TLS Brochure 2008

TLS 2008 Trustee Leader Scholar Program

Community Service and Social Action

Bard College

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

Founded in 1860, Bard offers a four-year bachelor of arts in the liberal arts and sciences through approximately 50 academic programs in four divisions. It also offers a five-year dual degree in economics and finance (B.A./B.S.) and a five-year dual-degree program through The Bard College Conservatory of Music (B.A./B.Music).

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

Front cover: AWARE: Bali Inside front cover: Bard College Community Garden

Bard students, New Orleans Project

Theme for the Year

Wrestling with Oppression: Coming to Terms with Our Motives and Beliefs From kindergarten to college, students are taught about oppressive conditions in such times and places as colonial Africa, postwar Vietnam, the Deep South, the Old West, and corrupt corporate back rooms. There is talk, especially at the college level, of power and poverty, of race and gender, of homophobia and ethnic cleansing. The problems, however, invariably occur elsewhere: in the suburbs, in the homes of the wealthy, in the offices of shady politicians, in the ghetto, in the former Yugoslavia. The study of power abuse—racism, classism, sexism, etc.—is mostly theoretical and distant. Rarely does anyone in the college classroom locate, with any kind of precision, the ramifications of oppression inside of us.

In the Trustee Leader Scholar Program, we attempt to name how oppression actually affects us personally. We believe that untangling the collision of historical social forces with our own beliefs and prejudices is a challenging and lifelong project—and absolutely essential for doing liberatory work.

We ask ourselves hard questions. For example, what does it mean if I am a young white lesbian and I’m running the tolerance committee at a largely black high school? What does it mean if I’m a wealthy student from New York and I’m going door to door in New Orleans gathering data and developing strategies for rebuilding that stressed city? What does it mean if I’m a city girl from Chicago running a sexuality education group for young women in an economically depressed upstate village? What does it mean if I’m an able-bodied artist and I invite developmentally disabled adults to the often-provocative art gallery at the College?

For the past year every TLS student represented in this booklet has been making a list of hard questions like these, relevant to their own project. Working alone and in small groups, they have developed ways of speaking and acting that allow for a sensitive response to the very real and charged situations they face. It is messy and hard. The process is often unnerving and has caused many students to alter their projects.

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We do not do this as penance. We study global histories and the politics of pain and oppression so that we can promote life in continually smarter, more compassionate ways. We read widely. We honestly tug apart our own motives, and reflect on our own beliefs and actions. We examine instances when we may not have acted with a great deal of compassion or real understanding of others. We are flooded with a range of emotional responses, from sadness to anger and fear. Honest talk is often exposing and jarring, but it is critical to the process of raising awareness and understanding. In the face of our own discomfort, we remember that we are educating ourselves about the world so that we can move in it and energize it more effectively. We have hard conversations precisely so that we do not become paralyzed with self-doubt.

We are committed to ethically driven action, but we do not celebrate guilt or shame.

Life on this planet is amazing, challenging, and quirky. In TLS we act, as much as we can, from positive, life-affirming desire. We are in the business of creating real relationships with the people we encounter. The more information we have about ourselves and the world, the better chance we have of creating authentic connections. It starts with asking the hard questions.

Paul Marienthal Director

“TLS meetings are honest, brutal, and shocking. We’re living proof that people in the world want to make a difference and that people in the world will make a difference.

Human beings are not caught in the current; we are the current.”

—Melanie Reilly, Astor Home for Children Bard Volunteers

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Trustee Leader Scholar Program

What is TLS?

The Trustee Leader Scholar Program is the formal community service and social action program for undergraduate students at Bard College. TLS supports the liberal arts mission of enlightened citizenship: personal development in the context of community building.

Who is in TLS?

Every Bard student is eligible to apply to TLS, and TLS students come from every academic discipline on campus. Approximately 50 undergraduates participate in the program at any given time, and most TLS students remain actively involved in the program throughout their college career.

What do TLS students do?

TLS students design and implement service projects based on their own compelling interests. For example, they organize relief efforts in New Orleans; run General Education Diploma (GED) programs in local prisons; mentor at-risk students in Hudson, New York; provide music lessons for economically challenged teenagers in Kingston, New York; and build houses in hurricane-ravaged Nicaragua.

TLS students write extensive proposals, budgets, and personal accounts of their activities. They meet one-on-one with program administrators and attend workshops and retreats to explore and discuss issues in community service, fund-raising, public speaking, and facilitation.

What makes TLS special?

The TLS program supports students in taking substantial risks as they turn their own passionate interests into action. The fundamental criteria for a TLS project is that it challenge the student—organizationally, ethically, politically, and emotionally. TLS prepares leaders who can generate an idea, then create an organization and make a plan to manifest that idea. Many colleges provide ample community service and volunteer opportunities. Bard is one of the few that puts substantial resources and trust behind student initiative.

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What are some key values in TLS?

TLS addresses the issues of paternalism and privilege that are stirred up by the notion of “helping others.” Students are encouraged to examine the world, read widely about oppression, identify their own motivations and needs, and experiment with ways of organizing that treat other people as partners, not passive recipients. TLS considers this life training.

What is the ultimate goal of TLS?

TLS strives to put into the world capable, sensitive adults who have the ability to design, plan, fund, and implement large-scale projects that matter and that influence environments positively and humanely. Many TLS students leave Bard capable of creating their own nonprofit organizations.

How does TLS differ from similar programs?

TLS is a leadership development program, not a service-learning program; TLS students do not earn academic credit for their efforts. For their participation, TLS program members receive stipends and transcript recognition. Separating their TLS work from academics allows participating students to design and implement ambitious projects that span multiple years. TLS recognizes that organizing a major service project while completing Bard’s rigorous academic requirements is a demanding load, and is not for everyone. It is worth noting, however, that many TLS students have said, “My project was the most important thing I did in college.”

How do you apply to the TLS program?

TLS applications are considered on a rolling, year-round basis. The best way to start the process is to talk with TLS staff members, who are always open to hearing the words, “I have a TLS project.” Students are encouraged to consider TLS from the moment they arrive on campus, and several first-year students are on the current roster.

How can you help if you are not a Bard student?

Making contacts, building networks, and creating webs of action are crucial to a project’s success. TLS projects flourish because of the enthusiasm of Bard students, faculty, and administrators, as well as community members outside of the academic environment who generously give their time, creative energy, and financial support.

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Current Projects

Join a TLS project Every project listed below needs volunteers. A TLS student initiated and facilitates each of these projects, but the success of the work always depends on widespread participation. Please get involved.

Have your own idea for a project?

Meet with us to discuss how to make your project come to life—even if your idea is still in formation. We are always available.

Paul Marienthal, Director Susanna Armbruster, Assistant Director Room 213, Campus Center 845-758-7056 service@bard.edu Astor Home for Children Bard Volunteers

The Astor Home for Children in Rhinebeck, New York, is a residential facility for emotionally challenged children. Since 1997 hundreds of Bard student volunteers have become a part of the lives of these children by sharing their love of creative writing, arts and crafts, photography, gardening, and theater and musical performances.

Student Leader: Melanie Reilly Activists’ Worldwide AIDS/HIV and Reproductive Education (AWARE)

AWARE: Bali assists the HIV-positive community of Denpasar, Indonesia, in its efforts to educate local youth about HIV/AIDS, intravenous drug use, and general reproductive health. The program works in conjunction with YAKEBA, a Balinese nonprofit composed largely of HIV-positive former heroin addicts. In the summer of 2006 two members of AWARE: Bali traveled to Denpasar to synthesize a curriculum out of Indonesian and English texts.

AWARE: Bali also assisted ex-addict program facilitators in teaching high school–age students during an intensive summerlong program. Topics included HIV/AIDS, other STIs (sexually transmitted infections), destigmatization, general reproductive health, and the perils of narcotics. The ultimate goal of the project is to create a team of high school–aged educators who can

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deliver important information to their peers. The curriculum included Q&A sessions and lectures by local doctors, testimonies of HIV-positive persons, games explaining scientific functions, and a trip to the local prison, which is an incubator of heroin addiction and HIV transmission.

Student Leaders: Nick Shapiro and Carolyn Lazard AWARE: Russia seeks to engage young people in St. Petersburg, Russia, in the battle against the growing HIV/AIDS pandemic. During the summer, AWARE works with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on the ground in Russia, supporting community outreach and in-school education programs that emphasize healthy lifestyles and harm-reduction techniques, such as safer sex practices and needle sterilization. During the school year, AWARE works on the Bard campus to raise funds for these NGOs and promote awareness of the global AIDS epidemic by organizing teach-ins, movie screenings, and speakers.

Student Leader: Genya Shimkin

“I was an asthmatic in a sea of smokers, a vegetarian in a forest of carnivores, and an activist trying to navigate some of the most tedious bureaucracies I’d ever encountered. I wrote Paul an e-mail from Russia that basically said, ‘I’m exhausted, I can’t breathe, I can’t eat, and no one has returned my calls or e-mails.’ He wrote back and said, ‘This is you coming up against real life, real experiences. This is good.’ This response was all the motivation I needed.”

—Genya Shimkin, AWARE: Russia

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Bard Biodiesel Co-op

With the generous support of Bard’s Building and Grounds Department and local tradesmen, the Biodiesel Co-op has built a fully operational biodiesel processor.

Members of the Co-op make fuel from restaurant waste grease for use in vehicles, home furnaces, and farm equipment. This locally based effort pushes the limits of the petroleum paradigm and functions to critically engage us with the complex relationship between economics and environmentalism. Are we truly seeking a cleaner burning fuel or simply a cheap fuel? The processor also initiates newcomers into the world of modern technologies, demonstrating that everyone can make their own cleaner energy source and thereby contribute, in a small way, toward lessening environmental disaster.

Student Leader: Jack Woodruff Bard College Community Garden

Since 1997 the Bard College Community Garden has been a haven for agricultural enthusiasts from Bard and beyond. During the growing season, people from the College and surrounding communities meet in the garden for weekly potluck suppers and work parties, helping to maintain the garden’s abundant fruits, vegetables, and flowers. The garden is a favorite year-round gathering spot for students: a place for conversation, campfires, and drumming. Planned improvement projects for 2008 include an outdoor bread oven and 400 feet of additional blueberry plantings. There is always work to do, and you are welcome to participate.

Contact: Paul Marienthal Bard Health Initiative (BHI)

The Bard Health Initiative is a collective of highly motivated, health-vigilant undergraduates who represent a diverse range of academic disciplines. Drawing from the appreciable resources of the College, BHI is eager to mobilize financial resources and personnel to promote local health initiatives, entailing the advocacy, administration, and implementation of primary, preventative, oral, and behavioral health care for underserved and excluded populations, especially those ineligible for health insurance.

Student Leader: Nick Shapiro

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Bard Jo-Wo-Liech Project

This project compiles and distributes musical recordings made by men living in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in northern Kenya. To date, more than 600 traditional Sudanese melodies and songs have been recorded. An album of this music will be sold to Sudanese who are part of the African Diaspora and now living in the West. All proceeds from album sales will be distributed back into the Kakuma Refugee Camp.

Student Leader: David “Kit” Martin Bard Math Circle

The Bard Math Circle is a math outreach program for local middle school students. Its aim is to provide an entertaining and stimulating experience that encourages critical and creative thinking. For the Bard students that lead the sessions, the Math Circle is an opportunity to experience math outside the world of academia and to face the difficult question of why the math world is so insular. Through cooperative exploration and hands-on activities we aspire to cross the barrier that so often exists between math teacher and math student. The Bard Math Circle thus serves to actively challenge the separation between math as a discipline and math as it exists in society at large.

Student Leaders: Shelley Stahl and Ezra Winston Bard Prison Initiative Volunteers (BPI)

BPI is a collective of Bard College faculty, students, and staff that establishes connections between educational institutions and correctional facilities in New York State. Volunteers organize and train facilitators for BPI’s inmate educational programs, including the A.A. degree–granting program, General Education Diploma (GED) programs, and poetry workshops. The BPI Volunteers project sponsors speakers, workshops, and conferences at Bard on topics relevant to prison life and the prison industry in New York.

Student Leaders: Maida Ives and Lilly Bechtel

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Children’s Expressive Arts Project (CEAP)

CEAP brings the practice of expressive arts to disadvantaged children. Expressive arts is a discipline that focuses on both community art making and the process of finding a personal and creative voice of expression through play, visual arts, movement, theater, music, and poetry. The arts and art making have the capacity to help us respond to and shape the world through playful exploration. CEAP members may find themselves building forts or painting murals with children; they may also find themselves sitting with young people as they struggle with questions and emotional moments that arise. Expressive arts allows children to consider their challenges in safe, imaginative ways.

CEAP works locally at the Astor Home for Children in Rhinebeck, New York, a residential home for emotionally at-risk children, and the Children’s Annex in Kingston, New York, a school for children with autism. Since June 2006, members of CEAP have also made biannual visits to the James M. Singleton Charter School (K–8) in New Orleans, facilitating expressive arts workshops during and after school hours. Members of CEAP have also taken trips to work with children and young people in Burma (Myanmar), Ghana, Thailand, Colombia, India, and Sri Lanka.

Student Leaders: Anna Putnam, Rebeka Radna, and Emily Wolff Coalition for Peru Relief (CPR)

The mission of the Bard Coalition for Peru Relief is to raise awareness and assist people in need in developing countries. CPR’s first major project focuses on Peru and the victims of the cataclysmic earthquake that occurred there in August 2007.

Project members are working hard to gather support and aid for the more than 80,000 people affected by the devastation. The group consists of a secretary, a treasurer, and a publicist, as well as artistic and coordinating committees. CPR’s ultimate goal is to assemble a team of Bard students and teachers who will travel to Peru and help begin rebuilding a small village. Organizers also hope to include Spanish-speaking American doctors and construction teams from Boston. These actions will benefit the people of Peru and impact students and faculty in the Bard community as well. Participants will share their experiences in conferences and public presentations on campus.

Student Leader: Carlos Apostle

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Community Arts Outreach (CAO)

Community Arts Outreach is dedicated to building a sense of relationship to community through art making. CAO students develop an understanding of expressive arts practices by taking workshops and meeting weekly with a trained expressive arts practitioner. They also use their acquired skills to organize and facilitate art projects in local communities as well as on the Bard campus. CAO uses public space in unexpected ways to create unique community experiences and provides opportunities for people to collaborate in ways they would probably never explore alone. Ideas for projects range from simply providing art supplies on a sunny day in a local park to creating a work over many weeks with people in a school or nursing home.

Student Leader: Philip Berezney Conversations on Education (COE)

Conversations on Education provides a forum for the Bard community to discuss issues of education on a local and global level. COE has gained prominence in the community as a place for students interested in teaching and/or concerned with educational issues from an activist’s point of view. Meetings typically consist of a hands-on activity that highlights a topic the group has chosen to discuss, followed by an open dialogue in which all group members have the freedom to emphasize and pursue related issues of concern. For example, the fall 2007 semester began with each member creating a map of his/her educational background. The maps were used as visual aids for sharing with the group how education shaped his/her understanding of the world. Group discussions have ranged from abstract pedagogical topics (What is education? What does it mean to educate and be educated?) to more focused, practical topics dealing with the art of teaching (What makes a good teacher?). Each member has the opportunity to teach an hour-long lesson on any topic, followed by constructive critique from the group. COE members learn about and visit various types of schools, and schedule, for the benefit of the greater community, open workshops on such topics as expressive arts and public speaking.

Student Leaders: Alison Sickler and Lauren Dunn

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Diamondz Hudson Young Women’s Group

Diamondz is the collaborative project of a Bard College student and a ColumbiaGreene Community College student. Volunteers meet weekly over dinner at Time & Space Limited in Hudson, New York, with a group of 13- to 17-year-old girls for discussion, craft projects, readings, poetry writing, field trips, movie screenings, guest speakers, and other creative projects.

Student Leader: Emma Alabaster Eco-Discoverers (Eco-D)

Eco-D is an environmental education program for 8- to 12-year-old children from Red Hook, Tivoli, and Hudson, New York. In partnership with Time & Space Limited in Hudson, Bard student volunteers and the children visit outdoor locations such as the Tivoli Bays and Hawthorne Valley Farm. Focusing on themes such as local agriculture, water, and botany, the program, held on alternate Saturdays, gives the children a basic understanding of local ecosystems. Children are also offered time to play and explore the outdoors while they learn about the area in which they live.

Student Leaders: Rachel Sanders and Hannah Sunshine Germantown Tutoring Program

The Germantown tutoring program is an after-school homework help program that pairs Bard undergraduates with middle and high school students in the Germantown Central School. The tutors provide help in all subjects and work alongside the students to help them get a better understanding of the material.

Student Leader: Spencer Goot

“Last Saturday was frigid, with sharp winds biting through warm layers. Yet we found a sheltered spot out of the wind and tested the pond for DO, pH, nitrates, and phosphates. We then braved the ice-laced path to circumnavigate the pond we had just tested. I think it was the longest hike we’d ever done with the kids, and despite them being cold and tired, they were enthusiastic. That’s what makes Eco so fulfilling for me.”

—Rachel Sanders, Eco-Discoverers

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Green Campus Project

Climate change is a real and global problem that highlights how truly interconnected all the world’s people really are. While Bard is a seemingly small and benign presence in an isolated rural area, our community makes a significant contribution to this global problem. Working closely with the Bard Environmental Resources Department (BERD), this project aims to support discussion and implementation of actions that will reduce Bard’s ecologic “footprint,” including the adoption of clean energies, reductions in energy demand through more efficient building and transportation practices, investment in firms that minimize their environmental impacts, and consumption of local and regional foods. The project will help make Bard an example of a community with minimum ecologic impact.

Student Leader: Sam Scoppettone Green Pages

The mission of Green Pages is to facilitate the information sharing and community building that will nurture a local network of economic and social cooperation. Participants work to encourage the creation of cooperative, place-based efforts, and to support and link those that already exist. To this end, project members are compiling a “green pages” directory of resources to meet local needs and to serve as a tool for cooperation and networking in the area from Rhinebeck, New York, in the southwest, to Germantown and Livingston, New York, in the northeast. This is an area that is geographically defined by a flat valley on the east bank of the Hudson River, north and south of the Tivoli Bays. Currently, the group is compiling the directory by examining all of the businesses, services, and organizations in the area to see if they fit criteria for serving a sustainable and beneficial role. The next step, planned for the spring of 2008, is to create online and printed versions of the directory. In the future, Green Pages hopes to create a quarterly newsletter that will emphasize the cooperative aspects of the directory.

Student Leader: Anya Raskin

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The Hudson Project

Students for Students seeks to foster a greater sense of community at Hudson High School by creating a space for students to bond over common beliefs, qualities, and goals, and to explore and embrace the differences among them as well. Bard College students help to provide resources and ideas, but all discussions and activities are led by Hudson students and serve to better understand identity issues.

Student Leader: Julz Benedict Hudson Gay-Straight Discussion Group is a high school−aged group that provides a nonjudgmental conversational forum for young people who are exploring queer issues. Bard students act as mentors, advocates, and open ears for Hudson youth.

Student Leader: Molly Cox International Tuberculosis Relief Project

The International Tuberculosis Relief Project is a small group of tenacious students who are contributing to the global fight against tuberculosis (TB). In the United States, TB is considered a disease of the past: drugs were formulated, a vaccine was developed, and the disease disappeared. Yet TB statistics internationally are shockingly high. One third of the world’s population is infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis; 10 percent of those infected are active cases. Eight million people become ill with TB each year, including 1.5 million in sub-Saharan Africa. TB claims 4,500 lives per day, two million lives per year. These deaths could be avoided with education and the proper funding. The full course of a regular TB treatment per person per year ranges from $15 to $500. The International Tuberculosis Relief Project raises public awareness of TB and the devastation it causes. In addition, the project raises funds toward the cost of medication and equipment for TB patients who cannot afford these necessities. The program is currently providing medicine for a college student in China. Project volunteers also establish personal relationships with TB patients in order to give a human touch to medical intervention.

Student Leaders: Anh Pham and Jie Zhang

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La Voz

La Voz is a Spanish-language magazine, distributed monthly throughout New York’s Dutchess, Ulster, and Orange Counties, which elevates the discourse and news coverage available to the Spanish-speaking population of the Hudson Valley. This project involves continual dialogue with the communities served by the magazine. La Voz is a critical source of information on immigration law, available health services, legal rights and resources, education opportunities, and local events relevant to the more than 12,000 Hispanic/Latino area residents. Bard students work directly with editor Mariel Fiori ’05 on all aspects of the magazine’s production, from graphic design to editing to reporting. Fiori began the magazine as a TLS project while an undergraduate at Bard; after graduation, she was hired by the College to publish La Voz on a permanent basis. In October 2007, the magazine received an honorable mention Ippie Award in the best overall design category from the Independent Press Association of New York.

Student Leaders: Mona Merling and Jonathan Raye

“There are times when I wish that someone would tell me if I am doing a good job or doing enough, but being placed in an environment in which I am ultimately responsible for making those decisions is a far more enriching experience. This is, of course, not to say that there isn’t guidance from TLS—everyone in the program would attest to the opposite. However, in leaving the really essential evaluations of their work up to the students, TLS instills in us principles of self-inquiry and rigorous moral searching that will benefit us in realms of life beyond the scope of our projects.”

—Spencer Goot, Germantown Tutoring Program

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The Media Analysis Project (MAP)

The Media Analysis Project brings critical media analysis to Bard by connecting current and potential campus media outlets with available resources and facilitating meaningful consideration of the impact these entities have on the community.

MAP also helps supply outside media to Bard, from national news publications to obscure zines. The central focus of the project is to make available to Bard students a broad array of media formats for the gathering and dissemination of ideas, while encouraging careful examination of the inclusiveness or exclusiveness of the medium itself and the ways a particular format or the content therein makes the media a more or less inviting place for all perspectives.

Student Leader: Lisa Dratch Migrant Labor Project (MLP)

MLP is a student-based organization that works to improve conditions for migrant laborers and their families in New York State, particularly the Hudson Valley, through community and campus education, direct service, research, and advocacy.

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: Betsy Plum New Old Gym Project

The Old Gym is Bard’s only multipurpose, student-run arts space. While Bard fully supports the arts, it can be hard for students of the performing and visual arts (majors or nonmajors) to find space for experimenting and taking risks. The Old Gym, which has the technical capabilities of a small black-box theater, is open to all students who want to explore performance or alternative installation projects.

The space is run by a committee of students from every artistic discipline—theater, dance, studio arts, photography, and music.

Student Leaders: Anna Henschel and Evan Spigelman

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New Orleans Project

The New Orleans Project engages Bard students as broadly as possible with the city of New Orleans as it stands today: battered yet vibrant, neglected yet determined. More than 250 Bard students have traveled to the city to repair stormdamaged homes, stabilize schools on the brink of collapse, teach expressive arts workshops in after-school programs, and carry out research and planning projects with communities eager to take rebuilding into their own hands. The project has adopted the Broadmoor neighborhood, a diverse community that has developed a strong grassroots revitalization organization. Project members also balance their hands-on engagement in New Orleans with work at Bard, creating resources such as panel discussions, New Orleans–based classes, film screenings, and lectures.

Student Leaders: Ariana Jostad-Laswell and Travis Rubury The Nicaragua Exchange

Bard students began an exchange with the town of Chacraseca, Nicaragua, in 2002. Chacraseca had been hit by several natural disasters, including flooding from Hurricane Mitch and the eruption of the Cerro Negro volcano. The pastoral committee of Chacraseca reached out for international aid, and Bard students responded by visiting the community and helping to build houses. Five groups of student volunteers have visited Chacraseca and have built 15 houses. The director of the pastoral committee has also visited Bard and was hosted throughout New England by members of the Nicaragua Exchange.

Bard student volunteers have worked in collaboration with community leaders in Chacraseca to improve the distribution of potable water. They are also beginning to address shortages of medicine and to provide scholarships for students in elementary school, high school, and the university.

Student Leaders: Jonathan Raye and Elysia Petras Red Hook English as a Second Language (ESL) Center

The Red Hook ESL Center brings English-speaking and immigrant community members together through free drop-in English classes. Organized and staffed by Bard students and local community volunteers, the center serves a diverse and emerging population in the Hudson Valley. Classes meet twice a week throughout the year.

Student Leaders: Julia Wentzel and Dan McKenzie

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SMOG

The Student Mechanic Operated Garage (SMOG) has been converted into a student-run social space that hosts the majority of concerts on campus as well as other performance and social events including plays, poetry readings, and dancing—from contradance to electro. It is also an open art space with constantly changing student murals and decorations. The SMOG Audio Co-op maintains equipment for band practices and runs the sound for all performances.

Student Leaders: Brandon Rosenbluth and Samantha Richardson SSTOP (Students Stopping Trafficking of Persons)

The United Nations definition of human trafficking reads: “‘Trafficking in persons’ shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat of use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.

Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.”

SSTOP is committed to educating the community about the dramatic increase in human trafficking in the United States and the rest of the world. Members also hope to aid students at other colleges in starting their own antitrafficking groups.

In addition to spreading awareness, SSTOP addresses the issue in the political arena and raises money for victim rehabilitation groups.

Student Leader: Sarah Paden

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Students for People’s Relief (SPR)

Students for People’s Relief raises awareness of poverty, which affects more than half of the world’s population. SPR feels that the solutions to poverty and the hardships it causes should come from the grass-roots level, and that every single individual should be involved in doing something to fight the problem. SPR wants to spread the message that the very small act of donating a single dollar can buy, for example, mosquito netting for an African child that will save him or her from deadly malaria. We can do very small things that have huge global impact.

Student Leader: Ashfaque Kabir Surrealist Training Circus

The Surrealist Training Circus is a workforce for creative disruption of the public spaces in a private institution. Members believe that academic and rational training falls short in preparing students for the absurdities of today’s world; in response they pursue public theater, circus arts, and even the collection of refuse as modes of training for our futures. Through the presentation of the chaotic, emotional, sometimes frightening, sarcastic, and bizarre, the Circus suggests that the irrational is to be honored. The Surrealist Training Circus welcomes the participation of any and all students, and sees spectators as ensemble members. The group’s year culminates each spring during finals week in a grand spectacle that, ironically, has become a school tradition.

Student Leaders: Rachel Schragis and Glenna Broderick Time & Space Limited Tutoring Program

The Time & Space Limited (TSL) Tutoring Program partners Bard student volunteers with the staff at Time & Space Limited in Hudson, New York, to offer atrisk middle school students in the city a general education tutoring program that will help them succeed in their academic endeavors. TSL is an arts organization with the mission of carrying local and global messages to the public about art, activism, and community exchange.

Student Leader: Adwoa Adusei

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Trans Action Initiative (TAI)

The Trans Action Initiative is a coalition of Bard students, faculty, staff, and community members who work together to raise awareness of transgender experience and elevate discussions of gender within the Bard community. Since Trans Action’s conception in the fall of 2006, the group has added gender identity and expression to the College’s nondiscrimination policy, created a student resource brochure, hosted multiple training and educational workshops, and consulted for the Office of Residence Life, Health Services, and Dean of Students Office, among others. Current projects include a faculty resource brochure, gender-neutral bathrooms and housing, and the creation of an informational website.

Student Leader: Jaan Williams Triform Community

Triform is a residential community for mentally disabled adults located in Hudson, New York. This project brings Bard volunteers to the Triform Camphill Community to conduct workshops in various art forms. Students work closely with the residents, developing lasting relationships. A couple of weeks after each workshop, Triform residents visit Bard for a related event, such as a tour through the CCS Hessel Museum of Art, a poetry reading, or a dance performance. Art forms used include drawing, sculpture, writing, dance, photography, or any other art form of interest to a volunteer or Triform resident.

Student Leader: Rachel Zwell

“I was one of the lucky ones. I got through high school as openly gay with little more than some name-calling against me. My TLS project is about saying thank you and giving back to the queer community. Because someone paved a path for me by not being silent, I am obligated to help out another who is growing up in a tougher situation than I did.”

—Molly Conway, Hudson Gay-Straight Discussion Group

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The Upbeats: Bard Music Mentoring Program

The Upbeats is a program dedicated to bringing the joy of music to children from local communities. Bard music mentors have a passion for music and, more important, a passion for sharing the gift of music with others. Lessons are provided to children for whom private instruction would otherwise cause their families financial strain. Children are given individual lessons as well as an opportunity to play in small ensembles and participate in theory/history workshops. The program culminates each May with a performance at the annual “Spring Fling” on the Bard campus.

Student Leaders: Kylie Collins and Tina Doran Young Rhinebeck Youth Program: Life, Learning, and Language

In partnership with Bard College, Young Rhinebeck supports elementary and middle school children in Rhinebeck, New York, through tutoring and mentoring programs. The Life, Learning, and Language program at the Chancellor Livingston Elementary School is designed to meet the needs of children who are new to the United States. Through one-on-one interactions with children from Mexico, Israel, Vietnam, India, and the Netherlands, mentors build relationships and provide language and homework support.

Student Leader: Thea Piltzecker

“I’m terrified of public speaking. When I sit down and think about the amount of responsibility I’ve taken on, it scares the hell out of me. I’m not incredibly well read on identity and I haven’t had to deal with racism, or some of the other things we’re trying to combat, on a daily basis. I don’t have all the answers. But when I sit down with my group and really start exploring these things, I realize it’s not the answers we’re after anyway. It’s the questioning, exploration, and reevaluation of what we think we know about another person.”

—Julz Benedict, The Hudson Project: Students for Students

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Selected Project Archive

Academic Advancement Program Bard High School Early College Play/Mentoring Program Bard Space Program Bhopal Memory Project Chiapas Solidarity Project Children’s Gardening Program Children’s Rights Are Human Rights, Amnesty International Conference Flying Fiddlers Mentoring Program Free Press Ghana Project Great River Sweep Habitat for Humanity at Bard Human Rights Film Series Intercollegiate Energy Audit Iraq Watch Kosher-Halal Kitchen and Multipurpose Prayer Space Linden Avenue Middle School Drama Project Make Art Now Mexico Solidarity Network Delegation “One Year Later” (academic conference on the anti–Iraq War outpouring in 2003) Palestine Awareness Project Red Hook Residential Reciprocal Education Project Register to Vote (a Bard student successfully sued the state of New York for the right to vote in Dutchess County) Rhinebeck Connections Homework Help Program Roving Readings Senior Citizen Writing Project STD of the Week Campus Education Project Student-Run Darkroom Sui Generis Thailand Project Understanding Arabs and Muslims Verse Noire Visible and Invisible Disabilities Awareness Project (VIDAP) Wayfinder Experience Work Awareness Project For the entire project archive, visit the TLS website: http://inside.bard.edu/tls

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We Need Your Support!

Volunteer

Volunteers are the backbone of TLS projects: whether you are a Bard student or a community member, we need your help. Join the Astor Home project in Rhinebeck, build homes in Nicaragua, teach outdoor education to middle schoolers from Red Hook, offer arts workshops in New Orleans . . .

Contribute Funds

Leadership includes fund-raising. Many TLS projects require thousands of dollars. The TLS office can provide only seed money, so many projects rely on the generous financial support of people who want to make a difference in the world.

With your support, TLS students have built schools in Africa and houses in Nicaragua, run tutoring programs in Hudson, New York, taught violin to economically challenged children in Kingston, New York, and recorded the indigenous music of the Sudan. These are projects that link people of all ages and needs with valuable assistance. Your willingness to support our work is crucial.

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: 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.

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TLS gratefully acknowledges the support of many individuals and foundations whose generosity makes our work possible. For further information, please call Paul Marienthal, director of the Trustee Leader Scholar Program and associate dean of student affairs, at 845-758-7056 or e-mail service@bard.edu.

Above and back cover: Nicaragua Exchange

Published by the Bard Publications Office. Photography by TLS students.

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