TLS Brochure 2006

TLS 2006 Trustee Leader Scholar Program

Community Service and Social Action

Bard College

Bard College’s Trustee Leader Scholar Program supports undergraduate leadership development in the context of hands-on, student-initiated community service projects.

Founded in 1860, Bard is a four-year college of the liberal arts and sciences.

It offers the bachelor of arts degree with concentration in more than 40 academic programs in four divisions. In addition to its residential undergraduate college, Bard provides many innovative study-abroad opportunities, administers several research institutes, and has seven accredited graduate programs.

For more information about Bard College, visit www.bard.edu.

AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian

Theme for the Year: Privilege “You are either hungry or about to be hungry.” I say this to the TLS students at our opening retreat every year. The body calls out, “I want food, I want warmth, I want sex, I want, I want, I want.” We spend our days fulfilling these demands, sometimes at the expense of other organisms. Ernest Becker, an anthropologist and social theorist, put it this way in his book Escape from Evil: If at the end of each person’s life he were to be presented with the living spectacle of all that he had organismically incorporated in order to stay alive, he might well feel horrified by the living energy he had ingested.

The horizon of a gourmet, or even the average person, would be taken up with hundreds of chickens, flocks of lambs and sheep, a small herd of steers, sties full of pigs, and rivers of fish. The din alone would be deafening. To paraphrase Elias Canetti, each organism raises its head over a field of corpses, smiles into the sun, and declares life good.

Human beings also experience and require loving bonds. We know ourselves through the eyes of others. We need to touch and be touched. Selfless action floods us with warmth, warmth generated by a quickening in the blood and breath. Herein lies the great human struggle: the reconciliation of compassion and desire. Sometimes we take the biggest piece of cake and sometimes we give it away. How we come to terms with the primal gap between self and other determines what kind of human beings we are.

Privilege and distributive justice have been major topics for the past three centuries. Philosophers, social theorists, theologians, politicians, and activists have written beautiful arguments for and against socialism, free market capitalism, the entrepreneurial spirit, trickle-down, upward mobility, volunteered simplicity, and globalism. Many of the arguments revolve around the idea of responsibility and the moral imperatives that emanate from it.

Let me posit that the idea of personal or collective responsibility cannot achieve a balanced world. Consider this simple reason to work toward universal distributive justice: it is energetically right. The world will simply be a better place to be in when everyone is fed, housed, and clothed. I think everyone knows this.

Even hardened misers and advocates of excess know this. Everyone has seen the pictures. It is not a question of available information. What’s going on? Why don’t human beings share reasonably? Why do we have post-Katrina New Orleans, a segregated, Third World disaster within our own borders?

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I think it goes back to the body and its limitations. I can only truly feel me, my own skin, my own desire. In order to want to share my cake with my sister, I must have a felt sense of her, an experience that her welfare affects my own. This constitutes empathy, and it is a challenging, elusive thing. In a cultural era that favors the individual and exonerates greed, it is vital that we develop sensitive awareness of others. When we learn about other people’s particular kinds of pain and humiliation, it makes it difficult to marginalize them. The barriers and fictions that create “us” versus “them” dissolve. We are propelled, struggling together, toward solidarity.

Expanding the sense of who constitutes “us” is the fundamental mission of TLS itself. In a first effort to bridge the existential gap between people, I ask prospective students, “Who is your project for, and how do you know they want it?” TLS students must answer this question, or at least wrestle with it. Otherwise they perpetuate elitism and paternalism in their projects.

Service, when it is rendered authentically, is the clearest and most direct way to create a world that reflects an expanded notion of us. In TLS we aren’t trying to create the “right” world, the “morally correct” world, but simply the world we want to be in. That is a world in which human beings proactively witness others, and everyone’s wants are addressed.

There are so many ways to look at human motivation and worth. Obviously it is impossible to solve everyone’s differences in two pages, but will you consider a few questions?

Are you willing to live in a genuinely fair world?

What would your life look like in such a world?

How would your life be different than it is now?

We are all trying to make the world the way we want it. Leadership development in TLS means relentlessly exploring these questions, and learning to create the world we want to be in. I deeply hope the students in the program want to create a world driven by justice and decency, but I cannot guarantee that they will. I can only provide tools. A final question: What stops you from making the world the way you want it?

Sincerely, Paul Marienthal Director, Trustee Leader Scholar Program

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The Trustee Leader Scholar Program What is TLS?

The Trustee Leader Scholar Program (TLS) is the leadership development program for undergraduate students at Bard College. Leadership development in the TLS Program happens in the context of hands-on community service projects.

Who’s in TLS?

TLS students come from every academic discipline on campus. There are about 50 TLS students each year. Most of them remain active in the program throughout their college careers.

What do TLS students do?

TLS students design and implement service projects of their own choosing. For example, they build homes in Nicaragua, run General Education Diploma (GED) programs in local prisons, teach English as a Second Language (ESL) classes for the local Hispanic population, and work with international HIV/AIDS advocacy groups. TLS students write extensive proposals, budgets, reports, and personal accounts of their activities. They meet one-on-one with the TLS administrators and attend workshops and retreats to explore and discuss issues in leadership.

What makes TLS special?

The director and staff of the TLS Program support students in taking substantial risks as they turn their own passionate interests into actions. We encourage students to truly challenge themselves—organizationally, ethically, emotionally, and politically. This is exciting work that makes a difference in the world, often in surprising ways.

Leadership is a complex process

Leadership is never solely synonymous with power. While there are many ways to lead, all leadership styles are not equally worthwhile even if they appear to get things done. We ask students to experiment with ways of leading that help them advance toward their goals. Effective leadership often boils down to paying close attention to particular circumstances, people, personalities, body language, and histories. In any given situation there are multiple options for action.

What is the ultimate goal of TLS?

TLS strives to put capable, sensitive adults into the world who have the ability to design, plan, fund, and implement large-scale projects that matter to people.

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How does TLS differ from similar programs?

Unlike many other colleges that offer academic credit for service learning, Bard has chosen to keep community service and academic life separate. This makes it possible for students to plan and carry out ambitious projects that span multiple years. For their participation in the program students receive transcript recognition and stipends. It is worth noting that many TLS students have said, “I’d have done it anyway.”

How does one apply to the TLS Program?

Bard students are considered by application on a rolling, year-round basis. The best way to start the process is to talk with the TLS Office staff, who are always open to hearing the words, “I have a TLS project.”

How can you help?

Making contacts, building networks, and creating webs of action are crucial to project success. TLS projects flourish because enthusiastic students, faculty, administrators, and citizens outside of the academic environment generously give their time, creative energy, and financial support.

This Thursday at Astor we began by writing poems about our favorite things. The poems became pictures, and the pictures became characters. Before we knew it, we were speeding away from a hungry dinosaur in a rocket-powered motor home. As the energy and conflict swelled, a tree appeared in our forest and suggested that we make peace. The kids found resolution between their characters. It was heartening to see that they felt safe enough to play and to watch the ways that they helped each other through the wild world that they’d created.

When I watch the kids work, hear their stories, try to guide them through difficulties, I wonder how it can be that such little people are struggling with such big monsters. The questions that they raise for me make this work about more than just reaching out my hands. I think about why and how and in what directions I am reaching. I am learning how to look and how to see, so that my intentions can be effective.

—Leah Schrader, Children’s Expressive Arts Project

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Current Projects Want to make a difference?

You are invited to get involved in student-driven projects that run the gamut from hurricane relief work in New Orleans to tutoring Hudson Valley immigrants in English. The TLS Office advises and supports some 35 current projects that need volunteers like you.

Have your own idea for a project?

Meet with us to discuss how to make your project come to life.

Paul Marienthal, Director Susanna Armbruster, Assistant to the Director

Academic Advancement Program (AAP)

The AAP guides juniors and seniors at Hudson High School, in Hudson, N.Y., through the complex college admissions process, enabling them to pursue higher education at an institution of their choice. The program provides workshops and college student mentors to help, on a one-on-one basis, high school students prepare for college and to support them individually through a very challenging process.

Student Leader: Cesia Minemann The Astor Alternative Music Education Project

The Astor Day Treatment Center is a comprehensive diagnostic and treatment center for children who are emotionally disturbed. This project fills an important void in the Astor Center’s student curriculum: the absence of musical stimulation. The center invites Bard students to create “music days,” such as show-andtell with an instrument, found-object orchestras, group sing-alongs, lessons in blues history, and tutorials in sound recording.

Student Leader: Allison Cekala Astor Home for Children Bard Volunteers

The Astor Home for Children in Rhinebeck, N.Y., is a residential facility for emotionally disturbed children. Since 1997 hundreds of Bard student volunteers have been part of these children’s lives by sharing their love of creative writing, arts and crafts, photography, gardening, and theater and musical performances.

Currently 20 Bard students participate in the program each week.

Student Leader: Patrick Paglen

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Activists Worldwide AIDS/HIV and Reproductive Education (AWARE)

AWARE’s mission is to combat AIDS and HIV by engaging youth in reproductive health education and implementing peer health education and harm-reduction programs that work with the values and goals of local communities.

AWARE: Bali seeks to train selected Balinese students on the Indonesian island to deliver practical education about AIDS and HIV. In August 2006, both male and female students will be selected as potential peer educators from high schools in the Kuta and Denpasar regions. Faculty advisers will also be chosen. Peer health educators from UNICEF will work in conjunction with AWARE members to deliver AWARE’s AIDS prevention curriculum to the selected students and staff. The newly trained peer health educators will then introduce the program to the entire student body populations in their respective Balinese schools. This will include a general introduction to AIDS and HIV awareness, sexual reproductive health, and harm reduction. Peer educators and mentors will provide monthly updates followed by a program evaluation and forum for improvement.

Student Leader: Nick Shapiro AWARE: St. Petersburg is committed to combating the spread of HIV/AIDS by helping to develop a culture of volunteerism among secondary school students in that city. Through the development of cooperative educational programs that engage young people and their families, this program, set to begin in the summer of 2006, will emphasize the importance of healthy lifestyle choices and human rights. These programs, which will largely manifest themselves in the form of peer education, will work to break through rampant prejudice, stigmatization, and a drug culture that is quickly paralyzing the adolescent population of St. Petersburg. By creating a lively program that people will want to get involved in, students hope to create a safe space for anyone involved with or interested in the HIV/AIDS community.

Student Leader: Genya Shimken

The TLS Program sent me to St. Petersburg, but my project sent me into myself.

—Genya Shimken, AWARE: St. Petersburg

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Bard Buddies

Bard Buddies is a group dedicated to enhancing the lives of people with mental retardation. Adults from the Association of Retarded Citizens in Kingston, N.Y., are paired with Bard students to build real relationships through parties, outings, and recreational activities.

Student Leader: Allison Cekala Bard College Community Garden

Since 1997 the Bard College Community Garden has been a haven for agricultural enthusiasts from Bard and beyond. People gather in the garden for weekly potlucks and work parties during the growing season and help to maintain its fruits, vegetables, and flowers. This year, for the first time, there were more raspberries than could be picked. (Flower cutting is encouraged!)

Student Leader: Nathan Gandrud The Bard-Hudson Mentoring Program

The Bard-Hudson Mentoring Program seeks to create positive options for atrisk youth in Hudson, N.Y., through one-on-one mentoring relationships with Bard undergraduate volunteers.

Student Leaders: Diana Vazquez and Sascha Goldhor Bard Prison Initiative Volunteers (BPI)

BPI is helping to restore higher education to the prisons of New York. Created

by Bard students and developed as a TLS project, the Initiative currently operates satellite campuses of the College within two New York State prisons, Eastern and Woodbourne Correctional Facilities. BPI currently enrolls 85 incarcerated students in an associate of arts degree program; in 2006, the Initiative will expand to offer a bachelor’s degree at both of these sites.

Founded as a student project, the Initiative continues to engage the campus community and has a profound effect on the intellectual life of the College. In collaboration with TLS, the Initiative organizes students from campus to facilitate a host of education programs in five regional prisons. Each week, roughly 40 students visit regional prisons as volunteers. They facilitate a wide variety of precollege opportunities, from GED mentoring to courses in theology and workshops in the arts. These on-campus students are now able to enroll in a range of classes related to their experiences with BPI, and many volunteer with the

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Initiative throughout their four years at Bard. Bard BPI alumni/ae have gone on to organize similar volunteer programs across the country.

Student Leader: Maida Ives Poetry Workshop (Beacon Correctional Facility) Since 2001, students have offered a poetry workshop at this prison for women. At the end of each semester, the women’s writing is published in an anthology and celebrated with public readings by students and inmates in the prison and by students at Bard.

GED Tutoring Program (Beacon, Eastern, Greene, and Hudson Correctional Facilities) Students provide one-on-one assistance to inmates working to obtain the General Education Diploma. At Eastern, the program is also offered in Spanish.

Education in the Community BPI frequently hosts discussions on campus focusing on justice issues of regional and national concern. Most recently, these events have examined the controversial issue of jail expansion in Dutchess County, obstacles facing New Yorkers after their release from prison, and Aristotelian questions of truth and justice.

Every week when I go to prison I walk down many hallways all freshly mopped by inmates. Sometimes I walk by the men mopping, in my dirty boots. I have to walk these halls to get to the school room where I tutor, but I feel so bad dirtying the floor.

—Maida Ives, Bard Prison Initiative

What I liked about this class was that you didn’t come in here to teach us. You came to teach us how to teach ourselves. That’s why it worked.

—Inmate at Eastern Correctional Facility on the last night of class, Fall 2005

Conversations on Education

Conversations on Education is a biweekly workshop for Bard students who are currently teaching or are interested in the field of education. Participants reflect upon teaching and learning through writing and discussion, and they take turns

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teaching workshops on topics of their choosing. Conversations on Education explores a wide variety of issues in education to help participants learn who, what, and how they want to teach and why they feel compelled to do so.

Student Leaders: Ariana Jostad-Laswell and Rachel Schragis Eco-Discoverers

Eco-Discoverers is an environmental education program for 8- to 12-year-old children from Red Hook, Tivoli, and Hudson, N.Y. In partnership with Time Space Limited, an arts and community advocacy organization in Hudson, Bard student volunteers lead trips to important outdoor locations in the area, including Tivoli Bays, Hawthorn Valley Farm, and the Hudson Valley Raptor Center. The trips, which take place every other Saturday, focus on themes such as local agriculture, water, and botany. Eco-Discoverers strives to give children a basic understanding of local ecosystems. Children are also offered time to play and explore, giving them a holistic sense of the outdoors while learning about the area in which they live.

Student Leaders: Ariana Jostad-Laswell and Rachel Sanders

In Eco-Discoverers this semester, I’ve realized that the content we introduce the children to serves as a vehicle for letting them explore outdoors and learn to play together. At the beginning of the semester the barriers between the children from two different places/backgrounds were apparent. Lately, Jabber carries the younger boys on his back. Sophie leaves saying, “Brittany is my friend.” I want to keep going because we are doing something small to break down social barriers as well as teaching the difference between coniferous and deciduous trees.

—Ariana Jostad-Laswell, Eco-Discoverers

Expressive Arts Outreach (EXAO)

Expressive arts is the use of materials, dance, music, and theater to help people deal with challenging life circumstances. EXAO provides a framework for students who seek to utilize expressive arts techniques in their projects. Expressive arts training is provided by professional practitioners for continuing and new student volunteers.

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Children’s Expressive Arts Project (CEAP) As a part of Expressive Arts Outreach, CEAP provides disadvantaged children with artistic tools to help them cope with everyday life. Through workshops they conduct with children and their caregivers, CEAP students lay foundations for constructive life change through the expressive arts. Students take part in ongoing training and offer workshops locally at the Astor Home in Rhinebeck. During the summer of 2004 they partnered with World Vision Myanmar’s Street and Working Children Project to offer workshops in that troubled country.

During 2005, CEAP students worked with children in Ghana, Thailand, and Cambodia. Four students returned to Myanmar (Burma) in January 2006.

Student Leaders: Kaythee Hlaing, Megan Kerins, Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford, Leah Schrader, Thomas Arndt, and Emily Diaz Expressive Arts Outreach: India During the spring 2006 semester, the student leader of EXAO: India will work with the women of the Sonagachi district of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). It is in this district that most of the city’s sex trafficking is carried out, much of it by young girls who have been transported into the country illegally and forced into prostitution. EXAO: India is working with these women and their children to help them learn how to use expressive arts to experience new ways of creating and playing despite the environment and harsh circumstances of their lives.

Student Leader: Emily Diaz

As a TLS student, I’ve furthered my vision, distilled my want, tempered my desire to take my tools of passionate helping to as many as I can. When I returned to an orphanage in Burma, a little boy who I had taught some vocal rhythms the year before looked at me searchingly for a long while. Suddenly his eyes lit up and he said BOOM SHAKA-LAKA, BOOM SHAKA-LAKA! It darn well broke my heart.

—Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford, Children’s Expressive Arts Project

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The Flying Fiddlers Mentoring Program

The Flying Fiddlers Mentoring Program links Bard student volunteers with the Flying Fiddlers String Chorale (FFSC), a nonprofit youth music program that encourages and supports a lifelong love of music. Bard student volunteers participate in the FFSC outreach program in Kingston, N.Y., which offers free comprehensive ensemble and solo experience to a culturally and economically diverse group of children from Kingston and Poughkeepsie. The Bard mentors act as private instructors and coaches for quintets, quartets, trios, and duets during weekly sessions for students studying violin, viola, and cello. The work culminates in a series of performances in Dutchess and Ulster Counties, and on the Bard campus.

Student Leaders: Sophia Mak and Jennifer Holup Habitat for Humanity at Bard

Habitat for Humanity (HFH) volunteers travel to different sites in the United States to build affordable homes for those in need. Throughout the semester, students organize and participate in several fundraising projects such as bake sales, charity concerts, the East Meets West cultural show, and candy-gram sales to develop leadership skills and a sense of community among HFH members. The funds raised directly contribute to members’ registration fees to the Habitat for Humanity organization. Bard HFH volunteers traveled to Philadelphia during the 2005 spring recess and to rural western Pennsylvania in January 2006. Past work has been done in Kingston, N.Y., and in Thailand through the HFH Global Village Program.

Student Leader: Jennifer Feng Hurricane Relief

Hurricane Relief works on several fronts in response to the disaster that struck the Gulf Coast in 2005. The organization raises funds and awareness and provides logistical support for cleanup and building trips. Immediately following the storms in September, Hurricane Relief mounted successful clothing and funding drives. In January 2006, 120 Bard students traveled to New Orleans to participate in the most rigorous and dangerous kinds of cleanup in poorer areas of the city, with the goal of keeping homes in the hands of lower-income residents. Through on-campus organizing and events, and opportunities for hands-on volunteer work in both the South and local shelters, Hurricane Relief provides the Bard community with a sense of

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internal cohesion, and also functions to connect to the larger, national community.

Student Leaders: Stephen Tremaine, Sharin Glasser, and Jennifer Hendrix

I was thinking about non-local compassion; that is, wanting to make things better for someone you have never met. It would seem both easier and perhaps more effective to act locally, but where are the limits of this? Can we all be part of some larger community of strangers, caring for each other? Is that possible?

—Jennifer Hendrix, Hurricane Relief

HuTArt

HuTArt emphasizes innovative teaching methods to teach kids hip hop dance, graffiti art, and music. The group plans to work with high school students to build a yurt for use in workshops, exhibitions, and performances. This project, in the works for three years, has required its volunteers to become intensely engaged with the building-permit process.

Student Leader: Julia Webb-Payne La Voz

La Voz is a Spanish language newsletter that seeks to elevate the discourse and promote the work of the Hispanic and Latino populations of the Hudson Valley. This project involves networking with the communities that the project serves. It creates an outlet for Bard students of the Spanish language to practice their writing and translation skills. Perhaps most importantly, it creates a conversation between Bard and a largely invisible and growing Hispanic population. TLS students work directly with editor Mariel Fiori ’05 (former TLS student) on all aspects of production.

Student Leaders: Elisa Ureña and Nevena Gadjeva Middle Eastern Dance Collective

Students learn traditional Middle Eastern dances and choreograph their own in these exciting, student-led belly-dancing workshops. Participants explore the history and social politics associated with belly dancing, whose origins are in childbirth

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training, not in overt sexuality. The ethos of the collective is abundant mutual support, and for many participants, this is their first positive performance opportunity.

Student Leader: Victoria Jacobs Migrant Labor Project (MLP)

MLP is a student-based organization that works to improve the conditions of migrant laborers and their families in New York State, particularly the Hudson Valley, through community and campus education, direct service, research, and advocacy work. MLP also works with a coalition of organizations involved in the Justice for Farmworkers Campaign, which advances farmworker rights through a legislative agenda. Additionally, MLP works with local agencies and organizations dedicated to serving the migrant community. In doing so, the project helps spread awareness of services available to migrant workers and promotes student involvement in the expansion of these services.

Student Leader: Owen Thompson The Nicaragua Project

The Nicaragua Project is a service project committed to helping families of Chacraseca, Nicaragua. Devastated by a natural disaster nearly a decade ago, this impoverished community still has not reestablished many of the homes, crops, roads, and other infrastructure it once had. Student volunteers raise funds and expand awareness of the Chacrasecan culture within and around the Bard community. Annually, volunteers take part in a three-week trip to Nicaragua, where they live and work with the families of Chacraseca to build new, strong, and safe living structures. The project is organized in partnership with the Maryknoll nuns of New York and the village of Chacraseca. Special thanks to the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation for multiple-year funding.

Student Leader: Stephanie Wells Palestine Awareness Project

The Palestine Awareness Project works with grassroots community groups in the Balata refugee camp to inspire, teach, and allow for the release of emotion through art, community engagement, and education. A publication of original writings by camp residents, including work produced by the girls’ journalism team, will be published in the spring of 2006.

Student Leader: Kate Crockford

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The problem I continually grapple with during the course of my project and my life is that of reconciling my anger and sadness with my happiness and optimism. I look around me, seeing piles of corpses and wrongs, and flowers growing from the places I’d least expect.

—Kate Crockford, Palestine Awareness Project

Red Hook ESL Center

The Red Hook English as a Second Language (ESL) Center brings Englishspeaking and immigrant community members together through free drop-in English classes. The Center is organized and staffed by Bard student and local community volunteers. The center is open two nights a week, and has managed, even though Bard has no official summer session, to remain open throughout the year. Recently, the Red Hook ESL Center has reached out to workers on local farms and orchards by providing on-site teachers, and also by providing transportation to the Center itself.

Student Leaders: Sara Carnochan and Elisa Ureña Red Hook Residential Reciprocal Education Project

A group of Bard students leads weekly workshops for first offenders incarcerated at the Red Hook Residential Facility in Upper Red Hook, N.Y. The topics taken up are linked by the common theme of youth empowerment through creative verbal and written expression.

Student Leaders: Cynthia Mothersil and Pavel Paulino

I’ve learned that instead of trying to open a person’s eyes to the world, it’s better to just have them think of themselves. Eventually, they’ll see how they affect the world and will want to see what they’ve done.

—Pavel Paulino, Red Hook Residential Reciprocal Education Project

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Science Coffeehouse

The Science Coffeehouse provides an open monthly dialogue for Bardians to discuss current issues in science, such as genetically engineered organisms and subliminal messages.

Student Leader: Peter Milano Sui Generis

Sui Generis, translated as “of its own kind,” is a literary magazine that features original writing in foreign languages and original translations. All works are created by members of the Bard community. The group also organizes events every semester, ranging from panel discussions to poetry readings that promote and focus on multilingualism as an important medium for experiencing different cultures.

Student Leader: Nina Gantcheva Surrealist Training Circus

The Surrealist Training Circus is a forum, network, and workforce for creativity and performance. Circus members are expected to pursue training experiences including theater training, puppet making, costuming, and the study of spectacle. The circus attempts to disrupt the illusions of space, time, and social relationships using various elements of formal and informal theater within the public spaces of a private institution.

Student Leader: Kell Condon Time & Space Limited Tutoring Program

The Time & Space Limited Tutoring Program partners Bard student volunteers with the staff at Time & Space Limited (TSL) to offer at-risk Hudson, N.Y., middle school students a general-education tutoring program to help them succeed in their academic endeavors. TSL is an arts organization that considers its mission to carry local and global messages to the public about art, activism, and community exchange.

Student Leader: Jeremy Bennett Verse Noire

Verse Noire is Bard’s completely student-run literary magazine. It exists as a venue for the creative and imaginative work that has been overlooked by other Bard

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publications. The editors hold a firm belief in the validity of student writing, as well as the importance of student-to-student writerly collaboration. Students perform all parts of the editorial and layout processes. Different types or genres of writing are not discriminated against, as a wide variety of the work being produced by students on campus is represented. The constructive environment welcomes all student submissions and strives to serve, reflect, and illuminate Bard as an undergraduate writing community.

Student Leader: Bonnie Ruberg Visible/Invisible Disabilities Awareness Project (VIDAP)

VIDAP works to close the gaps between able and disabled people by raising awareness about disabilities through films, guest speakers, and discussions at Bard and beyond. During 2004, VIDAP’s student leader worked extensively with advocacy groups in Serbia and Hungary.

Student Leader: Nina Bektic Wayfinder Experience

Through physical activity and sportsmanship, as well as traditional and improvisational theatrical devices, the Wayfinder Experience immerses participants in an environment of play and cooperation, making mythologies and stories a reality that penetrates the campus environment.

Student Leader: Patrick Paglen Work Awareness Project (WAP)

Most of the people on the planet work hard with their bodies. This project is aimed at raising the awareness of Bard students about work. Students are invited to participate in discussions, conversations, readings, and physical projects important to their community (for example, the two student-run performance spaces: the Old Gym and SMOG). Ultimately the point is to appreciate the materials and elegance of the physical world. The WAP stays in close contact with the Student Labor Dialogue Project, a group devoted to supporting fair labor practices at Bard.

Student Leader: Nathan Gandrud

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Young Rhinebeck Youth Programs

In partnership with Bard College, Young Rhinebeck supports elementary and middle school children in Rhinebeck, N.Y., through tutoring and mentoring programs.

KitKat Mentoring Once a week, students from Bulkeley Middle School in Rhinebeck, N.Y., are brought to campus to meet with their Bard student mentors. Activities foster social skills, self-esteem, and a sense of creative wonder.

Student Leader: David (Kit) Martin Life, Learning, and Language This program at the Chancellor Livingston Elementary School in Rhinebeck, N.Y., is designed to meet the needs of children who are new to the United States. Mentors build relationships through one-on-one interactions with children from Mexico, Israel, Vietnam, India, and the Netherlands by providing language and homework support.

Student Leader: Jon Leslie Rhinebeck Connections Homework Help Program Rhinebeck Connections Homework Help Program offers after-school tutoring to students at Bulkeley Middle School in Rhinebeck, N.Y. Student Leader: Spencer Goot

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Selected Projects Supported by the TLS Office The TLS Office offers organizational and fund-raising advice, facilitation, limited seed money, and transportation to student groups at Bard who are involved in service and action endeavors. These projects are organized by Bard students who are not members of the TLS Program, but who utilize the resources of the TLS Office. Your project could be on this list!

Bard Journal of Social Science

A completely student-run, semiannual journal of social science (anthropology, economics, environmental studies, political science, psychology, and sociology).

This is an opportunity for students to publish original and insightful theories, research ideas and projects, and book reviews.

Care Bears

Care Bears is a group of students on campus who are dedicated to caring for their fellow students. When a student on campus gets sick they can call Care Bears and within 24 hours they will have a free care package delivered to their door filled with chicken soup, water, cough drops, tissues, and more.

The Great River Sweep

Every year Bard sends a contingent of workers to help clean up the shores of the Hudson River. This annual event is organized by Scenic Hudson, the most active environmental organization in the region.

SMOG

The Student Mechanic Operated Garage has been converted into a student-run performance space. The Surrealist Training Circus and many student bands are housed there.

Biodiesel Project

Students are in the process of creating a biodiesel processing unit on campus. The environmentally friendly fuel that is produced will be used to run service vehicles at the College.

Old Gym Performance Collective

The venerable and lovely Old Gym will soon be used as a serious performance venue. The Collective is largely student-organized and student-run. A student

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from each of the performance disciplines serves on a steering committee that oversees the space.

Make Art Now

Playwrights, actors, directors, musicians, and set designers have 24 hours to put on an evening of performance together. Everyone gathers, a theme is chosen, everyone disperses, writes, and builds, and 24 hours later, a series of 10-minute plays is performed. This fabulous, immediate art-making takes place once a semester.

World Social Forum

The TLS Office helps sponsor a student contingent to this important annual conference of international activism. Upon their return, the participating students give presentations, write articles, and mount photo shows to pass on newly won insights about globalism and its problems, challenges, and opportunities.

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We Need Your Support!

There are many creative ways for you to get involved in TLS projects.

Volunteer

Spend a day picking up trash from the banks of the Hudson River, help make it possible for kids to go to school in Ghana, be a mentor to a local child in need, or host a benefit for a project. Volunteers are the backbone of TLS projects.

Charitable Contributions

Many TLS projects rely on the generous financial support of people who want to make a difference in the world. With your support TLS students have helped to build two schools, a library, more than a dozen houses, and many projects that link people of all ages with valuable assistance.

Making a charitable contribution to Bard College, the Trustee Leader Scholar Program, or a specific TLS project is easy. Many of our projects also benefit from donations of goods and professional services, such as books and bikes for raffles, printing services, and well-maintained cars.

Making a Gift by Check

Checks can be made payable to Bard College. Please note TLS and a project name on your check if you would like your donation to go toward a particular project.

Checks and other correspondence should be sent to: The Trustee Leader Scholar Program Bard College PO Box 5000 Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000 Making a Gift by Credit Card

Bard College accepts VISA, MasterCard, and AMEX. To make a contribution over the telephone, please contact the Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs at 845-758-7415 or 1-800-BARDCOL. The TLS Program gratefully acknowledges the support of many individuals and foundations whose generosity makes our program possible. For further information, please contact Paul Marienthal, Director of the Trustee Leader Scholar Program and Associate Dean of Student Affairs, at 845-758-7056 or send e-mail to service@bard.edu.

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Selected Project Archive Bard-Aid Bard High School Early College Play/Mentoring Program Bard Space Program Chiapas Solidarity Project Children’s Gardening Program Contra Dance Club Disabilities Awareness Dorm Composting Free Press Ghana Project Grace Smith House Hudson Tutoring Human Rights Film Series Intercollegiate Energy Audit Iraq Watch Kosher-Halal Kitchen and Multipurpose Prayer Space Linden Avenue Middle School Drama Project Mexico Solidarity Network Delegation No Exceptions: Children’s Rights are Human Rights, Amnesty International Conference One Year Later (conference focusing on the antiwar movement) Outdoor Club Purple Bikes Register to Vote (Bard students successfully sued the state of New York for the right to vote in Dutchess County) Roving Readings Senior Citizen Writing Project STD of the Week Campus Education Project Student-Run Darkroom Student Theater Project The Thailand Project Understanding Arabs and Muslims Volunteers for Communities For the entire project archive, visit the TLS website: http://inside.bard.edu/tls Published by the Bard Publications Office. Photography by TLS students.

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In TLS we believe that positive energy and decency create lasting change.

In the face of despair we strive for the human response, bringing grace, humor, and even good-natured iconoclasm to a challenged world.

Bard College, PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000 845-758-7056, service@bard.edu, http://inside.bard.edu/tls

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