SPRING
2002 • VOLUME 6, NUMBER 3
Launched in 1998, The Campaign for Mount Holyoke College has surpassed
its $200-million goal two years ahead of schedule. The final tally
for the campaign through the close of December 31 amounted to $202.5
million. In February, the Campaign Steering Committee prepared a
recommendation for the March board of trustees meeting on future
goals for the campaign, which continues through 2003. For details,
visit www.mtholyoke.edu.
"Amazing,
soulful, inspiring" were the words concertgoers used to describe
the November 11 appearance by singer/songwriter India.Arie at
Mount Holyoke. The free concert was sponsored by President Joanne
V. Creighton and the student group the Network as part of a series
celebrating the College's construction and renovation projects.
Poet,
author, and activist Nikki Giovanni was the keynote speaker for
Mount Holyoke’s celebration of Black History Month. Giovanni,
University Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and State University and author of more than fourteen
volumes of poetry, spoke to a capacity crowd at the College February
14. “The essence of blackness” was the theme of Black History
Month this year.
Michael Ignatieff, director of the Carr Center for Human Rights
Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, spoke
to a packed house at Mount Holyoke October 17. Ignatieff, who
is regarded as one of the leading experts on human rights issues
and the causes of human conflict in the world, addressed the topic
“Human Rights and Terror.”
Mount
Holyoke’s field hockey team advanced to the National Collegiate
Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament as a result of its 1–0
victory over Springfield College in October. The win clinched
the New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference (NEWMAC)
championship for the team.
On December 6, Linda Wertheimer, senior host of National Public
Radio’s All Things Considered, came to campus to relate how the
program’s news staff has collected and delivered the news since
September 11.
In February, Sister Shamshad Sheikh, Mount Holyoke’s Muslim adviser,
spoke to the College community about her three-week trip to Pakistan,
which began in December, to bear witness to the condition of Afghan
women and find out how they could best be helped. Security prevented
Sheikh from crossing the border into Afghanistan, but she was
able to visit Kacha Garhi refugee camp on the outskirts of Peshawar
in northwestern Pakistan, where 150,000 Afghans live under abject
conditions.
Folk music legend Pete Seeger told stories and played the banjo
before an appreciative Mount Holyoke crowd February 2.
In
October, screenwriter and Obie Award–winning playwright Suzan-Lori
Parks ’85 was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, also
known as the “genius grant.” As one of twenty-three fellowship
recipients this year, Parks will receive $500,000 over five years
of “no strings attached” support. The foundation said that Parks
“has emerged as an important and original contemporary playwright.”
Elaine
Tuttle Hansen ’69, provost and professor of English at Haverford
College, was named the seventh president of Bates College in Lewiston,
Maine, January 26. She will assume office July 1.
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