Posted on Feb 22, 2006

Things will be rocking at the third annual Rhythm for Life Concert to Fight AIDS, Friday, Feb. 24 at 7 p.m. in Old Chapel. Tickets for the show, sponsored by Gamma Sigma Sigma, are $5 in advance and $7 at the door.

All proceeds from ticket sales will benefit Children Affected by HIV/AIDS (CHABHA), an organization that provides relief to the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Performers include the Dutch Pipers, the Garnet Minstrels, the Gospel Choir and student bands White Punks on Hope, 3s' Company and Undercover Minority.

In addition to live music and refreshments, members of Gamma Sigma Sigma will be on hand to provide information about AIDS and CHABHA. Free condoms will be available courtesy of Planned Parenthood and Health Services. Both groups helped Gamma Sigma Sigma organize the event, along with the Social Enrichment Grant (SEG) committee and Seneca House.

“It was a great idea to put together a benefit concert at Union,” says Zach Fields '07, a singer/guitarist for White Punks on Hope, “and it's an honor to be able to play a show for such an important cause.”

Posted on Feb 22, 2006

Reappointment review committees have been formed for seven assistant professors: Kelly Black, mathematics; Aaron Cass, computer science; Palmyra Catravas, electrical and computer engineering; Zhilan Feng, Graduate College of Union University; Jennifer Matsue, music; Andrew Morris, history; and Andrew Rapoff, mechanical engineering.

Members of the campus community may offer written or oral testimony to committee members. Committees (with chairs listed first), are:

Black: William Zwicker, mathematics (ext. 6160, zwickerw@union.edu); Brenda Johnson, mathematics; Alan Taylor, mathematics.

Aaron Cass: Valerie Barr, computer science (ext. 8361, barrv@union.edu); David Hemmendinger, computer science; Thomas Jewell, Division of Engineering and Computer Science.

Catravas: John Spinelli, electrical and computer engineering (ext. 6307, spinellj@union.edu); Yu Chang, electrical and computer engineering; Michael Rudko, electrical and computer engineering.

Feng: Presha Neidermeyer, GCUU (ext. 6598, neidermp@union.edu); Alan Bowman, GCUU; Martin Strosberg, GCUU.

Jennifer Matsue: Timothy Olsen, music (ext. 6563, olsent@union.edu); Sharon Gmelch, anthropology; Dianne McMullen, music.

Andrew Morris: Steven Sargent, history (ext. 6360, sargents@union.edu); Andrew Feffer, history; Robert Wells, history.

Andrew Rapoff: Richard Wilk, mechanical engineering (ext. 6268, wilkr@union.edu); Ann Anderson, mechanical engineering; William Keat, mechanical engineering.

Posted on Feb 22, 2006

By mid-week, more than 300 members of the campus community had signed a petition produced by the Panhellenic Council and Spectrum (formerly UBGlad) that speaks out against discrimination and intolerance.

The petition, available for signing through Friday in the Student Activities Office (Reamer Campus Center Room 404), decries “bias-motivated violence – including derogatory comments, physical violence, and written abuse,” said Brooke Lamparello, Panhellenic's vice president of recruitment.

“It also states that we will no longer be ‘silent participants' in discrimination; our failure to act makes us just as guilty as the perpetrators.”

The petition comes as the campus is dealing with severalalleged bias-related incidents, including grafitti, vandalism and the attack of a Union student at another campus.

Jim Underwood, interim president, sent a message applauding the student groups' petition effort and urging people to sign “as a measure of support for building a better community at Union, a community characterized by mutual respect in which no one is made to feel demeaned and isolated.”

Posted on Feb 22, 2006

Renowned pollster John Zogby, widely considered a “maverick predictor” for his ability to pinpoint election results with dead-on accuracy, will speak at the Nott Memorial on Monday, Feb. 27, at 7:30 p.m. as part of Perspectives at the Nott. He will talk on “The Political Landscape in 2006: The U.S. and the World.”

Earler in the day, at noon, he will speak as part of the Pizza and Politics series in Social Sciences Room 103.

Zogby is the president and CEO of Zogby International, an opinion and marketing research organization based in Utica, with offices in Washington, D.C. The firm's pollsters work with psychologists, sociologists, computer experts, linguists, political scientists, economists and mathematicians to “explore every nuance in language and test new methods in public opinion research.”

Zogby conducts political and opinion polling for clients such as Reuters News Agency, NBC News, the New York Post, Fox News, Gannett News Service, the Albany Times Union and other newspapers in New York state and around the country. Since 1984, the firm has been tracking public opinion around the globe – working in 62 countries, at last count.

In November 1996, Zogby made headlines by being the only pollster to accurately call the U.S. presidential election.   

John Zogby has been praised as the “the most accurate pollster” (Seattle Post Intelligencer, Cleveland Plain Dealer, USA Today), and “the pace setter in the polling business” (New York Post).

He regularly appears on all three nightly network news programs plus NBC's “Today Show,” ABC's “Good Morning America” and is a frequent guest for Fox News and MSNBC special programs, along with CNBC's “Hardball with Chris Matthews.” He also is a regular political commentator for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Zogby holds degrees in history from Le Moyne College and Syracuse University. A frequent lecturer and panelist, he is listed with Leading Authorities, a top speakers' bureau in Washington, D.C., and the National Speakers' Bureau, in Chicago.  

He has polled, researched and consulted for a wide spectrum of business media, government, and political groups including Microsoft, CISCO Systems, Philip Morris, St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital, MCI, Reuters America and the United States Census Bureau.

Posted on Feb 21, 2006

After William Denison Williams graduated Union College in 1932, he didn't forget his alma mater. The retired General Electric engineer gave a modest gift to the school every year and attended reunions. In 1987, he donated a copy of Harriet Beecher Stowe's “Men of our Times” to the library.

The school's fundraisers hardly considered Williams a big fish.

That is, until Williams, who died in October, left a quarter of his $20 million estate to Union — a gift that arrived out of the blue. “He was a regular donor to the annual fund, at a nice level but not a major gift level,” said Tom Gutenberger, Union's vice president of college relations. “It's a fantastic surprise to get.”

The $5 million gift will be used to endow a pair of professorships. Union officials have not determined in which fields the chairs will be. Part of the gift will also be used to renovate Butterfield Hall, Union's engineering building.

Gutenberger said Williams would make regular gifts in the $200 to $1,000 range, and while officials would occasionally try to visit Williams, he kept turning them down. “Each time he just said 'no,' he just didn't want anybody to come see him,” Gutenberger said.

In Schenectady, where untold thousands have worked and invested in GE over the years, that kind of hidden fortune is not unheard of.

We have a lot of alumni that work at GE, or worked at GE, and a lot of them have built up a substantial amount of wealth through their GE stock,” Gutenberger said.

It's a tale with which Don Lang, chief development officer at St. Clare's Hospital Foundation, is familiar.

“It's not uncommon to get seven-figure gifts from names in this community that aren't household names,” Lang said.

For families that sent a few people to work for GE, “You've got over 100 years of GE stock building up. And they didn't spend it. They were frugal,” Lang said. And, typically, they want to remain far under the radar. “The richest people in town have the used cars,” Lang said. “You never know who is who, and who has what, so you treat everybody well.”

Williams, who received an electrical engineering degree from Union in addition to study at Cornell and Duke, was manager of GE's Magnetics Section and worked in its engineering laboratory. He was married and had no children; he lived in Scotia for many years before moving to Pennsylvania.

His estate was partially divided among Union, his late wife's alma mater, Piedmont College in Georgia, and the James A. Michener Art Museum in Pennsylvania.

Williams was also a skilled violinist who performed with orchestras in New York and Philadelphia. He also gave some money to individual musicians.

“We are extremely grateful to receive this generous gift,” said James Underwood, Union's interim president. “Union obviously played a big role in William's life.”

Williams' gift, while large, isn't the school's biggest ever. In 2002, former U.S. Rep. John Wold of Wyoming and his wife, Jane, contributed $20 million.