1980 Water Shortage

Amherst College and Western Massachusetts have experienced below-average rainfall amounts for a seventh straight month this year and as a result, water levels in town reservoirs are the lowest they have been in recent history. In mid-August, the state of Massachusetts issued a drought watch for the Connecticut River Region and the Town of Amherst has imposed mandatory water conservation measures for the town, including Amherst College campus.

If you’re on campus, you’ve likely noticed these signs around encouraging conscious consumption and water conservation.

In the fall of 1980, Amherst experienced a severe water shortage due to a very dry summer, several hot days in September, an unusually light snowfall the preceding winter, and the yearly influx of many thousands of students to the area.

The Amherst Student, Sept. 11, 1980

In early September, University of Massachusetts, the largest of the three colleges in Amherst, closed campus for several days as an emergency response to lessen demands on the town’s water supply.

The Amherst Student, Sept 15, 1980

By mid-September 1980, Amherst College director of land conservation and assistant to the director, along with a newly established Amherst College conservation program, met with all first year students to educate about wasteful habits and to promote on-campus awareness about water and energy conservation.  The conservation program offered suggestions to students about ways to reduce their water use:

1. “Turn off the water when brushing teeth, washing face, and shaving.
2. Use plugs in sink–fill the sink with hot water instead of letting the faucet run.
3. Use full loads in washing machines and
4. For those living off-campus, purchase the low-flow shower heads that all Amherst dorms already use.”

The Amherst Student, Sept. 29, 1980

By October 1980, the water supply emergency had abated and the Town of Amherst completed the construction of a new well in South Amherst.  Student members of the Amherst Water Conservation Project, a state-funded study, established goals for water conservation in Amherst:

• “To allow the town to remain self-sufficient in its water supply;
• To extend the life of the town’s new sewage treatment plant;
• To postpone or eliminate the need to develop new water sources;
• To improve water quality by allowing the town to use its higher quality water sources;
• To avoid future water shortages.”

The Amherst Student reported that members of the Conservation Project were meeting with the Physical Plants at University of Massachusetts, Hampshire College, and Amherst College to ensure that each institution was doing its best to conserve water.

The Amherst Student, Oct. 16, 1980

The Amherst Student gives an interesting glimpse of the 1980 town water shortage and campus-wide response.  A full run of the newspaper is available to read in the Amherst College Archives & Special Collections.

For more information on Amherst College’s ongoing efforts to conserve water and for ideas on how to do your part, visit the Amherst Conserves website.

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Josiah Warren, “The First American Anarchist”

Occasionally, a researcher’s inquiry will lead to a surprising find in our collections or turn up a previously unrealized cache of rare publications.  Last week, just such an inquiry led me to four rather rare publications by Josiah Warren, often called “The First American Anarchist.”

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Congratulations Graduates!

1949 feels your pain,

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Student publications at Amherst College

Student publications at Amherst College have been around for nearly as long as there have been Amherst College students. From the first hand-written issue of La Critique in 1829 to today’s issue of the Amherst Muck-Rake or AC Voice, the character and concerns of Amherst students and the times they lived in are readily apparent.

Below is a selection of images from student publications, click on the thumbnail for more information and a larger image. All the publications here can be found in the Amherst College Student and Alumni Publications Collection in the archives and most can also be found in the college catalog.

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Bloom Ephemera

With the arrival of May Day, it seemed to me a natural thing to go exploring in our so-called “Bloom Ephemera” collection. To do so is to experience almost pure randomness and happenstance.

Full-page back cover art work in Real Free Press Illustratie, no. 1, Antwerp, Belgium (undated).

The collection, consisting of 88 record cartons, is an unsorted amalgamation of printed matter from the 1960s and 1970s, almost all of which from a left-wing/counterculture perspective. It is the unprocessed counterpart to our Marshall Bloom Alternative Press Collection, which came to us through the late Marshall Bloom ’66, who co-founded Liberation News Service in 1967 to supply news stories to the thousands of “underground” alternative newspapers springing up all over the country.

What I discovered in my exploration of the Bloom Ephemera is that it really does not really consist of “ephemera” at all — at least not as traditionally defined as “paper items (as posters, broadsides, and tickets) that were originally meant to be discarded after use but have since become collectibles” (Merriam-Webster). It consists, in fact, chiefly of periodicals — and while periodicals (magazines, newspapers, newsletters, etc.) have a limited active life and might in that sense be considered somewhat ephemeral, they are regular publications that libraries, for example, systematically retain (as opposed to handbills and ticket stubs, which they do not).

Cover of the Fall 1968 issue of Caw! published by Students for a Democratic Society. This special issue addressed the May 1968 Events in France.

Some of the magazines here, I’m sure, are duplicates of those found in the Bloom Alternative Press Collection. Some are fairly mainstream popular magazines (e.g., Commonweal, Ramparts) that don’t closely fit the definition of “alternative.” But much else is wonderfully obscure and one-of-a-kind: newsletters put out by tiny leftist organizations, press releases, zines, local free newsweeklies, and so on.

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The History of Pride in the Bloom Collection

In honor of LGBT Pride month, I want to call attention to the substantial runs of historic gay newspapers that are part of the Marshall Bloom Alternative Press Collection. These are just a few samples of the many publications in the Bloom Collection that document the struggle for gay rights throughout the 1970s and beyond. You can find many more examples in Bloom by searching the finding aid for publications with “gay” in the title, but there are less obvious titles as well (Mom…Guess What! for instance).

While Bloom is frequently used by students in the departments of Black Studies and Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought, the collection is a rich source for researching the history of the LGBT community during the last quarter of the twentieth century.

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The Bloom Alternative Press Collection

Marshall Bloom (1944-1969)

While most people associate Amherst College with poets like Emily Dickinson, Richard Wilbur, and Robert Frost, few realize that we are also home to one of the leading collections of underground newspapers from the 1960s and 70s. Marshall Bloom came to Amherst College in the fall of 1962 and graduated with the class of 1966. He participated fully in the civil rights movement that was sweeping across college campuses during that time, and he soon became a major force in the development of the alternative press in the United States. More details of his life are available in the Biographical Note section of the finding aid to The Marshall Bloom Papers held by the Archives & Special Collections.

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