Amherst Winter 2014

Winter 2014

THE BIG TEST When Brian Shactman ’94 became a morning cable news host, he knew he had to boost ratings, beat CNN and get home in time to take the kids to soccer. Would that be enough?

Frost gets 32 boxes of Native American books Nelson Mandela’s legacy at Amherst A call one police officer will never forget Facing cancer with joy— and music Winter 2014 Amherst 1

IN THIS ISSUE

Ì WINTER 2014 | VOLUME 66

FEATURES

|

NUMBER 2

DEPARTMENTS

20 SHACK’S BIG TEST

BY BILLY TOWNSEND ’94

When Brian Shactman ’94 became a morning cable news host, he knew he had to boost ratings, beat CNN and remain a devoted husband and father.

But big media life is precarious and often capricious. Would success be enough?

29 INFINITE SEA

Frost Library has acquired an unprecedented collection of Native American literature and history. “The research possibilities are endless,” says one English and American studies professor, who is already building a course around the material.

2 VOICES 4 COLLEGE ROW MANDELA’S legacy at Amherst THE RETURN of the College Republicans REMEMBERING George Shinn ’45 BIDDY MARTIN at the White House AND MORE

18 SPORTS LEARNING TO LEAD, both on and off ff the field

34 SIGNAL 27 On his last day of field fi training, police officer ffi Ed Ducayet ’89 responded to a call he’ll never forget

36 BEYOND CAMPUS SOCIAL MEDIA A presurgery dance made Deb Cohan ’90 a YouTube star BASEBALL Ben Cherington ’96 took a laughingstock team and made it a winner AGING A longitudinal study is following Americans as they grow old BUSINESS Nudging forward the treatment of diabetes PHYSICS Michael FossFeig ’06 works on quantum simulators

42 AMHERST CREATES Ì

ON THE COVER

Photograph of Brian Shactman ’94

by Beth Perkins

FICTION Maybe One Day, by Melissa Kantor ’91 FILM San Francisco, 1985 COMEDY A late-night debut on Conan POETRY Tess Taylor ’00 writes self-portraits DOCUMENTARY Teller ’69 finds success in a new field

49 CLASSES 112 Deans’ Days 119 Alumni Survey

113 IN MEMORY 120 REMEMBER WHEN Nelson Mandela loomed so large in history that he seemed out of place sitting quietly on a couch

“It is incumbent on each generation to choose the path of forgiveness.” PAGE 4

ONLINE

Ì WWW.AMHERST.EDU/MAGAZINE

MORE NEWS l Amherst received a $223,200 Clare Boothe Luce Program grant to support summer science research opportunities for female students. The goal is to ENCOURAGE YOUNG WOMEN to become scientists and mathematicians.

l Speaking at the

invitation of the college’s Entrepreneurs’ Society, ALEXIS OHANIAN, cofounder of the website Reddit, said computer programming is the most valuable skill of the century—and one of the most accessible.

l DAVID HIXON ’75, head coach of men’s basketball, had his 700th career win in December with a 90–77 victory over Babson. He has led his alma mater to 15 NCAA tournaments and two national titles.

AUDIO AND VIDEO

j KELLY CLOSE ’90 was an Amherst student when she learned she had type 1 diabetes. The diagnosis became the basis for her life’s work. Page 40

ROB MATTSON, EUGENE LEE ’16, BEN BADUA, ©SIGRID ESTRADA, ROB MATTSON

COURTESY OF KELLY CLOSE

l Listen to exclusive

Amherst Reads interviews with many authors, including HELEN WAN ’95 (The Partner Track), Mark Gerchick ’73 ((Full Upright and Locked Position) and Fred Hoxie ’69 (This Indian Country).

SPORTS PHOTOS

l See the SWIMMING

AND DIVING team in action during a home win over Middlebury this winter. Also browse photo galleries from recent men’s and women’s hockey, basketball and soccer games, among several others.

VOICES

“Mike would invite classmates to join him in hopping a freight train. He rarely got a second date with a girl after talking all night on the first date about trains.”

DIESEL’S ROOMMATE TELLS ALL KUDOS TO MIKE SMITH ’68 ON “THE Short Liners,” the Fall 2013 article that featured Mike and his business partner, George Betke ’59. I called Mike to chastise him for not referring me to the writer, Roger Williams ’56, for background information, as Mike and I roomed together at Amherst all four years. I could have provided valuable, albeit potentially embarrassing, information about Mike’s passion for railroading—how, in our freshman year, Mike would hide his model trains and railroad magazines in my bureau when his parents were visiting; how Mike’s classmates quickly gave him the nickname “Diesel”; how, right in the middle of a play during a freshman football game on Memorial Field near the train tracks, Mike heard a train whistle, turned his head toward the whistle and neglected his assignment to block for me; how Mike would invite classmates to join him in hopping a freight train to Vermont, just as in the days of the hobos; how he rarely got a second date with a girl after talking all night on the fi first date about trains; how he would wax eloquent about his summer job on the track gang for the D&H Railroad; and how, one night in New York City, he and I rode in the diesel engine on a Penn Central train to Albany.

Mike is the classic example of someone whose life and career have been defi fined by his passion—in his case, railroading. That is the reason he is smiling so broadly in the photograph that accompanied the Amherst article!

L. Edward Lynn ’68 PAWLING, N.Y.

The

Short

Liners

BY ROGER M. WILLIAMS ’56

George Betke ’59 (left) and Mike Smith ’68 are in an industry whose success relies on knowing its markets, watching costs and making nice with local politicians.

A couple of years ago, James Squires ’83, now president of Norfolk Southern, one of the largest and most prosperous railroads in the United States, was taking a course at Harvard Business School.

Chatting with an esteemed professor of “strategy,” Squires asked, “What do you think of the railroad business?”

“A dead industry,” the professor replied.

Most of the rest of us would thoughtlessly agree, relying on our fuzzy visions of rusty locomotives, weed-choked tracks, and sleepy, musty stations. The far-flung Amtrak system (save the recently profitable “Northeast Corridor” routes) exists on continual federal life support.

In fact, as at least the strategy professor should have known, the railroad industry ranks among the most prosperous in the country. It has seldom, if ever, been

28 Amherst Fall 2013

Photographs by Christopher Churchill

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(“Notebook Days,” Point of View).

Like Ms. Taylor, my oldest daughter is several years removed from completing “the most excellent (and among the more expensive) educations the country could off ffer.” After 18 months of (unpaid) internships in Manhattan, pursuing her field of film/photography in a down economy, she returned home, where she waitresses and ponders her next move.

Ms. Taylor’s well-written, candid account of her decade of struggle has rekindled my daughter’s perseverance and enthusiasm while brightening her father’s previously gloomy outlook.

David B. Kee Jr. ’76 PINEHURST, N.C. POINT OF VIEW

Notebook Days

BRIGHTENING HIS OUTLOOK WHILE THOROUGHLY ENJOYING THE piece on the continued flying adventures of my former roommate Randall “Ace” Davis ’76 (“Some Things He’s Carried,” Fall 2013), I was greatly inspired by Tess Taylor ’00’s article in the same issue 2 Amherst Winter 2014

Most people don’t realize that the railroad industry has seldom, if ever, been in better shape than it is today.

34 Amherst Fall 2013 Illustration by Javier 34-48_AmherstFall2013c.

Jaén Benavides

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10/24/13 4:35 PM

Amherst Fall 2013 29

14-33_AmherstFall2013.indd 29

10/24/13 4:17 PM

THE FALL 2013 ISSUE OF Amherstt QUOTES author Dan Brown ’86 concerning how challenging it was for him to “fuse antimatter with the Vatican’s stance on science.” I am not sure about the point Mr. Brown is trying to make. In 1870, Vatican Council I held that “the appearance of [contradiction between faith and reason] is chiefl fly due to the fact that either the dogmas of faith are not understood and explained in accordance with the mind of the church, or unsound views are mistaken for the conclusions of reason.” For more recent statements, I refer readers to the address given by John Paul II on faith, science and the case of Galileo (see L’Osservatore Romano of Nov. 4, 1992), and I off ffer an excerpt from paragraph 242 of Pope Francis’ December 2013 apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium: “The Church has no wish to hold back the marvelous progress of science. On the contrary, [the Church] rejoices and even delights in acknowledging the enormous potential that God has given to the human mind. Whenever the sciences— rigorously focused on their specific fi field of inquiry—arrive at a conclusion which

OIL IN THE ARCTIC LOIS EPSTEIN ’83 IS OFF THE MARK IN her aspirations for “safety” in oil and gas extraction in the Arctic (“The Frontier as Proving Ground,” Fall 2013). The extreme methods now required to remove gas and oil in the Arctic (and everywhere else in the United States) are now and always will be fraught with negative consequences, both high-frequency with localized eff ffects and her “low-frequency, high-consequence accidents.” As a quick perusal of a week’s worth of headlines shows, oil and gas extraction are not and never will be “safe.” Instead, the question is: How many accidents, and what severity of consequences, will we tolerate?

Moreover, Ms. Epstein and her Wilderness Society colleagues ignore that oil and gas extraction, production and transportation generate extraordinary amounts of greenhouse gases—both carbon dioxide and the more pernicious methane—even before the refi fined fuels are burned in our cars and power plants.

Ms. Epstein also appears unaware of the eff ffects of air, water, noise and light pollution; the degradation of competing local economic endeavors; and the overbuilding of local physical and social service infrastructures which accompany the development of oil and gas reserves and plague local communities where it takes place.

Finally, history tells us that when the oil and gas have been pulled out of the ground, the extracting companies do their best to leave us taxpayers with the costly burden of cleaning up their mess.

That’s the actual history of oil/gas extraction and the real culture of the oil and gas

industry. I wonder why Ms. Epstein and the Wilderness Society think it will be diff fferent this time.

Joe Wilson ’64 ITHACA, N.Y. THANKFUL FOR ENGLISH 1 I WISH TO ADD MY VOICE TO THE TOPIC of English 1 (“English at Amherst,” Summer 2013). I acknowledge that I was not always sure where we were headed in my first semester at Amherst. I came from a large public high school in Denver, was away from home for my first fi extended time, and so much was new, including the swimming and fitness fi requirements.

However, as the year progressed, I saw the impact on me of the required coursework. There was a coordination of classes from physics to the arts. English 1 was an integral part of that coordination.

I was soon well oriented to small-college life, was swimming and more fit, fi and was learning to be a critical thinker. The final exam of English 1 will remain in my memory till I die: making sense out of a cornfi field. Of course, that was just a metaphor for life and for the entire first year of Amherst’s liberal arts curriculum.

I do recognize that the college and its curricula have changed, hopefully for the better, since my graduation. Nonetheless, I will continue to feel blessed by the coursework of Year 1 at Amherst, and that defi finitely includes English 1.

Thomas C. Washburn ’53 FERNANDINA BEACH, FLA. CORRECTION: Because of editing errors, the Fall 2013 story on the Pathways mentoring program did not make clear that Pathways is open to all Amherst students, and it incorrectly stated how often per semester alumni mentors speak to their mentees. Mentors commit to talking to mentees online, by phone or in person at least twice a month (not twice a week).

For more about Pathways, go to www.amherst.edu/campuslife/careers/mentoring.

ROB MATTSON

reason cannot refute, faith does not contradict it.”

It is axiomatic for the Catholic Church that between faith and reason there can be no contradiction.

Timothy Brunk ’87 HAVERFORD, PA. Brunk teaches theology at Villanova.

AMHERST VOLUME 66, NUMBER 2 EDITOR

Emily Gold Boutilier (413) 542-8275 magazine@amherst.edu ALUMNI EDITOR

Betsy Cannon Smith ’84 (413) 542-2031 DESIGN DIRECTOR

Ronn Campisi ASSISTANT EDITOR

Katherine Duke ’05 MAGAZINE ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Lawrence Douglas David Hixon ’75 Ron Lieber ’93 Elizabeth Minkel ’07 Megan Morey Meredith Rollins ’93 Peter Rooney WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU Ì WE Amherstt welcomes letters from

its readers. Please send them to magazine@amherst.edu or Amherstt Magazine, PO Box 5000, Amherst, MA 01002.

Letters must be 300 words or fewer and should address the content in the magazine.

WWW.AMHERST.EDU/MAGAZINE

Amherstt (USPS 024-280) is published quarterly by Amherst College at Amherst, Massachusetts 01002-5000, and is sent free to all alumni. Periodicals postage paid at Amherst, Massachusetts 01002-5000 and additional mailing offices. ffi Postmaster: Please send Form 3579 to Amherst, AC # 2220, PO Box 5000, Amherst College, Amherst, MA 01002-5000.

Winter 2014 Amherst 3

news and views from campu campus

College Row

“It Felt Like He Was an Angel” Sebabatso Manoeli ’11 and Zandile Bekwa ’11 were among the first four Mandela Scholars.

Amherst gave an honorary doctorate to Nelson Mandela in 2005.

SEBABATSO MANOELI AMHERST SENT A MESSAGE to

private schools in South Africa informing them of the opportunity for southern Africans to study at Amherst through the scholarship.

Schools were encouraged to nominate a student. I am grateful to have been selected. Accepting the offer ff to enroll at Amherst is one of the most significant fi decisions I have made in my life, and I believe it has set me on my current trajectory.

Mandela’s Legacy In a sense, the at Amherst South African leader is on campus every day.

SCHOLARSHIPS UWhen Nelson

Mandela received an honorary doctorate from Amherst in 2005, he issued a challenge: g “We in South Africa believe that all can learn—that there are more who are capable of learning, at the very highest levels of education, than are given the chance.” He urged schools to open their doors more widely to those who can’t aff fford to pay p y for college.

“Today,” he said, “we ask Amherst College, g and all of America’s great g colleges g and universities, to do more.”

One result of that challenge is the Mandela Scholarship, created in the South African leader’s honor and announced

4 Amherst Winter 2014

DIANE BONDAREFF

I WAS 6 YEARS OLD WHEN MAN-

at the honorary degree ceremony in New York on May 12, 2005. The scholarship provides need-based financial fi aid to students from South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. (Amherst also awarded an honoraryy doctorate that day to Mandela’s wife, Mozambican humanitarian Graça Machel.)

The first Mandela Scholar matriculated at Amherst in 2006, and three arrived the following year. In total, 12 have received the scholarship, including g five fi current students.

“In this world under threat,” Mandela said that dayy in New York, “colleges g and universities remain our best hope.” E.G.B.

DELA CAME TO POWER and 7

when my family moved from Lesotho to South Africa. In the post-apartheid era, we were able to reside in suburbs that were previously reserved for white people. Living as one of the first few black families in the area had its challenges, but largely the experience aff fforded my brother and me a level of dignity and access to opportunities that my parents were denied. This is especially true for my father, who by 1995 had experienced discrimination working in South Africa’s gold mines.

MANDELA WAS EVERYONE’S HERO. My generation

was encouraged to take pride in being a part of the new South Africa that we were all building in our daily

I AM TOLD THAT, HAVING BEEN AWARDED AN HONORARY DOCTORATE by the college, Mandela stated that the best way to honor him would be to give more South Africans the opportunity to enjoy the college’s prestigious education. So many other leaders would not have used a moment of being honored as a means of creating opportunities for others, but he did. It was only after I graduated from Amherst that I realized the signifi ficance of being

awarded a scholarship named after Madiba. I felt that, in a way, he had passed the baton of the pursuit of social justice and equal access to opportunities to me and the others who have benefited fi from his legacy.

I AM A RHODES SCHOLAR at the University of Oxford, where I also serve as president of the Oxford University Africa Society. I completed a master’s in African studies, and in the fall I began a Ph.D. in African history. My work focuses on Sudan. I plan to work in international institutions for the benefi fit of Africa and other marginalized regions.

MANDELA’S PASSING REMINDED ME of the imperative

to continue the work that he began—the work of promoting democracy, as well as just and ethical leadership, in South Africa and abroad. Many of us who have witnessed this valiant but imperfect establishment of democracy

Seeb S Seba baaabatso Mano Mano Ma noel noel elil ’11 is now no w a Rh Rhodes Sccho S hola larr whose w woork w rk foocuses on S Sudan.

CLIVE HASSALL

interactions as fellow citizens in multicultural playgrounds and workplaces. I remember watching some of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission episodes on TV with my family on Sundays, which was a staple for many families across the country. I am grateful to be a part of the generation that witnessed the miracle of a peaceful political transition through the simple virtue of forgiveness combined with a good measure of astute political judgment.

Zandile Bekwa ’11 felt proud to receive a scholarship named after Mandela.

have become discouraged by (and sometimes complacent about) the stubborn inequalities in the country. His death reminded me that it is incumbent on each successive generation to choose the path of forgiveness and the peaceful yet persistent pursuit of social justice.

I FELT A GREAT SENSE OF PRIDE

to come to Amherst under the legacy of a man I respected so much. I would always mention that it was a Nelson Mandela Scholarship, not just a scholarship. It felt like he was an angel, lighting a path for me from some lofty pedestal.

ZANDILE BEKWA I HAD APPLIED ONLY TO UNIVER-

I WORK AT DRAMA FOR LIFE,

SITIES IN SOUTH AFRICA, owing

an NGO at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. I majored in political science and theater and dance; this job merges my interests in social development and drama.

to concerns about funding and the fact that I knew very little about other countries.

Amherst contacted my school to invite promising students to apply to this specific fi scholarship. My school’s marketing manager thought of me.

NELSON MANDELA HAS AN ALMOST GODLIKE STATUS in South

COURTESY SEBABATSO MANOELI

sacrifi ficed much of his life to bring about.

Africa. He was one of the few things that we as South Africans could agree on across racial boundaries. He was a moral compass, and I was amazed at his ability to forgive. As I grew older, I knew I needed to help carry on building what Nelson Mandela had

WHEN WE LOST MANDELA, I

felt our country had lost our moral compass. His death exposed the reality of the bleak future we face, the widening inequality. Our leadership is losing sight of the ideals we fought so hard for. In a world where it’s hard to truly admire and aspire to be like someone, Madiba motivates me to aim higher, work harder and believe I can make a difference. ff Winter 2014 Amherst 5

COLLEGE ROW

Honored and Proud The Scholars now on campus feel a responsibility to continue work that Nelson Mandela began.

PERSEVERANCE

JASON ADAMS ’14 c cho hose ho se Amher mh herst erstt for er or ittss divverrsi sity sity ty and nd bec eca ecau au use se it h ha ad

hono ho h ono nore reed th the fform mer er prreesid side si dent ent n ooff h hiis co c un ntrryy.. He teear ared ed up u uppon o lea arn rnin ing hee in wa w as a Ma Man nd del ela Sc ela Scho Scho h la larr.. “A An ny S Soout uth Affri rican can w ca wooul uld db bee hoon nor ored d and nd proou ud d to attte a tend nd Amh herrst st.” ” A dou oublle majo majjor in ma n eco cono nomi mics mi c and Rus usssiian ian n, he he see see eess hims him hi msseellf a “a ty as type ype pe of a am mba b ss ssad sad ador oorr for or Soou utth h Affrric ica, a, like ike Ma ik Madi diib d ba a.” ” Sin inccee th hee leea ade derr’’s deat de ath, at h A h, Ada dam da ms ha h s be b een n“ “co conc co ncer nc ncer erne n d ffor th the he well weell-b ll-b ll - ei eingg of So eing Sout u hA ut Affrriica ca’s ’s social soci so ciiall, ppoli littiical ca al an and d ec eccon onom on mic ic futur utur ut u e. e.” Ad Adam ms’ mot mootther her me he met M Ma andel nd deella iin n tthe he he ea earl arlly 19 1990 9 s: “Fr From From m thi thi his, s I kne s, new w Ma adiiba ba was was a a wa arrm ppeersson o .” .” La atter er, A Ad dam ms lear le arn ar arne need ab bou ut and and ad an dm miired red Ma re Mandel nd del ela’ la a’’s smal sm mal allleerr-sc scal sc a e ac al accoomp acco mplliish ish hme meent nts, nt nts, s, succh a coas o-fo foun fo un ndi d ng Sou uth th Affrric ric ica’’s fi firrst st b bla la ackk-oown ned ed law w firm m..

“It was a great honor to be awarded the Mandela Scholarship. I teared up when I found out.”

6 Amherst Winter 2014

GIJIMA ’14 knew he wanted to major in chemistry at Amherst. “I also wanted to explore the open curriculum.” He created an interdisciplinary second major, in African studies, and is now writing a thesis on land reforms and land distribution in postcolonial Zimbabwe, his home country. He hopes to work in health care consulting and to someday earn an M.B.A. and M.P.H. His ultimate goal: to start a foundation or nonprofit fi to improve health care delivery in Zimbabwe. Growing up, he heard conflicting opinions on Mandela, with some saying the leader failed to deliver on promises.

But Gijima doesn’t like to focus on shortcomings. For Mandela’s role in freeing South Africa from apartheid, “he deserves to be remembered and revered,” Gijima says.

Photographs by Rob Mattson

DEXTER PADAYACHEE ’13 was the first in his immediate family to attend college. “The prestige of being a Mandela Scholar amplified the significance of this. Without Mandela’s work and accomplishments, this scholarship would not have existed and I may not have had the opportunity to attend Amherst,” says the black studies major. “I have benefited from his life, and therefore I feel a sense of urgency to do something productive for others.” He now has a job in the dean of students’ off ffice at Amherst, where he works with international students “in an eff ffort to make the four years spent here both comfortable and meaningful.”

KERWIN TICHMANN ’16 came to Amherst to explore diff fferent ways of living. “The opportunity to go to one of the best colleges in America, and to broaden my experience of cultures, education and people, was too much to let pass,” says the South African psychology major. Being a Mandela Scholar has amplifi fied Tichmann’s pride in and admiration for the leader’s patience, strength off character and attempts to unite a nation. “He was the first example that most teachers, parents and other grown-ups went to when they needed an image of a kind, generous and strong role model,” Tichmann says. “Now I feel (more than ever) like it is my responsibility, as a Mandela Scholar, to continue to express the kind of values he fought for.”

A double major in biochemistry and history, COURAGE MATIZA ’15 came to Amherst for the open curriculum and the liberal arts education. In his hometown in Zimbabwe, Mandela was a household hero and Matiza’s role model. “I respected his bravery and patriotism, his undying determination to fight for equality.” Now, as a Mandela Scholar, Matiza feels a direct connection to the leader’s “vision of education equality and youth empowerment.” He says of his childhood hero, “His legacy survives his death.”

“To be awarded a scholarship in the name of Nelson Mandela was unexpected and a bit shocking,” says LIBERTY CHIGOVA ’15, a political science major from Zimbabwe.

It’s made him feel connected to Mandela’s “impact on the world.”

Winter 2014 Amherst 7

COLLEGE ROW

The Mummy is Missing In 1905, Amherst acquired a preserved human body.

No one knows where it went.

8 Amherst Winter 2014

Conservator Erin Toomey examined the case and lid: “The paintings on the side are in incredible shape.”

ROB MATTSON (2)

ARTIFACTS U The Mead’s mummy is missing.

In truth, the 2,600-year-old mummy case has likely been empty for the entire 65 years that the Mead Art Museum has existed. But apparently it once contained a preserved human body.

As the museum staff ff researches the case and prepares to restore it for display, it would like to know what happened to the body, too.

Records indicate that in 1905, Amherst acquired an ancient Egyptian mummy case, the lid for a different ff mummy case and an actual mummy. There appear to be no records of where these items were kept or where the mummy went. No records, just stories.

Stephen S. Fisher, the Mead’s collections manager, heard it was stolen. “All I know,” he says, “is that it has never been found.”

Here’s what else we know: According to the Mead’s accession card, the case is for a woman embalmed in Abydos about 650 B.C., and the lid is for the coffi ffin of a priest interred during the same era, Egypt’s 26th Dynasty. Both artifacts are decorated with hieroglyphics, including some in praise of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the afterlife.

The artifacts were donated to the college by Stephen Holmes Weeks, dean of the medical school at Bowdoin, after he received an honorary doctorate from Amherst in

1905. The Amherst trustees endorsed a resolution in 1906 to thank Weeks “for the valuable gift of a mummy.” A June 1906 article in The Student mentions a mummy as well, noting that it was procured from the Cairo Museum.

“It baffl ffles me that such a gift would be so unremarked upon,” says Amherst College Archivist Peter Nelson, who unearthed the early references to the mummy.

Weeks had no apparent prior connection to Amherst.

His 1909 New York Times obituary says he had a national reputation as an expert on anatomy and was known for his work on tuberculosis.

The Mead’s new conservation project might bring the case and lid out of storage and on display. Erin Toomey, a Brooklyn-based conservator, recently examined the objects, and Joyce Haynes, an Egyptologist, has been approached to look at the hieroglyphics.

The fact that the artifacts seem to have generated little interest in years past may have helped preserve them, as some past practices aimed at restoring ancient artifacts can compromise them.

While the fate of the mummy may remain a mystery, Mead senior curator Bettina Jungen hopes the hieroglyphics have their own story to tell. “We will know much more,” she says, “after it has been translated and put into context.” WILLIAM SWEET

Passing the Torch

ADMISSION U Katharine Fretwell ’81, who has served her alma mater’s admission offi ffice for nearly 25 years, has been named dean of admission and financial aid, effective ff July 1. Fretwell succeeds Tom Parker, whose retirement ends an illustrious career at the college.

Reporting directly to President Biddy Martin, Fretwell will oversee all operations of both the admission and financial fi aid offi ffices. “Katie has worked alongside Tom for many years and will continue to build on Amherst’s success in attracting motivated and excepRecord Levels of Diversity tional students,” says Martin. “I’m thrilled that she has 5 Parker’s commitment 5 During Parker’s agreed to take the reins from Tom.” 5 Tom Parker came to remarkable tenure at to developing the Fretwell—who majored in English and dramatic the admission office Amherst, the college most diverse and arts at Amherst—joined the admission office ffi in 1989. in 1999 from his alma earned national academically talented Named dean of admission in 2012, she has been remater, Williams, where recognition for applicant pools in the sponsible for implementing and administering adhe served on the recruiting and college’s history has mission policy and for representing Amherst through admission staff for 20 graduating lowbeen rewarded with years, including eight secondary-school visits, on-campus programs, conferincome and racially record levels of as director. ences and alumni functions. diverse students, diversity among the Fretwell was instrumental in launching pioneering for its need-blind entering classes. In programs that have increased socioeconomic diversity admission policies for the Class of 2017, at Amherst while ensuring that low-income Amherst both domestic and 44 percent identify students graduate at the same rate as their peers, across international students, as students of color. disciplines. These programs include QuestBridge, and for replacing all About 60 percent of which matches high-achieving, low-income students loans with grants in its Amherst students with colleges that want them; Diversity Open Houses, financial aid awards. receive financial aid. which bring promising students to campus each year; diversity interns, current Amherst students who give ROB MATTSON

Ȩ ߶ ɇ ഞ

Katie Fretwell ’81 says she is “proud to receive the torch” from her mentor, Tom Parker.

prospective students information on the Amherst experience; and Summer Science and Humanities Institutes, which provide admitted students with coursework to help ensure they will thrive at Amherst.

“I could not be any happier for Katie,” says Parker.

“The admission and financial aid operations could not be in finer hands as we move forward.”

“I feel privileged to serve the college in this new capacity,” says Fretwell, “and proud to receive the torch from my own mentor, Tom.” Parker’s hallmark candor and devotion to data in decision-making and recruitment have given administrators, faculty, prospective students and families new insights into college admission, says Martin. “Tom leaves an exceptional and enviable legacy,” she says. “Thanks to both Tom’s and Katie’s eff fforts and talents, Amherst’s offi ffices of admission and financial aid are regarded as national models for enhancing access to and affordabilff ity of higher education.” CAROLINE J. HANNA Winter 2014 Amherst 9

SAMUEL MASINTER ’04

Tom Parker is retiring as dean of admission and financial aid. Katharine Fretwell ’81 will take over.

COLLEGE ROW

Busy January

For eight interterms in a row, students have learned to use sextants.

Filming a Scene simulated what it’s like to work on location for an independent production company. Instructor Peter Marvin, senior multimedia 10 Amherst Winter 2014

specialist in the information technology department, taught students how to shoot and edit a short scene.

For the eighth interterm in a row, the astronomy department offered ff Celestial Navigation, in which Henry Parker Hirschel teaches students to measure the sun’s angle in the sky using sextants. The class took fi field trips to Avery Point, Conn., and to Rhode Island’s Block Island Ferry to practice their newly acquired skill.

Modeled on writers’ and artists’ colonies such as MacDowell, Yaddo and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the Winter Creative Writing Residency helped students devote

ROB MATTSON

In four afternoons spent behind the scenes at the Mead Art Museum and on field trips to artists’ studios, Beyond Shopping: Acquiring Art for the Mead covered the ins and outs of museum acquisitions and laid the groundwork for the project’s grand fi finale: a mock-court-style presentation in which students, working in teams, argued the cases for particular works of art. Voting by secret ballot, museum docents and curators chose one work for the museum to purchase. Mead Director Elizabeth Barker taught the course.

sustained, undistracted attention to their fiction, poetry, dramatic writing and creative nonfiction. fi Each of eight sessions included a brief morning meeting at the Frost Café followed by three hours of independent writing.

Writing Associates Michael Keezing and Roy Andrews also offered ff one-on-one mentoring. The fi final activity was a community reading.

SAMUEL MASINTER ’04

This interterm, insttructors offered 32 noncredit c o u r s e s to s t u d e n t s w h o o p te d to s t a y o n c a m p u s .

In Financial Accounting, students learned to read corporate annual reports and to prepare the three typical financial statements: the balance sheet, the income statement and the cash fl flow statement. Sponsored by the Career Center, the course was taught by UMass Associate Professor of Accounting Richard Asebrook.

During a one-day Drawing Marathon, Resident Artist David Gloman and Sylvia Li ’14 began by having students discuss and practice various ways to approach drawing. Then, after lunch, the participants—artists of various skill levels—drew for five hours straight. Paper, pencils and charcoal were provided. E.G.B.

STUDENT VIEW | TOMMY RASKIN ’17 “If you’re used to analyzing things based on distance, then you might consider doing a different ff kind of analysis using a different ff kind of distance.” BENJAMIN DICKMAN ’08

“Some genes don’t change much, some do.”

CHRISTINE CAIN ’86

“Interstate highways help the American economy, but it is hard to assess the magnitude of the eff ffects.”

“The 13th century French version of The Quest of the Holy Grail was written by an evangelical Christian.”

ROBERT OWEN WILLIAMS ’91

ROBERT ELWOOD ’96

“Gerrymandering based on race raises complicated issues.” ADAM

“The narrative of The Awakening cannot operate without Edna Pontillier’s body.” KATE SILBAUGH ’85

BONIN ’94

Your Thesis, in a Sentence “Rocks that are next to each other in Massachusetts now were also next to each other 400 million years ago.” That’s how one anonymous Amherst geology major summarized his or her senior thesis for lolmythesis.com.

How would you sum up your own thesis in a single sentence? After coming across lolmythesis.com, the college asked this question on Facebook; some of the responses are above.

This rock-researcher is not the only Amherst writer to contribute to lolmythesis. com this winter. From one music major: “Being Czech, and writing music that sounds Czech, are similar but diff fferent.” A European studies major posted, “Mothers-in-law abuse daughters-in-law because Patriarchy.” And from a political science major: “Party system institutionalization: never want to type institutionalization again.” E.G.B.

A Lesson from the Checkout Line

BLOG:

TommyRaskin.org

I was a cashier at a grocery store for five weeks this summer. My co-workers were friendly, and the surrounding landscape was gorgeous, but clicking buttons on a register for seven hours a day, interrupted only by a 30-minute lunch break, proved dull. I hardly suffered the worst; for many, this sort of work remains year-round and inescapable.

I tried spicing things up. Before the lines got too long, I would play magic card tricks on customers. Later, when nobody was checking out, I’d glance down at The New York Times, only to have my superior snatch it out from under me.

Confi fined to my thoughts, paid tasks and transient interactions with buyers, I found it refreshing when customers were kind. It was gratifying when people approached me with a salutation, a compliment or even a remark about shopping (“I finally fi found the grapes!”). The longer and more intricate the discussion, the more fun I had.

Nice words don’t pay the bills.

Complimenting underpaid Americans doesn’t raise their wages, and common courtesy doesn’t give people the tools they need to selfactualize. But that doesn’t make civility worthless.

Not all of my customers were friendly. I didn’t mind being the one to initiate a conversation, but it was frustrating to receive dismissive answers to, “How’s your day going?” I never minded relaying a customer’s complaint to management, but I didn’t like being berated for others’ mistakes—“not watering the plants,” for example,

and “not putting up a price sheet near the cherries.” When your encounter with a worker lasts only a minute, it’s hard to consider it significant, fi but the sequence of these brief exchanges makes up an employee’s entire work day.

When I toured Amherst last year, I slept in a suite sometimes visited by a cleaning crew. I awoke to a vacuum running one morning and, a bit disgruntled, stepped into the common area. A worker, roughly 60, started apologizing, even though I’m not sure he was the one who was vacuuming.

Then, well beyond the call of duty, he continued the conversation. He asked if I was an Amherst student, to which I said no, and then whether I planned on attending, and which classes I had enjoyed checking out so far. He expressed a genuine interest in me.

I vowed, from that point on, to let my own courtesy uplift me. We should consider everyone’s capacity for gentility equivalent—while not forgetting the disproportionate economic strain and physical stress placed on hourly employees. We should show the cashier as much respect as we show the CEO. In every interaction, we are capable of empathy.

Winter 2014 Amherst 11

COLLEGE ROW

A New Plan for the Science Center The board of trustees has approved a science center project that will also transform the east campus with new dorms and a landscaped walkway.

DAVID POHL

“The new projects will be linked to one another and to the rest of the campus by a new form of green space,” reads the board statement: “not a traditional quad but a landscaped walkway among open expanses that will encourage foot traffic and outdoor gatherings.”

The existing science buildings, Merrill and McGuire, will remain and be developed for other uses.

“The facility will ensure that, among liberal arts colleges, Amherst remains a leader in undergraduate science,” according to a statement from the board of trustees.

ROB MATTSON (4)

The science center will be on the east campus, on the site of the current Social Dorms. One of those dorms, Davis, has already been demolished.

New residence halls will be constructed where the temporary, prefabricated dorms Waldorf and Plaza are now located.

ÌThe current cost estimate is $214 million for the science center. This compares to $270 million for the previous plan, which was abandoned last spring after concerns about cost and disruption. The estimate for the new dorms is $60 million. (The dorms would have been needed under any scenario, because the Social Dorms are at the end of their useful lives.)

l ONLINE The board’s full statement, which includes more details about the project www.amherst.edu/magazine

$270 MILLION

$214 MILLION

ESTIMATE

NEW ESTIMATE

The Return of the College Republicans

Edington will oversee the launch of the digital Amherst College Press.

POLITICS U Not long ago, the Amherst College Republicans had a membership of zero. Then one student set out to change that. A year and a half later, the club has a roster of 40 and is basking in the success of its latest and most significant fi event: a Johnson Chapel appearance by Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich—speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999 and a candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination—spoke to a crowded

CHLOE MCKENZIE ’14

Gingrich sported a purple tie for his Amherst talk.

He later described Robert Lucido ’15 as “remarkably entrepreneurial.”

chapel in early December. He covered topics ranging from technology to health care to government spending.

The lecture traced its roots to the second 2012 presidential debate, when Robert Lucido ’15 attended an on-campus viewing and found himself the “lone conservative voice in the room.” Then a liberal faculty member, Thomas Dumm, gave him an idea.

“Robert lamented there not being any organization for student conservatives, and I suggested he might want to take the initiative to restart the dormant Young Republicans,” says Dumm, the William H. Hastie ’25 Professor of Political Sci-

ence. “There should be lively discussion on our campus, and without voices from the right to serve as a foil to our more dominant, and sometimes thoughtless because unchallenged, progressive students, that discussion won’t happen.”

Last year the group marked its revival by holding an event that featured former U.S. Rep. Scott Brown and others. This fall Lucido wanted to think even bigger, so he connected with the conservative Young America’s Foundation, which helped to book the Gingrich lecture and subsidize the speaker’s fee. Additional funding came from President Biddy Martin’s office ffi and the Amherst Association of Students, as well as from outside donors and Republican student groups at UMass and Smith.

Lucido and his fellow Republicans worked hard to publicize the Gingrich talk, making a video, creating a Facebook page and running a contest that invited people to submit questions for the speaker via email. The club selected a winning question, and its author, Paul Tyler ’14, got to meet Gingrich and his wife, Callista, and sit in the front row. (Tyler’s question was about employers who “cut their labor costs by encouraging their employees to seek assistance from the federal government.”)

Lucido’s eff fforts drew notice from Gingrich himself. In a blog post after the visit, the politician described Lucido as “remarkably entrepreneurial” and noted that the young man’s 21st birthday was the same day as the speech.

Gingrich also put in a plug for the college’s Beneski Museum of Natural History. “The museum,” he wrote, “has a very nice triceratops and Callista got a funny picture of me holding my hand inside the dinosaur’s mouth.” E.G.B.

ROB MATTSON

Newt Gingrich filled the house in Johnson Chapel.

Setting Scholarship Free The open-access Amherst College Press has hired its first director.

UPDATE U Amherst’s open-access scholarly press now has its first director, Mark D.W. Edington, a social entrepreneur with a background in higher education.

Edington will oversee the launch of Amherst College Press, which will solicit and edit peerreviewed books in the humanities and social sciences and make them freely available online (see “Librarians Will Lead the Revolution,” Winter 2013). As part of this eff ffort, he expects the new press to think broadly about the future of the humanities: “What will scholarship in these fields be like in the future? How should it be presented? How do we support the development of knowledge?”

Edington came to Amherst in January from the Harvard Decision Science Laboratory, where he was executive director. As a social entrepreneur, he is director and board secretary of 2Seeds Network. He was also a co-founder and first president of the American Committees on Foreign Relations. Ordained in the Episcopal Church, he has served as undergraduate chaplain in The Memorial Church at Harvard and as rector of St. John’s Parish in Newtonville, Mass.

“Mark has a rare and intriguing combination of traits,” says Bryn Geffert, ff librarian of the college and founder of the press, “namely a strong history of collaborating with faculty, an excellent track record of entrepreneurship and starting new enterprises, and a good background in developmental editing and writing. We believe he will demonstrate that it’s possible for a small institution to produce excellent work under an open-access model.” C.J.H. Winter 2014 Amherst 13

COLLEGE ROW

The Valley as Lab

WILLIAM SWEET (4)

When the American studies faculty set out to create a perennial introductory course, it looked close to home.

CLASSES U “WHAT would you do if you had to pick one thing to focus on in an introductory American studies course?” asks department chair Karen Sánchez-Eppler.

“We had a lot of success with our New York City course, which involved a field trip to New York. So we thought: How about if we did here?”

The result is “Global Valley,” taught last fall by professors SánchezEppler and Lisa Brooks.

It covers the history and culture of sites barely a half-hour drive 14 Amherst Winter 2014

from campus, starting with an overview of the geology, flora fl and fauna of the region and jumping into early European settlement and interactions with Native Americans.

One field trip took students to Deerfi field, Mass., to learn about the 1704 raid on the settlement and changing perspectives on the Deerfi field Massacre. Among their stops, students visited a museum that has covered up old memorial plaques with modern interpretations of them. For example,

one plaque reads: Mary, adopted by an Indian, was named Walahowey. She married a savage, and became one. It’s now covered with a cloth that says: She married a Kanien’kehaka and adopted the culture, customs and language of her new community in Kahnawake.

Students also read the public responses— including death threats—that erupted when the museum made these additions.

“When the history of English settlement is discussed, the Native

In Deerfield, Mass., to learn about the 1704 raid on the settlement, students visited a museum that has covered old memorials with modern interpretations of them.

Later, the course focused on other benchmarks in local history: the Great Awakening in Northampton, Shays’ Rebellion, Sojourner Truth’s time in Florence, Mass., and the industrial revolution.

perspective is often left out of the picture,” says Christopher Tamasi ’15, who took the course last semester.

“We embraced all historical accounts, which allowed students to formulate their own opinions.”

As the semester went on, students took to the streets of Holyoke to study the Industrial Revolution and waves of immigration. They retraced the steps of past census-takers to see how the city changed over the years with the rise and fall of its paper mills. W.S.

A Force at Amherst, and on Wall Street The man who chaired the board of trustees when it voted to admit women—and who left Wall Street to study American literature—has died.

COEDUCATION President Joh hn William Ward with Anitaa Cilderman ’776, thee first womaan n to earn an Amherst B.A.

THE EARLY YEARS 1974 The trustees voted by a margin of 15 to 3 in favor of coeducation. This vote came after years of debate among board members, administrators, faculty, alumni and students.

After Wall Street, George L. Shinn ’45 taught courses in literature and investment banking.

JACK MANNING/NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX

Shinn joined the board in 1968 and was its chair from 1973 to 1980—the years during which the college began admitting female students.

Shinn was an important force on Wall Street during the 1980s. Starting as a trainee in 1949, he rose through the ranks of Merrill Lynch, the nation’s largest securities firm, fi to become its president and chief operating officer ffi in 1974. But the next year, he left to lead the First Boston Corp.

He surprised the Wall Street community when he retired from First Boston in 1983 to return to school. He earned a Ph.D. in English from Drew University in 1992, at the age of 69, and went on to teach American literature courses at Drew and investment banking seminars at Columbia University.

Shinn was born in Ohio and enrolled at Amherst on a scholarship in 1941. He joined the basketball and football teams and Psi Upsilon fraternity. World War II interrupted his college career—he served as a flight fl instructor and captain in the Marine Corps—but he returned to Amherst and graduated with a psychology major in 1948.

He received a doctorate of laws from Denison University in 1975.

Shinn served on the boards of The New York Times Co. and the New York Stock Exchange, among other organizations. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Survivors include his children, Andrew Shinn ’85, Deborah Shinn, Amy Shinn, Martha Moore and Sarah Shinn Pratt; daughter-in-law Margaret McKay Shinn ’85; and five grandchildren. His granddaughter Nora Moore ’07 died in 2004, and his wife, Mount Holyoke College alumna Clara LeBaron Sampson, died in 2010.

KATHERINE DUKE ’05

AMHERST COLLEGE ARCHIVES (3)

OBITUARY U George L. Shinn ’45, chairman of the board of trustees when it voted in 1974 to admit women to Amherst, died on Dec. 16, 2013, in Scarborough, Maine.

A life trustee of the college, he was 90.

Amherst students who favored coeducation created this Warholinspired sticker in 1972.

1975 Nine women who were already exchange students at Amherst were admitted as transfer students to become members of the Class of 1976.

1976 By virtue of alphabetical order, psychology major Anita Cilderman, originally from Mount Holyoke College, became the first woman to receive a bachelor’s degree from Amherst.

A few months later the first women admitted as first-year students arrived as members of the Class of 1980.

SOURCE: ARCHIVES & SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

Winter 2014 Amherst 15

COLLEGE ROW

Human Concerns With $50,000 each, one professor is writing about the Holocaust, while another examines an age-old question about life itself.

RESEARCH U Two professors have received more than $50,000 each from the National Endowment for the Humanities to publish their research. The results will be, in one case, a book about an overlooked chapter from the history of the Holocaust, and in the other, a philosophical exploration of some of our basic assumptions about ordinary life.

SARA J. BRENNEIS , assistant professor of Spanish, will use her grant to write a book about the experiences of non-Jews from Spain who were deported to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria. Some 7,000 Spaniards were sent to Mauthausen for their opposition to the government of Francisco Franco.

“The Spanish experience of Mauthausen was distinct in many ways from the Jewish experience of the Holocaust, but few people are even aware that Spaniards were imprisoned and killed by the Nazis,” Brenneis says. Her research examines narrative ficfi tion, fi film, memoir and historiography inspired by the experiences of Spaniards in Mauthausen. “Span-

→ Nearly half of the college’s total course enrollment is in humanities courses. → About 40 percent of graduates major in the humanities.

ROB MATTSON (2)

Vogel’s book asks: How can you know that your life isn’t just a very long dream?

The NEH funding refl flects a strong commitment to the humanities at Amherst.

→ President Biddy Martin, an outspoken advocate of the humanities, is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Brenneis is writing a book about non-Jews from Spain who were deported to a Nazi camp.

ish authors, filmmakers and scholars,” she says, “continue to grapple with the Holocaust’s cultural legacy in Spain.”

JONATHAN VOGEL , the George Lyman Crosby 1896 Professor of Philosophy, will finish fi work on Skepticism and Knowledge of the External World, slated to be published by Oxford University Press. The book will examine the ancient question of appearance versus reality: How can you know that your life isn’t just a long, unbroken dream?

Vogel’s book addresses the concept of “inference to the best explanation,” in which, choosing among competing theories, a person should believe the one that best explains the data. “You might say that we have two ‘theories’ to choose from: One is that appearance matches reality; the other is that appearance is strongly at odds with reality,” he says. If the better explanation is that appearance matches reality, “then we have good reason to believe that life isn’t just a misleading dream.”

Vogel’s project lies within the philosophical subfield of epistemology but crosses over into the philosophy of science and metaphysics and draws ideas from cognitive psychology, artifi ficial intelligence and other fields.

Among all scholars who submitted proposals to the NEH this year, Brenneis and Vogel are among only about 7 percent to receive fellowships. W.S.

Biddy Martin Goes to Washington At a White House summit, she said Amherst will undertake four new programs to help low-income students attend and succeed in college. y ACCESS U At the invitation of the White House, President Biddy

The summit—attended by President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and college and university presidents, among other leaders—focused on endeavors at various institutions that have the potential to be more widely adopted.

“I am pleased that the White House has recognized Amherst for its success in recruiting low-income and underrepresented students, in making an Amherst education aff ffordable for them, and for retention and graduation rates that equal those of the student body as a whole,” says Martin. “We are eager to take on additional challenges aimed at ensuring that all our students take advantage of high-impact learning opportunities at Amherst, while working with partners to increase the number of lowincome students in our region who go to college.”

The four initiatives aim to: Boost the number of Native Americans who go to and graduate from college. Amherst has pledged more resources to finding, enrolling and supporting Native students by partnering with College Horizons, a nonprofit fi dedicated to increasing the number of Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian students succeeding in college.

Amherst will host a College Horizons summer program—a six-day college admission workshop that will match students with admission offi fficers, college counselors, essay specialists and others.

The college will also deploy its student “Telementors”; coming from diverse backgrounds themselves, Telementors guide high schoolers through the college search, application and choice process.

Help low-income and disadvantaged students in and around Springfield, Holyoke, Northampton and Amherst. Leveraging the existing relationships, community-organizing skills and reputation of its Center for Community Engagement, Amherst will convene community and education leaders to consider how to increase the number of low-income and disadvantaged

middle- and high school students in the area who apply to, are admitted to and attend college—any college.

Increase the proportion of low-income and disadvantaged Amherst students who major in science and math fields. Amherst will continue to examine the relative proportions of student groups on campus majoring in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields and analyze where there are gaps between low-income/

ROB MATTSON

Martin traveled to the nation’s capital in January to take part in a summit on higher education access. There she announced four new initiatives that aim to increase the number of low-income students who attend—and succeed in—college, both at Amherst and elsewhere.

Biddy Martin

disadvantaged students and the student body as a whole. The college will draw on successful programs in its departments of biology and math, as well as programs at other schools, to close those gaps.

Close the “college experience” gap between low-income Amherst students and the student body as a whole. Research shows that young people who participate in study abroad and internship programs, write honors theses and conduct independent research with faculty supervision are more likely to be engaged in college life and, as a result, more likely to succeed in college. Amherst will track its students’ involvement in these activities in order to assess and better understand the eff ffects of the programs.

“Our goal with these initiatives,” says Martin, “is to not only provide lowincome students better access to higher education but also to off ffer them the best tools and training to succeed at college and beyond.” C.J.H.

Unparalleled Success The college’s track record in higher-ed access and aff ffordability is widely recognized as one of the best in the country. Amherst has a need-blind admission policy for both domestic and international students, and it meets the full demonstrated financial need of every admitted student. In 2008 it replaced all loans with grants in its financial aid awards, making Amherst one of just a few colleges and universities in the country that do not require students to go into debt in order to pay for their undergraduate educations.

At Amherst about 60 PERCENT of students receive financial aid, and low-income students graduate at about the same rate as other students—95 PERCENT .

Of transfer students to Amherst since 2007, 65 PERCENT came from community colleges; of those from community colleges, 85 PERCENT are low-income students.

The percentage of low-income Amherst students who graduated with STEM majors increased from 9 percent in 2008 to 32 PERCENT in 2013.

Winter 2014 Amherst 17

COLLEGE ROW

Ì SPORTS

Learning to Lead Leaders are often made on the playing field. At Amherst, an athletics department program formalizes this idea by treating varsity sports as a training ground for leaders. Headed by Gregg DiNardo ’01, Amherst LEADS offers the First Year Initiative Program, which teaches new studentathletes about their role on the team and how to lead themselves; the Futures Program, in which sophomores and juniors assess their strengths and weaknesses, study leadership styles and learn communication skills; and the Captains Program, for the student leaders of all 27 varsity teams.

Megan Robertson ’15 Æ MAKING THE BEST DECISIONS TEAM: BASKETBALL POSITION: FORWARD MAJORS: HISTORY AND MATH

Rob Wasielewski ’14 Æ LEADERSHIP IS ALL ABOUT INFLUENCE TEAM: FOOTBALL POSITION: OFFENSIVE LINEMAN MAJOR: POLITICAL SCIENCE

18 Amherst Winter 2014

ROB MATTSON

On the football field, Wasielewski learned “that leadership is all about influence,” says the tri-captain and three-time member of the All-NESCAC First Team. “Every action, every spoken word, carries with it the power to positively or negatively influence an individual teammate or the team as a whole. Leadership is recognizing this power and using it to better the team.” Also a leader off ff the field, he was one of two students chosen to serve on the college’s Special Oversight Committee on Sexual Misconduct. From LEADS, Wasielewski has learned to “look inward” and evaluate himself. “I am not sure where I will be next year, but I do know I want to be in a team setting, working alongside others for a common goal. This is the environment I enjoy most and one, I think, that I thrive in.”’

Chloe McKenzie ’14 Æ APPLYING YOUR MOST VALUABLE ASSETS

ROB MATTSON

RISALAT KHAN ’13

Robertson burst onto the scene as the league’s Rookie of the Year in 2011. She’s now one of the leading low-post players in the NESCAC. “Playing college basketball is a very different ff atmosphere from high school,” she says. “It is important for the leaders on the team to help the newcomers acclimate.” Being on a sports team has helped her learn to collaborate to reach a common goal. A co-captain, she hopes to work in athletics after graduation, perhaps in statistical analysis. “I am currently working with the Amherst LEADS Analytics group to learn more about Division III athletics through statistics. A job in this field would allow me to combine my interests in athletics and math.”

TEAM: SOCCER POSITION: FORWARD MAJORS: GERMAN AND LAW, JURISPRUDENCE AND SOCIAL THOUGHT

A converted goalie, McKenzie didn’t see the field in her first season at Amherst, yet she realized she could still be a leader, by pumping up her team. “College athletics forces students to recognize how often they must refine themselves in order to improve,” she says. “LEADS helps you investigate what your most valuable assets are as a leader and then encourages you to apply them.” She’s come out of LEADS workshops “knowing myself better. And that is the key to being a good player, to being good at anything.” McKenzie is writing an LJST thesis on rape in the military. In June she’ll join J.P. Morgan as a trader. Longer-term, she wants to be a Constitutional lawyer.

David Kalema ’14 Æ FINDING COMMON GROUND

ROB MATTSON

TEAM: BASKETBALL POSITION: GUARD MAJOR: SOCIOLOGY

Landrus Lewis ’14E Æ RESPONDING TO ADVERSITY

“When you have a team full of guys from diff fferent backgrounds, it’s important to work together to find a common ground,” says Kalema, who was part of last year’s NCAA championship-winning team.

“When everyone buys

in, practices are better, road trips are more enjoyable, chemistry is built and we find success as a team.” During his freshman year, Kalema’s captains “were so competitive in practice that everyone got better as the team got better.”

Playing college sports, he’s discovered there’s no single definition of leadership. “Through Amherst LEADS, I’ve had the opportunity to listen to diff fferent speakers from around the country, many of them involved

through sports. Through their experiences I’ve learned that anyone can be a leader. Leadership isn’t just about what you say; it’s also about what you do to motivate and push your team, and how you do it.” He hopes to go to business school someday. “I am having a great time writing my thesis on the business of college sports and how it aff ffects student-athletes,” Kalema says, “so I can see myself getting involved in sports on the business side.”

Playing football, says Lewis, one of the NESCAC’s premier defensive backs, “I learned how to lead in difficult ff situations, how to respond to adversity” and how to take into account the goals of the team, not just his personal goals. As a tri-captain, he learned how to “keep a group of people on the same task” and to set a good example on and off ff the field.

Amherst LEADS has helped him understand that he needs to know his teammates as individuals in order to bring them together as a group. “My goal is to become a very successful chiropractor and help people on their journey to better health,” he says. “I would also like to stay involved with football.”

Annika Nygren ’16 Æ PLAYING HARDER FOR HER CAPTAINS

“Observing my captains, watching their desire to win and willingness to push themselves to exhaustion to get there, makes me want to play harder for them,” says Nygren. Amherst LEADS has given her the opportunity to hear from guest speakers such as Julius Achon, a former child soldier

MEGAN ROBERTSON ’15

TEAM: FIELD HOCKEY POSITION: FORWARD/MIDFIELDER MAJOR: EUROPEAN STUDIES

NIAHLAH HOPE ’15

TEAM: FOOTBALL POSITION: DEFENSIVE BACK MAJOR: PSYCHOLOGY

who went on to represent Uganda in the Olympics. LEADS has also taught her more about herself: “While I have a vocal leadership style on the field, I often find myself in a reserved role in the academic setting. This leaves me room to experiment with participating more often in the classroom and taking the time to listen to quieter teammates on the field.” Nygren hopes to pursue a career as a counselor for children and teens. “Prior to that, I plan to travel the world documenting discoveries in positive psychology and social experiments.”

Winter 2014 Amherst 19

Big Shack’s

BY BILLY TOWNSEND ’94 PHOTOGRAPHS BY BETH PERKINS

20 Amherst WINTER 2014

Test When Brian Shactman ’94 became an MSNBC host, he knew he had to boost ratings, beat CNN and get home in time to take the kids to soccer. Would that be enough?

Winter 2014 Amherst 21

M

ika Brzezinski looked perplexed.

Across a split screen, Brian Shactman ’94 tried to explain to the co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe why it’s funny that some WNBA trash talk the previous night had ended with one player kissing another on the cheek.

A couple of hours earlier, Shactman had made an instinctive call to play up Diana Taurasi’s aggressive cheek peck on his 5:30 a.m. show, Way Too Early. The greater MSNBC morning extravaganza was still getting mileage out of it.

Shactman knows Taurasi a little, from his days as a TV sports reporter in Hartford and hers at the University of Connecticut: “She’s got more charisma than almost any athlete I’ve covered.” As he explained on the air, it’s just like her to break the tension of a near-fi fight on the floor with a wicked grin and a made-forTV smooch.

But Brzezinski, the straight-woman, shook her head as the kiss clip repeated like a GIF. “I don’t get it.”

In mock exasperation, Shactman turned, puckered and kissed the air over and over again. His lips landed precisely where Brzezinski’s cheek would have been if she were not 225 miles away in Washington, D.C., covering the approach of the government shutdown.

The air-smooching further vexed Brzezinski, and she proceeded to slap Shactman, virtually. The control room erupted. “That was awesome,” said one producer, giggling into his headset.

Welcome to the peculiar and demanding alchemy of successful cable news.

Brian Shactman, my old dorm mate in James Hall, is one of its sorcerers.

In January, Shactman wrapped up an eight-month gig as host of Way Too 22 Amherst Winter 2014

Early—the “pre-game show,” in the network’s mind, for its flagship Morning Joe. Now he’s covering the Olympics.

As part of his Way Too Early job, Shactman was a regular Morning Joe contributor, where, on Sept. 27, his unscripted slapstick with Brzezinski provided the high point of the program. It also provided a glimpse into how Shactman made his show a success.

Way Too Early was the 42-year-old’s first shot at hosting his own national show. The opportunity arrived with mandates to improve ratings and beat CNN. Shactman did both.

Every weekday morning, in 30 brisk minutes on camera, Shactman’s version of Way Too Early recapped whatever international drama occurred overnight and chased it with a hint of TMZ-ish celebrity news, a touch of business and a heftier dose of sports. In the wrong host’s hands, the mix and segues might have come out ridiculous and cringe-worthy.

But Shactman managed them with ear-

nestness, irony and wit. On camera in MSNBC’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza studio, he held court with viewers and crew as if he were in an Amherst common room with his buddies. In the process, he raised his own profi file in the industry.

Seventy miles away from Manhattan in tiny Blairstown, N.J., Shactman has another show. But he doesn’t so much anchor it as hang on for dear life. Sure, Blairstown looks like Mayberry with a slight Jersey accent and a prestigious prep school dropped into the middle of it. But out here, he is Jessica Matzkin’s husband. He’s Max, Annie and Bennett’s dad.

He’s Coach Brian.

The family lives in a comfortable but modest home on the campus of Blair Academy, where Matzkin is a dean of students. “Most of the people here don’t even know what I do,” he says, and he has little time to inform them. He’s too busy herding three spirited kids—all younger than 8—through a modern professional family’s day.

As host of Way Too Early, Shactman’s day started at 2:30 a.m., and it went much easier if he could make it home from work by noon. That gave him time to take Bennett, his youngest son, to the Blair dining hall for lunch. Then he could fi fit in a run before picking up the other two from school, sending the nanny home for the day, overseeing homework, organizing a bike ride and toting everyone to soccer, which he helps coach. Matzkin routinely works late, so Shactman’s afternoon and evening duty is essential.

Unfortunately, on my late-September visit, Amtrak and I conspired to wreck his schedule. We were supposed to meet at 30 Rock in the late morning—21 hours before the Morning Joe air-smooch—and ride to Blairstown together. But a power outage delayed trains all around New York. I arrived almost three hours late.

I’d come to follow Shactman for 24 hours and get sense of how he and his family navigate the Big Media world.

Before sunrise Shactman and his

team whittled away at their story list.

Winter 2014 Amherst 23

Even among Amherst grads, few people live the life of an almost-star. I wanted to see if that life is really so different ff from the rest of ours. The plan was to start my visit by listening in on a call with Shactman’s agent, and then to hit lunch at the Blair dining hall with Shactman and Bennett.

But the train snafu killed those ideas.

It also made one thing abundantly clear: In many ways, Shactman remains the “Shack” I knew at Amherst. On camera he exudes easy confi fidence. He’s just as charming in real life, but I know that he’s also intense and emotional. He’s not good at hiding it when he’s stressed or upset. Shactman is forthright about this quality, and nothing stresses him like his schedule. So a late-arriving train—or a 7-year-old’s missing shin guard before soccer practice—can quickly become a minor crisis mingled with a vague sense of personal betrayal.

A

FTER SOME TESTY texting and phone calls, the MSNBC car service saved the day—and maybe our friendship. One car took Shactman home; the other picked me up outside Penn Station. Just like that, everything calmed down. During his time at Way Too Early, car service—the one noticeable Big Media perk in Shactman’s life—was absolutely vital to balancing the duties of home and studio.

“I want to make people happy as a husband and a father and a host,” he said by phone a few weeks after my visit. “And I’m pretty intense. But I’ve gotten much better at work. Ultimately, it’s just TV. If somebody says something nasty about me on Twitter, it doesn’t really matter.

It’s more of a work in progress at home. I don’t lack for self-awareness. I know I’m a little too intense about some things at home. I have to keep working on it.”

Seven-year-old Annie puts it more directly: “Sometimes he comes home grumpy.”

But at least he’s able to come home.

In his previous job as a national correspondent for CNBC, Shactman might have gone anywhere in the country on a given day. The 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of 24 Amherst Winter 2014

He got some tough love from Mexico kept him away for a week. So did Hurricane Sandy. His work on North Dakota’s energy boom garnered an Emmy nomination. But Emmy nominations for North Dakota stories wreak havoc on family life.

During his stint at Way Too Early, Matzkin and the kids saw much more of him. The family usually ate dinner together before he piled the kids into bed at 8 p.m. for a story. On the night of my visit, it was Dr. Seuss. Shactman paused halfway through the rhymes: “Man, this is a long book.” His clock was always ticking. Before bed he led a conference call for the following day’s show and arranged his clothes so as not to wake the family in the middle of the night. At 9 p.m., he was off ff to sleep.

Afterward, Matzkin spent a few minutes chatting with me. She ran through the demands of her day and how she and Shactman met. She chuckled lovingly about her husband’s irresistible mix of charm, ambition and sensitivity. Then she noticed school folders on the dining room table. She started picking through papers. She sighed.

“They didn’t do their homework.”

Two-thirty came early. Or was it late?

Stepping into Shactman’s world felt like jet lag. But he had the Way Too Early morning routine down to a precisely scheduled science. Up at 2:35. Shower.

Throw on jeans and a sweatshirt. Put nothing in the hair.

The hair used to add a few moments.

Then he got some tough love from the studio’s make-up team. “They told me I was an overgeller.” So he surrendered total control of his face and coif to the professionals, which bought him a couple of extra minutes at home.

He used them to kiss Annie goodbye as she slept. “She made me promise I’d kiss her before leaving,” he said as we stepped into the 3 a.m. darkness. “She knows when I don’t do it, so I do it every morning.”

A driver in an important-looking black SUV waited in the unlit driveway.

The ride let Shactman catch a few extra minutes of sleep. He used the rest of the time to work his iPad for stories that may have developed after the pre-bed conference call. By 4:15, we’d traded family and Blairstown for a 30 Rock cubicle and banter with producers.

“We’re spending an awful lot of time on Mariano Rivera,” said one producer, referring to the famed closer’s emotional final appearance at Yankee Stadium the night before.

“That tells you what a slow news day it is,” said another. It also tells you how seriously Shactman’s Way Too Early took sports. Shactman grew up near Boston as a devoted Red Sox fan, and he was never afraid to open the show with the Sox. (A few weeks later, he’d pull an all-nighter driving to Fenway and back for Game 1 of the World Series. He told viewers the morning after, “I have enough makeup on my face to putty a house.”)

For 45 minutes Shactman and his team whittled away at their list of stories.

They tightened up intros and wrote a few jokes. Their editorial choices illustrated what Way Too Early wanted to accomplish. “I like to use the Matrix metaphor,” Shactman said later. “You know, they plug Neo into the Matrix and instantly he knows kung fu. That’s what we’re after.

You can plug into the show and get the knowledge to be conversant in any setting—water cooler, coffee ff shop, locker room. You get a good news briefi fing. You get sports, business and popular culture.

We can quickly help you get comfortable in any conversation.”

At 5 a.m. Shactman dashed into an empty office ffi and threw on his suit. Next he headed to makeup. He taped the show’s opening at 5:25 without his jacket, which he’d forgotten to bring to the studio. It arrived just in time for the live action.

Shactman glided smoothly through

makeup: “They told me I was an overgeller.”

Winter 2014 Amherst 25

five minutes of Mariano Rivera, and then through somewhat less time on Syria and the looming government shutdown. A scripted joke about actor Zach Galifianakis fi pretending to beat up singer Justin Bieber fell flat, fl as Shactman halfpredicted to me when he typed it into the computer. “Most jokes work best if I don’t write them out,” he’d said.

In fact, on-camera spontaneity is one his strengths as an anchor. So it’s no surprise that, that morning, an off-theff cuff ff moment killed. During a business segment, correspondent Geoff ff Cutmore brought up a possible boycott of Barilla pasta over its owner’s homophobic comments, but Shactman couldn’t get past Cutmore’s outfi fit—striped shirt, striped tie, striped jacket. “You know what you’re not boycotting, Geoff? ff Stripes on stripes on stripes.”

It was a complete non-sequitur—one that made everyone on set giggle and left Cutmore, whom Shactman admires as a “complete pro,” momentarily speechless.

During a commercial break, executive producer Ben Mayer told Shactman that he was running long. That’s the price of ad-libbing: Something had to drop from sports. Shactman cut a college football game but kept Taurasi’s hoops kiss. It was a good choice—and typical of Shactman’s story judgment.

“Brian hates repetition,” Mayer told me. “He is constantly pushing the team to frame stories with what’s new, what’s uncanny, what our viewers won’t hear on some other broadcast or read online.

He’s never had his own show before, so I think he’s more and more finding his voice.”

Actually, Shactman has always had his own voice. And it’s been vital in getting him this far.

Few people make a more powerful fi first impression. I remember exactly where I met Shactman in the fall of 1990, just outside his first-fl floor room in James. I can’t say that about any other Amherst friend. It was nothing more than a strong handshake and “I’m Brian Shactman.

Good to meet you,” but the impression lingered. Tall, confi fident and goodlooking, he stood out from his fellow freshmen.

One-name status came quickly. Within a week he was “Shack.” A few days later he became “Love Shack,” for obvious 26 Amherst Winter 2014

reasons. (The B-52s were big at the time.)

If the Class of ’94 had held a vote for “Most Likely to Have a Career on Camera,” he would have won, even though he never spent a moment with any campus journalism or broadcast outlet. When I heard he’d gotten a news anchor job, I thought, “Of course.”

S

HACTMAN HAS repeatedly talked or charmed his way into opportunities. With virtually every one, a combination of restlessness and ambition has driven him to seek the next. After some postgrad wandering, including a brief stint teaching at the Taft School in Watertown, Conn., and a master’s degree in English, Shactman— who’d played hockey at Exeter and Amherst—parlayed some connections into a strategic phone call to the then-fl fledgling ESPN.com in 1998. The network needed an online hockey writer and editor who’d work terrible hours ffor lousy pay. Shactman was a hockey-playing English major in desperate need of career direction.

He called Andrew Everett, son of a colleague from Taft. “I had met him a few times and knew he worked at the start-up that managed ESPN.com and NFL.com,” Shactman says. “While I was on the phone with him, he spoke to executive editor Jim Jenks, who hired me days later.”

Shactman went to work grinding out NHL and college hockey content and aggregation. ESPN held the NHL’s television contract at the time, and Shactman used his hockey knowledge to seize an on-camera opportunity. He shudders at the memory of this fi first TV appearance: “I was sweating. I stammered. I couldn’t think.”

Despite his struggle to get comfortable on camera, he became the network’s go-to voice for hockey when its primetime commentators were unavailable.

Then ESPN gave up the NHL contract.

Online hockey columnist and off-hour ff TV analyst was always a niche job. With

no TV contract to support, Shactman realized the niche itself would go away.

He sent out tapes to local stations across the country and got one bite— from a station in Hastings, Neb. It wanted to make him the second sports anchor on Nebraska’s fourth-largest station. He visited Hastings, picked out an apartment and came within inches of signing a three-year contract.

But he didn’t pull the trigger, largely because of Matzkin, whom he’d met playing pickup hockey at Taft. Like all successful relationships, this one started when he went on a blind date with her friend. It blossomed after Matzkin tripped him with her stick during some on-ice flirtation. Shactman broke a rib on the fall. He was smitten.

“If I had gone to Nebraska, I don’t think we would have made it,” he says.

“I really don’t know where I’d be today.”

Fortunately, the powers-that-be at WVIT in Hartford also saw Shactman’s tape. “They said, ‘You’re terrible, but we like you. We see possibility.’ So they gave me a six-month contract to see what I could do.” That was in 2002, and it didn’t hurt that he’d chatted up the news director’s mother-in-law at a youth soccer game. (“She loved me. I think she may have gotten me that job.”)

Shactman soon won awards for sports reporting and anchoring, including an Associated Press award for a documentary on the UConn women’s basketball coach. WVIT made him co-host of its morning show. Within months he’d gone from “terrible” to local star. Commuters on I-91 looked up into his grinning face on billboards.

This unorthodox rise didn’t always sit well with veterans at the station; Shactman acknowledges tension behind the banter with his co-anchor. Also, he chafed at some of the more Anchormanish aspects of local news: Too many mornings he opened the show with the latest Britney Spears meltdown or breathless reports about busting a pirated-DVD ring.

When CNBC offered ff him a spot, he jumped. He joined the business network in 2007 and soon became co-host of

After going to Russia to cover the

Olympics, he’ll announce his next move.

Winter 2014 Amherst 27

its Worldwide Exchange program. But he never found a breakout anchor role.

Not knowing where the day’s economic news would take him, he dreaded telling Matzkin that he was off ff to Arkansas or Louisiana or Eastern Europe. On a 2010 trip to Poland for a tobacco documentary, he got stranded by the eruption of an Icelandic volcano that grounded European air traffi ffic for days. “The youngest was about 7 months and still not sleeping,” he recalls. “My wife had to cancel a slew of things.” He ended up driving to Vienna just to fly home. “A few days later, I had to go to Bolivia. That almost broke us.”

Shactman began to question his future in TV. “Honestly, I was starting to consider what else I could do. Should I try to get a job with a prep school? I’m not really young anymore, and I thought this might have run its course. I had to get off ff the road. The road was killing me.”

He saw a chance when Way Too Early’s Willie Geist left for the Today show in October 2012. Morning Joe sometimes uses CNBC reporters for business news, and Shactman had worked hard to make himself available to its hosts and producers. That gave him a shot with Way Too Early, which shares studio space with Morning Joe. Early morning cable news is a constant churn of shows, personalities and time slots, but there is one relative constant: Way Too Early, like Morning Joe and virtually every other MSNBC program, looks up in the ratings at Goliath: Fox News. Geist had never managed to beat his 5:30 a.m. competitor on Fox, but he’d held his own against CNN. It’s hard to find an expert critique of Shactman’s work as a solo host, for an obvious reason. “Wish I could do it, but I haven’t ever seen the show,” says NPR television reporter and critic Eric Deggans. “It airs, um, way too early.”

But Shactman succeeded where it matters. In the first two quarters of 2013, Way Too Early lagged behind CNN’s morningshow ratings. That changed after Shactman took over in May: Way Too Early beat CNN in the third and fourth quarters.

And in his final days, he even knocked off ff Fox on a few mornings.

Yet on the day of my visit, the logo for Way Too Early with Willie Geist was still painted on an office ffi door window. It was an unsentimental reminder: Big Media 28 Amherst Winter 2014

life is precarious and often capricious.

As Matzkin put it in September, with a wry smile, “He might be unemployed by the time this story comes out.”

Shactman won’t be unemployed, but despite his ratings success, the network announced in January that Thomas Roberts, another MSNBC news anchor, would take over Way Too Early. It’s an open question as to whether Shactman will stay with MSNBC after he helps cover the Sochi Winter Olympics for NBC. Although Morning Joe and Way Too Early present themselves as nonideological, MSNBC as a whole is often considered the liberal counterpoint to Fox News. Various reports, none of which come directly from Shactman or MSNBC, suggest that the network’s leadership saw Roberts’ status as a highprofile fi liberal as a better fit for MSNBC’s political brand.

A

FTER THE ANnouncement, Shactman said in a statement, “I don’t want politics to be my only focus. I want to continue to branch out.”

By covering a bit of everything, every day, Way Too Early has positioned him well for that future.

As Way Too Early’s numbers improved, Shactman became an integral part of Morning Joe, participating in sports and business segments almost daily and coming to view himself as the “sixth man” on that show. Way Too Early recaps or looks ahead at the news that will have the country talking. Morning Joe is where high-powered people come to talk about it. “I’m not a stargazer, but the chance to interact with those people is just very rewarding,” Shactman says. “I think you’re lucky if you can have a job at 42 where you still get to learn every day.”

Engaging with newsmakers and athletes of stature matters more to Shactman than personal fame, to which he seems indiff fferent. He and Matzkin got a taste of fame during his time in Connecticut, where he became well-known enough to consider a 2010 run for Congress as a centrist Democrat—ironic, given that he might not be political

enough for MSNBC. He thought that serving in Congress might actually prove less disruptive to the family than his work as a CNBC correspondent. Ultimately, he decided against a run, but he acknowledges that politics is one of few potential careers that could satisfy his itch to mix it up with smart people and infl fluence public debate and national conversation.

That itch, rather than any specifi fic goal, is likely to drive his professional future.

It was during a Morning Joe business segment that Shactman had his playful moment with Brzezinski. It was funny— and audacious. Not every “sixth man” can pull off ff repeatedly air-kissing the cohost across a split screen. Shactman can.

Still, audacious banter doesn’t always turn out so well. In a now infamous Morning Joe interview with Russell Brand in June, Shactman made a crack about finding the comedian’s accent indecipherable on satellite radio. Brand was not amused. He snapped back that Shactman shouldn’t listen to jokes while driving and proceeded to dress down all the interviewers—Shactman, Brzezinski and Katty Kay—in a spectacle of awkwardness that became a YouTube sensation.

“I meant to talk about how I had trouble with his accent as I listened to him on the car radio,” Shactman says. “People took it as me being anti-British or something. It got millions of hits on YouTube and scathing criticism from his fans.”

Brand’s ire aside, to Shactman, the rewards of taking chances on camera and letting “Shack” shine through outweigh the risks. Don’t expect him to stop taking those chances, wherever he lands next.

For now, he’s excited to be an NBC correspondent at the Olympics, after which he says he’ll announce his next move. At press time, he was enjoying the quiet chaos of Blairstown, where the weeks between leaving Way Too Early and traveling to Russia gave him a sort of family vacation. He supervised homework. He stayed up late. And he always made it to lunch at the dining hall with Bennett. k Billy Townsend ’94, a former reporter and editor at several Florida newspapers, is the author off Age of Barbarity: The Forgotten Fight for the Soul of Florida, a about violent racial and religious conflict fl in Florida between 1915 and 1930.

Gertrude Bonnin in 1926, shortly after being elected president of the National Council of American Indians. That year she authored the organization’s Constitution and By-Laws, a rare copy of which is in Amherst’s newly acquired collection.

© BETTMANN/CORBIS

Infinite Sea Frost Library has acquired an unprecedented collection of Native American literature and history.

TWO PROFESSORS ARRIVED IN THE BASEMENT OF FROST LIBRARY EARLY LAST SEMESTER to sift through boxes of old books. The boxes—32 in all—had just arrived at Amherst, and they contained what experts consider the most complete collection of Native American literature and history in existence. With nearly 1,500 volumes dating from the 18th to the 21st centuries, the books provide access toindigenous voices long ignored in history books.

É 29

“I was brought to tears,” says Assistant Professor of American Studies Kiara Vigil, who examined the books with colleague Lisa Brooks.

The volume responsible for Vigil’s tears was a 1926 handbook of the constitutional bylaws ffor the National Council of American Indians. The life and writings of the council’s founder, Gertrude Bonnin, are central to Vigil’s current book project. “As far as I know, no other archival collection, including those that have Bonnin’s personal papers, have a copy of this particular document,” the professor says.

This volume is among the highlights of the Younghee Kim-Wait ’82 Pablo Eisenberg Collection, named to honor the fi financial support of the alumna whose gift made the acquisition possible, as well as the original collector. The collection features Native-authored myths and legends, tribal histories, religious tracts, biographies and memoirs, fiction, fi poetry, drama and historical and political writings.

College Librarian Bryn Geffert ff characterizes it as “the most complete collection ever compiled by a single collector.” Its volumes were published in the English colonies, the United States and Canada and within Native nations. Included are hundreds of items not held by any other major collection of Native materials in North America, says Michael Kelly, Amherst’s director of archives and special collections. The library is committed to expanding the collection.

Looking through the boxes was “like suddenly being amidst a seemingly infi finite living sea,” says Brooks, an associate professor of English and American studies, who chairs the Five College Native American Indian Studies program. Brooks is building a course around the collection, and she’ll also use the books in her own studies.

“The research possibilities,” she says, “are endless.” PETER ROONEY 30 Amherst Winter 2014

The nonfiction collection includes 87 items published in the 18th century. The oldest of these is A Sermon Preached at the Execution of Moses Paul, an Indian, by the Rev. Samson Occom, widely distributed after its publication in 1772. Occom, a Mohegan, was the first Native American to publish his writings in English. Paul was executed for killing a white man, Moses Cook.

→ Associate Professor Lisa Brooks is designing a fall course, “Native American Literature and Intellectual Traditions,” that will cover, among many other works, books by 19th-century Pequot activist and Methodist minister William Apess (previously known as William Apes).

There are nearly 600 volumes of nonfiction and 900 works of fiction in the collection. Volumes range from the 1899 novel O-Gi-Maw-Kwe Mit-I-Gwa-Ki (Queen of the Woods), by Simon Pokagon; to We Talk, You Listen: New Tribes, New Turff (1970), by activist and historian Vine Deloria Jr.; to the 2013 coffee-table ff book I Am Alaskan, by photographer Brian Adams.

I want students to understand that they are studying and interacting with a living intellectual and literary tradition,� says Professor Lisa Brooks.

Winter 2014 Amherst 31

→ Brooks’ students

Students will be able “to immerse themselves in the collection, to contribute to projects that will help to raise public awareness and knowledge about the authors in the collection, and to do originall research,” Brooks says.

will study writings that emerged during the forced relocation of the Cherokee Nation in the 1830s, including those printed by the Cherokee Nation Printing Press.

Among these is a copy of the postRemoval Cherokee constitution owned by the nephew of John Ross, who was the Cherokee chief during the Removal crisis.

Assistant Professor Kiara Vigil (far left, with Brooks) got to hold a rare document that is particularly meaningful to her: a 1926 handbook of the Constitution and By-Laws of the National Council of American Indians. Vigil is writing a book on four prominent Indian intellectuals: Gertrude Bonnin—author of the handbook—Charles Eastman, Carlos Montezuma and Luther Standing Bear.

ROB MATTSON (3)

In addition to books, the collection includes music, such as an 1845 Christian hymnal, Indian Melodies, by Thomas Commuck, a Narragansett.

32 Amherst Winter 2014

We have the Native American authors you’ve heard of, and for every Native American author you’ve heard of there are two dozen you haven’t heard of whose books we also now have,” says Michael Kelly, the library’s head of archives and special collections.

Black Hawk’s best-selling 1833 autobiography is among the books that Vigil plans to teach in her 2015 seminar “History of the Native Book.” The Kim-Wait collection has several editions of the Sauk leader’s autobiography—which is still in print today.

“I’m hoping to have students analyze the differences ff in these editions,” Vigil says, “so we can have a larger discussion about the influence and importance of print networks that Native authors used.”

numerous books by Charles Eastman, a physician who lived in Amherst in the early 20th century.

Eastman was a prolific fi author of books that cover American history from the Native perspective.

Eastman, who helped found the Boy Scouts of America, died in 1939.

ROB MATTSON

→ The collection includes

Danielle Trevino ’14 (center) has taken many courses in Native American studies, and last summer she staffed ff an NEH institute on Native Americans of New England. She had the chance to look at several of the books in Frost.

Among those she noted was Tributes to a Vanishing Race, published in 1916 in Chicago. “It’s a compilation that includes works by Native intellectuals with an introduction by two women who claim to be Native but lament the gradual disappearance of their race,” Trevino says, “which is interesting because they were living in the Osage capital, Pawhuska, around 1916, when oil money had made the Osage one of the wealthiest groups of people in the nation.” Trevino wants to know “who these women were, what their roles were in the Pawhuska community and why this book was privately published a good distance away from the astounding aff ffluence of the Osage.”

← In 1952 students at a day school in Shishmaraf, Alaska, wrote and illustrated a cookbook. One recipe is for “willow meats”: “Inside of barbirch there is something that is yellowish. That is called the meat of willows. They are very good to eat. People eat it with sugar and seal oil.”

Echogee, a picture book by 20thcentury PawneeCreek painter Acee Blue Eagle, is about a little blue deer who wants to see the world for himself.

Elias Boudinot, a Cherokee missionary, went to the First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia on May 26, 1826, to deliver “An Address to the Whites,” a speech aimed at raising money to establish a Cherokee Nation printing press. “I ask you, shall red men live, or shall they be swept from the earth?” asked the future newspaper editor. “With you and this public at large, the decision chiefly fl rests.”

Winter 2014 Amherst 33

POINT OF VIEW

Signal 27

34 Amherst Winter 2014

Illustration by Arthur Giron

He thought that “helping people” was a valid reason for his career decisions, and after nine years as a police officer, ff he still feels that way.

BY ED DUCAYET ’89

“You’ll never forget your first fi dead body.” That’s what my fi field training officer ffi said to me a couple of days into my post-police-academy patrol training. In the Dallas Police Department, we go through eight months of academy, then six months of field training, followed by six months of probation riding with a partner before we’re allowed to ride solo on patrol. Field training is the part most of us dread, because it’s where you can get fi fired for the slightest mistake, especially if your FTO doesn’t like you.

I cycled through four FTOs in those six months; all taught me different ff things. The first offi fficer (mentioned above) was the best.

He taught me how to write reports suitable for use in prosecution, how to talk to all manner of people and, most importantly, how to be safe on the street. The second taught me how to goof off ff and have fun on the job while still getting it done accurately and effi fficiently. The third taught me to step back and have a real life outside the job. The fourth taught me, by example, how not to approach the job; he has since retired. Often, you can learn more from a negative example than from a positive one.

There’s a scene in the fi film Training Day in which Ethan Hawke is being mentored by Denzel Washington after Hawke expresses doubts about the unethical methods the narcotics squad is using.

Washington looks at him and says he can walk away right now from the elite unit, if he wants to end up like “that guy,” indicating a uniformed offi fficer on a freeway helping a woman change a flat tire. Hawke decides to stick with the elite unit. I remember, when I saw that film (long before I ever thought about becoming an offi fficer), thinking, “What’s so bad about that guy on the freeway?” People go into law enforcement for a variety of reasons, just as they do when they devote themselves to academics, research, finance, medicine, the military and homemaking. I always thought that “helping people” was a valid reason for my career decisions, and after almost nine years as a police officer, ffi I still feel that way. Yes, there are some things about which I’ve grown jaded and cynical (drugs, vice and politics, to name a few).

But in other respects, I haven’t changed a bit.

Which brings us back to that first sentence. I’ve lost count of how many corpses I’ve encountered over the years. But some I recall quite vividly. The first was memorable, as my FTO had predicted, though only because it was the first “Signal 27” (dead-person) call I’d taken as an offi fficer. It was an elderly lady, most likely a natural death in her sleep, found by her son. As my FTO walked me through the procedures (contacting the medical examiner, observing the scene to ensure there were no hints of homicide, assisting the son in arranging for a funeral home), I picked up that what he was really training me to do was to observe what this man needed and help him through a difficult ffi time. The son needed to talk, and he needed us to listen.

The second and unfortunately more memorable Signal 27 call took place on my last day of training, with the same FTO. While it’s true that you don’t forget the first fi body, it’s an even more horrible truth that you never forget the first fi dead child you see. In this case, the man and woman had had an argument, and she’d kicked him out of the apartment, then drunk herself into a stupor while lying next to her infant son, with tragic consequences. The image of that baby will be forever burned into my brain, and trying to comfort that father was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

Is there a lesson in this work? Someone once said, “Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.”

You cannot turn off ff your feelings, and it’s dangerous to overanalyze situations, but achieving a balance between the two has been one of the greatest challenges of my life. I’ll let you know if I ever achieve it. Though I’m certain some of our military veterans have stories more terrible than mine (and I’ve left out the worst), I’ve seen things no human should have to see. For now, I’ll settle for helping people as best I can in what is an often unpleasant, frequently unappreciated, but occasionally quite rewarding profession. k Ed Ducayet ’89 has worked as a naval officer, ffi librarian and opera singer. He is now a sergeant in the Dallas Police Department.

Winter 2014 Amherst 35

alumni in the world

Beyond Campus

An ob/gyn became a YouTube sensation when she danced to Beyoncé before her double mastectomy.

Facing Cancer with Joy—and Music

BY SOO YOUN ’96

y met Deb Cohan ’90 on Facebook. On Nov. 5, Stephanie p Young SOCIAL MEDIA U Perhaps, like me, you Rosen, a ’90 alumna in Los Angeles, g posted a YouTube video introducing her friend: “Harvardtrained ob/gyn, mother of two, had a double mastectomy this morning.”

36 Amherst Winter 2014

Deb Cohan ’90

When Beyoncé posted the video on her Facebook page, it garnered 52 million likes.

been viewed more than 7 million times. Dancing, she says, is “my most direct way of accessing and expressing my emotions, and it seemed like a good way to get out my nerves and get the juju out before surgery.”

Cohan’s other intent was to inspire loved ones to record themselves dancing to the same song, so she could watch their videos as she recovered, when she couldn’t shimmy herself. She subverted her own plans: friends, family and strangers sent videos and photos, which she watched, but Cohan was in a dance class four days after surgery.

People didn’t just send videos.

Cohan heard from a nurse in a veterans’ hospital who said the video inspired nurses to dance in their lounge; the music then got soldiers dancing in the hallways.

Cohan also danced via Skype with a stranger who had a mastectomy a week after her own.

“Part of what made it so surprising to people is that the paradigm in our culture is to be fearful of illness and death,” Cohan says, “instead of seeing life and death to be linked. Facing death is an opportunity to celebrate life.”

Her Amherst friends were not

surprised. Lowell Weiss ’90, a friend since childhood, describes Cohan as “internally motivated to help and care for others, even when it’s not easy to do. I saw it when Deb raced into treating HIVpositive women at a time when a needle stick could have meant a death sentence. I saw it when she became the medical director for the St. James Infi firmary, caring for sex workers without a hint of judgment. Most of all, I see it in the way she is there for her friends (including me) during times of crisis, no matter how busy she is delivering babies into this world, or managing clinical trials in Uganda, or teaching students.”

Weiss, who came from Seattle for the surgery and recorded Cohan’s parents dancing in the waiting room, says his friend is both overwhelmed and delighted by the reaction to the video: “She wants others to get out of their victim crouches. She wants people to feel their own power for healing. And she wants to introduce new people to the spiritual value of dance.”

Cohan started chemotherapy on Jan. 9.

Soo Youn ’96 is a Los Angeles-based journalist.

HILLARY GOIDELL ‘90 (3)

Like hundreds, then thousands, then millions of others, I clicked.

What I saw was six minutes and 14 seconds of joyful dancing to Beyoncé’s “Get Me Bodied,” set inside an operating room at the University of San Francisco’s Medical Center at Mt. Zion. The dancers: Cohan, outfi fitted in a hospital gown and cap, and the team who would soon perform her surgery.

“The scrub nurse and I were mirroring each other, and there’s this moment I turn around and pat my heart,” says Cohan, who heads a San Francisco clinic that treats HIV-infected pregnant women.

“I was so happy this woman was playing with me, that people went along with this dance.”

The dancing preamble to surgery seemed to co-opt the pity and awkwardness often directed toward those with cancer, and, in doing so, transformed Cohan from patient to phenomenon.

My click echoed exponentially.

The next day “Deb’s OR Flash Mob” hit The Huffi ffington Post, the Today show and countless television news broadcasts. Soon several of my Facebook acquaintances— people with no connection to Amherst or cancer—posted the video.

I watched it go viral in my very own news feed.

“Facing a double mastectomy with grace takes courage,” declared The Huffi ffington Post. “Facing one with courage and joy is extraordinary.” In an age of self-promotion and snark, Cohan’s dancing proved both real and strangely private, a woman’s postcard to her future, changed self. Beyoncé herself posted the video on her Facebook page, writing, “Deborah, you are awesome!” The post garnered 52 million likes.

“Even though it was being taped, because I wanted my friends to see it, I was completely in the moment,” Cohan told me by phone a month after her surgery, when the YouTube video had

“Facing death is an opportunity to celebrate life,” says Cohan, an Amherst history major.

Winter 2014 Amherst 37

BEYOND CAMPUS

“A Team Even the Greatest Cynic Had to Admire” As Red Sox general manager, a former Amherst baseball player took a laughingstock and made it a winner.

BY SOO YOUN ’96

After the game, cameras eventually found the 39-year-old general manager, who took the stage in jeans, a baseball cap and a championship T-shirt (over a dress shirt). Ben Cherington ’96 remembers exactly what he was thinking at that moment: “I wanted to get ff the stage as quickly as I possibly could.” off So, with childhood friends, he “found an empty place, quiet and away from everyone else. Had some beer, talked about what happened. That was pretty cool, to be there with guys I had grown up with.”

He had no desire to celebrate on TV, to join in the theater. “You do those things because you have to do them and they ask you to do them,” he says.

You also do those things because you’ve accomplished something commendable, even historic, in a town with a sharp memory.

The Red Sox ended the 2012 season in last place in the American League. Cherington—who became GM

Ben Cherington ’96

Sporting News and MLB.com named the former English major 2013’s MLB Executive of the Year.

Cherington says, “We don’t want to focus on outcomes.”

38 Amherst Winter 2014

JARED WICKERHAM/GETTY IMAGES

BASEBALL U When the Boston Red Sox won the World Series on Oct. 30, it was the team’s third championship in a decade. Sweetening the moment, it provided the first win at Fenway Park in 95 years and a sense of healing from the Boston Marathon bombings six months earlier. And with players sporting unifying beards, the victory was full of theater.

The Three GMs Three Amherst baseball alumni are Major League GMs. In a December New York Times article, all gave credit to retired Amherst Coach Bill Thurston.

Cherington joined the Red Sox in 1999 as a scout.

He was hired by then-GM Dan Duquette ’80 on Thurston’s recommendation.

In 2007 Neal Huntington ’91 became GM of the Pittsburgh Pirates, which in 2013 made the playoffs ff for the first time in 21 years.

Huntington got his start from Duquette on Thurston’s recommendation.

Since Duquette became executive vice president of the Baltimore Orioles in 2011, the longtime losers have had two consecutive winning seasons.

after the 2011 season—responded by, among other things, replacing the dramatic Bobby Valentine with manager John Farrell and picking up seven free agents in the off-season. ff In 2013 the team won 108 out of 178 games.

“What Ben did in the span of one off-season ff might rank as the greatest rebuilding job of all time,” says The Boston Globe’s Red Sox beat writer, Peter Abraham. “After an agonizing 2012 season, the 2013 Red Sox were a team even the greatest cynic had to admire.”

While rebuilding, “we never once talked about the World Series, because we don’t want to focus on outcomes,” Cherington says. “If we prepare the right way, if we invest in scouting the right way, if we find the right players in the draft, if we sign the right players from the Dominican Republic, if we have the best medical operation in baseball—if we do all those things over time, the outcomes will be there.”

On the night of the World Series win, Cherington walked through a tunnel to the dugout and then onto the field to talk to Farrell, as he does after every home game. “Obviously I knew there would be a celebration,” Cherington says, but because it was half an hour after the last pitch, he assumed the stands would be emptying. Instead, “literally every seat was still filled. I had never seen the ballpark completely full from that vantage point, after a game.”

As Cherington surveyed the fans, reporters were surveying him.

“The field at Fenway Park was full of players, their families, team employees and media,” says The Globe’s Abraham. “Ben spoke to reporters with just a hint of a smile, pointing out that the team had weaknesses he hoped to address in the off-season. ff Even then, in a moment of triumph, he was on point.”

When They’re 64 A longitudinal study has been following 26,000 Americans as they grow old.

INTERVIEW BY WILLIAM SWEET AGING U What is it like to

grow old? As associate director of a longitudinal studyy on aging, g g Dr. Kenneth Langa ’85—who majored in sociology at Amherst—is working to answer that question.

Launched in 1992, the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study is following 26,000 Americans older than 50, surveying them every two years. The research—supported by the National Institute on Aging and the Social Security Administration—has led to, among other things, a widely publicized New England Journal of Medicine article about the heavy economic burden of dementia.

How do you keep up with 26,000 people for 20 years?

For about half of them, we go to their homes. We have 250 interviewers across the United States.

About 12,000 interviews are done with an interviewer in the home, and the rest are done by telephone.

What is your role in the study?

I am one of two physicians on the research group and the numbertwo person administratively. We have economists, psychologists, sociologists and epidemiologists also collaborating. We view ourselves as doing a scientific fi public service: Upwards of 10,000 researchers have used our data.

Illustration by Anthony Russo

The Journal article argued that dementia puts a financial burden on society comparable to those of heart disease and cancer.

The key policy issue is long-term care. The number of children per older adult is going down over the next 20 years. Who will be around to take care of the baby boomers?

We don’t have an established fifi nancing system for long-term care in the United States.

How effective are the treatments for dementia?

There are very weak treatments right now. The medications for Alzheimer’s disease [the most common cause of dementia, especially in Western countries] may provide symptomatic relief. Right now there’s no treatment that changes the course. There is progress being made on the science, but because of the complexity of the brain and the complexity of the interaction between the Alzheimer’s process and vascular process, there is more to be learned.

Are adequate resources being put into dementia research?

There’s about $7 billion a year that NIH invests in cancer research,

Kenneth Langa ’85

“Hyptertension and high cholesterol make it more likely that you will become demented.”

about $3.5 billion for cardiac research and about $600,000 for dementia. We live longer, which in general is a good thing, but it also makes it more likely that you will live to an age where Alzheimer’s becomes a bigger risk. I wouldn’t say we want to take money away from cancer and heart disease, but we think that more investment in [dementia] research would have important payoffs. ff Are there preventative measures against dementia?

Hypertension and uncontrolled or high cholesterol make it more likely that you will become demented. Better control of blood pressure and of high cholesterol can decrease the incidence of dementia upwards of 20 percent.

Also, there is a clear link between using your brain—both early and later into life—and the prevention of cognitive decline.

Use it or lose it.

Absolutely. People who have had more education and more mental stimulation, from birth through 18, have diff fferent brains, brains that can resist the insults that everyone is going to have as they age.

Winter 2014 Amherst 39

BEYOND CAMPUS

First a Diagnosis, Then a Career Kelly Close ’90 is founder and president of a company that is nudging forward the treatment of diabetes.

COURTESY KELLY CLOSE (2)

BY KATIE BACON ’93 BUSINESS U Kelly (Shaughnessy) Close arrived at Amherst in 1986 from a tiny town in Nebraska. She loved being at college and threw herself into life as a freshman, but physically, she felt awful. One morning she was so exhausted that she couldn’t make it from her room in James across the quad to her class at Johnson Chapel.

A friend helped her to Health Services. After a weight check and health history (she’d dropped to 92 pounds, was very thirsty and had polyuria), the doctor gave an immediate diagnosis: type 1 diabetes.

An autoimmune disease, type 1 diabetes destroys the ability of the pancreas to produce insulin. Going forward, Close would be dependent on insulin injections, and she would have to manage both the hyperglycemia (high blood glucose) caused by eating carbohydrates and the hypoglycemia (low blood glucose) caused by the insulin.

For Close, the diagnosis was shocking. It would also become the basis for her life’s work.

After graduating with a degree in English and economics, she worked on health care projects in the co-CEO’s offi ffice at Goldman Sachs. “That’s when I started thinking: This is fun; you can do work on something that you know a lot about and that you care about.” She earned an M.B.A. at Harvard and was an equity 40 Amherst Winter 2014

Close started her own firm after her boss refused to let her work remotely.

Kelly Close ’90

“Her newsletters are an absolute treasure,” says one client.

research analyst on Wall Street, focusing on firms fi in the medical technology fi field. Then her father was diagnosed with cancer. Close wanted to work remotely so she could be with him before he died.

Her boss refused, so Close quit.

Her father persuaded Close to start her own company, and in the weeks before he died, he helped her incorporate what would become Close Concerns, a health care information firm tightly focused on diabetes and obesity (type 2 diabetes, unlike type 1, is closely linked with obesity).

Founded in 2002 and based in San Francisco, Close Concerns has about 90 clients, both nonprofit fi and for-profi fit, including most of the big names in the field: fi the American Diabetes Association, the Joslin Diabetes Center, Novartis, Medtronic and Dexcom. With a full-time staff ff of eight (and other

part-time employees), the firm fi stays on top of everything happening in the world of diabetes—medical research, technological developments, FDA hearings, earnings reports, philanthropy, advocacy.

It packages this information into a curated daily synthesis of diabetes news. It also produces a free newsletter for patients.

The goal is to be “ubiquitous in the diabetes world,” says Close.

“Everywhere something is happening, we’re there asking questions about it.” Its presence is most obvious at diabetes conferences, which might have 75 lectures per day. Close Concerns researchers (many of them Amherst students or alumni) are always in the front row, hurriedly typing on their MacBooks; within about 24 hours, they report on these lectures to clients.

“Her newsletters are an absolute treasure,” says Richard Kahn, former chief scientific fi offi fficer of the American Diabetes Association.

As he explains, it takes months for information discussed at a conference to appear in the scientific fi literature. Close Concerns is “invaluable,” says Tom Peyser of Dexcom, to those who “don’t have the time to attend every meeting, listen to every earnings call or scour the literature for every paper.”

In fact, it was in Close’s newsletter that Edward Damiano of Boston University fi first learned about small pharmaceutical companies working to stabilize the hormone glucagon. That hormone is critical to the functioning of a “bionic” pancreas that Damiano and colleagues are trying to develop.

Close tested this bionic device last spring. “Getting rid of hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia for a week,” she wrote in her newsletter, “was one of the most powerful things I’ve ever experienced.”

Katie Bacon ’93 writes about parenting a child with type 1 diabetes at asweetlife.org.

One pair of lasers holds the atoms in a one-dimensional column.

Atom

Cold atomic gas

Very Cold Atoms A young physicist is chipping away at new corners of a large fi field.

BY NICHOLAS MANCUSI ’10 PHYSICS U Single-molecule magnets.

Quantum tunneling. Ultra-cold atoms.

The world of quantum physics is famously impenetrable, if intriguing, to the uninitiated.

That’s why, upon hearing that Michael Foss-Feig ’06 received the 2013 American Physical Society’s Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics Award for outstanding doctoral thesis in physics (the name alone daunts), a layperson might be tempted to take the physics community’s word for it that it’s a big deal, off ffer a hearty congratulations and leave it at that. Luckily, Foss-Feig is very good at talking about his thesis and its implications.

To understand his work and that of others in his field, it’s helpful to consider that, counter to common misconceptions about the more recondite pursuits of science, the research has a tangible goal: harnessing the futuristic power of quantum computing. Toward that end, it’s helpful for scientists to first develop what are called “quantum simulators.”

Many technological objects, from barcode scanners to advanced superconducting materials, depend on the strange properties of atomic building blocks so tiny that they adhere to their own set of rules, called “quantum mechanics” (as opposed to the “classical” mechanics used to describe, for example, the action of a basketball rolling down a hill). Predicting the action of a particle that has the boggling ability to be in two places at once can, to say the least, be tricky. To better make sense of these systems, scientists employ quantum simulators, which can be understood as a kind of computer that has only one task, such as predicting how a group of quantum-mechanical particles will act under some prescribed rules of interaction.

Foss-Feig’s thesis nudged these quantum simulators toward a higher level of complexity, which in turn Diagram by Ed Wiederer

Two pairs of lasers hold the atoms in a grid.

Laser beam

! temperature a mass of atoms would look like billiard balls flying around and colliding off ff of each other,” says FossFeig. Lasers “push” atoms in the direction opposite their motion, bringing them almost to rest.

Michael Foss-Feig ’06

Now a postdoctoral fellow in Maryland, he majored in physics and math at Amherst.

will be helpful in predicting the properties of more complex quantum material.

One of the many challenges that Foss-Feig faced is that just about any system that would be useful for quantum simulation needs to be very (very, very) cold. By comparison, the few Kelvin degrees above absolute zero that Foss-Feig worked with as an undergraduate while studying single-molecule magnets with Associate Professor of Physics Jonathan Friedman seems positively balmy.

“At room temperature a mass of atoms would look like a room full of billiard balls flying around and colliding off ff of each other,” Foss-Feig says. “If you want to make them cold enough for their quantummechanical nature to be useful, you need to typically achieve a temperature of 1 millionth of a degree above absolute zero. Or colder.”

To achieve this temperature, rather than using some sort of cryogenic tank, as the lay mind might first imagine, scientists employ a system of lasers, shining them on a vapor of atoms isolated in a vacuum. The lasers “push” the atoms in the direction opposite their motion, in a sense holding them as still as possible, which brings them almost to rest. (The glass walls of the vacuum chamber remain room-temperature to the touch, making them 1 billion times hotter than the atoms within.)

Friedman says of his former student: “He wrote a great thesis as an undergraduate, and even came back to work with me over the summer to actually solve the problem, which is quite an accomplishment.”

Foss-Feig is now a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Maryland, where he continues his research and splits his time with the University of Maryland. He makes it clear that, although he’s delighted to receive the award, it’s the collaborative nature of science that he enjoys the most. “I’m just chipping away at new corners of a very large field,” he says. Maybe so, but for a scientist just starting his career, he’s chipped off ff an impressive corner. k Nicholas Mancusi ’10 has a column on The Daily Beast and blogs at Galleyist.com. His writing has appeared in Newsday, y American Arts Quarterlyy and elsewhere.

Winter 2014 Amherst 41

SOURCE: NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP

Chilly in There How do you make atoms cold enough for their quantummechanical nature to be useful? Crisscrossed laser beams.

arts news and reviews

Amherst Creates

Kantor majored in English and political science at Amherst.

The Worst Thing That Will Ever Happen Maybe One Day is the ninth book by the wildly popular young-adult novelist Melissa Kantor ’91.

42 Amherst Winter 2014

Photograph by Heather Weston

SHORT TAKES

REVIEWED BY CATHERINE NEWMAN ’90 FICTION U The summer before their sophomore year of high school, Olivia and Zoe, best friends since forever, are kicked out of the New York Ballet Company, where they’ve been dancing seriously for years. The girls, devastated, know one thing for sure: “This is the worst thing that will ever happen.”

And it is! The end.

Oh, wait. It’s actually not.

That is just the prologue of Maybe One Day, a book that compares itself to the famously, epically tragic young-adult bestseller The Fault in Our Stars. (“That comparison gives me such a doomed feeling,” explains 14-year-old Ava, a family friend, when I show her my copy. “Also that the back cover uses the expression ‘the agony of loss.’” Points well taken.)

Now it’s fall of their junior year, and Liv and Zoe’s typical teenaged habitat of cute boys, annoying cheerleaders and locker-side banter is blasted almost immediately apart with the news that Olivia has cancer.

Acute myeloid leukemia, to be exact. “I have old-man cancer,” she says to Zoe, tragicomically.

“Isn’t that so humiliating?”

l

Zoe, our narrator, is the Z dark-haired, cynical foil to her sunny, blond best friend.

She’s smart, self-ironic and jusst barely snarky—the kind of tee enager who describes a boy as “nerdalicious,” is irritated by the e incorrect usage of the word “literally” and muses, “That my best friend regularly hung out witth cheerleaders was one of the e great mysteries of my life.”

Now, with Olivia sick, Zoe N is bereft. Theirs is one of the great girlhood passions—the kind where you can pack a suitcase for your friend in the hospital because you know the provenance and exact degree of likedness of her every garment. (“I love that part,” says our friend Ava. “Them sharing all their clothes—that all the parts of what she was wearing she bought with Olivia, except her underwear—that felt totally believable.”) Zoe’s mom has always said the girls look like salt and pepper shakers—light and dark versions of the same person. “And now here I was, just a stupid, lonely pepper shaker.

What was the point of a pepper shaker without a salt shaker? I didn’t even like pepper.”

In a perfect, heartbreaking detail, the girls switch their customary phone sign-off ff from “love ya” to “I love you.” For Zoe, a precocious awareness is dawning: the ordinary is precious. The ordinary is also, in the context of a sick best friend, bizarre. After she and some classmates discuss an especially good salad at school, Zoe says, “Even though Olivia was dying, we still ate lunch.”

The book gracefully navigates a number of subplots: In one, Zoe agrees to take over

AMHERST READS featured book: www.amherst.edu/magazine

Ì America and democracy are the grand ideas occupying the minds of many Amherst authors.

Embark upon American Odysseys: A History of Colonial North America, by Timothy J. Shannon and David N. Gellman ’88 (Oxford University Press). Then enjoy a Repast: Dining Out at the Dawn of the New American Century, 1900–1910, by Michael Lesy and Lisa Stoffer ff , Amherst’s director of foundation and corporate relations (W. W. Norton & Co.). Ira Silver ’91 advises on Giving Hope: How You Can Restore the American Dream (CreateSpace), and Ilya Somin ’95 writes of Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarterr (Stanford Law Books). Nick Bromell ’72 keeps us in the moment with The Time is Always Now: Black Thought and the Transformation of U.S. Democracy (Oxford University Press), while Mary A. Languirand and Robert F. Bornstein ’81 help us face the future with How to Age in Place: Planning for a Happy, Independent, and Financially Secure Retirementt (Ten Speed Press). Michael Wheeler ’65 teaches The Art of Negotiation: How to Improvise Agreement in a Chaotic World (Simon & Schuster).

Architecture critic Blair Kamin ’79 guides us through The Gates of Harvard Yard d (The Nieman Foundation for Journalism), and Peggy Shin ’85 brings on a Deluge: Tropical Storm Irene, Vermont’s Flash Floods, and How One Small State Saved Itselff (University Press of New England). In the mood for music? Listen to Missa Charles Darwin: Introitus: Tropus ad Kyrie, composed by Gregory W. Brown ’98 and featuring New York Polyphony (Navona), and The Edenfred Files, by Darryl Harper ’90 (Hipnotic Records).

Katherine Duke ’05 Winter 2014 Amherst 43

AMHERST CREATES

Liv’s dance class for at-risk girls at the local rec center— an experience that, predictably, has much to teach her about herself. In another, Zoe falls for the very boy whom Olivia likes, and romance— even a little escapist sexuality—ensues. More broadly, Zoe, mildly misanthropic, is compelled to recognize the essential goodness of nearly everyone, from her annoyingly groovy but profoundly supportive parents, to the bighearted cheer squad she has so enjoyed making fun of.

“These were good people,” she observes, poignantly, at a fundraising carwash they’ve organized. “These were Olivia’s people.”

Alas, Olivia’s cancer proceeds apace, and her treatment spans from chemo to a bone marrow transplant, with details that feel informative without ever becoming excessively graphic. There has been some imaginary controversy of late about a so-called “new” genre of literature about sick kids—The Fault in Our Stars may be the paradigm—but, honestly? It’s hardly new. Or, rather, teenagers’ interest in illness and loss has been around at least since I was in eighth grade devouring John Gunther’s Death Be Not Proud and experiencing a kind of cathartic grownup-ness: I dipped my vicarious toe in the water of loss and understood, for literally the very fi first time, how much there might be in life to lose. I would have loved Maybe One Day; I would have wanted my best friend to read it too.

Catherine Newman ’90 writes an advice column for Real Simple and blogs at benandbirdy.blogspot.com.

44 Amherst Winter 2014

San Francisco, 1985 In Test,t by Chris Mason Johnson ’95, AIDS is an everlooming threat, but it’s not the protagonist’s only worry.

The dance sequences are one of the great pleasures of the film.

REVIEWED BY JOSH BELL ’02 FILM U The title of Test, written and directed by Chris Mason Johnson ’95, refers to the first-ever blood test developed to detect HIV, but it also applies to most of what protagonist Frankie (Scott Marlowe) goes through over the course of the movie, which is set in San Francisco in 1985.

Although AIDS is an everpresent specter in the film fi and in the lives of its young gay male characters, Test is not a dour message movie or a heavy-handed melodrama.

Frankie worries about AIDS, but he worries just as much about his position in the troupe he dances for and whether he’s good enough to perform in its latest show.

One of Test’s greatest pleasures is its dance sequences, choreographed by Sidra Bell, with additional choreography by Johnson. At one point Frankie half-jokes to his friend and fellow dancer Todd (Matthew Risch) that the piece they’re performing is secretly about anonymous

gay sex, but what’s impressive about Bell and Johnson’s work is that it fits fi within the movie’s narrative about gay life without being overly symbolic or obvious. It’s just beautiful, graceful dancing, ably performed by the cast, and these interludes make Test feel almost like a grungy, low-key musical.

Test is also an effective ff character study of Frankie, who, while not as boisterous as Todd— or as open about his sexuality— has an abiding passion for dance.

Johnson doesn’t overload on ’80s signifiers, fi but Frankie is never without his cassette Walkman, which provides a lovely soundtrack as he walks around the city, absorbed in his thoughts.

Those thoughts return periodically to AIDS, although the disease’s name is almost never spoken, and when it is, it’s usually in background news footage.

Frankie gets the actual test of the title nearly an hour into the movie, and even then, Johnson does not keep his audience in suspense for long about the result. Frankie’s story is not about coping with AIDS; it’s about a transitional period in gay culture

Quietly Odd Aparna Nancherla ’05E reassured the audience on Conan, “It’s OK—I’m surprised I’m a comedian, too.”

BY KATHERINE DUKE ’05

fi editor.

Josh Bell ’02 is Las Vegas Weekly’s film

JEFF ENDER

that coincides with the spread of the disease and the development of a reliable way to detect it. The movie’s final line reframes the title in a personal and positive way, signaling a potential change in Frankie’s life and in the overall perception of gay relationships.

Johnson—a visiting lecturer at Amherst— portrays those relationships as fl fluid but genuine, blurring the lines between friendship and romance in a way that’s probably recognizable to any current or former 20-something, gay or straight.

AIDS aff ffects those relationships in small but signifi ficant ways, whether it’s Frankie and Todd laughing over the “antiquated” use of condoms, or a former lover revealing his own status on an answering-machine message. The virus infuses interactions with people outside the gay community as well, subtly but clearly, as a female dancer balks at touching a sweaty Todd, or a cabbie casually refers to gays as “human garbage.”

Johnson treats these encounters as part of Frankie’s everyday life, creating a heartfelt, lived-in tapestry that reaches far beyond the simple, declarative event of the movie’s title.

COMEDY U “You’ve reached Aparna’s carrier pigeon. Please cluck or squawk a message, and she’ll get back to you as soon as she gets the feathers out of her hair.”

Even in her voice mail greeting, I hear the quiet oddness that’s made Aparna Nancherla ’05E a favorite up-and-comer in comedy. I’m calling in November, weeks after she performed her first late-night TV stand-up, on Conan. It’s also shortly after the cancellation of Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell,l the FXX political comedy series that had provided her first steady comedy-writing-andperforming job and allowed her to work with executive producer Chris Rock.

Nancherla tells me (once I get her on the phone) that she’s on a “mini-tour/vacation” with some other former Totally Biased writers, doing stand-up shows down South—though it’s really “just an excuse to get ourselves to Disney World.”

Comedy, says Nancherla, is one of the few career paths she didn’t consider in her youth. It seemed, to her, like “the circus, where it’s something you’re born into, but you can’t just decide it’s something you want to do.”

Growing up near Washington, D.C., with protective Indian immigrant parents in a household without cable TV, she was no class clown—more of an anxious introvert who filled notebooks with her daily observations. One week, she wanted to be a veterinarian; the next, a police off fficer. She got into West Point but chose Amherst, because military service seemed like too big of a commitment.

As a sophomore she had a “low-level existential crisis” and took a semester off ff, hoping to find a professional direction. On her 20th birthday, friends convinced her to take the stage at a comedy club. “It went better than I expected,” she says. Nancherla returned to college with a renewed sense of creative purpose, began writing for campus publications and gave stand-up a few more tries. Her psychology major proved helpful as she wrote jokes about human behavior.

After Amherst she lived with her parents and held journalism internships while doing open mics, studying improv and filming Web shorts. NBC’s 2007 “Stand-Up for Diversity” talent search led her to Last Comic Standing, where she made the semifinals. Though she snagged only a few seconds of national-TV screen time, this success startled Nancherla: “At that point, I still felt so new.”

Like many young comics, she took to Twitter as “an incubator” for jokes; her followers now number 30,000. (“You’re never too old to cry in a mall Santa’s lap,” she tweeted this December.) She moved to L.A., where she found a manager. She landed Totally Biased in 2012, on her second try, and moved to New York.

Her Conan debut was surreal, she says. On stage in a red dress, she reassured the audience, “It’s OK—I’m surprised I’m a comedian, too. We’ll get through this together.” Next, she plans to work with filmmaker Chioke Nassor on a Web series about “about various misadventures I have during my day-to-day life.”

Winter 2014 Amherst 45

AMHERST CREATES

Forming Self-Portraits Poet Tess Taylor ’00 writes about Thomas Jefferson, Bombay, Berkeley—and herself.

REVIEWED BY DAVID SOFIELD POETRY U Tess Taylor’s The Forage House (Red Hen Press) is an affecting ff collection, ranging from the dailiness of El Cerrito, Calif., where she lives now, to Albemarle County, Va., where a long line of her ancestors has lived for centuries. That line includes Thomas Jeff fferson, who, as slave owner and gardener and much else, is the subject of the central section of the book, “A Letter to Thomas Jefferson ff from Monticello.” This ninepage, nine-part poem concludes with these words written to her eloquent relative: “ambitious foundering father I revere & hate & see myself in.” “Foundering father” is distinctly not a misprint; one appreciates the touch. To write that final fi line is of course to be ambitious oneself. Tess Taylor sets the bar high.

As in many first books of poems, seeing oneself is what these poems return to time and again. When the focus is not on the self, it is often on the places that formed it: the “Brooklyn commune room” (twice), where she was conceived; Madison and Berkeley, where her mother, an academic, worked; and Bombay, where her parents did archival research. Like a near-native, she is ready to tease teasable Berkeley: “Many people there build experimental gardens / & devote their lives to cultivating / the best kind of tomato.”

Some of Taylor’s most revealing self-portraits speak in the second person, providing a distance that clarifies.

But, although she numbers herself among the “inheritors of absences,” it is in the Virginia of her Taylor and Randolph ancestors that she principally fi finds herself. The portraiture is rich and at times welcomely surprising: at one point, doing her own archival foraging in Virginia, she writes: “I feel heavy with wild namelessness.” At another, while in a church service in Charlottesville: “I went to worship. Felt / my uneasy white-girlishness as I rocked.” And then to Jeff fferson: “O hypocrite — you make me tired.” Little wonder, then, that at the very midpoint of the sequence she says to him, “You Y disappear behind / your multitude of portraits.”

Taylor herself does not disappear, in significant fi part because what may be her most revealing and effective ff self-portraits speak in the second person, providing a distance that clarifies. fi “Offi fficial History” begins: You work as a journalist, pursuing legends of other people. It is October; gold leaves fall on your birthday. Little mysteries swirl with you, a Tess — now hunting out a dented spoon or crest, some half-disguise by which to know yourself.

The side-glance at Hardy’s Tess is unmistakable, but it is trumped by the echo of two of Elizabeth Bishop’s most memorable lines: “you are an Elizabeth, / you are one of them.” Taylor caps her (and Bishop’s) italics with the strong rhyme, in a book in which rhyming is rare, on “crest.”

The next second-person self-portrait is more modest, as well as wittier.

You came in ripped jeans from California and tasted

DANIELLE NELSON MOURNING

their seed, their curd, their underworld of 80 proof or no proof, a difficult ffi nut, cracked but rotten.

46 Amherst Winter 2014

Historical proof may be hard to come by, but whisky’s proof is not.

Those couplets—the first one here, in its formal disparities, may be a knowing version of ripped jeans—are worn by most of Taylor’s poems. It is a measure that serves her, like many current poets, well. One thinks of the free-verse couplets in Louise Glück’s “Ancient Text.” At moments, Taylor’s self-portraiture indeed resembles Glück’s, but Taylor’s emerges from a sensibility less self-serious. The Forage House—which, as it should, at times makes a reader do some significant fi part of the work—is an appealing fi first book.

David Sofi field is the Samuel Williston Professor of English at Amherst.

SHANE F. KELLY, © HIGH DELFT PICTURES (2)

Tim Jenison adjusts his model’s wig. Left: Jenison polishes a 17th-century-style lens that he made for his experiment.

Testing a Theory

BY JOSH BELL ’02 DOCUMENTARY U Onstage every night in Las Vegas as part of the Penn & Tellerr show, magician Teller ’69 makes an impression without ever saying a word. While his partner, Penn Jillette, is the verbose one, making jokes, taunting the audience, boasting about the feats of magic on display, Teller remains silent, letting his skills at crafting illusions speak for themselves. That same dynamic is present in Tim’s Vermeer.

The documentary—directed by Teller and produced

by Jillette—follows inventor and technologist Tim Jenison’s attempt to recreate a painting by 17th-century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer.

“We’ve known Tim for a long time,” Teller says, explaining that the idea for the movie came while Jillette and Jenison were having dinner together.

Jenison told Jillette about his theory that Vermeer had used mirrors and camera obscura to capture the remarkable detail in his paintings.

Jenison had created his own device using mirrors and lenses, and was planning to paint his own version of Vermeer’s The Music Lesson, despite having no training or experience as a painter.

While Jenison hoped to make a YouTube video or write an academic paper, Jillette had bigger plans.

“Penn said, ‘No, you’re not.

This is a movie. This is obviously a movie,’” Teller says.

“They hopped on a plane, went to L.A. and tried pitching it. Nobody would buy it.”

Enter Teller. As the de facto director of the Penn & Tellerr stage show, as well as the director of a number of theater productions (his macabre show Play Dead recently ended its latest run in Los Angeles, and his version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, with music by Tom Waits, premieres in Las Vegas in April), Teller had the requisite experience to direct the movie, plus an obvious connection to the main players.

“But also I was a schoolteacher,” he says. “And they realized that in this film, there’s a lot of stuff ff that you

Teller has now found success in a new field.

have to learn without really realizing that you’re learning.

It just sort of has to slide by.”

The film combines lessons in technology and art history with a detailed character study of Jenison. Although Jillette gets plenty of screen time as a narrator and guide (and Teller himself can be glimpsed a handful of times), Jenison is the star. “The more we looked at the footage,” Teller says, “the more we realized that this was not a fi film about Vermeer’s technology, this was not a film fi about Penn or Teller—it was a film fi about this amazing and fascinating, driven, genius guy.”

BEVERLY POPPE

Magician Teller ’69 follows inventor Tim Jenison’s attempt to recreate a Dutch painting.

The movie documents the years Jenison devoted to studying Vermeer’s work and perfecting his own device for replicating it, and the months he spent meticulously recreating fi first the room depicted in The Music Lesson (complete with furniture Jenison built with his own hands) and then the painting itself.

Since its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2013, Tim’s Vermeerr has garnered critical acclaim and awards buzz, making Teller a success in a whole new field.

At the same time, Teller is dedicated to his Vegas stage show, for which he and Jillette are always developing new illusions, and the pair also have some top-secret TV projects in the works. That’s in addition to The Tempestt and any other stage productions he might direct.

“If I found a [documentary] idea that captivated me, I wouldn’t hesitate to pursue it,” the magician says. “I don’t care where I am or what my title is; I just want to be working on something that fascinates me.” k Winter 2014 Amherst 47

WHAT T

Can You Do With

? an AMHERST DEGREE ANYTHING,

AMONG many other results, the survey compares the academic majors of alumni in their late 20s and early 30s with the industries in which they currently work. The conclusion: roughly 10 years out of college, a liberal arts degree proves valuable in fields ranging from education to politics to health care. Across generations, roughly half of survey respondents say their current position is unrelated to their undergraduate field of study. Also across generations, survey respondents feel Amherst prepared them well to write clearly, to acquire knowledge and to think logically, analytically and critically. These skills are doubtless helpful when an English major becomes a medical doctor, for example, or a psychology major goes to law school, or a physics major takes a job in finance. These lists show the fields in which respondents from the Classes of 2001 to 2005 are most often working.

according to the 2013 alumni survey.

AMHERST HUMANITIES MAJORS most often work in education, law/legal services, media/journalism/publishing, health/medicine and finance. Smaller numbers work in practically every field imaginable, among them public policy, biotech, information technology and computer science.

SOCIAL SCIENCE MAJORS most often work in law/legal services, education, finance, health/medicine and politics/public policy. As the survey shows, an Amherst degree in a social science also leads to work in fields ranging from computer science, to agriculture, to business services, to communications.

BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE MAJORS most often work in one of three fields: health/ medicine, education and science. Others go into areas ranging from law, to media/journalism/ publishing, to social services, to the fine fi and performing arts.

PHYSICAL SCIENCE MAJORS most often work in education, health/medicine, finance and science. Alumni with physical science degrees can also be found working in law, politics/ public policy, biotech, agriculture and the military, among many other areas.

SEE CHARTS AT www.amherst.edu/alumni/survey Social science majors at Amherst: Anthropology, Economics, LJST (Law, Jurisprudence & Social Thought), Political Science, Psychology, Sociology

Source: 2013 Alumni Survey, Classes of 2001 to 2005

Humanities majors: American Studies, Architectural Studies, Art & the History of Art, Asian Languages & Civilizations, Black Studies, Classics, English, European Studies, Film & Media Studies, French, German, History, Music, Philosophy, Religion, Russian, Spanish, Theater &Dance, SWAGS (Sexuality, Women’s & Gender Studies)

Science majors: Astronomy, Biochemistry & Biophysics, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Environmental Studies, Geology, Mathematics, Neuroscience, Physics

Amherst College

Ì MAY 12, 2005

DIANE BONDAREFF

REMEMBER WHEN

An Unexpected Handshake

DIANE BONDAREFF, A New York photographer, stood next to me in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria in Midtown Manhattan.

It was May 2005, my first year as a “Green fi Dean” writer-editor at Amherst, and my fi first major photo assignment. We were with Jide Zeitlin ’85, chairman-elect of the board of trustees, waiting for an update on the morning’s schedule.

Zeitlin asked, “Are you ready?”

Soon I would step into a private elevator, wearing a red wristband that cleared me through three levels of security into Nelson Mandela’s suite. I was 120 Amherst Winter 2014

Nelson Mandela loomed so large in history that he seemed out of place sitting quietly on a couch.

filling in for Frank Ward, Amherst’s photographer for almost as long as I’d been alive. I was terrified. fi The suite was filled fi with people: the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service; Mandela’s own security; Board Chairman Amos Hostetter ’58 and his family; and thenPresident Tony Marx,

his wife and two young children. It took me a minute to see Mandela, a man who loomed so large in history that he seemed out of place sitting quietly on a couch and smiling as everyone in the room orbited around him.

I started taking pictures of everything.

Twice. Three times, just in case. I fi filled up my first of only three memory cards in just a few minutes. I was changing cards when Marx asked if I “wanted to meet him.” I slung my camera across my back and Marx made the introduction.

Mandela smiled.

We shook hands.

He made small SAMUEL MASINTER

BY SAMUEL MASINTER ’04

talk. Bondareff ff took a photo of us.

We were hurried out of the room, escorted through empty hallways and across a street cleared by the NYPD. Black SUVs with flashing red and blue lights surrounded the hotel. Five minutes later I was in the third row of a standingroom-only crowd in St. Bartholomew’s Church, hunched over a camera and hoping the telephoto lens I had would give me the shot I needed. Mandela entered the church to a standing ovation.

I watched the entire event through a viewfinder.

I’ve never secondguessed an assignment as much as I have that one. The photo could have been sharper. I should have rented a 300 mm lens. I should have brought another memory card. Still, it was the first time I felt comfortable adding “photographer” to my job description.

It’s a title I’ve carried with me through the two jobs I’ve had since. Photography has taken me into Air Force bases, malaria research labs, the State Department and movie sets. But nothing will ever live up to an unexpected handshake in a hotel room I was only in because someone else couldn’t be. k Samuel Masinter ’04 is director of college relations at Smith.

Alumni and Parent Programs

SPRING SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

February

Amherst Reads Feature Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Day

by Jonathon Keats ‘94 February 10 - 14 Love My Alumni Week on campus—students show their appreciation for alumni donors and volunteers February 28, 12:30 p.m. Virtual Lecture “Why Anthropologists Study Food (and I, Instant Noodles)” with Deborah Gewertz, G. Henry Whitcomb 1874 Professor of Anthropology March

Amherst Reads Feature Portrait of a Novel by Michael Gorra ‘79 March 28, 12:30 p.m. Virtual Lecture with Amelie Hastie, professor of English and film and media studies April

Amherst Reads Feature Maybe One Day by Melissa Kantor ‘91 April 15 Alumni Trustee Election polls open April 24 – 25 Amherst Today on-campus program on “Privacy” led by Martha Umphrey, professor of law, jurisprudence and social thought May

Amherst Reads Feature The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil by Christine Bader ‘93 May 19 Alumni Trustee Election polls close May 25 Commencement May 28 – June 1 Reunion May 29, 1:30 p.m. Virtual Lecture (Reunion talk) “Guns, Militias and the Second Amendment” with Kevin Sweeney, professor of American studies and history

For additional information, a listing of regional events, or to register for events, please visit www.amherst.edu/alumni/events.

Search for Amherst and join the conversation!

AMHERST PO Box 5000 Amherst, MA 01002

THEN & NOW

HILLS

While nothing can compare to sledding down Memorial Hill on a Valentine tray, some people crave more sophisticated winter thrills.

Snowboarding only became an Olympic sport in 1998, which might explain why it’s a fairly recent addition to the winter scene on campus.

Back in the 1980s, four speed-seekers opted for a single toboggan.

1986 Merrill Science Center

2013 Johnson Chapel

OLD PHOTO FROM AMHERST COLLEGE ARCHIVES; NEW PHOTO BY MARK IDLEMAN ’15