Alternative Spring Break brings Academic Fellows to DC for networking and professional development opportunities The University of Massachusetts Academic Fellows Program (AFP) embarked on its inaugural Alternative Spring Break trip to Washington, DC from March 9-13, taking 19 AFP participants to the nation’s capital. The AFP brings specialized opportunities and programs for first generation and ALANA undergraduate students in the UMass College of Social & Behavioral Sciences.

An op-ed co-authored by Brian Schaffner and Jesse Rhodes, political science, says analysts of the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections are missing a key group: the more than 4 million voters, disproportionately young and black, who supported Obama and didn’t vote in 2016. 

We caught up with Nathalie Amazan '20 to talk about the work she does on campus in a leadership capacity. Nathalie is a political science and legal studies major, the newly elected Vice President of the UMass Amherst Student Government Association, the co-founder of the UMass Prison Abolition Collective, and works at the Stonewall Center where she does trainings around queer and trans identities and terminologies. She is also a member of the SBS Academic Fellows program and works at theCenter for Education Policy & Advocacy (CEPA).

Sheldon Goldman, political science, says a federal judicial nominee who left several controversial items off her disclosure form to the Senate Judiciary Committee should raise concerns. “Is this an oversight or is this strategic withholding of information?” Goldman asks. “If it’s strategic, that raises very serious questions. Whether the Senate Judiciary Republicans majority find that troubling or not, I don’t know.”