Posted on Mar 30, 2006

I enjoyed Tom McEvoy's “Greek Life Update,” but was a little disappointed that the column didn't mention any community involvement of Union's sororities.
I would like to specifically acknowledge my appreciation of the efforts of Gamma Phi Beta's Epsilon Epsilon chapter (of which I was a member). After Hurricane Katrina impacted Louisiana in such a dramatic way, I put out a request to the national Gamma Phi organization to support East Baton Rouge Parish School district, where I was a third grade teacher (through Teach for America) from 2001-2003.
The Gamma Phi's at Union responded generously by devoting an entire recruitment event to stuffing pencil boxes with essentials for New Orleans students displaced into Baton Rouge. The schools which received these supplies were incredibly grateful. I was also thrilled that Union's Gamma Phi's would respond so quickly to a request from a former member of their sorority, even though I haven't had the chance to meet any of the current sisters.
I wholeheartedly support your efforts to acknowledge all the positive contributions of Union's Greek community, and wanted to share the impact Gamma Phi made in Baton Rouge.

Posted on Mar 30, 2006

Union College and three other upstate New York institutions-Skidmore College; Hamilton College; and Colgate University-will share another $500,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support faculty career enhancement.
The grant will continue to support initiatives begun in the 2004-05 academic year: grants to mid-career faculty; exchanges among the institutions; and workshops, lectures and a speakers bureau.
“The Mellon grant provides excellent support for our faculty members' teaching and research,'' said Therese McCarty, Dean of Faculty. “We have already benefited from faculty exchanges and collaborative workshops with the other colleges involved in the grant. We are grateful to the Mellon foundation for providing the support for more such opportunities.''
The latest grant, which will fund programs for two years beginning in the 2006-07 academic year, follows a $600,000 Mellon grant awarded to the four schools in 2003.
The support has been used to help faculty with planning and research after they have reached tenure, typically at the start of their seventh year. In addition, two faculty members from each of the four schools have taught a course at one of the other schools, giving them exposure to new colleagues in a different academic and institutional culture.

Posted on Mar 30, 2006

The 1853 portrait may be the first of a woman to hang in the office, said Interim President James Underwood at the unveiling. Underwood said he saw a photograph of the portrait on the cover of a brochure for the Williamstown Art Conservation Center, where it had been restored. “When I saw that, I knew we had to have this for the President's Office,” he said.
Colleagues have described Urania's likeness as “striking” and “formidable,” Underwood said of the three-by-four-foot portrait that hangs in an intricate gilded frame behind Underwood's desk (which belonged to Arthur) in the southeast corner of the office.
As a work of art, “Sully's fluid brushstrokes create a gentle, soft composition and the warm pinks of her flesh contrast beautifully with the grays of the spare and simple background,” according to notes by Rachel Seligman, curator of the College's
collection. Prof. Louisa Matthew, an art historian, pointed to Sully's skill at creating a “slick” canvas with a minimum of brush strokes, his use of pink coral and pale blue, and his mastery at
capturing the intricacy of Urania's veil and fur wrap.
Sully was a prominent painter of the 19th century, perhaps best known for his portraits of women. During his 71-year career, he did some 2,600 paintings, 2,000 of which were portraits.
Urania Sheldon Nott's “power behind the throne” grew stronger as her husband was incapacitated by a series of strokes that began in 1860. Archivist Ellen Fladger reports the annals of Union history reveal little of Urania Nott's role as wife of the president, or her views of life at Union. Most of what we know about her appears in the Encyclopedia of Union College History, edited and compiled by Wayne Somers.
Urania had been operating women's schools in Utica and Schenectady when she met Nott. They married in 1842, a year and a half after the death of his second wife, Gertrude. He was 69, she 35.
Diarist Jonathan Pearson, professor and treasurer, wrote in 1860 that Nott “is completely under ‘Uranie's' thumb now, and has to do just as she says.” After a debilitating stroke in 1863 until his death three years later, she answered his correspondence and served as his spokesperson.
Her role galled some in the Union community. There was dissension over whether Vice President Laurens Perseus Hickok should succeed the incapacitated president. Some maintained that Mrs. Nott was overly involved in College finances; she was a guardian of the Nott Trust Fund, created after a state investigation of Nott's practice of co-mingling the College's assets with his own. She also wanted a location other than Vale Cemetery as a College burial ground, but her husband and Pearson supported the Vale idea, which was adopted.
After Nott's death in 1866, the Trustees granted Mrs. Nott, not yet 60, a stipend of $1,800 and agreed to pay for all repairs to her residence. She continued to live in the President's House-a right guaranteed her when it was finished in 1861-until her death in 1886.
Urania Nott spent the rest of her life doing community service in Schenectady. She was president of the Ladies Benevolent Society, and first director of the Home for the Friendless (today known as the Heritage Home for Women). A memorial booklet said of her passing, “Seldom, as in her case, does a whole city feel itself bereaved by a common loss, and while it mourns her departure, unite to call her memory blessed.”

Posted on Mar 30, 2006

After spending years researching how gender affects a person's decision to run for office, today she is living the decision. She says it's time for Rhode Island to send a woman to Washington-and she should be that woman.
Lawless is being aided in
her campaign in the 2006 Democratic primary race
for Rhode Island's 2nd Congressional district seat
by Union Political Science Professor Richard Fox.
Lawless, a professor of political science and public policy at Brown University, is considered an expert on women and political ambition. She says her research, much of it conducted with Fox, inspired her to run. Lawless and Fox are co-authors of numerous papers and studies, including one highly publicized study of more than 4,000 people that concluded that fewer women than men run for elected office because they lack confidence, not ability. Their book, It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don't Run for Office, will be out this summer.
Lawless, who is running with the slogan, “A Wave of Change for the Ocean State,” is working hard to unseat the popular, three-term incumbent, Rep. Jim Langevin, a Democratic Party favorite. Her priorities are education, health care, jobs, and reproductive choice. (Her website is www.lawlessforcongress.com.)
“It's time for a new face, new ideas, and new leadership in Congress,” she says, noting that her state ranks 35th out of the 50 in legislative female representation. “We don't have a single female statewide officeholder, nor have we had a woman in our Congressional delegation in 15 years.”
“It's harder to get the job than do the job,” observes Fox, one of the senior policy advisers for the grassroots campaign, which has attracted many Brown students and faculty members as volunteers. “Jen is taking an enormous risk, running under circumstances that are difficult to win,” says Fox, who has studied political campaigns extensively. “She's thinking very big. She wants to energize the Democratic Party. If anyone can pull this off, she can.”
“At Union,” says Lawless, “I realized what political science is and the importance of women in politics.” Her sophomore-year course with Fox on women and politics was a major career catalyst. She spent spring of junior year in Washington, D.C., interning with Barbara Kennelly, a Congresswoman from Connecticut and the first woman in American history to serve on the House Intelligence Committee. There, Lawless answered constituent mail, attended hearings, and did research on women in politics. The following fall, as a senior, Lawless researched women candidates and gender socialization on a term abroad in Kenya. After a brief stint in law school and several years helping women in the South Bronx transition from welfare to work, Lawless pursued postgraduate degrees. She did her doctoral dissertation on “Women and Elections: Do They Run? Do They Win? Does it Matter?”
“Having more diversity among candidates, whether it's women, minorities, or any other traditionally underrepresented group, opens and enhances
the political process and makes it more inclusive,” Lawless says. “Qualified women candidates can run, and they can win,
and they should definitely enter the process.”

Posted on Mar 30, 2006

He stands and roars life into his gleaming horn, a familiar, rousing tune that heralds an enduring love for his alma mater and its football team. Wearing a jacket in his school maroon, contrasted by his white hair, he cuts a regal air.
At 74, Ted Bick, a retired professor, a retired marathoner and a retired basketball player, still plays a mean fight song. If he's not the greatest fan the Union College Dutchmen have ever had, then it doesn't sound and smell like fall Saturday afternoons at Frank Bailey Field.
He brings his old trumpet in
a faded, ash-colored wood case and tucks it under his usual seat near the 50-yard line in the shadow of the press box. As kickoff looms, he takes it out and rests it across his lap like a pet.
His wife, Joan, at his side, Bick is a kind of pride piper for a klatsch of 20 or so other Union alumni, all seasoned by age and willing participants in a time-tested musical touchdown ritual.
With each Dutchmen touchdown on their home field, Bick and his friends rise to their feet. Bick plays “It's Union's Game.” The others join in. They've been doing it for 25 years, or thereabouts.
“We've traveled down
the Mohawk vale,
We've gathered every
Union son…”
Little chance Bick will be mistaken for Doc Severinsen.
“I'm not a great player and I have a limited repertoire,” says Bick, who also plays a pretty good rendition of the alma mater after the games and a few hymns at church on Sunday. “But there is no evidence that the singers sing any better than I play.”
“He's gotten a lot better,”
says Dr. Don Bentrovato, a Schenectady urologist from the class of 1969 and a chorus member in good standing who sits a row behind Bick. “When he first started, his playing was pretty miserable.”
That's how it goes on
game days.
“There's a certain amount of good-natured joshing, at least I hope it's good-natured,” Bick says. “We laugh a lot and people who are not part of our group join in, and I think everyone gets a kick out of it. We're not afraid to stand up and be counted when it comes to Union.”
Hail to her name
Ring Union's fame
Cheer on her team
It's Union's game
Union has scored 14 touchdowns at home this season and Bick trumpeted all but one of them. The rare miss came on Oct. 8 when a raw, miserable rainy day took its toll on both trumpet and player and Bick left the
premises before Union's final touchdown in a 31-3 rout of Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
“It was raining like crazy and was so cold the valves on the horn got stuck,” Bick says. “By then my fingers were frozen and were too cold to manipulate. I'm not very good anyway, so if you add things like valves not working, it gets pretty sad.”
He also plays the song for any home-game field goal longer than 40 yards, but says he can't recall the last time that feat was accomplished at a home game.
And then there's his discretionary tooting.
“I toot it for first downs, just one note,” Bick says. “Same
for a great defensive play.”
Bick's trumpet tradition complements a lifelong love of sports. He played varsity basketball at Union in the mid-1950s and kept up his devotion to athletics and conditioning throughout his teaching and retirement years.
Before his left knee gave out, he ran 80 miles a week and was a regular among area entrants in the Boston Marathon. He still works out with his wife at a fitness center four times a week and plays some alumni basketball, a game he counts as his favorite.
Union head football coach John Audino remembers Bick's weekly visit to the football office when he was an assistant coach in 1983.
Every Thursday the articulate math professor who taught there for 32 years would drop by the coaches' office with some calculated advice.
“He would give us his play
of the week,” Audino says. “We'd get him up at the chalkboard and he'd draw up a play and he'd say ‘You know, I've been thinking about what you guys should do…' and I'll tell you we put in a few of his plays over the years.
“I can't tell you how much support he's given us. He's just been tremendous for our kids and the school.”
From near and far they've
come this way,
To see today a victory won
Bick says his group may be the last of a breed, and that they may be no more than a source of curiosity for today's students.
“We haven't exactly overwhelmed the undergraduate student body,” he says. “They probably look at us like we're nuts, but we were crazy long before they were born.”
“I didn't know his name, but I'm aware of him, we all are,” says senior center Tim Cannon, a team captain. “I noticed that guy blowing that trumpet every time we score since my freshman year. It's something special because it shows people really care. They are there in the rain and the snow and when we would be 5-5 and not score our first touchdown until we were behind 33-7,
and still he plays the trumpet.
“I feel like they might be a different generation, but if they were all like that back in the day, man, that's something special.”
Bick doesn't discount the possibility some future trumpeters could still be out there, waiting their turn.
“I think in every class there probably is a small contingent of people who really give a hoot about the school and will get up on their feet and be identified,” he says.
Before Union's Nov. 12 game against Rensselaer, Bick and his trumpet were ready. [Union won that game, 49-42, securing an NCAA berth. They went on to beat Ithaca College, 55-41, in the first round before falling to Rowan University, 24-28, in the second.]
“I hope I have to play it about seven times,” he says. “That would be just about right.”
Hail to her name
Ring Union's fame
Cheer on her team
It's Union's game