The Amherst Student

This past Friday, I ate lunch with Michael Elliott ’92, not for anything related to this profile, but because he wanted to have lunch with a few students. There was nothing in particular he came to ask or discuss; he just wanted to hear what was on students’ minds. I never thought about how unorthodox this sort of interaction would be at most higher educational institutions u...

As an undergraduate, Wes Dripps ’92 spent hours alone in the Pratt Museum of Natural History (now Charles Pratt Hall), where the mammoth skeleton loomed over the exhibits, and often no one came in. “I was like a little kid in a playground,” Dripps recalled. Since returning to Amherst in 2022, he has been spending his days again in Pratt, which was refurbished into a dormitory...

“Come on, Emma. I’m audacious.” 

This was Anthony Chan ’72’s comment as I laughed-smiled, slightly confused, but also impressed by how he spent his senior year. Instead of a traditional major, Chan decided to participate in the Independent Scholar Program, with a good portion of it in Hawaii as the City Charter Commission’s youngest member at the time. 

But he was...

For Thomas Mitchell ’87, the word “impossible” does not apply. From combating systemic racial discrimination in Amherst athletics to creating a major legal reform addressing a form of property injustice not formally recognized 10 years ago, Mitchell pursues justice even when it appears unthinkable. His talent and potential have been notably recognized by the prestigious

Once a high school “class comedian,” not a class clown, Chet Harding ’92, who would like to clarify that he did not found or participate in Gad’s House of Improv (he doesn’t want to mistakenly receive the credit), grew his love for comedy at his time at Amherst College, and has continued to explore comedy post-college in a multitude of entrepreneurial, humanitarian, and corpo...