May
21,
2004
Front-Page
News
Uncommon Commons MHC’s
innovative Information Commons was the focus of a cover story in
the April 15 issue of Library Journal examining this increasingly
popular development in campus libraries nationwide. Just a few
years ago, wrote Andrew Richard Albanese, the library’s role on U.S.
campuses seemed to be in decline, with online resources taking
the place of books on shelves. But the information commons concept,
Albanese wrote, has breathed new life into the campus library.
To experience the concept in action, Albanese visited Mount Holyoke’s
Williston Library; he came away impressed by what he saw. At Miles-Smith
4, the location of the Information Commons, “the space teems
with students dispersed among more than 50 high-end computers,
including three large flat screens for group instruction,” Albanese
wrote. “What can appear as a sometimes complex intertwining
of previously separate missions under the library roof, in practice
addresses a simple goal—to offer students and faculty a one-stop
shopping experience for their needs. ‘The driving force of
all of this is, how can we make things easier for the user?’ says
[LITS director Patricia] Albanese (no relation to the writer). ‘Technology
today is a fact of life. Certainly students see it that way. They
don’t make the distinctions that we’ve classically
come from. So we as an organization need to think about it that
way, the way our students think about it, and to help our faculty
to use technology in ways that speak to our students.’” Library
Journal, the oldest independent national library publication, claims
a readership of more than 100,000 library directors, administrators,
and others in public, academic, and special libraries.
Unborn Citizenship Anthropology professor Lynn Morgan and colleague
Monica Casper penned an op-ed in the May 2 Sunday Republican regarding ongoing conservative efforts to reclassify the fetus.
Here is an excerpt from the piece, “Fetus Shouldn’t
Rob Woman of Personhood”:
“Last Sunday, more than half a million supporters of reproductive choice
mobilized in Washington, D.C., to draw attention to the Bush administration’s
ongoing assault on women’s bodies. But the March for Women’s Lives,
sponsored by more than 1,000 organizations, was not simply abortion-rights redux.
Something much more ominous is afoot: conservatives are quietly and persistently
working to reclassify the fetus as a bona fide U.S. citizen.
“They adopted this strategy because efforts to define fetuses as legal ‘persons’ have
failed repeatedly since the Supreme Court ruled (in Roe v. Wade) that ‘the
word “person” as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include
the unborn.’ In the 1980s, then-Sen. John Ashcroft sponsored the unsuccessful
Human Life Amendment, which proposed to define the ‘person’ as beginning
with conception.
“Now the language of personhood has been replaced by the rhetoric of citizenship.
Conservatives hope to capitalize on the successes of the civil and women’s
rights movements, pointing out that the Constitution did not always grant citizenship
to blacks or women, either.”
The rest of the article is online here.
Defending Our Turf President Joanne V. Creighton published a
letter in the May 3 New Republic responding to a recent column
by New Republic writer and Mount Holyoke alumna Kara Baskin ’00
questioning the ongoing relevance of women’s colleges. “Taking
the long view of human history,” Creighton wrote, “women’s
education is in its infancy. It’s a mere 167 years since
Mount Holyoke, the oldest of the Seven Sisters, was founded,
and only during the last 30 or so years have women had access
to previously all-male institutions. Within a world that is still
overwhelmingly shaped and dominated by men, these distinguished
women’s colleges are proud places of and by and for and
about women. And applications to our colleges are at record-setting
numbers. For to be at such a college is to be inspired by the
strong women who have come before and to be motivated by the
strong women who are one’s peers. This is not a ‘hugely
regressive form of female bonding,’ as Baskin claims; rather,
it is a joyful embracing of both academic excellence and female
selfhood. Rather than being ‘refuge from and preparation
for male-dominated society,’ these vibrant colleges develop
in women the confidence to take on and to change that male-dominated
world.”
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