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May Day protest makes its way to Davidson.
Volume 124, Issue 12
May 7, 2025
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The Davidson Disability Alliance evaluates its space on campus for next year.
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Colin Decker ‘27 gives a rundown on the current state of men’s basketball.
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A nuclear arms race is brewing on Patterson Court.
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Concern for free expression, international and undocumented students prompts calls for administrative changes, removal of trustee
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STELLA MACKLER ‘27 (SHE/HER) SENIOR EDITORIAL ADVISOR
or months, fear has defined daily life on college campuses. Student activists have been subject to heavy police response at institutions like Emory University and Columbia University. Speech has been surveilled and expulsions are more common. As the 2024-2025 academic year comes to a close, a new fear is rising—deportation. Over 1,800 international students and recent graduates at 280 colleges and universities lost their F-1 or J-1 visa status as of April 24 as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration. In a major reversal, on April 25, the government announced it was restoring student statuses in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS). No Davidson students had their status changed or their visas revoked, but the College is feeling the ripple effects of federal policy shift. In the close-knit campus community where students know administrators by their first names and share dinners with faculty at their homes, concern for stability and freedom of expression permeate. These fears have coalesced around calls for the removal of Leslie Grinage ‘03 from the Board of Trustees and demands for additional protections for international students. Grinage, who began her four-year term on Jan. 1, 2025, is the vice president for campus life and student experience and dean of the college at Barnard College and previously served as associate dean of students at Davidson from 2016-2019. Grinage is an alumni trustee, which means she was elected by Davidson College alumni to serve on the Board. Calls for her removal from the Board of Trustees began after the arrest of nine individuals on Barnard’s campus during a pro-Palestinian sit-in at the Milstein Center for Teaching and Learning on March 5, and an earlier sit-in at Grinage’s office in February where protesters advocated for the reinstatement of two students who’d been expelled for interrupting a class on Israel. “It’s a really strong visual and a really strong statement to have this person who was really publicly associated with extreme student repression and carceral violence against students, specifically at Columbia, [...] and she was the face of that,” a Davidson student, who wished to remain anonymous out of fear for their safety, said. “It is a huge symbolic move on Davidson’s part to say, ‘Okay, this person who has so publicly
Rallygoer holds up a handmade sign at an Immigrant Justice Coalition event earlier this semester. Photo by Alex Marron ‘27.
been the face of this violent student repression for non-violent protest, we want her.’” A petition calling for Grinage’s dismissal put together by an anonymous group, the Coalition of Davidson Alumni, also references the Trump administration’s arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a student activist at Columbia who advocated for Palestinian rights. Barnard stands as an independent college for women with its own curriculum, faculty, admissions standards, graduation requirements, trustees, endowment and physical plant. Although Barnard and Columbia have separate curriculum, faculty, trustees and endowments, Barnard describes itself as both an “independently accredited and incorporated educational institution as well as an official college of Columbia University.” “We are concerned for the stability of the Davidson community, and especially for the safety of international and undocumented students whose legal status may be weaponized against them,” the Coalition writes. “As alumni of conscience with a vested interest in our alma mater, we intend to ensure these dystopian realities could never play out at Davidson College.”
Grinage’s office wrote they were “unable to accommodate” a request for interview/comment. The authors of the petition, which first appeared in March, argue that Grinage has proven herself “unfit” to protect Davidson College students and that her position on the Board is an “embarrassment and a detriment to the students, faculty, alumni and greater community of Davidson College.” Signatories of the petition, whose names are not published, pledge to withhold financial support from the College until Grinage is removed. Sophia Ludt ‘25 is the president of the Center for Political Engagement. She believes Grinage is not the right person for the role of trustee. “I think that it’s great to hire people that are experienced with other colleges,” Ludt said. “But I have a lot of concerns about what her role on campus would be, and that it’s just upholding the systems that have historically held down certain students.” Trustees and high-level college administrators are aware of the petition and broader concern regarding Grinage’s position on the Board. David Hall ‘84 is a trustee and chair of the governance and nominating committee for the Board. One of the committee’s responsibilities is nominating potential trustees. “Members of the college shared some emails they received during the election and we are aware of the current petition,” Hall wrote over email. “We respect the opinions of our alumni and welcome their feedback. It is difficult, however, to respond to a petition that was started anonymously.” Vice President for College Relations Eileen Keeley went on to say that a single trustee does not have that much power. “They might have influence, they might have a voice, but a single trustee—she’s not on the executive committee,” Keeley said. “She’s a regular trustee attending meetings. She has a voice in those meetings, but she can’t decide anything on her own.” The executive committee of the Board does have some powers that regular trustees do not have, including the authority to act for the full Board between scheduled meetings. However, members of the executive committee do not have the individual ability to change college policy. Vice President and General Council Sarah Phillips commented that the relationship between the administration and the Board is a collaborative one.
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Three Davidson seniors continue education through noteworthy scholarships CLAIRE IRELAND ‘28 (SHE/HER) WEBSITE DESIGNER CLAIRE KELLY ‘25 (SHE/HER) CO-EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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s the semester comes to a close and another class of seniors look to graduate from Davidson next week, three standout members of the class of 2025 will head across the pond thanks to prestigious scholarships. Madeline Dierauf ‘25 has been named a Rhodes Scholar, and Grace McGuire ‘25 and Steve Mirabello ‘25 have been named W. Thomas Smith Scholars. Some might recognize McGuire for her comedic timing with her fellow improv members in Oops! or for her hosting skills for Union Board trivia this year. Others might have heard Dierauf play the fiddle in the Duke Family Performance Hall with her Appalachian folk band Wilder Flower and know Mirabello for his extensive work with The College Crisis Initiative or his ultimate frisbee skills. Their extracurricular and academic achievements speak for themselves, and these students will continue to add to their list of accomplishments in England. The Rhodes Scholarship is a fully funded, international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford. The Smith Scholarship, established by Tom Smith
‘48, funds all eligible expenses associated with a full-time graduate program in any field at a major university outside the United States for up to one year. For Dierauf, her passion for both the fiddle and academics made up the heart of her application to the Rhodes Scholarship. An independent study with Professor of Religious Studies Dr. Anne Wills made clear that these two components of Dierauf’s identity held profound intersections and led her to pursue a masters in American studies and philosophical theology. “We just read a novel a week more or less, and they were all American novels from the 20th century [...] it got me thinking about regional or folk literature, and how that could be sort of similar [to the] emotional feel to music,” Dierauf said. This interest in folk art compelled Dierauf to conduct research this past summer for Professor of English Dr. Hudson Vincent. Dierauf began to research the ballads that often accompanied the shipping of prisoners from England to the colonizing effort in the Americas. “I got to look at ballads about people who are being convicted of very minor crimes and sent from England to the Americas to help colonize. There are a lot of old broadside ballads about that because it tends to be sort of a folk form about lower class experiences,” Dierauf explained. “That really helped me make my pitch for
these fellowships. [I want] to think about how being in England and having access to old ballad archives would be really valuable historically and also artistically, bringing together literature and the academic side with the full art side,” Dierauf said. McGuire, whose mother and sister both pursued masters in the United Kingdom, is excited to carry on somewhat of a family tradition while also creating her own unique experiences at the University of Cambridge. “My mom went to [Cambridge] for her masters so [...] when I was 12, we went to England and she said, ‘We have to go to Cambridge for a day’ and I remember being so in awe [...] As a 12-year-old, when people are like, ‘Where do you want to go to college?’ I’d always say, ‘Cambridge,’” McGuire described. “I keep joking, it’s kind of like going to Hogwarts.” As a digital studies and art history double major, McGuire is excited to pursue her masters in digital humanities because of the versatility of the field. McGuire, whose art history thesis revolved around how AI labels pictures submitted by family and friends, has studied how art has adapted to the modern age. “When we all started at Davidson, AI wasn’t a thing at all, and now we’re graduating and it’s more of a thing. I guess that’s what I think is super cool about the digital world, [it’s] that things are constantly evolving and developing
Madeline Dierauf ‘25 is a Rhodes Scholarship grantee. Photo provided by Madeline Dierauf ‘25. [...] [When] I think of what I’m going to do in ten years, I don’t think it is necessarily something that exists right now.” For Mirabello, who will attend the London School of Economics to pursue a masters in philosophy and public policy, studying abroad is not unfamiliar territory. In the summer after his first year at Davidson, he went to France as part of a group investigation project and
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