Clark Whelton ’59

Say Your Prayers and Take Your Chances — City Journal

Clark Whelton ’59 compared his recollections of the 1957–58 global influenza pandemic — which he experienced at �ֲ���ý firsthand — to what’s transpiring now. 

“Today, I look back and wonder if an oblivious America faced the 1957 plague with a kind of clueless folly,” writes Whelton, a former speechwriter for New York City mayors Edward Koch and Rudolph Giuliani.

“Why weren’t we more active in fighting this contagion? Could stricter quarantine procedures have reduced the rate of infection and lowered the death toll? In short, why weren’t we more afraid?”

Read the story:

• “” City Journal, March 13, 2020

Jenna Armstrong ’15

Duke medical student Jenna Armstrong named Gates-Cambridge scholar — Duke Today 

Duke University announced that Jenna Armstrong, �ֲ���ý ’15, won a Gates-Cambridge Scholarship, a prestigious award that funds the full cost of a degree at Cambridge University. 

Starting in October 2020, Armstrong will earn a doctorate in physiology, development, and neuroscience. She plans to study “human metabolic resilience in older individuals through the lens of mitochondrial function and malleability,” according to Duke — in other words, she’ll study aging, and how to ease its effects, at the cellular level. 

Armstrong majored in biological chemistry and mathematics at �ֲ���ý and was a rower all four years. 

Read the story:

• “,” Duke Today, Feb. 17, 2020

Mike Nelson ’06

Nelson eager to be another kid’s lighthouse — The Wanderer 

Southeastern Massachusetts’ The Wanderer reported that Mike Nelson ’06 was appointed superintendent of the Old Rochester Regional School District. When he takes the job on June 30, he will be the youngest superintendent in the state. 

Nelson, who studied politics at �ֲ���ý, always knew he wanted to work in public education, he told reporter Mick Colageo. He has served as director of student services and assistant superintendent in the same school district. 

“I really thought about ‘Why am I applying for this position?’” said Nelson, who is currently developing remote learning opportunities for the students who are staying home during the COVID-19 pandemic. During his interview for the post, “I shared comments about the analogy that educators can be lighthouses for children.

“I thought about how fortunate I was not only to have one lighthouse but many different lighthouses who were educators throughout my life. And I said, ‘That’s the reason why I believe I ended up interviewing for this position,’ because in some ways it helps me come full circle in terms of what people gave to me.” 

Read the story: 

• “,” The Wanderer, March 12, 2020

Katie Dobkowski 

Parasitic sushi worms have quietly been on the rise, study says — New York Post 

Hannah Frishberg of The New York Post covered a new study, co-authored by Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Katie Dobkowski, which found that the number of parasitic worms humans can ingest by eating raw or undercooked seafood is on the rise. 

Dobkowski worked on the paper, which studied the prevalence of Anisakis, or “herring worm,” as a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences at the University of Washington. 

While herring worms — which also infect other species — pose more of a danger for marine mammals, the parasites can cause symptoms of food poisoning for humans who eat contaminated sushi. 

People up and down the supply chain do their best to remove the worms before they make it to a diner’s plate, but the researchers recommend that, to be extra sure their roll doesn’t contain a little something extra, sushi lovers should inspect every bite for worms before chowing down. 

Read the story: 

• “,” New York Post, March 20, 2020

Rakey Drammeh ’14

‘Squash gave me the tools to pick and choose my way to exist in the world at large,’ says StreetSquash graduate Rakey — Squash Mad

Squash news site Squash Mad editor Alan Thatcher covered a dinner celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Squash and Education Alliance, a network that combines squash, academics, and college preparation for underresourced communities. 

During the event, Rakey Drammeh ’14 gave a “show-stopping speech” about her experience with the affiliated program StreetSquash. An environmental studies major, she was captain of the women’s squash team at �ֲ���ý and is now a software developer at Citibank. 

“SEA introduced me to a world that I never imagined knowing or being part of,” Drammeh said in her speech. “But more than that, it gave me the tools to pick and choose my way to exist in that world at large.”

Read the story: 

• “�Ę,” Squash Mad, Jan. 26, 2020

�ֲ���ý College

�ֲ���ý College breaks record for Fulbright award winners — Sun Journal 

The Lewiston Sun Journal shared the college’s February announcement of a historic year for the college’s Fulbright Student Award program.

With 24 young alumni receiving Fulbright-sponsored awards for teaching and research worldwide in 2019–20, �ֲ���ý is the No. 1 producer of Fulbright Student awards among U.S. liberal arts colleges. The college’s two dozen awards are the most ever going to a U.S. liberal arts college.

(Subsequent to this article, in March, the U.S. State Department due to the COVID-19 public health crisis.)

Read the story: 

• “,” Sun Journal, Feb. 10, 2020

Clifton Daggett Gray 

Insight: When Clarence Darrow came to Maine — Portland Press Herald 

For the Portland Press Herald, U.S. District Court Senior Judge D. Brock Hornby wrote about a curious episode for �ֲ���ý, Maine, and legal history: the time �ֲ���ý President Clifton Daggett Gray, after boasting that college debaters could best legendary attorney and orator Clarence Darrow, had to put his money where his mouth was. 

In 1927, Darrow, known as the fierce defense lawyer who litigated the “Scopes monkey trial,” came to Maine to debate Gray on the question, “What and why is man?” The debate would be a friendly clash of worldviews: Gray, who held a doctorate from the University of Chicago, was an ordained Baptist minister; Darrow was thoroughly agnostic. 

The two debated first in Boston and again two days later in Portland. Of the Boston contest, The New York Times wrote, “If the scholarly shield of Dr. Gray shone with a higher polish, the ironic lance of Mr. Darrow smote with a sharper point.”

And the Press Herald, on the debate in Portland: “The contest of wit and logic rested at the conclusion without decision.” 

Read the story: 

• “,” Portland Press Herald, Feb. 9, 2020

William Worthy ’42

William Worthy — a radical, intrepid journalist and activist — Amsterdam News 

Herb Boyd of Amsterdam News profiled William Worthy ’42, a journalist and activist whose dedication to his work led him to flout U.S. travel restrictions during the Cold War. 

Defying a U.S. ban on travel to China, Worthy made a reporting trip there in the late 1950s, after which the State Department declined to renew his passport. He later traveled to Cuba without a passport, was convicted for returning to the United States without one, and had the conviction overturned. His trip to Cuba was the subject of “The Ballad of William Worthy” by folksinger Phil Ochs. 

Boyd praised Worthy’s courage and ability to stand up against injustice no matter who perpetuated it, whether on the political right or left. “Worthy not only courageously lifted his voice for the oppressed, he did it no matter where he ventured — China, Cuba, Russia, or the four corners of the world,” he wrote. 

Read the story: 

• “,” Amsterdam News, Feb. 6, 2020

Francesco Duina 

Flyover 2020: What does patriotism mean? — MPR 

Professor of Sociology Francesco Duina joined Berkeley sociologist Arlie Hochschild and Kerri Miller of Minnesota Public Radio for a discussion about what patriotism means and how it will affect voters’ decisions in the next presidential election. 

Duina’s 2017 book, Broke and Patriotic, explores why the poorest Americans are the most patriotic. The radio discussion turned to a meaty question: whether patriotism requires an uncritical, love-it-or-leave-it attitude, or if a self-defined patriot can still be critical of U.S. policies.

Duina said many Americans’ ideas of patriotism combine contribution to the nation, whether through military or another type of service, with a sense of hope for the future.

“Those are essential elements of American patriotism,” he said during the discussion, an entry in Miller’s call-in “Flyover” program. But “some people feel that the ability to live up to the notion of giving back with hope is vanishing because of a confluence of various long-term racial trends, economic trends, political trends.” 

“Some people feel that you can be patriotic — but you’re up against insurmountable challenges.” 

Listen to the interview:

• “” MPR, Feb. 5, 2020��

Nathan Tefft 

New study suggests raising taxes on e-cigarettes could encourage traditional smoking — Forbes 

Kelly Phillips Erb of Forbes reported on a new study, co-authored by Associate Professor of Economics Nathan Tefft and funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, that found raising taxes on e-cigarettes can lead to a corresponding rise in consumption of traditional tobacco products. 

That’s a problem — when it comes to so-called sin taxes, which prices are raised in a bid to discourage bad behavior, you don’t want people to swap one behavior for another. 

“Because smoking is known to have substantial negative health impacts,” Tefft said in an interview with �ֲ���ýNews, “policymakers should be aware of this potential tradeoff when contemplating e-cigarette control policies.” 

Read the story: 

• “,” Forbes, Feb. 10, 2020

Cameron Hamilton ’12

Lessons from ‘Love Is Blind’ for socially distanced daters — NPR

Cameron Hamilton ’12 and wife Lauren Speed — who met on the breakout Netflix hit Love is Blind — spoke with NPR’s Michel Martin about their unique perspective on social distancing. 

The premise of Love is Blind is that contestants date without ever seeing each other’s faces, at least until they become engaged. Fan favorites Hamilton and Speed have been married for more than a year. 

The pair spoke with Martin about their own relationship and how to date at a distance — but some of Hamilton’s advice can apply to relationships more broadly, romantic or not. 

“I think the power of communication is key here and truly listening to what the other person has to say,” he said. “I mean, it’s easy to hear them, but to really focus in and take a beat and try to process what they’re saying and respond to that.” 

Read the story: 

• “,” NPR, March 22, 2020

See also: 

• “,” Bangor Daily News, Feb. 26, 2020

Jessica Anthony ’96

Political satire Enter the Aardvark is wonderfully weird — Time 

For Time, Annabel Gutterman reviewed Enter the Aardvark, a new novel by Jessica Anthony ’96, a lecturer in English at �ֲ���ý.

The novel starts with Alexander Paine Wilson, a young Republican politician, receiving a taxidermied aardvark on his doorstep. The story follows the politician as well as two friends in 19th-century England, all of whom have to hide the fact that they are gay.  

“T��dzܲ��� Enter the Aardvark is certainly satire, Anthony’s depiction of Wilson’s repressed sexuality cuts beneath the surface,” Gutterman wrote. 

“Her dissection of Wilson’s political beliefs, particularly his anti-abortion stance, isn’t just sharp commentary on polarization, identity, and power in the U.S. It’s also a poignant examination of what happens when we deny ourselves the ability to love and be loved.” 

Read the review: 

• “,” Time, March 18, 2020

Amy Bradfield Douglass

Questions loom over the future of police lineups — Phys.org 

Australia’s Flinders University announced that a review of studies on eyewitness identification in criminal cases resulted in revised and new recommendations for setting up identifications, in the hope of avoiding false or faulty evidence. 

Professor of Psychology Amy Bradfield Douglass was part of the team that modified four existing recommendations and created five more, including recording lineups on video and having police put in writing the reasons behind suspecting someone of a crime. 

The review led one of the co-authors, Flinders’ Neil Brewer, to write a paper advocating for getting rid of traditional lineups altogether. 

Read the story:

• “,” Phys.org, Feb. 25, 2020

Emily Kane

How to raise feminist boys — The Week

For The Week, Claire Gillespie wrote about her own, often-difficult, efforts to raise her two boys to accept and promote gender equality. 

Gillespie wrote that she makes a wide variety of toys, colors, and opportunities available to her children; with her husband, tries to model equality — and worries that sexism and gender roles are so entrenched in the world around her that harmful patterns will prevail anyway. 

Professor of Sociology Emily Kane had some words of wisdom for Gillespie. “When parents enforce gendered expectations, it is often out of fear their children (especially their sons) will be teased, ostracized, or otherwise excluded if they don’t fall into line with those expectations,” she said. 

“We can all help by avoiding judgment, and those small, everyday assumptions about what a kid will enjoy or be good at based on their gender.”

Read the story:

• “,” The Week, Feb. 27, 2020

Mary Wheelwright Mitchell, Class of 1869

The ‘unconquerable’ Mary Wheelwright Mitchell — Sun Journal 

Steve Collins of the Sun Journal profiled Mary Wheelwright Mitchell, �ֲ���ý’ first female graduate, whose refusal to leave the college helped keep it true to its founding commitment to coeducation. 

�ֲ���ý was the first Northeastern college to admit women, and for that reason surrounding colleges looked down on it. This kind of pressure and others caused the first female �ֲ���ý students to withdraw without degrees. Mitchell was the first to stay the course. 

�ֲ���ý founder and president Oren Cheney secured Mitchell a scholarship from the state of Maine to help her through her studies. Reflecting both her independent spirit and, perhaps, how dramatically a college education’s price point has changed in the ensuing 150 years, Mitchell famously refused to take the help. 

“I cannot take that, Mr. Cheney,” Mitchell said. “Give it to the brethren. I can take care of myself.”

Read the story: 

• “,” Sun Journal, March 1, 2020

Matt Charest ’20

After thousands of miles in the same pool, this Maine swimmer is moving on — 207, WCSH-TV

News Center Maine’s show 207 featured the uplifting story of Matt Charest ’20 of Lewiston, Maine, whose entire swimming career has been based in �ֲ���ý’ Tarbell pool. 

Head swim coach Peter Casares started giving Charest private lessons when Charest was 8 years old, and when he was old enough, he started attending swim camps at Tarbell. When it came time to go to college, it was only natural for Charest to keep swimming, and to swim for �ֲ���ý. 

“While no one keeps track of such things, it’s possible that in his 13 years of swimming in Lewiston he has spent more time in the college pool than any other human being,” reporter Rob Caldwell pointed out. 

“It’s definitely a home,” Charest told the news program. “I feel at home when I’m in the water.”

Read the story: 

• “,” 207, March 5, 2020

Rebecca Herzig 

Why women feel pressured to shave — CNN 

Rebecca Herzig, professor of gender and sexuality studies, talked to CNN style reporter Marianna Cerini for an in-depth piece about how hairlessness in women came to be a beauty ideal in the United States, and how society’s views of body hair vary by time period and geography. 

Herzig said that an early example of the United States’ current ideal of hairlessness is none other than Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man, which associates body hair with primitivity and regards hairlessness as “more evolved.” 

Now, American culture considers body hair, at least for women, “abject,” or worthy of disgust and shame. “It’s worth noting that those are ideas about cleanliness, contingent social norms, rather than about actually removing ‘dirt,’�ĝ Herzig told CNN. “Most hair removal practices tend to introduce new opportunities for abrasion and infection.” 

Read the story: 

• “,” CNN, March 3, 2020

Michael Rocque

Megan Rapinoe did not stomp on the flag. Here’s why people got outraged regardless — Newsweek

In Newsweek, Associate Professor of Sociology Michael Rocque argued that a recent Twitter flareup — in which World Cup-winning soccer player Megan Rapinoe was accused of stomping on the American flag, when she’d done no such thing — is part of a pattern of often-uninformed outrage on social media.

“The temptation to jump to outrage is especially strong on social media, where our virtual communities of the like-minded, created by choosing our ‘friends’ and whom to follow, reinforce our preconceptions and can block any facts that get in their way,” Rocque wrote.

Michael Rocque, associate professor of sociology. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Anger spreads more easily online than other emotions, and collective anger paradoxically leads to feelings of affirmation and unity, Rocque wrote. “We’re wired to crave that collective anger.”

So before taking part in an online mob, he suggested, wait a second to get the facts.

“When we see a meme, post or tweet that sparks that familiar tingle of outrage, take a minute to look into it, verify sources or, better yet, wait to see how the story unfolds once more information is gathered.”

Read the story:

• “,” Newsweek, July 12, 2019

Joyce White Vance ’82

Prosecutors pick their battles. I chose not to pursue an ICE raid in Alabama — The Washington Post

Best-known these days for her legal insights into special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and report on the 2016 elections, Joyce White Vance ’82 recently turned her attention to the massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid of food processing plants in Mississippi.

Former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama Joyce White Vance ’82 speaks at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Mueller Report on Capitol Hill in June. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

A former U.S. attorney for Alabama, Vance once declined to pursue an ICE raid in her state because she failed to “see how it would be a wise use of our resources to pull away from crimes that were affecting our community in visible ways to arrest people who, while they might have lacked legal immigration status, were going to work every day.”

Noting that it took months to plan the ICE raids, Vance wondered if there aren’t other prosecutions that might have “better served the community” than “removing parents from children — children that the parents were hard at work for, so they could help them grow into productive citizens.”

Read the story:

• “,” The Washington Post, Aug. 9, 2019

Scott Allen ’84

These doctors risked their careers to expose the dangers children face in immigrant family detention — CNN

For years, Drs. Scott Allen and Pamela McPherson did their work — inspecting facilities where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains immigrant families — quietly.

But in 2018, the two doctors, who are medical consultants for the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, became whistleblowers.

Since then, Allen and McPherson have appeared in myriad media outlets, including The New York Times, 60 Minutes, and The Washington Post, to call attention to the harm children suffer when confined, with or without parents, to detention facilities, such as the ICE centers at the Southwest U.S. border.

“Each passing day of continued detention of children — and no acknowledgment of the risk that we have reported — alarms me,” Dr. Scott Allen ’84 told CNN in May.

“The medical community is quite unified in opposition to the detention of children. Decades of research have shown that detention is harmful to their medical and physical health,” Allen told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in June.

For their work, Allen and McPherson, along with Scott Shuchart, received the 2019 Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling.

Read and watch:

• “,” CNN, May 23, 2019
• “,” The Washington Post, Dec. 19, 2018
• “,’�ĝ The New York Times, July 18, 2018

Stephanie Kelley-Romano

If the Democrats master this single strategy, they can defeat Trump in 2020 — Newsweek

Stephanie Kelley-Romano, associate professor of rhetoric, film, and screen studies, watched the second set of Democratic presidential primary debates in late July and concluded, in a Newsweek op-ed, that the candidates need to work on framing — defining the issues they’re talking about and the limits on their solutions.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano leads a “Television Criticism” class on March 6, 2019. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

For example, debate moderators often framed discussions of universal healthcare as “taking away” private insurance in favor of government-funded care. It was only toward the end of these discussions that several candidates argued that universal healthcare would be a gain, not a loss.

“In the lead-up to 2020, Democrats must remember to take control of the framing of issues early, so they can focus on what it is they are trying to explain and why,” Kelley-Romano wrote.

Read the story:

• “,” Newsweek, Aug. 1, 2019

Dan Mills

An Artist’s Maps of Imperialism and Greed — Hyperallergic

Carl Little reviewed in��art news site Hyperallergic an exhibit at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art by Dan Mills, director of the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art.

Recently named by Maine magazine as one of 50 Mainers who are “creating a brighter future for the state,” Mills creates “collaged maps,” displays of numbers related to war and colonialism overlaid on vintage maps.

“Mills delves into the devastating numbers and then converts them into chaotically beautiful cartographies,” wrote Little, a well-known Maine art critic and historian. “The central paradox of his map pieces is that, even as they record the woes of the world, they are stunning and seductive. The visuals engage; the numbers appall.”

Read the story:

• “,” Hyperallergic, Aug. 10, 2019

Rebecca Fraser-Thill

The five biggest myths about meaningful work — Forbes

Backed up by a recent study by �ֲ���ý College and Gallup on purposeful work, Rebecca Fraser-Thill explained in Forbes that meaning in work and a meaningful life go hand in hand.

Rebecca Fraser-Thill is the director of faculty engagement and outreach at �ֲ���ý’ Center for Purposeful Work and a lecturer in psychology. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Dispelling several myths, Fraser-Thill, a visiting instructor of psychology and the director of faculty engagement and outreach at �ֲ���ý’ Center for Purposeful Work, argued that meaningful work is subjective and individual — it does not have to be a helping profession, high status, low paying, or even different from what you’re doing now.

“Whether it’s simply asking a co-worker about her weekend or bringing a smile to customers in a coffee house, any act that makes us feel more connected to others also makes our work — and our lives — more meaningful,” she wrote.

Read the story:

• “,” Forbes, Aug. 7, 2019

John A. Elsesser ’80

Conversation with: John Elsesser — Journal Inquirer

Tim Leininger of the Manchester, Conn., Journal Inquirer sat down with John A. Elsesser ’80, who has been the town manager of Coventry, Conn., for more than three decades.

Elsesser, who over 30 years has improved Coventry’s trash and sewer systems as well as its school and recreation programs, mused that he took to local government, in part, because of his upbringing, as the son of a Baptist minister.

“We always had company over,” he told Leininger. “We were taught that you should do good for others, try to make an impact. There was a lot of pressure for me to become a minister, me and my brother and sisters actually. None of us did, but I think the issue of trying to make a positive difference was the core of that.”

Read the story:

• “,” Journal Inquirer, Aug. 3, 2019

Sarah Strong

Across space and time: translating Night on the Galactic Railroad — Metropolis

Kenji Miyazawa’s masterpiece Night on the Galactic Railroad is exceedingly difficult to translate, wrote Eric Margolis of English-language Japanese magazine Metropolis. The novel, about a lonely Italian boy who rides to heaven on a magical train, contains surreal imagery and sound effects, made-up words, and regional dialect.

In taking on the task of translation in 1991, Sarah Strong, who is now professor emerita of Japanese language and literature, sought to represent in English the emotions of reading the novel in Japanese.

“If something was weird, I wanted the reader to think, ‘That’s weird,’�ĝ Strong told Margolis. “What was funny? What was happy? What was sad? I needed to get as close as I could to really understanding the writing.”

Read the story:

• “,” Metropolis, Aug. 2, 2019

Stephanie Wade and Megan Guynes ’11

River story workshop held in Lewiston — Sun Journal

In early August, Stephanie Wade, assistant director of Writing at �ֲ���ý, ran a writing workshop at Tree Street Youth through the Androscoggin Land Trust.

Children at the youth center went fishing in the morning, then came back to write a story about their experiences, which Lewiston Sun Journal photographer Daryn Slover documented. Also on hand was Megan Guynes ’11, program director at Tree Street Youth.

See the photos:

• “,” Sun Journal, Aug. 1, 2019

Emily Kane

Winners overlook rigged games’ lack of fairness, study finds — Associated Press

For context on a Cornell study about winning and fairness, Associated Press reporter Seth Borenstein turned to Professor of Sociology Emily Kane.

In the study, nearly 1,000 people played a card came in which winners could throw out their worst cards and take other players’ best cards. The winners attributed their winning to talent and only acknowledged the unfairness of the game after they were allowed to exchange cards a second time.

The study “tells us something about privilege and about society,” Kane told Borenstein. “It reminds us how powerful perceptions are — it’s not just what is happening that matters, it’s often more a matter of what we think is happening,”

Read the story:

• “,” Associated Press, July 17, 2019

Mara Tieken

Despite West Virginia education reform, the extraction of rural youth to continue — The Register-Herald

Associate professor of education and rural education expert Mara Tieken spoke with reporter Erin Beck of West Virginia’s Register Herald about the state’s struggle to both promote college education and keep young people in the state.

Associate Professor of Education Mara Tieken teaches “Community Organizing for Social Justice” in May 2018. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Tieken said that few high school graduates in West Virginia are getting college degrees — there aren’t a lot of jobs in rural areas that require them, even as traditional jobs like coal mining are declining.

“If we’re really trying to support kids to go to college, we also need to make sure that there are jobs in rural places that can use that college education,” Tieken said.

Read the story:

• “,” The Register-Herald, Jul. 14, 2019

Karl Alexander ’12

Getting Bike Share Right Is a Balancing Act — U.S. 1

Karl Alexander ’12 spoke with Princeton, N.J., newspaper U.S. 1 about how bike-sharing companies can establish themselves responsibly in communities.

Alexander, marketing manager for Zagster, told reporter Diccon Hyatt that the bike-sharing company tries to move into places — like Princeton — that will already be receptive to more bicycles, and promote bike-friendliness from there.

“You have to take the time to look at what works best for the community, whether that’s bikes or scooters, or if it is something else entirely, like increasing walkability,” he said. “You have to think before you act. You’ll probably be better off in the long run.”

Read the story:

• “,” U.S. 1, July 10, 2019

Two years ago, as part of a sociology class on power and inequality, Abby Westberry ’19 helped map the locations of shelters and other services for people experiencing homelessness in the Lewiston-Auburn area. In so doing, Westberry learned of a group not often included in discussions about homelessness: those who live for months or even years in motels.

The motels tend to be two or three miles away from the Twin Cities’ downtowns — outside the range of public transportation, and a long walk for someone wanting to get to a housing office or jobs center.

Westberry learned that “individuals in motels struggled to access these services based on their physical isolation,” she says.

She has just completed her senior honors thesis, “�ĘBefore its Smell Became Me’: Motel Residency and the Politics of Belonging,” on the topic of motel residency and its connection to housing insecurity.

Sociology major Abby Westberry ’19 of Readfield, Maine, poses on the outskirts of Lewiston. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

She’s one of the very first academic researchers to tackle the subject.

“She’s onto something that’s received very little attention in the academic literature,” says Professor of Sociology Emily Kane, who taught the original class on power and inequality and who was Westberry’s thesis adviser.

American motels emerged in the mid-20th century as inexpensive and convenient accommodations for motorists. With no background checks or upfront costs (like a security deposit) for customers, they often become the last resort for people who can’t afford to rent an apartment, or whose eviction histories or criminal records make them ineligible for other housing.

News outlets like the and have documented the lives of motel residents. The Florida Project, a feature film about a child living in a rundown motel near the opulence of Disney World, won a variety of accolades.

But when Westberry looked for scholarly research on long-term motel residency, she found relatively little — just one study on how motel residents access food, and a nonfiction book, Exiled in America, on the lives of a single motel’s occupants. (Westberry will defend her thesis in front of a panel that includes that book’s author, Kent State sociology professor Christopher Dum.)

Undeterred, this year Westberry interviewed more than a dozen residents of several motels in Lewiston-Auburn, as well as people who work at service providers like shelters, legal firms, and prisoner reentry groups. She used a method called community-based research, in which community partners, such as service providers, guide the framing of the research project.

Westberry has had plenty of opportunities for community-engaged learning and research. After volunteering in local schools through the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, she took several community-engaged courses. This summer, she received a Ruggles Fellowship to support her research on motels.

“Research doesn’t matter if it’s not put to good use,” she says. “You should make it meaningful to people’s lives. When you actually go and ask people what they need, not only do you find a lot of subjects that need to be researched, that require academic attention, but you also get knowledge that meaningfully helps those communities — not necessarily coming from me, but coming from community partners.”

Professor of Sociology Emily Kane, Westberry’s thesis adviser. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

After interviewing the motel residents, Westberry took care to maintain confidentiality by using pseudonyms, omitting mention of illegal activity involving the interviewees, and combining the actual motels into one fictional establishment, Valleyview.

By talking to the residents of Valleyview about how they came to live in the motel, their positive and negative experiences, and their own recommendations for policy changes, Westberry concluded that motel residency reinforces housing instability, though the residents support each other and form strong communities.

Motel life is inherently isolating, Westberry found. Valleyview is miles away from town, along roads without sidewalks. If a resident doesn’t have a car, holding down a job, attending a community event, or visiting a social service provider means walking for hours.

A motel room generally can’t be a mailing address, which means residents have to take extra steps to do things like receive mail, sign up for services, or vote. The rooms themselves might have a microwave but no other cooking facilities, so residents’ only option is processed foods. Often several people share a small space, fraying tempers.

Paradoxically, even though paying for a motel room from month to month would cost less over the course of a year, some residents can only afford to pay a week at a time. “They can’t build up their money, so they end up paying more overall just because they don’t have the saved capital,” Westberry says.

Gaps in social services can make it difficult to move out of a motel. Motel residency doesn’t fall under the definition of homelessness that many funding agencies use, meaning residents can’t access the services that receive state and federal funding — or they technically make too much money to qualify for income-based programs.

Of course, motel residents themselves already know this, as do some of the social service providers who work with them. Janice Lara-Hewey, a social worker at Catholic Charities Maine, used to run a homeless outreach program that, at times, included motel residents.

Lara-Hewey has seen the same realities that Westberry outlined in her thesis — indeed, she told Westberry about some of them: The nearest grocery store might also be the most expensive, you might have to lug a load of laundry to the laundromat without a car, or you might miss an appointment with a social service agency because of another emergency.

But Lara-Hewey points out that those challenges are not unique to motel residents, and the same systems that lead to motel residency — things like skyrocketing housing costs, inadequate funding for public housing and social services, lack of access to good food — also lead to people living in shelters and cars, or veterans facing homelessness, or college students not being able to find adequate food.

“It’s not just about people who are in motels,” she says. “It’s about people in general, and people who are struggling, and the importance of all of us being kind and compassionate, and understanding that, for most of us, we’re one emergency away from being in the same boat.”

Some residents had felony records or sex offender status that made them ineligible for public housing.

Despite the difficulties, Westberry found that people in motels form strong friendships and networks of support, ranging from giving each other rides into town to lending a microwave or money in a pinch.

“You saw that particularly among members of the community who were recently incarcerated, where they formed a lot of support networks amongst each other to work through all of the vast changes they were experiencing,” she said.

Westberry hopes to show the thesis to the community partners she interviewed and worked with, in order to influence future policies. She asked residents what local services could do to help them specifically, to “make sure recommendations and solutions we’re proposing toward community issues derive from the needs of individuals affected,” she said.

Solutions that help long-term motel residents could include investing in more public housing, expanding public transportation to reach motels, broadening definitions of homelessness so that motel residents are eligible for more programs, and modifying tenancy rules so motel residents have greater protections against removal.

“I wanted something that wouldn’t just sit on the shelf at the end of the day and molder away,” Westberry said. “I want something that’s derived from a community-based need and seeking to address community issues. I do think that that’s a really valuable way to conduct research.”

“They cancel classes for a reason,” Britiny Lee ’19 says of the annual �ֲ���ý Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance.

The reason is that the observance is packed with a full schedule of talks, film screenings, performances, and workshops that examine contemporary human issues, from the nation as a whole to right here on campus.

This year’s theme, “Lifting Every Voice: Intersectionality and Activism,” encourages the community to look at ways racism intersects with other forms of oppression — and search together for solutions.

Watch Britiny Lee ’19 explain the variety of events and opportunities to learn at the �ֲ���ý MLK Day observance.��

Lee, a member of the MLK Day Planning Committee, says the day is a “great chance for you to go and address issues that aren’t talked about every day but that are problems on this campus, that are problems in this world — that people are accustomed to brushing over, because it hurts.”

For others, MLK Day is chance to understand the experiences and challenges that people face due to racism and other forms of oppression.

Watch students Britiny Lee ’19 and Kyle Larry ’21, Director of Compensation and Performance Melani McGuire, Assistant Professor of Sociology Michael Rocque, Associate Professor of Philosophy Susan Stark, and Professor of Sociology Emily Kane explain the value of going to MLK Day events.

“I’m able to get out of my space— my white, privileged space��— and to be able to learn about issues that people of color are having,” says Melani McGuire, a member of the MLK Day Planning Committee who is the director of compensation and performance in the Office of Human Resources.

“As a white privileged person, we’re very protected from learning that information. And it’s an opportunity to find out and understand the challenges of the people we live with.”

Says Lee, “Whatever your race is, whatever way you identify, there’s something in it for everyone.”

Well-educated elites are no strangers to white supremacy — The Washington Post

After the violence in Charlottesville, �ֲ���ý faculty lecturer Christopher Petrella ’06 saying that our conventional wisdom that “it’s impossible to be both a white supremacist and a well-educated white American” is “both dangerous and historically inaccurate.”

In fact, he says, white supremacy has “not gestated on the fringes of American politics” but “flourished as a social movement grounded in respectability politics and led by elites.”

Christopher Petrella ’06 makes a point during a meeting of the college’s Justice and Equity Reading Group on Sept. 13, 2017. Petrella, faculty lecturer and associate director of programs for the Office of Equity and Diversity, is the group organizer. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Believing otherwise “allows middle-class and college-educated white Americans to escape responsibility for extirpating this stain on our society.”

Petrella, who is also an associate director of programs in the Office of Equity and Diversity at �ֲ���ý, is completing his first book, on the history of white supremacy in 20th-century New England.

Social activism thrives in Maine’s fine art world — Portland Monthly

For , art critic Dan Kany interviews several Maine “art agitators,” including �ֲ���ý Museum of Art Director Dan Mills, who “represent the range and reality of Maine artists who dare to disturb, incite, and stir social engagement.”

Mills, who co-curated the first exhibition of Saudi contemporary art in New England, Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia in Lewiston, is also an artist whose work has been exhibited in leading galleries in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Mills’ “large-scale paintings on maps….use nuanced visual systems to redirect and provoke deeper understanding of demographic and map-related data,” Kany says.

Mills says that art “is only one facet or tool” for social change. “Unless the art rises to being culturally embraced beyond the art world and covered in the media, its scope is limited.”

Dan Mills’ painting “Current Wars and Conflicts Killed by Continent, Book 02,” ink, watercolor, and gouache on atlas, 15 1/4 x 22 1/2 x 2 inches.

Retiring �ֲ���ý Dance Festival director Faure “put Maine on the map” — Portland Press Herald

Laura Faure, who retires Nov. 30 after directing the �ֲ���ý Dance Festival for 30 of its 35 years, is known as “a fierce advocate for choreographers and dance in its many forms,” said Aimee Petrin, executive and artistic director at Portland Ovations.

Faure, who was profiled by , said that the “life of a dancer is a tough life, and what we offer is support and a safe space.” She added, “We support artists through the arc of their career, and I am so proud of that.”

Retiring �ֲ���ý Dance Festival Director Laura Faure poses with noted South African dancer and choreographer Vincent Mantsoe during one of her visits to Africa. Mantsoe has taken part several times in the festival’s International Visiting Artists Program. (�ֲ���ý Dance Festival)

Keyes said that Faure “helped establish the festival as a destination for dancers and choreographers to refine, perfect and expand their skills, establish new work, and experiment with ideas and collaborations.”

“We have created an environment that didn’t exist in the dance world and that is based in the democratic and egalitarian model that is �ֲ���ý College,” Faure said.

Faure will be succeeded by Shoshona Currier, who began her work in August.

Shaw’s veterinary health tech firm secures $223 million investment — Portland Press Herald

Vets First Choice of Portland, founded by CEO Ben Shaw ’00, received a $223 million investment in July that will “accelerate the company’s growth and hiring, launch new services and begin a global expansion effort into Europe and Asia,” according to .

Father and son entrepreneurs David Shaw and Ben Shaw ’00 consult before their May 5 talk, “Adventures in Business and Social Entrepreneurship,” part of the spring’s “Purposeful Work: Voices in Entrepreneurship” series. David Shaw returned to �ֲ���ý at Commencement to receive an honorary degree. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“The venture capital funding represents the largest sum invested at one time in a privately held Maine company in at least two decades, and possibly ever,” Anderson reported.

Vets First Choice offers e-commerce pharmaceutical services to veterinary clinics.

Also in July, Shaw was recognized by Ernst & Young as a .

Atomic physicists will soon make ultracold states of matter on the space station — Science

When NASA’s $70 million Cold Atom Laboratory arrives at the International Space Station in early 2018, it will carry out a select few research experiments, including one designed by Associate Professor of Physics Nathan Lundblad.

In its Sept. 8 story, Science reporter Adrian Cho described a few of the projects, , noting that the Cold Atom Laboratory will “take advantage of weightlessness to attain record-low temperatures and break ground for ambitious studies of quantum mechanics and gravity.”

Physics major Dan Paseltiner ’16 narrates this short film about the �ֲ���ý experiment that will be aboard the Cold Atom Laboratory.

Weightlessness, plus the lab’s near-absolute-zero temperature, will “produce a long-predicted state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate, in which the atoms shed their individual identities and crowd en masse into a single quantum wave.”

Cho said that Lundblad’s experiment hopes to create “hollow shells of BECs,” like bubbles, something “that gravity squashes on Earth.” If successful, the shells might allow researchers “to probe the wave nature of the BEC in a new way.”

The other experiments were designed by scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the universities of Colorado, Michigan, Rochester, Virginia, and California at Berkeley.

Commentary on why parents shouldn’t be told the sex of their fetus — Journal of Medical Ethics

Professor of Sociology Emily Kane, the author of The Gender Trap: Parents and the Pitfalls of Raising Boys and Girls, joined a sociological discussion about the common practice of parents learning the sex of their unborn child.

In an article published last year in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Tamara Kayali Browne of the Australian National University argued that .

Disclosure of the sex, she said, invariably leads parents to anticipate a child’s gender. Since “the conflation of sex with gender is implicit” when the sex of a fetus is disclosed, “it may be more accurate to refer to [disclosure] as misinformation.”

Professor of Sociology Emily Kane delivers her Convocation address, “Summer Posts, Fall Possibilities,” on Sept. 5, 2017 (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In , she said that while other experts can weigh in on the feasibility of withholding such information, she agrees with Browne that both child and society would benefit by postponing “the gendered anticipation” that prenatal sex information encourages.

Given what we now know about the vast difference between gender and sex, postponing might “chip away productively at the vast network of social processes that constrain children and conflate sex with gender.”

Harvard names new diversity dean — The Harvard Crimson

Harvard Dean of Students Katherine G. O’Dair announced the appointment of Roland Davis ’92 as associate dean for diversity and inclusion, on Aug. 31.

Roland Davis ’92 is the new associate dean for diversity and inclusion at Harvard.

Davis “brings to Harvard a deep and nuanced understanding of the social, cultural, and psychological factors that impact communities around the issues of diversity and inclusion,” she wrote.

Davis’ appointment, the Crimson said, “coincides with the implementation of…penalties on members of single-gender social organizations,” such as barring members of these groups from “campus leadership positions, athletic team captaincies, and certain prestigious fellowships.”

A former dean in Student Affairs at �ֲ���ý, Davis served as the college’s founding director of the Office of Intercultural Education from 2010 to 2012.

Building products that people want to use — The Silicon Review

In its review of the 10 fastest-growing software companies, , a software engineering firm co-founded by Ben Schippers ’04.

The Review said that in the “ocean” of apps that exists today, Schipper’s company “is generating its mark by building thoughtful products” that “people want to use.”

Ben Schippers ’04 is co-founder of the Brooklyn-based software engineering firm HappyFunCorp. (Phyllis Graber Jensen)

One of HappyFunCorp’s recent products was an app allowing onto TV-based platforms, including Apple TV.

Portland’s restaurant�� boom reflects the “simplicity of living here, and honoring individual ingredients” — American Way Magazine

Portland, Maine, is home to 672 dining establishments, according to , “giving it a human-to-restaurant ratio of roughly 96-to-1,” which is lower than “almost every other city in America (San Francisco can make a similar claim).”

For insights on the boom, writer Alexandra Hall turned to award-winning restaurateur Andrew Taylor ’03, who said that it’s about the “simplicity of living here, and honoring individual ingredients.” He said, “People here are averse to big: big corporations, big restaurants.”

Taylor and Mike Wiley are chef/co-owners, with their manager, Arlin Smith, of Eventide Oyster Co., The Honey Paw, and Hugo’s. The pair won a , considered an Oscar of the food world.

James Beard winner Andrew Taylor ’03 poses at his restaurant Eventide with Matthew Moretti ’06, president of Bangs Island Mussels and Wild Ocean Aquaculture, on Sept. 26 2016. Bangs mussels are featured at Eventide and exemplify Taylor’s commitment to the local food economy. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý college).

Preparing for the football season and for what’s ahead after graduation — WMTV-TV

WMTV-TV sports anchor Travis Lee , a chemistry major from Cumberland Center, Maine, who plans to enter the medical field after graduation.

Over the summer, Rasch traveled to Haiti with International Medical Relief to “get involved in some sort of medical experience outside the U.S. in a culture that I’m not used to.”

Rasch says that football, specifically a lineman’s job to communicate with teammates during “drastically changing circumstances,” will help him down the road. “I am able to communicate with people in a large group and help get people on the same page.”

“Whatever I do for a living, I want to make sure that it has a good deal of purpose. That way I can dedicate myself fully to it.”

Text of the 2017 Convocation address, “Summer Posts, Fall Possibilities,” by Professor of Sociology Emily Kane, delivered on Sept. 5:

Good morning everybody. It’s an honor to be here, to welcome new students to the college and to the new academic year, to welcome the brand new faculty members joining us today, and to welcome back returning students, faculty, and staff.

I know all of you out there in the Class of 2021 and the transfer students from other class years have heard a chorus of welcomes lately. I hope the one I’m about to offer can add a little bit of a new angle. So here’s what I’m going to do- to get started, I’ll tell you about just seven of the many posts that have shown up on my social media feed and in my e-mail over the summer.

• First, a fellow sociologist shared a blog post she wrote that has 14,000 likes on Facebook, with 21 tips for the incoming college Class of 2021. They’re great tips, I’d love to read them all to you right now, but I’m headed somewhere else with these anecdotes, so please just bear with me for a bit.
• I also had beautiful summertime photographs come my way, from someone with a remarkable eye; she sent close-ups of freshly picked strawberries and haunting images of pathways through the deep woods, composed to draw the viewer into an appreciation of the vibrancy of the world around us.
• In another post, an activist environmental writer sent news of her recent invitation to give a TED talk about the toxic legacy of plastics, sharing the excitement and also the fear inspired by the chance to engage such a critical public health issue both live and for a potentially endless digital audience.
• I had an update from a talented writer, who told me about some very difficult life questions he’s been struggling with, and their intersections with long conversations he and I have had in the past; this e-mail brought me to tears through the honesty, vulnerability, and piercing insight of the writing.
• I also heard from a scholar-activist who studies political violence, who asked me to contribute to a bank of resources to help faculty advocate for undocumented students at this time of alarming changes to US policy, a resource bank they updated again in August in the aftermath of white supremacist violence in Charlottesville.
• Another post included adorable pictures of a 3-year-old throwing out a pitch and high-fiving Slugger the mascot at a Portland Sea Dogs minor league baseball game, just one of many amusing summer adventures for this special kiddo’s family.
• And the final one I’ll share this morning is an update I got about a fellow sociologist’s keynote address at a conference promoting equity in the construction trades, focused on how to expand inclusion for women, people of color and LGBTQ workers in jobs that pay a sustainable wage.

So why am I listing all of these things off? You might wonder if maybe I just grabbed some random Facebook posts and e-mails to get out of coming up with something to say to you this morning.

But I’ve got a reason, I promise — all of these summer updates have a connection to everyone here, because everything I listed came from former students who graduated at least five years ago, and some as far as 20 or more years back. All of them are people whose senior thesis I advised, all of them took multiple courses of mine, and all of them started college as strangers to me.

For whatever reason, they picked a course I happened to teach. A few of you students out there will still be in touch with me 5 or 10 or 20-plus years from now, and whoever you are, I look forward to meeting you soon. But more importantly, I hope all of you will be in touch with one or more of your �ֲ���ý professors for years to come.

That’s one of the joys of working here: Every year brings a new group of strangers with fresh energy and fresh ideas to our campus.

Every faculty member sitting out there with you has their own stories of former students with whom they’ve developed lasting relationships, connections forged in learning together and sharing a passion for a particular set of topics and commitments in the world. And like me, all of those other professors got started on forming those relationships by watching strangers arrive on campus as new students. Whether you are a professor or a student, right here, sitting within 10 or 20 yards of you, are strangers who will eventually become very special to you.

That’s one of the joys of working here: Every year brings a new group of strangers with fresh energy and fresh ideas to our campus. And here we are now, coming together on the day before classes begin for the new academic year, constituting a refreshed and renewed �ֲ���ý because of everything that you bring with you. Your energy and insights, your talents and life experiences, bring us all a world of new possibilities.

Over the summer, while I was enjoying those updates from inspiring former students (and there were many, many more beyond those I shared), you were getting ready to come join us here on campus. And of course one task in that summer prep was to pick out the courses you wanted to take this fall. I bet you pored through the options pretty carefully, and maybe you thought about the professor, but I think it’s more likely you thought about the topics of those courses, each of you picking your own unique combination of subjects you wanted to explore as part of your broad liberal arts education.

As you were picking out those courses, we were busy back here too. �ֲ���ý professors were researching in our labs, creating in our studios, advocating with organizations promoting the public good, gathering evidence in archives or in the field, crunching numbers, writing articles and books, and pursuing all sorts of ideas and action in the many fields we are so passionate about. We were also preparing courses, our paths beginning to cross with yours as we watched members of the incoming class pop up on our online enrollment lists. But you were just names, strangers with whom we would soon share our passion for those many fields.

Professor of Sociology Emily Kane gestures while delivering the Convocation Address on the Historic Quad on Sept. 5, 2017. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

So now it’s time for all of that to really unfold. Throughout move-in and Orientation, I know that you new students have met some of the amazing staff members with whom you’ll also develop transformative relationships. From Dining Services and Facility Services to the Student Affairs staff and the Registrar’s office, from the Harward Center to the Office of Intercultural Education, from Athletics to the College Store and to so many more, these people will be part of your journey at �ֲ���ý, and you will become part of theirs.

You’ve taken a walking tour around Lewiston, and I hope all of you will continue to enjoy the rich history, striking architecture, many cultures and faiths, activities, shops, and restaurants, as well as the natural beauty that your community has to offer. This is your home now in many ways, and you should get out there and get to know it if you aren’t already from right nearby. And for some of you, I know from long experience that you’ll build some of the most transformative relationships of all by getting even more deeply involved in this community: by working with, learning from, and living alongside the many local community members you’ll meet and the many local community initiatives with which you’ll participate.

We’re also eager to see how you engage and transform our campus with your fresh energy and perspectives.

But my main focus this morning is the faculty angle on all of this, so I especially want to emphasize new relationships with the professors you meet in your courses��— the First-Year Seminar that has already met, and the other courses that begin tomorrow and Thursday. Maybe already, maybe tomorrow, but definitely over time, you’ll begin to find the particular faculty members with whom you’ll forge those especially deep bonds. I hope you’re eager to get into the classroom, to get started learning with and from your new professors. And we’re eager for that too.

We’re also eager to see how you engage and transform our campus with your fresh energy and perspectives, joining with classmates who’ve been here longer to keep pushing for all that �ֲ���ý College aspires to be. You’ll throw yourselves into local politics, create art, start organizations and teams or help sustain and transform existing ones, protest inequities and injustices you see right here on our campus and beyond, keeping all of us accountable to our best ideals at this deeply troubling time.

As you do all that, you’ll find support from particular professors and staff members, from the broader community, and from your peers, but you will also provide support to all of those people, bringing your own talents and passions into the story of �ֲ���ý and the story of Lewiston.

I hope that for many of you new students, the people and places you’ve encountered during Orientation so far have left you excited and hopeful about your future at �ֲ���ý. But I also know this is a time of complex emotions, a potent mix of anticipation and anxiety, of new possibilities and sadness for what you’ve left behind, of excitement and loneliness and disappointing moments.

We’ll all have good times and tough challenges in the year ahead, and it’s a very challenging time in the U.S. and the world. There are lots of faculty, staff, and fellow students who will help you make your way through all of that. But I also know you will offer your own wisdom and energy back to all those other folks as they too navigate life’s complexities and society’s injustices.

When I teach a First-Year Seminar, one of the first assignments I give is to ask students to post just three words about Convocation. We discuss those words the next day, and we come back to them again at mid-semester, so we can talk over how the opening excitement is matching up with the more nuanced reality.

Several times now, at a reunion I hold for my First-Year Seminar students four years later, just before their graduation, I’ve shared a word cloud of the words they posted, together with some images of their Convocation ceremony. And guess what they say? They say, “What? I don’t remember that assignment!” They don’t really remember much about the specific content of Convocation either. But what they do tend to remember is the feeling of the event, the sense of anticipation and anxiety, that eager readiness to get started.

I hope to see many of you new students in my classroom over the next four years, but for the handful of you out there I come to know best, I bet you will be surprised if I remind you that I was the faculty speaker at your Convocation. You will probably say “What? That was you?” But I hope you might vaguely remember feeling a new layer of welcome had been added to the many you’d heard throughout Orientation. And I hope that if I remind you what I talked about, you’ll feel that some of the possibilities I sketched have been realized for you.

And of course that’s my hope for all of the faculty and students gathered here today. May you begin, tomorrow and in the semesters to come, to forge new relationships with each other, and among those, find the particularly special ones that will continue on for decades��— connections that leave you students wanting to update your former professors on your achievements, your struggles, your moments of joy and your moments of loss, teaching us as much as we taught you.

Welcome to you all, thank you for joining us, and best wishes for getting started on those relationships, and all of the other possibilities that lie ahead.

Notions of “�ֲ���ý community” are never far from mind when �ֲ���ý people talk about their college. Convocation 2017, the latest edition of the campus gathering that begins every academic year, gave three speakers the opportunity to offer three distinct perspectives on what “�ֲ���ý community” means.

During the Sept. 5 ceremony on the Historic Quad, the newly arrived Class of 2021 heard Walter Washington ’19, president of the �ֲ���ý Student Government, talk about the ways �ֲ���ý sustained him during a family medical crisis.

President Clayton Spencer’s 2017 Convocation remarks stressed the power of �ֲ���ý values in an era of inflamed U.S. politics and civic culture. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In her keynote address, Professor of Sociology Emily Kane urged the class to make deep and durable connections with faculty — “connections that leave you students wanting to update your former professors on your achievements, your struggles, your moments of joy and your moments of loss, teaching us as much as we taught you.”

Starting the ceremony, President Clayton Spencer held the vision of �ֲ���ý community up high against the backdrop of the nation’s inflamed political and civic culture, and reminded her listeners that the values that unify this community are needed now more than ever.

“This year, in the midst of our rituals of welcome and celebration, we find ourselves confronted with brazen displays of racism, anti-Semitism, hatred, and violence in Charlottesville,” she said, “with frequent accounts of racially motivated killings in cities across our country, and a national discourse driven too often by impulse rather than informed thought and laced with intolerance, dishonesty, and verbal violence.

“It suddenly feels urgent to bring to consciousness — for ourselves and our students — the values that shape the education we offer here at �ֲ���ý.”

Spencer used as her departure point the college mission statement, with its invocation of the “emancipating potential of the liberal arts” and its exhortation to engage “the transformative power of our differences.”

Shown on Alumni Walk on Sept. 5, Convocation Day, members of the Class of 2021 prepare to march in their first academic procession at �ֲ���ý. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“We believe in truth,” Spencer said. “We understand that hard problems do not admit of glib or easy answers. Rather they are solved incrementally and over time, often with painstaking work that builds on the knowledge of previous generations and gains strength through the insights of contemporary colleagues.

“This is called expertise,” she said, in a pointed rejoinder to the alt-facts discourse that increasingly prevails in some circles. “It is developed in institutions like colleges and universities, and it is safeguarded by respect for standards of inquiry and expression. Expertise matters, because it brings the promise of making lives — and life on this planet — better.”

She said, “We teach our students to reason from evidence. We believe that facts matter. A college campus is a culture that depends on persuasion and reason-giving, not on authority derived from power or position.”

Noting that �ֲ���ý’ founding principles insist that all persons must be treated as equal and worthy, Spencer took particular aim at the virulent bigotry that has deranged the American conversation over the last few years.

“We believe that engaging with difference is a powerful force for good,” she said. “In education, it is a source of growth and transformation. …We encourage our students to approach ideas and each other with openness and generosity.”

“We have our work cut out for us,” Spencer concluded. “Never has the humanistic project of the liberal arts been more important. Never has this form of education been more needed — or more challenged.

“This is not a time to lose heart: It is a time to take up our work with new resolve.”

Walter Washington ’19 of Fleetwood, N.Y., president of the �ֲ���ý Student Government, delivers greetings to the Class of 2021 during the 2017 Convocation, on Sept. 5. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

The student government president, the college president said in her introduction, is “a very talented person who is not shy about letting me know what students are thinking and what we can do to make �ֲ���ý better.” A politics major, football player, Deansmen crooner, and aspiring law student, Walter Washington of Fleetwood, N.Y., introduced the Class of 2021 to �ֲ���ý in a strikingly personal way.

Washington recounted his mother’s battle with cancer during his last year of high school and first two years at �ֲ���ý. “Fast-forward to sophomore year, and her good days were off and on,” he said. “Luckily, she was able to string together a few good days during the fall to come for Parents Weekend — and that weekend, she watched her son sing a solo with his newly joined a cappella group and register his first college sack against Williams.

“That was a pretty awesome weekend.”

Washington’s mother was declared cancer-free during his second winter at �ֲ���ý. But before that point, when the outcome was still in doubt, “there is no way, absolutely no way, that I could have persevered through such an ordeal without being a part of the community that is �ֲ���ý,” he told the Convocation audience.

“On a larger scale, the true moral of that story is that in the midst of all that success, joy and accomplishment you’ll have here at �ֲ���ý, I can also guarantee you that there will also be times when you feel like you cannot keep going,” he continued.

It’s a light moment as senior marshals Isabella Miller ’18 of New York City and John Dello Russo ’18 of Revere, Mass., lead first-years across the Historic Quad in the Convocation procession. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

“But take a moment and look at the people to your left and to your right. This place, the people sitting right next to you, the relationships, friendships and extended family you’ll make during your next four years here — it is that that makes this place so special.”

Sociology professor Kane was chosen to address the incoming class by last spring’s departing Class of 2017. Teasing her listeners with a bit of mystery, she started out with a sampling of social media posts and emails she received during the summer — from endearing pictures of a 3-year-old at a ball game to a list of 21 tips for incoming students, offered by a fellow sociologist whose Facebook post netted 14,000 likes.

Kane’s point, of course, was that all of those summer correspondents were former students — in fact, thesis advisees of hers.

“Every faculty member sitting out there with you has their own stories of former students with whom they’ve developed lasting relationships, connections forged in learning together and sharing a passion for a particular set of topics and commitments,” Kane told the Class of 2021.

Professor of Sociology Emily Kane gives the 2017 Convocation Address, titled “Summer Posts, Fall Possibilities.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“Like me, all of those other professors got started on forming those relationships by watching strangers arrive on campus as new students.”

Kane said, “That’s one of the joys of working here: Every year brings a new group of strangers with fresh energy and fresh ideas to our campus. …Your energy and insights, your talents and life experiences, bring us all a world of new possibilities.”

About 1,000 people assembled under milky skies for Convocation. Among them were the 510 members of the new class in their first academic procession, following the faculty across the humid quad.

Brittany Longsdorf, multifaith chaplain, gave the customary benediction to conclude Convocation. Likening the new students’ arrival at �ֲ���ý to a moment of embarkation onto a vast ocean of possibility, she said, “May they find an inner compass that guides their sails toward purpose and meaning.”

Members of the Class of 2021 process past the Class of 1927 “mouthpiece,” whose message suits the occasion. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

When you have a fender-bender, you call the insurance agency. When you buy alcohol in Maine, you’re at an agency liquor store.

However, for scholars like Professor of Sociology Emily Kane, “agency” frequently describes not a place but a state of being: our capacity to “act creatively and intentionally” in society despite “constraints that shape and sometimes determine our possibilities in the social world.”

In Kane’s work, those constraints are known as social structures and they include race, class, gender, sexuality, public policy, and family.

At the 2016 banquet for seniors who earned honors in their majors, Professor of Sociology Emily Kane introduces guest speaker Bridget Harr ’07, Kane’s former student and current colleague in the sociology department. Kane is holding Harr’s honors thesis. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Much of what Kane and other social scientists look at, of course, are questions about who has agency, who doesn’t, and who is trying to resist or change the structures that constrain them. As an example of this interplay, she points to her book Rethinking Gender and Sexuality in Childhood (2013).

“Children are not simply passive recipients.”

As Kane points out in her book, when it comes to childhood experiences, it’s long been assumed that adults have agency and children don’t. After all, we adults decide where a child will live and, for the most part, with whom they interact. Children’s experiences are also shaped and constrained by various “structures of inequality,” Kane says, like race, class, and gender.

But, as Kane argues in her book, “children are not simply passive recipients” of what we and society determine for them. In fact, children are “lively actors,” Kane says, with all kinds of agency. “They are capable of engaging in creative interpretation and reconstruction of the world around them.”

The rumors of Short Term’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

At a presidential event in Boston in March, President Clayton Spencer and guest Al Filreis P’16, the University of Pennsylvania author and professor who teaches one of the most popular MOOCs anywhere, were taking questions from the audience.

When an alumna asked if a MOOC could work at �ֲ���ý, Spencer took a moment to tout �ֲ���ý’ strong culture of teaching innovation; at the same time, she put to rest rumors that the days of Short Term, which begins Monday, are numbered.

President Spencer talks about Short Term:

Maybe because it sticks out like a green thumb at the end of the �ֲ���ý academic calendar, Short Term often seems ripe for review. Is it good enough? Can it be better?

And with a new president on board since 2012, folks have been curious about Spencer’s take on Short Term, the five-week, one-course spring experience beloved by �ֲ���ý students since the mid-1960s.

As Spencer said in Boston, getting a big laugh, students are “flippin’ out that we’re going to eliminate Short Term.”

The answer, she said, is that “we’re not.”

The Boston faithful applauded, but the vote of confidence was qualified. “My feeling is that we have to optimize Short Term as a site for experimentation,” she said.

In that spirit, �ֲ���ý is deploying two pilot programs this spring that play to Short Term’s founding tradition of innovation. And while the new programs might have the immediate effect of improving Short Term, they have a much larger purpose: Each supports the college’s primary strategic initiatives now being funded by the $11.5 million Catalyst Fund.

The three �ֲ���ý initiatives:

+The Engaged Liberal Arts: Deep and sustained interactions

+Purposeful Work: The heart of the liberal arts mission

+Opportunity and Excellence: Directly out of �ֲ���ý’ history and mission

This spring’s first pilot program, falling under the Purposeful Work umbrella, is a series of practitioner-taught courses that will give students fundamental understanding in four professional fields:

• Shannon Banks ’85, a senior vice president at Martin’s Point Healthcare in Portland, will teach a course on healthcare administration.
• Brandy Gibbs-Riley ’96, a graphic designer who has created branding and marketing campaigns for high-profile corporate and nonprofit clients, will teach graphic design.
• Ben Schippers ’04 and Will Schenk, co-founders of the Brooklyn-based software development shop HappyFunCorp, will teach a course on digital innovation.
• Craig Saddlemire ’05, a documentary filmmaker and former Lewiston city councilor, will teach social-change organizing and advocacy with Sarah Standiford ’97 of Planned Parenthood and Aditi Vaidya ’00 of the social-justice focused Solidago Foundation.

The second pilot program falls more under the Engaged Liberal Arts realm, and it features small groups of students — just a half-dozen or so — working with a professor to either redesign one of the professor’s own regular-semester courses or create a whole new course for next year.

“Students will have an amazing intellectual and conceptual experience.”

Known as “Pedagogical Innovation and Course (Re)Design,” the course-redesign projects promise to give faculty the necessary “time and space for the creative work of pedagogical innovation,” says sociology professor Emily Kane, who is spearheading the project.

For students, they promise intense and intimate engagement with faculty. “The students will have an amazing intellectual and conceptual experience,” said Spencer in Boston.

Five projects will get underway on Monday:

• Stephanie Kelley-Romano (rhetoric) and her students will redesign her course on presidential campaign rhetoric. The course typically includes a mock campaign, and she wants to create “policy modules” that will involve students from fields like politics or economics in the campaign experience.
• Jason Castro (psychology) and his students will build a new course in computational neuroscience so students can apply techniques from engineering and computer science to address fundamental questions of brain function.
• Mara Tieken (education) and her students will create a new course that does more than teach students about community organizing.The course will teach students how to organize, instilling a valuable set of skills, techniques and orientations.
• Dennis Browne (Russian) and his students will redesign the college’s intermediate and advanced Russian language courses. Their goal will be to create multi-level classes in which traditional pedagogical texts are replaced by authentic audio and visual materials.
• Amy Douglass (psychology) and her students will explore new ways to teach statistics — a challenging, math-intensive course — by drawing on real-world data and active learning strategies. Ultimately, information learned during Short Term might inform discussions about how �ֲ���ý teaches quantitative reasoning across the disciplines.

These new courses go along with all the regular Short Term courses, on and off campus.

This year, the suite of off-campus programs will see faculty and students studying human rights and art in Nogales, Mexico; Shakespeare in London; environment and culture in Russia; ecology and evolutionary biology in the Galapagos; culture within a European context in Berlin, German; and geology by kayak along the Maine coast.

Whatever the era, one impulse to improve Short Term comes from an awareness on campus that students and faculty “pay” for those five weeks by having to pack a lot of teaching and learning into the rest of the academic year.

The winter term, especially, can feel hurried, an idea expressed by Professor of History Michael Jones a few years ago.

“Any Short Term course ought to be really good because intellectually they cost a lot.”

In recent interviews with public radio, Professor of Sociology Emily Kane talks about her new book, The Gender Trap: Parents and the Pitfalls of Raising Boys and Girls, and why customs like pink for girls and blue for boys are not necessarily benign choices.

Asked about the impact of gender-specific toys, colors and activities, Kane tells the North Texas Public Media program Think��that these choices “are not just about whether we train boys and girls to be different. It’s about whether we might be reproducing structures that systematically disadvantage girls and women.”

What’s more, Kane says, while we often believe that all gender differences in children are natural, many are actually the result of specific parental and societal choices and reinforcement.

In her interview with Southern California Public Radio’s , she says that by choosing gender-specific opportunities and surroundings for our children, “we’re constructing these categories of boys and girls and kind of convincing ourselves that it’s inevitable.”

But it’s not inevitable, she says.

Referring to the fact that many of the parents she interviewed in the study wanted to offer their children a wider range of possibilities but feared social judgments, Kane notes, “One of my hopes with this book is that…we may realize there are more of us who want to see some kind of relaxing of those constraints than we might otherwise realize, so in that sense it wouldn’t be so hard to swim upstream.”

That might mean choosing neutral colors and toys that “would be interesting to any small human being.”