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HELP!
you know i need someone...
When students are feeling down, or need help getting their feet back on the ground, someone on the Bates staff will be there for them
photography and interviews by phyllis graber jensen with theophil syslo
the day-to-day work performed by many Bates staff members is often described as “support.” Academic support. Technology support.
But after seeing our students work so hard to navigate Bates life during a pandemic — physically distant, under a new academic calendar, and minus many college comforts like Commons — we chose another word, a near-synonym, to sum up what these Bates staff members have often provided to students this year: “Help,” the way the Beatles sang about it, when they’re feeling down and not so self-assured.
From Sports Medicine to the Department of Chemistry to Ladd Library and the Multifaith Chaplaincy, here are a few of the many Bates staff members who are around when students need somebody — not just anybody.
Rick McQueeney
Rick McQueeney is behind the wheel most days as a Bates Bobcat Express driver, helping stu- dents access places and services off campus, from medical appointments to shopping excursions.
Some students like to talk, and others less so. It’s like everywhere else in this world: Everybody has their own comfort zone of reaching out. I’ve talked to students from every continent but Antarctica!
It’s amazing what they’ve gone through and how they’ve gotten here. I learned that some students from Lithuania or Estonia got to Bates through China. Wow, what a trip!
Sometimes they just want somebody to talk to. We’re not really in a position of authority, so we’re just someone they can share concerns with or look to for advice or an opinion.
My wife and I have gardens at home, and I brought in produce for students to use in their cooking. I had a gentleman from Pakistan that was complaining about not having any hot peppers. I love hot peppers! I brought him home-canned peppers and some very hot peppers that my wife and I had grown over the summer.
I’ve really missed meeting students who go into the community through the Harward Center. I really got to know some of them. I’m still in contact with some; I like to see what they’re doing now.
I can say out of all this, the one thing of working here at Bates and meeting these students is, they’ve renewed my faith in what the future’s going to be like.
Justin Moriarty
Technical director for the theater and dance department, Justin Moriarty taught his first theater course at Bates, on stage management, during the fall semester.
On Friday, March 13, 2020, we got word that Bates would move to remote learning due to the pandemic.
That evening, around 100 of us gathered in Gannett Theater to show our support and watch a remarkable group of students stage a production that was far from complete.
The set was half-finished. Lights still needed to be hung and focused. There was so much still to do. No one was ready to go dark, and so we rallied together and did something unforgettable.
I remember being unmasked, laughing, crying, packed in a dusty black room with what now would sound like some nightmare super-spreader event. We loved absolutely every moment of it.
Our students, like so many of us, just wanted to feel connected. This is why we love live performance. The space we create together is sacred.
We returned in the fall to a new world — where 16 people would be our new max capacity in Gannett, where air fist bumps replaced the long-held embraces.
It was even more important to do what we do best. Treat each student as an individual, look for ways to help them succeed, and encourage them to step out of their comfort zones and fail brilliantly.
As the associate multifaith chaplain, Raymond Clothier works with students to plan activities that create space for conversation, art, reflection, and social action. He also meets with students, faculty, and staff for private conversation and spiritual care.
Realizing that big meetings would no longer be possible during a pandemic, I envisioned a new program called Thresholds that offers small groups of students ways to find belonging and community at transitional points in their college careers.
I had fun working with two of our Multifaith Fellows who dreamed up an online meeting based on the “36 Questions That Lead to Love” popularized by The New York Times.
I don’t know if any of the students fell in love, but they felt less alone. I also attached a pingpong net to the conference room table belonging to our colleagues at the Harward Center next door, but please don’t tell them.
This year, I’ve learned how surprisingly dif- ficult it is for first-year students to make friends. That is especially true with masks and COVID restrictions, but it contributes to the loneliness that many college students feel every year. Bates staff do a remarkable job of offering programming, but the way we live today — always looking down at our phones — keeps people from looking up to see others.
It’s not cheery to say that I have noticed more sadness and a general lack of joy. Maybe springtime and traditional events, like senior thesis binding, will help bring back some joy. If not, there is ping- pong in the Harward Center conference room.
Timothy Kivus
Timothy Kivus and his fellow Facility Services groundskeepers have helped Bates provide more outdoor opportunities for students by setting up furniture and clearing snow from Garcelon Field, a space that he — and Bates students — have dubbed “Garcelon Beach.”
Especially during the pandemic, Garcelon Field has become nearly a year-round space.
Students eat there, play sports there, and have fun at night there. I enjoy watching the students on Garcelon Field. I’m so glad that they can be out there.
When we plow Garcelon Field — it has a synthetic turf surface — we use three vehicles. I use a pickup truck with a Teflon blade to push the snow to the edge. A Bobcat skid-steer with a small front-loading bucket grabs the snow and pushes it through the gate. A large front loader piles the snow outside the gate.
During the last 10 years since the turf was installed, we’ve noticed that it’s a lot better to plow it every storm than to let it build up before plowing it. Luckily, this was a very mild winter.
We’ve also helped add outside seating for hanging out and eating. We’ve added under- canopy seating. I think students have really enjoyed these opportunities to be outdoors.
But some things have changed, such as the maintenance in the Library Arcade, where students often eat. With to-go dining in throwaway containers, there’s been more outside trash, and that’s now a really big factor on campus.
An assistant in instruction in the Department of Chemistry, Lorna Clark works closely with students, setting up laboratory experiments and training students on how to use various instruments.
Assistants in instruction spend a lot of time helping students learn techniques and methods in the laboratory. Being close by is a big part of the job, but physical distancing guidelines in 2020–21 meant I couldn’t be right beside them to help them with an instrument or an experiment.
To help with that, our faculty, Jen [Koviach-Côté] and Andrew [Kennedy], made videos of every single laboratory experiment we were doing. By watching the videos, students could see exactly what they were coming into the lab to do.
To physically distance, we went from 24 students down to 11 in the lab. Under ordinary circumstances, students feed off each other — they really work with each other to figure things out. When we went to 11, with everybody spaced out, that became very challenging.
It also got quiet in the lab, almost unsettling. I missed all the chatter. So we started playing music. It helps students just relax.
I’m usually smiling behind my mask. I think about how I believe in science, how I’m just so thankful that soon we’ll be out of this mess because of science.
Brenda Reynolds
Brenda Reynolds is head of access services for Ladd Library, managing the circulation of materials, bor- rowing from Colby and Bowdoin and within the state of Maine, helping students access library resources, including reserves, and ensuring physical distancing.
We took out half the chairs in the library because of COVID-19, to reduce density. Because of COVID, the library is more of a locked-down space than an open hangout space.
We have a copy of everything that a faculty member requires for a course. That used to be mostly physical copies, but during COVID it’s all scanned or digitized.
Students miss being at the library. At Bates, the library is a hangout place. We’ve taken out chairs, they have to wear their masks, and it’s just a very different vibe for them. This year, students come in mostly because they’re solely looking for something, or just to study. It’s like it might be at other libraries!
And we miss having the students hanging out. At Bates, the library is one of the places that a first-year student who hadn’t joined a club or activity yet, and hadn’t really gotten into coursework yet, could come to and meet other people.
A licensed clinical social worker, Tonya BaileyCurry works as a staff therapist for the college’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS). She recognizes that students are coping with two pandemics: COVID-19 and white supremacy.
It is emotionally dysregulating, tremendously so, to navigate life in the midst of two pandemics: one being COVID and the other, white supremacy, which reached heights impossible to ignore.
Working with BIPOC students, with whom I may racially identify, has provided an opportunity to allow them to hopefully feel a sense of comfort while addressing fears that I relate to, as well.
Lessons learned from the prior year: We have to continue to meet students where they are at. We will continue to remind them that it is OK not to be OK, and continue to hold space for them as they process what that means for their lives.
Also, I like to remind students that they — not I — are the experts in their lives. My role is to walk alongside them and hopefully provide them with some useful tools along their journey.
We at CAPS always try to elevate the importance of students using their voices, in all aspects of their lives, including their experience in therapy. Often students are spoken for and not with. Self-advocacy is essential, and we are listening.
Hoi Ning Ngai wears two Bates hats these days. She’s an associate director for employer engage- ment and business advising for the Bates Center for Purposeful Work and also an interim associate dean with the Office of Intercultural Education.
The pandemic has simply pushed us to be more ourselves than ever before — more engaged, more intentional, more thoughtful, more purposeful.
We pivoted from in-person to virtual platforms in everything we do. In some ways, it’s been a boon. Students have better access to us and our programs, and we’ve been able to “bring to campus” alumni and employers for panels and information sessions without the challenges of travel, time, and cost.
For individual student appointments, it’s Zoom or, weather permitting, the outdoors. I’ll always remember sitting with a student on the porch at Canham House, our headquarters, as freezing rain came down around us last fall.
Students have been doing their best, but they’re simply worn out and Zoomed out — all of us are. Their inboxes are overrun, their eyes are strained, all of their days blend together. There are no perfect solutions to any of these challenges, especially when we’re all experiencing them.
We’re now helping students craft their COVID resilience stories to share with interviewers for internships and jobs. Interviewers want to know how someone has dealt with unexpected situations — if the pandemic isn’t the best example, I’m not sure what is.
And that’s what we need to help students focus on: The world continues to turn, so they need to show how they’ve faced ongoing uncertainty with critical reflection and thoughtful action. And they have been resilient — we need to help them see and highlight that resilience.
Bobby Bosse
Bobby Bosse is supervisor of Mail & Package Services. He oversees the “Post” aspect of Post & Print and manages the facility’s student employees as they process every package that comes in and out of Bates.
In 2020–21, students ordered many more things online rather than shopping locally. We saw a lot more grocery and food orders coming from places like Amazon Pantry and Thrive.
Honestly, they’re ordering everything: beef jerky, cans of soups, ramen — just anything you can think of, they will order it all.
We’re also seeing an uptick in toiletries coming in, most notably razors, from Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s. Bates has teamed up with Central Maine Medical Center to make prescription deliveries so students who used to go to a local pharmacy can come pick up all their prescriptions here.
During the first 10 days of the winter semester, we processed and handed out 7,517 packages, a 40 percent increase over last year.
Ben Walker
A certified athletic trainer with Sports Medicine in the Department of Athletics, Ben Walker transitioned to a new role in 2020–21 as director of Student-Facing Contact Tracing.
Our goal is to accurately identify students who meet the CDC’s definition of a close contact in cases of COVID-19. By doing this, we help limit the potential spread and help keep our campus and local community safe.
Students have lots of stressors in their lives, especially in the last year. The added stress of finding out that you have tested positive or have been a close contact does not make things any easier.
The most important trait of a contact tracer is the ability to make a student feel comfortable. We are in the business of delivering unwelcomed news — sometimes before a student has even gotten out of bed. n
HELP!
More Help portraits bates.edu/help
Spring 2021 39 IN
The chance to get off campus to do some physical fieldwork on gorgeous coastal Maine farmland was like shaking off the shackles of the pandemic, if only for a morning
photography and text by phyllis graber jensen
Holly Ewing knelt down, knife in hand, at the edge of the pit that Sophia Miller ’21 had just dug at Pettengill Farm in Freeport. Ewing, the Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, deftly scraped loose material from the side so she and Miller, a student in her “Soils” course, could get a better look at the distinct layers of the soils of this saltwater farm, perched on an estuary of the Harraseeket River.
Before it became a historic preserve, Pettengill Farm was cultivated for centuries, so the soil was often plowed, mixing everything at the surface into one deeper layer, or technically speaking, a horizon. Below that tilled horizon was a layer of marine clay, known as the Presumpscot Formation, deposited when the area was covered by ocean after the glaciers receded.
“It’s pretty hard to dig through because it’s so dense,” Miller says.
But Miller, an environmental studies major from New York City who took two courses with Ewing in the fall, including “Soils,” was happy to dig in, especially when the pandemic canceled or curtailed so many hands-on and in-person opportunities, including sports and other extracurriculars.
There’s no sit-down dining in Commons; instead, students pick up their meals. Even the once basic freedom to roam about the Bates campus was limited,
Holly Ewing, the Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, center, offers her gathered students last-minute guidance.
as students were not allowed to visit residences other than their own. The result, say many students, was an unavoidable feeling of social isolation.
But there was also the art of the possible, with faculty like Ewing and others able to offer fieldworkintensive courses, albeit while following COVID-19 rules of distancing and masking — and lots of hand sanitizer.
For example, geologist Dyk Eusden ’80 mounted field trips for his introductory Maine geology course, using busses, ferries, rental vans, and sea kayaks to examine geology from the coast to the mountains. “We normally do a few more, but the fact that we were able to pull off four trips during a pandemic, with pretty challenging logistics, was amazing,” he said.
Likewise, Ewing knew she had to take her “Soils” class, an environmental studies course that digs into the science of dirt, outside whenever possible.
Beyond the science, Ewing’s trips to Pettengill Farm or Thorncrag Bird Sanctuary were a blessing for students, even if the excursions required three rental vans, and six people spread out across each 15-person van, another measure to ensure physical distancing.
Normally Ewing could have gotten the whole class there in one van, with maybe one other small vehicle. And she wouldn’t have needed to have every window in the vehicles open the whole way. For her students though, the inconveniences were worth it.
“I’ve just been really thankful to get off campus and get my hands dirty,” says environmental studies major Sam Gilman ’22 of Mendham, N.J.
In late winter, Ewing reflected on her fall experience, while looking ahead to fieldwork with students in her “Scientific Approaches to Environmental Issues” course this spring.
The core class is a requirement for any environmental studies major and at 45 students, was oversubscribed by six. She’d had to curtail some of the time typically allotted to being in the field because of strict rules around how much time students can spend together; typically there is additional time built into the schedule for lab work. And April in Maine isn’t exactly prime time to drive any distance with the windows open.
“This is all logistically complicated,” Ewing says. The compromise? Stick close to campus, including fieldwork you can actually walk to.
“Some of it is going to be designing a study here on campus,” Ewing says. “I’ll have them figure out how many trees there are on Mount David. They’ll go to Thorncrag and identify trees. We’ll go to Garcelon Bog and do some fieldwork to figure out how much carbon is sequestered in the bog. It will be a series of problems like that that are all very local.”
What’s essential, though, is seeing it all in person to place it within the context of land rather than pages in a book or a computer screen. As Ewing explained at Pettengill Farm, soil characteristics are shaped by a variety of factors, ranging from vegetation, slope, and drainage to the parent materials from which they form.
“The physical, chemical, and biological properties we discuss in the classroom can be connected to what we have seen and done in the field — something that can clarify and connect concepts in a way that no textbook can,” she says.
At Pettengill Farm, the work began. Shovels in hand, the students, some working alone, some in pairs, dug holes in the farmland, then set about exploring transitions in soil characteristics from hole to hole and comparing what they found in the field to how the soils are mapped in the area’s soil survey, which describes and classifies soil types and properties.
Students looked closely at soil structure, texture, and color among the different soil horizons that they unearthed.
“The changes that can occur within just a few feet of each other are incredible,” says Gilman. He
and his lab partner, Zoe Knauss ’23 of Buffalo, N.Y., dug about eight holes during the course of the morning. (Meanwhile, a student studying remotely, in New Hampshire, dug her own holes there.)
Ewing had prepared students for their fieldwork by teaching them about differences in soils and what causes those differences, from redox reactions to erosion. The classroom/fieldwork dynamic appealed to Gilman: “It’s really cool to then have the ability to get outside and actually see how what we’re learning in class applies to real landscapes.”
Knauss agrees, saying what prompted her to declare a major in environmental studies was “being able to relate what we learn about in the classroom to the actual environment we are living in,” she says.
As the students spread across the old farmland in Freeport with their analysis assignment in hand, Ewing, joined by Camille Parrish, a lecturer in environmental studies, moved from one group to another to check in and give feedback.
At the time of the fieldwork last September, Miller was working especially closely with Ewing because of the module system, a schedule change responding to the pandemic. Miller’s two courses for the first “module,” the soils course and her thesis work, were both led by Ewing. “She’s my only professor at the moment,” Miller says. “It’s been pretty incredible to get to know a professor on that level.”
Taking notes, Miller kneels on the grass beside her excavated hole, the soil from the hole piled neatly on a blue tarp, ready to be shoveled back into the hole at the end of the day’s work.
The Presumpscot Formation extends inland to Lewiston and beyond. The connectivity between the campus in Lewiston and this saltwater farm in Freeport was literally within her grasp. “Experiential learning has always been big for me,” she says. “That’s part of why I came to Bates.” And particularly welcome this fall, when she’s been spending so much time in her room.
“I’m socially more isolated than I have been in past years,” she says. “So the opportunity to be around peers in a socially distant way, to get off campus, and be learning from Holly is especially special.” n
Sophia Miller uses a Munsell color chart to evaluate the types of soils at Pettengill Farm.
OBJECTS OF THE HEART
The things that students — aka emerging adults — bring from home to campus help them navigate the throes of identity development while providing peace of mind during tough times
photography and interviews by phyllis graber jensen
“Anything that makes you feel more comfortable and brings you a sense of normalcy definitely helps,” says Maria Rocha, a first-year student from Porto, Portugal.
For Rocha, comfort comes in the form of Ping, the stuffed penguin she’s had since she was eight, who keeps watch over her Zoom classes and is always there when she returns to her dorm room.
For as long as humans have left their homes, it’s likely they’ve carried beloved items to help them through whatever ordeal might confront them. In young children, such comfort items are called “transitional objects” by attachment theorists. Linus’ blanket is the most famous example.
In attachment theory, explains Rebecca Fraser-Thill, a member of the psychology faculty at Bates, such items can “offer a concrete way of connecting to our (hopefully) safe and secure childhood, and to our caregivers in particular.”
College students — or “emerging adults,” as developmental psychologists call them — use transitional objects to help them navigate the throes of identity development in college, says Professor Emerita of Psychology Georgia Nigro.
The uncertainty brought on by the pandemic has certainly touched us all, including these seven emerging adults who told us about the beloved objects they brought from home, from juggling clubs to house plants, that play a greater role than ever in helping create peace of mind.
— h. jay burns
madeleine lee ’24
Hometown: Providence, R.I. Major: Undeclared What she brought: Parents’ wedding photograph Madeleine says: The story that my family tells is how, on my first day of preschool, I was so nervous that I went to school clutching this picture of my parents on their wedding day and one of my mom’s shirts.
There’s a picture of me that day, looking terrified, which I recreated on my first day of senior year in high school.
On my first day of classes here at Bates — my first day of classes ever in college — I went to Post & Print, and my parents had sent me the photo. It’s a sweet little reminder that they’re always with me, and I just love having it in my dorm room. It was the best kind of care package.
On your first day of school when you’re a child, you take the pictures by the door and have all these little traditions. So at Bates, on my first day of school without my parents, receiving the photo made me miss them — it was so special that they would remember to send it.
I’m sure I’ll have it with me on my last first day of classes in my senior year at Bates, too.
ben hoffinger ’22
Hometown: Arlington, Mass. Major: American studies What he brought: Juggling clubs Ben says: I always bring juggling clubs to campus, but this year they’ve been especially nice to have. Juggling relieves stress and helps to re-center myself, clear my head.
Maybe I’ve had a rough night with work, stuff like that, and I will just come outside at night — I have light-up ones too — and I’ll just juggle to relax and cool off. I mostly use the Keigwin Amphitheater because I live in Adams and it’s convenient.
I am co-president of the Circus Club. That’s been especially important to me because we can’t always be socializing as much as we did in the past.
It’s nice to have a hobby that I can work on in my free time that also, even outdoors, sparks social interaction because when people see you juggling they will come up to you — not right up to you — but to say, hey, like that’s kind of cool.
jasper beardslee ’22
Hometown: Miami Major: Environmental studies What he brought: Conch Jasper says: This is a conch shell, and I brought it because Maine’s really different from Florida. Growing up in Miami meant that I was pretty connected to the ocean — and being near it at all times — through diving, surfing, and swimming.
I found this conch off Elliott Key, which is right next to Miami. I was doing some free diving, and it was lying on the bottom, just empty and perfect-looking so I picked it up and brought it home and decided to bring it to college with me. I’ve had it all three years at Bates. I put it right by my window so the light hits it in the morning.
Even though it’s been really tough to not be with my family during these trying times, especially last winter, as it grew colder and the sun got low in the sky, I appreciated these trinkets more and more.
maria rocha ’24
Hometown: Porto, Portugal Major: Undeclared What she brought: Plush penguin Maria says: His name is Ping, which is short for pinguim, which means penguin in Portuguese.
My older sister, Beatriz, gave him to me when I was about eight, so I’ve had him for just over 10 years. I take him everywhere with me. I went to boarding school in India, also very far away from home, so I took him with me. It helped make my room feel homier, because the whole environment was foreign to me. At least I had this one constant thing.
And it’s similar at Bates. I always have him in my room; he’s just there.
I think because of the pandemic this year, we end up spending more time in our rooms. I have an online class when, even if I don’t notice him there, I feel that subconsciously seeing him there makes me feel a little bit better.
Hometown: Stockholm, Sweden Major: Environmental studies What she brought: Wall calendar with pictures of her cousins Linnéa says: Being really far away from home is tough, espe- cially not seeing my two baby cousins. They’re really special to me, like the sisters I never had. But I only see them maybe twice a year.
This photo is for October, and they are dressed for Hal- loween. Seeing them every day just puts a smile on my face. Aléa, on the left, is nine (oh my gosh, she’s so old!). On the right is Yara, seven. I literally remember them as if they were babies. I remember holding Aléa when I was 11. And she was taking her first steps when she was visiting me. They’re my mother’s sister’s daughters. They were born in Sweden, and their father is from Uruguay.
I get a calendar like this every birthday from my cousins and my aunt. It’s a tradition. At first I brought it with me because I thought, “Oh, it’s so cute. It just kind of keeps some Swedishness in my dorm.”
Ever since I’ve been here it’s become more and more comforting to me, more than I realized it was going to be from the start. When times get hard, just the daily reminder of just crossing off each day, especially now, is making me feel I’m taking day by day more than I did earlier in the year.
Marking things that are going to be fun, to look forward to, Dunkin’ Donuts or a hike I’m taking, and also schoolwork. It’s right by my door, so every time I leave for class, I get to see those things — and my cousins.
helen carr ’21
Hometown: Tarrytown, N.Y. Major: Politics and French and francophone studies What she brought: Three mugs Helen says: Each of these mugs has a story that’s important to me: someone who gave the mug to me, or a funny joke.
But what I really love about them is that even on my worst day — or my best day — I can always make a cup of warm tea and it’ll always make me feel better. It will make me feel like I’m back home with my mom sitting on the couch drinking tea together.
The pottery mug was made by a Bates studio art major who is now a graduate, Sarah Daehler ’19.
The Kellogg Hansen mug was given to me and all the other Purposeful Work interns from Bates at the law firm in D.C.
And lastly, the mug with the bagpipes was a gift from my sister that she got when she was living in Scotland. It says, “Ceci n’est pas une bagpipe” — “This is not a bagpipe” — a reference to the painting This is Not a Pipe by René Magritte, who wanted to kind of demonstrate that a picture of something is not the thing itself, even though we understand it to be the thing itself. But she got it in Scotland, so it’s a bagpipe.
The benefit of Zoom classes is that I can always take tea breaks in the middle of class. So I’ll see how my day’s going and pick out which mug I want to use that day and make myself a cup of tea in the middle of class.
adam banks ’21
Hometown: Jamaica Plain, Mass. Major: Environmental studies What he brought: Plants Adam says: Plants really help me be mindful of the space I’m inhabiting. You’re co-existing with living things and you have to watch them and take care of them. It keeps a nice daily rhythm for me.
This spider plant in particular might be from a larger one that I have. That larger one came from a plant that my mom had, and she gave me one of the babies.
Basically, whenever I see any of that line, it makes me think of her. It’s a nice little connection to home in that way. This year, they have stronger connections, especially due to the fact that we haven’t been able to go home at all. n
COURTESY OF THE WALKER FAMILY
Tiauna Walker ’21 was born when her father, Ed Walker ’02, was a first-year student just finding his place on the Bates campus. “How far we’ve come,” says the proud dad
by mary pols
One of the earliest memories Tiauna Walker ’21 has is of walking into her father’s dorm room at Bates. “It was a very small room,” she says, specifically a single, with a twin bed, extra long. And there was one of the now-laughably large computers of the era: “This like, huge box computer.”
Listening to his daughter describe the scene, Ed Walker ’02 squints against the late-winter sun in front of Hathorn, trying to summon up his own mental snapshot. “It had to have been Hedge,” he concludes. That’s where he lived senior year, when Tiauna would have been 3 and visiting the campus with her mother.
There may be another Batesie who’s had the distinction of having watched her dad play basketball in Alumni Gym, or who’s gummed French fries at the Den with baby teeth while her dad was in class. Though if not unique, Tiauna Walker’s Bates roots are undeniably rare and unusual; she was welcomed into the Bobcat family on the very day she was born.
Her middle name is Divine. “Divine intervention,” Ed Walker says. “Which is what she was.” The baby and Bates changed his life at roughly the same time. Just starting his second semester at Bates when she was born, he chose her middle name as a reminder to himself.
Her first name was plucked from the lyrics of the Notorious B.I.G. song “My Downfall,” in which the rapper sang of his own daughter: “Apologies in order, to T’Yanna my daughter / If it was up to me you’d be with me.”
Walker picked the name Tiauna as a sign of his commitment to being present, because at 19, the last thing Ed Walker wanted to be was an absentee father.
He had arrived at Bates in late summer 1998, a bright prospect from Roxbury, Mass., with not much more than the clothes on his back. He was 19, smart, charismatic, a gifted musician, and a leader on and off the basketball court. But he had been through a tumultuous childhood.
Joe Reilly, then the new head basketball coach at Bates and only 29 himself, had recruited Ed Walker from Charlestown High in Boston, where Walker played for Jack O’Brien, a Massachusetts coaching legend who had a reputation for guiding his players toward college opportunities. As Reilly got to know his recruit, he understood that Walker was food- and housing-insecure. The youngest of seven, Walker was bouncing from house to house, often sleeping at his high school teammates’ houses. “He called it ‘house hopping,’” Reilly says.
“I spent a lot of time looking for housing,” Walker agrees. The Charlestown team was his sole source of structure and a true fellowship, albeit one rooted in shared struggle. “Many of my friends were
taking care of their younger siblings,” Walker says. “We had to work together to find dinner together.”
Charlestown High was close enough for an easy day trip and Reilly formed a bond with Walker over at least a dozen recruiting trips. But the regular phone calls from the coach were particularly vital for Walker. “He asked about life and my circumstances and he never once mentioned basketball,” Walker remembers. “And I saw value in that.”
One day, as Walker recalls, Reilly said this to his young recruit: “If you come to Bates, you have my word. I’m going to see that you cross that stage, whether you play basketball or not.”
He remembers being very emotional during his interview with the Office of Admission in December 1997. Katie Moran Madden ’93, then an associate dean, asked him a question he didn’t understand, about AP classes. “I didn’t even know what an AP class was,” he says. So he bluffed, and then, as he realized his misstep, broke down in tears. “I was really young and raw.” Madden, who now works in admission at Dartmouth College, doesn’t remember tears, but she does remember how genuine Walker was. “And also vulnerable.”
Still, the conversation convinced Madden that Walker was ready for the challenge that Bates would provide. “I remember just being blown away after meeting him,” Madden says.
Joe Reilly was relieved. He had been truly worried about what would happen to Ed Walker after high school. The players he coached in the NESCAC usually had options. Family to fall back on. Not Walker. “Bates was his only safety net,” he says.
But by late spring of Walker’s senior year at Charlestown in 1998, there was another layer of complexity. His high school girlfriend, Starkia Benbow, was pregnant. For some this might have meant staying in Massachusetts, even giving up the dream of college. But for Walker, the promise of Bates took on a whole new meaning. “It was in that moment that I knew: Now I have to make something of myself. I have to think about someone other than myself.”
“His vision was, if he was going to be the best provider and the best dad he could be for Tiauna, he had to get that Bates degree,” Reilly says.
Walker asked for a single room at Bates, so that mother and his soon-to-be-born child could visit, not a request first-year students could count on. “Bates was extremely supportive,” he says.
But initially, he didn’t exactly fit in. “Everything about me was different,” Walker remembers. “My attitude. My style of dress. The language I spoke, the slang that I spoke. It was very clear. I understood that right away.”
And like many other Black students who’ve arrived at Bates, Walker quickly saw white supremacy in action. On his first day, moving into Hedge Hall, another student assumed he wasn’t a Bates student and confronted him. “Essentially asking, what was I doing there? Like, ‘Why are you here?’” Walker told the other student, “I’m here to be a student.”
That day Joe Reilly dropped by Hedge and found Walker still fuming about the incident. “He was wearing a Carolina Panthers NFL authentic jersey,” Reilly remembers. The room was sparse. “Ed came with very little.” He talked his new player down, but he never forgot that window of insight he got into the stark reality of being Ed Walker. “There were a lot of things you forget over 23 years,” Reilly says. “That’s not one of them.”
Reilly, now the head basketball coach at Wesleyan University, checked in with Walker before sharing that story. It felt too private not to. “I don’t want it to seem like Bates was not a welcoming place for Ed because I think it really was. But there were some challenges for Ed and students like Ed. I’m really proud that, in my 11 years there, great progress was made. Bates was a great place when Ed got there. It really was. And it was just a better place when Ed left.”
Teammate Billy Hart ’02 had never heard that story. He shakes his head at the telling, saying he and Walker talked about a lot of things, but not about such big-picture issues as being Black at Bates. “I feel bad that I probably never even asked the most simple questions,” Hart says. “Which is the privilege I had and he didn’t have.”
Hart says Walker brought a unique kind of maturity to Bates. “If anything, he thrives and is able to focus and do better in uncomfortable situations. He had a mental toughness that I didn’t have.” The whole team understood that Walker was preparing for fatherhood at the same time he was adjusting to academia. And that was taking a lot of energy too.
Walker was in Charles Nero’s class that first semester, trying to keep up while processing the bigger life lesson Nero presented: an openly gay Black professor with dreadlocks. “He delivered a sense of comfort in his skin that was new to me,” Walker says. It was a blessing, particularly at that time, “because I was so focused on learning what it meant to be a young Black man in this space.”
The basketball court was an easy space for him though, and one where he quickly became a leader. The Friday night that Tiauna Walker was being born, Feb. 12, 1999, her dad poured in 17 points in a loss to Williams.
“We’re getting ready to play,” Reilly recalls. “And Ed comes in and goes, ‘Coach, it’s happening tonight.’ And I’m like ‘Ed, we play in an hour.’” Reilly offered to have his wife, Isabel, drive Walker, who didn’t have a license, immediately to Boston. Or they could all leave after the game. Walker chose the latter, wanting to play.
“You can tell I was a young boy back then,” Walker says. “Because you know, I’m a grown man now, and if you said to me, ‘Your child might come within the week,’ I’m canceling my entire calendar.” (Walker is now married and has four children.)
Walker played in Bates basketball games on the night of, and the day after, Tiauna’s birth. “Now, if you said to me, ‘Your child might come within the week,’ I’m canceling my entire calendar.”
In concept and execution, Walker’s senior thesis in hip hop was “daring and brilliant,” said his adviser, Charles Nero.
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Right after the game, Reilly skipped the postgame speech, Walker skipped the shower, and they both jumped in Reilly’s Honda CR-V, with Isabel, and headed to Boston, arriving about an hour after Tiauna’s birth. “She looked like a little version of me,” Walker recalls.
The Reillys headed back to Lewiston, arranging for Joe’s brother Luke to pick Walker up on a corner near the hospital the next afternoon and drive him back to campus for Bates’ Saturday afternoon game vs. Middlebury.
In his first game as a father, Walker scored a game-high 23 points as Bates defeated Middlebury for the Bobcats’ first conference win of the year. The week his daughter was born, Walker earned NESCAC Rookie of the Week honors.
After the Middlebury game, longtime dean James Reese, heading to Connecticut, offered to drop Walker off in Boston. Himself a former basketball captain at Middlebury, Reese had watched Walker with keen interest, noting the physicality of Walker’s play — standard at Charlestown High, but not typical of NESCAC play.
“Was he smart enough to know how to pull it back?” Reese asks, rhetorically. “Well, yes. He’s the kind of guy who could get two fouls or three fouls in the first half and then never foul again for the rest of the game.” Reese, who was just getting to know Walker, wanted to be present if Walker had things he wanted to talk about. Like a test he was worried about. Or money.
But the drive to Boston was uneventful — until they arrived and Reese said farewell. Walker didn’t get out of the car. Instead, he turned to Reese and said, “You have to come inside. You have to see her.’” Reese was touched, but not sure it was his place. He demurred. Walker insisted. When Reese understood Walker meant it — “Every word of his is intentional” — he parked the car and went up, hoping Walker’s girlfriend didn’t mind meeting another person from Bates. “It was fantastic,” he said.
Over the next three and a half years, Walker created a routine, however unusual the routine was for a Bates student.
Whenever he could, he got on a Greyhound for Boston, and when Starkia could bring the baby up to Bates for a weekend, she would. In between visits, Walker juggled a lot of campus jobs: “Everywhere from the weight room to the gym.” He kept on scoring for the basketball team, amassing 1,409 career points by the end of his senior year, which now ranks him seventh for scoring in Bates men’s basketball history.
He was a junior advisor. He worked in Admission. He also had a side hustle, performing as a hip hop artist, sometimes as Versatyle — opening for Mos Def in spring 2003 at Bowdoin’s Jack Magee pub — and sometimes as Lyrikal, making a name for himself at Bates.
He “tore it up” at the Ben Mays Center in January 2001, according to The Bates Student, and again that March as Lyrikal, “who has kept heads nodding with his smooth rhymes at shows and parties throughout the year.”
When it came time to present his senior thesis in African American studies (now Africana), Walker asked his thesis adviser, Charles Nero, if he could perform it, through music and photography. The concept and execution were “daring and brilliant,” says Nero, the Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies.
Schaeffer Theatre was the venue. “It was overflowing,” recalls Carmita McCoy, then associate dean of admission and director of multicultural recruitment. She remembers sitting in the 10th row, with her son, Nicholas. “Ed was one of his heroes,” she says. “He’s that kind of a guy. He could relate to kids. He could relate to adults.”
Walker could have pursued music as a career. As The Bates Student put it then, go see Ed Walker so “you can say you knew him before he got big.”
But that wasn’t the path Ed Walker chose. After graduation, he worked for nearly four years in admission at Bates, focusing on multicultural recruitment. He made it his business to return to Charlestown High. “Ed is loyal beyond loyal and leads with his generous heart and spirit,” says Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Leigh Weisenburger, who met Walker during her first year at Bates. “He immediately took me under his wing.”
After three years, Walker began looking for work closer to his daughter and took a position at Wheaton College. He went on to get a master’s in education from Cambridge College in Boston and founded Independent Consultants of Education, with the aim to help students like the one he’d been.
Now based in Milbury, Mass., he works as a guidance and school counselor at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. “Looking back, I’ve always taken jobs to do for young people what I wish someone was able to do for me when I was their age,” he says. That includes sending many young people toward Bates.
He’s been a motivational speaker (when Billy Hart brought him in to speak to a group of middle schoolers at the school where Hart was working, the students were rapt and then rushed Walker at the end. “It was just, like, flocking,” Hart says). He still makes music, but faith-based rather than rap. Last year he started a clothing company, R3Raiment, athletic leisurewear that speaks to his spirituality, the three Rs standing for Repent, Reborn and Redeem. Tiauna is one of his models for the clothing line. For the record, he did not push his first-born, who attended Lincoln-Sudbury High School, into applying to Bates. “Surprisingly, no,” Tiauna Walker says, smiling. “He definitely heavily reps Bates,” she concedes. But they did look at other schools and in the end, Bates was her top choice. “It was all me,” she says.
On campus, she has encountered many who were floored that the baby they knew was now on her own Bates journey, and seemingly in the blink of an eye.
Tiauna (second from right) has taken courses from professors Charles Nero (left) and Baltasar Fra-Molinaro (right), who also taught Ed (second from left, with wife Bonnie). They’re seen during a campus meetup in her first year.
Like Charles Nero and his husband, Professor of Hispanic Studies Baltasar Fra-Molinero, who met her and the whole Walker family outside Commons during her first year. “We’re so old now,” Nero quips.
Her major is psychology, with a minor in Africana, so she’s taken a couple of courses from her father’s former mentor. She’s also studied Spanish with Fra-Molinero, who admires her globalist perspective. She has campus jobs as an Admission Fellow and in Post & Print.
There are physical similarities between father and daughter: Height, cheeks, smiles. But there was a generational difference Nero observed. Ed arrived with drive but less direction; he was a sponge, soaking up the experience. His daughter arrived “with a very clear idea about her direction.” Junior year, she studied in Ghana. And as she prepares to leave Bates, she says she’s thinking about going into education. “I want to be a principal or a head of school, most likely middle or high school.”
Her favorite class was a developmental psychology course with Rebecca Fraser-Thill, which entailed an immersive community engagement component. Tiauna signed up for visits to D’Youville Pavilion, the elder-care center adjacent to the Bates campus. That’s often a tough assignment to get students interested in, Fraser-Thill says, but “Tiauna was one of the people who was like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m all in.’” “I love infants and elderly people,” Tiauna says. “I like that bluntness that they have.”
In the memory unit, Walker grew close to Joan, a sassy woman who wore earrings and lipstick and was always happy to see Tiauna and tell her stories about her life. For a student, sitting and just listening is a crucial part of the lesson, Fraser-Thill says. “It might sound like someone just rehashing their life, but that’s actually a huge psychosocial journey that a resident is going through.” In those moments, Tiauna was empathetic and thoughtful, Fraser-Thill adds. “She was the only student to reach out and say, ‘I want to write to my resident over the summer.’”
When James Reese looks at Tiauna, he sees the quiet strength of her father. A similar posture and approach to life. “They both reflect an openness,” Reese says.
Tiauna Walker is leaving Bates with a host of connections to last a lifetime and stretching around the globe. This makes Ed Walker very happy. “Hanging out with her and her friends is like the United Nations. It’s so diverse. Right? She has friends from all walks of life.”
Soon, she will enter a time where it is fine, even natural, for her father to be hands off. (Yes, he proofread her thesis.) To let her fly as he did. “I’m just grateful for what we have and how far we’ve come,” Ed says.
A few years ago, in fall 2017, Tiauna arrived at Bates as a first-year student. As he’s done for so many students, James Reese was there to welcome her.
Reese didn’t want to presume by telling her about meeting her in 1999, when she was a day old, but he wanted her to understand what he remembers: how her father felt so strongly that she was a person who had to be met. “Because that’s really a statement about Ed Walker.” n
Below, Tiauna and Ed pose on Alumni Walk last winter. Right, while studying abroad in Ghana in early 2020, Tiauna does the famous canopy walk in Kakum National Park.