1989

The Vassar Cooperative Day Care Center, a co-op started by Vassar families, celebrated its tenth anniversary with a party and concert in the Villard Room. Carol Gainey, director of the co-op, described the day care as “a family affair:” some parents spent their lunch hours at the co-op, and there were bi-annual events where parents would help fix up the center, followed by a picnic.

The Miscellany News

A group of students created CARES, a confidential peer listening service, founded to provide support for victims of sexual assault. “I now would feel comfortable telling someone to come to Vassar, something I wasn’t sure about before,” commented Heather Fox ’90, one of the group’s founding members. “We saw a need for this service now, not next year.” CARES was staffed by 20 volunteers available twenty-four hours a day by pager or in person at the group’s office in the basement of Strong house.

Although other hotlines and peer listening services such as Help Line and The Listening Center already existed, CARES was formed to address the need for a peer organization dealing specifically with issues of personal violation. “Other organizations don’t have the extensive training,” explained Fox. The Miscellany News

George Tuckel, local environmentalist and bioregionalist. lectured on “Living in a Culture of Waste” in the Josselyn House living room. Tuckel spoke at the beginning of “Waste Not Week,” organized by the Vassar Environmental Group (VEG). “Utilizing waster is a useful way to cope with the environment. We live in a society of surplus and waste,” explained Ben Horsbrugh ’89, one of the week’s key organizers.

Throughout “Waste Not Week,” students attended other lectures, dorm workshops, an environmental fair with representatives from local and international organizations, student musical performances and a hike on the Vassar Farm. The Miscellany News

As part on the year-long recognition of the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Africana Studies program, African-American poet and civil rights activist Sonia Sanchez spoke in the Chapel. A visiting lecturer at several universities, Sanchez taught courses in Black Women and literature.

South African activist Teboho “Tsietsi” Macdonald Mashinini, a teen-age leader in the 1976 Soweto uprising living in exile, spoke to an audience in the Villard Room. “We call for the unconditional release of all political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela. Only when they are free will we rest,” Mashinini told the audience. “I am sure in the coming years our people will rise up and rightfully take what is theirs.”

The Miscellany News

Mashinini died under mysterious circumstances in Guinea in 1990.

Naomi Tutu, daughter of the anti-apartheid leader Archbishop Desmond Tutu, lectured in the Chapel on political and economic problems facing black South Africans. Discussing the effect of decades of apartheid, Tutu said education had been used “as a tool of oppression,” and that “apartheid tended to emphasize black subservience and turned African adults into a docile community….” Beginning in the 1970s, she said, the black consciousness movement among young Africans foreshadowed the “inevitability of black majority rule” in her country.

The Miscellany News

The president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and second-wave feminist, Molly Yard, spoke in Rockefeller Hall about the abortion crisis in the United States. “The reason people get abortions now,” she told her audience, “is because, for the most part, birth control fails or they are pregnant as a result of rape…. What we are being told by fundamentalists and by President [George H. W.] Bush is that if your birth control fails, you are forced to compulsory pregnancy. And what we say in the National Organization for Women is that, to hell with that, we’re not going to take it. We absolutely refuse to have compulsory pregnancy in this country.”

The Miscellany News

Noting a distinct lack of male organizations at Vassar, two students formed the Vassar Gentleman’s Club. One female student claimed that the organization’s presence signified male resentment for a student government composed mostly of women and the absence at Vassar of a football team, cheerleaders and fraternities, but one founder claimed, “we seek only a reputation of a tasteful nature.” Unlike other exclusive fraternity-styled organizations on campus such as The Bacchanal Society and The Order of the Royal Moose, membership in the Gentleman’s Club was open to all.

The Miscellany News

Alternative rock band They Might Be Giants performed, filling the Villard Room with off-beat pop, complete with an accordian. “I wish people weren’t so suspicious right off the bat when they hear that some kind of rock music has a lighter side to it, a lighter touch,” singer John Flansburgh told The Miscellany News, “We just want to present our view of the world in an imaginative kind of music.”

Vladislav I. Guerassev, the economic affairs officer of the Soviet delegation to the United Nations, gave the annual Matthew Vassar Lecture, speaking in the Villard Room on “Implications of Perestroika for U.S./Soviet Relations.” Declaring that “the Soviet Union could see no advantage in pursuing nuclear superiority,” Guerassev said it was time to “identify areas of possible superpower cooperation,” so that the two great nations could forge a “global partnership.” The Miscellany News

An alumna from the Class of ’87 posed nude for the March issue of Playboy magazine. Indignant that The Vassar Quarterly didn’t publish her story with the notes about other graduates’ activities, she spoke instead to The Poughkeepsie Journal. “Vassar is reluctant to acknowledge women [graduates],” she said, “who do something besides go out in starched shirts and pressed suits and make a name for themselves in the corporate world.”

She “missed the deadline for publication for our spring issue,” the Quarterly’s editor, Georgette Weir, explained to The Miscellany News, “but will find her name in the class notes of the upcoming summer issue.”

The trustees voted to increase fees for the next academic year by 9.16%, raising the total the comprehensive from $16,770 to $18,300. They also voted to increase the yearly student activity fee from $100 to $150, as proposed by the Vassar Students Association (VSA).

The College Center academic computing cluster opened in room 235. The space provided several Macintosh computers for general student use, marking the first step in a long-term plan to increase computer access on campus. The college hoped that someday each residence hall would have a similar computer cluster.

Comedienne and actress Sandra Bernhard performed in the Chapel. She spoke with The Miscellany News about her fame and sensibilities. On her reputation for pushing the boundaries of what was appropriate for mainstream television, Bernhard said, “I just address reality… say things everybody says, with their freinds, or at parties, or for fun. I don’t think there’s anything dirty… What’s dirty?”

Bernhard later played Nancy Bartlett, one of the first openly lesbian recurring characters on American television, on the television situation comedy program Roseanne.

I. M. Appalled, the movie critic in the annual April 1 edition of The Miscellany News, discussed the recently announced sequel to Gone With The Wind (1939). The role of Scarlett O’Hara went to “master letter-turner Vanna White” of the television show “Wheel of Fortune,” and the role of Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind II: The Tawdry, Titillating Tara Years was to be played by the former member of the Monty Python troupe, John Cleese.

“‘I think what was tragically overlooked in the first film is that Gone With The Wind is essentially a comedy,’ said Cleese…. ‘Anyway, I have some great ideas. For instance, in our version of the famous scene in which Rhett carries Scarlett up the staircase to the bedroom, I’m going to drop her.’
“‘Wow,’ said Vanna.”

Cast as “Mammy,” the role made famous by Hattie McDaniel, Meryl Streep ’71 was unavailable for comment. “Her spokesman stated only, ‘Ms. Streep is working on the accent. She’s on an intense, high-calorie, no exercise regimen. She’s consulting with hair and make-up specialists. When you see her she will be Mammy.’”

Poet and novelist Jean Stewart gave an informal talk in the Gold Parlor about her work. Disabled as a young woman by a hip malady, Stewart was a fervent advocate for the rights of the disabled. “We’re the largest minority in the country… It’s simply a matter of priorities, and we’re talking about civil piberties.” Stewart explained.

The Miscellany News

Her novel, The Body’s Memory, was published in 1989 by St. Martin’s Press.

Encouraged by four students who attended a national conference on ending campus violence, Vassar held a “Rally Against Violence.”

In one of a series of events marking the 50th anniversary of the death of Irish poet William Butler Yeats, Senator Michael B. Yeats spoke about his father. Senator Yeats’s wife, Irish harper Gráinne Yeats, gave a concert of traditional Irish music and, introduced by Eamon Grennan from the English department, Irish poet John Montague read his poetry and selections from Yeats.

Three Yeats scholars discussed “Recovering Yeats/Discovering Yeats: The Revision of the Yeats Canon.” Professor George Mills Harper from Florida State University spoke about his work with the manuscript materials for Yeats’s A Vision (1925, 1937) and his partnership with Professor Richard Finneran in the first Collected Works of William Butler Yeats since the poet’s death. Professor Ronald Schuchard from Emory University spoke about his collaboration with Professor John Kelly at Oxford University on The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats and Professor Colton Johnson spoke about his edition of Volume Ten of The Collected Works, especially his recovery of Yeats’s radio broadcasts, playing an excerpt from one of them.

W. B. Yeats spoke and read his poetry at Vassar in December 1903 and again in May 1920. Senator and Mrs. Yeats visited Vassar in March 1970, and she presented an evening of Irish music in February 1974.

President Fergusson conferred the bachelor’s degree on 584 members of the Class of 1989, and the co-host of ABC television’s Good Morning America, Charles Gibson, delivered the address at Vassar’s 123rd Commencement.

Student housing shortages forced 43 students into temporary “emergency housing” spaces on campus, including Alumnae House, the Main television room, the Cushing House east parlor, and various other usual accommodations for much of first semester.

George Gabriel ’90 and 20 students partnered with local groups to organize a week-long public service effort of city cleanups and volunteering at homes for the elderly in an event called “Step Beyond ’89.”

Comedian Tom Deluca quite literally hypnotized a crowd of 900 people packed into the All Campus Dining Center. Deluca’s act centered on hypnotizing twenty volunteers from the audience in an “absolutely hysterical” show.

“All of us who write poems are interested in washing our dirty laundry in public,” said Professor of English Eamon Grennan at a lecture and reading from his book, What Light There Is and Other Poems (1987).

The U.S. Department of Justice issued a civil investigative demand against Vassar and 54 other colleges for allegedly fixing tuition and financial aid levels.

The new AppleTalk network was completed, making e-mail, network software and centralized printing available to all residence hall students from their rooms.

Nadine Gordimer, South African novelist and anti-apartheid activist lectured on “Creating a People’s Literature,” arguing for “worker poets,” working class writers who will not leave the working classes while writing “a people’s literature.”

Thirty-four Vassar students marched among 35,000 other participants in the “Housing Now!” rally in Washington, DC, sponsored by the campus organization Hunger Action.

Chants of “Down with hate before it’s too late” rang out on Main St. as 450 Vassar students joined the March Against Hate, a response to the arrival of the Imperial Wizard of the KKK to arrange bail for a Klansman arrested on weapons charges.

What’s Brewin’ VCTV, a student television talk show, premièred at 9 pm, featuring interviews with the editors of The Vassar Spectator, a cappella group Measure-4-Measure, a student photojournalist, and The Vassar Daily’s student astrologer.

More than 50 Vassar students participated in a “Pro Choice—Your Choice” march and rally sponsored by Planned Parenthood in Poughkeepsie that included a speech by NOW president Molly Yard, who had spoken at Vassar eight months earlier.

A desktop publishing lab featuring three Macintosh SE/30 computers and a LaserWriter and funded by the VSA for student publications—Left of Center, The Vassar Daily, Womanspeak, Unscrewed and Vassatire—opened on the 5th floor of Lathrop.

Mary McCarthy ’33 died at the age of 77.  McCarthy wrote 28 books in her lifetime; the most famous, The Group, was a novel that followed eight Vassar graduates navigating New York City post-graduation. She spoke at Commencement twice.

“The Communist world is beginning to come apart,” historian and author Harrison E. Salisbury, Pulitzer-prize winning NY Times international correspondent in China and Russia, lectured in the Chapel on “The Crisis in the Communist World.” 

In accordance with new state restrictions, smoking in bathrooms and hallways was prohibited. Smoking policies for other places on campus changed as well, and the Retreat and the dining center created designated smoking areas.

The trustees approved a $13.6 million budget for a new art gallery with art department classroom space.

Dolores Hayden, professor of Urban Planning at the University of California at Los Angeles, lectured on “From Separate Spheres to the Second Shift: How the Design of American Cities Affects the Working Lives of Women and Men.”

The Vassar Journalism Forum sponsored a panel discussion on “The Press Since Watergate: Issues of Self-Censorship.”