The Miscellany News October 8, 2009
Since 1866 | miscellanynews.com
Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY
Volume CXLIII | Issue 5
Vassar, Höhn assemble top Civil Rights scholars Kelly Stout
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Kathleen Mehocic/The Miscellany News
President Catharine Bond Hill, Dean of the Faculty Jon Chenette, Dean of Planning and Academic Affairs Rachel Kitzinger and Dean of the College Chris Roellke answer student questions at an open forum on Oct. 6.
Community members react to staff reductions, Officers hold open forum Matthew Brock and Jillian Scharr News Editors
“W
e won’t be happy ’till everyone can come back and is told ‘it will be a good Christmas, not a bad Christmas,’” shouted Science Support Technician Otto Bertsche outside of the College Center at the CWA’s weekly gathering on Oct. 1. Bertsche is the business agent with the Communication Workers of America (CWA), a national union which has a large body of members on Vassar’s campus. Though CWA members meet each Thursday—always wearing red—the conversation this week took a more serious tone, given that the previous day, Sept. 30, President Catharine Bond Hill had announced the elimination of 13 staff positions in an allcampus e-mail. In reference to the economic crisis affecting Vassar and
its peers, Hill wrote, “important to this effort will be our willingness as a community to adjust some of our expectations about the way services are provided and to understand that some officers will be working with reduced staffs.” Following the announcement, some students expressed concern at the reduction. A group of students attended the CWA meeting last week, and several students posted signs outside Ferry House that read, “Support Campus Workers” and “Va$$ar Cla$$i$sm in action.” “I acknowledge that the administration has come a long way in reducing the amount of staff that they have, especially by consolidating positions and taking on more work,” wrote Alison Denn ’12 in an e-mailed statement to The Miscellany News. Denn was one of the students behind the signs.
“However, I’d like to see an open and voluntary pay cut taken by every person in the upper administration.” Hill and several senior officers addressed such student concerns and questions on Tuesday, Oct. 6, at an open forum in Rockefeller Hall. In attendance on the administrative side were Dean of Planning and Academic Affairs Rachel Kitzinger, Dean of the College Chris Roellke, Dean of the Faculty Jon Chenette and Vice President for Finance and Administration Betsey Eisemeir. At the forum, Hill emphasized the necessity of “looking to the future” when making cuts, comparing shortand long-term losses and gains. “The mission of our College is to educate students,” she said, “in perpetuity, not just for students who are here today.” Professor of English Donald Fos See FORUM on page 3
Features Editor
ast Thursday, Vassar Associate Professor of History Maria Höhn and Heidelberg University Professor of American Studies Martin Klimke were focused on hanging paintings in the Palmer Gallery when an unexpected package arrived. It was a 1972 painting by East German artist Susanne Kandt-Horn arriving at Vassar on loan from a children’s hospital in Berlin named, surprisingly, after Martin Luther King, Jr. To those in the know, the hospital’s namesake is not actually a surprising choice at all. In 1964, King gave a sermon at Saint Mary’s Church in East Berlin, and he has been a highly revered figure in Germany ever since, as Saint Mary’s representative Roland Stolte explained. Stolte took a moment to admire the painting with Klimke before Höhn called everyone to the center of the gallery to look at another treasure. She unveiled the guest book from Saint Sophia, another Berlin church where King spoke in the 1960s. She pointed out his signature halfway down the page. “We didn’t think we would get this,” Klimke said. “It’s really wonderful.” King’s visit to East Berlin was the focus of last Thursday’s panel discussion entitled “Tracing an Untold History: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Visit to Cold War Berlin in 1964,” which was chaired by Höhn and Klimke and featured American and German scholars. Thursday was the first day of a five-day international conference, “African American Civil Rights and Germany in the 20th Century,” organized by Vassar and the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. The conference also featured a lecture by renowned civil rights activist Angela Davis—currently Professor Emerita of History of Consiousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz—on her experiences with the civil rights movement in Germany
entitled “Between Critical Theory and Civil Rights: A Sixties’ Journey from Boston to Frankfurt to San Diego.” Davis studied in Frankfurt between receiving her undergraduate degree and Brandeis University and her master’s at the University of California, San Diego, and in Frankfurt she was involved in radical student actions. Upon returning to the United States, Davis became heavily involved in the Civil Rights movement. The conference accompanied a month-long exhibit in Main Building’s Palmer Gallery featuring photographs of American GIs in Germany. (Check out www.miscellanynews.com for additional coverage.) According to Stolte, a discussion of King’s sermon was a perfect way to begin the conference because the sermon left a lasting impact on East Berliners and set the stage for the decades of change that would follow in Cold War Germany. “The sermon gave [East Berliners] confidence and hope” at a time that was very difficult for East Berlin, said Stolte. “It was very impressive,” he added. “[East Berliners] never forgot it in their lives.” The conference’s key organizers, Höhn and Klimke, echoed this sentiment. Höhn remarked that during and after World War II, the United States and Germany’s histories became “intricately intertwined” in a way that is often overlooked in U.S. scholarship. “Why don’t we know anything about this?” she asked. “Why don’t we know about the history of our soldiers there?” Questions like these led Höhn to begin research on the relationship between American GIs and Germans during World War II as part of her 2002 dissertation. In many ways, she said, her research “opened up a new field of inquiry” into this particular chapter on race relations. While attending a conference in Heidelberg, Germany, she met Klimke and “immediately realized we had so much See GERMANY on page 6
Folk music legend Pete Seeger to give historic performance Erik Lorenzsonn Arts Editor
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Inside this issue
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NEWS
PETA lecturer questions campus
animal testing
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ner Hall of Music by local a cappella and vocal ensembles. But Pete Seeger provides a more immediate connection with the Hudson Valley region, and even Poughkeepsie. In 1966 Seeger founded Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Inc. with his wife Toshi. The Poughkeepsie-based environmental advocacy group was named after Seeger’s sloop (now on the National Register for Historic Places) and fought for the Hudson River’s well-being. The group gained national attention during the 1970s when it protested General Electric’s contamination of the water with polychlorinated biphenyl. Seeger and the group’s efforts led to a governmentenforced cleanup of the pollutants. The organization still actively pursues the ecological betterment of the Hudson Valley. It also hosts the annual Clearwater Music Festival, which has attracted the likes of Dizzie Gillespie, See SEEGER on page 15`
FEATURES
New teachers, TFA members reflect on transition
Image courtsey of Pete Seeger
assar students will have the good fortune to hear a folk legend perform this Saturday. One Vassar student will have the particular good fortune of performing with him. “Over the summer I saw that Pete Seeger had been added to the events calendar,” said Max Kutner ’11, an avid guitarist and former director of Vassar College Entertainment (ViCE) After Hours. “I saw they mentioned a student opener. I contacted the [Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center (FLLAC)], and asked to play. I know the people there, and they talked to College Relations, and it was okayed.” FLLAC is hosting the event. Opening for legendary folk artist Pete Seeger is no small task. The musician and activist has become an American icon after 60 years of performing. He has played with the likes of Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez, Bob
Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. He protested Vietnam on national television, popularized the song “We Shall Overcome” with the black Civil Rights Movement and was nearly arrested for fighting McCarthy’s red scare tactics. Today, he is not so much viewed as a celebrity as he is seen as a living part of American history. Despite the intimidating prospect of playing for such a legend, Kutner is nevertheless excited. “I love folk, especially Bob Dylan,” said Kutner. “And Pete Seeger is the grandfather of folk music. I am so thrilled to play with him.” Seeger will be performing at Vassar on the Chapel Lawn this Saturday as part of the Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Quadricentennial celebrating the anniversary of Hudson River’s exploration. Other related events have included an exhibit of watercolors from the New-York Historical Society at FLLAC and a choral concert at Skin-
Iconic musician and activist Pete Seeger will perform on the Chapel Lawn on Saturday for the Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Quadricentennial.
14 ARTS
Grizzly Bear to give Chapel performance