Winter Scene 2013 by Colgate University

scene Winter 2013

News and views for the Colgate community

Milk Money Local Legacies Responsible Adults Only

scene

Winter 2013

26 Milk Money

What’s in your fridge? Kirk Kardashian ’00 has the scoop on the state of the American dairy industry.

32 Local Legacies

From archaeological digs at ancient sites to native experts who come to campus, we treasure Colgate’s location in the land of the Iroquois.

38 Responsible Adults Only

The U.S. Senate: Would the founders approve? Should you? Recently retired insider Alan Frumin ’68 shares his take.

Message from President Jeffrey Herbst

Letters

Work & Play

Tableau: “Falling overboard”

Winter Carnival

Life of the Mind

Arts & Culture

Go ’gate

New, Noted & Quoted

The Big Picture

Stay Connected 2013 Alumni Council election

Class News 78 Marriages & Unions 78 Births & Adoptions 78 In Memoriam

Salmagundi: Puzzle, “13 Words or less” caption contest winner, Rewind

DEPARTMENTS

On the cover: Michelle Cohen ’15, from Atlanta, Ga., experiences her first real snowstorm. Photo by Andrew Daddio Left: Alex Doms ’14 (foreground) and Elizabeth Shore ’14 (top right) collect eggs from a female sea urchin into a beaker of sea water during Developmental Biology lab with Professor Jason Meyers (bottom right), after which they will fertilize them with sea urchin sperm. The fertilized eggs are being used in a screen of novel drugs from the National Institutes of Health to find out what teratogenic properties they might have; in other words, how they may disrupt normal development. Photo by Tommy Brown ’79 News and views for the Colgate community

scene team

Contributors

Volume XLII Number 2 The Scene is published by Colgate University four times a year — in autumn, winter, spring, and summer. The Scene is circulated without charge to alumni, parents, friends, and students.

For Kirk Kardashian ’00 (“Milk Money,” pg. 26), his background in peace studies and environmental law has been an undercurrent in his writing, much of which deals with issues of social justice and sustainability. He’s an avid road and mountain biker, Nordic and downhill skier, and fly fisherman, and those pursuits have worked their way into his writing, as well.

Peter Horjus (“Milk Money,” pg. 26) communicates with illustrations that range from simplified and conceptual to complex and narrative. Lately, he’s been simplifying his life, so his work has become more simplified as well. With clients including Newsweek, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Saks Fifth Avenue, and CocaCola, he has received awards from American Illustration, AIGA: Graphic Design USA, and Print’s Regional Design Annuals.

Once named one of Washington’s most powerful — yet least famous — people by the New Republic, this past November Alan Frumin ’68 (“Responsible Adults Only,” pg. 38) experienced the first election night in 36 years that did not affect his career. Before retiring in February 2012 as the U.S. Senate’s chief parliamentarian, he refereed its procedural wrangling for decades. His daughter, Allison Frumin Reschovsky, graduated from Colgate in 2007.

Illustrator David Vogin (“Responsible Adults Only,” pg. 38) is also a designer/art director in the areas of corporate collateral, packaging, and publication design. With more than 25 awards to his name, his illustrations have been recognized by the Society of Illustrators (Silver Medal), American Illustration, and Communication Arts, and his work has been featured in Computer Arts. “Giving back” to up-and-coming talents is a high priority in his life.

scene online

Listen

Sustainability Podcasts: http://tinyurl.com/ bpvjl2m Hear about Colgate’s green efforts, including the carbon offset program and Patagonia Sur project.

Watch

Dance at Colgate: http://youtu.be/TYYEJM-uwNU Danielle Iwata ’15 directed this wonderful video that showcases the passion and dedication of student dancers.

Go paperless

Online Scene subscription: scene@colgate.edu To stop receiving the printed Scene, e-mail us your name, class year, address, and e-mail address, and put Online Mailing List in the subject. We’ll send you an e-mail when we post new online editions (colgate. edu/scene).

scene: Winter 2013

Vice President for Communications Debra Townsend Managing Editor Rebecca Costello Associate Editor Aleta Mayne Director of Publications Gerald Gall Coordinator of Photographic Services Andrew Daddio Production Assistant Kathy Bridge

Contributors: Barbara Brooks, Director of Marketing and Public Relations; Daniel DeVries, Admission Marketing Manager; Matt Faulkner, Assistant Director of Athletic Communications; Matt Hames, Manager of Media Communications; David Herringshaw, Online Community Manager; Jason Kammerdiener ’10, Web Content Specialist; Karen Luciani, Art Director; Katherine Mutz, Graphic Designer; Timothy O’Keeffe, Director of Web Content; Mark Walden, Senior Advancement Writer Contact: scene@colgate.edu 315-228-7417 www.colgateconnect.org/scene Printed and mailed from Lane Press in South Burlington, Vt.

Look

Feedback form: http://tinyurl.com/d6tca9k Please take a moment and look at the recently redesigned Colgate website (www.colgate.edu), particularly the alumni pages, and share your comments and suggestions.

Talk

Get social: facebook.com/colgateuniversity Join the discussion about all things Colgate on the university’s Facebook page. Feel free to share your ’gate-related photos, too!

If you’re moving... Please clip the address label and send with your new address to: Alumni Records Clerk, Colgate University, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346-1398. Opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by the university, the publishers, or the editors. Notice of Non-Discrimination: Colgate University does not discriminate in its programs and activities because of race, color, sex, pregnancy, religion, creed, national origin (including ancestry), citizenship status, physical or mental disability, age, marital status, sexual orientation, veteran or military status (including special disabled veteran, Vietnam-era veteran, or recently separated veteran), predisposing genetic characteristics, domestic violence victim status, or any other protected category under applicable local, state, or federal law. The following person has been designated to handle inquiries regarding the university’s non-discrimination policies: Marilyn Rugg, Associate Provost for Equity and Diversity, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346; 315-228-7288.

Message from President Jeffrey Herbst

Anyone following national news

coverage of higher

education knows that putting classes online for “students” around the world has created a media frenzy, including a recent New York Times story headlined “College of Future Could Be Come One, Come All.” This extensive coverage exemplifies a troubling tendency to extrapolate a possible future from a few experiments: that impersonal broadcasting of courses to massive numbers will become the way of the educational world. important, measures for success with this educational model are vague, if defined at all; for instance, in one course heralded in the Times, out of 40,000 enrolled, only 1,283 completed the final exam. The fact is that only a small percentage of students who sign up for MOOCs ever finish them. As well, offering MOOCs to a global student population would be a significant diversion from current teaching efforts on campus — an increase in faculty workload few colleges could afford. And, although MOOCs establish a “virtual community,” they lack the personal contact made possible by physical proximity. I don’t mean to say that MOOCs do not have their place; indeed, their extraordinary enrollments demonstrate a worldwide thirst for learning that can only be admired. But even the schools hosting MOOCs have been very clear that they are not a replacement for what they offer on campus. When I talk with alumni, they are frequently curious about what is happening at Colgate in this realm. On campus, we are following these trends closely to find the right mix for us. Our approach is to experiment with technology initiatives that allow us to double down on our core values and educational philosophy: close personal relationships between professors and students in a residential community — a true distinction — that an online education can never replace. With that philosophy in mind, a growing number of our professors are utilizing and discussing technology in increasingly creative and intriguing ways. In fact, I will be co-teaching a new course this spring semester with computer science professor Vijay Ramachandran that will touch upon this very issue. The course, called Technology and Disruption, will focus on the effects of technological developments (e.g., social media, digital content, and “big data”) on our society and the structure of the economy. We will examine who benefits — and suffers — from disruption, the prospects for “brick-and-mortar” institutions (including universities), and possible future patterns of disruption. Our students will then spend the summer in Palo Alto, Calif., working in paid internships with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and attending lectures on related topics. We are also experimenting with online education. The highly successful Living Writers Online course offered to parents and alumni last fall (see pg. 14) revealed a hunger among the greater Colgate community to be engaged in the exciting intellectual exchanges that occur on campus. Lessons learned from that venture are informing future uses of technology. We are now discussing ways to significantly expand the online audience for Living Writers and other courses as well as extracurricular programs like the Thought Into Action entrepreneurial institute. As we navigate the extremely exciting landscape created by technological advances, we will remain anchored to an educational model stressing the close interaction between professor and student that, far from being outdated, will allow us to continue as a great and distinctive school. Lorenzo Ciniglio

While “distance education” in various formats has been around for decades, the focus today is on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), taught by college professors and currently being offered for free by a growing number of universities, for which tens of thousands have signed up. This new paradigm has suggested to some that the fundamental way that colleges “deliver” education could, or should, change. While this is only day one of truly massive online education, and improvements will certainly happen as it evolves, the basic model for MOOCs has shortcomings that cannot be ignored. For one, a financial model to host courses currently presented for free does not exist; institutions will need to find a way to fund courses that are currently being presented for free. More

News and views for the Colgate community

Autumn 2012

News and views for the Colgate community

Essential archaeological context

Celebrating the $480 million Passion for the Climb campaign

The Scene welcomes letters. We reserve the right to decide whether a letter is acceptable for publication and to edit for accuracy, clarity, and length. Letters deemed potentially libelous or that malign a person or group will not be published. Letters should not exceed 250 words. You can reach us by mail, or e-mail sceneletters @colgate.edu. Please include your full name, class year if applicable, address, phone number, and/or e-mail address. If we receive many letters on a given topic, we will print a representative sample of the opinions expressed. On occasion, we may run additional letters online.

Congratulations on the continuing high-quality content and production of the Colgate Scene. There are many items of interest to me in each issue. The summer 2012 issue article “Silent Stones” by Professor Elizabeth Marlowe was of special interest given my professional background as an archaeologist. She did a good job of explaining the essential requirement of “archaeological context” for determining the authenticity of ancient art and artifacts. I send special congratulations to her (and the Scene editors) on her clear presentation for a general audience. Frank McManamon ’73 Executive director, research professor, Center for Digital Antiquity Arizona State University School of Human Evolution and Social Change

Information sought: Sculptura Nudged by feedback from Peter Piven in the most recent Class of 1960 notes, I realized I needed to do more outreach on my project to document the history of Sculptura, Professor Alfred Krakusin’s art reproduction venture in the 1960s. Here’s the backstory. Prompted by an article by Professor Mary Ann Calo (“Modernism at the Fringes: Herbert Mayer ’29 and the World House Galleries,” spring 2011 Colgate Scene), I shared what I knew, having worked for Professor Krakusin at Sculptura. As a student in his class dealing with the apprenticeship system of the time, I saw the value of manufacturing operations training that would serve me well in the future

scene: Winter 2013

. . . a sort of a “How do they do that?” lesson that I later applied in my own factories. (Colgate’s current alumnistudent entrepreneurial initiatives, by the way, point to the wonderful continuity of this special real-world approach to student development. Bravo, Colgate!) I saw an opportunity to add even more substance to the story after Ashlee Eve ’14 interviewed me for her research into possible connections between Sculptura and ancient Egyptian reliefs in the Picker Art Gallery’s holdings (see Professor Elizabeth Marlowe’s article, “Silent Stones,” summer 2012 Scene). Professors Calo and Marlowe and their exceptional student teammates are discovering a wealth of scientific, artistic, geopolitical, and historical background on the Mayer originals. I hope to add Sculptura insights to the mix. Mayer and Krakusin saw Sculptura as an opportunity to bring quality art reproductions affordably “to the masses” — so where and how did they market them? Who bought these pieces? The quality of the manufactured pieces is solid, so I would expect that many of them will have survived the past 50 years and will be here decades from now. My own pieces, shown in Marlowe’s class blog (colgate.edu/lateantiqueegypt), are in fine shape, and priceless to me. Much more interesting business model information may be in the hands and minds of others. To expand research on the project, I created my own blog (http://sculpturabasrelief.blogspot.com) in order to reach out to the community at large and share what I learn with Professor Calo and others. What do you know of or remember about Sculptura and World House Galleries? Thank you in advance for whatever you can contribute. Jack Blanchard ’60 Gate60@prodigy.net

Kudos Some thoughts on the autumn 2012 Scene. Great production. The format is totally 21st century! Very upbeat, newsy! I also enjoyed the Rewind article by our ’45 scribe, Bob Husselrath (I am writing on Pearl Harbor Day). He deserves a letter for his longtime service as class editor. Hal Heim ’45 Key Largo, Fla.

Randy Duchaine

scene

Letters

Reconnecting with the land Nice to see something green emerging from the scorched earth of agribusiness: Gotham Greens, founded by Viraj Puri ’03 in Brooklyn (“Reinventing the farm,” pg. 71, autumn 2012). Also good to see the article on “Fern nerd” Eddie Watkins (pg. 34, same issue)! Localized farming is a ray of hope in a deteriorating global landscape. Transition Towns is another. We need to reconnect with the land. Dick Devens GP’15 Center Sandwich, N.H.

Answer to the 13th Prayer Why do the numinous origins of Colgate’s “13” always escape definition (Passion for the Climb, pg. 12, autumn 2012)? Did 13 elusive men pool 13 equivocal dollars with 13 esoteric vespers to spawn what Colgate is today? How can self-examination continue to elude an institution with stellar scholarship such as this?

In 1819, the Freemasonry behind the great seal of their country was not unknown to the denizens of the original 13 United States. Crudely redundant, it included an olive branch with 13 leaves and 13 berries, 13 arrows, 13 stars, and 13 stripes, inscribed with “New World Order/ Novus Ordo Seclorum . . . One, Forged from Many/ E Pluribus Unum (13 letters) . . . Our Undertaking is Favored (by an encapsulated Cyclops, the one-eyed pagan deity of light ensconced atop a 13-pedestalled pyramid) . . . /Annuit Coeptis” (again, 13 letters). Given this ideological zeitgeist, why not 13 letters in Colgate’s “Deo ac Veritati” as well? Like the ubiquitous number “13,” Colgate’s torchlight ritual is another Masonic symbol open to deeper psychological interpretation beyond its prima facie understanding. It is a nocturnal rite wherein we gather to commune in darkness. We swarm en masse, without individual distinction between faculty, alumnus, or student. Against our passion for the climb, we descend from the Chapel with torches of primeval light, whose extraordinarily evanescent flame, yes, we carry . . . but merely to extinguish in the dark, wet womb of Taylor Lake. And, by this inexplicable stroke of design and undeniable fact, the climax becomes the loss of light, the inexorable triumph of darkness. At my 30th reunion, a kilted bagpiper of the Scottish Rite stood playing as our torches sizzled on the lakeshore. He said he was always there as the light went out. He wailed long into the night, blowing shrill strains of tribute to a shadow resembling the “Light Bringer” (Lucifer) himself. In the way that a cup can be both half empty and half full, this is simply another interpretation. Ambiguity, intentional or not, garners our fascination and unthinking participation. We descend the hill and bring our light unto the world . . . or, do we enact something

else? The bagpiper’s words gave me pause for thought. Colgate’s Baptist roots have instilled commitment to learning and community. Its unwritten Masonic traditions have bequeathed irrational attachment to numerology and a frenetic fixation upon auguries of the numinous figure “13.” Herein lies the enigma of its founding, which lets us answer the mystery of that unrecorded “13th prayer.” Gary Moler ’73 Shiga, Japan

Help with Salmagundi collection The Colgate University Libraries are seeking copies of the Salmagundi (the student yearbook) to complete its holdings in the main collection and in the University Archives. If you possess any of the following volumes and would be willing to donate them, please contact me: 1998, 2002, 2003, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011. We are also seeking second cop-

ies of most yearbooks from 1884 to the present. The yearbooks are important resources for documenting Colgate’s history. Preserving them in the archives and making a second copy easily available in the main circulating collection will help us to support research on, and general interest in, Colgate. In addition, we are investigating possibly digitizing them, as we have done for the Colgate University Student Newspapers collection, and we need to have in hand each volume to do so. Thank you in advance for your help with this important project. Sarah Keen Head of Special Collections and University Archivist skeen@colgate.edu

What they’re saying online Facebook December 26/ Colgate University Students in extended study courses left for Israel and Egypt this week to further explore concepts developed in their classrooms during the fall semester at Colgate. Did you go on an extended study during the holiday break? Tassey A. Russo ’80 When at Colgate in the late ’70s, it was still necessary to do a J-term. I did an extended study in Sweden. Loved it! Wesley Gordon ’05 Japan with Professors Hudson and Harpp — one of my best Colgate memories. Stephanie Zanowic ’11 India, three years ago this Sunday. Gregory Siegelman ’79 Jan plan with Prof Kistler in London. Twitter December 6 Emo Philips @EmoPhilips My 12-7 show @colgateuniv (Lord, please give me the strength not to do any toothpaste jokes) is open 2 the public. http://www.emophilips.com Valerie @Kyriositytweets I’m so proud of @EmoPhilips for resolving not to tell toothpaste jokes at Colgate U. Way to Aim high, Emo! #jokesEmoWill Avoid aaron@dangerboymusic He will come up with an amazingly original toothpaste joke. At least he better Oral B really mad. Josh Caterer @joshcaterer I just flew in from Las Vegas, and boy are my gums receding! #jokesEmowillavoid

Postcard from France: Alexandra Mills ’13 sent greetings from last spring’s Dijon Study Group, taken during their trip to the south of France at the Pont du Gard.

al clark @PikesvilleAL It will be an historic event but @EmoPhilips is going to leave @Colgateuniv plaque-free after his 12/7 performance. #jokes Emowillavoid

News and views for the Colgate community

work & play

Campus scrapbook

A student gets a leg up on experimental theater at a workshop conducted by Argentinian ensemble Grupo Krapp. Photo by Andrew Daddio

The Golden Dragon Acrobats perform astonishing acrobatic feats — from forming a human caterpillar to climbing chairs stacked 20 feet high — in Memorial Chapel, hosted by Colgate’s Chinese Interest Association. Photo by Andrew Daddio

Artist Robin Morris’s Women of Purpose, part of the Great Minds exhibition and lecture series displayed in downtown Hamilton and on campus. Photo by Erica Hasenjager

No slackers here. Students test their balancing skills while practicing slacklining, an exercise similar to tightrope walking. Photo by Andrew Daddio

Showing silent support at the men’s hockey game versus RIT in Starr Rink, where the Raiders beat the Tigers 6-3. Photo by Andrew Daddio

Ethics class with philosophy professor David McCabe. Photo by Tommy Brown

Exam cram time. Photo by Andrew Daddio

A student opines to CUTV while keeping her eyes glued to the TV as the election results were imminent. Photo by Duy Trinh ’14

During the annual Black Student Union Family Weekend banquet, students and their families come together to celebrate their accomplishments and look forward to the future. Photo by Duy Trinh ’14

scene: Winter 2013

News and views for the Colgate community

work & play

earned both player and coach of the year in the same conference, as well as the only person to win conference championships in those two roles.

Andrew Daddio

Coming Out Week vandalism evokes campuswide response

Vicky Chun named new athletics director

Members of Advocates, which supports LGBTQ and ally students

scene: Winter 2013

After a national search, Victoria “Vicky” Chun ’91, MA’94 has been named Colgate’s new athletics director, becoming the only female athletics director in the Patriot League. She is also one of only 30 women actively leading an NCAA Division I athletics department, out of 345 member schools. Chun has served as interim athletics director since August 1. “Vicky Chun has proven herself a winner at Colgate as a studentathlete, coach, and nationally recognized athletics administrator,” said President Jeffrey Herbst. “After experiencing Vicky’s leadership of the division over the past several months, we are convinced that she has the integrity, energy, and vision to be an outstanding athletics director.” Chun became senior associate athletics director/senior woman administrator in October 2008, after serving as associate director since July 2007. A four-year letter winner on the Raider volleyball team who went on to serve as head coach from 1994 to 1997, she remains the only person in NCAA Division I history to have

Students were joined by faculty and staff in turning a hurtful incident into a positive demonstration of their support of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) individuals in October. During the celebration of Coming Out Week, homophobic messages were scrawled on doors that were meant for encouraging words and stories. This is the fifth year the Coming Out Doors have been displayed around campus; it is the first year that they were defaced. At an impromptu meeting held in response, Matt Ford ’13, Student Government Association president, made an impressive entrance. With 40 members in tow, he presented a permanent Student Senate resolution “condemning the hateful remarks ... against members of our community.” Sam Flood ’14, speaker of the Senate, and Heather-Ashley Boyer ’16 cowrote the resolution — a step that is rarely taken “because, although the Senate represents the student body, it is selective about expressing the sentiments of the whole student body or the Student Government.” After presenting the resolution, Ford stayed to brainstorm with those present for ways that the SGA could spearhead its own events or support awareness activities being held by other groups on campus. In addition to the meeting, which drew nearly 100 people, other events were held in response. On Blue for Q day, people wore blue to show solidarity; organizers chose that color because the most hateful comments were written in blue. Two evenings of open discussion were also held. More than 100 students signed a pledge against hate on a banner that was displayed in the Coop, sharing their suggestions for “What can I do to prevent hate at Colgate?” Before the incident, a variety of events had already been scheduled. The Women’s Studies Brown Bag Series hosted a discussion titled “Coming Out Stories.” In addition, Kye Allums, the first transgender college athlete at Georgetown University, gave a lecture; an alumnus hosted a barbecue; Frank

Talking points “It would not have been obvious to him during those decades in prison on Robben Island that this vision was the right one. He must have wondered, coming out already as an old man, if he had made a mistake, but he had the conviction of his own beliefs to understand that what he said in the early 1960s was still true in the early 1990s. He acted accordingly. And that was brilliance of a particular type from which his country and the entire world benefited.” — President Jeffrey Herbst on the life and work of former South African President Nelson Mandela, in his Great Minds Exhibition talk Nov. 13, 2012 “In the case of Russia, there was probably a sigh of relief.” — Valerie Morkevicius, assistant professor of political science, during a “What Happened?” post-election panel discussion in Persson Hall “He did not live to provide answers and in some ways, one hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, we are still bedeviled in this country by the questions Lincoln raised in the second inaugural.” — Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Eric Foner, who spoke about Abraham Lincoln and American slavery in his Douglas K. Reading Lecture “The idea was this was going to lead to greater inclusive change, eliminate some of the corruption, that it would bring democracy or some sort of equality, and these things just aren’t happening.” — Joshua Stacher, fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and political science professor at Kent State University, about why change won’t happen immediately in Egypt (http://bit.ly/Sow10k)

A harrowing journey

Reporter Sonia Nazario found her Pulitzer Prize atop freight trains, where she took a seat with migrants heading north through Mexico on a dangerous ride to America. Nazario, a Los Angeles Times reporter who has written extensively about families migrating from Latin America to the United States, talked about her investigative journalism work when she visited campus in October. Organized by the Latin American Student Organization, Nazario’s keynote lecture kicked off Colgate’s Hispanic Heritage Month celebration. Nazario first learned about the trend of Latin American mothers who leave their countries and later send for their children from her housekeeper Carmen’s personal trial. “The children get impatient and want to seek out their mothers,” Nazario explained, describing how they will travel thousands of miles on top of trains speeding across

Go figure – the digits on Dancefest 12/1/12 date of this fall’s fest 13 dance groups 206 dancers 800+ people in the audience 150–300 gold coins on a belly

dancer’s skirt

4:27 length of the longest dance, performed by Kuumba Dance Troupe

702 total cumulative rehearsal hours 2nd year the event was Livestreamed 688 people from 32 countries watched live from their computers

Latin America — facing the dangers of bandits, border patrol officers, and gangsters. So, Nazario decided to make the three-month trek herself. “There are 22,000 Central Americans kidnapped in Mexico [while making this journey] every year — a human rights disaster,” she said. Nazario’s award-winning book, Enrique’s Journey, tells the true story of a Honduran boy who set out to find his mother after she had migrated to the United States. In addition, Nazario spoke about her efforts to bring to light the issues of poverty in Latin America and U.S. immigration policies. Other events in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month included a Brown Bag on Latino women in higher education; a W.E.B. Dubois Lecture about racial inequality in Brazil and the United States; and a piñata-making station at this year’s Gatestock festival. — Natalie Sportelli ’15

‘Paperboys’ grow green business

Lumberjacks beware. Thanks to the efforts of Ryan Smith ’13 and Brendan Karson ’13, printer paper at Case Library and more than two dozen campus departments is composed of recovered sugarcane fiber that would have otherwise ended up in landfills. EcoCampus LLC is Smith and Karson’s 2011 project for Thought Into Action (TIA), a program that pairs alumni entrepreneurs with students to help the students start their own business or nonprofit organization. The green company delivers sustainable paper products to campus. As of October, use of the eco-friendly paper had prevented the release of 20.59 tons of carbon emissions, the production of 155,553 gallons of wastewater, the creation of 13,363 pounds of solid waste, and the use of 2,660 gallons of oil, according to Smith. When a department places an order, Smith and Karson load up their cars with inventory they keep in Hamilton and deliver the next day. “We’ve upgraded our warehouse from underneath our beds to a shed out back,” Smith posted in the project update section of TIA’s website. To become an approved supplier to campus, director of purchasing Art Punsoni said the students had to allay concerns about the operation. Karson and Smith returned to Punsoni and addressed everything in a business plan, including incorporation as a registered limited liability corporation

Back on campus A virtual hangout Four alumni who work at Google offered their career advice to students via a Google Hangout session on November 13. During the video chat, New York City–based Debra LoCastro ’05, Jim Habig ’06, David Perry ’99, and Lisa Stern ’06 gave their insight to approximately 40 students who were gathered around a projection screen in Case Library. “We represent the twenty percent of employees who work on the business side,” explained LoCastro, who is university programs manager at Google. She and the other three alumni said they landed their positions with the help of liberal arts educations. Perry, who is in advertising sales, said that playing lacrosse at Colgate gave him a strong sense of teamwork that is effective in the workplace. “To make things happen, you have to push each other,” he said.

in Madison County, and being insured. “You have to enjoy every obstacle, and every ‘No’ has to make you want it even more,” Smith said. “Otherwise, ideas never happen.”

Gamma Phi Beta recognized

Members of Colgate’s Delta Tau chapter of Gamma Phi Beta have earned

Stern said her Colgate experience has translated well to her position in Google’s human resources department. “The most important thing I learned was how to be autonomous, how to be innovative,” she said. The hangout allowed students to ask questions of the graduates, and facilitated participation by a student and an alumna who were in Japan. “This was applicable not just to Google, but also for seeing how what you do outside the classroom helps build career skills,” said Sophie Salzman ’14. Chip Schroeder, associate director for employer relations, helped coordinate the event, with assistance from Viktor Mak ’15, who has been serving as Colgate’s Google ambassador since last summer. Schroeder added that in addition to computer science majors, technology companies also have great opportunities for “candidates who are good problem solvers, and are innovative and creative.”

one of the most prestigious honors of their national organization: The Order of 1874, recognizing their scholastic and philanthropic achievements. Out of 176 chartered collegiate chapters, only three others received the award, according to Lara Donahue ’14, vice president of public relations for the chapter.

Andrew Daddio

Dining Hall held a “Family Dinner”; and SafeZone training was offered to students, faculty, and staff. “As an entire campus community, there is widespread support for LGBTQ people, and we saw that really come to life,” said Jamie Bergeron, assistant director of LGBTQ Initiatives and the Center for Leadership and Student Involvement.

Ryan Smith ’13 (forefront) and Brendan Karson ’13, founders of EcoCampus LLC, deliver tree-free paper to Case Library.

News and views for the Colgate community

work & play

Of the 187 members at Colgate, 12 earned 4.0 GPAs and 122 were named to the Dean’s List for spring 2012. The chapter’s average GPA was 3.54, compared to the all-sorority average (3.49), all Greek-letter organizations (3.35), all women on campus (3.37), and the university as a whole (3.29). “Gamma Phi Beta excels at serving as a support system for our members,” Donahue said. “We have study hours weekly, we reserve a library room where the girls can come and study together. That promotes a high level of academics. You’re there with your sisters all working hard together.” Gamma Phi Beta also hosts fundraising events on campus, from the annual Crescent Classic soccer tournament, to picking up litter on Broad Street, and co-hosting a campus obstacle course challenge. “Gamma Phi Beta is blessed with strong and involved advisers,” said Fouad Saleet, assistant dean for campus life. “It is gratifying to see their hard work held up as a standard to follow by the international headquarters.”

Duy Trinh ’14

The fall 5K run in Hamilton benefited the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp

scene: Winter 2013

Donahue said Colgate’s chapter met 74 requirements of excellence set out by their national organization, including recruitment, alumni relations, scholarship, public relations, philanthropy, and sisterhood.

Polartec prize for Outdoor Ed

Last June, nine paddlers from the Outdoor Education Program took on more than 100 miles of the bold and remote coastline of southern Newfoundland, Canada. Thanks to the support of many members of the Colgate community, the program won $10,000 for their documentary-style video about the trip in the final round of the Polartec Made Possible Challenge. Colgate supporters voted early and often, and Polartec announced that the program won the grand prize with more than 11,000 votes. The award will help subsidize future cultural expeditions for outdoor education. According to David Esber ’13, funds also will help the program purchase higher quality video and audio recording equipment so future students can chronicle their trips.

Community members celebrated the right to read at the Hamilton Public Library’s Banned Book Read-Out in October. Participants read from a number of books that have been banned over the years including To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Ken Kesey), and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (J.K. Rowling). The event was part of Banned Book Week, a national celebration that was inaugurated in 1982 by the American Library Association. As Hamilton was blanketed with piles of orange leaves, Colgate students, parents, and community

Outdoor Education paddles the Newfoundland coastline.

Watch Colgate’s winning video at http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=M571cKOsi0o.

Marking Black Solidarity Day

A group of students, faculty, and staff gathered on the steps of Memorial Chapel for a speak-out marking Black Solidarity Day in early November. First observed in 1969, the observance is traditionally held on the Monday be-

members (some even wearing costumes!) participated in a 5K run around the village, hosted by Philanthropists at Colgate. The run benefited the Hole in the Village Green Wall Gang Camp in Connecticut, which serves children who are coping with cancer and other chronic illnesses. The event raised $3,500. Afterward, the PAC hosted the Fall Festival to celebrate the falling leaves with food, drinks, and pumpkin painting. Drugstore becomes “Pop-up Gallery?” That’s right! MAD Art, a Hamilton-based nonprofit for local artists and patrons of the arts, moved into the vacant space on Lebanon Street where the iconic Crowe’s Apothecary had recently cleared out. The first show, featuring art from and about Nigeria, ran from November 23 through the last day of the year. MAD Art teamed up with Carol Ann Lorenz, senior curator of Colgate’s Longyear Museum of Anthropology, to put the exhibition together. The Palace Theater was transformed into the North Pole for the Here Comes Santa event on December 1. Almost 400 children visited with Santa, Mrs. Claus, Frosty, and Rudolph, in addition to playing reindeer games, making holiday crafts, and enjoying cookies and hot chocolate. — Emma Barge ’14

want to be an ally,” Nelson said. That evening, Black Student Union members and supporters gathered at the ALANA Cultural Center to continue the day’s observance with a discussion of “Political and Economic Power through Solidarity.”

Basil Childers

Dylan cover concert for peace

Zagat highlighted Slices (aka Hamilton’s New York Pizzeria) as one of the “10 pizza joints in the U.S. that are worth some travel time,” noting its “pillowy, bubbly upper crust covered with the most satisfying ratio of sweet tomato sauce to salty mozzarella.”

come barriers that separate people. Some called out to passing students to join the speak-out and to recognize issues of race faced by minorities. “You are not students of color, you are Colgate students,” said Thomas Cruz-Soto, associate dean for multicultural affairs. “This is your Colgate.” Vice President and Dean of the College Suzy Nelson told the group that the students’ experiences were difficult to hear, but that listening to those who have been the target of overt or subtle racism is important. “I don’t want to be silent, and I do

Brown bag Thanksgiving misgivings

Natalie Sportelli ’15

fore Election Day as a time for people of African descent and supporters to abstain from social, political, and economic activities in peaceful protest. “White privilege is an issue on campus,” said Black Student Union President Imani ‘Yellow’ Shabazz ’13, who took to the podium and talked about being ignored by a group of white students during an interaction with a white friend of hers. “How do you act like you do not see us?” Shabazz asked, adding that the encounter gave her a greater awareness of the issue of race and racism. “Sometimes it has to be put in your face to be aware of it.” Black Student Union Co-vice President Drea Finley ’13 shared an experience from her first year when a white student told her after class that she was smarter than he had expected. “I asked if it was because I was black, and he said, “Yes!’” “On a weekly and monthly basis, we hear of these micro-aggressions,” said Jamie Bergeron of subtle actions that often result in making minorities on campus feel uncomfortable. The assistant director of LGBTQ initiatives and the Center for Leadership and Student Involvement, Bergeron said, “These are the things that I think about and try to make better on campus.” The group of about three dozen listened as a variety of speakers — students and staff members — got up to share their frustrations as well as express sentiments of support and encouragement for finding ways to over-

Strains of “Mr. Tambourine Man” came spilling out of 110 Broad Street during Jamnesty: Bob Dylan Does Human Rights. Coordinated by Colgate’s chapter of Amnesty International, the November 10 fundraiser was a way to raise awareness of human rights issues. Throughout the night, student bands interpreted their favorite Dylan songs from the famous folk singer’s canon — with covers ranging from a rock version of “Jokerman” by Body Electric to an acoustic “Tangled Up in Blue” by Ben Diamond ’13. Jamnesty convened students from different groups and class years, with sponsors including Amnesty International, Broad Street Records, Peace and Conflict Studies, and Philanthropists at Colgate (whose dining room at 100 Broad Street hosted the event). Between sets, Simone Schenkel ’14, president of Colgate’s Amnesty International, presented facts on human rights issues. Hoping to make Jamnesty an annual event, the group plans for next year’s gathering to highlight a different artist, but with the same mission. — Katie Rice ’13

Primal scream: Benjamin Rangel ’15, Myles Davis ’15, and Hugo Fetsco ’15 joined in the fun on December 9 when students filled Case-Geyer library’s terrace for the first “Raider Roar,” a late-night group scream aimed at relieving stress from studying for final exams. Led by megaphone-wielding Matt Ford ’13, the Student Government Association president, students roared into the dark at exactly midnight.

For many Native Americans, the fourth Thursday in November is not a jovial celebration with football games, parades, and a hearty dinner, but a time to fast and grieve. As part of Native American Heritage Month in November, professors Michael Taylor and Jordan Kerber led a lunchtime discussion about the many misrepresentations that characterize the mainstream story of the first Thanksgiving. The event opened with a reading of an account of a Thanksgiving Day protest in 1970, when a group of Native Americans attending a feast in Plymouth, Mass., walked out. They decried the happy caricature of the relationship between the Pilgrims and Indians as a cover-up of their strife in the aftermath of English colonization, dispossessed of their traditional way of life, religion, and lands. The demonstration began an annual day of mourning for Native Americans in the region, and the trend has continued to spread. “We have a distorted view of the Thanksgiving that may or may not have happened in 1621,” said Kerber, a professor of anthropology and Native American studies. “But after that one day is over, Native Americans disappear from the public consciousness.” Students in attendance shared their personal experiences in grade school, where stereotypes are often perpetuated. Kelsey John ’13, who is half Navajo Indian, encountered this problem in first grade when her teacher instructed her to dress up as either a Pilgrim or an Indian. “For Native American students, it is strange to dress up as you, but that depiction really isn’t you,” said John. Education will be the force to dispel these stereotypes and enlighten future generations, said John; her notion was echoed by others in attendance. To raise awareness, “A more sustained effort needs to take place, more than just a day,” said Kerber. — Natalie Sportelli ’15

News and views for the Colgate community

Tableau

Falling overboard By Robin Beth Schaer ’93

At first, I couldn’t sleep on the ship. At night, bunked beneath the waterline, I put my hand against the wooden hull and imagined dark water on the other side pressing back. I lay awake holding my breath, picturing the route I would swim through a maze of cabins and hatches if the ship went down. In port, Bounty had looked tremendous: 180 feet long, three masts stretching 100 feet into the sky, and 1,000 square yards of canvas sails. But underway, with ocean spreading toward horizon in every direction, she was small, and inside her I was even smaller. I had lost my job and my marriage when I saw Bounty for the first time. I wanted to stow away, cast off, and leave the ruins of my life behind — and Bounty let me. Yet I left far more than grief on land; what mattered at home — education, achievements, appearance — was irrelevant at sea. It was unsettling to abandon all that I thought defined me. I sat in the galley with the other deckhands and wondered what they understood from my face. I was uncertain of what remained. To leave the shore required surrender; I had to give myself over to the ship and the journey, wherever it led and whatever it revealed. I fell into the rhythms of standing watch and eating meals. Soon even the ship’s deep rolls and strange music of creaking timbers became familiar. I learned lines and sails, practiced emergency drills, and studied the compass and charts; I tarred, painted, spliced, caulked, and I finally slept. I slept deeply, trusting when I closed my eyes that others were awake, on watch, keeping me safe, just as I had done for them. We were profoundly dependent on each other. With that dependence came an admission of fragility. We relied on each other aboard the ship because it was necessary to survive. Every day we

climbed up the shrouds together, we lay our bodies over the yards to furl and unfurl sails, and we trusted we were safe in the rig while the sea swelled underneath. Change happened fast: winds suddenly shifted, waves crashed over catheads, and storms appeared. Every day I grasped how easy it would be to fall, to slip, to let go, to die. To recognize that risk is also to understand the dominion of nature. Our voyage depended on understanding the winds and currents, and respecting our place beneath the movements of the stars. To explore, to protect, to fish, and to trade have always required facing the ocean. The risks have become legend, and the language for intense emotions — whether love or loss — are borrowed from the extremes of life at sea. We are in the same boat; we ply uncharted waters; we weather the storm; we are lost at sea; we go down with the ship. Yet, these expressions are far from figurative for sailors. Instead, the words are literal and steeped in animism; they contain an understanding that the sea, the ship, and the winds have power. Our captain often patted the pinrail and reminded us, “If we take care of her, she will take care of us.” To survive, we had to reckon with each other, the ship, and nature. The pact formed between ourselves and the environment is delicate and easily broken. Sea levels rise, currents change, and a hurricane twice the size of Texas churns toward New York. Off the coast of North Carolina, Bounty is tossed in its wake. I am split in two by the storm: I am home as my city floods, while at sea the ship loses power, founders, and begins to sink. The order to abandon ship is given, and the crew in their heavy red neoprene survival suits leap into rafts to await rescue. As they evacuate, the captain and two crewmembers are swept overboard. One swims to a buoy, the dead body of another will be found hours later, and after four days the Coast Guard will give up searching for the captain. I want to look away from the broken ship with her masts snapped and hull submerged. I want to blur the crew lifted by helicopters from 20-foot seas. I want to veer from the captain, washed overboard, and drifting alone in rough waters. I say the truth is unfathomable and the phrase snags in my throat, a trope already taken from the sea. I catch myself saying fathom again: a word that once meant embrace, and then the length from arm to arm of rope or water, and now means understanding. Bounty is on the sea floor and her captain lost (my ship, my captain gone); I don’t want to hold, or measure the depth, or understand this loss. I was never meant to stay aboard the ship forever; I knew this. Bounty carried me from one place to another, and I let myself be taken. I lost myself in the wind and the canvas, and the open ocean. Inside her hull was a home; between the crew was a family. Now the ship is wrecked, but we are not stranded. To fathom is truly what the voyage taught: to embrace, measure, and understand the fragility and strength in this blue world and our dependence on each other within it. I learned to love a ship and then I stepped ashore willing to risk my heart. Robin Beth Schaer wrote this essay, which was originally published in the Paris Review, in response to the sinking of the H.M.S. Bounty and the loss of her captain in Hurricane Sandy. Schaer had served as a deckhand on the tall ship — which was built in 1960 “as a replica of the 18th-century vessel of mutinous fame” — during a European voyage in 2009 and through the Great Lakes in 2010. Schaer’s work has appeared in Tin House, The Awl, Bomb, Denver Quarterly, and Prairie Schooner, among others. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, Djerassi, Saltonstall, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She teaches writing at Cooper Union and Marymount Manhattan College in New York City.

scene: Winter 2013

Warmth in the snow: From Winter Carnival to Winterfest The mandolin club was rehearsing, the hockey box was flooded for the interclass hockey game, and invitations were mailed in the week leading up to Colgate’s inaugural Winter Carnival February 18–20, 1915. This highly anticipated event was organized by the Pan-Hellenic Council, Outing Club, and Winter Sports Committee. It was modeled after Dartmouth’s carnival, to which Colgate students were invited to compete in the intercollegiate ski and snowshoe meet. “One thing which we as a college decidedly lack is a sufficiency of interfraternity social functions,” reported the Colgate Madisonesis on December 8, 1914, when the idea was proposed. In addition to a desire for strengthened brotherhood, the organizers hoped to build popularity for winter sports and recreation. The schedule for the first Winter Carnival included a Musical Club Concert followed by formal dances hosted by the fraternities on Thursday; Masque and Triangle’s presentation of “She Stoops to Conquer,” the Colgate-Williams basketball game, and a dance in the gymnasium on Friday; and a full Saturday of ski and snowshoe races, skating on Taylor Lake, and a presentation by the Hamilton Military Band, stationed at the end of Taylor Lake while “a huge friendship fire” (bonfire) was lit in the center. The nighttime winter wonderland was followed by fraternity “informals” (house parties). “This should promote a stronger feeling of cooperation between the various groups and make every man in the student body realize that he is primarily a Colgate Man,” the Madisonesis declared of the event’s success. Over the years, activities were added, including sleigh rides and toboggan races down Trainer Hill (“the Old Ski Hill”). In the 1920s, at least, the toboggans were constructed in the gym by students acting as “neophyte engineers.” The carnival queen (called the “Queen of snows” in the 1928 Colgate Maroon) was crowned — along with a king, but he wasn’t the focus. A snow sculpture competition began on the fraternity lawns, and that tradition carried on. In the 1990s, Winter Carnival was renamed Winterfest. The most recent, in 2011, included tug of war, musical chairs, three-legged races, spoon races, wheelbarrow races, human dog sled, dizzy bat, and three-on-three soccer.

early 1920s

1954

2011

1950

13 Page 13 is the showplace

2011

Theta Chi, 1959

for Colgate tradition, history, and school spirit.

Courtesy of NASA

life of the mind 14

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in orbit

scene: Winter 2013

Time with Hubble

Astronomy professor Jeff Bary and collaborator Tracy Beck of the Space Telescope Science Institute were awarded 12 orbits, or about 9 hours’ worth of highly coveted observing time, on the Hubble Space Telescope, to collect data for their investigations into the formation of binary stars that might eventually host their own planetary systems. As Bary described it, “The time on Hubble is oversubscribed by a factor of six to one, meaning that it is a highly competitive process to get time on it.” In January, he and Beck collected photographs of the gas and dust in the rings surrounding young — in astronomical terms, 1 million to 3 million years old — binary star systems. These rings of dust and gas are the building blocks of a planetary system potentially containing rocky planets like the Earth and gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, said Bary. The clarity of the images from the Hubble will be of enormous value to Bary and Beck as they study in great detail the interactions between the forming of binary stars and nearby dust and gas that might be evolving into a planetary system. To put it into layman’s terms, Bary uses a Star Wars reference: “Luke Skywalker’s home planet, Tatooine, is a great example of a planetary system with two host stars. In the movie, they show two suns setting on the horizon at dusk. That kind of planetary system is exactly the type of system we are

studying. Only, we are observing it in the midst of formation.” Bary and Beck were previously awarded time on the 8-meter Gemini North telescope in Hawaii for this research. The results from those observations, which concerned one of the star systems they are studying with the Hubble telescope, were published last summer in the Astrophysical Journal. “We found strong evidence for the interactions of potential planetforming material in the near environment of the young stars,” said Bary. The duo is part of an international team of astronomers that also was awarded time on the new Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the telescope in the Chilean desert being built by a consortium of countries. “ALMA is the next big thing in astronomy. It will not be long before its discoveries start dominating the headlines concerning advances in the field of astronomy,” said Bary. But for now, the Hubble is as good as it gets. The telescope, which was launched in 1990 as a joint project between NASA and the European Space Agency, was recently in the news for sending back a photo that NASA said provided a glimpse into the farthest corners of the universe. — Katie Rice ’13

Salman Rushdie speaks about religion, life in exile

British author Salman Rushdie, who is perhaps best known for the controversy over his novel The Satanic Verses, was the capstone speaker for Colgate’s Living Writers series. Addressing a standing-room–only crowd in Memorial Chapel on November 29, he spoke of religion, fanaticism, and censorship. With a tinge of black humor, Rushdie regaled the audience with stories about living in exile after Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa (religious edict) calling for his death in 1988. Khomeini said that The Satanic Verses blasphemed against Muhammad and was offensive to Muslims. During this time, the police advised Rushdie to adopt a pseudonym, so he took the first names of his two favorite writers, Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov. Joseph Anton is Rushdie’s new memoir, from which the author read excerpts during his talk. “Life became a spy novel, in which there were armed men in the kitchen and I would be told about anonymous

Syllabus ECON230: The Economics of Poverty in the U.S. Nicole Simpson, associate professor of economics TTh 9:55–11:10 a.m., 311 McGregory Course description: This course discusses issues surrounding poverty with a particular emphasis on the central New York region. Students first analyze how poverty is measured, which includes studying unemployment, the minimum wage, income inequality, and economic immobility using economic theory and data analysis. Students next study various anti-poverty programs in the United States such as traditional welfare, the Earned Income Credit, food stamps, and Medicaid. On the reading list: The Economics of Poverty and Discrimination, Bradley Schiller Nickel and Dimed, the 10th Anniversary Edition, Barbara Ehrenreich Various policy reports and news articles Unique assignments and activities: At least 10 hours of field work at a local nonprofit organization — the opportunities include the Hamilton Food Cupboard and the Madison County Department of Social Services, among others. Various site visits are also an integral part of the course. The professor says: “Students will learn about poverty in the United States through the traditional way in the classroom; however, through the service-learning component, they get to see how local nonprofit organizations alleviate poverty in central New York. By working with local practitioners, students gain a real sense of the issues and the people and programs that exist to combat poverty. Given that many of the students are economics majors and have good quantitative skills, our community partners often put those skills to good use during the semester by having my students work on projects for their organizations.”

Andrew Daddio

Salman Rushdie

groups entering the country with lethal intentions,” he said of his years living under protective custody. Rushdie added that those who criticized what he emphasized is a work of fiction had never read it — a common problem, he said, with many books that have been banned throughout history. Earlier in the day, Rushdie attended the Living Writers course, which brings 10 authors to campus each fall for personalized classroom sessions and public readings. The 60 students in the English class were joined by participants of the LW Online program. The e-students (alumni, parents, and friends) took an online version of the class co-taught by professors Jane Pinchin and Jennifer Brice, who led interactive webcasts on the course material throughout the semester, complemented with a blog for continued discussion. As an alumnus, the online course was “a fantastic opportunity,” said Geoffrey Gold ’86. “It really opened a new world to writers writing about places and things that I didn’t have much familiarity with, which is one of the primary reasons this course in particular interested me.” Pinchin and Brice agreed that this year’s program and its international theme were a great success. “These offerings asked us all to move beyond boundaries and to look through lenses we were not accustomed to wearing,” Pinchin noted.

Chris Hedges brings Destruction to Colgate

If you believe that the outcome of the 2012 elections could have changed anything fundamental about Ameri-

ca, Chris Hedges ’79, P’12 thinks you’re wrong. As a journalist and writer, Hedges spent two decades living and working in war zones. He has seen combat in El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Sudan, Yemen, Algeria, Turkey, Iraq, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Retired from a long career as a war correspondent, he has turned his focus on a kind of domestic violence. Hedges’s book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt tells the story of what he calls America’s sacrifice zones — locations where industry has destroyed the environment and ruined lives while harvesting the resources it needs to build profit. He asserts that elected officials from both parties are either complicit or feckless, and that there is currently no popular movement that can stand in the way of powerful corporations. For his book, Hedges selected several sites where the consequences of exploitation are in the highest relief — including Gary, W. Va., where coal companies use explosives to remove mountain peaks that separate miners from the seam. After layers of earth have been blasted away, machines can easily scoop out coal, but the damage to the environment can be read in the scarred terrain, local cancer rates, and an alarming trend of climate change that scientists trace back to the burning of fossil fuels. “There’s a kind of insanity to it where, as the planet begins to disintegrate, you use more violent methods to extract profit from it,” Hedges said when he visited campus October 22. Astronomy professor Jeff Bary, who teaches Core Scientific Perspectives:

Galileo, the Church, and the Scientific Endeavor, began reading Days of Destruction when he heard that it included a profile of Gary, just down the road from his hometown of Welch, W. Va. When Bary saw Hedges’s description and correlated the coal industry’s condemnation of climate science with the Vatican’s treatment of Galileo, he knew that he had to bring the alumnus to campus to speak to students. “It has a political bent to it that I hadn’t imagined for this class,” Bary said, “until I started to think hard about how the arguments I’ve seen trotted out — both for and against mountaintop removal — play into what I’m trying to get at in the Galileo course.” Bary reached out to a colleague, anthropology professor Nancy Ries of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program, to cosponsor Hedges’s visit. “There’s an interesting parallel process,” Ries explained. “In recent years, PCON has focused more attention on the conflicts inherent in resource and energy extraction, both locally and transnationally.” During his talk, Hedges traced the political and corporate antecedents of America’s environmental crisis, then he talked about the present state of affairs and the future, should these shadows remain unaltered. In addition to mountaintop removal in West Virginia, he spoke about other “sacrifice zones,” like South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation, where he said the victims of America’s internal colonization have the secondlowest life expectancy in the Western

hemisphere — just 47 years for males. And Camden, N.J., once the home of RCA and Campbell Soup Co., is being recycled from the inside out — barges stand ready to take scrap metal, gutted from the city’s dilapidated buildings, to China and India. “I wanted to go into these sacrifice zones,” Hedges said, “because what happens to them becomes the template for what’s going to happen to the rest of us.” The only answer Hedges can see is massive civil disobedience. Elections are not going to change anything, he said; the people must pour into the streets.

Unpacking Nietzsche

Two members of Colgate’s philosophy department, Maudemarie Clark and David Dudrick, have collaborated to publish an important book about one of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s most difficult writings, Beyond Good and Evil. Their chosen title, The Soul of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, captures exactly their scholarly purpose: to show it as a work of philosophical morality and anthropology. Clark and Dudrick’s book, explicating what is possibly Nietzsche’s most important work, has been long awaited among philosophers as a follow-up to Clark’s highly influential Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, also published by Cambridge University Press. That earlier text sought to dispel certain mistaken ideas about Nietzsche’s concept of truth; for one, it rejected with exacting argument the claims of relativism as the correct understanding of Nietzsche’s doctrine of “perspectivism.” Similarly, this new book critically examines and explains a difficult and complex work, while relating its insights both to a broader understanding of Nietzsche’s other work as well as to philosophical thought and self-understanding more generally. The authors’ meticulous care and respect for the reader (and the writer) are reflected throughout the book’s many arguments and thoughts. Most notably, their principal purpose is to understand and explain Nietzsche’s central metaphor: “the magnificent tension of the spirit” as relating the soul’s “will to truth” to its “will to value.” They explore how Nietzsche uses the notion of the “soul” to explain a person’s “political” ordering and control of diverse, often incompatible, physical and psychological drives, thus

News and views for the Colgate community

scene: Winter 2013

Beyond Colgate: up in the air and out on the street

Five hundred feet above the ground. A street corner in Harlem. These are just two of the many places “Beyond Colgate” where students found themselves this past fall. The program, jointly funded by the university and Colgate alumni, enables students to apply classroom material to situations and locations beyond campus boundaries. Each semester, about a dozen such trips are supported. Students in Professor Jeni McDermott’s Hydrology and Surficial Geology course viewed the topography of the central New York landscape via an aerial tour. McDermott wanted to show “how glaciers demolished all the pre-existing topography and left a flat landscape.” Molly Clinton ’13, one of McDermott’s students, said: “This experience definitely enriched my understanding of glacial landforms. From the air we could see the Finger Lakes and erosion along the coast of Lake Ontario.” Spencer Wallach ’15, another student to enjoy the flight, has since officially declared geology as his major. Jenna Reinbold, assistant professor of religion, took the 16 students in her first-year seminar to New York City to explore a contemporary churchstate controversy — whether religious

Duy Trinh ’14

life of the mind 16

accounting for the distinctive power of the human will. A most important way of reading and understanding this book is to experience it as a genuine philosophical engagement. As in a vibrant liberal arts class, the authors take us into a series of philosophical confrontations — dialectical challenges that engage our thoughts about our actions and motives, our drives and will, as vital and determined human beings. Through Clark and Dudrick, Nietzsche induces us to confront his “exoteric nuggets” — his suggestively probing and provocative remarks — uncovering through logical analysis a series of profound thoughts. The reader is provoked into serious thought by the challenge (if not threat) of unsettling, troubling, and often never-confronted basic truths about ourselves. These fresh insights serve the reader to gain a fresh understanding of the deepest springs of our actions. — Jerry Balmuth, Harry Emerson Fosdick Professor of philosophy and religion emeritus

Aerial view of the central New York landscape, as seen through the eyes of students of Geology 210: Hydrology and Surficial Geology

groups should be allowed to use public schools for their Sunday services. Her course is called Church, State, and Law in America. In collaboration with Tony Carnes, editor of the web magazine A Journey Through NYC Religions, the class attended a Bronx Household of Faith service, held in P.S.15. After the service, with Carnes’s staff and Chloe Nwangwu ’12 acting as guides, the students fanned out on the street and took what is possibly the first poll regarding the holding of worship services in public schools in New York City. For Madeline Allen ’16, interviewing people on the street took her “definitely beyond [my] comfort zone, but the results were surprising.” Reinbold said her students expected people on the street to be either indifferent on the issue or uninformed, but that was largely not the case. According to a recent blog post on A Journey Through NYC Religions, many of the interviewers were surprised at how the people in the street spoke vigorously and favorably about this issue. “There is a certain thrill when the students hear people talk about issues they’d talked about in class,” Reinbold said. “After engaging the public, they have a command of this information now.” — Alicia Klepeis

New living-learning opportunity

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a $700,000 grant to Colgate for use over four years in order to support a new program called Mellon Sophomore Residential Seminars. The initiative will create a series of courses in which sophomores will apply to live and study together, meet regularly with the seminar professors and guest speakers in their residence hall, and participate in an academic travel experience. Each spring, the students will continue the dialogue in another course with their professor. The initial series will be offered in the fall 2013 semester. Beginning in fall 2014, at least four seminars will be offered every fall, and new courses will be added to the rotation each year. The first course options are: Existentialism, with Professor David Dudrick (philosophy), director of the program; Coffee and Cigarettes, with Professor Robert Nemes (history); and Jerusalem: City of Gods, with Professor Lesleigh Cushing (religion, Jewish studies). “I like the idea of students talking about the ideas they encounter in their courses over lunch or in their dorm rooms late at night,” said Cushing. “Really interesting conversations are bound to ensue.” “In Coffee and Cigarettes, we spend

Fluorescent minerals light up faces at visualization lab

Hearing the “oohs” and “aahs” coming from school groups in the hallway after Ho Tung Visualization Lab shows, one might wonder what all the fuss is about. But even though the show has ended, there’s still wonder to behold, in a display of fluorescent minerals that beams a rainbow of bright pink, electric green, and radioactive orange. Matt Shramko ’13 and his father, Steven, donated 70 of the minerals to Colgate, a natural evolution of their longtime interests in geology. “I’ve collected rocks since I was two years old because my dad has collected rocks for most of his life,” said Shramko, who is majoring in geology. Shramko’s father owns a business selling rocks and minerals, which is how they managed to amass such a large collection. They collected a few of the minerals that they donated, but most were bought at rock shows. “This is a great collection, and Colgate is lucky to have them,” said Professor William Peck, chair of the geology department. “School groups typically visit the Linsley Geology Museum on the second floor of the Ho Science Center and then the visualization lab, so getting to see the mineral exhibition after the show is icing on the cake.” “My dad and I noticed that Colgate didn’t really have any and we felt that we should fix that,” Shramko said. In addition to the fluorescent minerals, the Shramkos have donated about 15 other minerals to the university. — Katie Rice ’13

Outside the Ho Tung Visualization Lab, a school group enjoys the display of fluorescent minerals donated by Matt Shramko ’13 and his dad, Steven.

They can be beautiful and they can be terrifying — the duality of Hindu goddesses inspired Padma Kaimal’s new book, Scattered Goddesses: Travels with the Yoginis. But Kaimal wasn’t always drawn to these female icons. “I fought it for a long time,” admitted the professor of art and art history and Asian studies. “I was resisting assumptions that I felt other people were making that, ‘You’re a woman; you must be interested in gender.’” But, at the time, Kaimal was fascinated with the god Shiva: “He’s an outsider god; he refuses to follow the rules,” Kaimal said. “He won’t sit in a palace wearing jewels like a king — he’s out on the mountainside, wearing skins of animals and necklaces of seeds. I guess he’s a good god for people of a naturally questioning turn of mind.” Shiva actually led Kaimal to study goddesses because he was at the center of her favorite monument, the Kailasanatha temple in Kanchipuram, India — “the Sistine ceiling of Indian art,” she said. Although the central shrine is dedicated to Shiva, the female deity sculptures all over the building play a much bigger role than what existing scholarship had assumed. “I wanted to wrap my head around the monument, and I realized that I was just going to have to take on goddesses. Once I got into them, I realized that they’re so much more complicated than I thought, and [goddesses aren’t] just some model of matriarchic utopia of the ancient past. “To realize that this was not a male-centered building, but a building about the dynamics between male and female deities, made me wonder if there was anything else like this in the region,” she added. Soon, Kaimal said, she found “my girls” — 19 sculptures from 10th century South India that had been scattered to at least 12 museums across North America, Western Europe, and South India. In Scattered Goddesses, Kaimal paints the complex story of how these sculptures were dispersed through the theft and heroism of several characters — an archaeologist, an art dealer, and a poor laborer. Over the nine years that she worked on the book, Kaimal traveled to all of the museums where the goddesses are currently housed, dragging along her “very patient husband,” Andy Rotter, who is Colgate’s Charles A. Dana Professor of history. Kaimal’s love of art history started with her mother. Calling herself “a mixie” of a working-class white Bostonian mom and Indian father, Kaimal was raised in America, but whenever her family visited relatives in India, her mother would take her to the archaeological sites and major monuments. Although Kaimal said she “always felt culturally much more American than Indian,” she kept ties with her Indian roots through 30 years of Indian classical dance, yoga, cooking, and an emphasis on extended family. (Her parents moved to Hamilton to help Kaimal and Rotter raise their two daughters, who are now 20 and 24.) Her mom even served as an extra set of eyes as Kaimal was writing her book, “to tell me if I was being too jargony or exclusive in the way I’m telling the story,” she said. “The book is not meant to be just for scholars.” Kaimal’s dream is to “get the girls back together” — reunite the sculptures under one roof. “The entire reunion is maybe a pie-in-the-sky [goal], but we’re taking some baby steps toward it,” she said. Next December 13, at the Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C., an exhibition on yoga will reunite four of the goddesses. Kaimal consulted with the curator, wrote the catalogue entry, and will be giving a lecture at the gallery. In the meantime, she continues to study the Kailasanatha temple and has brought her research into the classroom. In her seminar on narrative in sculpture for juniors and seniors, Kaimal has been using the discourse to further her own scholarship. “We’ve been reading theory about how visual narrative works, and I’m applying it to this monument. It’s incredibly helpful.” — Aleta Mayne

News and views for the Colgate community

Alice Virden-Speer

Get to know: Padma Kaimal

Andrew Daddio

a lot of time discussing all aspects of these everyday goods, but their production remains far removed from the students’ (and my own) experience,” said Nemes, who has taught the course before. “A trip to Costa Rica (or someplace else in the ‘coffee belt’) in January will help us unravel this mystery and to appreciate the expertise, labor, capital, and geography that produce the coffee we drink.” Although Colgate has offered occasional courses with a living-learning dimension, the Mellon Sophomore Residential Seminars will impact up to 70 students a year with academic interests from across the curriculum. The weeklong travel experience in January, to be included at no additional cost to the students, is entirely new to the residential model. According to Douglas Hicks, dean of the faculty, the Mellon Sophomore Residential Seminars will build on the best of a residential liberal arts education. “It will deepen faculty-student mentoring and student-student social and intellectual engagement.” Of the particular focus on sophomores, Suzy Nelson, dean of the college, said: “Sophomore year is a critical time for students to solidify their college identities. This is when they develop the social and academic networks that will support them throughout their remaining college years and beyond.” “I think Colgate students yearn for a way to integrate their social and intellectual lives within a community,” said Dudrick, “and the seminars will provide a way to do just that.”

Duy Trinh ’14

arts & culture 18

Above: From This Is Not a Play About Sex, a scene titled “After Hours,” which addresses verbal harassment. Below: Christina Liu ’13

scene: Winter 2013

This is not a story about sex

It started out being about sex. But as Christina Liu ’13 was writing her play last summer, she found that it underwent what she called “a distinct shift.” This Is Not a Play About Sex, for which Liu received a University Studies grant to write and direct, became about much more than her intended topics of sex, the body, and sexuality. A theater and women’s studies double major from Shanghai, Liu got her inspiration from three years of acting in (and, last year, directing) The Vagina Monologues — soliloquies about womanhood that have been performed internationally. Like that play, Liu’s script is composed of monologues based on interviews with real people. Liu conducted her interviews last spring with 26 students — 13 men and 13 women. “I wanted the play to encompass all gender identities, all sexualities … my goal was to capture as many different perspectives and behaviors and attitudes as possible, to have a more complete portrait of sexuality and sexual expression at Colgate,” Liu explained. When she began working on the script, Liu found that “something very unsettling was happening,” she said. “With everyone I interviewed, regardless of what they’re affiliated with, their gender, or their class year, there was this undertone of dissatisfaction across the board, and people feeling not fulfilled. I found that troubling.” That’s when the play became more complex: “I think sexuality was a door through which to talk about fulfillment. My takeaway message has to do with happiness and why we’re not obtaining the things that we need to feel fulfilled or sexually satisfied.” In rehearsals, the 21-member cast treated the monologues as a jumping-

off point to share their own experiences and talk about steps toward positive sexuality on campus. “I wanted this play to take on more of an activist role than just a performance piece for people to feel good about and think ‘that was nice’ and leave with it,” she said. So, Liu developed a take-home packet as a way for people to further the discussion with their own groups and organizations. Liu is also working with university deans to get the conversation started earlier by introducing the play and packet into the first-year experience. The play originally debuted on campus in October over Family Weekend, but it became such a phenomenon that Liu brought it back for an encore performance in December. With more than 500 people total attending the shows, a follow-up brown bag discussion, and a film screening, Liu’s plan to spark a campuswide dialogue is working. “When I thought of the project before the show [debuted], I thought the performance would be the pinnacle,” Liu said. “But now something new is happening. I underestimated the need for people to talk; people are really grasping on to this as an opportunity to have conversations.”

Playing with time

Many artists have covered Dave Brubeck’s acclaimed jazz standard “Blue Rondo a la Turk” — from singer Al Jarreau to electric guitarist Paul Gilbert of Racer X and Mr. Big fame. Now you can add the Colgate University Orchestra (well, a subgroup of it) to that list, thanks to Dave Unland, teacher of low brass and tuba player in the orchestra for 33 years. The brass and percussion sections opened the orchestra’s October concert with the world premiere of Unland’s new arrangement, which was commissioned by conductor Marietta Cheng. With its lilting, punchy oddtime signature and staccato melody, the tune was an inspired addition to a program that also included selections from Copland, Gershwin, Liadov, and Borodin. “‘Blue Rondo’ has always been one of my favorite ‘cool’ jazz tunes — it is very catchy and stays with you after hearing or playing it,” said Unland, who had shared the stage with Brubeck and his sons in a concert of Brubeck’s music back in the 1970s. “I love

Preview

Twice-Cooked Pork by Wei Weng/Cong Yip: an audio-visual mixer and video installation that gives “a new experience of the ancient Chinese language.”

Revolutions per Minute: A Decade of Chinese Sound Art March 26–April 29, 2013 Opening celebration: Reception on March 26, performances on March 27 (in the Hall of Presidents) and March 28 (in the Visualization Lab), and a colloquium on March 29 A retrospective of Chinese sound art by 30 artists will be installed throughout campus and in Hamilton. Six artists will present free sound art performances, including improvisation, electro acoustic composition, abstract audio-visual work, and circuit bending. These performances will highlight key events from the past decade of Chinese sound art — a movement that began in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Artists focus on sound as a medium to reflect their views on culture and art as well as express their emotions and document dramatic societal transformations. The interdisciplinary nature of the exhibition extends from the planning phase involving various faculty members — from physics to theater — to different academic opportunities. The visiting artists will conduct four do-it-yourself workshops/demonstrations on sound, and students will create their own sound art.

For more, visit http://www.RPM13.com.

External Original

A video of a dying butterfly that has lost a wing. A three-dimensional gray backslash hung on the wall. Refigured images from the film Deep Throat. These artworks, displayed as part of the External Original exhibition in Colgate’s Clifford Gallery, may seem like dissimilar pieces, but curator Sarah Mattes ’06 sees a common thread. With External Original, Mattes — a professional artist living and working in Brooklyn — premiered her first curatorial endeavor that featured art by some of her peers. All of the works make reference to poet Ezra Pound’s ideas of Imagism from the early 1900s, which were grounded in the notion that every person brings his or her own experiences to an object. The 11 artists Mattes chose — from videographers to artists working with paper — presented their own points of view on this broad category. And, Mattes selected them because “many of the artists here approach their work

Intertwining texts

What happens when you mix a globally recognized director, the dense and complex works of poet-playwright Heiner Müller, and a group of students? Herakles Block, a production that goes beyond any recognizable 19th- or 20th-century form. In the fall, students teamed up with Christian A. Johnson Artist-inResidence Thomas Irmer to create a collage of two texts written by

Müller, who is considered one of the most important playwrights of the 20th century. Because Irmer wanted to write a “learning play” that would allow for the exchange of ideas between his students and himself, the group collaborated to conceptualize the merging of the texts in order to construct the script. “We were treated as equals in the creation process,” said Asia Lamar ’13, the show’s production assistant. “[Irmer] also gave the actors liberty with their gestures and line delivery.” The group began with Müller’s “Mommsen’s Block,” a text about German historian Theodore Mommsen and his writer’s block. They then integrated “Herakles 2,” in which Müller writes about a moment when a man comes in contact with a beast, and asks his readers to determine whether the two become one or if the man was the beast the entire time, therefore acting as his own obstacle. This was a different way of thinking of the concept of “block,” and created a duplicity that acted as the base for the group’s exploration. The group wanted to create an entirely original production that would break the rules of traditional theater. To achieve this, they wrote the script without any real plot or characters, performing sections of choric theater — all of the players spoke in unison, acting simultaneously as one voice and without any distinguishable characters. They also imagined an environment where players and

Gabriela Bezerra ’13

in the same way I do,” she said during a gallery talk and reception at the opening on October 31. Through a convergence of mediums and forms, the artists in External Original “address process and the recording of a trace or history,” said Mattes. For example, Carmen Winant, a writer and artist, created a worn image using a still from the iconic movie Thelma and Louise. Winant visited the site in the movie where the car drove off the cliff and used materials that she collected there to distort the image. In addition to introducing the exhibition, which ran until November 20, Mattes fielded questions from students about the life of a professional artist and the art world outside of Colgate. As is evident in her exhibition, Mattes values the importance of collaboration in the art world, saying: “Art after Colgate is not so much focused on figuring out who you are as an artist, but rather on helping peers with their work.” — Katie Rice ’13

A scene from Herakles Block

Mark Williams

combining jazz and classical music. All too often, players of one genre are unwilling, or unable, to cross the aisle and become involved with other types of music. I have a much more universal approach.” The brass-percussion arrangement wasn’t Unland’s first for “Blue Rondo” — years ago he arranged it for an eight-voice low brass ensemble plus drum set. “It worked really well, so when I decided to use the tune for Colgate, I resurrected the old arrangement, revoicing and streamlining it to fit an orchestral brass section.” The tune’s origin has an international flair. As Brubeck, who passed away in early December, told it, he had heard an unusual rhythm performed by street musicians while on tour in Turkey. Upon asking them where they got the rhythm, one replied, “This rhythm is to us what the blues is to you.” Unland, who has also taught at Ithaca College, has performed with the St. Louis Symphony, Joffrey Ballet orchestra, Ringling Brothers circus, Six Flags, and Disney on Parade, among other ensembles. He retired from both Colgate and Ithaca this fall. You can watch the Colgate performance at livestream.com/ colgateuniversity, where both of the orchestra’s fall concerts are archived.

Cave Skeleton by David Gilbert, part of the External Original exhibition curated by Sarah Mattes ’06.

audience would share the same space. Rather than being seated in Brehmer Theater’s velvet seats, the audience sat in a cafe setting on stage. Herakles Block proved to be a testament to the global quality of Colgate students, and to their ability to comprehend exceptionally abstract concepts. Hailing from five different countries, the students spoke six languages between them and were able to offer international perspectives in developing the play. Some lines were repeated in different languages. “The contributions of the student players transcended the original concept because the show we saw in the end was possible only with these six individuals,” Irmer said. The five performances in midNovember were the final test of their great experiment and a chance to show their peers the production that they had not been able to neatly explain during months of preparation. Because Herakles Block was an original play, students had no context to answer typical questions. But, that was the point, explained Irmer. “They needed to have the courage to say ‘I don’t know,’” he said. “No Juliette, no Willy Loman.” “Working with Thomas is an experience of constant learning, engagement, and intellectual provocation,” said Lamar. “What makes this production worthwhile is its global voice and modern message delivered through a poetic timeline.” — Emma Barge ’14

News and views for the Colgate community

scene: Winter 2013

Volleyball wins league title

In one of the best midseason turnarounds of any program at Colgate, the volleyball team won the 2012 Patriot League Championship after a thrilling battle with American University. The Raiders won 20-18 in the final set. The teams traded set wins in the first four games, lining up a dramatic fifth set in Cotterell Court. The Eagles jumped out to an early 6-1 lead, but Colgate climbed back in the match with five-straight points to get to 10-9. The advantage remained in the hands of American until two mistakes gave Colgate its first lead of the set at 20-19. The Eagles never recovered from the miscues, forcing a fifth set with a win in the fourth game. Cotterell Court was rocking by the time the fifth set began as fellow student-athletes were in full support of their mates on the court. “The football players, the women’s basketball players, and all the other athletes — they changed the match,” Head Coach Ryan Baker said. “With the energy they created, I truly credit game four to them. And then in game five, they consistently supported us.” American quieted the crowd as the Eagles earned a fast 4-0 lead, which forced Baker to call a timeout. He regrouped his troops, who went

“This was a Disney-style season for us,” said Baker. “We started poorly, but finished the way we wanted to. I can’t wait until I will be able to look up at the championship banner at Cotterell Court and think of each one of these exceptional student-athletes.” Colgate finished the year 17-15, but when fans look back at the overall record, they will not realize that this team fought back from a 1-8 record early in the season to finish on a roll, winning 16 of 19 matches on their way to reaching the NCAA Tournament.

Women’s soccer wins 12th title

The women’s soccer team won its 12th league title this fall, defeating Navy 1-0 and earning the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament — for which they hosted a first-round game for the first time in program history. “The team stuck together — they played with and for one another,” said Head Coach Kathy Brawn, who has been a part of all 12 titles. “They really brought their game to another level in training the whole week leading up to the Patriot League Tournament.” The Raiders entered the tournament as the second seed; Navy was given the top seed and was the host. Before Colgate could reach the tournament final, the Raiders had to get through American, who had tied 2-2 with Colgate in the regular-season finale. Catherine Williams ’16, Jillian Kinter ’13, and Caroline Brawner ’15 each scored a goal against the thirdseeded Eagles in a 3-0 shutout victory. It was also the 100th career Patriot League win for Brawn. Colgate had also tied top-seeded Navy earlier in the season, so the

Duy Trinh ’14

Bob Cornell

go ’gate Liz Karnes ’15 (#9, middle hitter) leaps for the kill.

on an 8-1 run to gain the lead. The Raiders, however, couldn’t get rid of the 10-time Patriot League Champions that easily: American stormed back to tie the set at 10-10. The momentum swung back to Colgate with four-straight points to set up match point. With the crowd ready to erupt, the Eagles came back from the brink with four points to tie the match at 14-14 and also gained their own match point at 16-15. Colgate wouldn’t lie down, earning two more match points. Each time, American fought off the Raiders, but the adrenaline and crowd noise brought Colgate to another level. Finally, an attack that sailed long sent Cotterell Court into bedlam as students, fans, and parents stormed the court with the Raiders winning their first title since 1999. “Both teams left their hearts on the floor,” said Baker. “It was one of the best volleyball matches I’ve ever seen.” Michele McCarthy ’13 was named the tournament’s most valuable player, while Kaylee Fifer ’14 and Diane Seely ’15 joined her on the alltournament squad. McCarthy led the team in the title match with an attack percentage of .414, finishing with just two errors. Seely and Lindsay Young ’14 also were impressive on the front line, with 18 and 15 kills, respectively. Fifer finished with 49 assists, 12 digs, 4 blocks, and 3 kills. Following the big win, the Raiders continued to the first round of the NCAA Tournament in Austin, Texas, to take on the Longhorns. Texas proved to be too much for Colgate, but that didn’t put a damper on the great season.

Jenna Gibney ’15 (#7, midfielder), holds her head high during the first NCAA Tournament game against Rutgers at Van Doren Field.

Patriot League soccer awards

Women’s soccer players Jillian Kinter ’13 and Catherine Williams ’16 both earned major Patriot League honors for their successful 2012 season. Kinter, team captain, was named Offensive Player of the Year, fulfilling early expectations after she was named Preseason Offensive Player of the Year in August. She also earned first-team All-League status after finishing the regular season leading the league with 13 goals and 35 points, while tying for the top spot with nine assists. The Newburyport, Mass., native was also the top offensive performer during league play — with five goals and five assists for 15 points, she led all three categories. This season, Kinter became the eighth player in Colgate history to record 20 or more career assists. She sits eighth overall with 83 career points, eighth with 31 career goals, and tied for fifth with 35 season points. First-year standout Williams was named Rookie of the Year — the second-straight and third in the last four years to come from Colgate. The attacker stands second in the league with 28 points, tied for second with 10 goals and third with eight assists. Williams was named the Brine Rookie of the Week four times, one shy of the record. She finished second in league play with 11 points (4 goals, 3 assists). She started all 18 games for the Raiders and has the fifth-highest point total for a first-year player in school history, with 28.

The Raiders also garnered three All-League selections on the first team: Joining Kinter and Williams is midfielder Caroline Brawner ’15, who is third on the team with 15 points. Colgate led in the league with three selections on the second team, including 2011 Rookie of the Year Jenna Raepple at forward (3 goals, 5 assists for 11 points). Joining her were midfielder Kelsey Hough ’14 (1 goal, 4 assists for 6 points) and defender Elisa Amioka ’13 (3 assists).

Football captures league title

Colgate swept its seventh Patriot League football championship — all under Head Coach Dick Biddle — thanks to a perfect record in conference play. They finished 5-0 against league opponents (6-0 if including Fordham) after being picked third in the preseason behind Lehigh and Holy Cross. The Raiders clinched the title with a 35-24 comeback win at Lehigh. The team started the season 1-3 and played only four home games, yet fashioned an 8-4 record and an NCAA playoff berth. Among a strong contingent of postseason all-conference selections, Colgate landed the Patriot League’s Offensive Player, Coach, and ScholarAthlete of the Year awards. Gavin McCarney ’14 earned the top offensive player award, Biddle earned coaching honors, and Chris Looney ’13 was named Patriot League Football Scholar-Athlete of the Year. Counting McCarney, Colgate placed six players on the All-Patriot League first team and added two more to the second team. Colgate’s first-team representatives all came from the offense. Quarterback McCarney was joined by tailback Jordan McCord ’13, fullback Ed Pavalko ’15, and offensive linemen Craig Capodiferro ’13, Brian Crockett ’13, and Ryan Risch ’13. Looney made the second team at wide receiver, while Patrick Friel ’13 was the pick at linebacker. “It was a total team effort for us to go from 1-3 to win seven games in a row and the Patriot League title — and do it when most of the games were on the road,” Biddle said. Biddle’s coaching record stands at 133-65 (.672), all at Colgate, and this year marked his 14th campaign with at least seven victories. He is 78-24 against Patriot League opponents and 38-9 against the Ivy League.

Get to know: Anne-Marie Lemal Coach of figure skating and the rugby club On the surface, rugby and figure skating couldn’t be more different. But Anne-Marie Lemal believes they go together like a scrum and a triple Salchow. As coach of both the rugby and figure skating teams at Colgate, she brings a wealth of experience in both sports. Lemal’s professional skating career began in 1987 when she joined the New York Ice Company, performing solo at outdoor rinks around the city. “That was one of the coldest winters ever — it was regularly below zero,” Lemal recalled, adding that her most memorable performance was skating to “Santa Baby.” A year later, Lemal had moved to warmer climes — California — and happened to attend the NCAA rugby championship game, where she met the coach of the Bay Area Shehawks rugby club. The coach encouraged her to try out for the club; Lemal did, joined soon after, and in her rookie year, the team won nationals. “It was an amazing start to rugby.” Lemal was immediately drawn into the tight-knit circle of her rugby team. “Teammates really bond with each other because it’s almost like going to war together — you have to have each other’s back.” She also liked the adrenaline rush. “It’s the only full-contact sport that’s played exactly the same for men and women. And if you know the proper technique, you can take anyone down — it’s very empowering for women.” For years thereafter, Lemal balanced playing rugby with pursuing her skating career. Among the highlights as a professional skater, after Lemal skated in a few shows with Nancy Kerrigan, people thought they looked so much alike that Lemal skated as her double in a Disney TV special. Although playing such a physical sport like rugby while making a living as a skater seems like a dangerous combination, “the higher the level of rugby, the fewer the injuries — it’s so much cleaner,” she explained. “I never got anything worse than lots of bruises.” What’s more, Lemal learned that the sports actually complemented each other. “Because rugby involves so much explosive lower-body power, my skating was better than ever — my jumps were huge and my speed was so much faster,” she explained. “With skating, posture, body alignment, and core strength are crucial. These abilities are very useful in a contact sport like rugby. Skating also helped me deal with fear. You must be able to override the natural anxiety that comes along with hurling yourself into the air, spinning around, and landing on ice.” Figure skating and rugby also led Lemal to her husband, Scott Brown. She was coaching the Skating Club at Dartmouth; he was working at the college and playing with the Dartmouth Old Boys rugby team. Fast-forwarding to 2008, when Brown was interviewing at Colgate, a student learned that his wife had a figure skating background and asked Lemal for help starting a team. So, when Brown signed on as the associate vice president and dean of students, the university also got its first figure skating coach. Lemal did that for about a year before agreeing to also become the women’s rugby coach. Under her leadership, the figure skating team has grown from 2 independent skaters to a solid group of 16. The team is in the most challenging division on the East Coast and competes in Eastern sectionals every year. The rugby team of approximately 40 women missed going to league playoffs by a heartbreaking one point this year. “But it was a spectacular season because we went from being at the bottom of our league to the top [tier],” Lemal said. Lemal combines her teams for workouts. “We do a total body workout, core body strength, and the upper body strength that’s missing for the figure skaters,” she said. Lemal also incorporates stretching and working muscles that are more often used in figure skating. “Some of my best rugby players are gymnasts and ballerinas,” she said. Whether it’s on ice or a muddy pitch, Lemal has shown her players the best of both worlds. — Aleta Mayne

News and views for the Colgate community

Andrew Daddio

Raiders showed up ready to play and ended the Mids’ 20-game unbeaten streak. With seven minutes remaining, a simple one-touch from Jenna Raepple ’15 gave the Raiders the 1-0 win. Navy did earn a free kick from outside the 18 with 20 seconds left, but Colgate stood its ground to win the title. Ashley Walsh ’13 was named the tournament’s most valuable player after collecting two shutouts and not allowing a goal in 180 minutes of action. Joining Walsh with tournament honors were Brawner, Raepple, and Jenna Gibney ’15; all four were selected for the all-tournament team. The Raiders then earned a chance to host their first NCAA Tournament game at Van Doren Field. Colgate outshot the Rutgers Scarlet Knights 20-13 but unfortunately lost 1-0.

go ’gate

Bob Cornell

Johnson wins IC4A Championships

“I’m Coach of the Year only because we’ve got good players,” he said. “It’s the best year I’ve ever had in coaching at Colgate.”

McCarney’s record-setting season

Below: Gavin McCarney ’14

scene: Winter 2013

Quarterback Gavin McCarney ’14 completed one of the finest individual football seasons in school history by being named Patriot League 2012 Offensive Player of the Year. He finished the season with a school-record 3,778 yards of total offense, compiling 2,372 through the air and 1,406 on the ground. His name now appears in the Colgate individual records section in 18 categories. McCarney also led the nation in scoring with 140 points, finishing with 23 touchdowns and one twopoint conversion for an average of 11.7. (Teammate Jordan McCord ’13 was second with 138 points.) The junior from Jefferson Township, N.J., also placed fifth in this year’s voting for the Walter Payton Award, presented annually to the NCAA Football Championship Division’s national player of the year. McCarney helped the Raiders to an 8-4 season and an undefeated run through the Patriot League for the program’s seventh conference title. He was a late-season addition to the Payton Award watch list, and should be one of the award’s favorites heading into next year.

Finally, McCarney earned Patriot League Top Football Play of the Year as voted by the fans. His 51-yard touchdown run to open the scoring against Holy Cross included a midfield leap over a would-be tackler. Colgate went on to win 51-35. “Under the circumstances of teams knowing what he was going to do, it probably ranks as the best I’ve seen for a player in one season at Colgate. He did it all,” said Head Coach Dick Biddle.

Herbst vs. Herbst

There was a good-natured sibling rivalry on display at center court before the women’s basketball game between the Raiders and Connecticut Huskies on November 28 in Hartford. President Jeffrey Herbst and his sister, Susan Herbst, who is president of the University of Connecticut, exchanged handshakes, traded

Arthur McKinnon

Above: Jordan McCord ’13 (#25) finished second in the nation in scoring, with 138 points.

Patriot League Runner of the Year Chris Johnson ’13 won the 104th IC4A Championships with a time of 25:28 over the 8K course. Seven members of the Colgate men’s cross-country team competed at Van Cortlandt Park in New York City on November 17. In his first IC4A title-winning run, Johnson was with the lead pack during the first 2 miles of the race. He then made his move up the hills to build a 20-second lead and never looked back. He finished 37 seconds ahead of the second-place runner. Colgate finished seventh out of 16 teams. The team got a point boost from Ben Aldrich ’15, who finished in 12th place with a personal best time of 26:31, which earned him All-East honors. Timothy Phelps ’13 (27:14) and Christopher Wendt ’13 (28:17) helped the team improve from last year’s 13th-place finish. The three first-years representing the team — Michael McConville, Christopher Noda, and Cody Hawkins — all established personal records.

Chris Johnson ’13 (#37), Patriot League Runner of the Year, is most comfortable leading the pack.

Blain has been the head pro at Seven Oaks since 1982. She coached Colgate’s men’s golf team from 2005 through 2007 and continues to teach two golf classes at the university. The honor for Blain came on the heels of Seven Oaks having been named golf course of the year by the New York State Golf Association. The course has hosted numerous qualifiers and championships for the state golf association and for the U.S. Golf Association. Blain accepted the President’s Award from the state association on behalf of the Seven Oaks staff.

assists) in 498 career games in the American Hockey League with Baltimore, Portland, and Norfolk. He is currently in his third season as an assistant coach with the AHL’s Rockford IceHogs. With Colgate, Poapst appeared in 132 collegiate contests from 1987 through 1991, racking up 61 points on 13 goals and 48 assists.

Stephen Slade

Head pro at Seven Oaks recognized

President vs. president: Jeffrey Herbst and his sister, Susan Herbst, president of the University of Connecticut, traded jerseys before the Raiders took on the Huskies.

Alumnus joins ECHL Hall of Fame Former Colgate standout Steve Poapst ’91 is among four inductees comprising the 2013 East Coast Hockey League (ECHL) Hall of Fame Class. Poapst was formally inducted into the sixth class of the ECHL Hall of Fame at a ceremony in conjunction with the 2013 ECHL All-Star Game on January 23 in Loveland, Colo. “We are proud to welcome this year’s class of four players with outstanding credentials and uniquely different résumés,” said ECHL Commissioner Brian McKenna. Poapst joined his former ECHL, AHL, and NHL teammate Olaf Kolzig as the second inductee in the Developmental Player category. Poapst began

his professional career in the ECHL with the Hampton Roads Admirals in 1991–1992, scoring 28 points (8 goals, 20 assists) in 55 regular-season games and adding 5 points (1 goal, 4 assists) in 14 postseason games, helping the Admirals claim their secondconsecutive Riley Cup championship. He returned to Hampton Roads the following season, tallying 45 points (10 goals, 35 assists) in 63 games. Poapst made his NHL debut with the Washington Capitals in 1995–1996, scoring one goal in three regular-season games, while also seeing action in six games during the Stanley Cup Playoffs. He appeared in 307 career National Hockey League games with Washington, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis, tallying 36 points (8 goals, 28 assists). Poapst also registered 205 points (45 goals, 160

Men’s rugby to compete at national tourney

Robert Tardio ’84

jerseys, and posed for pictures before the opening tipoff with Raiders Head Coach Nicci Hays Fort and the Huskies’ Geno Auriemma. Nearly 150 Colgate boosters gathered for a standing-room–only pre-game reception, enjoying the atmosphere at the XL Center. The Raiders knew it would be a challenging night against the Huskies, the perennial powerhouse ranked No. 2 in the nation. UConn ended up winning 101-41. Hays Fort told the Greenwich Time that the game was a no-lose situation. “We made a lot of mini-goals within the game and we wanted to compete every possession,” she said of her game plan. “I don’t want to say we competed every possession, but we competed in a lot of them.”

Marian Blain, PGA professional and golf instructor at Colgate’s Seven Oaks course, was inducted into the Central New York PGA Hall of Fame during an awards banquet at Turning Stone Resort’s Shenendoah Golf Club in December. According to a report in the Syracuse Post-Standard, Blain has broken several “glass ceiling” gender barriers during her golf career, including becoming the first female PGA member in the CNY Section (1987) and also one of the first nationally. In 1970, following a petition to state officials by her father, Blain became the first girl to try out for — and make — the Hamilton Central High School boys’ team. It came at a time when girls were not allowed to be on boys’ teams, even if there wasn’t a girls’ team for that sport. By her senior year, Blain was the team captain and the first woman to earn a varsity letter on a boys’ team at Hamilton. Blain played collegiate golf at Miami-Dade Junior College and the University of South Florida. She played in two U.S. Women’s Amateurs and four LPGA tournaments, and was runner-up in the first annual championship for female PGA pros.

Winger Joe Kelly ’13 delights the home crowd of more than 1,000 spectators by splitting a pair of Oswego State defenders en route to his second try of the rugby match.

The men’s rugby club advanced to the USA Rugby collegiate championships for the second-straight year after a 31-15 victory over Oswego State. Playing in front of a huge crowd of supporters during Family Weekend in October, Colgate’s eighth-straight victory earned the team a berth to the national collegiate tournament to be held April 27 and 28. “To return to the national tournament so soon after our first-ever qualification last year is a testament to the high quality of this program,” said Alexander Heller ’13, who captains the team with Graham Rieser ’13. Heller, of Toronto, and Rieser, from Chicago, both came to Colgate after having played rugby in high school. Head Coach Timothy Burdick praised the players, and cited the leadership shown by Rieser, Heller, club president Colin Cowles ’13, match secretary Rico Rosa ’13, communication secretary Matthew Flannery ’13, and club vice president John T. Colucci ’14. “Colin, Rico, Matt, and J.T. — shoulder to shoulder with Alex and Graham — have displayed such skillful leadership throughout the season,” said Burdick. “These gentlemen are establishing Colgate rugby as one of the truly high-performance programs on the collegiate scene.” The club finished the season 9-1, and has already started its preparations for the national tournament in April. After finishing fifth in the nation last year, the co-captains said they are committed to taking Colgate rugby to the top. “While the team is different every year, the major difference this time is that we’re going to finish number one!” Rieser declared.

News and views for the Colgate community

new, noted , & quoted

Books, music & film Information is provided by publishers, authors, and artists.

Placed by The Gideons

Wormburner, featuring Steve ‘Hank’ Henry ’93 (Wax Off Records) Placed by The Gideons is the latest CD by Wormburner, “an electrifying five piece” from New York City that radio station KEXP in Seattle called “anthemic indie rock with a punk rock kick.” A “fugitive odyssey concept album,” Placed by The Gideons features 10 hard-charging rock songs — penned by vocalist/guitarist/lyricist Steve ‘Hank’ Henry ’93 — that are connected by one smoldering narrative thread. Time Out New York cites “echoes of Springsteen, The Clash, and The Pogues that ring out in the succinct vignettes of this striking sophomore set.” The New Yorker said Henry “can sound like a cross between Michael Stipe and The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle.” Wormburner regularly plays shows at New York City venues like The Bowery Ballroom and The Mercury Lounge, but acclaim for their new album has led to national tour dates stretching to the West Coast.

Africa’s Third Liberation: The New Search for Prosperity and Jobs

Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills (SA Penguin)

In Africa’s Third Liberation, Colgate President Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills show how Africa has experienced two liberations: the first from colonial and racist regimes and the second from the autocrats who often followed foreign rule. At the end of the 1970s, just three African countries regularly held multiparty elections; more than 40 do today. Africa’s political evolution points to a third liberation — from political economies

scene: Winter 2013

characterized by graft, crony capitalism, rent-seeking, elitism, and social inequality. This liberation will open up the economic space in which business can compete and employment can expand. The debate is about how Africa can realize its economic potential and avoid the disappointments of the first 50 years of independence. This book asks how Africa’s political leaders and interest groups can promote economic growth in their countries. Using examples from Central and South America, Southeast and South Asia, and the Middle East, the authors examine what means are best to match political liberalization with growth. They suggest a way forward for higher-growth and job-absorption strategies in Africa in the context of liberalized political systems.

Between the Shadow and the Flame

Geoffrey Lee Hodge ’86 (Penumbra Invictus)

In Geoffrey Lee Hodge’s new sci-fi mystery novel, when a pandemic and ensuing nuclear war threaten to put civilization on the brink of obliteration, and conspiracy theorists whisper of a plot to wipe out humanity, philosopher Sophia Xiao gets caught up in a quest to find the truth. Shadowed by a mysterious figure, she travels across the devastated land with Newman, a former theology student, and Hyle, a snarky young science writer, as they evade paramilitary death squads, encounter pockets of survivors, and match wits with the charismatic cult leader who has prophesied Sophia’s role in the coming battle at the end of days. Hunted, Sophia, Hyle, and Newman search for clues about their pursuers and the cause of the war.

Feminism, the Left, and Postwar Literary Culture Kathlene McDonald ’91 (University Press of Mississippi)

In journal articles, essays, novels, short stories, plays, and collections of poetry, women in the 1940s and 1950s worked to establish a feminist consciousness in American culture. In her

new book, Kathlene McDonald analyzes literary texts to uncover the ambivalence, conflicts, and contradictions that women faced when trying to posit a more egalitarian society in their writings. McDonald argues that, despite efforts to contain political resistance during the McCarthy era, women writers became more actively involved in left politics during the period, drawing on the rhetoric of anti-fascism to critique the cultural and ideological aspects of women’s oppression. McDonald is associate professor of English at the City College of New York Center for Worker Education.

Sleeping with Dog Tags

Tiffany (Drewniak) Cloud Olson ’90 (Word Association Publishers) The novel Sleeping with Dog Tags tracks the emotional rollercoaster of a military spouse’s year at home while her husband is deployed in Afghanistan. Central to her narrative is the conviction that while war is hell for the soldiers, it is also hell for family members manning the home front, for whom there are few supports. But this is also a love story about two people meeting later in life after divorces and discovering they are soul mates — despite their very different backgrounds. Wisdom garnered from life experiences feeds a poignant, yet self-aware reflection on the challenges of dealing with the ever-present specter of death, the military’s “my way or the highway” nature, and the missteps of a strong woman treading the unchartered path of the military spouse.

The Island Garden: England’s Language of Nation from Gildas to Marvell Lynn Staley (University of Notre Dame Press)

For centuries, England’s writers have used the metaphor of their country as an island garden to engage in a self-

In the media conscious debate about national identity. In her new book, Lynn Staley suggests that the trope of Britain as an island garden catalyzed two crucial historical perspectives and, thus, two analytic modes. As isolated and vulnerable, England stood in a potentially hostile relation to the world outside its encircling sea. As semi-enclosed and permeable, it also accepted recuperative relationships with those who moved across its boundaries. Identifying the concept of enclosure as key to Britain’s language of place, Staley traces the shifting meanings of this concept in medieval and early modern histories, treatises, and poems. Staley is Colgate’s Harrington and Shirley Drake Professor of the humanities and medieval and Renaissance studies.

Instant Songwriting: Musical Improv from Dunce to Diva

Nancy Howland Walker ’87 (Satyagraha Publishing)

Instant Songwriting is a how-to for musical improvisers and an excellent resource for songwriters. With more than two decades of musical improv experience, Nancy Howland Walker guides the reader with clear, logical, and fun step-bystep exercises, from the very basics of putting a song together, to highly advanced song techniques. She has written the book for all levels — whether you’re new to the art form or experienced, your songs are improvised or written, or you write songs just for fun or for a profit. Musical tracks are included for each exercise, to accompany you as you practice and master each step along the way. With her new book, Walker is hoping to coach you to become the songwriting diva you were meant to be.

Those We Love Most

Lee McConaughy Woodruff ’82 (Voice) In her first novel, Woodruff writes about marriage, family, and the ties

that bind us all. On a bright June day, Maura Corrigan wakes up happy and secure, with a loving husband, and three healthy, vivacious children. By the end of the day, her entire world will be shattered. In the aftermath of tragedy, the fractures in both Maura’s life and her marriage become all-too-clear not just to her and her husband, Pete, but also to her parents, who are grappling with strain within their own marriage. Told through the alternating perspective of these four people over the course of a year, Those We Love Most chronicles how a twist of fate forces them to examine their mistakes, fight for their most valuable relationships, and ultimately find their way back to each other.

Also of note:

In his new children’s book, Watts and the Nightlight (Larch Press), Gaston Blom ’41 writes about a young boy, Henry, who can’t fall asleep and Watts — an imaginary character living in the nightlight — who helps Henry with his fear of the dark. An educational comic book, Self-Talk: A Child’s Bulletproof Vest Against Emotional Gunfire (RoundTable Comics), released by Devin Hughes ’91, teaches children about “self-talk,” a strategy they can use to combat negativities stemming from issues like bullying, learning disabilities, familial dysfunction, and peer pressure. Meghan Arcuri Moran ’98 has published her story, “Inevitable,” in Chiral Mad (Written Backwards), a new psychological horror anthology whose profits are donated to Down syndrome charities. Fitting into the theme of chirality (when an object is not identical to its mirror image, or cannot be superposed onto itself), “Inevitable” is a story of changing identity. Some days Bud looks into the mirror to find he’s become another person. Today he’s a little girl. In a few days, he’ll be invisible. And in a few more days, he’ll become someone else — someone he finds deplorable. Follow Bud’s descent into the darker side of his humanity.

“I think people just want to feel less alone. When you feel like the circus freak and the people on the soccer sidelines don’t know what to say to you, you want that collectivity and connectivity.” — Lee McConaughy Woodruff ’82 on the Today show discussing her new novel, Those We Love Most

“I do believe that this is a critical moment for Africa, and a critically optimistic moment where Africans will be making a set of choices that will affect their economies and their political economies for many years to come.” — President Jeffrey Herbst at the CATO Institute during the launch of his new book, Africa’s Third Liberation

“For the Maya, everything has to be brought together in terms of whole multiples and that’s where Venus comes in. It has a five-to-eight rhythm with the sun.” — Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology and Native American studies, in Archaeology Magazine

“Choices have consequences. We should never stop learning.” — Beverly Low, associate dean for administrative advising and first-year students, in her Huffington Post op-ed piece

“It’s interesting that the Russians are claiming that they found a gigantic deposit of diamonds in a meteoriteimpact crater, because, from what we’ve seen so far, it’s kind of unlikely.” — Geology professor Richard April comment- ing to Yahoo news about a claim from Russian scientists

“The result is an authoritative analysis of an episode that ... has utterly failed to penetrate the popular historical memory.”

— A review in the Atlantic, which listed history professor R.M. Douglas’s book as one of its “Books of the Year 2012.” Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of Germans After the Second World War was published by Yale University Press in June 2012.

News and views for the Colgate community

From the gallon of 2 percent in your fridge to that Cheesy Gordita you had for lunch, the story of the dairy industry is sure to hit you in the stomach. By Kirk Kardashian '00 Illustrations by Peter Horjus

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He never thought it would come to this.

“Are you Robert Simpson?” asked Deputy Sheriff Carrie McCool. “Yes.” “Did you bounce two checks to Feed Commodities, Mr. Simpson?” “Yes.” “Put your hands behind your back, sir. I need to take you in.” Simpson chuckled, his ruddy face growing a deeper shade of red. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” “Afraid not,” she said. Simpson, a stocky but gentle 58-year-old, protested a bit more. But within 30 seconds, he knew it was no use. Right or wrong, he was being arrested. So he turned around and McCool fastened handcuffs on his thick wrists. Then she opened the back door to her squad car and helped him in. As the car bumped down the steep, washboarded driveway, Simpson worried about his herd. He was shorthanded that day — May 1, 2009 — and he needed to move a few dozen of his Holsteins from the lower pasture into the feed barn on his farm in Braintree, Vt. His wife, Tay, had gone to the store. His son, Andrew, was away for the weekend at a wedding. At the police station in nearby Randolph, a small, blue-collar town with a cheerful main street of brick storefronts and American flags, Simpson was fingerprinted, photographed, and cited with two felony counts of false pretenses. The charges dated back to

October of 2008, when he had inadvertently written two bad checks, each for roughly $7,300, to pay for a load of grain. This was the first time Simpson had ever been arrested, and if the experience weren’t so surreal, so ridiculous, he might have been angrier. But the truth was, Bob Simpson had bigger problems.

Dairy crisis

It was 2009, and the dairy industry was hitting a crisis. Milk prices were plummeting, costs surging, and hundreds of dairy farms were going bankrupt. For most of my life, I had paid little attention to the milk, cheese, butter, and yogurt in my refrigerator. But all that had changed in 2007 when my wife and I started taking our daughter Agnes to daycare on a family dairy farm near our home in Woodstock, Vt. The farmers were some of the nicest, hardestworking people I had ever met, and I respected them immensely. Suddenly, dairy wasn’t just a product to me anymore, but a symbol for good folks doing what they loved. I’d hear about the crisis on NPR while driving Agnes to that daycare. And then I’d get to the farm, and the hardship I was hearing on the radio came into stark relief. Carrying the bitter taste of those stories through the squeaky screen door and into the diurnal rhythms of a struggling dairy family proved a potent tonic that made me think Big Thoughts. How could it be that such honest, hardworking people could produce a nutritious food that almost everyone consumes, and do it well, yet lose money? It seemed wrong that, in this greatest of meritocracies, the faithful could deposit their capital, sweat equity, and skill into the market and emerge on the other side with a debit instead of a credit. Surely, I reasoned, there must be a logical explanation. I wanted to know how the dairy industry had arrived at its current state, where, increasingly, cows don’t graze on pastures and many farms resemble factories. I wanted to uncover the implications of the journey — from grass to concrete, from farm to factory — for people, animals, and the environment. And I wanted to know how we might navigate to a place more just, prosperous, and sustainable. My attempt at some answers soon became my first book, Milk Money: Cash, Cows, and the Death of the American Dairy Farm. I started out by talking directly to dairy farmers about their experiences. Robert Simpson was one of my first interviewees. His story encapsulates the struggles of small and medium dairy farms caught in a system that’s not working for them.

How could it be that such honest, hardworking people could produce a nutritious food that almost everyone consumes, and do it well, yet lose money? Down and out on the farm

Simpson’s farm, honored as a “Dairy of Distinction” by the Vermont Department of Agriculture, was hemorrhaging dangerous amounts of money. Barring some miraculous change in the milk market, the Simpsons would, like 52 of their colleagues in Vermont and hundreds more across the country in 2009 alone, be forced out of business and left with a knot of debts that only a bankruptcy judge could untangle. Times weren’t always so tough on the Simpson farm. Just eight years before he was arrested, Simpson’s farm was healthy enough that a bank lent him $2 million to build a bigger, state-of-the-art milking parlor, a center-aisle feed barn, and manure and grain storage facilities. Simpson could now milk up to 425 cows, and he had calculated that if the price for 100 pounds of fluid milk stayed above $14, he’d be all right. That plan played out nicely for a while. In fact, 2007 proved to be a banner year for American dairy farmers. Global demand for milk surged as developing countries grew more prosperous. Plus, droughts in Australia and New Zealand created a large milk hole that the United States was all too happy to fill. Milk exports rose to more than 12 percent of production, and in September the all-milk price hit a high of nearly $24 per hundredweight. The message to dairy farmers from Maine to Florida to Idaho was loud and clear: the more milk you make, the more money you’ll make. “The first thing producers did,” USDA economist Don Blayney said, “was buy more cows.” Herds swelled, and milk production followed, increasing by 5 percent between 2006 and 2008 to almost 200 billion pounds per year. But just out of view, trouble was on the horizon. The first blow came to the Simpsons in November 2007. A 2005 federal energy bill had begun to ramp up the amount of corn-based ethanol in domestic gasoline, moving grain prices a little higher. The news that another piece of legislation would likely be enacted at the end of 2007, effectively asking

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Today’s dairy cow might look like she’s been on a diet compared to the squat, thickly boned Holsteins of past genera ons — but their transformed physiognomy is a result of gene c research and ar ficial insemina on meant to breed a more produc ve Bessie.

12,000 lbs vs. 24,000 lbs

Down 37.5%

The gene pool went from thousands of bulls contribu ng to it, to 30% today coming from only two bulls, Chief and Eleva on

6 years vs. 5 years

for twice the amount of ethanol by 2015, set off a bull market in commodity corn. In one month, Simpson’s feed costs rocketed up by $12,000. That might have been fine — if the price of milk had stayed high. But to see a line graph of milk prices over 2008 and 2009 is akin to watching a rock bounce down a jagged precipice. Simpson looked on in horror: $22, 19, 19.50, 20, 18, 17, 16 per hundredweight. Simultaneously, fuel costs went in the other direction, rising to more than $4.50 per gallon, which made fertilizer more expensive, too. Simpson was getting squeezed on all sides. Then, in late September 2008, milk’s very image as a healthful and wholesome food came under attack. More than 300,000 people in China, most of them under the age of 3, became sick from drinking milk tainted with melamine. Chinese dairy processors had been adding the nitrogen-based industrial chemical to low-quality milk to give it a creamier, more protein-rich mouth feel. It also, incidentally, gave infants kidney stones and caused

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renal failure. A billion Chinese people suddenly feared milk of any provenance. The falling milk price reached terminal velocity in October of 2008, when the global recession squelched domestic and international demand, causing exports to fall to 5 percent. And yet, all those cows that had been brought on line in the boom times of 2007 were pumping out milk. Farmers couldn’t just shut them off. This created a huge surplus. As complicated as the dairy industry is, the rule saying that when the supply of any commodity exceeds demand, its price will decrease holds true, and Simpson understands it all too well. By the end of 2008, Simpson’s milk check was $20,000 less per month than it had been the year before. The year 2009 dawned with prices at $15 per hundredweight, only to plummet to just over $12 by early spring. Now his milk check, in essence the revenue that would pay for everything related to the farm, was but a stub — “zero dollars and no cents” — because the dairy cooperative he belongs to skims grain bills, co-op dues, milk promotion fees, farm-loan payments, health insurance, workers’ compensation,

and a host of other charges right off the top. The falling price of milk just made that skim deeper and deeper until, eventually, the skim was everything. The Simpsons have faith that they won’t become another statistic in the drawn-out denouement of family dairy farms, but the odds are against them. Between 1970 and 2006, the number of dairy farms in the United States fell by 88 percent, from 648,000 to just 75,000. The overwhelming majority of these losses came from farms with 30 to 200 cows — typical small dairies. Meanwhile, the number of farms with more than 2,000 cows doubled over the much-shorter period of 2000 to 2006. The force behind this trend is well understood: bigger farms achieve an economy of scale that makes them less expensive to operate. They use their infrastructure more intensively and purchase feed at bulk discounts. They contract with breeders to obtain heifers from off site, reducing the expense of raising the animals themselves. They confine their milk cows in large barns or in dry-lot feed yards, which cuts down on real estate costs and yields more milk per cow. All of this results in total costs that are 18 percent lower on farms with 500 or more cows than farms with 200 to 499 cows; costs on farms with fewer than 200 cows are even higher.

If you follow the logic, it’s not hard to see where it leads: a stark difference in profitability between large farms and small ones. Nationally, the average net returns for farms with 500 or more cows were positive, while smaller farms reported negative returns. That’s probably why a survey in 2000 by the USDA’s Economic Research Service found that 25 percent of farmers with fewer than 100 cows expected to close down by 2010. Meanwhile, only 7 percent of the larger operations had the same expectation. But that trend (which has proven generally to be the case) is not just numerical, it’s also geographical. The states with long histories in the dairy industry — New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Minnesota, and Wisconsin — contain mostly small and medium-size dairy farms. The growth of megafarms is happening predominantly in the Southwest and in California, which has operations with upward of 30,000 cows and now produces more milk than any other state or region. Synthesize these facts and you realize that small farms in the traditional dairy states are disappearing, or are in grave risk of disappearing, and the milk production is shifting to behemoth farms in the West. The global recession has quickened that exodus, presenting a frightening vision for the future of milk. “If we lose the farms in New England,” Simpson said, “then people will be drinking milk made from concentrate. They’ll pull the water out of it, truck it

wanes), prices went up. The result was massive instability and unpredictability in the market. The Great Depression was the catalyst for change. Within two years after the stock market crashed, milk became a luxury. Demand for it dropped precipitously, and the classified pricing system that had developed during the “milk wars” of the 1920s broke down as well. The dairy cooperatives, blessed with an exemption to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, rallied for government intervention to stabilize prices. “The attitude of the milk-shed representatives,” Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace recalled, was, “‘For God’s sake, do something — and do it quick!’” Roosevelt’s nascent New Deal stepped in with the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. This law authorized Wallace to enter into marketing agreements with handlers and processors to raise the price of agricultural commodities, including milk. Its central goal was crop control and bringing supply in line with demand. Although the Supreme Court would later strike down the law as unconstitutional, it was reshaped two years later and went unchallenged. The act laid the foundation for the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, which is the basis of the federal milk marketing order today. The marketing order, regulated by the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, was designed to “ensure consumers an adequate supply of wholesome milk for drinking, and an adequate price for producers — a little stability,” said Robert Cropp, a professor emeritus of agricultural economics at the University of Wisconsin. Aside from some technical provisions

“ If we lose the farms in New England,” Simpson said, “then people will be drinking milk made from concentrate. They’ll pull the water out of it, truck it across the country, and reconstitute it. And if people are fine with that, then the game’s over.” across the country, and reconstitute it. And if people are fine with that, then the game’s over.” Talk to enough farmers like Bob Simpson and you begin to really wonder how the milk pricing system works, and why it doesn’t ensure a fair wage for dairy farmers.

The Control of American Milk The roots of dysfunctional federal dairy regulations were laid in the “milk wars” of the 1920s — fierce price competition between milk cooperatives serving the same regions that contributed to drastic price swings. Another source was the seasonal fluctuation of milk supply: in the spring (when cows give a lot of milk), prices sagged; in the fall (when milk production

about the components of price formulas, the marketing order remains largely unchanged more than 75 years after it was first conceived. The most important thing to know about the order is that it sets minimum prices that processors or handlers must pay to dairy farmers and cooperatives for fluid-grade milk. They can pay more, of course, but rarely do. The prices are differentiated by region, the number of which has consolidated steadily from 34 to 10, reflecting the greater distances milk regularly travels today. One major problem is that the federal milk marketing order price has nothing to do with the cost of production by region; it’s all based on supply and demand, and, strangely, how far from

Eau Claire, Wis., the milk is produced. In recent years, the Southeast has had the highest floor price in the country, and that’s because Florida has a huge and unmet demand for milk. The Northeast has one of the lowest, because there’s a glut of milk. The effect is that the floor price in the Northeast, where the cost of producing milk is the highest, is usually just a few cents more than it is in western and southern states. Northeastern dairy farmers, who are receiving a few dollars less per hundredweight than their southern colleagues, would like to ship their milk to Florida, but hauling costs are prohibitive. The regulation has created a sort of perverse incentive: the higher price in the Southeast encourages Southern farmers to produce more and meet that demand. The low price in the Northeast encourages farmers to make up the price losses with volume gains. All roads lead to increased supply and, therefore, lower prices.

Milk Gone Wild

Ironically, another part of the challenge is that we’ve become too adept at making milk. And, while the price of milk is pushed, prodded, held up, and stamped down, market supply is completely unregulated — left to the whim of farmers and the innovations that corporations and land grant colleges can put into their hands. What that means, oftentimes, is that we just have too much of it. In 1944, the United States had 25.6 million dairy cows. Today, there are about 9 million. Those midcentury cows made a total of 120 billion pounds of milk per year, while today’s much smaller modern population pumps out 190 billion pounds. Since 1900, we’ve increased annual per-cow milk yield from roughly 3,000 pounds to 20,000 pounds — a nearly sevenfold rise. At the same time, even though the U.S. population has doubled in the past 60 years, per capita milk consumption has declined. And this, despite the vigorous efforts by the Got Milk? campaign. One effect of this overabundance is that farmers’ margins are razor thin, leaving them increasingly vulnerable to the price swings that define the industry. Another effect is less obvious — but more weird. People are drinking less whole milk, and, at the behest of their doctors and the USDA, they’re drinking more skim and low-fat milk. This, in turn, has left a lot of excess milk fat on the market — the raw ingredient in cheese. Instead of going through the front door with a Got Cheese? promotion, in the mid-1990s the USDA formed a sub-agency called Dairy Management Inc. (DMI) to subtly push more cheese into the foods we eat. As the New York Times reported in November 2010, with its chief executive making more than $600,000 a year, two other executives earning more than $300,000, and 160-plus employees, DMI more closely resembles a private corporation than a governmental entity. The budget for this marketing organ, whose goal is to put more saturated fat into American stomachs, tops $135 million per year — paid for largely

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Instead of going through the front door with a Got Cheese? promotion, in the mid-1990s the USDA formed a sub-agency called Dairy Management Inc. to subtly push more cheese into the foods we eat. by a mandatory charge to dairy farmers. Meanwhile, the budget for the USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, an advocate of healthful eating, is $6.5 million. With these resources, DMI has developed specific goals and helped many fast-food chains launch new cheesier foods. According to internal documents obtained by the Times in a Freedom of Information Act request, DMI wants to see more “cheese snacking fanatics” and to increase cheese use in sandwiches and elsewhere. Since the late 1990s, DMI has been working with restaurants such

as Pizza Hut, Domino’s, Wendy’s, and Taco Bell to devise new menu items topped, stuffed, coated, and baked with cheese. The first campaign in this effort was Pizza Hut’s declaration of the summer of 2002 as the “Summer of Cheese.” During the 12-week period, Pizza Hut reintroduced the Stuffed Crust and Insider pizzas, increasing cheese use by 102 million pounds by the fall. In October 2010, with $12 million worth of DMI’s marketing funds, Domino’s rolled out a new pizza for its Legends line of cheesier pies. Dubbed the Wisconsin, this pizza featured six types of cheese on top and two more in the crust. Even while DMI helps Domino’s brainstorm these cheese-blasted concoctions, its parent organization, the USDA, issues nutritional brochures such as “Your Personal Path to Health: Steps to a Healthier You,” which provides hints on good eating habits such as portioning snacks on a plate, and ordering appetizers instead of entrées. Under “When You ‘Order Out,’” it offers the strangest advice: “Make your pizza a veggie with toppings like mushrooms, peppers, and onions.” And “ask for wholewheat crust and half the cheese.” How did we end up with a system where farmers make too much of a product? Largely, it’s a result of the unfair prices farmers receive for their milk. Over the years, the federal government has treated the symptoms of the broken pricing system by implementing various subsidies and export incentives. Those efforts, while valiant, have proven incapable of ensuring dairy farmers a sustainable wage. A proposal in the next farm bill may be a step in the right direction.

A Fix in the Farm Bil ?

About every four years, Congress debates and reauthorizes the farm bill, an omnibus piece of legislation that encompasses everything from conservation to corn subsidies. Dairy farmers have been trying for years to secure provisions that would reduce the wild price swings in milk and give them a little stability. The 2012 farm bill had

scene: Winter 2013

been their best chance yet. In a version passed by the Senate last June, a new law called the Dairy Security Act would provide margin insurance and implement a supply control program, which would help prevent an oversupply of milk. The same law was contained in a version of the farm bill that passed the House Agriculture Committee. But that’s where it stalled. Citing irreconcilable differences on budget cuts to the food-stamp program (also part of the farm bill), the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, announced that he would not bring the bill to a vote before it expired on September 30. Then, in the waning hours of 2012, the farm bill debate was overshadowed by the wrangling over the so-called fiscal cliff. In the 11th-hour deal on the revenue side of the fight, the House passed a bill that included a nine-month extension of the 2008 farm bill. The Dairy Security Act was left out, but, hopefully, the new Congress will see its utility and include it in the new farm bill. The impacts of this legislative neglect are already starting to appear. In Bridport, Vt., Leonard Barrett has decided to end his 40-year career as a dairy farmer, telling the Addison County Independent that he was “forced out” by the combination of rising production costs and stagnant milk prices. “I’m very disappointed with our people in Washington, D.C.,” he said. With stories like Barrett’s, it isn’t shocking that Vermont has 22 fewer dairy farms than it did last year. In Florida, Mike and Freda Carey are holding on to the last dairy farm in Polk County, hoping that the situation improves enough to pass the operation on to one of their four children. Given the current outlook, it doesn’t seem likely. “It’s pretty hard to keep working when you’re losing $500 to $600 a day,” Mike told The News Chief, a newspaper in Winterhaven. In other parts of the country, as CNNMoney.com reported in October, struggling dairy farmers are feeding candy, ice cream sprinkles, and hot cocoa mix to their cows as a way to save money. And, farms’ financials have worsened still: November 2012 was the first month farmers didn’t receive an MILC payment, costing them precious thousands of dollars. Thankfully, those payments will resume this year, under the extended farm bill. Yet another culprit in the milk surplus crisis is the status of milk as a commodity — something that’s supposed to be uniform across the market. In a commodity market, producers have little incentive to make a higher-quality product, because they won’t be rewarded for the extra work it requires. But one man might have discovered a way out of the commodity trap. Dr. Sam Simon is the founder of the dairy cooperative Hudson Valley Fresh (HVF), which produces high-quality milk, yogurt, and sour cream and sells it under its own brand name. His business model offers a glimmer of hope for smalland medium-size dairy farms.

Grass Fed, Free Range, Streamline Baby

You might say Sam Simon is a third-generation farmer. His grandfather, Albert, was a cattle broker in Germany and had contracts to provide the German government with horses and grain, which he would buy and sell at the Russian border. But by 1937, the whole family had escaped the Third Reich. Knowing cattle, they bought a farm in Middletown, N.Y., where Sam’s father did most of the work raising beef cattle and milking cows. When Sam reached grade-school age, his father was happy to have the extra set of hands on the farm. From the earliest he can remember, Sam idolized doctors and vets, but he was forced to farm. He grew up to be an orthopedic surgeon in Poughkeepsie. When he retired in 1995, he went back to dairy farming. “I wanted to do it one more time,” Sam, now 66, recalled — “my way, where I could be immersed in it.” From the moment he started making milk in 1999, he received quality premiums from Agrimark, the cooperative that makes Cabot Cheese. These premiums recognize the low raw bacteria and somatic cell levels in farmers’ milk. The raw bacteria count is a measure of the cleanliness of the environment. The somatic cell count, a measure of the white cells in the cow, is an indication of the cow’s health. By both standards, Sam’s farm was outstanding. But the premium bonuses were nothing more than a token — certainly not enough money to offset the higher cost of production. He knew of other farmers in the region who were also making great milk, but struggling to survive. Then the thought came to him: We need to put this premium milk under its own label, not commingled with anybody else’s milk. That’s the challenge. Simon rounded up eight other farms under the Hudson Valley Fresh name and was lucky to find a processing plant in Kingston that agreed to only process milk from HVF. The product was an immediate hit. One of their earliest and most vocal advocates was Eli Zabar, the son of the founders of Zabar’s market, and the owner of Eli’s Manhattan, a premium grocery store on the Upper East Side. When Simon walked into his store and gave Eli a taste of HVF milk, Eli immediately knew he was on to something special. “It had this very smooth, rich flavor, and I thought it was better than everything else we carried,” Eli recalls. Then he heard Simon’s story, his mission to provide punctilious dairy farmers with a living wage in a way that conserves land and is good for the environment. “I thought it was noble and admirable,” Eli said. “It all worked into my philosophy when he showed up.” The bread and butter of HVF’s sales don’t come from places like Eli’s, however, but from supermarket chains such as ShopRite, Stop & Shop, Whole Foods, and Hannaford. These stores make it possible for HVF to sell 4 million pounds of milk per year, and reap $2

million in sales. In most of these outlets, the price of a half-gallon of HVF milk is about a dollar less than its organic competitors, and usually about 50 cents more than commodity milk and private label brands. For all this, HVF is not in the promised land yet. In fact, it has a long way to go. Right now, it’s able to give farmers $22 per hundredweight on about 30 percent of the milk they make. The rest gets sold to a mainstream distributor, because they produce more milk than HVF can currently sell. “I want it to get big enough so that the farmers can sell 75 percent of their milk under the Hudson Valley Fresh label. That would be ideal,” Simon said. “Then I would guarantee them a living wage in perpetuity.” But there are no guarantees in dairy farming, only stories. There are the farmers who try their best and still can’t make it, and then there are the innovators, like Simon, who have made modest but encouraging gains. Each one is different. The keys to HVF’s success are, you might say, idiosyncratic: an unusual collection of local farmers producing premium milk; access to a milk plant that processes only HVF milk; an agreement with a cooperative to haul the milk; access to the New York Metro Area, which is chock-full of educated people with some money; and, importantly, a burgeoning local food movement. I’m happy to also include Bob Simpson and his

Cooperatives like Sam Simon’s Hudson Valley Fresh have added a new option to the dairy aisle: premium milk, which has several benefits over “regular” or even “organic” milk. With less than 200,000 somatic cells per milliliter (a measure of the white blood cells in a cow, an indication of her health), premium milk comes from healthier cows. And healthier cows make healthier milk. As well, premium milk has a shorter shelf life than other types, but that's a good thing. Shelf life is determined by the pasteurization process, which in turn affects milk’s nutritional makeup. Milk labeled “ultra pasteurized” (as is most organic milk) has been given a long shelf life (a month or so) because it has been heated to a high temperature of 280 degrees for a few seconds. That process not only kills the harmful bacteria but also reduces the nutritional value. Premium milk is pasteurized conventionally; heated to 164 degrees for 20 seconds, it only lasts a week to 10 days in the refrigerator. So, with premium milk, you are drinking a fresher product that contains more nutrients such as Omega3s (the beneficial fatty acids that protect against cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disorders, diabetes, arthritis, and arrhythmia) and higher amounts of the beneficial enzymes lipase and protease, which help the body absorb them. Finding premium milk in your area may not be easy. Look for the independent producers and bottlers in your area. Chances are, they would be happy to talk with you about their milk’s somatic cell count. For many farmers, it’s a point of pride.

family in the innovators category. They made it through the 2009 crisis and, last summer, diversified their farm with a starter herd of Boer goats for meat. As for the dairy daycare that started this odyssey? Let’s just say Agnes, who’s now 5, and my 2-year-old, Brian, still come home smelling like a barn.

After graduating from Colgate, where he majored in peace studies, Kirk Kardashian ’00 received his JD from Vermont Law School in 2004. He practiced real estate and land use law for five years in Vermont while freelance writing on the side until 2009, when he decided to write full time. He’s been a senior writer at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business communications office since 2011. Milk Money: Cash, Cows, and the Death of the American Dairy Farm (University of New Hampshire Press), whose forward was written by U.S. Senator for Vermont Bernie Sanders, is his first book.

News and and views views for for the the Colgate Colgate community community News

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Arnold Aron Jacobs Onondaga Nation, Turtle Clan Skywoman Descending Great Turtle Island, 1997 (after 1981 painting) Lithograph, 23 3/4" x 33 7/8" Iroquois Indian Museum 98:124

Skywoman: Haudenosaunee Art and the Creation of a New World, an exhibition at Colgate’s Longyear Museum of Anthropology last fall, included contemporary work in various styles and media by 15 artists. In Haudenosaunee society, women are keepers of the culture, so the Skywoman is seen as a primordial mother, pioneer, and cultural heroine.

Legacies

Local

By Rebecca Costello

Long, long ago, there was no land, only water. Powerful beings lived in a place called the Sky World. One day, a woman who was expecting a baby fell through a hole in the sky at the base of the Tree of Life. She grabbed a handful of seeds at the tree’s roots as she fell. A flock of geese saw this Skywoman falling. They caught her and placed her on the back of a giant turtle. With the handful of soil and seeds, she danced the earth into being. How Turtle Island, or North America, came to be is the creation story of the peoples who settled the region surrounding Colgate more than 10,000 years ago: the Iroquois*, or as they call themselves today, the Haudenosaunee (“People of the Longhouse”). *The name Iroquois originated with French colonists who transliterated a pejorative Algonquin term.

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Art & Craft Comb, Antler, late 16th century ONEIDA, Cameron site, Stockbridge Camp B

Iroquois comb designs illustrate artistic qualities such as interesting positive and negative space, symmetry, and the frequent doubling of figures. The two human figures may refer to the good and evil twins of the Iroquois Creation Story. Many Iroquois combs served also as pendant ornaments. — Lizey Burkly ’13

CAYUGA: Gayogoho:no, “People of the Great Swamp” ONONDAGA: Onöñda’gega’, “People of the Hills” ONEIDA: Onyota'a:ka, “People of the Standing Stone” MOHAWK: Kanienkehaka, “People of the Flint” TUSCARORA: Ka'te'nu'a'ka', “People of the Submerged Pine-tree”

z SENECA z CAYUGA z ONONDAGA

Beaded Medal Pouch, c. 1810–1830 SENECA (Funded by the Mortimer C. Howe Fund)

The Haudenosaunee tradition of decorating bags predates contact with Europeans, but trade with Europeans triggered the replacement of local materials such as porcupine quills with glass beads manufactured in Europe. This pouch might have held a peace medal of a type given to Indians by the American government as a sign of friendship. — Alyson Chu ’13

z ONEIDA z MOHAWK z TUSCARORA

NY State Museum

6 NATIONS

SENECA: Onöndowágah, “People of the Great Hill”

Many Haudenosaunee items can be found among the more than 10,000 Native American pieces in Colgate’s Longyear Museum of Anthropology’s collection of art and artifacts. Thanks to its extensive holdings, “We are an important resource for other institutions,” said the museum’s curator, Carol Ann Lorenz. Just this year, items from the Longyear are on loan to three institutions: beadwork for shows at the Iroquois Indian Museum in Howes Cave, N.Y., and the Corning Museum of Glass, as well as a modern sculpture by acclaimed Onondaga artist Peter B. Jones that is traveling internationally in a major exhibition organized by the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. Last fall, students in Lorenz’s Native Art of North America course curated an exhibition of ancient and modern Haudenosaunee art and craft drawn from the collection. The show, which opened Family Weekend, was set up in an Alumni Hall classroom, where other related courses could benefit from the project. Professor Michael Taylor brought his Core: Iroquois class there for a lecture about the shifting definitions and distinctions between art and craft. “We’ve been studying Iroquois material culture at a historical level. With this exhibition, I could show them modern pieces produced in much the same way as they would have been hundreds of years ago, so there is that connection between tradition and modernism.”

The “People of the Longhouse” not only refers to their traditional bark-and-log dwellings, but is also a metaphor for their confederacy, with the eastern door guarded by the Mohawk, the Senecas watching to the west, and the Onondagas keeping the central fire. In the mid-1400s, five previously warring nations formed the Haudenosaunee union. Their system of self-rule was guided by moral principles, holding in view the present and future generations. (The Tuscarora Nation joined them in 1722.)

Benjamin Franklin was inspired by the Iroquois’ model of unity through one law in proposing the colonies of the United States. In 1988, on the 200th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution, the U.S. Congress acknowledged the historical debt owed to the Iroquois confederacy “for their demonstration of enlightened, democratic principles of government and their example of a free association of independent Indian Nations.”

ANNABELLE OAKES, Mohawk Fancy Strawberry basket, 1976

The Strawberry Thanksgiving ceremony celebrates the first fruit to ripen in spring.

BEVERLY DOXTATER (MILLER), Mohawk Cornhusk Figure Cornhusks, cloth, leather, feathers, glass beads, wood, yarn, metal

Hands-on, in person

Cornhusk dolls were once traditional toys for children and ceremonial objects, but have now reached the level of art. According to tradition, the dolls are faceless because a child and the Creator would determine the individuality of the doll. Doxtater’s figures are more detailed than play dolls and are mounted on wooden bases. This male figure is posed as if playing lacrosse, which is the Creator’s Game and has a ceremonial aspect for men and boys. He wears a gustoweh cap with one feather pointing up, indicating that he is Seneca. He also wears a circular silver brooch that has been a typical Iroquois ornament since the 16th century. — Bennett King ’15

Archaeology is not just about digging up priceless statues and ancient tools. Sometimes, you have to pay attention to the refuse. Professor Jordan Kerber’s students have been learning that lesson since 1991, while excavating sites in the homelands of the Oneidas for his Field Methods and Interpretation in Archaeology course. “We aren’t making earth-shattering discoveries,” said Kerber. “This course is all about giving students an opportunity to do archaeology at an authentic site, and to get a realistic sense of what it’s like to do archaeology. They start by formulating questions and doing background research, and continue right through lab work, analysis, interpretation, and results. They end up writing a paper that becomes a permanent record about the research.” Many of his classes’ finds — stone chip debris, projectile points, scrapers and knives, fish and animal bone, pipe stems, pottery sherds, and more — have ended up in Colgate’s archaeology lab collection. Other students get to handle those artifacts in courses like Amy Groleau’s Intro to Archaeology. “When I say, ‘These are 4,000 years old and they’re from right down the road,’ their eyes get big and they see the landscape in a little bit different way,”

No-face dolls also serve as a caution against vanity.

“The Longyear has, I would say, the best and most comprehensive collection of Iroquois materials, especially Oneida, in the region. It has been a tremendous resource not just for the community, but also for Colgate students. Every course I teach includes some aspect of that collection.” — Jordan Kerber, professor of anthropology and Native

In recent years, excavation by Kerber’s field methods classes has taken place at the Brunk site, an ancient Oneida village in northern Madison County. The site was occupied by Native Americans for 15 to 20 years between the late 1400s and mid-1500s. The landowners run a farm/agritourism destination with an educational bent called Wolf Oak Acres; they plan to add an exhibit of the artifacts unearthed by Kerber’s students to their programming.

American studies

In keeping with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, institutions receiving federal funding must publish an inventory of its Native American holdings so that federally recognized tribes with an affiliation to specific objects — for example, funerary and sacred objects — may request repatriation. Colgate has repatriated several objects to their affiliated tribes, and in other cases, the tribes have allowed the university to retain the objects, as long as they are not displayed.

Vessel ONEIDA, Vaillancourt site

“‘A new, human-like figure is first visible in Oneida ceramic art,’ making Vaillancourt one of the more widely studied sites in Oneida country as well as extremely culturally significant.” — Jeanie Arnold ’13, quoting historian Anthony Wonderley in her SOAN 353: Field Methods in Archaeology final paper

Courtesy New York State Museum, Albany, N.Y.

This 16th-century Oneida vessel has a large collar, rounded bottom, and two castellations or points on the rim. Hatched areas on the collar were associated with fields of corn, and the faces on the castellations represent a personified corn plant. — Holland Reynolds ’16

Excavating Oneida artifacts at the Brunk site

“I couldn’t imagine what it was like until I tried it myself. I had pictured the dart going a lot faster,” said Alex Jurado ’15, “but it’s more of a lob up toward a certain point and then it falls.” The fact that people like Tarbell who can “bring technology like this to life” are so close to Colgate is a rare opportunity, said Groleau.

“What I found really interesting was that they used compound spears with a main fixed shaft and a dart at the end so that when you stab the animal and then pull back, the dart would stay in the animal and then you can reload; it really showed how advanced this culture was.” — Alex Jurado ’15

A lesson in spear throwing from Mike Tarbell

Back at the lab, Scott Brayden ’13 and his classmates sort and catalogue items they found at the Brunk site. “In their reports, they interpret the results in an attempt to reconstruct the activities that may have occurred at the site,” said Professor Kerber. “In the final part of their paper, they compare what we know from this site with what we know of at least one other Oneida site to look at similarities and differences.”

Andrew Daddio (4)

she said. “Their understanding of this place changes as they think about deep time.” Objects can only show so much on their own; with decomposition of wood and sinew, artifacts are often incomplete. So, in teaching about stone tools and methods for knowing about them, for example, there’s nothing better than bringing in an expert. Perched on the edge of the glacial terrace forming the front lawn of Merrill House, Mike Tarbell sets a wooden, arrow-like spear into the cupped end of a j-shaped handle. He plants his feet and deftly launches the spear across the descending hillside. “Who wants to try it?” asks Tarbell, of the Mohawk Nation Turtle Clan. Groleau invited him to give a demonstration of native tools for her archaeology students and Michael Taylor’s Core: Iroquois class. A professor at SUNY Cobleskill and recently retired educator at the Iroquois Indian Museum, Tarbell has dedicated his life to studying the material culture of pre-contact Iroquois people. Along the way, he became an expert in traditional flintknapping and toolmaking, replicating bows, arrows, knives, war clubs, and other items such as the spear thrower, which predates the bow and arrow and was used in group hunting on terrain just like the Merrill House lawn.

News and views for the Colgate community

From ancient to contemporary When the Hamilton Historical Commission asked Professor Jordan Kerber last spring if Colgate could organize an exhibition of local American Indian objects for the Hamilton Public Library, he turned the project over to the capable hands of two students. Lily Jones ’13 and Gillian Weaver ’14 both have museum experience working for Carol Ann Lorenz, curator of the Longyear Museum of Anthropology. The project, which became a semester-long independent study, required Jones and Weaver to sort through thousands of artifacts in the Longyear collection. “We have things that go from 10,000 BC to the present,” said Jones, a double major in sociology/anthropology and Native American studies, of the resulting exhibition, Local Legacies: A Look at the Material Culture of Indigenous Peoples in the Hamilton, N.Y., Area, which inspired the title of this article. The objects chosen by the pair revealed a local history of Native Americans from long before European contact, with early stone tools, to contemporary Haudenosaunee art. Jones, who is Seneca and grew up on the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation near Buffalo, N.Y., has a special connection to at least one item in the exhibition. A statue titled Indian with Fan (shown at right) was made by her father, Peter B. Jones, an internationally acclaimed Onondaga artist. The statue is just one of several of his works in the Longyear Museum’s holdings. “With my dad being an artist, I’ve been interested in that idea of communicating through museums for a long time,” Jones said. Weaver, who is from Milwaukee, Wis., said the exhibition was unique in that all of the objects are from Hamilton and surrounding townships. Assembling the exhibition gave Jones and Weaver an appreciation of the painstaking detail that is required for museum curatorial work. “It’s not just finding objects, it’s writing text, figuring out how to hang things and display them, and making signage,” said Weaver. The exhibition will remain open for viewing through the summer at 13 Broad Street, according to Joan Prindle, chair of the historical commission. “It’s a perfect fit for the students, and it helps us out,” Prindle said.

Gabriela Bezerra ’13

— Daniel DeVries

Peter B. Jones, Onondaga Indian with Fan, 2000, clay sculpture

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“When I say, ‘These are 4,000 years old and they’re from right down the road,’ their eyes get big and they see the landscape in a little bit different way. Their understanding of this place changes as they think about deep time.” — Amy Groleau, visiting assistant professor of sociology and anthropology

Portrait by Father Claude Chauchetière, late 1600s

Native Footsteps: Along the Path of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha (Marquette University Press) Known as the “Lily of the Mohawks,” Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680) became the first Native American Catholic saint last year. Her canonization in October 2012 is celebrated through a compilation of documents, interviews, and illustrations (most of them color photographs), co-edited by Christopher Vecsey, Harry Emerson Fosdick Professor of the humanities, Native American studies, and religion.

Potsherd with Human Figure ONEIDA, Cameron site, Vernon Township

These two artifacts date to the contact period, beginning around 1560.

Regional resources

Antler Spoon ONEIDA Sullivan site, Stockbridge Township

Michael Newberg ’11 made a documentary, Rising from the Subsoil, about the high-level amateur archaeologists of the Chenango Chapter of the NYS Archaeological Association who are responsible for some of the most important and meaningful archaeological research in the region. One member, Monte Bennett, an Earlville resident who has amassed an enormous collection of American Indian artifacts over 50 years of digging, adds a rich dimension to Professor Jordan Kerber’s Field Methods course. Over the years, Bennett has flagged several productive sites for Kerber, often visits the class digs, and occasionally helps interpret findings. “The expertise of an avocational archaeologist is that, if you have spent many years excavating a certain time period, you get very professional at what you are doing,” said Bennett. At the end of the semester, the students give a presentation of their findings at the chapter meeting, bringing the sharing full circle. Watch the video on YouTube: tinyurl. com/risingsubsoil.

Just 20 miles north of Colgate, the Shako:wi Cultural Center brings to life the history and culture of the Oneida Indian Nation. One of their own, Kandice Watson, who serves as the nation’s education outreach director, earned her master’s in teaching at Colgate in 2003. Now she’s taking her turn with the next generation of students. Many of the center’s regional school visitors are fourth-graders, the year in the New York State curriculum when children learn about the Haudenosaunee. “They are so impressionable, you have to be clear with them,” said Watson. “I quit wearing my regalia when I do presentations. I used to wear it, but it made the kids think that is what we always dress like. I’ll be talking to them, and one will raise his hand and ask, ‘Are there any Indians left?’ We try to make sure they understand that we are here and how different all the tribes are.”

Ganondagan State Historical Site, Victor, N.Y. Iroquois Indian Museum, Howes Cave, N.Y. Longyear Museum of Anthropology, Alumni Hall, Colgate University New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, N.Y. New York State Museum, Albany, N.Y. Shako:wi Cultural Center, Oneida, N.Y.

News and views for the Colgate community

scene: Winter 2013

Illustrations by David Vogin

In the waning days of 2012, just as the Scene was going to press, the latest debate in the U.S. Senate over one of its unique and controversial parliamentary tactics — the filibuster — was breaking out.

As the Senate’s parliamentarian, Alan Frumin ’68 was the chief arbiter of its

procedural wrangling for nearly two decades. Having scrupulously maintained a nonpartisan stance, he is the only person to have been promoted to the position of chief parliamentarian by both political parties. His job on the front lines was meant to be behind the scenes; in fact, he never once granted an interview to a member of the fourth estate. But Frumin, who retired last February, broke his silence when he gave the inaugural Edgar Shor Lecture at Colgate in October. Not long after, majority leader Harry Reid vowed to reform the filibuster on day one of the new Congress. By early December, Frumin found himself speaking out, defending the filibuster on MSNBC, and being summoned back to Capitol Hill for meetings with senators. What follows is an adaptation of his talk at Colgate, in which he shared insights about the Senate from his singular perspective on the inner workings of the country’s political process.

Responsible Adults Only

The U.S. Senate: Would the founders approve? Should you? By Alan Frumin ’68 In the U.S. Senate, any individual or group has a unique power: one can stop virtually everything from being considered or voted upon. The main tool at their disposal is unlimited debate — the practice known as filibustering. But, historically, members exercised restraint because they knew that the Senate couldn’t work unless this tactic was employed with discretion. The rights of the majority and the privileges of the minority in the Senate have been in a delicate balance for more than two centuries. Over my 35 years as a Senate parliamentarian, I saw that balance list further and further off kilter; in fact, in 2005, the Senate nearly imploded. At that time, the Republicans were in the majority and the Democrats were filibustering judicial nominations of President George W. Bush, claiming that the nominees were too

radical. I was concerned, as were many, that the Republicans were planning to use a procedure that would have involved the presiding officer, Vice President Dick Cheney, coming into the Senate and, ignoring the advice of yours truly, declaring the filibuster unconstitutional. While the Republicans referred to that procedure as the “Constitutional Option,” the Democrats called it the “Nuclear Option.” Now, the Senate has been without a general limitation of debate since 1806. This is why filibusters are possible, and this simple fact of procedure has been the means by which minorities in the Senate (either individuals or parties) have exerted disproportionate influence. But one rule, the cloture rule, can, in essence, compel action — i.e., force a vote by ending debate — provided that a supermajority of the membership votes to do so. As the Senate’s parliamentarian, I was asked by Harry Reid, who at the time was the minority leader, what I

thought of the Republicans’ proposal to end the filibuster by a ruling of the vice president. My point was that it should not happen because thousands of precedents and years and years of practice have stood for the proposition that unlimited debate was the means of protecting the minority. Senator Reid went to the press and said, “The Senate parliamentarian said it would be wrong.” But the Republicans continued to threaten their proposal. I saw the situation from both sides. A high-ranking Republican senator actually confided in me that he thought some of the candidates were “nut jobs,” so the Democrats were right to dig in their heels. At the same time, one of the nominees who was being blocked was a personal friend of mine who was not a nut job (and I hardly considered him radical). I supported the Democrats’ right to do this, even when my personal knowledge led me to question their judgment, at least in the case of my friend. At this point, I should clarify certain language. It is common to talk about the rights of the minority in the Senate, but that really is a misnomer. The minority has privileges. Those privileges could be snuffed out in a heartbeat if there is a willful majority and a presiding officer willing to go along with them. Using the “Nuclear Option” to eliminate the filibuster was a proposal to do just that. Ultimately, seven Republicans and seven Democrats got together. Led by John McCain, this Gang of Fourteen said, “We don’t want things to go this far; let’s get together.” The Democrats stated, “We will not filibuster except in the most extreme cases,” and the Republicans responded, “We will not press this.” In that moment, the Senate saved itself — at least for the time being.

A complex mechanism

While I was at Colgate in the 1960s, to the extent that I had a political view of Washington, D.C., it was: Progress Good, Filibuster Bad, Senate Weird. Civil rights legislation was struggling to make its way through Congress in part because of an obstinate, bizarre Senate — the roadblock to what many people considered absolutely necessary legislation. As fate would have it, when I graduated, I traveled 365 miles and several centuries south, and found myself in Washington, D.C. After

law school at Georgetown University, I worked for a couple of years as an editor of Deschler’s Precedents of the House of Representatives, a multi-volume publication codifying a half-century of unpublished parliamentary precedents, until I was hired to be an assistant parliamentarian for the Senate. I was instructed to stay out of the limelight, never talk to the press, and embrace a passion for anonymity. The Senate was the redoubt of obstructionism — nothing that any of us, at least among my friends, had been educated to believe was a good or sensible institution. But I was attracted to the more exciting job of actually advising members of Congress, as opposed to writing about what advice others had given them. I found myself in unusual company. I traded jokes with people like Strom Thurmond, whose friendship none of us in the era in which I grew up would have cherished. I got into fights with Jesse Helms. I received phone calls at my house at 2 a.m. from Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia — who in his formative years was active in the Ku Klux Klan — to discuss complex matters affecting the Senate as an institution. I was out of my element, but developing a comfort zone. It’s an office where politics should not matter, and yet I listened and watched as my predecessors got into trouble and found themselves shown the door. Every one of the thousands of decisions the parliamentarian makes has the potential to anger one or more powerful senators. I vowed that no senator, nor any Senate staffer, would ever have a justification for believing that I had not listened to them and had not considered their positions. So, I made a habit of listening, and withholding judgment until I had heard from all interested parties. The Senate is an unusual institution. What the founders wanted was something very different from the House of Representatives. James Madison referred to the Senate as “a necessary fence” that would be a body of “enlightened, contemplative, respectable citizens.” The Senate was designed to check everybody: not only the people and the House, but also the president. From the Federalist papers: “A salutary check on the government” (The Federalist No. 62). “The defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions”; “Cool and deliberate sense of community” (The Federalist No. 63). The framers gave the country a Senate unique in its structure and

News and views for the Colgate community

A Senate Glossary Cloture The only procedure by which the Senate can vote to place a time limit on consideration of a bill or other matter, and thereby overcome a filibuster. Under the cloture rule (Rule XXII), the Senate may limit consideration of a pending matter to 30 additional hours, but only by a supermajority vote of three-fifths of the full Senate, normally 60 votes. Invoking cloture on amendments of the standing rules requires a higher standard of two-thirds. Filibuster Informal term for attempts to block or delay Senate action on a bill or other matter by debating it at length, offering numerous procedural motions, or any other delaying or obstructive actions. Majority compulsion Procedural actions by which the party in power (the majority) can force a vote. Parliamentarian The adviser to the Senate on the interpretation of its rules and procedures. Staff members from the parliamentarian’s office sit on the dais and advise the presiding officer on the conduct of Senate business. The office also refers bills to the appropriate committees on behalf of the presiding officer. Reconciliation A bill containing changes in law being recommended in order to bring spending, revenues, or the debt limit into conformity with a budget resolution. Such a bill is intended for minor changes only. Supermajority A specified greater level of support than a simple majority is required for certain types of proposals. For example, a three-fifths supermajority is required to bring out a vote of cloture.

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composition: two senators from each state protected the small states; in fact, some would say the small states are overrepresented. The minimum age to serve was set at 30 years instead of 25 for the other body. Senators were required to be citizens for nine years instead of seven. And initially, senators were elected by their state legislatures, and not directly by the people. The framers gave the Senate preeminent responsibility for many things. By its advice and consent role, the Senate is a partner with the president in the making of treaties. It is a partner with and a check on the executive branch in the appointment of executive officers. And it is a check on the president in the formation of the judiciary. The Senate is not like, and does not want to be like, the House of Representatives. I learned that lesson when I had to make a decision on an arcane matter of procedure and there was no Senate precedent to govern it. When I gave my advice, Warren Rudman (one of the Senate’s most astute members), who was not happy with it, asked me, “Where’s the precedent to support this?” and I said, “Well, I can reason by analogy to several Senate precedents. And, there’s a case directly on point from the House.” He almost went apoplectic: “How dare you cite the House to me?! I will drag your butt across the street to the Supreme Court! No senator wants to hear about the House.” Lesson learned. So what was this unusual institution where I was asked to be the custodian of its unique and often controversial way of doing business? From a structural standpoint, the constitution has the vice president of the United States as the presiding officer. It also authorizes the Senate to elect a president pro tempore, who by current practice is the most senior member of the majority party. In addition, the standing rules authorize the president pro tem to appoint someone to fulfill the duties of the chair when the president pro tem cannot. The practical effect of that is that junior members of the majority party are cast with the responsibility of presiding over the Senate. They know virtually nothing about Senate procedure. And if they think they do, they don’t. Imagine how excited they get at the thought of presiding over the Senate. Not very much. There are any number of things they’d rather do. It is not interesting, it is not fun. They do

not develop any expertise. You might be sensing a vacuum. That vacuum is filled by the office in which I served for more than 35 years. In essence, the parliamentarian is the de facto presiding officer of the Senate. It is the job of the parliamentarian to answer all questions of procedure. Parliamentarians don’t rule; the presiding officers rule. When people asked me, “How would you rule on something?” I’d say, “I’m just on staff here. I give advice to people who take that advice and rule on it.” The Senate rulebook is quite thin. It has 44 standing rules, but that really doesn’t matter, because the rules are almost impossible to make sense out of. What we really have are living, breathing, standing, sitting, walking, talking rules — 100 of them, two from each state. The Senate is personality-driven. Its processes are based on the relations between and among its members. This institution, designed to restrain the passions of the people and the possible abuses of the executive branch and the House of Representatives, has evolved into one where individuals are preeminent. The procedural basis for this evolution is something that does not even exist in the Senate rules, and that is a simple motion to limit debate. As I mentioned earlier, there is no general limitation of debate in the U.S. Senate. What this means is that the Senate is a place where, even though anything can go, nothing goes very far, nothing goes very fast, and nothing goes without broad consensus. Unlike the House of Representatives, as a general rule, the Senate majority cannot force action on the minority. This means that even for a determined majority it can be very difficult, if not impossible, to force a bill or resolution to the Senate floor for consideration. And it is equally difficult to force a vote on such a measure even after it has been brought to the floor for consideration. It is virtually impossible for an individual senator to achieve either of these procedural goals, with one very notable exception, which I will discuss later. Much was made during this past political season of the fact that the president didn’t deserve another term because he had all levels of power at his disposal in the 111th Congress. The Democratic president had a Democratic House, and a Democratic Senate. But, those who understand the Senate know that for much of that Congress, the president did not

have the Senate — he did not have a working majority. The minority used their time-honored customs and precedents basically to say “No” and often “Hell, No” to the president’s initiatives as best they could. That lack of limitation of debate means that — unlike members of other legislative bodies where the decision is binary (“Yes” or “No”) — senators are permitted to vote “Yes” to adopt a question; they can vote “No” if that question comes to a vote; or, they can vote “Hell, No” by preventing that question from coming to a vote — through the parliamentary tactic of extending debate. This is the infamous abuse (according to some), or the essential protection of minority rights (according to others) known as the filibuster. And senators can vote “Hell, No” pretty much all they want. Some say things have gone from “Yes,” “No,” or possibly “Hell, No” to “No,” “Hell, No,” and “Over My Dead Body!” This state of affairs is possible not because of what the rules say, but because of what they don’t say. The rules are silent on a general limitation of debate. That this state of affairs has become more common is due less to what the rules lack than how the political environment has changed.

Weapons of obstruction

So, how does the Senate operate? Does the Senate operate? I’ve seen it work. There were times when I saw it work quite well. Actually, I saw it work very well in the old model. When I came to the Senate in 1977, I was amazed at the level of comity exhibited by senators walking across the aisle, Democrat to Republican, senior to junior, and likewise among the Senate staff who would come into our office. They were part of a community where each and every one of their principles could frustrate the designs of every other member, and yet they generally didn’t do it. During my first 25 years in that office, restraint, respect, and humility were utilized in the employment of this weapon to obstruct. The Senate had a critical mass of responsible adults who understood that they all were armed with this enormous power to say “Hell, No,” but that — unless they restrained themselves — nothing would ever get accomplished. I’ve been asked what I think of the Senate recently. I tell people I’d like to see a sign on the Senate chamber (and possibly an addendum to that portion of the rules that speaks to the qualifications of senators, and possibly

somebody could go into the constitution and add this into Article 1): “The Senate is a complex organization. Responsible adults only.” So, how does the Senate operate? There are three general modes of operation: unanimous consent agreements, cloture, and expedited procedures (so-called fast-track measures). First, understanding that anybody could object to anything, the Senate attempts to go forward with its business by what are known as unanimous consent agreements. When these agreements are sought and obtained, you see senators surrendering their rights to obstruct to permit the Senate to get things done for the greater good. It is difficult to get unanimous consent because it requires the entire body to agree; unanimity requires cooperation, consultation, and consensus. Cloture is the second mode of operation. The Senate’s cloture rule, Rule XXII, was adopted in 1917. The formal limitation of debate that breaks a filibuster, cloture provides a means to compel action on questions, but requires a supermajority vote of three-fifths of the senators duly chosen and sworn on most questions, and a potentially higher vote of

two-thirds of the senators on explicit amendments to the Senate’s Standing Rules. Rule XXII (and its cloture procedures) is mostly misunderstood by people who want it declared unconstitutional (leaving aside the fact that the courts have not and should not meddle in Senate internal affairs). Rule XXII is designed to limit debate, so those who are frustrated by the Senate are wrong in attacking it; what they really want to do is strengthen it. Because a simple majority of the Senate cannot force cloture, they need to work across the aisles (again, the institution is mindful of the rights and prerogatives of the minority). In fact, it’s rare for the Senate to find itself with 60 or more senators from one political party. The third mode of operation is the use of what we call “fast-track measures,” which under the rules or pursuant to statutory provisions, are bills or joint resolutions with built-in limitations of debate, i.e., they cannot be filibustered, and therefore require only a simple majority for their passage. Fast-track measures are given such expedited procedures because they generally deal with time-sensitive matters or other matters considered too important to be subject to a

filibuster. I’ll share two anecdotes that show how expedited matters have given parliamentarians an interesting moment in the sun over the years.

Unwitting moments in the sun

One measure providing expedited procedures is the War Powers Resolution. Congress enacted it in 1973 (over Richard Nixon’s veto at the height of the Vietnam War) to try to re-assert the constitutional authority of Congress to declare war. The War Powers Resolution provides extraordinarily expedited procedures — what my successor refers to as a Rocket Docket — for the consideration of joint resolutions introduced by any senator qualifying the authority of the president to maintain armed forces in areas of hostilities, provided that certain conditions existed. Any such joint resolution could not be bottled up in the Foreign Relations Committee. It could not be filibustered. It would sprint out of committee automatically, be on the floor automatically, and be voted upon within 72 hours. This statute provides not just majority compulsion, but single-senator compulsion to force an issue to a vote in the Senate. This is truly extraordinary. The War Powers Resolution gives senators that extraordinary legislative authority to compel Senate action “any time that U.S. armed forces are introduced into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances.” Indicated by whom? I don’t think that the people who drafted the War Powers Resolution thought that through. Early in my tenure as chief parliamentarian, in 1987, I received a call from a staffer with a sense of humor. He said, “Alan, follow me through the War Powers Resolution, and let’s see who it really authorizes to declare if a state of war exists.” He walked me through it, and said, “Congratulations, sir. They didn’t know it at the time, but they have allowed you to declare war.” Lo and behold, his boss, without the knowledge or consent of the Senate leadership, had decided that there was a problem in the Persian Gulf. This was a Democratic senator who had no truck with President Ronald Reagan and didn’t mind embarrassing him. He introduced a joint resolution to place a six-month limit on the president’s authority to order U.S. forces to escort re-flagged Kuwaiti tankers in

the Persian Gulf. He argued that this joint resolution was privileged under the War Powers Resolution. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was to be put in the position of saying Yes or No, but he left me no choice. I was fortunate in that there was a precedent on point that had been established by my predecessor, Robert Dove — who, after being fired by the Democrats at the beginning of 1987, decided that he had enough of 10 years of being my mentor. He was now going to be my tormentor, for he went to work for Bob Dole, who was serving as the minority leader. But Dove was kind enough to have — four years earlier when the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, had been bombed — answered the very question being presented to me: What does that language mean? Is the resolution introduced pursuant to that language entitled to this Rocket Docket privilege? He said, “Yes.” Wonderful. I had a precedent. And so, when Bob Dole dragged me into the Republican cloakroom, horrified at the fact that this joint resolution that was meant to embarrass Ronald Reagan was not only not bottled up in committee but was on the Senate floor and had to be voted upon within 72 hours, he wanted to know where I had the temerity to put myself into the position of placing this joint resolution on this Rocket Docket, and how could I defend that decision? And I said, “Well, Senator Dole, there is precedent for this.” “When?” he asked. “1983.” At which point his hostile gaze left from me, standing to his right, to my predecessor Bob Dove, who was standing to his left. It was all I needed to say. The Senate thought better of having yours truly declare war, obtained unanimous consent to place the joint resolution on the Senate calendar of business, and then indefinitely postponed its consideration, effectively killing it.

Reconciliation, or cloture?

These are responsibilities parliamentarians don’t go looking for. These are not the sorts of things they teach us in parliamentarian’s school. You don’t expect to be asked to decide whether or not the United States is literally or virtually in a state of war. This next anecdote is where my life really got turned on its head. First, some background. The Congressional Budget Act of 1974 provides expedited procedures

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for a few types of vehicles, one of which is called a reconciliation bill. The people who wrote the Budget Act had no idea the extent to which this little procedure would be utilized. The key here is that reconciliation bills cannot be filibustered; they are another vehicle of majority compulsion. Now, the dynamic in the Senate

almost always has been that the Democrats will start a fight and the Republicans will finish it. In their last year of controlling both the House and the Senate during the 96th Congress (1980), the Democrats decided to use budget reconciliation aggressively. Well, the Republicans took this idea and ran with it when they obtained

Things They Don’t Teach in Parliamentarian’s School What to do when an earthquake hits just before your first solo pro forma session. Whether a port-a-john is permitted on the floor of the Senate. If not, how about an empty tennis ball can? What to do when the presiding officer of the Senate has turned his back to the proceedings ignoring the parliamentarian as all hell is breaking loose, so he could make a date with a well-known actress (telephone on the dais removed soon thereafter). How to respond when a first senator has demanded that a second senator be taken off his feet (Rule XIX, our favorite “shut up and sit down” rule), and when the two senators approach you at the desk, one says to the other, “How would you like a fist through your face?” What to do when the president pro tempore makes salacious remarks to one of your assistants into an open C-Span microphone. Whether it matters that the presentation for presidential signature of the joint resolution authorizing the use of American Armed Forces is delayed (1) so that a measure can carry a luckier number, or (2) to permit the vice president of the United States to attend a Johnny Depp movie, or (3) to have some staffer (who shall go unnamed) watch an NFL playoff game. How to counsel the vice president of the United States on his role in conducting the joint session of Congress to count the electoral ballots declaring that he had lost his election to be President of the United States. What to do after a terrorist attack on Washington when the Senate leadership wants to convene without authority to do so. Telling the state of New York that if they wanted their electoral votes to count, they would have to correct the spelling of the name of the candidate they thought they had certified as having won in their state. What to do when your wife receives a phone call at home from a reporter telling her that he has it on good authority that you have been receiving death threats but just wants to confirm this with her. What to do when the president pro tempore signs an enrolled bill in such a flamboyant manner that there is no room for the signature of the president of the United States, and the White House is not amused. That the signature tax cuts of a president would have to sunset because, in essence, you said so.

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the Senate majority after the 1980 election. Even though reconciliation was designed to make only minor budgetary changes to laws recently enacted or to bills being prepared for presidential signature, the Republicans convinced my predecessor that a reconciliation bill could be used at various times and for a whole host of things, and they used several such bills to enact a great deal of the Reagan Revolution in the early 1980s. This dynamic, with each political party using reconciliation bills to advance their agendas, has occurred back and forth, frequently over objections that the process was being abused. In 1986, the Senate adopted the Byrd Rule (named for Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, the Senate’s acknowledged procedural expert) as an amendment to the Budget Act of 1974. The Byrd Rule is meant to prevent language containing extraneous (i.e., non-budgetary) provisions in reconciliation bills, as well as to prevent amendments to that effect to such bills. Decisions by the Senate’s presiding officers interpreting the Byrd Rule (on advice of the parliamentarian) can only be overturned by a vote of three-fifths of the senators duly chosen and sworn. Likewise, waivers of the rule require the same three-fifths supermajority. Therefore, the use of reconciliation bills, how they travel through the legislative process, and what content they may contain are subject to dozens of decisions made by the Senate’s presiding officers, always on the advice of the parliamentarian. In 1993, the Clinton administration was most eager to use the reconciliation process. Since most aspects of its economic agenda (taxes and spending) were budgetary in nature, the reconciliation process was suitable. However, in addition to provisions having a budgetary effect, hundreds of non-budgetary provisions were removed from this reconciliation bill based on my interpretation of the Byrd Rule. Further, Bill and Hillary Clinton’s signature policy initiative was to be health care reform (sound familiar?). The Democrats wanted to use another reconciliation bill later in that Congress to avoid a Republican filibuster on the initiative. I was approached by the Democratic leadership to see if I thought that that was either appropriate or viable. My answer was “No” — reconciliation might be appropriate, possibly, around the margins, but not for large policy changes.

Senator Byrd also came to me. Having been approached by the White House (as was I), he asked me what I thought about budget reconciliation. I told him, “Your rule, the Byrd Rule, will make this either impossible or problematic.” The White House leaned on Senator Byrd, he said, “No.” He passed along the White House’s pressure to me. I said, “No.” It was about this time that a powerful chairman of a House committee was quoted as saying, “They made the Senate parliamentarian more powerful than the Speaker of the House.” I don’t think he meant this as a compliment. Fast forward to 2009. Once again, we had a president with a health care initiative. And again, the question was, what about avoiding a Republican filibuster by using expedited procedures under reconciliation? The Democrats were close to 60 votes for cloture at the outset of President Barack Obama’s term. My assistants and I simply prayed for 60. We didn’t care if it was 40 Republicans and 20 Democrats. All we cared about was for there to be 60 for cloture so that we wouldn’t be called upon to decide the appropriateness of using reconciliation, that tool that is majority compulsion. When Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania decided he was tired of being a Republican, score one more for the Democrats. There were pluses and minuses through this period of time. Ted Kennedy passed away over the summer. The Governor of Massachusetts had appointed Paul Kirk to fill that seat until an election could be held in early 2010. Then we had an unresolved election in Minnesota. When it finally was resolved in favor of Al Franken, behold, a 60th Democrat. The Democrats had the magic number through Christmas Eve. The judgment calls that the parliamentarian would have to answer if the Democrats sought to use expedited procedures under reconciliation were going to be mind-boggling, extremely difficult, and very controversial. Give us 60. Keep 60. This massive Senate health care amendment to an unrelated House bill passed on Christmas Eve with the Democrats using their 60-vote majority to invoke cloture. Well, as soon as it passed, people began objecting to certain things in the bill. One, which the press called the Cornhusker Kickback, was put in so that Ben Nelson of Nebraska would go along;

another called the Louisiana Purchase was for Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. There were a number of things that the press and the political opposition made clear were either inappropriate or an awfully heavy weight to carry. It remained for the House to take the Senate’s amendment, and with the House, you have majority compulsion, so there would be no problem as long as Nancy Pelosi could keep her troops together. But Nancy Pelosi was not about to take the Cornhusker Kickback and the Louisiana Purchase, and so it became clear that the House would not simply take the Senateamended House bill, pass it clean, and send it to the president, but would have to amend the bill. Then the bill would have to come back to the Senate, which would have to agree to the House’s amendments to it. Once again, the Democrats would need 60 votes. Over the holidays, the Democrats still had 60 votes. We’re now into January. Massachusetts was about to hold a special election to fill the balance of Ted Kennedy’s term. Interim Senator Paul Kirk, who was a reliable 60th vote for the Democrats, was not running. Martha Coakley was running for the Democrats; Scott Brown for the Republicans. A week or so before the election, I got a phone call from my assistant saying, “Alan, did you hear what Martha Coakley said? She referred to Curt Schilling as a Yankee fan!” Simultaneously, on both sides of the phone line, we said, “Oh, My God, we are so screwed.” We knew that Martha Coakley, who had insulted Red Sox fans everywhere, would lose that 60th Democratic seat. And well she did. Republican Scott Brown won, and there went the Democrats’ supermajority. With that went the fix for the Cornhusker Kickback and the Louisiana Purchase, which could not survive a Republican filibuster and pass a Senate of 59 Democrats and 41 Republicans. So what would happen? Well, there’s always budget reconciliation. And who got to decide about budget reconciliation? Who got to decide whether the process was appropriate? Who got to decide every line of the bill? Who got to decide whether or not the president had to sign the first massive bill before he could sign the reconciliation bill fixing the first bill? People who understood how the Senate worked knew that my office in general, and I in particular, might have a role to play in deciding the fate

of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. And so, I who was hired because I had a passion for anonymity, found the following headlines during that period. Some were all right. “Senate Parliamentarian: He’s the Only One Both Parties Trust” (McClatchy Newspapers) — That was a good one. “Alan Frumin, Senate Parliamentarian, is a Health Care Rock Star” (Huffington Post, March 17, 2010) “Who’s Alan Frumin and Why Might He Shape U.S. Health Reform?” (Christian Science Monitor, October 14, 2009) I like this one: “Romancing the Parliamentarian. If Alan Frumin Can’t be Bullied or Bought, Can He Be Bypassed?” (Slate Magazine, September 2, 2009)

obstruction, but of the unwillingness to compromise. One recently elected senator gave his maiden speech at the desk of Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser, and decried the very thought of compromise. That mindset is the death knell of the Senate. Because, if the minority is never willing to compromise, the majority will feel compelled to extinguish their privileges forever. Politics is the price that people pay for the privilege of governing. And the price of governing in the Senate, I believe, has gotten much higher than in 1977 when I began working there. Has restraint become absolute obstructionism, such that the country cannot do its business? Is the Senate a viable institution in the 21st century? In a political culture that has a 24/7 news cycle where everything a senator does or says is published immediately? That has cell phones and video cameras everywhere, where people can’t speak in confidence? If the press

is following you wherever you go, if somebody is Tweeting something you said you might think, God knows, compromise becomes problematic. My hope is that the culture will revert to what it has been for the better part of the past 200 years and that senators will understand that compromise is the essence of the political process, before the institution simply implodes upon itself, as it almost did in 2005. What the founders envisioned for the Senate was different and unique and worth preserving. But in order for it to be preserved, its members need to respect each other, to recognize that they are a community, to be humble, and exercise self-restraint. This depends on the political process generating people who understand that. I’ve always said that the Senate is an acquired taste, and that it’s a taste worth acquiring. It’s different, it’s nuanced — but in its odd way, it had worked for more than 200 years.

“One of Washington’s Most Powerful and Least Famous People” (New Republic, October 12, 2009) There were editorials about me in the New York Times. I never answered the phone. I never talked to a reporter. It doesn’t mean they didn’t find my wife at home. That doesn’t mean there weren’t cameras in my face as I walked from my car to my office. Things got so interesting that I had police protection at my house. Between 60 votes required for cloture and a simple majority vote under expedited procedures lies years of psychoanalysis, ulcers, sleepless nights, and frustrated spouses and children, for somebody who is simply hired to advise the Senate’s presiding officer.

The essence is compromise

As I said earlier, when I first found myself involved in the daily operations of this most unusual body, senators had different agendas, but they respected one another, and they respected the institution and exercised self-restraint in the manner in which they employed the Senate’s procedures. People from both sides of the aisle with strong opinions about public policy issues knew that they had to compromise. There were many times when the votes were hung up, but rarely was it “Over My Dead Body.” One person’s obstruction is another person’s brilliant analysis and caution. What troubles me today is not so much what one might think of as

Alan Frumin joined the U.S. Senate’s Parliamentarian office in 1977. He held the top job from 1987 to 1995 and from 2001 until his retirement in early 2012. As parliamentarian emeritus, Frumin is updating the Senate’s official book of procedures, which he last published in 1992. The newly established Edgar Shor Lecture honors the longtime political science professor who created Colgate’s Washington, D.C., Study Group.

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Andrew Daddio

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The Office of Alumni Relations is pleased to offer many ways for alumni to stay in touch with each other, and with Colgate! E-mail me with questions or concerns at tmansfield@ colgate.edu. — Tim Mansfield, director of alumni relations Questions? Contact alumni relations: 315-228-7433 or alumni@colgate.edu.

She is chair of her reunion program committee. ERA VII Anne Huntington ’07 Anne Huntington founded art advisory and curatorial company AMH Industries. She is a Thought into Action mentor, admission volunteer, and a class gift committee co-chair. At Large Harry Horwitz ’76 Harry Horwitz has served as copresident of the Colgate Club of Philadelphia since 2003. He has cochaired his reunion gift and reunion program committees, and has been a career services and advancement volunteer. Don Rith ’56

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Your portal to alumni programs, volunteer opportunities, career networking, and more

2013 Colgate Alumni Council Election

The Nominations Committee of the Alumni Council has selected the following slate of alumni for election at Reunion 2013. The candidates, chosen from approximately 300 nominees, have strong records of varied Colgate volunteer service, a consistent history of giving financial support to Colgate, and meaningful personal or professional accomplishments or contributions to the greater community. Complete information about the election and challenge petition process, as well as full biographies of the nominees, are posted at www. colgate.edu/2013candidates. Paper copies are available by calling 315228-7433, or by sending an e-mail to alumni@colgate.edu. ERA I Guy Martin ’57, MA’59 Guy Martin served as Colgate’s associate dean of admission, dean of admission, and dean of students between 1966 and 1976. An Athletics Hall of Honor inductee, Martin is a six-time reunion program committee chair. ERA II Robert Glendening ’71 Robert Glendening’s Colgate family legacy spans four generations. A Ma-

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roon Council member for the past 24 years, he spent 19 years on his class gift committee and has served as an admission volunteer. ERA III Patricia Apelian Aitken ’76 Patricia Apelian Aitken, founder of financial services company Westgate Partners, LLC, is a longtime admission volunteer, reunion program committee chair, and a charter member of the Alumnae Leadership Council. ERA IV Eric Seidman ’84 Eric Seidman is managing director of Quantum Partners, Inc. A Colgate Thirteen alumnus, he has spent 20 years volunteering with his class gift committee and has served on his reunion program committee. ERA V Robert Grossman ’96 Robert Grossman, director of advisory services at KPMG LLP, has served as an admission and career services volunteer. He has chaired his class gift committee and reunion program committee. ERA VI Carmella Alvaro ’98 A Colgate Scene class editor for the past 15 years, Carmella Alvaro has served as an admission volunteer and class gift committee member.

At Large Vaughn Crowe ’02 Winner of the 2002 Adam Clayton Powell Award, Vaughn Crowe is a Thought into Action mentor and Maroon Council member who has participated in the Living Dream Catcher program and served as an admission volunteer. •••••

Summer on the Hill June 30–July 3, 2013 Wish you could do it all over again? Relive the liberal arts during Summer on the Hill — an ideal getaway for alumni of all class years. Enjoy the warmth of a Chenango Valley summer, engage with brilliant professors, and share the company of your classmates during this special weekend. Visit colgate.edu/summerhill for details. •••••

Congratulations

If you received this Scene by mail, your postal address is current and correct in Colgate’s alumni directory. But what about your business information or e-mail address? And have you made it possible for your friends and classmates to find you? You control the quality and visibility of your directory information! Visit colgate.edu/profile today to review your profile and your privacy settings — contact the alumni office at alumni@colgate.edu or 315-2287439 with questions.

salmagundi

College Knowledge

Rewind

First answer each question in this quiz. Then write each answer in the only row in which it will fit in the grid below. When you’re done, read down two of the grid’s columns to find the answer to the final question, which is posed above the grid. See page 75 for the solution. What are the call letters of Colgate’s radio station? What TV show featured this Colgate alumnus from 1978 until shortly before his death in November 2011? What was this campus building called before it was renovated and reopened in 2007?

What kind of product was Colgate & Co. the first to mass produce, in 1873, originally as powder in a jar?

What product (and alternate name for this puzzle) has been one of the most successful endeavors that Colgate alumni have ever helped develop?

What is the last name of this man, Colgate’s president from 1969 to 1977? Before its 1890 name change to Colgate, the university bore this man’s last name from 1846 to 1890. What was it?

What word is missing from this line of the Colgate Hymn? Alma Mater, Mother True! Loyal Sons would we, Strong in heart, with ready hand Give our ___ to thee.

13 Words (or fewer) In the autumn 2012 issue, we asked readers to submit their clever caption ideas for this photo. We voted on our favorite entry: “Before the construction of the Angert Family Climbing Wall, life was not easy.” — Stuart Angert ’62 and his wife, Joyce, whose gift built the climbing wall in 1999 in honor of their children, Meredith ’94 and Joshua Thank you to everyone who submitted captions. Stay tuned for the next contest!

scene: Winter 2013

A lifetime ago I can hardly remember Cold that blew in that November And the going was slow And we traveled in snow Travelin’ up to the hill A lifetime ago I know it was me Lost in the house on Utica street Well, I couldn’t sit down I just wandered around Found my way to the hill Up on the hill How can it be Up on the hill That boy was me Up on the Hill

Puzzle by Puzzability

Salmagundi, 1992

Steve Kunzman ’77 wrote “Up on the Hill” after taking his daughter Molly ’12 to visit Colgate for the first time. Kunzman is an environmental lawyer by trade, but said that he “doesn’t know life without the guitar” and “music is at the very core of my soul.” Kunzman has been playing guitar for more than 50 years and has studied with Grammy Award–winning songwriter Rosanne Cash. Here is an excerpt from “Up on the Hill,” which is featured on Kunzman’s new CD, Back Home. Listen at soundcloud.com/ stevekunzman

Oh what a time it was A lifetime away Oh what a time we had Though it seemed like yesterday A lifetime ago Looked for the way Listening to wise men each day But memories fade And plans get delayed Plans made up on the hill Up on the hill How can it be Up on the hill Man we were free Up on the Hill © 2012 Steve Kunzman Do you have a Colgate reminiscence for Rewind? Send your submission of short prose, poetry, or a photograph with a description to scene@colgate.edu

Above: Young Maya Indian weaver Sarahy Lopez, from San Antonio Aguas Calientes in Guatemala, instructs Nicole Kroeger â&#x20AC;&#x2122;14 in a workshop on the art of Maya Indian weaving hosted by the Native American Student Association. The backstrap weaving technique is ancient, but still practiced. The weaver wears a loop around the waist; subtle leaning forward decreases the tension on the warp threads, while leaning back increases the tension. Maya weavers and dancers came to campus in connection with the annual Native American Arts and Culture Festival in September. Photo by Gabriela Bezerra â&#x20AC;&#x2122;13 Back cover: The Willow Path blanketed in snow. Photo by Andrew Daddio News and views for the Colgate community

scene: Colgate University

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