Winter Scene 2009

scene Winter 2009

News and views for the Colgate community

What’s Behind the Door?

Enduring American Arguments Reversal of (mis)fortune

scene

Winter 2009

26 What’s Behind the Door?

A pictorial “backstage” look at life on campus.

32 Enduring American Arguments

Fresh from covering an intense election season, veteran political reporter Howard Fineman ’70 examines the issues that this country debates about.

36 Reversal of (mis)fortune

Colgate experts weigh in on the economic crisis, regulation and reforms, and lessons to be learned.

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Message from President Rebecca S. Chopp

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Letters

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Work & Play

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Colgate history, tradition, and spirit

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The Big Picture

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Stay Connected

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Class News 73 Marriages & Unions 74 Births & Adoptions 74 In Memoriam

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Salmagundi

DEPARTMENTS

Life of the Mind Arts & Culture Go ’gate New, Noted & Quoted

On the cover: Free climbing at the Angert Family Climbing Wall in Huntington Gym (photo by Basil Childers). Inside front cover photo by Andrew Daddio.

News and views for the Colgate community

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scene team

Contributors

Volume XXXVIII Number 2 The Scene is published by Colgate University four times a year — in autumn, winter, spring, and summer. The Scene is circulated without charge to alumni, parents, friends, and students.

Award-winning journalist Howard Fineman ’70 (“Enduring American Arguments,” pg. 32) has interviewed every major presidential candidate since 1984. Senior Washington correspondent and columnist for Newsweek, he reports exclusively on TV for NBC, and writes for MSNBC.com. His 2003 Newsweek cover story “Bush and God” was the top-selling issue that year and was part of a series that won a National Magazine Award for General Excellence.

Illustrator Steve Dininno (“Enduring American Arguments,” pg. 32) has clients ranging from Coca-Cola to Jaguar to Panasonic. His work appears in advertising, newspapers, magazines, book publishing, CDs, and cards. He is also an instructor and member of the Board of Advisors of The Woodstock School of Art, and a widely exhibited painter and printmaker.

He graduated with honors from the School of Visual Art.

Senior Associate Athletic Director Vicky Chun ’91 has put on a journalist’s cap to contribute the Raider Nation column for the Scene’s Go ’gate section. No matter the sport, if you’re at a game cheering on your favorite Colgate athlete, watch for her, with camera in tow, in the stands — she just might want to shoot your mug and ask you a couple of questions!

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scene online

Listen

Colgate Conversations: www.colgate.edu/podcasts English professor and stage scene designer Marjorie Bradley Kellogg talks about her set designs for operas such as Margaret Garner, Broadway productions like American Buffalo with Al Pacino, and Colgate theater.

Watch

Video Features: www.colgate.edu/video Do you remember the intensity of the Colgate vs.

Cornell hockey rivalry? See today’s students talk about what it means to them in one of our latest video clips.

Get connected

Online Community: www.colgatealumni.org Your class page has the latest news and an RSS feed highlighting classmates who are mentioned in the media. Log on and learn about your class!

Look

Scenic Photos: www.colgate.edu/admission The redesigned Office of Admission website features beautiful seasonal scenic photos taken all around campus.

Vice President for Public Relations and Communications Charles Melichar Managing Editor Rebecca Costello Associate Editor Aleta Mayne Director of Publications Gerald Gall Coordinator of Photographic Services Andrew Daddio Production Assistant Kathy Bridge

Talk

Message Boards: http://www.colgatealumni.org/messageboards Colgate professors and alumni talk about the U.S. economic crisis in the feature article on page 36.

What regulations, if any, do you think are needed to restore the economy?

Contributing writers and designers: Director of Web Content Timothy O’Keeffe Art Director Karen Luciani Designer Jennifer Kirsteins Director of Athletic Communications Robert Cornell Director of Marketing and Public Relations Barbara Brooks Senior Advancement Writer Mark Walden Manager of Media Communications Anthony Adornato

Contact: scene@mail.colgate.edu 315-228-7417 www.colgate.edu/scene

Printed and mailed from Lane Press in South Burlington, Vt. If you’re moving... Please clip the address label and send with your new address to: Alumni Records Clerk, Colgate University, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346-1398.

Opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by the university, the publishers, or the editors.

Notice of Non-Discrimination: Colgate University does not discriminate in its programs and activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, citizenship status, sex, pregnancy, religion, creed, physical or mental disability (including AIDS), age, marital status, sexual orientation, status as a disabled veteran of the Vietnam era, or any other category protected under applicable law. The following person has been designated to handle inquiries regarding the university’s nondiscrimination policies: Marilyn Rugg, University Harassment Officer, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346; 315-228-7288.

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Cert no. SW-COC-00255 6

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scene: Winter 2009

Message from President Rebecca S. Chopp

The ability to meet any challenge

with clear thinking,

determination, and hope is a quintessential Colgate quality. We talk often about how the Colgate spirit distinguishes our students as they pursue their studies, their research, and their interests and lead their lives after graduation. It is just as important, though, to talk about how those qualities manifest themselves at the university in times of turmoil.

Andrew Daddio

The fall term began much like many others before it, but as the semester drew on, pressing issues related to the economy and race came to bear on conversations at Colgate, setting off important dialogues about priorities and culture on this campus that will continue for some time to come.

Less than one week after Barack Obama was elected as the first-ever African American president of the United States, racist incidents were being reported by colleges across the country. Colgate was among those affected.

Racist graffiti was discovered in a student bathroom in Alumni Hall, and students reported having racial slurs yelled at them. Those events made it clear that the issue of racism must be addressed as we seek to model the best of what an inclusive 21st-century living-learning community can be.

Colgate’s students, faculty, and staff are here with a common purpose: developing — and developing into — wise, thoughtful, critical thinkers and perceptive leaders who value intellectual rigor and respect the complexity of human understanding. This is our mission as a modern residential liberal arts university. Our diversity as a campus, and our embracing of it as individuals,

are critical to our pursuit of that mission. We will not allow those who seek to create barriers, put up roadblocks, and foster a culture of negativity to hinder our progress.

There is much work still to be done, but I was inspired by the ways in which our campus pulled together, showing its true character in denouncing those acts and strongly affirming our commitment to diversity and inclusivity.

Just as we have pulled together to deal with the troubling issue of racism, the Colgate community has shown tremendous resolve and ingenuity as we have begun to navigate this period of global economic turbulence.

As outlined in the autumn issue of the Scene, the costs of fulfilling our mission are significant, and rising. With the ensuing economic downturn, all of Colgate’s principal sources of operating budget revenue (tuition, room and board, endowment support, and annual fund gifts) are under severe pressure. Similar to our peer colleges and universities, Colgate’s endowment has sustained significant investment losses, particularly in recent months. The endowment’s investment return from July 1 through October 31 was minus 15.8 percent. Our best estimate of the market value as of November 30, 2008, is $573.5 million, which is 18.5 percent lower than the endowment’s value on July 1, 2008. Because the endowment provides approximately 22 percent of the university’s annual revenues, a lower endowment market value has a meaningful impact on Colgate’s operating budget. We are deeply grateful to the members of the Finance Committee of the Board of Trustees who are working tirelessly to oversee Colgate’s endowment investment portfolio; fortunately, Colgate’s long-standing endowment spending policy smoothes the impact of a falling endowment market value over a number of years. While this provides the university the time to develop appropriate long-term strategies, it is clear that the Colgate community must also respond to our changed economic environment.

Our response has been guided by our educational mission as we look to reduce costs and think creatively about new forms of collaboration across campus. Immediate measures, already taken in late fall, have included: substantially reducing next year’s operating budget allocation for capital projects; reducing operating budgets by 5 percent for 2009–2010; reviewing and reconsidering vacant administrative staff positions; and tempering growth in compensation expenditures. No doubt, there will be more adjustments to come, but there is one area in particular that we are strongly committed to sustaining: financial aid.

We fully expect that the effect of the troubled economy will increase the need for financial aid for more of our students and their families. Although meeting these new needs will put additional pressure on the university’s budget, this is a commitment that we must fulfill. Financial aid is a critical component in Colgate’s ability to attract and retain the best possible students, particularly at a time of broad economic hardship.

Colgate has made great strides in advancing its strategic priorities, thanks to the hard work of those on campus and the generosity of alumni, parents, and friends. The challenges we face are not unique to Colgate, but the ways in which we respond reflect our mission and project our values as an institution and as a community.

Thank you for your partnership as we maintain our focus on what Alfred North Whitehead identified as the primary task of a university, “the creation of the future.” This is what we do every day at Colgate.

News and views for the Colgate community

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Letters The new Scene Editor’s note: Our inbox was flooded with messages about the new Scene.

There were too many to respond to each and every person, but we thank you all for your feedback, and share a sampling of comments here.

The Scene welcomes letters. We reserve the right to decide whether a letter is acceptable for publication and to edit for accuracy, clarity, and length. Letters deemed potentially libelous or that malign a person or group will not be published.

Letters should not exceed 250 words. You can reach us by mail, or e-mail sceneletters @mail.colgate.edu. Please include your full name, class year if applicable, address, phone number, and/or e-mail address. If we receive many letters on a given topic, we will print a representative sample of the opinions expressed. On occasion, we may run additional letters online.

Wow! I just finished reading the new Scene — it is fabulous! What an improvement over the old Scene, both in content and style. The look is fresh, the layout is easy to read and very creative, and the content is superb.

Packed with more information, and some great new features, like Page 13, My picture of Colgate, etc.

You have really captured the spirit of the place, and helped make me feel more connected to the school than I ever did with the old version. Kudos to all for the hard work and vision it took to create this great new version of an old favorite!

Dr. Cynthia Jerome ’78 Pound Ridge, N.Y. Congratulations on remaking the Scene. It is a far more vibrant publication than it has ever been during my 20-plus–year association with Colgate.

The dynamic format, bold photography, and in-depth articles all reflect more accurately the lively, engaging spirit of Colgate. For the first time, I want to read something other than class notes and I am proud to share the Scene with non-Colgate friends.

The new Scene is a great upgrade for Colgate, bringing our most important alumni publication on par with the rest of Colgate’s offerings in and out of the classroom. You’ve done a great service to alma mater.

Andy Busser ’91 New York, N.Y. Congratulations to you and your staff for really stepping into the 21st century! My mailbox hasn’t had that kind of good news in too long. The new look is fabulous … and very informative. What a great service to the alumni and the

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entire Colgate community. My only regret? Our class notes are moving ever closer to the first few pages! Must be part of the aging process! I can’t wait for the next new Scene!

Pierce H. “Pete” Foster ’55 Tappan, N.Y. Just a quick note to congratulate you and your staff re: the latest incarnation of the Scene. The new format is a huge improvement; somewhat akin to stepping into a new century! Nice photos and articles. I am much more inclined to read the Scene rather than just quickly glance at it and then recycle it! I imagine a lot of thought went into the cover design. It would be nice if the word “Colgate” was a bit more prominent. Overall, the new Scene is fantastic.

Scott Ward ’81 Boston, Mass.

Awesome publication; very eye catching.

Small correction — pg. 8 bottom photo is not Founders’ Day Convocation, but, rather, the first meeting of the great Class of 2012 on Aug. 28. If it were Founders’ Day, it would be evening (no light in windows), we would be robed, and Prof. Ellen Kraly would be speaking instead of me!

Beverly A. Low Dean of First-Year Students

I read the Autumn 2008 edition of the Scene from cover to cover. I found it very large, very colorful, and very expensive to produce and distribute; however, the content was the same as in the former less-expensive newsprint editions. It seems it would be prudent for the university to cut costs everywhere they can in light of current economic conditions and the extremely high cost of a Colgate education. I am a product of the Great Depression and World War II. I was taught to waste not, and to conserve wherever I can.

William J. Torrens ’49 Turlock, Calif.

Editor’s note: In reducing frequency from six to four times per year, Colgate is spending essentially the same amount of money to produce the new magazine as for the old tabloid.

Congratulations on the Autumn issue of the Scene. The new format and color pictures are great! The only criticism I have is the shot of the campus from the air was not in the centerfold so that it could be taken out easily and framed. I’ve taken it out in two pieces and will frame it as best I can. Keep up the good work. Thanks!

Glen Chidsey ’52 Hobe Sound, Fla.

Editor’s note: Digital prints of the aerial photo (pg. 40–41), and the nighttime campus shot (inside front cover) are available for purchase through the Colgate Bookstore at 877-362-7666 or www.colgatebookstore.com.

Behind the Sticker Price The fall issue is quite interesting; specifically, the article titled “Behind the Sticker Price” (pg. 30). About the same time, I read a column in the New York Times titled “Seeking Higher Education at Lower Prices” (Oct. 26, 2008) noting the annual cost of tuition, fees, and room and board at SUNY Binghamton is $16,452. How can Colgate justify its price of $49,000 against that of one of the best schools in the country?

Granted, Colgate undoubtedly affords a fine education, but is it three times better than Binghamton’s?

Regarding Mr. McKeegan’s question, the cost of operating a SUNY college is significantly subsidized by the state, whereas Colgate, being a private institution, receives neglible operating budget support from governmental sources. Those subsidies keep the cost of a SUNY school lower than most private higher education institutions in the state and nationwide.

Robert McKeegan ’43 Lititz, Pa. The most interesting, and telling, statistic is nowhere to be found in this five-page article. Comparing the pie charts, 1988–1989 to 2008–2009 reveals a compound growth of just about 6 percent per year. Inflation for these last two decades has not been remotely close to those levels, and I can’t recall any one year in these last 20 that came close. How can 6 percent operating expense growth year over year make any sense?

Dave Ayres ’70 New York, N.Y. David Hale ’84, Colgate financial vice president, responds: First, to Mr. Ayres’s question, Colgate’s expenditures have increased over a long period of time for a number of reasons, articulated throughout the article, that sum up to the university offering a much broader set of opportunities for students, and not simply providing the same set of services at increased cost.

The increased expenditures, averaged out over 20 years, is indeed 6 percent.

Ringing the chapel bell I entered Colgate in the fall of 1944 after a couple of years in the Merchant Marine. Living in West Hall was very handy to the chapel on May 7, 1945, and I was one of those who rang the bell in a manner not “slow and respectful” (Page 13, Autumn Scene), to celebrate cessation of hostilities in Europe.

As a physics major and part-time helper in the department, I spent many winter nights in that open bell tower photographing the aurora borealis for Dr. Berkey. I was on a direct telephone line to a person at Cornell, and we centered our cameras to simultaneously photograph a specific start with the aurora in the foreground. Interesting, but cold.

Douglas Bly ’48 Rockville, Md.

More on The World’s Bomb I was a Marine in the South Pacific during World War II, and I was very disturbed by Gary Moler’s letter (Scene, Autumn 2008). Mr. Moler is, of course, entitled to his opinion, but, based on his class year, it is obvious he was too young to have been there and knows nothing firsthand of the situation. I would like to question the author on the following: Who started the war? Does he mourn the loss of those killed and maimed at Pearl Harbor? Does he grieve for all the Americans killed and maimed during WWII? Does he realize how many lives were saved on both sides by dropping the bomb and not invading Japan?

I wonder if he would feel differently if he were in my shoes, serving more than two years in the Pacific Theater during that war and being ordered onto a ship embarking for the invasion of Japan at the time the Enola Gay dropped “America’s Bomb” to end the war.

To this day, I thank President Truman for making that decision and saving my life and countless other American lives. I, for one, have no moral problem with that decision.

James Scott ’50 Pawleys Island, S.C. Gary Moler’s letter concludes, “Moral accountability presumes choice of action.” That doesn’t follow from his selective appeal to history using emotional close-ups in support of his notion that moral wars kill small numbers of non-innocents using modest weapons. For him, weaponry is the obscenity rather than the context of its use. In his attempt to persuade Professor Andrew Rotter to have America accept responsibility for unleashing the atomic bomb, Moler likens our use of the bomb to the use of the Gatling gun, a more efficient machine that Americans used to kill innocent Native Americans some 40 years after its invention.

When Japan killed American innocents with Gatling-type guns bolted to aircraft to make them more efficient at killing, she launched America into a war she did not look for, did not start, and did not want. Then, after too many years of horrible war, Japan rejected an allied appeal to surrender or face inevitable and complete destruc-

tion of their forces and homeland.

Moler’s politically correct letter culturally trashes a nation that has done more to establish moral clarity than any other nation on earth. Better judgment would conclude that war has no future as an instrument of diplomacy and, equally important, that peace is more than just the absence of war.

Peace is the absence of the need for war. Simply banning the bomb would not free us from tyrants or establish a process of peaceful problem resolution that offers all who are oppressed a path to liberty. Moler should marshal his moral skills to fashion a compelling, accessible argument why militant Machiavellian actions ultimately backfire.

Stephen B. Waters ’69 Rome, N.Y.

Orteig’s Lindbergh connection In reading the new and inspiring Autumn 2008 edition of the Scene, and being of an age, I always look first at the classes close to mine and then the obituaries. In both cases, the death of George E. Orteig ’48 caught my eye.

I met George once, probably in the late ’60s, in the Colgate Club of New York when it used the facilities of the Columbia University Club at 4 West 43rd St. I was having a pre-luncheon drink at the bar and struck up a conversation with George. Later, we had lunch together. That’s when he told me about his grandfather, Raymond Orteig, the proprietor of the famous Hotel Lafayette and restaurant in lower Manhattan, well known in the ’20s and ’30s for its ambience and food.

In 1919, his grandfather offered a prize of $25,000 for the first nonstop aircraft flight between New York and Paris. Several aviators tried and failed, but in May of 1927 a young airmail pilot by the name of Charles Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island in the Spirit of Saint Louis, and 33.5 hours later arrived at Le Bourget airport in Paris. After the flight was certified, Lindbergh claimed and received the award. No paltry sum in those days, to say nothing of the fame it brought Lindbergh. What a fascinating story to accompany a delightful lunch with George Orteig.

Ray Dawson ’42 Delray Beach, Fla.

News and views for the Colgate community

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work & play

Campus scrapbook B

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Word to the bird. Participants in the Children’s Theater Workshop course performed a version of the English puppet show Punch and Judy at Brehmer Theater. Photo by Luke Connolly ’09

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It looks like these students packed on more than the typical “freshman 15” for sumo wrestling during Homecoming events.

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Molecular masterpiece. Students in Professor Richard April’s Mineralogy lab study a crystal model of muscovite.

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Cast on, cast off. Friday afternoon knitting group in the Center for Women’s Studies.

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Singing for “something new,” or Jambo Jipya. This Swahili translation is the name of the Kenyan school for which Colgate’s a cappella groups harmonized during a benefit concert at Hamilton’s First Baptist Church. (Full story on page 10)

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Professor Chris Vecsey (right) joins the Haudenosaunee Singers and Dancers in the Snake Dance at the 2008 Native American Arts and Culture Festival.

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Physics and astronomy professor Kiko Galvez and students admire the Orion nebula in the new Ho Tung Visualization Lab, which offers dazzling presentations of the night sky and other educational eye candy. Photo by Tom Balonek

Photos by Andrew Daddio unless otherwise noted

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News and views for the Colgate community

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work & play

Racist graffiti sparks campus solidarity events

The Colgate community fills Memorial Chapel in solidarity against a racist incident on campus.

Shortly following the 2008 presidential election, racist graffiti was posted and discovered in a bathroom in Alumni Hall. Members of the community joined together to respond in a variety of ways. In the largest event, students, faculty, and staff poured into Memorial Chapel as an expression of solidarity and as a denouncement of acts of bias and intolerance.

Remarks were made by President Rebecca Chopp, Dean of the College Charlotte Johnson, Dean of Diversity Keenan Grenell, Dean of the Faculty Lyle Roelofs, Student Government Association (SGA) President David Kusnetz ’09, and Brothers President Michael Walden ’09.

“It’s time for us to stand together, not because someone has scrawled heinous lines in a bathroom … but because we all want something more, we all want something better,” Walden said. “Our generation is poised to make a terrific contribution to the world. We must create a society that is inclusive of all.” His powerful speech received a standing ovation from the overflowing audience.

“The Colgate community shines with its strength of character and its commitment to embracing our collective diversity,” Grenell said. “Our peaceful and proud response will lead us to a season of brighter days ahead.”

In closing remarks, President Chopp said, “We’re not going to stop in

our march toward a better tomorrow.

Our work won’t be finished; indeed, it will just be started when we leave here today in a process of healing, education, and solidarity.”

Other responses to the incident included an SGA-sponsored unity march in Hamilton, a live WRCU broadcast discussing white privilege, and an open, informal discussion at the Coop.

In addition, many professors dedicated time in their classes to discuss issues of racism with their students.

Also, a task force of students, faculty, and administrators formed to implement concrete changes on campus to heal, prevent further racist acts, and strengthen diversity. Led by the SGA and the Unity Coalition, a meeting against intolerance was convened to discuss and strengthen the proposed changes drafted in a task force document.

The web page www.colgate.edu/ solidarity includes a full video of the chapel event, a photo gallery from the week’s solidarity events, responses to the incidents, and other resources.

Also see the message from President Chopp on page 3 in this issue.

Brown bag Alumna helps shape environmental policy as a legislative fellow “In Washington, information is power, and scientists can provide that information,” Martha McConnell ’97 said in her Geology Seminar Series presentation “From FOARAMs to Congressional Fellow: Climate Change and Public Policy.” McConnell is a geology doctorate student who was a legislative fellow for U.S. Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.).

As a legislative fellow, McConnell authored the FOARAM (Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring) Act of 2007, which Lautenberg co-sponsored. If passed, the bill establishes an interagency committee that will develop an ocean acidification research and monitoring plan.

Ocean acidification caused by greenhouse gas emissions is an issue that hits close to home for New Jersey. As carbon dioxide levels increase, the pH of salt water decreases and essentially becomes corrosive to marine organisms. McConnell used her work on this issue as an example to show that in order to have an impact, scientists must not simply communicate research, but also recognize issues with possible policy implications.

While working for Sen. Lautenberg, McConnell identified the need for scientists to better communicate with Congress.

To create viable climate-change policy, she said it is essential that scientists reach out to the general public and policymakers in an understandable way.

McConnell’s current research interests at the University of South Carolina include paleoclimatology and rapid climate change.

WRCU’s new high-tech home

Programming on Colgate’s studentrun radio station is now being beamed from a new studio that has dramatically increased the station’s visibility and created new opportunities for student deejays. The dreamy digital digs for WRCU (90.1) are in

Also recently discussed…

What China is Doing Right Environmentally Phil McKenna, East Asia and environment correspondent for New Scientist magazine (Environmental studies bag luncheon)

Andrew Daddio

Poetically Minded

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Dedication of the new Poetically Minded Library at the ALANA Cultural Center and poetry slam presentation

Mansfield named Colgate’s director of alumni affairs

Timothy Mansfield will be the university’s next director of alumni affairs. He has spent the last seven years at Colgate leading efforts in residential life and leadership development, most recently serving as assistant dean of students and director of Greek Life, a position he held since 2006.

“Tim is well known and highly regarded by Colgate students, parents, and alumni as a passionate Colgate person who is committed to finding creative ways to build community and engage people around common goals,” said Vice President for Alumni Affairs RuthAnn Loveless MA’72.

As director, Mansfield will lead the university’s efforts to build and maintain strong relationships between the university and its 30,000 alumni by leading a comprehensive and diverse program that engages alumni across generations, locations, and interests.

He will work closely with Colgate alumni and staff to direct the university’s nationally recognized program,

Free-bike program shifts into high gear

Members of Colgate’s cycling club are dusting off old bikes and putting them in the hands of central New York families who need them most.

More than 50 bikes have been donated to the Community Bike Project, a program started in August 2008 by Chuck Fox ’70 of the Hamilton Theater.

To breathe new life into the bikes, Fox enlisted the help of Scott Truett, of Adventure Bikes & Boards, and cycling club members, who are helping with repairs.

Bikes were initially handed out free to children, but when Fox heard about local parents having to walk miles to work, he expanded the Community Bike Project to include adults as well.

“This has been an eye-opening experience,” said Fox. “Even teenagers are using the bikes to travel to after-school jobs that supplement their parents’ incomes.”

In collaboration with the Community Action Partnership of Madison County, the Community Bike Project identifies families with specific needs and then matches them with the right bike, accessories, and training.

Theta suspended

Andrew Daddio

Curry Knox ’09 (left) and Nolis Espinal ’11 (right) work in WRCU’s new broadcast room.

Colgate’s Zeta Zeta chapter of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority was given a four-year suspension, through May 2013, in response to violations of the university’s hazing and alcohol policies that earlier caused the national Grand Council of Kappa Alpha Theta to withdraw the chapter’s charter, disassociating the local Colgate chapter from the national organization.

Those women who accepted invitations to join Theta this year were eligible to receive bid invitations to other active Greek-letter chapters on campus or wait and participate in the recruitment process in the fall of 2009. Women who had already been initiated into the sorority are expected to earn alumnae status from Theta national.

Talking points “The greatest single problem in Israel is [that] both sides disbelieve; neither side believes that a peace agreement is possible.”

Barrett Brassfield

including reunions, alumni travel offerings, club activities across the nation and abroad, and programs to support career networking such as the annual Real World program.

Mansfield earned his bachelor’s degree from Le Moyne College and his master’s in education from Providence College.

— Former U.S. Ambassador and Middle East chief envoy Dennis Ross in an Institute for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics public seminar “The spread of religion is a Darwinian anomaly, in that religion is so widespread but also seemingly so maladaptive. What could explain the persistence of a trait that leads people to things like lifelong celibacy? This is not a fitness-enhancing strategy.”

— Michael J. Murray, Arthur and Katherine Shadek Professor in humanities and philosophy at Franklin and Marshall College, discussing evolutionary religious studies in his talk titled “Scientific Explanations of Religion and Justification of Religious Belief” “He [Plato] thinks that young people should be informed about what is respected and valued, and what will in turn produce value; and that a great deal of exposure to indulgences and corruption — that is to say, to forms that corrupt the soul — may well destroy.”

— Jerry Balmuth, Harry Emerson Fosdick Professor of philosophy and religion, in his Core 151: Western Traditions lecture series talk, “Why We Read Plato”

News and views for the Colgate community

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Timothy D. Sofranko

director of the Center for Leadership and Student Involvement and adviser to WRCU, which is the largest student organization on campus, with more than 170 participants.

Andrew Daddio

the new Blackmore Media Center, named after Robert L. Blackmore ’41, William Henry Crawshaw Professor of literature emeritus, who died in 2002.

Blackmore was a jazz disc jockey at WRCU and other area radio stations for 40 years. Rob Fraiman ’80, a former WRCU deejay, spearheaded alumni fundraising efforts for the station as a tribute to Blackmore.

“We have gone from extremely little visibility to being in the center of campus,” station general manager Paul Osmolskis said about the move from Drake Hall to the lower level of the O’Connor Campus Center (Coop).

Students checking mailboxes or using the popular Coop computer lab can see the station’s broadcast room through a large window that features an “On the Air” sign that glows red when deejays are working.

Bands can perform in the studios to promote their campus performances and the shows can be taped for future use. Deejays can pre-record shows and also do live call-in shows, complete with “delay” functionality.

They can create commercials and personal service announcements.

The nerve center of the station is the broadcast studio. There also is a production studio, which mimics the main studio in functionality and also gives deejays a place to practice, an edit room, three offices, a server room, and a conference room.

“It was important for students to make it a comfortable space, a place where they can get together and talk music,” said Bill Gabler ’07, assistant

work & play

Colgate hosts hearings on controversial power line

Groups opposed to the proposed NYRI power line set up a “graveyard” outside of James C. Colgate Hall, where public hearings were held.

Area residents flocked to James C. Colgate Hall on Oct. 20, 2008, to voice their opinions about a controversial power line that is proposed to run from central New York to New York City.

Two brief informational sessions led by state Public Service Commission (PSC) staff members were followed by public hearings on the $2.1 billion project proposed by New York Regional Interconnect (NYRI).

Two administrative law judges, Jeffrey Stockholm and Michelle Phillips, listened as dozens of residents stepped up to the microphone at the Hall of Presidents and talked about the proposed 190-mile–long power line. The majority of the comments were negative, with residents questioning whether a thorough needs analysis for the project had been done, and expressing concern about the impact on agriculture, tourism, and real estate values; its potentially adverse effect on area electricity rates; and possible health issues surrounding electromagnetic fields.

Comments made at the hearings and those submitted in writing will become part of the formal public record, said Stockholm. The two administrative law judges make a recommendation to a Board of Commissioners about the NYRI application,

and the commissioners will make the final decision on whether or not to approve the project.

The university’s Upstate Institute facilitated the hearings, which were the first of 13 scheduled to be held.

NYRI says the 1,200-megawatt line is needed to improve the state’s aging power grid and reduce the threat of blackouts like the one that struck the state in 2003. But person after person at the public hearings argued against the project and strongly urged the PSC administrative law judges to recommend it be denied.

NYRI officials were present at the hearings but did not speak.

Views from the hill Who on campus has influenced or changed your way of thinking?

“I took Politics and Moral Vision with Barry Shain; he also led our Geneva study group. I had never taken any theory or philosophy classes before his, so he really opened up my mind to a whole new way of thinking about politics. Also, going abroad with him has given me a fresh perspective on international organizations and international politics. While we traveled all over Europe as a group, he challenged a lot of our preconceived notions and encouraged us to be more independent.”

–Natalie Beato ’09, international relations and economics major

A cappella groups raise voices for Kenyan school

The soothing sounds of Colgate’s a cappella groups have turned into some much-needed financial support for a Kenyan school that serves 250 poor and orphaned children.

The Colgate Thirteen, Dischords, Resolutions, and Swinging ’Gates teamed up and raised $500 during a benefit concert at Hamilton’s First Baptist Church.

The money will go toward building new classrooms for the Jambo Jipya School, located in Mtwapa, Kenya. The school, which was founded in 2004 as a single mud hut, is in need of an expanded facility to accommodate

“My roommate, Mike Chamberlain ’12, is a really smart guy, and so we debate philosophy together a lot.”

–Simon Dolginow ’12

Andrew Daddio

“Professor Eliza Kent and the class Sex, Love, and God: Religion and Queer Studies have really broadened my view of the world.”

–Sehee Yang ’12, major undecided, psychology minor

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scene: Winter 2009

Colleges note increase in ‘F-gen’ students

Even though Inna Peshkova has only been at Colgate for a semester, she has already reached a major milestone: the Russian-born teenager is the first person in her family to attend college.

“Being able to pursue a college education means so much to me and my family,” Peshkova said.

Peshkova, the oldest of seven children, is not alone. She is one of an increasing number of first-generation

Go figure – Faculty fast facts 80 Percent have taught a core class 52 New faculty members arrived last fall 207 Articles and book chapters published in 2006–2007

$1.6 Million in grants awarded from

foundations and government agencies for research projects in 2007–2008

20,000 Pounds of stony creek granite, at sculptor DeWitt Godfrey’s studio at the Paul J. Schupf Studio Arts Center; some of it is intended for a commissioned piece

45 Kiloseconds awarded to physicist/

astronomist Jeff Bary by NASA to spend on the Chandra X-ray Observatory for his study on the formation of stars

8 Religions of the world taught in courses 66 Opus number of Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 2, to be performed February 14

by Laura Klugherz, violin; Florent RenardPayen, cello; and Christine DiWyk, piano

students who are applying to colleges across the country, including Colgate.

In the last year, the number of firstgeneration applicants to Colgate increased by 22 percent.

Senior Associate Dean of Admission Karen Giannino believes applicants who are determined to be the first in their families to attend college have characteristics that Colgate seeks in its students. “They are hardworking and do not take opportunities for granted,” explained Giannino.

Once on campus, though, some of the students can find the transition to college life difficult. “They face a unique set of challenges because they are being tested in new ways — in ways that are new to their families as well,” said Jaime Nolan, associate dean for diversity and director of the office of undergraduate studies.

To help ease the transition, Nolan and Dean of First-Year Students Beverly Low are creating an orientation program specifically for first-generation students and their families.

For Peshkova, adjusting to the rigors of college classes has been seamless. In fact, she already has plans for her future beyond Colgate: “Graduate school is a definite.”

Student group shares Ramadan with area children

Members of the Muslim Student Association (MSA) shared activities and chatted with area children about the holy month of Ramadan at an event at the Colgate Bookstore.

“We wanted to reach out to the Hamilton community and show the kids what Ramadan is about,” said junior Rifat Zaman, MSA co-president.

Parents and children gathered around junior Kaela Chow as she read Night of the Moon, a book by Pakistani-American author Hena Khan that explores the traditions and meanings of Ramadan.

“It’s important to be able to learn how to appreciate other cultures, and that should begin when we are young,” said junior Hassan Mohamed.

Members of the MSA also helped the children decorate stars and moons and talked with them about foods traditionally eaten after a day of fasting.

The month-long period of Ramadan in September is observed by more than one billion Muslims around the world. It is a time for spiritual purification achieved through fasting, self-sacrifice, and prayers.

Get to know: Bill Northey

Andrew Daddio

the increasing number of students.

Jambo Jipya means “something new” in Kenya’s native language of Swahili.

Sam Meyer ’10, a Colgate Thirteen member, first heard about Jambo Jipya from a friend who established Reason 2 Smile, a nonprofit organization that supports the Kenyan school.

Approximately 60 Colgate students and community members turned out for the charity concert. To raise money, the a cappella groups sold bracelets as well as 50/50 raffle tickets, and they collected donations for the school.

Groundskeeper, athletics After plugging in the Zamboni to recharge following a clean glaze of Starr Rink, Bill Northey sat down to talk about working at Colgate for 20 years. The past 13 of those years have involved maintaining the athletics grounds, including the ice, to make sure the Raiders hockey teams are fast on their feet.

• Most memorable hockey moment: In 1990 when the men’s team defeated Lake Superior State University in the quarterfinals of the NCAA playoffs at Starr Rink. “It was pretty wild,” Northey recalled. “There was stuff being thrown on the ice, people were going in the locker room, everybody was going nuts — it was neat.”

• On the challenges of driving a Zamboni: “The only way to drive a Zamboni is just to drive it repeatedly. The rink’s oval and it’s a square machine that won’t turn very far. The only good way to do it is [in a specific] pattern.”

• The first time driving the Zamboni at a game: “If anyone tells you they’re not nervous, they’re lying, because you look up, the place is packed, and they’re all watching you,” he said, laughing. “I thought, with my luck, if anything was going to go wrong, it was going to go wrong that night. And, to make it worse, they always announce when it’s your first time driving in the rink!”

• Before the ice age: Northey was assistant equipment manager for his first seven years at Colgate. He “met a lot of nice people” — every varsity male athlete had to go through him for their equipment and uniforms. He also traveled with the teams so much that they started calling him “uncle.”

“To this day, when they come back to visit, they come looking for me,” Northey said.

He specifically remembers teasing men’s soccer coach Erik Ronning ’97 as well as assistant men’s hockey coaches Jason Lefevre ’02 and Brad Dexter ’96 when they were studentathletes.

• Outside the rink: Northey is married and has two children. In his free time, he cheers on his son at his Utica College football games, hunts, and runs a hay business with a friend.

— Aleta Mayne

News and views for the Colgate community

11

work & play 12

Passion for the Climb Finding meaning in Blagoveshchensk

By Lara Hueth Cilwik ’00

Lara Hueth Cilwik and her husband, Thomas

scene: Winter 2009

My mother liked the film Dr. Zhivago and told herself that if she ever had a girl, she would name her Lara. Knowing the story behind my name led to an interest in all things Russian and explains, in part, why I changed around my first-year schedule to include Russian 101. From there it was the 1998 Russian Study Group in Moscow and Vladimir. Then, as a Colgate graduate, I returned to Russia on a research scholarship. Russia fascinated me — Russians seemed like people searching for meaning. I was searching for meaning, too.

I was living in Vladivostok with a host family, a mother and a daughter, in a small, one-bedroom apartment perched on one of the high hills encircling the city. Maria, the mother, would talk fondly of the days of Communism and, when we had electricity, teach me how to make pirozhki in the kitchen.

The daughter, Tanya, and I, being about the same age, became buddies. We played badminton together in the apartment courtyard and taught each other colloquialisms by posting them on the kitchen wall with sticky notes.

Life seemed good.

Time went on, and things changed.

Maybe we saw one another’s flaws, or maybe we just got sick of each other. Tanya had bought into MTV as American culture, and, as much as I tried to explain to her that the things she saw on television were not the things Americans actually did, she didn’t believe me. Odd, isn’t it, that I was searching for meaning in Russia while Tanya was searching for meaning in MTV America. In contrast, Maria’s life and ambitions were buried in a Communist past. In the new order, it seemed, she had no purpose and nothing to live for except a good meal and vodka. Maria also was searching for meaning.

Things went from bad to worse.

One evening, I came home to find that Maria had locked herself in the bathroom. I didn’t think much of it until later, when I learned the rest of the story. I had given Tanya money for my room and board, and Tanya had given it to Maria. Maria lost the money and Tanya had beaten her.

This was not something I had ever experienced firsthand. People were supposed to love one another; this wasn’t right. I tried to fix things. I talked to Tanya. “Why are you making such a big deal out of it?” she asked me. Tanya was ready to move on — whether to the next thrill or the next drink, it didn’t matter. Maria, I think, was ready for the American to leave so that she could be alone again. Then it hit me. I couldn’t fix their problems.

All the feel-goodisms and platitudes I had quoted weren’t cutting it.

One night, I left the apartment and began walking down a steep hill to the center of town. It was cold, and the sky was clear and full of stars. I didn’t know where to go, and I didn’t know what to do. I was not a religious person, but I prayed. I don’t remember my exact words, but it went something like, “God, I can’t help these people. I don’t know what to do. I have nothing to offer them.”

Time passed and, as scheduled, I left Vladivostok for Amur State University in Blagoveshchensk, near the Chinese border. My studies included private Russian lessons, and I soon found out that I would have an American classmate. Another American in Blagoveshchensk? That was unexpected. Her name was Margaret, and she was there helping Baptist missionaries start a church. A missionary? “How quaint,” I thought. As I got to know

her, I realized that Margaret had what Tanya and Maria had been seeking.

Margaret had purpose. Margaret had peace.

I wanted that purpose, that peace.

I began to attend church services and Bible studies. I wanted understanding.

I wanted answers. But Margaret and the other missionaries who invited me could no more help me than I could help Tanya and Maria. That, however, was the point. They led me to the person who could help. Suffice it to say that I met a man in Russia, and his name is Jesus Christ. He is the One who gave my life meaning — whether then in Blagoveshchensk, Russia, or today in North Troy, Vt. And, herein is the irony: this life is not about me, or my identity, or my search for meaning — it’s about Him, and doing what He wants, and showing forth His love.

Therein, I find peace.

As I write this, my children, ages 4 and 3, are sitting at our dining room table eating apple slices and string cheese. My husband and I are trying to help them understand the great love that we know, a father’s love, the love of God. My life now is nothing like how I would have imagined it on graduation day. It revolves around God and church and family. It revolves around love. I couldn’t ask for a better life.

I may never see Maria or Tanya again, but if I do, I know what I’ll tell them. I still don’t have the answers, but I know the one who does. There is hope, there is meaning, and while they might walk away from that truth, I would point them to where Margaret pointed me.

Perhaps you’ll laugh at this essay and toss it aside. I probably would have in the past. I hope you’ll remember it, though, if you’re ever walking down your dark street in Vladivostok.

Your Margaret might be waiting for you right around the corner.

8 Read more essays from our Passion for the Climb series, or see how you can submit your own essay, at www.colgate.edu/scene/pfcessays

Oviraptor Through an improbable and fortuitous set of circumstances, Colgate came to own one of the first dinosaur eggs ever discovered. The fossil, one of a clutch of 13 eggs found in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert, was stumbled upon by paleontologists on July 13, 1923 — another lucky Friday the 13th. Expedition leader Roy Chapman Andrews auctioned off the egg in 1924 to fund future trips. The winning bidder? Col. Austen B. Colgate, who paid $5,000 and then donated the egg to the university that bears his family’s name, and for which he was a trustee.

MISCELLANY • Roy Chapman Andrews is suggested to be the inspiration for the Hollywood movie character Indiana Jones.

• Charles Gallenkamp mentions the Colgate connection in his Chapman biography, Dragon Hunter.

• Geology professor Connie Soja knows more about the egg than anyone.

Her research with students into how dinosaur eggs became fossilized made the cover of American Paleontologist (Summer 2008). She was “eggstatic”!

• The egg was once stolen — and reappeared on the village priest’s front lawn. See Colgate Maroon, March 27, 1957. To this day, the perpetrators remain anonymous, and the egg has since been kept under tight security.

• Last fall, Soja (center) gave people a chance to “meet” the egg during presentations on Family Weekend and the weekly Science Colloquium Series.

SPECS • Species: Oviraptor philoceratops • 80 million years old (late Cretaceous) • 7 cm (diameter); 16 cm (length) • Approximately 60% of its original eggshell is intact • Unhatched, according to CAT scans and X-rays • The first definitive evidence of how some dinosaurs reproduced

Page 13 is the showplace for Colgate tradition,

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history, and school spirit. What are you interested

in learning about? The Scene wants to know.

For more: www.colgate.edu/dinoegg The Scene thanks Connie Soja for her assistance — and appreciates her eggy puns.

Write to us at scene@mail.colgate.edu.

scene: Winter 2009

Andrew Daddio

life of the mind 14

Dog teaches man, man teaches students about calculus

Most of us don’t associate solving a calculus problem with a day at the beach, but for Tim Pennings, a math professor at Hope College, this is exactly what comes to mind.

Pennings and his dog, a Welsh corgi named Elvis, came to campus to share their unique take on calculus with students and faculty members.

One day, when Pennings was playing with Elvis at a Michigan beach, he noticed that their game of fetch imitated a familiar calculus problem of finding the optimal path from point A to point B. Usually the best route between two points is a straight line; optimal problems, however, incorporate different factors that influence that route. As Pennings threw the ball into Lake Michigan, he noticed that Elvis would run along the beach and then launch himself into the water and swim to the ball. Pennings also noticed that Elvis ran faster than he swam.

Because the different mediums of land and water affected Elvis’s speed, they also affected his optimal route to the ball. Pennings set out to learn whether Elvis was indeed finding the optimal route, and if so, could Elvis in fact do calculus?

Pennings first decided that Elvis’s objective was to get to the ball as fast

as possible. This became obvious to the students when Pennings and Elvis played fetch to start the lecture.

Back on the beach, once Pennings threw the ball into the water, Elvis had a couple of choices. He could jump right into the water and swim in a direct line to the ball, or he could cut down on his swimming time and run along the beach until the ball was the shortest swimming distance away, and then jump in.

Pennings ran a series of trials that revealed, statistically, that Elvis consistently was jumping in near the optimal point.

So does Elvis do calculus? Pennings performed one more demonstration to try and resolve this question for the students.

Pennings asked Elvis repeatedly to find the derivative of x3. “Look at his eyes carefully,” Pennings suggested.

“Look at his eyes and his mouth. See, he does that every time. Nothing.

What were you expecting?”

Pennings does not think Elvis can do calculus, although he thinks his pooch is an example of the optimizing ability of nature. Don’t feel too bad for Elvis; he may not be able to do calculus, but he still received an honorary doctorate from Hope College.

— Megan Foley ’09

Professor’s research sheds new light on global warming

Even though the most significant impact from climate change has been in polar regions, a new report co-authored by Assistant Professor of Biology Catherine Cardelús may debunk the notion that tropical plants and animals remain unaffected by global warming.

The research conducted by Cardelús and four other scientists was published in the October 10, 2008, issue of Science magazine, and media outlets around the world have reported the team’s findings.

“Until now, there has been little attention given to the impact of a warming climate on tropical diversity,” said Cardelús. “There is a lingering belief that because species live in hot climates, they can withstand even higher temperatures. This, however, is not necessarily true.”

Contrary to conventional wisdom, tropical species living in some of the warmest places on earth may be significantly threatened by global warming, according to the study.

Syllabus GEOG 205: Climate and Society MWF, 11:20-12:10, Lathrop 217 Adam Burnett, Professor of Geography, and Jessica Graybill, Assistant Professor of Geography Course description: Global warming is the defining environmental and social issue of our time. But, while the global community increasingly understands the basic processes driving climate change and is starting to appreciate the consequences, the coupled social-natural dynamics are complex, and the issue remains controversial. This course provides background on the biophysical, social, and ethical dimensions of global warming and highlights the multiple modes of analysis commonly used in the discipline of geography.

On the reading list: – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report (2007) – Field Notes from a Catastrophe (Elizabeth Kolbert) – Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum (William Ruddiman) Key assignments/activities: Two team papers, an oral report, and a fictional essay on the impact of climate change.

The professors say: Climate change is a complicated topic that involves both physical and social science issues. The amount of information available is extensive and includes a large body of observational and paleoclimate data, several datasets that focus on future climates, and numerous efforts to understand the human dimensions of these changes.

Creating this course, which is designed for first- and second-year students, was a way for us to address climate change and its potential impacts on society and individuals in a systematic and logical way.

The report indicates that global warming would shift temperature zones uphill and tropical species will likely be driven to higher, cooler elevations by these changes, following the climate zones they are suited for.

Cardelús and her fellow researchers, who collected data on 2,000 species of plants and animals along forested slopes of a Costa Rican volcano, believe the results of such a shift could be devastating to lowland tropics.

“Lowland tropics do not have a pool of species to replace those driven uphill by warming, which could lead to a decrease in the region’s biodiversity,” she warned. More than half of the species they studied in Costa Rica could potentially face such risks.

Lecture highlights shamans’ role in protecting Amazon

Photos showing flesh-eating bacteria and a river of dead fish drew gasps in a packed Love Auditorium science colloquium as Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) president Mark Plotkin emphasized the importance of protecting Amazonian land and culture.

Ian Starr ’04, executive assistant at ACT, joined Plotkin on the visit to talk about their work with indigenous people. Starr, who was a Native American studies major at Colgate, has worked with members of more than a dozen indigenous tribes from across greater Amazonia in his four years with ACT. “They’re paying the price for something we’ve been causing,” Plotkin said of how climate change and deforestation are harming the rainforest and the indigenous people who live there. He added that the health and

environmental devastation they are experiencing is headed our way. “Ever since 9/11, we’ve learned that whatever happens in far-off places affects us right here at home; we are living on an ever-shrinking planet,” he said.

An ethnobotanist, Plotkin has been working with elder shamans in Central and South America to learn about medicinal plants for the past 20 years.

“Plotkin’s whole point is learning from the shamans — rather than us saying what we have to teach these people, they have so much to teach us,” said Professor Chris Vecsey, whose students in Core 176: Native American Indians read Plotkin’s book, Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice.

Students had the opportunity to ask Plotkin questions about the book when he visited their class. “He opened my mind to new possibilities and that science is not restricted to common Western practices,” said Sean Spellberg ’12.

Class helps Bhutan refugees

You can really clean up with $700.

Just ask the students in economics professor Nicole Simpson’s Immigration course.

The first-year seminar analyzes the causes and consequences of immigration in America. Simpson gave the class a recent Post-Standard article about a new Syracuse community of approximately 450 refugees from Bhutan, a small nation in the eastern Himalayas, sandwiched between China and India. In the early 1990s, Bhutan’s government stripped the country’s minority ethnic Nepalis of their citizenship and forced them

Mark J. Plotkin, Amazon Conservation Team president

into exile, according to the nongovernmental group Human Rights Watch.

As part of what is described by the United Nations as one of the world’s largest resettlement efforts, the United States recently offered to resettle 60,000 of an estimated 107,000 Bhutanese refugees. The first wave of refugees arrived in several U.S. cities, including Syracuse, last March. The article put out a call for assistance for the refugees, who need help in various ways. One category: cleaning supplies, which for refugees present an overwhelming — and unaffordable — array of unfamiliar options for those setting up a new household.

The students decided, on their own, to do something. “I feel that since we are so privileged, we are obligated to share our resources,” said Elizabeth Ramsey ’12. “We wanted to donate something tangible so we would know where the money was going and how it would help.”

They set up a fundraising table in the Coop, asked area stores for product donations, and shopped for supplies.

Each kit included rags, sponges, laundry detergent, general purpose cleaners, toilet cleaner and brush, dish detergent, and a mop or broom.

The project, Ramsey said, also helped the resettlement organization, Catholic Charities in Syracuse.

“They are dealing with a huge number of people who need housing, food, jobs, and to be integrated into everyday life in upstate New York. The amount of time we spent on this project was minimal, and I saw by visiting Catholic Charities and meeting other immigrants how far that little effort can go to help someone,” she said. In all, the class raised $700 — enough for 35 families to clean up.

Andrew Daddio

A conundrum of provenance

Last fall, when Elizabeth Marlowe took the students in her ARTS 481 seminar on “Looting, Faking and Collecting Antiquities in the Postcolonial World” to New York City, the group witnessed an exchange that later sparked a discussion in the blogosphere about ethics and the art market.

The group visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the home of a private collector, and an antiquities gallery, where a customer came in wanting to purchase a piece of jewelry. When he asked about the piece’s provenance (ownership history), the students overheard an exchange that made the

Live and learn

When Carolina van der Mensbrugghe ’10 chose the Madrid Study Group last fall, little did she know she’d soon play a role in the arts and culture of the city. A chance pit stop while on a run in Retiro Park led her to a poster advertising auditions at The Fundación Shakespeare, Spain’s equivalent of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Van der Mensbrugghe impressed the company’s director with her acting chops, landing the part of Ophelia in Hamlet.

The international relations and theater major juggled rehearsals six days a week (in preparation for 12 performances) with courses in Spanish art history, theater, postwar stories, peace and war in the contemporary world, and film history. Midsemester, she wrote about her experience: “I go to class, eat, study, and go to rehearsal; there is little room for much else, but I would have it no other way. I am working with a cast of models, opera singers, and television and movie actors. I go out to tapas with them, and have learned what it is like to try and break into the Madrid theater scene.

“It is interesting seeing how a play is reproduced in a different culture. This Hamlet is much more passionate, violent, and emotional than any Anglo-Saxon production I have seen. I am performing Ophelia’s madness scene in English and Spanish, a new challenge that heightens the sense of her descent into lunacy.

“The hardest part about working in Spanish is justifying my lines — it’s very different from carrying on a normal conversation. I’m the only foreigner in the company, so I’m a bit of a novelty — the cast jokes around a bit about me being the ‘token American,’ but all in good fun.

“Seeing El Greco’s El Entierro del Conde Orgaz in person was breathtaking.

I’ve studied the painting in various classes, but I saw things in it I have never seen before.”

News and views for the Colgate community

15

Recent research by Alumni Memorial Scholars

Alumni Memorial Scholars, the top students admitted to their class, are eligible to apply for a fellowship of up to $5,000 to pursue research, travel, and internships pertaining to their academic interests.

Health care challenges in South Africa – Michael Kimura ’09 “My research brought me to Cape Town, South Africa.

Although the sites were amazing and the people were extremely hospitable, I witnessed an impoverished and suffering population that has been worn down by staggering instances of HIV/ AIDS and tuberculosis. I was stationed in two public sector hospitals, where I rotated through various departments, helping in both a medical and nonmedical capacity. South Africa’s public health care welcomes all patients; a seemingly ideal system, it is plagued by a lack of medical and human resources. Despite these strained conditions, doctors have maintained the highest quality of health care. Such cooperation and genuine concern has helped mature my own beliefs of medical care, and has instilled a commitment to strive for the kind of personalized care these medical officers are able to achieve.”

Showtime for the Maya: The role of performance in the indigenous fight for cultural survival in Mexico – Kelly McKay ’09 “My initial goal was to study the evolution of indigenous theater in postcolonial Mexico, focusing on the use of theater performance as a method of cultural preservation. After my on-campus research, I traveled to the Riviera Maya region of Quintana Roo, Mexico. However, Tropical Storm Arthur affected my itinerary, and I shifted my focus to an exploration of the performative aspects of tourism.

In a sense, tourist experiences like those marketed by companies on the Riviera Maya are a way for Mayan culture to gain exposure within the

This past November, members of the British National Debate Team were invited to campus to compete with members of the Colgate Debate Society and lead a public speaking workshop for students. That same weekend, several other Colgate debaters traveled to England to compete at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, as well as learn more about British Parliamentary Debate style. Earlier in the semester, the Colgate Debate Society won the University of Rochester 2008 Debating Championship and had a strong performance at the Yale Intervarsity 2008, an international tournament with 120 teams competing.

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scene: Winter 2009

Interactions between Muslims, Christians, and Jews in medieval Spain between the 13th and 14th centuries – Ryan Zinski ’09 Following 10 weeks of research and three weeks in Spain — Valencia, Cordoba, and Seville: “I have found that la convivencia (a contemporary term explaining how Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived together in medieval Spain) was connected to military and economic motives held by the Christian monarchies during the 13th and 14th centuries. As the 14th century progressed, la convivencia became strained as economic competition

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mainstream culture and for Mayan communities to gain resources for further development. In another sense, in the hands of these companies, Mayan cultural traditions become commodities to be bought and sold, which can alienate them from their original meanings. My findings suggest that the tourist experience involves a complex relationship between colonizer and colonized, which I hope to further study in graduate school.”

have an illegal artifact that will have to stay in the private sphere.”

“It really points to the problem with the use of ‘provenance’ as the only important word in such a dialog and some collectors’ ignorance of its true meaning,” remarked Claudia Piacente ’09.

Andrew Daddio

life of the mind

course’s abstract ethical debates suddenly very real.

Provenance is a buyer’s only protection against repatriation claims, which can arise when an object’s excavation or exportation from its country of origin was illegal (a frequent occurence). But provenance only works if it proves that an object has been out since 1970, the year UNESCO legislated against the unregulated excavation and exportation of antiquities. The gallery owner rightly guessed that this distinction would be lost on her hapless customer. She reassured him that the piece “had provenance” because it had been published in three of the gallery’s recent sales catalogues. Since publication history is often part of the evidence of provenance, it all sounded good to him, and she closed the sale.

The episode was exciting for the students, whose classwork enabled them to grasp the ethical complexities of the scene playing out in front of them. Marlowe then wrote to antiquities expert David Gill of Swansea University in Wales. Gill wrote an entry about it on his “Looting Matters” blog, which is widely read among art historians and archaeologists, inviting comment from others. A couple of Marlowe’s students jumped into the online conversation. As Matthew Anaya ’10 recounted: “The saleswoman did not state that the object was legal … a problem because now the man may

is an integral part of their attempt to regain a sense of identity. Modern-day Giecz, the town closest to the site that I helped excavate, is in an area that was once a trade settlement in the 11th century. Nearby are the remains of a defensive stronghold and burial ground, which, together with the trade settlement, form an important archaeological complex for Poland.

Many of the graves contained burial goods in addition to the skeletons, allowing us to hypothesize about the lives of those buried. Attending the field school allowed me to be involved in multiple steps of the archaeological process and to see how each area was important for the process as a whole.”

Eating the sun: perceptions of eclipses in ancient and modern China – Erin Scott ’09 “An astronomy major, I have an interest in the interaction between culture and science. I traveled to China to see the total solar eclipse on August 1. My main goal was to determine how people’s views of such an event have differed depending on their background and how such views have changed in modern times. My research began with an investigation into occurrences of solar eclipses in the past, their locations, and how they affected the local populations. During my stay in China,

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Faculty awards

I distributed surveys and conducted interviews to determine people’s reactions in modern times. I then compared these responses to the historical reactions of people of both this culture and of the West.”

Investigation of mortuary archaeology at a field school in Giecz, Poland – Kate van den Heever ’09 “I attended a mortuary archaeology field school offered by the Slavia Foundation, a nonprofit organization supporting archaeological research in Poland. I would like to attend graduate school for forensic science or physical anthropology. This allowed me to develop my skills and knowledge of physical anthropology, osteology, and forensic science in general. Poles have continuously had to rebuild their past, so the work done by archaeologists

Congratulations to the following faculty for recognition in their fields.

Michael Johnston, Charles A. Dana Professor of political science, was given the 2009 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving the World Order for his 2005 book Syndromes of Corruption: Wealth, Power, and Democracy. This international prize, one of five cash awards, is given annually for works aimed at making the world a better place.

Joseph Amato, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of physics, and Roger Williams, research and teaching support technician for physics and astronomy, won first place in the American Association of Physics Teachers’ annual Apparatus Competition. Their entry was a novel microwave analogy to X-ray Bragg scattering.

Chris Henke, assistant professor of sociology and anthropology, received a research grant from the National Science Foundation to support his project “Contested Fields: Place-Bound Conflicts over Transgenic Crops.”

Noor-Aiman Khan, assistant professor of history, won a Fulbright Scholar award for lecturing and research on Indian Nationalism and Anti-Imperial Movements; and InterNationalism in Egyptian Nationalism.

English professor Phillip Richards received a renewal of his grant from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation supporting his scholarly inquiry into African American studies.

Earl Smith, visiting Arnold A. Sio Professor in diversity and community, was given the annual book award by the North American Society for the Study of Sport for his book Race, Sport, and the American Dream.

Get to know: Steven Kepnes

Andrew Daddio

increased and campaigning decreased.

While military and economic stimuli for cooperation faded, the religious tensions were set loose. I discovered that much of Spain’s medieval legacy has disappeared under urban revitalization projects (and many synagogues and mosques were torn down when the Jews and Muslims were expelled). Luckily, old churches dating back to this time often incorporated structural pieces of the former mosques, which allowed me to infer a degree of reusing of religious structures and thus, coexistence between different religious traditions.”

Chair of the religion department, Murray W. and Mildred K. Finard Professor in Jewish studies, and university professor for Core 151: Western Traditions Spring semester courses Core 151: Western Traditions; and The Land of Israel — Extended Study What does your current research involve?

I’ve been working in the area of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic dialogue. I co-founded a group called Scriptural Reasoning that meets to practice the art of reading and interpreting the scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. We’ve been doing this for a decade all over the world. Part of my newest research project is to present our accomplishments, with illustrations of how Jews, Christians, and Muslims can get together to peacefully talk about similarities and differences. The book will review insights that participants come to in reading scriptures from another tradition and in reading their own scriptures with people from other traditions.

When was the last time a student surprised you?

Students constantly surprise me. I think if you’re not surprised by Colgate students, then teaching could become boring. And for me, teaching is never boring.

Please talk about your work with the Upstate Scholars.

The idea came out of the Sio Reading Group, a faculty seminar on race and education that I did with five other faculty members. We talked a lot about the underfunding and underresourcing of inner-city schools in America, and it occurred to me that we as faculty, and Colgate students, could do a lot more for our local high schools.

This program, called the Upstate Scholars, is administered by the Upstate Institute and seeks to put some resources into Proctor High School in Utica so that those students who are high risk — mainly minority, poor, often from one-parent families — can reach an academic level where they could apply to Colgate. One of the main initiatives is to help them with their SAT prep, so they’re more likely to do well on such tests, which will help them get into competitive schools like Colgate.

What do you do in your free time?

I get caught up in sports — the Boston Red Sox, the Celtics, and the Patriots — anything that’s connected to Boston. When I was 8 years old, my father entered the contest to name the Patriots and won — they chose his name for the team. He took me to all the old AFL games. I’m still a passionate ex-New Englander.

I also love to be with my family. I have two kids. My daughter graduated from Brown, and I have a son who is at Sarah Lawrence College. My wife teaches law at Syracuse University College of Law, and we love to travel.

What’s next?

I’m taking a group of students on a three-week extended study trip to Israel this summer.

We’ll study on campus this spring and then go see the sites in Israel that we’ve studied. It will be focused on the history, culture, and religion of the state of Israel. We’ll focus on not only Judaism, but also on Christianity and Islam, and we’ll also explore the many sides of the contemporary Palestinian-Israeli peace process.

— Aleta Mayne

News and views for the Colgate community

17

arts & culture

Zambello directs Little House on the Prairie

The beloved children’s book series Little House on the Prairie has been brought to the stage in a musical version by internationally recognized opera and theater director Francesca Zambello ’78. “I wanted to make a musical from these poignant stories the moment I rediscovered them as an adult,” Zambello told Playbill. “Our musical focuses on the independent spirit of the teenager, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and her struggles to become an adult; alongside the story of the land — as it becomes the American West.”

The world premiere starred Melissa Gilbert — known to millions as daughter Laura Ingalls in the longrunning television series — as Ma. Even before it opened at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in August 2008, it broke box office advance sales records, prompting an extension of the show’s run. Little House embarked on a national tour in October.

This coming summer, Zambello will direct a new musical version of The First Wives Club at San Diego’s Old Globe Theater.

Dance-theater group inspires students to push the edge

Little House on the Prairie, the musical, directed by Francesca Zambello ’78

On a late Wednesday afternoon in Ryan dance studio, a dozen students were gathered on the floor in a circle, intensely deconstructing a short video clip they had just watched, of a frenetic, kinesthetic scene that was part dance, part theater, part music. The

students — dancers, singers, actors, and one self-described “seeker” — had come for a workshop with the Argentinean experimental dance theater ensemble Grupo Krapp.

Then the students broke up into groups to invent their own movement scenes, employing the elements they had just discussed, which they would perform on campus in the coming days.

Grupo Krapp (named in homage to Samuel Beckett’s one-act play Krapp’s Last Tape) spent eight days on campus in early October as this year’s Cathy MacNeil Hollinger and Mark Hollinger Artists-In-Residence.

“I saw them last summer when I was in Buenos Aires,” said April Sweeney, assistant professor of English in the University Theater, who invited the ensemble to campus.

“Their choreography struck me — this space that they inhabit between dance and theater… It really spoke to me, and I thought it was more than bold. It was crazy risky, somehow, and really funny and subtle and smart, and the form was somewhat bleak and hysterical at the same time.”

Sweeney knew they would be a perfect choice for this year’s Forum on the Arts, whose theme, “Crossing Cultures, Crossing Mediums,” looks at artists who work in interdisciplinary ways, bringing different mediums together and bridging cultures.

In addition to the Wednesday workshop, Grupo Krapp offered a second open workshop to students,

Preview

Harlequin Unmasked: Music and Dance of the Commedia Dell’Arte Feb. 22, 2009, 3:30 p.m.

Colgate Memorial Chapel Featuring Apollo’s Banquet (Thomas Baird and Paige Whitley-Bauguess, Baroque dancers) with the Rebel ensemble for Baroque music The poignant characters of Harlequin and Colombine dance their way through Italy, Germany, and France, interspersed with instrumental caprices of the 17th and 18th centuries. The program coincides with the end of the symbolic period of Carnival and the beginning of Lent.

8 Michal Daniel

For information on other arts events, visit www.colgate.edu/arts

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scene: Winter 2009

talked with students about their work in informal meetings, and visited several classes, including Core Cultures: Argentina, Intro to Latin American Politics, and a Spanish Literature course given in Spanish.

They also performed two of their own shows in Brehmer Theater.

“The students really had a chance to interact,” said Sweeney. “We’re so lucky to have had them here.”

Open mic

Habes named director of Colgate’s Picker Art Gallery

Sister/Leaves BettyJo Roby, ENG 477: Advanced Creative Writing Workshop

Andrew Daddio

Scott Habes has been appointed director of the university’s Picker Art Gallery. As director, Habes will provide vision and artistic direction for the gallery, taking the lead in shaping its role in the visual arts and education on campus and the central New York region.

“I am confident that we will see great things from the Picker as Scott is a person of experience, vision, and energy,” said President Rebecca Chopp.

Habes comes to Colgate from The Art Gallery at the University of Maryland, where he served as director since 2000. The Art Gallery has received critical acclaim for its innovative vision that serves as an extension of the undergraduate and graduate curricula

On the fly: Lyndsay Werking ’09, Alice Feng ’12, Sabrina Frometa ’11, and Octavia ChavezRichmond ’11 create their own movement scene in a workshop with the Argentinean experimental dance theater ensemble Grupo Krapp.

of the university and as a cultural resource for the region.

Habes earned a dual BA in art history and economics from the State University of New York at Oswego and an MBA in arts administration from the State University of New York at Binghamton.

“Scott brings great enthusiasm not only for excellent art, but a passion for connecting it with teaching and learning in ways that will enhance the experience of our students and those in our community,” said Provost and Dean of the Faculty Lyle Roelofs.

Andrew Daddio

Composer celebrates

The avant-garde jazz ensemble Trio X — Joe McPhee, saxophone; Dominic Duval, bass; and Jay Rosen, drums — had a daylong gig at Colgate, complete with an interview/performance on WRCU, a luncheon with students, and a concert in Donovan’s Pub. The group’s recently released 10th-anniversary box set includes their 2006 live performance at Colgate’s Picker Art Gallery.

Leave it to composer and trumpeter Dexter Morrill ’60, professor of music emeritus, to mark a monumental birthday with music. Morrill celebrated his 70th year on earth in 2008 with a concert series where his compositions were performed by ensembles across the country.

The series kicked off last March with the world premiere of his Symphony No. 2 for winds, percussion, and piano, at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, and wrapped up in November with his Iron Horse Quintet, performed by the Utica Chamber Music Society at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. In between, his compositions were performed at the University of Texas, Arlington; University of North Texas College of Music; Stanford University; Santa Rosa Junior College; and Le Petit Trianon in Cupertino, Calif.

Lauren DiCioccio ’02 was featured as a local artist of the week in the San Francisco Bay Guardian as her work was on exhibit at the Jack Fischer Gallery. Mount Rushmore: The Four Presidents is from a collection of hand-embroidery pieces sewn on organza and pleather; each is approximately 2" x 2".

“These embroideries are life-size sculptural recreations of 35-mm slides I have collected. I am drawn to slides as precious objects: the fragility of the translucent negative material and intimacy of the scale of a palm-sized slide are particularly endearing. I hope to capture this tenderness in my sculptures. To make these little pieces, I embroider directly onto bridal organza, a very delicate translucent material, and allow the excess threads to pour out the back and hang down the wall.”

My year-and-a-half-old sister, Paula, ate some leaves from the thick climbing tree.

It was sunny and I was six. The leaves had fallen on the patch of grass in front of our Virginia doublewide. All of us, my mom and my brother and I, missed the instant she stuffed the ovals between her gums, but I noticed the dark green bits on her lips an instant later.

Mom, Paula’s eating leaves!

My protective-older-sister cry. Within two seconds my mother was frantically snatching all of the leaves she could reach from my sister’s mouth and throat. Then we were on our way to the hospital where my father had just started his workday as a second-shift janitor, my mom toting a few sample leaves from the tree in a plastic baggy for identification.

I was uncomfortable in the waiting room chairs, squirming next to my father, who waited with my brother and me. He had taken time away from his work so my mom could be in the examination room with Paula. My mind fluttered.

What’s taking so long? Why are they making us wait out here?

When they finally let us in to see her, my mom was holding my sister and a nurse was removing a plastic bin of stomach acid mixed with tiny pieces of floating black.

The doctor comforted my father: It’s just a precaution, the leaves probably aren’t poisonous.

We headed home. My father went back to mopping.

Read more of Roby’s memoir-in-progress at www.colgate.edu/scene.

News and views for the Colgate community

19

go ’gate

NCAA gives Colgate A+ in student-athlete graduation rates

Tight end Nick Cvetic ’11 (#46) blocks a Lafayette player as running back Nate Eachus ’12 (#32) scores a touchdown against the Leopards. Eachus carried 34 times for 171 yards and two secondhalf touchdowns as Colgate rallied for a 21-13 win over Lafayette at Andy Kerr Stadium.

Colgate’s student-athletes scored high in the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) most recent Graduation Success Rates. Tied for the top spot among Division I schools were Colgate, Alcorn State University, and the University of San Francisco.

Colgate’s student-athlete graduation rate is at an all-time high of 99 percent, and 18 of the university’s 20 sports had 100 percent graduation for the four-year period tracked by the NCAA. The rankings show the percentage of student-athletes earning a degree within six years, based upon the four-class aggregate of first-year classes from 1998 to 2001.

“This is a clear indication of the kind of students our coaches are recruiting, students who are able to make both their education and their sport a high priority,” Assistant Athletic Director-Compliance Coordinator Ann-Marie Guglieri told the Maroon News. “This is something we can be proud of,” she added.

Fall season wrap-up

A highly successful fall season vaulted Colgate into first place in the Patriot League President’s Cup race. The Raiders had a solid fall across the board, qualifying for the Patriot League Tour-

nament in men’s and women’s soccer, field hockey, and volleyball. Football and men’s soccer both earned Patriot League titles, and the volleyball team advanced to the championship match.

Football

The Raiders qualified for the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision playoffs for the eighth time in Colgate’s tradition-rich football history and for the sixth time under head coach Dick Biddle.

Biddle guided the Raiders to a 9-3 record overall, and an undefeated record in the Patriot League. For his effort, he was named the Patriot League Coach of the Year for the fourth time in his 13-year tenure. He also passed the legendary Andy Kerr as the winningest football coach in school history with 104 victories.

Running back Nate Eachus ’12 became the fifth Colgate player to earn Patriot League Rookie of the Year honors, and the first for the Raiders since his backfield mate, Jordan Scott ’09, received the honor in 2005.

Colgate also led the way in both overall and first-team all-league selections. The Raiders had 12 players selected to the all-league team, including eight first-team honorees.

First-team selections were Eachus and Scott at running back; offensive

Ask Raider Hilary Meyer ’99, who happens to be the youngest woman inductee, asks: Who was the first woman to be inducted into Colgate’s Athletics Hall of Honor?

All-American diver Gail Majdalany Heaslip ’79 was the first woman inducted into the Hall of Honor, in 1984. And to date, the earliest class represented by a woman is 1976: Sandra Baur Bixby, inducted in 1995, served as captain of Colgate’s firstever women’s varsity teams in field hockey, basketball, and lacrosse.

Tom McGarrity ’79 tries to stump Raider by asking: What future NFL Hall of Famer got knocked out of the game with broken ribs

by Bruce Nardella ’79 and Danny Mastrella ’80 in the 1978 Colgate 20-14 victory over Villanova?

That would be Howie Long, who went on to play for a different Raiders team — Oakland!

Did you know?

If you haven’t seen the 1977 cult hockey classic Slap Shot, starring Paul Newman as aging hockey coach Reggie Dunlop, it’s time to Netflix it! Starr Rink and its locker room was one of several arenas used in the film.

Andrew Daddio

Do you have a Colgate sports trivia topic suggestion or question for Raider? Send an e-mail to scene@mail.colgate.edu and put Ask Raider in the subject line.

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scene: Winter 2009

Men’s soccer

For the first time in school history, the men’s soccer team earned back-toback appearances in the NCAA Division I Tournament. The Raiders won the Patriot League regular season title, before taking their second-straight tournament championship.

Under head coach Erik Ronning ’97, the Raiders finished 12-6-3 overall and 5-1-1 in league play. Goalie David Cap-

puccio ’09 was named the league’s Goalie of the Year for the second time in his career. He finished his collegiate career with a school-record 23 shutouts.

Joining Cappuccio on the all-league first team were Chris Ross ’10 and Glenn Volk ’09, while second-team selections were Steven Miller ’11, Alex Weekes ’10, Jeff Leach ’11, and Daniel Kerley ’09.

Weekes, who was MVP of the Patriot League Tournament, was named first team on the National Soccer Coaches Association of America all– Mid-Atlantic Region team. Cappuccio and Volk were second team, and Ross was third team.

Kerley was selected to the ESPN The Magazine first-team Academic All-America squad. He is the first-ever men’s soccer student-athlete to be named first-team Academic All-American. He was Colgate’s Male Scholar Athlete of the Year in 2007–2008.

Get to know: Stephen Jungbluth

Andrew Daddio

linemen Nick Hennessey ’09, Steve Jonas ’09, and Rich Rosabella ’09; wide receiver Pat Simonds ’10; and defensive backs Chris Ekpo ’09 and Wayne Moten ’10. On second team were quarterback Greg Sullivan ’11, defensive linemen Austin Douglas ’10 and Paul Mancuso ’10, and linebacker Greg Hadley ’10.

The American Football Coaches Association named Hennessey, senior offensive tackle, to its All-America team.

He led an offensive unit that finished fifth in rushing offense with 267.67 yards per game and 12th in total offense. Hennessey started 34 straight games for the Raiders. Also, he was named to the Walter Camp Football Foundation 2008 FCS All-America team.

Mark S. Randall Head Coach of Swimming and Diving – Hometown: Westford, Mass.

– College swimming experience: 400 IM, 1650 free, and 200 fly at University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in exercise science – Previous swimming and diving coaching experience: assistant coach and interim head coach at Amherst College; assistant head coach at Navy – Honors: 1994 Minuteman Award, which he earned after his senior season at UMass-Amherst, where he was co-captain; Patriot League Coach of the Year, 2006

Volleyball

For the second-straight season, the volleyball team advanced to the league’s championship game. The Raiders upset second-seed Army in the semifinals before losing to 11-time

What has been your proudest moment as a coach?

When we signed the Class of 2009, including one swimmer who competed in the 2004 Olympic trials and two swimmers who competed at U.S. Nationals; all three had state records. It was a class nobody thought we could get.

In the Raiders’ third-consecutive win of the field hockey season, midfielder Laura Denenga ’11 managed the ball as Bryant teammates were hot on her trail at Tyler’s Field. Colgate shut out Bryant with a 5-0 victory.

What was it like to overcome Navy and lead the women’s team to the Patriot League Championship last season?

It was great. A month prior to the meet, I ran some calculations that predicted that we could win the team title. No one really gave us a chance at the time of the meet. The team scores were really close. With just the final relay left to race, I calculated the scores 12 times over, and realized that we had finally clinched the team title.

What are some key things that are important to you as a coach?

Team building — to forge a chemistry that will bring us both individual and team success.

It’s something we’ve done a great job with. It’s the X-factor that allowed us to win a Patriot League title.

The second is leadership. I’ve been fortunate to find a few strong leaders in every class that I’ve recruited and to find people who move the team in the right direction.

Andrew Daddio

What are the team’s goals for the end of this season?

One of the goals for the men and the women is to score more combined points than we did at the championship last year. I look at that as a big goal because if we hit that, we hit a bunch of smaller goals along the way: lifetime bests, setting records, and winning titles.

Another goal is to win 13 events at the Patriot League Championship (beating Colgate’s record of 12 at the 2006 meet). And most significantly, I’m determined to send a swimmer to nationals.

What’s the most rewarding part of your job?

When I get letters from swimmers and former swimmers, explaining what they’ve learned from the program. These are the most cherished gifts that I can get — a note or an e-mail at the end of the year thanking me for whatever I’ve been able to pass on. I received a note last year from a swimmer saying that she didn’t like swimming in high school because of the team and the team’s attitude, but that I helped change that. That’s the most satisfying thing, when you’re able to make a positive impact on somebody.

— Paul Kasabian ’10

News and views for the Colgate community

21

go ’gate

champion American University in the finals, 3-1.

Katrina Zawojski ’09 and Casey Ritt ’11 were named first-team all-league, while Jackie Adlam ’09 was selected second team.

the freshman and school records in the 1650 free as well as establishing the new freshman, school, and Patriot League records in the 400 IM at the Conoco Phillips U.S. Short Course Swimming Championships.

Field hockey

Rowdy Raiders build enthusiasm at games

The Raiders made their secondstraight appearance in the Patriot League Tournament, finishing the season with a 9-9 record. Lauren Carey ’09 and Maddie Watrobski ’09 earned all-league first-team honors, while Laura Denenga ’11, Laura Flisnik ’09, and Katelyn Nerbonne ’10 were second-team selections.

Women’s soccer

The women’s soccer team qualified for the Patriot League Tournament, but lost a heart-breaking 1-0 overtime game in the semifinals against eventual champion Navy.

Midfielder Jillian Arnault ’10 was first-team all-league, while Danielle Wessler ’12, Josie Johnson ’09, Liz Polido ’10, Jessica Bitsack ’10, and Calista Victor ’11 were on the second team.

Women’s swimming

Erica Derlath ’12 was named Patriot League Women’s Swimmer of the Week in early December, for breaking

Andrew Daddio

The men’s basketball team practicing in Cotterell Court

Since the Rowdy Raiders, the sports fan group exclusively for Colgate students, kicked off in spring 2008, students have taken the ball and run with it. From student-designed T-shirts to banner contests and canned food drives, the more than 2,000-member fan group has ramped up school spirit.

David Roach, director of the division of physical education, recreation, and athletics, and Senior Associate Athletic Director Vicky Chun ’91 have learned that it’s the student-driven initiatives that are most successful with increasing attendance and enthusiasm at Colgate sporting events.

“As much as we like to think we’re cool and have these great ideas, it really isn’t [popular] unless it comes from them,” Chun joked.

The group’s Raider Nation slogan and T-shirts were thought up by former men’s lacrosse player and then-president of the Student-Athlete

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scene: Winter 2009

Advisory Committee, Devin Clifford ’07. These are the shirts that students receive when they sign up for the free club. By wearing Raider Nation T-shirts and swiping their identification cards at the Rowdy Raiders table at sponsored games, students rack up points to qualify for prizes. Attending one game gets them five points; if they wear their shirts, they get 10 points. They receive additional free apparel for lower points, but higher points make them eligible for grand prizes such as gift certificates to the Colgate Inn, Valero gas station, and Oliveri’s Pizzeria, as well as tickets to the ECAC men’s ice hockey championship.

This year, students who earned 70 points before the men’s hockey game vs. Cornell were guaranteed a ticket without waiting in the line that can form as early as noon for the 7 o’clock game. It was for that game that the wildly popular “Tango in the Chenango” T-shirts were created.

Again, students were the driving force. Paul Kasabian ’10 imagined the concept, and the picture of Raider dancing with Cornell’s bear mascot was drawn by linebacker Greg Hadley ’10. The shirts were handed out in Reid Athletic Center, and “We couldn’t give them out fast enough,” Chun said. To make the wait in line more pleasant, the faculty band Dangerboy entertained and free pizza was given out.

“We try to make it a great experience for them,” Chun said.

She added that the success of the Rowdy Raider–sponsored games has prompted them to look into getting non-scholarship sports involved.

Raider Nation

Fan spotlights with Vicky Chun ’91, senior associate athletic director “The enthusiasm has been unbelievable,” Chun said. “In my years here, I really haven’t seen anything like it.”

“It brings Colgate even closer than it already is,” added Hadley.

Conte named Silver Puck Award winner

Harold Ramis P’12

From: Chicago, Ill. Occupation: Actor, writer, producer Game: Football vs. Lafayette 11/1/2008 (Colgate defeated #22 Lafayette, 21-13) What brought you to the game?

It’s Parents’ Weekend, so we’ve come to see our son, Julian.

What do you think of the game?

I was very impressed by that first drive in the second half after the fumble.

Is this your first Colgate sporting event?

Yes. Julian just started in September, so this is the first time we’ve been back.

We’ll probably check out the hockey game today, too.

8 Check out www.gocolgateraiders.com for game schedules, rosters, statistics, online ticket ordering, and news and video features. For scores, call the Raider Sportsline: 315-228-7900.

Ticket office: 315-228-7600.

Andrew Daddio

David Conte ’71 received the 44th Silver Puck Award in December. The executive vice president/director of scouting for the New Jersey Devils received the award from Head Men’s Ice Hockey Coach Don Vaughan and Silver Puck Club president Gerald Quill ’60. The award is given to those who have gone above and beyond for the Colgate men’s hockey program.

At the banquet, Conte delivered an inspirational keynote speech on the values of Colgate, what it takes to succeed in the collegiate game and at higher levels, what it means to be a member of a team, and to never have any regrets.

In the 1960s and early ’70s, Conte was a standout for the Raiders. His Colgate rookie record of 56 points in the 1968–69 season still stands today, and his point total is the second highest among former Raiders who played in fewer than 100 contests.

Following his collegiate career, Conte played professionally in Europe for five seasons. After spending five years as a scout for the Washington Capitals, Conte began his 24-year association with the Devils’ organization as a full-time scout.

Do you have a funny quote?

Oh boy, that’s a lot of pressure; I have a comedy movie coming out next June: The Year One with Jack Black.

Stephanie Hipp ’09

Hometown: Orange, Conn.

Game: Women’s soccer vs. Navy 11/1/08 (Women’s soccer made its 16th appearance at the Patriot League Championship Tournament in Coach Kathy Brawn’s tenure at Colgate)

Brian Day ’11 (#12) tallied his sixth goal of the year just 59 seconds into the final period, but Cornell still beat Colgate 4-1 in an ECAC Hockey men’s clash at Starr Rink in November.

What brought you to the game?

I wanted to see the seniors’ last game.

Who is your favorite player?

Josie Johnson ’09 — she’s in my classes.

What other Raider sports do you follow?

I follow all of them.

What was the most memorable Colgate event that you’ve witnessed?

The Bucknell basketball game last year.

Outside hitter Maureen Colligan ’12 (#8) goes for a spike in the second match of the Colgate Invitational against Syracuse at Cotterell Court. Colgate closed out the season with a 15-14 record and 9-5 mark in Patriot League play.

Logan Keala ’11

Hometown: Kaneohe, Hawaii Game: Men’s soccer vs. Holy Cross 11/16/08 (Patriot League Championship Game, Colgate defeated Holy Cross 2-1) What brought you to the game?

I’m here because they’re playing for the Patriot League Championship game and we WON! Do you come to a lot of games?

Yes. I’m a varsity volleyball player and all the student-athletes go to each other’s games to show support.

Andrew Daddio

Who is your favorite player?

Glenn Volk ’09.

How was your game experience?

It was great! A lot of people came and then it started hailing… It’s a little different from Hawaii.

News and views for the Colgate community

23

new, noted , & quoted

Books & music Information is provided by publishers, authors, and artists.

The Source: Unleash Your Natural Energy, Power Up Your Health, and Feel 10 Years Younger Kathleen Healy Merrell ’84 (co-authored with Woodson Merrell) (Free Press)

Kathleen Healy Merrell co-wrote The Source with her husband, Dr. Woodson Merrell, based on his 6-step, 21-day plan for how to create and maximize one’s energy with simple lifestyle choices. An integrative medicine physician, Dr. Merrell combines research in medicine, endocrinology, and neuroscience with ancient Eastern methods and newer alternative practices. The plan addresses the exhaustion and lack of energy that millions of people nationwide report to their doctors.

A Syttende Mai Son George Nilsen ’47 (PublishAmerica)

During the Great Depression, through hard work and recurrent rejection, a syttende mai (born on May 17, Norwegian Constitution Day) son of immigrant Norwegian parents who divorce seeks, by personal achievement, recognition of worth by himself, his family, and his peers. Increasing difficulty to make ends meet on the family farm and his stepfather’s hatred for him forces the son to leave the farm at the age of 16.

How Capitol Got The Beatles and Then What Happened

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scene: Winter 2009

chance and reversed its rejection. Many of the ups and downs between the record company and the artists over the years of their association are discussed. An attorney, Charles Tillinghast worked with Capitol during the years of this relationship and had primary responsibility for the business and legal relationship between the company and the Beatles.

literacy, the plight of the elderly, the treatment of slaves, and much more — to life. It also explores the mentalities and morals of ordinary ancient Greek citizens at all societal levels. Robert Garland is Roy D. and Margaret B. Wooster Professor of the classics.

The Art of Social War

Christopher R. Henke (The MIT Press)

Jodi Siegel Wing ’86 (Harper)

Soon to become a major motion picture, Jodi Wing’s debut novel takes a satiric look at Hollywood high society. The heroine, Stacey Knight, is a die-hard New York woman who wants nothing more than to marry her adored fiancé, Jamey, and continue to succeed in her career running the “I Heart New York” campaign. Her future shines as bright as the Chrysler Building until Jamey’s company, a global media firm, acquires a badly run Hollywood film studio, and a condition of the deal is that Jamey must become CEO to orchestrate the company’s turnaround. When Jamey and Stacey have to relocate to Los Angeles, the unwitting newlyweds realize they have landed in a Technicolor, highstakes social war, pursued by ruthless power brokers. Stacey navigates a sea of unsubtle cultural mores, confusing social obstacles, packs of wild coyotes (literally), and extremely bad behavior.

Empowered by the 2,500-year-old military strategy tome, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, she takes control of the “War Game” and learns that she must adapt if they are to survive, and attack (cleverly, of course, and always in stilettos) if they are to thrive.

Charles Tillinghast ’51 (Outskirts Press)

Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

How Capitol Got The Beatles recounts the story of the record company’s initial rejection of the Fab Four, the group’s U.S. signing with Vee Jay Records, and how Capitol got a second

Drawing on the most recent scholarship, this volume brings ancient Greek society — from food and drink to

Robert Garland (Hackett Publishing)

Cultivating Science, Harvesting Power: Science and Industrial Agriculture in California

In Cultivating Science, Harvesting Power, Christopher Henke explores the ways that science helped build the Salinas Valley and California’s broader farm industry. Henke focuses on the case of University of California “farm advisors,” scientists stationed in counties throughout the state who have stepped forward to help growers deal with crises ranging from labor shortages to plagues of insects. These disruptions in what Henke terms industrial agriculture’s “ecology of power” provide a window into how agricultural scientists and growers have collaborated — and struggled — in shaping this industry. Henke is assistant professor of sociology and anthropology.

Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism

Edited by Dan Monk (and Mike Davis) (The New Press) Evil Paradises is a global guidebook to phantasmagoric but real places — alternate realities being constructed as “utopias” in a capitalist era unfettered by unions and state regulation. These developments — in cities, deserts, and in the middle of the sea — are worlds of consumption and inequality.

The case studies include the gilded archipelago of private islands known

In the media as “The World” being built in Dubai, where child slavery existed until very recently. Urbanists, architects, historians, and visionary thinkers contributed these essays to reflect upon the trajectory of a civilization whose deepest ethos seems to be to consume all the resources of the earth within a single lifetime. In addition to co-editing the book, Monk contributed an essay, titled “Hives and Swarms: On the ‘Nature’ of Neoliberalism and the Rise of the Ecological Insurgent.”

He is the George R. and Myra T. Cooley Professor of peace and conflict studies, and a professor of geography.

cal illiteracy, poor Christian education, weak faith and commitment, non-biblical–centered preaching, professionalization of the clergy, ineffective leadership, secularization, and privatization of religion. He explores and examines the root causes of these problems in the 20th century and beyond. To address these problems, Sindima develops biblical principles to reclaim Christianity from marginalization.

“I felt like primates were my impetus, and they pulled me along to great places.”

Reclaiming Christianity in the 21st Century: Building a Spiritual Powerhouse

Also of Note:

Harvey J. Sindima (Africa Academy Press)

In Reclaiming Christianity, religion and philosophy professor Harvey Sindima analyzes the current status of Christianity: declining membership, dying churches, biblical and theologi-

BookCase

A selection from the new titles shelf at Case Library • The Day My Mother Changed Her Name and Other Stories William D. Kaufman • Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America Frederick Douglass Opie • Homer Simpson Goes to Washington: American Politics Through Popular Culture Edited by Joseph J. Foy • I Am My Family: Photographic Memories and Fictions Rafael Goldchain • Jews and American Comics: An Illustrated History of an American Art Form Paul Buhle • Nights in the Pink Motel: An American Strategist’s Pursuit of Peace in Iraq Robert Earle • Pecking Order Omar Tyree • Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics Joe Biden • Stone Canoe: A Journal of Arts and Ideas from Upstate New York, Number 2 Robert Colley, Paul Aviles, Michael Burkard, David Lloyd, Marion Wilson • The Wasted Vigil Nadeem Aslam

A Sunless Heart (Broadview Press), edited by English professor Constance Harsh, is a story of emotional and physical hardship and the power of bonds between women. It explores issues of race, sexuality, and class in the late-Victorian era.

Cities of the World (Rowman & Littlefield), coedited by associate professor of geography Maureen Hays-Mitchell, offers readers a comprehensive set of tools for understanding the urban landscape, and by extension, the world’s politics, cultures, and economies.

When Every Day Matters: A Mother’s Memoir on Love, Loss and Life (Simple Abundance Press), by Mary Jane Hurley Brant, chronicles the author’s first year after losing her daughter Katie Brant ’92 to brain cancer, and provides reflections and advice on accepting the unacceptable trials of life.

Footnotes: ice underfoot clear sky and visible breath anticipating winter This haiku by human rights activist Rick Roth ’75 appears in Haiku Not Bombs, a follow-up to The Haiku Year (Soft Skull Press, 1998), a project by a group of friends that involved each person writing a haiku for every day of the year and sending these poems to one another in the mail. This reincarnation of the project by a group called Collectivo Haiku was adjusted so that each participant wrote one poem a week in digital/blog format, which was later printed by Another Brooklyn Chapbook.

— Adam Hermans ’07 commenting to his hometown newspaper, the Exeter News-Letter (Exeter, N.H.), about studying primates during his journey as a Watson Fellow

“We figured that this was the year to kick off a different way at Colgate.”

— Adam Zimmermann ’10 describing to the Christian Science Monitor new efforts to register voters during first-year orientation

“Even if it turns out that our worst fears are totally unfounded, this is still very worthwhile.”

— Associate Professor of Russian Ian Helfant, chair of Colgate’s Environ- mental Council, in a Post-Standard (Syracuse) article about efforts to make his home more sustainable

“Let your parents know you need to start learning how to do things yourself.”

— Dean of First-Year Students Beverly Low offering advice to readers of CosmoGIRL magazine about the transition from high school to college

“In my heart and mind, one foot has remained in the Third World.”

— William Northrup ’63 describing his experience serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala to the Tennessean (Nashville)

“Every student should do some kind of community service, but not just with college in mind, as that would be missing the point.”

— Karen Giannino, senior associate dean of admission, speaking to the Post-Star (Glens Falls, N.Y.) about the importance of service

As the sole researcher on Alice Schroeder’s The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life (Bantam Dell), Lauren Esposito ’01 said she learned that “Warren Buffett is a human being like the rest of us.” The only authorized biography of Buffett, the book was number one on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction best sellers list following its release. “This book gives you a sense of the child, the husband, the father, the investor, the philanthropist, and the showman. He ran away in junior high, committed a number of investing blunders, and made mistakes with relationships at home — it’s how he recovers from these that can teach us all something,” Esposito added. She met the author of The Snowball while working as an investment banking analyst at Mor-

gan Stanley. A top-ranked research analyst, Schroeder chose Esposito for her strong financial background and understanding of business, and they left the company to work on the book together more than four years ago.

Schroeder had proposed the idea to Buffett, who agreed to participate as well as give her access to his files and friends. “Studying the life of Warren Buffett in its minutest detail was a big learning experience,” said Esposito.

“However, also being taught by this author who took on such a monumental project has taught me what is possible.”

News and views for the Colgate community

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AT ANY GIVEN TIME, ON ANY GIVEN DAY, MYRIAD THINGS ARE HAPPENING — NOISY OR QUIET, HIGH TECH OR MANUAL, CAFFEINATED OR LASER ACTIVATED — ALL OVER CAMPUS. MANY WOULD BE A FAMILIAR SIGHT TO JUST ABOUT ANY STUDENT OR GRADUATE WHO WALKED THE HALLS AND THROUGH THE DOORWAYS OF COLGATE’S BUILDINGS. OTHER MOMENTS ARE JUST AS VITAL TO THE WORKINGS OF A COLLEGE, BUT TAKE

What’s

PLACE BEHIND THE SCENES.

the

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREW DADDIO 26

scene: Winter 2009

107 Ho Science Center Ashish Shah ’10 uses lasers to research the quantum mechanics of light in Professor Kiko Galvez’s optics laboratory. “Quantum theory predicts that a single photon can interfere with itself, which is really spooky, because it shouldn’t have anything to interfere with,” Shah said. “We are trying to test that.”

Men’s basketball lounge, Reid Athletic Center Anthony Hill ’12 takes to the magnetic “court board” in a post-practice meeting.

After a new play is introduced, each first-year player is called up to show his understanding of it.

News and views for the Colgate community

27

Greenhouse, Ho Science Center Elsie Denton ’09 carefully transfers pollen grains from one four o’clock flower to the female stigma of another.

Selective cross-pollinating allows her to study genetic associations between pigments and other aspects such as scent, reproductive success, resistance to predators, and other factors, for her senior biology thesis.

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scene: Winter 2009

Locksmith shop, Buildings and Grounds Cores and pins as small as .002" sit ready for locks to be re-keyed. “We are responsible for about 5,000 keys to individual doors,” said locksmith Bernie Whitacre.

Garden Level practice room, Memorial Chapel India Rosse ’12 had quit the piano in high school, but took up lessons again when she got to Colgate. “I practice whenever I can,” she said.

“The morning is usually a good time.”

Max Kade German Center, Lawrence Hall In fellowship at the weekly Wednesday Kaffeestunde (coffee hour), both fluent and beginning German speakers get to practice the language.

News and views for the Colgate community

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Paul J. Schupf Studio Arts Center

LASR System, Case Library and Geyer Center for Information Technology The three-story Library Automated Storage and Retrieval System holds books, periodicals, and other media in its bin stacks.

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scene: Winter 2009

Meagan Sheff-Atteberry ’09 describes her drawings to internationally renowned printmaker and installation artist Xu Bing. While on campus as part of Colgate’s “A Year of Chinese Art” series, Bing took time to offer critiques of all the senior art majors’ projects.

Judd Chapel A Hindu altar is part of a recent renovation to the interfaith worship space on the Garden Level of Memorial Chapel.

Prep room, Frank Dining Hall Fresh cantaloupes for the lunch crowd

News and views for the Colgate community

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Illustration by Steve Dininno 32

scene: Winter 2009

Enduring

American Arguments

WE’VE BEEN ARGUING OVER THE SAME ISSUES SINCE THE FOUNDING FATHERS, SAYS VETERAN POLITICAL REPORTER HOWARD FINEMAN ’70.

AS HE REFLECTS UPON CAMPAIGN 2008 AND PRESIDENT OBAMA’S MOVE INTO THE OVAL OFFICE, FINEMAN WRITES THAT THE ARGUING WILL CONTINUE — AND THAT IS A GOOD THING. We were flying from Reno to Albuquerque last July when Senator Barack Obama’s aides waved me up to the front of the campaign plane. In the living room–like cabin, I found the candidate in a reclining chair, a pile of papers on his lap. I had interviewed him for Newsweek several times, but now I was on a different, more limited mission: to give him a copy of my book, The Thirteen American Arguments. He glanced at the cover and took a moment to study the contents page. “I guess you’ve got all the answers to all the arguments here, ” Obama said with a smile.

I took his smile to be a wry, knowing one. As a professor of constitutional law and a shrewd politician, Obama understood the idea that had taken me years of reporting and research to grasp. In this country there are no permanent “answers.” There is no dogma, no orthodoxy. Arguing is what we were born and bred to do. No sooner do we settle an iteration of a dispute — generated by that era’s facts and frictions — than we start another.

So I smiled, too. “You taught con law,” I replied, “so you know there are no answers in there!” Then, with his aides watching impatiently, I gave him the gist of my ambitious (and perhaps rather lunatic) attempt to explain all 400 years of our public life in 300 pages about the 13 enduring debates that define and inspire us. “The conventional wisdom is that we argue too much,” I concluded, “but I say that we don’t argue enough — about the right things, the deep things.”

Obama nodded, seemingly in agreement. But he shot me a wary glance, too. Arguing wasn’t what he was selling; national unity was.

Crafted and sold over two years, Obama’s message was that we had endured too much combat for its own sake; that pettiness, fear mongering, and dog-eat-dog division had paralyzed our politics. He promised debate — actually listening to other views and carefully explaining his own positions and conclusions — not another bully pulpit presidency.

He offered, as proof of his intentions, his own campaign and biography. Obama’s Internet-based campaign was a digital exercise in shared experience, cooperative creativity, and the desire for community. His personal life and even his DNA were

symbols of reconciliation: white and black, old and young, local and global. Bursting onto the scene in 2004 with a speech to Democrats in Boston, Obama had declared: “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is a United States of America!”

So, on the campaign plane, he was not about to agree with my premise: that our heritage and habit of argument is what makes us unique and keeps us free. However messy (even bloody) the process, argument is indispensible. “I’ll take a look at the book,” he promised.

More than three months later, on a clear night by the shores of Lake Michigan, Obama stood alone on a stage before a crowd of 200,000 adoring supporters. He had just won the presidential election. His victory speech was the exclamation point at the end of a long sermon to the country.

On that day, he said, Americans had, with their votes, “sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of red states and blue states: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.”

Accepting the cheers, he urged Americans to sing politics in a new key. “Let us resist the temptation,” he said, “to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.” As if to prove his point, he reached out to his foes: “And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices. I need your help, and I will be your president, too.”

Watching the “feed” of the speech on a TV monitor at NBC News in New York, I saw a man who seemed to believe in his words of hope and unity. But I also saw a somber, reflective character, whose writings and speeches — whose presidential campaign — bespoke a realistic sense of the American experience. I had listened to him enough, talked to him enough, and watched him on the trail enough to know he understood the challenges he faced.

The main challenge was that he would now have to argue — maybe even vehemently — for his vision of how he wants to change America.

And I know he understands the point. He knows too much about our history and our society not to. His own campaign reflected that understanding.

Who is a person?

Obama’s campaign was paradoxical. He called for an end to division in the midst of asking the American people to choose him over competing men and ideas. However much he called us to a higher purpose, Obama issued a scalpel-sharp critique of the Bush years — an era he derided as full of selfish, dissolute, feckless governance and wrong-headed military adventures.

In his major speeches, Obama took a civil, accommodating, even lofty tone. He always seemed to be speaking more in sorrow than in anger. His campaign machinery, meanwhile, fed the Republicans, President George W. Bush, and Sen. John McCain into the rhetorical wood chipper. Even his fellow Democrats, Obama said equably, had “outworn ideas and politics of the past”; we needed to “disagree without challenging each other’s character and patriotism.”

Even so, at the same time, his surrogates portrayed McCain as old, out-of-touch, and unsteady. The presidential debates were useful exercises; the advertising campaigns (from both camps) were the usual

“… we don’t argue enough — about the right things, the deep things.” toxic stew of outrageous distortions, accusations, misquotes, and caricature.

In one way or another, in one place or another, all 13 “American Arguments” surfaced in the campaign.

The most fundamental one was, for the most part, unspoken, but no less profound. It was over race: our agonizing struggle over the question of who is a “person” in the eyes of our law and society.

For nearly four centuries, we argued over whether those “of color” in general, or African Americans in particular, were fully human. Our contradictory views were embodied in our seminal documents.

The founders anchored their Declaration of Independence on the “self-evident” truth that “all men” (their term for persons) are created equal, endowed with certain inalienable rights. In the Constitution, of course, those same founders ignored the rights, even the very existence, of a whole category of mankind.

We have been arguing about the definition of personhood ever since. Without saying it in so many

News and views for the Colgate community

33

words, Obama revived the argument in a new form: do we believe in the idea of personhood enough to choose as president the son of an African goatherd?

Ironically, but perhaps inevitably, Obama himself was forced to deal with the question of his race in defensive, negative terms: hadn’t he countenanced racism in his own black church? Rather than cry racism himself, rather than lashing out at his critics, Obama chose to distance himself from the ranting Rev. Jeremiah Wright by recounting our sad, centuries-long history of mistrust and misunderstanding, and vowing to help us surmount that past. It was a masterstroke of political maneuvering because it offered something more: understanding and hope.

On the night Obama declared victory, he had every right to exult — not on his own behalf, but on behalf of the country. “If there is anyone out there,” he declared, “who still doubts that America is a place

Another American Argument, however, soon eclipsed the one over the war. It was over the economy — American and global — which was headed into the worst, most dangerous weather since the Great Depression.

We have been debating the essential question since long before the founders met in Philadelphia in 1787: how much do we leave “free” enterprise to its own devices, and how much can or should government do to direct private, profit-making endeavor?

The choice wasn’t between no government, or all government; we always have had more of a “mixed” economy than captains of industry would admit.

We got our start as colonies in a mercantile system, after all; governmental “public works” had always been sold and seen as lubricants and multipliers of the marketplace. Fortunes were (and are) made on the rights and privileges government bestows for access to our national resources.

But now the question became more urgent: could government save us from ruin? Or would government inevitably mean suffocating bureaucracy, burdensome taxes, and a dulling of creativity?

What were the limits of individualism and the market at a time of uncontrollable flows of (or freezes on) global capital and credit? It seemed clear that “deregulation” had gone too far, but “reregulation” could do more damage than good if done stupidly, without reference to the world as it is, or merely as the result of interest group pressures.

Even before assuming the presidency, Obama was being pressed for answers. Did government have a duty to save the Detroit-based Big Three automakers? Could it in fact “save” them, or would more cash merely be propping up a dead carcass?

Perhaps it was the better part of wisdom — and a better lesson to the markets themselves — to let the companies fall into bankruptcy as a consequence of their failures of imagination and craft?

What to do about the banks was another pressing question — and fundamental American Argument. Should they be left to lend as they wish, even though they had made so many disastrous bets in recent years? Or did the “infusions” of federal cash into them mean that federal officials should now decide who gets a mortgage or car loan?

And what about his promise to raise taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year? Would he dare pursue that proposal in the midst of a recession? If he doesn’t pursue those new revenues, how will he pay for public works he says we need? And if we merely borrow more money from abroad or, failing that, print more money, do we risk undermining the dollar’s credibility?

Another new aspect to the age-old American Argument over the limits of individualism in the economy is: what if limits need to be imposed by an authority other than our government’s? What if the

The presidency is an educator’s

job … serving as Explainer in Chief. where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”

From now on, the “personhood” debate, in one of its forms, is settled. No one can argue that one’s race is a bar to reaching the highest levels of American society. To be sure, there are other limits in the accidents of birth — poverty, lack of education, crime, poor health, and health care — but the mixed-race son of Kansas and Kenya settled that one.

It only took four centuries.

Economy trumps foreign policy In America, it is possible to “make” history, or so we always have told ourselves. But history makes you, too. Obama launched his campaign by taking a strong stand on one side of the American Argument over foreign policy. As I see it, the issue is this: must we try to change the world in our image in order to survive in it and honor our moral destiny? Obama was a critic of the idea that we must — or at least that Iraq was the right place to try. His opposition to the war in Iraq made him a grassroots star in 2002, helped him get elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, and fired up his presidential campaign.

In the 2008 campaign, the contrast on Iraq could not have been more vivid. Obama wanted withdrawal of all American combat troops with deliberate haste; McCain wanted to keep them there, perhaps forever. As his presidency begins, Obama’s most obvious political challenge on foreign policy will be to hold true to his promise — sealed by his 365-vote Electoral College victory — to get out of Mesopotamia within 16 months of inauguration.

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only way to smooth the tidal waves and sudden freeze of global capital is to create truly global regulation? Surrendering some of our individual sovereignty is one thing — if it is, as Lincoln said, to a government “of, by, and for the people.” But what if there must be some kind of planetary sovereign in an age of global communication, travel, and business?

This is where two American Arguments merge: one over economics, the other over foreign policy.

Bush’s my-way-or-the-highway thinking didn’t work, or certainly didn’t work as well as he hoped.

But are Americans ready for the kind of internationalism that Obama has suggested we need, and that his own life embodies?

The country will be listening to his arguments.

A judicial temperament The presidency is an educator’s job. Especially in the early days after 9/11, the country found strength and reassurance in the certitude of George W. Bush.

There was evil in the world, and he named it. But he never understood that such a declaration was merely the beginning of the conversation — the argument — not the end of it.

Unsure of his own abilities in public debate; fiercely bound to his worldview and his decisions once he had made them, Bush was not given to, or capable of, serving as the Explainer in Chief.

Obama is. The first speech I heard him give in person was at Georgetown University in the fall of 2006. His topic was energy and the environment; he had absorbed a series of mind-numbing complexities and now was playing them back in words and ideas that the rapt student audience seemed eager to hear and absorb. There was, frankly, nothing that remarkable in the content. We needed market incentive to promote efficiency, while at the same time mandating higher mileage standards; we had to promote new technology — solar, wind, biomass, etc. It was “green” boilerplate.

But what mattered to the students was the sense of Obama himself: a reasonable man, smart enough to see all sides of all the arguments — and a decent and confident person. He seemed, to them, to be the kind of fellow who would not let ego warp his view of the wisest course to pursue. Obama has a judicious, even judicial quality about him, one that voters clearly found appealing after George Bush’s rigid judgments.

But that same judicial temperament means that, all along, Obama has been all-too aware of what would lie ahead as he prepared to move into the Oval Office. There will be two or more sides to every argument that forms the core of every policy proposal he has made, or will make. America and the world face an economic catastrophe that could cripple social progress on the planet for years, if not decades. Government, the president-elect vowed, will do “whatever it takes.”

But that, Obama knows, is the just beginning of the argument.

Where did you get your love of political writing?

My dad had been a history teacher and was always able to connect what was happening in the daily paper to the history that he’d lived and studied. My mother was an English teacher. My father’s idea of a treat was to pack us in the station wagon and drive to Washington, D.C., so I identified Washington with family, adventure, and learning. When I was 13, two books greatly influenced me: Advise and Consent, the popular novel about Washington life by a former reporter, and Teddy White’s The Making of the President, 1960, the first great insider account of a political campaign. And the events of the 1960s were so compelling, my natural interest was fired and sealed by the life we were all living.

How did your Colgate experience impact how you analyze and write about politics?

I learned about the power of words from philosophy professor Jerry Balmuth, who insisted on the close reading of texts, and the appreciation of the power of words to create meaning. The English department — people like Frederick Busch, Wilbur Albrecht, and Joe Slater — was way ahead of the curve in examining the relationship between literature and society.

I was an English major, but I went on the London History Study Group with Ray Rockwood. When we wrote our papers at the library of the British Museum, he reminded us that we were there to look to primary sources and be meticulous. We got to meet and hear lectures by many of Britain’s great popular historians. He even got us into 10 Downing Street for a session with the prime minister’s press secretary.

It was the fall of 1968, and just as America was being challenged by political division and the Vietnam War, amazing things were going on in England, too.

Your first journalism experience was the Maroon?

I was a “scrub” from my very first week, and became editor-in-chief senior year. It was a time of turmoil on campus, and some conservatives who thought the Colgate Maroon was anti-war and anti-establishment had bankrolled a competing newspaper, the Colgate News. So one of the things I did was turn the paper from a weekly to a twice weekly, to emphasize news. It was a disaster because we didn’t have enough staff time, but it was worth a try.

Who have been your favorite people to interview?

Intellectually, Newt Gingrich was the most thought provoking. He’s brilliant and widely read; his interests ranged from dinosaurs to outer space. In terms of inspiration, I would have to say Barack Obama, if for no other reason than what he represents given the history that I have lived through.

Lorenzo Ciniglio

Q&A Howard Fineman ’70 (center) on the set of Hardball with Chris Matthews, broadcasting live from Hofstra University before the final presidential debate in October 2008. Fineman is senior Washington correspondent and columnist for Newsweek, an analyst for NBC news and MSNBC, and a weekly contributor to MSNBC.com.

What have been the most satisfying stories to cover?

It was a happy accident that I had gone to the South to begin my career, which had been the tradition in American journalism since World War II. When I got to Louisville, the busing story broke, and I covered the integration of the Jefferson County schools, an unbelievably riveting story that is now more relevant than it was 20 years ago. The irony was, when I went to Kentucky to cover civil rights, I also saw the beginning of the rise of the evangelical Christians.

It’s so often in journalism you go someplace and find a story you weren’t looking for. But until now, that has been the most important story of my time as a reporter covering politics in America. Being in the Bible Belt was great preparation for me to cover people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Now the big story is the beginning of a truly multicultural America. It’s every bit as important, and to me, personally, more exciting.

The Thirteen American Arguments Who is a Person?

Who is an American?

The Role of Faith What Can we Know and Say? The Limits of Individualism Who Judges the Law? Debt and the Dollar Local v. National Authority Presidential Power The Terms of Trade War and Diplomacy The Environment A Fair, “More Perfect,” Union (Paperback edition available March 2009)

Tell us about writing your book.

I wanted to go back through my notebooks and take advantage of the reporting I’ve done both on the campaign trail and covering the White House, Capitol Hill, and the bureaucracy here, and to put some kind of shape to it. I wanted to look at the big picture, because that’s who I am — that’s the kind of stuff I do best, I think. The book couldn’t have happened without two Colgate people. I’ve learned a lot of history on the fly in 30 years as a reporter, but I have a lot more to learn. I hired four researchers, one of whom is a brilliant Colgate grad, Amy Dudley ’06, who was the head of the Student Government Association. My classmate James Allen Smith ’70, who is a specialist in American history, was indispensable, giving me overall guidance throughout the project.

Is it a coincidence that there are 13 arguments?

Every Colgate person I see says, “I know why there are 13!” Of course I had good feelings about the number, and I would like to say my Colgate background was a main factor, but it wasn’t, really. I got good advice from my friend, the historian Michael Beschloss, who said, “You don’t want so few that each is so generalized that it’s gauzy. But you don’t want 193.

Find a balance between specificity and simplification.” I know this sounds crazy, but I wanted a prime number. I liked the idea of indivisibility. I was also influenced by the poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens.

What are you reading these days?

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, a biography of Samuel Johnson, and a book about the life of Cicero. Having written my first book has gotten me more interested in historical writing. But probably most important is my weekly copy of the Steelers Digest.

News and views for the Colgate community

35

The dramatic events that flared up the current U.S. financial crisis have stirred significant debates about how to restore the economy and prevent a future meltdown.

How could this have happened?

What role did regulation (or deregulation) play? What regulations should be enacted in the future? What other lessons are to be learned?

Is this the end of capitalism as we know it?

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scene: Winter 2009

The Scene posed the issue to several Colgate professors from a variety of disciplines, as well as alumni with expertise in various aspects of the financial industry, and asked them to share what’s on their minds.

An era of re-regulation?

drastically affect long-term behavior. These concepts can guide regulation and intervention strategies.

Almost all prediction methods today rely on models of randomness. When random events are independent, they counteract each other. We can thus broadly predict the behavior of groups. For example, to predict life insurance claims, we assume that factors leading to death are largely independent from

securities on its asset side. This is one measure of the depth of the crisis, and could foreshadow a redefined role for the Fed. The immediate task, however, will be combining monetary and fiscal policies to address the danger that the global economy has fallen into the “liquidity trap” first envisioned by John Maynard Keynes. (In a liquidity trap, traditional central bank interest rate

Thomas Michl Professor of Economics

I

s this the end of capitalism that Karl Marx had in mind? Not likely. But this historical moment does illustrate the thesis of a different Karl. In his 1944 classic, The Great Transformation, economic historian Karl Polanyi argues that markets of all types (goods, labor, and financial) generate destabilizing impulses that periodically require state-imposed limitations, often at the initiative of the entrenched business interests themselves. (It was serendipitous that my first-year seminar and I were reading this book just as the financial crisis erupted.) Partial nationalization of the banking sector initiated by a former CEO from Goldman Sachs would not surprise Polanyi, who might ask, “Are we entering a new era?”

This feels like the turning point between two eras. The Reagan-Thatcher era assertion that “there is no alternative” to the market no longer seems tenable; there must be an alternative. We are evidently entering an era of re-regulation, perhaps (I would hope) guided by the principle that the market is a good servant, but a bad master.

One potential victim of the current turmoil may well be the Greenspan doctrine that central banks have no business trying to contain speculative bubbles in stocks, housing, or other assets. Because they are the lenders of last resort, central banks will need to play a larger supervisory role in the financial system that goes beyond managing inflation.

The Federal Reserve has been forced to restructure its balance sheet over the last year in breathtaking (well, maybe to an economist) ways, with nontraditional loans to broker-dealers, commercial banks, and even non-bank businesses replacing Treasury

policies lose effectiveness, and need to be supplemented by fiscal policy and nontraditional monetary policies.) Beyond the broad generalization that we are entering an era that combines aspects of socialism and capitalism, it is too soon to say with any certainty what the world will look like on the other side of the current financial and economic turbulence.

— Michl is a member of the Economic Advisory Committee of the Fiscal Policy Institute in Albany, N.Y., and an associate of the Political Economy Research Institute at University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He teaches a course called Growth and Distribution, the topic of two of his books.

Finance as a dynamical system Dan Schult Associate Professor of Mathematics

Andrew Daddio

Andrew Daddio

The market is a good servant, but a bad master.

T

wo concepts from mathematics have direct relevance to recent turmoil in the financial and insurance markets. One, from statistics, captures the “law of averages” that independent random fluctuations average out, but nonindependent ones don’t. The other, from dynamical systems, describes tipping points or bifurcations where small changes

person to person. Thus, claims can be predicted and premiums set accordingly. This works so often, it is tempting to believe it always works; however, when factors are not independent (e.g., an earthquake), predictions fail. Models assuming independent mortgage foreclosures fail when people act in concert. When Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke were reported as “storming” Congress, demanding immediate action to save financial firms and credit markets, investors acted in concert to remove their money. Nonindependence destabilizes the markets.

Viewing the markets as a dynamical system obeying rules we don’t fully understand provides insight from the complex behavior of simple models.

With as few as three variables, dynamical systems can generate chaotic solutions (unpredictable in detail beyond a short time horizon). With more variables, chaos becomes more likely. Simple models show how small changes can move systems toward completely different equilibriums by pushing them over a tipping or bifurcation point. Even in simple systems, long-term behaviors lie dangerously close to the boundary beyond which catastrophic motion drives us to a vastly different behavior. Because these situations arise frequently with simple systems, it is almost certain that they occur in complex systems like financial markets. Some bifurcation points have been identified for global warming, and we should expect them in financial markets, too.

The government is different from other market players because its motives go beyond making money. If the goal is stability and protection from catastrophes, regulation makes sense. It should move markets away from potential tipping points, perhaps by slowing market fear response by restricting short sales of stock. Unfortunately, identifying bifurcations is difficult at best, so funding financial research could be helpful here. Regulation could also encourage independence of events, discourage collective

News and views for the Colgate community

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regulators alike — about the complex ways in which assets were sold, split, and resold. Thus, various aspects of the financial world were connected in ways that were not clear to most participants, until the crisis began unraveling.

As a result of this crisis, the government is more directly involved with the banking industry. And this is unfortunate. If markets would have been allowed to work, by letting more banks fail, the industry may have learned from its mistakes, so that asset prices would better reflect the actual risks and rewards that they potentially bear. Certainly, allowing more bank failures would have come at significant costs to society, which was probably not worth it. Now, the government must deal with the reality of interfering with these markets. Any new regulation should certainly control the extent to which banks are allowed to merge and become too big. The government should also require more transparency about how assets are sliced and diced across the various sectors of the economy. Hopefully, with a little government oversight, financial markets may be able to work again.

behavior, or intervene when nonindependent events occur. Just as regulation of the construction industry protects against earthquakes and hurricanes, regulation in financial services should help discourage “runs on the bank,” bursting (or building) bubbles, freezing or overflowing of the credit markets, etc.

Safety nets could be put in place to reduce damage when nonindependent events do occur.

— Schult studies dynamical systems, pattern formation, and chaos through mathematical models of fire and disease spread. Prior to graduate school for mathematics, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics, and he still watches the markets with interest.

Let markets work — for the most part Nicole Simpson Associate Professor of Economics

Andrew Daddio

— Simpson, whose interests include fiscal policy and immigration, has studied the impact of fiscal initiatives — such as government education expenditures, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and public insurance — on economic growth and well-being.

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Lorenzo Ciniglio

Keith Goggin ’90 American Stock Exchange Specialist

arkets should be allowed to function with minimal government intervention. It is precisely this mantra that governed the oversight (or lack thereof) of the U.S. financial service industry leading up to the crisis that ensued last fall. Basic supply and demand theory would suggest that if markets work correctly, prices of financial assets would incorporate the potential risks and rewards associated with those assets; however, two problems arose with the basic model. First, the financial industry is essential for the world economy to operate, so the government could not let it fail. While the federal government certainly made examples of some (e.g., Lehman Brothers), the majority of financial institutions involved with the meltdown were not allowed to fail for fear of contagion throughout the U.S. and world economies. Second, I believe there was a complete lack of understanding — by consumers, traders, and

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Look for regulated, centralized markets

A

staunch advocate of free and open markets, I am therefore of the mindset that less regulation is generally preferable to more. Nonetheless, as a

market maker and specialist on the American Stock Exchange for 12 years, I’ve operated successfully in one of the world’s most highly regulated trading environments and have come to appreciate the protections that an effective regulatory structure affords to its participants.

Clearly, additional regulations will spring forth in response to the near-total meltdown of the global financial system. Can we enact rules that are effective but still allow the financial system to be efficient and competitive?

In general, the Self-Regulatory Organizations and the central clearing houses that support and protect the listed markets have performed admirably during the recent turmoil. This is not surprising; these institutions have been tested before, most notably during the October 1987 stock market crash and the near-collapse of the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund a decade later. Now, once again, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, the Options Clearing Corporation, and CME Clearing have safeguarded the operations of the listed equity, options, and futures markets. Their structure is nothing new.

Each is a central clearing organization, set up for use by all qualifying market participants and run both for profit and to protect the integrity of the markets, and their function has remained largely unchanged over time. In contrast, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the most significant piece of government regulation to come out of the last financial crisis — when WorldCom, Enron, Adelphia, and other large companies failed due to internal fraud — played virtually no role in preventing the current crisis, proving once again that knee-jerk reactions rarely have a positive long-term effect.

So, what new regulation is likely to, and should, come? Most certainly there will be copious legislative grandstanding and regulatory belt-and-suspendering, the vast majority of which will be misguided and ineffective, along the lines of Sarbanes-Oxley.

For example, we have already seen an assault on short selling, a useful, long-standing, and largely market-neutral practice that most economists would argue generally adds to market efficiency and liquidity, but which, when prefaced with the loaded word “naked,” has provided a convenient boogeyman that both the government and the media has used to explain market-driven assaults on financially weak companies.

Another possible area of change could be to the different ways banks and insurance companies are required to value their portfolios for financial

What role did regulation (or deregulation) play?

reporting purposes. Although the difference in the way these two market participants are permitted to “mark” the securities on their books is well beyond the scope of this commentary, it should be sufficient to point out that this discrepancy played a significant role in the collapse of insurer American International Group (AIG) in the biggest financial bailout to date.

While it would have been unthinkable just a year

The financial system collects and mobilizes savings in order to deploy those resources to productive investments. By doing so, it facilitates economic growth and rising incomes. But it does no more than that, and, therefore, it should be thought of as providing a service whose function is to enhance the real economy of production and employment.

Indeed, that precisely was the intent that motivated

torial column, “Money On My Mind,” that explores the role of private money in politics. His latest book is Democracy, America, and the Age of Globalization.

Restore free credit markets Michael T. Hayes Professor of Political Science

ago, consolidation of the market for credit default swaps under a common clearing house is also likely, and would be beneficial.

In my opinion, self-interested regulators, not regulation itself, will most effectively protect the interests of the markets and their participants.

— Goggin is a trader at OTA LLC and owner of STR Specialists in New York City. Previously, he was a market maker for the index-arbitrage firm STR Trading Partners and worked in AMEX’s Derivative Securities division. He got his start on Wall Street as a journalist.

Treat the financial system as a public utility

Andrew Daddio

Jay Mandle W. Bradford Wiley Professor of Economics

B

y providing sufficient liquidity, the Treasury’s and Federal Reserve’s combined efforts will be able to restore the functioning of the financial system. But these efforts must be joined with reforms that will reduce the likelihood of a similar financial meltdown in the future.

the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1934.

It is important for financial markets to be deep.

Market depth encourages savers to make their funds available. But complexity can lead to dysfunction.

The problems that arose when subprime mortgages were securitized did not emerge because those loans were packaged together for sale. The real difficulty was that investors (driven by herd behavior), bought them, although many contained terms and obligations that were literally unintelligible. Government regulators allowed this to go on in the name of enhancing financial market depth and size.

But this — literally — was too much of a good thing. Too many complex instruments encouraged too much risk taking. What occurred boiled down to system-threatening bets being made without sufficient knowledge of the private and public interests at stake.

If in future reforms, the financial system were considered as a public utility, government regulators would examine markets not simply with regard to their traditional concerns of transparency and armslength deal making. As well, they would intervene when the level of complexity of transactions makes it unlikely that a reasonable assessment of risk can be made. When that threshold is reached, they should aggressively act to remove such securities from the market.

Doing this would mean that financial markets would be constrained to a level below their growth potential. But in doing so, and in treating the financial system as a public utility at the service of the rest of the economy, regulators will reduce the risk that the financial tail will wag the economic dog of the future.

— Mandle, whose interests include economic globalization and the contemporary U.S. economy, writes a monthly edi-

Andrew Daddio

Genuinely free credit markets should be the ultimate aim of our policy.

F

ree markets are the most efficient way to allocate scarce resources, including credit. Genuinely free markets are extremely rare, however. What “fails,” in instances like the current financial crisis, are mixed markets featuring a large governmental presence.

As the late Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises observed, government intervention distorts markets, inevitably creating political pressure for more intervention. For example, we have not had a free market in health care for a very long time. The effects of government intervention are not confined to the existence of Medicare and Medicaid, two huge programs. Equally important is the fact that the tax code encourages employers to spend marginal compensation dollars on untaxed benefits like health insurance because a large portion of any money paid to employees goes to the government in the form of taxes. So, the tax code fosters a system in which most private insurance is provided through employers rather than purchased on an individual basis.

Almost no one in either party thinks that this system is working. Many Democrats want some form of single-payer program that covers everyone. While (as of press time), President-elect Obama says he does not want that (yet), he certainly favors action by the federal government to expand coverage. Whatever plan ultimately emerges, the trend is toward more government intervention rather than less, conforming to Mises’s law.

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One important lesson, then, is the need to support the concept of the public good.

— Hayes, an author of three books who specializes in American politics and public policy, and studies interest groups, incrementalism and policy making, and effects of public opinion on the legislative process, teaches a course called Government and the Economy. He will lead the Washington, D.C., Study Group next spring.

Don’t make hedge funds the scapegoat

Lorenzo Ciniglio

Dan Gluck ’00 Hedge Fund Manager

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ased on what materialized in the markets in 2008, and the resulting often-unfavorable spotlight on hedge funds, many lawmakers have begun to call for more regulation of this “misunderstood”

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industry. This is not the first time hedge funds have been used as scapegoats and such threats have been issued. In 1998, after the failure of Long-Term Capital Management, representatives of the hedge fund industry were forced to testify in front of Congress.

Then, between 2000 and 2002, hedge funds were often blamed for the steep declines in the NASDAQ, and a similar process ensued; however, it was inconclusive that hedge funds posed real systematic risks to the financial markets, and there was little change on the part of government intervention.

What did change was oversight by investors.

Before 1998, this relatively new and unregulated industry reported little in terms of numbers, and there was zero transparency. Afterward, although not required by law, most hedge funds started to provide investors with information on holdings, exposure, and returns. So, there was little real regulation, but plenty of self-regulation.

This time around, the current endorsement is of a different and more serious order of magnitude — and government regulation is more likely to result.

Politicians and investors are looking for answers (and scapegoats) to explain one of the largest financial crises in history, and the hedge fund industry is ripe for a severe regulatory crackdown. While it is unclear what form of legislation or other regulatory measures will be developed, the likely area of focus will be on trading activity (specifically, short selling), portfolio transparency, taxation of managers, and general compliance and oversight.

While I often lean toward a more laissez-faire approach to economic policy, as a hedge fund manager, I welcome a modicum of government regulation, such as reinstating the uptick rule, stricter enforcement of the ban on naked short selling, requiring hedge funds to register with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and the reporting of positions on a confidential basis to a regulator. The aforementioned cautionary policies will establish a more formal protocol for the industry and will appease policy makers, but will not retard the true spirit of hedge funds — capitalism!

It is essential to remember that companies such as Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual, and Lehman Brothers went under because of poor internal risk management, not because of machinations of hedge funds. Bank shares went down because of over-levered balance sheets and a lack of investment discipline and acumen, not because of hedge fund manipulation. The financial crisis and ensuing company bankruptcies are part of the natural cycle of capitalism, not the product of hedge funds.

— Partner and portfolio manager at Weiss Multi-Strategy Partners, Gluck manages the firm’s $1 billion long/short global real estate securities fund. Previously, he was senior analyst for Weiss’s U.S.-focused real estate fund, which he helped start in 2001, and a capital markets analyst at the Carson Group, a New York financial consulting firm.

Defaulting for degrees Louis Prisock Assistant Professor of Sociology

Andrew Daddio

The same thing is happening in the credit markets now. Two government-sponsored enterprises, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, have substantially expanded the secondary mortgage market (distortion 1). Government regulators and elected officials have also encouraged the relaxation of normal standards of credit worthiness in order to encourage home ownership (distortion 2). All this takes place within a larger environment in which the Federal Reserve is expected to influence interest rates (the price of credit), and elected officials routinely generate enormous budget deficits, further affecting interest rates through massive government borrowing.

Although some form of government intervention is warranted now to keep the system from imploding, we need to restore free credit markets, not undermine them. While we should do this very carefully and gradually, genuinely free credit markets should be the ultimate aim of our policy. Whatever we do, we should understand that the free market is not what is failing here.

T

he lack of meaningful regulation of the financial industry is clearly a major factor in the country’s economic woes. And, while I believe more governmental oversight is needed, here I will point to other social problems related to this crisis that must be addressed with vigor and imagination once the economy stabilizes.

One clear example is the state of America’s educational system. Much of the attention to the financial crisis has focused on credit markets, specifically the subprime arena, where many bad home mortgages originated. Home ownership has a strong connection to education. Where you live and the value of your home can determine the experiences and opportunities your children may or may not receive. Disparities in the quality of education within our public schools have produced a situation where Americans scramble to live in what I call “blue chip” neighborhoods — homes with high values and strong infrastructures such as public schools. High demand for these finite neighborhoods raises the access fee, or selling price, and many Americans have been willing to do whatever it takes, including accepting mortgages they cannot handle, to acquire entry.

The resulting waves of foreclosures take a large

What other lessons are to be learned?

toll on the public in a variety of ways. Americans who have lost their homes lose a major wealth asset; neighborhoods with more foreclosed homes see wealth draining out as property values of occupied homes spiral downward; then, because property taxes are still the main source of public education funding, less revenue comes into the school system.

As the costs of higher education continue to rise, more Americans are stretching themselves even thinner to provide their children a leg up in our ultracompetitive global economy, taking out home equity loans or second mortgages to pay for tuition in order to lessen their reliance on student loans.

One important lesson, then, is the need to support the concept of the public good. Those fortunate enough to send their children to college without incurring major debt, or who live in a “blue chip” neighborhood, have just as much at stake in working toward making higher education more affordable and reducing the gap in the quality of public education. If we fail as a nation to see what our collective responsibility is to each other, then we are more than likely to repeat the mistakes that brought us to our current state.

sengers cringed upon delivering bad news, today’s accountants are trying to deliver a difficult message during a financial crisis. For years, U.S. accounting standards have required that impaired loans and securities be written down to fair value. Yet some organizations have called for the temporary suspension of these standards during these extremely volatile times. They suggest that if they could ignore the current depressed values, and report assets at what

Suspending standards is a short-sighted strategy that would backfire.

— Prisock, who specializes in race and ethnicity, as well as political, urban, and economic sociology, has studied the participation of African Americans in conservative social, political, and intellectual movements, and black suburbanization. He teaches a course called Sociology of Money and Markets.

Tell it like it is

Timothy D. Sofranko

Leslie French Seidman ’84 Board Member, Financial Accounting Standards Board

D

on’t shoot the messenger.” It’s safe to say that the Bard did not have an accountant in mind when he penned those words. But just as wartime mes-

special interests will suggest, through the Treasury blueprint for regulatory reform in the United States and the G-20 Summit discussions, that accounting standards should be set by the government, rather than an independent agency such as FASB. The investing public should be wary of allowing politicians, who are potentially influenced by powerful lobbies, to decide how financial information should be presented to the capital markets. For the markets

they’ll be worth in the future, investors will regain confidence and the markets will recover.

In my view, suspending standards is a shortsighted strategy that would backfire. Japan tried this approach in the 1990s, when the government made a policy decision to postpone the write-down of bad loans. Many economists believe that practice kept investors in the dark and prolonged the stagnation under which Japan suffered. More recently, the London-based International Accounting Standards Board, under pressure from the European Commission, softened the accounting for impaired loans and securities. The few European banks who took advantage of the change were sullied in the financial press. Investors quickly saw through the accounting gimmick and chastised the standard setter. Investors are aware that losses exist: the best way to restore confidence is for the companies who have losses to report them clearly and in a timely fashion.

These previous episodes both involved political influence in the standard-setting process. In the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission has statutory authority to determine accounting methods for public companies, but for decades it has delegated that responsibility to the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), which is a nongovernmental agency. Having an independent standard setter is important to investors, so that the markets receive consistent, objective information, even when administrations and their policy agendas change. As the U.S. financial crisis emerged last fall, the Securities and Exchange Commission urged FASB to enhance any standards that weren’t providing useful information to investors, such as disclosures about complex derivatives and securitizations. This form of governmental oversight is appropriate, and distinctly different from pressure to change rules in order to achieve a desired outcome. However, it is likely that

to function effectively, we need the messengers to tell it like it is, not tell us what they think we want to hear.

[The views expressed in this article are my own and do not represent positions of FASB. Positions of FASB are arrived at only after extensive due process and deliberations.]

— Seidman was appointed to FASB in 2003. Previously, she was a financial reporting consultant, and a vice president of accounting policy at J.P. Morgan. She started her career as an auditor with Arthur Young & Co.

8 Economics professor Nicole Simpson discusses more of her thoughts about the financial crisis in the Colgate Conversations series at www.colgate.edu/podcasts.

What regulations, if any, do you think are needed to restore the economy? Discuss at www.colgatealumni.org/messageboards.

News and views for the Colgate community

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Andrew Daddio

News and views for the Colgate community

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stay connected

to know: Know:Edward Name Here Get to “Biff” Jones ’64

Alumni bulletin board

– Alumni Council member since 2002; treasurer – Class president since 1964; class agent; four-time reunion chairman; Presidents’ Club; Maroon Citation – Orthopedic surgeon, Institutional Review Board Chair, Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS), New York City; Professor, Weill Medical College of Cornell University What’s the most satisfying part of your work?

I am fortunate to be able to focus on research and teaching at HSS. We review and approve clinical research in terms of scientific merit, methodology, and ethical issues. Prospective studies looking at health-related quality-of-life benefits after joint replacement or sports-related surgery are a particular interest. I love teaching, especially a course for Cornell medical students, Ethics in Clinical Medicine and Research.

We’ve heard you were once a NYC cab driver.

In my second year at Columbia Med School, I had a patient who owned a cab company. I got a license, and drove weekends. I clearly remember conversations on the days Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were shot, all these momentous events. I learned about the people and the city and fell in love with New York.

What volunteer role with Colgate has been your favorite?

The Alumni Council. It is great to be on campus, and to appreciate the quality and dedication of the administration, faculty, and students. We are fortunate to have the leadership of President Chopp, and I think the university is in great shape. We’ve had some challenging issues during my tenure. To see the Broad Street initiative played out and to have been part of those discussions has been very gratifying. We needed a different paradigm. The fact that the university decided to preserve Greek life at the school was farsighted and courageous. I think it is the right balance now.

What are your outside interests?

My wife Mary and I have two young boys, 6 and 8, who keep us busy and counting our blessings. Along with my grown sons and four grandsons, we have a close and interesting extended family. We enjoy golf, skiing, and boating together. Most nights I take refuge in a good book. I’m enjoying a series of historical novels by Alan Furst.

Do you have any special talents?

I was a member of the Colgate Thirteen, and fortunately some hardcore Thirteeners from the ’60s have formed a “vintage” group. We meet and sing on a regular basis. I treasure these Colgate friends and really enjoy singing and carrying on the tradition.

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2009 Colgate Alumni Council Election The Nominations Committee of the Alumni Council has selected the following slate of alumni for election at Reunion 2009. The candidates, chosen from more than 300 nominees, have strong records of varied Colgate volunteer service, a consistent history of giving financial support to Colgate, and meaningful personal or professional accomplishments or contributions to the greater community.

Complete information about the election and challenge petition process, as well as full biographies of the nominees listed here, is posted at www.colgatealumni.org.

Paper copies are available by calling 315-228-7433, or by sending an e-mail to alumni@mail.colgate.edu.

Era I: Up to 1964 Robert P. Quitzau ’55 A geophysical consultant who has worked with Shell Oil Company, Robert has served as class president and an advancement volunteer and co-edited his 50th reunion yearbook.

Era II: 1965–1975 Thomas W. Dempsey Jr. ’72 Thomas is president of Utz Quality Foods Inc. A Maroon Citation recipient, he has been a tireless advisor to Delta Upsilon and has served on the Fraternity Sorority Alumni Initiative.

Era III: 1976–1982 Jeffrey A. Oberg ’76 Vice president of private wealth management for Goldman Sachs, Jeffrey has served as a Presidents’ Club class chair and president of the Phi Kappa Tau alumni board.

Era IV: 1983–1989 Joseph P. McGrath Jr. ’85 Joseph is managing director for Barclays Capital Inc. A Maroon Council member, he has also done extensive work in career advising, including recruiting and mentoring students interested in finance.

Era V: 1990–1996 Amy L. Dapot ’96 Senior vice president of Marsh USA Inc., Amy has helped Colgate students make many career development connections and has been active with the Women’s Advisory Committee and class gift committee.

Era VI: 1997–2002 William J. Sweeney III ’01 William is a real estate fund manager for Antheus Capital. Recipient of the Ann Yao ’80 Young Alumni Award, he is a past president of his district alumni club and has spearheaded young alumni initiatives.

Era VII: 2003–2008 Amy Hargrave Leo ’03 Associate director of residential life and pre-college programs for Barnard College, Amy has been class president, reunion program committee co-chair, and an Ann Yao ’80 Young Alumni Award recipient.

At Large Sandra Braddy Hall ’76 Associate director of diabetes brand marketing for Novo Nordisk Inc., Sandra has provided career advice and mentoring for students and has been instrumental in Alumni of Color programming.

Lynn P. Winn ’77 The principal, owner, and CEO of Brand Centric LLC, Lynn has been an active career adviser and leadership program participant, and has taken a leadership role with the Women’s Advisory Committee.

••••• Regional Vice President In addition to the nine elected Alumni Council members, regional vice presidents are officially appointed by the Alumni Council at its spring meeting.

RVP, Upstate New York Thomas F. Kirkpatrick ’61 The CEO, shareholder, and partner of several companies in real estate and construction, Tom has been a key leader and mentor for Phi Gamma Delta and Colgate’s Greekletter house ownership transition.

salmagundi

Servin’ up Slices

Dale A. Johnson ’57 won a Slices T-shirt for his correct entry in the drawing for the Autumn 2008 Slices photo ID contest.

The photo depicts the philosophy and religion department in the late 1950s.

Seated (L to R): Ken Morgan, Herman Brautigam, Eugene Adams. Standing: Ted Mischel, Jerry Balmuth, Donald Berry, M.H. “Steve” Hartshorne, Huntington Terrell, R.V. Smith.

Puzzle by Puzzability

Lucky 13 All 13 clubs from a deck of Colgate playing cards are shown in this jumbled pile. Can you figure out, from the pieces showing, what each card must be, and which card is the one shown facedown? See page 71 for the answer key.

Then & now Dig in your heels and pull! The basic rules of Colgate’s annual tug of war contest have remained the same, but times have changed since the photo on the left appeared in the 1959 Salmagundi and the photo on the right was taken at the 2008 fall field day. The obvious difference: Since Colgate went coed, female members of the student body now compete in this test of strength. Not shown here: The losers are no longer forced to take a dip in Taylor Lake!

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Dale’s creative caption suggestions were: “P & R faculty taking a break from an arduous meeting,” or “P & R faculty at the ‘tie of the month’ club.”

Honorable mention goes to Ed Ryan ’68 for his caption: “Nulli secundus! Nunc est bibendum!”

[Explanation: “Second to none” and “Now it is time to drink.” I took courses from Balmuth, Terrell, Hartshorne, and Brautigam. The entire P&R department was indeed second to none. I added the second phrase because it looks like the group just finished a departmental meeting at the Stone Jug.] Stay tuned for another Slices contest next time!

Members of the men’s football team celebrate winning the 2008 Patriot League Championship after defeating Holy Cross 28-27. Photo and back cover photo by Andrew Daddio

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