May 04, 2009

Amherst-Williams 150th anniversary game coverage

The much-anticipated celebrations surrounding the 150th anniversary of the first intercollegiate baseball game garnered coverage in a number of outlets. Former Boston Globe columnist Gordon Edes wrote a nice piece on the re-enactment game for Yahoo! Sports, Charlie Quigg covered the events for MLB.com, and of course, the College has its own coverage in a piece called “Muscle and Mind, Part Two.” The piece links to a set of Sam Masinter’s photos and a video of the introduction to the game.

Brian Meacham '97 | 11:44 PM | Athletics | History | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

May 02, 2009

H1N1 cases at the College

As reported in the Boston Globe, a number of students at Amherst have tested positive for Type A influenza, which may be H1N1, otherwise known as swine flu.

A series of updates on the College website have more information on what is being done and what students can do to prevent the spread of the flu.

Brian Meacham '97 | 11:07 AM | Student Life | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 10, 2009

Ezekiel Emanuel '79 in L. A. Times profile

Noting his more famous younger brothers Rahm and Ari, the Los Angeles Times today ran a short front-page profile of Ezekiel Emanuel ‘79, the brother “they think could someday win the Nobel Prize.”

Now Ezekiel Emanuel has become something of a public figure as he tries to help the Obama administration overhaul America’s healthcare system.

It’s an enormously difficult task, given the nation’s economic problems. And while Zeke, as everyone calls him, has impressive medical and policy credentials — not to mention the ear of Rahm, the president’s chief of staff, with whom he talks every day — he has never been part of a political team or toed a party line. The changes he has championed — to give all Americans insurance vouchers and get rid of the employer-based healthcare coverage — bear little resemblance to those embraced by the president.

Brian Meacham '97 | 07:57 PM | Alumni | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

March 21, 2009

Women's hockey: National Champions

Moments ago, the Amherst women’s hockey team defeated Elmira 4-3 in overtime to capture its first national title.

Trailing 3-2 late in the third period, Amherst got a goal from Emily Vitale ‘12 to force overtime. Kate Dennett ‘10 scored the game winner after about 10 minutes of overtime after a solo rush down the left wing. Dennett collected a pass in her own zone and eluded an Elmira defender at center ice to gain the blue line. Dennett then fired a wrist shot on goal from the face-off dot that was stopped by the Elmira goaltender, who apparently thought she trapped the puck in her upper body. However, the puck had fallen in directly in front of her. Dennett followed her shot and poked the loose puck between the goaltender’s legs and into the net. Dennett, Kirsten Dier ‘10, Krystyn Elek ‘10 and Lindsey Harrington ‘09 all made the all-tournament team.

This was a big weekend of Amherst sports action, Women’s basketball qualified for their first Final Four, and finished in fourth place.

We’ll have a full wrap a bit later (the swim teams are in action in Minneapolis), but for now, congrats to all!

Dave Nardolillo '98 | 09:31 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 15, 2009

Residential Master Plan: Sit tight

The Student is reporting that the inexorable renovation progress of the Residential Master Plan, which started earlier this decade with the construction of King and Wieland dorms, has been slowed. According to Torin Moore, Dean of Residential Life (I love writing that, because Torin was an Area Coordinator when I was an RC in South) the College will close three of the most-remote houses (Plimpton, Tyler, and Seligman, formerly known as DKE, Kappa Theta, and TD, respectively) for 2009-2010, as well as the infamous “mods” (Waldorf and Plaza dorms, temporary housing behind Seeley Mudd).

This plan will leave Marsh House as the only inhabited dorm on “the Hill” and doubtless please the Lincoln Avenue neighbors of Seligman. With Hitchcock and Seeleye Houses re-opening after this year’s renovation, the College will be able to house all the students displaced from the three houses and the Mods in newer, more energy-efficient housing.

According to the Student, the next priority on the RMP is “renovation” of the Social Dorms (Crossett, Davis, Pond, Coolidge and Stone) which, in our opinion, would be best approached by demolition and a fresh start as taken for James and Stearns.

Parker Morse '96 | 01:44 PM | Campus | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

March 14, 2009

Spring break sports roundup

Students may be leaving Amherst on spring break this weekend, but many winter sports teams are still in action.

The track team wrapped up the indoor season Friday and Saturday in Terre Haute, Indiana, at the NCAA Division III Nationals, hosted by Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. The highlight came on the second day, when Elise Tropiano ‘09 won the women’s 5,000m in 16:58.84. Tropiano placed second at the Cross Country nationals back in November; in this race, she broke free of the pack with four laps (800m) remaining and extended her lead through the finish. On Friday, the Jeffs’ men placed seventh in the Distance Medley Relay. Full story

Both men’s and women’s hockey are in action this weekend. The women’s team pulled off a huge win over defending national champions Plattsburgh and will now face NESCAC champions Middlebury in the Frozen Four next weekend. The men lost 2-1 to Hobart, in overtime but ended the season with the best record in program history.

And already over tonight is the women’s basketball game which will take Amherst to the first Final Four in their program history. The Jeffs upended NYU on Friday night, 74-51, setting a new program record for wins in a single season in the process, and knocked off Brandeis tonight, 68-54.

More details, as always, can be found at the athletics page.

Update, 3/16: We’ve added links to the athletic department releases above. Women’s basketball will play Washington-St. Louis in the national semi-final game on Friday at Hope College, in Michigan. Women’s hockey will play tournament hosts Middlebury on Friday in their national semi-final.

Parker Morse '96 | 07:11 PM | Athletics | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 08, 2009

Women's basketball returns to Sweet 16

We were at LeFrak last night for the Amherst women’s absolute demolition of Emmanuel to advance from the second round of the NCAA tournament to the “Sweet 16.” Emmanuel played a tough game, and it might have looked close as long as nobody looked at the scoreboard: Amherst held Emmanuel to only 37 points while racking up 76 of their own.

The College will now play host to another two rounds next weekend, with the schedule to be announced tomorrow. The Lady Jeffs will face another team in purple, NYU, and the winner of that game will advance to play the winner of the Brandeis/Muhlenburg game.

Muhlenberg’s presence is a good news/bad news situation for the Amherst squad which went 27-2 this season. The Mules advanced by beating Bowdoin by a single point in Brunswick, thus removing from the tournament the only team which has defeated Amherst so far this year (twice, by a total of five points), but also denying the team a third shot at toppling the NESCAC champions.

Parker Morse '96 | 08:55 PM | Athletics | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 02, 2009

Morgenthau '41 prepares to leave Manhattan DA post

Rumors had began to circulate late last week that Bob Morgenthau ‘41, the 89 year old district attorney in Manhattan would not seek a 10th term and retire on December 31. Those rumors have now been confirmed. Morgenthau was elected to the post in 1974, having already served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York for nine years.

New York Times writers Michael Powell, William K. Rashbaum and Benjamin Weiser all contribute to a fascinating retrospective article on Morgenthau’s career. There are also multimedia features you can access through the link. Although Morgenthau is in good overall health for an 89 year old, the article reads like an obituary, traveling through all periods of his life , starting with aristocratic roots, through his World War II service and through the highs and lows of his often revolutionary tenure in office.

While the article repeats oft-noted anecdotes about Morgenthau (the son of FDR’s treasury secretary, Morgenthau served drinks to Winston Churchill at his family home. Morgenthau also served as the inspiration for the the fictional Manhattan DA, Adam Schiff, on the television series Law & Order) it also notes the many changes Morgenthau made to the office, from attracting top talent and improving diversity in the ranks of assistant DAs to forming a formidable white-collar prosecution unit in the office, after he had also built a securities unit in his prior role as a federal prosecutor.

In a speech in 1969, his last year as United States attorney, Mr. Morgenthau explained why he pursued white-collar crime with such passion. His words resonate today.

“It is a deplorable fact,” he said, “that many businessmen tend to treat more sympathetically the banker guilty of tax fraud, the broker guilty of stock fraud or the accountant who certifies a false balance sheet than the poor man guilty of auto theft or hijacking of a truck.”

We wish Morgenthau the best in his final months in office and, hope that enjoys many healthy years of retirement!

Dave Nardolillo '98 | 02:52 AM | Alumni | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Winter sports playoff push

We’ve been too busy with our day jobs to say much about about the Amherst athletic teams during this academic year, but with the winter season approaching its close, several Amherst teams are on the brink of qualifying for the NCAA tournament in their respective sports. Here’s a brief update:

The women’s basketball team was defeated in the NESCAC tournament championship game, 49-46 by top-seed Bowdoin in Brunswick on Sunday, but with a 25-2 overall record (both losses came at the hands of the Polar Bears by a combined 5 points) the team is a virtual lock for a high seed in NCAA tournament.

The men’s basketball team also fell in the NESCAC title game. Top-seeded Middlebury, playing on its home court, broke open a tie game late in the second half with an 8-0 run to avenge a loss to Amherst two weeks ago. While the men’s team has a very solid 21-6 record, the experts (and I mean that sincerely!) at D3hoops.com have the Lord Jeffs right on the bubble, possibly even the last team left in.

The selections for both basketball tournaments will occur late tomorrow morning.

Both hockey teams are seeded first in the NESCAC tournament and will host the semifinal and final rounds next weekend after winning their respective quarterfinal matches, making for a busy weekend of action at Orr Rink. The women’s team is ranked fourth nationally and just completed the second ever undefeated season in NESCAC league play. The team is 20-4 overall and each of the four losses have come against a different top ten team, including each team ahead of them in the rankings.

The men’s hockey team is a surprising #6 in the country and propelled themselves into the top NESCAC seed with a weekend sweep over Williams and perennial national power Middlebury.

Women’s and Men’s swimming finished second and third respectively at the NESCAC meet and both teams will have individuals competing at the NCAA meet in just over two weeks in Minneapolis.

The indoor track teams still have the ECAC meet to come next weekend before qualifying individuals head to NCAAs.

The Amherst Sports Information website has full details and schedules here.

Dave Nardolillo '98 | 01:57 AM | Athletics | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

February 24, 2009

Mishandling difficult news

Those who read our post on the Crossett Hall stabbing will recall that the administration has made no official public statement regarding the incident. The Amherst College eNews bulletins sent to alumni are also silent. We learned that students received an e-mail within hours of the attack, but we cannot find another statement. The administration’s silence on the most serious on-campus assault in recent memory is inappropriate.

Dee Mandiyan ‘10 echoes this sentiment in a letter to the editor of the Amherst Student. She argues that the e-mail sent to students was so “exceptionally vague” that it fostered misinformation and gossip. This paragraph captures her central points:

It took four days for some semblance of fact to come out through the Student. Four days of gossip running rampant because “the victim” said this and the “assailant” did this and the knife was in his sleeve or maybe in his hat or, maybe even worse, complete silence on the subject, as if “the victim” wasn’t one of us or of any consequence. Maybe even worst of all, by the Monday after “the incident,” professors were already joking about it, grouping it with that Registrar security breach as an example of “Amherst Gone Wild.”

I cannot disagree with her; the victim has been marginalized. That one or more Amherst professors supposedly used the incident as fodder for classroom humor is an outrage and a disgrace. If these comments were made, President Marx should issue a swift public reprimand.

That aside, why the administration did not issue some basic statement, if only to allay concern and curtail counterproductive rumors, is mystifying. I anticipate that the response to that question would mirror Campus Police Chief John Carter’s comment to the Student “It would be inappropriate to comment on anything that might impact the investigation.”

That reasoning would be unpersuasive. The administration could have issued a statement by Sunday afternoon that said the following four things : 1) that a student had been injured in an apparent stabbing on campus; 2) that a suspect, who was not an Amherst student, was in custody; 3) that the student was in stable condition; and 4) the investigation was now in the hands of Massachusetts state authorities and further inquiries should be directed to those agencies. Also, that statement might have properly noted that the party was registered with Campus Police and that the prompt actions of on-duty student security officers likely prevented a far worse outcome. This simple, neutral statement, which contains undisputed facts, could have no adverse effect on an investigation, yet it properly informs the public.

Instead, the administration has chosen silence. This does a disservice to the College for it leaves the impression that the administration is ignoring a very serious matter to avoid bad press. I’ve had few criticisms of this administration, but it has mishandled this situation.

Everyone associated with Amherst is understandably dismayed by this attack. However, the administration must resist the natural inclination to ignore difficult news with the hope that it fades away unnoticed. The proper response is to be forthright and act in affirmatively so as to properly inform the public and to exert control over speculation that may, in the end, be even more damaging to public perception. The administration should issue an immediate statement to update the College community and the public.

As always, we welcome your comments below.

Dave Nardolillo '98 | 02:54 AM | Administration | Campus | Publications | Student Life | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

February 23, 2009

Prof. William Pritchard '53 reviews "Snark: A Polemic in Seven Fits" in Boston Globe

Yesterday’s Boston Globe included a book review by Henry Clay Folger Professor of English William H. Pritchard ‘53. New Yorker film critic David Denby’s new book Snark: A Polemic in Seven Fits is, says Pritchard, a “densely packed, thoroughly readable foray into a contemporary phenomenon” and “an aggressively humorous anatomy of current invective.”

Although snark has been around since Juvenal and has found expression in literary figures as Swift and Pope, Denby’s real interest is in snark’s proliferation (or metastasis) in contemporary political and technological culture, Pritchard writes. Pritchard reports that for Denby, the fodder of race and sex and gender, combined with the ubiquity of the internet, have resulted in a literary culture lacking nuance and taste: “Irony and satire have been replaced by a debased mode of snarkery.”

Pritchard takes particular interest in Denby’s analysis of Maureen Dowd, the New York Times columnist:

Denby shows, conclusively to these eyes, how her criteria of judgment are exclusively aesthetic, often sex-related; her own personality contains a “girlish, kittenish side … which has often soothed men even as it teased their inadequacies.” He says Dowd predicted that Gore’s concession speech in 2000 would be self-righteous and self-serving, then never qualified her remarks when the speech turned out to be a dignified and unself-serving one. Dowd mocked Hillary Clinton’s breaking into tears during the campaign, calling it “weirdly narcissistic” in its “Nixonian self-pity.” She saw Clinton’s campaign against Obama (“Obambi,” she called him) as “an imaginary sex war” rather than an authentic struggle for the nomination. What Denby’s pages on Dowd provide is a reasoned case against a gifted writer whose powers of ridicule take precedence over everything else. He also shows readers why their irritation with Dowd’s column is part of a larger cultural pattern.

Snark, Pritchard concludes, makes “necessary distinctions between [snark] and something better,” and does so “with wit and passion.”

Mina Suk '99 | 10:43 AM | Alumni | Faculty | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 17, 2009

Student donation considered

Today’s Daily Hampshire Gazette reports that the Association of Amherst Students is considering a $100,000 donation to the College.

The donation would be divided between student financial aid support and the “supplemental student programming fund.” It is still being discussed, according to the Gazette, and would likely be put to a campus-wide vote later this semester. The Association is funded by a student activities fee, not directly from the College, and $100,000 would represent about 1/8 of its annual budget.

Association president Nicholas Pastan ‘09 was quoted saying, “We know it’s a small amount when you think of the budget, but we wanted to show our values.” We reported in November on the budget-cutting steps being undertaken by the College, which, as Pastan notes, significantly exceed $100,000: as summarized by the Gazette notes, a 10% cut in the College’s budget would represent about $15.5 million.

Update: The Student story, also broken here.

Parker Morse '96 | 08:56 AM | Campus | Comments (0)

February 16, 2009

Shedding light on Emily

Over the weekend, contractors hired by the College started removing the tall hemlock trees which line the north side of Main Street from Sweetser Park to the corner of Triangle Street. The trees, once a hedge which fronted both the Dickinson Homestead and the neighboring Evergreens, will be replaced by a more “historically accurate” evergreen hedge. Based on my run by this morning, only the row of trees around the edges of the property, which is owned by the College, is being cut; many older and thicker trees, presumably those which gave the Evergreens its name, remain standing inside the lots.

Local bloggers Larry Kelley and Mary Carey posted pictures of the Homestead in its newly sun-bathed southern exposure, but to my mind the most dramatic change is at the Evergreens. The overgrowth of the hedge had hidden that house as thoroughly as though it had drawn a curtain over itself, a landscaping parallel to the house’s long slip from the center of town society to near-dereliction. The Evergreens was added to the “Emily Dickinson Museum” in 2003, and now it’s a visible part of Main Street for the first time since I came to Amherst.

Parker Morse '96 | 10:03 PM | Town | Comments (2)

Professor Corrales on February 15 Venezuela referendum

Javier Corrales, Associate Professor of Political Science, is cited in a February 16 Los Angeles Times articleon referendum held in Venezuela this past Sunday. Voters decided to rescind term limits, effectively allowing President Hugo Chávez, elected in 1998 and reelected in 2000 and 2006, to remain in office. According to Corrales, the article states, “Chavez’s victory could devastate the opposition.”

Prior to the election, Corrales was also cited in a February 15 Bloomberg story. Were Chávez to prevail, Corrales said, he might see victory as “a renewed mandate to accelerate his march toward socialism.” Corrales continued, “I’d expect him to become more radical and arbitrary in his management of the economy.”

Mina Suk '99 | 12:41 PM | Faculty | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 15, 2009

Student Breaks Into Registrar's Office, Changes Grades

I’ve used the same headline as the Student for this bit of news, which was originally announced through a notice posted by the administration last Friday. An unidentified student was able to access email accounts of five “members of the College community”, change their grades in Blackboard, and “broke in to the Registrar’s office” to change grades.

The original notice was probably mandated by federal privacy laws, because of the presumed access to other student records, and consequently most of the information bears on the two computer-related incidents. (The IT context of the notice makes it unclear whether the student actually gained physical access to the Registrar’s office in Converse, or merely accessed computer records—in that context, “breaking in” has both meanings—but the former is most likely.)

Using Blackboard, or any other “off-the-shelf” courseware system, involves security trade-offs for the College; it’s impossible for IT to know and mitigate all the potential routes by which a user of the system might achieve “elevated privileges,” but that risk may have been outweighed by other advantages offered by a widely-used courseware system such as Blackboard. It’s also possible that the email account compromises led to the student achieving elevated privileges in Blackboard; the notice doesn’t explain whether the email accounts belonged to students, faculty, or administrators. Email account compromises, unfortunately for security administrators, are relatively easy and may not even require significant skill on the part of the attacker—passwords might be learned by simple snooping or from a sticky-note on someone’s monitor. (A story about a College email account compromise by a student appeared in Prism magazine when I was still a student.) IT underlined this by urging students to follow their posted security best practices.

The other reason we believe the “break in” at the Registrar’s office to have been a physical break-in is the bare paragraph in the notice which indicates the (appropriate, we think) actions being taken by the College:

The student is no longer at the College. The College will pursue criminal and disciplinary actions against the student.

Parker Morse '96 | 10:16 PM | Campus | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Ezekiel Emanuel '79 joins Obama administration as health policy advisor

Ezekiel J. Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D. ‘79, is featured in a February 14 posting on the Chicago Sun-Times’ Washington politics blog. Dr. Emanuel, a breast oncologist, has begun serving as special advisor for health policy to the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. He will work in the Obama administration while continuing in his current post as Chair of the Department of Bioethics at The Clinical Center at NIH.

Dr. Emanuel received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and his Ph.D. in political theory from Harvard University. He is the brother of Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff.

Mina Suk '99 | 12:41 PM | Alumni | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Town of Amherst turns 250

If you thought that this past Friday the 13th was the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, Charles Darwin, and the NAACP only, you forgot one: the Town of Amherst, Massachusetts, founded 1759, turned 250.

Yesterday’s Springfield Republican reported some of President Marx’s remarks at the Atkins’-catered town celebration:

Keeping with the family theme Amherst College President Anthony W. Marx said “as a daughter of Amherst founders, we are proud to be part of the community.”

And he said in these dire financial times “we will need God’s help” and the government, but he also said “we need each other” to survive.

For more information on the year-long celebration, visit http://www.amherst250.org.

Mina Suk '99 | 12:41 PM | History | Town | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Professor Hunter in New York Times op-ed on solar hot water systems

Professor Larry Hunter, Stone Professor of Natural Sciences (Physics), advocates in a February 11 New York Times op-ed piece for the use of solar hot water heaters. Solar hot water systems, he argues, are more energy efficient and less expensive to install at home than are the more well-known photovoltaic solar panels. On the advantages of the comprehensive solar water-heating system, he writes:

Three 4-foot-by-8-foot panels (covering a total area of 96 square feet) can, in full sunlight, deliver about 4.5 kilowatts of heat — enough to heat about 50 percent to 80 percent of the water used by a family of four. The cost to install such a system, including the panels, a water storage tank, piping, a pump and control electronics is usually less than $10,000.

In comparison, a photovoltaic system that can produce 4.5 kilowatts in full sun requires 11 like-sized panels and costs about $40,000. Here in New England, where our annual average illumination is equivalent to only about three hours of direct sunlight per day and relatively high electricity rates (about 16 cents per kilowatt hour), either system can replace about 5,000 kilowatt hours of energy a year. A conventional coal-fired power plant delivering the same amount of energy would emit about five tons of carbon dioxide. But the hot water system pays for itself in 13 years, while the photovoltaic system takes about 50. In places with more sunlight like the Southwest, much more energy can be produced.

A federal tax credit would help jump-start consumer use of home solar water heaters, Hunter argues. He adds that it would also create a niche product market for which skilled but currently unemployed construction workers would fill a void.

Mina Suk '99 | 12:41 PM | Faculty | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Professor Sandweiss on her book "Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line"

Martha Sandweiss, Professor of American Studies and History at Amherst until 2008 and now Professor of History at Princeton University, has published a new book to great acclaim. Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line tells the story of the double life of Clarence King, a white geologist and Manhattan socialite who also passed as James Todd, a black Pullman porter and steelworker. He revealed the secret of his identity to his wife, a black woman named Ada Copeland, on his deathbed in 1901.

A review of Passing Strange appeared in the February 4 New York Times. Vanity Fair featured the book (with audio recording of Sandweiss reading a selection) in a February 6 posting on its Culture & Celebrity blog. Sandweiss also appeared on the February 11 broadcast of The Diane Rehm Show on NPR (click here to listen to the podcast).

Mina Suk '99 | 12:41 PM | Faculty | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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