Behind Ugly Locker-Room Talk, Divisions of Class and Race

For much of its existence, the Amherst chain of being has been populated mostly by wealthy white men. It wasn’t until 1975 that the college first admitted women, and only in the past 15 years did Amherst get particularly serious about diversifying its student body.  More than two out of five are ethnic or racial minorities, and more than one in five receive Pell Grants designated for low-income families, making Amherst more diverse than many of its peers. But there are still pockets of the campus that look a lot more like the Amherst of 1950 than that of 2017, and nowhere, perhaps, is this more the case than on its athletic teams.