Jared Golden ’11 and Ben Cline ’94 actually have a lot in common. As undergraduates, both felt a bit different from their peers — Golden was older and a Marine veteran, while Cline was a conservative from the South.

Both majored in politics (Golden also majored in history), and both worked on Capitol Hill before being elected to the legislatures of their home states.

Now, they’re both first-term Congressmen from largely rural districts, Golden representing Maine’s sprawling 2nd District, the largest east of the Mississippi River, and Cline serving Virginia’s 6th District, in the northwest part of that state.

For all that’s similar about the pair, one key difference — Golden being a Democrat, and Cline a Republican — made their Reunion appearance in June a must-see.

+The nine �ֲ���ý alumni who've served in Congress

In a Pettengill Hall classroom packed with Reunion attendees, the pair covered a range of topics — at times sounding almost confessional in their frustration with the hyperpartisanship in Washington.

Interviewed by professors John Baughman (politics) and Stephanie Kelley-Romano (rhetoric, film, and screen studies), the two talked about their �ֲ���ý pasts, about what it was like arriving in Washington during a government shutdown, and how the alignment of powerful — and surprising — forces tends to stymie bipartisanship.

On their first days in Congress — during a government shutdown

When Golden and Cline were sworn in in early January, the federal government was in the middle of a five-week partial government shutdown. There was barely time to get acclimated to the offices and technology, Cline said. “We were voting on day one.”

At left and right, moderators Stephanie Kelley-Romano and John Baughman prepare for their discussion with newly elected Congressmen Ben Cline ’94 of Virginia and Jared Golden ’11 of Maine (second from left and right) on June 8 at Reunion. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The 116th Congress includes a number of charismatic, media-savvy freshman members comfortable in the national spotlight, and both Golden and Cline frequently referenced Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., during their discussion, with Golden distancing himself from her style of legislating.

“There’s room in every caucus for all kinds, and you need a little bit of every type of leader,” he explained. “Mine is, I think, a more quiet, dogged focus on issues and work, and then getting to the district and traveling around and meeting people face-to-face and making sure they feel a strong connection to their representative.”

Golden and his staff decided, instead of jumping straight into high-profile issues, to hang back and wait for his committee assignments — but he hit a wrinkle there.

“I think I bring an enlisted perspective into that committee room.”

He had promised during his campaign that he would not vote for Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as speaker of the House, saying Congress needed a new generation of leaders. He, along with 14 other members, followed through on their promises, but Pelosi was reelected speaker anyway.

“I’m not gonna lie,” Golden said. Voting against the speaker “doesn’t make it easy to get your top committee assignments.”

One of Golden’s two committee assignments is the Committee on Armed Services, whose 62 members include 20 military veterans. Twelve of those served combat tours, but only Golden served in the enlisted ranks.

“I think I bring an enlisted perspective into that committee room,” he said. “There’s a lot of officers sitting in that room. It’s a different, boots-on-the-ground perspective on Afghanistan and Iraq or other things.”

He’s also on the Committee on Small Business, chairing that committee’s contracting and infrastructure subcommittee.

“That committee’s been a real blessing,” he said. “It’s interesting, and in my experience, the one you might not enjoy as much turns out to be really deeply engaging.”

A lawyer, Cline landed among many other lawyers on the Judiciary Committee, an assignment he credits to the Congressman succeeded in Virginia’s 6th District, Bob Goodlatte ’74, who was the committee’s chair.

He also joined the Committee on Education and Labor where, as the representative of a district dotted with four-year colleges, he works on the higher education subcommittee.

On election night in Virginia, Ben Cline ’94 hugs Bob Goodlatte ’74 before giving his acceptance speech in Roanoke. (Heather Rousseau / copyright The Roanoke Times, reproduced by permission)

Soon after arriving in Washington, Cline drew media attention for a reason he didn’t expect. New members of Congress join a lottery to pick their offices, and Cline got first pick among the 80 new representatives — and was promptly inundated with calls from news outlets asking him about his new office. “Just to show you how the priorities of D.C. are messed up,” he lamented.

“CBS This Morning wanted to follow me around,” Cline said. “I said, ‘Can I go on CBS This Morning? Because I’d like to talk about my priorities for legislation.’ ‘No, we just want to follow you around and see what room you pick.’ That was my moment of fame.”

Cline didn’t go on This Morning, and he said the national media requests have largely subsided. “I’ve been on a very quiet committee assignment of Judiciary ever since,” he joked.

On listening to people

What most people don’t realize, Cline said, is how much of a House member’s attention and resources are devoted to issues back home in the district.

“They see us in Washington, but they don’t see that half of our budget is constituent services, running the offices. Half my staff is in the district helping folks who have problems with Social Security benefits or veterans benefits, solving problems with passports and things like that.”

Golden and Cline or their staffs spend three or four days out of most weeks in the district, hearing their constituents’ opinions.

“I have 19 counties and cities in my district, and so I’m trying to have a town hall in each one of them,” Cline said. “That’s where the rubber meets the road, when people can actually talk to their representative. You’re just being available. That’s what’s going to restore faith in the system.”

A squad leader in the Marines, Golden said that leading a Congressional staff was very different. “I hired good, smart people who challenge me and try and push back and make sure I’m making the right decisions and be thoughtful about it. That’s a learning experience for me, too.”

Jared Golden ’11 offers his Maine constituents multiple ways to give him feedback, including taking hikes with him. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Golden said he might hold a town hall now and again, but finds that the format favors loud and politically extreme views. (Maine’s two U.S. senators, independent Angus King and Republican Susan Collins, also tend to eschew the town hall format.)

Golden also has roundtables and coffee hours, appears at public events, and even tells his constituents to take a hike.

“We say, ‘Come meet us at the head of the trail, and walk through the woods with your Congressman for an hour.’ We’ll get three or four people; but maybe some people need it that low-key.”

On partisanship

Cline, a former member of the Republican-controlled Virginia House of Delegates, had to get used to being in the minority in “one of the most partisan environments imaginable,” he said — and during a shutdown, to boot. “We’re trying, but it’s like starting from 20 yards behind.”

In Virginia, Cline said, it was much easier to work across the aisle.

“In Richmond, all of us sit in the House together on the floor at the same time, and there’s one room in the back called the Members’ Lounge, and that’s where the food is. In line, it’s Democrat, Republican, Democrat, Republican. When we sit down, we’re all sitting together in the back sharing stories.”

On Capitol Hill, Cline has found that there’s a partisan slant to everything from orientation, which is largely separate for Republicans and Democrats, to doorways.

“The caucuses don’t even enter rooms through the same doors. The Republicans go through one door, the Democrats go in another door. Every committee has separate lounges, a lounge for Republicans and a lounge for Democrats.”

“We are starting from a place of stark division and for those of us who want to make changes, the institution’s very resistant to change,” Cline added. “We’ve got a lot of work to do to make it happen.”

Darnell Morrow ’14 (left) greets Ben Cline ’94 (right) prior to the Reunion discussion on June 8. Both graduates of Washington and Lee Law School, the pair had met once before, when on opposite sides of a legal case. (Jay Burns/�ֲ���ý College)

Cline said he sometimes plays “Democrat roulette,” saying hello to various Democratic members of Congress and seeing who is responsive and who is not. Golden joined the For Country Caucus, a group of military veterans from both parties who are committed to bipartisanship.

“It’s really a commitment to forge relationships and try and put yourself in the mindset of, what’s the best step for the collective country?” Golden said.

“Forget talking about Middle East peace. Here in our country, we’re in a lot of trouble.”

One audience member in the Keck Classroom called the separate doors “heartbreaking,” and asked the Congressmen if there was any hope for bipartisan cooperation. Neither were optimistic.

Golden recalled listening to a podcast featuring a marriage counselor who also worked on Middle East peace efforts. The counselor said that cooperation is very difficult if people don’t trust either the process of negotiation or negotiators themselves.

“I really thought about our politics these days,” Golden said. “Forget talking about Middle East peace. Here in our country, with our politics, both sides don’t trust one another. The general public doesn’t trust the process. We’re in a lot of trouble.”

Improving relations between the two major parties in Congress won’t be easy, say Jared Golden ’11 (left) and Ben Cline ’94. “Trying to get a seedling to sprout in that rubble is challenging,” said Cline. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Cline said the Judiciary Committee, which is conducting some of the highest-profile hearings on the Hill in connection with the Mueller Report, is a microcosm of the hyperpartisanship sweeping Congress. “We were talking past each other and making points and then going back to our offices,” he said.

He said he’s trying to get all the freshman members together for lunch once a week, but the work is frustrating.

“It’s building those relationships from the ground up,” he said. “Right now we just have dust. We just have rubble. Trying to get a seedling to sprout in that rubble is challenging.”

On their �ֲ���ý experiences

Cline grew up in Lexington, Va., the son of a Washington and Lee economics professor. He had the liberal arts ethos in mind when he arrived at �ֲ���ý, and he said he got what he wanted.

On a largely liberal campus, the more-conservative Cline was “confronted on day one,” he said. But he learned to debate his beliefs in Commons, where anything and everything was up for grabs.

“Everything was on the table,” he said. “If you had something to say, say it.”

In 1992, Cline’s mother sent him a newspaper clipping — Bob Goodlatte ’74 had won that year’s House seat in his home district. Two years later, Goodlatte returned to campus for his 20th Reunion, and Cline made a point of joining the student �ֲ���ýStar team for the Class of 1974.

“Everything was on the table” at �ֲ���ý, said Ben Cline ’94. “If you had something to say, say it.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The �ֲ���ýStars were encouraged to write notes of introduction to the returning alumni. “Mine said, ‘I’m Ben Cline, I’m from Lexington, Virginia, I’m majoring in political science, and I really want to work on Capitol Hill.’”

And during the weekend, he got to meet the new Congressman and his wife, Maryellen Flaherty Goodlatte ’74.

“Sure enough, after he and Maryellen got back to Washington, there was a resume waiting for him. It was at that point that the very first staffer, an entry-level correspondent who wrote the mail, had decided to leave. I got called in for an interview.”

Cline worked for Goodlatte for eight years, becoming chief of staff. After his time in Goodlatte’s office, Cline earned a law degree and served eight terms in the Virginia House of Delegates. When Goodlatte decided to retire in 2018 after 26 years in Congress, Cline won his seat.

“My �ֲ���ý network was one guy,” Cline said, “but it was a very critical guy.”

In July 1999, Ben Cline ’94 (left) confers with Rep. Bob Goodlatte ’74 in Goodlatte’s office in the Rayburn House Office Building. Cline was Goodlatte’s legislative director at the time. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Born in Lewiston and raised in nearby Leeds, Golden served two combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before returning to Maine. By the mid-2000s, he was working a few jobs to make ends meet, including one at George’s Pizza in Auburn, a favorite Friday night pizza takeout spot for Bill Hiss ’66, a longtime �ֲ���ý dean of admission.

The two met one night, and Hiss encouraged Golden, who had briefly attended the University of Maine at Farmington, to return to college, at �ֲ���ý.

“I’m like, ‘You’re out of your mind, buddy,’” Golden said in recalling Hiss’ suggestion, eliciting a big laugh from the Reunion audience. But, he said, “�ֲ���ý didn’t laugh.”

“It’s a real lesson that nothing is really impossible. If you want to try something and work hard enough for it, and people will give you a chance and opportunities, you grab onto it, and you can do it.”

As a parent takes a photo, Jared Golden ’11 poses with a Reunion-goer’s son following the discussion. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Golden ticked off the ways he was a non-traditional student: He was in his mid-20s and “could also qualify as a townie and the only veteran on campus — so being a little different and facing some resistance in the classroom, but also bringing some,” he said.

After graduation, Golden worked in Collins’ Senate office before returning to Maine in 2013. He served two terms in the Maine House of Representatives and was elected assistant majority leader in his second term. In 2015, he married Isobel Moiles ’11.

In terms of his political perspectives, the lessons he learned as a Marine and as a �ֲ���ý graduate sometimes intertwine. One result, he said, is being able to see different sides of an issue and a propensity to challenge conventional thinking.

On election night in November, Jared Golden ’11, joined by Isobel Moiles Golden ’11, greet supporters at the Gendron Franco Center in Lewiston. (Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal)

When a Reunion audience member asked whether the U.S. government should intervene in Venezuela, Golden pointed out that Congress didn’t have much power to initiate or stop armed conflict these days. Even so, his experience tended to prevent a yes-no answer.

“It gets real complex, real fast,” he said. “When I talk about my feelings on Afghanistan, I can go, ‘Geez, what are we doing over there? We’re not really helping. We’re wasting so many resources and blood and lives of both countries.’”

But then, “I go and talk to Mustafa.”

As a student, Golden became good friends with Mustafa Basij-Rasikh ’12, a student from Kabul, Afghanistan, who had received support to study in the U.S. from the Peter M. Goodrich Memorial Foundation, founded by Sally and Don Goodrich, whose son Peter ’89 died in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

For a 2010 �ֲ���ý Magazine story, Mustafa Basij-Rasikh ’12 and Jared Golden ’11 posed together in a Pettengill history classroom. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Golden and Basij-Rasikh both thought deeply about the state of education in Afghanistan, and Golden returned to teach there one summer.

So when Golden thinks about his friend from Kabul, “it gets real hard to say we should just walk away and not engage in that type of [military] activity. A lot of questions, and the answers, are tough to come up with.”

On Capitol Hill, “�ֲ���ý has put me into a mindset which is probably infuriating at times to some of my colleagues,” Golden told his fellow alumni at Reunion.

“I will challenge conventional thinking as much within my own party and caucus as I would across the aisle in challenging the Republicans.”

During the Annual Gathering of the Alumni Association on June 6 at Reunion, three alumnae received association awards for their contributions to �ֲ���ý and to the wider world:

• Dr. Patricia Sullivan Doyle ’79, a longtime rural Maine physician and advocate for health-care reform, was awarded the association’s Alumni Community Service Award for “distinguished leadership and commitment to serving the community in which they live or work.”
• Rachel “Rae” Harper Garcelon ’62, who has served �ֲ���ý alumni as a valued employee and an effective volunteer, received the association’s Helen A. Papaioanou ’49 Distinguished Alumni Service Award for “truly distinguished service — both in quantity and quality.”
• Emily Buchanan ’89, a painter whose work has been part of a Department of State global visual arts program and featured in the 2014 White House holiday card, was awarded the association’s Sesquicentennial Prize, which honors an alumnus or alumna for “a single academic, artistic, or scientific achievement.”

Rachel “Rae” Harper Garcelon ’62, recipient of the Alumni Association’s distinguished service award, congratulates David Longdon ’14, a member of the Board of Trustees who received a �ֲ���ý’ Best award at Reunion 2019. (Rene Roy for �ֲ���ý College)

Also during Reunion, the college presented �ֲ���ý’ Best awards to seven alumni to honor their Reunion volunteer work:  Dwight Harvie ’54, Jonas Klein ’54, Jack DeGange ’59, Michael Nolan ’69, Alicia Hunter Warner ’94, John Harvey ’09, and David Longdon ’14.

And on Friday evening of Reunion, Professor Emeritus of Psychology John Kelsey received the College Key’s Distinguished Service Award during the organization’s annual meeting.

Here are the three Alumni Association awards:

Dr. Patricia Sullivan Doyle ’79: Alumni Community Service Award

The citation for Doyle’s award reads, in part:

How fortuitous for the small community of Moose River Valley that doctor Pat Doyle landed there 30 years ago and never left…. Here, she cares for a community of roughly 1,000 people with limited staff and resources. Where others would have left after their five-year stint, Pat put down roots and rolled up her sleeves to serve a community in need.

Patricia Sullivan Doyle ’79 received the Alumni Community Service Award at Reunion 2019. (Rene Roy for �ֲ���ý College)

Rachel Harper Garcelon ’62: Helen A. Papaioanou ’49 Distinguished Alumni Service Award

The citation for Garcelon’s award reads, in part:

In addition to her contributions as an employee of the college, Rae has volunteered repeatedly and tirelessly as a class officer…. Her devotion and commitment to the college is reflected in the enthusiasm and high attendance of class members at Reunion gatherings. Friends recount how �ֲ���ý is her love and how she has always been present and engaged with the college, both as a student and alumna: As one former classmate puts it, “She is not just a person of our class, but the highlight of our class.”

Rachel “Rae” Harper Garcelon ’62 receives the Helen A. Papaioanou ’49 Distinguished Alumni Service Award. (Rene Roy for �ֲ���ý College)

Emily S. Buchanan ’89: Sesquicentennial Prize

The citation for Buchanan’s award reads, in part:

Complementing [her]t training has been her willingness to work hard, which she attributes to her �ֲ���ý education. In an interview for �ֲ���ý, she remarked: “My greatest asset as a painter is that I’ve worked hard and consistently at it over the years. If I hadn’t had the experience at �ֲ���ý, I’m not sure that I would have had the maturity to pursue my art as I have.”

For many years, Emily has been involved with a U.S. Department of State initiative called Art in Embassies, which places artwork in embassies around the world. It was through this connection that she was commissioned to paint the White House annual Christmas card in 2014.

Emily Buchanan ’89 (left) receives the Sesquicentennial Prize from Jen Crawford ’01, vice president of the Alumni Association. (Rene Roy for �ֲ���ý College)

In 1876, just as the post-Civil War Reconstruction stalled and white politicians began to roll back the rights of formerly enslaved people, the Emancipation Memorial was erected in Washington, D.C.

The concept of emancipation is more complex than the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C., might suggest, says �ֲ���ý professor Charles Nero. (Photo by yeowatzup / CC BY 2.0 / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

The history and ideology behind the word “emancipation” are complex, �ֲ���ý professor Charles Nero told an alumni audience at Reunion on June 7.

Did emancipation happen as depicted in the statue — as a white statesman benevolently freeing the slaves — or was it the result of a war of liberation in which black Americans won their freedom through their own struggle?

The Benjamin E. Mays ’20 Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies, Nero approached his talk — on the life of his professorship’s namesake, civil rights icon Benjamin Mays — with the rhetorician’s attention to the power of words and images.

The 50th Reunion Seminar, organized by the Class of 1969, centered on Mays’ most famous quote relating to �ֲ���ý, from his autobiography, Born To Rebel.

Mays wrote, “�ֲ���ý College did not ‘emancipate’ me; it did far greater service of making it possible for me to emancipate myself and to accept with dignity my own worth as a free man.”

Mays’ description of his �ֲ���ý education is “stylistically very elegant,” Nero said.

When Mays published Born to Rebel in 1971, he’d had many decades to think about emancipation. After graduating from �ֲ���ý and earning a doctorate from the University of Chicago Divinity School, he served for 30 years as president of Morehouse College.

At Morehouse, Mays mentored future civil rights leaders, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., becoming known as “the schoolmaster of the Civil Rights Movement.”

Mays’ description of his �ֲ���ý education is “stylistically very elegant,” Nero said.

�ֲ���ý professor Charles Nero discusses the concept of emancipation and the life of Benjamin Mays during a 50th Reunion seminar on June 7. Nero is the Benjamin E. Mays ’20 Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“He is rejecting this idea of emancipation, the idea of emancipation that is in this statue which surely he knew,” he added. “In other words, he is declaring his own agency, his own command of his future. �ֲ���ý College played a role in that.”

At the same time, “�ֲ���ý College is not Lincoln. That’s very important for an African American man to make a statement to that effect.”

Contained in Mays’ idea of emancipation, Nero said, were three additional heavy concepts: religion, gender, and citizenship — all of which Mays used to reject white supremacy.

Mays was a devout Christian minister, and his theology was similar to that of Latin American liberation theology, Nero said. In a 1966 edition of the �ֲ���ý Alumnus, now �ֲ���ý Magazine, Mays recalled how, even as a child, he had decided that if God had made black people inferior to whites, he would not pray to that god.

Benjamin Mays (right), with Martin Luther King Jr., was known as “the schoolmaster of the movement” for teaching and inspiring a generation of civil rights leaders, including King, who called Mays “my spiritual mentor and my intellectual father.”

“He is going to reject white supremacy, and if it requires him to reject his faith, he will do that,” Nero said.

Resisting white supremacy also meant asserting his manhood, Nero said. Here, Nero turned to the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois and the sociologist’s famous definition of double-consciousness — the conflicting identities of black men as Americans and African Americans.

Du Bois wrote of feeling best when he could beat his white friends at school or sports. So did Mays — “I thought I would go north for college to compete with whites,” he wrote in the Bulletin. “If I do well there, that would be convincing proof that Negroes are not inferior to white men.”

At �ֲ���ý, Mays had the opportunity to read the Bible critically, in a way that supported his claim of equality with white men.

“I learned that God was no respecter of persons and that I was right in not believing what I had heard in my childhood — that Negroes were inferior,” he wrote in the Alumnus. He also excelled academically and graduated with honors.

A talented debater, Mays won an oratory award for reciting “Imaginary Speech of John Adams,” by Daniel Webster, a speech that emphasizes the divinity of the American push for independence. That Mays won an award for the speech was profound to Nero.

Benjamin E. Mays (middle, back row) poses with a 1919 debate team. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

“�ֲ���ý allowed him the testing ground to demonstrate his masculinity, his manhood, his right to not be an outcast or a stranger in his own house — that is, to be a citizen of the United States,” he said.

Nero then asked his audience to consider emancipation as it related to their time at �ֲ���ý. How did the Class of 1969 grapple with racism and white supremacy?

The late 1960s was, of course, a time when social structures of all kinds came under scrutiny. The Vietnam War was starting to attract widespread protest, and the Civil Rights movement was accompanied by the brutal assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., and, earlier, the murders of Medgar Evers and four young girls in an Alabama church.

Depicting candidates Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon, and George Wallace, this uncredited political cartoon appeared in The �ֲ���ý Student the week before the 1968 presidential election.

Student publications that Nero projected showed deep engagement with the 1968 elections. The campaign of George Wallace, though unlikely to find a friendly audience in the liberal Northeast, advertised in The �ֲ���ý Student. Comedian and activist Dick Gregory, then running as a write-in candidate, appeared on campus.

Students and faculty also wondered how to contend with racism on campus, and how to make �ֲ���ý more inclusive. Robert Chute, a popular professor of biology, wrote a thundering letter demanding radical changes in admissions, financial aid, and the curriculum.

Dick Gregory’s talk at �ֲ���ý in February 1968 was described as a “tour de force on civil rights today” by The �ֲ���ý Student.

One 1968 workshop, “�ֲ���ý College and the Disadvantaged Black Student,” raised questions about how African Americans were represented.

Chantal Berry Dalton ’69, a retired diplomat who was in the Reunion audience, was listed in the workshop’s program as a poetry reader. She said that, as the only black woman in her class, she went to many such workshops and conversations — and did not appreciate how black students were automatically assumed to be disadvantaged.

She said the institutional will to change was there, but it took a lot of work from her and other students of color.

“I spent a lot of hours in a lot of meetings talking about how we were going to change things at �ֲ���ý,” she said. “It was interesting. It was tiring.”

Chantal Berry Dalton ’69 recalls participating in many of �ֲ���ý’ efforts to make the college more inclusive. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Other, white, members of the Class of 1969 said they had little recollection of conversations about racism during their time in college. For some, the burgeoning women’s movement was more salient — at the time, women at �ֲ���ý lived under more restrictive social rules than men.

In fact, for a few, it was only years later that some white audience members understood how white privilege affected their lives.

“Was it your privilege as white people that made you unaware of the kind of labor that emancipation requires?” Nero asked them.

Many of those who spoke up during the talk agreed that emancipation, for �ֲ���ý, is ongoing.

Alicia Hunter Warner ’94 reminds the audience that questions of race and racism are not historical concepts. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“Like many institutions and individuals, �ֲ���ý is growing into its own aspirations in a lot of ways,” said Alicia Hunter Warner ’94, a member of the Alumni Council of the �ֲ���ý Alumni Association.

“I think that there is hope for how we’re changing and what we’re doing as a community, but I do think that we cannot ignore what institutionalized racism in this country is. It is not just our institutions; it’s the fabric of the way we live and interact with each other that keeps self-perpetuating.”

Charles Nero talks with alumni following his Reunion talk on Benjamin Mays and the concept of emancipation. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)