saying “he didn’t think he was allowed to come on campus, and was worried people would be mean to him, but once he came over a couple of times he started getting more comfortable.” She added that “as a Babson frat man I think he feels like he might be the antichrist to this campus, but I think we are more accepting of him than he expected.” 

So what is it that they’re afraid of??

One boyfriend, who follows his girlfriend around “like a little duckling,” is even uneasy going for seconds in the dining hall without her. She thinks it’s “because of all the stares he gets,” although she admits “it’s part of the campus culture. I love staring at other people’s significant others cause I’m just nosey like that.” This is how many of us on campus feel.

When I see a boyfriend, I’ll be the first to admit that I do look at them. I’ll confess, sometimes I’ll even look them up and down, not to convey a message of “you’re not welcome here,” but rather, I’m evaluating if they are hot or not, especially if they are with their partner. 

My eyes linger, not out of malice, but out of inquisitiveness. As one observer put it, they have a “morbid curiosity.” Another non-boyfriend-haver said, “it’s like seeing a lost dog, or an alien species, I guess.” “I’m not criticizing, I’m assessing his vibe. Is he chill? Can I tell what school he goes to? Is he attractive? Is he hot enough to be with his girlfriend?” All this points to a shocking conclusion: is being a Wellesley boyfriend as close as a man can get to experiencing what it’s like to be a woman in the real world?

So yes, there is a certain fascination that accompanies seeing young cis men on campus. It’s not a daily occurrence, and it’s only natural that our eyes fall upon them. But these glances aren’t inherently negative, so in a sense, we boyfriend-havers have pathologized ourselves.

On the other hand, one girlfriend explained that she is often the one who receives the glares, not her boyfriend. She also told me about a time at steps when a group of first-years wouldn’t stop yelling amongst themselves “why the fuck is there a man here,” but didn’t say anything directly to the couple or the large group they were in. As an interracial couple, she and her boyfriend can’t help but suspect “some of it could be racism as well and not just misandry vibes.” 

The last thing to address here is the bathroom issue. As is policy, boyfriends should use the bathrooms labeled “sibs and guests,” however, that isn’t always realistic. The boyfriend without a four-letter name explained that his girlfriend lives on the fifth floor, and the only guest bathroom is on the first floor. I think we can all agree that it’s unreasonable to expect him to make that voyage consistently. 

To mitigate the Sidechat commenters’ worries, I think it’s best practice to accompany your boyfriend to the communal bathroom during normal hours, when your hallmates might also be there. This is obviously easier if you synchronize your pee schedules, although number two is harder to coordinate.

To all the boyfriend-havers, for the sake of you, your boyfriend, and your sibs, you should face your homonormativity fears and all the looks. Just let your boyfriend be Velcroed to you (he wants to anyway). And to the observers and so-called boyfriend haters, understand that, like it or not, men are here to stay. They’re out there in the real world, and sometimes they’re here too.

According to one non-tenure track (NTT) professor, the decision to end the strike was made that morning at around 8 a.m. because of a “credible threat to the entire Wellesley community including the students.” 

However, the College administration asserted that the college has “not threatened union members.” Yet, with there still not being a written explanation from the WOAW-UAW on why they ended the strike so abruptly, there is no way to dispel the misinformation that has been circulating with the varied versions given by different NTT faculty. 

With the uncertainty between what each side chose to speak on and not speak on, one thing remains loud and  clear: students have been caught in the middle. 

The abrupt end to the strike without a clear explanation left many students feeling anxious and confused about what the end of the year would look like. With just one week of classes remaining, the unprecedented decision by the Administration to alter the academic credit that students signed up for at the beginning of the semester appears even more unclear. 

When the new credit plan was first announced, it left many students in distress as dropping below full-time status would impact graduating, financial aid, and visa status for international students. At the time, the College did not even provide clear guidelines for the deans and professors who had to be immediately answerable to the student body.

Now that the strike has ended, the college sent a simplified “decision tree” to students which states that, if these students had to re-enroll and the new classes do not conflict with their classes taught by NTT, then they are supposed to remain in these new courses as well as attend their previous ones. Many students complained about this email with its minimal explanation which in turn seemingly minimized student feelings regarding the credit changes. 

The math is still not fair. Despite attending one more week of an NTT class previously accredited as 0.5 credit, the college has said that those specific classes will still be 0.5 credit. With the calculations Anika Sridhar (Opinions Staff Writer) demonstrated in a previous article, students should have earned 0.73 credit for the classroom time they spent with NTT faculty over 9.5 weeks, not accounting for the extra hours they had with professors during advising and office hours. The Registrar has previously awarded 0.8 credit for semester courses to transfer and study abroad students, so it is entirely possible to award alternate amounts of credit for the NTT classes, especially in extenuating circumstances. From my point of view, the 0.5 credits do not fully reflect the amount of time and effort that students have already put into their previously enrolled classes. For some students who have to attend both their re-enrolled and WOAW-taught classes, they involuntarily signed up for twice the amount of work, with extra assignments and stress. 

At the mercy of their professors, and with a lack of finals guidelines, affected graduating seniors in their final semester are having to take extra final exams. As a graduating senior myself, the Class of 2025 entered freshman year during the COVID-19 pandemic, and I believe our final weeks of college should be the happiest time of year with no extra difficulties. Yet, many of us are leaving Wellesley having been caught in the crossfire of the bargaining, confused about this credit decision and without the bare minimum of transparency of why the strike ended in this manner. I support all of my faculty and I support the members of Administration who have tried to have our best interests at heart. As a soon-to-be alumni, I care about the wellbeing of Wellesley College including its reputation and students of the present and future. However, the decision for NTT Faculty to go on strike for various reasons, to abruptly end the strike with no explanation, and the Administrative decision to alter course credit as a bargaining tactic, feels inconsiderate to the students who care about and uphold this academic institution.

First, housing selection usually takes place in the summer, but this year, it occurs during the last week of class. I, like many others, have conflicts with classes and assignments that make this process more stressful. My 9:15 am slot coincides with my 8:30 am class, and I am not looking forward to choosing my room for the next year while sitting in an Economics lecture. Moreover, I would either have to step out of class or miss it entirely to call my roommate in the event that the room we want is taken. 

Second, there has been discourse about seniors placing juniors into singles. Seniors chose their housing today, April 29, while juniors and sophomores will go tomorrow. In past years, it was not uncommon for juniors and seniors to form a block. However, students have taken issue  with seniors placing juniors into rooms during senior regular selection because it defeats the purpose of splitting housing selection by class year. If such a senior had an early time slot, their decision to place juniors in high-demand dorms such as Tower Court could have prevented other seniors from getting their location of choice.

In addition, having housing selection during the school year could have increased interest in creating larger housing blocks, as people can communicate in-person about their time slots and preferences. Over the summer, communication is often restricted to close friends, but now, students are able to ask around campus with the goal of joining an early-slot blocking group. Students are also able to tour their potential rooms in-person, which could increase competition for larger rooms, rooms with better views, and more. 

According to users on Sidechat, every Tower single was gone one hour after housing selection started for seniors. By the end of the first day, only 65 singles remain—most of which are in Munger and McAfee. One user even posted a screenshot from the Wellesley Facebook page, which read, “Willing to compensate $500 if a rising junior has a 9 a.m. slot.” Even students  who already have their rooms are trying to trade them on this platform.

This year’s early housing selection might be the College’s attempt to get a head start on its administrative responsibilities, but it is unclear whether negative feedback will change future procedures. Moving selection back to the summer, limiting blocking sizes or enforcing restrictions on class year selection dates could all be solutions to this problem. In any case, good luck to my fellow juniors—I hope we can all make the best of a not-so-ideal situation.

Wellesley was among the 60 institutions warned by the US Department of Education of potential enforcement actions, including federal funding cuts if they were found failing to protect Jewish students. Instead of specifically addressing antisemitism on campuses, however, the federal government’s politicized use of Title IV presents a coercive ultimatum that grants the administration unprecedented control over higher education.

To combat the overreach, many of the Big Ten schools, the most prominent Division 1 conference housing the country’s largest institutions, have teamed up and signed a NATO-like pact of mutual defense. If the Trump administration were to attack any of the member universities and deny federal support, the others would pool their funds and resources to ensure their academic programs live on.

This unified approach to resisting federal overreach not only safeguards academic freedom but also sends a powerful message of institutional solidarity. In light of Trump’s war on progressive education, Wellesley’s place among the schools being investigated, its liberal arts mission, and historically women’s status make it especially vulnerable to federal attack. 

Now more than ever, Wellesley should align itself with peer institutions in both word and action—defending the integrity of its academic values and the rights of its students against politically motivated interference.

To start with, Wellesley and the Seven Sisters consortium—including Smith, Mount Holyoke, Barnard, Bryn Mawr, and formerly Vassar—could follow in the footsteps of the Big Ten schools. An alliance among historically women’s colleges would help all members  since it could take into account the nuances of being a historically women’s college under the Trump administration, which poses prominent legal challenges that other institutions may not contend with.

Historically women’s colleges are protected in large part due to their private status, which exempts them from the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. As a result, they can maintain gendered admission policies without facing legal challenges. The Trump administration has not yet issued a direct threat to women’s colleges as a category, but its Title IX rollbacks, redefinitions of “sex,” and support for exempting religious institutions from anti-discrimination policies have created a more legally uncertain environment—particularly for schools that are inclusive of trans and non-binary students. This shifting legal landscape underscores the urgency for historically women’s colleges to defend their educational mission in the face of potential erosion.

Beyond the safety it would offer its members, a Seven Sisters pact would send shockwaves through the landscape of higher education. It would continue to redefine what institutional resistance looks like—not as isolated press releases, but as an organized, value-driven front. At a time when many colleges are backing away from their commitments to equity and inclusion under political pressure, the Seven Sisters have the opportunity to set a national precedent: the defense of academic freedom, marginalized students, and inclusive education is not only possible, but essential.

More broadly, this alliance could reestablish the role of liberal arts colleges as moral leaders in higher education. In resisting not just for themselves but for the principle of education uncoerced by political agendas, the Seven Sisters could galvanize other less populated institutions—especially those that feel powerless or peripheral—to act in concert. A united front  among these historically women’s colleges could be a tipping point, proving that meaningful resistance to state interference is not the purview of the Ivy League alone.

Wellesley has the history, the credibility, and the responsibility to take the lead. By championing a Seven Sisters compact, it can model what bold, coordinated defiance looks like in a time when so many are shrinking from the fight. Higher education—and democracy itself—depends on institutions willing to speak truth to power, even when the cost is high. Now is the time for Wellesley to stand among these leaders—championing collective resistance, affirming its values, and demonstrating that the defense of higher education and democracy requires courage, conviction, and action.

Humanities majors have historically received Latin distinctions more often than science majors, not to say there is a causal relationship between one’s major and academic rigor. Still, I acknowledge the underlying ways I may approach Latin honors from a position of privilege. As a result, I would likely benefit from the current system in a way that is disproportionate to a student of a different major or STEM degree as opposed to a humanities one. 

Recent conversations among faculty about altering the Latin honors system have cast doubt on its durability due precisely to this imbalance — the upward trend in award recipients may be corroding the distinction’s social weight, and disparities in awardee volume by department call into question the generalizability of Wellesley’s academic rigor.

Over the past several years, the number of students receiving Latin honors has increased significantly. This growth may be attributed to Wellesley’s removal of its grade deflation policy, which remained in place from 2004 until Fall 2019. The policy stated that classes should have an average grade no higher than a B+, encouraging teachers to keep a 4.0 GPA out of reach for most students. Logically, allowing only a select few to earn an A in each class led to a small, elite group being eligible for Latin honors, especially summa cum laude, which demands a GPA of 3.90 or above. In this period of grade deflation, the Latin honors system worked as intended: only the best and brightest Wellesley students (as measured by grades) obtained the highly coveted distinctions. It perpetuated an environment of academic elitism, and the minimal attainability of awards likely encouraged student competitiveness more than the current grading system, which allows more students to reach the pinnacle of Wellesley honors.

As more students achieved the elusive 3.60 or above GPA in the years following 2019, the social weight of Latin honors changed significantly due to their increased commonality. The elite associations with the distinctions are, of course, still pervasive at Wellesley, but less than they were a decade ago. This erosion of prestige defeats a large extent of the system’s purpose but does not fundamentally award individual students’ work either. Latin honors indicate how much students achieve compared to each other and as deemed by faculty. Thus, the honors dissemination reflects Wellesley’s institutional grading practices and students’ efforts. The two factors cannot be disentangled in any conceivable award system because a benchmark is necessary to identify those who excel beyond it. In this context, reinstating the esteem of Latin honors poses a simple path to remedying the current system: decreasing the volume of distinction recipients by making GPA award benchmarks higher, implementing a stricter grading policy, or any institutional alterations that lessen students’ impact on their distinction eligibility.

However, another problem presented by a return to recognizing only the very “best and brightest” is the lack of proper standardization for who fits the bill. Evidenced by the disparities in the number of honors recipients by major — specifically between STEM and humanities concentrations — not all disciplines are created equal. I do not mean that certain majors are definitively more challenging than others, only that numerous factors may contribute to this disparity in awardees: differences in teacher standards across disciplines, reconciling two grades in lab courses, in-class hours vs. outside-of-class work hours. Nonetheless, the imbalance between majors points to the existence of a variable academic experience among Wellesley students. Thus, a system based on the assumption that all fields are comparable only exacerbates the divide between disciplines. Taking into consideration the ethical problem of making institutional factors more prominent to preserve the system’s prestige, I believe the Latin honors system is indeed undurable.

To create a more equitable system, the current Latin honors framework should be reconsidered, considering both the varied academic experiences of students across disciplines and the increasing commonality of these honors. The growing prevalence of the distinctions, while fostering academic ambition, may also dilute the recognition of true excellence. Striking a balance between celebrating individual achievement and maintaining fairness across different fields of study is critical — an honors system should both preserve its prestige and ensure that the distinctions are meaningful, reflecting the rigor and dedication required in all areas of study. A replacement of the current system could allow for departmental determination of the benchmark for receiving honors, such as the required GPA. In doing so, distinctions would more accurately award students for academic excellence by taking into consideration the context of their major’s grade distribution. Ultimately, an ideal system would celebrate academic success without reinforcing disparities between disciplines, encouraging all students to thrive regardless of their chosen path.

The Office of the Provost’s original email on March 27 made several references to a “required number of minutes,” but it did not specify what this requirement is. The College continued to be inconsistent on this point, taking several days to construct a direct answer.

On March 31, Coile and President Paula Johnson presented to the College Government Senate on the topic. The slide on credit hours was prefaced with the helpful “warning: confusing!” and cited the notso-confusing definition “A semester hour must include at least 37.5 clock hours of instruction” (Federal Register, Vol 75 No. 209, page 66950). 

Throughout this presentation, Coile reiterated that calculating the number of minutes is confusing. As a Wellesley student who has fulfilled my Quantitative Reasoning, Data Literacy and Mathematical Modeling distribution requirements, I — and many others — do not find multiplication confusing.

This plan was announced on the ninth week of classes. Because the strike began on a Thursday, NTT courses were likely able to meet on Monday and Tuesday, but not Thursday and Friday. Thus, we will assume 8.5 weeks of class had elapsed by the start of the strike. 150 minutes per week times 8.5 weeks is 1,275 minutes. If 1,950 minutes are worth 1.0 credit, we must divide 1,275 by 1,950 to get 0.65 credits. Thus, students whose classes are being cut short by the strike are receiving less credit than they actually completed. The College’s argument against awarding the amount of credit is because the College gives credit in units of 0.25. However, if the Registrar is able to frequently award study abroad and transfer credits in units of 0.8, there clearly is a way for Wellesley to adjust the amount of credits to accurately reflect student learning.

Another point of contention is that the new courses that students will complete in presumably the last four weeks of the semester are also equal to 0.5 credits. If students register for new classes on March 29, between March 31 and the last day of classes, they will have nine classes to attend. Nine class days times 75 minutes is 675 minutes. 675 minutes of class attended divided by the 1,950 minutes required for 1.0 credit is equal to 0.346 credits. Clearly, the classes students are forced to add at the last minute are not equivalent to their classes that have been cut short. 

If the math seems nonsensical, that is the point. Of course, I’m sure the process of ensuring Wellesley’s credit hours align with accreditation standards was a thorough and intentional process that might not map out with mathematical precision. However, make no mistake: the Provost’s decision was not made to preserve the integrity of Wellesley academics — it was a last-ditch union-busting effort, and now administrators would rather save face than meet their responsibilities towards students. The Provost’s decision is extremely disrespectful, implying that our courses are interchangeable with each other. It suggests that Wellesley students take courses simply to get the credits for a degree, rather than to design an enriching academic experience. If there was a genuine concern to maintain Wellesley’s academic standards, the administration would not disregard how Wellesley students chose a liberal arts education to be intentional with their intellectual pursuits, minimize the learning students have put in so far by reducing their credit, and force students to take on new classes purely for gaining credit hours. If this was a genuine effort to support students, the administration would not disrespect tenure-track faculty by pressuring them to take on new students in the last few weeks of the semester and imply that any student could easily master their curriculum in only nine classes. If this was genuine, the administration would have bargained with the Union in good faith, avoiding the strike entirely.

The College justified announcing the credit plan on the first day of the strike by arguing that they needed to take action early in the event that the strike lasted all semester. Nearly twenty days into the strike, we see the College’s self-fulfilling prophecy materialize. Now with this plan to fall back on, the College presents the image that they do not need to bargain urgently to end the strike. 

However, like with the original credit plan, this too has holes in it. It is expensive for the College to pay for picket line security each day. Thesising students have had to hurriedly reorganize their thesis panels. Delaying the strike puts summer courses and the Fall 2025 semester in limbo, as students are unsure as to which courses will be offered. Media attention will be on the College on Marathon Monday, families will come to campus on Commencement, and alums will come to campus for Reunion. Waiting out the strike is not sustainable. The College must swallow their pride and return to the bargaining table. 

No amount of condescending Senate meetings, dismissive Zoom webinars or backtracking email blasts will salvage the situation. Administration has irrevocably destroyed whatever trust the Wellesley community have held for the administration. There is only one clear solution. First, the administration must substantively demonstrate their commitment to Wellesley academics by bargaining in good faith with WOAW to bring the strike to an end. This includes agreeing to WOAW’s offers for additional bargaining sessions, engaging with WOAW’s big ticket items and not pressuring the Union to engage in private mediation. Second, the administration must issue an apology to students (particularly international students, students on financial aid, and graduating seniors) and faculty (both tenure-track and NTT) for the chaos and damage the 0.5 credit plan has created. 

Finally, we as students cannot lose sight of the issue at hand. Faculty teaching conditions are our learning conditions. We cannot sit on our hands and wait for the grown-ups to figure things out. Our education is being materially impacted, and we must take action. We are the students of this college. Our money pays senior leadership’s paychecks, and our money should be used to pay our educators. We have a voice in calling for the College to return to the bargaining table. We must use that voice to uphold the Wellesley education, for ourselves currently on campus, for the alums that came before us and for the students that will follow up. 

Our community has been demonstrably shaken up by the College’s actions. As we reach the third week into the strike, we can tell that this is not a situation that will casually blow over. As a community, we have a responsibility to ourselves and future generations to preserve this institutional memory — as painful as it may be — and work to create a better future, one that values the labor of those who make Wellesley what it is.

The Provost’s office emailed students a shocking update today: essentially all striking courses without a lab will only be worth 0.5 credit unless a replacement (scab) professor is offered. This ultimately means that many students are no longer at the minimum number of credits to be considered full-time students at Wellesley, let alone seniors who need credits to graduate. Any Wellesley student on financial aid who does not meet the minimum 3 credit courseload requirement will lose their aid, and international students could lose their visa.

The college’s solution, for the problem they artificially created, is allegedly to open up seats for students in tenured professors’ classes. This means that students will sign up to complete the semester in a course they did not attend for half of the semester, may have absolutely no prior knowledge in, and may not even be remotely interested in. On top of that, likely hundreds of seniors and students on financial aid will need to find open seats: these courses will likely become so crowded that it is impossible to gauge how these lectures could even continue to run, or how professors could handle this additional workload. Wellesley does not have many large classrooms available for courses over 32 students, and even 32-student courses can struggle to fit into their allocated classrooms. 

70% of tenure track faculty have also pledged not to scab union classes. I assume this solidarity extends to them refusing to open their current courses to more students. If this is the case, very few departments would be able to even offer open seats to students. The economics department is one of the few departments that has decided not to stand with the union and instead scab their courses, so perhaps we will all be taking Econ 101 together in a classroom where we can’t even get desk space. 

Let’s put this into perspective for a moment: the college has willingly decided to threaten students with losing their financial aid or visa status if they do not attend scab lectures or replace their current lectures with completely unrelated courses that are halfway through their content. This disgusting move by the college is deliberately meant to harm students. Other colleges such as the University of California, University of Illinois – Chicago, and Community College of Philadelphia have had similar strikes among faculty for very long durations. Despite this, none of these colleges took away students’ credit from their striking classes. These colleges even explicitly stated that the striking courses would not threaten students’ F1 visa status or financial aid, and some even offered refunds to students who had striking classes. 

Wellesley College is deliberately threatening their students with major financial and immigration consequences if they support their striking faculty and could even withhold graduation from students in their final semester. Considering the college’s track record, this development is unsurprising but still incredibly underhanded. Students should not be used as a bargaining chip in the administration’s dispute with the union. I ask and hope that department chairs and tenure-track faculty refuse to open up seats in their courses for students and force the college to give students their fair and deserved full credit for their striking courses, as many other institutions have done in the past.

Welcome back to the second installment of my exploration into the wide world of dating turn-offs, affectionately known as “icks.” In this edition, we dive deeper into how these spontaneous feelings of repulsion manifest and what we can do about them. To recap, the last issue I discussed and offered solutions to handling Visual icks (like bad style or “a guy driving a golden Prius”) and Actions/Behaviors (e.g., excessive finger-guns or random meowing). To remind you, the type of ick alone doesn’t dictate the best response. Key factors include its timing in the relationship, if it’s a recurring issue, the ick-giver’s potential for change, and your readiness to compromise. Today, I’ll cover the last three categories: Utterances, Interests, and Character Traits. And don’t worry, I’ve saved the most egregious for last.

Compared to previous categories, icky Utterances often have far less middle ground, as they are stronger indicators of irreconcilable differences, which necessitates swift action. For example, if a man dances embarrassingly, that doesn’t reveal incompatibility, only that he lacks rhythm. However, I’ve been on plenty of dates where a man has told me, “You’re not like other girls,” which I condemn immediately. To me, it’s a sign that they view me/women one-dimensionally or are so intrinsically boring themselves. That’s the tame side of things. 

I have a friend who, on a third date, was told, “our kids would be so cute!” signaling two things: (1) this girl was imagining a long-term future together, and (2) she lacked a fundamental understanding of reproduction (given that they’re both biological women). My friend, who’s a realist and wasn’t looking for anything serious, shortly ended things by expressing concern that they were looking for different things.

Falling under the category of Interests, icks can be as simple as “she wanted to go to a Tate McRae concert,” an indication of their antithetical personalities and music tastes. Other minor icks in this class include “being too into thrifting as a man,” “really loving house music,” and “having a leather kink.” Strong relationships are formed on the basis of shared interests and hobbies, so early on, if you discover you hate something they love, it likely, but not certainly, won’t work out anyway.

I’ll never forget the day that my first love decided to audition for his college improv troupe. We’d been together about six months by the first time he started telling me about inter-troupe rivalries, attempted sabotage, and overall dynamics in the college improv scene. Wanting to be a supportive girlfriend, I swallowed my involuntary abhorrence and encouraged him. Don’t get me wrong, he and his troupe-mates weren’t unfunny people, but improv has seldom made me laugh. Since watching it live and forcing fake laughter exacerbated the ick, my solution was dragging a friend with me and getting high (hoping it’d be funnier)––at least I didn’t have to sit alone in the lecture hall turned makeshift-auditorium like some troupe-groupie. 

I really wanted to support him, but the only thing less attractive than watching the man you’re intimate with ~clap into a scene~, is hearing him later that night, overthink whether he should’ve clapped in sooner…or not at all. Additionally, having to routinely answer “um, he’s really involved with college improv” to the question “what’s your boyfriend like?” is unfathomably demoralizing. Ultimately, the ick was not responsible for our relationship’s demise, but I can’t pretend I wasn’t thrilled the moment I realized I’d never have to go to an improv show ever again.

Functioning similarly to icks of Interest, Character traits icks emerge from deeper, often ingrained aspects of a person’s personality that clash significantly with one’s preferences or values. These icks can be especially jarring because they reflect more permanent and, therefore, unsurmountable aspects of a person. An icky character trait can also be the ground from which other icks arise, take for instance, my friend who prefaced her testimony with the statement, “One time I was with a man who loves to sing.”

This calamitous choir casanova invited my friend on a first date to his frat’s Champagne & Shackles event. The point of the event is that you’re zip-tied to your date, and can only cut the ties after you empty a bottle of alcohol together. “Of course, he bought a ginormous sake bottle (the type that restaurants use) so that we could ‘stay cuffed for as long as possible.’ He was so committed to staying cuffed that even when he needed to pee, we stayed cuffed.” Only halfway through the pair’s comically large sake bottle, my friend needed to pee but expressed to her date that she had no desire to go in front of this man. “We compromised. I sat on the toilet with my hand out by the door while he stood outside. I asked him to play music or something because I did not want him to hear me piss. He proceeded to sing “I’m not the only one” by Sam Smith.” 

Wow.

How she handled all of that… let’s just say zip-ties and sake create the perfect conditions for acute onset Stockholm Syndrome.

To conclude, I hope that I’ve illustrated the vast spectrum icks, from minor annoyances to major deal-breakers. As we’ve seen, the nature of an ick can reveal fundamental differences that highlight potential compatibility (or lack thereof), and long-term connection. Whether it’s the awkward utterances on a first date or the intense commitment to a hobby, each ick gives us insight into what we can tolerate and where we draw our lines. Remember, while icks can sometimes be managed or laughed off, they often serve as early warning signals of deeper misalignments. As you navigate the complex world of relationships, use these experiences not only to understand others better but also to refine what you truly seek in a partner.

*also to my improv ex (in the very unlikely chance you happen to read this): I added an anecdote from our time together not because I wanted to bash your passion, but because I think it demonstrates how you can actually choose to tolerate a major ick if you like the other person enough.

Upon entering Wellesley, all students pledge their agreement to the 31-word Honor Code that they will “act with honesty, integrity and respect, to themselves and to the community.” 

However, the vagueness of the Honor Code has long caused confusion among students, with very limited resources available to interpret its extensive applications. The Honor Code Council in recent years created the student code of conduct to clarify the Honor Code processes and rules, but this has instead generated further confusion regarding when each code applies and what truly counts as an Honor Code violation.

The Administration’s comment coincides with an increasing trend of food theft reports, frequent charges against unauthorized student AI use and a recent uptick of student protests in the past few years. 

Understanding the limits of both the Honor and the Student Code of Conduct is difficult, but adding to the overall confusion is the fact that current Wellesley students exist in a vastly different campus environment than those of past generations. 

 Representatives of the Administration during Senate meetings continue to place blame on students for the College’s lack of education and clarity, rather than addressing the systemic issues and breakdown of communication in place at the College. 

Students have more reason than ever to distrust the Administration and the Honor Code, especially when it’s not consistently applied. In the 2023-2024 academic year, student protestors were charged with an Honor Code violation, which stated that they failed to meet the demonstration policy during the Renewing Democracy Summit featuring Hilary Clinton on April 6, 2024. Instead of the established Honor Code processes, including faculty, students and staff, their cases were moved to administrative resolution — a process with no formal policies, faculty and student deliberation, or appeal process. The lack of transparency in the handling of this case only deepened student distrust, as there was no way to know whether the deliberation was performed equitably or fairly. The use of administrative resolution in this scenario affirmed to all students that the existing guidelines and procedures we are expected to abide by can be thrown out on a whim. 

The students of Wellesley fundamentally lack trust in the College, and the Administration does little to address this growing divide. If anything, the Administration continues to enforce changes without student input. Students have voiced concerns that vague threats of “being Honor Coded” are frequently used despite widespread confusion over what it entails.

In the Feb 3 Senate meeting, a student reported that they were threatened by a former Associate Director for Residential Life with an Honor Code charge while protesting, despite stating that they were following the College’s demonstration policy at the time. A member of the editorial board was also threatened twice by a Residential Life Community Director with an Honor Code violation due to complications while throwing a party in their dorm hall. These threats are very troubling for students if faculty and staff can threaten students with Honor Code charges to police their behavior. The tactic is effective — Honor Code trials are lengthy, stressful and carry severe consequences such as probation or suspension. Threatening students with an Honor Code charge is a way of intimidating them to change their behavior without any accountability on the part of authority figures to maintain clear standards and procedures for what exactly counts as a violation and how it should be fairly and reasonably addressed.   

Not only are students ill-informed on the Honor Code, they also lack the structural supports to ensure they are truly able to “live the Honor Code.” One of the biggest recent violations, food theft, is centered around residential life. Students presumably know that theft is generally unethical; However, the administration could do more to address the complicated web of factors leading to food insecurity, often a motive for food theft. Unlike other colleges including Emerson, BU, and UMass Boston, which fund on-campus food pantries, Wellesley does not offer any free supplemental food to students.

At MIT, students receive daily stipends to spend outside the dining halls at local businesses and grocery stores. Additionally, they offer donated swipe passes to students who run out of meal swipes. At Wellesley, students cannot use flex money from their meal plan over winter and summer breaks, despite the extreme cut in hours and locations. Even during the semester, students only receive $75 of flex points, a pitiful amount considering high grocery prices and the comparatively large amount of flex money offered at neighboring institutions like BU (which also has an unlimited meal plan).

Students’ lack of enthusiasm for the Honor Code has much to do with the community cultivated on campus. Dean Horton stated in the Nov. 18 Senate meeting that the Honor Code used to be “a way of living life” and that students used to carry themselves in the community differently, with more integrity and respect. However, the campus has undergone major changes and losses to extracurricular life over the past few years, leaving many students feeling disjointed and often at odds with each other. The state of the campus social life is depressing for most students, especially when compared to what it used to be. The Administration continues to impede co-ops, most notably continuing to prevent Punch’s Alley from reopening and delaying El Table and Cafe Hoop from opening until the end of the semester last Fall. These co-ops do not just operate as businesses but also serve as uniquely vital student spaces for organization, collaboration, and celebration. Even dorm spaces that historically served as gathering spots, such as the Tower Court apartments or 5th-floor blocks, have been systematically and purposefully dismantled by the Administration and residential life. There are few spaces where students feel that they can safely gather without faculty, staff or Administrative presence. This is especially true of spaces for students to consume alcoholic beverages. The campus no longer has its bar, where it safely provided alcohol to students of legal age, and allowed Wellesley students to party in a safe, controlled environment. In the years since the closing of Punch’s Alley, alcohol safety transports increased drastically, and dorm or off-campus parties have become the only other place for students to party with the use of substances.This is especially concerning considering the high prevalence of drink spiking in the Boston area. Quite frankly, the administration appears to be starkly against providing safe spaces for their students. 

The foundation of the Honor Code was never meant to be a tool for authoritarian punishment and intimidation. It was created by students, for students, as a means of fostering mutual trust, self-governance, and protecting the right to self-expression — especially in a time when women had little political influence. 

Over time, however, the Administration has transformed this once-powerful symbol of solidarity into one of fear and control, wielding it inconsistently and at times unfairly against students. If Wellesley truly values the principles on which the Honor Code was founded, the Administration must work to restore student trust by increasing transparency, ensuring fair and consistent application of policies, and addressing the systemic issues that drive student struggles — rather than punitively punishing those forced to navigate them.

8/8 Members of the Editorial Board voted in favor of this piece.