Smith College is known for many things: its top-tier academics, its socially conscious students, and the fact that it often acts as a safe haven…
Posts tagged as “chantelle leswell”
At once a slick piece of cinema and a compelling instance of storytelling, “The Lighthouse” reminds us what it means to be completely stunned by a film in the current climate of conveyor-belt movie-making.
Wellness puts up their interactive mental health awareness display in the campus center.
Smith is a mystical place.
After four years since her case began, Chanel Miller comes forward with her story. Up until this point, the public only knew her as “Emily Doe”, a catchall caricature of what a rape victim might look like. You might not even know her by this name, but I’m sure you recognize the name Brock Turner and all of its connotations. That’s less of a reflection of a person as an individual, and a lot more to do with the culture we inhabit that first, privileges the voices of men; second, ignores, and at worst shuns and degrades survivors; and third, upholds whiteness as an ideal. So much so that just weeks after the story broke, headlines everywhere painted the picture of a helpless white boy whose whole life was about to be taken away over “one silly mistake.”
In June of 2019, the Smith College community was profoundly shaken by the passing of the wonderful Marc Steinberg after his year-long battle with pancreatic cancer. Our community still feels the reverberations of his loss to this day.
The polls are showing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the preference for democratic candidates lies with affable old white men.
Last week, I attended a movie night ran by a new student organization, Active Minds.
Chantelle Leswell ‘20J | Staff Writer
We’re getting to that point in the semester where the first round of big assignments are hitting, the melting snow is leaving slush piles and black ice is everywhere. And is it just me, or is the big hole in the middle of campus getting bigger? For some of us, resolve may already be slipping. That doesn’t mean we can’t push through, but wouldn’t it be sweet if the semester wasn’t just about surviving? Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of “The How of Happiness,” puts it bluntly: “It’s equally important to investigate wellness as it is to study misery.” That’s worth pausing over. Holding both of these parts of the human condition with equal importance forces us to confront our self-concepts and how we act in our daily lives. My theory is that, generally, we wallow a little too much in the “misery” camp when we ought to be erring on the side of wellness, and leaning into moments of joy can really start to optimize our wellbeing.
I’ve been reflecting a lot over break, mostly through journaling snippets of thoughts, ideas and feelings, but also through poring over the past five years of my life with loved ones. These years have been unquestionably formative and, predictably, incredibly difficult in ways I could never have anticipated. What I was able to decipher, while in a place I struggle to call home anymore, was that failure and the state of being unable to anticipate what’s coming from much of what has shaped me over these past few years.