Opened in May of 2022, the Bob Dylan Center is located in Tulsa, Oklahoma as the house of Bob Dylan’s archive. Dylan chose Tulsa for archives’ personal home because of the “casual hum of the heartland that [he feels] here,” according to Jenkins. Jenkins took on the role as director, and his skills from working at non-profits over the last 30 years as well as his love for Bob Dylan’s music made him a perfect candidate for the job. 

Even though he has the experience to back it up, Jenkins’ daily role as director is far from straightforward. If he isn’t taking members on tours of the center, or planning an event that is coming up years in advance, he’s figuring out who to call to fix the front door or just looking around to make sure that everything is running smoothly. 

“I like the level of activity that verges on the impossible and can occasionally be chaotic, but that’s part of what makes it exciting, is that it’s so varied,” Jenkins remarked about his role as director. 

Some days, Jenkins is even meeting with other rock legends at the center. “So it’s looking ahead, and then it’s just that every day, you know, oh, we just got a call that Bruce Springsteen is in town, and he would like a tour of the center. Then, so, well, you drop everything and give Bruce Springsteen a tour of the center,” Jenkins shared. 

Alongside his role as director for the Bob Dylan Center, Jenkins took on his own sort of role as curator of the “Stepping Into the Unknown” film. 

“I use curator lightly in this case, because you sort of can’t go wrong. I mean, the clips speak for themselves.”

Jenkins used archived clips to piece together a one hour film in the chronological order of Dylan’s career, ranging from a solo acoustic performance to his electric era and the famous “Judas!” moment in 1966, when Dylan dared to play electric guitar live on stage, which many fans saw as a betrayal to the folk rock movement at the time.  

“There are so many Dylan’s- I think of him in the plural- that this at least sheds light on, you know, a dozen or so of Bob Dylan and various guys, his musical genres, persona, styles, and also I find them interesting,” Jenkins commented. 

Some of the clips showed classic Bob Dylan moments, like the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, but some clips were uncovered by Jenkins when he was digging through the archives during the creation of the film. “So we have access to this material… Some of which were known to exist, others which have come as a total surprise to us as we’ve gone through the archival materials. And this program this afternoon will show some of that, but I just started to piece together in chronological order, because that just seemed to make the most sense.”

Jenkins also teased that more of these collective films could be coming the audience’s way. “So all in thus far, I’ve put together three different one hour programs, so who knows, if this goes well today, and the folks at the theater you know want to bring me back in a year or two, I can show some of the other films.” 

These on-the-road screenings of the film started around two years ago at the Jacob Burns Film Center in New York. The film center invited Jenkins out to show the film and answer some audience questions. 

“And I thought, ‘oh, that’s interesting,’ because for the first time, we can take something from Tulsa… and share some of that with another audience, and also encourage people to come to Tulsa,” Jenkins noted about the first screening.

“Encourage” is an understatement. Jenkins remarked that the center has seen visitors “come from all 50 states” and “up to 45 different countries in the last year or so.” 

Jenkins shared that the drop of the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, had a similar effect on the Bob Dylan Center. The center curated a display, designed around elements of the film, like the actual outfits and items used by Bob Dylan, as well as some of the recreated items used for the film, like a letter from Johnny Cash, juxtaposed with the real thing. 

“So a lot of visitors came in to see that. And I think the film really has been a point of entry into the Dylan world for perhaps younger visitors and listeners in particular,” Jenkins shared. 

From these screenings, Jenkins has seen a wide variety of audience reactions, ranging from audience members singing along to stoic appreciation of Dylan’s artistry. Jenkins has also gotten a mixed bag of questions from the audience as well.

“They range all over, you know, ‘do you talk to Bob every day?’ to, you know, ‘why Tulsa?” to “in that one clip, is he playing a Fender Stratocaster, or is that a Fender Telecast?’ you know, some really specific… musicians nerding out on that stuff, which is, which is fun too.” 

The Amherst Cinema’s screening of “Stepping Into the Unknown” had some chuckles from the audience at times, but most of the viewers watched in an awe-filled silence. The audience also produced a wide variety of questions for Jenkins to answer, ranging from archival materials on hand to some of Dylan’s creative choices throughout his career. 

Contrary to what some may believe, Jenkins has only ever met Bob Dylan once- completely unrelated to the Bob Dylan Center. Jenkins was at a Bob Dylan concert in San Francisco when he was introduced to Dylan backstage. 

“And I got the same experience that I hear… a lot of people told me a similar thing, like, ‘oh yeah, I found myself in that situation too…’ And so I just, you know, tried not to totally fanboy out and just say, ‘Hello, nice to meet you.’ And I mean, it was about that simple,” Jenkins recalled about the interaction. 

Jenkins actually spends a lot of time communicating with Dylan’s manager rather than Dylan himself. While Dylan has not yet been to the center itself, he had a part in choosing Tulsa as the location, and made a statement about the center’s opening. 

“He knows the materials are here in a big building in Tulsa, and we’re doing our thing. Better that he’s looking at tomorrow night’s show, the next song, the next painting, as opposed to the past,” Jenkins remarked. 

Jenkins shared that out of the films that have been made about Dylan, his favorite is I’m Not There, directed by Todd Haynes. “Haynes’ decision to create a half dozen characters that each embody some aspect of Dylan’s ethos or personality, I thought, was such a smart way of doing it.”

As for films in which Dylan played a role, one of Jenkins’ favorites is Masked and Anonymous, directed by Larry Charles and written by Bob Dylan. “So [Charles] and Dylan collaborated on this very unusual narrative feature film called Masked and Anonymous. Dylan wrote the script. He plays a character named Jack Fate.” 

Dylan performing a song titled “Cold Irons Bound” in the Jack Fate costume is one of Jenkins’ favorite clips included in the “Stepping Into the Unknown” film. 

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Amherst Cinema’s screening of “Stepping Into the Unknown” was a completely packed house. The event sold out, and not a seat was open in the room.

Following the screening was a performance by local band, Frozen Corn, who played some Bob Dylan songs to wrap up the event. 

To find upcoming Amherst Cinema screenings, check out amherstcinema.org. If you ever find yourself in Tulsa, Oklahoma and you want to see a piece of music history, check out the Bob Dylan Center.

While the UFC’s new partnership with Paramount has brought a lot more money to the sport and delivered some of the promotion’s biggest television and streaming numbers in years, marking a surge in fan interest, this event was widely expected to surpass these highs and blow recent events out of the water.

But instead, reactions suggest it has struggled to match the unprecedented amount of hype leading up to it.

The six-fight card was immediately deemed underwhelming by MMA-centered content-creating analysts like Ariel Helwani and The MMA Guru, who, on his channel, exclaimed that the UFC “can do better than this.” Fans agreed that the card is not living up to the “the greatest fight card ever assembled” hype White gave it, and didn’t have “8-9 title fights” as President Trump predicted.

Apart from the two noteworthy bouts of undefeated Ilia Topuria defending his Lightweight belt against Interim Champion Justin Gaethje, and superstar Alex Pereira moving up to Heavyweight to face the controversial Ciryl Gane for the Interim Belt, reactions note the card being noticeably absent of big names.

Other UFC fighters, both former and current, reacted to the fight list with mixed reviews, with some being excited for the top fights, but a majority showing cynicism or indifference.

Demetrious Johnson, a UFC Hall of Famer and legend of the sport, had a video breaking down the card, and simply described the card as “disappointing,” claiming that “it feels like it’s missing something.”

But a part of skeptical fans see a problem beyond this card’s lack of star power and the misleading publicity leading up to the fight.

For some critics, the event represents something much bigger than a couple of fights on a late Saturday night. It highlights the ever-growing relationship between the UFC and right-wing politics.

What’s happening with this event reflects a shift in how the UFC functions within American culture.

With a huge part of conservatives adopting the promotion and the sport of MMA altogether, Conservative-leaning fighters that have aligned themselves with President Trump, like Sean Strickland, Derrick Lewis, and Josh Hokit, have remained prominently featured in the UFC, despite the controversies surrounding them. With Lewis and Hokit being added to the White House card after a personal request from President Trump himself.

Former fighter Kevin Lee claimed the reason he was cut from the promotion is that he publicly supported Bernie Sanders in 2019, alleging that Dana White and the UFC told him he was “dead in the water” shortly after the fact.

Having backing from both Dana White and President Trump, part of the UFC fanbase claims the card has turned what would normally just be a fight night into a political spectacle.

A portion of fans, however, have ignored this relationship, claiming that the UFC is its own independent organization and that this relationship between the two is merely that of friends and no true harm is being done.

But as these connections become what shape the presentation and promotion of events, fans feel the line between sports entertainment and political signaling becomes increasingly blurred.

With this in mind, Freedom Fights 250 takes on an even more important significance, hosting a fighting event in a space historically associated with the state and diplomacy.

Bringing an MMA event to the nation’s most prestigious and important building would have been unfathomable for fans just a couple of years ago, but now we’re only a couple of months away from seeing it live.

The relationship between President Trump and the UFC is nothing new; the President has been part of UFC events since the early 2000s, when he helped the organization get a jumpstart by hosting events at his Trump Taj Mahal complex.

During his first term in office, however, the relationship shifted from one of friendship and business to one with real political impact in the right-wing sphere.

The clearest moment of this came during the 2016 Republican National Convention, when White came onto the stage to introduce the at the time newly nominated presidential candidate Donald Trump.

The moment marked a turning point, publicly linking the head of the world’s largest MMA promotion with a presidential campaign that would go on to win the 2016 election and cement a tie between the UFC and American conservative politics.

Fast-forward 10 years, after countless Trump appearances at UFC events and fighters’ greetings after victories, the perception of the promotion being a part of conservative cultural identity has solidified.

Taken together, the reactions to the Freedom Fights 250 announcement reflect a wider pattern in how recent UFC events are being received and perceived.

While the promotion continues to draw strong viewership and attention, responses to fight cards are increasingly highlighting a gap between expectations and reception.

As the UFC moves through its first year under its Paramount partnership, Freedom Fights 250 stands as yet another example of how the promotion is not just being discussed in terms of fights, but also in how it presents and positions itself.

Ranging from rap covers to strong indie vocals, the Spring 2026 BOTB performances did not disappoint. The battling bands and WMUA crew kept the crowd hyped, from the pre-show music, to the reveal of the winning band. During the performances themselves, the energy in the room was palpable.

Caramia and The Breakdown opened the show with an upbeat original song, “Crash.” Lead singer Caramia Pozzi kept the audience captivated with her strong vocal presence, and the band worked together in harmony. They followed up “Crash” with another, slower original, “Down that Hole Again,” which Pozzi says she wrote in a Southwest field. On their final song, “Wyoming,” Pozzi brought on two guest singers, Sam Reisner and Maggie Gearan. Together, the three sang a triple harmony- accompanied by some mandolin flair- that drew in the audience, gaining cheers from the crowd. 

Following the first act, The Reffers took the stage with a couple of original songs. The four piece band kept the energy going, and the crowd clapped along to the beat. Audience members could see The Reffers’ drummer keeping the beat in a bucket hat and pink heart-shaped sunglasses. The band closed with a cover of “Something” by The Beatles, with some acoustic ukulele to add to the ambience. The crowd enjoyed the familiar tune, and sang along heartily. 

After ending with a slower song, The Reffers were followed by the action-packed band, The Bedsmokers. Each member of the band had their own pair of bunny ears, and they kept the momentum high for their whole set. Each band stood out for a certain element of their sound, and The Reffer’s had a very strong guitar presence. There were several groovy guitar riffs throughout their set that stuck out poignantly. The band was well known by many members of the audience, concertgoers were seen clapping and singing along to some of the band’s original songs. The audience especially enjoyed the closer number, a cover of “Join Us for a Bite,” from Five Nights at Freddy’s.

No other band topped the level of energy that the fourth band, Mortifex, produced at BOTB. The metal band took to the stage with a cover of “Open Sandman” by Metallica and the audience loved it. Mortifex’s lead singer, Eson Tang, had an incredible connection with the crowd, and his energy was unmatched. Tang shared that he was in the audience at last semester’s BOTB, which inspired him and his band to go for BOTB this semester. The band played some songs from their soon to be released debut album, “Glide Line,” and they ended their set with a screamo song before tossing some CDs of their album into the crowd. 

BOTB Spring 2026 closed with a performance by Nefertiti, who performed covers of popular rap songs with an accompaniment of jazzy rock instrumentals. Before their set started, the band entertained the crowd with a little riff of “I Want You Back” by Jackson 5. Nefertiti opened with a cover of “Alright” by Kendrick Lamar, and the crowd enjoyed their jazz/rap/rock combination sound. The band also covered “See You Again,” by Tyler the Creator, featuring Kali Uchis, as well as “Fkn Around” by Phony Ppl, featuring Megan Thee Stallion.

WMUA directors Jason, Olivia, and Lyvia came on stage after a quick voting session to announce the Battle of the Bands Spring 2026 winner, Caramia and The Breakdown. The group was seen cheering and hugging each other on stage after their win was announced. 

“I am so excited, I’m so grateful, I’m so proud of my band,” lead singer and UMass student Caramia Pozzi said about Caramia and The Breakdown’s win. “We worked so hard, practicing these original songs. I’m just so proud, I’m so happy.” 

Their win was well received by the audience members. “I really like the first band that won, I really like the female vocalist, she was great,” UMass student Jami Buteau said. 

Check out Caramia and The Breakdown as openers for the WMUA 2026 Spring Concert, featuring Hotline TNT, on April 25th at The Drake!

A few minutes later, I find Joe at a small circular table in the corner of Hampshire Dining Commons, which he reserved a couple of hours earlier by placing two apples on it. Surrounded by students eating, Joe and I are meeting on his lunch break. He has a combination of spring rolls and french fries, and a glass of water with a lemon wedge.

He’s wearing his work uniform, a chef’s shirt and black pants beneath a standard black apron. Under his chef’s cap, Joe has short, black hair speckled with gray and a white goatee. When he smiles, wrinkles frame his eyes like sunrays. Tucked in his pocket are his circular black glasses, which he puts on later to look at his phone. Right now, Joe is pulling a small black case and a business card out of his pants pocket.

“I got you something because you are so smart,” he says, with a slight Portuguese accent. Before this, Joe was complimenting my pursuits to contact him. He accommodated my requests quickly–we’re speaking only a few days after I’d reached out.

The card has a QR code for his new YouTube channel, @Hamppizzajoe, and a graphic of him holding a pizza. The case holds a ballpoint pen with his channel’s URL inscribed on the side. Joe explains that when he reaches 200 subscribers, he’s going to give away a prize similar to the pen.

This was mid-February. Joe now has 261 subscribers, but his YouTube channel pales in comparison to his Instagram account, @hamp_pizzajoe, which has amassed over 20 thousand followers in the five years he’s had it. This is where he became “Hamp Pizza Joe.”

Joe’s videos are typically either interactions with students, new pizza creations or AI-generated content. Posting several times a day, he’s generated his face on characters while motivational music plays, created dubstep video edits of selfies taken with students and has used possibly every special effect CapCut offers. Joe laughs as he tells me about a recent video he generated of a personified donut as a stand-up comedian. He says he uses AI because it’s fun.

On Instagram, he refers to his audience as “pizza lovers,” but in person, Joe explains the main point of his Instagram is to connect to people, especially the students, since they’ll have a more immediate way to contact him. “They’ll know that I’m here, and I’ll do what I can to make them happy,” he says.

And it works. Students often message Joe requesting a specific pizza, and he makes it. Once, Joe tells me, a student asked him for a teriyaki pizza. He’d never done that before, so he created a new recipe: teriyaki sauce, marinade, carrots, chicken and scallions. He sent it to all the other dining halls, and now it’s an occasional menu item. Occasionally, that student messages Joe asking when he’ll make it again.

He responds, “Tell me when, everyone can have it.”

Joe jumps from story to story, sometimes not finishing the last before he begins another. When not fidgeting with the apple, his hands wave around to emphasize his words. He mainly talks about the students, who he says are his favorite part of the job.

At some point, Joe cuts off what he’s saying to greet Nakos Maroudas, a senior. The day before, Maroudas had come in asking Joe how he could arrange for his band to play in Southwest. In person, it’s clear the two have a solid friendship.

“Pizza Joe is one of my favorite people on campus. He’s always so supportive of the students, and it’s abundantly clear how much he cares about us,” Maroudas says.

“You’ll make me cry,” Joe jokes.

Joe’s worked at UMass since 2009, but that’s not where his story began. Born in central Brazil, he’s been working since he was 12 years old, selling ice cream on the street. In his 20s, he worked for an electrical engineering company, but he wanted something more. So, he moved to the East Coast and started working at a pizza restaurant.

“When you come here [to the U.S.], you do anything. That was tough for me,” he says.

But Joe persevered. While still managing the pizza restaurant, he bought a cafe. Each day, he worked at the cafe from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m., then he’d commute to the restaurant and stay until 11 p.m., a weekly schedule he stuck to for five years.

His hard work earned him the money to open a Dunkin’ branch in Hadley, and then another in Easthampton, which he owned for 14 years, until he decided to retire. But he wasn’t content to just stay home, so he came to UMass.

“Making people happy, it’s the most important thing. If you’re not happy, the food’s not gonna be good,” he says intently. Joe rarely breaks eye contact throughout our conversation, but with this, he looks more earnest.

A few minutes past 1 p.m., Joe rushes off, leaving behind his water and an apple. He’s late to his next appointment: making pizzas for the club volleyball team at their request. Making these additional pizzas on top of the regular menu items increases his already heavy workload, but Joe says he doesn’t mind. “More work for me, but that’s what I like to do – make people happy.”

His work isn’t unappreciated. “There’s no Hamp without Hamp Pizza Joe,” said Jamie Watt, a sophomore on the volleyball team. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this sentiment from students.

The second time we talked, I shadowed Joe while he made pizzas during Hampshire’s lunch hours. Of the four pizzas on the menu that day–Nutella, basil pesto, Chick-fil-A and pickle–Joe had introduced all of them to UMass Dining.

He kneads the dough for his Chick-fil-A pizza, and then tosses it in the air once. It’s topped with grilled chicken, waffle fries and homemade sauce. I ask what’s in the sauce, and he gives me a pointed look, trying to maintain its secrecy. But a second later, he softens and tells me.

Joe drops a pickle on the floor while making his second pizza, but he doesn’t acknowledge it. He moves very quickly, because he has to. On a busy day, he makes about 200 pizzas. As he takes one pizza out of the oven, he puts another in. When I ask how long it takes him to make one from start to finish, he says, “You’re gonna have to time me,” and cackles. Joe laughs again when he says God taught him how to make pizza.

Joe narrates what he’s doing, at times talking only to himself. He tells me stories as he makes the pizzas, sometimes repeating ones from when we first met. At one point, Joe talks to me for too long, overcooking one of the pizzas. “Sometimes they like a little burned,” he explains away.

Joe’s more than a pizza artist, he also paints pop-art portraits. He’s made them for family members, coworkers and even Chancellor Javier Reyes. While he started painting to deal with stress, it has since become a frequent hobby.

Selina Fournier, associate director of Hampshire Dining Commons, said Joe has made a portrait for her, and then a few years later, he gave her a portrait of her kids. He got the photo from her social media, so it came as a complete surprise. “It was very touching,” she said.

According to Fournier, Joe stays connected to his coworkers and their personal lives. “I think Joe is that big brother to everybody,” she said.

He isn’t just a part of a work family. Regarding life outside of Hampshire, the first thing Joe mentions is his three-year-old grandson, Lazaro, who’s pictured on his phone’s lock screen. Joe spends as much time as possible with him; he even got Lazaro a toy motorcycle to match his Harley-Davidson Softail Slim. He also mentions his wife, Maria, and daughter, Natalie, often.

Throughout our time together, Joe repeats something often: “Anybody can make pizza.” And he’s right. He taught me how to make it, after all. But there’s something about Joe that makes many students believe Hampshire Dining Commons wouldn’t feel the same without him. It’s not just his original recipes or the Hello Kitty pizzas; it’s the passion and love Joe has for what he does, the environment he creates for students and the positivity he exudes as he serves his UMass community. There might not be a Hamp without Pizza Joe, but there’s also so much more to Joe beyond his Hamp Pizza identity.

“Anybody can make pizza, but I make people happy with pizza,” Joe says.

That “sister” is Dr. Amina S. Davlatshoeva. Originally from the mountains of Tajikistan, she is now settled in the farmland and forested hills of Amherst, Massachusetts, and has built a small international following for her podcast, Tabila. The show is a fusion of the Pamiri mountain language of Shughni (whose entire speaking population of a high estimate of 90,000 could fit into a large football stadium), English, and the other languages she has in her arsenal; eight, to be exact. For people like Davlatshoeva, who come from minority language communities, multilingualism is a ticket for survival. 

Often, though, the constant tangled web of words, phrases, and dialects run through her mind like a marathon and leave her exhausted at the verbal finish line.

Tabila, a podcast about language and culture, covers contemporary social issues (in what she calls Shunglish) and other complex topics. These are primarily related to identity formation, mental health, digital modality and internet safety for the native Shughni community, whose language is but a ghost in the educational and professional worlds. The challenge is existential. “A language trapped in a mountain,” as Davlatshoeva refers to it, is dominated by more widely spoken tongues and has little room to evolve.

Davlatshoeva was born in pre-civil war Tajikistan, in the small town of Khorog, 7,200 feet above sea level in the Pamir Mountains, in a deep canyon nestled between cliffs. Davlatshoeva, a big fan of Lord of the Rings, compares it to the mountains Frodo Baggins walks through on his journey. There are no hills, only mountain ranges. Shughni is one of many indigenous languages spoken in the region, and was the dominant dialect in her household, rather than her mother’s native tongue, Bartangi. Bartangi and Shughni are sister dialects, but their respective speakers do not understand each other.

For Davlatshoeva, Shughni was lullabies and storytelling; it was simple, everyday conversations. The division governed her world: Shughni domestic, Tajik academic. The memorization and purely academic-based use made learning the dominant language of her home country difficult, but by third grade, Davlatshoeva could proudly call herself multilingual. By the sixth, she would earn her polyglot status. 

It was nearly impossible to avoid the Russian language in a Soviet controlled territory. If Shughni was domestic, Russian was a common visitor. It was found in the children’s cartoons Davlatshoeva’s family would put on at 9 PM most nights, in popular media, and in classrooms as part of the curriculum. For a young, indigenous Pamiri girl between what seemed like three different worlds, the ability to speak four languages (which in the United States would be a perfect addition to a university application or an impressive fun fact) was as natural as learning to speak at all.

Davlatshoeva says some Tabila listeners, called Tabilians, have described her Shughni demeanor as “sisterly,” a calm voice that could lull them to sleep. That was the role she took on in her household as the eldest sibling, and she took it in stride. Her favorite part of growing up in the Pamir mountains was caring for her three younger brothers, acting as “dad’s deputy.” The man himself was a teacher, who later worked in the provincial government as head of the education department in war-torn, poverty stricken Pamir. His influence would be the guiding light of Davlatshoeva’s educational pursuits. In fact, it was he who pushed her to learn English after recognizing the shifting axis of a changing, war-torn world. 

Political instability came fast, in 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a brutal civil war that would plague Tajikistan from 1992 to 1997. Davlatshoeva was in the midst of her nursing technical education, and the academic and linguistic landscape was changing. The Tajik language became more prevalent as it was promoted in newly independent Tajikistan. For survival in this shifting world, Davlatshoeva honed her Tajik and Russian language skills. All the while, Shughni would become more marginalized and hidden in the trees of the two dominant languages that overtook her speech and community, “My own mother tongue was cornered… I hardly spoke my language outside of home walls,” she says.

An avid reader and academic, the books offered to Davlatshoeva were only in Tajik and Russian, never in Shughni. When she started at Khorog State University to earn a degree in biology, the country was deep in poverty, and the library would not allow books to be checked out. Davlatshoeva recounts taking turns with friends in her classes, each writing 25 pages from their chemistry textbook. The students would trudge to class to glass covered classrooms with no electricity. 

It was here that Davlatshoeva began to understand her position as a woman in higher education. She recalls crossing a bridge on her way to class, the temperature just as cold as the coldest days in New England, and the ground beneath them iced over and slippery. She says some of the men would laugh at the women for falling down, catcall them, and make threats.

Education for women has been a contentious subject following the rise of the Taliban. There were fears of Western ideas leading the girls astray, and a stigma around leaving your home for education. Davlatshoeva herself received comments from members of her own community, though her educator father stood behind her, encouraged her, and motivated her to have her own opinion and reasoning and aim higher. A father so passionate about his daughter’s education was not the norm, says Davlatshoeva. Especially when it came to learning English, the language that would open new doors for her in the professional world.

Davlatshoeva was 23 and had finished undergrad at Khorog State when the opportunity to learn English presented itself. Though she was a high achiever in school, the English language was something she could not fully grasp; at the time, it was of little interest to her. In pursuing her biology degree, Latin became a focus as a way to grasp more of the science. English was not on the radar. But with Afghanistan’s war with the United States looming on the horizon, her father told her she had better start learning. Every night, washing the dishes by candlelight, she would practice her verbiage.

Though it did not stick until one day in particular, a day when the smell of fresh bread overtook every inch of the home. Due to the extreme poverty that hit Khorog post-war, the poverty she had been feeling since her early school days, food and grocery stores were scarce. The family mostly relied on her mother’s fresh-baked bread, which they would also offer to the neighbors.

One of them was a Canadian woman who had come to Khorog to teach computer language as a volunteer. Davlatshoeva followed her usual routine of the bread drop-off: bring it to the door, drop it off, say nothing, and leave. Though sometime after Davlatshoeva went, the woman had left her home and fallen into a nearby well, injuring herself.

One of Davlatshoeva’s younger brothers happened upon the scene and quickly went back to alert his sister. The nursing instincts she picked up over years of tending to her brothers and her technical education kicked in, and she spent the evening and night dressing the Canadian woman’s wounds, disinfecting them, and providing first aid. Grateful, she offered Davlatshoeva an opportunity she had initially refused: she would sponsor Davlatshoeva’s trip to Ontario to learn English at an English learning center.

Her father pushed her to go; it was a life-changing opportunity that few from her background were given. “She saw potential in me,” Davlatshoeva says.

With English under her belt, she went for her master’s at Aga Khan University in Pakistan. Afterward, she worked on many international humanitarian aid projects in Afghanistan. There, she began her dissertation on female voices in health issues. She picked the topic after her graduate research textbook suggested running your dissertation ideas by your grandmother. At the time, she was also considering picking a topic related to corruption. But her grandmother talked her back home into the Pamir mountains, and pushed her to cover female voices and identity. 

Her time in Pakistan led her to Urdu and Farsi. The campus was isolated, and in the aftermath of September 11th, classes were all held inside. She recalls visiting home during summer break and having a conversation with a cousin about her studies in Pakistan.

“What are the people like?” Her cousin had asked, and Davlatshoeva realized she did not know. “How do you visit all these different countries and not know anything about the people?”

That was when Davlatshoeva’s language arsenal had expanded to six, and eventually seven. She focused on learning the conversational manner of Urdu and Farsi, as opposed to the academic, almost clinical way, “It’s part of the job, that I want to connect with people,” she says, “I use language as a medium to talk with them.” While working on these aid projects, eventually with the UN and UNICEF, Davlatshoeva became concerned with the voices of the actual beneficiaries, making a point of building those connections. Eventually, she got to thinking about the unseen minorities, the proverbial ten indigenous girls in a village that fly under the radar of these aid projects. The people on the “margin of the margin,” as she refers to them.

As Davlatshoeva traveled through Pakistan and eventually to Kabul, Afghanistan on these projects, teaching classes, the Shughni community back home continued to dwindle. Losing their language began to weigh heavily; Davlatshoeva says the cultural environment had become hostile in a way she did not recognize. Such as their cultural tradition of how to give condolences during a grieving period. She explains that what was once a simple, quick visit and an offer of kind words has become plagued by gossip and the “politicization of procedures”: How long do you stay? How much do you say? She says a similar contention has found its way into Shughni wedding ceremonies, that they now feature excessive drinking, name-calling, and debate over what the women can and cannot wear. The vulgarity and overall demeanor was unfamiliar.

Davlatshoeva noticed an uptick in violence against women, something she felt was unheard of in Shughni culture, considered undignified. Constantly in survival mode, volatility rears its head in what she views as not only a consequence of losing the language, but also an apparent mental health issue that spills over into the digital world.

According to UMass Linguist Faruk Akkus, who specializes in endangered Indo-Aryan languages, when you lose a language, what you are really losing is the culture. “Language preservation is an enterprise that requires the collaboration of many shareholders,” says Akkus. It is a process that must take place over generations, though in recent times, Shughni elders have encouraged their children to learn the dominant languages. Shughni usage has been reduced to simply private conversations. According to Akkus, the best way to preserve a language is to do the opposite: keep speaking it and pass it down. Children are the primary key to language preservation. 

A study from the University of Badakhshan into the deterioration of Shughni in the Pamiri communities of Afghanistan found that the younger generations are trending toward a decline, replacing Shughni words with those from other languages. The study also notes that another danger is underdocumentation. Few academics have launched research projects to document the Shughni language. The last large-scale project began all the way back in 2007, at the University of Kentucky.

That year, Professor of Linguistics Gregory Stump was teaching a field methods course. His philosophy was this: teach students about languages through native speakers as the primary source. And Stump was after languages that most people in the West would have never heard of.

That semester, the University brought scholars from post-Soviet countries as part of a program to connect them with experts in their fields. The University welcomed native Shughni speaker, Gulnoro Mirzovafoeva. Given Stump’s affinity for the obscure, the campus coordinator connected the two. His interest piqued, Stump founded the University of Kentucky’s Shughni Grammar Project.

The team included other professors of linguistics at UKY, like the now Vice Provost of the University of Texas, Andrew Hippisley, and colleagues of Mirzovafoeva from Khorog State University in Tajikistan, the same place Davlatshoeva finished her undergrad. The Shughni scholars were very excited to work on the project; they emphasized the dire situation of Shughni’s survival. Hippisley says he and Stump spent that summer running a workshop with them at UKY, focusing not on theory, but organic conversation. Speaking in English, Russian, and Shughni, back and forth, through the line again and again. It was the same method Stump found most effective for his students.

The Shughni researchers attended the daily two-hour workshops at UKY for eight weeks. In that time, the linguist’s goal became clear: to create a comprehensive English-language dictionary and grammar of the Shughni language, and hopefully bring it back from the brink of endangerment.

Their research also found that the landscape of the Pamiri mountains shaped the language itself. Direction prepositions act distinctly as a vestige of them. Instead of using certain inflections like “go down” or “go away” to describe direction, in Shughni, they phrase it as “move up a vertical plane” or “move down a vertical plane,” says Hippisley, like a topographical map woven into the grammar.  Davlatshoeva notes that when she speaks Shughni, her mind feels like it is up in the mountains, no matter where she is on Earth.

The project eventually fell flat as the Shughni researchers returned to Tajikistan, funding dried up, and Stump and Hippisley’s research interests broadened. Speaking on the topic almost two decades later, though, Hippisley excitedly sifts through his office to find his old Shughni materials as he speaks on it. Though he now does administrative work as Vice Provost, he says that if he were ever to return to research, this is the project he would come back to.

Upon finishing her master’s, Davlatshoeva would find work in education services. In 2005, she would join the USAID-supported Learning for Life project, which brought health education and midwifery curriculum to vulnerable Afghan communities amid the war. Given her nursing background and affinity for women’s education, it fit like a glove, “I loved working on that project,” says Davlatshoeva, “I had a command of the topic.” When the program shut down suddenly in 2006, Davlatshoeva was unsure of her next step. When her boss recommended the doctorate program at UMass Amherst, she was off to New England.

That same year, similar to Mirzovafoeva at UKY, Davlatshoeva would earn some money on the side helping a group of UMass linguistics students complete a project about Shughni. Her favorite part was the students asking her about words, phrases, and the way she spoke. It was a thrilling experience, “I’ve never been in a situation where someone asks me about my language structure.”

Davlatshoeva had completed her doctorate, and spent some time working in Abu Dhabi where she honed her Arabic. In 2021, Learning for Life relaunched in the midst of the pandemic, and Davlatshoeva held a high-ranking consultancy position she attributed solely to her multilingual skills. The program ended once again after the Taliban banned Afghan women and girls from public life, including schools, higher education, and midwifery. Not long after, she faced the grief that came with losing her father. Feeling uncertain, she found herself back in Amherst, which she now considers her second home.

Grappling with the grief in her personal life, and professionally for Afghan women, Davlatshoeva became disheartened at the idea of losing it all, including her language: “When you lose your home, you lose your land, the place you go lamenting, to calm yourself down…” she explains, “the identity of that is embedded in your language.” She notes how women in the delivery room, in their rawest moments, will scream in their mother tongue.

Leaning into her creative side, Davlatshoeva created the Tabila Podcast to begin preserving that most basic part of herself. A space she says could only exist in New England, where she can express herself freely and simply, be. A language that was not afforded an educational or professional space was given one by her. Through Tabila, Davlatshoeva records the language and its culture by association, as a form of preservation. Her podcast has covered faith based grieving, and teaching through music. One episode delved into the neuroscience of her multilingualism. She does not find the split between private conversations and those about complex topics to be necessary. “It’s indigenous investment,” says Davlatshoeva.

Her heart never left women’s pursuit of education, though. Aside from Tabila, she teaches the occasional class at an Afghan Refugee Assimilation center in Springfield. Recently, she taught a class on feminine hygiene. Very similar to the courses she taught in Kabul during the Learning for Life program in Afghanistan. In the small room decorated with traditional carpets and pillows for the women to sit on, the smell of incense reached through every corner, pleasantly enveloping it all. Davlatshoeva, at the head of them, opened a sanitary pad and was met with a cacophony of laughs from the women in the room, “That’s where the nerve of a culture is,” she says.

Davlatshoeva can only do so much herself to preserve her language. She finds most of her listeners are much like her, a single Shughni dot in a community of non-speakers. She recalls one listener who worked on a cruise ship to Antarctica out of Dubai, and another studying alone in China. She becomes most excited hearing from her mountain listeners that tune in through mp3 files, warmth permeating her tone as she spoke about a father and son who listen together. Her podcast is for them, a space to come home to their native language and maybe even learn another, like English. Tabila celebrated its two year anniversary this past December 13th.

The six Afghan girls she teaches English, aged 16-19, now out of the internet outages, log on once a week for a WhatsApp call. On these calls, Davlatshoeva tries to impart to them what her father imparted to her: a way to speak in a world that deems them voiceless.

An earlier version of this article misstated that Dr. Amina Davlatshoeva previously worked in Dubai. She previously worked in Abu Dhabi.

UMass students need to stop looking at the campus’ brutalist buildings, like Herter Hall, the W. E. B. Du Bois Library, and the UMass Hotel, as old eyesores ruining campus, and recognize that they are the boldest parts of the school and that the university’s architectural legacy is brutalist.

But why is it that there isn’t a consensus on the value of UMass’ brutalist architecture? What is it about huge concrete buildings that makes some people either hate them or love them?

Some students seem to be partial to newer additions to campus, like Isenberg School of Management and the Design Building, seeing them as more valuable simply because they are more expensive and “of the moment.”

Buildings like the UMass Hotel and Conference Center and the Arts Center are much bigger and more imposing than they need to be, but that is where their charm comes from. While the brutalist structures stand out, some other campus buildings seem like copies of copies, generic, cookie-cutter type buildings that every other major campus in America has.

Brutalism has been misunderstood ever since it arrived on campus. From the mid-60s to the late 70s, 27 brutalist buildings on campus were built, and they drew immediate attention and were immediately criticized. Not everyone loved the changes that were happening on campus, as they saw them as not fitting the campus.

Brutalism was an avant-garde concept from its very beginning, with architects wanting to build the infrastructures of the future, dreaming of utopian places with big concrete buildings.

Notable architects, including but not limited to Marcel Breuer and Hugh Stubbins, were called in to design buildings like the Campus Center and Southwest Residential Area, respectively. The changes in architectural vision reflected a change in the direction the university was taking.

Both of the aforementioned architects drew inspiration from Le Corbusier, who, despite not working on the UMass campus himself, is seen as the pioneer of the brutalist movement, showing the importance of UMass’ architecture to the rest of the world.

At the time, UMass was expanding rapidly from an agricultural college in a small town to a major public research institution that drew students from all over the world.

The school celebrated these buildings at the beginning of their existence in the 1960s, using them as symbols of this growth and change.

A brochure entitled Standing in Silhouette: The Southwest Dormitories at UMass from 2021 gathered promotional images from the era that depicted this architecture alongside carefully staged student life, positioning the dormitories “as an exciting, modern, but normative place to live.”

Organizations like UMassBRUT not only serve to appreciate brutalism and restore public opinion to what it once was, but are also actively “attempting to reshape perceptions of Brutalist architecture to advocate for the conservation and renovation of these historic and internationally significant buildings.”

But despite these recent efforts to change the consensus, students still feel the buildings stick out like a sore thumb, limiting the appreciation our architecture should be getting.

A couple of weeks ago, the OneBuzzUMass page held a vote on their stories for followers to suggest what the ugliest buildings on campus are. Later in the day, the page shared the results.

Being dominated by brutalist architecture, the poll shows a common trend among students: when asked to point to the ugliest parts of campus, most fingers land on brutalism, with buildings like Herter, Tobin, and “all of Southwest” taking the spotlight.

The critique here almost always stops at aesthetics. People walk by these buildings every day but refuse to engage with them on a deeper level. They see bold concrete and sharp edges and dismiss them just because they do not fit into the narrow mold of what a “pretty building” should look like.

On the other hand, when they asked students to vote on which of the campus’ buildings are prettiest, respondents overwhelmingly chose newer, high-end buildings.

This reaction from followers comes from a common misconception that brutalism is equal to cold or ugly. The name comes from “béton brut,” meaning raw concrete, not brutal in the sense that it is violent. The word ends up getting lost in translation between French and English, since it has nothing to do with the word brutality. The way we have interpreted it has caused great harm to the movement.

As Ludmilla Pavlova-Gillham, a campus planner and architect involved with UMassBRUT, noted, these buildings were designed to “do more with less.” Architects used form and structure to serve collective and communal purposes rather than just what they thought would look best. The lack of ornamentation is not an accident, but rather a purposeful move to avoid excess. These formal choices reflect a certain humility that feels uniquely suited for public, democratic spaces like a college campus.

Much of this contrast can be explained by what the university itself denotes as pretty and worthy of students’ attention.

This is exacerbated when newer and more expensive buildings are introduced to campus and immediately featured in every piece of campus advertising. The Du Bois Library is still the most prominent one, but the original brutalist works have been pushed to the side to make way for buildings like the $62 million Isenberg and the $52 million Design Building.

Pavlova-Gillham also noted how the brutalist buildings used “reinforced concrete for structural strength and formal plasticity, as well as for economic efficiency,” which underscores a major shift:

Our campus’ older buildings prioritized economically rational, functional design and smart approaches, while the modern ones cost millions of dollars more, but for no good reason other than visual impact.

We have to overcome these limitations in order to fully understand and appreciate the art of brutalism on our campus. These buildings are what make UMass what it is today and what it will continue to be for the next decades, a hub for innovation and artistic revolution.

With more and more changes to campus every semester, the older buildings get left in the past and are slowly stripped of their relevance to our school’s history.

Losing touch with this aspect of UMass history is losing touch with the school itself. Every big school in the U.S. has contemporary glass and metal buildings; they are the most basic buildings a school can have.

Our brutalist legacy leaves an impression on all students who visit here, while other campuses offer the same clinical environments, becoming indistinguishable from one another.

If UMass leaves its brutalist history in the past, it trades a one-of-a-kind campus identity for the same corporate-like buildings everyone else has.

When construction began, university and state officials said the project would be a “world-class” facility built to accommodate rapid enrollment growth and expand research and teaching capacity. What the university did not anticipate was who would actually end up filling the common spaces.

As students settled into finals season this fall, one pattern became unmistakable, nearly everyone studying inside the gleaming, wood-accented, glass-wrapped extension wasn’t a computer science major.

In fact, during multiple visits to the building, every student who agreed to be interviewed, and even the ones who declined because they were deep in exam mode, came from other majors, mostly in engineering. Some weren’t aware of the original computer science building next door.

And yet, these students chose to trek to the far northeastern corner of campus, a zone many described as “kind of out of the way,” to study in Manning’s quiet, sun soaked atmosphere. They all cited the same reason , Manning just feels better.

“I just thought it was really, really pretty,” said Teresa Rodrigues, 20, a junior civil and environmental engineering major who discovered the building only because her club happened to tour it during its construction days. “It’s a nice space to study. There are a lot of little nooks and crannies you can study in.”

Rodrigues had never once visited a computer science building before this semester. Before Manning opened, she usually hunkered down in the library basement or the engineering library, two spaces she described, politely, as less than inspiring. “Engineering buildings are old,” she said. “They have no windows in a lot of the classrooms, and they don’t have study spaces designated for students. So we have to go into other majors’ buildings to find places to work.”

She laughed as she explained the contrast. “This place has a lot of natural light, which is kind of less depressing, versus some of the older buildings.”

Her new study routine reflects it. “Yeah, I come here several times a week. I’ve been here three days in a row,” she said. “It’s definitely a nicer place to study for finals.”

Kevyn Batista, 20, a mechanical engineering major, landed in Manning for similar reasons. He had spent most of his semester bouncing between E-Lab 1, engineering spaces, and South College, until he wandered into the new building “just to check it out.”

“Then I realized it’s super nice here,” Batista said. “Engineering buildings don’t have this many study spaces. Or this much light.” The building’s design stood out immediately, “The high ceilings, the glass, the wood, it’s calming. It reminds me of the Design Building,” referring to the Olver Design Building, one of UMass’s major study hubs, a $52 million facility known for its open, modern architecture.

Even though he lives in Southwest, Batista said the peaceful atmosphere is worth the trek. “It’s quiet. I get stuff done. And it has that new building smell,” he added. Other students described the same draw to Manning, a study space that feels calmer and more intentional than most buildings on campus.

From a graduate student’s point of view, Katie Li, 23, has seen her fair share of overcrowded study spaces. As a computer engineering master’s student, she usually worked in Marcus Hall, where the graduate area was “crowded” and seats were hard to come by.

“There weren’t enough places to sit,” she said. “And the volume was definitely higher.” Manning, she explained, offers an opposing atmosphere, it’s quiet, spacious, and stable. “Immediately it felt new. It’s more open, and I can focus.”

The only proposed challenge, she said, is collaboration. “It’s great for studying on my own,” she said, “but for group work, you have to be volume conscious because it’s all open.” She said she’s noticed enclosed rooms but isn’t sure whether she’s allowed to use them as a non CS student.

Still, Li comes anyway. Even with its location being “kind of out of the way,” Li adds the building’s atmosphere pulls her in. “It’s nice to see the campus build something new. I’m glad I got to use it before graduating.”

The building’s interior, calm, quiet, and filled with natural light from floor-to-ceiling windows and glass walls doesn’t just appeal to students. It also impressed Elizabeth Parolski, assistant director of graduate student success and advising, who moved her office from the old CS building just this fall. “It’s really nice for students to have their own space again, and for it to be pretty,” she said.

Before the expansion opened, graduate students lost their former lounge because it was used to store construction materials. “For this year only, students didn’t have space,” she said. “So when this building opened, it was huge. The graduate lounges are beautiful. One has a fridge and kitchenette, the other has great seating. And they both have conference rooms inside them.”

Parolski said these spaces are more than aesthetic upgrades; they remove real barriers that affect academic success. “Many of our grads live in apartments where every bedroom is taken. Sometimes someone’s using the living room or playing music. It’s stressful to do an interview like that,” she said. “Now they can book a room here and not worry. That makes them more confident walking into an interview, and that’s a big deal.”

She has also enjoyed watching learning happen organically in the open areas. “On the third floor, there’s this work bar that looks like an Apple Genius Bar,” she said. “I’ve seen students actively working out algorithms for their classes on the big whiteboards. It’s cool to see real time learning.”

Parolski watched the building emerge over several years and said she had moments when she doubted it would ever be finished. “They kept saying, ‘We’ll be open by fall 2025,’ and honestly, I didn’t believe it,” she said. “It felt like not a lot was happening, and then all of a sudden, over the summer, everything happened so quickly. It was like watching a time lapse.”

She recalled how meaningful it felt to see the project realized. “To see a building go from an idea to actually getting built and pretty close to on time is amazing,” she said.

Even Professor Subhransu Maji, whose office sits just feet from the new extension, said he has watched the building evolve firsthand. Maji said his office remained in the original Manning building throughout the construction process, giving him a front row view of the transformation.

“I’ve always been here,” he said, referring to his time working in the building before, during, and after the expansion. “It’s really quite nice,” he added, noting that the new extension physically connects his longtime workspace to a facility that will shape the next generation of CS students once classrooms and the auditorium’s officially open.

In a part of campus defined more by traffic lanes than the usual designated student walkways, students from every corner of UMass now make the walk to the far edge of Governors Drive to study in its inviting space.

These photos aim to capture this liveliness Vadnais described. Each image explores the people and features at the library, and were taken in October and November 2025. RECESS, located on the second floor of the library, is prominently featured– from crafting and trivia to ping-pong, foosball, Legos, and the tabletop RPG club. The library staff also play an important role in making the space so comfortable for students. For example, Sue Dreyer, known as the “UMass squirrel lady,” decorates her office with dragon and squirrel trinkets to foster a welcoming environment. 

Further, the Digital Media Lab in the basement offers students different ways to engage with technology, including 3D printing and virtual reality. The archives, stored on the 25th floor, hold documents and photos of the library throughout the years, two of which are highlighted. The album also captures the more hidden aspects of the library, such as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles statue on the 21st floor and the “Silly to Strange” whiteboard in the basement. 

Although the library is still a place for studying and checking out books, it has transformed into so much more, filled with liveliness, community, and a wide range of unique features.

The investment comes as a surprise to many, given that the team ended the season winless at 0–12, and according to Fox Sports, rank 135th out of 136 teams nationally—extending a losing streak that has stretched for more than a decade.

At a Sept. 24 press conference, the university’s athletic director Ryan Bamford said, “We’re going to have to overinvest to win,” describing the plan as the “deferred maintenance” needed to pull the team out of “no man’s land.” 

With the money, Bamford plans a three-phase revamp, first focusing on changing the “fan experience” to align with things “integral to the game day experience.” Namely, he’s talking about gutting McGuirk Alumni Stadium, which is infamously one of the least impressive home fields among the NCAA Division 1 schools. 

“There will be a complete overhaul” of McGuirk, Bamford said, as updating it, “changing what it looks like and feels like,” will be “very important to the success of the program over the long term.” 

The second and third phases will focus on structural elements of the program, such as staffing and roster management. 

“We have to now catch ourselves up, and we have to do it quickly,” Bamford says. 

Bamford reported that he and his staff are focused on investing money in the right places and with a sound strategy, they’re ready to go into overdrive. 

Funding will rely on private money and unspecified “creative funding models” outlined by the university and its Board of Trustees, which Bamford did not further explain.

The program will be taking on debt that decision-makers believe will eventually pay for itself down the line. 

As of now, general operating funds from the state of Massachusetts will not be used.

The Faculty Perspective

​​A UMass professor with a background in college sports as a former college athlete and researcher, expressed skepticism about the plan. He agreed to speak on the matter anonymously, not wanting his comments to reflect poorly on his department or colleagues. He described the new plan for UMass football as one he fears is “sticking a Band-Aid on a much larger issue.” According to the professor, UMass simply isn’t a “sports school.”

When asked to compare UMass to universities in other regions, particularly those in the South, the professor pointed to how “When the [Texas] Aggies played this past weekend, over 100,000 people showed up. There was a campus-wide tailgate, a ticket pool, and an entire week built around one game,” he said. “It’s the same thing for every other major Southern university.”

To him, saying UMass has no sports culture is an “understatement.” Compared to what’s happening down south, there’s barely any buzz on UMass’ campus when the football team has a game. For the professor, that’s a cultural difference. In the South, he explained, sports are institutionalized into academics. “If you don’t play sports in the South you fall through the cracks,” he said.

In Massachusetts, however, priorities are different. “You have to look at how education is structured and where the state government is investing money; there’s a clear difference in focus,” the professor said.

He gave the example that in some parts of the South, it is common to see people join school communities with the primary goal of coaching, and end up also doubling as teachers—sometimes even in core academic classes. He recalled one community where state education funds were cut, resulting in the loss of both regular classroom and special education teachers, only for a $60 million sports bond to later be passed in order to upgrade athletic facilities. 

The contrast in priorities– “how that would never happen up North,” he said, is what he appreciates most about Massachusetts as a place to raise young children.

 “UMass is a product of the state it comes from. If the State House isn’t funding sports like they do in the South, and instead funds educational programs, then what business does the main state school have behaving like a southern one?”

The professor says he understands where Ryan Bamford is coming from, especially in his role as athletic director, but added that he’s “yet to see evidence that this is going to be a worthwhile investment.”

The Player Perspective 

Freshman Elijah Faulkner and sophomore Ramondo Johnson, both members of the team, offered players’ perspectives.  Faulkner, who has been playing football since the age of five, expressed deep appreciation for the UMass football program, a feeling he says he’s had since the early stages of his recruitment process.

Faulkner said the Minutemen’s disappointing start this season “doesn’t reflect who we are as a team,” adding that they’re “better than what we’ve been putting out.”

Faulkner called the revival plan “a great thing that’s happening and something that’s going to be put to good use,” but made clear that “money isn’t everything.”

Johnson agreed, saying, “We just need to come together as a team, figure out our mistakes, get better, and learn.”

More than funding, both players emphasized the team’s need for support from their peers. “It’s hard for a football team to have all its energy be internal,” Faulkner said. “It’s special to be in a stadium when the lights come on and the crowd is loud— that’s when players play their best.”

The Student Perspective

Sophomore Patrick Stratford has been a football fan for as long as he can remember. He grew up watching the Patriots every Sunday and says what he loves most about football is “how every team and every player has a story.”

Since coming to UMass, Stratford still spends every weekend watching football. “If I’m not doing anything,” he said, “I’m always watching football, just never UMass football.”

For Stratford, “UMass is tough to root for.” His attachment to the sport comes from getting invested in players’ journeys and wanting to see them succeed. “The UMass storyline is that they suck,” he said.

Logan DeSimone, another sophomore student, had a similar story to Stratford. Having grown up in a football family, he felt his childhood was centered around the sport— what he refers to as an “American dynasty.” 

DeSimone said,  when applying to UMass, he was “excited” by its Division 1 status and he thought football was “kind of a big deal” on campus. However, no longer a prospective student but an almost second semester sophomore, DeSimone  said, “The football team mostly just depresses me.” 

In regards to Bamford’s plan, DeSimone said, “I’m glad somebody wants to save the team” but like others interviewed, he fears that UMass’ football problems aren’t solvable by money. 

DeSimone agreed with the professor wholeheartedly too, that culture provides an interesting and important lens to UMass’ “football problem.” 

As did Johnson, who transferred from West Virginia University and, having grown up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has seen the differences the professor described firsthand.

To DeSimone it’s a “chicken and egg situation.” He thinks “students should care about our football team, and they should go to the games even if we’re losing” but he himself does not go and probably never will, “I’m a hypocrite,” he admits. 

When told about how the players felt all they really needed was their support of their school, DeSimone said, “it sounds like someone’s got to fold first,” as they “want people to come because they think they’re good, but people won’t because they know they’re not.” 

DeSimone said when he sees a win from the Minutemen, he will gladly attend their next game— and he thinks the same would go for a lot of other students. 

Stratford also made comparisons to schools in the South. He pointed to the University of Texas, noting that their football players have presence—you see them and you hear about them. Stratford said that just isn’t the case at UMass.

In regard to the new budget, Stratford said “revival” is a fitting title for the plan, “because the team has no pulse.” To him, the plan makes no sense. He doesn’t understand why “we’re going to throw $30 million at rebuilding a stadium for a team that sucks.” Realistically, he said, it’s a waste, especially considering the school has better teams and the fact that its students are going through a housing crisis for dorms. 

It won’t be a revival “cool enough to all of a sudden make lots of people want to come here.” “Maybe we go up 10 spots in three years,” Stratford hypothesized, “but it won’t be this huge thing like they say.”

Still, Stratford emphasized that he feels for the football team. He doesn’t believe the program should be cut but that the university should really prioritize the area where they’re actually succeeding, academics.  

DeSimone agreed, saying he doesn’t think the program should ever be cut and that he’ll always support its existence. As well as that he supports investing in it— “just not $30 million” and that it really does feel like an “exorbitant amount of money to throw at the program.” 

In his opinion, UMass is not being smart with its money. Like Stratford he’s worried about housing at UMass and says the school has a significantly more pressing overcrowding issue that needs to be addressed. 

“But they’ve got their money, so I say give them their chance.” 

The professor was adamant that reviving UMass football will be no easy task and that the real challenge lies in changing how students view the team. He suggested that an investment in a stronger marketing or public relations strategy may be what the program truly needs. “For this to work,” he concluded, “everyone has to go all in.”

Minch, an indie artist born and raised in Connecticut, now living in New York, gained popularity with his single “handgun” and EP “how many.” Minch creates mostly emotional, softer songs that hit a listener in the heart.

The doors opened at about 7 p.m., and the crowd was seen sitting together on the floor before the show started. At the front of the venue, there was a merch table selling posters and T-shirts for Minch and opener Darryl Rahn. The atmosphere was buzzing with excitement, and concertgoers sang along softly to the pre-show music, including cuts from One Direction and “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers.

Rahn came on as the opener around 8:30 p.m. He opened with his song “Nothing Ever Happens,” moving on to “Angels Bowling,” which he said is about “waking up sad in a thunderstorm.” Rahn also played “Heaven’s a Dive Bar” and “Bright Side,” both folksy and mellow songs, which he said went out to the “five people who like dive bars” in the audience. The crowd was very mellow for Rahn’s set, soaking in his softer, solo acoustic sound. During his set, one audience member in the front said that they came from Boston to see the show, and it was their first time in Amherst. Before he went backstage, Rahn teased his upcoming EP, thanking Minch and the tour staff.

Minch came on around 9 p.m. and opened with “Nostalgia Act,” the first track on “George.” The crowd sang along softly to the gentler song, and soft strumming from the band added to the calm atmosphere in the room. He followed up with “moms new car” and “jesse,” which the audience sang along with passionately.

Minch was accompanied by a two-piece band, made up of Liam Creamer, also known as Ken Park, and Michael Basil Andrew. The pair switched from guitar to banjo to piano to drums, depending on the song. Their chemistry on stage was palpable.

“I really liked when they locked eyes with each other while they were playing it,” audience member and UMass student Connor Garry-Benko said. “I think they were really good.”

To follow up “jesse,” Minch played “Changed Things,” which he called a “sadder one,” joking that he only has a couple of upbeat ones. “Changed Things” is about Minch’s sister and their relationship growing up. The emotional contents of the song hit the audience hard, and there were audible sobs in the crowd.

Far from lightening the mood, Minch hit the audience with one more somber song, “drinking song,” before bringing on Darryl Rahn to bring the energy back up. They performed “F—-ed Up,” which Minch called a “song about being an asshole.” Concertgoer and Minch fan Ella Murray said that “F—-ed Up” was one of her favorite songs of the night.

The crowd sang along very passionately, and the mood in the crowd lit right back up. One audience member commend

ed Rahn, saying “Darryl, you ate.” Another audience member had a poster with the words “Who up Jaking their Minch rn.”

The mood only rose from there. The group then played “whose you are,” and the crowd screamed the lyrics. The climax of the show came at the performance of “Say uncle,” a song for which Minch asked the audience to put away their phones, since it is best enjoyed “when it feels like no one’s watching.” Being the most upbeat song of the night, the audience danced along and performed a crowd ritual, where they crouched to the floor during the quiet part of the song and popped back up to dance when the volume came back up. After the song, Minch told the audience “Amherst, I was unfamiliar with your game.”

What comes up, however, must come down, and Minch slowly started to bring back some softer songs by bringing on his tour photographer to sing “handgun,” his most viral song, with the rest of the group. Toward the end of the song, he transitioned into singing “Kyoto” by Phoebe Bridgers, a surprise that caught the audience off guard. Minch followed “Kyoto” with “Fingers and Clothes,” a much more emotional song, before Rahn left the stage.

Minch closed out the night with “For Leaving,” “Twice,” and “Leave,” a bonus track on “George.”

“My favorites were probably ‘Leave’ and ‘Twice’ and ‘For Leaving’ and the fact that they were all in a row was lethal,” audience member Cameron James said.

The three songs added an extra punch, being arguably the saddest songs of the night. Minch closed with “Leave,” playing the song solo onstage, leaving a solemn yet satisfying air in the room when he left the stage.

Chances are you may not have heard of Minch, but Lizzy McAlpine, Noah Kahan, and Paul Mescal have. The Wire sat down with Minch to learn a little bit more about his life, and how his music has grown into what it is today.

Born and raised in Connecticut, Minch grew up with his sister and single mom. He attributes his upbringing around so many women to be what inspired him to pursue music. Some of his biggest inspirations for his sound are what he calls “yearning songs,” like “Longsleeves” by Phoebe Bridgers and “all of Lizzy McAlpine’s early discography.”

“I had a lot of female friends growing up which kind of put me in, like, this weird ‘I’m the center of the universe kind of thought during my teenage years. I was like a guy who could sing and the only other guys who could sing didn’t do theater,” Minch said. “It felt like that path had never been explored by anyone I knew and so I sort of had fun feeling like I was paving the way where I grew up.”

In August, Minch started on his first headliner tour, performing his album “George” alongside Hana Bryanne. Being one of Minch’s “favorite songwriters ever,” he was able to connect with Bryanne and learn a lot during the first leg of “George on Tour.”

“Her and I had a Yin and Yang kind of thing, and I learned so much in that space. It was formative in a way that shook me when it was happening,” Minch said.

On this leg of the tour, Minch is traveling alongside Darryl Rahn, who Minch says he has a sort of “younger dog and an older dog” relationship. “Darryl is a little older than me, he’s more laid back, not that Hana wasn’t laid back, but he was totally down to hop in when we needed a guitarist for a couple of songs, and he’s more well versed.”

Minch has put out many singles and EPs, but “George” is his first full album. One single that gained the most popularity was “handgun,” released in 2023. One line in the song, “The worst part of growing up is learning how young you are,” came to Minch when he was working through some lyrics and remembered something he was thinking of in an Uber.

“I had an idea note and I was in the back of an Uber, over the summer after my senior year of high school, and I’d written, I guess it was either something my Uber had said or I thought up, but it was ‘the worst part of growing up is learning how young you are,’… that was the first time that I caught, what felt like, lightning in a bottle,” Minch said.

Minch’s favorite song on his first full length album is the 12th track, “Twice.” “Here’s the pendulum — this is knowing everything, this is knowing nothing, I think I did a lot of swinging back and forth really rapidly, and ‘Twice’ is just, like, exactly in the middle,” Minch said.

This is Minch’s first headliner tour, but he’s not a stranger to performances. He’s performed around the country and around the world, in places like Amsterdam and Canada. He’s even performed with Lizzy McAlpine, one of his biggest inspirations. He says that “More George on Tour,” however, has produced “some of the best nights of [his] life so far.”

On this leg of the tour, Minch found, was a lot more music centered than theatrics centered.

“Last tour was really ego-based, in a sense. The album had just come out, I had cosigns by pretty big heads, and I was feeling super awesome and all the rooms were sold out,” Minch said. “This time, we are stripping it back, and I am putting in the time to build a band that I want to spend time with long term.”