Stay Tuned
Morley Safer and a crew from 60 Minutes came to campus October 9 to interview Dina Jaber '05. It was a repeat performance for the first-year student from the West Bank city of Nablus, who was first questioned by the famous journalist in 1998 as a teenage camper at the Seeds of Peace camp in Maine. The camp brings Arab and Israeli teens together in an attempt to break the cycle of acrimony between the two groups. 60 Minutes will air a segment this Sunday, October 28, that will showcase the campers and explore the long-term effects of their camp experience three years after the original piece.

Well Engineered
Boston Globe reporter Patrick Healy had good things to say about Mount Holyoke's new collaboration with the University of Massachusetts that allows MHC math and science majors to earn a degree in engineering from UMass at no additional tuition cost. "It's another way to raise the small number of female engineers nationwide," Healy wrote in the October 7 edition of the Globe. "It's also a good competitive move for Mount Holyoke, whose chief rival, Smith College, recently launched the nation's only engineering program at a women's school."

Emily's World
Dickinson scholar Christopher Benfey spoke with the Daily Hampshire Gazette about his essay in The Dickinsons of Amherst, a new book containing Jerome Liebling's photos of the Dickinson Homestead and the Evergreens, built for Emily Dickinson's brother Austin. "At the homestead, [Liebling] captures Emily Dickinson's taste for clear and clean distinctions, and he captures the exact opposite in the Evergreens, a world of tangled emotions of anger and passion expressed in the very color of the furnishings," says Benfey, a professor of English and codirector of the College's Harriet L. and Paul M. Weissman Center for Leadership. Benfey and other scholars who contributed essays to the book were interviewed by writer Bonnie Wells in the October 17 edition of the Gazette. The book was also featured in the October 18 edition of the "House & Home" section of the New York Times.

Addressing Terrorism
The Springfield Union-News and the Daily Hampshire Gazette reported on an October 17 talk at MHC by human rights expert Michael Ignatieff on the United States' declared war on terrorism. "The core of our fear is we have been attacked by an enemy without a flag," said Ignatieff, director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. In his talk, Ignatieff argued that military action against terrorism is justified, because all of the alternatives have been exhausted. Ignatieff's talk was sponsored by the Harriet L. and Paul M. Weissman Center for Leadership (see article on page five).

Cleaning Up
The following article by Thomas Breen, titled "Ton Cleaned Up in South Hadley," about a Connecticut River cleanup project organized with the help of Margaret Byrne '04, is reprinted with the permission of the Daily Hampshire Gazette. The piece appeared in the October 19 issue of the newspaper.

The magic number for nearly sixty volunteers Saturday was one: They cleaned one ton of trash from the South Hadley Beachgrounds as part of the annual Connecticut River Source to Sea Cleanup. The massive shoreline clean-up effort took place in Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Connecticut. In South Hadley, the cleanup was organized in part by Margaret Byrne, a sophomore at Mount Holyoke College who is also the campus coordinator for Massachusetts Community Water Watch, one of the main organizations behind the event.

"It was the best cleanup ever," said Byrne, a West Virginia native who became concerned about environmental issues in Massachusetts after starting college at Mount Holyoke.

"I learned that Massachusetts has the second-dirtiest waterways in the country," Byrne said, "and I felt like I should really do something."

Among the trash, volunteers found broken glass, tires, teapots, a guitar and large sections of three cars. "I kept a steering wheel as a memento," Byrne said. According to Peg McDonough of the Connecticut River Watershed Council, which also helped organize the cleanup, more than 800 volunteers cleaned an amount of garbage as yet undetermined. "There's definitely many tons," McDonough said. In addition to the Source to Sea event, Community Water Watch conducts cleanups throughout the year and always welcomes volunteers, said Wilhelmina Tsang, regional organizer of the group.

"It depends on when there's a good time for a cleanup, but we try to do it as much as possible," Tsang said. Although the next Connecticut River cleanup is scheduled for 2002, Byrne said she plans to do more. "I'd really like to have a statewide waterways cleanup," she said, adding that many people would enjoy it. "How can you not have fun on a beautiful day at the river?" she asked.