Sox Diary: 9-15-04
Wednesday, September 15, 2004: While I am sure the phrase was around a lot longer than my recollections, the first time I ever heard the term “winning ugly” used was to describe the 1983-1984 Chicago White Sox. That was the team that changed uniforms again, that time into something remotely resembling the beautifully hideous rainbow unis of the Houston Astros. It featured a hirsute pitcher, La Marr Hoyt, who was their ace. Carlton Fisk was their stalwart at catcher (a thought that still makes red Sox fans wretch nearly a quarter century after Haywood Sullivan let him escape to Chicago because we tendered him a contract offer too late). Harold Baines, Greg Luzinski, and Ron Kittle were their offensive backbone. It was a team that won, taking the west in 1983 but losing to the Baltimore Orioles who went on to win the World Series against the Phillies, but they won ugly - lots of error-riddled 9-7 games and the like.
History of Faculty Censure
In our counter logs, it is sometimes interesting to see what web searches bring people to EphBlog. One search that did so this evening was for:
“Williams College” AND faculty AND censure
conducted on Yahoo. Hmmm. Who would be interested in finding out about this topic right now? Likely suspects would include the perp, the perp’s attorney and enterprising reporters. But who searches for things on Yahoo anymore? And uses all cap logical terms?
I continue to suspect that the perp is either tenured or was born/educated outside the US. I have a new guess, but want to do a bit more digging first. As best I can tell, there is only one female professor (in a department with an African American colleague) who was not educated in the US.
Alas, whoever was searching did not find anything useful on the topic at EphBlog or, as best I can tell, anywhere else. In fact, I can’t think of a single example of a professor who was formally (publically) censured by the College in the last 25 years. Perhaps the Rosemarie Tong controversy — whose details escape me but had something to do with a lack of scholarly attribution on Tong’s part, IIRC — resulted in a censure? I know, second and third hand, of professors who were forced to leave for some unsavory reasons, but can’t recall an official act of “sanction” by the College.
Anyone with a better memory than I should give us the history . . .
Disruption
Joseph Shoer ‘06 notes that “If I was in charge of this school, and I really wanted to disrupt student life and ruin the campus, I would have started a Baxter building project.”
Give any bureaucracy enough money, and it will decide to build something.
We’re Not the Only Ones
The Bronfman family money initially came from bootlegging and Seagram’s still constitutes a large portion of their wealth. Some Puritanical types (it is Massachusetts after all) might object to Williams being beholden to alcohol money (filthy liquor?).
Williams is not unique in this regard. Brown just received a $100 million donation earmarked for financial aid. The source of the money?
The donation came from Sidney E. Frank of New Rochelle, N.Y., who imports liquors like Jägermeister Liqueur, and created Grey Goose Vodka. Mr. Frank briefly attended Brown and described the donation as “something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”
“I was too poor to complete my education there,” said Mr. Frank, initially a member of the class of 1942. “I only had enough money to complete a year.”
Ah, Jägermeister. There is some type of cosmic justice in funding scholarships for college from the profits of a product that has ruined many a college career. However, another donation by Frank is even more ironic:
A $20 million donation from a man who spent one year at Brown and made Jägermeister a household name has set in motion the first phase of the University’s decade-long physical expansion plan.
The gift allows planning to begin on a $30 million academic building that will house the Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, the Brain Science Program’s administrative offices, a 350-seat auditorium and classrooms.
A product that impairs judgement and slurs speech is funding a building devoted to Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences. Beautiful.
Now, I just need the esteemed Mr. Frank to create an endowed chair of voter mobilization research.
Eph Endowment …
stands at 1.2 billion, tops among liberal arts colleges. Considering that Williams is also just a year into a $400 million fund-raising drive, over half of which is earmarked for the endowment, that is encouraging news about Williams’ financial condition. Since our chief rivals (Amherst, Swarthmore, Middlebury) either just finished or are just finishing major campaigns, Williams should, if the money managers do their jobs properly, be in a dominant financial position in the liberal arts world four years from now.
Personally, I’d love to see about ten or fifteen percent of that endowment aimed specifically at keeping tuition increases at or below cost of living increases and for increasing the percentage of the student body on financial aid (and thereby solving Williams true diversity problem, which is not one of skin color) to over 50 percent by recruiting more first generation college, rural and urban applicants. Or at the very least, gold-plated urinals in the new student center.
Rizzo ‘87 in Iraq
Just when I thought that I knew about most of the Ephs, especially most of the Marines, serving in Iraq, I come across an article like this one about Jerry Rizzo ‘87.
Current Navy sprint coach. He was not Annapolis. Instead, he was out of Williams College. Four years later, after a series of coaching jobs, he applied for Marine Officers Candidate School. In July of 2001 he was formally introduced as Navy’s sprint football coach. Between the 2002 season and 2003, Jerry Rizzo went to war in Operation Iraqi Freedom. He served in Iraq for four months as a forward air controller, coordinating from the ground with a small aircraft above to call in air strikes on Iraqi positions.
“In three nights we covered 50 miles,” he recalls. “We weren’t at the front. We were the front. We were miles ahead of the 1st Marines to the east and the Army to the west.”
It is 3 a.m. and they are rolling toward a brigade of Iraqis preparing an ambush. The Marines saw them first as an Iraqi team was setting up a machine gun. They saw the Iraqi pickup trucks. They ambushed the ambushers.
The firefight lasted half an hour. Then Rizzo took the rest of his element north. In four months of fighting, Rizzo’s unit was back and forth across the face of Iraq.
My daughters sleep safe in their beds at night because Ephs like Jerry Rizzo serve on the frontlines of freedom. My thanks to all of them.
Sox Diary: 9-14-04
Tuesday, September 14, 2004: Before tonight the Red Sox were a shocking, indeed, almost unfathomable, 0-6 against rookie pitchers. After tonight’s ugly performance, the likes of which we have not seen in well more than a month, make that 0-7, with the Sox making tonight’s Rays’ starter Scott Kazmir, who came into the game with a record of 1-1 and an ERA of 4.50, looking like Sid Finch. It is the 8th right now, and of course you never want to rule anything out, but if the form holds, we are on the way to our 3rd loss in 5 games, which pretty well erases much of the previous couple of series. These games all count the same whether they are against the Angels or Devil rays. Too bad the guys started off this series looking like they do not know this.
Not an Author Yet . . .
In her always off-beat anti-blog, Diana Davis ‘07 claims that she is “now a full-fledged author for EphBlog, instead of just getting mentioned every few months upon their pages.”
Alas, until you post on EphBlog itself, you aren’t really a full-fledged author, you’re a Finley.
;-)
Welcome aboard!
Colonial Theatre
It is always fun to see work done by Williams students affecting the real world. The Eagle reports that the decision to provide funding for the Colonial Theatre redevelopment in Pittsfield may come down to one vote, that of Councilor at large Patricia Farley-Bouvier.
During a recent committee meeting on the issue, Farley-Bouvier requested specific information about the types of jobs that would be created by the Colonial’s renovation.
Replying to her question, Williams College economics professor Stephen Sheppard said that a study undertaken by some of his students estimated the number of jobs that would be generated by the Colonial’s renovation at about 100, but did not identify the specific types of jobs. It did conclude, though, that they would “not be all fast-food jobs” but would run the gamut from banking to real estate and construction.
Does anyone know of a on-line copy of this study and/or who the students who worked on it were?
Of course, any money spent on such a project is bound to create some jobs. The important point is to consider both what is seen (the new jobs) and what is unseen (the jobs that would have been created had this money been used elsewhere). A smart guy like Steve Sheppard understands this, but I’d like to see how he addressed it in the study. I also hope that someone in the Williams Economics department assigns Bastiat, but I doubt it.
Nazario ‘82 Speech
Sonia Nazario’s ‘82 Convocation speech is now available. Kudos to the College for setting this up. Although I am a huge fan of Nazario’s writing, I found her speech less impressive.
Although I appreciated and enjoyed life at Williams, I was always struck by how many aspects of life were absent here. There was little opportunity to understand how most Americans — much less most people in the world — live.
It seemed a strange dichotomy: people came to this place to open their minds, for a liberal arts education. Yet their time here, and lives afterwards, were spent in a comfortable bubble, often so apart and unaware of the rest. In that way, Williams fueled my desire to write about social issues and take myself — and other people — to places they might not otherwise go.
The invisible worlds.
The worlds far beyond Williams.
Nothing wrong with this, and her opening and closing are tied nicely together. I’d also wager that this speech was very specific and special to the occasion of a Williams Convocation, unlike some recent hack repeats that come to mind.
She has some heart-wrenching stories, but they seem disjointed to me. The speech also seems too long and I would have liked more Williams material.
So, busy readers of EphBlog would be better off reading her Pulitzer-winning articles than this speech.
Then again, if memory serves, I blew off my own Convocation, so perhaps I am not the best judge. Did the seniors who were there like the speech?
Sox Diary: 9-13-04
Monday, September 13, 2004: I am back from England, and wouldn’t you know it, the Sox have an off day. Which in all honesty, is probably good - I am exhausted, had to teach three classes today, including this last one that ends at 10:00 at night, and I am as drained emotionally as I am physically. It is almost nice not to have to worry about how they are doing on top of readjusting to life back here. I got back yesterday, was awake for more than 24 hours straight with the whole range of the long travel experience, and was able to watch some football.
For future reference
I would have thought this was obvious to many, especially in the Williams crowd. But yet again, my naive optimism in the student body has failed me.
1) When we post links to other web pages that are discussing public events that actually happened, there is a term for that… most call that “news”.
2) It is not illegal to post “news” - regardless of whether said “news” makes you look like a jackass if a potential employer happens to Google the web and find the link on our site. I suppose that falls under one of those “perhaps you should have thought about that at the time” concepts.
3) This one is the most important… If you decide to ignore points 1 and 2, feeling that your own interests are better served if the link isn’t there - then we at EphBlog (especially Dave, less so on my part) will remove the offending item.
But when you write that e-mail - it is generally considered more polite to not contradict yourself within the first two sentences of the e-mail, as well as not resort to (empty) legal threats within that first e-mail. Perhaps save those thinly veiled threats, which you can’t legally back up, for e-mails to follow our response if you find it unsuitable to your needs.
For example, were you (not a minor) to have to go to court for possession of drugs and someone here refers to the newspaper article that discusses your court date - that is not breaking any laws on our part. And then when you write to us and let us know that you are all for freedom of speech and that we should be able to say anything we want… but that you must draw the line at us referring to your court date - well, that would be a contradiction that would probably be best left out of said e-mail.
Additionally, say you fear we won’t remove it - give us a shot first. Be nice, make jokes, and hey the post goes down. But when you tell us with a literary hand wave that we are “doing several illegal things” when we clearly aren’t, and then giving us an ultimatum of “take it down or else” and refer us to a theoretical lawyer that must have a great sense of humor if he deals with this sort of thing…well… then you are just a douchebag.
On a more technically inclined note - Google keeps things cached, regardless of whether we remove it from our site.
Best wishes in your job search and I hope that plausible deniability serves you well in this case.
Cheers to all - next week I will discuss how to do laundry.
Palestine/Isreal
Oren Cass ‘05, back after a long summer of no blogging, reports:
GEOGRAPHY 101: It’s always nice to be at the first meeting of a class on Political Islam and hear the professor say that we will be looking at violent movements in places like “Palestine-slash-Israel”.
Is that near Gaul-slash-France, or over by Quebekistan-slash-Canada?
Long time readers of EphBlog will guess whose name popped into my head after reading this.
And, sure enough, Political Islam is being taught by Professor Marc Lynch this fall.
Natural Flora
Luis Taboada ‘02 reports from medical school that
For some reason, it felt like every other sentence was in reference to some bacteria that was part of the “natural flora” of the female genital tract. I did some tabulating after lecture and it added up to like 10 different bacteria that normal reside “down there”. That’s like 9 more bacteria than I would like to think about. Lesson learned: girls are gross…really, really gross.
This certainly seems to be the consensus opinion among the boys in my daughter’s 3rd grade class.
Next Time
Jon Stahl ‘95 worries about a “next time” in terms of political smears. This reminds me that I owe Lee Altman ‘93 an answer in this long ago thread about Derek Catsam’s 93 take on the Swiftvets. Now, if I can just figure out how this kerning stuff works . . .
Only in the Boston Globe
This is a hoot…
STUDENTS HAVE returned to campus, and conservatives claim these impressionable learners are entering a great leftist stronghold where doctrinaire liberalism and overweening political correctness go uncontested.
But are students really under siege from liberalism? Or is “liberal bias” on campus the same as “liberal bias” in the media — a weapon of self-promotion that falsely portrays conservatives as victims of leftist orthodoxy?
Obviously it goes without saying that the “liberal bias” in the media is a myth that falsely portrays conservatives as victims of leftist orthodoxy. Forget the statement by Evan Thomas of Newsweek:
There’s one other base here, the media. Let’s talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win and I think they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards I’m talking about the establishment media, not Fox. They’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and there’s going to be this glow about them, collective glow, the two of them, that’s going to be worth maybe 15 points.
Also forget the Kerry campaign source who told The American Spectator:
The campaign source said that the book [Unfit for Command] was not considered a “serious” problem for the campaign, because, “the media wouldn’t have the nerve to come at us with this kind of stuff,” says the source. “The senior staff believes the media is committed to seeing us win this thing, and that the convention inoculated us from these kinds of stories. The senior guys really think we don’t have a problem here.”
Anywho… forget all of that. It’s the stuff of myths. What’s next? The Earth is round?
Anyway, here’s my favorite part:
But the reality is otherwise. Look at other examples of conservative upstarts taking on the supposedly liberal establishment: Fox News as rival to CNN; the Heritage Foundation and Brookings; Rush Limbaugh and NPR, etc. In fact, while the new right-wing institutions are steadfastly extreme, older establishment institutions, far from liberal beacons, often strive for balance or are themselves increasingly conservative.
Right, NPR is centirst and Heritage is extreme. Give me a break.
Over 30 years, the right has built a powerful campus machine. A dozen right-wing institutions now spend $38 million annually pushing their agenda to students.
Ok, now I need to stop being sarcastic, because that does sound scary. That is, if you just look at how big the number is and not think critically about it for .0004 seconds. Back in 2003 a friend of mine and I brought Jonah Goldberg to Williams. Jonah’s big in conservative circles: Syndicated columnist, popular with the college crowd, etc. It cost $3,000 to bring him. My friend also brought Bill Emmott, of the Economist, and is bringing Victor Davis Hanson, all for the same amount.
So $38 million would pay for 12,667 lectures at the 4,197 colleges and universities nationwide. To be clear: That means 3.018 lectures at each school. With all that money, I can almost here the triumphing of all these conservative students’ will.
Or, let’s look at it another way. Just considering the 13,155,393 undergrads in America, these scary conservative organizations are spending $2.89 per American undergrad student. When will these conservatives stop secretly running academia?
Anyway, this all makes sense if you consider the source of the Op-Ed:
Ben Hubbard is campus programs director and David Halperin is special adviser at the Center for American Progress.
Hmmm… if we consider John Podesta’s place to be centrist than maybe Heritage is pretty far out on the right. In case you’re wondering what the Center for American Progress is about, you can read about it here:
Every day we challenge conservative thinking that undermines the bedrock American values of liberty, community and shared responsibility.
Shit Podesta’s on to us. The homepage is also very mainstream.
Unreal.
Oh, and going back to how far $38 million gets you in academia: Last year’s study by Stanford, UC-Berkeley, and U. of Maryland professors that found “political conservatism is significantly associated with (1) mental rigidity and closed-mindedness… (2) lowered self-esteem; (3) fear, anger, and aggression; (4) pessimism, disgust, and contempt; (5) loss prevention; (6) fear of death; (7) threat arising from social and economic deprivation; and (8) threat to the stability of the social system” was funded with at least $1.2 million.
I guess the question is why all these conservative groups are wasting their money funding lectures when they could be funding a grand total of 32 crackpot studies.
Used as a . . .
One of our Williams sources forwarded e-mails (from Morty Schapiro and Dean of the Faculty Bill Lenhart) and suggested “discussion” at EphBlog.
Well, I don’t know if discussion is really what we do best here, but if you’re looking for uninformed speculation and disjointed mutterings, then you have come to the right place!
See below for the complete e-mails. Here is the key section, from Lenhart:
At the end of the spring semester, a meeting took place in which a group of faculty members, one of whom is African-American, was conducting department business. One of those present raised a concern about the status of her own field of professional work relative to the fields of the others. At one point, she made a heated statement to the effect that she did not want her field to be “used as a nigger.”
The matter was promptly brought to my attention by several of those present at the meeting and a formal complaint was made against the faculty member who made the remark. Upon investigating, I concluded that the faculty member’s behavior warranted the serious step of imposing sanctions on her, which I have done. I believe that the statement made at the meeting was a use of racist language that was meant to provoke or hurt the African-American colleague who was present.
No Bias Whatsoever!
As Oren Cass ‘05 so diligently points out on his blog, Williams is having two vocal hard-left anti-Bush speakers on campus in a single 8-day period: — Howard “I have a scream” Dean on 9/28, and Paul Krugman, ecommunist [sic.] at Princeton and columnist for the New York Times, on 10/5 .
While Krugman is surely a favorite of the econ department, his work as published in the times is SERIOUSLY FLAWED, as Donald Luskin points out on numerous occasions. (see here under the “New York Times” heading)
Now, the question is, when can we see THE COLLEGE, as opposed to the GRC, Williams Liberty, or any of the campus religious groups, bring a non-leftie political speaker who’s not part of a “debate package” with a leftist? (and note that I’m not using liberal, as they’re about as far from the Liberal tradition as one can get). I’m not holding my breath for ideological balance, but I suspect that right-wing or libertarian speakers (on anything besides drug control) will be seen on campus shortly after hell freezes over.
RIP, Dox
Dox — without a doubt, the creepiest, weirdest, most random commercial establishment in Williamstown — is no more.
9/11
As long as there is an EphBlog, we will try to remember the Eph victims of 9/11. They were: Howard Lee Kestenbaum ‘67, Lindsay Morehouse ‘00 and Brian Murphy ‘80.
The heart-breaking article in the New York Times Portraits of Grief series begins:
The first thing Brian Murphy would say when he got home from work was, “Where are my girls?”
There were three of them: his wife, Judith, and their two daughters, Leila, 4, and Jessica, 5.
That is the same thing that I say when I come home from work each day. It could have easily been me, or thousands of other middle-aged Eph business folks, in the Towers that day. Why Brian Murphy and not us?
I don’t know why the deaths of these three Ephs affect me so much. Three thousand other people were murdered that day, each as innocent and good as Brian Murphy. Hundreds of other Ephs died that year. But affect me it does.
Leila and Jessica are now 7 and 8. As I head out to coach my own 8 year old daughter’s soccer team this afternoon, I pray that whoever is coaching the Murphy girls keeps a special eye on them. They are all our daughters now.
Sox Diary: 9-11-2004
Saturday, September 11, 2004: Like most Americans, even (maybe especially) those of us who are abroad, it is hard not to be thinking about the horrific events of three years ago. It hit particularly close for me since at the time I was living in Washington and, not to be melodramatic, but the flight path of the Pentagon-bound plane flew directly over my apartment complex. One of my first thoughts on a day riddled with disjointed pondering was of Williams, my alma mater, and how very many of my classmates and other fellow alums work in the world of finance in New York, and how many work in government in Washington, and one of the little reliefs of that day was knowing that for all of those numbers, we lost relatively few.
Bi Medals
The College is giving Bicentenial Medals to a simply outstanding set of alumni tomorrow.
Williams College President Morton Owen Schapiro will present five of the college’s Bicentennial Medals during the college’s annual Convocation ceremony Saturday, Sept. 11, at 11 a.m. in Chapin Hall. Established in 1993 on the occasion of the college’s 200th anniversary, Bicentennial Medals honor members of the Williams community for distinguished achievement in any field of endeavor. The college awarded 23 Bicentennial Medals in 1993 and has added five to seven in each year since.
I think moving the ceremony to Convocation — in front of the seniors — is an especially nice touch. The winners include: Felix Grossman ‘56 (father of Dave Grossman ‘87 and father-in-law to Jen (Morris) Grossman ‘89 — roomate of my lovely wife) and Sonia Nazario ‘82, Pulitzer Prize winner.
If you read nothing else Eph-related this week-end, read Nazario’s Enriques Journey.
Kudos to whoever selected these winners and decided to switch the event to Convocation. I assume that Morty and Steve Birrell ‘64 deserve much of the credit . . .
Sox Diary: 9-10-04
Friday, September 10, 2004: Naive and foolish as it seems, when the Sox have been on this roll, I have begun never to even conceive that they might lose. And certainly the idea of them losing to a team like the Mariners, or them losing games (a whopping 1.5 as the Yanks swept the Rays in that long postponed doubleheader and we lost) seemed almost unfathomable.
Sox Diary: 9-09-04
Thursday, September 9, 2004: So in the most important stretch of games all season, the Sox sweep the Angels, take 2 of 3 from the Rangers, and sweep the A’s in rather humiliating fashion (8-3 last night, Pedro pitched a two hotter, they rolled in the first three innings, pretty much putting the game out of reach, even if they did yet again give up runs in the 9th that made it look closer than it was — a slightly worrisome trend). The Yanks cannot get their doubleheader in last night, so we gain a half game on them and maintain our lead in the Wild Card, a lead decreasing in significance as it widens and as we close in on the gasping Yankees.
Groff == Garsten?
The web page that used to belong to Professor Bryan Garsten now features Professor Ruth Groff. I realize that this web technology stuff is quite confusing, but surely someone in the Political Science department can edit a file name.
On a vaguely related note, what is the deal with Political Science having 4 visiting assistant professors this year?
For those not in the academic world, a visiting assistant professor (a junior person with a one (or maybe two) year contract and not on the tenure track) is a strange beasty to have around. A place like Williams — looking for longevity and commitment — should want to have the vast majority of its junior faculty on the tenure track. Why should any of these visitors be especially committed to excellence in teaching if their time at Williams is so limited? Why should any Williams student invest in a relationship that will end in a year or two?
On rare occasions, a case can be made for hiring junior visitors — perhaps because someone got sick and a specific class needs to be taught — but these situations are few and far between. I can’t imagine why the Political Science department would have 4 junior visitors at one point. Are none of them good enough to be offered a tenure track job? Was Williams turned down by applicants who it has wanted to hire?
Most likely, there is nothing to my musings. Still, I worry. Old-timers will recall that the Political Science department was widely regarded as one of the most dysfunctional at Williams, caught up in internecine battles between an old guard of “conservatives” — read: Kerry voters — and younger “radicals”. This may have reached a head during the Reinhardt tenure battle a decade ago. In any event, the departure of folks like Cook and Jacobsohn should have healed this rift. So, is there some reason that the department still can’t get a handle on its hiring process?
So Many Courses
EphBlog, in its constant quest to whiningly lecture at younger Ephs, has more course suggestions.
It seems like ECON 357T The Strange Economics of College is the perfect class. Fun topic, superb instructor, and the possibility of a powerful letter of recommendation. What more do you need?
PHIL 388T(F) Consciousness also looks like fine. I have no first hand experience with Cruz as a teacher, but I would wager that he is excellent. Don’t let all that mumbo-jumbo about prerequisites fool you.
HIST 487T(F) The Second World War: Origins, Course, Outcomes, and Meaning also looks worthwhile. I have some honest differences of opinion with Professor Wood, but have heard good things about the course. Try to take as many courses as you can with professors that you disagree with. There is no better education.
If you don’t take a tutorial every year that you are at Williams — possibly every semester — you are losing out. Or you don’t belong.
First Years — at least the intellectually serious and confident among them — should sign up for a tutorial as well. There is no need to wait.
Sox Diary: 9-08-04
Wednesday, September 8, 2004: We have now taken on the meat of the American League West and the heart of the toughest part of our schedule, and we have won every series. Last night’s 7-1 pummeling of the A’s, with Derek Lowe at the helm on the mound (I believe yesterday I averred that Waker would be pitching — clearly being out of the country has been bad for my attention to detail — mae culpa) and the bats continuing to fire on all cylinders. Tonight we go for the sweep with Pedro on the mound against their ace, so this should be a pretty epic game. Sadly, it is on ESPN2 but obviously I will not be seeing it. Though being on the west coast, it will end not long before I wake up tomorrow.
Diversity of Opinion
Thanks to a suggestion in Todd Gamblin’s ‘02 blog, I discovered this handy site for reveiwing political donations by zip code. Here is a listing for all the givers from the 01267 Williamstown zip code. This is a nice compliment to sites that allow you to search by employer.
A quick perusal shows a variety of Eph folks, including members of the administration (McIntre and Ouellette), former presidents (Chandler and Oakley), current professors (Dew ‘58, Satterthwaite, Booth, Scholfield, Willingham, Marcus, Fix, Brown, Altschuler, Epping, Reinhardt, Schmidt, Engel, Singham, Skinner), professor emeriti (Sabot, Winston, Markgraf, Faison ‘29, Rudolph, Burns ‘39), and even faculty spouses (Crampton, Wooters, Versenyi).
Now, since Williams College values diversity — political, intellectual and otherwise — you might expect that some Ephs would donate to Democrats and some to Republicans.
You would be wrong. In terms of politics, the diversity of opinion at Williams seems to run from Kerry to Dean.
I can not find a single person employed by Williams (or married to someone employed by Williams) who has donated money to any Republican candidate or group this electoral cycle.
I suspect that there is a nice Record article in here somewhere . . .
Hoops Mafia
The Eagle reports on the growing ranks of the Williams Hoops Mafia, the 21st century successor to the legendary Williams Art History Mafia.
Williams College may be the No. 1 liberal arts college in the nation, but it is also becoming a breeding ground for college basketball coaches.
John Fitzgerald, who played for Williams and spent last year as an assistant under men’s head coach Dave Paulsen, has left the Ephs to become director of operations for the Princeton University men’s basketball program.
…
The former Eph becomes the sixth member of the Williams basketball family in the last 10 years to get a college basketball coaching or administrative position.
In addition to Fitzgerald ‘03, Grant Farmer ‘98 and Jeff Lafave ‘03 also get a mention.
Kudos to Sheahy ‘75 and Paulsen ‘87 for creating and nurturing this sort of network. Williams needs more of this.
Daily Messages Want To Be Free
When I check the Daily Messages at the College, I get:
You may only use this application from the Williams College Network
along with a handy listing of my non-Williams IP address. Is this really purposeful? I would think that the College would want to encourage goofy alums to participate in life at Williams as much as possible.
Luckily, I am an evil computer genius, so I just look just add the appropriate month, as so, and all is revealed.
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