On Sunday, May 16, the Kenney Community Center at Union hosted its 13th annual U-Care Day Carnival. The free event is open to the public and features a variety of fun activities for children, including spin art and other crafts, games and prizes, a puck shoot, a bouncy bounce castle and more.
The Union Community Action Reaching Everyone (U-Care) program helps connect undergraduates with community organizations and volunteer services. U-Care Day allows student groups and local families to celebrate their accomplishments.
To read about this year's carnival in The Daily Gazette, click here (registration may be required).
Leading members of the disability rights and bioethics community will address some of the most contentious issues facing people with disabilities when the College hosts a major conference May 21-22, “Disability and Ethics Through the Life Cycle: Cases, Controversies and Finding Common Ground.”
The conference at College Park Hall will offer bioethicists, disability-rights advocates, disability scholars, biomedical researchers and others the opportunity to discuss disability-related issues as they arise through all stages of life.
Robert Baker, chair of the Rapaport Ethics Across the Curriculum program and the William D. Williams Professor of Philosophy at Union
Among the issues to be discussed:
Allowing people with disabilities to choose to die
The reproductive rights of people with mental and physical disability
Ethical challenges of raising a child with disabilities
Medical biases against people with disabilities
Bioethical biases against people with disabilites
Presenters include Mark Kuczewski of Loyola University-Chicago and president of the American Society for Bioethics and the Humanities; Diane Coleman, founder and president of Not Dead Yet, a national disability rights group that opposes the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia; and Robert Baker, chair of the Rapaport Ethics Across the Curriculum program and the William D. Williams Professor of Philosophy at Union. He also directs the Union Graduate College-Mount Sinai School Medicine Bioethics Program.
The event, which includes a series of panels, workshops and discussions, also features leading scholars on ethics and disability from Albany Law School, St. Louis University, Union College, Stony Brook University and Yeshiva University.
There is a free public session from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Friday.
This is the second major conference on bioethics to be hosted at Union. In 2008, the College was the first liberal arts school to host the National Undergraduate Bioethics Conference. Planned and organized by students, NUBC covers issues of current interest in the field of bioethics with discussions led by experts from across the country.
In October, the College will host the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum’s annual conference, “Bioethics and Ethics Across the Curriculum: The Challenges of Teaching, Researching, and Publishing Across Disciplines.”
Rachel Feldman – Grace Carroll- Courtney Steiner, founders of Union's new equine club
The College is beginning to build a presence in the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association. Earlier this spring, a group of students led by sophomores Courtney Steiner, Grace Carroll and Rachel Feldman founded Union’s first equestrian club for students interested in all types of horseback riding and equine sports.
"Many of us rode horses growing up and wanted to continue,” said Steiner. “We're excited about the strong interest we've gotten in such a short period.”
The fledgling Equestrian Club already has nearly 30 active members, both men and women. Many ride at nearby Dutch Manor Stables in Guilderland, N.Y., a base for other local colleges' equestrian programs. Union riders look forward to competing in hunter-jumper shows in the fall.
The Equestrian Club also volunteers at Peaceful Acres, a local farm that promotes emotional therapy and well-being by partnering rescued and adopted horses with humans in need. The club has found supporters among Union's faculty and staff as well, several of whom are long-time riders and are enthusiastic about having an outlet for equestrians at Union.
Allen Wells, an expert on Latin America, will discuss “Lives in the Balance: FDR, General Trujillo and the Jewish Refugees in the Dominican Republic,” Tuesday, May 18 at 7 p.m. in the Nott Memorial.
Allen Wells Bowdoin
The talk is free and open to the public.
The lecture will focus on the U.S. government’s initial support of the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo’s offer to accept 100,000 Central European Jews at the Evian Conference in July 1938, and FDR’s subsequent refusal to take any Jewish refugees from German-occupied territory.
Wells, the Roger Howell Jr. Professor of History at Bowdoin College, is the author of “Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR and the Jews of Sosúa” and “Yucatán's Gilded Age: Haciendas, Henequen, and International Harvester, 1860-1915.”
He is the co-author of “Summer of Discontent, Seasons of Upheaval: Elite Politics and Rural Rebellion in Yucatán, 1876-1915” and a co-editor of “The Second Conquest of Latin America: Coffee, Henequen, and Oil during the Latin American Export Boom.”
The talk is sponsored by Hillel, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Africana Studies, History, Economics and Political Science departments, and Circulo Estudiantil Latino Americano.
Sonika Raj will present a freshman recital featuring music by Bach, Caldara, Scarlatti, Schubert, Fauré and Copland on Thursday, May 20, at 6 p.m. in Emerson Hall, Taylor Music Center. The event is free and open to the public.
Sonika is pursuing a B.S./B.A. in biology and music and an M.S. in health care management through the Leadership in Medicine Program. She has been a singer-songwriter and pianist since age 8, and she recently began to study the guitar. She has since produced several private music CDs with self-composed music and lyrics.
In October 2004, Sonika was the first Asian-American to perform the American and Indian national anthems at New York’s City Hall. Last year, she was the first student at her high school to be invited to the New York State School Music Association All-Eastern Honors Mixed Choir. At Union, she is a member of the Camerata Singers, a select chamber choir, and she studies voice with Corine Salon.
