ARTS P. 8 Spooky second season of ‘Stranger Things’
SPORTS P. 12 The Independent Student Newspaper at Williams College Since 1887 VOL. CXXXII, NO. 7
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2017
Women's cross country wins NESCACs
College remembers late bursar Mary Kate Shea ’81 By MADELINE McFARLAND EXECUTIVE EDITOR On Thursday night, Mary Kate Shea ’81, the College bursar, passed away unexpectedly. President of the College Adam Falk notified the community in an e-mail he sent out on Friday afternoon, in which he honored Shea’s tenure at the College and her renowned diligence and kindness in working with students. Shea served as the College bursar for five years, after working as the director of the College’s conferences office from 2009 to 2012. Shea came back to the College after a successful career in the events planning and sports industries, working for NBC in the 1996 Olympics, the NBA, the Massachusetts Sports & Entertainment Commission, the 2002 Winter Olympics, Dartmouth, Connecticut College and the Children’s Miracle Network. In her time as bursar, Shea emphasized the need for more interactions with students, and was instrumental in the implementation of various new systems of student check-ins, such as room draw or parking registration holds, that “drastically reduced the number of people in a difficult situation, because it addressed it sooner,” according to Controller Susan Hogan. “I would say she was responsible for getting families in touch with the College more often and more promptly, because we’ve been able to set some other times to interact,” Hogan said. “We were more involved than in previous years,” Jill Mendel, the controller’s office accounting assistant,
said. “The barriers to coming to see us were lower and it made coming to the bursar’s office more comfortable and welcoming for students, to not only come when you’re in trouble, but come before there is trouble.” “I think she humanized the process,” Matthew Sheehy, Shea’s colleague on the Village Ambulance board and the College’s associate vice president for finance, said. “She really took the process and said, ‘What makes sense for students?’ ‘What makes sense for families?’ ‘When are people thinking about this?’ ‘What does the College calendar look like?’ and ‘When are people going to be worried about things?’ What at times can be a very transactional process, I think she humanized it by talking to families on the phone, understanding people’s issues and really taking to light what that means to them.” “I think everyone will tell you her commitment was unparalleled,” Hogan said. “There was never an e-mail, a phone call that went unanswered, because she realized when students have holds or get a note saying, ‘you’re behind,’ it’s really stressful, and she wanted to eliminate that stress as soon as possible. She was a quintessential New England woman: She was no-nonsense, do what you’re supposed to do, do it when you’re supposed to do it, do it well … and she expected that out of herself and everyone else. She worked tirelessly to get students through some very difficult situations, and I have been blown away by how many people across campus - parents, students, co-workers
RB SMITH/FEATURES EDITOR
Members of the College community are mourning the loss of beloved bursar Mary Kate Shea '81 (right) after her recent unexpected passing. - have been sending emails reaching out to the controller’s office to say something special about Mary Kate.” An avid sports and Red Sox fan, Shea also supported
the Ephs at their sporting events, especially basketball games. Not only an alumna of the College herself, but a member of an Eph family including her father
John Shea ’50 and brother Tim Shea ’90, Shea was “an Eph through and through,” Sheehy said. “If you knew where to look for Mary Kate, it wasn’t unusual to see her
doing her stroll through Route 2 in Williamstown.” Shea served with Sheehy on the board of the Village
SEE SHEA, p. 5
Student group works to establish Preach It Forward campaign Hindu prayer room in basement seeks changes to chaplaincy of Thompson Chapel By SARA HETHERINGTON STAFF WRITER At the beginning of October, a room in Thompson Memorial Chapel was repurposed for use as a Hindu prayer room. The room was previously used by the Christian Fellowship. As a result, the Christian Fellowship now uses what was previously a room used by Muslim students. The change was the result of a push from Aanya Kapur ’20. “At the beginning of the year, I was thinking it would be nice to have a space for Hindus to pray – any sort of space we could find. I went to speak to Chaplain Rick [Spalding] in the chaplain’s office and explained. He said he’d never been approached about it before … but said of course that’s possible,” Kapur said. While Kapur prepared a budget, Spalding helped find a space in Thompson Chapel. “For some years I have hoped that a group of observantly Hindu students might coalesce on campus,” Spalding said. “The obvious place to look was the basement of Thompson Memorial Chapel, where there are a number of different spaces clustered around the Interfaith Common Room – so we began a series of consultations about the uses of those spaces – consultations that are still going on.” There is not an official group for Hindu students on campus, so with Spalding’s help, Kapur sent out an email to students who had identified as Hindu on PeopleSoft, and asked if anyone would be interested in setting up the prayer room. On that project, she said, “I’m working with one freshman in particular, Shreyma Mira [’21], from New Delhi. The room is very bare at the moment, but has the basics needed for prayer.” “If someone were to be setting up a temple, they would
By SKYLAR SMITH EXECUTIVE EDITOR
buy from India because it’s cheaper,” she said. But, because the shipping is expensive, Kapur is making do with basics found on Amazon. “My friends are going to India in the winter so [we’ll] buy the bulk of things by then.” Because of this, the prayer room should be completely finished by Winter Study, but before that, Kapur hopes to continue to hold bi-weekly services for any interested College community members. The space, though, does raise questions about how to accomodate the large number of student religious groups needing space in the chapel. “The resources of space are limited – at least until the College finally decides to start a long overdue renovation of the building! – but we were able to identify a room that would meet the Hindu students' needs,” Spalding said. Despite the space issues, Spalding characterizes the reaction of other communities that use the Thompson Chapel space as positive. “All of the other student groups that use spaces in the Chapel have been really glad to welcome a new student spiritual community into the wonderful mix of that space,” Spalding said. “And the need to cooperate and collaborate on the use of the limited spaces will provide an ideal set of questions for a fresh round of inter-religious, inter-group conversation around the essential question: How can we live together, practice our various faiths and support one another in our different traditions?” Besides setting up the prayer room, Kapur, with the help of the chaplain’s office, helped organize a trip to the Hindu temple in Albany, N.Y. “We organized a trip to the Hindu temple in Albany for Diwali because that’s
one of our main festivals throughout the year,” she said. “A group of us went in a van to the temple, had the service and dinner and then came back.” Kapur hopes to see the Hindu community on campus grow in other ways from these initial steps, and also hopes to begin offering platforms for informal discussion. “We are all connected from our faith, but I’m from England,” she said, “so the way I practice Hinduism would be different from the way someone from India practices.” Opening up discussion can help increase a sense of community and understanding between Hindu students on campus, but Kapur also stresses that events are open to all students. On their first trip, half of the students were non-Hindu. “We really want people to come and use this space,” she said of the prayer room. “It doesn’t have to be for religious purposes. If someone wants to come see it, [they can] learn more about a different religion which is not widely recognized on campus.” The group’s future trips to the Hindu temple in Albany are similarly open to all students. “We hope to continue going to the Hindu temple for Holi and Navaratri,” two upcoming festivals, she said. Though Kapur is unsure of whether the group will try to become an official club, she is grateful for the community that has been forged in such a short time. “Because there hasn’t been a group on campus, for me it’s been nice as a way to get to know people of the same faith and cultural background,” she said. The Record contacted the Muslim Students Union for comment, but the group was unable to comment before press time.
This summer, a group of students and recent alumni launched the Preach It Forward campaign by sending two letters to the chaplain’s office and administrators involved in chaplaincy hires. The first one, issued in July, was signed by 38 students and alumni; the second, released in August, was signed by five. The second letter outlined four concrete proposals: to require bias trainings for all members on chaplaincy search committees, to standardize how search committees garner community input, to reform the process of search committee membership selection and to require that “successful applicants have experience serving traditionally marginalized groups within their faith tradition, explicitly stating so in job postings and throughout hiring procedures.” The Preach It Forward campaign, according to its Facebook page, is a “call on the Chaplains’ Office to renew its commitment to marginalized students of faith.” Currently headed by around 20 students and recent alumni, the public campaign “call[s] on the College to implement reforms that would reduce bias in staff hiring procedures” and “to prioritize the hiring of candidates who would serve marginalized students of faith, especially female and LGBTQ+ people.” According to Christine Pash ’18, one of the students chairing Williams Interfaith this year and involved in the campaign, the letters and subsequent campaign target systemic biases and institutional systems, rather than recent individual hires. The chaplain’s office has not had a permanent chaplaincy position held by a woman since 2000-2004, although Rabbi Rachel Barenblat ’96 did serve as the interim Jewish Chaplain last spring.
“The letters were a result of issues surrounding genderbased marginalization,” Pash said. “People noticed that year after year, there are several new chaplains hired, and they all end up being male.” The calls are particularly relevant, according to Pash, because of the anticipated departure next month of the only current LGBTQ+ chaplain, Chaplain to the College Rick Spalding. According to Tiffani Castro ’19, a student who became involved with the campaign this fall, many people were disappointed when Barenblat was not hired for the full-time Jewish chaplain position. “People were very excited that there was a woman in the chaplain’s office,” Castro said. “There’s only so much you can speak about with someone if they don’t identify as [your gender]. There was huge disappointment when [Barenblat] was not hired – it felt like something that was being demanded was being listened to, and then it was taken away.” Spalding said he remains committed to listening to students’ needs at the College. “It matters to me a great deal that people know that the chaplain’s office is wholeheartedly in support of taking the opportunity that my departure creates to take another step in the direction of making the chaplain’s office even more useful to the Williams community,” Spalding said. “One vacancy out of four is huge. That’s a 25 percent infusion of brand-new energy, which is very exciting.” According to Vice President for Campus Life Steve Klass, the search process for Spalding’s replacement is already underway, and the calls made through the Preach It Forward campaign have already affected aspects of this search process. “The second part of [our first meeting] was dedicated to a presentation and discus-
sion on understanding implicit bias in search processes and the engagement of particular practices to ensure the most diverse pools of candidates possible,” Klass said. “This presentation was led by Ngoni Munemo, associate dean for institutional diversity and associate professor of political science. At this meeting, I also presented the aforementioned letter I had received from the campaign to the search committee so that they would read about their experiences firsthand.”
SEE PREACH, p. 5
WHAT’S INSIDE 3 OPINIONS Religious life at the College 5 NEWS Williams 101: The endowment 7 FEATURES A look at students designing contract majors this year 8 ARTS Active ingredients at WCMA 10 SPORTS Football secures first winning season since 2011
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