Occidental Magazine - Winter 2019

WINTER 2019

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Battleground Stakes: Tracking Campaign Semester

Committed to Oxy: Anne Cannon ’74

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WINTER 2019

As an American studies major at Occidental, Mark Rountree ’79 got his introduction to fundraising for nonprofit organizations—an interest that he turned into a profession, with a focus on philanthropy for higher education and the arts. For the majority of his career, Mark has worked with nonprofits in the South and Midwest as a consultant and development officer.

In addition to his education, “My years in Eagle Rock had an immeasurable and positive impact on every job, every adventure, and nearly every relationship in my life ever since,” says Mark. Since 2010, he has been vice president, partner, and senior consultant with Ashley|Rountree and Associates, which provides fundraising, campaign planning, board development, and management consulting services to nonprofit organizations in Louisville, Ky., and the surrounding region. His liberal arts education challenged him to Kay and Mark Rountree ’79 think critically about the world and himself, and Mark Photo by Jolea Brown Anderson credits his Oxy professors, administrators, classmates, and even his dorm advisers (he was head resident of Chilcott Hall ing goal, and gaining the satisfaction of knowing that his planned as a senior) for making him who he is today. gift will support the educational experience of Tigers in perpetuity.

With his 40th reunion approaching, Mark and his wife of nearly Mark recognizes that his undergraduate experience was made 16 years, Kay—the couple met in her hometown of Owensboro, possible not just by annual support, but also through bequests to Ky.—wanted to make a difference in the lives of as many students the endowment that were realized long before he arrived on camas possible. To that end, the couple recently set up a revocable be- pus. He urges every alumnus and alumna to include Occidental in quest intention, designating the College as a beneficiary in their will. their estate planning, regardless of the amount: “Oxy made a difIt didn’t stop there: Mark and Kay also set up future distribu- ference in your life, so please consider making a difference at Oxy.” tions from their local community foundation, which will support Mark looks forward to returning to campus in June to sit in on the department of American studies because they believe that the a class taught by Newhall, catch up with his classmates, and celeprogram’s inherently interdisciplinary nature gets to the heart of brate his alma mater with Tigers of all ages around the Lucille Y. the liberal arts experience. The Rountrees’ gift underscores the Gilman Memorial Fountain (which Mark helped to build as a part value of Mark’s education in many ways: recognizing one of his of a student crew under the direction of professor of sculpture favorite professors, Eric Newhall ’67, who will retire from Oxy this George Baker). “I just love sitting for a good, long time on a bench spring; counting his planned gift toward his class reunion fundrais- among the roses and trees in the Quad,” he says. Io Triumphe!

Rising

STAR

Breaking news junkie Yasmin Vossoughian ’00 gets the conversation going as an anchor for MSNBC

oxy.edu/magazine

Occidental College Office of Gift Planning M-36 | 1600 Campus Road Los Angeles CA 90041-3314 | Phone: 323-259-2644 Email: giftplanning@oxy.edu | oxy.edu/giftplanning | facebook.com/BenCulleySociety

ACTING GLOBALLY: INSIDE THE KAHANE U.N. PROGRAM /// WOOFERS AND TWEETERS: TWO CANINE MATCHMAKERS

Making Their Mark on Oxy

OXYFARE 

Re-engage and Be Engaged Volume 41, Number 1 oxy.edu/magazine OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE

Jonathan Veitch President Wendy F. Sternberg Vice President for Academic Aairs and Dean of the College Rhonda L. Brown Vice President for Equity and Inclusion & Chief Diversity OďŹƒcer Charlie Cardillo Vice President for Institutional Advancement Vince Cuseo Vice President of Enrollment and Dean of Admission Rob Flot Vice President for Student Aairs and Dean of Students Amos Himmelstein Vice President & Chief Operating OďŹƒcer Marty Sharkey Vice President for Marketing and Communications Jim Tranquada Director of Communications editorial staff

Dick Anderson Editor Marc Campos Contributing Photographer Gail (Schulman) Ginell ’79 Class Notes Editor SanSoucie Design Design DLS Group Printing OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE

Published quarterly by Occidental College Main number: 323-259-2500 To contact Occidental magazine By phone: 323-259-2679 By email: oxymag@oxy.edu By mail: Occidental College OďŹƒce of Communications F-36 1600 Campus Road Los Angeles CA 90041-3314

Jean Wyatt Professor of English

Occidental College crew neck sweatshirt with tackle twill and embroidered circular full chest graphic. Available in oatmeal.

80% Cotton/20% Polyester. Sizes S-XL. $51.95

Letters may be edited for length, content, and style.

Occidental College online Homepage: oxy.edu Facebook: facebook.com/occidental Twitter: @occidental Instagram: instagram.com/occidentalcollege Occidental College Bookstore oxybookstore.com To order by phone: 323-259-2951 All major credit cards accepted

Cover photo by C. Taylor Crothers Oxy Wear photo by Marc Campos

Our goal as the Alumni Board of Governors is to help strengthen the connections and engagement between alumni and the College. We are focused on doing this through our three main committees—careers and mentorship, admission, and programs—each of which has a comprehensive set of goals for the continuing enrichment of alumni and students.

Our careers and mentorship committee, led by Ben Finser ’13, seeks to connect students with alumni to help them in their professional paths, whether they are interested in nonproďŹ ts, government service, graduate education, or the private sector. We are seeking to establish industry advisory groups in each of these areas so that we alumni can share information among ourselves as well as provide advice, internships, and jobs to Oxy students. This will make our alumni network a powerful stepping stone for Oxy students as they embark on their path to inuencing and changing the world. What we lack in size, we can make up for in the strength of our shared community, so please consider supporting our students through an industry advisory group or via the OxyWorks Internship program.

It’s one of the most meaningful actions you can take to help the College and I suspect you will ďŹ nd it extremely rewarding to connect and mentor Oxy students.

The admission committee, led by David Estrada ’05, helps prospective students by exposing them to alumni during engagement events nationwide. These events give alumni the chance to relate their experiences and thereby communicate Oxy’s unique advantages as one of the only true liberal arts colleges in a major metropolitan city.

Talking about all we have to oer beyond an incredible education, in community engagement, internships working on real-world urban

problems, and gaining exposure to the vibrant L.A. arts, entertainment, and business climate can be invaluable to the recruitment process.

This past year we also held our ďŹ rst early-admission get-together in Los Angeles where 23 early-admit students and their families got to meet each other, alumni, and College sta in a casual setting. It was a great chance to welcome them to the Oxy community.

Our programs committee, led by Taylor Renshaw ’14, focuses on regional events and aďŹƒnity groups that focus on connecting alumni with the current happenings at the College. These range from young-alumni get togethers to intimate gatherings with President Veitch to hear about the College’s strategic direction. AďŹƒnity groups also serve a variety of alumni interests: API and the Women’s Club have long-running scholarships, OCLAA and BAO provide personal and professional networks for students of color, and ORAA and the Gammas celebrate the shared activities they enjoyed as students. If you haven’t been to a regional or aďŹƒnity event recently, I encourage you to sign up for the next one in your area. I think we all feel that the intimate To join an industry experiences we had at Occidental with our advisory group or learn professors and fellow students made mean- more about OxyWorks, email careers@oxy.edu. ingful dierences in our lives.

To update your contact We can make this special part of Oxy’s information, including DNA even stronger by extending these inti- employer information, email alumni@oxy.edu. mate connections as alumni to students, To volunteer for a each other, and the College. It’s a great time regional engagement committee or learn to re-engage and be engaged.

Brad Fauvre ’87 President, Board of Governors

more about an aďŹƒnity group, email Monika Moore, director of alumni and parent engagement, at mmoore2@oxy.edu.

Winter’s wonder gets a sixth edition Professor emeritus Bob Winter and co-author Robert Inman ’72, seated, celebrate the publication of the fully revised sixth edition of An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles at a packed book launch party on campus December 9. Written by Winter and David Gebhard (the architectural historian and preservationist who died in 1996), L.A.’s “architectural bibleâ€? was ďŹ rst published in 1965 by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The party was hosted Occidental’s Institute for the Study of Los Angeles and Angel City Press, which published the new edition.

Introducing the new oxy.edu!

A fully redesigned College website was unveiled by Oxy in late January. The new oxy.edu boasts many new features and a contemporary look and feel. The site is also fully responsive and optimized for viewing on mobile devices. Content across the site has been updated and enhanced to provide a more userfocused experience for the Oxy community. Performance and accessibility have been improved, and the site architecture makes navigation and ďŹ nding information more intuitive. Check it out!

Save the dates for Alumni Reunion Weekend: June 21-23, 2019

alumni.oxy.edu

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Features

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12 Getting Out the Vote After 10 weeks in the trenches, what did 18 Campaign Semester students learn about politics and themselves?

18 Breaking Away Yasmin Vossoughian ’00 brings her passion for storytelling to the MSNBC anchor desk.

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Joellen Anderson ’11 holds Sprout, aka Ace—who, with his two siblings, was rescued along the side of a highway in India. Ace now lives with his new family in Vancouver, B.C.

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Departments 36 OxyTalk Seniors Micol Garinkol and Jacques Lesure bring new energy to the table as they work to awaken interest in student government.

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First Word President Veitch on returning to teaching after a decade away from the classroom.

Also: Carolyn Adams’ maternal ways; religion’s ties to Oxy and the Constitution; and a full serving of mixed media.

From the Quad Occidental welcomes its first Obama Scholars to campus, forging a sense of community built upon the ideals of the initiative’s namesake.

Also: Remembering professors Jim Lare ’55 and Frank Lambert.

Page 64 A host of Oxy hoops greats return to campus to surprise men’s coach Brian Newhall ’83 in commemoration of 30 years on the hardwood for the Tigers.

Tigerwire Class notes for odd years.

26 On a Mission For more than three decades, Oxy students have experienced the United Nations from inside the Secretariat Building. Now their work extends into the fields of Costa Rica.

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Setting the Benchmark Through her commitment to Oxy as a trustee, volunteer, and benefactor, Anne Cannon ’74 champions the value of a liberal arts education.

Gimme Shelter Liesl Wilhardt ’91 has rescued thousands of dogs from abuse and neglect—and a new expansion promises to help even more.

34 A Passage From India How far will Joellen Anderson ’11 go to find forever homes for 10 stray dogs? 8,000 miles by air—and another 1,600 miles by land.

CREDITS: Max S. Gerber Anderson | Rachel Winningham ’20 Campaign Semester | Marc Campos Veitch, Garinkol/Lesure, Newhall | Occidental College Special Collections Lambert

FIRST WORD » FROM PRESIDENT VEITCH

The Joy of Thursday Nights in Class Last semester, I found myself back in front of a classroom after a 10-year absence. I’ll be honest: I was nervous. Higher education is filled with introverts who are required to be extroverts, and I count myself among them. During my tenure at Oxy, I have spoken to audiences of hundreds and even thousands of people many times, but it still take a conscious effort. Teaching in the classroom is no different.

Why, then, did I put myself in this position? Over the last two years, I have extended an open invitation to students to meet with me over lunch to discuss recent headlines in The New York Times. (I wrote about this in the Spring 2018 issue.) As you might expect, our discussions have been wide-ranging, covering not only the subjects of the stories themselves but how journalists decide what’s newsworthy and how they write their articles. A smaller

classroom needs to be a place where issues are considered in their full complexity. One of my fundamental principles is embodied in something that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in 1936: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” I want our students to be more attuned to nuance and to think empathically about issues with which they disagree. In my own conversations with Oxy students, I have found that they sometimes defend positions based on intuitive or received opinions, rather than their own thoughtful analysis. We have lost the capacity to adjudicate a middle ground, and I want to create doubt where there is certainty while encouraging students to listen with greater care and to speak with more self-confidence when expressing a dissenting opinion.

Class is in session: Veitch listens intently as co-instructor Rachel Cronin (foreground, left) speaks.

Veitch and Adams photos by Marc Campos

group came to me saying that they were interested in having a more extended discussion about current events. Acutely aware of the fault lines that divide our polarized society, they felt stymied in having discussions about issues of the day with friends, not knowing how to begin and, once begun, unsure of how to inhabit positions with which they disagree and better understand those points of view.

I found it hard to say no to such a proposition because I believe that the 2

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So it was that I found myself creating a syllabus for an independent study class with attorney Rachel Cronin, who recently served as interim general counsel for the College. The class focuses on three subjects: freedom of speech on college and university campuses, the paradox of privacy in a society that believes in privacy and yet gives it away online on a regular basis, and immigration and the extent of our responsibility—and its limits—to people who live thousands of miles away. We took

advantage of Rachel’s background in debate (as a coach and participant) and created a debate format. Each class session starts with a discussion; the class is then divided into two groups to argue for or against a proposition related to the day’s discussion and the assigned reading.

The result has been a reaffirmation of my decision to spend one less night a week with my family. I’ve heard our dozen or so students in the class wrestle with 19thcentury philosopher John Stuart Mill’s question of whether the truth will prevail— the basis for the whole liberal view of the world—during a discussion of freedom of speech, and then grapple with a larger question: Why do we care about the truth?

For me, I can now speak with more authority about the quality of Oxy students, who are truly impressive. I can better appreciate not only the skill it takes to command a classroom and engage students but the hours of preparation it takes to be effective as a teacher.

With a calendar jammed with meetings and the need to travel regularly to meet with alumni and donors, the president’s job can be isolating. Returning to the classroom makes it possible to develop rapport with students in a different way, and get a better sense of how they think and what they’re thinking. On an even more fundamental level, the demands of the president’s office are such that it’s possible to find yourself in a position where you can forget the joy of our mutual enterprise. There’s no better way to rediscover that joy than to get back into the classroom.

As this issue was going to press, President Veitch announced his decision to end his tenure on June 30, 2020, at the conclusion of his current contract. Look for full coverage in the Spring magazine.

FIRST WORD

» FROM THE READERS The Joy of Carolyn Adams I feel a great sadness to read about Carolyn Adams’ passing (“She Shed Light Everywhere,” Fall 2018). As a student worker in the Community and Public Relations office, I remember how quickly she found solutions and how life was joyful and easy with her around. I remember her consulting with me about appropriate dress attire for her daughter who had been invited to her first quinceañera. Would Charlotte Russe be a good shop to find a dress? I remember talk-

Adams with professor Tetsuo Otsuki in 2010.

ing about politics, protests, beauty tips, classes, and the work we were there to do.

Secretly I always wished she could have been my mother. Yet she did mother me and so many of us at Oxy. What a great honor that was.

Lourdes Olivas Brown ’97 Los Angeles

I was surprised and disheartened to read the letter from a 1951 alumnus bemoaning Oxy trying to “attract more non-Christian students” as well as the fact that “America is ‘no longer a Christian nation.’” Would you have printed a letter from someone who was unhappy that Oxy now admits a number of people of color, LGBTQ folks, or Jews, when in its early years there were probably very few on campus? I hope not!

Les Zendle ’74 Palm Springs

Faith in Our Founders My father was a WWII veteran, and he was a firm believer in the Constitution—that America’s rights and freedoms and the longevity of its government depended on this remarkable document’s flexible strength. For me, that includes people of all faiths—Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, pantheists, any and all and none—being able to worship or not as they see fit, and not have potential educational opportunities, including scholarships, be limited because of their faith. Yes, Occidental is still a private school, but if it were a public school, initiatives such as the Obama Scholars Program, awarding scholarships to up to 20 Oxy students a year regardless of their religion, would be de rigueur, and not just a fine sign of tolerance and acceptance.

Nancy Hubbs-Chang ’85

Trust in Occidental Constitutional Christians?

I wanted to respond to Richard Apple ’51’s letter (“Constitutional Crisis”) in the Fall 2018 issue. As an American, I take issue with his deeply offensive message that somehow Occidental is betraying America and its Constitution by welcoming nonChristians as students. What a tremendously offensive and outrageous notion.

From his preposterous assertion that the U.S. Constitution is “Christian-based” to his asinine statement that America was ever a “Christian nation” in the first place exposes his profoundly shallow understanding of our national history.

And shame on Occidental magazine for giving this message of bigotry, ignorance, and intolerance a platform. You’re better than that.

Jesse Burch ’92 Van Nuys

In 1966, I was happy to take Comparative Religion at Occidental, a required course at the time. I learned enough about the world’s major religions to conclude that most of humanity addresses the big moral and philosophical questions of human life using some religion or another. I came to the conclusion that my previous learning, which taught that only a few sects of a single religion know the truth, probably was too limited.

This class was life-changing for me. In 1967, I married Basab K. Basu ’67, who worked his way through Oxy driving a truck, who fell so in love with the promise of America that he left 18 generations of tradition in his home country to become a proud American citizen, and who was a Hindu. We spent 50 years together before his death. He was a true American in the best tradition of our freedom-of-religionbased, free-speech-based Constitution.

Basab and I established a trust that will leave an endowment to Occidental. Now that the Obama Scholars Program has been established, our endowment will be used to support it in a small way. While Barack Obama ’83 was raised by Christian grandparents, it is true that some of his relatives in Kenya chose Islam and that his Indonesian stepfather exposed him to Islam, so it’s safe to say that he met honorable people of more than one religion during his upbringing. I’m not aware that he has any direct influence over who is chosen to be an Obama Scholar. As a donor, I probably do have a tiny bit of influence.

In response to my own experience witnessing people of several religions and cultures who are true Americans, I promise to use my small influence to fulfill Richard Apple’s prediction: that Obama Scholars will be chosen from a variety of religious and cultural traditions.

Janet M. Basu ’69 San Francisco

Seeing Things Differently On reading my Occidental magazine, I discovered that a fellow member of the Class of 1951 was admonishing the College of his youth for encouraging the enrollment of non-Christian students. I wish to establish that I see things very differently. I like the idea of a student body that reflects our varied nation and world with all its many religions, ethnicities, and political philosophies. The exchange of ideas is what it is all about—please continue!

Anne Follis Huebner ’51 Salt Lake City, Utah

Living Off the Land I was truly inspired by the article “Nature’s Remedy” (Fall), and I want to thank Adrienne (Spivak) ’08 and Garrett Hostetler ’08 for their exemplary work and lives. Their explanation of how communal living differs from both capitalism and communism was clarifying to me, and we have a place in Arizona called Arcosanti that exemplifies communal living.

If Adrienne and Garrett are unaware of it, I want to call to the attention of them as well as other alumni an experimental farm in North Fort Meyers, Fla., called ECHO (echonet.org). This farm is researching improvements in plants for family farms, in WINTER 2019

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superfoods and how to grow them. People from many other countries visit ECHO to learn from them. We in the USA can contact them as well for seeds, info, and advice. For example, if you’re trying to grow tomatoes and not succeeding, they can send you the proper seeds for the soil in your area.

Barbara Lohman Dabul ’64 Sun City, Ariz.

The Curious Sofa I was fascinated to (finally) open the Fall edition after Christmas to see the article on Mark Dery ’82 and his latest book (“The Gorey Details”). Edward Gorey has been a staple in our family for my entire lifetime, partly because his unique and macabre humor matches our family dynamic. If you ask anyone in my family who is their favorite Gashlycrumb Tiny, to a person we’ll answer “Neville” (who died of ennui).

We had, however, a closer connection to hold our attention and interest. An older cousin of my mother’s was at Harvard with Gorey and knew him well. “Ted” Gorey was part of my cousin’s circle of friends at Harvard and later in New York, where my cousin lived part-time. I even have a photograph of Gorey from the early 1960s in my cousin’s Upper East Side apartment, which I scanned from an old photo album before my cousin’s death in 2014.

It follows, therefore, that I pre-ordered Dery’s book for myself and as Christmas gifts for five members of my family this year, my mother included. It also follows that one of those recipients gave me a copy as well, so we have a surfeit of Dery’s book, which does not trouble us at all. More are better than none of this interesting and well-written book.

Daniel Woodruff ’85 Atlanta Photo courtesy Daniel Woodruff ’85

“Ted” Gorey at John Black’s 67th Street apartment in New York City, circa 1963, scanned from Black’s personal photo album. Photographer unknown.

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» MIXED MEDIA Taking Back the Boulevard: Art, Activism, and Gentrification in Los Angeles, by Jan Lin (NYU Press). Over the last decade, there has been a noticeable renewal of public life on several of Los Angeles’ iconic boulevards, including Atlantic, Crenshaw, Lankershim, Sunset, Western, and Wilshire. Focusing especially on the cultural scene of Northeast Los Angeles, Lin shows how these gentrifying communities help satisfy a white middle-class consumer demand for “living on the edge” and a spirit of cultural rebellion. Drawing on survey research, interviews with community residents and leaders, and ethnographic observation, Lin argues that the revitalization in Northeast L.A. by arts leaders and neighborhood activists marks a departure in the political culture from the older civic engagement to more socially progressive coalition work involving preservationists, environmentalists, citizen protesters, and arts organizers.

Lin is professor of sociology at Occidental.

The (Underappreciated) Life of Humphrey Hawley, by Mathieu Cailler ’06 (About Editions). Humphrey Hawley is a beetle who yearns to be a ladybug—humans let ladybugs crawl on them, after all, but beetles, not so much. After going to extreme measures to be something he’s not, Humphrey embraces the joys of being himself. With illustrations by Carrie Louis Wood and Rebecca Wood, Humphrey Hawley is about being “proud of who you are,” Cailler told The Beach Reporter.

“I want to show children, ‘Hey, we all have been called ‘weird.’ … It’s more important to strip that veneer away because everyone has something to offer.” Cailler majored in philosophy at Occidental and later studied writing at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He has published three books of poetry and Loss Angeles, a short story collection. Humphrey Hawley is his first children’s book. Cailler lives in Palos Verdes.

The Burning Shores: Inside the Battle for the New Libya, by Frederic Wehrey ’94 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Going beyond the headlines and partisan controversy over the 2012 Benghazi attack, Wehrey offers an onthe-ground look at what happened in Libya after the overthrow of Muammar Qadhafi.

An Arabic-speaking Middle East scholar, Wehrey interviewed the key actors in Libya and paints vivid portraits of lives upended by a country in turmoil: the once-hopeful activists murdered or exiled, revolutionaries transformed into militia bosses or jihadist recruits, an aging general who promises salvation from the chaos in exchange for a return to the old authoritarianism. He chronicles the American and international missteps after the dictator’s death that hastened the country’s unraveling. Wehrey is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His writing on Libya has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. He lives in Washington, D.C. Read Till It Shatters: Nationalism and Identity in Modern Thai Literature, by Thak Chaloemtiarana M’68 (ANU Press). In the cultural, political, and social transformations that occurred in Thailand during the first half of the 20th century, Thai literature was one of the vehicles that moved the changes. Taking seriously “read till it shatters”—a Thai phrase that instructs readers to take apart the text, to break it down, to deconstruct it—Chaloemtiarana challenges the Thai literary canon from the margins and suggests ways of expanding and enriching it.

Chaloemtiarana is professor of Asian literature, religion, culture, and Southeast Asian studies at Cornell University. He lives in Ithaca, N.Y., with his wife, Siu-Ling J. Chaloemtiarana ’69.

Islands of Deception: Lying With the Enemy, by Connie Hood ’71 (Waves Press).

In this historical novel based on her father’s life story, Hood traces Hans Bernsteen’s journey from a life of family wealth and prestige in Holland to near penniless immigrant

intent upon assimilating in New York, to spy for the U.S. Army in the Pacific during World War II. Despite disappointments at every seeming opportunity, Hans, with his inherited ingenuity, makes a modest success. In each new situation he seems to stumble upon the very action that will bring the next challenge and the next small success until they add up to exceptional honor in service of his adopted country, but an honor that he has sworn not to reveal for 50 years. Hood lives in Ventura.

Goodbye, School, by Tonya Lippert ’95 (Magination Press; April). Franny loves her school. She’s played, read, studied, and even napped here. As she prepares to move to a new school, she wants to find a way to honor this special place. How can Franny say goodbye?

Goodbye, School includes an author’s note with information on how to guide children through periods of transition or change and acknowledge their feelings throughout the experience.

After graduating from Occidental with a psychology degree, Lippert studied developmental psychology at the University of Texas at Dallas and clinical social work at UT-Austin.

She lives in Portland, Ore., and currently runs mental health therapy groups at Kaiser Permanente. Lippert also has a short story in the newly published anthology Strongly Worded Women: The Best of the Year of Publishing Women (Not a Pipe Publishing; available on Kindle).

Heart of a Gypsy, by Tom Yeager ’71 (warriortogypsy.com). As a student at Oxy, Yeager spent six months in Europe doing an independent study that required visiting eight countries. “From that experience I learned that travel can bring you more knowledge, love, and power into your life,” he explains.

In the decades since, Yeager has visited more than 35 countries, ridden horses on six continents, and seen five wonders of the world.

In this 14-volume travel series, he shares his most memorable adventures through photos,

observations, and his own poetry. Yeager lives in Riverside and continues to enjoy “traveling, riding horses, writing, and eating delicious sushi.”

Oracle of the Reeds, by Thomas Bauer ’60 (BookBaby). In his fourth novel, Bauer details the relationship between Hatshepsut, fifth pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt, and Senmut, who rose from humble origins to become tutor to Hatshepsut’s daughter, and eventually the queen’s lover. Following the death of her husband, Thutmose III becomes the child king with his stepmother as regent.

With Senmut’s help, Hatshepsut usurps the throne and Senmut becomes the most powerful man in Egypt. Palace intrigue and Senmut’s lust for power lead to the couple’s fall from grace, and Oracle of the Reeds is narrated

by Senmut on his return from exile to die in his homeland. Bauer lives in Morro Bay with his wife, Joyce, and his dachshund, Strudel.

Bar-crossed lovers Alexander Dreymon and LesleyAnn Brandt in Jon Kauffman ’05’s Heartlock.

Heartlock, directed and co-written by Jon Kauffman ’05 (Darkstar Pictures; in limited release and on demand). Seven months into a 20-year prison sentence, Lee (Alexander Dreymon) is anxious to break out by any means necessary. Under the guidance of seasoned inmate Continental (Erik LaRay Harvey) Lee manipulates a female guard (Lesley-Ann Brandt) to help facilitate their escape. Heartlock marks the debut feature by Kauffman, who made his first short as an Oxy student under the tutelage of Brody Fox, associate professor of media arts and culture.

Kristi Upson-Saia, professor of religious studies, was guest editor of the Winter 2018 issue of Studies in Late Antiquity (published by the University of California Press) with the theme “Rethinking Medical Metaphors in Late Ancient Christianity.”

numerology

Image courtesy Facebook Newsroom

75 Percentage of reduction in the amount of fake news being shared after Facebook implemented a new ad system designed to intercept articles that contain “deceptive, false, or misleading content,” according to a study of the anti-vaccination movement from economics professor Lesley Chiou and MIT Sloan economist Catherine Tucker published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

$1,449,000 Asking price for the 1928 Spanish Colonial Revival residence in Eagle Rock built for 1920 graduate and future Oxy president Arthur G. Coons. The fourbedroom, three-bathroom home on West Escarpa Drive has 2,308 square feet of interior living space and sits on an 8,071-square-foot lot. The house was declared a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 2010.

quotable “It is an honor to be in a position to have helped facilitate this wonderful symbol of our collective respect for the grace and dignity embodied by our 44th president.”

—California state Senator Anthony Portantino, who, with then-state Representative Jimmy Gomez, introduced legislation in 2017 to rename the five miles of highway from State Route 2 in Glendale to Interstate 210 in Pasadena the Barack H. Obama Highway. A pair of signs was installed by Caltrans in December. The $5,000 project was financed through donations from area residents, according to Portantino, who represents La Cañada Flintridge.

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FROM tHe QUad

In Obama’s Footsteps As Occidental welcomes its first Obama Scholars to campus, program administrators and three seasoned seniors forge a sense of community built upon the ideals of the initiative’s namesake

It’s been nearly 40 years since a laid-back 18-year-old from Honolulu named Barry Obama ’83 first stepped onto the Occidental campus. He was a fan of Jimi Hendrix, hung out in the Cooler, and did a mean Mick Jagger impression (according to former Haines Hall dormmates). In other words, he was just another student moving toward an unknown future, armed only with a strong will to succeed and a budding passion for activism.

A hallmark of the 44th president’s subsequent career—working for the public good —is the cornerstone of the recently launched Barack Obama Scholars Program at Occidental. The merit-based program offers a full scholarship with a focus on first-generation students, veterans, and community college transfers—young people dedicated to carrying the torch of the program’s namesake.

“My years at Occidental College sparked my interest in social and political causes, and filled me with the idea that my voice could make a difference,” Obama observed in 2017, when the program was announced.

The College “started giving me a sense of what a purposeful life might look like.” Oxy also played an inspirational part in his career choice—Obama has said that his general interest in politics was sparked in Professor Roger Boesche’s political theory courses.

Now, with the support of alumni and friends of the College, the program has moved from high concept to living, breath6

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ing reality as two inaugural Obama Scholars and three senior-class Obama Fellows begin to reap the benefits of the signature initiative that has the endorsement of the president himself.

“He definitely represents a lot for me,” says Obama Scholar Noa Richard ’22 of Miami—who, like Obama, comes from a mixed-race family. “I respect him for who he is and who he continues to try to be, his values and his work outside of the presidency especially—what interested him in college and the kind of character he possesses.”

During her time in high school, Richard co-founded Women in Need (WIN), an initiative that joined forces with a local shelter to aid homeless women. With an interest in filmmaking and “a humanities fellowship from my high school that was going to support any work in film that would tell some sort of human story,” Richard went on to make The Syrian Refugees of Miami, “a documentary interviewing refugee families who had sought asylum in the United States and were now placed in my community,” she says. “I feel like that’s what stood out strongly on my resume for the program, and I was able to learn a lot from these families and be humbled by them.”

As a high school student, Obama Scholar Sherin Aboobucker ’22 was already doing research in conjunction with Arizona State University on gender quotas and women’s

From left: Obama Fellow Carlos Gonzalez ’19; Obama Scholar Noa Richard ’22; Jennifer Locke, program administrator and director of national and international fellowships; Obama Scholar Sherin Aboobucker ’22; Obama Fellows Cléo Charpantier ’19 and Alison Salazar ’19; and Ryan Preston-Roedder, associate professor of philosophy and program adviser.

Photos (pages 6-9) by Marc Campos

representation in politics. “To see a president of color was very inspirational,” says the Peoria, Ariz., resident, who wrote her application essay about “how I was very upset about the immigration process and I ended up writing an email to the White House. A couple of weeks later, I got a response from President Obama explaining his policies. I’m not sure if it was literally him, but it came from the White House!”

Though any Occidental applicant is eligible for the scholarship, Richard’s and Aboobucker’s accomplishments made them ideal candidates. “We were looking for students who had demonstrated their commit-

ment to serving the public good, to making their community a better place or improving people’s lives,” says Ryan Preston-Roedder, associate professor of philosophy and faculty mentor to the program. Out of the 7,281 applicants to the Class of 2022, 40 semifinalists were reviewed by a committee that included President Jonathan Veitch and a host of College administrators and faculty.

“We were also looking for students who had demonstrated leadership ability and academic promise,” says Preston-Roedder, who guides the program with administrator Jennifer Locke. “Finally, we were looking for students who could help create a community

in which Obama Scholars and Fellows would share ideas and learn from one another.”

Only a few months into the school year, the two Scholars are already happily steeped in what Occidental offers. “I’ve definitely had a great experience so far,” Richard says.

“I get this feeling that this is where I’m supposed to be—each time I meet someone, or something changes the way I think. That wouldn’t have happened unless I was here.”

“The academic environment has been challenging and I enjoy that aspect of it, as well as the close relationships that I’ve been able to foster with my professors,” says Aboobucker. “Being in a tight-knit environ-

ment is something that’s really been rewarding in my first semester here.”

A central part of the curriculum is the Obama Scholars Program Seminar, a regular meeting of Scholars and Fellows led by Preston-Roedder composed of reading, discussion, and guest speakers. Those guests have included Oxy faculty members such as Peter Dreier, the Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and co-director of Campaign Semester (page 12), and Courtney R. Baker, associate professor of American studies and chair of the College’s new Black studies program.

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FROM tHe QUad

manager and White House senior adviser, and feminist activist Margo Okazawa-Rey, who spoke at Oxy in October as part of this year’s Cultural Studies Program, have also addressed the group.

“Occidental is a really important moment in the Obama journey,” says Plouffe, who is currently policy and advocacy chief for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Meeting the Obama Scholars and Fellows “gave me great optimism as they talked about their desires and hopes. I think this program is just tremendous. Thinking about what these folks are going to do out in their communities around in the world to bring about change could not be more exciting.

“It is so core to Barack Obama’s philosophy about change is not going to come from folks at the top,” Plouffe adds. “It’s going to come particularly from young people making their mark. And if we can make sure that a few folks who might not have the opportunity to do so can go out there and organize for change and build great businesses and get involved in government and public service, it’s great.”

Though the Obama Scholars Program was developed with the input of many minds, PrestonRoedder and Locke have been tasked with bringing it to life.

“A big focus for me this year is creating a sense of community,”

students are making the most of these very local campus experiences to not just get a great education but also get hands-on experience with leadership? How can we encourage that as early as possible and really develop those skills that will be great for that kind of career?”

“The seminar has given me an opportunity to listen to other opinions and other views on issues and see things in a different perspective,”Aboobucker adds. “As a premed, a lot of my classes right now are very sciencebased, and it gives me the chance to look beyond the science and see the broader picture, and how I can use what I’m learning now toward real-life goals.”

Outside of the classroom, Locke provides students with all manner of practical support. “I’m the person who’s making sure that

“Thinking about what these folks are going to do out in their communities around in the world to bring about change could not be more exciting.”

—David Plouffe, pictured with Obama Scholars Aboobucker, left, and Richard

Preston-Roedder says. “We’ve been bringing the Scholars and Fellows together for the seminar, which focused on issues of racial justice during the fall semester. It’s intellectually very rich, and it’s been a pleasure getting to know them and think through important ideas and topics with them.”

“The seminar is a lot of big-picture thinking: What actually is the public good and what is good leadership?” Locke says. “At the same time, how do we make sure that these 8

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the Scholars are taking advantage of all the campus resources,” she says. “I’m also helping them think through next steps. For the Scholars right now, I’m helping them plan their summers to be developing skills related to their goals and working for the public good. And for the Fellows I’m helping them think through their postgraduate plans.”

“Jennifer pointed me in the direction of a really incredible scholarship for film in a university in the U.K. this summer,” says Richard.

“She has so many tools in her pocket. I don’t know what I would have done without her.”

The Obama Scholars Program is designed with the idea that three years into their college journey, Obama Scholars will transition into Obama Fellows. Following the lead of Oxy’s first Fellow—Cameron Peters ’18 of Temecula, an Army veteran and community college transfer who majored in urban and environmental policy—three seniors were chosen in their junior year to fill that role.

“The Fellows serve as peer mentors to the Scholars, serving as a source of formal advice and support but also informally suggesting fun things to do on the weekend,” Preston-Roedder explains. “These are seniors who have taken advantage of what Occidental has to offer and who, in various ways, embody the kinds of characteristics that we want fostered and cultivated in the program. We felt really strongly that each of the three Fellows brought something particularly helpful to the group.”

As it happens, all three Obama Fellows hail from California, so they know the lay of the land well. That’s especially true of Carlos Gonzalez ’19, a Spanish studies major who grew up in neighboring Highland Park in a single-parent household with his mother, an immigrant from Guatemala.

Gonzalez was selected for the STEM Magnet Program at Benjamin Franklin High School and had his first brush with Oxy through magnet coordinator Estela Donlucas ’94 M’95. “She served like a mentor, and still does, when I was a student. She always went the extra mile to support me.”

As a sophomore at Bowdoin College in Maine, Gonzalez withdrew from school in February 2016 to return home and help his mother, who had lost her job. He had no intention of returning to higher education until he ran into Donlucas, who helped him develop a plan to transfer to a local college nearby. “This is when Oxy came back on the radar,” Gonzalez says. “I immediately began my application and ultimately got in.”

That second chance included his selection as an Obama Fellow. “It’s exciting to be part of the inauguration of the first Obama Scholars,” Gonzalez says. “I know that our input as Fellows is very important, so I was very conscious of that. What I really like about the program is that it considers your background. I don’t consider myself a traditional student, and I really appreciate that.

FROM tHe QUad

The Obama Scholars Program puts Oxy on a bigger stage, which I think it really deserves.”

For Cléo Charpantier ’19, a philosophy major from San Francisco, being an Obama Fellow has allowed her to be of service, an important aspect for her. “It means just being there for Obama Scholars themselves, as a mentor and someone they can turn to,” she says. “So I’ve had lunches and coffees with both Sherin and Noa just to talk through how their semester’s going, and engaging in some deeper conversations about what it means to be good and do good in the world.”

Rounding out the Fellow triumvirate is Alison Salazar ’19, an urban and environmental policy major from the Boyle Heights community of Los Angeles, and the daughter of parents who emigrated from Mexico.

“Growing up, I knew that my family was underprivileged and wouldn’t be able to afford college,” Salazar says. “My mom always reminded my sister and I that we had work twice as hard because that’s how we would get scholarships to go to college.”

That work paid off—she was awarded a full-ride Centennial Scholarship. “I’ve grown and learned so much at Oxy, and I don’t think I would’ve had the same experience at any other school,” Salazar says. “I was intrigued by the commitment to prepare students to give back and create change in the social justice framework because I’ve always wanted to give back to my community.”

Salazar’s one regret about the Scholars program is that it didn’t come sooner. “I would have loved to been a Scholar as a freshman, because I needed a similar support network, but I still have gained a lot from the experience as a senior. I’ve been able to meet students and professors that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise, discuss racial justice in a small seminar, and have gained a network of people—students, professors, and advisory council—that all care about the public good.”

The validation from all of those involved in the Obama Scholars Program is undeniable, and it’s only the beginning of an imprint that will be a defining part of the Oxy experience.

As Obama himself observed in 2014: “America is the student who defies the odds to become the first in a family to go to college, the citizen who defies the cynics and goes out there and votes, the young person who comes out of the shadows to demand the right to dream. That’s what America is about.”

—PETER GILSTRAP

Plouffe on Politics Former Obama insider David Plouffe talks about elections past, present, and future as the 2020 race fast approaches American politics may be “ugly, small, and unimaginative,” but the only way to change the country’s direction is to win elections, former Obama campaign manager and White House senior adviser David Plouffe told a packed Choi Auditorium on October 19 as the inaugural speaker in the College’s Obama Scholars Speakers Series. “Everything that affects you is based on who you elect,” Plouffe said, urging his audience to remain engaged in the political process as he analyzed the possible outcomes of the November 6 midterm elections.

In addition, Plouffe addressed a wideranging series of topics in his talk, which was moderated by Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics Peter Dreier and former California state senator and current Occidental trustee Hector De La Torre ’89.

A few highlights from his remarks follow.

Why Trump won in 2016: “Generally in history, particularly after a two-term president, a lot of voters are not looking for a replica. George W. Bush differed in many ways from Bill Clinton; Barack Obama was very different than George W. Bush. Donald Trump won the election by the rules that we have embedded in the Electoral College but he still got 46.1 percent of the vote. I think the worst a Republican presidential candidate can do these days is probably 44½ or 45, so we live in a divided country.”

On the record number of women and candidates of color running for office: “When people see someone like them seek office, it makes it more likely they would seek offices when they see the win because a lot of the barrier to running for office is ‘I don’t know how to do this; I don’t know anybody in the party.’ Well, you don’t need to know anybody anymore. … If you’re a compelling person with a compelling message and you excite people, you can build a

winning campaign, and that’s what’s so exciting to me.”

On the 2020 election: “Even those of you who are political animals want a break.

But Trump is deep into his re-election campaign already—that’s never happened in American political history. … We’re going to have this presidential campaign hanging over us not just in 2020 but in 2019, too. And that sucks up so much oxygen. So that’s the other thing that the Hill Democrats have to think about—whatever they’re doing on the floor in September 2019 is going to be far less interesting than what’s happening in Iowa in the presidential primary.”

On the risks and reasons for running: “Being president does age you in ways that are quite visually available to everyone. It’s a really tough job and you shouldn’t run because you want to be Donald Trump— that’s not the right reason. You need to run because you think you have something unique to offer the country in that job. …

“But also you’ve got to be ready to deal with Trump, OK? Running for president used to be considered like a symphony or a concert pianist. … This is like Mad Max: Fury Road—and that’s the way [Trump] likes it. And he’s very skilled at it.”

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FROM THE QUAD

» APPRECIATION

Lare takes his classroom into the Quad in 1970.

Left: A 1979 headshot.

Photos by Jeffrey Robbins and Joe Friezer/courtesy Occidental College Special Collections

‘A Mentor and Inspiration’ From urban studies to government internships, professor of politics emeritus James Lare ’55 opened new doors for generations of students

Long before Oxy defined its mission by the cornerstones of excellence, equity, community, and service, associate professor of political science James H. Lare ’55 was putting those ideas into practice. In 1968, he and a group of Oxy students conducted a survey of Northeast Los Angeles residents to study the causes of crime and delinquency in the community. Concurrently, Lare served as faculty adviser to the Task Force on Relations With the Immediate Community, overseeing the activities of more than 150 Oxy students volunteering as reading and math tutors in elementary and junior high schools.

During his 40-year career at Oxy, Lare— who retired in 2002 as professor of politics emeritus and died Dec. 1, 2018, at age 84— was a three-time chair of the political science department and instrumental in creating an urban studies curriculum at the College in 1967. He coordinated the Occidental-inWashington, D.C., program and set up internships for students in local and state government and political campaigns.

Upon his retirement, Lare was hailed on the U.S. Senate floor as “a mentor and inspi10

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ration to his students, many of whom have flourished on Capitol Hill and in local government,” according to the Congressional Record. “Dr. Lare has been an outstanding teacher and is an exceptional citizen who has enhanced the lives of those privileged to cross his path.”

A native of Harvey, Ill., Lare grew up in Holtville and majored in political science and philosophy at Oxy, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his master’s and doctoral degrees at Cornell University and taught at Cornell and at San Fernando Valley State College (today’s Cal State Northridge) before joining the Oxy faculty in 1962.

“The possibility of teaching courses in American politics and public policy formation to a limited number of well-qualified students and the opportunity to relate these fields to the other disciplines of the liberal arts are very attractive to me, particularly when they are at a college to which I am deeply committed as a result of my student life there,” he wrote in his application.

Lare wrote frequently on Congress, legislative politics, urban administration and

politics, and the pressures on domestic policymakers. With Cornell professor Clinton Rossiter, he edited The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy, published by Random House in 1963. With Kenneth A. Wagner and Stanley Williams Moore, he wrote The Child’s Political World (Praeger, 1985), a longitudinal study of how children learn about government and politics.

A former president of the Southern California Political Science Association and chair of the California Conference on Education for Public Administration, he served on the Citizen Advisory Council on the Northeast Los Angeles Community Plan and the Northeast Los Angeles Fair Housing Council. At Oxy he was faculty adviser to Young Democrats and Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.

Lare was married to Joan Hinchman, a professor of home economics at Long Beach State, for more than 32 years until her death in 1990. He subsequently wed Oxy librarian Jacquelyn Ann McCoy in 1991. In addition to McCoy, Lare is survived by daughters Jennifer, Michelle, and Patricia; son John; nine grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.

FROM THE QUAD

A Centenarian of Chemistry The lasting joy of Frank Lambert’s 100 years on Earth was ‘teaching organic chem at Oxy’ Lambert in the laboratory with Oxy students in 1967.

Below: In the early 1970s.

Photos by Joe Friezer/courtesy Occidental College Special Collections

After several years as a research and development chemist for Edwal Laboratories, Frank Lambert decided he was better suited to a teaching career and took a position as an instructor at UCLA. In 1948, he became the third tenure-track faculty member in Oxy’s chemistry department, where he taught for 33 years before retiring as professor of chemistry emeritus in 1981.

But retirement was an illusory concept for the Minneapolis native, who died Dec. 28, 2018, in La Verne at the age of 100. Lambert became the first permanent scientific consultant at the Getty Museum and helped establish the Getty Conservation Institute. More recently, he was a tireless advocate for the energy dispersal model of entropy and was credited for the adoption of that model in some introductory textbooks.

“I’ve been incredibly lucky since retirement in correcting the 1898 definition of a scientific concept, entropy, so that now 29 chem texts use my definition rather than that of the 20th century,” he wrote to Occidental magazine in 2012. “But the lasting memory and joy of my wife’s and mine is of teaching organic chem at Oxy.” Lambert graduated from Harvard College and earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from

the University of Chicago. A specialist in the halogenation of organic compounds and polarography of organic halogen compounds, he became the first Oxy faculty member to be awarded a National Science Foundation research grant in 1955.

He subsequently was named an NSF Science Faculty Fellow in 1957 and 1969. Lambert also served as president of the California Association of Chemistry Teachers and as a councilor of the American Chemical Society, and he was the recipient of the first Donald R. Loftsgordon Award for Outstanding Teaching in 1967, which has been voted on by the Oxy senior class every year since.

After “disastrous experiences” in Chemistry 1 and 2 classes at Oxy, Jim Sanborn ’67, a biology/premed major, enrolled in Organic Chemistry in fall 1964—his first encounter with Lambert. “His enthusiasm for organic chemistry was contagious,” Sanborn says.

“His lectures were fact-packed and informative, and his knowledge extended to chemical happenings outside the laboratory.”

Three terms of Organic Chemistry were the highlight of Sanborn’s chemistry education at Occidental, and he went on to earn a Ph.D. in organic chemistry at UC Riverside, focusing on pesticide chemistry. “Chemistry

was a constant thread in my workplace from 1972 to 2011, in government, industry, and academia,” says Sanborn, who reconnected with Lambert in 2004 after reading about his work on entropy—a concept that Lambert admitted not understanding at Harvard or grad school—in the pages of Occidental.

“Frank Lambert’s former students will remember him as an extraordinary teacher, but he is also remembered by me as an exceptional mentor—as a new, inexperienced teacher coming to Oxy, I was the grateful recipient of his many pearls of wisdom on how to inspire the confidence and best efforts of the students I’d be teaching,” says emeritus professor of chemistry Donald Deardorff. “I tried to honor Frank’s legacy for those 34 years I taught at Oxy. It was a profound privilege to know him.”

Lambert and his wife, Bernice (“Bunni”), who died in 2014, had no children. “Eight hundred chemistry majors over the past 20 years have brought me up,” he quipped in 1967—and hundreds more would follow.

“He treated all students equally, whether they were chemistry, premed, biology, or other non-science majors,” Sanborn says.

Writing to the magazine in 2012, biology major Elliott Oppenheim ’69 credited Lambert with “influencing my life and career and philosophy of life. If there were anyone who has stamped a Culleyesque footprint on the campus, it would be Lambert, who enriched so many scientifically bound minds.”

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GETTING OUT THE

VOTE

By DICK ANDERSON

Sophomores Madeline Scholtz, left, and Koyote Fee canvass a neighborhood in Apple Valley, Minn., for U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, inset.

Photos by Stephanie Rau

Eighteen Campaign Semester students spent 10 weeks in the trenches of some of the most competitive races in the land.

What did they learn about politics, democracy, and themselves?

right: Fee and Scholtz listen to a volunteer with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. below left: Volunteers for Smith knocked on over 100,000 doors 10 days before the November 6 election. below right: Fee’s passion for politics prompted her to take an active role in 2018.

en days before Election Day, in the Minneapolis suburb of Apple Valley, U.S. Senator Tina Smith—tapped to replace Al Franken amid allegations of sexual misconduct in January 2018—speaks to an overflow crowd of volunteers. It’s a precinct where the 2016 presidential tally ended up in a tie (712 votes apiece) between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Even as statewide polls show Smith leading her Republican opponent, Karin Housley, 10 percent of the electorate remains undecided, and no vote is taken for granted in this special election to fill out the remainder of Franken’s term.

“Think about those people whose doors you’re going to be knocking on,” Smith says.

“I would bet you that most of them are thinking about their own lives—what they have to get done today. … Those are the people that we need to put at the center of our politics and at the center of the way we govern.

They’re wondering if we can get anything done in the state house or in Washington, D.C., anymore. You are like an ambassador of joy and positive action.”

Milling among the locals, Occidental sophomores Madeline Scholtz and Koyote Fee await their marching orders like a couple of veteran politicos—which, after more than two months on the job, they effectively are.

“Campaign Semester is this awesome opportunity to become involved in the process that you study in the classroom,” explains Scholtz,

a politics major from Denver. “For 10 weeks, you get a chance to completely immerse yourself in campaign life. After the election, you get to reflect on your experience and analyze the results of the elections all across the country. You get both the real-world experience out in the field and the academic component back on campus.”

While rallies bring together volunteers whose passion for politics matches that of the 18 students across eight states who participated in Campaign Semester in the 2018 midterms, part of that real-world experience is talking to potential voters who are less engaged in the process. “I live, breathe, and eat politics at this point—not everybody does,” says Fee, a politics and economics double major from Trout Lake, Wash. “It’s important to see where other people come from and talk to them about politics in a way that relates to them, rather than pushing your own agenda.”

“There’s a lot of high-profile, very competitive races this year in Minnesota—that’s definitely something that drew me here—but ultimately, I really wanted to work for Sen. Tina Smith,” Scholtz says. “When I look back on this experience and this election year, it will be awesome to know that I dedicated my semester to working on issues that I care about and working for someone who I’m very passionate about.”

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Standing, l-r: Campaign Semester coordinator Marisa Grover Mofford, professors Peter Dreier and Regina Freer, Natalie Martinez ’21, Violet He ’20, Elsa Du Moulin ’21, Koyote Fee ’21, Anya SilvermanStoloff ’20, Rachel Winningham ’20, Silas Scott ’20, Josh Bogen ’20, Baxter Montgomery ’20, Alistair Sherris-Watt ’20, and Jacob Montag ’20.

Seated, l-r: Corrine Schmaedeke ’21, Madeline Scholtz ’21, Junica Meng ’19, Sarah Gooderham ’21, Kevin Briggs ’21, Ethan Reznik ’20, and Justin Sell ’20.

Group photo (above) and Montgomery photo (page 16) by Marc Campos

and Scholtz suggest that it should be even higher. “It’s really important for students to vote because it’s something that we almost take for granted—that these politicians are working for us in D.C.—and a lot of young people just choose not to participate and not to vote. They don’t realize how important it is and how much of an effect it has on our everyday lives,” Fee says.

“And what a privilege it is,” Scholtz adds.

“That’s a good one!” Fee exclaims.

In early 2008, energized by Barack Obama ’83’s success at the outset of the Democratic primaries and caucuses, a number of students came to Peter Dreier, the E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics at Occidental, expressing an interest in getting involved in his campaign. “My first advice was drop out of college for a semester, take a leave of absence, and go work for the campaign—that’s what I did in 1968 when I worked for Bobby Kennedy,” recalls Dreier, who was housing director at the Boston Redevelopment Authority and senior policy adviser to Boston Mayor Ray Flynn prior to coming to Oxy in 1993.

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I think it had to do with their parents, who wanted to make sure they graduated on time.”

Upon further reflection, Dreier and his colleagues looked at the model of Oxy’s longstanding study abroad program, where students would spend a semester immersed in “some culture that is different than their own,” he says. What if Oxy students went to some place away from their home states to work on a political campaign for the first 10 weeks of the fall semester, and received a full semester of credit—16 hours— for their work? Eric Frank, acting dean of the College, was receptive to the idea, which would include a seminar component during the last month of the semester where students would “put their experiences into some kind of context,” Dreier says. “We had to invent the wheel because no other college had been doing this.”

In fall 2008, 17 Oxy students christened the Campaign Semester program. While many of them worked on the Obama cam-

paign, others opted for Senate or Congressional contests on both sides of the aisle.

“We required only one thing, which is that whatever race they picked, it had to be a battleground race where the outcome wasn’t known in advance. Because you wanted them to see the competition and the fierceness of

“CAMPAIGN SEMESTER IS THE HARDEST THING YOU’RE EVER GONNA DO AT OXY, BUT ALSO THE MOST REWARDING. AND WHEN YOU COME BACK, IT’S NOT GONNA BE THE SAME.” —Baxter Montgomery ’20

a political campaign and some of the chaos as well,” Dreier says.

“For many of them it’s a life-changing experience where they learn about themselves,” he adds. “Even if they don’t want to become full-time political junkies—which most of

Photos (pages 15-17) courtesy Campaign Semester participants

below: U.S. Senate candidate Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona with Josh Bogen ’20. right: Dean Phillips, left, runs for Congress—literally—with Justin Sell ’20 in Minnesota. far right: U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri with Violet He ’20.

left: Anya SilvermanStoloff ’20 with Gina Ortiz Jones in Texas.

Jones would have been the first FilipinoAmerican elected to Congress. right: Kevin Briggs ’21, left, at a ball game with congressional candidate Angie Craig, far right, in Minnesota.

them don’t—they learn skills about how to recruit people, how to get volunteers, how to make an argument, how to build a constituency that will be helpful if they want to work with their local PTA or their union or their community or environmental group.

Those skills are very transferable in making them more effective citizens.”

The fact that an overwhelming number of the approximately 100 Campaign Semester participants to date have opted to work for Democratic candidates is not lost on its organizers. “I think that it really is a reflection of our student body,” says professor of politics Regina Freer, who has taught at Oxy since 1996. “Peter and I are very conscious about recruiting students from a diverse array of perspectives, and making sure that we are representing those perspectives in the class as well so that our students don’t get lazy in their assumptions.

“What we’re now recognizing and appreciating more in the class is the diversity of the student perspectives even as they work on Democratic campaigns,” she adds. “One of the more robust debates that we had this semester was amongst students who had

very different visions about where the Democratic Party needed to go and what was happening under that tent.”

“Part of the appeal of Campaign Semester is that you are able to choose whichever campaign you want as long as it’s in a competitive district,” says Anya Silverman-Stoloff ’20, a politics major from South Orange, N.J. “There were a few races that were on a more national scale that I knew about, but there were hundreds of smaller races that weren’t on the media every day.”

In talking with her parents, she discovered that her mother had a colleague who personally knew Gina Ortiz Jones, who was running for Congress in Texas’ 23rd District.

“She convinced me that not only was she a really strong candidate but also a really great person,” Silverman-Stoloff says. “I thought working for a woman was really cool,” she adds—and, having never been to the Longhorn State, “Going to south Texas would be important for my personal development.”

Once she got there, “I expected the whole apparatus to be a little bit bigger,” she admits.

“Our team was about 15 at its biggest. I was

surprised with how much of an integral part I was able to play because I thought for some reason that there were going to be 100 people all working to get Gina elected, like it was a presidential race or something.”

Josh Bogen ’20, a politics major from Denver, found himself operating on a larger scale as a field organizer for the Arizona Democratic Coordinated Campaign that helped elect Kyrsten Sinema to the U.S. Senate. From August 15 until Election Day, Bogen logged upward of 15 hours a day, seven days a week, with little down time.

“You’re really not thinking about how much work it is,” he says, “because it’s honestly the most incredible experience that you can have—there’s no other experience like it at an undergraduate college.”

A typical day on the campaign consisted of community outreach in the morning— meeting with volunteers, registering voters, signing people up for the mail-in ballot— before returning to the office to arrange the rest of the day around “call time.” As Bogen explains, “Call time is sort of a sacred thing on these campaigns, because it’s the No. 1 way of recruiting volunteers and reaching WINTER 2019

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right: Corrine Schmaedeke ’21 met congressional candidate Kara Eastman of Nebraska on her first day on the job. below: After Oxy, Baxter Montgomery ’20 hope to eventually run for public office in his native Texas.

voters. So we create our lists for the day that we’re gonna call through, and we train the volunteers who are coming in that day to knock on doors or make phone calls.”

For Violet He ’20 and Junica Meng ’19, both of whom enrolled at Oxy from mainland China, the whole electoral process was a foreign concept. “They can’t vote in China, and neither can their parents,” Dreier says.

“They’ve never seen an election. Because of the propaganda of the Chinese government about the United States, they all thought that all American elections are fixed and rigged— that it wasn’t really a democracy.”

He, an economics and politics double major from Shanghai, was one of four Oxy students who went to Missouri to volunteer for U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, who lost her bid for re-election in the historically red state.

(Three Oxy grads—all of them Campaign Semester alumni—were working full-time for McCaskill as well.) Meng, a diplomacy and world affairs major from Shenzhen, interned in Orange County for Gil Cisneros, who was elected to his first term in Congress in a district that is split almost evenly among Asian, Latino, and white voters.

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“There were lots of Asian and Latino staff working on the campaign,” says Meng, who is fluent in both Mandarin and Chinese.

“They gave me a lot of important work, such as translation for all the Chinese documents, and I even became the translator for Gil.” Hearing about He and Meng’s experiences during the seminar sessions, “They were on a par with their classmates in terms of understanding American politics,” he adds. “I hope in future Campaign Semesters we have more international students, because it’s a real eye-opening experience for them and it’s interesting for the others to hear their perspectives.”

Growing up in Minnesota, which is a very blue state, and going to school in California— another very blue state—“I’d never spent much time in a red state before,” says Corrine Schmaedeke ’21, a politics major from St. Paul who worked on Kara Eastman’s campaign for Congress in Nebraska’s 2nd District. But during her Campaign Semester experience, “I knocked on a lot of doors. I talked to a lot of Republicans, and I really learned how to have good, honest, meaningful conversations with them.”

Schmaedeke also quickly came to appreciate the lengths that volunteers are willing to go to for democracy. “I had a 90-year-old woman canvass with me,” she says, “and it’s hard to get out there and walk for two hours and get doors shut in your face.”

Canvassing for McCaskill in south St. Louis, Baxter Montgomery ’20 knocked on the door of a house with a rather detailed sign: “Forget the dog. Beware of the owner with the revolver pointed at me.”

“I hear this big, burly guy yelling and screaming coming down the stairs as I knock on his door,” recalls Montgomery, an economics major from Houston. “I’m thinking to myself, ‘Please don’t come to the door with a gun.’ He comes to the door, he’s the nicest guy you’ve ever met. We talked for two or three minutes, and he said he would support Claire.

“It had been a really rough morning—a lot of people slamming doors in my face and telling me to go away,” he continues. “I think this guy saw my smile when he signed my commit-to-vote card.”

Rachel Winningham ’20, a politics major from Portland, Ore., who worked on Joseph Kopser’s congressional campaign in Austin, Texas, recalls a woman answering the door, “baby on her hip,” who was unaware that there was an election going on. After listening to Winningham’s talking points, the woman had one question: “Is Joseph pro-life?”

No, Winningham explained, Kopser was pro-choice—and she expected the door to be shut in her face. “But this woman was genuinely listening to me, very curious,” she recalls. “We had this 30-minute conversation about what it means to be pro-life, what it means to be pro-choice, what responsibilities the government has to protect young women and people in general.” Although Winningham left uncertain whether she had picked up a vote for Kopser, the conversation “definitely restored my faith that people can talk and disagree but work toward a better solution.”

As Dreier sees it, “The more our political culture gets polarized, the more important those conversations are. Another lesson our students learn is that politics is about the art of persuasion. You don’t get very far in getting people to vote for your candidate if you only talk to people who agree with you.”

Silverman-Stoloff recalls door-knocking in the small, “kind of conservative” Texas town of Castroville when she approached the house of a middle-aged man who took one look at her Gina Ortiz Jones T-shirt “and said something like, ‘Get out of here. I’ll never vote for a Democrat in my life,’” she says. “And I gave him a visceral reaction like, ‘What? That’s so mean, I’m just a person

wanting to talk to you.’ And I think he felt kind of bad. So he said, ‘OK, OK, come back over. Let me hear your spiel.’”

In conversation, she learned that the man’s name was Alejandro. “He was 51, and his parents were Mexican immigrants. We ended up talking for a really long time. He was very wary of the immigration issue that’s happening on the Texas border. He liked that the Republicans were hard on immigration.

But he was a veteran himself, and so the fact that Gina was a veteran really appealed to him,” she recalls.

The longer they talked, Silverman-Stoloff continues, “I could imagine my field director saying, ‘You need to move on to the next house. You’re spending too long on one person.’ But I felt like I was getting to him in a way that it’s hard to get to with people who disagree with you.” Alejandro explained that he had grown up poor in Los Angeles but had moved up to the middle class through hard work. “I knew exactly where he was from in Los Angeles, and that’s pretty rare in Texas,” she adds. “So he really liked that.

“By the end of the conversation he was being very appreciative for having listened to him,” she says. “I thanked him, too, because not that many people who are Trump supporters are willing to hear me out and have a conversation.” Before leaving Castroville, “I drove by his house just to say goodbye.

He was sweeping his driveway and he told me to wait up. He brought over to me a little American flag pin, and he told me he had gotten it when he had retired from the military, and it was very special to him. And he had tears in his eyes when he said, ‘I want you to have this.

Because I’ve never felt someone listen to me more, or care about what I had to say more.’

“All of a sudden I had all these feelings about the problems of our democracy. And I said to him, ‘I’ll always look at this pin and think about you as that Trump supporter who wasn’t actually that bad.’ And he was holding the literature that I had gave him 30 minutes earlier and he said, ‘You know, I might vote for this Gina person.’ And I left there thinking about how necessary it is to talk to people that we don’t agree with. And I have this new theory that if every Oxy student had to do what I did for a few months and talk to people they disagreed with, and vice versa, this country would be a whole lot better off.”

In the end, Jones came up slightly short in her bid to unseat incumbent Will Hurd, losing by 926 votes out of more than 210,000 votes cast. The election wasn’t called until well after Silverman-Stoloff had returned to campus. “I remember calling Professor Freer and asking if I could stay until the race ended, and she told me I couldn’t,” she says. “I had to be back at school, which was understandable. I had to do the academic component.”

While Bogen returned to campus all but certain that Sinema had won her race in

“THE BIGGEST THING I’LL TAKE AWAY IS THE POWER OF PEOPLE TO WORK TOWARD A COMMON GOAL. ALSO, I’M LEAVING WITH A LOT OF HOPE FOR THE NEXT GENERATION.” —Rachel Winningham ’20, above

Arizona, “It wasn’t called until my first day of class,” he says. “It was a little disappointing being back in Los Angeles while Kyrsten was giving her acceptance speech and the campaign staff was having their celebration.

“But what makes Campaign Semester so amazing is we get to come back to school and talk about it with a bunch of people who had the exact same experience on a macro level,” he adds. “Then we get to talk about the details of what happened on each of our campaigns and compare and contrast our experiences.”

After the election, “I was really scared that I didn’t know how to be a student anymore,” says Winningham (who spent 10 days on campus during orientation as a member of O-Team before hitting the campaign trail last August). “It kinda felt when I was on

campaign like I had graduated, gotten a job, and was being an adult. Being back in the classroom with other people who have had this same weird experience was definitely something that I needed to process my own thoughts about the campaign.”

“When the students return, they don’t just read political science,” Dreier says. “They read a lot about American culture, and about the changes that are going on technologically and economically. They get a sense that as the country changes, our politics have to change as well. They learn from their experience that America is a more interesting place than they might have thought otherwise.”

“Every campaign cycle there’s new technology, new theory being built on the ground, and new experiences that I could not have anticipated,” Freer adds. “For example, we know that active contact with voters is going to make a difference. What’s the form of that contact? What about texting? What is the form of a robocall now? Often I’m thinking through these questions with the students simultaneously, and I love that experience as a professor.”

Did the experience leave students eager to jump back into the election fray? Depends on who you ask. “If I worked on a campaign again, I would want to work solely in the communications department, because I really liked interacting with the media,” says Schmaedeke. “It opened my eyes to how journalism and politics collide.

That is something that I never thought of doing before, and now I am taking a journalism class next semester.”

“The most unexpected thing for me was the willingness of so many of our volunteers to give up their time making food for us, driving us around, knocking on doors, being emotional support for the campaign,” says Winningham, whose candidate lost by less than 3 points to the Republican challenger— an 18-point improvement over 2016.

The experience has left her ready for more. “I have big plans in 2020,” Winningham says. “I’m graduating at the perfect time, gonna hop right on a campaign. And that’s something that I never thought I would say.”

“I’m actually trying to find a campaign to work on in 2019—like a ballot initiative or some special election,” Montgomery says.

“In 2020, I will 100 percent be there.”

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Vossoughian guides the conversation at MSNBC’s 30 Rock studios in New York City during a Sunday broadcast in December.

In addition to her ongoing co-anchor duties with “Morning Joe: First Look,” she will anchor a new Saturday news hour beginning in March.

MOTHER OF TWO AND YOGA ENTHUSIAST YASMIN VOSSOUGHIAN ’00 BRINGS HER PASSION FOR STORYTELLING TO THE MSNBC ANCHOR DESK

BREAKING AWAY

By DICK ANDERSON Photos by C. TAYLOR CROTHERS

asmin Vossoughian ’00 does not consider herself a writer. “I like to interact with people—that’s how I learn,” she explains.

For an economics class at Oxy, the assignment was to do a report on the differences between what people do in society. With video camera in hand, she chronicled a day in the life of a sewage worker and a CEO, shooting in manholes and high-rises and talking with both about their work—one for minimum wage, the other for millions a year.

“A lot of people wrote papers, but I wanted to do it this way,” Vossoughian recalls. When 18

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she showed the finished piece in class (“I wouldn’t say it was a documentary—it was a four-minute video by a 21-year-old kid”), everyone liked it. “Someone said, ‘You’re gonna be the next Barbara Walters,’” she adds with a laugh. “I definitely don’t think I’m headed in that direction, but I thought, ‘Maybe there is something here.’”

Vossoughian still dismisses any comparisons to the pioneering broadcast journalist, but she is still telling stories as an anchor for MSNBC, cable’s second-most-popular news channel (trailing perennial leader Fox News) and the only cable network in the top 25 to grow by double digits in 2018 (up 12 percent in average daily viewers).

Since joining MSNBC in 2017, Vossoughian has been a fixture on the channel as co-anchor of “Morning Joe: First Look,” the predawn newscast that leads into MSNBC’s signature morning show, and her own Sunday afternoon news hour, on which she and a panel discuss the week’s biggest headlines.

“Yasmin is genuinely compassionate about the stories and topics she covers,” says “First Look” co-anchor Ayman Mohyeldin, “and she always has a keen interest in listening to what her guests have to say.”

He cites an on-air moment at the height of the immigration debate last summer, at a time when migrant children had died in U.S. custody. “Yasmin closed out her Sunday show

with a poignant reminder about the need to focus on the human cost of our policymakers’ inaction,” Mohyeldin recalls. “Her words were a powerful and compassionate reminder that this debate is about much more than dollars and miles, but about real people and their lives.”

“I love breaking news,” Vossoughian says, sitting down in mid-December at MSNBC’s headquarters at 30 Rock in New York City.

(Leading the news cycle that day: former Trump attorney and “fixer” Michael Cohen’s sentencing to three years in federal prison.)

“I’m just this junkie when it comes to that.”

Hearkening back to her days at Oxy, she admits, “I never liked writing long papers. I

didn’t take three weeks to study for a final— I studied the night before. That’s not a great thing, but it actually serves you well in news.

I download all this information, it sits inside of me and marinates, and then I go on the news. Then, the next day, it’s all different.

Breaking news just fits my personality.”

Growing up, Vossoughian went to Northfield Mount Hermon, a boarding school in western Massachusetts renowned for its commitment to equity and multiculturalism. When it came to choosing a college, she was looking for a school with a similar demographic —and Occidental’s No. 1 ranking for diversity among liberal arts colleges in U.S. News &

World Report made an impression on her: “One of the main reasons why I went to Oxy, and it rang true, was the diversity.”

Vossoughian is Iranian-American: “My parents are from Iran. I was born and raised in the United States,” she says. “I grew up in a smaller town about an hour north of New York City that was not diverse. My family is Muslim. There were maybe three Jewish kids and three black kids in my hometown. And so I really crave diversity in my life—it’s something I’ve always been drawn to.”

Classes at Oxy on the African diaspora and genocide in 20th-century Europe made a lasting impression on Vossoughian, but it would take her some time to find a career WINTER 2019 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE

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below: Vossoughian talks to panelists on her Sunday show. right: “Because we have had very similar personal and professional life experiences, our friendship is very siblinglike,” says “First Look” co-anchor Ayman Mohyeldin. “We have great professional and personal chemistry—although she thinks she’s funnier than she really is,” he jokes.

Photos courtesy MSNBC (above) and Yasmin Vossoughian ’00 (page 21)

path to her liking. Prior to Oxy, she flirted with the idea of a job inside the Beltway, but after doing an internship on Capitol Hill as a teenager, “I recognized politics was not my thing,” she says. “I didn’t want to work for the government—but I maybe wanted to work in a capacity in which I could question the government.”

While her sister was a physician and her brother was pursuing academia, “I was kind of the rebel,” she says. “Immigrant parents are always wanting their kids to be physicians, especially in the Persian community.”

Her father, a doctor, urged her to pursue economics: “That’s where people are making money these days and making a difference.”

But after taking a few econ classes, she says, “I realized I just wasn’t into it. Straight finance is tough for me to wrap my head around.” (Even now, on the job, “Whenever there’s a market or finance story I’m like, ‘Oh God,’” she adds with a laugh.) So she went the history route instead with a theater minor— good preparation for a journalism career.

“Ever since I was a kid, I had this craving to interview and talk to people, and since I was living in L.A. at that point, I thought maybe it would be in an entertainment capacity,” she says. As a sophomore, she did an internship in A&R with a music company, and instead of going abroad her junior year she came back to New York for a semester, took some classes at NYU, and did an internship at MTV (followed by a summer internship at Cosmo Girl). “I was definitely trending in the entertainment journalism realm,” she notes, but it was that video for her econ class that “kind of put me over the edge.”

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After graduating from Oxy, Vossoughian got a job at E! Entertainment TV in New York City. She worked for “The Howard Stern Show” for a bit, and then picked up a second gig as a production assistant for the Style Network (which, like E!, was owned by NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment Group).

She was putting in long hours covering New York Fashion Week for Style in September 2001 when “I changed my tune with regards to what direction I wanted to go in,” she says.

On the morning of September 11, “I was at the gym, and I remember watching the towers fall, and getting off my treadmill immediately and trying to call people. And then I went out into the streets—I had to be at work in the next hour or so—and I remember seeing people from the towers starting to drift uptown just covered in soot.

“My whole family lives in New York. My sister lived five blocks from the World Trade Center. There was this moment where the Fashion Week people were trying to figure out if Fashion Week was gonna go on, and I remember thinking, ‘That’s what we’re thinking about right now?’

“In the aftermath of 9/11, we started to see a lot of hate crimes,” she continues.

“There was such a huge divide between our country and the Middle East and the understanding of the people over there.” As a firstgeneration American, born in New York to Iranian parents, she thought, “I have this opportunity where I can explain what people in the Middle East were like—and I also can explain what people in the United States are like. Because I’m both. I have to use my language skills, my Farsi skills. I’ve got to do this —I’ve got to change my track.”

In 2004, using the Handycam that her parents gave her for graduation, she spent

eight weeks traveling around Iran, conducting interviews for a piece on what it was like to be a young person there.

“I would shoot things by candlelight, and I would be at these parties with these young people, which were illegal,” Vossoughian says.

“It would be as if I shot it all on my iPhone now.” She returned to New York, edited the material together, and submitted it to Current TV “because they were looking for video journalists. It became my first piece to be played on Current, and from there I started doing a bunch of pieces for them out of Iran.”

In October 2006, Vossoughian became a world poll correspondent for Gallup based in Washington, D.C. “Gallup was polling all around the world, and I was their online liaison,” she says. “I would travel to Israel and Africa and the Middle East and put stories to these numbers.” For example, if a Gallup survey said that 82 percent of people were confident in running a business in the West Bank, she would do a story on a business in Ramallah. She also interviewed Fatah youth leaders about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, young West Africans with HIV/AIDS and malaria, and experts in water filtration and environmental protection in Singapore—all without any formal newsroom experience.

“I was going in the online direction way before online took off,” she says. “I had been doing guerrilla-style reporting at Current, and then I was doing online packages at Gallup.” After a brief layover in Greenville, S.C., working for One Minute News, a new YouTube news channel targeting millennials, she landed back in New York City at NY1, the local cable news channel.

NY1 proved to be an invaluable training ground for Vossoughian. “I had to set up my

own camera, do live shots all day, edit and write my own pieces, and get them on the air,” she says. “It was really long days, and then you’re looking at your bank account and you have negative money in it. But it was the best learning experience of my life.”

Vossoughian would spend a month on Staten Island covering Hurricane Sandy (aka Super Storm Sandy) for NY1. “That was the first time I’d ever covered a hurricane like that,” she says. “We were the first team to be on the ground after the destruction of Sandy, because we ended up staying on Staten Island and waiting out the storm. It was an unbelievable experience, just the stories that I heard of people losing everything.”

Whether it’s a natural disaster or one of the countless mass shootings that have taken hundreds of lives since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, tragedy often leads the news. “When you’re doing those stories, there’s so much emotion involved—there’s death, there’s loss,” she says.

“You’re seeing that firsthand but it’s your job, too, so you try and not get emotionally connected to it.

“We were doing a story on Sandy when one of my cameramen started crying at one point,” she says. “I had to take the camera from him and just keep shooting. You have to suppress your emotions until after, and then you go home and think, ‘OK, I can breathe.’ It’s usually a couple of days later, when you’re exhausted and you’re trying to recover, that things are starting to sink as to what you actually just covered. It’s the hardest thing but also the easiest thing, because you are telling someone’s story.”

Following a stint as a host and producer for a live news and entertainment program at AOL, Vossoughian joined HLN (formerly known as Headline News) in May 2014 as a correspondent, covering a variety of beats including entertainment and breaking news.

The following January, she was named cohost of HLN’s “The Daily Share,” an afternoon show targeting viewers in her own demographic—“women who have all sorts of interests, everything from ISIS and IsraeliPalestinian issues to dog videos and taking your dog on the subway to ‘Is Beyoncé pregnant or not?’ to sports,” she told a writer for AdWeek’s TVNewser. The show ran for nearly two years, and Vossoughian remained at HLN until March 2017, when she hopped channels to MSNBC.

below: Vossoughian remains “the closest of friends” with classmate Alden Wood ’00. “We just took our kids together to Hawai‘i—friends from Oxy are friends for a lifetime.” bottom: Seated, right, freshman year with her Alpha Lambda Phi Alpha sorority sisters.

Vossoughian was co-anchoring a Sunday newscast with Mohyeldin on Nov. 5, 2017, when news broke of a church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, that took 26 lives.

“Our boss called Ayman and said, ‘We want you to go to Texas. We want Yasmin to stay on the air,’” she recalls. “I stayed on the air for something like the next five hours.”

Among the people she interviewed that day was a woman whose 5-year-old grandson died in the massacre. “She called in from the waiting room in the hospital and she didn’t know his status,” Vossoughian says, “but she wanted people to know what was happening, and what they were going through. It was one of the most simple conversations and interviews I’ve ever had in my life.”

Twenty-nine months earlier, she spent a week in Charleston, S.C., covering the shooting spree at Emmanuel AME Church that left nine people dead. When Vossoughian covers such stories, “I feel like I have this moral responsibility to get the news out here, so people understand what these individuals have

lost,” she says. “You only hope that the feeling that you’re getting when you’re talking to these people comes through.”

During her four-month maternity leave— she gave birth to her second son in August— Vossoughian made a point of stepping away from the daily news grind. “Mostly I watched ‘Real Housewives’ for 16 weeks,” she admits.

“I really didn’t want to be on the air when I was off, and I’ll tell you why. The news cycle is a lot right now, and every day you’re like, ‘Wow, wow, wow.’ Sometimes you need a break, and having a baby is tough, it is trying, and you don’t get much sleep. I thought that I was going to leave and be itching to get back on that whole time. I wasn’t.”

Does being a mother of two inform her perspective reporting the news? “Oh, my God, yeah. Everything has more color now.

Everything means more. That’s not to discount anybody who doesn’t have children, or chooses not to.” But, she continues, when you talk about education, the economy, or gun violence—or anything, really—“you think about the future of this country, and the future is going to affect our children.

“When I interview a woman whose child was shot at Sandy Hook, I think, ‘God forbid, that could be my child.’ That resonates with me more so than ever before. You find yourself tearing up a little bit more when something like that goes down and you have little ones at home. You imagine your own child in that situation, and it’s so awful to think of.”

In her profession, she says, “There was a time when we had to hide being moms. People didn’t want to know that you were a mother. They just wanted you to be an anchor, a journalist; whatever they wanted you to be, you had to be that person for them. I try to be very open about the person I am.”

In preparing for her broadcasts, Vossoughian reads, makes calls, and talks to her sources—“You get as much information as you can,” she says. “Our producers at this network are incredible, and we have amazing teams that usually come and provide us with research packets pertaining to the stories that we’re covering for that show.”

On top of that, Vossoughian likes to get her aggression out before each broadcast.

“I’m a big yoga person, so I do a little bit of meditation,” says the former yoga instructor.

“Honestly, I always have a tinge of nerves no matter what day I go on air, and it’s a good thing. That adrenaline gets you excited.”

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After filling in on prime time for the first time in December, MSNBC President Phil Griffin commended Vossoughian on her performance: “He was being nice and telling me I did a great job,” she says, “but it was a really big deal for me.”

“There’s a part you forget that it’s a business, and that’s the reality,” she continues.

“It just so happens now that we’re a little bit louder. That’s because more people are watching, and more people are engaged than ever. I just feel like it’s our responsibility to state the facts. Now, more than ever, you need to make sure you know your stuff. Everyone is nitpicking at each other and you want to make sure you have your facts straight, especially when it comes to the White House and Washington, D.C., because you understand that it affects the entire country.”

Less than two weeks after returning to the air in December, Vossoughian landed her highest-profile slot to date, subbing as host of “The Beat With Ari Melber,” which drew an average nightly viewership of 1.8 million people in January. “This network takes prime time very seriously,” she says. “Being asked to fill in for a prime-time show is pretty cool, so I am happy that it was well received.”

Eventually, would she like to do a “60 Minutes”-type show? “I think that’s every journalist’s goal in my arena—that’s the big leagues,” she says. “Who knows, though? The whole landscape is changing. Will that be the coveted thing to get? I don’t know. I just want to tell good stories and inform people and bridge gaps, and that’s what my goal has always been. Being a minority myself, being Iranian-American and growing up with Muslim parents and being from a small town, all of that plays into it.”

These are interesting times to be a broadcast journalist—a profession frequently tarred with the sobriquet of “fake news.” On January 9, @realDonaldTrump tweeted: “The Mainstream Media has NEVER been more dishonest than it is now. NBC and MSNBC are going Crazy. They report stories, purposely, the exact opposite of the facts. They are truly the Opposition Party working with the Dems. May even be worse than Fake News CNN, if that is possible!”

The president is not the only one who’s watching. For the month, MSNBC recorded its best ratings ever, with every show on its schedule, from “Morning Joe: First Look” to “The 11th Hour With Brian Williams,” hitting all-time highs, making it the No. 2 network in all of basic cable.

“Do we question if we do too much Trump?” Vossoughian asks. “I think every22 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE

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body does. I think the higher-ups do. I think we do. There are times where you’re like, ‘Gosh, the entire show is Trump,’ and it’s tough, because you want to do other stories, and there’s so much going on in this country and in the world that I care about, and that everybody in this building cares about.

“MSNBC is doing really well in part because of the coverage of the current president of the United States,” she says. “That being said, there are days that I wish I was doing other stories besides that.” It is the media’s responsibility to cover the White House, she says, just as it was when the commander-inchief was named Obama, Bush, Clinton, and so forth. “It just so happens I’m in this position now, under Trump, and I was for some time under Obama. But it’s our responsibility to question authority for people, for the country, because we have a microphone.

Vossoughian has one more story to tell from her Oxy days—from her last day of college, in fact. At Commencement, she recalls, “I was sitting in the Greek Bowl, excited to graduate, and I went across the stage, got my diploma, and sat back down.” Minutes later, she turned to her best friend, Alden Wood ’00, and said, “Oh, my God, let’s look at our diplomas.” Vossoughian opened hers up to find a note inside: “You owe $135 to the Occidental College Library, and you will not receive your diploma until you pay off your debt.”

“So I went and paid it so I could get my diploma. It was so anticlimactic, so hilarious,” Vossoughian says. “I wasn’t the most responsible individual in college, so I was not surprised—and no one else was surprised, either, because they were like, ‘Duh, you owe me money, too,’” she adds, laughing. “Hopefully, I’ve gotten it together by now.”

Through her commitment to the College as a trustee, volunteer, and benefactor, Anne Cannon ’74 champions the value of a liberal arts education

By JIM TRANQUADA Photos by KEVIN BURKE

Setting the

BENCHMARK WINTER 2019 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE 23

left: Nearly 23 years after leaving Oxy to attend the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Cannon returned to campus in 2005 to complete her degree in anthropology. below: In 2015, Cannon was given a pair of water wings by President Jonathan Veitch: “These will help keep you afloat when you are one of the first to ‘Cannon’ ball into the new pool,” he quipped.

ANNE WILSON CANNON ’74’S LIFE has followed anything but a straight line. Oxy was her first choice for college, but she left after her junior year to transfer to the University of Pennsylvania to study accounting.

She had a successful career as a CPA, financial analyst, and financial adviser but also spent nine years as a partner in a Hong Kong art gallery that featured contemporary Vietnamese painters. After a 30-year absence, she returned to Eagle Rock in 2005 to finish her anthropology degree, graduating a year later on the same day son Joshua completed his studies at Bucknell.

Over the last dozen years, a new relationship with Oxy has emerged: an unwavering commitment to service to the College. She joined the Board of Trustees in 2007, took on major leadership roles, and now has quietly become the donor of one of the largest gifts in the College’s history. For Cannon, there is a compelling logic to it all: Her experience as an undergraduate at Penn and throughout her career repeatedly demonstrated the value of her Oxy liberal arts education. And the year she spent on campus as what she euphemistically refers to as a “mature student” gave her a new appreciation for the latest generation of Oxy students.

“Like many of my peers, I was concerned about Oxy’s decline in the rankings [in the mid-1990s] and what was going on at the College. When I returned as a student, I was knocked over—I was so impressed by how bright the students were,” Cannon says.

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Photo by Marc Campos | Page 25 photo courtesy Anne Cannon ’74

thoughtful, creative, earnest, and clueless as we were 30 years before. Seeing that firsthand was what got me really jazzed about the College, and wanting to become involved in a meaningful way.”

Cannon didn’t have to be recruited to become a trustee—her level of enthusiasm was such that she floated the idea herself to thenPresident Susan Prager. “I can’t think of a more effective advocate for a liberal arts education, a more engaged trustee, or a more committed leader to building a new culture of philanthropy at Oxy than Anne,” says President Jonathan Veitch. “She leads by example, and Oxy has benefited enormously from her leadership and her generosity.”

“I’ve worked with lots of trustees over the last 50 years, and Anne clearly is one of the most devoted to the College,” board chair emeritus Steve Hinchliffe ’55 says. “Everything she takes on she takes very seriously, works hard on, and does well.”

When Cannon first arrived at Oxy in 1970, the first-year lookbook listed her home address as Madrid, Spain. It was just the latest in a series of foreign addresses for her family, driven by the job assignments of father Bob Wilson, an oil company executive.

(Cannon was born in Boston while her dad was finishing his doctorate in chemical engineering at MIT.) First was Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital, where Cannon finished ninth grade, followed by London—“this was in 1967, and London was a pretty happening place,” she notes. The following year, Cannon traveled back to the states to finish high school at Dana Hall, the girls boarding school in Wellesley, Mass.

As a high school senior, she had made up her mind she wanted to go to Oxy, where her brother, Charlie Wilson ’73, was already enrolled. “I would not consider, much to my father’s chagrin, going to a women’s college,” she remembers. “Oxy was my No. 1 and only choice.” Oxy was small, located in a big city, “and in comparison to other small liberal arts colleges, Oxy had a fairly diverse student body by the standards of the time,” Cannon says. “That was important to me because although I was American, my school experience had exposed me to different cultures, and I had friends from different countries. I felt different and culturally I had a different view of America and the world.”

Cannon’s parents, however, had more old-fashioned ideas. “They sent me to Oxy to find a husband to take care of me,” she says with typical candor. “I was handicapped by being petite, cute, and blonde with a happy personality, and it was very easy to not be taken seriously. That’s how my parents looked at me.”

During the fall of her junior year, with no husband in sight, “I began to consider the idea that maybe I wanted to have a career and be respected for my brain,” Cannon says.

When she finally worked up the nerve to tell her parents about her new plan, “Dad’s eyes widened in shock. He suggested I should become an executive secretary,” she remembers. “I said I can’t see myself serving coffee.

It was my mother who suggested I become a CPA—they play with numbers all day, and I had always liked numbers.”

So it was with a new purpose that Cannon transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where she graduated from the Wharton School in 1976 with a degree in economics

and accounting. She couldn’t help noticing the differences between Oxy and Wharton.

Many of her classes at Wharton were taught by graduate students who were less than enthusiastic about being in the classroom. And in two years, she was asked to write only one paper. “I gained a great appreciation for what I had left, such as the opportunities to delve into a subject, research it, substantiate an opinion, and make an argument,” she says.

“Penn was harder to get into, but Oxy was the better school.”

The writing and critical thinking skills she learned at Oxy stood her in good stead during her professional career. “There is a surprising amount of writing that is done in

to Oxy, I was so excited by what was going on. I became a real fan.”

In her 37 years at Oxy, professor of linguistics emerita Betchen Barber remembers just a handful of students who returned years later to finish their degrees. “I loved having Anne in class,” Barber says. “In a class that had a lot of freshmen, she really stood out.

All her papers were right on. She had a work ethic that made the other students sit up and take notice, and the questions she asked would help them focus.”

After her year as a student, becoming a trustee gave her a new perspective on Oxy. “I became more aware of how the money is spent and the stewardship of the College.

Cannon, center, and Mindy Muchmore ’74, far right, shared an apartment off campus their junior year. The two remain close friends today.

“I would not consider, much to my father’s chagrin, going to a women’s college,” Cannon says. “Oxy was my No. 1 and only choice.” audits,” she says. “I remember one assignment for a big client—research accounting methods for real estate development—so I had to read all the literature, understand it, and put it into practice. They were impressed that I could figure that out. I appreciated Oxy more and more as time went on.”

On the ground floor of the Arthur G. Coons Administrative Center, two comfortable black leather sofas greet visitors at the bottom of the rotunda. Since their installation several years ago, they have been put to good use: by visitors to the College, by administrators and staff, and most frequently by students reading, checking their phones, and catching the occasional nap.

“I had those sofas in my living room when I moved into my new house, but they took up too much space, so I offered them to the College,” Cannon says. “I had no idea they would be such a big hit.” They came fully tested, however. “I did fall asleep on them many times,” she admits.

Years before she gave the sofas to Occidental, Cannon dreamed about completing her Oxy degree. “It was one of those ‘I wish I had …’ things,” she says. When she moved to Irvine from Greenwich, Conn., Cannon finally made her dream a reality. It was a long commute from her home, but worth it. “The back-to-school experience was transformative for me in many ways, but in particular in my relationship with Oxy. Once I came back

Since Jonathan came on board as president, we have had a really tight financial operation and nine consecutive years of balanced budgets, so I was comfortable with the way my annual gift would be spent, that it was really doing good things.”

In the basement of Thorne Hall, in a room that TeleFund callers affectionately refer to as the “Tiger Den,” Cannon dials up alumni to thank them for their support of Oxy. No gift, she says, is too small.

Cannon has been a regular contributor to the Oxy Fund since her first job as a staff accountant for Price Waterhouse taking home $650 a month after taxes. “I understood from the very beginning that I should give back to the College once I graduated—I learned it from my parents,” she says. “I knew I should give back because I had been given a gift— not only from my parents but from the people before me who gave to the College. That inspired my giving.”

That record and her insight into philanthropy made her a natural to serve as national co-chair of the Oxy Fund, a role she shares with Raymond Yen ’82. “From the beginning I have been interested in annual giving and focused not just on the amount of giving but also regular participation,” Cannon says. When more alumni give, it has an immediate impact on the College’s bottom line—and a positive effect on Oxy’s U.S. News ranking, she adds: “Participation rates matter.”

In addition to sizable annual gifts to the Oxy Fund, Cannon has made planned gifts to the College as well. The first was what is known as a charitable remainder trust to which she contributed stock. “The trust helped me diversify my portfolio and it generated more revenue than the stock dividend.

It was a solid business decision,” she says.

Her most recent gift is an estate gift that represented one of the earliest major commitments to the College’s upcoming comprehensive campaign, whose goal is to build Oxy’s endowment and to support financial aid, faculty and academic programs, and the College’s capital needs. When realized, it is expected to become one of the largest gifts in College history.

“I always knew of the importance of the endowment—as a CPA, that’s second nature to me,” Cannon says. “But as a trustee I’ve learned how much Oxy does for its students despite the relatively modest size of the endowment. Right now, we’re doing a lot with a little. We’re fighting above our weight. And the campaign is all about growing the endowment and generating more resources for our students and faculty.”

Her confidence in the direction of Oxy is such that her gift will go into the endowment “and be used however the College needs it: scholarships, professors’ salaries, deferred maintenance, or whatever,” she says. “I just want to do my part to help ensure Oxy’s ability to educate future generations.”

WINTER 2019 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE 25

On a

Mission

For more than three decades, Oxy students have experienced the United Nations from inside the Secretariat Building.

Now their work extends into the fields of Costa Rica

By DICK ANDERSON lllustration by GWEN KERAVAL

C

ASSANDRA MADRAZO ’19 first learned about the Oxy-at-the-U.N. Program on a campus visit four years ago. Her admission tour guide was an Oxy senior and U.N. intern who talked enthusiastically about the experience. “The idea of the United Nations was so abstract to me, so big—I couldn’t believe that an undergrad college even offered something like that,” says the first-generation college student, a diplomacy and world affairs and studio art double major from Los Angeles. “I was immediately hooked.”

Since its founding in 1986 by George Sherry, former U.N. assistant secretary-general for special political affairs, the William and Elizabeth Kahane United Nations Program has offered Oxy students the opportunity to live in New York City and do hands-on work with agencies or diplomatic missions for a full semester. A classroom component rounds out their understanding of the U.N.’s work in maintaining international peace, protecting human rights, delivering humanitarian aid, promoting sustainable development, and upholding international law.

In recent years, thanks to a $5.5-million gift from Elizabeth and Bill Kahane ’70, Oxy-at-the-U.N. has broadened its scope to include a weeklong visit to Costa Rica “to work on very practical problems there and see how the U.N. operates at the field level,” explains Douglas

Oxy-at-the-U.N. participants—all members of the Class of 2019—on a hike in Monteverde, Costa Rica. Front row: Rhea Bhatia and Aditya Kankipati. Middle row, l-r: Mia Coleman, Ovie Kabba, and Hallaamal Keir. Back row: Zach Solomon, Maddie Lubeck, Marianna Babboni, the group’s Costa Rican nature guide, and Dire Ezeh.

Gardner, who became the program’s third director in 2012 (succeeding John Hirsch, currently a senior adviser to International Peace Institute president Terje Rød-Larsen) after 30 years with the U.N. Development Programme.

“People hear about the United Nations on the news when there’s a meeting in the Security Council, or there’s an issue with Syria, or there’s a jetliner shot down by another country,” he adds. “What they don’t see are the totally dedicated, committed people working for peace and development, human rights, and the environment.

They also don’t see the 80 percent of U.N. staff working at the field level—on Ebola in Africa or governance in Cambodia. It’s really a field-based organization.”

Gardner’s hope is “that students will take away the extraordinary nature of what the United Nations is doing, and of being part of and supporting a team.” He and a handful of Oxy seniors who were among the program’s 18 participants in its 33rd year sat down at Oxy’s United Nations Plaza address in December to discuss their internship experience and the challenges they witnessed firsthand facing tropical crop workers in Costa Rica.

Rhea Bhatia ’19, a psychology major from Singapore: Oxy-at-the-U.N. is an opportunity for students to get reallife working environment experience within the United Nations. Students either are put into country missions— WINTER 2019

top: Doug Gardner spent 30 years with the U.N. Development Programme in duty stations around the globe. above: Longtime U.N. University Office director Jacques Fomerand joined the Oxy program in 2002.

OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE 27

Photos (pages 27-29) courtesy Oxy-at-the-U.N. | Gardner photo (page 27) by Nathan Podshadley

above: U.N. students and faculty during a visit to Georgetown Law School. Front row, l-r: Ashley Leon, Jacques Fomerand, Olivia Wilk, Claire Von Fossen, Jayne Wixtead, Aditya Kankipati, and Zach Solomon.

Middle row: Poppy Thedki, Marianna Babboni, Cassandra Madrazo, Manjun Hao, Maddie Lubeck, Dire Ezeh, and Mia Coleman. Top row: Doug Gardner, Andrea Snyder, Ovie Kabba, Hallaamal Keir, and Juliana Durning. below: Birdwatching in Monteverde. From left, Madrazo, Leon, Hao, Wilk, Wixtead, and Alexa Stickel, a coordinator from the Monteverde Institute.

28 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE

for example, you could work for Rwanda, or Guatemala, or Costa Rica—or you’re put into an agency such as the U.N. Population Fund, the U.N. Foundation, or the U.N. Development Programme, which is what I did [under the Bureau of Policy and Programme Support for its gender team]. The work that the two types of groups do is extremely different, but both are very effective in knowing how the U.N. works and understanding the bureaucracy of an international organization as a whole.

Gardner: We see the students come in at orientation a bit nervous—very talented, but not sure what they’re getting into. The first reward for Professor Fomerand and me is seeing the true transformation that takes place in these gifted academics who become gifted young professionals in a fairly short time.

Bhatia: The first day is daunting. I will not even sugarcoat that. You really have to hit the ground running. Oxy has prepared you for this. You are knowledgeable and capable, so you should just go head first into it.

Zachary Solomon ’19, a diplomacy and world affairs major from Portland, Ore.: One of the strengths of this program is that I have never been treated like an intern

WINTER 2019

at my work from Day 1. Our supervisors treated us as professionals. The U.K. Mission gave me hard work and the resources to do it.

Mia Coleman ’19, a diplomacy and world affairs major from Boston: I arrived at the perfect time, because my supervisor was working on the release of two major studies on women and young persons with disabilities, and providing genderresponsive and rights-based services for sexual reproductive health and rights. In September we launched the global study during the U.N. General Assembly. A typical day for me at the time was running around, calling offices, translating letters of invitation to the Prime Minister of Morocco, and then it calmed down for a little bit and I was doing some writing and editing.

Madrazo: During General Assembly Week, I went in as a representative of UNICEF, and usually sat somewhere in the back and listened quietly to people like Justin Trudeau from Canada, or Theresa May from the U.K. And they’re about 30 feet from me, and I could take as many notes as I like. Another time I saw the former president of Chile at the Vienna Café, which is like our Starbucks inside, hanging out, having a cup of coffee.

This is something I’d never see outside in the real world.

Ashley Leon ’19, a history major from Los Angeles: We have been working with various missions and agencies for a number of years now. Based on our set of skills and their set of needs, they place us accordingly. For me, knowing that I’m interested in Latin America and that I know Spanish, they placed me with the Guatemalan Mission.

Solomon: The semester is really a hurricane of activity from start to finish. You are using the things in your classes at your work, and you’re talking about the things you’re doing in your work in your classes. And you’re also experiencing New York City, and going to tons of events at the U.N. and with different NGOs. Leon: The classroom component is broken down into three courses: conflict prevention, human development, and our U.N. experience, in which we debrief and discuss certain things about our internships, like leadership styles.

Conflict prevention is taught by Jacques Fomerand [adjunct assistant professor and assistant director of Oxy-at-the-U.N.], and we talk about peacekeeping, peaceand capacity-building, migration, climate change, and all the works. One of the cool things that we get to do is produce policy briefs or memorandums of law. The idea is to address them to our supervisors at our internships, and hopefully give them something academic that maybe they could use in further research.

Bhatia: Jacques tries to connect what we are doing in our internships and the main themes that are going on at the U.N. with how they relate to conflict prevention and what the flaws are in conflict prevention. Every week three or four students take on a subtheme, do the readings that are assigned for it, and create a simulation in class

for us to learn. So we’re engaging in these mock situations. And the way that some of my classmates have created the most engaging and innovative ways to make us critically think about conflict prevention is astounding.

Leon: In our human development course, which is taught by Professor Gardner, we dive deeply into the task force report on tropical crop production in Costa Rica and its impact on women.

Coleman: We went to Costa Rica for a week in October to conduct research and interviews and in turn write a gender analysis of tropical crop production.

Bhatia: Tropical crops are the country’s most profitable industry, but it really affects communities that are closest to big plantations. The more you have to produce, the more agrochemicals you have to use.

Solomon: We met with a bunch of people in various positions of society, from farm workers and agricultural activists to the U.N. team and the government.

Madrazo: Professor Gardner has been super helpful in facilitating the process and making us think about the details: What kind of questions should you ask when you are doing an interview or conducting research? How can you be sensitive to those people whom you’re talking to?

Bhatia: The most memorable activist that we talked to, Zinnia, took us out to a plantation that has been affecting her community. They’re drinking water that is essentially killing them, and they don’t even know that it’s happening. Zinnia found out when she was pregnant because her baby had some issues, and so when she tried to complain, she got death threats and was isolated from her community. People thought she was crazy because there’s a culture in Costa Rica where masculinity is so ingrained that if a woman says anything that steps out of these norms, people are going to act out.

People need to understand and know about an issue before they can act on it. And we haven’t even gotten to the first stage yet. Did you ever hear about tropical crop production issues for women in Costa Rica? No! Gardner: We’re hopeful that our client, which is the U.N. in Costa Rica, will use this report as an arrow in their quiver to advance gender issues in the country.

Bhatia: The main thing we learned from the trip to Costa Rica is how essential it is for people who work at the U.N. to go into the field. Oftentimes people forget that the work that we’re doing up here is affecting real individuals on the ground. And we have to see how they are being affected in order to ensure that our policies aren’t just words on a paper or a PowerPoint.

Madrazo: We were talking in the group chat amongst the 18 of us, and saying, “God, we knew nothing.” We all had a million different ideas and it could go a ton of

left: Gardner and Fomerand walk through a forest in Costa Rica. below: Coleman, left, and Bhatia with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez during General Assembly Week. below center: Hao, Lubeck, Madrazo, and Leon pose outside the U.S. Capitol. Interns met with alumni working in the State Department during a trip to Washington, D.C.

different ways. Now we have this fully polished report that is clear, concise, and well structured. And it didn’t just come out of nowhere. It came out of a ton of guidance and a lot of work, arguments, and debates.

And it’s done.

Gardner: The second reward for us as professors is staying in touch with students after they graduate—seeing where they go and what they do, and how they leverage this experience going forward in their careers and making a difference on the planet.

Madrazo: This program has just given me not only the connections of people I’m working with but true friendship. People that I never would have met before, because they live in New York and work at such a high-profile place, I now can WhatsApp message with them. After I graduate, we’ve had conversations about working together in the future.

So career-wise, absolutely, my life will be dramatically altered. My family migrated here from Cuba. My grandfather was a janitor. My grandmother cleaned houses. So the idea of me working at one of the highest institutions in the world, on the international stage, it’s changed the course of my life, and my family’s life.

Solomon: Oxy-at-the-U.N. is an amazing experience. You will be pushed and tested, but you’re going to come out stronger and a more mature, better person at the end of it. It really is a remarkable exposure to people, places, and topics that you just can’t get anywhere else. This is definitely the hardest I’ve worked at any semester at college, but by far the most rewarding.

WINTER 2019

above: Ezeh, Keir, Kabba, and Durning toast their pending return to the United States with a can of Imperial, Costa Rica’s most popular cerveza.

OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE 29

Wilhardt, seated, with rescue dogs Baldwynn, Izzy, Ranger, Tanka, Wombat, Wilder, Pika, Blarney, and Stiltz.

Liesl Wilhardt ’91 has rescued thousands of dogs from abuse and neglect— and an environmentally friendly expansion promises to help even more

By CHRIS LEWIS Photos by KELLY BEAL

WINTER 2019 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE

31

below: Wilhardt with Picasso, “the wonkyfaced dog,” whose “Luvable” mug has captured the hearts of dog lovers worldwide.

IESL WILHARDT ’91 HAS BEEN PASSIONATE about dogs for as long as she can remember. As a child watching television, she fell in love with Petey, the pit bull from “The Little Rascals” shorts of the 1930s and 1940s. From then on, she decided that she would adopt her own pit bull someday.

After completing a master’s degree at Harvard Divinity School (which she attended at the encouragement of religious studies professor Axel Steuer), she adopted her first dog—a pit bull/Rottweiler mix named Pagan. Subsequently, she decided to foster other pit bulls, each of whom were rescue dogs. Tapping the resources of her fine jewelry company—a hobby that she turned into a full-time business for 10 years—she purchased a 55-acre property in her hometown of Eugene, Ore., where she ultimately built structures to foster the dogs and nurse them back to health so that new owners could adopt them.

As the years passed by, more and more pit bulls required Wilhardt’s time and attention. Following her mother’s unexpected death from an aggressive cancer,

she closed the jewelry business and formalized Luvable Dog Rescue as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 1999. (“The inheritance from my mom allowed me to focus on my nonprofit as the executive director without taking a salary,” Wilhardt explains.) Since then, Luvable has placed more than 2,000 dogs—pit bulls as well as small breeds—in “forever homes” across the country.

“The early years were incredibly challenging. I had no formal education in dog training or shelter medicine,” says Wilhardt, who majored in public policy (with minors in religious studies and anthropology) at Oxy. “I had to learn everything through experience and build my own dog shelter from the ground up.”

These days, the organization houses between 20 and 60 dogs and puppies at a time, requiring assistance from paid staff members who work two shifts 12 hours a day, 365 days a year. In addition to caring for these animals, Luvable contributes more than $2,000 a month to a variety of local programs in the Eugene community, primarily to help low-income pet owners ensure their dogs are spayed or neutered, receive any surgeries they may need, and enjoy long, healthy lives.

For the better part of the nonprofit’s existence, Wilhardt operated it by herself with little outside support.

A grant from the Jason Debus Heigl Foundation (founded in 2008 by actress Katherine Heigl and her mother, Nancy) allowed her to build three “dog cottages,” and four more structures would follow, entirely financed by Wilhardt and her friends. Requests for help increased to the point that she had to hire staff members to assist her, and in 2008, she also began to rescue small breed dogs (aka “littles”), mostly from L.A. shelters, where they were threatened with euthanization due to overpopulation.

While doing so, she also worked alongside a volunteer-based nonprofit in Los Angeles, known as the Shelter Transport Animal Rescue Team. START was focused on raising money to transport dogs from these “death row” shelters to well-known rescue organizations in Oregon and Washington, such as Luvable Dog Rescue, whose reputation had grown over time. “I established a great network with various Los Angeles area shelters and transporters,” Wilhardt says. “Before long, I regularly had at least 15 to 20 littles along with my beloved pit bulls.”

Despite her efforts, Wilhardt encountered a dilemma in 2015: She had nearly run out of money not only to operate Luvable Dog Rescue but to support her own needs.

Since dog rescues can only receive donations, grants, and small amounts of funds from adoption fees, the nonprofit was ineligible for federal or state funding.

She had been contributing thousands of dollars a month out of her own pocket to keep the doors open.

And she refused to deny any type of medical care her dogs needed, essentially operating a “no-kill” shelter with a euthanasia rate that was less than 1 percent, all of which added up a significant financial commitment.

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WINTER 2019

But that November, a miracle occurred. Two days after Thanksgiving, a pit bull-loving septuagenarian named Tony Low-Beer contacted Luvable Dog Rescue and asked for a tour of the shelter. An investment professional and rescuer of six pit bulls, Low-Beer had dreamed of building his own pit bull rescue for years. After learning about Wilhardt’s financial issues, he decided to partner with her instead and help her create another shelter to save even more dogs.

Shortly thereafter, Wilhardt and Low-Beer established the American Bully Breed Rescue Foundation (ABBRF), which then purchased land zoned for farm and forestry to house the new shelter. Pending approval, the second shelter, located just outside of Eugene, will be an 80-acre wooded sanctuary and adoption center for up to 30 small breed dogs, eight pit bulls, and several litters of mother dogs and puppies.

It will also be an innovative, environmentally friendly “green shelter,” utilizing solar power to generate 80 percent of the facility’s energy. Rainwater will be collected and used for laundry, and any landscaping that requires water will be minimal, as most of the property will remain a wild nature preserve. To ensure the dogs remain healthy and active, the property will also feature miles of hiking trails, along with an 8,000-square-foot barn for exercise and agility obedience training.

“I don’t know of any animal shelter quite like this anywhere else in the world,” Wilhardt says. “But it boils down to a land-use issue, and we hope Lane County will decide a dog shelter can operate in a farm and forest zone.”

Much of what Luvable has done over the last decade would have been impossible without the existence of social media. In the age of Instagram, you don’t have to be a singer, supermodel, or even a Kardashian to garner legions of followers. “I don’t know what people in rescue did before Facebook and Instagram,” Wilhardt told the Eugene Weekly in 2016, following a visit to Oregon by

Sophie Gamand, an award-winning photographer and animal activist based in New York City.

Many Luvable dogs, along with their stories, are featured in a book by Gamand, who started her Pit Bull Flower Power campaign in 2014 aimed at rebranding shelter pit bulls and helping dogs get adopted. “Luvable Dog Rescue was where Sophie photographed her youngest subjects ever and also did her first portrait of two dogs together,” Wilhardt explains. “Our senior pit bulls, Indie and Chaco, were so bonded they couldn’t be separated even for a photograph!”

Gamand’s portraits of “pitties”—frequently adorned with flower crowns—are helping to change people’s perceptions of the dogs as dangerous and scary animals. (Gamand has more than 237,000 followers on Instagram.) Picasso and Wacku, “two wonky-face rescues in a dogpack of 10,” have more than 105,000 Instagram followers (@picassothewonkyandwacku). A pit bull and Chihuahua mix born with a completely lopsided snout, Picasso was rescued by Wilhardt from a Porterville animal shelter and adopted along with his “normal-looking” brother, Pablo, who was also on the shelter’s euthanasia list. (Picasso was honored as a Diamond Collar Hero Dog award from the Oregon Humane Society last year; Pablo died suddenly of a brain aneurysm in 2017.) Picasso and Wacku, who lost half of his face during a machete attack in his native Philippines, have won the hearts of dog lovers around the world.

Having attended Occidental with the benefit of scholarship support, Wilhardt insists that she could not have achieved her goals without the mentorship of Ambassador Derek Shearer, the Stuart Chevalier Professor of Diplomacy and World Affairs.

According to Wilhardt, Shearer provided her with the foundation she needed to have faith in her abilities—and Shearer’s passion for helping the less fortunate inspired

above left: The Luvable Dog Rescue Dog House. above right: Some rescues have their own fur coats, while others sport their winter sweaters.

above: Architect’s rendering of Luvable Dog Rescue’s new exercise barn, which was financed with the support of Ingrid and Maurice LeBlanc, who lost their son at age 46 to a heart condition. “Branden’s Barn” honors the memory of their son, who “loved dogs more than anything,” Wilhardt says.

WINTER 2019 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE 33

Sky was featured in Pit Bull Flower Power, a project by photographer and animal advocate Sophie Gamand.

(She is still available for adoption.)

her to create a nonprofit. “He taught us how individuals and small groups with a shared vision and passion could change the world,” she adds. “I left school knowing someday I would volunteer or work for a nonprofit. I ended up starting my own instead.”

As the owner of two rescue dogs, Shearer admires his former student’s perseverance and positive impact on thousands of dogs. “Liesl has followed her passion in a wonderful way,” he says.

“She is making the world a better place.”

Sheila Heen ’90, a public policy major from Cambridge, Mass., and roommate of Wilhardt for two years at Harvard Divinity School, concurs. “Luvable Dog Rescue is such a perfect expression of who Liesl has always been—incredibly kindhearted, especially for those who are otherwise overlooked or scorned,” she says.

Her compassion for the misunderstood will continue, as Wilhardt believes the most important trait of any living being is its character. “There is no correlation between a dog’s outward appearance and its temperament,” she says.

“Just as stereotyping and discrimination of people is unjust, it is unfair to stereotype any type of dog. Love and compassion will always defeat discrimination.”

Currently Wilhardt works seven days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day. She remains unpaid by Luvable but now has a paid position as executive director of the ABBRF. “Now I run both organizations, while still hiking dogs 15 miles a day,” she says.

“Thank God for iPhones.”

Chris Lewis wrote “Java Opportunities” in the Winter 2018 issue.

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WINTER 2019

How far will Joellen Anderson ’11 go to find forever homes for 10 stray dogs? 8,000 miles by air—and another 1,600 miles by land. Here’s the incredible tale of the Canine Caravan

By DICK ANDERSON Photo by MAX S. GERBER

Anderson shepherds Betty, left, and Scarlett through Los Angeles International Airport in December.

nder gray Los Angeles skies December 5, a Qatar Airways jet from Delhi, India, touched down at LAX after a 16-hour flight.

Among those on board were 10 passengers of the four-legged variety, ages 4 months to 2 years, and their twolegged chaperone. “When you are a girl and you’re alone and you have 10 dogs, people take pity on you,” says Joellen Anderson ’11.

“Almost everyone loves dogs.”

Even so, finding forever homes for the strays that find their way to Peepal Farm—the animal recovery center and organic farm near Dharamsala, India, that she and cofounder Robin Singh established in 2014—is a constant challenge. While the shelter treats a multitude of animals—including dogs, cows, cats, pigs, lamb, goats, and the occasional monkey—“There’s really no outflow,” Anderson says. “There are very few people locally who will adopt a stray dog.”

Thanks to the global reach of social media, Peepal Farm has enjoyed some success in placing dogs farther afield, including England, Finland, Germany, Israel, and Scotland.

And only a few months ago, with the help of a dog lover in Vancouver, British Columbia, Anderson hatched her most ambitious plan.

“I had this crazy idea since we get a lot of interest from people in adopting in the U.S. and Canada—why don’t we just take the dogs there?” she explained in a YouTube video.

With Anderson leading the way, the “Canine Caravan” would transport nine dogs from Dharamsala down to Delhi, put them on a flight to Los Angeles, and deliver them to forever homes in Seattle and Vancouver. Total distance: more than 9,600 miles. “I might be out of my mind,” she admits in the video, which raised nearly $4,700 to help underwrite the trip. “But this should be fun.”

The incredible journey was a team effort from start to finish. A veterinarian in Delhi experienced in relocating pets accompanied Anderson to the airport, the vet’s husband handled all the necessary paperwork, and five additional people assisted in wrangling the canine cargo. (Nine dogs became 10 when Anderson chaperoned another dog for an acquaintance at the last minute. “He ended up being the biggest handful,” she says.)

Anderson has been working with dogs since she was 15, beginning with the local Humane Society in her hometown of Tucson. She

picked up spending money as a dog walker at Occidental—among her clientele was Polly, a Boston terrier belonging to Tamara Rice Himmelstein in the Office of Student Life—and majored in urban and environmental policy.

After graduation, Anderson spent close to eight months traveling the world, including northern Africa and Europe. Along the way she met Singh, who had grown up in Delhi and was stepping back from E-Junkie, the e-commerce business he had founded nearly a decade earlier. He was planning a trip in Auroville, in the south of India, to help a woman who was running a shelter for abandoned dogs. “I kind of invited myself on Photos courtesy Joellen Anderson ’11 the trip,” Anderson says, and the duo would top left: Peepal Farm grows grains, roots, spend several months in Auroville cleaning vegetables, and fruits for residents and guests, up the shelter and putting systems in place. and green fodder for cows. top right: Cofounder Robin Singh with Sanju the goat and Mimi the Their work planted the seeds for Peepal lamb. above: A farm volunteer leads the dogs on Farm, located in the Himalayan foothills less their daily morning route outside Dharmasala. than an hour from the home of the Dalai Lama. (It’s named for the Peepal tree, “which “This trip has really been about making takes root and dismantles existing struc- connections,” she adds. The success of the tures—we subvert the cultural status quo to caravan has been instrumental in freeing foster compassion and good work,” accord- Peepal Farm up for the sterilization and posting to the farm’s website.) operative care at the core of its mission. “We “Robin had been looking at living off the are always over capacity. Right now we have land there for a long time,” Anderson says. seven dogs in trauma recovery, 13 adoptables, “Then the search became about building eight puppies, and four dogs in post-operative something like Peepal Farm.” The farm has care. The caravan gives us an outflow.” given sanctuary to scores of After delivering the first four strays, including cows. “Despite dogs to their owners on a rainy India having the reputation of day in downtown Seattle, the reholy cows, the way they are maining six crossed the border treated is really bad,” she notes. into Canada for the caravan’s Once their milk production definal stop in White Rock, British clines, “Most cows are abanColumbia. Five of the dogs had doned, since slaughter is illegal been placed locally, Anderson in our state, or they’re hit by says, and “We put the last one on trucks and left to die.” a flight to San Antonio.”

While Peepal Farm has manFrom travel crates to rest aged to facilitate both a cow and stops, “I was blown away by how a bull adoption nearby, the bulk well-behaved the dogs were, of its energies on Facebook and despite not being trained,” she Instagram go into profiling the adds. “I definitely had a positive dogs who come there in need of experience overall.” Already, peohealing. “When people read the top: Sunderi has a ple are asking her about a second new name—Nelly— stories of these dogs, and the sit- and a new home in canine caravan. “Maybe later in uations they’ve been trapped in, Vancouver. above: 2019,” Anderson says—only “I Chutney was the last they connect with an individual think I would take a few fewer surviving pup in her dog and they want to adopt litter. She now answers dogs and a different type of van them,” Anderson says. next time.” to Dharma.

WINTER 2019 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE 35

OXYTALK Photo by Marc Campos

As ASOC vice president of financial affairs and president, respectively, Garinkol and Lesure have advocated for shared governance in the decision-making process at Occidental.

Meaningful Dialogues Seniors Micol Garinkol and Jacques Lesure bring new energy to the table in conversations with senior administrators as they work to awaken interest in the potential of student government

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In November 2015, less than three months into her first semester at Oxy, Micol Garinkol ’19 joined hundreds of her fellow students in occupying the Arthur G. Coons Administrative Center—a five-day demonstration that sought a variety of curricular, budgetary, and operational changes, including more student say in the affairs of the College.

“When I first got to campus, there was an ethos of mistrust among the students toward the administration, and vice versa,” says Garinkol, a politics major from Boston.

“The administration was far less engaged or interested in even hearing us out, or running a student-centered ship.”

Today, Garinkol says, there’s a decidedly different climate on campus: “Now more than ever, I think the administration has a better ear toward students.”

As vice president of financial affairs for Associated Students of Occidental College, Garinkol has helped lead student government to reassert its voice on campus, working

OXYTALK

closely with ASOC President Jacques Lesure ’19, an independent study major (resistive education in theory, research, and policy) from DeKalb County, Ga. “I’ve tried to build relationships and show the administration that we really do have a competent, capable student body, and that we really should have a role in the direction of the College,” says Lesure, whose calls for shared governance have been the rallying cry of his campaign and tenure. In an April letter to The Occidental newspaper, Lesure was blunt: “Until students take on a different relationship to power at the College, fairy tales about healthy partnerships will never come to be. We don’t need any more heroes.

We need shared governance.”

Lesure has been involved in leadership roles since before high school, when those around him noticed his desire to serve his community. These days his focus is on Oxy: In an email that he sent to the student body last August, Lesure wrote of the need for greater transparency in allowing students access to “important information” about College operations.

He further advocated for the creation of a guidebook summarizing the roles of various administrative departments. “Nothing can function without students,” he said at the time.

While the AGC occupation prompted a commitment to change from President Veitch and the Board of Trustees—from the creation of a Black studies major to the promotion of the College’s chief diversity officer to vice president level—Garinkol credits a renewed sense of enfranchisement to increased discourse with Oxy administrators. She cites Rob Flot, dean of students, and Wendy Sternberg, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the College— both of whom joined Occidental in July 2017—as well as Marty Sharkey, vice president for marketing and communications, with breathing a spirit of collegiality into the student-administrative dyad. “They have transformed the student experience,” she says.

Flot has walk-in office hours several days a week, “in which any student can come in and have a conversation,” he says. “Both the students and the administration want there to be more intentional, thoughtful opportunities for students to be involved in conversations and to share information back with other students. We’d be remiss not to routinely engage with ASOC.” Notable as part of ASOC’s heightened presence is the development—since the occupation—of the Diversity and Equity Board, a student-led branch of ASOC that works toward “empowerment and improved conditions for structurally marginalized groups on and off campus.” The goal of the board is to hold Oxy to its mission of diversity and equity.

Garinkol represented ASOC last year in one of the more emotionally fraught issues to confront Occi-

dental in recent memory: the future of the football team. As part of a minority bloc, she voted to disband the team out of concerns for player safety and out of concern that the College couldn’t adequately recruit players. While the outcome wasn’t what she hoped for, Garinkol made her voice heard.

The Oxy student body, like ASOC, has also spoken: In 2017 races for the ASOC Senate and the Honor Board, more than 550 students cast ballots, higher than in recent years. Four out of 16 races were contested—a marked improvement over 2016, when no races were contested. “We as a Senate, and leaders in ASOC more broadly, have been called upon by the student body to address issues such as gender equity,” Lesure says—a call for action that has sparked renewed interest in the potential of student government.

After developing relationships with ASOC officers and senators last year, Flot says he’s bringing “more intentionality” to those connections. Every two weeks, he meets with Lesure to talk “about things that are on my mind relevant to the student body, and things that are on his mind relevant to student interaction with the College.”

“Occidental strives to be a college in which student input is included and considered,” Flot says.

“My primary responsibility is to engage and connect with, and support the students, and ASOC is a great vehicle through which to do that. I find it to be very helpful, that routine communication.”

In the College’s recently concluded search for a new athletic director, Flot enlisted student representation on the 12-member committee. Currently he and Thalia Gonzalez, associate professor of politics, are co-chairing a new committee that will “review the most salient components of the student experience outside the classroom, and develop strategies, priorities, and goals to improve the student experience over the next three to five years.” That new 12-member committee includes four students.

Meantime, as they enter their last semester at Oxy, the current generation of student leaders are pondering their legacy. “Mostly, I hope there’s a spirit of collaboration between students and administration,” says Garinkol, who notes her leadership is inspired by “all of the women who broke boundaries in the midterms,” such as U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. Garinkol is now applying for paralegal jobs as well as work in the areas of finance, computer science, and analytics.

Adds Lesure, who plans to pursue an education doctorate after graduating this spring: “I think we’ve carved out a lot of space for people to work effectively and collaboratively in ways that weren’t possible in the past. Students in the future are going to really benefit from the relationships that we’ve built.”

—andy faught

» NEWSMAKER Photo courtesy Thomas College

Shanda Ness, above, will join Occidental in March as the College’s new athletic director. Ness currently serves as athletic director at Thomas College in Waterville, Maine, where she oversees 16 varsity sports and one club team that compete in the North Atlantic Conference. Prior to coming to Thomas, she spent 11 years at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, where she was head softball coach in addition to her administrative duties.

She is a graduate of South Dakota’s Northern State University, where she also earned her master’s in teaching. “Shanda is a student-centered, proven leader who communicates with honesty and compassion,” search committee co-chairs Rob Flot, dean of students, and Marci Raney ’01, assistant professor of kinesiology, wrote of Ness. “The committee was especially impressed by her understanding of the role of athletics in a liberal arts environment and her experience in building and strengthening athletics programs, as well as in recruitment and gender equity issues.” A national search for a new athletic director was launched last August after the College announced that Jaime Hoffman, who had been out on leave since October 2017, would not be returning in the role. Hoffman remains on leave.

WINTER 2019 OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE 37

PAGE 64

31 for 30 A host of Oxy hoops greats return to campus to surprise men’s basketball coach Brian Newhall ’83 in commemoration of three decades on the hardwood

Newhall shows his emotional range on the Rush Gymnasium courtside.

Photos by Marc Campos

Following the 1987-88 basketball season, Occidental head coach Bill Westphal left the Tigers to take the top coaching job at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix. His 27-yearold assistant, Brian Newhall ’83, was named interim head coach—and the following season the Tigers improved from 12-14 to 15-10 overall, finishing third in the SCIAC. Newhall was offered the job permanently—a position he clearly took to heart.

With a career coaching record of 434-333 as of February 6 (following the Tigers’ victory over Redlands), Newhall is Oxy’s win-

above: Newhall diagrams a play for the current Tigers squad during a timeout against Claremont-Mudd-Scripps on January 9. right: Newhall and 18 of his former players pose for photo in Booth Music Courtyard at a reception on January 26. Front row, l-r: Chase Young ’03, Finn Rebassoo ’03, Hung Duong ’94 M’02, and Ethan Caldwell ’90. Back row: nephew David Newhall ’99, Hans Mumper ’84, Jeff Muir ’92, Michael Guzman ’88, Scott Schroeder ’85, Trevor Moawad ’95 M’01, John Keister ’89, Brian Newhall ’83, John Pike ’96, Ted Steben ’99, Sandy Brown ’93, Jason Muir ’97 M’99, Michael Whaley ’84, Tim Walsh ’98, and Omar Anderson ’95.

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ningest hoops coach of all time, and can claim a 100 percent graduation rate for his senior players. His resume boasts multiple SCIAC crowns, a run to the NCAA Division III Elite Eight in 2003, and the only perfect 14-0 season in SCIAC history that same year.

Dozens of players spanning the last three decades came back to surprise Newhall with a halftime ceremony during the Tigers’ January 26 contest against Caltech. A post-game reception was emceed by Ethan Caldwell ’90, who transferred to Oxy as a junior from Pitzer (where he played for the Sagehens under future San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich) and started on Newhall’s first varsity team.

“Brian was ‘Coach Newhall’ to me for two years, and has been ‘Brian’ and really like a brother and close family member for 28 years,” Caldwell said.

“I was excited to get to Oxy and

try to help this new coach change the team culture—to change Pomona-Pitzer’s scouting report from ‘Great individuals and underperforming team’ to ‘Family and winners.’”

An American studies major from Portland, Ore., Newhall played basketball for the Tigers for four years, earning team MVP honors in 1982 and 1983. As a senior, he helped propel the Tigers to their first SCIAC championship in three years and was named 198283 SCIAC Player of the Year.

In his 31st season as head coach, Newhall has put together one of his strongest squads in years. Zach Baines ’19, a 6'5" economics major from Stamford, Conn., set the Oxy single-game scoring record with 50 points in a win over Pacific University of Oregon in December. Austin DeWitz ’19, a 6'7" biology major from Oregon City, Ore., has averaged 17.6 points per game to date. And Ryan Kaneshiro ’20, a 6'2" economics major from Santa Clarita, is a three-time SCIAC Defensive Player of the Week this season.

Going into the last two weeks of conference play, the Tigers were assured of their best finish since going 22-6 in 2007-08.

“Brian and his staff are as good as any in the nation,” said Caldwell, who announced the alumni funding of a new position—recruiting intern—to support Oxy’s efforts toward national success in men’s and women’s basketball.

What separates Newhall from Popovich, he adds, “is way less than he thinks.”

OXYFARE 

Re-engage and Be Engaged Volume 41, Number 1 oxy.edu/magazine OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE

Jonathan Veitch President Wendy F. Sternberg Vice President for Academic Aairs and Dean of the College Rhonda L. Brown Vice President for Equity and Inclusion & Chief Diversity OďŹƒcer Charlie Cardillo Vice President for Institutional Advancement Vince Cuseo Vice President of Enrollment and Dean of Admission Rob Flot Vice President for Student Aairs and Dean of Students Amos Himmelstein Vice President & Chief Operating OďŹƒcer Marty Sharkey Vice President for Marketing and Communications Jim Tranquada Director of Communications editorial staff

Dick Anderson Editor Marc Campos Contributing Photographer Gail (Schulman) Ginell ’79 Class Notes Editor SanSoucie Design Design DLS Group Printing OCCIDENTAL MAGAZINE

Published quarterly by Occidental College Main number: 323-259-2500 To contact Occidental magazine By phone: 323-259-2679 By email: oxymag@oxy.edu By mail: Occidental College OďŹƒce of Communications F-36 1600 Campus Road Los Angeles CA 90041-3314

Jean Wyatt Professor of English

Occidental College crew neck sweatshirt with tackle twill and embroidered circular full chest graphic. Available in oatmeal.

80% Cotton/20% Polyester. Sizes S-XL. $51.95

Letters may be edited for length, content, and style.

Occidental College online Homepage: oxy.edu Facebook: facebook.com/occidental Twitter: @occidental Instagram: instagram.com/occidentalcollege Occidental College Bookstore oxybookstore.com To order by phone: 323-259-2951 All major credit cards accepted

Cover photo by C. Taylor Crothers Oxy Wear photo by Marc Campos

Our goal as the Alumni Board of Governors is to help strengthen the connections and engagement between alumni and the College. We are focused on doing this through our three main committees—careers and mentorship, admission, and programs—each of which has a comprehensive set of goals for the continuing enrichment of alumni and students.

Our careers and mentorship committee, led by Ben Finser ’13, seeks to connect students with alumni to help them in their professional paths, whether they are interested in nonproďŹ ts, government service, graduate education, or the private sector. We are seeking to establish industry advisory groups in each of these areas so that we alumni can share information among ourselves as well as provide advice, internships, and jobs to Oxy students. This will make our alumni network a powerful stepping stone for Oxy students as they embark on their path to inuencing and changing the world. What we lack in size, we can make up for in the strength of our shared community, so please consider supporting our students through an industry advisory group or via the OxyWorks Internship program.

It’s one of the most meaningful actions you can take to help the College and I suspect you will ďŹ nd it extremely rewarding to connect and mentor Oxy students.

The admission committee, led by David Estrada ’05, helps prospective students by exposing them to alumni during engagement events nationwide. These events give alumni the chance to relate their experiences and thereby communicate Oxy’s unique advantages as one of the only true liberal arts colleges in a major metropolitan city.

Talking about all we have to oer beyond an incredible education, in community engagement, internships working on real-world urban

problems, and gaining exposure to the vibrant L.A. arts, entertainment, and business climate can be invaluable to the recruitment process.

This past year we also held our ďŹ rst early-admission get-together in Los Angeles where 23 early-admit students and their families got to meet each other, alumni, and College sta in a casual setting. It was a great chance to welcome them to the Oxy community.

Our programs committee, led by Taylor Renshaw ’14, focuses on regional events and aďŹƒnity groups that focus on connecting alumni with the current happenings at the College. These range from young-alumni get togethers to intimate gatherings with President Veitch to hear about the College’s strategic direction. AďŹƒnity groups also serve a variety of alumni interests: API and the Women’s Club have long-running scholarships, OCLAA and BAO provide personal and professional networks for students of color, and ORAA and the Gammas celebrate the shared activities they enjoyed as students. If you haven’t been to a regional or aďŹƒnity event recently, I encourage you to sign up for the next one in your area. I think we all feel that the intimate To join an industry experiences we had at Occidental with our advisory group or learn professors and fellow students made mean- more about OxyWorks, email careers@oxy.edu. ingful dierences in our lives.

To update your contact We can make this special part of Oxy’s information, including DNA even stronger by extending these inti- employer information, email alumni@oxy.edu. mate connections as alumni to students, To volunteer for a each other, and the College. It’s a great time regional engagement committee or learn to re-engage and be engaged.

Brad Fauvre ’87 President, Board of Governors

more about an aďŹƒnity group, email Monika Moore, director of alumni and parent engagement, at mmoore2@oxy.edu.

Winter’s wonder gets a sixth edition Professor emeritus Bob Winter and co-author Robert Inman ’72, seated, celebrate the publication of the fully revised sixth edition of An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles at a packed book launch party on campus December 9. Written by Winter and David Gebhard (the architectural historian and preservationist who died in 1996), L.A.’s “architectural bibleâ€? was ďŹ rst published in 1965 by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The party was hosted Occidental’s Institute for the Study of Los Angeles and Angel City Press, which published the new edition.

Introducing the new oxy.edu!

A fully redesigned College website was unveiled by Oxy in late January. The new oxy.edu boasts many new features and a contemporary look and feel. The site is also fully responsive and optimized for viewing on mobile devices. Content across the site has been updated and enhanced to provide a more userfocused experience for the Oxy community. Performance and accessibility have been improved, and the site architecture makes navigation and ďŹ nding information more intuitive. Check it out!

Save the dates for Alumni Reunion Weekend: June 21-23, 2019

alumni.oxy.edu

WINTER 2019

Office of Communications F-36 1600 Campus Road Los Angeles CA 90041-3314

Nonprofit U.S. Postage Paid Occidental College

Battleground Stakes: Tracking Campaign Semester

Committed to Oxy: Anne Cannon ’74

Address Service Requested

WINTER 2019

As an American studies major at Occidental, Mark Rountree ’79 got his introduction to fundraising for nonprofit organizations—an interest that he turned into a profession, with a focus on philanthropy for higher education and the arts. For the majority of his career, Mark has worked with nonprofits in the South and Midwest as a consultant and development officer.

In addition to his education, “My years in Eagle Rock had an immeasurable and positive impact on every job, every adventure, and nearly every relationship in my life ever since,” says Mark. Since 2010, he has been vice president, partner, and senior consultant with Ashley|Rountree and Associates, which provides fundraising, campaign planning, board development, and management consulting services to nonprofit organizations in Louisville, Ky., and the surrounding region. His liberal arts education challenged him to Kay and Mark Rountree ’79 think critically about the world and himself, and Mark Photo by Jolea Brown Anderson credits his Oxy professors, administrators, classmates, and even his dorm advisers (he was head resident of Chilcott Hall ing goal, and gaining the satisfaction of knowing that his planned as a senior) for making him who he is today. gift will support the educational experience of Tigers in perpetuity.

With his 40th reunion approaching, Mark and his wife of nearly Mark recognizes that his undergraduate experience was made 16 years, Kay—the couple met in her hometown of Owensboro, possible not just by annual support, but also through bequests to Ky.—wanted to make a difference in the lives of as many students the endowment that were realized long before he arrived on camas possible. To that end, the couple recently set up a revocable be- pus. He urges every alumnus and alumna to include Occidental in quest intention, designating the College as a beneficiary in their will. their estate planning, regardless of the amount: “Oxy made a difIt didn’t stop there: Mark and Kay also set up future distribu- ference in your life, so please consider making a difference at Oxy.” tions from their local community foundation, which will support Mark looks forward to returning to campus in June to sit in on the department of American studies because they believe that the a class taught by Newhall, catch up with his classmates, and celeprogram’s inherently interdisciplinary nature gets to the heart of brate his alma mater with Tigers of all ages around the Lucille Y. the liberal arts experience. The Rountrees’ gift underscores the Gilman Memorial Fountain (which Mark helped to build as a part value of Mark’s education in many ways: recognizing one of his of a student crew under the direction of professor of sculpture favorite professors, Eric Newhall ’67, who will retire from Oxy this George Baker). “I just love sitting for a good, long time on a bench spring; counting his planned gift toward his class reunion fundrais- among the roses and trees in the Quad,” he says. Io Triumphe!

Rising

STAR

Breaking news junkie Yasmin Vossoughian ’00 gets the conversation going as an anchor for MSNBC

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ACTING GLOBALLY: INSIDE THE KAHANE U.N. PROGRAM /// WOOFERS AND TWEETERS: TWO CANINE MATCHMAKERS

Making Their Mark on Oxy