The Chronicle will be published biweekly starting this fall with a
renewed emphasis on coverage of items that interest members of the Union campus community.
The move to biweekly publication represents an effort to move toward
coverage of longer-range news events and Union community news. The move also is due in
part to longer lead times required by off-campus printers.
A separate campus calendar will be published by the Office of Special
Events, Conferences and Professional Development.
The Chronicle will continue to publish news about faculty, student and
staff achievements; special events; gifts; personnel news; and sports scores. Also,
beginning this fall on a space-available basis, the Chronicle will begin publishing
non-College information of interest to Union employees. These could include
“classifieds” like computers for sale or want ads, for example.
Publication dates this fall are Sept. 8, Sept. 22, Oct. 6, Oct. 30 and
Nov. 3.
Deadlines are Monday at 5 p.m. preceding the publication date.
Information should be sent to the Chronicle at the Office of Public Relations. Our e-mail
address is caseyc@alice.union.edu.
Campus Safety has installed four new emergency phones on campus, each
mounted to a green pole with the word “Emergency.” The poles are topped with a
blue light, which flashes to alert passersby when activated. The user simply pushes a red
button to connect with the campus dispatcher via a “hands-free” intercom. The
new emergency phones, which are in addition to those at other locations, are at the corner
of South Lane and Alexander Lane (near the Union Avenue gate and Alumni Gym), between
Social Sciences and Reamer Campus Center, the corner of North Lane and Terrace Lane North
(near North College), and the corner of South Lane and Terrace Lane South (near South
College).
With about half of the Class of 1999's 517 members from New York
State, the College has seen an increase in representation from other U.S. states and
foreign countries, according to Dan Lundquist, vice president for admissions and financial
aid.
The College welcomes 30 transfer students this fall.
Over one fifth of freshmen, 106, are from Massachusetts; 41 are from
Connecticut; 29 are from New Jersey.
The freshman class is 47 percent female, 53 percent male.
With 1995 being a record year for applications (3,554), the College has
had a 23 percent increase in applications over the last four years.
Union is still one of a select few colleges in the U.S. that continues
to meet the full need of students who apply for aid, Lundquist said. About 55 percent of
the freshmen are receiving Union College scholarships, he noted.
On the Sesquicentennial of engineering and the 25th anniversary
of co-education at Union, President Roger Hull on Wednesday called on the College to
develop an innovative speakers forum on technology, terms abroad offerings which team
liberal arts and engineering students, and interdisciplinary courses that bridge liberal
arts and technology.
He also urged that the College “insure that women are truly equal
partners.”
Speaking at the Opening Convocation in observance of the College's 201st
year, Hull cited Union's history of innovation: modern languages, experimental sciences,
innovative financing, a planned campus.
He lauded the 150th celebration of engineering, adding, “what we
initiated in 1845, expanded during our Centennial in 1895 with the introduction of
electrical engineering, and sometimes feel uncomfortable with today must – and will – be
improved.” During the course of the year, he said, the College would unveil an
“Engineering Curriculum for the 21st Century” that is being developed with a
$750,000 grant from the General Electric Foundation.
Referring to the 25th anniversary of co-education, Hull lamented the
paradox that a historically innovative institution like Union did not admit women earlier.
“While we take great pride in 200 years of educating men and 150 years of providing a
first-rate education for aspiring engineers, we cannot be very proud of the fact that
today we are celebrating but 25 years of women on the campus,” he said.
“If liberal arts colleges are to maintain their honored place in
society, we must increasingly be sensitive to the need for change,” Hull said.
“Nowhere will change be more apparent in the first quarter of our third century of
service than in the makeup of our student body,” he said. There will be more
technologically-aware high school students with different learning styles, he continued,
and a cultural change that will accompany an increase of millions of students of color and
a corresponding decrease of millions of white students.
“As we think about what it is we should do, we must always remember
that we must take stands based on principle. We should insure, for example, that women –
especially on their eve of our 25-year celebration – are equal partners at Union. For far
too long women were invisible on this campus; for far too long, too, students of color
were equally invisible. We cannot afford either to overlook or look through anyone or to
allow any part of our society to remain invisible – not because it is expedient, but
because it is right.”
Also at the convocation, Jay E. Newman was invested as the R.
Gordon Gould Professor of Physics. Newman, a member of the faculty since 1978 and current
chair of the department, earned his B.S. degree from the City College of the City
University of New York, and his master's and Ph.D. from New York University. His areas of
specialization include light scattering and biophysics, and his teaching has ranged from
introductory courses to National Science Foundation honors courses for distinguished
teachers. The professorship was established by R. Gordon Gould '41, inventor of the laser,
to honor Professor Frank Studer.
The Phi Beta Kappa Award was presented to Sara Saltsman '98, with an
honorable mention to Laurie Kirschner '98. It was established by the Alpha chapter of New
York to honor a freshman for outstanding achievement in General Education.
The convocation also recognized Dean's List students, whose names appear
on a plaque at the Reamer Campus Center.
An antiwar activist at the time of the Vietnam War, he now wears the robes of a state trial court judge in Massachusetts.
Although it might seem ironic that a man with an arrest record ended up behind the judicial bench, Coven sees his progression as nothing more than an extension of the same battle he has been fighting for more than a quarter of a century.
Coven and approximately thirty other students regularly challenged
the Union student body, faculty, and administration to ask the same questions being asked on campuses across the country.
“What was happening was
not just a challenge to government policy, but also a questioning of the values and the type of college we wanted to be,” he says.
Coven helped organize marches, demonstrations, and student strikes in the name of educational freedom and a participatory system of rule; the College created both an all-College senate and appointed a student member to the Board of Trustees.
“For a small school, Union was a very dynamic place in those years,” he says.
Part of what made the school dynamic, he says, was strong conservative opposition from students and faculty to what was seen as liberal causes. It was, Coven says, “conservative opposition in the best sense of the word. There was principled disagreement, rational discourse, arguments, and intellectual challenges. It was not hostile acrimony.”
Today, from his chambers in Somerville, Massachusetts, Coven insists that “there is not a major difference between accepting responsibility by doing civil disobedience to draw attention to issues you feel are important and trying to enhance the moral fabric of the country through your rulings as a judge.”
It is a statement not every antiwar protester could get away with. After all, Jerry Rubin raised more than a few eyebrows as a successful investment banker during the 1980s.
But Coven has more than earned his credibility. His career of service has brought him from the desegregation cases in Georgia in the 1970s to a lawsuit against President Ronald Reagan and the federal
government over social security benefits for the elderly during the 1980s.
In fact, Coven began fighting for
the rights of the less fortunate as a student when he helped organize both a food cooperative and a poverty rights office in Schenectady. He spent his college summers organizing tenants and welfare recipients in Atlanta and returned to Georgia during law school to pick up the desegregation fight. After
a clerkship with the New Hampshire Supreme Court and a stint as the legislative director for New Hampshire Senator John Durkin, Coven returned to Massachusetts, where he
organized a
legal services program for the elderly in Boston and in the Berkshires. “After being in the belly of the beast I wanted
to return to a community and become actively involved,” he says
His work earned him a spot Governor Michael Dukakis's administration as assistant
secretary for human services. In 1986, Coven moved to the attorney general's office, serving as deputy
attorney general,
before becoming a judge in 1989.
He hears both civil and criminal cases
and says he enjoys a diverse caseload that forces him to deal with some of the most serious problems facing the country, such as domestic violence and child abuse.
“There is not a day that goes by that I feel ineffective,” he says. °I love the intellectual challenge, and I also feel I can intervene and help the lives of some very troubled people.”
According to Coven, that kind of intervention is where the spirit of the antiwar movement endures on today's campuses. Just because there isn't a war or an overriding national issue to protest doesn't mean students have become apathetic, he says. “There are lots of outlets for community involvement and students doing all kinds of worthwhile things. There may not be major demonstrations, but I don't think there's any less concern with social action.”
The liberal in Coven, who believes in the government's ability to help people through its dedication to justice, says he tries not to get too disheartened about the recent shift to the political right.
“I'm patient enough to realize that the government has its ebbs and flows and like a pendulum ultimately returns to the center.”
