The Springfield Republican, for example, yesterday reviewed a biography of Charles Swan Walker (Class of 1885, according to the Biographical Record). According to the article, Walker was “the only person ever to earn a doctorate of philosophy from Amherst College.”

But perhaps the strangest twist in Walker’s life occurred while he was a professor of mental science and chaplain at the Massachusetts Agriculture College, which was commonly known as Mass Aggie and later became the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. One day while giving a sermon at the school’s chapel, a student named Harlan Fisk Stone led a rush out of the chapel, Fatherley said during a recent interview. Walker tried to stop the students, but Stone hit Walker and successfully led the students out of the chapel.

Walker succeeded in having Stone expelled from the college, Fatherley said. Stone then went on to Amherst College, where he befriended Calvin Coolidge. The connection eventually led to Stone becoming chief justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

This is the first I’d read of Stone 1894 having spent time at Mass Aggie, but clearly meeting Coolidge 1895 was an important point in Stone’s life—and apparently it was Walker who precipitated that meeting, however indirectly.

Coolidge himself was the subject of a retrospective in the Rutland Herald last week written by Cyndy Bittinger, executive director of the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation. On the occasion of Coolidge’s 136th birthday (he was born July 4, 1872), Bittinger writes,

His mother gave birth to him in a simple dwelling attached to the store his father ran for the local farmers. Not many U.S. presidents come from such humble dwellings. …in this top-heavy, powerful, executive-run government, we expect only those who have come from well-connected, wealthy parents to run the gauntlet and succeed. You need a leg up, an advantage, a genealogy that places you among the elite. That is why the Coolidge story should resonate just as Obama’s now has become a best-seller on the New York Times book list.

Swanson, of Northborough, Massachusetts, was working at the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), a nonprofit organization that promotes educational programs around the world.

In an article in The Boston Globe, John M. Guilfoil writes that “[Swanson’s] co-workers and résumé paint a picture of a bright, young woman who loved international affairs and travel.”

The Washington Post covered the story as well, with this to say about Swanson’s work after Amherst:

Swanson had an internship in Washington last year at the Middle East Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. She graduated from Amherst College with a degree in Middle East history, according to the institute’s Web site. The site says she studied Arabic at the institute.

She remained in the city after that and began work in January as a program associate at the International Research and Exchanges Board […]

The organization released a statement saying: “The loss comes as a terrible shock to all of us here. She was a well loved employee and friend to all who knew her.”

Swanson is remembered on the websites of IREX and The Middle East Institute.

We offer our heartfelt condolences to her family and friends, and would appreciate hearing any memories or thoughts from those who knew her.

Update 11 July: The Washington Area Bicyclist Association placed a ghost bike for Swanson near the site of her death. Catherine Pfaffenroth ‘01 shared some photos of the memorial.

On Masinter’s to-do list: the College’s two steeples (Johnson Chapel and Stearns Steeple), the steam tunnels, and the (in)famous “Bunker.” We visited the steam tunnels two years ago with Physical Plant’s Aaron Hayden as our guide, but we have no doubt Masinter will produce prettier pictures than we were able to capture with our cell phone.

Catanella has two things that a lot of similar experts do not: the knowledge of basketball that comes with having played as a professional, and hands-on experience doing rigorous multivariate analysis on Wall Street. Following graduation from Amherst College in 1997, Catanella analyzed arena finance for professional teams, and valued publicly traded companies.

At Amherst he was both a player and later an assistant coach, and then played professionally for the German Bundesliga’s Cologne 99ers, where he also later served as the German team’s Assistant GM.

While earning his MBA at Duke in 2004 and 2005, Catanella assisted the men’s basketball teams, developing analytical tools and systems for Coach Krzyzewski’s staff. At the same time, Catanella interned for the 76ers’ front office.

The interview gives a sense of the mind-boggling array of statistics Catanella keeps track of and analyzes as the team sorts out potential draft picks:

[Q:] Do I sense that you are not even looking at the same sets of numbers for every prospect?

[A:]It depends on the position. And it can get very detailed.

We chart, essentially, every game that every draft prospect has played on video, and we track just about every category you can imagine.

According to the school district,

Knox Hill Academy was founded in 1849 by John Newton (1814 - 1893). Newton was born near Pittsburgh, Pa., and educated at Amherst College.

However, a quick look at the Biographical Record reveals no John Newton, and indeed, no Newtons at all early enough to have founded a school in 1849. The story is more than plausible—the country is liberally seeded with schools founded by early College graduates irradienting the terra—but seems to be missing a link. Can anyone shed some light on Mr. Newton and his educational history?

In the article, titled “America’s hottest investor,” Jon Birger lays out the reasons Heebner and his company have enjoyed unparalleled success in recent years.

Spend some time with Heebner, and it becomes clear why. His brain is wired differently. His ideas come faster, his focus is more intense, and his ability to sift through massive quantities of information and zero in on what matters is downright spooky. Pity the Salieris of the investing world who have to compete with this guy.

Heebner was featured in Fortune in 2006, as well, in an article we noted here at the time.

Thanks to Matt again for the tip.

Oh, and think about blogging for us! It is a fun way to stay connected to the College and help keep other alumni and memebers of our community informed of all the various happenings surrounding the Fairest College and its alumni.

Drop us a line at amerst@gmail.com to get involved.

Inside Higher Ed’s (IHE) Andy Guess filed a report on the Confessional websites that have been starting up at several campuses around the country. One of these sites, which are essentially open message boards to post anything that comes to one’s mind, is present on the Amherst campus.

Billed as a portal to “share thoughts, debate ideas and communicate … anonymously,” the Confessional sites have deteriorated into arenas for obscene, vitriolic, defamatory and libellous comments and gossip about topics such as the sexual proclivities and preferences of individual students, who are sometimes mentioned by name or described in such a thinly veiled way that their identities are clear to the reader. Although the site administrators apparently attempt to weed out such postings, it is clear that many are not caught.

The original Confessional site was the creation of an Oberlin student and after an uproar at that campus the participation was limited to those with an Oberlin e-mail or with access to a computer located on the campus. That step has proven to be a hollow remedy as the objectionable postings apparently continue.

Sadly, Amherst is not an outlier to this situation. Things got so bad on the Amherst version of the website that the Editorial Board at the Amherst Student used its regular space in a March issue to argue that the College’s administration should shut down the Amherst version of the website entirely.

IHE notes in its report that attorneys for the College are planning to contact the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office to discuss potential legal action.

This raises a number of questions that IHE’s reporting does not answer. First, the IHE article notes that the Oberlin Confessional was eventually restricted to students using campus computers or signing in with Oberlin e-mail addresses. If access to the Amherst version is limited in the same way it would seem to me that much of the key information about who is posting this material would be available to the College’s IT department.

Perhaps the College would like the Massachusetts AG to issue a subpoena to the administrators of the Amherst Confessional website to divulge which IP addresses or e-mail logins are posting what material, but unless I am missing something doesn’t the College already have access to pieces of this puzzle? Does the College need to engage law enforcement to conduct additional discovery, or is it utilizing the Massachusetts AG to relieve it from the alternative of monitoring communications of its own students?

To be clear, I am not being critical of such a strategy—I feel for longtime Dean of Students Ben Lieber, who ultimately has to deal with this—and most people can certainly appreciate the College taking care to ensure a proper approach to confront the issue, but I think it is fair to ask the College what information about usage of the site is already in its possession and control, via its own network usage data.

Students also need to realize that there is little First Amendment protection for such writings on the internet, and the College would be perfectly within its rights to suspend or expel the parties responsible for the defamatory writings. Future employers can also take action based on their view of the proceedings. Most will not write such behavior off as an innocent college prank.

For those of us who have been to law school in the last few years, the AutoAdmit.com lawsuit is a cautionary tale for those that like to participate on such websites. AutoAdmit.com (a.k.a. xoxohth.com) is a website directed at law students with similar problems as the Confessional sites, but a group of female law students allegedly aggrieved by several postings there took action and sued the administrators of the site (and are also seeking information regarding that site’s “anonymous” posters). While many legal scholars debated the merits of the lawsuit (the plaintiffs apparently have little recourse against the administrators who did not post the items in question), enough information about the lawsuit became public that one of the administrators, a University of Pennsylvania law student, had a prior job offer revoked by a large law firm after it learned of his association with the site. The argument that AutoAdmit provided a space for “free expression” clearly did not fly with that law firm’s managing partner.

Shutting down these sites (and others, like the Daily Jolt) is probably a futile response by the administration, since other websites would undoubtedly crop up to replace them. But I hope that Amherst students (and others using similar websites) will soon altogether disassociate themselves from engaging in such behavior. If any students get caught in association with the objectionable postings on the site, the national attention such online misbehavior is getting recently will mean those indiviudals will likely face a variety of serious repercussions with lasting effects.

Some of my classmates now living in New York City reported a Sabrina appearance in that city on Tuesday evening. Could someone send us a report and some photos? Leave a comment or contact us at amerst@gmail.com or dnardo@gmail.com … no questions asked!

The alternative title to this post could be “Why Brian, Parker and Dave are lucky to have been born in the ’70s” since it is clear we would have faced an even tougher challenge getting into Amherst had we been competing with the ever improving quality of recent applicant pools.

Katie Guthrie ‘11 of the Amherst Student filed a report that covered the key angles.

The headline statistics? The overall acceptance rate for the class of 2012 is a paltry 14.2%, while the regular decision acceptance rate was even lower: 12.5%. The average SAT is now over 1440. This year’s incoming class also contains more students of color and more international students.

While the growing population of 18yr old college applicants is certainly a factor in the increase in applications (many colleges are enjoying record applications), certainly credit must be given to the initiatives at the College and the leading position it has taken to regarding access to a top-quality college education.

The article also notes some other important factors. Namely, the College deliberately cut back on the number of students accepted this year, after last year’s surprisingly high yield.

It will be interesting to see how the pool fluctuates during the summer. College officials have anticipated that the lack early decision application options at Harvard and Princeton mean that the College has likely accepted students who will also be admitted to those institutions. That’s encouraging news for anxious waitlist members. Congratulations to all the new members of the Class of 2012!

As the Gazette put it,

Sabrina—or more appropriately, stealing Sabrina—has a long history at Amherst College.

Rebecca Binder ‘02 did some digging and found reports of some of the more legendary exploits, including the train-by-the-baseball-game incident in 1922, the hidden in a barn incident (starring future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Harlan Fiske Stone, class of 1894), and this lengthy Times article from 1911, titled “The Thirty Years’ War.” Binder reports that much more can be found in the Times archive by searching “Sabrina Amherst”.

The Gazette went on to quote a College spokesperson:

“We understand the students say they have the Sabrina,” said Caroline J. Hanna, Amherst College’s director of media relations. “We’re looking into it.”

A more direct, if somewhat less official, quote came from President Marx at the Senior Dinner, held Friday evening. According to Lawrence Hamblin ‘08, Marx said,

“Some group of you, in this room, have my nymph! And I want her back!”

Sabrina has been in the hands of the College administration for several decades, making occasional appearances at College events, but according to a note posted this morning on the Daily Jolt,

“Some time ago, a few of your fellow classmates crept into a bunker, hidden in the mountains around our valley, and absconded the beautiful goddess. We cannot, of course, disclose our identities just yet, nor can we display Sabrina publicly, for fear that the administrative forces of the College will work fervently to repossess her. (Although, really, it wouldn’t disappoint us if they recognize the fun of this tradition and let us off the hook…)”

The supposed statue liberators note that

“…as some of you may know, many years ago Sabrina was cruelly decapitated at the hands of pranksters among the Williams Ephs. Although her head was reattached by a subsequent Amherst class, the scars are still apparent, and her head is loosening once more. Therefore Sabrina will be traveling throughout the Northeast during senior week, visiting alums from ‘E classes, and posing with them in photos in exchange for a small donation toward the Sabrina Recapitation Fund. This summer we will use those funds to give Sabrina the healing treatment she deserves at the hands of a professional bronze craftsman.”

It’s also worth noting that, like any other college girl with topless photos floating around the internet, Sabrina now has a Facebook profile, where she lists among her “favorite books” both Passages of Time: Narratives in the History of Amherst College by Doug Wilson ‘62 and Chicken Soup for the Bronze Statuette’s Soul.

Parker reports that the Daily Hampshire Gazette has also posted a long obituary. Unfortunately, even online access to the obits there requires a paid subscription.

Certainly, there will be an outpouring of remembrances of Doug over the next few weeks. We welcome our readers to share their reflections here in the comments. All of us here offer our condolences to Doug’s family and friends.

UPDATE 5/7: The College has set up a website (password required) where members of the Amherst community can share memories about Doug. For those who are unable to view the page, here are two quick excerpts which convey the impact Doug had on our community:

“Doug was the kind of person we too often take for granted, and one whose absence will be sorely felt.” —Steve Vladeck ‘01

“He was a gentle, very smart, and loyal man. Our world is less rich with his passing.” —Professor Ron Rosbottom

UPDATE 5/9: The Globe’s obituary for Wilson is up, highlighting his time with the College, as well as the oft-mentioned fact that he was the first reporter to break the story of Nixon’s resignation in 1974, while reporting for the Providence Journal.

UPDATE 5/15: Wednesday’s Providence Journal, the paper Wilson worked for when he broke the Nixon story, published a laudatory column about Wilson’s newspaper days, “Almost famous for a day”.

From there, progress to the article by Michael Cieply in yesterday’s New York Times noting Julie & Julia’s production as part of the “next generation of chick flicks.” The article, “Wary Hollywood Plans More Chick Flicks (Hoping to Lure the Guys)”, calls the film:

…a complex exercise, … based on both the life of the cooking enthusiast Julia Child and the 2005 book of the same title by Julie Powell, who, stuck in place as an office temp as she approached 30, spent a year whipping up every recipe in Ms. Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.”

In fact, [the film is] rooted in a phenomenon — widely styled “chick lit” — that has swept the publishing world in the last decade. The books are written for, and mostly by, professional women in their 20s. The covers are often bright and fluffy, with amusing illustrations. And narrative is often rooted in the first person singular.

And, to top off the tour, Julie’s own reaction to the NYT piece, which, along with some pointed criticisms of both the label “chick lit” and the accompanying condescending tone, takes issue with the Times’ characterization of Child:

COOKING ENTHUSIAST?!!! Pardon my french, but what the F——?!