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Above: Debate alumni returned in force to the campus in September for a celebration of one hundred years of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ debate. Here, alumni debaters rally round a debate icon.<\/p><\/div>Big Numbers from Double Zero<\/strong> “We are more crowded than we want or planned this fall,” President Harward told the campus community at the beginning of the semester. “But adjustments have been made to ensure a consistent ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ experience for all of our students.” Harward said that the winter enrollment will be lower to ease the crunch.<\/p>\n Housing was a key adjustment. The College created new beds in a variety of areas. For example, some Smith doubles became triples, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½-owned Chaplain’s House at 227 College Street (vacant with the departure last spring of Chaplain Wes Avram) was opened for student housing, and another College-owned residence was quickly renovated for about a dozen students.<\/p>\n Why is the entering class so large (some thirty-five more than projected)? Virginia Erskine Harrison ’63, associate dean of admissions, says the formula for predicting how many students will matriculate from the pool of admitted students — known as the “yield” — failed this time.<\/p>\n “More students than usual said ‘yes’ to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½,” Harrison said. “That translated into significantly more people.” It also means that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is a hot school for high-school seniors.<\/p>\n She added: “All colleges admit more people than they have room for, and rely on experience to determine how many will actually accept admission.” If fewer students than usual choose to matriculate, a college goes to its waiting list. If more than usual attend, a college finds space.<\/p>\n Size aside, the Class of 2000 is distinctive in many ways. Fifty percent of the class is from outside New England, the highest share ever. Other statistical tidbits gleaned from admissions data on the Class of ’00:<\/p>\n Debate Memories Cast Bright Light<\/strong> Among many returning alumni — familiar debate names like Vincent McKusick ’44 and Charles Radcliffe ’50, among many others — a common theme was reverence for the late Brooks Quimby ’18, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ debate coach for nearly forty years, from 1927 until 1967. “You know, I have to tell you: Brooks Quimby was a special person,” said Robert Rubinstein ’53, now an attorney in New York City. Norm Temple ’44, who once took over as director of debate when Quimby went on sabbatical, remembers attending the notorious “Quimby Institute.” “The Quimby Institute was something Brooks made up for his students,” said Temple. “Every debater had to debate against him — the `Institute’ — but of course the Institute was undefeated. Brooks was the timekeeper and the judge as well.” Temple added with a chuckle, “He would also rub his head and then flick his fingers as if to say `You had better be prepared’ before you went up against him.”<\/p>\n Elizabeth Gregory ’38, a retired pediatrician, said, “Brooks cared about his students very much. I have never met anyone any better than him.” Gregory said that her experience in debate at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ helped her in her career as a doctor. “Debate helped me to stand on my own two feet and helped me to talk in front of an audience without being scared or nervous.” When asked about being a female debater at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, she said, “I really did not recognize that I was a woman. I was a premed student, so I was used to being a woman in a man’s field, which was the same in debating.”<\/p>\n The student debaters listened to debates stories filled with the history that they had heard and read about for years. “Their stories were similar to our debates today. They talked about their debate partners, their topics — `Remember when we debated against so-and-so?’ It’s all the things we talk about today,” said Jason Hall ’97.<\/p>\n “All of us who attended the weekend came away with a renewed sense of this extraordinary tradition,” said debate coach Robert Branham, professor of rhetoric. “It’s wonderful for our current debaters to meet debate alumni. The achievements of these alumni — both in debate and beyond — give current students some idea of their own possibilities.”<\/p>\n For the student debaters, it was their first chance to meet and talk to the names they had heard so much about. Hall said the reception was “a good way to break the ice,” the start of a weekend filled with many celebratory events marking one hundred years of debate at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, including the publication of Branham’s illustrated debate history,Stanton’s Elm,<\/em> from which excerpts will be published in the winterÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n Odd couple: Chris Raffensperger ’98 and Renee Leduc ’98.<\/p><\/div>Strange Bedfellows<\/strong><\/p>\n He made the national news last summer, shaking hands in a lobster suit with the likes of Dan Quayle, James Baker, and Bob Dornan at the Republican convention.At the same time, she was getting pumped for another four years with Bill Clinton in the White House.<\/p>\n But ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students Christian Raffensperger ’98 and Renee Leduc ’98 say their love for each other transcends politics — for the most part.<\/p>\n “My attitude is `Dole in three months,'” Raffensperger said last summer. “She’s like, `It’s never going to happen, that would be horrible for the country.'”<\/p>\n Raffensperger, a history major, traveled to last summer’s Republican convention in San Diego as one of two aides to the Maine delegation, running errands and hobnobbing on the floor with the nation’s Republican bigwigs for four days. He spent the rest of the summer designing high-tech computer software for a San Francisco telecommunications firm.<\/p>\n Raffensperger, an Omaha, Nebraska, resident, even accompanied delegation chairman and party hard-liner Ken Cole to the ballot in a lobster suit, securing himself a place in national and local news coverage.<\/p>\n As he unwound from the whirlwind week, she was getting pumped up for the Democratic convention, which Leduc attended as one of Maine’s delegates. For Leduc, the trip culminated months of grass-roots party work. She and fellow ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ student David Lieber ’98 were elected to serve on the state platform committee, which drafts the party’s official position on various issues.<\/p>\n Two weeks before the state convention in May, at which the national delegates are elected, Leduc was informed that the chair of the committee would be absent, leaving her, the vice chair, to present the platform in front of two thousand fellow Democrats. There, she was elected a national delegate.<\/p>\n The Enfield, Connecticut, resident spent the summer as a guide at the state Marine Resources Aquarium in Boothbay. “I am so psyched up for Bill Clinton and all the Democratic candidates in the state of Maine.”<\/p>\n Raffensperger, the head of the College Republican on campus, and Leduc, leader of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Democrats, first met through their involvement in political activism.\u00a0The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Student<\/em> profiled their respective groups.<\/p>\n Both immersed in politics, they rarely lack a conversation topic. Despite their differing views, they say they avoid heated argument.<\/p>\n In fact, both consider discussion valuable because it forces them to examine and explain their views. Their discourse actually serves to strengthen their opposite political views, they said.<\/p>\n Reprinted courtesy of the <\/em>Lewiston Sun-Journal.<\/p>\n “It’s our version of Cheers,” says “Tiny” Tim, bouncer-bartender at the Blue Goose Tavern, a landmark for of-age ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students and alumni since the 1930s.<\/p><\/div>Another Round for the Blue Goose<\/strong> And for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students hoping to make this passage, Tiny (at six feet, 270 pounds, he is, of course, anything but) provides a formidable challenge. Don’t ever try to flash him an invalid form of identification. A practitioner of the tavern arts for thirteen years as both bouncer and bartender, Tiny can spot phony IDs a mile away and has confiscated 617 such fakes.<\/p>\n A criminal-justice major at the University of Maine, Tiny employs successful, if not particularly sophisticated, methods of separating twenty-one-year-old fish from underage minnows: He always holds the ID firmly in both hands so that upon discovery, an impersonator isn’t tempted to grab the card and run. Or he secures an ID in one beefy palm while using his other fist to investigate with a mag lite.<\/p>\n It’s just another weekend night at the Goose. Neon blazing as his backdrop, Tiny waits, a sentry perched atop his doorway stool, to inspect entering guests. “I have a photographic memory,” Tiny states matter-of-factly. Therefore, once he recognizes a younger customer’s face, he finds it unnecessary to “card” that visitor. “I don’t have to harass people every single time they come to the door,” he says. “The Goose is here for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students to come and enjoy themselves.”<\/p>\n Come Reunion each spring, returning ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ alumni flock to the Goose and “line up out the door,” says owner Mike Miller. “It’s huge. Beyond your imagination.”<\/p>\n Miller, somewhat of an absentee owner, leaves the day-to-day operation to general manager Scott Seguin. Instead of hanging around Sabbatus Street, the owner spends most of the year sailing on the South Seas. “Thanks to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College,” he added.<\/p>\n
\nThe late-summer process of finding beds for one of the largest student populations in recent history prompted some good quotes from housing officials. New housing coordinator Matt Arsenault ’96 toldThe ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Student<\/em> that his first few weeks on the job was “baptism by blowtorch.”This fall, the student body is about sixty more than projected. The causes include a large entering class (501 members), coupled with fewer upperclass students going on leave and an increase in students returning from leave.<\/p>\n\n
\nThe ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ debate program began its centennial celebration weekend, September 20-22, with a Friday afternoon reception for alumni and student debaters in the Muskie Archives Garden. The sun was shining and the mood was light as alumni gathered to reminisce with others and to catch up on ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ news from present debaters.<\/p>\n![\"[Photo:](\"http:\/\/abacus.bates.edu\/pubs\/mag\/96-Fall\/on-off.photo2.jpg\")
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\nWith half the tavern’s clientele drawn from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and the balance from community regulars, the Blue Goose Tavern on Sabbatus Street is “our version of ‘Cheers’ in Lewiston,” says Tiny Tim, the Goose’s bouncer-bartender for the last year. “Everyone gets along.”For more than sixty years — since October 1933, to be precise — ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students have made the Blue Goose a local touchstone, a rite of passage on their way through college.<\/p>\n
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Again Those College Rankings<\/strong><\/p>\n