1983

President Virginia Smith announced a new Executive-in-Residence program, through which leaders in business would come to campus, deliver a major address and interact with groups of students in order to reach a “maximum intimacy between the visiting executive and Vassar students and faculty.”

Smith hoped that the new program would allow liberal arts students to see how their studies fit into the American business world—“We cannot directly train students for the job market in the classroom, so we have to try to do whatever we can outside the classes.”

The Miscellany News

The following March, the president, general counsel and director of Arnold Bernhard and Company, investing specialist Dorothy Berry ’65 was the first Executive-in-Residence.

President Virginia Smith held a question and answer session, during which she criticized a recent law linking draft registration to federal financial aid. The board chairman of the Association of American Colleges (ACC), Smith announced a resolution adopted by the AAC asking Congress to reconsider the law. “President Smith,” reported Steven Kauderer in The Miscellany News, “called the law ‘penalty without due process.’ Furtheremore, she added that it discriminates against college students who need financial aid (as opposed to students who do not.”

Smith also reported that The Energy Resource Management Co. (THERM) would begin a study of energy consumption and usage. Smith said the company would “participate fully in the implementation of their recommendations and provide training for Vassar College personnel.” She also announced that actres Meryl Streep ’71 would be the speaker at Commencement. Smith released a press statement saying, “We are most excited about welcoming Meryl Streep back to Vassar as the speaker for our 119th graduation. At the age of 33, she is often described as the most talented actress in the country, admired for the depth of her emotion and the range of her talent. She is obviously an intelligent woman—after all, she was graduated from Vassar with honors!—educated in the liberal arts tradition. Success has not clouded her view of what’s important in her life nor diminished the strength of her character. I know her thoughts and example will be of great value to the young men and women in the graduating class.”

The Miscellany News, News from Vassar

A new student publication, MaleMouth appeared. Written “by and for those who are secure with their sex” about “things that are unique to the male condition in the world as well as in Vassar,” the first issue addressed topics such as shaving and laundry.

Some students felt that MaleMouth mocked the feminist publication Womanspeak, but co-editor Benjamin Swett ’84 insisted that MaleMouth “wasn’t supposed to be a lampoon of another publication…Womanspeak is a fine publication and I enjoy it.”

The Miscellany News

A ballet instructional/performance film created by Vassar ballet instructor Jeanne Periolat Czula, Vassar physical education instructor Roman Czula and Poughkeepsie Ballet dancer Phillip Otto was screened in the College Center.

The Vassar Art Gallery presented work by Assistant Professor of Art Peter Charlap, Lecturer in Art Harry Roseman and Assistant Professor of Art Richard Ryan.

An all-campus meeting was held, during which community members participated in small discussion groups, shared a meal, attended an assembly and enjoyed an all-campus party.

Chaplain Allison Stokes wrote of the meeting, “The College is now passing through a difficult period which tests its integrity as a sustaining community…The tension, distress, academic pressure, intolerance of others, the sense of isolation, the lack of civility and the financial worries of which so many students have spoken have convinced us of the need to act now, to explore together the sources of these recent tensions and to seek for ways to address them appropriately.”

The Miscellany News

Emmy award-winning African-American journalist and television commentator Gil Noble lectured and screened a film, The Life of Malcolm X, in the Chapel. “I think it’s very important,” the host of the ABC News program Like It Is said, “that we understand the enormous legacy embodied in the man of Malcolm X…. There is a direct connection between what happened in those days and your existence here now, and what lies ahead in the future.”

Noble challenged his audience, “What would people like Malcolm X—who fought and bled to get black students into Vassar—say about your behavior today? Would they shake your hand or shake your neck?”

Declaring that society’s institutions had created a “counterculture designed to put (young people) to sleep,” Noble demanded that the students wake-up, telling black students to have a “clearness about their Africanness” and encouraging all students to get involved. “Student involvement,” he concluded, “is a sign of a healthy society.”

The Miscellany News

The Vassar Gospel Choir and the Rainbow Singers performed in the Villard Room.

Ultimate Frisbee teams from Manhattanville, New Paltz and Bard came to an invitational tournament hosted by Vassar. The home team finished in second place, and co-captain Jonathan Rubin ’86 said, “We played the best game of the year…Our organization, our teamwork was at a high like I’ve never seen before. Truly outstanding.”

The Miscellany News

Associate Professor of History Jonathan C. Clark died suddenly at the age of 41. Clark, an expert on New York colonial and revolutionary history, joined the faculty in 1973.

Philaletheis presented Godspell in the Aula. The musical—parables from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke interspersed with texts from hymns set to contemporary music—originated as a student production at Carnegie Mellon University, and it enjoyed a long off-Broadway run. A Godspell touring company performed at Vassar in 1977.

Guitarist and satirical songwriter Fred Small performed socially conscious songs at the Noyes West End Coffeehouse. His program included “Supply Side Economics,” “Dig a Hole in the Ground or How to Prosper During the Coming Nuclear War” and “I Lost that Pretty Little Girl to Title IX.” Small also sang about the civil war in El Salvador, in which the United States was heavily involved.

Using the story of Cinderella and her two stepsisters as an example, Professor Ann Bedford Ulanov from Union Theological Seminary lectured on envy in Josselyn House living room. Dr. Ulanov’s book Cinderella and Her Sisters: The Envied and the Envying (1983) was followed by Picturing God in 1986.

The board of trustees voted to raise tuition, room and board $1,160 or 11 percent for the 1983-1984 academic year, bringing the total to $11,660. President Smith, in her letter to the student body, cited inflation, loss of federal aid and skyrocketing gas prices as reasons for the increase.

Also at the February meeting, the Trustees requested that President Smith write a letter opposing a proposed amendment that would deny financial aid to students who did not register for the selective service system.

The co-founder of the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States, Dr. Mary Steichen Calderone ’25, former medical director of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (1953-1964), came to the campus as the President’s Distinguished Visitor.

Dr. Calderone lectured on “Children and Parents as Sexual Beings” in the Chapel. Asserting that sexuality did not begin with puberty, she said, “It is possible today to state categorically that children feel and behave sexually even from before birth, and that from year one to year five, the development of sexual behavior and thinking will parallel closely the rapid development of language during the same years.”

During her visit Calderone spoke with Vassar classes and local community professionals, and she held an informal “tea talk,” during which she discussed the necessity of not teaching children that sexuality was “bad” and of explaining that it was a part of life with proper places and times for its expression.

The Miscellany News, The New York Times

Novelist Hilma Wolitzer, author of Ending (1974), In the Flesh (1977) and Hearts (1980), was the English department’s writer-in-residence. On Feb. 17, Wolitzer read from her work in progress in the Josselyn House living room.

The Library Committee voted to ban food and vending machines from the library. Head Librarian David Paulus cited “some evidence that food and drink has damaged books.”

The Miscellany News

Benjamin Sasway, the first student to be convicted for failing to register after the Carter Administration reinstated the selective service system in 1980, spoke about draft resistance in the Villard Room. Sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison, Sasway was paroled after serving six months.

Learning of his indictment in 1982, Sasway told the press, “The Government has chosen to prosecute me to intimidate the 500,000 people who did not register for the draft. I urge these resisters to stand firm, without fear. I ask people appalled by hatred and violence, who believe in freedom and who oppose militarism, to stand by me in protest. We can’t forget that it is our Government and we have the power, if we act together, to change and improve it.”

New York Times

The Vassar Jewish Students’ Union held a rally in honor of National Soviet Jewry Solidarity Day, February 23, with speeches by former state representative Hamilton Fish and recent Soviet Jewish immigrant Boris Lipkin.

In a brief residency at Vassar, avant-garde choreographer and dancer Merce Cunningham and dance filmmaker Charles Atlas gave a film presentation, showing Cunningham’s dance movies Locale (1979) and Channels/Inserts (1981). The films were again shown on February 27^th.

The following day the Merce Cunningham Dance Company performed in Kenyon Hall in a Dickinson-Kayden event.

Mildred Bernstein Kayden ’42 established the fund in 1966 in honor of the late Professor of Music George Sherman Dickinson.

Flora Lewis, foreign and diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times, lectured on “Foreign Policy in Changing World” in the Villard Room. Insisting that American foreign policy should be relatively consistent, Lewis deplored the apparent assumption that it should change with every presidential administration.

Lewis held an informal discussion in the Villard Room the next day.

Carl Berry, deputy superintendent of Green Haven Prison lectured on “Prisons in Crisis” in New England Building. In 1979, Professor of Religion Lawrence Mamiya began the conversations between Vassar students and inmates at the maximum security prison in Stormville, New York, which developed into his popular course called “The Prison Experience in America.

New York City NewsCenter 4 reporter Bob Teague; Philadelphia Inquirer editor Constance Rosenblaum; WNYC radio news director Marty Goldensohn and Professor Penn Kimball from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism participated in a panel on “News Business or Show Business,” discussing the approaches, constraints and purposes of television, radio and print journalism.

The fifth annual Spring Seminar on Academic Planning—a student-faculty panel, an information session and discussions—encouraged freshmen to consider their academic options and futures at Vassar.

Jazz legend Lionel Hampton and his orchestra performed at the Spring Formal.

A conservative student publication, The Vassar Spectator, published its first edition. Editor-in-Chief Jonathan H. Mann ‘83 said, “We are a conservative publication, but we resent being labeled. By labeled I mean supporting one specific political platform. We hope to print some articles that are totally unrelated to politics and are of interest to the community.”

The Miscellany News

Vassar soprano Carol Wilson performed Handel’s Lucrezia, Richard Strauss’s Drei Leider der Ophelia, songs by Charles Ives, and selections from Brahms. Wilson was accompanied by Associate Professor Blaca Uribe on piano, Barbara Bogantin on violoncello and Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Brian Mann on harpsichord.

The history and political science departments joined the Women’s Studies program and Feminist Union to sponsor a film series on women and union activity. Among the films shown were: With Babies and Banners (1979), The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1980), Union Maids (1976) and The Wilmar 8 (1981).

Vassar’s first executive-in-residence, Dorothy Berry ’65, the president, general counsel, and director of Arnold Bernhard and Co., the publisher of Value Line services, spoke on “The Stock Market: Myth and Reality.” The executive-in-residence program brought business leaders to the campus who spoke at a community breakfast to Mid-Hudson business and civic leaders and Vassar community members and who then met with classes and spoke informally with students about their careers and their experiences in the workplace.

The American Culture Program celebrated its 10^th anniversary with a party.

Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull (1896) was performed in Avery Hall.

An exhibit in the Vassar College Art Gallery, Photo-Collecting at Vassar: 100 years +10, included photographs by Diane Arbus, Walker Evans, Lewis Wickes Hine, Edward Weston, Andre Kertesz and Len Jenshel.

On April 24, a panel discussion of the exhibit included its guest curator Anne Hoene Hoy ’63; photographer Lynn Davis; Life magazine picture editor John Loengard; photographic historian and Visiting Lecturer in Art Marjorie Munsterberg and New York photography dealer and critic Daniel Wolf.

Philaletheis presented Lanford Wilson’s Talley’s Folly (1979), directed by Judy Davis ’83, in Rockefeller Hall. The second play in Wilson’s Talley Trilogy, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980.

Feminist folksinger Judy Gorman-Jacobs gave a songwriting workshop and concert at Noyes West End Coffeehouse. Gorman-Jacobs’s album Right Behind You in the Left-Hand Lane was released in 1982.

Vassar cellist Luis Garcia-Renart and pianist Todd Crow, associate professor of music, performed in Skinner Hall.

President and CEO of Time Inc. J. Richard Munro, Vassar’s second executive-in-residence, lectured in the Villard Room on “Repairing the ‘Safety Net’: Business Should Care.”

The executive-in-residence program brought business leaders to the campus who spoke at a community breakfast to Mid-Hudson business and civic leaders and Vassar community members and who then met with classes and spoke informally with students about their careers and their experiences in the workplace.

Children’s author and poetry anthologist Lee Bennett Hopkins lectured on “Teaching Children Writing” in Blodgett Hall. The prolific author was a determined advocate of the importance of encouraging children to read and to write poetry.

A national advocate for abused and neglected children, Dr. Vincent J. Fontana, professor of clinical pediatrics at New York University’s College of Medicine and medical director and pediatrician-in-chief of the New York Foundling Hospital Center for Parent and Child Development, lectured on “Child Abuse” in the Villard Room. The personal physician at one time to both President Dwight D. Eisenhower and New York’s Cardinal Francis Spellman, Dr. Fontana, a pediatrician by training, was co-author of The Maltreated Child: The Maltreatment Syndrome in Children: A Medical, Legal and Social Guide (1964) and author of Somewhere a Child is Crying: Maltreatment—Causes and Prevention (1973, rev. 1983).

Vassar’s Feminist Union sponsored the annual Women’s Weekend. As part of the weekend, New York City consultant Janet Cuttings Feldman spoke on “Feminism and the Feminine.” Former National Organization for Women (NOW) president Eleanor Smeal also lectured.

The weekend was also celebrated with a dance and a stage production of Foodfights an investigation of eating disorders performed by a Massachusetts theater group.

The English Beat and R.E.M. performed in Kenyon Hall. The less well-known R.E.M. opened for The English Beat on their tour, but R.E.M. eventually went on to greater success with It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) (1987), Losing My Religion (1991) and Everybody Hurts (1993).

Former college chaplain George Williamson preached in the Chapel.

British medievalist R.W. Southern, Sometime President of St. John’s College, University of Oxford, gave the C. Mildred Thompson ‘03 Lecture on “Reason, Passion, and the Position of Women: a 12^th Century Paradox” in the Villard Room. Professor Southern’s The Making of the Middle Ages (1953) established his eminence in the field and was followed by such works as St. Anselm and His Biographer: A Study of Monastic Life and Thought, 1059-c.1130 (1963), Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (1970) and Robert Grosseteste: The Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe (1986).

Belgian-born animal rights activist Henry Spira, founder in 1974 of Animal Rights International, lectured in Rockefeller Hall. His successful campaigns against the American Museum of Natural History’s experimentation on cats in 1977 and on Revlon’s blinding of rabbits in toxicity tests in 1980 drew public attention to his organization and his method of publicly shaming rather than physically protesting or attacking his targets.

“John Burroughs Day: A Symposium” was highlighted by an exhibition of Burroughs’s newly-acquired journals and several discussions. Panel participants included: President Smith, Professor Emeritus of Biology Margaret Wright, Associate Professor of English and Director of the American Culture Program Frank Bergon, Curator of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Lisa Browar, Associate Professor of English H.R. Stonebeck from the State University of New York at New Paltz and John Burroughs’s granddaughter, Elizabeth Burroughs Kelley.

Other symposium events included a visit to Burroughs’s Catskill retreat, Slabsides in West Park, NY, and a film and slide series on the naturalist at SUNY New Paltz.

Burroughs was a frequent visitor to the campus in the later 19^th and early 20^th centuries, and student groups visited him frequently at Slabsides. Vassar’s first nature club, the Wake Robin Club, took its name from Burroughs’s “invitation to study Ornithology,” his book Wake-Robin (1871).

Eugene O’Neill’s Dynamo (1929), directed by Herman Farrell ‘83,was performed in the Powerhouse Theater.

Poughkeepsie punk-rock band Agitpop performed New Wave dance music at the Noyes West End Coffee House.

John Irving, author of The Hotel New Hampshire (1981) and The World According to Garp (1978) read from his work in progress in the Chapel. That work, The Cider House Rules, was published in 1985.

Spanish playwright Federico García Lorca’s The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife (1930) was performed in Avery Hall.

The Clifford Jordan Quintet and the Walter Booker Duo with pianist John Hicks performed jazz in Skinner Hall.

Associate Professor of Geology Karen Lukas and Associate Professor of Anthropology L. Lewis Johnson gave a Sigma XI lecture on “Natural History and Cultural History: Galapagos Islands and Machu Picchu” in Sanders Physics. Sigma Xi, an honorary scientific fraternity open to faculty members with associate membership for outstanding students, had 500 chapters nationally. Vassar established Sigma Xi at the club level in 1959 and an active chapter of Sigma Xi in 1995.

Visiting Lecturer in Drama Elizabeth White directed Meg Inglima ‘83, Dow Flint Kowalczyk ‘83 and Jens Krummel ‘83 in their reading of Russell Davis’s The Further Adventures of Sally (1982) in the Powerhouse Theatre. Davis attended all three readings.

Meryl Streep ’71, Academy Award winning actress for Sophie’s Choice (1982) and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), delivered the 1983 Commencement address entitled “The Secret that You Know.” Streep spoke to the graduating class as “peers,” encouraging them not to lapse into complacency, but instead to “integrate what you believe into every single area of your life. Take your heart to work and ask the most and best of everybody else too.”

“That choice, between the devil and the dream,” Streep counseled the class of 1983, “comes up every day in different little disguises…. My advice is to look the dilemma in the face and decide what you can live with. If you can live with the devil, Vassar hasn’t sunk her teeth into your leg the way she did mine. But that conscience, that consciousness of quality and the need to demand it can galvanize your energies, not just in your work, but in every aspect of your life.”

“What you can take away from Vassar,” Streep concluded, “is a taste for excellence that needn’t diminish.” Vassar Views

In its first hosting of programs intended to increase summer use of the campus, Vassar welcomed an IBM and Educational Testing Service summer program, created in the hope of “increasing the use of computers in high school curriculum.” Vassar professors instructed Hudson Valley teachers in computing and, in return, were given 15 personal computers and printers by IBM. Thirteen other summer programs including sports camps, a ballet festival, a “Career Opportunity Institute” designed for Vassar juniors, and three conferences attracted some 1,600 summer residents

Associate Director of Financial Aid Michael Fraher replaced Marla Orr MacKenzie as director of financial aid. “My job,” he told The Miscellany News in September, “is to get kids through the system.” Fraher described his “system” as a balance between the “uniform methodology” required by various regulations and each student’s personal needs. The former director of financial aid at Marist College, he served as associate director at Vassar for three years prior to becoming director.

Over fifty students were placed in emergency housing—including 23 freshmen in Alumnae House and 30 students in converted common-spaces in Josselyn and Main—due to overenrollment. President Virginia Smith commissioned a task force to investigate the problem. In November, the task force concluded that the housing problem was caused by an increasing number of students electing to live on campus. The task force also submitted several recommendations, including a 10-20 person reduction in the student body.

Eminent Baptist preacher Rev. Gardner Taylor, pastor of the Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Brooklyn, spoke in the Chapel. Called “the dean of the nation’s black preachers” in 1980 by TIME magazine, Taylor counted Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Jr. and every President of the United States since Harry Truman among his close acquaintances. Awarding him the Medal of Freedom in 2000, President Clinton said of Taylor, “His life’s work has been a sermon as well, teaching that none live in dignity when they are oppressed, and that faith can transcend racial, social and economic boundaries.”

Yvonne Gay Fowler, “The Dean of Black Preachers,” Oberlin Alumni Magazine

Associate Professor of English Eamon Grennan read his poetry in the Gold Parlor of Main Building.

An all-campus party, “Woodstock Day,” was held on “Joss Beach,” the lawn between Josselyn House and Chicago Hall.

The poetry editor of the New Yorker, poet Howard Moss, a Vassar instructor for three semesters from 1944-1945, read some of his early poetry from forthcoming anthology Rules of Sleep, published in 1984 by Atheneum.

Vassar hosted The International Congress on Obesity conference on “Adipose Tissue: Growth, Development and Metabolism,” which was chaired by Professor of Biology Patricia R. Johnson.

The Black Caucus, a group of five professors, released their 1980 confidential report that declared “affirmative action at Vassar has become a ritualistic exercise which consists of meaningless paperwork.” The report was in response to the perceived inadequate proportion of African-Americans in the faculty, administration and student body.

The Miscellany News

James Armstrong, director of choral activities, led several college choral groups in the performance of 13 songs from Vassar’s past, including “Sling-A Da Ink,” “Dreaming,” “There’s Only One College” and “Toast to Vassar.”

The Miscellany News

Paule Marshall, author of Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959) and Soul Clap Hands and Sing (1961), discussed her writing in the Villard Room. Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow was published by Putnam’s in 1983.

Professor of Drama Evert Sprinchorn directed Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (1890) in Avery Hall.

Poet, children’s author, and Lecturer in English Nancy Willard, author of the 1982 Newberry Award-winning A Visit to William Blake’s Inn: Poem for the Innocent and Experienced Travelers, read from her fiction in New England hall.

The Vassar College Art Gallery presented All Seasons and Every Light: Nineteenth Century American Landscapes, paintings, drawings and sketchbooks by Hudson River School painters, including Frederic Church, Jasper F. Crospey, Charles Moore, Sanford R. Gifford, Asher B. Durand, William Trost Richards and Aaron D. Shattuck. The works were drawn from the Magoon Collection purchased by Matthew Vassar in 1864 from founding trustee Rev. Elias Magoon.

The U.S. women’s Olympic Field Hockey team visited Vassar as part of a tour “designed to bring Olympic caliber field hockey to the doorsteps of eight colleges” and held a free clinic at Walker field house. The Olympic team also played in an exhibition game against a team of Vassar, Western Connecticut and Skidmore field hockey players; the Olympians won 9-0. “It was an experience I’ll never forget,” said Vassar player Barbara Aaron ’84. “They were so nice to us. Supporting us and telling us how to improve.”

Field hockey appeared for only the second time in the 1984 summer Olympics, the first time the United States competed in the sport, because the United States team boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

The Miscellany News

New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat showed and discussed his work at Vassar.

1984 presidential candidate Donald Badgley, a Poughkeepsie resident, spoke about his political and religious beliefs.

The board of trustees met on campus, reviewing the college’s position on the Solomon Amendment and the recently released 1980 Black Caucus report criticizing Vassar’s affirmative action policy.

President Smith and a number of students spoke out against the Solomon Amendment to the Defense Authorization Act of 1982—a Federal law that required male students to register with Selective Service to qualify for Federal financial aid. The law was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1984.

The Black Caucus report proposed the appointment of an affirmative action officer and development of a “comprehensive Affirmative Action Plan and Program relating to the overall integration of Vassar in all areas.” The Caucus also suggested that the personnel and admissions offices “be directed to formulate and adopt radical new procedures to widen and make more effective their minority recruitment pool/sources”—through the use of “target-cities” and “target schools” programs for student recruitment. The Caucus further recommended that the personnel office meet with members of the Poughkeepsie black community to recruit qualified job applicants.

Trustee Harold Healy affirmed after the meeting that racial diversity “is the highest priority the trustees have.”

The Miscellany News

Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer Anthony Stellato reported that Vassar’s 1982-1983 had been balanced for the second year in a row—explaining, “We’re very proud that we got to that point.”

The Miscellany News

Due to lack of interest and the graduation of much the previous year’s team, the women’s varsity basketball team suspended intercollegiate competition for the 1983-1984 year. Women’s varsity basketball coach Patricia Fabozzi said, “There must be some women out of at least 1,200 with [high school] varsity experience. They don’t realize that the step isn’t as large as perceived. They see intercollegiate competition here as something comparable to Division I. I think that what has happened to the women’s basketball program is something that anyone who has an interest in Vassar athletics should take note of.”

The Miscellany News

Architect and Lecturer in Art Jeh V. Johnson, Vassar’s teacher of architecture, and Professor of Art Richard Pommer, an architectural historian, discussed Vassar’s architecture in Taylor hall.

The conservative student political group Tertium Quids participated in the “Adopt-a-Marine” project, sending care packages to marines stationed in Beirut.

Student directors presented a trio of plays in Kenyon Hall. The Wedding (1919), written by Bertolt Brecht when he was 21, was directed by Joshua Wiener ’85, The Present Tense (1982), by twenty year-old New York University sophomore John McNamara, was directed by Joe Heissan ’87 and Lunatic and Lover: A Play About Strindberg (1978) by the eminent British translator and biographer of Strindberg and Ibsen, Michael Meyer, was directed by Elizabeth Blye ’84.

David Napier, master of Calhoun College and professor of bible and ministry at Yale, delivered a sermon, “Servant of God,” at an ecumenical service in the Chapel.

Assistant Professor of Political Science Sidney Plotkin lectured on “Labor and the Environment” in the Gold Parlor.

British organist James Parsons performed in the Chapel. Parsons later served on the Council of the Royal College of Organists.

Literary and cultural historian Paul Fussell, professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, read from his work in the faculty parlor. Professor Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory (1975) won the National Book Award for Arts and Letters in 1976 and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism in 1975. Fussell’s Caste Marks: Style and Status in the USA (1984) was followed by Class: A Guide Through the American Status System in 1992.

Poet, writer and political activist Imamu Amiri Baraka, also known as Le Roi Jones, lectured on African-American literature in the Villard Room. Baraka maintained that no college student should be able to “come out of college and not know anything about black studies” because “you cannot talk about American culture without looking at black culture.” The lecture was followed by a question and answer session.

The Miscellany News

The Vassar Student Association and The Miscellany News sponsored an all-college forum, “Coeducation at Vassar: Where are we going?” in the Villard room. VSA President Maurice Edelson ‘85 said of the event, “we’re at a critical juncture right now. This is the tenth anniversary of the first graduating co-ed class, and we need direction.” The forum consisted of a large panel discussion followed by smaller discussion groups.

The Miscellany News

One of the issues discussed was a possible change to the college’s traditional colors, rose and gray. Edelson suggested that a color change would represent Vassar’s coeducational nature.

The Miscellany News celebrated the anniversary of coeducation with the November 11, 1983 “Special Issue: Coeducation at Vassar: Past, Present, and Future.”

The Office of the Dean of Studies and the Africana Studies program sponsored a panel on junior year abroad in third world countries.

Over 400 students participated in the 10^th Annual Fast for a World Harvest, run by Oxfam America. The All Campus Dining Center pledged to contribute $2.70 for each fasting student.

The fast was also marked by films about world hunger and an interfaith service.

Jazz giant Count Basie and his orchestra performed at the fall formal in the college center.

The Ponder Heart (1956) a stage adaptation by Joseph Fields and Jerome Chodorov of Eudora Welty’s 1954 novel, was performed in Avery Hall.

The Vassar College Art Gallery displayed an exhibition of Modern German Prints and Drawings curated by Amy Froehlich ’84, Merrill-Anne Halkerston ’85, Deena Holliday ’84 and Wendy Litvack ’85. The exhibit included works produced in Germany between 1880 and 1930 by Käthe Kollwitz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee.

English poet and author Andrew Motion, editorial director and poetry editor at the revered London publisher Chatto & Windus, read his poetry in the faculty parlor. Motion was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009.

Internationally known installation artist Judy Pfaff presented a slide show and spoke about her work in Ely Hall. Her set design for Wind Devil (1983), a dance choreographed by Nina Weiner and produced at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) won a Bessie—the dance equivalent of the films’ Oscar—in 1984.

Born in England, Pfaff maintained her primary studio in Kingston, NY.

Vassar College Art Gallery Curator Sally Mills lectured on “The Role of the Art Gallery in Education Women in the 19^th Century” in the gallery.

Assistant Clinical Professor of Surgery at Yale Medical School Dr. Bernard Siegel spoke on “Love, Medicine, and Miracles” as part of an ecumenical chapel service.

Siegel published a book with this title in 1986, about which the Library Journal wrote “Siegel, a New Haven surgeon, believes that the power of healing stems from the human mind and will, that his scalpel only buys time against cancer, and that self-love and determination are more important than choice of therapy. His philosophy has caused radical changes in his practice. Siegel recounts many arresting anecdotes: joyous stories of patients who survived against all odds, sad chronicles of those who seemingly gave up and assented to their own deaths. The author’s credentials make this one of the more plausible books on the mind-body connection.”