The more I think about it …
the more it works for me!
True Privilege
Interesting discussion on WSO about at article that we discussed on EphBlog. Ellen Song writes:
I was basically with the same group of kids between 1st and 5th grade. There were very few native-born Americans in my class. In fifth-grade, an entire third of my class was composed just of first or second-generation Korean kids. Not to mention other Asian students like the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Indian, and Latino students. Our teachers were pretty decent, though, despite the NYC shortage of teachers and relative underpay, at least in our “gifted” class, which was the level I experienced all my years at this elementary school. I was lucky to have had the ability to take an exam to test into a similar “gifted” junior high school, and escape the worse conditions of our local junior high school. In all my years of junior high, I didn’t witness a single fight or drug deal. My brother, who attended my neighborhood junior high, has seen otherwise. My “gifted” school was, fortunately, free.
And lucky me (and my brother as well), for testing into a *free* “gifted” high school as well, and so avoiding the neighborhood high school with its lower graduation rate, higher drug rate, fewer advanced programs, etc. etc. During high school, my friends were from various walks of life, which I wouldn’t have really experienced at either my neighborhood high school, or an “elite” private school on, say, the Upper East Side. One of my closest friends lives in a beautiful 4 story brownstone in a prosperous Brooklyn neighborhood and has professional parents. Another of my best friends lives in a one-bedroom apartment in inner Queens, and his closest neighborhood buddy is a notorious, young drug-dealer in the area. We all took the same AP courses, we all had the same teachers. Both are among the smartest people from my free, gifted, inner-city high school, yet neither was accepted into the various schools I’d been accepted to. They are in no ways inferior to me. My best friend from high school had a recommendation written by our principal (no small feat in an overworked public school of over 4000 students), had a GPA that was decently higher than mine, took only the most difficult courses, was given the utmost respect by faculty and fellow students, was voted “Most Likely to Succeed” in the yearbook… yet this person is attending a public college here. In no ways is he less intelligent than I, but this is what life has given him.
I say I’m lucky, because who’s to say that things couldn’t have gone the other way for me? Maybe I would’ve never gone to my particular junior high (had my 5th grade teacher not been attentive), which would set me up for my high school, which is where I became the person who was accepted by Williams and similar places.
Being back home has reminded me of what I have at Williams. My [largely immigrant, lower socioeconomic] neighbors have never heard of Williams. When I tell them I’m an English major, they look at me perplexed, as if to say “Why?” because it’s not very practical for people who grow up here… not something like, say, business management or information technology. When I go to the supermarket, the Bangladeshi cashier who has watched me grow for the past 10 years looks at me proudly; her brother-in-law, who runs the bodega across the street, tells me that there are so few other kids like me in this neighborhood, and that he’s glad to see me doing things with my life. As I ride the overhead subway, I see all the graffiti (many of the artists are likely my brothers’ friends) I’d taken for granted over the years, and I realize that I’m probably one of the only people in my subway car to receive a college education. Or speak English fluently, for that matter.
Amid all this, I’m reminded of the elitism at Williams, and how different my life probably is from most of my classmates’. Not in a bad way, certainly, because I feel like I have a perspective that not everyone has (not to say that anyone else’s viewpoint is less valuable, of course) and it can really, truly, help me appreciate what I am receiving at a prestigious institution. I’m not ashamed of my background – even at dinner at my professors’ house, where many of my classmates were speaking of the corporate or professional jobs their parents had, and I couldn’t say the same about my family- because it’s just not something I could or would change at this point in my life.
I wonder how many people think as I do. I wonder how many people sit in Paresky or inside Schow, actively and consciously thinking, “It is a true privilege to be here, with these people.” But it doesn’t matter how many other people are thinking this way, I guess. Not really, because it won’t change the fact that I’m thinking it.
Good stuff. In my experience, the ability to recognize how lucky you are is not correlated with wealth. Williams is a privilege for all of us.
Coups
Peter Nunns ‘08 worries about military popularity and military coups.
A recent Gallup poll revealed that, in America, the military is far and away the most popular institution.
…
Shortly after Argentina became democratic, with universal male suffrage in 1916, it fell prey to six military coups between 1930 and 1976. The first unseated Hipólito Yrigoyen’s Radical government and installed a conservative oligarchy, the second, in 1943, unseated the oligarchy and, after three years of military rule, restored power to the elected populist Juan Perón. After the unraveling of Perón’s popular coalition, the military deposed and exiled him in 1955, restoring power to his “class enemies.” They intervened again in 1962, but stood by when democracy was restored in 1973, resulting in the return of Perón’s Partida Justicialista. Three years later, the military took over for good, plunging the country into seven years of brutal dictatorship.
In each of these instances, a political or economic crisis – the Great Depression, a slump in export earnings, internal guerrilla warfare, etc – called the legitimacy of the standing government into question. When the military stepped in at these points, they were a popular institution carrying out the will of (a certain subset of) the people.
…
We have not undergone such a disastrous experiment with military rule, and our military is, as the polls show, the most trusted institution in the country. It would not be entirely erroneous to comment that conditions are ripening for a repeat of the Argentine experience.
Indeed. Read the whole things. Although Peter’s politics are different from my own on some dimensions, we share a concern about civilian/military relations. Fortunately, there is an easy solution: Close the military academies. Instead of having thousands of future military leaders spend their college years separated from civilian life, have these future officers attend elite colleges and universities around the country. Dramatically increase the size of ROTC classes at places like Princeton, Brown, Amherst and so on. If the future American elite of both the military and civilians worlds spent their college years together, a coup 20 years later would be much less likely.
Tough Yet Vulnerable
Which Eph has been seen by tens of millions of people in the last week? Monique Curnen ‘92, playing Detective Anna Ramirez in “The Dark Knight.” Background reading here and here.
Give Batman attitude? Those who try don’t live to tell about it. But feisty Hollywood up-and-comer Monique Curnen defies that certainty in the new summer blockbuster, “The Dark Knight.”
Confronting the caped crusader (Christian Bale) in one tense scene, the raven-haired newcomer who stands up to Batman says the moment was fun but intense.
“I’m just grateful it came on my last day of shooting,” says Curnen. “I wasn’t daunted by Christian any longer. Believe me. He was very intimidating in that Batman suit, especially up close and in your face.”
As Det. Ramirez, the tough yet vulnerable rookie cop who helps Lt. James Gordon (Gary Oldman) clean up Gotham City, Curnen joins a cast of conflicted characters born from the darkest recesses of the human psyche in this follow-up to 2005’s “Batman Begins.”
Thanks to Curnen’s suitemate Laura Lim Prescott ‘92 for the links.
Hey, Lighten up. It’s summertime …
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2008/jun/16/advertising
I’m sure Heinz and BBDO didn’t consult Garrison Keilor’s Ketchup Advisory Board/Mayo Speciality Group.
But I like to believe that both liberals and conservatives can agree on that great taste! Has Bill Kristol ever said “Hold the Mayo”?
Eph Serial Killer?
Now, this is taking the rivalry a little too far. In the latest novel from Amherst alum Harlan Coben, the villain is an Eph:
The detective comes into the story because there has been a particularly brutal, sadistic murder that, from all appearances, has nothing to do with all the other conflicts the author explores. And when a woman vanishes after a shopping trip to Target, the police wonder if a serial killer is on the loose.
The reader knows (but the police don’t, at least initially) that there’s a strong connection between the murder and the disappearance of the shopper, although the exact nature of that connection unravels slowly.
In the meantime, the reader learns a great deal about the backgrounds of the killer (oddly enough, a graduate of prestigious Williams College) and his partner, a woman who was traumatized by the brutality that accompanied the disintegration of her former country, Yugoslavia.
Perhaps it is time for Stephen Sondheim to write a sequel to Sweeney Todd set in the five college area?
Blatt ‘85 on Shipley ‘85
Dan Blatt recalls his classmate David Shipley.
When I first read that my Williams classmate David Shipley had taken over as Op-Ed editor of the New York Times, I saw it as a sign of improvement on the editorial page of the Old Gray Lady. Even though David had worked in the Clinton Administration, I had always known him as an even-handed, level-headed kind of guy. At college, he never showed any particular disdain for conservative ideas — and this in the heyday of the Reagan Revolution.
Indeed, I assumed it was David’s doing when the Times tapped such thoughtful conservatives as David Brooks and William Kristol to write regular columns for its Op-Ed page. He is the kind of guy who would welcome diverse viewpoints, including conservative ideas intelligently expressed.
At Williams, David was well-liked among his classmates, at least those of us who knew him. He kept a pretty low profile on campus. I recall he was soft-spoken. We rowed together freshman year.
But, David wasn’t one of those angry left-wingers (yes, we even had them on college campi even in my day), railing against the latest action by the Gipper. He may have had left-of-center political views, but he kept them pretty much to himself, at least in his conversations with me. And I was a pretty outspoken undergraduate, particularly during my sophomore and junior years.
…
Thus, I was surprised to learn that he had personally rejected (or at least written the e-mail rejecting) presumptive Republican nominee John McCain’s column for the New York Times.
The David Shipley who so readily listened to his Williams peers was now dictating how one party’s candidate should write about our nation’s Iraq policy. I want to believe David’s distinction between accepting Obama’s piece and rejecting that of his Republican rival, that the Obama essay “offered new information.” Given the increasingly biased record of the Times, I am skeptical, even of a man whose even-handedness I have long respected.
…
I hope David still shows the same respect for conservatives he did at Williams and in our 1993 lunch. His failure to publish this editorial shows the decline of the paper whose Op-Eds he now edits.
Read the whole thing. Previous discussion here. I was surprised at how dismissive some of our commentators were of McCain’s argument. It is reasonable to believe that McCain was (and is) wrong about the best policy for Iraq. But, if you assume for a moment that McCain’s policies are correct (as at least 20% of US citizens believe), then his op-ed piece seems to make a perfectly reasonable argument for them. If you disagree, what specific lines would you change?
Shipley also gets a mention in the American Thinker.
Newsflash to David Shipley: McCain’s editorial was a rebuttal, not a Time Life Books® companion piece. And as the New York Times’ readership is reputed to be intellectually savvy, I don’t think there would be much danger of them confusing McCain’s views with those of the left-leaning Times editorial board.
By the way, the New York Post snapped up what the Times rejected and published McCain’s op-ed. The decision by the Times to reject McCain has turned into a major publicity nightmare. Better tell Pinch that’s not exactly good news for stockholders.
Of course, every news outlet has the right to reject content based on editorial standards – our right to free speech does not translate to an obligation for a newspaper or other media outlet to publish us. But in this instance, the Times risks being labeled as lopsided.
Indeed.
Twins and Triplets at College
There’s an interesting article in The New York Times on twins and triplets applying to college, and their worry that applying to the same college will hurt them.
The Williams case that I know of is the Samuelson triplets: one went to Harvard, one went to Yale, and one went to Williams. (Before parents faint at the thought of Mr. Samuelson paying three high-end tuitions all at once in the early 1970’s, don’t. Mr. Samuelson was Paul Samuelson, the MIT economist, who was well-heeled due to royalties from his popular economics textbook. And yes, we used his textbook in Econ 101.) Paul, the triplet at Yale, after several years decided to transfer to Williams and was accepted. So Bob Samuelson and Paul Samuelson graduated from Williams in 1975.
Pasachoff/Babcock to Siberia
A Williams group is headed to Siberia to view a solar eclipse.
Scientists Jay Pasachoff and Bryce Babcock of Williams College are leading an expedition to Siberia so as to station themselves and their equipment in the path of totality (the phase of an eclipse when it is total), which is only hundreds of miles wide in spite of being thousands of miles long.
Leaving Williamstown on July 21, they flew 1,750 miles east to Novosibirsk, the third largest city in Russia. Their observing site will be in collaboration with Dr. Allya Nestorenko of the State University of Novosibirsk and Dr. Igor Nestorenko of the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics.
Williams students Katherine Dupree ‘10 and Marcus Freeman ‘10 are also traveling, and the release includes contact information if the press (or possible anyone?) is interested in getting more information from Pasachoff.
Other coverage here.
Comments on Eph Planet
I am looking for feedback from readers about Eph Planet (also available from a link on the right side of the page). Do you use it? Do you like it? What would make it better?
I think Eph Planet is great. I enjoy reading about what a random cross-section of Ephs are doing with their lives. But, if our usage statistics from Google Analytics are correct, very few other EphBlog readers find the link useful. Comments welcome.
They were leaders
Remembering the end of the Korean war:
July 27 is not one of those days that stirs the American soul like Dec. 7, July 4 or June 6.
We have so many memorable days in our history that forgiveness is appropriate if you can’t recall that on that day in 1953, the guns fell silent along the line of battle in Korea. Three years of killing was at an end. This year, it’s the 55th anniversary of the cease fire, so maybe there’ll be a bit more ink and airtime.
I carry in my mind’s eye recollections of two officers who paid a price while serving their country. Both were fellow second lieutenants – a rank sometimes regarded as below that of private – in the field artillery. I served with both and knew them well enough to say they were among the best, brightest and likable young men you might want to know. And, they were leaders.
[...]
First, let me tell you about Nimrod Torkomian. He was one of 200 who were in the initial formation for D Battery, Field Artillery Officer Candidate Class 17 in January 1952. Ninety of us made it to the finish line in June. “Tork” – everyone gets a nickname in the Army – must have stood on tiptoes to get in. He was 5 feet tall, maybe. But he was in superb physical condition, easily meeting the many physical demands placed upon us. He had the barracks wit needed to get through six months of OCS.
After graduation, we spent a few months in artillery battalions stateside before what we thought was the inevitable – orders to become forward observers across the hills of Korea.
Tork wound up as a forward observer with the 555th Field Artillery, an ill-fated outfit if ever there was one. They were overrun not once but three times during the course of the war, often because they weren’t given the protection they needed. Worse, their guns fell into the hands of the North Koreans and Chinese. This is close to a mortal sin for an artilleryman.
In March 1953, the Chinese caught a South Korean infantry unit unprepared and walked all over the 555th. Tork and his forward observer team were isolated at an outpost. They held out until they were out of ammo, and then stuck a white handkerchief tied to a rifle out a firing port. Tork wrote an eloquent essay about this experience, sharing it with all of us at our most recent reunion. It is not a good feeling, he said in a classic understatement, to be marched north when the U.S. Army is somewhere south of you.
The good news is that he survived, was exchanged not long after the armistice and is enjoying life in California.
Other OCS classmates tell their tales of the last day of the war when we get together. For one, it was being sent up on the line when other units were standing down in anticipation of the cease fire. Ma Parker’s son may not make it home in one piece after all, thought Roy Parker, now a lawyer in Tupelo. Another brought his wounded radioman down for help and went back to fire more missions. And so on.
Then there’s James Dorland from New Jersey, who was commissioned just before me out of OCS. We were both assigned to an anachronism, a mule artillery battalion in Camp Carson, Colorado.
When the expected orders for overseas came, Jim’s were for Korea and mine were for Germany. He accepted his with a baffled grin, and I thanked some gnome in the Pentagon for his wisdom in sending me elsewhere, even if there was a twinge of guilt.
Some years after Al Gore invented the Internet, I began to crawl the Web to find out what happened to Jim. It didn’t take long to find out that he’d been shot down over North Korea in March 1953 while calling in artillery fire as an aerial observer. He was first listed as MIA – missing in action – and later that changed to KIA – killed in action. His remains have yet to be returned.
Jim was tall, lean, witty, a graduate of Williams College. He was a quiet leader, dependable, demanding and respected, and I will never forget being his friend and serving with him.
Sculpture in the Berkshires
On a lighter note, an article in the New York Sun highlights sculpture in the Berkshires this summer. Among the mentions are the Williams “Eyes” scattered near the art museum and Broke-ology (featuring a garden gnome sculpture as a central character) at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Apparently there is an exhibit of garden gates by contemporary artists on the grounds of the Rockwell Museum. The slideshow includes a photo of a sculpture in Lenox, Kathryn Lipke Vigesaa’s “Melt/Water,” consisting of Adirondack chairs and a deck pointed towards photographs of beach scenes. A speaker plays the sounds of water lapping. Summer fun.
dkane accepts National Enquirer Award for Journalism …
Some present were calling “clean cup, clean cup!”.
Art Mafia, Cleveland Chapter
Congratulations to C. Griffith Mann ‘91:
The Cleveland Museum of Art appointed C. Griffith Mann as chief curator. The medieval art historian, noted for skill in organizing exhibits and expanding access to museum collections, will begin his new duties at the museum in early September. Mann arrives in the midst of the largest renovation and expansion in its history, a $350 million project designed by Rafael Vinoly that will increase the museum’s size by nearly 200,000 square feet. Mann began his museum career at the museum 16 years ago as an intern in the education department. Since March 2007, he has been director of the curatorial division at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, where he oversees seven collections departments, the office of the registrar, photography, the library and curatorial publications and installations and research on the Walters’ encyclopedic collection. As chief curator in Cleveland, Mann will oversee 11 curatorial departments. He holds both a Ph.D. and master’s degree in art history from Johns Hopkins University and a bachelor’s degree in history and art history from Williams College. An avid baseball fan and outdoor enthusiast, he will be moving to Cleveland with his wife and three children.
Trash
Was it just 9 months ago that I pointed out that Jay McInerney’s ‘76 former girlfriend Rielle Hunter was in the news? Was it just 7 months ago that I passed on the story of Hunter’s love child with with former Democratic Senator and presidential candidate John Edwards? Indeed it was! My reward was comments like:
No need to do Drudge’s dirty work for him, David. That story has already been pulled from the site after the woman apparently denied that the baby was Edwards’.
This is trash. The story never had a leg to stand on. Why do you keep trying to keep it alive?
Ephs everywhere thank you for making EphBlog part of a shameless home-stretch smear attempt against the Edwards campaign.
But, alas, I was right. Always trust content from EphBlog.
Hockney Named Swim Coach at Williams …
The New England school, well-known for athletics and its art programs, combines both aspects in this break-through appointment.
Readers are encouraged to submit their own improbable but interesting appointments.
Dream Job
Speaking of jobs, here’s an article from the Bennington Banner about an Eph who found a dream one. Dan Cohen, a graduate of the Master’s program in art history, has been the curator of the Louisville Slugger Museum and factory since 2006. He used to work at the Clark. He’ll be in the area Sunday to give a gallery talk at the Bennington Museum about the baseball bats on view in “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” with a particular focus on Louisville Slugger and its history. Lucky guy.
I don’t whether this is a permanent exhibit, but SM might want to check it out next time she’s in town. The museum is right on Main Street (Rt.9).
Professor Nolan: Not a fan of “Problem Solving” Courts
Professor Nolan is cited as the primary critic of problem solving courts (which provide alternatives to jail time for drug offenders) in this interesting article. Nolan opines:
Ideological critiques also tend to distract from what some see as structural flaws of problem-solving justice — and there are a few. Problem-solving justice’s most vocal critic is James Nolan Jr., a criminologist from Williams College in Massachusetts. He has dedicated a good portion of his career to writing articles and books challenging the approach, and his latest book, to be released in 2009, will compare the operations of problem-solving courts around the world.
Nolan’s chief criticism involves due process rights. “My concern is that if we make the law so concerned with being therapeutic, you forget about notions of justice such as proportionality of punishment, due process and the protection of individual rights,” Nolan says. “Even though problem-solving advocates wouldn’t want to do away with these things, they tend to fade into the background in terms of importance.”
Nolan offers an example, a drug court participant in Miami-Dade County who was forced to remain in the program for seven years. “So here, the goal is not about justice,” he says. “The goal is to make someone well, and the consequences can be unjust because they are getting more of a punishment than they deserve.”
With the caveat that I haven’t read anything more fleshed-out by Nolan, I disagree. As a former prosecutor, I’ve seen first-hand how habitual drug users are failed by the system, wasting tax payer dollars and law enforcement / judicial resources in the process. I don’t see a system which is not punitive as threatening due process — to the extent someone is marooned in the problem solving court for years, all that means is that they are a habitual drug user who would otherwise be in jail or dead. Moreover, many states impose — without violating due process — far more intrusive “non punitive” measures on habitual sex offenders (namely, locking them up indefinitely beyond the term of their sentence, if they are deemed a serious enough recidivist threat).
One thing is for sure, the system of locking up more and more people for drug use or petty crimes (small time dealing, shoplifting, larceny) associated with feeding their habits has proven not to work. I don’t see the harm in trying to be creative with a novel approach.
What Matters
The Hartford Courant has another story about Williams student Bianca Czaderna ‘11. Bianca took up rowing at Williams last fall in memory and honor of her close friend Hayley Petit. Petit, who would have rowed for Darmouth that season, was murdered, along with her mother and younger sister, in a horrific home invasion in Cheshire, Connecticut a year ago today. Czaderna has proven an exceptionally fine rower, and earned the honor of being chosen as a spare for the Williams boats that won the NCAA Championship in May.
As I read this article, I was stuck by how it fit with JG’s recent posting about Nate and Shirin.
Comments were Down
As Larry George noted, the comment system seems seemed to be having some problems.
For your amusement during the intermission:
A very Interesting Reptile, and a data heavy political blog by Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus.
Also, the Williams multimedia page has video of Commencement addresses.
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