February 2019

A

for the Students

New Yorker

Dorothy Wickenden ’79

Hobart and William Smith Colleges announced today that the 2019 Commencement Address will be delivered by Dorothy Wickenden ’76 L.H.D. ’14. Currently the Executive Editor of The New Yorker, Wickenden is an accomplished novelist, journalist, and editor who has an extensive career covering national news and has been noted as one of the most influential women in journalism.

Wickenden has worked at The New Republic as managing editor and executive editor, and at Newsweek as a national affairs editor. In 1995, Wickenden joined The New Yorker as managing editor. She is also the editor

of The New Republic Reader: Eighty Years of Opinion and Debate, which “traces the key political and social battles of the century” and includes magazine contributors such as George Orwell, Rebecca West, John Dewey, and Arthur M. Schlesinger. Throughout her career, Wickenden has written for publications such as The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, and has also published the acclaimed non-fiction biography Nothing Daunted

“During her distinguished career, Dorothy Wickenden has demonstrated a diligence and fearlessness in pursuing important news that reflects the Colleges’ values of intellectual rigor, integrity and citizenship,” says Interim President Patrick A. McGuire L.H.D. ’12. “Under her leadership, The New Yorker has played a critical role in elevating public discourse on vital issues, from national politics and foreign affairs to the #MeToo movement. She is an accomplished journalist, author, and executive whose experience makes her uniquely suited to address the world into which our seniors

will graduate.”

By Alex Kerai ’19 Editor-in-Chief Speaker… continued page 8

Wickenden graduated magna cum laude from William Smith and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. As a student, she won the Chester J. Hampton Price for Excellence in English and was awarded distinction for her baccalaureate essay. In 2009, she received the Alumnae Achievement Award. In 2014, President Emeritus Mark D. Gearan L.H.D. ’17 awarded Wickenden an honorary Doctor of Letters to note her accomplishments in journalism and her support of the Colleges as a speaker, panelist, and member...

Walkway for W.S. Hill

By Elise Donovan ’20 Herald Staff

Ever since I could walk, my Dad would constantly remind me that the fastest way to get between two places is in a straight line. This idea is partly why Nuzhat Wahid, previous William Smith Class of 2022 president and current William Smith Congress vice president, decided to construct and establish a walkway up the infamous William Smith Hill.

Joyce Jacobsen Named Next President of HWS

The Herald has full coverage of the Presidential Announcement, including the first sit-down interview with President-elect Joyce Jacobsen. Dr. Jacobsen sat down with the Herald on Friday, February 8 just hours before the official announcement to the campus community. We also have an exclusive interview with John Isaacson, of the search firm Isaacson, Miller, which led HWS’s presidential search.

Besides acknowledging Archimedes and my Dad’s claim about cutting down on walk time by going in a straight line, Wahid explained her initial thought process in an interview about the walkway. “Unfortunately, the idea did not suddenly jump out from my subconscious and ignite within me a fire to pursue the issue as steadfastly as I have. Initially, I, like other firstyears, would bemoan the arduous task of trekking along the muddy plains of the hill and/or the hellish incline of the driveway. Sometimes, walking along both was necessary. Failure on grass equated to full shoe submersion in the mud. Also, take note, white shoes and grass do not get along.” Not only eloquent in wording, Wahid’s idea also marked the start of a long road (or pathway) to helping out her other WS Hill residents.

In addition, there is full coverage of the announcement itself, with a photo spread from Chief Photographer Ani Freedman and quotes from attendees and members of the search committee.

At first, Wahid remarked, the problem of a long and strenuous commute did not seem like something she believed she could fix. It was only on her post-WSC election night high that she decided to pose the idea to some upperclassmen. Many, she said, agreed with Wahid’s concerns regarding the lack of the pathway, with one student recounting the story of a WS sophomore who attained frostbite during a late-night walk. This story was particularly memorable to Wahid. Later in the conversation, Wahid made sure to give due credit to a fellow first-year who pointed out a possible ‘path’ to actually accomplishing the goal of a pathway. Wahid explained, “after mentioning the concept...

“I like to talk to students and find out about what they’re interested in and what their hopes and goals are for the future... I hope to meet as many [students] as possible... and start to understand how I can make this a better Col leges for them as well.” - President-elect Joyce Jacobsen

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Dear Readers of the Herald,

Welcome back to campus and what an exciting few weeks it has been! Two weeks ago, we witnessed the historic announcement of the first woman President of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and this week brings the announcement of Dorothy Wickenden ’76 as the 2019 Commencement speaker. It is shaping up to be an exciting spring semester!

On that front, we have an incredible team working to bring you the most up-to-date news and investigations relating to campus –and we have some very exciting things in the works. We also have our podcast, The Seneca Scene, that is bringing listeners weekly interviews every Wednesday with people on campus. To continue to get your Herald fix, subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts.

We have been working very hard this past year to engage students in campus issues and create less apathy around campus. The student body has endless potential to create change at HWS. We see this take root in proposals like Nuzhat Wahid’s walkway or in the opportunity to run for Student Trustee – two subjects covered in this issue. These are avenues for students to ensure that their voice is heard.

As we near March, I want to also note another anniversary that is coming up: March 1 is the 140th anniversary of the Herald which has been continuously published at Hobart and William Smith Colleges ever since. Although writers and editors have changed over the years, as have the topics covered, one thing has not: The Herald is written for, and aims to benefit, the students but –in doing so – asks for their cooperation in return; it asks that they do not demonstrate apathy but instead take direct action and create change.

A newspaper is made to inform, and through informing it hopes to educate its public such that they can act in any which way they deem necessary. The news is here to ensure we know things; it hopes, but does not require, that we act on that knowledge.

For the past semester, I have written in these letters that HWS is in a state of transition, that things are in flux, and that this the time to institute change. The Colleges are at a crossroads and it is the people currently at the institution who will help chart the path forward.

I believe strongly in the importance of knowledge and action. And I do not believe it is possible, in the current climate we live in today, to have one without the other. To know is to act; to act is to change.

I was talking to a professor after class recently and he mentioned that most of the laws and rights we take for granted today came from a group of people banding together and fighting for what they believed in. That could be with social movements such as Civil Rights activism or the revolution that began this country in 1765. Everything that we take granted came from a group taking action.

It is time to pay that forward.

It is the final semester of my senior year here at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and I have been re-reading old editions of the Herald trying to figure out what we can do next to help the students and improve our community. But what I have also realized is that it is not just up to me; it is up to all of you. As one person, the Editor of this HWS mainstay that is nearing its 140th-anniversary, I can only do so much: I work to bring you the news. It means nothing with apathy; it means everything with action.

This is the time to figure out what you want to do with your time at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. This is the time to think ahead.

The great work has begun, my friends, and it is time to let your voices – the voices of the students, faculty, and staff; the voices of Hobart and William Smith Colleges – to be heard.

I look forward to hearing them.

Sincerely, Alex Kerai Editor-in-Chief of the Herald

Davis Gallery: Art & Labor Collection

By Grace Ruble ’21 News Editor

On Feb. 1, the Davis Gallery celebrated the opening of its new Art and Labor Collection. The exhibit features works from HWS’s own collection. Art and Labor is Visual Arts Curator Anna Wagner’s first collections curation project at the Colleges and features works by artists such as Kara Walker, Käthe Kollwitz, Arthur Dove, Frank Romero and Stacey Robinson, as well as several unnamed artists. HWS students Shannon Smith ’20, Rachel Geiogamah ’19, Ethan Leon ’19, Sarah MacKechnie ’19, and Dylan Bennett ’19 wrote the wall labels for the collection along with Wagner.

The unifying theme of labor allows works in the collection to span a wide range of mediums, from photos and paintings that depict labor in progress to sculptures and ceramics that show the end results of labor. According to Wagner, the collection highlights many forms of labor that have often gone undiscussed, including “motherhood, farming, industry, locomotion, union organization and slavery,” as well as pieces that exhibit evidence of “madness” and “materiality.”

Some pieces, which demonstrate the gallery’s mission to portray labor that is often ignored, include Frank Romero’s Arrest of the Paleteros, which depicts a

conflict between Chicano laborers and police, and Alison Starr’s depiction of emotional labor in her painting Inheritance, which is supplemented by an interactive sculpture made by HWS students outside the gallery

The collection also recognizes that galleries themselves are products of people and their labor and aims to ask how the Davis Gallery can be “a space for engagement, and a space that realizes and demonstrates different forms of labor.”

Interested readers can view the Art and Labor collection at the Davis Gallery until March 1, when it will leave to make way for the opening of the Advocacy, Activism & Alliances in American Architecture

Since 1968 exhibit on March 8.

& Opinion

Sodexo: History & Concerns

By Olivia Rowland ’21

Editor

Saga food isn’t the greatest. At least, that’s what everyone says in continual complaints about dining on campus. But what about Sodexo — the company that runs Dining Services and Buildings and Grounds?

Although I won’t argue that complaints about food aren’t warranted, there are many reasons that students should be more concerned about the company providing their food than the food itself.

Sodexo has been providing the Colleges with food service since 1986 and running Buildings and Grounds since 1988. It was called the Marriott Corp. until 1998, when Sodexo, then called Sodexho, merged with Marriott.

Before Marriott, the Colleges’ dining services were provided by the Saga Corp., a food service company that was created on campus in 1948 by three Hobart students, including William Scandling ’49. Students and staff who had experienced dining under both Saga and Marriott noted a significant difference in their work environments and the quality of service that was provided. The Saga Corp. gave the dining hall a warm, family-like feel and made workers happy to go to work. Marriott, on the other hand, felt more like an institution, which depressed employee morale.

From the start of Marriott’s service on campus, many students were unhappy with the cost of meal plans, the quality and source of food, the company’s environmental impact, how it treated its workers, the lack of good vegetarian/ vegan and kosher options, and the company’s food monopoly on campus.

A lot has changed since the ’80s, but apparently not much has changed with Dining Services, since all of these problems are still relevant on campus today. Many of them stem from broader ethical concerns about Sodexo as a company.

First is Sodexo’s involvement in the private prison industry. This was briefly something of a hot topic on campus when Angela Davis came to speak in October, but few people know the details about Sodexo and prisons.

Sodexo used to invest in private prisons in the United States, notably through the Corrections Corporation of America (now CoreCivic), but sold its stock in 2001 following widespread college protests.

Even though Sodexo is no longer involved in the U.S. private prison industry, it is heavily invested in private prisons internationally. As of 2016, Sodexo managed 42 prisons in

Staff

the Netherlands, 34 in France, five in the UK, two in Spain, and one in Belgium. It is also involved in the private prison industry in Australia and Chile.

There have been notable controversies around prisons managed by Sodexo. In 2013, a female prisoner in one of Sodexo’s UK prisons sued the company for denying her proper healthcare following a miscarriage. Commentators in France and the UK have also questioned the safety and organization of prisons operated by Sodexo.

This is a serious issue that should concern everyone in the HWS community. The fact that Sodexo makes part of its profit, no matter how small, from imprisoning other human beings is unacceptable. Private prisons in general are less secure than government-run prisons are and they pay their employees less. Since they earn more money when more people are imprisoned, many companies involved in running private prisons lobby for policies that will increase incarceration rates and times, which means that they are a contributing factor to our country’s prison problem.

Sodexo has also been frequently accused of underpaying and mistreating its employees and denying them the right to unionize. In 2011, a Human Rights Watch report claimed that Sodexo had “launched aggressive campaigns against some of its U.S. employees’ efforts to form unions and bargain collectively.” This prompted five colleges and universities to get rid of their contracts with Sodexo.

Also in 2011, a TransAfrica report gave voice to workers who accused Sodexo of “paying sub-par wages, denying employees breaks, and withholding overtime pay.” One employee who had been with Sodexo for 40 years was only earning $7.42 per hour.

These specific examples represent a pattern in Sodexo’s treatment of workers across the country. The New York Times has noted that the wages Sodexo pays its workers are “so low that some workers are required to turn to government assistance, including anti-hunger programs.” The same 2010 article revealed that less than a fifth of Sodexo employees were union members and that many more wanted to join but felt too scared to do so.

Sodexo has also repeatedly been accused of discrimination, despite claims on its website that “diversity and inclusion [are] the cornerstone of our culture” and its first-place ranking among 449 companies for diversity in 2010, according to DiversityInc.

After many of the company’s African American employees claimed to be “routinely barred from promotions and segregated in their company” in a 2005 lawsuit, Sodexo paid $80 million to settle. According to the Service Employees International Union, similar lawsuits were still being filed against Sodexo in 2010.

Although food isn’t the focus of this piece, it’s worth mentioning that Sodexo has also been criticized for the quality of its food and its food safety procedures. In 2012, Sodexo’s frozen strawberries were found to be the cause of a serious outbreak of food poisoning in Germany that affected more than 11,000 children. In 2013, facilities run by Sodexo in England found horse DNA in their beef.

More recently, inspections of Sodexo-run dining halls at Marquette University (2013), RPI (2014), Drexel University (2015), Binghamton University (2016), Franklin College (2017), and Pittsburgh University (2018) uncovered serious food safety violations.

Sodexo has responded to all of these incidents by emphasizing its commitment to food safety and the fact that it corrects violations before re-inspection. This pattern of food safety violations, however, is cause for concern, as it puts both Sodexo employees and customers at risk.

I am in no way claiming that any of these things are happening at HWS, nor do I intend to disparage anyone who works for Sodexo. I did reach out to Dave McCandless, general manager of Sodexo on campus. He said he would “answer what I can” but then never responded to my questions. This article intends to call attention to the many indicators that Sodexo is an unethical company that we should not support.

The real problem is that students, except the few who are able to live off campus or in a theme house with a coop, are forced to give money to Sodexo if they want to attend HWS. This means that these ethical concerns should be of significant interest to every student who has a meal plan (which is most of us).

So, what do we do? Students need to start caring about where their money is going. Many students at other colleges and universities have protested Sodexo’s service at their schools, and some have succeeded in getting their schools to drop their contracts. There’s no reason why we can’t — and shouldn’t — follow their lead.

Sustainability at HWS

By Yellie LeBare ’19 Special to the Herald

In 2007, HWS President Mark Gearan signed the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment, which charged the Colleges with a new task: carbon neutrality by 2025. Although bold, this act was crucial in the forward momentum of the Colleges’ sustainability, and 12 years, two solar farms, and countless program initiatives later, the Colleges are well on their way to minimizing their impact on the planet. A main contributor to the oncampus portion of these improvements has been groups such as the EcoReps! They are responsible for assessing the needs of facilities as well as the student body and coming up with creative ways to get people involved in their cause. They often table and host events like the current Green Lens film series that takes place on the last Thursday of each month.

In a recent interview, campus Sustainability Manager Michael Amadori discussed his goals for helping the campus meet its carbon neutrality pledge, improve recycling rates, and engage more students in the EcoRep program. The current tagline has been “When in doubt, throw it out” to educate the campus about the contamination problem of our recycling. Also, several program changes have taken place this year within the EcoReps that have made it easier than ever to participate!

First, rather than going through an application process, the program includes everyone regardless of experience, major, or level of commitment. To join, visit the Sustainability home page and take a quick 10-minute survey that asks basic questions about your current knowledge and habits, and provides some basic sustainability information. That’s it! Then you are in the club and will receive updates via email to participate more.

Secondly, because of many people’s conflicting schedules, the EcoReps now operate on a reward system rather than a commitment system. For each event you attend as an EcoRep (a meeting, a tabling session, volunteering during Earth Week, etc.) you will be entered into a raffle for the end of the year party in order to win prizes such as reusable mugs, recycled notebooks, solar-powered chargers and more! This method allows the EcoReps to be more inclusive to students who have other commitments but still want to contribute.

In this way, everyone can have a hand in the necessary ongoing changes to make our campus a greener, happier and more

sustainable place to live, work, and play!

There are many perks to being an EcoRep, too. Every semester there are tours to local places of interest such as water treatment plants, recycling centers, composting operations, and fruit orchards. If you help as a Bin Master during Orientation, you have the ability to move back to campus early and train with your fellow EcoReps. The meetings always have great food from local restaurants, you get to hang out with friends and meet new people, and the program is a resume builder.

Any questions can be emailed to Sustainablity@hws.edu and be sure to follow us on social media: @GreenHWS

News

HWS Announces Next President

By Alex Kerai ’19 & Grace Ruble

Dr. Joyce Jacobsen was announced on Friday, Feb. 8 as the 29th President of Hobart College and the 17th of William Smith College. The introduction took place on campus in the L. Thomas Melly ’52 Lobby of the Gearan Center for the Performing Arts to a standing-room only crowd.

Jacobsen comes to the Colleges after serving for over 25 years at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. She most recently was the Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs. Her experience includes over 30 years of teaching, including positions as an endowed professor and dean.

Professor of Political Science and Presidential Search Committee faculty member Justin Rose noted in an interview with the Herald that “among faculty, there was a desire to have a strong faculty leader. And when looking at Joyce, her faculty credentials are impeccable. There was an endearing factor for the faculty as we got to know her. By the end there was widespread consensus –it was unanimous, for the Search Committee and Trustees – about the candidate.”

Immediately after the announcement, the Herald interviewed members of the audience and asked for their thoughts on Dr. Jacobsen. Associate Vice President for Advancement, Alumnae Relations Kathy Regan ’82 P’13 said, “I am completely inspired and excited. I had the good fortune to walk around with her today. She’s very observant, a great listener, a great sense of humor which came out [during her speech]. So I think it’s really neat. She’s exactly what this place needs.”

That feeling appeared to be shared among the many members of the audience, including first-year students like Mercy Sherman who told the Herald, “I was just so impressed at the fact that Hobart and William Smith is having the first woman president. I just can’t wait to see what changes she’ll bring to the college …”

Jacobsen continued to impress the members of the Presidential Search Committee. After her announcement, Professor of Physics Donald Spector, who served on the search committee, noted, “When we first came across Joyce in the search we just saw ‘this is someone we’ve got to talk to’ and as we talked to her and got to know her at each stage, everything, in every way, everything was more impressive than we thought. I mean, she is smart, she’s a scholar, she’s a teacher, she just knows

liberal arts Colleges in her bones. And then on top of all that she’s just nice, she’s just a pleasure to talk to and have dinner with and I can’t wait to work with her. I think it’s going to be a fabulous time under her presidency.”

A graduate of Harvard University, the London School of Economics, and Stanford University, Dr. Jacobsen is a professor of Economics who has been widely published in the field with her research focusing on the economics of gender. She studied with the main labor economist Richard Freeman at Harvard and did postgraduate work with Victor Fuchs. She is a recent past president of the International Association for Feminist Economics.

In addition to her academic work, she has also done consulting for think tanks and non-profit organizations including the World Bank and ACLU.

Dr. Jacobsen will begin as President on July 1, and Interim President Patrick McGuire, who is also an Emeritus Professor of Economics, offered advice based on his 50year tenure at the Colleges: “Talk to students. I mean, and that will not be a problem for her … she’s just open to everything, so she’s very experienced in the ways of administration and she knows faculty. Provost is the toughest job on campus, so yeah I think she’ll welcome the kids and talk to them and get a sense of who they are, and I think she’ll be better off with that so that’s what I would say.”

There was a lot of excitement in the room for the announcement. Professor of Economics Thomas Drennen said, “It’s

really exciting to have a recognized scholar in gender economics who’ll understand the academic world, what it’s like to be a professor and the pressure, and she’s, you know, a renowned teacher, she’s won teaching awards, so she gets all that.”

President-elect Jacobsen also met with some students in a meeting before the announcement. She impressed many of students in the room. One of them, William Smith Congress President Eva Catanzariti, told the Herald, “[Jacobsen] wants to work for everyone but the main thing is she wants to change stuff and I don’t think it’s just for profit, not just for political gain, image-wise but purely because she wants to fix things and there are definitely things to fix and I think she’s definitely the woman to do it.”

In a final reflection on the experience and selecting Dr. Jacobsen, William Smith Student Trustee and Presidential Search Committee member Caitlin Lasher ’19 said, “One of things I really appreciated about Dr. Jacobsen was the fact that she came up through the academy, she has that background as a professor but then as an administrator and it was also really apparent to us right away that students would gravitate towards her. She comes into a room and she fills it with happy energy and you know that she means well, but also that she can lead us and that’s something you want in a president: someone who can be there to support you but also make those tough decisions and lead us into greatness. I mean, I’m honestly beyond thrilled.”

Introducing President Jacobsen

By Alex Kerai ’19 Editor-in-Chief

On Friday, Feb. 8, just hours before she was announced as the next President of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Dr. Joyce Jacobsen sat down for an interview with the Herald. In a wideranging interview, Jacobsen discussed how she learned about HWS, her cat Putters, and her academic career.

Dr. Joyce Jacobsen comes to HWS after 26 years at Wesleyan University in Middletown,

Connecticut where she is an endowed chair in Economics and the Provost. As someone who comes from the faculty as well, Jacobsen is uniquely attuned to campus. “I was myself a student, and I’m a staff, and I’m an alum, and so being a faculty means I’ve really got it all covered now, while someone who comes in who wasn’t from the faculty, that’s not something they necessarily understand: faculty culture,” she said. Faculty are a big contingent on campus, and hold quite a bit of sway over the majority

of aspects relating to campus more prominently: the academics. In recent years, there have been shake-ups within the administration and faculty that have fed into faculty worries. Jacobsen hopes to alleviate that: “I understand where they’re coming from, what the pressures are on faculty members nowadays – the pressures to be both an excellent teacher and an excellent scholar the constraints on time being the most critical one … And it will make it easier for me to communicate with the faculty,

as well as being interested in what they’re doing. I like to go all different kinds of lectures and events, and can talk with faculty across a number of fields from my years on the faculty and as Provost.”

As a professor of Economics, Dr. Jacobsen is used to thinking about “trade-offs … costs and benefits, and constraints, and multiple goals,” and then applying those to higher education as an administrator. She noted that she was “a problem solver” and loves to “analyze problems,” which also attracted her to the Colleges: “setting up processes by which we can solve problems more effectively at the Colleges.”

When discussing the finances of the Colleges, she imagined “a campaign that focuses on building the endowment, with a focus on financial aid, building academic resources, which also can be done as an endowment aspect, and then facilities, most specifically the science building but probably a few other smaller projects as well.” The last

President-elect Jacobsen with Chairman of the Board of Trustees Thomas S. Buzzuto

and Search Committee co-Chair Andrew G. McMaster,

L.H.D.

President-elect Jacobsen speaks at the announcement. Photo Credit: Ani Freedman for the Herald

News

Deeper Look into the Presidential Search

By Alex Kerai ’19 Editor-in-Chief

On the morning of the presidential announcement, the Herald spoke by phone with John Isaacson, the founder and Chair of search firm Isaacson, Miller. Mr. Isaacson was integrally involved in the presidential search and answered some of the Herald’s questions about the process and what it was like to work with HWS.

Mr. Isaacson and his firm have been assisting the Colleges and the Presidential Search Committee since early July. In an email update, Search Committee co-chairs Andy McMaster and Cynthia Fish wrote that “Isaacson, Miller is a preeminent firm serving academia in the recruitment of presidents, vice presidents and deans for some of the nation’s leading Colleges and universities.” Throughout the process, Mr. Isaacson has met with students, faculty, and staff to determine the desired qualities for the next HWS president, while managing the search process and recruiting candidates.

“People were very anxious on campus about the search, and that included everyone from students to faculty and staff to the Board,” Mr. Isaacson said. “But the Search chairs and the Board chair put a tremendous amount of time in on preparing for the search.” He noted that they interviewed many different search firms and “probably did more reference checks than anyone else who hired us.”

Listening sessions for faculty, staff, and students were held on campus so that Isaacson, Miller could begin to assess the needs of the community. Isaacson said that he traveled to campus several times as well: “I think we really did know the campus well by the end of the search, and I’m sure that influenced the quality of the Search Committee’s deliberations and be clear about what it needed.”

But it was not just the campus itself that was attractive. Isaacson noted that “the most attractive thing here was that people really believe in the place and they understand viscerally what it can mean to young people. It’s a really nice and reassuring commitment to helping young people find their place in the world intellectually and personally. There’s a shared view among trustees and faculty – ‘mission coherence’ – That made it possible for the committee to probe what was important in a new President.”

Although aspects of the search were closed to outsiders, and Isaacson would not disclose any trade secrets, he had nothing but praise for the committee and the work they did. One faculty member of the committee, Professor of Political Science Justin Rose, said that the faculty were “the only elected representatives, specifically with the purpose of serving on the Search Committee.” As such, Rose noted, “there was a bit of added pressure, a certain sense of having to represent the views of the faculty. We wanted to represent the views of the faculty but also the broader institutional view.”

Isaacson complimented the committee as a whole. With such a diverse range of experiences and viewpoints, it could have been difficult to agree on a single candidate. But the choice of Dr. Jacobsen was unanimous and Isaacson commended the committee: “I appreciate very much the way they came together, the quality in the leadership of the committee, and the way people reached beyond their normal experience to learn more about the place. They came together in a really lovely way.”

Members of the faculty who were on the Search Committee echoed Isaacson’s sentiments: “During the process there was widespread transparency and honesty

which made it a successful search in the end,” Rose told the Herald. “We [the faculty] were as honest as we could be about wanting equity, which helped the process be a success in the end.”

Isaacson also noted that they started off having many different angles of vision before working their way towards a single vision. Professor of Physics Donald Spector agreed when he spoke to the Herald after the announcement: “It was a really high-functioning committee. Everybody listened to everybody else. It wasn’t like we all went in saying, ‘We must think alike,’ but we took those differences of how we thought and really achieved a common viewpoint and this is the outcome and we’re all feeling equally excited about it.”

Isaacson commended Dr. Jacobsen, the President-elect, as a “an incredible Provost” and said that she has “the combination of a thoughtful careful listener and decisive intellectual.” These qualities became more apparent during extensive interviews with the committee: “She manages beautifully to pull everyone together [at Wesleyan] to create a kind of dialogue that is important and then make critical choices that are strategically important.”

Praise of both Dr. Jacobsen and the Search Committee was unanimous at both the Presidential announcement and during the Herald’s call with Isaacson. After having visited HWS and worked with faculty, staff, and students from the school for the past seven months, Isaacson said, “The school has a terrific array of programs and a faculty utterly dedicated to their teaching. This is a personal journey for students, and they can find their way in the world.”

In regard to Dr. Jacobsen’s new journey as President of HWS, Isaacson praised her work and noted that he will probably offer private advice to her closer to July when her tenure begins.

Jacobsen

capital campaign for the Colleges began in 2006 and culminated in the 2016 opening of the Gearan Center for the Performing Arts.

At the Gearan Center on Friday, President-elect Jacobsen was able to meet a handful of the students and faculty at HWS after the announcement. She said that after she begins fulltime in July she is looking forward “to talk to yet more people … [and] to really understand more about the place and how all the different constituencies and individuals here see the Colleges.” She also wants to do a thorough inspection of all the buildings on campus. “I like to go bottom to top on buildings … because physical space is an important aspect of how students and faculty and staff experience the Colleges.”

Even while she is not on campus, Jacobsen will continue to be accessible to students. Already, her email account is set up and she plans to visit campus a few more times before the summer. She wants people to “always feel that they can contact me and tell me things they think I need to know.”

Jacobsen plans to be very accessible to students, which was already evident by an earlier meeting with select students before the announcement.

as chair, dean, or provost, “it was because I was asked to do the job, it wasn’t because I had volunteered for it, but that I felt that I would step up and serve through my leadership – or lead to serve.”

Now Jacobsen is moving forward by accepting the position of President of the Colleges. She said that she was looking for her next step and found the idea of being President of a school to be interesting. When she began looking she said that “the main attractor is the Colleges and I think thinking that this would be a good match in terms of my skill set, that, again, Wesleyan isn’t that different from Hobart and William Smith, it’s relatively similar in size of the undergraduate student body size, the acreage, the type of curricular structures you have. So there’s things that are different, but it’s not so different that it will take me that long to get up and familiar with it.”

One of the most important elements of the announcement was that Dr. Jacobsen would be the first woman president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges. She noted that it was something that attracted her to the job, and that “it just says again that another place where people weren’t used to seeing women is now becoming increasingly a place where it is perfectly normal to see all types of people and that doesn’t have to become a factor going forward as much.”

Each time she was asked to step up, either

It is that accessibility along with her willingness to help others and step into action that has brought Jacobsen to HWS as president. She said that at Wesleyan, “whenever I was asked to serve or something, I would say ‘yes’ because I thought I could do a good job on this and it freed somebody else from doing it and I will learn more from it.”

Jacobsen concluded by saying that she looks forward to meeting more students at the Colleges and understanding “how I can make this a better Colleges for them as well.” Jacobsen begins her tenure as President of Hobart and William Smith Colleges on

Left: President-elect Joyce Jacobsen is welcomed with a standing ovation to HWS

Above: John Isaacson of Isaacson, Miller the firm used for the Presidential Search

Photo Credits: Ani Freedman for the Herald & Ken Kotch

News

Free Speech on Campus

By Ryan Skinner ‘19

In November 2017, the Young Americans for Freedom invited its first speaker to campus. Nonie Darwish, the founder of Arabs for Israel, was widely accused of Islamophobia during her remarks in the Sanford Room, prompting a debate among students over how the campus community should balance free speech with its commitment to diversity and inclusion.

The faculty was no exception. More than a year after Darwish’s remarks resuscitated their internal debates, they ratified the Guiding Principles for Speech and Expression, which is a tweaked version of DePaul University’s speech guidelines. This non-binding resolution, proposed by the Committee for Diversity, Equity, and Social Justice (DESJ), affirmed the right “to engage in speech and expression consistent with the values of academic freedom and inquiry,” but it also emphasized that the Colleges have a “responsibility to create a respectful and inclusive learning environment whereby members of historically marginalized groups are empowered to express and engage critically with a diversity of viewpoints.”

According to Professor Justin Rose, the former chair of the DESJ committee, the impetus for this discussion may have come even earlier as Solomé Rose, the former Chief Diversity Officer, tried to heed a warning by the Southern Poverty Law Center that provocative speakers could come to campus after the Charlottesville riots. Professor Rose indicated that “It became clear to us that we are continuously being too reactive to these incidents, and not only are we being reactive, we are being unprepared. There was that one speaker who the Young Americans for Freedom brought to campus, Nonie Darwish, and — you know, her views aside — what was very clear to us at the DESJ was that there were many faculty members who didn’t know she was coming to campus and didn’t know how students felt about her. At the DESJ we wanted to work with the institution to come up with a response plan. The first process would be the Guiding Principles. The second resource would be learning how to have difficult conversations in the classroom.”

Professor Vikash Yadav, the chair of the Committee on the Faculty, cautioned that he could not speak for those who proposed the resolution, but said, “Those who were putting forth the principles from the Committee for Diversity, Equity, and Social Justice, what they wanted to communicate is that free speech comes with certain responsibilities and it particularly needs to operate within an academic framework. It needs to be substantiated by evidence and reasoned arguments. I think they were reacting to the perception that speakers would be invited to campus merely to invoke anger instead of having a reasoned discourse.”

However, there was not consensus about the Guiding Principles and a group

of faculty members proposed the Chicago Statement on Free Expression as an alternative. This alternate resolution would have established a broad latitude for free speech, arguing that “debate and deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the Colleges’ community to be offensive, unwise, immoral or wrong-headed. It is for the individual members of the Colleges’ community, not for HWS as an institution, to make those judgments for themselves, and to act on those judgments not by seeking to suppress speech, but by openly and vigorously contesting the ideas that they oppose. Indeed, fostering the ability of members of the Colleges’ community to engage in such debate and deliberation in an effective and responsible manner is an essential part of the Colleges’ educational mission.” However, the Chicago Statement also includes exceptions for harassment and intimidation. When asked what distinguished the two proposals, Yadav offered, “I would say that the Chicago principles were more circumscribed in terms of the authority that they confer and I also believe that the Chicago principles give greater scope for open debate.” After being asked to expound on whether it is important for students to be equipped to debate and deliberate with people who say hateful or offensive things, Yadav noted that “Having been a minority on a small liberal arts campus, I do think that it’s important that instead of deferring debate or circumscribing debate that we encourage students to be able to articulate their positions. How can we do that? We can do that by modeling debate among the faculty that is civil and reasoned. We can do that by encouraging difficult conversations in the classroom.”

In response to those who support the Guiding Principles, Yadav said, “Their arguments are also worth noting. They said that minority students are tired of having to justify their humanity, their rights, their being on a daily basis and I can understand that. I can see how it wears students down to constantly feel that they are under attack for just their identity. It’s a difficult balancing act. Students shouldn’t have to justify who they are and they shouldn’t feel personally attacked. We should be debating policies, not identities.”

The policy implications of the Guiding Principles are difficult to judge at this moment, as Rose indicated that the administration would have the final say in how to implement policy. “We were hoping that they [the Guiding Principles] would inform policies,” Rose said, “but they are not meant to be policies … The whole creation of the principles was always to be an iterative process, by that we mean, we didn’t think that DESJ should lock themselves in a room and dictate the conversation. How do we balance … between upholding free speech, freedom of expression and our commitment to diversity and inclusion?”

However, Rose did suggest that the Colleges have the legal ability to take action against speakers if it chooses because “We are a private institution, so we don’t have to strictly adhere in the same way as a public institution to certain forms of expression. If we wanted to, we could draw parameters around what kind of speech or actions are acceptable … Here’s one way to think about this: You don’t need to ban people from campus if you don’t agree with their views, but you can ask groups for the rationale behind bringing them. If the staff or faculty member can’t provide that rationale, then can we find someone who can both provide a different perspective and respect our commitment to diversity and inclusion. There’s plenty of people who have genuine critiques of terrorism who don’t then take the next step of broadly labeling one group as deficient and dangerous.” Rose further clarified that “It’s not our place to decide what those rules should be … I think the hope is that, as educators, that we never have to ban anyone from campus because students will recognize that they are part of this community, not just students, and at the end of the day we aren’t just going to bring people to campus to get a rise out of other people.”

Rose argued that there are other, more constructive ways to equip students to debate and deliberate with people they consider to be hateful. Rose said: “in the context of my classroom, I show a documentary that follows the alt-right, white nationalists in Charlottesville and it actually gives a platform for their views. But for me it’s within a larger context of an educational endeavor where I’m trying to show that there are these views and, whether right or wrong, this is a slice of America and we shouldn’t ignore this, and perhaps we even want to comment on it, but this exists. I can do that in a very responsible manner in which students are being exposed to different views and it can be part of a larger educational context, but notice I don’t need to bring a white nationalist to come to campus and shout at black students about how terrible they are.”

Several professors on both sides of the debate declined to comment on this story, suggesting the discord remains controversial among the faculty even though Yadav emphasized that it was a civil debate. Indeed, proposals for the adoption of the Chicago Statement have recently incited controversy and student protests at Williams College. Professors without tenure may feel a particularly strong apprehension about commenting on such contentious issues. Although the support for the Guiding Principles was not unanimous, the faculty has now for the first time provided its official view on the free speech debate. It remains to be seen how this judgment will affect policy as HWS continues its transition towards its first female president, Joyce P. Jacobsen.

continued from page 1

Through a recommendation from Professor Blankenship, she was then directed to the Arts and Design Collective to come up with more tangible plans and drawings. During

her meeting with Elizabeth Rhodes, the head of the Arts and Design Collective, they determined that the collective should work with WSC to produce the plans. Currently, the drawings and plans are still in progress.

Throughout the process, Wahid was happily surprised by the response. While she said she was expecting a sort of “pseudorenegade” against the idea, or at least some more vocal backlash, she found there to be an outpouring of support regarding the issue. Upon speculation about the lack of backlash or negative response, Wahid explained that it could have been because “it involves alumni, or because it increases handicap accessibility and/or it makes life more convenient for students, but either way, I know that not only do the students need this, the colleges do as well.” Wahid said that that by allowing alumni to become involved in this project, it not only created “a visible representation of the concept of William Smith students moving up other William Smith students but a tangible installation and tribute to our alumni.”

Walkway for William Smith Hill a few times, a first-year, Hannah Goichmen, approached me with the possibility of alumni involvement. The hence dubbed “Goichman Idea” (she deserves the credit and I also don’t want to be sued) allowed me to contact the head of alumni relations, Kathy Regan.” With Regan, Wahid came to the idea of paving alumni names into a walkway leading up the hill, which became the basis for the project. From there on, Wahid continued to talk to more and more students and people of influence at the Colleges. She made sure to pay tribute to those who have helped her along the way and helped her navigate the difficulties of a proposition this large. Some people she mentioned included, Regan, associate vice president for advancement, who helped with the “schematics” of the plan, Christopher Button, and Tom Bonacci, both project managers from Buildings and Grounds, helped with engineering logistics. Through these meetings, which took place after the first of November 2018, Wahid said she really began to realize and visualize the concept of the walkway. She said Tom Bonacci was especially helpful in this area, as he not only helped with the dimensions and elevation of the hill but even took the time to traverse the hill several times to come up with the best path. Later in the process after, “a lull in activity due to Thanksgiving, midterms and my reluctance to leave the warmth of my dorm” she decided to reach out to the Architecture Department. Initial correspondence with Professor Kirin Makker and Professor Jeffrey Blankenship, both associate professors of Art and Architecture, provided her with the information necessary to acquire price estimates.

Besides the more obvious benefits, Wahid explained some of the drawbacks with the installation. She said the Colleges’ primary concern is the preservation of the grass. However, Wahid (as well as others

Foot Paths in the Snow on William Smith Hill

involved in the project) believes that “were this walkway plan to come to fruition, not only would it add to the aesthetics of the colleges but it would also serve to strengthen the image of the colleges and increase our handicap accessibility.” In terms of completion times, Wahid would want it to be completed in the summer so as not to compete with student foot traffic.

On a broader completion scale, Wahid hopes the walkway will be done before her graduation. She added: “unless some unfortunate circumstance befalls me, I will utilize my time to see that it progresses.”

You would think that this project would be enough to keep Wahid busy, but she made sure to announce that she has other projects in the works as well. While some are still confidential, she referred to a project she is working on with Kristen Tobey, director of Student Activities, which has the goal in mind of bringing free menstrual hygiene products to campus. In closing, Wahid said that no matter what, she will continue to strive to improve HWS in any way possible. And if we are just looking at her track record so far, I think it’s safe to say she has done just that.

Photo Credit: Ani Freedman

Arts & Entertainment

The HWS Music Scene

By Wren Andrews ’21

Welcome to the Geneva Music Series – a column focused on illuminating the musical venues, artists, histories, and opportunities across Geneva, both on and off campus. For this issue, we interviewed Dylan Bennett, who gave us a unique perspective on music at HWS – as a member of one of HWS’ student bands, St. Clair, and a general musical advocate.

The Herald (TH): What are your thoughts on the idea of a Geneva Music Series in the Herald? Dylan Bennett (DB): I think it’s a cool idea to do a column, or a series of articles, that look at a lot of different things with music as a general thematic connector. In the four years that I’ve been here, I think music has become a bigger presence – there definitely wasn’t really a lot going on my freshman year, which was kind of a bummer. I learned from the seniors my first year that it ebbs and flows, and it’s really determined by a motivation to actually make things happen: I wouldn’t say this is a particularly musical school – or even a particularly musical city – but there’s always going to be small groups of people who are determined to make things happen. And what I’ve found from my own experiences is: you get all those people together, and things can happen.

Right now, I’m at a point where I’m happy with what I’ve done here, and I’m looking toward people I know who will be here for more years to make sure that the momentum doesn’t start over again. My first year, four years ago, was kind of a lull period. Things weren’t really continued over from the previous year, or from the previous few years, and I’ve spent my four years restarting clubs, and getting people together, approaching venues. There’s always at least one band on campus, and now I know there’s at least four, actually: St. Clair, Disoriented, Austin Kennie’s band, and the HWS Jazz Band. I also think FLX Live has helped in terms of the presence of music in Geneva, and having music be a social event that happens regularly – but at the same time, there’s something nice about having the music belong to students and their initiative. Like, [my band has] played at FLX Live, and we’ve played Lake Drum. But we played at a house once – it didn’t go so well because we got the police called on us – but that was the most fun, playing at somebody’s house, where it’s friends organizing it, friends inviting friends, and having it be a fun social setting.

In a sense, that’s my ultimate goal [for the music scene here]. But at the same time, it’s tough, because we got the police called on us, and that was the only house that we were able to find that was willing to have live music at a party. We’ve reached out to fraternities, and we’ve reached out to other off-campus houses, but nothing has really come through. There is a counterbalance at large between a majority of the population at the school, who I think has a general apathy towards music, and then there’s a third or so of the students who counter that with being really proactive. But it ultimately can fall either way. The lulls happen when people graduate, when clubs give up, and when things don’t come to fruition. I’m really trying to motivate younger people that I know to continue this momentum. So, I’m glad the Herald is helping with that and just generally spreading the word about music here.

TH: Thank you! That was the kind of the whole idea behind the series, to turn what you called the apathetic majority into more of the people who care, and are proactive about music here – keep up the momentum, like you said. I think it’s really important to talk about, because music is always present but not always known. This being said, how do you feel about school-sponsored music events? Do they contribute to the music scene on campus that you envision?

DB: So, I think a lot of school-sponsored music events are focused on artists who have name recognition and one big song. I think they’re trying to make it a big thing when, I think, it would arguably be more successful if it was scaled down, and focused less on there being a big name-brand artist. I think [having Izzy perform this year] was a really good idea – they could honestly have an entire Welcome Back Concert full of student bands if they wanted to, and there are definitely events where they try to get student bands to play. My band played at the senior toast last year – but we played for an hour and a half for an event that lasted around two songs, and halfway through the set someone from backstage asked us if we could play more songs that people knew… That’s not how bands work! We had prepared a set in advance, and we’re kind of a punk, contemporary rock band. So, since we were supposed to fill a whole hour and a half, we played everything we knew, and most of what we knew wasn’t really stuff that a lot of people probably were expecting to hear. So, yeah, it was kind of a weird event. Honestly, I’m always a little apprehensive about school-organized music events. I just think that there’s a weird bureaucratic process, and it has to please the most amount of people at the same time while also not appealing to anyone in particular. I think at this point, that’s why I’m like, if I want something to happen on campus that’s musical, my friends and I just need to take it upon ourselves to make something happen. If we get campus approval, that’s great, but we played off-campus at somebody’s house because we wanted to do something that we don’t need permission to do.

In my eyes, music is an alternative to the dominant social scenes on campus,

which are predominantly sports teams, fraternities, and going downtown. A lot of first-year students can’t even attend those kinds of events. We want to show that there have to be social alternatives for people who don’t want to participate in that kind of socializing. I also really want to try to help younger students start the process of getting the school to realize that other forms of socializing and social life are important –music can be a really good avenue for that! Because everyone loves music! Hopefully it’ll provide people who might not feel like they have a space on campus something to do in a welcoming and fun environment regardless of whether they’re a musician or not. That’s the kind of music scene I’d like to see.

TH: Me too. What advice do you have for people who want to see that sort of music scene happen on our campus?

DB: Always work together, definitely. Don’t do anything on your own, because you won’t get anything done on your own. I’ve learned the hard way. And I would say one of the most important things is get a theme house as soon as possible, and use that as a kind of base of operations. ResEd is very apprehensive and very resistant to the idea of a music theme house – there was one once, I lived in it, my junior year first semester before I went abroad. Then I applied when I was abroad to do a theme house that would be sort of like an arts and music DIY event planning house, and the idea was to populate it with some kind of event every weekend.

That was just my idea – basically, I would say, get a space of operations, because this campus has a very limited amount of those. It’s important to fight for a theme house, and fight for the kind of validity that a space brings. Because ResEd, and the school, and CAB –they don’t always understand how important having an actual space – that is always accessible – is for music to actually happen. The process of finding somewhere to practice is so difficult for bands. That can literally kill bands here. You have to pay to be able to get into the drum room in the Gearan Center, and that’s $350 per semester – and that’s only if you’re doing drum lessons specifically. If in the band doesn’t pay for that, there’s nowhere to practice. You can’t practice in your dorm room, you’ll get yelled at. The barn is always locked. So, yeah – get a space. If it can be a theme house, even better. Otherwise, somehow try to convince the school to be flexible with space, and allow a space for music.

Keep clubs alive, but don’t be afraid to change them if they’re not working. The problem I found, for the first three years I was here, is clubs were just dying and starting and dying and starting. You have to keep a steady name, and a steady amount of activity, for people to know about clubs and know what each club focuses on.

And don’t be afraid of getting in trouble. At the end of the day, there won’t be music on campus if you consign to being told “no” once – and you’ll be told “no” a lot. You just kind of have to be willing to get reprimanded, and keep trying, because eventually, someone will let you do what you want to do. And go downtown. Play downtown. There are plenty of bars that are willing to let a band be there. Don’t be afraid to literally walk up to the bartender and be like, “hey, can my band play here in a few weeks?” Because they won’t say no – they’ll more than likely say, “uh, I need to talk to whoever,” and they’ll give you a phone number, and then you call or text or email them. And go to shows. When bands have shows, go to shows – especially if they’re campus bands – because it’s a sign of support that shows that people appreciate what they’re doing, and that will make it happen again. Even if you’re not there the whole time, be seen for the sake of being seen. Because it’s a music scene. It’s not bands – bands come and go –a music scene is audience and band together, reciprocating that relationship. And I think that’s what I’m realizing more and more. Like we’ve been a band since my sophomore year, but it hasn’t really felt like a music scene until this year, because now we’re finally good enough where people like to come see us. My circle of friends has grown, and people have seen me play, and seen us play, and it’s gotten to that critical mass – now people might recognize our name maybe – that would be nice – but at the very least, they’re like, “oh, there’s a band at Lake Drum,” or whatever, so people will show up. It’s not going to happen right away. We all have to start somewhere.

Our school likes to promote living lives of consequence, and catering to well-rounded students, but in reality, with anything students want to do here, there are so many barriers. There are so many people on the way that are going to say “no,” or “it’s not realistic,” or “it can’t happen,” that it’s defeating at a certain point. But I think it’s gotten to a point where there are enough musicians on campus that people are just

pulling each other up, like, “we’re not gonna let them win!” At the end of the day, we will play somewhere. Music isn’t going away.

TH: You’re right, it’s not. It’s all about that determination and motivation that we were talking about earlier. Are there any events

coming up that students can attend in order to support and promote music at HWS?

DB: Yes, actually! I’m in the Arts and Design Collective, and last semester, in conjunction with HWS Live, we put on a Barn Bash. It was an informal social event in the barn and we had art hanging up, we had the jazz band, we had Disoriented, we had Austin’s band, we had my band, and we had our friend who graduated last semester, Robert George, his band from Buffalo came, too.

We want to do it again this semester, and this time we want to try to push an equal distribution of art and music. Last semester it was a little heavy on the music – that’s never a bad thing! – but we want to push more people to share their art. Any band will take the opportunity to play, but I think it feels more like a personal spotlight to be like, “put up your art!” Because people look at it and people talk about it. We’re trying to make it a less formal environment and have people be encouraged to bring whatever they want and we want to open it up even to poetry reading and standup and things like that. We want to have it be like a real variety show. We’re in the very beginning process of planning that for this semester – so keep an eye out. We’ll start promoting it soon, but first we’ll be sending out calls for like content. So, if you have something you want to highlight, like a performance you want to do, or a band, or art, this is the space, this is the time. We had a really good turnout last time, and we’re excited to do it again! We’re trying to get the ballroom in 380 S. Main St. reserved for it. But yeah, we’ll start promoting it soon.

TH: That sounds awesome! Where should people reach out if they want to be part of the Barn Bash?

DB: They can send me an email! My email address is dylan.bennett@hws. edu – and I’ll respond to them and CC the rest of the Arts and Design Collective.

TH: Great! Anything else you’d like the Herald’s readers to know?

DB: Listen to WHWS! That’s another one of my peeves. WHWS has a really bad auto-mix when there’s no DJs on. The DJs are great – try to listen to your friends when they DJ because they’ll play good music – but yeah, I understand if you don’t listen to it when there’s no DJs on. Usually it’s like … I don’t even know. More often than not it’s … I have no idea how the music gets on there. It’s so random. I don’t understand how it happens.

TH: Yeah – WHWS is always playing on my car radio. I always thought WHWS was really cool; a couple of my friends have been involved with the radio station and I always wanted to get involved.

DB: And you should! Like, ideally music on campus means bands, radio, and a general musical culture – those things should be synonymous with each other. That’s one of the things we talk about a lot: how can we use the radio station; how can we use the clubs?

[WHWS is] so underutilized. More students should be DJs. It’s so easy – you literally find an hour in your schedule that’s free, go to the radio station, and plug in your laptop. You play what you want to play. As long as it’s not explicit before 9 p.m., you’re fine. It’s the crazy easiest thing, I don’t understand why more people don’t do it! You can have all your friends come, you can have, like, a radio show. It’s so much fun, I love doing the radio station … and then, the more people do the radio, the less time the radio has to do its auto-play!

TH: Hahaha, very true! Well, Dylan, thank you so much for sharing all this with us. It was so nice to meet you, and I’m excited to have more correspondence in the future.

DB: Yeah, and thank you! I’m glad you’re writing this stuff – it’ll be pretty cool to see it in the Herald! I think music is a really good topic to look at, and I think [the Herald is] a really good platform for it. I’m excited to be involved and to see more of the series!

Thank you, Dylan, for your insight on music in Geneva. We look forward to interviewing more musicians and artists on campus and accumulating a broad perspective on music in Geneva in order to most effectively highlight and promote our music scene. If you are a musician and are interested in being interviewed or writing for the Herald, please email us at herald@hws.edu with your ideas.

“...there’s always going to be small groups of people who are determined to make [music] things happen. And what I’ve found from my own experiences is: you get all those people together, and things can happen.”

Left: Dylan Bennet

Speaker

continued from page 1 of the Board of Trustees from 1994-1998.

Wickenden previously gave the 2006 Convocation address at the Colleges, where she also received the Presidential Medal from President Emeritus Gearan. In her speech she discussed her four years at HWS and remarked that “the true freedom provided by a liberal arts education is the freedom to open your mind. That means... taking leaps of faith, being able to see the logic of an argument you profoundly disagree with, assimilating difficult, often unsettling ideas, and learning to think critically and act humanely.”

After graduating with a B.A. in English from William Smith College, Wickenden attended the Radcliffe Publishing Procedures Course before moving to Washington, D.C., where she worked as an editorial assistant for the Shakespeare Quarterly at the Folger Shakespeare Library. She later continued her studies at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

In recent years, Wickenden has taught as a faculty member with The Writer’s Institute at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City, and is a member of the final selection committee for The Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

Since 1996, Dorothy Wickenden has worked as the executive editor of The New Yorker. Wickenden has moderated the weekly podcast “The Political Scene” with New Yorker writers and editors since 2012.

This year celebrates the 194th Commencement of Hobart College and the 108th Commencement of William Smith College. The ceremony will be held at 10 a.m. on Sunday, May 19 on the Hobart Quadrangle.

The Student Trustees’ Role at HWS

By Reed Herter ’22 Staff Writer

Student Trustees are an important part of our school’s system, and a role not enough people vote for. With the upcoming election for the new junior Student Trustees (see the timetable above), the Herald met with Gavin Gross ’19 and Caitlin Lasher ’19, our senior Student Trustees to learn more about their role at HWS and on the Board of Trustees. Their role is an important one for our school, yet one few people know enough about them. Student Trustees are an important part of our school’s system, yet not enough people vote for them. I think that is a culture issue. We don’t believe in systems and their ability to actually succeed in helping people, especially when it comes to things that we don’t fully understand and may see as trivial. Simply look at our midterm elections. But these opportunities we don’t take are self-fulfilling, and getting involved even at the smallest level is something we

What Do These People Have in Common?

need to learn to do and appreciate if we want to value our systems we live in and use to run our lives. This is an out-of-the-classroom learning experience when it comes to living lives of consequence and a way we are taught to live in and care about our world.

Student Trustees are students elected by the Hobart and William Smith student body as representatives who act as members of the Colleges’ Board of Trustees. As a group, members of the Board of Trustees make decisions affecting the everyday life of the students. That means they work within the coordinate system. The Board decides the policies of the campus that students must follow, and it also chose our new president. That means that the Student Trustees play an important role in allowing students to have a voice.

Gavin Gross, one of our senior Student Trustees, describes the job as acting as a “liaison between the students and the Board. You’re really a representative for Hobart and William Smith.” Student Trustees have a number of responsibilities that are very important to their job. These include attending Board meetings that take place three times a year, in the fall, winter and spring, and writing Board reports. This is done by attending all of the student government meetings and “really knowing what’s going on campus,” as Gross put it. This means doing things like tabling and going to clubs. Not only do they interact with the students, but Student Trustees get to be on committees, such as the Presidential Search Committee that chose Joyce Jacobsen as president of the Colleges. Student Trustee Caitlin Lasher served on the Presidential Search Committee. She described it as “a lot of fun work.” She said she really got to “know the insides and out of what we [Hobart and William Smith] are looking for in a president,” reading the applications and sitting in on interviews, acting as a student representative of our school. Other committees exist for the Trustees to work on, and they change from year to year. Both Trustees mentioned the individuality of the Trustee role from year to year. These are some of the responsibilities that the Student Trustees have, as well as running student elections. This may sound like a lot, but as Lasher put it, “It’s a lot of good hard work, but good and important work.”

The student elected as Student Trustee should be someone who is ready to put in his or her time and effort, but a Student Trustee also needs to have other characteristics, too. It is important to have someone who “can and will speak,” Gross said. As a representative of the student body, the person who has this role needs to be one who will do just that, and represent by acting and engaging, not just observing. Being approachable as someone students can talk to is a crucial part of this, both representatives commented. Lasher said it was important to be a “representative first,” as the role exists for students to represent the majority of the student body, not just their personal views. As Gross said: “you want someone who represents your school in the right way.”

The Trustees are voted in in March, but first they must campaign and attend a candidate Q&A session. The dates of the process are listed at the top of this page and are taken from the Student Trustee Petition Packet.

Anyone interested in running should get a packet from Student Activities. The Student Trustees elected this year will be two sophomores who will get to learn how to be a Trustee next year as juniors. If you’re not running, it’s still important to look into the candidates who are to find a person who represents you in the “right way.” When elections occur in March, take an active role in your representation, since this is how you can be part of making our school’s systems work.

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New HSG Constitution

By Will Fuller ’22 Herald Staff

On Jan. 29, Hobart’s student government proposed and passed a long list of changes to the Hobart Student Government Constitution. The changes passed with 75 percent of the vote by Hobart students.

The Herald met with Ryan Skinner, Hobart Student Government’s vice president at the time of the constitution revisions, to find out more about the changes. Ryan explained that the new constitution will have a gender-neutral language to represent all Hobart students because previously the constitution would only refer to Hobart students as “he.” HSG, in an email before the vote, noted that this was “pursuant with our commitment to include all Hobart students, irrespective of gender identity.”

Also, the constitution establishes a new advisory committee called the Council of Statesmen made up of former members of the Executive Board to help aid the current Executive Board and the younger members of HSG. The Council of Statesmen will include John Matthew Camera ’19, former president of HSG; Ryan Skinner ’19, former vice president and treasurer of HSG; Matthew Fox ’19, former vice president of HSG; and Albright Dwarka ’21, former secretary of HSG. This should aid the new board in making decisions and provide guidance as they navigate the Hobart and William Smith bureaucracy.

This new constitution is also looking to expanding the size of the current Hobart Senate by incorporating more underclassmen roles for club representatives, encouraging more first-years to get involved in the student government community. This links to their goal of more inclusivity and including younger students – especially as the Executive Board now includes three first-year students. (Full disclosure: The author of this article is now the secretary of HSG; at the time of writing and research, he was not a member of HSG.)

The constitution of HSG requires the president to be at Executive Board meetings while the vice president runs meetings of the quorum, which are the main Tuesday meetings for everyone. It is hoped this is a way to improve efficiency in student government from the previous semester. The quorum is also redefined as any number of Hobart

students to join, which is different from the Senate, in that the members of the Senate are voted in to particular positions such as class presidents and club representatives.

The Senate, not the general meeting quorum, will now be voting on club status proposals. Votes of senators will be averaged when calculating club funding proposals and a new line-item veto may be used – if unanimous – for budget proposals put forward to the HSG Executive Board, which will potentially decrease the number of blanket denials issued for budget proposals. Senate votes will no longer be spoken out loud but will be a secret ballot and results will be in meeting minutes. The president of HSG, however, can break a split vote in the Senate.

The constitution also works to centralize all elections in early September, to be potentially timed with the William Smith Congress. That way, the only elections held in the spring will be for Student Trustee. The Budget Allocations Committee is also re-formed to have two members elected by Hobart students and the remaining two appointed by the treasurer of HSG. That will be a separate election, however, and allow the student body to choose representatives to approve club funding proposals at each meeting of the BAC.

Moving forward, the constitution will be amended at least every two years, and this new version notes that Student Activities can’t alter budgets and bylaws without HSG’s permission. Furthermore, Student Activities cannot send ballots to the student body that haven’t been reviewed by HSG and they will deliver budgets to clubs within one week of each meeting of the BAC. These are huge changes to student government’s relationship with Student Activities.

Skinner said how excited he was for this constitution to be proposed and the positive effects it can have for HSG.

Students are, as always, encouraged to use their voice in student government and participate in elections and general quorum meetings. Any student can run for positions on the Executive Board of the government for his or her respective college. It is hoped the new HSG constitution will be the first step in creating, as Skinner noted, “a more inclusive student government.”

ResEd & Housing

By Ani Freedman ’22 Chief Photographer vvHerald Staff

With housing selection season underway, students are buzzing with excitement, nerves, and questions regarding where they will be living in the 2019-2020 school year. Rising sophomores, juniors and seniors are most likely looking to upgrade their living situations, but rumors have been stirring on campus regarding the possible uncertainty of off-campus housing, overcrowding, and the mystery of the Geneva Gardens located across from JPR. The Herald recently sat down with Brandon Barile, assistant vice president for Campus Life, to address some of these rumors and outline how the process works.

Barile first acknowledged the possible loss of off-campus housing in the future for the Classes of 2022. “I don’t know where those rumors have come from,” Barile told the Herald. “The Colleges will continue to offer off-campus housing,” in conjunction with residential life on campus, and continue to “work in tandem with the students on their lease agreements and offer tips to negotiations with landlords.” He said there are about 200 students who choose to live off campus, ensuring there will be “no over-occupancy.” With this rumor working its way amongst students, however, worries have arisen about the reality of overcrowding on campus.

According to Barile, the only sign of overcrowding on campus is within first-year dorms. “At this point, all nontraditional triples have been offered to be de-tripled,” he said when asked about residential overcrowding. With the continuing of off-campus housing, the primary overcrowding issue would remain amongst first-year dorms, due to the fact that the Colleges aim to keep the incoming classes together and not place them

amongst sophomores and upperclassmen in Medberry and de Cordova.

Across from the first-year dorms of JPR, a residential community called Geneva Gardens is inhabited by local Geneva citizens — but with questions of overcrowding and future Res-Ed plans, rumors have been spreading about the property and its relation to the Colleges. Students have been discussing the possibility of HWS owning this complex and possibly planning to convert it into dorms or more living spaces for students. Barile could only clarify that the Colleges “do not manage or own” this property, and as far as he is aware it is run under a “soleproprietor” not affiliated with the Colleges.

As for the future and current goals of the Office of Campus Life, Barile wanted to make sure that HWS students are aware of the open communication that Res-Ed wishes to have with them. “We’ve been responsive to requests,” he told the Herald. “Adjusting dates for housing applications” and promoting “housing options for all” (such as more genderinclusive housing and the conversion of Medberry and Hale Hall into co-ed dorms) were some of the examples that Barile provided regarding the previous discourse the office has had with students. Despite the lack of communication regarding the housing rumors circulating throughout HWS, Barile made it apparent that ResEd believes this open communication is necessary in understanding how the housing process works and what students need to do to ensure they are properly placed in years to come.

Taylor Brorby

By Tayah Payne ’22 Herald Staff

The Herald recently sat down with Taylor Brorby to discuss his role as a new TRIAS Post-Graduate Teaching Fellow in the English Department and what projects he has been working on. He is teaching Creative Writing and is offering a course in Advanced Environmental Nonfiction Writing this semester.

A graduate of Iowa State University originally from North Dakota, Brorby taught for a year in Gettysburg, Pa. before taking the position here at Hobart and William Smith. He describes his position as similar to that of a visiting professor but also recognizes his role of mentorship with his students. His goal for his classes is to help make his students’ writing more effective in order to help them communicate the ideas they are passionate about in a way that captivates their readers and emphasizes the importance of their work.

Additionally, he is excited about the unique perspective he offers to students by being closer in age to them. Teaching, to him, allows him to learn just as much as those he’s instructing. He provides insight into how this particular path of teaching while being a working writer is working out for him, as a number of pupils will pursue a similar career. He is currently working on two books while teaching three classes — and being an example to students of how to balance a multi-disciplined life. Brorby feels this vulnerability and inclusivity are invaluable to the learning experience, and he hopes this openness will be beneficial for those he shares it with in prompting their own vulnerability in their writing process.

Brorby further explained how writing can be therapeutic, and an aim of his course is to help students to be “creative in bold ways” so that they too can experience this quality. He feels that relating to others and the world around oneself can be excellent ways to begin writing with perspective. According to Brorby, through talking about experiences and interaction with others, insightful writing can be produced. He explains that failing and writing poorly can lead to some of his students’ best works, and that fearing failure will only impede the writing process. From what started as HWS’s need for another Creative Writing instructor and his own need for teaching experience has blossomed into a valuable and enjoyable experience. His favorite thing about teaching Creative Writing is how many new perspectives are offered each time he teaches this course. With an entirely new body of people taking the class every year, the stories being produced remain fresh and exciting with writers making it their own. The other class he is teaching this semester, Advanced Environmental Nonfiction Writing, explores the politics of nature and environmental writing. It will take a look at contemporary nature writing, such as Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, and how it led to the birth of the Environmental Protection Agency, while also investigating how topics like food, climate, and social justice come into play with this type of writing. He hopes this class will help students and the Colleges create goals to positively impact the environment and to improve and foster sustainability. He especially looks forward to seeing how the measures already being taken in this area and those to come will create and encourage conversations regarding environmental change and become a point of pride for everyone involved.

Arts & Entertainment Welcome Back Concert

By Wren Andrews ’21

Editor

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Walking into the Welcome Back Concert was something I had not anticipated doing this year. After reviewing last year’s concert featuring A Boogie Wit da Hoodie, I was reluctant to take my chances on Jay Sean and Jay Critch. Comments from last year describing “the entire room [as] a gross mosh pit” are, for obvious reasons, effectively repelling, and adamantly turned me against the mere concept of a Welcome Back Concert. However, given some reconsideration, a complimentary Press Pass from Student Activities, and the company of a friend or two, at 7:30 p.m. I found myself standing in the middle of the field house –slightly skeptical, but admittedly excited.In terms of entry security, this year it was much tighter than it was reported to be last year –security guards separated guests by perceived gender, then looked through coats, bags, and pockets for Juuls, cigarettes, and other disallowed objects and substances. When found, these things were labeled with the owner’s name and student ID number and confiscated until the end of the show. Any type of smoking or vaping was prohibited at the concert, with emphasis on strict enforcement. In addition to hired security, who conducted the initial searches, EMS and Campus Safety had a presence at the show, in order to maximize the safety of the event and address potential emergencies. Before any music started, many students expressed a sincere excitement for the concert – particularly for the appearance of student performer Izzy and his entourage. These students arrived early in order to catch the entirety of his set, and when asked for their motivation to attend, mentioned Izzy (and various members of his hype team) as their main reasoning. Other students attended in support of their friends involved in CAB, for the vibe and atmosphere of live music, out of pure boredom, and to simply have a good time, courtesy of music and entertainment at an affordable price. There were also plenty of fans of both Jay Critch and Jay Sean in the audience, who buzzed with excitement in anticipation of the show. Meanwhile, my curiosity – and appreciation – grew in regard to the concert as I learned more and more about everything that goes into preparing and executing the event: it was certainly impressive standing in the midst of this operation in motion. The Office of Student Activities, particularly Chad Freeman and the Concert Advisory Committee, all collaborate with people like Brett Pasternak, who assists in booking artists for gigs here at the Colleges, in order to find the right person to put on the show each year.

As Freeman informed me, an entire system of variables goes into selecting an artist, including surveys, availability, show quality, price range, name recognition, dates, and reliability, among other factors. Out of this year’s contenders, Jay Sean and Jay Critch best fit the criteria, with fantastic reviews to back them up. In terms of actually putting on the show, there are venues to reserve, staff and volunteers to

hire and coordinate, production companies to work with, contracts to write, and sets to build, all of which are handled by either Freeman or the Concert Advisory Committee.Keeping all the inner workings of this show in mind, it was easy to dismiss a few minutes of wait time before any inkling of live music began. But patience was dropping steadily as one to two extra songs streamed from online turned into a 30-, then 40-, then 50-minute wait. After standing for nearly an hour, many students expressed a

conflict, as the audience was visibly aggravated. But Jay Sean was contracted as the headliner for the show, not the opener, and expressed his desire to close the show to an understanding concert crew. As Freeman told the Herald, the artist eventually settled on a compromise, agreeing to go onstage at 9:30 p.m. should Jay Critch not arrive by then … but by 9:45 p.m., no live music had come on, and the concert should have already ended. The audience kept getting smaller as students trickled out of the building, and Jay Critch eventually trickled in – at 9:54 p.m. It wasn’t until 9:50 p.m. that Jay Sean emerged from backstage, and was greeted with a newly excited audience, who quickly became more fun and energetic as the one-hour set progressed. Students thoroughly enjoyed the performance, singing along to his hit single “Down” both times it was played, cheering when he and his DJ swapped roles, and generally having a good time. Of those who stayed for his set, the majority of students and staff agreed that the fun and the enjoyment were worth the wait. As HWS Sustainability Manager Michael Amadori put it, “the concert is what you make it – if you’re here to have fun, you can have fun.”

growing disinterest towards the concert, but remained in order to see Izzy perform. There was a visible indifference, even towards the student performers, in the first few minutes of their set, but the enthusiasm picked back up as Izzy’s set progressed. At 9:20 p.m., after performing twice as long as originally intended, Izzy left the stage as audience members left the building. On their way out, numerous students mentioned that they had only attended the concert to see Izzy, while others left for other social events they had planned for the evening – after all, it was nearly 9:30 p.m., and the concert’s estimated end time was originally 9:40 or 9:50 p.m..

By 9:37 p.m., a portion of the audience had sat down in front of the stage, after having stood around for at least an hour waiting. Rumors circulated that the meet and greet with Jay Sean was moved from the beginning of the show until the end, and as more people left the building, the remaining population wondered what the fate of the rest of the show would be. Staff standing at the door estimated that around 10 to 15 percent of the crowd had left so far, frustrated, hungry, impatient, and rife with growing disinterest. Perhaps even more upset was the crew of people who had planned the concert, now faced with a complicated dilemma.According to Chad Freeman, Jay Sean arrived at the Colleges on time, and ready to go – his DJ did a sound check with the stage management team, and he was excited to perform for an audience of more than 500 students. However, Jay Critch had not yet arrived, and was hired as the opener for the event. While he and his crew were contracted to arrive at 6 p.m., an unclear delay kept pushing his estimated time of arrival later and later. While Jay Critch and his team were busy driving to HWS from Brooklyn, Jay Sean was asked to go on earlier in order to resolve the time-related

Jay Sean wrapped up his set by 10:44 p.m. and proceeded to conduct his meet and greet, while some students left, and other students came back, or were just arriving, after hearing rumors that Jay Critch had arrived. However, at this point, most people not involved behind the scenes weren’t really sure what was going to happen. Three to four rows of dedicated audience members persisted, eager to see Jay Critch – and at 11:07 p.m., nearly an hour and a half after the concert was scheduled to end, Critch emerged from backstage and proceeded to perform.

With only a small crowd in front of me and a press pass in my hand, I was able to get pretty close to both Jay Sean and Jay Critch while they were singing and/or rapping. While I was annoyed, and moderately angry, that their lateness had impeded on time I hadn’t planned on spending at the concert, my proximity to them had a humanizing effect that I didn’t expect. Up close, where you can hear their voices before they are amplified by a microphone, where you can see the fine details of their costumes and the wires of their ear pieces, where you can see beads of sweat condensing on their brows, it’s difficult to not perceive them as mutually human. As Chad Freeman noted, when scheduling and planning events like this, despite their caliber, it boils down to collaborating with other people, to whom unplanned things inevitably happen. Planes get delayed, natural disasters happen; bad weather, bad traffic, and the simple circumstance known as running late are all realities faced by everyone, regardless of status or profession. Yes, I was irritated by having to spend two additional hours waiting for the music to play. Yes, a lot of people left for that same reason – but a lot of people stayed. The concert ended at 11:45 p.m., and there was an audience until the final beat. Why? I’ll be the first to admit that despite the annoyance and the inconvenience, ultimately the Welcome Back Concert was actually fun.

The Tech Behind #TBD

By Reed Herter ’22 Staff Writer

#TBD, directed by Associate Professor of Theatre Heather May, is one of the spring Theatre Mainstage productions. It is one that theatre students have been writing and helping to make as they go along. The three main playwrights are May, Thomas Perry ’19, and Izzy Ingram ’19 – though the idea came from last year’s devising class.

It all began with the question: “What is it like to do a theatrical show in the age of social media?” The class came up with an idea for a show about a rebooted ’70s sitcom with a portal, though that’s where the original script and #TBD’s similarities end. Resident Sound Designer and Projections Designer Kelly Walker said that “one of the things we’re trying to do is really extend the idea of theater as something that happens within the four walls, but beyond the four walls,” which is done through means that are new to this theatre department.

The portal and many other effects in the world building are done through projections, which is a new but very popular effect in theater. Essentially it is video or graphic images that are shown from a projector on any object like a set piece or curtain. It is helpful because it can decrease the work of the crew, since there is less set to build and paint, as well as increasing the flexibility of the show. Because of this, so many theaters are using projections that it is important to teach students looking to have a career in theater about the integration of projections into theatrical performances. These little pieces can really help make the show, especially in terms of world creation.

One other element that is lending well to the world creation is part of what is making this piece so new: its use of social media. The show not only includes live streams, but also makes use of Twitter and QR Codes on the posters put up around the campus, as well as having its own website. The website is based upon a fan site, even going so far as to have a fan discussion

section. This mimicry is not only helpful for the fans to make a more complete universe and allow them to know a bit about the world of the show before coming to the performance, but it can also be helpful to the cast and crew. This can be through integration of video, or through being able to reference their own material, as well as the help of immersion in the world to understand characters and make artistic decisions.

All of this is making something truly new with the creation of the script and the integration of the projections and social media. May said: “I hope the audience will enjoy the

juxtaposition of the ’70s sitcom and the new media.” This juxtaposition is not limited to this, but also reflected in the use of the new social media outlets in the older form of theatrical performance. Our theater is doing something that is new within a time-tested framework. As Walker noted, “Sometimes it is important to pull out the [theatrical script] canon and know it and love it. And sometimes you have to say what can we do that we have never done before? And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being ambitious with both accounts.”

Student Performers at the Concert Photo Credit: Paul Ciaccia