The Miscellany News | May 22, 2011

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The Miscellany News Since 1866 | miscellanynews.com

May 22, 2011

Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY

Volume CXLIV | Special Issue

All-School Gift raises record-high amount Angela Aiuto Senior Editor

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Carlos Hernandez/The Miscellany News

he 2011 All-School Gift Committee met its overall goal of 1,861 student donors last Monday, May 16, earning a matching gift of $223,000 from the President’s Advisory Council (PAC). Along with the $15,000 matching gift toward sustainability, which was donated by an anonymous alumna when the Class of 2011 met its own 80 percent participation goal last week, and the approximately $12,000 already raised by the student body, the 2011 All-School Gift currently totals approximately $250,000, the largest student-driven gift in Vassar’s history. The money will support Vassar’s Annual Fund, an unrestricted fund that serves every aspect of the College. Students first learned of PAC’s $223,000 matching gift on Tuesday morning, when PAC Co-Chairs Beth Burnam ’77 and James Kloppenburg ’77 delivered the news in an allcampus email. PAC had originally

promised a matching gift of $150,000 when the 2011 All-School Gift was first announced in February, but later exceeded their goal. “The larger gift was not a conscious decision to increase the goal,” wrote Associate Vice President for Principal Gifts and Associate Campaign Director Jennifer Sachs Dahnert in an emailed statement. “We simply decided to let their cumulative additions over the last year keep growing.” According to Burnam and Kloppenburg, members of PAC will continue to donate to the 2011 All-School Gift until the end of the fiscal year on June 30, whereupon PAC’s total contribution will be announced. PAC’s matching gift is intended to celebrate the achievements of the Classes of 2011-2014, whose AllSchool Gift—the first of its kind—was designed to turn the tides of student giving. In a speech at the President’s Reception on Tuesday evening, Kloppenburg noted that Vassar lagged far behind peer institutions in giving by See GIFT on page 4

Spring Convocation, pictured above, took place on Wednesday, April 27 in the Vassar Chapel during which Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Music Jonathan Chenette delivered his Convocation Address entitled “Becoming Prairie.”

Four years of progress at Vassar Molly Turpin

Editor in Chief Juliana Halpert/The Miscellany News

Ethan Fisher ’11 created the above model for his thesis in the Urban Studies Department. Other topics this year included war, education and immigration.

Theses cover a wide range Dave Rosenkranz

Joey Rearick

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Assistant News Editor

n each of Vassar’s graduating classes, a few exceptional students win national fellowships that provide financial supptort for study or service of some kind. Next year, approximately 23 talented seniors will embark on journeys far from Vassar’s gates, funded by highlycompetitive grants. Three Vassar seniors received Fulbright grants from the U.S. State Department in order to teach English abroad. The Fulbright program offers competitive scholarships to students who wish to study or perform some service in any foreign country. The financial support afforded by the Fulbright program will allow See AWARDS on page 6

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s Finals Week marches on, some students are starting their celebrations early. Over the last few weeks, seniors have been turning in their theses. These academic capstones range from historical analyses to urban case studies, and provided members of the Class of 2011 with an opportunity to learn more about their favorite subjects. History Department Chair and Professor of History Leslie Offutt and Professor of Political Science Sidney Plotkin explained how their departments structure the thesis process. Typically, seniors meet their professors in the spring of their junior year and begin to refine a topic. See THESES on page 5

Inside this issue

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Assistant News Editor

Daises, Violets a Commencement tradition

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rom construction projects to financial challenges to the Vassar community, any class is bound to witness highs and lows during its time at the College. In four years punctuated by the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, seniors witnessed a singular period

living in the house both before and after the reconstruction. Vassar Athletics saw a major improvement in its facilities with the establishment of Prentiss Fields across Raymond Ave, which opened in the fall of 2008. The fields have become the new home of baseball, track and field, field hockey, lacrosse and soccer home games and See FOUR YEARS on page 5

Exhibit highlights Vassar fashion Charlacia Dent

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Assistant Arts Editor

n honor of all things sesquicentennial this semester, Vassar has dug deep into what 150 years of education looks like with the opening of “Fashioning an Education,” an exhibit that displays student clothing from the 1860s through the 1950s. The exhibit will be on view in the James W. Palmer III gallery from Monday, May 16 to Sunday, June 12. 30 years ago, Senior Lecturer and Costume Designer Holly Hummel rescued many of the old garments from the Drama Department’s basement which are now a part of the Vassar College Costume Collection (VCCC). The collection consists of 500 examples of original historic clothing, dating from the mid-19th century to the present, that have been donated by alumnae/i and other friends of the College. Many of the pieces, including the clothing on display in the exhibit, underwent extensive museum cataloging procedures for conservation, and were researched by faculty and students alike. Their findings provide insight into the College’s history, and provide a deeper understanding of student life at Vassar.

A history of the iconic Main Building

Christie Chea/The Miscellany News

Seniors receive awards

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of evolution in Vassar’s history, culminating in the celebration of College’s sesquicentennial. There were changes to the College’s physical plant, especially prior to the financial meltdown. The renovation of Davison House caused the dorm to be taken offline in 2008-2009, meaning that some members of the class of 2011 had the unusual experience of

The Vassar College Costume Collection is currently hosting “Fashioning an Education,” which chronicles Vassar fashion from the 1860s to the 1950s. “We just wanted to let the objects tell us their own stories. Each piece let on a different thread of that,” explained co-Curator of the VCCC Arden Kirkland. Several students involved in the project have worked on independent research, comparing and contrasting different pieces of clothing in order to relate them

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to the College’s history as a whole. Faren Tang ’13 worked with turn-ofthe-century women’s fashion at Vassar, investigating the implications of masculinity. Many examples of clothes from the era indeed take on “masculine” qualities; dark colors were common, specifically dark See VCCC on page 4

Seniors reminisce in retrospectives


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