March 2009

BARD FREE PRESS ANNANDALE ON HUDSON, NY MARCH 2009 VOLUME 10 ISSUE 5

Ladies & Gents of the Free Bard Student Allied Community,

While the merger of the FREE PRESS and the Observer has brought a unified front and sufficient funding, unfortunately the combined paper still lacks sufficient staffing. That includes writers, layout designers, editors, artists, and people with the vision necessary to propel student journalism at Bard.

This is an urgent appeal to the Bard community at large – students, faculty, and administration. Not only are our right and left flanks weakening, but we’re losing the very front month by month! Our lines are thin! Our fuel is low! Gangrene withers us. We request the following, for our very existence is at stake:

The river is crumbling our already unstable bridge of student communication. To ensure that this bridge remains fortified, incentives must be proffered to students who invest the intellectual energy and time to sustaining it.

We propose that FREE PRESS function something like an academic tutorial. A corps of dedicated students would obtain 1 or 2 credits for at least one semester, and have an adviser to oversee their efforts – not a babysitter, but something like a drill sergeant, to ensure that students who request credit are investing

sufficient academic energy to deserve it. Because we do.

You, dear reader, will notice in the letters-to-editors section of this selfsame issue, that a telegram from Gen. Botstein indicates his respect for our operations and his willingness to offer the administration’s resources to help further the campaign.

This semester, the FREE PRESS staff has consisted of approximately six students – a frighteningly low number for the amount of work involved. Two will be graduating this May; we seek volunteers to take our positions as editors, layout designers, managers, and photographers--Emily and Abby simply can’t do it on their own. In the wider scheme of things, we need people who are willing to interface with the administration, and keep an eye and an ear dedicated at all times to what’s going on around them. Need we remind you that college journalism is a tremendous opportunity to learn the tools of the trade through trial and error and not worry about getting fired for screwing up?

Our application process is simple: send us an email and we’ll make a time to meet in person. Prior experience is NOT necessary.

-Travis and Dan, [email protected]

bard free [email protected]

staffTravis WENTWORTHDaniel TERNAEmily DIAMONDAbby FERLAAlex ERIKSENDonna MCCOLLOCHEnrico PURITA

visualsAnna CARNOCHAN

Sam DOUGLASJosh FADEM

Molly SCHAEFFERWalker TATE

Special Section, p. 11-30:The Center for Curatorial Studies

contributorsAndrew COLETTI

Ken COOPERLaura CRAMERAnna PUTNAM

Rob ROSSHenry SCHENKER

Joey SIMSDan WILBUR

Editors,I want to compliment you all on

having decided to combine the Free Press and the Observer. In an era when there is an unfortunate de-cline of print media, the revival of a newspaper at Bard is a welcome and hopeful sign. I congratulate you all, wish you well, and hope you will share this message with the contrib-uting writers and artists. The first is-sue is extremely promising, and if there is anything those of us in the administration can do to help, please let me know.

Leon Botstein

Editors,Re: “Market Decline Forces Bud-

get Cuts” in the last issue - good ar-ticle. It’s not easy chasing down all those details at Bard. But I was hop-ing to make a correction. ALL credit for the 100% post-consumer content paper selection goes to Julie Myers, the Purchasing Director. She does all the work for making that environ-mentally responsible choice work for Bard. It’s not easy to stick to that choice, and to get all the blame for every paper jam that occurs on cam-pus, and any delivery that gets mis-managed, on top of paying the price premium...

Thanks,Laurie Husted

Editors,I must congratulate you on the

timely release of this semester’s first issue of the FREE PRESS. I know that integrating staff on short notice is hard, but you pulled it off.

Now, for God’s sake, will you stop letting whatever coked-up orangutan that butchered the layout of my col-umn near the computer? You can’t

put a drop cap on the second para-graph of a column, and you can’t lay out a column in two different type-faces. It looks ridiculous. Honestly, if I had a higher opinion of your skills, I might believe you intentionally mess up my layouts just to irritate me.

And why does Donna get so much space? NO ONE CARES WHAT SHE THINKS. Half of her budget forum column is the same word over and over and over. “Waaaaaaahhhh, waaaaaaahhhh....” Honestly.

Keep up the good work! You should publish this email.

Rob Ross

Editors,While I generally enjoyed Rob

Ross’s piece in your last issue (“Bud-geting Gives a Clear Picture of Bard-ians”) and in particular found the layout of the piece to be delightfully avante-garde, there was one passage that struck me as out of place. Reply-ing to global women’s rights group SWEAR’s statement on Planning Committee’s decision to give them a budget of $.01, which included the statistic that “‘1.3 women are raped every second,’” Ross responds, “I fail to see the connection. I also wonder how one third of a woman can be raped[.]” Setting aside the question of what a person who “fail[s] to see the connection” between rape rates and funding for a women’s rights group is doing attending Bard Col-lege, let alone sitting on the Planning Committee, 1.3 is not equal to one third, nor to one and one third. Is it re-ally wise to have somebody capable of such an elementary mathematical error taking such a prominent role in the budgeting process?

Respectfully yours,D. O. McColloch

Crimes of idiocy have oc-curred at various points on campus this past week.

*The power of the paint can, wielded by individu-als who have graduated from bathroom vandalism, have seen fit to demonstrate to all of us that Bard some-times admits students of limited capacity and matu-rity. We hope that the van-dals consider turning their play school mentality into something more construc-tive, like building struc-tures from their leggo box.

*This Monday at 4am, the volunteer fire department was called out once again, to save a pot of burning noodles.

44 percent of all turn-outs to Bard are for burnt popcorn, toast and similar culinary missteps. Volun-teer firemen are less then impressed with the cooking abilities of Bard resident students. Short of throwing all stoves into the recy-cling bin, I am consider-ing offering a security class on “How to Pay Attention to Cooking,” 101. On a side note, I find an interest-ing comparison to my moth-ers former assisted living building. Many residents

also leave food heating on the stove, fall asleep and wake to the firemen breaking down their door to put out their grilled cheese sand-wich. My mother is 97 and her friends are all over 80. Something to ponder.

*Another fire in a garbage can at Cruger is of great concern. As in most colleges, trash cans are made from plas-tic - a hydrocarbon - fuel. Someone thought that the can was a big gray ashtray. New York State Law forbids smok-ing in buildings, and basic commonsense dictates that throwing lit cigarettes into plastic bags and cans is a bad idea - so, what am I missing?

The Seton Hall Fire in 2000 was set by some fun loving students who just want to have a bit of action, setting fire to paper on a bulletin board. The fire reached 1500 degrees, burning to death 2 classmates, and killing an-other by smoke inhalation. 62 other classmates were severly hurt and 3 horribly disfig-ured. For those torching fly-ers on dormitory doors, for “fun” the result may be hor-rific.

Bard - a place to think - about consequences of actions.

Cop ShopDispatches and Alerts from Your Friend Ken Cooper

Vandalism and Fires Abound!

03

Since you posted your statement on your website, there has been a large

response on campus, including an investigation by the student govern-ment, and a student forum at which

Michele Dominy, Amy Ansell and Jim Brudvig answered questions regard-ing the administration’s decision not

to rehire you. What’s happening now from your point of view?

Well, I think there are a number of administrative procedures taking their course; I’m not familiar with student procedures. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), both the national organization and the Bard chapter, are looking into it. I found out also today the Middle East Studies As-sociation (MESA), they’re looking into it, and issued a letter to Bard to begin the evaluation over again. They felt that my allegations had enough sense to them to reopen investigations. The ball’s in Bard’s court now, we’ll see what happens.

What was your initial feeling when they told you they weren’t renewing

your contract? It was one of shock and surprise. I

had been involved in discussions - my

intention was to set up an amicable res-olution to this. I’ve been around a long time, and I know this could be resolved peacefully. February 7th I met with the dean and then on February 10th I re-ceived a very official-looking letter ef-fectively dismissing me. I felt troubled and undeserving of being dismissed. I’d made it clear that I wanted to nego-tiate. I went and continued my process; I met the Dean, that was a very heated meeting. At the end of that it was agreed upon that I should talk to Botstein. I left that meeting with the understanding that they would get back to me. I waited a week and nothing was happening. At that point I had to conclude they didn’t want any further dialogue. I was con-cerned that justice be done and people here learn about it.

Since they weren’t going to discuss it with me internally, I decided to take it externally. I feel American academia and Bard play a definite role in the dis-cussion of human rights violations of Israel. Bard was saying nothing about this and I thought this was not the way I felt the college where I’ve worked for so long should behave.

Do you feel Bard openly supports

Zionism and actively suppresses anti-Zionism?

First of all, when we say ‘Bard,’ that can mean a lot of different things. I know the President openly supports Zi-onism. It’s good that he’s up front about it. I know other key members of the fac-ulty support Israel. I’m sure there are trustees as well. I don’t think overall the institution supports Zionism. Most people at Bard are like everywhere else, they’re in the middle, and unfortunately they’re afraid of speaking out. In terms of being active against people like me, that’s a question that can’t be answered yes or no, that’s a thing that requires looking at a pattern. It would be pretty stupid of them to say “we oppose Pro-fessor Kovel” - that wouldn’t happen. It was very striking when my book was banned by the University of Michigan Press in 2006 - you consider that a ma-jor breach of freedom of ideas. We got 650 letters to support the book, and they [U. of Michigan Press] backed out. Not one letter came from Bard. Bard did not support its faculty - I think that’s re-markable and also reprehensible. Bard so prides itself for being this bastion of free thought. Botstein told me ‘Well, I

thought that you were doing just fine on your own.’ I was; I know how to handle myself, but that’s not the point. Where does Bard stand? Is it being consistent with its principles? I can conclude to that no, they have not been. The air of silence on campus says it all. It’s very profound. There’s a long-standing tradi-tion of opposition of anti-Zionism itself; they’re very touchy about criticism. You hardly hear anybody talk about or make parallels to Israel and apartheid Africa. I would be glad to debate anyone, and anywhere. I think I’m right, I don’t know I’m right, I feel very strongly, but what I do know is that we don’t have a good debate in America, and not at Bard, and that’s terrible. You’re not in a place that gives you the vitality of a debate of one of the great issues of our time. It’s like an elaborate public relations campaign.

What’s your reaction to the nega-tive SOTC forms from students?

My response is that yes, I have very strong views, but a great many of those students I’ve worked with over the years have not had that point of view. I deeply, personally respect the integrity of each student. I think it’s really remarkable that you have an evaluation from 2006

In mid-February, Professor Joel Kovel circulated an open letter to the Bard commu-nity that outlines his account of the administration’s decision not to re-new his contract.

He has taught at Bard since 1988, when he became the first to oc-cupy the controver-sial Alger Hiss chair. He spoke with the FREE PRESS over the phone and over email.

The Separation Wall in Bethlehem; PHOTOS BY Dan Terna

04

venient” questions about the al-Quds project to make sure that Bard is not engaging in a kind of neocolonial action the purpose of which is to divide the Palestinians and strengthen the hand of “Greater Israel.” I suspect I would not be thanked for this.

The administration has cited financial concerns about employing part-time professors such as your-self. Do you accept that economics played as large a

role as anything else in your termination?Of course, serious financial issues have arisen at

Bard, as they have everywhere. This is all the more rea-son to proceed with much greater transparency than has been the case. It is essential to have a valid (as against a corrupt) evaluation process in order to remove any hint of suspicion that economic exigency was being used to settle a political score. Skepticism along these lines is rampant, and casts a long shadow on the evaluation process inasmuch as it may have been rigged to come up with an alternative reason to let me go. After all, Bard could not possibly state that Prof. Kovel is going because he is a threat to the order of things, especially Zion-ist ones. So it must be shown that I am not pulling my weight, am washed up, a poor communicator, intolerant

of student views, etc—for which purposes the evalua-tion has to be doctored.

What would be the most favorable terms for you? A completely overhauled evaluation, impartially su-

pervised, if necessary by external reviewers. If you do stay, how will this controversy affect

your relations with faculty and administration? This will be a challenge. That is one reason I would not

just want to go back to my regular courses, but to play a more public role within the college. In recent years there has been a mutual pulling back. I would want to see this overcome, in part by providing for structured dialogue on questions such as the role of the college in the world, and the dialectics of speaking out and protesting.

Could you tell us a little about your plans if you’re not rehired?

I have a number of prospects. In any case I have a lot of writing – several books lined up – which I want to do.

What is the most important thing to you about teaching?

To see the light of the critical and creative imagina-tion in the student’s eyes.

and not the one from 2007. I regret it - I would have to also say that it’s hard to imag-ine the context. I know I may have said some things that may have upset people, but I feel open inquiry is crucial. I’ve never ignored a student, always tried to work with them. I don’t see myself as somebody that bullies students or imposes a world view on them, I want to hear what they have to say.

If the administration seems hostile to your views, why do you still want to teach

at Bard? I would continue teaching at Bard. But

in addition to just showing up for courses, I want to resume what had been the case in my early years at the college - namely, playing an active role in contributing to the dialogue on the great issues of our time. In recent years I have been marginalized in this respect, and I would expect for this to be reversed in addition to being allowed to resume teaching. Whether or not the admin-istration is “hostile” should be seen in rela-tion not to emotional attitudes but whether we can sit down and work things of this sort out.

What evidence do you have to claim bias by Bruce Chilton and Leon Botstein?

I have never discussed these issues with Bruce Chilton, and we have always been po-lite to each other. However, there is strong opposition in interests on the subject of Is-rael and Zionism. I can do no better than quote from my statement of Feb. 17.

[The statement read, in part: Professor Chilton... is a member of the Executive Committee of Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East. In this capacity he campaigns vigorously against Protestant efforts to promote divestment and sanc-tions against the State of Israel. Professor Chilton is particularly antagonistic to the Palestinian lib-eration theology movement, Sabeel, and its leader, Rev. Naim Ateek, also an Episcopal. This places him on the other side of the divide from myself. It should also be observed that Professor Chilton was active this past January in supporting Israeli ag-gression in Gaza. He may be heard on a national radio program on WABC, “Religion on the Line,” (January 11, 2009) arguing from the Doctrine of Just War and claiming that it is anti-Semitic to criticize Israel for human rights violations - this despite the fact that large numbers of Jews have been in the forefront of protesting Israeli crimes in Gaza.

The Faculty Handbook states explicitly that if an evaluator has a conflict of interest with some-one being evaluated, he should recluse himself and not take part in the evaluation.

The President freely states that he is a devoted Zionist and is dedicated to the well-being of the State of Israel (which he visits some ten times a year according to a recent news article). He has told me so to my face and has made it clear over and over again by his actions. It should be emphasized that support of Israel to this degree is an existentially profound position. The evidence overwhelmingly shows that Zionists in power have acted intolerant-ly toward critics of the state of Israel, and certainly those who hold views such as my own.]

How do you feel about Bard’s partner-ship with the al-Quds university in Pales-

tinian East Jerusalem?I have refrained from publicly comment-

ing on this because the issue is delicate and complex, and I do not feel well enough in-formed. However, I would, because it is my function as a critical intellectual, ask “incon-

The Separation Wall in Bethlehem; PHOTOS BY Dan Terna

Joel Kovel at a lecture in 2008; screenshot from arabichour.org

Signs of protest on Olin. Photo by Travis Wentworth

05

Fireside Chats with Speaker of the Student

Senate Enrico PuritaSince I last spoke to all you excruciatingly attractive

members of the Bard student body, we had just passed a successful budget forum. In the aftermath of budget fo-rum, both the Student Senate and the Central Commit-tee have been hard at work to keep student life issues at the top of the administration’s agenda. Here’s a look at what’s been done and what’s ahead.

I’d first like to speak on the March Student Forum. At this forum, the decision not to re-hire Joel Kovel was the topic of discussion and present for the discussion was Professor Amy Ansell, Dean Michele Dominy, and Vice President Jim Brudvig. After an EPC report that showed a small but present decline in Professor Kovel’s SOTC evaluations, students were allowed to ask ques-tions to the three members of administration present.

The conclusion of the forum brought many previ-ously incendiary issues to rest. Dominy and Ansell explained the reasons for the decision centering on the recent economic crisis and a decision not to renew 40 other faculty contracts due to varying departmental needs.

Dominy also denied that she ever told Kovel to re-tire, and that the only member of the faculty evaluation committee that could have had a political bias against Kovel, Bruce Chilton, evaluated Kovel positively. Leon Botstein, the posterchild for sentiment against the ad-ministration for the Kovel firing, had no part in the de-cision process other than the final stamp of approval.

The sense that I got from student reactions to the administration at the forum is that most in attendance were satisfied. Aside from a dedicated following of Kovel’s students who were understandably (albeit a bit blindly) defending their professor, the majority of stu-dents seemed satisfy to believe in the fact that the tim-ing of the firing was coincidental (Kovel’s Zionism class was not part of the evaluation) and that Kovel himself may be overreacting. A bit.

The Student Senate, for the past two weeks, has been hard at work to improve the entertainment on campus. We have collectively drafted a proposed Constitutional amendment that would make the Entertainment Com-mittee a democratically elected body. Overwhelming criticism toward the Committee for their inaccessibil-ity and lack of connection to the majority of SMOG reg-ulars is more or less what dictated this decision.

This new version of the Entertainment Committee would have seven members. The structure of the com-mittee would be such that three members would be elected by the student body, three members would be appointed by the Committee chair, and the chair would be elected by the Student Body in a online vote.

The Committee would be required to host at least one show each semester in which bands are decided on in an online vote by the students. Furthermore, the Committee would be required to put out an entertain-ment survey each semester to gauge student opinion on past and future entertainment committee events. One member of the Committee would have to present at the shows as well so that he/she can see how good/shitty the show that they booked turned out.

The specifics of the amendment will be included in an online referendum sometime in the next two weeks. I urge you all to vote and to pass the amendment so that we can finally start improving the sad state of the week-end social scene here at Bard.

Next time, I hope to give you all the gift of a student space update! We are also working at getting the stu-dent government website updated and streamlined so stay tuned for that. If anyone has any questions, as al-ways, feel free to email me at [email protected].

ILLUSTraTIOn BY SaM DOUGLaS

This month’s student forum was most notable for the presence of two administrators (Admin. VP Jim Brud-vig and Dean of Studies Michele Domi-ny) and a professor (Amy Ansell, chair of the Division of Social Studies) who answered students’ questions about the decision not to re-hire Joel Kovel. Essentially, the decision was the result of a confluence of influences that in-cluded declining ratings from students on course evaluations, the expiration of Kovel’s five-year contract, and the sudden need to cut spending. Not only did political antipathy towards Kovel’s anti-Zionist views have nothing to do with the decision, according to the ad-ministrators, but Kovel’s accusations against Leon as the Zionist ringleader simply could not be true because not re-hiring Kovel was not Leon’s idea in the first place. Though it was not made entirely clear, the decision, more than anyone else, was apparently Domi-ny’s, who, in needing to eliminate non-tenure and non-tenure-track faculty to save money, determined that Kovel—a part-time professor with full benefits and middling student ratings—pro-vided the least bang for the buck. Kov-el’s contention that his ouster was the culmination of a long effort to margin-alize him was not true either, say An-sell and Dominy; Ansell claims Kovel just about never attended departmen-tal meetings, and of the notion that Dominy had asked Kovel to retire be-fore his contract was up, “I’ve never said to Professor Kovel that it’s time to

retire,” she said. “He was never asked by this college to retire. Not ever.”

As students speculate that the administration capitalized on this confluence of events in order to get rid of Kovel, the story becomes less clear-cut. Some students in the MPR didn’t seem like they were about to be convinced. This editor was there for about two hours until he finally had enough; a quite resolute contingency of pro-Kovel students in the front right corner of the room kept passing ques-tions up for the student government to ask the administrators, though most of them had already been addressed sev-eral times. On a couple of occasions, a student from the resolute contingency rose and interjected questions (rhetor-ical ones, presumably) on how, while citing certain “statistically insignifi-cant” declines in student ratings, the administration could possibly refute a room full of students who had shown up in earnest support of Prof. Kovel. At such moments this editor suppressed a desire to rise and state that, for the record, it was unlikely that everyone in the room had such strong opinions on the matter; many, this editor in-cluded, were probably there simply because they enjoyed a good scandal. And a good scandal it was.

At any rate, the student govern-ment’s Educational Policies Commit-tee, and its chair Dan Whitener, gave an impressively thorough and com-prehensive report, one that did not state directly that the administration

erred, but did say that it stood by the recommendation it had previously made to rehire Kovel when his con-tract was originally up for renewal. The EPC’s report corroborated much of what the College Evaluation Com-mittee, which in Kovel’s case was made up of Kyle Gann, Mark Lambert and Bruce Chilton, had said—that Kovel had spurts of glowing feedback on course-evaluation forms, but that there was a clear negative trend in rat-ings: low and mid 4s in ’04 and ’05, and high 3s in ’06. “Anything below 4 raises some concerns,” said An-sell. As far as the comments on the SOTC forms are concerned, between the reports of the administration and the EPC, words like “eye-opening” and “worldview-changing” often ap-peared, but so did phrases like “intel-lectual bullying,” “dogmatic teacher,” “not open to other perspectives,” and “disorganization.”

Ansell also took care to defend Bruce Chilton, one of the three faculty members on the CEC who reviewed Kovel (but did not make a direct rec-ommendation as to whether to re-hire). Kovel argues Chilton should have recused himself due to his pro-Israel views, but according to Ansell, Chilton took the task seriously and objectively, and in fact contributed to the largely positive CEC report. “Such personal vilification of an individual involved in the review was very prob-lematic to people,” said Ansell. “How unfair that vilification was.”

06

Dominy, Brudvig & Ansell Address Kovel IssueFaculty explain pragmatics behind Kovel’s contract non-renewal

Unusual administrative presence at Student Forum

Think you’ve got that suite or that Manor single in the bag thanks to all your prissy AP work? Well think again! Your extra credits are no longer good here. In what student senator Travis McGrath sees as no less than a class issue - that is, people who went to fancy high schools are more likely to have extra credits and thereby get better rooms - the student gov. and Res Life have agreed to apply only credits earned at Bard

to determine what year you are. Through some very complex arithmetic that is

beyond the understanding of your humble interlocu-tor, this will mean, according to Brittany Rode of the Student Life Committee, that fewer “upperclassmen will get TBAed and more people will get rooms. Basi-cally.”

-T.W.

Also at the March Student Forum:

Pre-Bard Credits Will No Longer Count at Room Draw

By Travis Wentworth

So you’ve been serving in the Assembly for over twenty years,

that’s correct?Sure.

So what made you deicde to run for Congress now? You’d be

starting over in terms of senior-ity.

Well, I’ve always believed that people move you from on level to another in terms of service. I was a city councillor for five years; they came to me when the assembly opened up. They said, “We think you can serve more people at a higher level with a better level of excellence.”

And at that time, there was support for that--that’s where they wanted me to be, and so I ran for that position. Of course, in the last few years I’ve been elected leader; I was conference chair. And at this point, a good number of our con-stituents, in the great ten counties of this Congressional district, have come to me and said, “we think you could do a in Congress right now, serving us, serving more

people, at a higher level, and at the next level of excellence.”

I think, in public service, peo-ple move you, and my goal has always been to be in the best way so I can serve the most people, and

make the best difference in their quality of life. And I think, right now, that’s in this Congressional spot.

OK.I want this information in the

piece: my website is www.jimte-disco.com; I’m on Twitter, Face-book, and YouTube.

Bard’s not a very Republican school - staunchly pro-choice,

very much pro-gay-equality. Why should Bard students vote

for you?Because I think what they’ve

shown is they want someone who can stand up and speak out, and be a representative and stand up to the most powerful interests when they’re in power. But I’m about the best interests of our constituents, and I think most politicians can make a difference for the interests

of our constituents. My philoso-phy of being a representative is much like Kirsten Gillibrand’s. We may have some philosophical differences, but we agree on some very important issues.

We agreed that it was a security issue that we give illegal aliens drivers’ licenses, an issue where she supported me. And we beat back one of the most powerful voices in New York State - the pre-vious Governor, Eliot Spitzer - we harnessed the support of the more than 75 percent of people across the state who said, ‘We agree with you. We think immigration is im-portant, that this country is great because of the diversity, and we need more immigration - but we need legal immigration, and we want to send the message that if you come here and break the law by coming here, and you get bene-fits, then you really have no incen-tive to follow the process, which takes a while, to become part of this great mosaic as a full citizen.’

So I think what they’re look-

ing for on that level - it doesn’t make any difference, income level, whether they’re minority or majority - they’re looking for someone that’s able to stand up, speak out, and understand that a

representative needs to be less of a speaker and more of a listener. And I think I’ve been very good at being a representative in that regard - that’s reaching out, and finding out what the concerns of my constituents are, especially in these 10 counties. And I’ll be rep-resenting their agenda. So I think what people are looking for is not necessarily one or two issues, but a genuine philosophy of standing up and speaking out on behalf of the people - finding all the people and listening to all the people about what they want their Con-gressional district to be. And I’ve shown that I’m capable of doing that.

Alright. Onto issues more directly affecting Bard right

now. There have been cutbacks in funding for higher education

across the country. Bard, the largest employer in Red Hook, had to lay off workers. What’s

your plan to bring more funding to higher education in the Hud-

son Valley and the nation?

Well, before I became a legisla-tor, I had a real job - I like to say - and an important job, also: I was an educator for 10 years. And I know and understand, like some of my colleagues, but unlike oth-ers, that the most powerful tool any of us will have is what we can give to the generation coming up - that’s going to be our future, a great education. There’s nothing that’s going to be more powerful than the ability to think analyti-cally, communicate, and bridge the gap between diversity, difference, and different people - whether it relates to other nations, interna-tional commerce, or understand-ing how to do the best you can in any type of employment situation. And education is the most pow-erful thing we’ll have. It won’t be money. It won’t be gold. It won’t

When Sen. Hillary Clinton was appointed Secretary of State, NY Gov. David Paterson appointed Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand to Clin-ton’s Senate vacancy, creating yet another vacancy in the House for Bard’s 20th Congressional dis-trict. This sprawling district in-cludes Annandale-on-Hudson as well as vast swathes of upstate New York. Though originally drawn to be a safe seat for Repub-lican John Sweeney, the troubles of the local economy, the unpop-ularity of President Bush, and Sweeney’s ethics issues - the “Con-troversies” section of his Wikipe-dia page has 12 entries - lead to a Democratic insurgency: Kirsten Gillibrand defeated the longtime incumbent in 2006 and captured more than 60% of the vote in her re-election last November.

Paterson’s appointment of Kirsten Gillibrand, which has prov-en controversial with downstate Democrats, has opened up a wild and unpredictable contest for her vacant Congressional seat. Longtime State Assembly member Jim Tedisco, who re-cently rose to the leadership of the Assembly Republicans, has received the endorsement of the Republican and Conservative parties. Scott Murphy, a former staffer to two Democratic gov-ernors of Missouri, who now runs a local venture-capital firm that finances and advises local startup businesses, has been

nominated by the Democratic and Working Families parties, and, in a major upset, the New York Indepen-dence Party, which usually supports Republicans. The Libertarian Party of New York, which is currently at-tempting to obtain ballot access for the race, has put forth Eric Sund-wall, an IT consultant and state Lib-ertarian Party chair.

Special elections are notoriously un-predictable, and the loyalties of New York’s 20th are divided. Tedisco has a long track record in office, the district has a preponderance of reg-istered Republicans, and his party has performed well in other special elections since Barack Obama’s vic-tory. On the other hand, Murphy has shown momentum in recent polls, and he has the endorsement of now-Senator Gillibrand, who is still enor-

mously popular here. And it would be a mistake to write off Sundwall, whose clear stances against the Wall Street bailout and the stimulus package are sure to endear him to some local voters - as well as the fact that, unlike in 2006, he might actu-ally be on the ballot.

Over the past month, the FREE PRESS has had the opportunity to speak on the record with all three candidates. In the spirit of informed decision-making, we present the interviews, mostly unedited, to our readers.

07

Jim Tedisco, the Republican candidate for the U.S. House seat vacated by Kirsten Gillibrand’s appointment to the Senate, spoke with the

FREE PRESS’s Donna McColloch about his experience and his politics.

be the military power in the final analysis for this country. It’ll be the education we provide for our young people.

My plan is to go out to Wash-ington, D.C., and fight for every penny we can get back to get into the schools, and secondary educa-tion and higher education, and to reach that level of excellence that we should have in the secondary educational area and in our colleg-es’ education areas. I had the op-portunity to graduate from a great school, Union College, and go on to get my master’s in special edu-cation at the College of St. Rose, to work in special education, with kids with learning disabilities.

My philosophy of governing is that government should move obstacles for every single person, not only in our congressional dis-trict but across this state and this nation, so they can be everything they can be with the God-given tal-ents they’ve been given. So if you want ‘no child left behind,’ you’ve gotta fight for ‘no child left behind. You’ve gotta provide the financial tools to do that.

I’ve been a strong advocate for funding education, and I’ll con-tinue to do that. We send a lot of money out to Washington, and

historically, I don’t believe we get our fair share back, especially for important areas like education, health care, and economic devel-opment. So we’re gonna be work-ing really hard on that.

Relating to the economic crisis, we’re talking about dis-

bursing another $350 billion in TARP funds and adding billions to the TARP fund. But we don’t

know what happened to the first $350 billion. What’s your plan to

bring accountability?Well, you make a very good

point, in that every day we don’t have a Congressman representing the 20th Congressional district in the State of New York, we’re not standing up for the concerns of people in this Congressional dis-trict. And we’ve called up the Gov-ernor to tell him to call this elec-tion immediately. And we need to get someone who has experience standing up and speaking out, crossing party lines to find con-sensus, standing up and fighting when we have to fight for the best interests of our community. And what we need in any stimulus package is, first of all, oversight and transparency. There’s no way this money should be stopping with CEOs so they can recoup

their losses, go on junkets, or give individuals bonuses, when they’re the ones that had the risky invest-ments and had the reserves to pay those off. People who are losing their jobs in the 20th Congressio-nal district - we have small busi-nesses that are laying off work-ers, we have lost 50 or 60 percent of their 401(k)’s, we have health care costs that are not being cared for, people who can’t afford to pay their mortgages.

What we need is someone standing up on the floor of Con-gress and saying, ‘The best and fastest way to get from one point to another is a straight line, and that straight line should be a stimu-lus package where money gets to the people who need it most: the middle class, those who pay with credit to start up their business, keep their business running, keep jobs running, the small farmer who maybe is not making it right now because of the prices, the dairy farmer.’ And so I’m a little concerned about agenda, and phil-osophical discussions should take place later on. They have more in-terest in income that comes with a stimulus package, directly to the pockets of the middle class, who are facing perilous times with this economy. And that’s the direction they have to go. But you have to have complete oversight, and un-derstanding of the fact that that money can’t stop in the pockets of the people who created this prob-lem. And those individuals who made risky ventures, and many middle-class individuals, are suf-fering because of that. So it can’t stop there, and I’m not sure the oversight is in place, but it has to be put in place.

So you said you’re in favor of a stimulus package, in contrast to current House Republicans?Well, three Senators voted

for it. I didn’t see the package the way it is right now; I haven’t got it outlined for me. All I can see is the information that’s being pre-sented in the media right now. And the package I’m looking for is one that goes in a straight line to the constituents who will need it most - not laden with dead-end programs that are not gonna cre-ate jobs, save houses, help people with their health care and insur-ance. So there’s no question about the fact that we’ve got to get credit to people right now, especially about the fact that this is laden with some more agenda items, which have to concern everybody, because we don’t need more pork in this stimulus. What we need is more money getting to people who are trying to make ends meet, and that’s the middle class, many of whom are hemorrhaging in this 20th Congressional district.

Last question is about the arts. A quarter of Bard students

are art majors; NEA funding last year was about $144 million -

about one percent, of what the

U.K. spends. How much should the U.S. spend on the arts?

Well, let me put it this way: the arts is a very serious part of our economy, and also a very serious part of our quality of life and edu-cational opportunities. I think if you look at my history, at one point when they were gonna take the New York City Ballet and elimi-nate it back in Saratoga, I fought to keep that part of the quality of life there, because it does fit in with the economy, but it also fit with allow-ing opportunities - educational opportunities, and training in the arts, and futures.

And percentages are tricky things. What we have to do is set the priorities. That’s one of the things I want to do when I get to Congress: make sure we have a sense of what the spending pri-orities are, because I live in a state right now; as I look at the federal level, it’s nice to say ‘yes’ to every-body. When you say ‘yes’ to every-body with funding and spending and programs, you’re basically saying ‘no’ to everybody, because there’s not enough money to say ‘yes.’ But you have to have the courage to stand up for some of the priorities: those are infrastruc-ture, those are education, those are health care, and I think the arts are up there also, because that’s a real serious part of the quality of life, a real serious part of our tour-ism, education, and the economy. So we’re gonna support that, we’re gonna try to be one of the individ-uals that makes tough decisions about our spending priorities in the interest of the 20th Congres-sional district, the state, and the nation.

I was curious about exactly what you meant when we were

talking about keeping spend-ing under control. Should we be running a deficit currently - the

federal government?The best policy that you can

have is to treat the federal gov-ernment like you treat a family. They have some borrowing, and they have some obligations, but you have to have a timely period where you can pay those off. The best way to do things is to be able to pay as you go, but you also have to take care of the quality of life and people who need to be served. When I say we ‘remove obstacles so people can be everything that they can be,’ we have people in our society who are disabled, like my brother Joey, who had Down Syndrome and died at the age of 15, who are going to have a disabil-ity for the rest of their life. First and foremost, out of any budget of any level, no matter what the situation is financially, we’ve got to take care and have a concern for those individuals who have some serious concerns to deal with. And that’s an obligation; we’re compas-sionate people. And we have to move on from there, with priori-ties in terms of the quality of life.

08

Dan Terna

So the election is March 31st?March 31st.

How much work is there to be done?

Lots of work. We’re busy every day, working to get the message out to people, make sure they re-alize that I’ve been a successful entrepreneur who’s been start-ing businesses and investing in small businesses for the last 15 years and that the companies I’ve worked with have created over a thousand jobs across New York State.

Do you think the fact that you’re not a career politician is

a strength right now?I think so. My opponent – the biggest issue out there is this economic recovery act that the president just passed a couple weeks ago. I said I was in favor of it, that it needed to be done to get the economy moving. And my opponent, talking like a ca-reer politician, has refused for

two and a half weeks to answer the question yes or no. We’ve heard five different answers on what he would have done, but he still refuses to tell people the truth.

Given the fact that no repub-licans voted for it, can we

assume he would have been against it?

I just wish he would tell us the truth. It just seems like maybe you learn that skill in Albany in 27 years and not answer the question, but it doesn’t seem like it’s that hard to say yes or no. Republicans have a significant

voter registration advantage in this district—

Yeah, the district’s been voting for Democrats lately—Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama, Kirsten Gillibrand twice—in the last five elections, Democrats have won this dis-trict.

Obviously Gillibrand had some great success in getting Republican votes. Would you

say she’s more conservative than you are?

Well, I think it’s just a question of every single issue. Senator Gillibrand and I agree on an aw-ful lot of issues. She’s been cam-paigning with me, and endorsed me, and I’ve been working close-ly with her.

Do you think the president will become involved at all

with an endorsement?Hope so. Don’t know.

How would you character-ize the makeup of the people of the 20th district as far as

age, demographics, politi-cal philosophy, expectations

of government—and how might these have to change in order to accommodate a new

economy in the region?Well, this is a district of small towns. There are small towns all across this district, and the people there are just regular Americans that are looking for common sense solutions. When I talk to them, they’re worried about the economy, and they’re wanting leaders who will tell them what they’re going to do and be true to their word. So that’s kind of my sense of the district. I think one of the re-ally important things we need

to do in this district from an economic development perspec-tive is make sure that we’ve got broadband internet access ev-erywhere—it’s a real problem that so much of this district is underserved and doesn’t have the infrastructure. As we move forward, you know, you’re on a college campus, this is a criti-cal element for young people. People in their 20s don’t want to go anywhere that they don’t have broadband internet ac-cess. So we’ve got to make sure we have that so we can continue to hold on to the young people. Part of the reason I’m running is that I’m concerned—I’ve got a big family, I’ve got 30 nieces and nephews, and my own three kids—and I’m concerned about making sure there’s job oppor-tunities for them in this district. And for all the kids coming out of our colleges to be able to stay in this district of they want to. And right now we don’t make that easy because of the lack of infrastructure. That’s some-thing this economic recovery act has money to help with, and it’s something I want to work very hard on making sure is avail-able.

Beyond just infrastructure, what would revitalize this

area?

09

Scott Murphy, the Democratic candidate, worked as a gu-bernatorial aide in his native Missouri before moving to up-

state New York. He is staking his candidacy on his experience as a successful entrepreneur, a skill greatly in need in the current economic climate. He spoke over the phone with the

FREE PRESS’s Travis Wentworth.

Well you know, there’s not a magic bullet. It’s going to be hard work on a lot of different kinds of businesses, and that’s really where my experience comes in. We’ve got agricultural small business, we’ve got tourism small businesses, we’ve got retail shops and small manufactures, and we’ve got next generation tech-nology companies. One of the areas I’ve spent a lot of time in-vesting in is clean tech and green tech stuff. Those are great oppor-tunities for us. With the stimulus plan, there’s a lot of money for ad-vanced battery technologies, the smart grid, and some infrastruc-ture plans that will really facili-tate those next-generation, green-tech, clean-tech jobs. And that’s something upstate New York is very good at and has a lot of po-tential for and that’s really a big part of our future in my opinion.

As far the stimulus package, one controversy was the extent

to which materials used in public projects must be sourced

in the U.S. Do you see this protectionism as necessary, or

something that will hurt the U.S. in the long run?

Yeah, I think there was a lot of talk about that. At the end of the day, it turn out to be something that was less of a big issue than some of the talk. I think at the

end of the day, we want to look to buy things domestically, but we also want to be involved in trade. Trade is a big part of our future, and I think most of the money from this economic recover act is going actually to middle class tax cuts, and going to support our state and local governments which are really cash-strapped. Those are really good and impor-tant things we need to do and un-related to sourcing issues.

China passed a stimulus pack-age yesterday – do you think

that will help the U.S. economy?We definitely need the world economy to get moving. It’s a cy-cle and as we’re going down and everywhere else is going down, it’s viral down for our compa-nies doing business overseas. So I think it would be great if China got their economy moving and started buying more imports from the U.S. That would be a good thing for us, so I’m hoping to see whole world’s economy get moving as we also get the U.S. economy moving.

What’s the biggest problem facing the younger generations

today that we might not yet realize is such a problem?

I hear this all the time – I was meeting with some college kids in glens falls a few weeks ago. Peo-ple are worried about job oppor-

tunities – they’re getting ready to graduate, and the economy is really frozen and I think some of the kids on campus probably aren’t thinking about it yet, but the seniors I guess are. We’ve got to come up with opportunities to get this economy moving so that there are job opportunities out there for people to start in on their careers, and right now that’s not what I’m hearing at least on the ground. People are starting to get very worried and I want to get this solved.Do you think perhaps investing

in startups instead of bailing out, big, established, struggling

companies is more important?I think absolutely our small busi-nesses are the job creation en-gines. Depending on the study, it’s 80 to 90 percent of jobs come from small businesses. That’s where we really see the growth. That’s what I want to work on. There are a number of things in the economic recovery act to real-ly help our small businesses, and we’ve got to be sure that those get implemented well and they do re-ally benefit our small businesses. So I’m excited about working on that.

Dan Terna

So both of your opponents in this race have experience in politics - Jim Tedisco

has been in the New York State Assembly since before most Bard students were

born, and Scott Murphy was a gubernato-rial staffer in Missouri. What experience

are you bringing to the table?Well, I do have practical business experi-ence in the community. I’ve lived in this area, in Columbia County, since 1994. My dad has been in politics for quite some time; he served as a town board member in the Town of Kinderhook for eight years. He was chairman of the county Conservative Party for a long time. I’ve served as chairman of the Libertarian Party of New York; I’ve also served on the national committee for the Libertarian Party. So in terms of third-party politics, I do have quite a bit of experience. Obviously, the problem for us is always bal-lot access - and also you have to be elected. So in terms of experience with third par-ties, that’s always kind of a unique thing. But in this particular case, I’ve also run for this office, back in 2006, and I actually got knocked off that ballot, despite collecting over 5,200 signatures. Could you tell me a little more about your

business experience? What kind of busi-ness are you in?

I’m an independent IT consultant. I used

to run an operation called Old Kinderhook Integrated Systems. We were based out of Kinderhook and Galatia from 1994 to about 2005, and then we shut our retail operation down, and now we just consult with some of our better clients.

So the two other campaigns have ads on the air and are well-established. You’re

still trying to secure ballot access?That’s right. We will submit our petition on Monday. We currently have in hand, right now, about 7,000 signatures. The require-ment is 3,500 signatures. So it is our ex-pectation that we’re going to submit these signatures and be on the ballot. In the event that we’re challenged, we’re prepared to go to court with a legal team. We have every-thing all prepared in order to do that. In the spring of 2006, I got knocked off, and our lawyers have a good deal of experience with this now. So, again, yes, that’s what we’re doing. In terms of campaigning, what I’ve been telling everyone in the media is that the petitioning process, as much as I find it abhorrent in terms of real democracy, the reality is that I’m out here talking to real voters on a daily basis. I’ve collected over 200 signatures myself, and because of that, having conversations not just with voters but with average people - in Greenwich Falls, in Hudson, in Greene County. So in my estimation, except for that fact that these split-second, say-nothing commercials are out there, inundating the public, we’re out there running a real campaign in terms of day-to-day interactions with the public.

So generally, though, you’re not in a very established position; it seems unlikely

that you would win. Why would you run?Well, why do you say that?

Well, no Libertarian has ever been

elected to Congress.So historical inevitability is the usual

thing that reporters will report in that type of situation, and rely on that as real analy-sis. Here’s the answer to your question. Ba-sically, what we hope to accomplish in this special election, in a condensed period of time, is not only a recognition of the Liber-tarian Party in general, but also of a lot of the Libertarian ideas. And certainly, in the normal course, a Libertarian third-party campaign will grind along over the course of however many months it takes, and pro-duce a very typical result of anywhere from one to three percent of the electorate. What we’re hoping for in this particular election is not only another special election with very low turnout - but our expectation is that, with our rejection of the stimulus and bailout packages, we’ll get enough voters’ attentions where you could theoretically win this kind of an election with as little as 30,000 votes. So that’s not unrealistic to look at, in terms of energy and turnout. I’ll grant you, certainly, that can’t happen in a longer election, but that’s not the case.

I think you’re going to see a great deal of support from the liberty community in gen-eral, in the whole country and in the state, but you’re also going to see a large media presence that really would be mostly un-

precedented for a Libertarian candidate to be part of. We expect to be in the WRMW Channel 9 debates; we expect to be in those of March 26th. We’re working really hard on getting included in the Times-Union and WMAC debates. So in terms of exposure, I think we’ll be there. And, quite frankly, I’m known in Columbia County, and I’m known in parts of Rensselaer County and Dutchess County. So I’m not a completely unknown factor in all of this.

You were talking earlier about bringing Libertarian ideas to the table. Let’s talk more about those. You oppose the bail-out package and the stimulus package, and on your website you say that there

“should be no increase in the national debt.” Even before the bailout and the stimulus, the federal government was

running a huge deficit. Where would you make cuts?

We could make cuts across the board. We’ve extended our empire across the en-tire world. We’re deployed in countries like Japan and Germany and South Korea still. It’s a tremendous expenditure that’s being made, in terms of keeping all of these pres-ences overseas. You could probably save a trillion dollars, real fast, if you were to re-ally withdraw a lot of our forces from all around the world. We’re spending too much money on what we call “national defense,” when in reality there’s special interests out there promulgating the American empire. I think that would be the number one way to cut money.

The other thing would be that, in terms of Libertarian ideas and principles, the Federal Reserve and currency that’s not backed up with anything is a huge issue. And you’re seeing a great deal of infla-

tion, and what you mean by inflation is a pumping of the money supply - it’s got to take place, and they’re just wasting future generations’ wealth in a matter of minutes now. So, first of all, across the board cuts are something a Libertarian candidate would have to look at. If I were to be, miraculously, elected, I’d be more of a voice of opposition to the current spending spree that Congress is on. And, certainly, one representative couldn’t prevent that kind of result - even if it’s Jim Tedisco or Scott Murphy. They say that don’t have an inclination toward that sort of thing. But they’re two career politi-cians, with promises to special interests, and they’ve made promises to the district to spend money that doesn’t exist. And that will have an impact for future generations, for decades to come.

So you’re opposed to increased spend-ing, but almost half the current stimulus package was tax cuts. Senator DeMint of South Carolina proposed an amendment

that would replace the entire stimulus package with a tax cut package. What

would you say about tax cuts? Should tax rates be lowered right now?

It should if they would be cutting spend-ing, but they’re probably not doing either. I don’t generally buy the argument that the stimulus package is a matter of tax cuts.

Any time you inflate the money supply, in a money system like this, it’s really a tax increase, because there’s inflationary pres-sure. The banks and the institutions man-age to make money, but the average person’s dollar is subject to huge inflationary pres-sures. That’s a tax in and of itself. So I don’t buy the idea that there’s a tax cut involved with any of this at all.

On your website, you also talk briefly about the importance of the environment.

What environmental policies should the federal government be enacting?

Well, the Libertarian perspective tends to be a little bit more contractual when it comes to environmental issues. Obviously, if some-one dumps garbage on your lawn, there’s a course of action that you can take on a legal path. So in terms of any sort of legislative or political plan or proposal, anything that reduces the size of the federal government is subsequently going to reduce pollution. The federal government is the largest pol-luter in the entire United States. So in my estimation, if you reduce the size of the fed-eral government, you’re also going to be re-ducing the amount of pollution. So, in that regard, that’s the sort of issue that I would employ in that type of situation. So you think a reduction of the size of the

federal government should be the main environmental policy that the federal

government should be enacting? Potentially. And I think that the CAFE stan-dards, and all the other things they’re try-ing to tweak in order to get people to behave in a certain way, are just grossly unfair and inefficient, and just won’t work. We’re see-ing strides in technology and strides in con-sumer awareness that are achieving results without, necessarily, the coercive hand of

government. So you’d be opposed to the cap-and-trade

system that’s being proposed for green-house emissions?

I’d say that I’m more skeptical; I don’t think it’ll do any good and just lead to more lev-els of legislation and bureaucracy, and ulti-mately, in the end, just not make any differ-ence.

One last question - higher education funding is being cut by a lot of levels of

government right now. Many colleges, including Bard, are finding it increas-

ingly difficult to put together a workable budget. Would you be in favor of more higher education spending right now?

Not at all. I’m in favor of eliminating that spending altogether. Why should I be spending any money of my own in order to send you to a $50,000 a year college like Bard, just to read Henry David Thoreau on the weekend?[*] I see no obligation for any taxpayer or individual to support anybody else’s secondary education.

Alright. Any final comments? Sure. If you look at the issues the Libertar-ian Party will promulgate in an election, you’re going to see the end of Social Securi-ty, the unjust drug war - a lot of the other is-sues: military spending, entitlement spend-ing that’s really just ruining this country.

And the only thing I would add to that is that we should be - human beings should be - in the most prosperous time in human history right now, and we’re being bought and cheered up by federal and state policies that do nothing but spend and waste indi-viduals’ wealth and money, and eliminate the prospects for any kind of notions of real freedom and liberty in this country.

10

Eric Sundwall is the Libertarian Party candidate for the U.S. House seat vacated by Kirsten Gillibrand after her appointment

to the Senate. He spoke with Donna McColloch over the phone about the difficulties third-party candidates face, and why the

government shouldn’t pay for you to read Thoreau.

[*Ed. note: Though Mr. Sundwall’s invoca-tion of Thoreau may appear quite impoli-tic, his reference, whether accidentally or not, may be valid. Behold, forsooth, in the “Economy” section of Walden:

“At Cambridge College the mere rent of a stu-dent’s room, which is only a little larger than my own, is thirty dollars each year, though the corpo-ration had the advantage of building thirty-two side by side and under one roof, and the occu-pant suffers the inconvenience of many and noisy neighbors, and perhaps a residence in the fourth story. I cannot but think that if we had more true wisdom in these respects, not only less education would be needed, because, forsooth, more would already have been acquired, but the pecuniary expense of getting an education would in a great measure vanish. Those conveniences which the student requires at Cambridge or elsewhere cost him or somebody else ten times as great a sacri-fice of life as they would with proper management on both sides. Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made.” -T.W.]

six years on paper

A material Manifestation by first-year graduate students at the center for curatorial studies

What you have in your hands is a spin-off of a spin-off. This publi-cation is the second cousin of www.artwurl.org and a young, rebel-lious sibling of www.six-years.com

It all began with the brainchild of Carlos Motta, artwurl, which Tirdad Zolghadr’s ‘Curating and Criticism’ seminar at the Center for Curatorial Studies inherited in August 2008. Shortly thereaf-ter, in October, six-years.com saw the light of day. The site was, and is, a “dematerialized” exhibition space that changes work, curator, and critic on a weekly basis.

Six-years.com’s arrival brought together a group of five first-year students as part of the seminar. These five newcomers were skep-tical of the cybernetic utopianism and the undefined minimalism that informed the web project, and answered with a “re-material-ized” and geographically mappable contribution that went public between December 12, 2008 and January 30, 2009. The dissidents’ modus operandi was a simple 3-step procedure: 1) invite artists

from their respective home countries (Belgium, Iran, Mexico, Unit-ed Kingdom, Venezuela) to submit work, 2) display the final fifteen selected works in an unexpected, loosely thematic constellation in five installments on six-years.com, and 3) create a printed version of the images and texts to remit to the contributing artists.

What you have in your hands is the culmination of this October Rebellion. It brings an end to our resistance and turns us into Up-state promoters, distributors, and reviewers of works by Ali Chit-saz, Shadi Malek, Miguel Amat, Paul Newman, Saskia de Coster, Johan Jacobs, Pablo Rasgado, Ruben Gutiérrez and Jaime Ruiz Otis. Many thanks go to Christina Linden at CCS and the Bard Free Press for generously (but perhaps unknowingly) helping us in complet-ing this act of apostasy.

Andrea Torreblanca; Diana Stevenson; Carlos Palacios; Sohrab Mohebbi; Sarah Demeuse.

Cover: Miguel Amat, GLG Partners-London-Headquarters, from the series Top Hedge Fund Firms, January 2008

Six Years on Paper12

Traveling in the Socorro deserts of New Mexico, an unidentified flying object drifts in to view. “Who’s there?” As this is a holiday destination especially favoured by visitors from other planets, the question seems relevant. However, it turns out that the visitor has only traveled a few thousand miles from the UK, rather than the light years others make to this particular location. But like the scientists and specialists of the extra terrestrial, this visitor is also in the desert to undertake research,

to explore other dimensions of the various fictional characters that populate his work. Paul Newman’s work (performance, painting and installation) involves quasi-human creatures finding themselves in discomforting scenarios. Interior anxieties are played out by placing these creatures (already bearing the evidence of psychological unrest) into an environment where their disquiet is amplified to the stuff of nightmares.

Paul Newman, Birmingham, United Kingdom

Preceding pages: Somewhere in Socorro II, 2006; The Socorro Connection, 2006; Above: Somewhere in Socorro I, 2006

Six Years on Paper

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Ruben Gutiérrez´s projects are oftentimes a mockery of the art world and appropriate canonized language as a way to subvert it. At other times, his work is a violent alteration of popular culture. For instance, scenes form TV shows, movie sequences or images of childish nostalgia constantly appear in his work. He uses a variety of mediums (drawing, film and painting), each of which translates quotations that are frequent-ly in-between sarcasm and seriousness. Ruben Gutiérrez has a ten-

dency to be suspicious about the artwork that is being produced today. In Post Philosophical Needs he created a series of drawings that resemble excerpts from action, drama, and political films. The trivial phrases he inserted seem to reveal a whole spectacle by themselves. Ruben Gutiér-rez currently lives and works in Monterrey, Mexico, where he founded ONF (Object Not Found), a non-profit “semi-nomadic” space for contem-porary art projects.

Ruben Gutiérrez, Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico

Ripple

Up-down. Downsize history-locality; excavate punctual remains.

Borrow fragments and overturn them ironically, or even, place them just as they are.

Chronicles of confined pasts and presents: portrayals of strangers that glance on opposite sides.

This is the history of histories, where translation occurs at a distance; where individual battles emerge and archetypes are broken.

Recycling cycles and rippling ripples; a border that is never crossed.

Stumbling with the unknown at an edge in which nothing else occurs, but the anxiety of a mosquito flying in the midst of conflict.

Hub: an inverted “chapeau” utilized by one and all.– a container embodying the Horse of Troy.

This is the history of histories: a paraphrase of antonyms.

Right: Leave the Art Fair, 2006-2008


Six Years on Paper

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The work of Pablo Rasgado Quintanar often presents an encounter with the quotidian. He tunes into a secret stratum that hides beneath the quotidian surface and that often emerges in disguise. Pablo Rasgado walks the city streets and interrupts his itinerary to remove elements that confound him. By means of several formats he accumulates, assembles, and reconstructs chronicles that pose philosophical questions that are implicit in every

object. In this translation, each of his works open a possibility for collected stories, as they unfold the predicaments of each of their layers. Landscape (2006) is a dissected project that focuses on a single subject: mountains. The repetition of this motif in multilayered quotations visualizes how we see, interpret, absorb, and decipher meanings. Pablo Rasgado currently lives and works in Mexico City.

Pablo Rasgado Quintanar, Zapopán, Jalisco, Mexico

Left: Landscape, 2006; Above: Lightnings, 2007Following page: Ali Chitsaz, 127, 2008

Six Years on Paper

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Debris, alteration, residue, and reuse are the main references for Jaime Ruiz Otis´s work. His findings are almost archeological. He makes the leftovers of manufacture labor evident by the single gesture of posing the debris as it was revealed to him. The ruins of industrialized environments become this artist’s playground. Jaime Ruiz Otis discloses the urban

framework in each of his projects to address different modes of produc-tion. Coilder is the result of such disclosure, and is part of a series that could be called The Many Faces of Cyber as it displays computer remains as vestiges of what has evolved from outmoded technology. Jaime Ruiz Otis currently lives and works in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico.

To get to Memphis from New Orleans, it is necessary to drive the whole length of Mississippi, taking Route 55 where it starts somewhere over the Louisiana swamps. The swamps from the highway cannot be seen in any detail and the trees and water are gone before you can take a picture. The landscape flickers away, further away behind us, receding into the past along with the petrol cap we left at the gas station, the odd acquaintances, and the hospitable sunlight of a southern winter. These pictures show landscape as an ephemeral thing, as much a fiction of reconstructive imagination than a document of the world outside. Romantic memories of past adventures, idealised and distilled - clouds and a horizon line are all that are left. Did we see two people sitting on that rock, or was it the final remains of some ancient relic? Is it time to saddle the horses? When we get to Memphis we can have some beer and look in to the Mississippi River.

Jaime Ruiz Otis, Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico

Left: Coilder (Computer), 2005


Writing about Ali Chitsaz’s paintings is like dragging a camel out of a shopping mall when the poor bastard is already walking itself out. Beard and lollipops, football and tyranny, bored kings and Alain Robbe-Grillet, vodka and fashion police, mangled in this chop suey of acrylic on canvas they call painting. Post-colonial discourse becomes dry academism that will dust its way on the bookshelves of well-educated collectors who

import fake Barbies from China, screw the local industry and spend their holidays in the Caribbean. In the end they are not that much different from the religious fanatics at whom Ali is smirking.

All in all this could be considered a rather decent textual bikini for Chit-saz’s not much decent art.

Ali Chitsaz, Tehran, Iran

Right: Best Day, 2008; Untitled, 2008


The scenario is pretty common: two artists become friends and decide to col-laborate. This time the story is set in Brussels in 2008; its main characters are Johan Jacobs (1961) and Saskia De Coster (1976). He, the freelance photographer, specializes in documentary, reportage, and portraiture and provides the images. She, the writer, comes up with bold, often enigmatic statements that look like captions.

Johan frequently contributes in Belgian newspapers and weekly publications (De Standaard, Humo). His work has been included in several books and exhibi-tions, such as 300 Jaar Geschiedenis van de Munt (1996) (300 Years of History of the Monnaie) and Brussel, Groei van een Hoofdstad (1999) (Brussels, Growth

of a Capital). Saskia’s acerbic columns appear in De Standaard and NRC news-papers. She has published four daring novels - Vrije Val (2002), Jeuk (2004), Eeuwige Roem (2006) and Held (2007) - and is now working on her fifth book. Saskia has also written lyrics for musicians such as Dez Mona and Daan Stuyven, and has worked with experimental theatre companies (The Crew).

Now the Chances of Being Struck are Pretty Slim (2008) combines a caption with what looks like a burned portrait of a young man. The referent and context of the caption are unclear. Through this semiotic ambivalence and skewed visual perspective, the piece responds to a visual regime that is intrigued by disaster and the representation of human destruction.

Saskia De Coster & Johan Jacobs, Brussels, Belgium

Left: Now the Chances of Being Struck are Pretty Slim, 2008


“On that Petrol Free Sunday people took out their bikes and headed in serpentines to the capital.” I see highways as the open pastures of anti-OPEC wannabe Wild West explorers. He rattles on about cycling on the worst traffic intersection in the country. 1970s in 2008.Horses gush behind herds of buffalos. Kevin Costner’s voice somewhere. 1862 in 1990.This is a sincere exercise in free association spiced with some cynical daydreaming parasitically feeding on another man’s nostalgia. Like re-enacting a historical soccer game—Pelè scoring in the World Cup or Maradonna’s mano de dios—but backwards and interrupted each sixth minute for a Corona commercial.


Miguel Amat belongs to a new generation of photographic docu-mentarians. For his participation in the past edition of the Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Amat showed landscapes, which were battle scenes of the Venezuelan Independence war. The im-ages describe natural spaces without a trace of history of heroism; instead, they seem totally insignificant until we notice the titles. In

this series devoted to the Top Ten Hedge Funds, Amat recovered the photographic collage technique of early avant-garde movements. These images show the headquarters of failed capitalist companies in the urban settings to which they belong. The result is a very complex image that refers to the emptiness and the hybridization of capitalism in urban areas.

Miguel Amat, Caracas, Venezuela

Shadi Malek, Tehran, Iran

Shadi Malek is a printmaker. She has a silkscreen table in the middle of her hall where occasionally, when in a particularly good mood, she makes prints. She lives and works in Tehran.

Left: Miguel Amat, Goldman Sachs-Monaco, from the series Top Hedge Fund Firms, January 2008

Back cover: Untitled, 2008

Six Years on Paper

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Kid With a Camera: Photographs by Wayne When people call little Wayne “Lil Wayne” he tells them to call

him “Big Wayne” instead. But the title is pretty accurate—he’s a three foot tall first grader in New Orleans. “There are times when he’s extremely mature, trying to be the older kid, but there are times when he’s just a regular six year-old who likes to be picked up and held in your arms,” explains Anna Putnam (’09), who teaches at his school through the Bard New Or-leans summer camp. Wayne and Anna are pictured to the right.

Everyday at school Wayne runs aways with Anna’s point and shoot camera in his hands. His photographs tell the story of his ad-ventures through the hallways and playground of his school. What’s so amazing about Wayne’s images are their composition and their attention to the small details in a child’s world that most of us are disconnected from. “It’s also how he encounters these unseen so-cial dynamics—his photos aren’t these generic posed pictures that we’d expect from a six year old,” says Anna. “He’s gone beyond the novelty of a digital camera, where he needs to pose his subject and then check the screen right after. When he was shooting with my film camera, he didn’t need the reward of seeing the picture immediately like the other kids—he just wanted to take photos.”

By ANNA PUTNAM and DAN TERNA

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What made you want to come back to Bard to teach?

Well, I knew Bard, I liked the people here, I believed in the kind of teaching that was be-ing done. At that time Bard thought of itself as a very particular place, a place different from other American colleges and universi-ties.

Why English in particular? I started out wanting to write. I did a creative senior project, a collection of poems. I knew very much this is what I wanted to do. I went to a high school specializing in the sciences and it became very clear to me that a career in science didn’t interest me, and literature seemed like a pleasant way to spend one’s time.

Why are you retiring? That’s actually a very hard question to an-swer. I’ve been thinking about it over a num-ber of years, in the past four or five, and part of it is almost abstract. It’s been a very long time that you’ve been in this one place - as much as you like it, shouldn’t you try some-thing new at some point? More specifically, I’d say I had a rather ambitious book project I wanted to take on and I realized that I’m just not very good at working on that kind of project while teaching, I wanted to be able to concentrate on it.

What’s the book about? I did a book a number of years ago, it came out in 1980, on essentially one particular stylistic device in Charles Dickens novels,

and in some sense the book was a kind of stunt because it was so narrowly focused. I had a lot of fun doing it, but what I wanted to do was a larger project on what you’d call period style in that same area, Victorian fic-tion, which I find very rich, very interesting for this kind of research. What I’m going to be working on there is a larger number of de-vices and characteristics which you find in Victorian Fiction and not in contemporary fiction or even early 20th century fiction, or at least not as much, and what we can say about those.

In the course of your career at Bard, what would you say you’ve accomplished?

I wouldn’t say it’s any large structural thing. It’s educating a large number of students, which obviously doesn’t mean giving them their complete education, but I think I’ve been able to show students certain kinds of things, particularly in the combination of the history of the English language and the work of English Literature. In some ways my approach has been somewhat old fashioned, or out of fashion, which to me has been more important to do so at least students get a taste of it - to pay very close attention with word-ing. It’s almost a kind of ear training, to make fine distinctions - one situation, one way of describing a situation, is not really the same thing as something else. There are differenc-es that you’re discriminating; there’s both a pleasure and much to be learned by making these fine discriminations.

What book do you have the most fun teaching?

A great many of them. If you put it a different way, in terms of which author, I would say Chaucer. In some ways he’s the most com-panionable.

Did you have any teachers that inspired you to become a teacher?

I had a number of extremely good teachers when I was here. The one I’ve been thinking about recently was someone who just started when I was at Bard. 30 years old, beginning poet, just had his first book published, a man named Donald Finkel. He was my adviser and a wonderful teacher; he was just here that first year and wound up going to the University of Washington in St. Louis. I saw in the paper that he died in his 80s. I had no contact with him in all of those fifty years but it was lovely to work with him. Every time I walk past his old office I get this sense of layers of history. One of the most influen-tial teachers for me was Erma Brandise, my senior project advisor, my mentor, my friend. It would take hours to describe her. I assume people still remember her - Bard gives the Brandise prize every year. She was a marvel. What are five landmarks in English Litera-

ture in the last 200 years? I would concentrate on the romantics, partic-ularly Wordsworth and Keats. Ulysses has to be in there. I love Dickens so I’d be sorry not to have a representative Dickens novel in the list. And for five I guess I’ll say Henry James.

Mark Lambert, the Asher B. Edelman Professor of Lit-erature, graduated from Bard in 1962. He returned to Bard as a professor in 1967 and retired this semester.

Interview and Photo by ALEX ERIKSEN

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Prof. Graham, a Bard College Fellow, has been here since 2006, specializing in Victo-rian Studies - a field that does not suggest his somewhat remarkable upbringing. His father, Philip Graham, was publisher and co-owner of the Washington Post from 1946 until he com-mitted suicide in 1963; his mother, Katherine Graham, then took over and presided as the Post broke the Watergate scandal. She chroni-cled her own life in the Pulitzer-prize winning autobiography Personal History.

What was it like growing up with parents who were so prominent in the publishing

world?One tends to accept whatever the environ-ment is. So I wasn’t aware that there was anything unusual about my family or their circumstances. My father worked at this big building and had an office at the top floor, but you know, a lot of people’s fathers were busi-nessmen. And the Washington Post Compa-ny wasn’t really nationally known. It wasn’t really a factor outside Washington D.C. until Nixon and Watergate.

Was there every any discussion of you tak-ing over the Washington Post?

It never entered my mind. For one thing, I loathed Washington. I didn’t go to Bard, but I easily could have. I’m the kind of arty younger sibling who often winds up at Bard, whereas his older siblings might wind up at Penn. I never lusted for journalism or business in par-ticular. I just didn’t have the political gene, the journalistic gene. It’s like if your parents work at G.M. and you have a rebellious streak, it’s likely you won’t want to go into making cars.

You have to find some niche that hasn’t been filled by somebody else, so you cast around. I just couldn’t wait to get out of Wash-ington. I do not have a sense of exclusion.

How did you handle your father’s suicide?I’m still trying to figure that out. It was a such a catastrophic event. I was 11. It affected me traumatically and fundamentally. But I can’t really quantify it. Losing a parent at that age undermines your whole sense of stability and probably makes you emotionally wary. Guarded. Beyond that, you’ll have to talk to my psychotherapist.

How did life change after your mother, Katharine Graham, took over at the Post?I was left to my own devices. My house be-

came the gathering spot of choice for a certain counter-cultural element. I’m not going to use the phrase ‘pot parties’…never let that phrase escape my lips. Also at that time I played the drums, and she was very understanding, tolerant, about my really not very good rock

band rehearsing in the living room. But the fact that she was often not there made that an easier call for her.

So there was benign neglect, you know, and it had its pluses and minuses. For exam-ple, nobody ever made me do my homework. It’s kind of the lot of the younger siblings - the first-born are kind of hovered over and every step is watched and great things are expected, and by the time you get to number four, you re-ally are left alone to carve out your own path. I liked being left alone. I could have done with some more supervision, it probably caused me some problems adjusting to college. When I had to run my own life, I think it took me lon-ger to figure out how than it might have.

How did your mother handle the transi-tion?

She has nine lives, my mother. She stepped down as head of the company after a very suc-cessful time. Then she worked for seven years on her autobiography. Wrote the whole thing herself. She had never written a book. Filled up one yellow pad after another. It won the Pu-litzer Prize. And now these plays and movie projects keep rumbling around. [The latest is an HBO project written by Joan Didion, with Laura Linney rumored to play Katharine Gra-ham].

I admire her, you know, I admire her work ethic. I loved her. We weren’t close in the sense of yukking it up together. She was earthy, but we didn’t totally share the same sense of humor, let’s say. And there were moments of conflict.

What was life like at Harvard?I got there right in the middle of Vietnam, so it was very political. My dorm room was right on Massachusetts Avenue, so every time there was a demonstration they would march past. Spring of my freshman year there was a big strike because we bombed Cambodia. There were demonstrations and strikes and unrest,

and all my exams and papers were canceled freshman year. So that was an unexpected fringe benefit of the Cambodian incursion.

What was the inspiration for founding the New York Theatre Workshop in 1979?

I worked on some shows and I produced a cou-ple things. And then it became clear that there were certain things that it didn’t make sense to put on Broadway, or even off-Broadway. Things like Sarah Kane’s Blasted, for example. [When scripts] came across my desk I would have thought, ‘Hmm, this looks a little iffy to have a backer’s audition and raise money from a bunch of dentists, they’re gonna think this play is really strange. We need a non-prof-it arm.’ So I started it initially just as a founda-tion, and then it kind of metamorphosed into a more traditional non-profit theater.

And ‘Rent’ had its first production at the New York Theater Workshop.

It was largely a blessing, because prior to Rent we were always financially strapped – which is the case with most downtown non-profit theaters of a very risky kind. And for the next ten years we piled up royalties, so we always had a cash reserve. It got the theater settled on a solid footing and gave us a lot more visibility. People started approaching us with a higher caliber of plays. The downside was that it cre-ated a sort of welfare culture, a culture of de-pendency, so that Rent cash reserve gradually dwindled. And now they’ve run out and we’ve really had to cut back. So it has reverted to its original, excitingly financially unstable state of being.

What are the theater’s prospects now?If it collapses, it collapses. I don’t think immor-tality should necessarily be the aim of any-thing. One theater collapses, somebody comes along and starts another. I never dreamt that it would last this long.

How do you remember your time at Ecco, the literary press?

The Ecco Press was on its own and was floun-dering and having financial problems. I came on board for a number of years, trying to make it into a self-sustaining small literary press, which is…impossible. But nevertheless, we tried for a while. But it continued to lose mon-ey, although it was an enormously satisfy-ing time. I met all these interesting poets and so on. But at the end of the day, Ecco got sold to Harper Collins, so it’s now part of a larger firm. All those poets now work ultimately for Rupert Murdoch. I feel fine about that. Poets deserve to get paid.

So how have you found Bard so far?Awful. I don’t know how to describe the bru-talizing work conditions here - no, honestly, compared to the only other two institutions I’ve taught at, Bard is, for me, ideal. It would be more ideal if it were closer to New York City, it’s a bit of a hike, but the trains run and are comfortable. What I want is smart students - and without denigrating the New School, a lot of the students there are perfectly intel-ligent but it’s a mixed bag and there are a lot of people who are there to get a stamp put on their passport so they can get a job at Citibank or somewhere like that.

And Columbia is obviously a distin-guished place but its personality is horren-dous. Feuding, backstabbing, hostility, un-happiness, departmental rivalries – I mean, it’s a really grim place to work. So at Bard I find collegiality, I find bright students, I find a place that hires a lot of adjuncts. This does not please some tenured faculty, but it pleases me since I’m not one.

I don’t know if this is the sort of thing that one should confess to, but I adore reading and researching things, and I love history, and I love novels, and I have crafted a professional life of sorts in which I am able to pursue those interests in a somewhat focused, organized way.

What exactly is the Student Responsible Investment Committee?

The Committee consists of 4 student representatives and 4 faculty/staff representatives. The students are elected at Student Forums. Our mission is basically to improve the transparency and social responsibility of the College’s en-dowment, and leverage the endowment for social change. Because the College owns shares of public corporations, it has the right to speak directly with corporate management, raise issues that may be voted on by all shareholders at an-nual shareholder meetings, and vote on issues that are im-portant to the corporation.

What are the Committee’s responsibilities?The Committee has three responsibilities. First, it makes proxy-voting recommendations to the Board of Trustees. This means that instead of attending the annual sharehold-ers meeting, we vote on issues by proxy, over the Internet. It also maintains a partial list of the College Endowment’s public stock holdings. Second, the Committee engages corporations held in the College’s endowment by writing shareholder letters and filing shareholder resolutions. Fi-nally, we support the Bard College Social Choice Fund for Endowment Giving, which is a portion of the Endowment

that is invested in a socially responsible mutual fund. The Class of 2007 created this Fund with a portion of their class gift, and the Class of 2008 donated part of their gift to the fund. Hopefully, donating to the Social Choice Fund will become a tradition for graduating classes and alumni alike.

What has the Committee done recently?Recently, we engaged McDonald’s in a dialogue about re-ducing pesticide use in its fruit and vegetable crops. The di-alogue started out with a letter of inquiry, and continued in the form of conference calls and emails. We are proud to say that we have reached a formal agreement with the company which requires McDonald’s to survey U.S. potato suppli-ers, look for best practices of pesticide use reduction, work to encourage the adoption of those best practices through-out the supply chain and report back periodically to share-holders. In reaching this agreement with McDonald’s, Bard College has become a pioneer in shareholder activism: it is just the second educational institution to come to a formal agreement with company management regarding company policy. In the past we have engaged corporations such as Schlumberger and Conoco Phillips. In the future, we will continue engaging companies.

Are there other colleges doing this type of work?

Bard’s committee is one of many similar committees at col-leges and universities across the nation. However, the Bard committee stands out because Bard’s trustees afford it so much responsibility. Bard is one of only a few colleges and universities that have a Social Choice Fund for Endowment Giving. Recently, the national Responsible Endowments Co-alition chose a member of Bard’s committee to represent col-leges and universities everywhere at the Social Investment Forum’s Third Annual Forum on Responsible Investing.

How can people get involved with SRI?A direct line of communication between the Bard commu-nity and the management of public corporations is a huge deal. If someone is concerned about irresponsible corporate behavior at a company we hold in our endowment, they can help the Committee write a formal letter expressing your concerns. In the past, the Committee has teamed up with clubs like the Darfur Action Campaign to write letters to corporate management. If you are interested in helping the Committee write a letter, or learning more about the Committee, please email Katie Burstein ([email protected]) and Abbie Paris ([email protected]). Also, look out for SRIC-sponsored general-interest meetings and guest speakers.

Prof. Stephen Graham attended Harvard and Yale Drama School, and in 1979 founded the New York Theater Workshop, a renowned off-Broadway non-profit theater, where he was executive director until 1986. From 1993 to 1998, he was co-publisher of Ecco Press. Before arriving at Bard, he had previously taught at Columbia and at the New School. He sat down with the FREE PRESS’s Joey Sims and discussed how he set aside his tumultuous roots and carved his own path.

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Comparatively paltry though Bard’s endowment may be, it’s nonetheless a source of power - one that demands to be wielded responsibly. The way Bard invests its money carries worldwide social implications, which is why the Student Responsible Investment Committee exists. Katie Burstein, who heads the SRIC, answered Henry Schenker’s questions.

1.We promptly emailed the address provided.Never had Live Action Role-Playing par-

ticularly appealed to either of us in and of itself, but the prospect of Bard students masquerad-ing as creatures of the night was too titillat-ing to turn down. Do they really think they’re vampires? Do they actually drink each other’s blood? How will I get in on this?

The first LARP of the semester was two weeks away, which gave us ample time to get our first glimpses of this strange new world—and make our way in. We scheduled a prelimi-nary meeting with one of the bloodsucking LARPers, and in the days leading up to the appointment, our anxious conversations were crowded with stereotypical presumptions. We fancied we would encounter characters ripped from Napoleon Dynamite who were so wrapped up in their own fantasy that they were entirely unaware of its lunacy. We expected to meet people who would be attractive solely on

the grounds of being absurd.We were wrong. Our new friends were as

excited to meet us as they were welcoming and kind. And we needed their help, as the strange new world of the vampires turned out to be more than we had anticipated.

The LARPers (a subdivision of the Bard MET, our resident gaming club) entrusted us with a lengthy sourcebook for the game, prop-erly titled Vampire: The Requiem. We plunged headlong into LARP, a long-time counterpart to more traditional tabletop gaming. We learned that, like its more famous cousin Dungeons & Dragons, Vampire is a story-telling game in which characters drive the action and resolve conflicts by rolling dice. Bard’s incarnation of Vampire is set in Kingston - not the Kingston we all know, but a Kingston where supernatu-ral madness is ever-present, like Gotham is to New York City. The framework of the game is a systematized slew of vampire myths drawn from a wide variety of sources to suit the vary-ing tastes of players. We could choose to play as any of several kinds of vampires, from the

patrician and sophisticated “Ventrue” to the grotesque and monstrous “Nosferatu.” Char-acter creation allows the player to delve much deeper than just these ‘clans’ – we were invited to select our characters’ religious and politi-cal affiliations, strengths and weaknesses, and even a virtue and vice. Between the romantic aesthetic conjured by the language of the game, its suitably morbid content, and the enormous degree of personalization available, we began to feel our characters’ potential to take on a life of their own.

Our new characters, tailored to suit our respective fancies, couldn’t have been more different. Laura became Reagan, a geeky and unassuming Bard student newly enlisted by the vampires and turned sexy as an agent on campus: a role that, though tame, offered Laura ample opportunity to ask journalistic questions without breaking character. Andrew became Seven Macaw, an ancient Mayan who went into hibernation to avoid the Spanish Conquest and to await the next epoch of creation. Awakened a few years shy of 2012 during spring break in

what is now Cancun, he sampled many college students, and found Bard blood to be the most satisfying. Seven Macaw lacks the propen-sity for social interaction and is bewildered by modern conventions; the role that gave Andrew ample opportunity to rant senselessly in a loin-cloth and face paint.

More surprising than the joy we found fill-ing in bubbles on a character sheet was the striking absence of ridicule we experienced when we shared this joy with our friends, who were consistently supportive and excited to hear the details. Regardless, there was a float-ing, cursory disapproval of the whole concept of role-playing, something that we ourselves felt despite our now intimate involvement with the game. A cultural undercurrent had informed all of us that role-playing is irreconcilably uncool no matter how engaging or harmless it may be. Why the interested eyes but upturned nose?

Friday the 13th arrives - finally - the day of the vampire LARP, and a fine day to be a vampire indeed! I sit nervous across from story-teller Senia, who is responsible for my pending

Vampires Have More Fun

THERE ARE VAMPIRES AMoNg uS. FEAR NoT: THEy’RE oNLy PART-TIME.WE, youR HuMbLE ANd INTREPId ILLuMINAToRS oF THIS dARK ANd LITTLE-KNoWN WoRLd, HAVE ALWAyS FELT AN uNACCouNTAbLE PLEA-SuRE FRoM dRACuLA, ANNE RICE, ANd oTHERS oF THAT ILK. WHEN WE SAW bELA LugoSI SNARLINg MySTERIouSLy FRoM A PoSTER oN THE WALL oF KLINE, WE WERE IMMEdIATELy INTRIguEd. THE TEXT WAS CuRT: VAMPIRE LARP. FREE JuICE. No CAPE NECESSARy.

By Laura Cramer and andrew CoLetti

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Photos by anna CarnoChan

‘embrace’ and initiation into the World of Darkness. See, within a role-playing game like Vampire, the Storytellers (STs for short) craft a dynamic story line by prepar-ing a web of contingencies and planning multiple threads of conflict. The three Bard STs meet for six or more hours the week of each game to devise cunning plots to please their fellow LARPers. Their task is daunt-ing but fun – during the game, they are called upon to perform the parts of vari-ous ‘non-player characters,’ which means every person, whether friendly shopkeep or scheming foe, encountered by the players.

So there I, Laura, am in Kline with Se-nia, and she is telling me, in a voice that is not quite her own, how useful I will be to the vampires. She is now Celia, a powerful vampire who can brag of such traits as “an-gelic looks” and “level 4 celerity.” Suddenly quite sultry, she is asking me questions, and

I stare at her blankly. My level 1 knowl-edge of what the fuck to do is proving in-sufficient. We are in Kline! People can see us and maybe hear us! But then she leans in. “You will have all eternity available to continue your studies. You’ll be above and beyond society, both human and inhuman, and you will be out of contact with your life as it is now. And you will be very beautiful. Are you sure this is what you want?”

“Yes,” I said flatly, meaning it, and she told me to close my eyes and reach out my hand across the sticky table.

I think it was then that I felt the first tinge of the perversity of role playing. It wasn’t the sex and immorality inherent to vampires. It was that I felt suddenly im-bued with a secret power and I was actively trading my own mundane world for some-thing preferable, regardless of its relevance to reality. And I liked it.

2.Having braved the challenges of last-

minute costuming and sneaking through Kline and across frigid South Campus in our costumes, we arrived at the LARP still un-sure of what to expect. Would we be called upon to fight imaginary enemies, or our fel-low LARPers? Were we expected to stride boldly into the room, our real selves discard-ed, playing the parts of schoolgirl succubus and cranky Mesoamerican to the hilt?

When we arrived at the deserted third floor of Olin, we walked into a room that resembled backstage right before a play is to begin. Anyone who has ever done theater can imagine this scene—the personal effects strewn about, the hurried last-minute cos-tume checks and line rehearsals, the palpable excitement and anxiety in the air. This is pre-cisely what the pre-LARP atmosphere was like. The LARPers greeted us warmly and immediately took it upon themselves to help us complete our character sheets and fine-tune other details. Periodically they would escape outside to “run scenes” with each other—transition swiftly into character to impart information that would be important later.

In retrospect, live action role-playing and theater have a great deal in common. The main difference is that this is theater in which audience and cast are one and the same. It is a gentle, friendly, maybe even in-troverted sort of theater—one with the great faceless Leviathan of the audience removed, but theater all the same, full of nuance and deliberation. Before we could even call our-selves LARPers, when we were just two nuts in a corset and a loincloth with some funny ideas, we realized that the people around us

weren’t all that different from us, or anyone who has ever wanted to pretend to be some-body else, just for a little bit.

But the real task of the evening was upon us. It was time to don our personas and see what the STs had in store. We assembled in one classroom that had become, temporarily, the Elysium, or vampire meeting-place. From there our evening was a blur of mystery and vampiric jargon. Vampires, and even mortals, were manifesting previously unknown at-tributes! Members of the usual coven were missing, leaving behind such ominous traces as love notes and roses! And it was up to all of us to get to the bottom of things.

The STs went through a whirlwind of costume changes to flesh out the world they had woven for us. Before our eyes they be-came a free-wheeling vampire couple, a pair of mortal hobos, a decrepit grande dame and her monstrous acolyte.

We witnessed the most prominent mem-ber of our vampire coven staked and resur-rected. We tripped on imaginary vampire psychedelics. We laughed, we pondered, we got lost.

Do not think that this entire time we were pretending to be a pair of vampires. Given the nature of the story, at any given time we might find ourselves split into three groups in various areas of Olin, so whenever we had ‘off-time’ from the main story line, we were encouraged to cross our fingers—a gesture that indicates that the LARPer is speaking as his or her regular self, out of character. We also used this whenever we became particu-larly confused by the story, which after all had been going on for over a semester before we tuned in. Through it all, the LARPers were incredibly welcoming, frequently crossing their fingers just to ask, “Are you guys hav-ing fun?”

3.Four hours later, the LARP

was over. Ten exhausted some-time vampires, still in drapecoats, eyeliner, tribal facepaint, etc., stumbled past scornful strangers and into Michael’s Diner for a well-earned dinner.

Popular consensus may be that live action role-playing is the geekiest of all possible ac-tivities. But what is this stereo-typical geek, and do the Bard LARPers fill that role? One im-mediate cultural marker of the geek is a lack of regard for con-ventional fashion, a criterion our

new friends surely meet. And they too possess extensive ob-scure knowledge, another trait necessary to geekdom. But to call someone a geek has other implications, namely social in-capability and an utter dearth of confidence. Our experience showed us this was clearly not the case.

See, we are the ones who are immersed in mainstream not-geeky pastimes most weekend nights and supposedly possess theatrical confidence, but we experienced immense difficulty feeling comfortable with the kind of on-the-spot improvisa-tion LARPing calls for. These

so-called geeks demonstrated a confidence we lack.

And on closer examination, their penchant for the pretend is not as weird as it at first seems. Everyone in college wants to suspend their life for something better. Leaving the LARP, I, Laura, whispered to Andrew, “Man, when was the last time our friends had this much fun without getting fucked up?” It is quite trendy to alter your reality chemically. The LARPers do it manually. And what differenti-ates the reigning vampire sheriff from tonight’s beer pong cham-pion? To each his own fantastical construction.

The long-awaited film adaptation of Alan Moore’s celebrated graphic novel Watchmen is finally here--and it’s making waves among critics and moviego-ers alike. After making back nearly half of its $120 million budget in just three days, the film’s future looks very bright, in contrast to its apocalyptic end-ing. Watchmen is hands down the most thoroughly imagined and faithfully executed adaptation of any comic book to film yet. However, the film generates a strange set of problems that will perhaps prove to be its most enduring legacy.

These problems stem from the film’s literal inter-pretation of the source material. Watchmen is es-sentially a multi-million dollar paint-by-numbers. The film plays the visuals and dialogue close, so close in fact that outside of an innovative and brilliant open-ing title sequence, the film is nearly identical to its counterpart. Scenes and dialogue are lifted directly from the pages of the book; even the pacing is cop-ied directly from the source. This is perhaps Watch-men’s biggest problem. The graphic novel which DC Comics distributed in 12 issues in September 1986 to October 1987 gave its readers time to digest in-formation with each publishing. This transposition may leave the uninitiated feeling lost in Watchmen’s many flashbacks and plot twists.

Watchmen takes place in an alternate-history version of 1980s America, where superheroes have become a part of the fabric of American culture. After more than forty years of masked vigilantism, government regulation bans the costumed heroes. Most of them retire, yet one, the enigmatic Ror-schach (Jackie Earl Haley), still patrols the streets. The film opens with Edward Blake (Jeffery Dean Morgan), a former superhero known as The Come-dian, falls to his death from the window of his high-rise apartment. Rorschach, formerly his companion the crimefighting fraternity known as the Watchmen, is the only one to suspect any foul play. At the same time, mounting pressure between the U.S. and the Soviet Union points to a nuclear holocaust on the horizon. Rorschach connects the dots and believes a plot is at work to eliminate the remaining members of the Watchmen in order to prevent them from in-terfering.

Rorschach, who in both novel and film serves as a narrator of sorts, peppers the film with snippets of gravel-voiced diary entries. He rallies what remains of the Watchmen, including his own ex-partner the Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson), the beautiful Laurie Jupi-ter a.k.a. Silk Specter (Malin Akerman), the so-called “smartest man in the world” Adrian Veidt a.k.a. Ozy-mandias (Matthew Goode) and the godlike Dr. Man-hattan, voiced by Billy Crudup. All these characters are given serious exposure, contributing to the film’s 162-minute run time.

The performances are good, with Haley’s Ror-schach stealing the show with a gritty and feral display that harkens to Heath Ledger’s Joker from

who watches the watchmen? well, everybody.Superhero flick grosses $55,655,000 at box office opening weekend.

The Dark Knight. Haley was born to play this role and is pitch perfect as Rorschach. Nite Owl un-der his mask is mild mannered Daniel Drieberg, a nerdy everyman with a penchant for gadgetry. Silk Specter, while easy on the eyes, does the most to hurt the film; her fiery attitude fails to make it over from the comic, leaving us with a dry and often irritating presence on screen. Crudup’s Dr. Man-hattan weighs heavily on his vocal performance, not having the advantages of his eyes or facial expressions we take so often for granted. His de-tached and deadpan delivery saves some of the character’s dramatic gravity. The ripped and often nude Doctor is an impressive show of what the latest in CGI can do. Goode’s Adrian Veidt is com-petent, capturing the self-styled business man, although readers of the comic will see and argue rightly that he’s been miscast. The comic’s Veidt is a more admirable figure than the dark character portrayed by Goode—a crucial factor in the de-bates comparing the film and the book.

Watchmen’s marketing calls Zack Snyder a “visionary” director. Watchmen is his third film, fol-lowing another comic adaptation, 300; and 2004’s Dawn of the Dead remake. Three films are hardly enough to qualify one to be called a “visionary” unless they mean it in some other sense of the word. The film Snyder has crafted is a monolithic and intensely stylized experience. Despite being the longest superhero film ever made, many of the novel’s more intellectual ideas feel thin or altogeth-er omitted from the film. The book deconstructed the idea of the superhero, taking intense glimpses at the mind behind the mask. Sexual fetishism, psychological disorders, and violent antisocial behavior were all things brought to the surface of the idea of a superhero. It attempted to answer the question of why no one actually ever has tried suiting up and fighting crime. Furthermore, it ex-plored what impact these individuals would have on world politics and popular culture. Altogether it drew up the question of what it meant to be a hero in a world that hardly seems worth saving.

Watchmen is ultimately a very curious film. Never before has such a dive into a novel’s world been taken. Despite its lofty ideals never truly be-ing realized, the movie is thought provoking and intelligent. The action set pieces are what one would expect from a huge studio film, and the special effects are top notch. Watchmen, by liter-ally transferring the page to the screen, brings with it the same layers of problems one would have an-alyzing the book. Little new life--except the great opening scene and altered ending--is injected into the film. It would have been interesting to see more freedom of expression from Snyder. What touches he does add, particularly in his choice of music, are largely cliché or unnecessary. Overall. it would seem he was too afraid of disappointing the comic’s fans. But despite its flaws, Watchmen is an incredible piece of American art. Without a doubt there is more beneath the surface and re-peating viewings may give some glimpse of it. For the average moviegoer, the effects and action are worth the price of admission. For the book’s fans, a deeply rich and complex world awaits, despite the few stumbling blocks that were inevitable for a project with such a large scope.

By aLex erikSen

37

Photos by anna CarnoChan

his foot, then ran onto the train. So we’re on the train, but he smells like shit! He broke the stink bomb, and they’re all laughing because it was a prank, but now the train smells like shit because that guy’s boot smelled like shit. And they’re all laughing at the people on the train making weird faces. How are you making fun of them? You smell like shit! But there was this hipster girl who was laugh-ing, but with them, you know? Like, ‘Oh, I get you guys.’

She thought she was really cool with them suddenly.

Yeah, like, what was her goal? Are the kids going to be like, “Yo, girl, usually we don’t do this, but if you want to smash stink bombs on the Q train, you should come along.”

This leads me to another ques-tion: Your ‘captions’ for the New

Yorker -Those are fake.

I know! I fell for it the first time, though. Is there material you

stay away from? I have a lot. I don’t want to do too much stuff about being Jewish be-cause I hate that New York vibe. It just seems really 80s to go up there and talk about Jews and living in New York and loving bagels, though I have a joke about loving bagels. I don’t want to harp on one thing too much. I have another joke about black kids choking me, and some-times I do it, but other times I’m clearly making people uncomfort-able. But it’s all autobiographical. I can’t help it that people choke and rob me.

Right. That’s another thing about colleges, that if you talk about sex and drugs they’re down, but then if you do any-thing racial, they kind of stifle their laughter because they don’t want to seem insensitive, you know? You leave college, and you find out no-body gives a shit.

Let’s do some basics: when did you start comedy, and where?

I started in High School. That’s amazing.

I did improv, then senior year I start-ed doing stand-up, but it was stand-up in Minneapolis, so there were only two open mics. I must have quit stand-up comedy like eight times. Like any time I did an open mic, it was just fucking terrible, and I’d say ‘this is awful, I’m never doing this again.’ Then I transferred to Emer-son after a year at Madison in Wis-consin where there was no comedy. In fact my dorm was across from The Onion, and they just left to go to New York. So I said ‘OK, I’m not fucking staying in Wisconsin.’ Then at Emerson I actually started focus-ing and writing jokes.

Do you still do improv? No. When I went to college I thought I wanted to do sketch. Emerson has

Dear Bard Community, Hi. It’s me, Jesse. Graduated last year. remember me? Doesn’t mat-

ter. Just trust me.I threw a lot of parties as a student, both as a club head and a DJ. I’ve

been the latter a few times since graduating, and it has given me a fifth year’s worth of insights into the party life at Bard. Such as it is. I want to issue some suggestions.

Firstly, if you are organizing a party:Get a good DJ. It makes a big difference to have someone who can

beat-match and keep a steadily-increasing, uninterrupted tempo through-out the night. also it helps if the DJ is stocked with at least some songs in all of the following genres: rap, r&B, pop, dancehall, reggaeton, salsa/merengue, oldies and dance/electronic. This will provide every partier with at least one thing s/he can really get down to. For instance, Damian Marley’s “all night” is exactly the same tempo as M.I.a.’s “Boyz,” which is just one bpm faster than Freak nasty’s “Da Dip.” This sequence takes care of Caribbean hip-hop heads, leftist hipsters and nostalgic radio-lis-teners all within the span of about 7 min.

advertise a lot. and early. Like, at least a week. a Facebook group is not enough--though it is completely imperative, and preferably with more than one administrator, so that more than one entire circle of friends gets

invitations. You need posters in all the usual places, plus a big butcher-paper sign, which is free to make at Student activities. Print smaller ver-sions of the poster and leave them on tables at Kline and DTr. Make the posters clever and striking. Word art is disingenuous and smacks of laziness.

Decorate in fun ways. Streamers and shit are really cheap, and Stu-dent activities actually has Christmas lights, which are cute. By the way, DO nOT KeeP anY LIGHTS On DUrInG THe ParTY. not even a single one of the faux candles if the party is in Manor. There is already too much un-turn-off-able light flooding in from the refreshment room. People want to dance and escape, imagine that they are in a club, see other people enough to know where their genitalia are, and not be seen too well dancing like a maniac.

as I understand it, the rule on alcohol is now that you cannot spend club money on a keg. The thing is, that’s a majorly important thing at a party and it’s not actually that expensive, especially if the cost is split between, like, ten club members. It means forfeiting your own alcohol stash for like a week or two in the interest of throwing a great party, which should not be a difficult judgment to make.

OK, now for party goers: What the fuck is wrong with you guys?Why go to a party that ends at 1:40 and arrive at 12:40? That gives

you one hour to dance, which is not enough time to get drunk and not enough time to arrange to get laid. as someone who spent a good deal of energy and inventiveness over four annandale years trying to get drunk and laid, I take this to heart.

When I was a freshman, parties got good at 11:30 (which is seriously not fucking early). I guess that people would think, “It’s not going to get good until 11:30, so let’s not go until 11:45,” and so forth until now parties don’t get good until 12:40. and I’m playing really good music to no danc-ers for three and a half hours. People get to Manor parties late because they think those parties suck. and they think the parties suck because no one gets there until too late. There’s only one way out of this vicious cycle: a community decision to start going to parties earlier. Pre-game at 9, get to the party at 11, and go nuts for two and a half hours! Totally enough time to pick up a one night stand and slur your speech a bit. I recommend a Facebook group: “Once 100 People Join This Group, all 100 Will Go to Parties earlier.”

and don’t request a thousand things from the DJ. as previously men-tioned, beat-matching is important, and I’m not going to stop Montell Jor-dan’s “This is How We Do It” (103.6 bpm) to play Beyonce’s “Diva” (146.2 bpm). It’s not important enough to me. Unless it’s a Tivoli party whose DJ equipment is an iPod, just expect that the DJ is going to play some cool shit, and enjoy it.

and dress sexy, for crying out loud. This does not, as apparently many people think it does, mean push-ups and fishnets. A cashmere sweater and modest jeans can be sexy, as long as that’s your style. The fact has remained since early in the last century: dresses tend to accentuate the female body well; slacks and ties, the male.

Partying is really important, so get it right, okay? See you next time.

Comedian Joe Mande graced the Bard Comedy Workshop on March 4th along with local favorite

Bardians Nelson James, Vincent Lechowick, and Paul King. He spoke with Dan Wilbur after the show about college shows, his edgier material - such as the New

Yorker Captions (a satirical response to the moron who made the infamous “Stimulus Monkey” cartoon)

- and his only IMDB credit.

38

By Jesse AlexAnder Myerson, ‘08

First Treatise on Etiquette for Parties, Both their

Throwing and Attending, and their Implementation both Foul and Proper: An

Open Letter

3,000 kids and 2,000 sketch groups, and a lot of them are funded by the school. It was fun but really stupid, then after college I decided I didn’t want to do sketch or improv. My brain just isn’t fast enough for improv.

Do you do any crowd work then? Not really. I’m not good at it. It’s a skill set that you need to take down heck-lers. I can handle it, but I’m not a pro. Why do I need to be good at talking to assholes? It’s a shitty thing that I don’t like about being a comedian.

It’s cool you weren’t necessarily forced to go the Upright Citizens

Brigade route. You don’t have to. I remember, when I first went to New York, I went to a party at there and I was hanging out in the green room, and one of the kids had a UCB tattoo. I was like ‘Oh my God! Really? A tattoo?’ That’s a bit much. I’m gonna find other places to perform as well as this place.

It’s great that you moved so fast though. 20 at Emerson to 25 and

juggling multiple things. Yeah. Last year was the first year I ever lived as a comedian. I didn’t make a ton of money, but I paid rent by doing shit, hustling.

Did you end up running from club to club every night?

Not clubs. I got writing jobs and col-leges. And weird shit would fall in my lap. 23/6.com paid us for videos. I had a lot of fun with that. Can you talk about the MTV thing?

Silent Library for America, right? One of the producers at MTV came to our show. Noah Garfinkel, my writing partner, and I do this thing called ‘The List of Nothing’ which we’ve done for two years, which is ideas for sketches and videos that we thought were really funny, and then realized they’re just terrible. Usually they’re just puns. Like: ‘Cerano De Bernie Mac,’ shit like that. We now have 15 PowerPoint slides filled with hundreds of these, and ev-ery night, we just breeze through it on-stage, and the MTV producer was like ‘I think you guys have the right sen-sibility for this Japanese game show we’re bringing to America.’ It was fun.

I was wondering about your joke about another unnamed comic,who

tells an uncomfortable joke. You were the only one with the balls

to say ‘This is the joke, and here’s what’s wrong with it.’

Yeah, when I was in L.A. doing a showcase, another comedian comes

up to me, and was like ‘Good set, man. You should watch out, though - a lot of people know who that guy is. And that’s his big joke.’ And I was like ‘Well, that’s his problem. I’m not gonna start a feud, but he has a joke about stab-bing gay kids. That’s really fucked up.’So you’re not afraid to rebuff other

comics. I’m fearless. No, I’m full of fear. I’m scared of everything.

Do you remember bombing? When I first started out, that’s all you do. My summer living in New York do-ing the Maury Show, all I did was bomb. It was not so much my material but the places I was performing. I haven’t bombed in awhile. I’ve had shitty shows, but now I have a stockpile of 10-15 jokes that I know will always get some kind of response. It’s comforting. I’m gonna do really bad sometimes. But bombing is its own feeling. There’s nothing worse than fucking bombing, where everything you say is to silence. That’s why people stop. It’s shameful. You feel really bad about yourself, but you feel bad that other people have to endure it. Oh, God.

Do you write every day? Or does stuff fall on you?

I have friends that can just sit at a desk and think. I don’t know. Crazy shit just happens to me. I’m like a magnet for crazy people. Something will happen, and I just have to write it down. A lot of that really dumb shit goes on that ‘List of Nothing’ and that’s a good outlet. It gets the garbage out of my brain. Final question. Yeti: A Love Story?

Oh, fuck! I did that movie as a favor for my roommate who said I owed him money even though I didn’t. The movie is just fucking crazy. I play the kid no one likes, and I go to take a shit, so my big scene is that I’m out in the woods, and I hear a noise so I run, but the branches are ripping my clothes off, so I’m running naked and a guy shoots me in the chest. I was like, ‘Well, no one will ever see this, and I won’t owe the kid money.’ Then a year later, Troma buys the movie, and it was released nationally. I hope when I’m rich I can buy the rights to that movie, and just collect them all and burn them.

For more of Joe’s work, go to joe-mande.com. If you missed Joe, come

by Down the Road for Seth Herzog (Chappelle’s Show, Best Week Ever,

Conan) on March 18th.

I was reading something Baron Vaughn wrote (who you’re headlining with next

week at Comix), and he wrote any college gig you do is going to be weird.

It’s always weird. That’s why we at least try to do a real

show. I’ve done a lot. I went on the road with John Mulaney last year, and the range of shows we did - one night we’d have an auditorium with a wireless mic and a spotlight, then the next day we’d be in a cafeteria at 5:30 in the af-ternoon. You just never know. I wanted to do another joke but I was afraid I’d sound rac-ist. I live across from a junior high school with a lot of Puerto Rican kids. You can tell me if this is funny: a kid smashed a stink bomb with

Story & photos by Rob Ross

What do you get when you take the 89 year old face of the man who’s name is synonymous with American folk music and 100+ Bard kids willing to sacrifice their future children in his name? During an unassuming Thursday after-noon at Weis Cinema, Pete Seeger treated a crowded conglomerate of mesmerized students to two hours of storytelling, sing-a-longs, and the mere inspiration of his presence.

Pete Seeger could’ve done almost anything when he walked into Weis. The venue was filled to its maxium capacity only to get more full as Seeger went on. Every seat was filled with people taking a break from class, not going to

class, or just rolling out of bed to see Pete Seeger.

It really didn’t matter what Seeger did. Luck-ily, however, he gave us a picture of the brilliant persona that has made him a seminal figure in modern American history.

After an hour-long anecdote filled with twists, turns, and endless digressions, Seeger conclud-ed that whenever confronted with an important scientific discovery, don’t tell anyone.

The highlight of the talk was Seeger’s mus-ings on how much hope he has for the fu-ture stating that he has “never been this op-timistic about the future in his life.” Seeger

Pete Seeger Storms Weis

Springtime in the Hudson ValleyAs the days lengthen and the sun once again returns to upstate New York, students should take the opportunity to enjoy some truly amazing scenery.

A gnarled white pine growing out of the rocky bank of Kruger Island is defended by and pair

of dive bombing blue-jays. In a few weeks, bald eagles nesting on the Island will lay eggs and

begin to hunt fish and rodents to feed their chicks.

I saw the first bud of the spring of 2009 on February 21st in the tidal marshes near Kruger Island. I think it was a buckthorn bush, or maybe poison oak; it’s hard to tell when they don’t have leaves. I was standing in the middle of sea of cattails colored red by the setting sun, and I felt, not for the first time, a little sad that I’m about to graduate. During my time at Bard, I’ve met more than a few seniors who have never seen the ruined building on Kruger Island, never been to the gardens at poets walk, never swam in the water fall, never been to the floating dock in Tivoli bays. This is a shame. What’s the point of going to a rural college if you never take the time to explore the woods? In the coming weeks, get out and see the really awesome animals around bard. Bald Eagles on Kruger Island should be laying their eggs soon. A family of beavers living north of the island avoided hunters this winter and will soon

begin to rebuild their lodge. A Great Horned Owl is living somewhere in the bays, and snapping turtles will begin mating in the tidal marshes from the Saw Kill to Tivoli. You haven’t really lived until you watch two 40 lb. turtles making sweet, slow love.

39

wanted to instill on his audience that he feels the world is legitimately im-proving (a breath of fresh air when confronted with the current trend of apocalyptic prophecies).

In an interesting question and an-swer session, one student asked about the similarities Seeger sees in the current age of wiretapping and the Patriot Act as compared to Cold War politics of the 1950s. Seeger, while not exactly a proponent of the Bush doctrine, was quick to point out that it was a lot worse back then. He made clear that never had he seen the youth as aware as it currently as opposed to the 1950s that saw Seeger himself get blacklisted for his membership in the U.S. Communist Party.

Seeger performed two songs and invited everyone in the audience to

sing along. His style of performance was consistent with the Pete Seeger that most are accustomed to. After singing, he’d break to muse further on the state of the world and, when he felt inspiration, he would start up his banjo and urge everyone to sing along.

Seeger’s legendary banjo, with the inscription “this machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender,” was also in attendance.

The crowd slowly thinned out after Seeger was done. However, a large following hovered around Seeger to simply hear him speak. Very rarely does an individual get treated in such a Christ-like manner at a place where the large majority of people think Christ was an okay prophet. For this day, Pete Seeger was bigger than Jesus.

By Enrico Purita

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March 2009

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