Everything about University Of Massachusetts Amherst totally explained
Area governments
There are a total of six area governments. Each of the campus's six residential areas has an area government, and there's also a Commuter Area Government to serve commuter students. Area governments provide social programming for their areas, and are in charge of the house councils for the dorms in their area. They also represent the needs and interests of students in their areas to the Administration, Housing Services, and the SGA.
Area Governments have a tradition of sponsoring large events, generally in the Spring, such as Fill the Hill, Bowl Weekend and Southwest Week.
House councils
Each residence hall or residential "cluster" (a group of residence halls) at UMass Amherst has a house council. House councils report to their respective area governments. Its budget comes from voluntary dues collected in return for access to common supplies (access to the
kitchenette, rental access to vacuums, brooms, games, etc). House councils also engage in social programming for their halls or clusters, and advocate to housing staff in regards to concerns of students in their hall/cluster.
Army ROTC
The
Minuteman Battalion
is one of the permiere Army ROTC battalions in the Army . Boasting a program that annually performs well above national averages and among the top handful of programs in the northeast USA, Army ROTC recently enjoyed the announcement of a senior Cadet being named the #1 Cadet in the nation in a national class of over 4,000 Cadets. UMass has earned this prestigious achievement twice in the last 15 years. The training program is among the best at preparing officers for the US Army and commissionees regularly outperform their peers in initial Army officer training. Active on the Amherst campus, the program's Scabbard and Blade community service club is very active and represents UMass well throughout the year with food drives, assistance to local veteran's groups and assistance with the Medical Readiness Corps at UMass in preparing for large-scale medical disasters. The most unusual activity associated with Army ROTC is the Light Leader's Tactical Society, in which Cadets train in dynamic real-world environments and scenarios. Most students are on a
full tuition scholarship. UMass-Amherst is the host program for the Pioneer Valley and Five Colleges Army ROTC programs including: Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, Amherst College, Hampshire College, Western New England College (WNEC), Springfield College, Westfield State College and American International College (AIC). At
AIC and
WNEC, students on Army ROTC Scholarships also earn free room and board.
Marching band
UMass Amherst has one of the largest marching bands in New England. The Minuteman Marching Band consists of over 360 members and regularly plays at football games. The band is led by
George N. Parks. The Minuteman Band also won the prestigious Sudler Trophy in 1998 for excellence. The band is well known across the nation for its style and excellence, particularly for its percussion
UMass Drumline and tuba sections
UMass Tubas. The band also performs in various other places like
Allentown, Pennsylvania,
Bands of America, Boston, and on occasion Montreal.
Fraternities and Sororities
UMass is home to numerous fraternities and sororities, organized under four councils:
IFC,
NPC,
NPHC, and the
MGC. Several Greek Life organizations had houses on
North Pleasant Streetuntil Alpha Tau Gamma, Inc. who owned the property for many years, didn't renew the leases. The North Pleasant Street houses were colloquially known as Frat Row. Most of Alpha Tau Gamma Properties' houses were out of
code and were razed November, 2006. The land was then sold to the University. Currently several sororities & fraternities still live in "Frat Row" including
Sigma Delta Tau,
Alpha Kappa Alpha,
Pi Kappa Alpha,
Iota Gamma Upsilon,
Phi Sigma Kappa and
Theta Chi. Behind "Frat Row" or North Pleasant Street there are more sorority houses such as
Sigma Kappa,
Kappa Kappa Gamma, and
Alpha Chi Omega. Two other houses
Chi Omega and
Sigma Phi Epsilon are situated on Olympia Drive, on the northern outskirts of the campus.
Delta Upsilon is also situated on North Pleasant Street just past Lederle and Totman.
Alpha Epsilon Pi is also on campus.
Alpha Epsilon Pirecently relocated to Sunset Ave, and
Pi Kappa Alpha returned to campus in Spring of '07.
Several organizations don't have houses, such as
Pi Kappa Phi, Alpha Epsilon Phi, and the
NPHC, and the
MGC fraternities and sororities.
The Greek community has several annual traditions, including 'UDance', the
Relay for Life and the annual
Greek Week, during which the various fraternities are partnered with sororities, and these teams compete with each other throughout a week of challenges.
The Daily Collegian
The student-operated newspaper,
The Daily Collegian, is published Monday through Friday during the University of Massachusetts' calendar semester. The Collegian is independently funded, operating on advertising revenue. Founded in 1890, the paper began as
Aggie Life, became the
College Signal in 1901, the
Weekly Collegian in 1914 and the
Tri-Weekly Collegian in 1956. Published daily since 1967, the Collegian has been broadsheet since January 1994.
Campus
Buildings and layout
The campus extends about a mile from the Campus Center in all directions. The university owns significant amounts of land in the nearby town of
Sunderland.
The campus may be thought of as a series of concentric rings. In the outermost ring are parking lots, the admissions center, playing fields and barns for the animal science program. In the middle ring there are the five residential areas and dining commons. The innermost ring has most of the classroom buildings and research labs.
South Campus
The
Isenberg School of Management has its buildings in the southernmost part of campus near the Visitors Center and the Newman Center, the Catholic student center. In addition to being the site of the main administration building,
Whitmore, the southeast side of campus has buildings mainly dedicated to the humanities and fine arts. Buildings include
Herter,
Bartlett, Mahar and the
Fine Arts Center (Abbreviated "FAC"). Between Whitmore, the FAC and Isenberg lies the Haigis Mall, a local stop on both the
PVTA and Peter Pan bus lines. The buildings on the southwest side of campus house the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. These include
Emily Dickinson Hall and Tobin Hall.
The 26 story
W.E.B. DuBois library and the Old Chapel are the notable buildings in the center of campus. The buildings in the center of campus, Goodell and Machmer are mainly used by the Commonwealth Honors College.
Student Union
The
Student Union Building houses most of the University's
Registered Student Organizations (RSO's) and it's the home of the Student Government Association. Other facilities include the Campus Design and Copy (CD&C) center, a convenience store, a ball room, and a student lounge. Several student-run businesses and co-ops are also present including Tickets Unlimited (Tix), Bike Coop, the
Fair trade convenience store, bagel shop
People's Market and a vegan/vegetarian eatery
Earthfoods Cafe.
South College
South College is the home of UMass' world renowned linguistics department. The DuBois library was intended to be an annex to South College.
Campus Center
Designed by famed architect
Marcel Breuer, the Murray D. Lincoln
Campus Center is located adjacent to the Student Union and is accessible via passageways from both the Student Union as well as from the main level of the parking garage.
On the concourse level are the campus store, restrooms, graduate student lounge, which serves beer, and the Bluewall, which contains a cafe, a smoothie stand and a fair trade coffee stand. This level is a high-traffic area throughout most of the day with students and faculty not only using it as a 'pass through' from one building to another, but also as the central hub of on-campus life. Many people often pass the time between classes on this level and it's common to find vendors and organizations operating from fold-out tables along either side.
The lower level of the campus center has multiple conference rooms and a large auditorium. Within the central space of the lower level are telephones, ATMs, vending, as well as couches and television. The offices of the University newspaper, The Daily Collegian, can be found at the far end of the level, along with the University radio station,
WMUA, and its offices. One of the basement rooms is home to the UMass Science Fiction Society's library which is the second largest Science Fiction library on the east coast.
The top floor of the Campus Center, "The Top of the Campus" recently underwent a complete renovation. It is home to a state of the art teaching kitchen, beverage lab and dining room facility.
Campus Center Hotel
Above the concourse level is the Campus Center Hotel
(official website), a five-level full service facility with 116 rooms, including two suites located in the Campus Center. The Campus Center Hotel is the training ground for the university's Hospitality and Tourism Management students.
Fletcher's Cafe
Fletcher's Café is a student run business on campus at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. It is located in Flint Lab, the Hospitality and Tourism Management building, which is next to the campus center parking garage. Students that are part of the Hospitality and Tourism Management major take on full managerial responsibilities and are required to hire employees, order food and drinks, take care of accounting and hopefully make a profit by the end of the semester.
North Campus
The north side of campus is mostly dedicated to science and engineering, and many buildings there are newer than their counterparts in the humanities. The Physics Department primarily uses Hasbrouck Lab, located at 666 North Pleasant Street. The Lederle Graduate Research Tower is the largest building on the north side, housing the Math department on its sixteenth floor. As the Math Department headquarters, the sixteenth floor is prominently labeled 4². The
Silvio Conte Polymer Research facility is located in North campus.
Computer science
The Computer Science department recently moved into an airy new building built for them on the edge of campus, though classes are often taught elsewhere, especially for lower division classes. Between the imposing concrete LGRT, the second-story walkway from it to its sister structure the LGRC, the glass-and-aluminum Computer Science building, and other new buildings for the Engineering and Polymer Science departments, North Campus looks more "high-tech" than the rest of campus.
Sports, recreation, and exercise
Major sporting events, such as UMass's hockey and basketball team games, are held in the
Mullins Center, amidst the fields to the west. Other locales for sporting events include
Warren McGuirk Alumni Stadium (where UMass holds its football games) and Garber Field, which is an artificial-turf field adjacent to Boyden Gym used for lacrosse, field hockey, and various team practices.
On campus there are two major gyms, the Totman Gym near Northeast and Sylvan and the Boyden Gym to the south. Each houses basketball courts, a weight/fitness room (Boyden's is free to undergraduates), and various other resources such as racquetball and squash courts. To the west of campus are numerous fields used for recreation and for soccer and baseball. There is also a set of tennis courts located north of Boyden.
In addition to Totman and Boyden, there's
Curry Hicks Cage, which hosts a small indoor track, pool, and basketball court. It is also occasionally used as a venue for guest speakers (such as the fall 2006 visit from comedian
Bob Saget) and for the Western Mass high school basketball championships and other similar sporting events. The Cage was the home of the UMass men's and women's basketball teams before the Mullins Center was built.
Ground was broken in fall 2007 for a new building across the street from the Mullins Center. It will be a three-floor rec center, complete with a weight/fitness center spanning two floors. It is estimated to be constructed by apring 2008 and commissioned in spring 2009.
Campus Bus System
The
PVTA bus system is the second largest free public transportation system in the world. It serves not only the University of Massachusetts campus, but also the surrounding colleges and communities. This bus system is run primarily by University students and is free for students, which allows them to easily get to classes at the other four colleges.
Residential areas
At UMass Amherst, first and second year students are required to live on campus. Housing is open to all full-time undergraduate students, regardless of year. Upper-class students who have continuously lived on campus during their first and sophomore years are guaranteed housing as long as they choose to live on campus. If, however, a student is admitted after their sophomore year, or moves off campus, and wants to move back onto campus, they're not guaranteed housing, but instead must go through a housing lottery, since demand outstrips supply. Building and room selection is accomplished by a
complex system that takes into account building seniority as well as class year; those choosing to move from their building are subject to a lottery system. There are approximately 12,000 students living on-campus.
Students living on the UMass campus live in one of the six residential areas: North, Sylvan, Northeast, Central, Orchard Hill, and Southwest. Several residential areas have a student-run business. All campus residence halls are staffed by Resident Assistants, who provide programming and community development, as well as enforce policies, and have quiet hours, which start at 9 pm on weekdays, 12 midnight on the weekends, but may vary from hall to hall.
North Residential Area
Recently completed, the newest residence halls on campus opened in the Fall of 2006. Located between Sylvan and Northeast, these apartment-style dormitories house approximately 850 undergraduates in four buildings. The buildings are currently named North A, B, C, and D. Each unit comprises four single bedrooms, two full bathrooms, and a shared common area including a full kitchen. Other amenities include
Ethernet and cable access, central air, and laundry on-site. This is a nine-month housing area, which allows students to remain on campus from September to May.
Sylvan Residential Area
Sylvan is adjacent to the North Residential Area, and before the opening of North in 2006, was the newest residential area on campus, construction having been completed in the early 1970s. Sylvan is distinctive for offering suite-style living in a shady wooded area. Sylvan derives from Latin silva, "a wood or grove." Each residence hall contains 64 suites and each suite is either all-male or all-female. For Fall 2007, a gender-neutral suite is being made available "to students who don't want to identify a gender, students whose gender identity is in transition, and their friends and allies."
Each suite is a mixture of double and single rooms, a common bathroom, and a common living room. Suites accommodate six to eight residents. Sylvan is also home to the
Sylvan Snack Bar (SSB) one of eight student-run businesses on campus. The SSB delivers food right to students doors in the Sylvan living area. The snack bar, located in the basement of the McNamara building, provides food and a student hang out for the Sylvan residents.
Northeast Residential Area
Northeast is across the street from North and diagonal to Sylvan. The residential area consists of nine buildings assembled in a rectangle surrounding a grassy quad. Northeast is one of the oldest residential areas on campus and has what one might call classic academic architecture, consisting of red brick buildings and gabled/shingled roofs. Buildings of note in Northeast include Knowlton, which is an all female dorm; Hamlin, which is an all male dorm; as well as Lewis, which provides international students with 9-month housing and is home to one of the
Residential Wellness Center facilities offered on campus. Thatcher is unique because it has a foreign language program, which includes several floors, each with a different language. The residents of these floors are encouraged to speak the language they're studying with their floor-mates. Dwight Hall offers Asian-American Student Program. Crabtree Hall and Leach Hall house the Engineering Residential Academic Programs (RAPs). Another building, Mary Lyon, houses the 2-in-20 floor; offering a safe space for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered students and their allies.
In Fall 2008, the cluster of Crabtree, Mary Lyon, and Knowlton (CMLK) will become all-freshmen housing, as Northeast will join Central, Southwest and Orchard Hill as the fourth residential area to offer freshman-only living. Knowlton will become co-ed, and Johnson will take its place as the new all-female dorm. The 2-in-20 program will also be relocated.
Central Residential Area
Central is unique because it has three academic buildings in addition to nine residence halls located along a hill on the east side of campus. Academic buildings in Central include Hills House, New Africa House, and Fernald Hall. Central is also home to the Central Art Gallery in Wheeler House.
Central is organized into 4 clusters of buildings: Gorman-Wheeler and Brett-Brooks at the bottom of the hill, Baker, Chadbourne and Greenough ("BCG") organized in a quad halfway up the hill, and Van Meter-Butterfield ("VMB") at the top of the hill. Gorman Hall is a building-wide Living Learning Community called NUANCE. Founded in 1989, it's a diversity awareness Living Learning Community. Wheeler is home to the Central Art Gallery. Brett is a nine-month housing dorm, allowing students to stay during breaks for a fee. Both Wheeler and Brett are popular living options for student-athletes. Brooks is a "Wellness" dorm, requiring its residents to abstain from substance use. Baker houses the Area Office and a freshman-only floor. Chadbourne houses the Josephine White Eagle Native American Cultural Center. Butterfield and Van Meter are freshman-only dorms. Van Meter is the largest dorm on campus in terms of residents, while Butterfield is the smallest and has a rich community history.
The Greenough dorm is also home to the
Greeno Sub Shop, another one of the student run businesses.
Orchard Hill Residential Area
Completed in 1964, The Orchard Hill residence area is north of Central, and has four residence halls: Dickinson, Webster, Grayson and Field. As of the 2007 school year, Dickinson and Webster buildings were converted to freshman-only housing. Webster is home to one of the
Residential Wellness Center facilities offered on campus. Orchard Hill is known for its yearly spring event, Bowl Weekend, which is put on each year by the Orchard Hill Area Government. Many students from the Commonwealth College honors program live in Orchard Hill as part of Learning Communities. Orchard hill also houses a number of Talent Advancement Programs. . Orchard Hill also refers to the hill on which the
Orchard Hill Observatory and a cell phone tower are located. The cell phone tower also supports a microwave relay system for
internet and land phone service at the
Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory, located on a peninsula within the
Quabbin Reservoir. Field also houses
Sweets 'n More, a student run business on campus.
Southwest Residential Area
Southwest is the largest residential area on the UMass campus.
Southwest is composed of five 22-story towers (Coolidge and the all-freshman Kennedy are side-by-side in the north and John Quincy Adams, John Adams and Washington are arranged in a cluster in the south) and 11 smaller residence halls, also known as low-rises (the height of which varies from building to building), holding a total of around 5,500 students. The low-rises are arranged as such: two freshman-only clusters in the north (James-Emerson and Thoreau-Melville), a freshman-only cluster in the south (Cance, Moore, and Pierpont), and located along Sunset Avenue to the east are two clusters (Prince-Crampton in the north and MacKimmie-Patterson in the south) offering nine-month housing. Cluster offices are located in James, Melville, Cance, Prince, MacKimmie, Pierpont, and in each of the five towers. Additionally, Thoreau and Cance are home to the area office for the north and south portions of Southwest, respectively. Moore is home to the Residence Life Resource Center. Meanwhile, JQA and Washington are the homes to two of the
Residential Wellness Center facilities offered on campus.
Southwest houses three of the five campus dining commons currently in operation. Hampshire is in the north and the newly-renovated Berkshire is in the south, both offering traditional food, while Hampden, located in between, is a kosher dining option. Hampden, which was originally going to be a tower itself before contractors realized the foundation wouldn't be able to support one, is host to the Southwest Art Gallery, Convenience Store, and the Southwest Cafe & Pita Pit. Also found in Southwest is the Stonewall Center, a resource for
GLBT students and allies.
Southwest houses approximately 50% of the students living on campus. Southwest is known for its lively, festive, and active community spirit, often stereotyped (both positively and negatively) as a center for "party" activity. After both victories and losses by the New England Patriots and Boston Red Sox in 2002, 2003 and 2004, as well as after the December 2006 UMass defeat in the NCAA Division I-AA football championship game, students held large impromptu festive gatherings (also referred to as riots) in the Southwest Mall which led to injuries, incidents of property destruction, and significant police involvement. Although the Patriots were not involved in
Super Bowl XLI, campus security was tightened on Super Bowl Sunday in 2007 as a precautionary measure. The 2007
Boston Red Sox playoffs and World Series games were met with tight security as well and proved to be effective. On the night of the Red Sox World Series victory there was loud but peaceful celebration and minimal arrests were made.
Off-campus living area
Off of the campus there are several areas that offer housing to juniors and seniors. These come in the form of apartments and houses. For example there's Puffton Village: It is a large apartment complex that houses about 1200 students. It is also helpful for students because there's a bus system that goes right through it every 15 minutes during the week and will take you directly to campus. The prices range differently because they offer one bedroom apartments, two bedroom apartments, and three bedroom apartments. Students however my have four people live in the three bedroom to save money. Overall that'll pay for the rent and utilities and it's a fair price for most college students.
Parking on-campus
Parking at UMass is open to all students via
Parking Services for a fee. Cost varies depending on seniority and location. The most typical student parking permits range from $60 to $300 for the year. It is a color coded system with Green, Purple and Yellow Lots available to students. Purple Lots are typically closest to the dorm/housing areas; Yellow Lots are the cheapest but the farthest away; Green lots are for commuter students.
Parking is also available in the campus garage for a fee of $1.50 per hour during the day. In the evening there's a night rate of $3.00. Payment options include cash or ucard. Meter parking is also available at select locations through out campus. The meters accept nickles, dimes, and quarters only.
Athletics
UMass is a member of
Division I of the
National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The university is a member of the
Atlantic Ten Conference, while playing ice hockey in the
Hockey East Association. For football, UMass competes in the
Colonial Athletic Association (CAA), a conference of the Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS; known as Division I-AA before the 2006 season). UMass originally was known as the Statesmen, later the Aggies, then the Redmen, before changing their logo and nickname to the Minutemen. In a response to changing attitudes regarding the use of Native American-themed mascots, they changed their mascot in 1972 to the Minuteman. This has been lauded by many in the NCAA as being one of the greatest name changes due to the "minuteman" relationship with Massachusetts and its historical context. Women's teams and athletes are known as Minutewomen. UMass considers Boston College, the University of New Hampshire, and the University of Connecticut as their biggest rivals.
The UMass-Amherst Department of Athletics currently sponsors Men's Intercollegiate Baseball, Basketball, Cross Country, Ice Hockey, Football, Lacrosse, Skiing, Soccer, Swimming and Track & Field. They also sponsor Women's Intercollegiate Basketball, Softball, Cross Country, Rowing, Skiing, Soccer, Swimming, Field Hockey, Track & Field and Tennis. Among Club Sports offered are Men's Varsity Wrestling, Men's Rowing, Men's Rugby, Women's Rugby and Men's And Women's Bicycle Racing.
Notable faculty
Anshu Jain (Head of Global Markets, Deutsche Bank)
Crown Prince Hakon (Norway) (International Relations)
E. Wayne Abercrombie (Music)
Andrew Barto (Computer Science)
Madeleine Blais (Journalism)
Samuel Bowles (Economics)
Wayne P Burleson (Electrical Engineering)
Sandip Kundu (Electrical Engineering)
Chuck Close (Fine Arts)
E. Bryan Coughlin (Polymer Science and Engineering)
Walter Denny (Art History)
Martín Espada (English)
Fred Feldman (Philosophy)
Carl R. Fellers (Food Science and Technology)
Dennis L. Goeckel (Electrical Engineering)
Sheldon Goldman (Political Science)
Lisa Green (Linguistics, African-American English Studies)
Jeffrey Holmes (Music)
Neil Immerman (Computer Science)
Sut Jhally (Communication)
Jim Kurose (Computer Science)
Joseph Levine (Philosophy)
Lynn Margulis (Biology and Evolutionary Science)
John McCarthy (Linguistics)
Warren P. McGuirk (Physical Education)
Dick Minear (History)
Anna Nagurney (Finance and Operations Management)
Max Page (Architecture)
George N. Parks (Music)
Barbara Partee (Linguistics)
David Pozar (Electrical Engineering)
Stephen Resnick (Economics)
Thomas P. Russell (Polymer Science and Engineering)
Daniel Schaubert (Electrical Engineering)
James Tate (English)
Russell G. Tessier (Electrical Engineering)
Don Towsley (Computer Science)
Michael Wex
Richard D. Wolff (Economics)
Robert Paul Wolff (African-American Studies)
Ian Grosse (Mechanical Engineering)
Alumni
The slogan of the Alumni Association, "You were. You are. UMASS."
The University is campaigning to get Alumni to purchase specialty Massachusetts license plates with the UMass Amherst logo. The proceeds from sales of the plates would go to help fund student scholarships.
The University Alumni Association operates out of Memorial Hall.
Campus activism
While some students at UMass add to its reputation as a party school, others among the undergraduate and graduate population have also received press for their activism, including rallies to repeal the imposition of a Student and Exchange Visitor Information System Fee in 2003-2004, to protest for more favorable in 2005 and 2007, protesting tuition and fee hikes that make the university the second most expensive for in-state students (behind the University of Vermont) and many other campus issues.
Throughout the school's history, it has been the site of many sit-ins, and protests, often led by the Radical Student Union and its successor movements, Take Back UMass, amongst others.
UMass Amherst in the news
"Most violent campus" controversy
On November 17, 2005, ABC News' Primetime reported University of Massachusetts at Amherst as having the highest rate of violent crime on a campus of its size.
UMass officials said the report was flawed in two ways: first, ABC used figures from 2002 and 2003, when UMass reported 57 and 58 violent crimes, and didn't take into account the data from 2004, when only 28 violent crimes were reported; second, the news program calculated the rate of violent crime by dividing the number of crimes by the total enrollment rather than by the number of on-campus residents."'Just as you wouldn't include visitors, commuters, and tourists to calculate the crime rate among a city's population, neither should an aggregate number including off-campus students be included in a calculation of an on-campus crime rate", O'Malley, the general counsel, wrote to ABC News.
UMass Amherst Team of Scientists Create "Nano Nose"
A team of scientists at UMass, led by Vincent Rotello, have developed a molecular nose that can detect and identify various proteins. The research appeared in the May 2007 issue of Nature Nanotechnology, and the team is currently focusing on sensors which will detect the malformed proteins made by cancer cells.
UMass Amherst Team Create Fire-Safe Plastic
UMass Amherst scientists Richard Farris, Todd Emrick, and Bryan Coughlin lead the research team that has developed a synthetic polymer that doesn't burn. This polymer is a building block of plastic, and the new flame-retardant plastics won't need to have flame-retarding chemicals added to their composition. These chemicals have recently been found in many different areas from homes and offices to fish, and there are environmental and health concerns regarding the additives. The newly developed polymers wouldn't require the addition of these potentially hazardous chemicals. Coughlin, one of the research team leaders, notes that this is "really a two-birds-with-one-stone approach for a new polymer. It is extremely fire-safe and doesn't contain halogenated additives, which are known to be environmentally hazardous."
Andrew Card Protest
On May 25, 2007, a large protest was held during the University of Massachusetts at Amherst Graduate Commencement where Andrew Card received an honorary degree. The protest was picked up and broadcast by MSNBC, as well as receiving a writeup by the Associated Press stating that hundreds of students and faculty booed and held up signs while Andrew Card was given his honorary doctorate in public service. Due to the protests, Card neglected to speak and Provost Charlena Seymour's comments regarding the award were drowned out by the hundreds of people involved in the protest.
The commencement protest followed two large demonstrations on campus on May 8th and May 15th, 2007, respectively, with regards to the honorary degree. Card was also protested earlier in the year when he came to UMass to give a lecture entitled "The American Political Landscape: Looking Towards 2008" on April 11th, 2007. The Radical Student Union and the Graduate Student Senate organized protests which included a "die-in," where students fell prone with fake blood spattered on their clothes, as well as protest signs and the unfurling of a very large protest banner.
Jack Wilson's Restructuring of the UMass System
University of Massachusetts president Jack M. Wilson has proposed a "one university" plan for the UMass system, part of which included the excision of the Chancellor position. There are also other leadership restructurings which have received a fair amount of complaint from faculty and administration of the various UMass schools in the state: the faculty of UMass-Amherst passed a no-confidence vote in both the president and the trustees; UMass-Boston is currently considering doing the same.
There has been concern that much of the proposed plan has been developed behind closed doors within a small circle of the Board of Trustees. Members of the board have noted that even within the board itself there were members that were aware of the plan prior to it being transmitted to the board-at-large, a fact that has led some to speculate about the evolution of an insider group with its genesis in the involvement of Romney's appointments to the board and other organizations during his gubernatorial tenure. Stephen Tocco, Chairman of the Board, was backed and elevated by then-governor Mitt Romney. Romney also made other appointments to the board just before leaving office, as well as appointing Wilson as a Massachusetts Commissioner to the Education Commission of the States shortly before his exodus. The current plan centralizes some of the power within the UMass system by effectively combining the role of President and Chancellor into the President's office. Due to the uproar from a wide variety of camps, some commentators worry that this reorganization plan may weaken Wilson's position, depending on the effects of the various no-confidence votes and future reactions of the administration and faculty.
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