The great civil rights leader never forgot �ֲ���ý. And it works both ways.

By Doug Hubley

In 1986, about a dozen �ֲ���ý people found themselves deep in rural South Carolina looking at a shack.

They were looking at a shack, but seeing the starting point of a journey whose consequences were nothing short of transformational for a man and for a nation.

Benjamin Mays ’20, photographed in 1980 when he returned to �ֲ���ý for his 60th Reunion. Photograph by Jim Daniels.

The shack was the Greenwood County birthplace of Benjamin E. Mays ’20, the civil rights theorist, educator, preacher, Morehouse College president and mentor to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — in short, schoolmaster to the civil rights movement, to paraphrase recent Mays biographer Randal M. Jelks.

The �ֲ���ý group comprised students in a Short Term religion course investigating the black church in America. For them, the shack near Epworth, S.C., was one seminal stop in a Southern itinerary that resembled a kind of “Benjamin Mays Tour” because Mays was linked to so many of its destinations.

There in the countryside, the visitors from �ֲ���ý were closing a circle. They were learning about a man who might have had a much different life, perhaps a less consequential life, without �ֲ���ý. �ֲ���ý had shaped Mays, and now his legacy was shaping these students, and back through them, the college itself.

Even 29 years after Mays passed away, that circle remains intact. Many people know of �ֲ���ý because of the college’s influence on his life. And Mays’ influence is more present than ever on campus, whether expressed in the college mission statement, or in the recollections of �ֲ���ý people who knew him, or in campus speeches, notably the Oct. 26 inaugural address by Clayton Spencer (see page 38).

Former slaves, Mays’ parents were sharecroppers. Their dwelling has since been moved to the Dr. Benjamin E. Mays Historic Preservation Site, in Greenwood, S.C., but when the �ֲ���ý group visited, it was “out in the middle of a field,” recalls Associate Dean of Students James Reese, who was part of the group led by an acting college chaplain, Rob Stuart.

“Personal and political freedom and formal education were inextricably bound together for Mays.”

The group talked about starting life in that field in the Jim Crow era — Mays’ earliest memory was of a white mob threatening his father — and ultimately heading off to Maine for a college that promised something better. In 1986, the distance from Greenwood to Lewiston “was palpable,” Reese says.

“But in 1917, it was like going across the universe. That really resonated with us.”

In that year, Mays entered �ֲ���ý as a 23-year-old sophomore after a year at Virginia Union University, where two �ֲ���ý alumni on the faculty encouraged him to try their alma mater. Starting with a friendly encounter with a �ֲ���ý student on the train coming north, Mays was pleasantly surprised to discover that racism in Lewiston was more the exception than the rule.

Mays poses with his 1919 debate teammates. Mays’ drive to succeed academically came from wanting to prove “that superiority or inferiority in academic achievement had nothing to do with color of skin,” he wrote in Born to Rebel. Front row, from left, Arthur F. Lucas ’20, Robert B. Watts ’22, Edward H. Brewster ’19; back row, Charles M. Starbird ’21, Benjamin E. Mays ’20, Charles P. Mayoh ’19. Photograph courtesy of Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library.

Mays came here not only for a better education than a person of color could reasonably expect down South, but to prove his intellectual equality to whites. “How could I know I was not inferior to the white man, having never had a chance to compete with him?” Mays recalled in Born to Rebel, his 1971 autobiography.

Proof soon abounded. He won a speaking award in his first year at �ֲ���ý, finished his senior year as captain of a triumphant debate team and was one of 15 in his class to graduate with honors, among other achievements.

“I concede academic superiority to not more than four in my class,” he wrote in Born to Rebel. “I displayed more initiative as a student leader than the majority of my classmates. �ֲ���ý College made these things possible.”

At �ֲ���ý, Mays “found a way to chart a course in which he could find the intellectual resources he needed, gain confidence in his ability and then to leave to do extraordinary things,” says Marcus Bruce ’77, who is the inaugural Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at �ֲ���ý.

Or as Mays himself famously summed up his experience in Born to Rebel: “�ֲ���ý College did not ‘emancipate’ me: it did the far greater service of making it possible for me to emancipate myself, to accept with dignity my own worth as a free man.”

He later earned advanced degrees at the University of Chicago, but it was at �ֲ���ý that he laid the groundwork for “a new biblical interpretation that could mobilize black communities to take action against Jim Crow’s enforced apathy,” Jelks writes in the 2012 Mays biography Schoolmaster of the Movement. Mays’ studies in religion steered him toward an intellectual structure for both his profound Baptist faith and his personal mission “to uplift his people,” as Jelks puts it.

In the writings of theologian Walter Rauschenbusch and others, Mays learned about the Social Gospel, a Protestant movement that advocated for a church that would actively address societal ills — of which there was none more exigent to Mays than American racism.

Mays later came to understand the Church as central to both the persistence of racism and its amelioration. Racist whites cited Scripture to defend their prejudice, and blacks used the Church to defend their sanity and solidarity. And in that unity also lay the foundation for a civil rights movement.

Mays delivers the final eulogy for the slain Martin Luther King Jr. on April 9, 1968, at Morehouse College. Photograph courtesy of Howard University.

Mays saw in certain Baptist tenets — “freedom of conscience, the dignity and worth of every man, each man’s individual right of direct access to God,” in his words — a moral basis for the powerful rebuttal to racism that he would promulgate to generations of students. Especially during his tenure as Morehouse president, from 1940 to 1967, he “laid the intellectual groundwork for social change throughout the South among black churchgoing college students,” Jelks writes.

Both resounding and intellectually sound, Mays’ rhetoric was the ammunition that these students needed to overturn the racist discourse of the Jim Crow South. Mays, says Bruce, “employed and deployed religious rhetoric to address urgent issues of religious, political and social importance. This is certainly one of the lessons that he passed along to his student, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” as well as to such political and civil rights leaders as Julian Bond and Andrew Young.

People who know about Benjamin Mays tend to know about �ֲ���ý.

James Reese, who was a child when he first encountered Mays, at a college football game in Knoxville, Tenn., has stayed close to Mays’ legacy. Reese accompanied former �ֲ���ý President Elaine Tuttle Hansen to Greenwood in 2011 when she spoke at the dedication of the Mays Historic Preservation Site.

Hansen explained to an attentive audience that �ֲ���ý, in rewriting its mission statement in 2010, had tipped its mortarboard to Mays by declaring itself “dedicated to the emancipating potential of the liberal arts.”

“That really resonated with the audience,” Reese recalls. “They leaned back, confident that �ֲ���ý understood what Dr. Mays was about. I was so glad to be there for that moment.” In fact, Reese points out, people who know about Mays tend to know about �ֲ���ý. The warm relationship between Morehouse and �ֲ���ý has roots in his story; and Reese even has an anecdote about bringing his parents to visit a friend whose hospitality suddenly blossomed when she learned he worked at �ֲ���ý.

In June 1963, Mays and then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson confer while en route to the state funeral of Pope John XIII. Yoichi Okamoto/LBJ Presidential Library

If �ֲ���ý is known elsewhere because of its role in Mays’ achievements, those achievements keep Mays alive in the campus consciousness. He is much in evidence when �ֲ���ý observes Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which always includes a debate with Morehouse. �ֲ���ý named its Residential Village campus center for Mays, adding to a list of monuments around the nation that includes an elaborate memorial, incorporating a statue and Mays’ tomb, at Morehouse.

Most important, Mays lived and taught values that �ֲ���ý calls its own. Other Northern institutions refused Mays admission due to race, but �ֲ���ý has always been open to all races.

“Personal and political freedom and formal education were inextricably bound together” for Mays, Jelks writes; so they are here.

In this undated photo, Mays talks with baseball great Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves. Photograph courtesy of Howard University.

Mays’ passion was social engagement; his scope was global — Gandhi, whom he met, was influential in his thinking. And his style was audacious. These are all �ֲ���ý hallmarks.

“Exploring the legacy of Mays is a way to discover something about �ֲ���ý as well,” says Bruce. “He continues to help us understand who we are as an institution, and the kind of education we provided in the past, and can provide in the future.”

The revised mission statement, Bruce says, presents the liberal arts education “as being about emancipation, freeing yourself from certain kinds of fears, or conventions, or ideas that are limiting. It enables you to see, and think, and live in new ways.” And if most of today’s students will likely never face the difficulties experienced by minorities back in the bad old days, the determination that Mays forged in the struggle remains inspirational.

“He’s an extraordinary example of faith, of fortitude, of persistence and clarity of vision,” Bruce says. “�ֲ���ý provided an opportunity for him, but at the same time he continues to provide us with a great deal. It’s just a matter of exploring his legacy.”

Photographers with a Vision

Alex Verhave ’05 photographed this photomural, “Judgment of Paris,” which recalls The Last Supper, to reference the famous 1976 French wine tasting won by California wines. The mural was created with Diller Scofidio + Renfro for the exhibition How Wine Became Modern: Design + Wine 1976 to Now, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Photograph by Alexander Verhave ’05.

Not every photographer has a vision. Not every photographer has a muse, or listens to one.

Not so with Alexandra Strada ’10, Ryan Heffernan ’05 and Alexander Verhave ’05. As with the best photographers, the urge to communicate through imagery is in their bones.

Responding to what calls to them, these emerging photographers have artfully gone beyond the basic documentary approach, using their talents to explore, filter and share images of their immediate and far-flung environments.

Whether storytelling for a client or creating poetry for themselves, Strada, Heffernan and Verhave show the lyrical power of still photography.

Take a look for yourself.

— Phyllis Graber Jensen

Alexander Verhave ’05

Alexander Verhave ’05

Major: Geology • Location: Brooklyn, N.Y.

“I’ve learned to look beyond the surface of my subject and focus on the details.”

Why did you become a photographer?
As a naturally quiet person, I’ve always felt I communicate better via a photograph than with words.

Who has influenced you?
Edward Weston, for his unique way of looking at sometimes-mundane objects and finding interesting shapes and hidden beauty.

How has your photography changed?
I’ve learned to look beyond the surface of my subject and focus on the details that reveal a more compelling story.

What’s an overused piece of camera equipment?
Zoom lenses. Using prime lenses forces you to move and explore the subject in a physical way.

How would you photograph a familiar subject like Hathorn Hall?
As a portrait series highlighting the diverse uses of the building — ending with a photo from the bell tower.

“Patagonia Rodeo,” Chile, for the nonprofit Patagonia Sur. Photograph by Alexander Verhave ’05.

Los Leones Glacier, Chile, for Patagonia Sur, later published by Fortune. Photograph by Alexander Verhave ’05.

“W. 10th St. Clock Shop,” New York City. Photograph by Alexander Verhave ’05.

Alexandra Strada ’10

Alexandra Strada ’10

Major: Art and visual culture • Location: Brooklyn, N.Y.

“I see my photographs more as poems than works of nonfiction.”

Why did you become a photographer?
I was given my first camera when I was 13 and immediately was enamored.

Who has been the greatest influence on your work and why?
Mary Ellen Mark. I first met her at a conference for young photographers, and ultimately went on to assist and study with her for a time.

From my first viewing of her work when I was 14, I saw how photography could be a means to enter places I might otherwise not enter, and a way to interact with people I might otherwise not meet. I thought, “I want to do that.” Her photographs affect me the way a profound piece of fiction might: I learn intimately about the lives of others while facing realities about myself.

How has your photography changed since you left �ֲ���ý?
At �ֲ���ý, I was very interested in “truth” and had photojournalistic aspirations. Since then, I have come to realize that a photograph is not necessarily an expression of reality but more of a narrative or an impression. Consequently, I have become more playful in my approach to photographing. I see my photographs more as poems than works of nonfiction.

What is your dream assignment?
I am working on a series called “Observations on Recreation,” photographs about the colorful, sometimes nonsensical, ways we entertain ourselves. The project has led me to photograph at a vacation trailer camp and an international Boy Scouts jamboree. My dream assignment would give me the funding and the time to expand the project to places like Yosemite, Las Vegas and Asbury Park.

The following photographs are from the series “Observations on Recreation,” taken during Strada’s visits to Iceland over the last two years, including her Gullkistan Residency in Laugarvatn in 2012. “The photographs are about the colorful, sometimes nonsensical, ways we entertain ourselves,” Strada says.

Photograph by Alexandra Strada ’10.

. From the series “Observations on Recreation.” Photograph by Alexandra Strada ’10.

From the series “Observations on Recreation.” Photograph by Alexandra Strada ’10.

From the series “Observations on Recreation.” Photograph by Alexandra Strada ’10.

Ryan Heffernan ’05

Ryan Heffernan ’05

Major: Art and visual culture • Location: Santa Fe, N.M.

“The days of walking around Havana or Lewiston shooting film and processing it in the darkroom are long gone.”

Why did you become a photographer?
Short Term, freshman year, I ended up in Cuba for an anthropology class but spent all waking hours making photographs. After that I tailored my study abroad experience in Spain and Argentina around photography and was off to the races.

Who has been the greatest influence on your work and why?
There are two: my father, who is a professional photographer and has always been an incredibly supportive and constructive critic; and spending time outdoors, which gave me the inspirational environments that solidified my passion for photography.

How has your photography changed since you left �ֲ���ý?
The days of walking around Havana or Lewiston shooting film and processing it in the darkroom are long gone. However, that documentary experience taught me the power of telling visual stories with images that make a lasting impact. Ultimately, that’s a quality that both editorial and commercial clients gravitate to.

What is the most overrated or overused piece of equipment?
A lot of the magic in photography these days comes from Photoshop, but heavy-handed and sloppy retouching techniques are definitely the most overused piece of “equipment” these days.

How would you go about photographing Hathorn Hall?
I’d use a remote-control helicopter camera unit to hover above the front of the building, aiming down at the columns and roof. Shooting at the very end of sunset, the Hathorn’s front would receive raking, saturated light — which emphasizes architectural details — leaving the roof and other surroundings in shadow.

With that wide-angle image as our background plate, in post-production we’d add glowing graphic mathematical equations stretched over the roof and sides of the building. It might be production overkill, but would tell the story of how this historic building is still relevant to teaching mathematics today.

A model goes underwater in ecofriendly denim manufactured without water, for Agence Antidote, Paris. Photograph by Ryan Heffernan ’05.

Stormy spring day in Washington, D.C. Photograph by Ryan Heffernan ’05.

Child with Sesame Street character, Soweto, South Africa, for a Sesame Workshop report on international programs. Photograph by Ryan Heffernan ’05.

Apache elder who is leading efforts to save New Mexico’s Otero Mesa from mining development, for Sierra. Photograph by Ryan Heffernan ’05.

Samburu warrior in Laikipia, Kenya, for a safari tour company. Photograph by Ryan Heffernan ’05.

Shown at his Manchester Center, Vt., home in September 2012, Nathaniel Boone ’52 displays his replica of the Congressional Gold Medal awarded to the Montford Point Marines. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College

Like many �ֲ���ý alumni of a certain era, Nathaniel Boone believes that his college experience was largely defined by “Cultch” — the series of Cultural Heritage courses that painted 2,000 years of human development in broad sweeping brushstrokes.

But Boone’s appreciation of humanity’s evolution may be sweetened by knowing that he played a role in one of the sweeping historical changes of his own time. He is one of about 400 surviving “Montford Point Marines,” the first African Americans to serve in the U.S. Marine Corps.

“We were fighting the war before we encountered any enemy.”

Given basic training in the 1940s at the racially segregated Montford Point facility at Camp Lejeune, N.C., thousands of black Marines broke the Corps color barrier in a time and place where desegregation was anything but welcome.

Wearing dress blues, Marine Cpl. Nate Boone poses for an unnamed buddy in front of a barracks at Montford Point, Camp Lejeune, N.C., in 1947. Photograph courtesy the Boone family

“This was a swampy area, infested with snakes,” says Boone, a retired attorney who now lives in Manchester Center, Vt., with his wife of 55 years, Harriet Howell Boone ’52. “The barracks were made, more or less, of a glorified cardboard. And there were no black officers at that time.”

“We had difficulty in the town near the base, which was Jacksonville, because the whites didn’t want us there. And the white officers didn’t want us there,” Boone says. “So we were sort of fighting the war before we encountered any enemy.”

Traveling from his home in Englewood, N.J., to North Carolina, Boone had to change buses in Washington, D.C. — and move to the back of the bus. “That’s where the segregation started, in our nation’s capital,” he recalls.

But Boone made a return visit to the nation’s capital last June that may have eased the sting of that insult, as he and the other remaining Montford Point Marines — totaling 420, out of close to 20,000 who trained at the camp from 1942 to 1949 — received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor bestowed by the government.

“It brought me to tears, because the Marine Corps has changed so much,” he says. The Marines at the two-day event, he adds, “treated us like royalty. And to see the rank that the ladies, black and white, had achieved, and to see black generals, which I didn’t think would ever happen in the Marine Corps.”

Back in 1946, Boone understood what he was getting into, partly because his mother and aunt, who had grown up in Georgia, gave him ample warning of what he could expect in the Jim Crow South. But, Boone says, “nothing that was said to me deterred me, because the only way I could go to college was the GI Bill.”

While college leaders feared that this landmark legislation would open their hallowed gates to the rabble and thereby debase U.S. higher education, the GI Bill had just the opposite effect: Veterans-turned-students from all walks of life, instead, brought new vitality and ideas to the U.S. academy.

Indeed, Boone says, “I think it’s frankly one of the best things the United States ever did because it developed a middle class and it allowed a lot of individuals to go to college” who otherwise never would have.

Boone joined the Marine Corps because “the only way I could go to college was the GI Bill.”

Cultch and all, �ֲ���ý prepared him well for law school, Boone says — he put himself through at Boston University by scrubbing floors in a restaurant — and for a long law career in Hackensack, N.J.

Even though Montford Point and his Marine Corps career got Boone the college education he wanted, the medal is a welcome recognition of both the trials those pioneering black Marines went through and their contribution to a country that, at the time, was hardly gracious about it.

Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College

“I’m honored to receive this award,” says Boone. “I did some research and I found out some of the people who received this award” — a list that starts with George Washington and goes on to include other presidents, war heroes and such notables as Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, the Tuskegee Airmen and the Native American “code talkers” who used their own languages to encode military messages during World War II.

“I’m in fairly good company,” he laughs.

Video about Nate Boone bates.edu/nate-boone-marine

Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College

Spencer to �ֲ���ý: ENGAGE!

By Doug Hubley

Mace bearer Sawyer Sylvester, professor of sociology, leads the academic procession to Merrill Gymnasium on Oct. 26, 2012. Photograph by Mike Bradley

In the year since Clayton Spencer was named �ֲ���ý’ eighth president, she has offered a strikingly active and consistent interpretation of where �ֲ���ý stands and how the college can move forward while staying true to its own best self.

Her views have come at three signature addresses: the December 2011 event that introduced her to campus; during Reunion 2012 on the eve of her official start as president; and, most recently, at her Oct. 26 inaugural installation.

At each turn, Spencer has vividly described a specific scenario: As shifting economics and, especially, exploding information technology transform higher education as we know it, �ֲ���ý can respond by being brighter and bolder about what it has always done so well — namely, standing firmly on principle while engaging robustly with the world.

In the next decades, “success will go to the institutions that engage most robustly and effectively with the forces that are reshaping our world.”

Fittingly, the inaugural address, titled Questions Worth Asking, was the richest statement of Spencer’s thesis to date, and she used Benjamin E. Mays ’20, the great educator, theologian and civil rights leader, as both a metaphor for the founding �ֲ���ý ethos and a guide for applying that ethos to the coming times. (Take a new look at Mays on page 24.) Bucking societal norms, �ֲ���ý was inclusive and progressive in ways that directly benefited students of color like Mays, a leader who in turn amplified and passed those values forward to lift up all of U.S. society.

His story, Spencer stated, makes clear that we have always “encountered individuals in their full humanity. We took as our task educating them with intellectual rigor, ethical responsibility and care for their fellow human beings.”

She added, “These qualities are in the DNA of �ֲ���ý College, and they define us to this day. They also point the way forward.”

Clayton Spencer shows off the presidential collar following her installation as the college’s eighth president. Photograph by Mike Bradley

Spencer explored the theme of technology-driven change with the words of another new president. In his September inaugural address, MIT’s Rafael Reif situated higher education on the threshold of a “technological transformation [that] has the potential to reshape the education landscape — and to challenge our very existence.”

Unhindered access to unimaginable amounts of information has changed both the work of education — “some of the most powerful changes are occurring at the heart of scholarship and knowledge creation,” as Spencer pointed out — and the context in which it’s done.

So in their intellectual reach, liberal arts colleges like �ֲ���ý “have become a great deal larger,” she explained. “Yet enlarging the screen on which we must project our institutional identity and compete for faculty and students makes this tiny campus…look ever smaller.”

In fact, liberal arts colleges educate fewer than 4 percent of the college students in America. And the relevance of the “tough-minded tradition of the small New England college,” as Thomas Hedley Reynolds put it at his own inauguration, in 1967, is increasingly questioned. But schools like �ֲ���ý should regard such questioning as an invitation not just to demonstrate their relevance, but to strengthen it, Spencer said.

This scrutiny “challenges us to make a virtue of our scale, delivering our particular model of education at a high standard of excellence,” she said, describing a paradoxical liberal arts model that embraces both “the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, with no practical aim,” and the “teaching of values…that shape a human being who can in turn shape the world.”

Which brought her listeners back to a �ֲ���ý graduate who had done just that: Mays, who remains the proof and embodiment of values that endure after 158 years, she said.

The Mays story, she said, is a story about mindset. For �ֲ���ý, that mindset is about “standing firmly on principle and encountering the world with energy and confidence.” In the next decades, she said, “success will go to the institutions that engage most robustly and effectively with the forces that are reshaping our world.”

For �ֲ���ý, this could mean changes in faculty recruitment, departmental structure, even how academic disciplines are defined — but most important, it means an even greater dedication to the goal of teaching and learning that engages with the world.

“We stand ready — together — to challenge ourselves and to engage the world.”

The mindset exemplified by the Mays story is one “grounded in ideas and values, but porous to the world,” she said. “For the liberal arts college it means, among other things, recognizing that the line between theory and practice is breaking down. It means…that we see the growing concern of students and parents with employment prospects… as a deep aspect of our obligation as a liberal arts college to prepare our students for a life of purposeful work.”

In her discussion of the character of �ֲ���ý graduates, she took a cue from the late Rev. Peter Gomes ’65, for whom the College Chapel had been ceremonially named the day before Spencer’s installation. Liberal arts colleges, Gomes once preached, put “the making of a better person ahead of the making of a brighter person, or a better mousetrap.”

A poignant moment during the installation: Clayton Spencer hoists her academic cap, the same one that her father, Samuel Reid Spencer Jr., now 93, wore as president of Mary Baldwin College and Davidson College. Photograph by Mike Bradley

In Spencer’s words, the liberal arts college, with its intimate scale, has an advantage when it comes to this task of creating better people. �ֲ���ý shapes human beings who are not only “equipped to navigate a complex world, but also motivated with empathy toward their fellow human beings,” a goal that comes alive every day through the legions of students exercising both minds and hearts through community-based learning projects in Lewiston.

And, through Mays, Spencer concluded her address by interpreting the notion of community as it has been constructed at �ֲ���ý, one defined by openness and inclusiveness “well before we had the language for such things,” she said, adding that ours is an intentional community that anticipated, by nearly a century, the GI Bill that introduced a new egalitarianism to other campuses nationwide.

“The genius of American higher education is that it unites excellence and opportunity,” she said. �ֲ���ý can claim this union “as a core element of our identity, and we need to continue to build on this deep aspect of who we are.”

Meaning, in practical terms, that �ֲ���ý must make an “unwavering commitment” not only to the financial aid that supports a diverse student body, but to the existence of a campus culture “that embraces diversity across many dimensions, giving richness and power to the educational experience of all of our students.”

No one can predict the future, but Spencer closed her speech by invoking someone famed for predicting what its gadgets should look like: Steve Jobs. The late Apple co-founder once told a group of graduating students that “your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

“Likewise, at �ֲ���ý, we don’t have time to waste,” Spencer said. “But we are not in danger of living someone else’s life. We know who we are and what we stand for, and we stand ready — together — to challenge ourselves and to engage the world.”

Spencer’s inaugural address bates.edu/inauguration

President Spencer and her father, Samuel Reid Spencer Jr, sit together on a campus bench after the ceremony. Her father and her mother, Ava, attended the installation, as did Clayton’s children. Photograph by Rene Minnis

The Daring Young Man

By Victoria Stanton
Photographs by Phyllis Graber Jensen

At the apogee of an upswing, Jones is poised to catch the next student flying his way at the South Street Seaport location of the Trapeze School New York.
 Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen

Last summer, Travis Jones ’13 took a flying leap into the process of independent research.

He arrived in New York City ready to study the High Line, an elevated railway turned public park on Manhattan’s West Side, for his senior thesis in art and visual culture with Whitehouse Professor Erica Rand.

But his second senior thesis, in theater, had yet to come into focus. Jones wanted to deepen his interest in architecture with an exploration of how different theater spaces affect performance.

And this is where Jones’ expertise on the flying trapeze entered the scene. Three years ago, Jones, who is a diver for the Bobcat swim team, “got hooked” on trapeze after taking classes at Manhattan’s Trapeze School New York. A quick study, he was soon invited to become an instructor, an offer he took up last summer.

While watching the aerial feats of his TSNY colleagues, he realized that the circus would be the perfect genre to help him focus his investigation of space and performance.

While most Americans have a “big top” notion of all things circus, Jones explains that today’s circus venues “don’t really have a stereotypical look.”

Taking advantage of New York’s status as a mecca for the weird and wonderful, Jones attended a variety of performances, including Cirque du Soleil at Radio City Music Hall and Spiegelworld in Times Square.

While the acts in each show were similar, Jones discovered that his experience was drastically affected by his proximity to the performers and his viewing angle. “I’m interested in finding out what aspects of the venue influenced my feelings” about the performance, he says.

Jones’ theater adviser, Charles A. Dana Professor of Theater Martin Andrucki, originally suggested that his advisee look at architecture and performance, but Jones took the idea to new heights.

“That’s exactly the kind of response an adviser likes to see in a student,” says Andrucki, “picking up a hint and running with it in an inventive and creative direction.”

Jones at the High Line, a former freight rail line that’s now a public park elevated above the streets on Manhattan’s West Side.
 Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen

As far as the relationship between his High Line thesis and circus-venue thesis goes, Jones, who is a native of Ithaca, N.Y., suggests that they are both about architectural spaces and “how people interact with those spaces and how the elements of design impact the audience experience.”

Over the summer, Jones also noticed how his research made him spacey, in a different sense of the word.

“I learned as much about how I interact with my immediate space — like how I behaved in my apartment — as I did about how other people engage with the spaces I’m studying.”

In spring 1981, Professor of Sociology George Fetter took 27 students to China to observe a country in transition. Looking at these photos, taken by trip participant Steve Stone ’83, you can see how reforms under Deng Xiaoping were steering the country toward world economic power.

People’s diplomacy: John Vivian ’81 invites children to blow bubbles as their elders watch. Photograph by Steve Stone '83.

When �ֲ���ý students arrived in China in 1981, billboard adver-tising of TVs, clothes and the like was a fairly new phenomenon. The rise of the consumer had begun. Photograph by Steve Stone '83.

�ֲ���ý student and Chinese youths play basketball in 1981. While here the Americans overall seem taller than their counterparts, socioeconomic development since then has meant the average height of an urban Chinese male has increased by nearly three inches. Photograph by Steve Stone '83.

Long an economy focused on heavy industry, China's reforms under Deng Xiaoping by 1981 were slowly steering China toward becoming a capitalist and consumer economy. Photograph by Steve Stone '83.

Some things don't change: Red flags still fly over Tiananmen Square today as they did in 1981. Photograph by Steve Stone '83.

You see, for example, billboards offering consumer products, like electronics and clothing, for the first time.

Stone kept his Ektachrome slides safe through the years, digitizing them recently and sharing them with �ֲ���ý Magazine as the trip’s 30th anniversary got him thinking about the experience.

Another student on that landmark Short Term was Paul Marks ’83, and he was back on campus last fall for the dedication of Hedge and Roger Williams halls as new academic centers.

Marks is now CEO of the global aerospace technology firm Argosy International Inc., based in Shanghai. He’s done business in China since 1988, and at the dedication he spoke about that transformational trip with Professor Fetter.

In 1981, Paul Marks ’83 listens to the �ֲ���ý guide, Mr. Xu. (Photograph by Steve Stone ’83)

Back in ’81, most Chinese citizens still had good reason to blend in with the crowd — politically, socially and even sartorially, by wearing bland clothing. The nation was wary after Mao’s brutal Cultural Revolution, which had ended in 1976.

The lingering feeling was that “you didn’t want to be identified as the next possible target if the political winds changed again,” says Margaret Maurer-Fazio, the college’s Stangle Professor of Applied Economics and an expert on China.

Paul Marks, here talking with students during a �ֲ���ý Career Development Center lunch during his visit in October 2011, has done business in China since 1988. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

If the winds shifted one way, “you wouldn’t want to be accused of being a bourgeois capitalist ‘roader,’” she says. If the wind shifted the other way, “you wouldn’t want to be accused of clinging to feudal Chinese culture.”

So the adults in these photos are wearing mostly unremarkable, drab clothing.

But look at the young children in a traditional classroom: They’re wearing bright orange, blue and rose-color sweaters. A little boy and girl watching a �ֲ���ý student blow bubbles wear bold red and blue coats.

Like the billboards, it’s a sign of what’s to come.

“In traditional Chinese society, many people would consider themselves lucky to get one new set of clothing each year, on the Chinese New Year,” says Maurer-Fazio, who studies the dramatic impact that economic liberalization has had on China’s labor markets. “And in Mao’s day, the economy was focused on heavy industry, and consumer goods were in short supply.”

In the newly colorful clothing of these children, she says, “you see today’s modern, consumer society.”

“I watched peasants hoe fields adjacent to the runways. The only peasants nearby today are landscapers for the villas by the airport.”

Thirty-one years ago, when Fetter and his students landed at the Beijing Capital Airport to begin their Short Term, the airport wasn’t today’s glorious, gargantuan Norman Foster–designed facility. It was a simpler airport “and a simpler China,” Marks recalled during his address last fall.

“I watched peasants hoe fields adjacent to the runways. The only peasants nearby today are landscapers for the villas by the airport.”

Between Marks and Mike Bonney ’80, chairman of the Board of Trustees, there were jokes aplenty at the dedication ceremony about the Roger Williams’ former identity as a funkadelic dorm, where beer flowed like, well, beer.

As Marks quipped to his friend Liz Drolet ’84, “The contractors handled the remedial aspects of both asbestos removal and beer odor in a technically proficient manner.” The Bill and Hedge, he noted more soberly, are now enlightened by intellect rather than soaked with beer. “Now that’s progress,” Marks notes.

Roger Williams is home to the college’s language programs and Off Campus Study Office, while Hedge houses religious studies, philosophy and environmental studies.

Marks himself was an unenlightened student early in his �ֲ���ý career. Then came the 1981 Short Term trip to China. It was the second in two years led by Fetter, who once said of his first trip that it was the product of “four years of negotiations and a lifetime of yearning.”

In fact, that first visit was notable enough that Sen. Ed Muskie ’36 spoke about it on the Senate floor. “It is a tribute to Professor Fetter’s commitment to educating American students about a culture so distant but so important in today’s world.”

Children in a classroom wear brightly colored sweaters, a sign of new socioeconomic forces at play. (Photograph by Steve Stone ’83)

Richard Nixon had made his historic visit back in 1972, but it was a trend toward people’s diplomacy — nongovernmental exchanges such as those by Fetter and his students — that did much of the real work of normalizing relations between the U.S. and China through the 1970s and into the ’80s.

Marks’ parents initially objected to his going to China. Up to that point, “my academic performance was not stellar,” Marks said. A long trip to China looked like a boondoggle.

But Fetter had faith in Marks even though there was little obvious reason for it (which is the whole point of faith, anyway). He called Marks’ parents, promising that the experience would change the course of their son’s life.

It did. “Everything was different and amazing,” Marks recalled. During five weeks in Beijing and other cities, “I became hooked on China. I wanted to understand this chaotic, totally different world.” Marks had grown up in New York City, where the music of the city was honking horns and emergency sirens. Beijing was a “city of bicycle bells — not the Beijing of today.”

In cities and villages in 1981, bicycles were still the dominant mode of transportation. Beijing was “a city of bicycle bells,” Marks recalls, “not the Beijing of today.” (Photograph by Steve Stone ’83)

Marks returned to �ֲ���ý eager to learn Chinese, but �ֲ���ý didn’t have a Chinese language program. What the college had, as noted in the 1981 Catalog, was a “Self-Instructional Program in Less Commonly Taught Languages.”

In practice, the “program” was a black book in French professor and foreign-language chair Dick Williamson’s office, which he would flip through to find someone able or willing to teach a language not offered in the curriculum of French, German, Russian and Spanish.

Marks’ first instructor was the wife of a Taiwanese dentist in town. She tried to teach him Mandarin, “and I tried to teach her how to teach.” Marks was soon joined by CJ May ’80 as the college’s first students of Mandarin.

For Marks, the late Williamson’s help, along with Fetter’s and history professor Ernest Muller’s, represented the college’s can-do spirit. It’s also “typical,” Marks says. “Professors go beyond the call of duty to find opportun-ities for their students to engage, explore and find themselves.”

Today, Marks says he’s encouraged by strides in Chinese instruction and Asian-focused academic programs and opportunities at �ֲ���ý. “You can be quite proud — I am quite proud — to see where the college’s journey has arrived.”

Back in 1981, the �ֲ���ý group’s official guide, Mr. Xu, told Marks that foreigners never learn their language. Marks rose to the challenge, betting the guide five bucks that he could indeed learn Mandarin.

“Mr. Xu owes me five bucks. Or 31.7 RMB.”

On a Sunday afternoon in December, the Clifton Daggett Gray Athletic Building had become a bustling event venue, as �ֲ���ý leaders sat onstage before hundreds of students, faculty and staff who had put aside studies, holiday errands and football games to meet their next president. Clayton Spencer was backstage, listening for her name — her cue to come forward.

Interim President Nancy Cable welcomed the throng, followed by Presidential Search Committee co-chair Michael Chu ’80.

And when trustee chair Mike Bonney ’80 wound up his introduction with the simple words, “Welcome, Clayton Spencer,” she stepped from behind the curtain, smiling, grasping the pages of her speech and ready to greet a crowd eager to know more. A little choked up, she began a new relationship with her new college.

She surveyed the gathering and spoke her first word as president-elect of �ֲ���ý College. “Wow!”

From her formative upbringing as the daughter of a college president to her innovative policy work at Harvard, Clayton Spencer’s rise as a U.S. higher education leader culminates in her wow debut as president-elect of �ֲ���ý — and her avowed commitment to leading �ֲ���ý toward a stronger marriage of excellence and opportunity.

Made for the job

Ava Clayton Spencer was born in December 1954 to Samuel and Ava Spencer in Concord, N.C.

“I grew up as the daughter of a college president. I used to sneak across campus to watch commencements as a kid,” she recalls. “Dinner conversation was about the issues facing the college.”

Previously president of Mary Baldwin College, Sam Spencer began his 15-year tenure as president of Davidson College in 1968. By then, those dinnertime topics included the Vietnam War, civil rights, coeducation (Davidson was still all male) and fraternities.

That wasn’t all: in the city of Charlotte and surrounding Mecklenburg County, the landmark busing case Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education was heading to the Supreme Court.

“Because we were in a small town in North Carolina, guests of the college would stay with us or have a meal. I was a teenager by then, and I’d gone from listening to the adults from a window seat in the living room, to wanting a seat at the table and attending the various talks and lectures at the college. I soaked up everything.”

Fatherly advice

“What I learned from my father,” Clayton Spencer says, “and what I’ve learned and relearned throughout life, is that whatever you’re doing, you have to be authentically you.” Samuel Reid Spencer Jr. served as president of Davidson College, his alma mater, from 1968 to 1983.

The road to the presidency

Spencer studied history and German at Williams College, making her the second �ֲ���ý president to have a bachelor’s from there, after T. Hedley Reynolds, Williams ’42. She then read theology at Oxford University and earned a master’s in the study of religion at Harvard.

She is the first to have a law degree, from Yale.

Of her decision to not seek a doctorate in religion, she says that she “wanted a life that combined ideas and action, and therefore landed at Yale for law school. I was able to do the kind of conceptual thinking I love, while staying engaged in the facts on the ground. That dialectic, between ideas and facts on the ground, has informed my life ever since.”

Power from dialectical poles

“The field of religion fundamentally deals intellectually and morally with contradictions. How do you stay optimistic when you know that you’re going to die, when you know that bad things are going to happen to good people?

“Religion takes on these contradictions, placing you between the poles of the contradiction and making you think dynamically about finding a way forward. Dialectical thinking is how I move through practical problems. It’s the furniture of my mind.”

A lesson from Ted Kennedy

Speaking of “poles of contradiction,” Spencer tells a story about working on Capitol Hill for the late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, as chief education counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, which Kennedy chaired.

“I first met the senator when we were trying to pass direct lending for student loans, moving from a guarantee-agency system to funding directly from the federal government to colleges. I wrote a memo about how we were going to move 100 percent to direct lending in one fell swoop.

“I was called in to meet with the senator. He sat in his well-worn leather armchair. And he said, ‘Clayton, I’ve read your memo. It’s a really smart memo. Why don’t you take a walk with me down the hall?’

“He took me to the office of Jim Jeffords, then a Republican senator from Vermont before he went independent. Jeffords was the swing vote on the committee. He said, ‘Jim, my new education staffer here thinks this direct-lending thing is going to go through, no problem, at the markup next week. Can you tell her how many votes you have on the Republican side?’

“Jeffords said, ‘Well, Ted, I’ve got one or two on my side, but you ought to be more worried about your side. You don’t have a majority of the Democrats yet.’

“The senator walked me back, and he said, ‘We’ll give it several weeks, we’ll work it and then we’ll get this done.’ That was how I was introduced to getting things done on Capitol Hill: It takes more than smart memos to win the day.”

The ideal persuader

“The Senate is a culture of persuasion, as is a college campus,” Spencer says.

“Sen. Kennedy cared passionately about ideals, but he knew that ideals were sterile unless you could somehow put them into action. He was one of the most productive legislators in U.S. history because he knew when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em.”

Given Kennedy’s stature and power, Spencer, in effect, was chief education counsel for not just the committee but “the entire Senate and the country,” says Nick Littlefield, former Kennedy chief of staff.

“Clayton was a leader. She could master the substance of any issue; she could build the bipartisan alliances to get the initiative passed; and she could communicate the objective and details of the initiative in a charismatically persuasive way.

“She was one of the most respected staff directors I’ve ever known.”

Getting things done

Spencer joined Harvard in February 1997 as a consultant for federal policy issues. The following year, she was appointed associate vice president for higher education policy reporting to the President, and in 2005 she rose to the new position of vice president for policy.

Working directly with four different Harvard presidents, Spencer became known for her collaborative approach, effectiveness in getting things done and passionate commitment to access and affordability.

Of her involvement in various university-wide initiatives, from a task force on the advancement and support of women in academic life to the role of the arts and international strategy, Spencer is especially proud of her part in three projects at Harvard:

• The merger of Harvard and Radcliffe College and the subsequent transformation of Radcliffe into an institute for advanced study;

• The redesign and dramatic expansion of Harvard’s financial aid program;

• The creation of the Crimson Summer Academy for academically talented high school students from financially disadvantaged backgrounds.

“I learned a great deal by observing a variety of leadership styles,” she says. “The most basic lesson is this: Effective leadership is based on persuasion, not on hierarchy or on one’s position on an organizational chart. Leadership is most effective when you bring cooperative work to bear on solving hard problems.

“I believe this is one of the most fun things to do in life. You take on a hard problem, get the best thinkers around the table, invite the great ideas and then move toward actual, concrete outcomes. In my experience, achieving a unity of ideas and action will motivate the entire community and propel an institution forward.”

Turning crimson

Her highly effective yet low-key style caught the attention of The Harvard Crimson, which in 2008 published a profile headlined “Right-Hand Woman.”

“…[C]olleagues say she studiously avoids imperiousness,” wrote Clifford Marks, now a reporter for the National Journal. “Fellow trustees of Williams College, on whose board she has served for five years, say that Spencer is an exceedingly modest ‘coalition-builder,’ experienced in organizing support in the ego-dominated halls of both Washington and Cambridge. ‘It’s not Clayton’s style to hold herself out as “I know more than you do,”’ said Williams trustee Michael Keating. ‘She’s very careful to say, “Based on what I know, I have this point of view.”’”

The Gomes connection

Spencer says she was “very privileged” to work at Harvard with the late Rev. Peter Gomes ’65 in his role as the Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church.

“Peter had such rich and contradictory gifts, and you saw them all in a dynamic blend that was enormously powerful.

“I was introduced to �ֲ���ý in part through Peter’s love for the college. Peter wrote in one of his later books, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus, that Jesus ‘wants us to live in the full implications of our human gifts.’ That’s a pretty interesting way to encapsulate the essence of the liberal arts, and the �ֲ���ý experience as well.

“Clearly that’s a lesson he took very seriously and deeply.”

Coming to the party

“In the course catalog, you describe yourselves as a community of people who love ‘ideas, artistic expression, good talk and great books.’ Who wouldn’t want to be at that party?

“When I read the presidential prospectus, I was blown away by �ֲ���ý. It was love at first sight. Any college that leads its mission statement with an affirmation of the ‘emancipating potential of the liberal arts’ is a place I want to be.

“Then there’s the fact that from your earliest beginnings, �ֲ���ý welcomed women and African Americans into the full standing of the scholarly community, at a time when that simply wasn’t done. I love a place that does what is right, rather than what is expected.

“Another quality that comes through loud and clear is the lack of pretension, that sense of being down to earth, having an authentic way of moving through the world. And that suits me to a T.”

Adding to the allure is the college’s place in the state of Maine and the city of Lewiston. “I find this state fascinating and I respect its reserve — the fact that it’s hard to crack.”

What’s fun?

“Movies — all kinds. Solving hard problems with smart people. Basketball. Arugula salads. Being a mom [daughter Ava Carter is a Harvard junior; son Will Carter is working on Wall Street with a degree from NYU]. Good friends. Catching up with James Reese, a 10th-grade classmate!”

Not what we have, but what we do

“One of the legacies of the 2008 financial crisis is that we can no longer, in our society, equate wealth with excellence in higher education. But �ֲ���ý knew that long ago: �ֲ���ý was founded on the idea that it’s less about what we have and much more about what we do. That is tremendously appealing to me.

“The important thing for us now is to make sure that �ֲ���ý is delivering on the liberal arts model as much as we say we are, and to make sure that the value added in this experience is worth the price.”

Win, at some cost

“I am simple-minded. My view is that in athletics, as in everything else, it’s not worth doing unless you do it with the same commitment to rigor and excellence that you apply in other fields.”

Take cake, forget humble pie

“I know �ֲ���ý is famous for being humble, but I hope now that the college can step up and claim its excellence and rigor. �ֲ���ý is doing important work in shaping a direction for the liberal arts in this new century. You see it in the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, in the general education curriculum, and in the ongoing commitment both to individual and collaborative work for theses and capstone projects.

“To my mind, �ֲ���ý is poised to be a leader in transforming the liberal arts for today’s world.”

Knowledge and wisdom

“Given the welter of information and stimuli that confront people today, it is important to give students a framework of values and knowledge that can lead to wisdom that will guide them in life.”

Obligation to democracy

“Education is the key to the American dream. Ideally, it provides individual opportunity to talented students, whatever their backgrounds, and creates the educated citizenry that is essential to a healthy democracy and civil society. Unless higher education marries excellence and opportunity, it is not doing its job. It’s an old-fashioned idea, but it’s never been more important than it is today.”

Passion and tools

“I think we need the courage of our convictions about the liberal arts experience. It’s not the right option for everyone, but at its best, it teaches young people to harmonize their passions with rigorous intellectual training and to take a sense of creativity and possibility out into the world to serve purposes larger than themselves.”

By Doug Hubley
Photographs by Phyllis Graber Jensen

In a dance exercise last fall, students paired off and took turns jumping: One member of each pair would lift off as the other touched down.

Taking turns with the jumps proved hardest for an unexpected pair, seniors Shachi Phene and Shlesma Chhetri. “We are so used to getting back in synch with each other, we just could not manage it,” explains Phene.

“Not even once,” adds Chhetri.

Shachi Phene ’12, photographed by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College.

Phene and Chhetri have choreographed more than 40 dances together at �ֲ���ý, and their exploits in South Asian dance, notably the colorful and exuberant genre seen in Bollywood films, have made them campus stars.

A few years ago, �ֲ���ý dancers like Harita Daraneeswaran ’10 got the Bollywood ball bouncing at �ֲ���ý, and Chhetri and Phene have made the most of what they inherited, displaying a dedication as energetic and uplifting as the Bollywood spec-tacles they have created.

Shlesma Chhetri, photographed by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College.

They have not only studied dance but taught it, extending a Bollywood offering in physical education that dates back to 2006. They perform in productions by the Department of Theater and Dance and numerous student-organized events such as International Club coffeehouses and the wildly popular Asia Night variety show.

They even organized a dance club, �ֲ���ý Masti — taking on a deep commitment that involves everything from choreography to costuming to wrangling overcommitted fellow students.

Shachi Phene, seen here, and Shlesma Chhetri, below, take part in a faith discussion sponsored by the Multifaith Chaplaincy in 2011. Photograph by Rene Minnis

A sociology major, Chhetri is from Kathmandu, Nepal. Phene, a double major in economics and psychology, was born in India and now lives in Lexington, Mass. Phene was formally trained in classical Indian dance, while Chhetri is largely self-taught.

“We’re coming from different places but we are both equally passionate about what we want to show on the stage,” Phene says.

Photograph by Rene Minnis.

Known for bright, colorful costumes and infectious rhythms that fuse traditional Indian with Western styles, “Bollywood dances, songs and movies are associated with having a good time — joy,” says Phene. “It’s something people of all ages can do together.”

“Even first-timers end up having so much fun with the dance,” Chhetri says.

In that sense, the pair have given back to the �ֲ���ý ethos of inclusivity that gave Bollywood fertile ground to grow in. “�ֲ���ý has created an environment where people are very interested in learning about each other,” says Chhetri.

By H. Jay Burns
Photographs by Phyllis Graber Jensen

On March 3, 2002, the death of �ֲ���ý lacrosse captain Morgan McDuffee ’02 — a young man, as his coach said, “who simply glowed” — plunged the many people who knew and loved him into the darkest kind of despair.

Ten years later, a rainy day that gave way to sunshine, McDuffee’s family, friends and former teammates gathered for a memorial lacrosse game between �ֲ���ý, coached by Peter Lasagna, and Skidmore College, coached by McDuffee’s friend and former teammate, Jack Sandler ’02.

With the passage of time, the circle of people keeping McDuffee’s spirit alive is now larger and still unbroken.

That’s what struck Sandler about the memorial game: “the outpouring of support from so many for someone who meant so much to me but who many of them had never even met.”

Played at Tufts, the non-conference game was also a fundraiser for Morgan’s Fund, administered by the Maine Community Foundation. The fund supports groups promoting anti-violence programming and mediation, including Metro Lacrosse, a Boston nonprofit whose mission is youth development and education through lacrosse competition.

Players, coaches and fans wore No. 2 decals honoring McDuffee’s uniform number at �ֲ���ý.
Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College.

Before the game, McDuffee’s former teammates brought out Morgan’s lacrosse jersey, signed by both teams, and presented it to his mother.

Lasagna spoke briefly. The moment was heavy with shared emotion, but time had clearly passed, and the group seemed content to come together.

Lasagna said he was certain that McDuffee, had he lived, would have chosen a life that involved working with young people like the Metro Lacrosse youths, many of whom came to the game and were greeted by players and coaches.

�ֲ���ý head coach Peter Lasagna greets young boys and girls from Metro Lacrosse, the Boston nonprofit that focuses on youth development and education through lacrosse competition and receives support from Morgan’s Fund.
Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý

As a coach not much older than his Skidmore players, Sandler has shared the story of his friend Morgan McDuffee. Not necessarily the story of McDuffee’s death — murdered near campus while trying to break up a late-night melee between �ֲ���ý students and locals — but of his competitive yet generous spirit. He was a “what can I do to help?” type of leader and an equally loyal and big-hearted friend.

“Obviously, I spend a lot of time with my players at Skidmore,” Sandler says. “They get to know me and they’ve heard me speak of Morgan before. But in the locker room before the game, when I presented them with the No. 2 stickers for their helmets, this was the first time. They understood what a tragedy this had been and how important Morgan was to not just me but all those who attended the game.

“Morgan reached so many people in such a short amount of time.”

When the hard-fought game ended (Skidmore won), Sandler and Lasagna embraced.

McDuffee’s mother asked a photographer to take a picture of her and her sister, Morgan’s aunt, with the signed jersey, and they smiled as the photo was taken.

After the game McDuffee’s mother, Lisa Freeman (left), and her sister, Laura Birdsall, pose with McDuffee’s �ֲ���ý lacrosse jersey, signed by both teams. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý

Suzi Andrew South ’04, who was engaged to McDuffee at the time of his passing. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College.

Players, coaches and fans wore No. 2 decals honoring McDuffee’s uniform number at �ֲ���ý. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College.

For many players, the game was their first understanding of the power of the McDuffee story. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý

Head coach Peter Lasagna and his former players Aaron Sells ’01, Chris Buckley ’01 and Ben Anderson ’99. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý

�ֲ���ý head coach Peter Lasagna greets young boys and girls from Metro Lacrosse, the Boston nonprofit that focuses on youth development and education through lacrosse competition and receives support from Morgan’s Fund. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý

Illustration by James Steinberg.

The least-healthy food is the food most available to the people at highest risk for health problems.

“It’s so important for the development of a whole person to have academic work that addresses real-life, place-based issues.”