Posted on Mar 1, 1995

Two basketball players and a basketball coach reached milestones by the halfway point of the season.

Sam Poulis, a senior forward from Clifton, NJ., scored his 1,300th point, moving him into fourth place on the all-time scoring list. Poulis was averaging more than twenty-two points a game and twice scored thirty-seven. Only eleven players have scored more than 1,000 points in their Union careers.

Andrea Pagnozzi, a senior guard from Cresskill, NJ., who averages eighteen points a game, became the second woman to score more than 1,000 points. By early February, her total was more than 1,200. She trails only Robin Romer '92, who scored 1,738 points.

Both Poulis and Pagnozzi had been named to the Upstate New York weekly honor roll several times by midseason.

Coach Bill Scanlon became the thirty-sixth active member of the Division III 300-win club when his Dutchmen beat Utica, 82-69, on December 12. Scanlon, in his twenty-second year of coaching at Union, had a record of 304233 as of early February.

Hockey
If one word could characterize a sports season, the word for the hockey team might be “frustrating.”

Despite outplaying opponents regularly, the Dutchmen had difficulty scoring and went through a 0-7-1 stretch in December and early January.

But when Union did break out of the slump, it picked a great time to do it, beating RPI 5-2 before a delighted home crowd and
out shooting the Engineers, forty-one to sixteen.

Later that month came
wins over Dartmouth (6-5) and St. Lawrence (6-0), a tie with Vermont (1-1), and a close loss to nationally-ranked Clarkson (42).

The Clarkson and St. Lawrence trip was especially heartening, coming only a few days after sophomore star Troy Stevens, of Coon Rapids, Minn., stunned his teammates by suddenly leaving college to sign a professional contract. Coach Bruce Delventhal said he was surprised by the player's decision and expressed “disappointment that he is forgoing his college education.”

Swimming
Both the women's and men's swimming teams continued to pile up wins.

By early February, each team was 6-2. Under Coach Susan Bassett, the women are 62-10 in dual meets and won two state championships, while the men are 41-20 and finished second and third in the last two state meets.

The major point scorer for the men has been sophomore Kevin Makarowski, of Washington Mills, N.Y., who twice this season won three races in a meet. Sophomore Jackie Crane, of Danville, Pa., won two races in four separate meets.

Track
Senior Rich Pulver, of Hudson Falls, N.Y., led the track team with impressive performances in the shot put. With a throw of 51' 10″, he qualified for the NCAA meet in March; last year he finished ninth nationally.

Posted on Mar 1, 1995

Correcting the name
Re: Your article about Kojo Attah

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, as a career Foreign Service officer, I
was assigned as a regional officer with responsibilities which covered over twenty countries in east and southern Africa.

Through an airline scheduling error I was routed to Salisbury, Southem Rhodesia, at the time of the civil unpleasantness. Following the negotiated peace for that country, I was fortunate to call officially upon the
newly-established government of Robert Magawbe in Harare, the renamed capital of Zimbabwe. Since then I have made several trips to that beautiful country with a still to be uncovered historic depth.

Meanwhile, my school days geography continues to plaque my mental process when I relate to Africa. I must constantly remind myself that while country boundary lines sometimes remain the same, there is no French or British Somaililand; no Anglo-Egyptian Sudan; no Tanganyika; no Rhodesia, Northern or Southern; no Nyasaland; and no Zimbobway.

H. Peters Strong 51
McLean, Va.

Great cover

Congratulations on the stunning cover photos of the Nott Memorial! An artistic triumph, to say the least. As a matter of idle curiosity, who's the crackpot with the broom on the parapet? A high altitude custodian on flight pay? Or some public-spirited academic who holds that a cluttered roof is a symbol of a cluttered mind?

Richard D. Conly 42
Gladwyne, Pa.

The intrepid soul with the broom was one of the many workers who defied gravity to restore the highest reaches of the Nott Memorial, inside and out. The sidewalk superintendents on campus enjoyed watching the action while shaking their heads and muttering, “No way would you get me up there.” When some of us did get up there, we found the view spectacular,- the photograph shows the new Morton and Helen Fulman Theater from the Nott's outside balcony.-Editor

Posted on Mar 1, 1995

Alumni and friends with access to the Internet can follow campus events electronically thanks to the College's Campus-Wide Information System, commonly known as the “gopher.”

Among the offerings on this bulletin board are the Chronicle, the weekly campus publication that contains news about coming events and other college activities; faculty, staff, and student achievements; and sports scores. The Chronicle is published weekly while classes are in session (thirty times a year) by the Office of Public Relations.

Other postings on the Union gopher include information about the College's Bicentennial, Schaffer Library, and academic departments. Some areas of the gopher are still in the construction phase.

Not all computers with Internet access will necessarily have access to the Union gopher. Subscribers to America
Online, Prodigy, Compuserve, and other network service providers should check with their provider with questions about access to the Union gopher.

(It's called gopher, by the way, because the software that runs the system was developed at the University of Minnesota, home of the “Golden Gophers.”)

Campus addresses
For those of you who would like to correspond with individual offices, here are some Union e-mail addresses:

Admissions Office
Only for submitting nominations of highly-qualified students: admissions@union.edu

Alumni Office
Paul Rieschick '74, director: rieschip@alice.union.edu

Annual Fund
annual fund@union.edu

Career Development Center
Joanne Tobiessen, director: tobiessj@alice.union.edu

College Relations
Dan C. West, vice president: westd@alice.union.edu

Dean of Arts and Sciences
Christina Sorum, dean: sorumc@gar.union.edu

Dean of Engineering
Richard Kenyon, dean: kenyonr@gar.union.edu

Development
Bruce Downsbrough, director of development: downsbrb@alice.union.edu
Debra Balliet, director of the annual fund: ballietd@alice.union.edu
Perry Goff, assistant director of the annual fund: goffp@alice.union.edu
Hayl Kephart, senior development officer: kephartm@alice.union.edu
Alice Marocco, director of gift planning: maroccoa@alice.union.edu
Amanda Mason, development officer: masona@alice.union.edu
J. Michael Smiles, senior development officer: smilesm@alice.union.edu
Sally Webster, senior development officer: websters@alice.union.edu

Public Relations
Peter Blankman, director and editor of Union College magazine: blankmap@alice.union.edu
Charlie Casey, director of the news bureau and editor of the Chronicle:
caseyc@alice.union.edu
'The Classes” section in the magazine: Deb Ludke: ludked@alice.union.edu

Records Office
For changes of address, career changes, and other alumni information: records@union.edu

Posted on Mar 1, 1995

George Butterstein, Florence B. Sherwood Professor of Life Sciences, presented a paper titled “Erythropietin increase in the pregnant rat is mediated by increasing androgen levels” at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Reproduction. The paper's coauthor is Charles Doering '94 in collaboration with Daniel Castracene at Texas Tech Health Sciences.

Mary Caroll, assistant professor of chemistry, with coauthors, has published “Solid-state Microprocessor-controlled Detector for Doublet Peak Measurements in Flow Injection Analysis” in
Analytica Chimia Acta.

Felmon Davis, associate professor of philosophy, is the author of “Discourse Ethics and Ethical Realism: A Realist Realignment of Discourse Ethics” in the
European Journal of Philosophy.

Erik Hansen, professor of history, and Peter Prosper, professor of economics, are the authors of “Political Economy and Political Action: The Programmatic Response of Dutch Social Democracy to the Depression Crisis, 1929-1939,” an essay in the
Journal of Contemporary History XXIX

Peter Heinegg, professor of English, has contributed a translation of Jean-Claude Pressac's “The Machinery of Mass Murder at Auschwitz” to
Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, edited by Ysrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum and published by Indiana University Press. Also, Doubleday has published his translation of Uta
Ranke Heinemann's “Putting Away Childish Things,” a critique of orthodox Christian interpretations of the New Testament.

Kurt Hollocher, assistant professor of geology, is the author of “North Central Colorado as a Model Field Area for Integrated Lab Exercises in Map Interpretation” in the
Journal of Geological Education and (with two others) “Composition Changes in Ash Flow Cooling Unite During K Metasomatism, West Central Arizona” in Economic Geology.

Martha Huggins, Roger Thayer Stone Professor of Sociology, has been appointed to a three-year term on the Fulbright Commission's discipline advisory committee for criminology. She will review and recommend grant proposals for international research and teaching in crime and justice. She has twice held Fulbright senior research and teaching fellowships in Brazil. Also, she has been elected first vice president of the International Sociological Association's research committee on crime and deviance.

Susan Lehrman, assistant professor in the Graduate Management Institute, was nominated for the long term care research award presented by the Foundation of the American College of Health Care Administrators. She is co-founder of the Institute for
Long Term Care Policy Studies, which conducted one of the few surveys of care provided to persons with AIDS in long-term care facilities.

Steven Leavitt, assistant professor of anthropology, gave a two-day series of colloquia on “Nostalgia for the Dead: Interpreting Bumbita Arapesh Personal Narratives of Cargo” at the annual meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Society.

Bonney MacDonald, associate professor of English, is the author of “Eastern Imaginings of the West in Hamlin Garland,” published in
Western American Literature.

Victoria Martinez, assistant professor of Spanish, is the author of “In Search of the Word: Performances in Luisa Valenzuela's
Novela negra con argentinos,” which appeared in Chasqui: Revista de literatura
latinoamericana.

Melanie Rinaldi '96 was one of the three students in New York to receive a scholarship award from the Association of Mathematics Teachers of New York State. The award is for outstanding students who intend to teach high school or elementary mathematics. Rinaldi, of Mansfield, Mass., is enrolled in the College's Master of Arts for Teachers program. She tutors in the College's Calculus Crisis Center and in Schenectady County Community College's mathematics lab.

Thomas Werner, the Florence B. Sherwood Professor of Physical Sciences, has received a two-year, $25,000 grant from the Petroleum Research Fund for research with undergraduates on a project titled “Fluorescence Probe Studies on Cyclodextrin
Polymers.  “This is the fifth grant Werner has received to support his research with undergraduates.

Brenda Wineapple, the Washington Irving Professor of Modern Literary and Historical Studies, has been named a co-director of the Biography Seminar, a professional organization, at New York University.

Posted on Mar 1, 1995

The College turned to the courts in January to resolve a long-standing disagreement about using its properties in the city of Schenectady's GE Realty Plot.

In papers filed with Schenectady County Supreme Court, the College asked the court to declare unconstitutional the City Council ordinance that prevents Union from using property it owns in furtherance of its educational mission.

President Roger H. Hull, announcing the College's action, said, “Before 1978, the College had the right to use its property for educational purposes. The College retained that right when the city created the GE Realty Plot Historic District in 1978.

“However, in 1984, the city took away the College's right to use its properties when it eliminated most special uses within the area,” he continued. “We feel this taking was discriminatory, and we are convinced that the city's 1984 zoning ordinance is unconstitutional.”

The College can only speculate as to the reasons the zoning amendment was adopted, Hull said. Special uses for schools and churches are allowed in the city's two other historic districts and there already are numerous uses in the GE Realty Plot other than
single family residences, including commercial activities, a school, and a church.

“We believe it is significant that the city's Records Department has refused to honor our Freedom of Information request to obtain the public documents relative to the amendment, in direct violation of the law,” he said.

Union is not asking to be excluded from any reasonable zoning requirements, the president said. “At the same time, we believe we should have the right-as any property owner
would to take our proposal to the Zoning Board of Appeals. Under the present legislation, we don't have that right.”

Hull said that Union's inability to use its Lenox Road properties costs the College approximately $500,000 a year
in lost revenue because it cannot house additional students on campus. “At a time of great financial pressures on all colleges, it is essential that we seek to maximize our revenues,” he said.

The College noted that both the constitution and the laws of New York, as interpreted by judicial decisions, give educational institutions a special status in relation to the enforceability of municipal zoning ordinances. In 1986, the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals, ruled in cases involving Cornell University and Sarah Lawrence College that educational institutions are an inherent benefit to the community and must be entitled to file for a special use permit in a residential neighborhood.

On October 6, Hull wrote to the City Council, repeating the College's request that the city recognize the College's constitutional right as an educational institution to apply for a special use permit. The College had received no formal response from the city when it filed its suit. The College's petition remains before the City Council.

Since 1991, Hull and other Union officials met on seven separate occasions with residents of the GE Plot in an effort to resolve the matter amicably. Representatives of the Plot Association rejected all efforts at compromise and only expressed interest in “the College selling its properties and getting out of the neighborhood entirely.”

The College offered a number of compromises:

• to sell (which it did) one of the homes it owned on Wendell Avenue in the GE Plot; 
• to restrict the uses to which it would put the Lenox Road properties to administrative and faculty offices; 
• to ensure that the use of the properties would not have a negative impact on the city's finances (Union pays $37,500 a year in property taxes; water and sewer charges for the entire campus are $101,000 a year); 
• to maintain the exterior of the homes as they are now except for the addition of handicapped access; and 
• to sell all other properties it owns in the GE Plot, keeping only the Lenox Road properties and not to acquire any additional properties for a period of time to be determined by mutual consent.

With the filing of its suit, the College withdrew the proposed compromises.

The College also withdrew the Environmental Impact Statement it had prepared. Hull said that until the constitutionality of the zoning ordinance is decided, there is no reason to consider the impact statement.

The Lenox Road properties are located adjacent to the College campus. Four of the properties have houses used as residences by faculty, staff, or guests; one house is vacant; and three properties are vacant lots.