Pulteney Street Survey - Fall 2020

Fall 2020

INSIDE

Faculty Reflect on Race, Justice & Anti-Racist Education Record-Breaking Fundraising Year

Life Inter rupted

How HWS Approached the Coronavirus Pandemic

On the cover: The sun sets behind the statue of William Smith on the Hill.

P HOTO BY C HI E F PHOTOG R APHER KEV IN CO LTO N.

VOLUME XLV, NUMBER TWO/ THE PULTENEY STREET SURVEY is published by the Office of Marketing and Communications, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, 300 Pulteney Street, Geneva, New York 14456-3397, (315) 781-3700. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Pulteney Street Survey, c/o Alumni House Records, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, 300 Pulteney St., Geneva, New York 14456-3397.

Hobart and William Smith Colleges are committed to providing a non-discriminatory and harassment-free educational, living, and working environment for all members of the HWS community, including students, faculty, staff, volunteers, and visitors. HWS prohibits discrimination and harassment in their programs and activities on the basis of age, color, disability, domestic violence victim status, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, race, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, veteran status, or any other status protected under the law. Discrimination on the basis of sex includes sexual harassment, sexual violence, sexual assault, other forms of sexual misconduct including stalking and intimate partner violence, and gender-based harassment that does not involve conduct of a sexual nature.

EDITOR, VICE PRESIDENT FOR MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS Catherine Williams / SENIOR EDITOR Bethany Snyder / DESIGNER Lilly Pereira / aldeia.design / CONTRIBUTING WRITERS/EDITORS Ken DeBolt, Mackenzie Larsen ’12, Mary LeClair, Bethany Snyder, Natalia St. Lawrence ’16, Andrew Wickenden ’09 and Catherine Williams / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Kathy Collins ‘09, Kevin Colton, Adam Farid ’20, Jacob Hannah, Jennifer Johnson, Laura Kozlowski and Christopher Lavin ’81 / PRESIDENT Joyce P. Jacobsen / THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES CHAIR Craig R. Stine ’81, P’17 / VICE CHAIR OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES Cynthia Gelsthorpe Fish ’82 / VICE PRESIDENT FOR ADVANCEMENT Robert B. O’Connor P’22, P’23 / William Smith Alumnae Association Officers: Kirra Henick-Kling Guard ’08, MAT ’09, President; Katharine Strouse Canada ’98, Vice President; Julie Bazan ’93, Immediate Past President; Carla DeLucia ’05, Historian / Hobart Alumni Association Officers: The Hon. Ludwig P. Gaines ’88, President; Vice President — TBD; Dr. Richard S. Solomon ’75, P’10, Immediate Past President; Andrew Donovan ’12, Historian. / For questions and comments about the magazine or to submit a story idea, please e-mail Catherine Williams at cwilliams@hws.edu or Bethany Snyder at bsnyder@hws.edu.

The pages of this publication were printed using 100% recycled paper which enables the environmental savings equivalent to the following: • 244 trees preserved for the future • 18,227 gal. US of water saved • 35,342 lbs. CO2 saved from being emitted • 403 MMBTU of energy not consumed * * These calculations were derived from the RollandEco-calculator.

Contents

Pulteney Street Survey | Fall 2020

Student artwork created in Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 is featured throughout this issue. Seen here is Wrapped in Yourself by Shannon Smith ’20.

HILL & QUAD

FEATURE STORIES

HWS COMMUNITY

CLASSNOTES

03 | U pfront: A letter from

18 | Life Interrupted

44 | A Reunion

50 | C atch up with

48 | New on Shelf,

96 | The Last Word

President Jacobsen

14 | Record-Breaking

Fundraising Year

30 | The Work Ahead

Giving Challenge Stage and Screen

your classmates

Pulteney Street Survey | Fall 2020 / 1

Engaging with

Student Art The artwork shown here — and found throughout the issue — demonstrates the depth and range of our students’ creative talents. Graphic designers, photographers, sculptors, illustrators and painters use their chosen medium to reveal hidden truths, showcase beauty and explore the world as they see it.

Created in Fall 2019 and Spring 2020, these pieces and many others are included in a curated online gallery available at www2.hws.edu/ student-exhibition. << Untitled by Amir Ahemedin ’20.

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Upfront The Year of Engagement DEAR MEMBERS OF THE HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COMMUNITY, These are strange and difficult times. The pandemic is threaded through everything we do, having already taken the lives of so many while interrupting the lives of so many others. We are in the midst of the largest racial justice movement of this generation, with protests occurring across the nation, many calling for racial equity and police reform, and others rallying to back the blue. Fires across the western states are destroying lives and habitats, while hurricane season is in full swing on the east coast, making us ever more aware of the multiple threats of climate change. Add in a heated election season when the aisle between our two political sides has never appeared more wide or unnavigable, and the passing of the notorious RBG leading to a Supreme Court vacancy, and it’s no surprise that we are all feeling pretty stressed and challenged by current events and wanting a warm cup of tea.

But what a time to be in an educational environment where you cannot sit idly by and observe events, but instead are pushed to think, read about and study them, to write and create art inspired by them, and to take action in response to them. In a higher education community like Hobart and William Smith, students learn about the history, economics and science driving the planet, the implications and tactics underway to create change, what is at stake, and who they are as human beings in the face of uncertainty. They learn how their own actions affect the communities they love – whether that’s through wearing a face covering, registering to vote, marching in support of a cause, or organizing a relief effort. Our faculty and students are deep into creating an innovative form of teaching and learning that is inspiring to watch and rooted in meaningful engagement. So whereas last year, I invited the HWS community to Explore HWS with me, this year, I’m asking everyone to enter into a Year of Engagement. I define engagement as active participation, encompassing the acts of meeting new ideas, situations and people head-on with eyes open, receptive to encountering dissonance, willing to learn, and committed to growth and change.

The Colleges, if they could speak, likely would appreciate a warm cup of tea as well, but they persevere with purpose. Even as there are clouds above higher education, there are many silver linings at HWS. With great appreciation to our alumni, alumnae, parents and friends, we had the largest fundraising year in the Colleges’ history (p. 14) and begin this academic year with a balanced budget. The Colleges have so far this Fall remained open for in-person learning on campus, a testament to the enormous amount of planning and preparation that occurred over the spring and summer months. Although we still have a long road ahead to embody the kind of inclusive community that matches our aspirations, we have made meaningful steps forward (p. 12 and 30). Individuals can still realize personal achievements even in difficult times, and the Colleges and our faculty and students have received a number of accolades as described in the following pages.

Throughout all this turmoil, I remain ever grateful for your partnership and guidance, and look forward to the time when we can once again gather in person to celebrate Hobart and William Smith Colleges together.

Sincerely,

Joyce P. Jacobsen, President Pulteney Street Survey | Fall 2020 / 3

Hill & Quad

Nicole Wright ‘20

Hot Entrepreneurial Win Winner of the 2020 Pitch contest, Nicole Wright ’20 recently won the 2020 Minority and Women Owned Business Enterprise award at the New York Business Plan Competition. Emeritus Fire Gear, a streetwear hoodie specifically designed for firefighters, was recognized in the Military and First Responders category. A volunteer firefighter at Hydrant Hose Company in Geneva, N.Y., Wright designed the hood based on her experience gearing up and fighting fires. By integrating a Nomex hood into the sweatshirt, firefighters will already be wearing an essential piece of protective gear when called to an emergency.

Environment America named HWS #2 in the nation for renewable electricity and #1 in the small schools list, recognizing the work of the Colleges to be climate neutral by 2025.

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NEWMAN CIVIC FELLOW Ian Albreski ’23 was named one of only 290 students nationwide who make up the 2019-2020 cohort of national Newman Civic Fellows. This honor recognizes students who work to find solutions for challenges facing their communities. The fellowship provides training and resources that nurture students’ assets and passions, and help them develop strategies to achieve social change.

The Colleges rank #16 among small schools on the Peace Corps’ list of top volunteerproducing colleges and universities in 2020. This is the fourth consecutive year that HWS have appeared on the top rankings. Currently, there are 10 HWS graduates serving in countries around the world including the Dominican Republic, Mozambique and Ukraine. William Smith rower Annika Linden ’20 was recently accepted into the Peace Corps.

The Sherborn, Mass., native was assigned to the youth development program in Morocco.

Since the agency’s founding in 1961, 236 alums from HWS have served abroad as Peace Corps volunteers.

Faculty Ranked #9 in Nation For the fourth year in a row, HWS faculty again number among the nation’s best professors in the 2021 edition of The Princeton Review’s Best 386 Colleges. Ranking ninth in the nation for “Professors Get High Marks,” the Colleges are also ninth in the nation for study abroad and 15th for “impact.”

Best Colleges, which relies on survey responses from current students, cites small class sizes that “make it really easy for professors to know who you are” as well as faculty members who “work hard to facilitate meaningful discussions and provide thoughtprovoking and challenging questions,” as students reported. HWS faculty are “engaging, dynamic and truly interested in fostering the next generation.”

As one student put it, “My professors believe in me, support me and share their passion in pursuit of me finding my own.”

The HWS study abroad program is ninth on the “Most Popular Study Abroad” list, marking five years in a row that the Colleges have had a top-10 ranked study abroad program. The “impact” rating is based on student assessments of community service opportunities, student government, sustainability efforts and on-campus student engagement.

H ON OR AR Y MEMBERS OF CLA S S E S OF 2020 President Joyce P. Jacobsen and Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies and Chair of the Entrepreneurial Studies program Thomas Drennen have been elected honorary members of the Classes of 2020.

In nominating Jacobsen, McKenzie Frazier ’20 remarked that Jacobsen’s leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic “has been really inspiring” and that “she deserved to be recognized and honored.” Jacobsen noted that “getting to know the Classes of 2020 has been one of the joys of my first year as HWS President” and expressed gratitude that they thought to include her in their moment.

Connor Solomon ’20 nominated Drennen “because of his passion for sustainable development and his ability to share that passion with students.” Drennen shared that “being named an honorary member of the class of 2020 was a huge surprise and honor” and he looks forward to celebrating together in person in 2021.

Fulbright Scholars • As a 2019–20 Fulbright Scholar, Assistant Professor of Art and Architecture Angelique Szymanek was based in Scotland at the University of Dundee’s Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, where for six months she studied the works by women artists.

• Brandon Harding ’20 is the recipient of a 2020 U.S. Student Fulbright Award to Vietnam, where he will teach English to Vietnamese students, building on his previous internship experience in Hanoi, where he studied abroad in 2018.

• Ruby Williams ’20 is the recipient of a 2020 U.S. Student Fulbright Award to Germany, where she will serve as an English Teaching Assistant.

Williams previously studied abroad in Germany through the Julius G. Blocker ’53 Fellowship.

AmeriCorps • As an AmeriCorps volunteer, Katherine Foley ’20 will serve the community of Big Sky, Mont., as a member of the Gallatin River Task Force. Foley’s role will be to protect and preserve the Gallatin River, a tributary of the Missouri River that begins in Yellowstone National Park.

• Colin Maczka ’20 has been accepted into the AmeriCorps VISTA program, appointed to the Project M.O.V.E. team in his hometown of Buffalo, N.Y. • Catherine Sherwood ’20 and Alexander Cottrell ’20 have joined AmeriCorps’ Community Mediation Services Corps as conflict resolution specialists through the Center for Dispute Settlement. In their new roles, they will work with youth and families in local communities and schools. Sherwood has been assigned to Canandaigua Middle School, while Cottrell will head to Geneva High School.

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HILL & QUAD |

The Likely World

Professor of English Melanie Conroy-Goldman Authors “Mesmerizing,” “Badass Smart” First Novel

BY A N DREW W I C KE ND E N ’ 0 9 PH OTO BY LAURA KOZLO W S K I

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With The Likely World, published in August by Red Hen Press, Professor of English Melanie Conroy-Goldman has written a “bizarre and beautiful” book, “equal parts brainy lit and gut-bucket pulp,” as PEN Faulkner and National Book Award nominee Mary Gaitskill writes.

The novel follows single mom Mellie, who has just emerged from a shattering 20-year addiction to the memory drug, cloud, when a stranger who may be her baby’s father appears with a dangerous agenda. When her pursuit of this man and the past they may share threatens her sponsor, Mellie will have to put her tiny family and her recovery at risk in hopes of saving the woman who saved her first.

In the July/August 2020 issue of Vanity Fair magazine, Lysley Tenorio, author of the novel The Son of Good Fortune, writes that in The Likely World, “present and past collide, themes of motherhood and sex clash — a mesmerizing novel unlike anything I’ve read.”

Guggenheim recipient and New York Times notable book author Peter Ho Davies says, “Conroy-Goldman’s gritty street postmodernism will rewire your brain in ways that recall David Foster Wallace or Philip K. Dick. But it’s the depth of feeling here, about love, about motherhood, reminiscent of Rachel Kushner or Claire Vaye Watkins, that will break your heart.”

“I don’t know if you’ll ever read a literary novel like The Likely World this or any other year,” says Pulitzer Prize finalist and Pen-Hemingway winner Chang-Rae Lee. “It’s groovy, badass smart, and totally trippy, but also full of heartache and longing and the woundings of love. This novel absolutely sparkles with brightness and life.”

“ It’s groovy, badass smart, and totally trippy, but also full of heartache and longing and the woundings of love. This novel absolutely sparkles with brightness and life.”

Conroy-Goldman is a founding director of the HWS Trias Residency for Writers. Her fiction has been published in journals such as Southern Review and StoryQuarterly, in anthologies from Morrow and St. Martin’s and online at venues such as McSweeney’s.

FACULTY NEWS HALFMAN RECEIVES INAUGURAL CITIZEN’S AWARD Professor of Environmental Studies John Halfman has received the inaugural Citizen Award from the Finger Lakes Regional Watershed Alliance, given to individuals who contribute significantly to protecting the water quality of the Finger Lakes. At the ceremony, Finger Lakes Institute Director Lisa Cleckner noted that Halfman has “engaged and taught hundreds of Hobart and William Smith students about the lakes through research missions on our vessels as well as in our laboratories.”

MCCORKLE RELEASES NEW BOOK

P H OTO BY KE V I N CO LTO N

The poetry of Visiting Assistant Professor of Africana Studies James McCorkle ’76 is featured in a new book called Triptych.

In Time, one of three books in the collection, showcases McCorkle’s “chewy, sustained meditations on time and the nature of decay,” according to publisher Etruscan Press.

HWS EARNS $500K NSF RESEARCH GRANT A grant from the National Science Foundation will support a four-year continuation of the collaborative undergraduate research program led by HWS that explores atmospheric and related sciences. Awarded as part of the Northeast Partnership for Atmospheric and Related Sciences (NEPARS) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU), the $531,693 grant will support paid summer research opportunities for undergraduate participants and paid positions for students to join the group as REU program assistants.

A collaborative effort between HWS and Plymouth State University, NEPARS REU will bring faculty research mentors from both institutions together with more than 55 undergraduate students from across the country during the four-year grant.

“The NEPARS REU program at HWS provides great research opportunities for HWS students to work alongside undergraduates that come to campus for the summer from colleges and universities across the United States,” says Professor of Geoscience Neil Laird, the project’s director and one of several research mentors.

Perkins Observatory Data Confirms Exoplanet Discovery Observations with the Colleges’ Richard S. Perkin Observatory made by Associate Professor of Physics Leslie Hebb have been used to confirm the existence of a new extra-solar planet.

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, launched into space a few years ago, is designed to discover new extra-solar planets — those that revolve around a star other than the Sun — around the nearest and brightest stars. Because “not every candidate is a genuine planet,” as Hebb explains, observations are taken of candidate host stars to determine if they qualify.

Hebb provided a series of brightness measurements from one candidate host star named TOI-1266, located 117 light years from Earth. Data from the Perkin Observatory was combined with velocity measurements of the star taken by one of Hebb’s colleagues. “We were able to confirm the existence of the planet and measure its mass (about 10 times the mass of Earth) and radius (about 2.5 times the size of Earth),” she says.

The results of the findings were published in an article in the Astrophysics Journal co-authored by Hebb and 20 academic and astronomical professionals from institutions including Princeton University, University of Texas and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

CROW SHARES MELVILLE EXPERTISE In two new publications, Associate Professor of History Matthew Crow uses the lens of his research on writer Herman Melville to discuss contemporary questions of law and authority in the context of American literature and history.

He contributed a chapter to Empire and Legal Thought: Ideas and Institutions from Antiquity to Modernity and the article “A Melvillean Moment: Law, History, and Empire from Gibbon to Melville” in the June 2020 issue of Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies.

” We were able to confirm the existence of the planet and measure its mass (about 10 times the mass of Earth) and radius (about 2.5 times the size of Earth).”

Leslie Hebb, Associate Professor of Physics

HILL & QUAD |

Bey ’21 Crafts Artistic, Entrepreneurial Success

BY A N DREW WI C K EN D E N ’ 0 9

With her 2019–20 collection, “We Are the Blueprint,” artist Faithe Bey ’21 calls attention to all the ways Black women are the inspiration and standardbearers for contemporary images of feminine beauty, style and culture in the U.S. The collection — which began with hyperrealist paintings of lips, hairstyles and nude bodies — was intended to reveal how “Black women unintentionally and effortlessly gifted pop culture in America what the average girl wants to look and sound like,” Bey writes on her website. “Today we are celebrating and recognizing the rightful authors of this narrative.”

Animated by this artistic vision, Bey has forged her own blueprint for her work, building what was once a hobby into a lucrative social media-driven business. Selling not only prints and posters but apparel and accessories featuring her original art, Faithe Bey Artworks has attracted thousands of followers and sold more than 3,000 products

related to the brand since launching in 2019.

While she had grown up drawing and coloring, Bey didn’t start painting until the end of her first semester at HWS. “One night I got the random urge to paint,” she remembers, “but all I had were some Crayola markers.

So, I squeezed the ink out of those and voila — watercolors!

After finishing a self-portrait, it was then that I realized not only was I better at it than where I left off so many years ago, but I discovered my passion for art all over again.

I signed myself up for an art class in the spring and just continued to learn and grow from there.”

Bey started practicing portraiture and experimenting with new media after her father, Justus Bey ’90, P’20, P’21, P’23, bought her a set of oil paints. (Faithe’s siblings, Tai-Ling Bey ’20 and Justus Bey ’23, are also members of the HWS community.) By the spring of 2019, Faithe was “painting celebrity portraits to gain some exposure, which worked almost every time.”

The portraits drew attention on social media, including

8 / HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES

Trust the Process by Faithe Bey ’21.

recognition from Jordan Peele, Lupita Nyong’o, Jackie Aina, H.E.R., Ella Mai and others. But it was with “We Are the Blueprint” that Bey “really started to develop my own style.”

As a studio art major and entrepreneurial studies minor, Bey has pushed herself to explore the far reaches of her craft and align it with her career aspirations. She participated in the Centennial Center’s Summer Sandbox Idea Accelerator, “which has taught me a lot about growing a business from the ground up; I apply those things to Faithe Bey Artworks

constantly,” she says. “I’ve learned that you can be extremely talented and not have your work sell because of how you market it. Look at viral posts and study them.

Study their wording and photo line up. Most of all, look at how you currently market and ask yourself: Would I buy this?”

With the first anniversary of “We Are the Blueprint” approaching, Bey is planning to expand the collection — and also on the lookout for new ideas, “because almost everyday I see a new thing that Black people are the Blueprint for.”

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Student Art 1. I ntangible Title

by Anna Krajewski ’22.

2. Landscape

by Molly Quinn ’20.

3. Anonymous.

4. Strangely Rooted in Reality

by Brooke Sowerby ’22.

5. Transformations

by Sammy Adcock ’22.

6. LD

by Grace Stribling-Hough.

7. Trees

by Ara McCorkle ’20.

8. Despot

by Carlos Cruz ’20.

Pulteney Street Survey | Fall 2020 / 9

HILL & QUAD |

Access and Affordability New Chair of the Board of Trustees Craig R. Stine ’81, P’17 Outlines Priorities

BY CATH ERI N E WI L L I A MS

AT ITS SPRING MEETING, the Board of Trustees unanimously elected Craig R. Stine ’81, P’17 as its next Chair. The Vice Chairman of the Global Financial Institutions Group at Barclays, Stine has been a trustee for nearly a decade, serving as Vice Chair of the Board for the past year. He began his duties as Chair on July 1, following the four-year tenure of Thomas S. Bozzuto ’68, L.H.D. ’18.

“I am thrilled to have this role and to serve the Colleges,” says Stine. “I’ve always admired the leadership of the Board and been proud to be associated with it. Tom Bozzuto and others convinced me it was time for a new generation of trustees to step forward, and I was happy to be next in line.”

Being next in line means tackling some significant issues facing higher education including a decreasing number of college-age students, questions surrounding the business model, and the need to create a more inclusive and equitable community, issues made more pronounced by the pandemic.

“Access and affordability must be our aspiration,” says new Chair of the Board of Trustees Craig R. Stine ’81, P’17.

10 / HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES

“If I didn’t have a high degree of confidence in the Colleges’ trajectory and in our ability to make progress against these more macro headwinds facing the higher education sector, I wouldn’t have agreed to be Chair of the Board,” says Stine. “I am convinced that President Joyce Jacobsen is the right person to lead the Colleges and, having worked with her team, know that she has the senior staff in place to succeed.”

A member of the presidential search committee that unanimously selected Jacobsen, Stine describes her as “eminently qualified. She’s proven that in her first year by shoring up the Colleges’ finances and delivering a balanced budget to the Board,” he says. “She has a broad understanding of how higher education aligns and differs from the forprofit business sector, and the knowledge of

how finance works — critical skills we will need over the next few years. She has also created an overall Strategic Plan and refocused the community on the Diversity Plan. In doing so, she’s set up a blueprint for her presidency that will propel the Colleges forward.”

Stine says that Hobart and William Smith offer an education that only a small percentage of families can afford. “Access and affordability must be our aspiration,” he says. “We know that a Hobart and William Smith education creates opportunities and outcomes for students and we must do everything in our power to make it more achievable.

It will continue to be our principled obligation to make that possible.”

Part of that principled obligation, Stine says, is making certain that the campus culture is one that supports all students, faculty and staff. Over the summer, the Board established a committee on diversity, equity and inclusion to support the Colleges’ Strategic Diversity Plan, chaired by Trustee William T. Whitaker Jr. ’73, L.H.D. ’97 (see p. 12). “Our work on access and affordability must be accompanied by

“ Students need a pathway — a clear pathway — to their next phase in life. We need to go where the puck is going and offer students that pathway, one unburdened by excessive debt. If we can do that, we will continue to fulfill our mission.” an emphasis on making the Colleges a place that attracts and retains a wide diversity of community members,” says Stine. “That means making further changes to policies and practices, and fostering a positive campus climate. We must see action in this area in order for me to feel like I’ve made a difference at the Colleges.”

Stine is also particularly mindful about containing or decreasing student related debt. “It breaks my heart to think that college graduates are making important life decisions based on their loan balances and monthly payment obligations,” he says, pointing out that even graduates of Ivy League schools are shouldering debt despite the fact that their alma maters have endowments in the billions. At Hobart and William Smith, the average

debt at graduation is about $34,000, comparable to HWS’ peer group. “Young people aren’t taking the jobs they want or working toward their long-term life goals. They are delaying the purchase of homes and cars. There’s a natural economic glide path into adulthood that just isn’t happening because of these financial constraints. This isn’t a Hobart and William Smith problem; because it’s an overall economic issue, this is everyone’s problem. We must continue to tackle this issue head on. The Board has been focused for some time on investing in higher levels of financial aid and we need to continue that push as we also contain costs.”

Doing so will take every member of the community.

“One of my goals going into my tenure as Chair is to forge a tighter working relationship

with the faculty, and we have plans underway to facilitate that,” he says. “The faculty are largely concerned with the same things as the Board – access, affordability, diversity, equity and the size of the endowment. A more cohesive relationship among the Board and faculty will help us all to understand what we can do as individuals and as cohorts to be part of the solution.”

“Hobart and William Smith provide an outstanding education,” Stine says.

“What parents want for their children is for them to be well-educated and to have a productive life. Students need a pathway — a clear pathway — to their next phase in life.

We need to go where the puck is going and offer students that pathway, one unburdened by excessive debt. If we can do that, we will continue to fulfill our mission.”

A nearly 30-year veteran of the investment banking industry, Stine began his career with PNC Financial Group in Philadelphia and since then has served as Co-CEO and Co-Head of Investment Banking of Citadel Securities and held executive positions at Citi.

Before joining Barclays in 2020, he was Executive Vice Chairman of the Global Financial Institutions Group

at Credit Suisse Securities.

An economics major at HWS, he earned an M.B.A. from Temple University.

As an HWS Trustee since 2011, Stine has served as Chair of the Board’s governance committee and as a member of the presidential search, advancement, financial management and executive committees. He has mentored and hired a number of HWS graduates, helping shape the next generation of financial leaders. In 2010, Stine endowed a scholarship to help defray the costs of tuition, room and board for an economics student who has shown academic excellence. Members of the Seneca Society and important supporters of the campaign for Gearan Center for the Performing Arts, Craig and his wife Kathy Hay Stine are parents of three sons, including Jack ’17.

During the Board’s spring meeting, Cynthia “Cyndy” Gelsthorpe Fish ’82 was re-elected as Vice Chair; Calvin “Chip” R. Carver ’81 and J.B. Robinson ’96 remain in their respective roles as Treasurer and Secretary.

Pulteney Street Survey | Fall 2020 / 11

HILL & QUAD |

HWS Board Establishes DEI Committee The Hobart and William Smith Board of Trustees has established a committee on diversity, equity and inclusion to support the Colleges’ Strategic Diversity Plan, a powerful step in sustaining HWS’ commitment to inclusion. Trustee William T. Whitaker Jr. ’73, L.H.D. ’97 will chair the committee.

“Despite progress in institutional policy and culture, the experiences of students, alums, faculty and staff remain unequal, namely for people of color and those who have historically been marginalized,” says Board Chair Craig R. Stine ’81, P’17. “I am deeply grateful to Bill Whitaker for taking a leadership role on the committee and am looking forward to working together to fulfill our aspirations for an HWS community of dignity and respect for everyone.”

“In order for Hobart and William Smith to continue to attract and retain exceptional students, faculty and staff, we have to invest the time, energy and resources in building and sustaining an inclusive community,” says Whitaker. “That means we must work toward building a campus that not only reflects the diversity of our nation, but one where all of our students are equally prepared for the world into which they will graduate, one with a multiplicity of perspectives, voices and ideas. It is an important moment in the Colleges’ history, and I’m honored to help in this way.”

Trustee Jane M. Erickson ’07 will serve as vice chair of the committee. Other committee members include Trustees Linda D. Arrington ’88, Edward R. Cooper ’86, P’16, Margueritte S. Murphy, Michael E. Rawlins ’80, P’16 and Rt. Rev. Prince G. Singh; and Student Trustees Albright R. Dwarka ’21, Audrey G. R. Platt ’21, Gib Shea ’22 and Nuzhat Wahid ’22.

Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Khuram Hussain, who will staff the committee, says the Colleges have an opportunity to be proactive about all aspects of diversity and to promote in-depth discussions that lead to action. “There is healing that must happen,” he says. “But there is also a sense of optimism and momentum here on campus. This is our moment to make change happen and I’m so appreciative that the Board of Trustees is with us in this work.”

12 / HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES

New Board Members

William T. Whitaker Jr. ’73, L.H.D. ’97

Jane M. Erickson ’07

Linda D. Arrington ’88

Edward R. Cooper ’86, P’16

Albright R. Dwarka ’21

Khuram Hussain

Margueritte S. Murphy

Audrey G. R. Platt ’21

Michael E. Rawlins ’80, P’16

Gib Shea ’22

Rt. Rev. Prince G. Singh

Nuzhat Wahid ’22

Six new members recently were elected to the Board of Trustees.

As immediate past presidents of the Hobart Alumni Association and William Smith Alumnae Association, Julie Bazan ’93 and Richard S. Solomon ’75, P’10 will serve four-year terms, working as liaisons between the Board and the bodies representing Hobart and William Smith graduates.

Margueritte Murphy was also elected to a four-year term starting in July. The Board’s other newest members, Eric J. Stein ’89, Joseph Stein III ’86 and Sam Stern ’03, were all elected to four-year terms in October 2019.

Julie Bazan ’93 joined Simon Business School at the University of Rochester as the Executive Director of Career Education and Professional Development in April; she is an adjunct professor at Nazareth College and co-owner of MJDB Ventures LLC that operates B & D Market in Geneva. Formerly the COO of Cobblestone Capital Advisors and Mann’s Jewelers, she holds master’s degrees in liberal arts and educational leadership and earned a certificate of Executive Leadership from Cornell University. A committed member of the Emerson, Wheeler and Heron Societies, Bazan majored in philosophy and rhetoric, minored in education and played field hockey.

Margueritte Murphy has served as Associate Provost at HWS, as well as Chair of the Colleges’ Writing & Rhetoric Program and an adviser and faculty liaison

to the Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning.

A faculty member of Bates College for two years and Bentley University for 20 years, Murphy is the author of two books: A Tradition of Subversion: The Prose Poem in English from Wilde to Ashbery and Material Figures: Political Economy, Commercial Culture, and the Aesthetic Sensibility of Charles Baudelaire. Murphy holds a B.A. from Stanford University and an A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Richard S. Solomon ’75, P’10 is the Clinical Director, President and Cofounder of Delta Consultants, a clinical practice working with children, adolescents and families.

He also consults with schools and leads trainings across the country

and serves as an adjunct professor of psychology and clinical supervisor in the psychology doctoral program at the University of Rhode Island.

At HWS, Solomon majored in psychology, played hockey, was sports editor of The Herald and news director of WEOS-FM. He earned a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Rhode Island. His daughter, Victoria, graduated from William Smith in 2010.

Eric Stein ’89 is Global Chairman of Investment Banking at J.P. Morgan, where he has worked in various positions since his graduation from Hobart. As a student, he played on the Statesmen lacrosse and football teams, earning multiple awards and honors. He was the recipient of the 1989 USILA National Player

of the Year Award and was a first team All-American. In 2014, he was inducted into the Hobart Athletics Hall of Fame. An economics major at Hobart, Stein earned a master’s in business administration from New York University.

Joseph Stein III ’86 is Managing Director leading Financing Advisory efforts for PJ Solomon, L.P., a New York-based investment banking firm. Formerly executive director and head of the Private Placement Group at UBS Warburg LLC, Stein also held corporate finance positions at Citicorp. At Hobart, he played lacrosse and football, earning AllAmerica honors in both sports. From 1990 to 1992, he served as director of the Statesmen Athletic Association and in 1997 was inducted into the

Hall of Fame. He majored in political science at Hobart and received his MBA from the Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester.

Sam Stern ’03 founded Stern LLC in 2019, a boutique law firm specializing in criminal and civil litigation. He began his career in public service with the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office in Jersey City, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey and the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office. After serving as a prosecutor, he joined Kobre & Kim LLP before starting his own firm. Stern earned a B.A. in history, a law degree from Fordham University School of Law and is an adjunct professor at the University of Miami School of Law.

Increasing Turnout with HWS Votes With an eye on the 2020 elections, the Colleges’ nonpartisan, student-led, civic engagement and voter registration initiative is ramping up efforts to increase registration and voting. HWS Votes works with politically-oriented groups on campus — including College Republicans, College Democrats, Americans for Informed Democracy and the Progressive Student Union — to maximize student participation and understanding of the electoral process.

Building on the campus’ 2016 voting engagement, HWS Votes seeks to increase the student registration rate from 77.9 percent to at least 85 percent and increase the student voting rate from 37.2 percent to at least 50 percent.

“We see voting as a threshold to civic engagement and participatory democracy and are dedicated to reaching every student at the Colleges this fall,” says Audrey Platt ’21, who serves as HWS Votes co-president and civic leader of political activism.

Since launching in 2004, HWS Votes has helped 2,000 students, faculty, staff and Geneva community members register to vote, request absentee ballots and receive election reminders.

Audrey Platt ’21 and Kate Equinozzi ’23 serve as co-presidents of HWS Votes.

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HILL & QUAD |

Record-Breaking Fundraising Year

On May 31, Hobart and William Smith closed out the 2020 fiscal year with more than $27 million in new gifts and commitments from donors — making it the largest fundraising year in the institution’s history.

“We are inspired, we are tremendously grateful and we are deeply honored by the commitment and generosity of the Hobart and William Smith community,” says Vice President for Advancement Bob O’Connor P’22, P’23.

“I join Bob in thanking everyone who made a gift to the Colleges,” says President Joyce P. Jacobsen. “In my first year as president, this support is particularly meaningful and demonstrates a high level of confidence in our trajectory. I’m especially grateful to Bob and his team for all of their hard work to make it happen and in their skill in communicating to our donors the powerful value

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of a Hobart and William Smith education.”

Philanthropic support drives innovative academic work, enables students to pursue internships and study abroad and enriches the campus experience, from athletics to clubs. All-time records were also broken in annual giving at $6.9 million and athletics fundraising, which set both donor and dollar records.

During Athletics Day of Donors in February, HWS saw more donors contribute more dollars for Statesmen and Herons teams in a single day than ever before.

For more information about making a gift to Hobart and William Smith, contact Senior Executive Director of Development Steve Caraher at (315) 781-3776 or caraher@ hws.edu.

L EGACI ES OF GIVING

Alums support the Colleges through bequests, gifts and endowments, while others offer challenges to their classmates to give back.

Pearl Newton Rook ’50 made a substantial gift to support the Colleges’ general scholarship fund upon her death in 2019 at the age of 95. After studying at Mount Vernon Seminary in the early 1940s, Rook enrolled at William Smith, where she met and married Douglas Lee Rook ‘49. A poet and editor, she later returned to HWS to finish her degree in English, graduating in 1978. ¶ A new fundraising challenge, sponsored by Michael L. Opell ’59 and Ellen Levine Opell ’60, will establish the HWS Student Entrepreneurship Fund to support current and future programs, workshops and student initiatives in entrepreneurship at HWS. The Opell Challenge matches each new gift to the Entrepreneurship Fund by 50%, up to $162,000, with an overall goal of $486,000. ¶ Gary Dake ’67 established the Gary A. ’67 and Myra Dake Endowed Scholarship Fund as a way of ensuring that current students have the same opportunity to build a strong academic foundation that he had. “I’m grateful that we can help some of these young people who are learning to think more widely about where they came from and what the world should look like,” he says. ¶ A new scholarship fund, endowed with a $200,000 gift from William Prather ’71, will support a student from an underserved community pursuing an English major at HWS. Prather, who himself majored in English, recalls a “well-rounded education” at the Colleges, an experience that “helped me broaden my overall thinking processes.” ¶ The Dr. Kenneth R. Carle Endowed Summer Science Research Fund, named for Professor Emeritus of Chemistry Kenneth Carle P’82, P’84, P’90, establishes a permanent endowment to fund summer research opportunities on campus. The lead gift was provided by Carle’s son, Dr. Kenneth “Alan” Carle ’82; contributors include Carle’s daughters, HWS Professor of Biology Sigrid Carle ’84 and Sandra Carle Pilotte ’90, as well as Dr. Steven Lasser ’78, Bradford Spring ’88 and Michael Dick ’70, P’09. ¶ As a longtime donor and Trustee, Herbert J. McCooey ’76, P’04, P’09 has played a key role in driving strategic planning efforts to ensure the financial security of the Colleges. Now, as Annual Fund Chair, McCooey is providing senior leadership for the Colleges’ Annual Fund program, including his own Annual Fund gift that he hopes will serve as an example to others, creating momentum for sustained, annual giving. ¶ With a $100,000 gift to HWS, Peter Standish Jr. ’83 and Anne O’Connor ’86 Standish P’14, P’16 established a permanent endowment fund to provide assistance to academically qualified students who have demonstrated financial need. This year, to encourage others to take on leadership roles in meeting the Colleges’ fundraising goals, the Standishes have volunteered to serve as committee chairs of the Emerson Society.

Membership in The Emerson Society is achieved annually by making gifts totaling $2,000 or more during the fund year. ¶ Robert Karofsky ’89 was already an economics major when he had his first class with former Interim President and Professor Emeritus of Economics Patrick A. McGuire L.H.D. ’12. As a gesture of thanks for the profound impact McGuire had on his education, Karofsky recently made a substantial donation to the Patrick A. and Sandra A. McGuire Study Abroad Fund. Created by the Board of Trustees in 2019 to honor the McGuires’ years of service to the Colleges, the fund makes studying abroad a reality for students who otherwise could not afford it. “Hobart gave me confidence to continue in the finance industry,” Karofsky says. “When I look back on my career, Pat McGuire was one of the most significant influences. His engagement and passion helped me mature as a student and as a person.”

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HILL & QUAD |

A FALL WITHOUT GAMES

BY M AC K EN Z I E L A RS E N ‘ 1 2

COVID-19 has changed the landscape of sports around the world, across the nation and at Hobart and William Smith.

While the pandemic cost the Statesmen NCAA tournament games in basketball and hockey over the winter, spring sports seasons barely got started — if at all — before they too were canceled. The opportunity to gather and cheer for the Herons and Statesmen remains on hold through the fall semester.

In July, Associate Vice President and Director of Athletics and Recreation Deb Steward, in conjunction with the Liberty League, announced the cancellation of athletic competition and championships for the Statesmen and Herons for the fall semester. Similar announcements from institutions and conferences across the nation led the NCAA to cancel all fall championships.

“We worked tirelessly with our Liberty League colleagues to determine the best path forward for our student-athletes

given the challenges of this pandemic,” says Steward. “This difficult decision was focused on our guiding principle — ensuring the health and safety of our student-athletes, staff and communities.

We will engage with our student-athletes in this new environment with greater passion and appreciation for the time we get to spend together playing the sports we love.”

The decision to cancel all intercollegiate competition until at least January was made in consideration of updated NCAA guidance on the return to practice and competition, and the trajectory of COVID-19 infection rates across the country. The decision affects all HWS intercollegiate athletic teams.

Despite these changes, the Colleges are committed to providing student-athletes with a fall intercollegiate athletics experience that includes team practice, strength and conditioning workouts, leadership seminars and player-coach meetings.

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“We’ve created a COVID Action Team to develop our return to practice plan with representation from sports medicine, strength and conditioning, equipment, facilities, coaching staff and administration — and in consideration of NCAA and New York State guidance,” says Steward. “Once we have approval from the state and county, we will implement a phased plan with our goals to keep our campus healthy, our students engaged in their education and provide an athletic routine that aids in the physical, emotional and intellectual wellness of our student-athletes.”

The Colleges are members of multiple conferences for winter sports; all of those leagues have announced that conference play will not begin before January 2021. HWS will continue to engage with its conferences and the NCAA to determine if spring 2021 competition is a viable option for fall sports teams.

Training in a COVID-19 World

Chu Announces Retirement

BY KE N D E B O LT

After 18 years guiding the William Smith rowing team, Head Coach Sandra Chu retired from coaching at the end of the 2019-20 academic year.

“I am thankful for Sandra’s leadership with our Heron rowing team, in our department and on campus,” says Steward. “She empowered hundreds of William Smith women to pursue their passions and modeled that through her own pursuits. Sandra challenged all of us to grow outside our comfort zone and to build our self-awareness.”

Chu’s teams enjoyed success on the water and in the classroom. She mentored 26 CRCA All-Americans, including 13 first team selections, while guiding William Smith to six NCAA Championship bids as a team and two as an at-large eight. Chu’s Herons won nine Liberty League Championships, including six in a row from 2011 to 2016.

Academically, her Herons earned 174 Liberty League AllAcademic awards, 68 CRCA Scholar-Athlete awards and three CoSIDA Academic All-America® awards.

“It has been my distinct privilege to help guide the Heron rowing program to success,” says Chu, who is pursuing opportunities in the fields of leadership development and executive search. “Serving as the William Smith Head Rowing Coach has been one of the highest honors and greatest opportunities of my life.”

Chu departs Winn-Seeley Gym with eight Liberty League Coaching Staff of the Year Awards, the 2012 ECAC Women’s Coach of the Year Award and the 2012 CRCA Division III Coach of the Year.

“It’s difficult to find words to express my gratitude for all that Sandra has done for me over the past decade,” said Elizabeth “Libby” Hughes ’14, who won two Liberty League gold medals in the varsity eight and coached with Chu for the past six seasons.

“If not for her kind heart, strength, stubbornness, growth-minded approach, tireless patience and so much more, I wouldn’t have been able to see in myself what she saw in me all those years ago when I first stepped on campus with high aspirations but no plan of achieving them.”

Paul Bugenhagen, Hobart’s Head Rowing Coach since 2011, succeeds Chu, leading both the Statesmen and Herons.

Before 2020, social distancing was never a consideration when designing fitness centers.

That got Chris Gray thinking outside the box, literally and figuratively.

Now in his third year as HWS’ John J. Hogan ’88 Strength & Conditioning Coach, Gray helped to devise workouts for Herons and Statesmen over the spring and summer. With gyms across the country closed, “we tried to meet the kids where they were,” he says. “We surveyed everyone to find out what, if any, equipment they had at home and then provided them with tailored workouts pertinent to their circumstances.”

With Statesmen and Herons back on campus, Gray has prepared strength, speed and agility drills that can be done outside, spreading small groups of student-athletes out over a 100-yard field. Team workouts will be held outside when the state permits.

Aware that some student-athletes haven’t had consistent, intense workouts in six months, Gray has designed the workouts to start at 50% intensity and volume and build up to 100% over four or five weeks. “It’s a safe and progressive way to build up to full capacity and have our teams ready to return to competition in 2021,” he says.

STATESMEN FEATURED IN ASSOCIATED PRESS STORY The Associated Press interviewed Kevin DeWall ’00 and Emmett Forde ’21 for a story titled “Heartbreak of lost football season felt across Division III” that was featured in media outlets across the country.

The article describes some of Hobart football’s traditions put on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic including the Victory Walk, the team’s pregame walk across campus to Boswell Field at David J Urick Stadium.

Entering his third year as head coach at Hobart, DeWall spoke about helping team members navigate the pandemic’s effects on sports, including seniors who have to choose between starting a career or postgraduate education and playing one more season.

A 2019 AP All-American linebacker, Forde shared his thoughts on the cancellation of his senior season, game day at Boswell Field and his perspective on what it all means. “There are people in much worse situations than us,” Forde said. “Obviously, football is just a sport. People are dying from this virus and it’s a national and global pandemic. We really can’t be selfish and think about ourselves. We have to think about society as a whole.”

BY M ACKE N ZI E LAR SE N ‘ 12

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How HWS Stayed Steadfast and Resilient in Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic

Life Inter rupted

ART BY © CACTU S C RE AT IV E ST U D I O / STO CKSY U N I TE D

Note that this story is accurate as of press time in early September. For the latest news, go to www2.hws.edu/opening.

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A moment arrived in March when the Hobart and William Smith administration knew that — for the safety of students, faculty, staff and the Geneva community — the time had come to move most students off campus and shift to a remote learning model.

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e had some sleepless nights on the way to the decision but as we monitored the spread of the virus and had conversations with health care officials, we knew it was the right thing to do,” says Vice President for Campus Life Robb Flowers.

While the spring semester is typically a flurry of activity, instead of finishing Honors projects, mounting theatrical productions, competing for league championships and preparing for beloved traditions such as Moving Up Day, the Hobart Launch and Commencement, administrators found themselves booking flights back to the States for students studying abroad, coordinating the return of on-campus students to their homes and families and providing a safe space for the 200 or so students who needed to remain on campus. All students received a partial credit for room and board, and any student who needed to stay on campus for the remainder of the semester was able to do so free of charge.

“No one wanted to see that moment arrive,” says President Joyce P. Jacobsen, “but everyone tackled the challenges involved in shifting to remote learning with focus and resolve.”

The move had to happen quickly, with both faculty and students diving headfirst into a new reality of Zoom classes, virtual office hours and unfamiliar technology.

Everyday vocabulary expanded to include words like “pivot,” “asynchronous” and “breakout rooms.”

Described by Jacobsen as “a massive natural experiment,” the shift required faculty to redefine classrooms and translate experiential learning — including art, science labs, performances, field experiments and research projects — into the online space.

“The faculty did a tremendous job,” says Provost

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and Dean of Faculty Mary Coffey. “In the history of higher education, I can’t think of another time when so many people were called on to shift their pedagogy with so much speed. Staff in the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) and Information Technology created remote teaching guides for faculty and students, and consulted oneon-one to ease the transition.”

Dean for Teaching, Learning and Assessment and CTL Director Susan Pliner reflects on the “complicated and rapid transition” to remote learning that took place. “What most comes to mind is the resiliency displayed by our students and faculty, along with the innovation demonstrated by our staff,” she says. “It was an extraordinary shift during a tenuous time, but our sense of community never wavered and the passion toward student learning carried us through in the face of every obstacle.”

In the first weeks of the spring shutdown of New York State, the entire HWS community held out hope that staying apart would mean we could still be together for two of the most anticipated events of the spring and summer: Commencement and Reunion. Again, the health and well-being of everyone took precedence and both

“ We were just overwhelmed by the generosity of our alums and parents.

We even had parents who donated their student’s room and board credit to the Colleges. Everyone pitched in.”

VICE PRESIDENT FOR ADVANCEMENT BOB O’CONNOR P’22, P’23

events were postponed until June of 2021.

The outpouring of sympathy for graduates was overwhelming with dozens of faculty, staff, alums and elected officials recording video messages.

“I have felt so fortunate to see almost two decades of students graduate from the Colleges, and it is special each time,” says Dean of William Smith Lisa Kaenzig P’22. “This year, I stood under the trees next to Smith Hall to record my message to the graduates and was struck by my own strong emotions in wishing everything good for this very special group of students in the Classes of 2020 who have persisted in a way that was truly unique in our history.”

One message from the Most Rev. Bishop Michael B. Curry ’75, Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church, was particularly poignant. Curry, who had been scheduled as the Commencement speaker and who has agreed to

return in 2021 to deliver his Commencement address in person, invited graduates to: “dare lives that dare to dream dreams, that dare to hope against hope, that dare to stand for ideals and values and principles like love and justice and compassion and kindness, to dare to ask why not and dare to live it.”

(More at www2.hws.edu/ commencement-2020/.)

The Hobart and William Smith community also rallied in other significant ways.

In a time of uncertainty and hardship, gifts and commitments to the Colleges resulted in the largest fundraising year in HWS history (see story on p. 14), while a newly formed Student Emergency Fund coordinated

by Alumni and Alumnae Association leadership and students raised more than $60,000 to provide students with immediate financial assistance. Associate Vice President and Dean of Students Brandon Barile, who oversaw the allocations from the Student Emergency Fund,

notes that grants covered a variety of needs “helping students access Wi-Fi from home, get textbooks, obtain technology such as laptops or computer repairs — all things to make their academic experience successful.” In addition, “some more basic needs were addressed such as airfare to get home, rent, utilities, groceries and even costs for at-home counseling since so many students rely on our counseling services and resources on campus.”

More than 393 grants were distributed in total, financed by funds donated by alums, parents, faculty and staff, and monies identified by student leaders for re-allocation from student government. Barile is “grateful as well for student leaders who supported their peers, connecting them to on-campus resources and funding to help get them financially through the pandemic, as much as possible.”

“We were just overwhelmed by the generosity of our alums and parents,” says Vice

President for Advancement Bob O’Connor P’22, P’23.

“We even had parents who donated their student’s room and board credit to the Colleges. Everyone pitched in.” He notes that the Colleges also received support from two regional foundations — The Max and Marian Farash Charitable Foundation and The Fred L. Emerson Foundation — to help with COVID-related expenses.

With a new model for the spring semester underway, staff began to think through the logistics involved in reopening for the fall.

Jacobsen appointed three task forces to consider a range of scenarios for what the fall semester might look like. The Logistics Task Force, overseen

by Coffey and Flowers and comprised of faculty, staff and students, conducted scenario planning; outlined plans for social distancing, cleaning, testing and quarantining; and planned for flexible modes of instruction. The Financial Task Force, led by then-incoming Chair of the Board of Trustees Craig Stine ’81, P’17 and consisting of trustees and senior staff, focused on the projected financial implications of the pandemic. The Community Coordination Task Force, led

by Flowers and Vice President and General Counsel Lou Guard ’07, sought the input of regional officials, health care

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leaders, local alums, parents, politicians and community leaders to imagine a campus reopening that would be safe for HWS, Geneva, Ontario County and the region as a whole.

“The goal was clear — create a scenario in which we could open for in-person classes in the fall,” explains Flowers. “The detailed planning we conducted throughout the summer was to ensure we could do just that.”

That planning resulted in a wholesale reimagining of teaching, learning and living spaces. A thorough environmental review of every classroom, residence hall room and office resulted in floor plans for each that allow for safe social distancing.

Enhanced cleaning and sterilization protocols were rolled out. To promote good hygiene practices, more than 300 hand-sanitizing stations were installed across campus and personal protective

equipment was distributed.

Dining services were redesigned to accommodate pre-wrapped options, noncontact transfers and Plexiglas dividers in seating areas.

The Colleges changed the academic calendar for the fall, shortening the schedule by canceling fall break, requiring students to remain in the immediate vicinity of Geneva during the semester and returning most students home at Thanksgiving for the rest of the semester. Plans were set in motion for a phased return to campus in August, including quarantining and testing. And an addendum was added to the Community Standards, signed by each returning student, that spoke to each student’s responsibility to wear PPE, adhere to social

distancing protocols and maintain enhanced cleaning protocols.

Each faculty member determined their preferred teaching mode for the fall — fully in person, remote or a hybrid of the two. Enrollment limits were determined and learning spaces reconfigured to allow for de-densification and social distancing requirements. When the fall semester opened, about threequarters of courses were fully or partially in person with the remainder delivered remotely.

“Faculty made decisions that were in the best interest of their own health and personal situations and the Colleges responded, offering support and technology resources as possible,” says Coffey.

President Jacobsen monitored the impact of the virus and the shutdown through the lens of her deep experience in and understanding of economics, from the macro — following financial and labor market trends, to the micro — asking the Financial Aid office to work with students and families on a case-by-case basis to see that their financial needs were understood and met. In between taking courses on contact tracing and learning about microbial transfer, Jacobsen and members of the staff connected with colleagues across the nation, in the New York Six consortium and in the Rochester area. “We have helped one another to determine best practices and

“ Coming back to campus to teach my hybrid courses was unexpectedly joyous. Being with students in person again filled me with a sense of happiness I had not anticipated.

And actually seeing our familiar students, albeit behind their masks, was a blessed reunion. Our mutual losses have generated these wondrous moments.”

PROFESSOR OF DANCE DONNA DAVENPORT

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to work together with local and state agencies for further consideration of higher education,” Jacobsen explains.

“Especially in Upstate New York, the success of higher education relates directly to the success of our local communities.”

In order to allow for 14-day quarantines required by New York State, between August 1 and August 24 when classes began, the Colleges successfully returned students to their residence halls through a staggered and orderly process that allowed everyone to maintain safe protocols at all times. The Colleges administered more than 2,000 COVID-19 tests and received test results from a number of other persons upon arrival to campus. Every day, staff members drove test swabs to the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass., to expedite results. When the Colleges opened for classes, only one person had tested positive, believed to be a result of the presence of antigens.

That person, asymptomatic, was moved to an isolation facility, along with the one other person with whom they had any close contact. The Colleges were in immediate dialogue with Ontario County Public Health staff to ensure the safety of everyone.

While initial testing results and campus-wide adherence to the new community standards hint at a successful fall, Flowers says that the Colleges are not

taking a victory lap. “We just cannot,” he says. “Although we are working with urgency and doing everything we can to stop any spread of the virus, we are also prepared for positive cases with detailed quarantine and isolation protocols. Should we need to move to a remote model, temporarily or for the remainder of the semester, we are ready to do so. We are balancing the health and wellbeing of our community with the need to provide the kind of instruction model that gives our students an exceptional education. We will continue to monitor our progress.” During the first week of classes, the Colleges began surveillance testing of 200 – 300 individuals each week.

“Coming back to campus to teach my hybrid courses was unexpectedly joyous,” says Professor of Dance Donna Davenport. “Being with students in person again filled me with a sense of happiness I had not anticipated. And actually seeing our familiar students, albeit behind their masks, was a blessed reunion. Our mutual losses have generated these wondrous moments.”

Professor of Religious Studies Michael Dobkowski agrees. “Although teaching remotely in the spring went well, there is nothing like the personal contact that in-person teaching affords, even behind masks and observing social distancing,”

he says. “It confirms why HWS is such a special place.

There are challenges, of course, and teaching with a mask while monitoring Zoom for those who are connecting remotely can be taxing, but it has also been exhilarating. I am heartened by the spirit of cooperation and flexibility displayed by the students. We all are doing what we can to keep our campus safe and to maximize the educational experience.”

Most students have returned to campus, like Alex Dwyer ’23, who plans to double major in environmental studies and geoscience. “After months of quarantine and remote learning I’ve come to truly appreciate the experiential learning that I get while living at HWS,” she says. “I’ve been impressed by how willing and excited my professors are to make the best of the situation.

We’re making it work, we’re staying safe and we’re realizing that we can do a lot even in tough times.”

Around 120 students decided to learn remotely this semester, choosing to stay home and take classes via Zoom. Justus Bey ’23, at home in Texas for the fall semester, has found remote learning to be one of the bigger challenges of his college career — although there have been benefits. “Between learning from home and managing my work schedule, I’ve gained a much better grip on my time management,” he says. “We all have to adjust to

change in the world and be able to manage it.”

Adjusting to and managing change is on the minds of everyone in the Hobart and William Smith community.

While campus and day-to-day interactions look different, what hasn’t changed is the resolve of everyone to participate in the exchange of knowledge, even and especially in a moment of unprecedented historical significance.

In the words of President Jacobsen, the HWS community remains “steadfast and resilient, with an enhanced sense of purpose.”

A COVID-19 Dashboard of current cases as well as detailed documentation and all opening plans are available on the HWS website at www2.hws.edu/ opening.

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The Man Who (Almost) Missed the Pandemic B Y

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Imagine closing your eyes one day in mid-March and not waking up until the end of May. Now imagine you took that long and refreshing snooze this year, laying your head on your pillow just as the coronavirus pandemic was beginning to make headlines.

If you think that sounds like something out of a Washington Irving story, you wouldn’t be the first. In fact, when The New York Times heard about Daniel Thorson ’09’s 75-day retreat during the start of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States, they dubbed him “a latter-day Rip Van Winkle.”

Thorson is in residence at the Monastic Academy, a nonprofit contemplative training center located in Northern Vermont where he’s participated in numerous retreats, most of which lasted for a week or two. And while he didn’t sleep through most of the spring like Van Winkle, he did spend those 75 days in solitude and silence. “I had no access to any news or

information and didn’t speak to anyone about anything related to current events,” he explains.

While Thorson knew about COVID-19 before he started the retreat, which began just two days after the World Health Organization declared the virus a global pandemic, he tried to put it out of his mind. “To dwell on it without any hope of taking action or finding out more information was just going to cause anxiety and worry that wouldn’t help anybody,” he says. Rather than “doom scrolling” through social media as many of us were doing, Thorson spent the spring reading 1,000-yearold texts.

A philosophy major who served on the Debate Team and was a member of Kappa Alpha, Thorson both lives and learns at the Monastic Academy, where he works on curriculum design and development.

Thorson wasn’t completely out of touch during his retreat. On his daily visits

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TIPS

Thorson offers two practices that can be of service during times of isolation and uncertainty.

Learn to feel your feelings.

“Spend 15-30 minutes a day focusing on what you’re feeling in your body. In particular, focus on your belly, solar plexus, heart and throat — this is where emotions tend to express. Open, allow whatever is there and let it be. To cope with difficult emotions, you need to actually feel and accept them.”

Engage in difficult conversations.

“When you feel anxious or hopeless, it changes everything to speak those feelings aloud and have them heard and honored by someone you trust. One rule of thumb: If it feels like a hard conversation to have, or a hard feeling to share, that’s usually exactly the direction to go.”

to the main building of the center to use the restroom and get food, he took note of new social distancing and masking precautions.

“I knew supply lines were still running because we were still getting food, energy was still running, mail was coming,” he says.

Those regular peeks into civilization allowed Thorson to calibrate his expectations of what the broader world would be like upon his return.

Still, he was unprepared for

“the new etiquette around social spaces” he observed on his first trip to a grocery store, and confesses he still hasn’t “completely installed it.”

While Thorson acknowledges that while it was isolating to miss out on the collective experience of the coronavirus shutdown, especially for a self-described news junkie, he’s grateful that he was able to avoid what he perceives as “an intensification of anxiety at that time.”

Thorson is the host of a podcast with a title that befits his early coronavirus experience: Emerge: Making Sense of What’s Next. Much of the discussion on the podcast centers on possibilities such as pandemics, climate crises and transformational learning. “The topics I’ve been covering on my podcast for years that once felt fringy are now more mainstream,” he says. One of the reasons he came to the Monastic Academy is because he suspected something like COVID-19 would happen.

Thorson clarifies that he didn’t undertake the retreat to avoid or ignore catastrophe, but “to become the kind of person who can respond to this kind of situation in a way that doesn’t add to the insanity, and instead is more calm and even-keeled and responsible. I came to the Monastic Academy to live with a kind of resilience in the face of global and national calamity.”

He got the timing just right.

P H OTO BY JACOB H A NNAH

Daniel Thorson â&#x20AC;&#x2122;09 at the Monastic Academy in Vermont.

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LIFE INTERRUPTED |

Career Call to Action from Bozzuto and Stine

BY N ATA L I A ST. L A WRE N C E ‘ 1 6

When students began to report that their summer internships and research opportunities were being canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic, past Chair of the HWS Board of Trustees Thomas S. Bozzuto ’68, L.H.D. ’18 and current Chair Craig R. Stine ’81, P’17 enjoined the HWS Alum Network to identify and share career and experiential learning opportunities with HWS students and recent alums.

More than 75 alums responded to the call to action, sharing a breadth of available internships and job openings across the business and nonprofit sectors.

With support from the Salisbury Center for Career, Professional and Experiential Learning, 13 students landed internships in hotel management at Robert Philips ’88’s company Paine Lake. Sean McCarthy ’20 secured a fulltime position with Roar Digital after connecting with Nick Lioudis ’18.

“Both of us have hired dozens of HWS students in the past and we will continue to do so. They are smart, resourceful, dedicated and above all have the integrity we all want in our employees,” Bozzuto and Stine said in a joint letter to alums and parents.

As a result of the outreach, a new partnership was also formed between HWS and Syracuse University’s iSchool. Molly Naef ’16, a recruitment specialist and master’s student at SU, helped to establish a 50% tuition award for students who enroll in fall 2020 or spring 2021 to pursue their graduate and certificate programs.

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Demonstrating Geneva’s Heart B Y

B E T H A N Y

S N Y D E R

Campus was quiet this summer, but the kitchen at Scandling Campus Center was alive with activity. The Colleges hosted food preparation for the Boys & Girls Club of Geneva, providing more than 70,000 hot meals to local families during the COVID-19 crisis.

The partnership between the Boys & Girls Club, the Colleges and Sodexo was established several years ago, with Sodexo making the food and the club staff taking it to their location to package and deliver. When demand from local families soared due to the pandemic, Executive Director Christopher N. Lavin ’81 knew there had to be a more efficient way to manage the increased production.

“One of our great worries was the kids counting on us for food,” Lavin says. The club has always been a source of food for the community — serving about 60 lunches a day for children in grades 1–3 and an additional 120 dinners a night for those Boys & Girls Club of Geneva in grades 4–12. With schools and the club Assistant Executive Director closed, that resource was gone.

Allauna Overstreet-Gibson ’14 “We asked if we could bring our part of loads food onto a truck for delivery outside Scandling the operation to campus,” Lavin says. “And Campus Center. >> the Colleges said, ‘the door’s open, come on in.’ If food is an act of love, this town, gown and regional effort has been a real demonstration of Geneva’s heart.”

Lavin’s staff — led by Assistant Executive Director Allauna Overstreet-Gibson ’14 — arrived at Scandling Campus Center at 3 p.m. each day and by 6 p.m. had delivered hundreds of hot and healthy meals all over Geneva.

With support from donors and local organizations such as Freihofer’s Baking Co., the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, the Wyckoff Family Foundation, Inc., Bella’s NY Kitchen and Cornell University’s Dairy Plant, the group produced, plated and delivered meals to Geneva families between March and August.

“Adding good food into a home was a very effective economic boost to the family,” Lavin explains. “Not only did it take away the cost of food, but it allowed us to put a high-quality meal on the table.” Each Sodexoprepared meal included a protein, grain, vegetable and milk. He estimates that the meals saved a family of four close to $600 a month on food costs.

Lavin is grateful to the professionals at Sodexo and to his alma mater for expanding the operation, but not surprised. “HWS opens its doors to the community in every way,” he says. “It’s in the Colleges’ DNA.”

P H OTO BY C H R ISTOP H E R N. L AV I N â&#x20AC;&#x2122;8 1

“

LIFE INTERRUPTED |

Overheard

Having clearly written protocols, competent and well-trained personnel and reliable laboratory information systems enable laboratories to function 24/7 under these very demanding and stressful conditions. I am very confident that we will get through this and come out smarter on the other side.

The process has many steps, including cutting nose pieces from scrap metal that my dad has brought home from work or has been donated to us. We then iron, sew and cut elastic to go around the ears, and cut the fabric. Sometimes we form an assembly line through the house.

DR . ROBE RTA B A RN E S CA RE Y ’71, retired director of the Laboratory Quality Management Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

M A D E LI N A DA M S ’20, talking about the hundreds of masks she and her family have sewn in their Cambria, N.Y., home for health care workers and those in need

There were so many happy accidents involved in bringing penicillin to market. … I just hope that all the good fortune and serendipity that happened around penicillin can happen again… We need every good thing, every bit of cooperation, every entity pulling together, every person seeing the importance of this. Our lives really depend on this.

It’s been amazing to see — just like during 9/11 — how New Yorkers come together when it matters.

ER I C L A X ’ 6 6 , L . H. D. ’ 93, author of The Mold in Dr. Florey’s Coat, speaking with The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists about the parallels and differences between the development of penicillin and the rush to find a vaccine for COVID-19

The more in control you can be of your behavior, the more likely you are to influence others in an effective way.

…there is also power in the symbol of the mask.

We live lives of such affinity.

In wearing a mask, you are projecting an image.

It communicates a broader sense of membership.

STE P HE N L . COHE N ’ 6 7, former HWS trustee and industrial psychology and business strategy expert, on how to manage stress and lead others in times of crisis and uncertainty

Associate Professor of Anthropology CHRI STO P HE R A NNEAR discussing some of the underlying motivations people have to wear face coverings in TIME magazine

M I CHA E L G A NTCHE R ’92, former HWS trustee, working with Brooklyn-based restaurant Hunger Pang and Operation Feed Brooklyn to provide food for local hospital staff

Focus like a laser and try to ignore the chaos around you. Be prepared to build strength after the storm passes.

JEF F S A N D S ’ 8 9 , author of Corporate Turnaround Artistry: Fix Any Business in 100 Days, on advice for organizations dealing with pandemic-related financial distress

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To love your neighbor means to wear a face mask. To love your neighbor means to stay six feet away from each other. To love your neighbor means to do what public health officials ask us to do — not for ourselves alone, but for everybody, for the common good.

T H E MOST R EV. BIS H OP MICH AEL B. CUR R Y ’75, Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church, in an interview on All Things Considered on NPR on May 24, 2020

Our healthy drivers are on the front lines delivering meals to people who need them.

ALOYS EE H ER EDIA JAR MOS ZUK ’98, former HWS trustee, who assumed the role of Chair and Commissioner of the Taxi and Limousine Commission of New York City just before the pandemic hit, on shifting licensed drivers to take passengers to and from grocery stores and transport food to elderly and homebound residents

Whether it’s a research hospital in Philadelphia or a private genomics company in Silicon Valley, they need data. If we can get that data to them more efficiently, we’ve done our part.

DANA MER K ’97, vice president of business development at Data Expedition, Inc., on his company’s participation in the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium, created by the White House to provide access to the world’s most powerful computing resources to support COVID-19 research

The world generally has been a place where extroverts are rewarded and introverts get a side-eye. All of the things that make the world harder for them as introverts, the world is better for them right now. They’re adapting much more quickly.

LIS A KAENZIG P’22, dean of William Smith College and an expert on topics in pedagogy and introversion, was interviewed in an article by the Associated Press about how extroverts and introverts are navigating the pandemic differently

In the early weeks of the pandemic, with fears of transmission and so little known and scant if any guidance from state or federal officials, we feared the worst: fire, EMS and law enforcement staffs decimated by illness; calls for service unable to be answered; emergency departments and hospitals overwhelmed; the sickest of the sick dying in front of us. Recommendations changed almost hourly, rumors and fear dominated and what we knew was dwarfed by what we didn’t know. We were lucky: our community was spared the brunt that my colleagues in New York City saw and others have seen in cities throughout the summer.

Although we continue to live the “new normal” of providing care in the COVID-19 era, it remains challenging to maintain vigilance and adherence to how we protect ourselves and our patients. We have certainly learned a lot, but no doubt there will be more to learn before this pandemic is over.

DR . JER EMY C U S HMAN ’ 9 6 , Chief of the Division of Prehospital Medicine at the University of Rochester and Regional EMS Medical Director

The deal is, you get some postcards of my paintings, and the Vermont Foodbank gets 100% of the purchase price.

JAME S S E COR ’ 1 0 , who is turning his art into food during the coronavirus pandemic

Emergency services are still business as usual; falls, strokes, motor vehicle accidents, brush fires and dumpster fires to name a few. We handle all of this, as we always have, but now with the added layer of COVID-19 related calls. Adjusting our routine protocols to match the safety requirements surrounding keeping ourselves safe while effectively treating those in need is of primary importance.

TH O MA S “ G I B ” S HE A ’ 22, volunteer at Fire and EMS Department in Weston, Conn.

Prior to working in the Emergency Department during this current pandemic, I was isolated in a bubble that included my immediate family and my close friends. But as soon as I stepped foot into the hospital, the reality of this situation hit me like a train. I no longer watched what was going on in the comfort of my own home on the TV; instead it was right in front of me, in an ED filled with sick patients fighting for their lives.

JU L I A A DA MS ’ 2 1 , patient care technician in the Emergency Department at Samaritan Hospital in Troy, N.Y.

I’ve had many interesting opportunities during my almost 20-year career at the CDC, but the COVID-19 response has been the most impactful, challenging and fulfilling work I’ve ever been involved in.

CA PTA I N A I M E E TUC KER TRE FFI LE TTI ’96 of the U.S. Public Health Service, who was asked to lead the newly formed Maritime Unit as part of the Global Migration Task Force in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Emergency Operations Center. The unit manages public health concerns around cruise ships in U.S. waters during the No Sail Order.

When our minds and our hearts (and our news sources and social media feeds) are full of issues so large and painful that they block out virtually everything else, it helps me to remember that each of us has the power to make change, even if that change doesn’t feel as big as we want it to. My tradition teaches that whoever saves one life, it is as if he or she has saved an entire world.

Each of us — in how we interact with each individual we meet, in how we make our voices heard, in how we stand up for what we believe — can shape our world.

JULI A NNE M I LLE R, Director of the Abbe Center for Jewish Life and Hillel Adviser at Hobart and William Smith

I imagine a lot of us have sewing machines and crafting supplies sitting around waiting for free time. Turns out what I really needed was not the time, but the purpose.

Professor of English A NNA C R E A D I CK, part of a grassroots effort in Geneva to sew face masks delivered to The Geneva Center of Concern

W HAT DO E S RE SI LI E N C E M E AN TO M E ?

I love a good come-back story — a story of resilience while facing a major challenge, fear or a great loss. The process of coming back from a traumatic experience is not simply a process of healing wounds but also a process of self-discovery. During this process we develop and master skills that will help us to become stronger when faced with adversity again.

Look at shared experiences of resilience such as the rebound of New York City after the September 11, 2001 attacks and the restoration of a healthy economy under the Obama administration, after the economic collapse of 2008. In these cases, Americans were confronted with loss of stability: loved ones, jobs, homes and income. In both situations government (federal and local) and American people came together in support of one another and slowly rebuilt communities.

Today we are confronted with numerous issues: the coronavirus pandemic, a failed economy, attacks on the free press, increased focus on structural racism, protests demanding police reform and the 2020 presidential election. Together, these issues are overwhelming and have people worried about the future. It is important to understand that we have an opportunity to rebound and rebuild this country with an economy that supports the environment. We can create industries and jobs that will build an economy that is stronger than before.

TAMAR A PAYNE graduated from William Smith College in 1988. The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X, by Les Payne and Tamara Payne, published by Liveright will be released October 20, 2020.

It is currently available for pre-order wherever books are sold.

We wanted to provide one consistent conversation with every student. We called with no specific questions, just introduced ourselves and asked ‘how are things going?’ Folks opened up almost immediately.

BR ANDON BAR ILE, Assistant Vice President and Dean of Student Engagement and Conduct at Hobart and William Smith, describing an initiative this spring in which staff and coaches made more than 4,000 calls to students between the end of Spring Break in March (when students were sent home for remote learning) and finals week in May

This is America and we will do whatever it takes to prevail. Stay safe, appreciate your time locked down with your family for now and don’t panic.

JEFFR EY GER S O N ’ 8 5 , P’16, financial advisor and managing director of GGM Wealth Management Group at Morgan Stanley, offering insights from his more than 30-year career in the financial industry

Pulteney Street Survey | Fall 2020 / 29

THE

BY ANDREW WICKENDEN ’09

WORK

Following the death of George Floyd, local Black Lives Matter marchers — including HWS students, faculty and staff — gather on the corner of Castle and Exchange Streets in Geneva, N.Y. P H OTO BY KAT H Y CO L L I N S ’09

AHEAD

FACULTY REFLECT ON

Race, Justice & Anti-Racist Education

THE WORK AHEAD |

F

rom Reconstruction through the Civil Rights movement up to the present, attempts to unravel the systems of anti-Black racism in the U.S. have themselves been unraveled time and again. Jim Crow laws effectively rolled back the Constitutional rights codified after the Civil War. Voter suppression tactics continue to undermine the Voting Rights Act, notably among minority voters.

Racial disparities persist in employment, income, health, housing, the justice system and education, underscoring the holographic nature of inequality in the U.S., where each facet of injustice reflects and reveals the bigger, intractable picture.

This spring and summer, the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and other Black Americans intensified demands for change — not only with respect to police brutality and vigilantism directed at people of color, but all the ways “that Black lives are cut short all across the board,” as Black Lives Matter cofounder Opal Tometi told The New Yorker this year.

For Hobart and William Smith faculty who have been studying racism and social injustice, grappling honestly with these interrelated manners of oppression requires the critical engagement practiced in the liberal arts. Connecting historical precedents with today’s world means looking analytically at patterns, data and cultural tropes. Reconciling the impact of structural forces on individuals means continually probing stereotypes, received ideas and incomplete narratives.

Here, professors from across academic departments share what their scholarship and syllabi reveal about what true justice might look like in the U.S., why past attempts have fallen short, how to combat structural racism and sustain long-term activism, and the role and responsibility of higher education in fostering an anti-racist society.

The following reflections from faculty are the products of interviews conducted by Andrew Wickenden ‘09 in the late spring and early summer of 2020, in some cases edited and condensed for clarity.

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Khuram Hussain Vice President for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Associate Professor of Education ON RACISM IN THE ACADEMY AND ANTI-RACIST REFORM Racism runs deep in the roots of institutions of higher education. Public and private colleges and universities live in the shadow of racial segregation and the racist hoarding of educational opportunity. This history hits close to our home with the story of Alger Adams ’32, D.D. ’83. Our first Black graduate was originally denied the right to live on campus. It is our shared responsibility to acknowledge this history and to take ownership of how inequity was mixed into our foundation. In addition, it’s critical to acknowledge that our academic disciplines were founded by proponents of racist ideas and pseudoscience that marginalized and dehumanized many nonEuropean subjects. We must acknowledge this history if we are to grow beyond it and towards academic inquiry that explores the web of human life and ideas beyond a Eurocentric worldview.

As a scholar of education, I center the stories and lives of historically underrepresented communities. I trace the

dynamic and adaptive efforts of Black communities to enact a more humanizing and emancipatory ideal of schooling. In doing so, I aim to show the intellectual and cultural contributions of communities who are often refused agency in traditional narratives of school reform.

Part of working against institutional racism involves creating new processes and systems. As an educator I try to create learning opportunities that are democratic, culturally responsive and communityoriented. This is an essential responsibility for all educators to undertake if they want to address institutional and structural racism. One of the defining features of institutional racism is how people of color are forced to assimilate into organizational culture. Educators can confront this exclusionary practice by working to fully include the participation of people of color, including their worldviews, cultures and lifestyles.

Institutions can address racism by first looking carefully at the everyday practices and beliefs that make racial and cultural differences seem like a deficit. We need to develop a

framework that sees diversity as an asset and actively works against systemic racism.

We can be an affirming institution that develops accountability to racially oppressed communities, explores the barriers that racism places in front of meaningful diversity and actively recruits members of groups that have been historically denied access and opportunity. We can change the way we see ourselves and identify as an anti-racist institution that can acknowledge white privilege and reimagine ourselves as an anti-racist institution that redefines and rebuilds all relationships and activities in our community, based on antiracist commitments.

Janette Gayle Assistant Professor of History ON OPPORTUNITY LOST AND OPPORTUNITY FOUND It’s been interesting to watch the unfolding of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the last months.

You look at what’s going on in the streets across America and the world — it’s interracial, interclass, intergenerational.

And it’s not like the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, where you could

point to individual leaders.

Now leadership is diffuse; we have to wait to see if that’s helpful in the long run or not, but as a movement, it’s bringing people together across all of those divisions created to control people.

I’m hopeful that this is a moment where people across all those boundaries come together to see the bigger problem, the bigger picture, the bigger promise. I think it’s the only way we’re going to move forward.

But I’m concerned about the staying power of the BLM movement because of the power of the idea of race — and it is an idea — that motivates people to vote against their class interests, as they have for the past 200 years. And with the 24-hour news cycle, does the movement filter into nothingness? When you’re a historian, you tend to look at events in the present through the lens of the past; I’ve seen interracial coalitions for civil rights and workers’ rights fall apart and I’m concerned.

Black people in America have been struggling for rights — essentially, the struggle for freedom — from the time they landed in Jamestown in 1619. However, the modern civil rights movement begins in the 1930s when you have a

coalition of people struggling for workers’ rights and people struggling for civil rights for African Americans.

That coalition lasts until the 1965 Voting Rights Act becomes law. However, by the end of the decade, the multi-racial coalition falls apart. It’s one thing to put laws in place, it’s another to change attitudes. Black folks rightfully believed that not only had the promises for equality, inherent in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, not come to fruition, but that the laws were being actively undermined by those who wanted to turn back the clock to pre-civil rights days when Black folks “knew their place.” That betrayal and the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. gave rise to a militant Black power movement determined to make real the promise of citizenship for African Americans by any means necessary. At that point, white support for the civil rights movement begins to fall off. As historians Robert Korstad and Nelson Lichtenstein said of the coalition, “it was an opportunity found and an opportunity lost.”

Though the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s to where we are now, it’s been a consistent undermining of

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THE WORK AHEAD | that opportunity. Now we have a moment, again, of an opportunity found, an opportunity we can hopefully take hold of and take it to the full measure, to make the kinds of changes that are necessary to improve the lives of all Americans. What we need to guard against is people who have a vested interest in seeing the BLM movement collapse by sowing division along lines of race, ethnicity, class and generation.

I’m a believer that the most potent form of political participation happens at the local level. I’m not minimizing the power of presidential politics, but where we, as ordinary citizens, can make the most difference is at the local level; we have to know who we’re electing to city council and at the state level.

And when I’m marching with Genevans of all colors, ages and from all classes, I am powerfully aware that they see things that are wrong and that they have the power to change it.

That’s why I teach. I have a responsibility to inform the young minds who come into class with the myth history of America. For example, all that’s taught of the “I Have a Dream” speech is that line

and the one that follows it about people being judged by the content of their character not the color of their skin, but there’s more to it. King says in the preceding sentences: “We have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check … a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the ‘unalienable Rights’ of ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’… a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’” That’s how Black folks feel — that the promises made with the 13th and 14th Amendments are largely unfulfilled. We need to know that part of King’s speech because if we don’t, we’ll continue to have lost opportunities.

The work of the Black Lives Matter movement — making visible the systemic racism and racial injustice that plague our country — makes these cancers eating away at society harder to ignore. Social media has been integral, and it’s where students get a lot of their information, so it’s interesting to find a way to have them think through what they’re reading, the information they’re getting. I believe that open discussion in the

“ Whatever work we do, it’s about being a conscious individual and putting that into practice. Knowledge is useless unless you pass it on.”

JAN E T T E GAYL E

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classroom is the best way. I give my students a historical narrative, which is often a counter narrative to what they’ve learned in high school.

For instance, in my seminar on Black women and the struggle for rights, we study women like Maria Stewart, an abolitionist and women’s rights activist who spoke out for Black freedom and rights in the 1830s; Jo Ann Robinson and the Women’s Political Council who organized the 1955–1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott; Ella Baker who founded SNCC (the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) in 1960; and Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrice Cullers, co-founders of Black Lives Matter. Students often ask why they haven’t heard of these women before.

They haven’t heard because the history textbooks haven’t included them until relatively recently. Black women have been the backbone of protest and radical movements in this country all the way back, but this has not been public knowledge. They have been largely excluded from the dominant historical narrative.

On an individual level in the classroom I can help students think through this received narrative and the premises it’s based on, and they can come to their own conclusions. For me, whatever work I do in the classroom and outside of it is about being a conscious individual and putting that consciousness into practice.

I strongly believe that knowledge is useless unless you pass it on. In this way, I hope to help create and make use of opportunity for change.

James Sutton Associate Professor of Sociology ON COMPLICATED DATA AND THE MICROCOSM OF INJUSTICE THAT IS THE JUSTICE SYSTEM It is crucial to underscore that the patterns that we see in the justice system are seen in all of our institutions. Hence, our institutions are mutually reinforcing (as we see with the school to prison pipeline) and ultimately reflect and maintain more deeply rooted social inequalities. Given that this is the case, changes to the system (e.g., police reforms) can help address certain challenges, but they may fall short when it comes to fixing the more deeply rooted inequalities that are intertwined within all of society’s structures.

I take steps to help students understand what the data show, reinforcing an approach that moves beyond sensationalism, conventional wisdoms and media depictions. For instance, the data are clear when it comes to racial disparities. I emphasize that when we see a clear pattern there is usually a reason. In practice, the reason may be difficult to fully decipher, and I ultimately use this to explain the goal of a lot of our work: the patterns are clear, but the reasons behind them are not and/or may be more complex than we often appreciate. So, we discover patterns, and we then do research to figure out why patterns persist and how they affect the lives of real people. This all underscores

“ Together, all of this is geared toward liberating students from their own experiences, which in my view is the goal of a liberal arts education.”

JA M E S S UT T O N

the importance of taking a critical and empirical approach. When we do this, things become more complicated, both for those who simply want to dismiss that inequalities exist and for those who are impassioned about addressing inequalities. For instance, common narratives about mass incarceration and racial inequalities in the system have focused on the war on drugs and privatization.

When we look at the data, however, these narratives, while important, ultimately fall short when it comes to accounting for the growth and patterns that we see. (John Pfaff’s book Locked In provides an empirically based account that challenges common conventional wisdoms, such as the war on drugs and the privatization of prisons being the primary drivers of mass incarceration.)

I often stress that we should be saying criminal justice systems because we have hundreds of separate systems of justice in this country rather than one uniform system, and there is often a lot of variation from one system

to the next (such as the system in one county versus another, one state versus another, etc.). Another theme that I emphasize is that discretion is inevitable at all layers of the justice system(s).

Policing is just one layer where this is seen (such as the NYPD’s Stop and Frisk program). Judicial discretion is another.

We know that some groups are systematically advantaged by discretion (e.g., whites, people with more affluence) and others are systematically disadvantaged (e.g., non whites and the poor). I try to humanize what this looks like in terms of lived experience. I also try to emphasize patterns using parallel examples.

For instance, we are talking a lot about policing and Black men at the moment. It is important to look at this within the context of Black men’s experiences with other layers of the system and their experiences with other social institutions. I also like to bring in data on the experiences of other groups as well (e.g., Latinx, Native Americans, whites) to provide a basis for asking additional questions about race and justice. I also

think it is important to look at how different statuses intersect to shape peoples’ experiences (e.g., race, class, gender, sexuality, age).

Together, all of this is geared toward liberating students from their own experiences, which in my view is the goal of a liberal arts education.

My hope is that rather than simply providing factual information, students will instead ultimately leave with a set of questions to ask (e.g., what patterns do the data show, why do the patterns exist, how are they experienced by real people, who benefits and who is disadvantaged by these patterns) and a desire to make positive change.

Donna Davenport Professor of Dance ON THE ROLE OF THE ARTS IN ACTIVISM The power of the arts as activism resides in both personal autonomy and the pleasure of community.

We are alone and together.

Any person who perceives art can partake in aesthetic experience however and whenever they want. Their individual capacity to re-think and re-do is invited within the arts context. No one is forced. Not like lectures and speeches, people wandering through an art exhibit, sitting in a concert hall, or watching choreography or theatre, can experience what they choose and ignore what eludes them.

They can see what they know they must see. The male gazer must face his own voyeurism.

The racist must face her own contempt. And timid eyes and ears must endure courageous images. Most artistic messages are delivered neither in academic rhetoric nor verbal vernacular. Even poetry is not precise; it is holistic. The language of the arts is color, line, relationship, sound, action, emotion, rhythm, kinetics, sensation and human inquiry. “I don’t get it” is a familiar response. But what is there to “get”? There is never just one thing.

Viewers have the opportunity to be titillated, rejoice, miss or dismiss, claim righteous superiority, cry or put their hands over their ears. Yet most people are in the audience to learn; they want to be moved or they would be somewhere else. In our seats, we want to feel something. The liminal space between art and the viewer allows an intangible dialogue that permits grace of the human spirit. This open space invites the viewer to take in whatever they can manage to absorb, and maybe later that night, they think about it; maybe they discuss it with someone who will listen. Maybe they’re changed.

Maybe they’re challenged. Maybe they’re inspired.

The possibilities are exciting to imagine.

I used to separate the work of social justice advocacy from my work to promote dance as art in education. That distinction — social justice

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THE WORK AHEAD | << Led by the grassroots student organization The Rising Panthers, more than 100 supporters join the Black Student Lives Matter march across campus in September.

PH OTO BY K E VI N CO LTO N

“versus” dance — melted away at least 10 years ago, and I realize that my whole academic identity changed as a result. Working with colleagues and students in social justice studies has led me to acknowledge institutional racism; invisible indigenous people; embedded hierarchies; liberal hypocrisy; my own naïve, complicit role; and critical actions of community.

I’ve learned that it is no longer enough to teach students to dance in anatomically safe and expressive ways, to integrate creativity and craft, to write articulately, to read closely and to be intellectually “deep.” None of that academic training has any meaning if students do not also value and seek difference, understand themselves as ethnic and racial beings, recognize their own fortune, realize the opportunities

they’ve had and overtly respect others who have had less or no access to safe education, kindness, nutritious food, health care, arts training, equity and all the amenities of privilege that are taken for granted.

As a multi-racial woman, I hope that my teaching acknowledges the very real chains of oppression and the traumas of discrimination for all marginalized people. As a professor, my goal is to teach students to question their assumptions and the social constructs that have taught them their values. In my role as an artist-educator and a community volunteer, I want to model ongoing care and the will to work, to communicate across difference, to utilize the power of my privilege and the opportunity of educated people to make the world kinder and safer. Over time, the Colleges have made me a warrior for change.

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Virgil Slade Assistant Professor of History ON “A PROBLEM OF THOUGHT” At its most basic, the craft of the historian is to construct a narrative that assigns meaning to time.

This seemingly simple process is often associated with objectivity, accuracy and is supposedly bereft of a political agenda. The French philosopher Voltaire complicated these assumptions when he defined history as “the lie that everyone agrees on.” What did he mean? When any group of people agree to a “lie,” the implication is that some consensus has been reached — whether tacitly or overtly — about a perceived benefit in such complicity.

Voltaire, therefore, dismisses

notions of “objectivity” and draws attention to the inherently political nature of “creating history.” Put differently, the manner in which dominant accounts of the past (those versions of history that enjoy the widest acceptance in a given society) have been constructed is always in service of particular political, social and economic agendas.

These dominant accounts draw on core assumptions that almost necessarily require forms of historical amnesia and strategic exclusions, and are of the utmost importance in articulating which communities properly belong within any given national space. It is precisely this process of conjuring notions of belonging that directly impacts how communities experience a society. And it is here that the stories of people like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and countless others give insight into the consequences of America’s dominant historical discourse for those identified as Black.

Most of the courses I teach at HWS, rather than attempting to insert more “accuracy” into accounts of the past, explore how

these narratives were constructed in the first place.

As a point of departure, my classes deconstruct the core assumptions of any given master narrative, as the most effective way to undermine any argument is to destroy its very foundation. My area of regional specialization is Africa, and I largely focus on representations of the continent and its peoples within the West, both historically and in our present, as a space of “lack” that disavows our shared humanity. By extension, those who live in, or are regarded as descendant from Africa, are similarly depicted as lacking humanity. This supposed lack justified the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism and, of course, apartheid. In America, this supposed lack has justified slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, mass incarceration and the manner in which African American communities continue to encounter law enforcement and the justice system. These representations already assume the supposed superiority of those regarded as “white.” What is important here is not ideas of racial difference but rather how this difference is analyzed.

Within this framework, any form of alterity to whiteness is equated with inferiority.

While I use mostly African case studies (depending on the course) to demonstrate to my students how this process functions, I actively encourage them to apply the same intellectual exercise to explore dominant discourses circulating in America. What then becomes apparent is that

while legislation has changed regarding the position of the formerly enslaved within the United States, notions of racial inferiority have persisted.

Therefore, when we analyze the murders of people like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, we encounter, first and foremost, a “problem of thought.” Before you treat someone inhumanely, you have to think them “inhuman.” The genealogy of this form of racialized “knowledge” owes its genesis to the transatlantic slave trade, and it has not been eradicated but rather it has evolved.

As a problem of thought, it is the responsibility of educators everywhere to actively destabilize any discourse that equates difference with inferiority.

To be remiss in this regard is to be complicit in the inequalities that plague our present…

Emily Fisher Associate Professor of Psychological Science ON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSONAL VALUES AND COMMUNICATING ACROSS POLITICAL DIVISIONS People tend to think they are being rational and empirical about a lot of their political attitudes when they’re actually starting from an emotional standpoint. When you ask, they’ll say they researched and thought about it and developed this idea, but we find that those ideas start with values. We tend to start with values and then we go seek

“ But if we isolate ourselves with people we agree with, we start to see our experience as the most common one. And if your most common experience with the police is neutral, or maybe at worst getting pulled over for speeding, it’s hard for you to imagine the experience of someone from a different background, harder for you to see the problem.”

EMI LY F I SH ER

out the news and research that confirms that reaction.

So one of the challenges for social psychology is to get people to realize that they are thinking emotionally to begin with, so they’re aware of where their attitudes come from and that they might not be as rational as they think they might be. We’re getting good at figuring out why these divisions are happening but changing it is really hard.

People aren’t always very good at recognizing their own hypocrisy because our biases tend to be unconscious and unless we’re really intent on thinking hard about our blind spots, we don’t see them.

I think that’s part of what’s happening with the issue of

policing and racial justice: some people see respect for authority as the moral thing to do and supporting the police is part of that perspective.

Moral foundations theory suggests that, just like we have different personality traits — “organized” or “introverted” — people differ in terms of what they see as moral issues. Some are pretty universal, like you should take care of the vulnerable, but then there’s something like respect for authority, or loyalty to your group; some people think it’s immoral to be disloyal, or to question the things authorities in law enforcement do. Finding a way to reframe the conversation around the role police play in

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THE WORK AHEAD | our communities in terms of helping America, or in terms of fairness, could be a way around that, to get people to see the issue from a different perspective that still aligns with their moral foundations.

Not everyone is going to respond to the same types of arguments, so you have to recognize that you’ll have to speak a different language to people who aren’t otherwise on your side. The arguments that would convince you aren’t necessarily the arguments that would convince someone else. If you’re trying to change someone else’s mind, you have to think hard about the other person’s perspective and speak to them where they are.

Since we’ve become so politically polarized, another problem is that people are a lot less likely even than a few decades ago to have friends who disagree with them politically. Polarization between urban, rural and zip codes has increased; people are moving to zip codes that are equal to, or more, liberal or conservative than where they currently live, in part because of what people want and what those places offer, like living close to neighbors versus having a big yard and open space. But if we isolate ourselves with people we agree with, we start to see our experience as the most common one. And if your most common experience with the police is neutral, or maybe at worst getting pulled over for speeding, it’s hard for you to imagine the experience of someone from a different background, harder for you to see the problem.

If you start to make friendships or meaningful personal interactions across those differences, you can see those differences. We tend to prefer hanging out with ingroups — the social psychology word for someone you have something in common with — so we need to push ourselves to be sure we’re not seeing non-ingroups as homogenous blobs. The benefit of having contact with outgroups is that it lets you see your experience isn’t as universal as you thought, and it becomes a bit easier to take the perspective of someone who has a different experience. Having those conversations is one of the most powerful ways to, if not change minds, at least change biases against particular groups.

Matthew Crow Associate Professor of History ON CORRECTIVE JUSTICE AND THE POWERS THAT SHAPE HISTORICAL NARRATIVES Legal history has a way of bringing the past directly and sharply into the present.

In both of my classes this fall, we are looking at the legal, political and intellectual history of British North America and the early United States, and so in both classes, the fundamental importance of slavery and resistance to the emergent modern world is front and center.

Certainly, there are some classic readings that lend

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“ There is a saying, fiat justitia ruat caelum, let justice be done though the heavens fall. That’s a thought we owe it to ourselves to spend time thinking with and about today. It’s a very radical, one might even say dangerous thought, but as Hannah Arendt argues, ‘There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.’”

MAT TH EW C R OW

themselves to those issues, like the poetry of Phyllis Wheatley, David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, which was a call for a revolution of enslaved people in the antebellum United States and across the African Diaspora, and of course Fredrick Douglass’ speech, “What to the Slave is Fourth of July?” I think the power of these writings is that they kind of recast our own perspectives of the intellectual terrain, reshaping how we usually think of history. You have to go out of your way to read Douglass and not think you are reading a political, historical, ethical thinker who should be canonical in the history of thought, both in the United States and more

globally. So, it’s not just oh we need to read Douglass too, just to check the box, it’s that you are reading one of the keenest political minds ever to put pen to paper and the heroism of his own life is part of the fire that forges him, to be sure. When you read Thomas Jefferson dismissing Wheatley’s work as “beneath of the dignity of criticism,” and you read Wheatley, you realize she’s not just writing poetry too and giving herself agency, she’s got this guy who is going to be President scared out of his mind by what she can do with words. Her very presence, both in her time and in a different sense in ours, recasts the traditional narrative of whose lives and whose words and thinking

count. That’s a kind of power that I think any student of history, myself included, needs to spend time with.

One of the things I think about in my research as well as in my teaching is the idea of discretionary or corrective justice, and the many philosophical issues it poses for constitutional cultures that purport to value democracy and the rule of law. So, one of the things I like to highlight for students are cases where judicial discretion and power can be a more secure route to justice than what seems like the nominally democratic or popular option. So, we might think of freedom suits in British and American courts on the eve of the American Revolution, and here, legally speaking, you have the property rights of settlers potentially being checked by what they view as judicial fiat.

A good deal of the American anti-government tradition and the idea of opposition to judicial activism comes from this history of so-called activist judges hearing claims from parties that had been historically disenfranchised.

One very recent example of this is the Supreme Court case of McGirt v. Oklahoma, 2020, where much to many conservatives’ dismay, Justice Gorsuch quite rightfully wrote for the majority that the federal government’s treaty obligations to Creek Indians dating back to 1832 still had the force of law and that no part of the intervening years of state and local officials ignoring or minimizing the

historical reality of those obligations changes that.

People talk about the corruption of the presidential pardon power, understandably, but in the hands of another president that power could be used for a whole lot of good, especially given what we know about racial disparities in our criminal justice system.

Again, the anxieties about this and other forms of lawmade power are baked into the foundations of the United States and now is as good a time as any to think through those ideas and dilemmas.

There is a saying, fiat justitia ruat caelum, let justice be done though the heavens fall. That’s a thought we owe it to ourselves to spend time thinking with and about today. It’s a very radical, one might even say dangerous thought, but as Hannah Arendt (another writer we will read this fall) argues, “There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.”

If there is a better argument for the liberal arts, for thinking about thinking, I am not sure I know what it is.

Karen Frost-Arnold Associate Professor of Philosophy ON IGNORANCE OF RACISM AND SOCIAL EPISTEMOLOGY White supremacy is maintained, in part, by denial of its existence, ignorance of how it operates and erasure of its harms. The U.S. is a white supremacist state. This

is a country of profound and ongoing racial injustice.

It is also a country with widespread ignorance of the extent of the injustice and lack of understanding of its causes. This ignorance is particularly prevalent in the white population.

In recent years, philosophers have studied this ignorance of racism, and we have learned a lot about what it is, what causes it, and what we can do about it.

Philosopher Charles Mills has shown that ignorance of racism manifests itself in gaps in knowledge (e.g., never having heard of the 1921 Tulsa Black Wall Street Massacre and other racist attacks) and false beliefs (e.g., the belief that racism is simply a problem of the past). Many white Americans do not know the extent of racism in this country.

This ignorance is actively produced by educational and media institutions, but it is also maintained by denial.

Philosopher José Medina has shown that people often resist knowing about the extent of racism. We avoid learning about it — we scroll past it or change the channel. We fall into apathy and fatalism about racism. We feel anxious and defensive when confronted with evidence of racism. All these mechanisms support what Medina calls racial insensitivity and racial numbness. Not only are people numb to particular injustices, but they are “numbed to their own numbness.”

The Black Lives Matter movement has been incredibly powerful at breaking through this numbness, and social media has been one useful tool in their work. It becomes much harder to avoid evidence of police brutality when our social media feed is full of images of it, expressions of anger and pain about it and videos of protestors bravely standing in front of violent police. In the past few months, Americans have peacefully taken to the streets to resist white supremacy and they have been violently attacked, beaten, gassed, shot with projectiles, thrown to the ground, dragged through the streets... We have all witnessed it, and social media played a large role in that. We feel the pain of this violence viscerally, and that can powerfully break through racial numbness.

So social media can help.

But it can also be used as a tool of backlash and disinformation. There are many who stand to profit politically and economically from maintaining white supremacy, and they are working hard to use social media (and traditional media) to spread lies about the protestors and to turn anger away from the murder of innocent Black Americans towards angry narratives of destruction of property and disorderly agitators. So where do we go in this moment?

We are in the midst of multiple crises. These crises break us open in

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THE WORK AHEAD | painful ways, but also create opportunities for change. It’s harder to be apathetic in the midst of a crisis. There is so much pain and also beauty to witness. The pain of the loss of so many lives to COVID-19, so many of those lives being people of color and lowincome workers. The pain of seeing people beaten in the streets. But there is also the beauty of people staying home to protect others from sickness, the beauty of healthcare workers caring for the sick and the beauty of people standing together for justice. We can use social media to share these stories to fuel our passion for change, but it is important to remember that there will be no videos of brave protestors to share if we don’t show up, if we don’t organize. Social media can bring us together in groups to imagine what change we want to see, to share resources for organizing and to declare moments in which we will join online and offline to create a more just world.

DeWayne Lucas Associate Professor of Political Science ON PROTEST AND LASTING CHANGE We know from political science that when citizens feel unheard by the government, they will take the levers of power available to them — either conventional or unconventional forms of participation. While

“ The extent and intensity of these protests express the demands to political leaders to act on behalf of the community. Just like voting is a message to candidates to continue or change, protests are messages from citizens to their representatives to change.”

DE WAY N E L U C A S

unconventional forms of participation like protests are often discouraged for more conventional forms like voting, each represent legitimate expressions of concern and demands on government. Recent protests of police brutality across the world are expressions of the outrage and frustration from the Black community and its allies at government actions that they have felt unheard about and find unacceptable.

The extent and intensity of these protests express the demands to political leaders to act on behalf of the community. Just like voting is a message to candidates to continue or change, protests are messages from citizens to their representatives to change.

The level of response from government about that message, however, is

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dependent on that continued intensity. Government leaders may simply take short-term measures to pacify the protest and to demonstrate their awareness of the concerns. Where recent protests seem to differ is that they are not simply accepting these conciliations but demanding more significant actions and changes such as complete police reform. A key question for the future of politics is how long and how intense will the protests remain.

Will protesters still be in the streets demanding change until legislation is actually passed? Will candidates adopt their campaign messages to include issues from the protests? Will the promise of law and order outweigh the calls for meaningful social reform? Will voters elect candidates that actually will push those changes?

Laura Free Associate Professor of History ON THE VESTIGES OF THE CIVIL WAR AND SHORTFALLS OF RECONSTRUCTION One of the greatest successes of Reconstruction-era politics was the 14th Amendment.

It came out of the need to redress and repair the damage done by the Dred Scott decision. The 14th Amendment recognizes all people born in the U.S. as U.S. citizens. And it declares that all people in the United States have the same civil rights. It’s the foundation of all civil rights legislation and policy in America today, and that’s a profound victory. But like many of the victories of Reconstruction, it’s mitigated.

It was undermined very quickly and it wasn’t until the 1950s and ’60s that decades of activism among Black Americans pushed national politicians to give it full power.

Another significant success was the 15th Amendment.

It says that the right to vote cannot be abridged on account of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” At the time, it helped enable southern governments to rebuild around a coalition of Black Americans and white Republicans — the first Black congressmen were elected at this time. Many historians also point to the many significant things these coalition governments accomplished.

For example, they rebuilt the southern infrastructure destroyed in the Civil War.

And they implemented the first system of public education in the South.

That said, the language of the 15th Amendment was ultimately a compromise.

And it had significant negative consequences in the longterm. The Amendment does not say that all adult Americans have the right to vote. Therefore, it implied that states could restrict the vote for other reasons. And so white Americans seeking to control politics after the Reconstruction period did just this. They used things like grandfather clauses, poll taxes, literacy tests — all permitted under this Amendment — to prevent Black Americans from voting. The same racist policies were also oppressive to poor white Southerners, many of whom couldn’t pass a literacy test or afford to pay a poll tax. This is just one moment in the American past that demonstrates how clearly harmful racist policies are. If you make equitable policies, it helps everyone; if you seek to make inequitable policies, they wind up hurting everyone.

Another one of the profound problems with Reconstruction was its failure to address the profound structural economic disparity created by enslavement. If you look at land — the capital of the day — you can see how this played out. Because after the war the land in the South, which had been cultivated by the labor of generations of enslaved people, ultimately remained in the hands of white elites who had been enslavers, they retained the

economic power. One system that emerged from this fact was sharecropping. In that system, people who did not own land rented it from those who did by paying with a share of their crop at the end of the growing season. This system started as a way for Black southerners to take control of their own time and labor, operating as independent farmers.

But it didn’t take long for white landowners to use the system for their own financial gain, twisting it into something profoundly exploitative and oppressive.

Landowners would require the people who rented land to buy their farming equipment and seeds from them, as well as basic supplies like groceries, charging such outrageous prices that often by the end of the season there was very little money left after the crop was “shared.” It ultimately financially benefitted the white landowners, redistributing wealth from the farmer to the landowner. And it is a really telling example of how structural racism is manifested in economic and policy decisions. With longterm consequences.

Another failure of Reconstruction happened in the way that its history was told. Very soon after Reconstruction’s end in the late 1870s, white southerners started to engage in a systematic campaign to ensure their version of that period’s history was accepted and taught to young people.

One organization, the United Daughters of the Confederacy,

printed textbooks that were distributed widely in southern schools and used to justify the campaign of racism and terror against people involved in Reconstruction governments. Academics, including those in the north, also adopted a negative view of the Reconstruction period, perpetuating that same problematic narrative.

Numerous Black scholars like W.E.B. DuBois called out this bad history for decades. Finally, by the early 1960s, white academic historians were starting to recognize how wrong the earlier history was. But it took a long time — and shows again how hard it is to undo and break down systemic racism and institutions created to benefit one group and keep down another. As a historian, it indicates to me the importance of the stories we tell ourselves about the past.

And the power that history can have.

My goal as a historian and educator is to provide students with tools to evaluate historical evidence to be able to think about history for themselves. One of the tools I’ve adopted over the last year has been a chapter from Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s book How to Be an Antiracist. In it, he emphasizes the role that policy choices play in creating racist ideas and institutions.

This gives us all a foundation and language for grappling with primary texts and for assessing past policies. It also emphasizes that racist policy is a choice that gets made, and

so one that can be undone through different choices.

In some ways that’s a really liberating idea — to know the history, recognize it and make more equitable choices moving forward.

Read more reflections from HWS faculty on racial justice by going online at www.hws. edu/alumni/pssFall20.

Associate Professor of American Studies Elizabeth Belanger on paradox, power and learning through discomfort.

Professor of English and Comparative Literature Anna Creadick on decolonizing the canon and the relationships between storytelling and social change.

Associate Professor of Sociology Kendralin Freeman on teaching, learning and practicing anti-racism.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Media & Society Jiangtao Harry Gu ’13 on black bodies and white spectatorship.

Assistant Professor of Africana Studies James McCorkle ’76, P’20 on self-interrogation and paying attention.

Professor of Political Science David Ost on the purpose of racism and ways to defeat it.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science J. Ricky Price on the hidden reach of racial disparities.

Chair and Associate Professor of Media & Society Leah Shafer on social media and activism.

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THE WORK AHEAD |

CHRONICLING PROTESTS IN GENEVA W ITH K ATHY C O L L I NS ’0 9

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As a social worker at Geneva Middle and High School who also operates a freelance photography business, Kathy Collins ’09 went to her first Black Lives Matter rally in Geneva because of her connection with so many of her students and families of color in the school district. She has since chronicled more than six rallies.

“I wanted to supports the kids. I'm very encouraged by their efforts to try to have a conversation between the police and the community, as difficult as it appears to be,” says Collins, who graduated cum laude in English and earned minors in lesbian, gay and bisexual studies and peer education and human relations. She also holds her MSW from the University at Buffalo, 2014.

Collins has been overwhelmed with community turnout. She recalled the evening march when she took photos from her car.

“It was such a large march and was really spectacular to be involved with. It was so cool to drive for five miles and see these little kids shouting out the windows of their cars: ‘I matter! Black lives matter!’”

She spoke at one rally about the need for community mental health support, working with police as a mental health professional and the trauma that comes with systemic and generational racism. “I think that beyond anything, the organizers have taught me how to keep going even when your own existence is threatened,” she says. “They have focused on educating the community as opposed to dividing it and have welcomed all viewpoints.

They have made it abundantly clear that they do not tolerate violence and have made sure that these events, all of them, have remained peaceful and free of hateful language.”

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1. Protesters gather in front of the Geneva Public Safety Building. 2. Phylicia Dove ’09 stands with former Buffalo Police Officer Cariol Horne after Horne’s talk “From Officer to Activist.” Dove serves on Horne’s communications team in an effort to create a mandatory statute on police bystander intervention.

3. Community members protest police brutality following the death of George Floyd. 4. Protesters march down Exchange Street. 5. Marchers make their way up White Springs Road.

A L L P H OTOS BY KATH Y COL L I N S ’ 09.

4

3

5

“ … these events, all of them, have remained peaceful and free of hateful language.”

K AT H Y C O L LI N S ’ 09

HWS Community FANFARE | HONORS | AWARDS | CELEBRATIONS

Anderegg ’67 to Receive Hobart Medal of Excellence

A Reunion Giving Challenge The Classes of 1970 and 1971 When James F. Anderton IV ’65 attended his 50th Reunion in 2015, he was proud of the fundraising efforts of his classmates — but he also saw opportunity: What if each 50th Reunion class was challenged to exceed their fundraising goals and those of previous classes? In the spirit of friendly competition, The Anderton 50th Reunion Cup was established.

The cup is awarded to 50th Reunion classes that meet or exceed three of the four fundraising results of the two previous 50th Reunion Classes: class giving percentage in the 50th Reunion year, total Annual Fund contributions in the 50th Reunion year, total contributions since the 45th Reunion and number of Wheeler Society members.

“The education I received at HWS was transformative,” says Anderton, who served on the Board of Trustees from 1994 to 2000.

“The breadth and depth of my HWS education has provided me incalculable benefits in my personal and professional life. This is a way to give back to the Colleges, to support them as they so richly supported me.”

The award isn’t merely an accolade — it’s a literal cup, a twohandled sterling silver trophy (shown above) on display in The Office of Advancement.

With the Classes of 1970 and the Classes of 1971 set to celebrate their 50th Reunions in 2021 due to COVID-19, a new twist on the competition will play out as June draws nearer.

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During Reunion Weekend in June 2021, Retired Air Force Colonel C. Richard “Dick” Anderegg ’67 will be presented with the Hobart Medal of Excellence, the Hobart College Alumni Association’s highest honor.

As a student, Anderegg embarked on his lifelong service to the United States, graduating with distinction from Hobart’s Air Force ROTC program.

After earning his bachelor’s degree in English, he spent 30 years as an active-duty Air Force officer, commanding an F-15 squadron and serving twice as a fighter group commander and twice as a fighter wing vice commander. As vice commander of the 3rd Tactical Fighter Wing, he was instrumental in planning for and carrying out the evacuation of Clark Air Base in the Philippines in April 1991 when the Mount Pinatubo volcano erupted.

A former F-4 Fighter Weapons School instructor pilot, Anderegg flew 170 combat missions during the Vietnam War. He is the recipient of the Legion of Merit with oak leaf cluster, Distinguished Flying Cross with two oak leaf clusters, Meritorious Service Medal with five oak leaf clusters and the Air Medal with 11 oak leaf clusters.

In his retirement, Anderegg has served as the civilian director of the Air Force History and Museums programs and historical adviser to the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force Chief of Staff. An expert on air and space power, he contributed to the planning and execution of operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. Today, he frequently appears on the Smithsonian Channel program Air Warriors.

PH OTO BY K E VI N CO LTO N

Cecere ’91 Launches Finger Lakes Goods

BY B ETH A N Y S N YDER

Jim Cecere ’91 has a simple way to explain his new business: He calls it “the Amazon of the Finger Lakes.”

Finger Lakes Goods — an online marketplace as well as a brick and mortar store on Linden Street in Geneva, N.Y. — takes the best of small-batch regional products and makes them available for one-stop shopping. Gift boxes and bundles feature items such as honey, pancake mix, sweets, salsas, ketchups and mustards, soaps and self-care items and artisan jewelry.

“There is a terrific amount of wonderful, quality products being made throughout the Finger Lakes,” says Cecere, a member of the President’s Leadership Council who held a successful finance career working for firms such as JP Morgan, BNY Mellon and Vanguard Group. “I’ve created a retail experience that makes them all available through one source.”

The business was a collaborative effort that involved alums, faculty, staff and students. Cecere was put in touch with Trustee Scott Mason ’81, P’13 and Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies and Chair of the Entrepreneurial Studies program Tom Drennen by Associate Vice President for Advancement, Leadership Giving Jared Weeden ’91. Mason helped to flesh out the concept, while students in Drennen’s senior capstone class helped to assess the viability of the idea and refine the business plan.

“Being able to leverage the resources of the Colleges, the students, the growth of the area, an alum like Jim who has an entrepreneurial flair and someone like Jared to connect us — it’s a Geneva story,” says Mason. “It’s a Hobart and William Smith story.”

Find Finger Lakes Goods online at flxgoods.com.

Jim Cecere ’91 on Linden Street in Geneva.

Raise a Glass to HWS

The Colleges have partnered with Ravines Wine Cellars in Geneva, N.Y. — owned by Lisa and Morten Hallgren P’19 — to produce two HWSthemed wines.

The HWS Pulteney Reserve Dry Riesling 2019 features a delicate bouquet with intricate aromas of white flowers mingled with pear, apple and citrus.

HWS Boathouse Red 2018 is a blend of Bordeaux varietals Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot that results in a balance of dark fruit, savory herbs and minerality.

The special cuvées are available in the Ravines tasting rooms on Seneca Lake and Hammondsport, N.Y., and online at hws.edu/wine.

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HWS COMMUNITY |

The Dreamer, the Builder and a Firehouse Sharon and Timothy Clark ’87 Create Aspire House

BY B ETH A N Y S N YD ER

The near northwest neighborhood in Indianapolis, Ind., can be rough.

A high-crime area, it’s not unusual to hear gunshots as you pass through.

But for Timothy Clark ’87 and his wife Sharon, it represents community, opportunity and aspiration.

Tim, a native of Syracuse, N.Y., who serves as a grant officer in charge of partner outreach at the nonprofit Simon Youth Foundation, and California native Sharon, head volleyball coach at Butler University, own several properties in Indianapolis, primarily used for rental income. Then an unusual lot on Udell Street came up for sale.

“Sharon came home one day and said, ‘Oh, by the way, honey, we have a firehouse,’” says Tim, a sociology major and education minor who was a member of four NCAA Division III lacrosse national championship teams during his time at Hobart.

“I’m the builder, the maker — she’s the dreamer.”

Sharon’s initial dream for the firehouse was to use it for studio space; she repurposes furniture and found objects into usable art. But as they began cleaning out the space — which served as a working firehouse from 1897 to 1961 and later as a church, a community center and as storage for the detritus of the owner of a shoe repair shop, a weightlifting gym and a car repair shop — conversations with community members changed the Clarks’ vision for what the building could be.

“Neighbors came by to thank us for restoring the place, to share its history with us. That gave us courage to keep going,” explains Tim, noting that the building was broken into several times during the early days. Sharon shares that the couple “began to recognize the need for the residents, from seniors to youth,” and soon a vision for a community space came into focus.

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“That’s where Aspire House was born,” she says.

Four loft rental units on the second floor will help pay for a flexible, multipurpose, creative community space below, which will be used for programming such as neighborhood association meetings, weekend coding classes for kids and poetry slams, as well as a space for seniors to sew and a wellness center for urban women.

What started as an idea for studio space has grown into a registered nonprofit, Aspire Higher Foundation, and an Aspire House brand with a focus on urban redevelopment, art and education. Through their foundation, the Clarks are transforming vacant buildings into viable residential and educational spaces and providing opportunities for community residents to improve their lives.

Aspire House is “about helping others, about encouraging others to do better,” says Tim. “At the youth level, it’s about how we can help them live a better life to achieve their dreams.” He credits his personal journey for putting him on this path. He lost his mother at age 7 and was raised by his sister, a single parent. Later, an introduction to lacrosse led him down a path of “unbelievable experiences and life-long friendships,” he says. “I know that I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for those who offered me opportunities and wouldn’t let me fail. My wife and I are here to help the next generation.”

While Sharon grows the dream of Aspire House, Tim continues to build.

“He’s on the floor laying hardwood at night and then getting up and putting on a tie to go to work the next day,” Sharon says. “He believes in the goodness of people, no matter where they come from, and their ability to aspire to something higher.

He learned that at Hobart. That’s the Statesman in him.”

To learn more about Aspire House, visit aspirehouseindy.com.

P H OTO BY A DAM FAR I D ’2 0

“ He believes in the goodness of people, no matter where they come from, and their ability to aspire to something higher. He learned that at Hobart.

That’s the Statesman in him.”

HWS COMMUNITY |

New on Shelf, Stage and Screen A new series from Warren Littlefield ’74 [1] has been picked up by Hulu. Dopesick, based on the bestselling book of the same name, is slated to premiere in 2021 starring Michael Keaton. The eight-episode limited series will offer a look at the opioid crisis in America. A former president at NBC Entertainment, Littlefield is the executive producer of The Handmaid’s Tale and Fargo.

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A new middle grade novel by Carrie Firestone ’92 [2] has earned positive reviews from The New York Times, Kirkus and Publisher’s Weekly. Dress Coded is available from Putnam. Learn more at carriefirestoneauthor.com.

A performance of “Let It Go” by D Smoke and SiR on the BET Awards featured Jedidiah Collins ’18 [3]. On campus, Collins was a member of Hip-Notiqs Step Team and participated in Koshare.

Hannah Barnaby ’96 [4] has published two new books for children and young readers, Monster & Boy and There’s Something About Sam. The author of several books for children and teens, she was the first writer to earn the Children’s Writer in Residency at the Boston Public Library.

Learn more at hannahbarnaby.com/.

Alan Snel ’83 [5] has released Bicycle Man, a collection of stories from his years of bicycle travels. He is the founder of LVSportsBiz.com, which covers the business and politics of sports, stadiums and teams in the Las Vegas market. For copies, contact Snel at asnel@LVSportsBiz.com.

The Webby Awards recognized “Going From Broke” — an online series hosted by Daniel L. Rosensweig ’83, [6] president and CEO of Chegg and former HWS Trustee — with a 2020 People’s Voice Webby for original online video reality series.

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Herold ’10 Makes Fashion Functional 5

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BY ALE XAN DE R KE R AI ’ 19

Alexandra Connell Herold ’10 launched the adaptive fashion marketplace Patti + Ricky with a simple idea: “What if I sell empowerment?”

The online shop showcases products created by medical professionals and more than 90 designers, most of whom have loved ones with disabilities or have disabilities themselves.

Products include braille jewelry, arm slings, rain capes and insulin pump belts, all designed to make the wearer feel fashionably cool.

A psychology major with minors in education, child advocacy and peer education in human relations, Herold notes that Patti + Ricky proves that medical equipment can be beautiful and that functional fashion is possible.

“I hope that people who have been doubted — whether they have a disability or not — can create and go into their passion and help people,” she says.

To learn more, visit pattiandricky.com.

Manual wheelchair bags

by PunkinFutz (above) and women’s adaptive shoes by Friendly Shoes (below) are some of the products available through Patti + Ricky.

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REMEMBERANCES

Ruth Bonesteel Shores ’60 Hobart and William Smith faculty and staff remember former Associate Registrar Ruth Bonesteel Shores ’60 on the occasion of her passing (see her obituary on p. 91). Shores retired in 2007 after having served the HWS community with professionalism and good humor for nearly three decades.

Registrar Peter Sarratori remembers Shores as “truly an extraordinary person.

There were many Commencement rehearsals on the Quad when the graduating classes would give Ruth Shores a standing ovation because our seniors knew her as ‘mom.’”

"One thing that always struck me was just how much information she was keeping track of at any one time; she was a marvel!” says Emeritus Professor of Economics Scott McKinney P’13, while Emeritus Associate Professor of Economics Judith McKinney P’13 remembers Ruth’s “huge heart” and “great (sometimes slightly wicked) sense of humor. Ruth cared deeply about the students and she cared equally deeply about the integrity of the academic program.”

Former Dean of Hobart College Clarence Butler L.H.D. ’06 shares: “I cannot imagine that my years at HWS would have been as fulfilling had Ruth Shores not stepped in often to correct the direction of my actions, gently, with humor, but with firmness.”

Retired Professor of French and Franocphone Studies George Joseph remembers Shores as “a great source of strength” during the time when his wife, retired Professor of Africana Studies Thelma Pinto, was in a coma from a cerebral hemorrhage. “What grace! What charm!

Her courage was an example to me.”

Professor Emerita of Art History Elena Ciletti describes Shores as “simultaneously sharpwitted and kind in all things” and notes that “despite the personal hardships life handled her, Ruth made the molecules dance all around us. Without fanfare. To say she will be achingly missed is no small understatement.”

Sarah Beale Gaffin ’78 The Hobart and William Smith community remembers Sarah Beale Gaffin ’78. Most of her professional life was spent at HWS, where she started in 1982, became director of planned giving and then assistant vice president for institutional advancement (see her obituary on p. 91). Although she retired in 2018, she remained deeply connected to HWS staff and alums.

Trustee Tom Melly ’52, L.H.D. ’02 was a champion of Gaffin’s planned giving efforts and knew her for many years. “Sarah had that vision for the Colleges and the optimism that others would want to pledge their support today, for the tomorrow of Hobart and William Smith,” he says.

“Sarah deeply cherished her relationships with our many alums,” says Vice President for Advancement Bob O’Connor P’22, P’23. “Through her efforts and their generosity, she left a powerful legacy here at the Colleges. Having Sarah as a coworker made all of us better. She was a legend.”

Kelly Young P’16, who serves as executive director of stewardship, remembers Gaffin for “her warmth, energy and steadfast dedication to the Colleges and her work with alums. We carry on that work, with Sarah’s memory sustaining and guiding us.”

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THE LAST WORD

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JO HN LE W I S (1940–2020), Congressman, Civil Rights leader and recipient of the HWS President’s Medal, during his Convocation Address in 2007

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PH OTO BY K EV I N COLTON

“ I have been all over this country to speak at colleges and universities, and let me tell you, there is a sense of community here that I have not seen elsewhere. Walk tall. Walk with the wind. Let the spirit of these Colleges be your guide. … Today’s experience has been like being at the top of the mountain — now tomorrow morning I have to return to the valley because there is still work to do.”

Creating a Legacy Founded 1989

The Wheeler Society recognizes alumni, alumnae, parents and friends who have thoughtfully supported the Colleges with a planned gift.

“HWS allowed me to pursue my interests and broaden my studies. I want students to be able to take advantage of that same interdisciplinary approach and explore their creativity.”

— lighting designer and owner of Light Positive Nancy Goldstein ’79 on why she named the Colleges in her estate plan Contact Angela Tallo ’05 at tallo@hws.edu or 315-781-3545 to discuss your planned giving.

START PLANNING NOW!

We look forward to seeing you.

Reunion could not happen without our dedicated volunteers.

To volunteer, complete the Planning to Return form at

www.hws.edu/reunion.

Non profit org.

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Pulteney Street Survey

300 Pulteney St., Geneva, NY 14456

Parallels 1. What’s your motto? Give first, then gratefully receive, then give again...

2. Who was your favorite professor and why? William Smith Dean and Professor of Psychology Debra DeMeis P’06, L.H.D. ’08. She helped me understand child development and the variability of learning paradigms.

Malcolm Anderson ’87 Licensed clinical psychologist Hobart Lacrosse All-Time Letterman Major: Psychology Hometown: Norcross, Ga.

3. What do you find most fascinating about human beings? Our simultaneous capacity for denial and learning.

4. What does it mean to be part of a team? To be part of something bigger than you, to be responsible for fulfilling your role.

5. What’s your greatest motivator?

New experiences 6. How do you contribute to your community? I coach, mentor and provide psychotherapy 7. What’s the number one quality that makes someone a good athlete? Hard work

1. What’s your motto? Fear is a choice.

2. Who was your favorite professor and why? Assistant Professor of History Janette Gayle. She was extremely tough on me because she wanted the best for me.

3. What do you find most fascinating about human beings? How everyone is different. You can put people in the same situation and have two completely different outcomes.

4. What does it mean to be part of a team? You need to know your role; everyone plays a part in making a team better.

5. What’s your greatest motivator?

My family 6. How do you contribute to your community? Food drives and cleaning beaches 7. What’s the number one quality that makes someone a good athlete? Hard work

8. What are you most proud of, and why? My family. They continue to inspire me to grow and find happiness.

8. What are you most proud of, and why? My family. Seeing what they’ve accomplished drives me to be the best I can.

9. Where is your happy place?

The beach

9. Where is your happy place?

The field/gym.

10. What do you do to unwind?

Play the guitar

10. What do you do to unwind?

Play video games

11. I n one word, describe the impact of athletics on your life.

Tremendous

11. I n one word, describe the impact of athletics on your life.

Opportunity

Jared Leake ’21 Plans to attend law school Hobart Football; All-Liberty League first team Major: Psychology Hometown: Huntington, N.Y.