community

Message to the K Campus Community on Recent Events and Commitment to Safety and Inclusion

Posted on

The following message was emailed to Kalamazoo College students, faculty, and staff this afternoon, and posted on the Colleges Intranet site:

At the Monday, February 23, Student Commission meeting a K student asked StuComm to support his effort to allow him and others to carry a concealed weapon on campus. The commission declined to support his effort. Some have reported that the student visibly displayed an empty gun holster and made threats to individuals and or groups. The meeting made some students feel unsafe.

On Tuesday students expressed safety concerns via a social media campaign and directly to college administrators and trustees. On Wednesday morning the College’s security department asked the student who displayed the empty gun holster on Monday to allow a search of his residence hall room and car. He cooperated, and no weapon was found. Our Director of Campus Security did a complete threat assessment of the situation and the individual with the empty holster. The director has extensive training in this area through the FBI and the Michigan State Police. In his professional judgment, this individual did not pose a threat to the campus community or to individuals on campus.

Weapons are not, and will not be, allowed on campus. No weapon was involved in any of the events of the past three days. The wearing and showing of an empty holster is not against the law or the Kalamazoo College code of conduct. Nor does the action in and of itself constitute bullying and harassment. Nevertheless, we know that some felt bullied or harassed. That concerns us deeply.

We also are concerned about a much deeper issue—our institutional progress toward building an inclusive, safe environment for all students, particularly students of color. On Wednesday afternoon we met with students who expressed safety concerns stemming from Monday’s StuComm meeting. About 100 students attended and we have heard very clearly that many have concerns about feeling safe on campus, and that these feelings are not only predicated on Monday’s incident, but also arise out of a broader set of concerns, including not being heard, not feeling included within our campus community, and at times being targeted as an individual or as part of a group.

Creating a campus that is safe and inclusive for all is a top concern of ours. The events of this week remind us that while we have made many strides (including diversifying the student body, adding a new major in the curriculum, and with training and on-going work on campus climate and student support) there is much more that must be done to meet our aspiration of a campus that is fully inclusive. We pledge to keep the lines of communication open. We invite all members of the campus community—students, faculty, staff—to consider our individual roles in creating a safe and inclusive community, including how we interact with each other in person and on social media. We also commit to continuing to examine and eliminate or change institutional practices and structures that inhibit a truly inclusive community.

— President’s Staff

Kalamazoo College Hosts THREE Art Hop Stops

Posted on

Got Art? Kalamazoo College will host THREE stops on the monthly downtown Kalamazoo Art Hop, Friday Feb. 6. Each stop is open 5-8 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

Artist Nayda Collazo-Llorens at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership
Nayda Collazo-Llorens and Stanger Land

STRANGER LAND
Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership
205 Monroe St.
Stranger Land is a site-specific project by artist Nayda Collazo-Llorens. This text-based piece is the first to be commissioned for the new Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership building. See the new building and talk with the artist about her methods and inspiration for the piece.

Displays of Senior Individualized Projects from K students
K Community Art Studio in Park Trades Center

SIP SELECTIONS
Kalamazoo College Community Art Studio
Park Trades Center
326 W. Kalamazoo Ave. / Suite 312 (3rd Floor)
SIP Selections features select digital, video, and other media by senior K art majors from their Senior Individualized Projects. Meet the artists, discuss their work, and check out the K community studio in the Park Trades Center.

Art from the Petals and Paws Exhibit
Petals and Paws In A.M. Todd Rare Book Room

PETALS & PAWS
A.M Todd Rare Book Room
Upjohn Library
3rd Floor
150 Thompson St.
Petals & Paws features select flora and fauna resources from K’s permanent collection of art, books and more.

The Petals & Paws exhibit remains open thru March 12 (Mon, Tue, Thu – 1-3 p.m.)

Weber Lecture on Detroit Bankruptcy

Posted on

Gerald Rosen, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of MichiganThe Honorable Gerald Rosen ’73, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, will deliver the 2015 William Weber Lecture in Social Science at 8 p.m. on Thursday, February 5. The lecture is free and open to the public and will take place in the Mandelle Hall Olmsted Room on Kalamazoo College’s campus. The lecture is titled “Detroit Bankruptcy: Lessons Learned” and will draw from Rosen’s experience as chief judicial administrator for the Detroit bankruptcy case, the largest municipal bankruptcy case in U.S. history.

At K, Rosen earned his bachelor’s degree in political science. He was the first K student to study abroad in Sweden (Stockholm), to which he returned in his senior year to complete his Senior Individualized Project, which focused on Swedish press coverage of the 1972 U.S. presidential election. He began his professional career as a legislative assistant to United States Senator Robert P. Griffin (R-Michigan), serving on Senator Griffin’s staff in Washington, D.C., from 1974 to 1979. During this time Rosen was involved in some of the most significant and challenging issues of the period. He also was attending the George Washington University Law School at night, and he obtained his J.D. degree in May 1979. (Today he is a member of the law school’s board of advisors).

For 20 years, Rosen has served as an adjunct professor of law for University of Michigan Law School, Wayne State University Law School, University of Detroit Law School, and Thomas M. Cooley Law School. Throughout the years he has presided over a number of high-profile, ground-breaking cases, including the first post-9/11 terrorism trial, an early partial-birth abortion case, and one of the first physician-assisted suicide cases. Nevertheless, he describes his work on the Detroit bankruptcy case as “the most challenging and rewarding experience of my professional career.”

Rosen is involved with several charitable and community organizations, including serving on the board of directors of Focus: HOPE and the Michigan Chapter of the Federalist Society. He has written and published articles for professional journals and the popular press on a wide range of issues, including civil procedure, evidence, due process, criminal law, labor law, and legal advertising, as well as numerous other topics. He is also a co-author of Federal Civil Trials and Evidence, Federal Employment Litigation, and Michigan Civil Trials and Evidence.

The William Weber Lecture in Government and Society was founded by Bill Weber, a 1939 graduate of Kalamazoo College. In addition to this lectureship, he established the William Weber Chair in Political Science at the College. Past lecturers in this series have included David Broder, Frances Moore Lappé, E. J. Dionne, Jeane Bethke Elshtain, William Greider, Ernesto Cortes, Jr., John Esposito, Benjamin Ginsberg, Frances Fox Piven, Spencer Overton, Tamara Draut, Van Jones, and Dr. Joan Mandelle.

Alumna Archivist and Prominent Citizen Help Tell the Story of Kalamazoo

Posted on
Kalamazoo College graduate Mary Corcoran and Martha Parfet holding a book
Mary Corcoran and Martha Parfet hold the latter’s new book KEEP THE QUALITY UP.

Opening a door can change a life. In the life of Kalamazoo College graduate Mary Corcoran ’11, the door opened a closet. But the closet belonged to 89-year-old Martha Parfet, whose ancestors come from two of the most prominent families in Kalamazoo history: the Upjohns and the Gilmores. The collaboration between these two women (Parfet as writer; Corcoran as research and writing assistant) has resulted in the recent publication of a two-volume book about prominent local families and the story of the Kalamazoo community. The book is titled “Keep the Quality Up” (based on an Upjohn Company motto; Parfet’s grandfather, W.E. Upjohn, founded the pharmaceutical giant in 1886). The book went on sale this week at the Kalamazoo Nature Center, the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, the Gilmore Car Museum, and Irving’s Marketplace (the former site of Gilmore Brothers Department Store). Sale proceeds will support the nature center, car museum, and KIA.

Parfet and Corcoran met when the later answered a K job posting. Over the years Parfet had become for her extended family the unofficial caretaker and curator of diaries, scrapbooks, photos, newspaper clippings, and business documents of two pioneer families that had settled in the area in the 1830s (Upjohns) and 1880s (Gilmores). The enterprises and achievements of these families helped shape much of the history of the city of Kalamazoo. Parfet wanted to make sure the story of these persons and their achievements lived on, so she decided to write a family and community history based on the information included in these family archives. She placed the ad–“Job helping older woman in Kalamazoo research husband’s family for two weeks.” Corcoran answered.

“When she opened her closet door for me the first day,” Corcoran said, “I became sold on becoming an archivist. The stories are in the documents. There was always something new.”

Corcoran is a researcher and project manager at Upjohn Ancestry. She earned her bachelor’s degree at K in English and studied abroad in Dublin, Ireland. Her study abroad program is kind of fitting; the Gilmore family originally immigrated from Ireland, the Upjohn family from England. Corcoran is working on a master’s degree in archives and archival information from the University of Michigan.

Sunday Concert

Posted on

Soprano Katelin SpencerSoprano Katelin Spencer will do a concert at Kalamazoo College on Sunday, January 25. The Brighton (Mich.) native received her bachelor’s degree in voice performance from the University of Michigan and her master’s degree in opera performance and literature from Northwestern University. Spencer currently lives in Kalamazoo and is a frequent soloist with the Kalamazoo Bach Festival. Her other recent appearances in Kalamazoo included Farmer’s Alley Theatre productions of “The Light in the Piazza” and “Pinkalicious.” Her Sunday performance will feature works by Fauré, Schubert, Bernstein, Carpenter, among others. The concert is free and open to the public. It was take place at 4 p.m. in Dalton Theatre. For more information call 269.337.7070. Article by Mallory Zink ’15

K Closes for Holiday Break

Posted on

Kalamazoo College will close for its annual holiday break–December 24 through January 2.

Anyone who wishes to make a gift to K before the end of the calendar year may call the College’s main line (269.337.7000) between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. eastern standard time on December 26, 29, 30, and 31, and a staff member will be happy to assist. At any other time the College is closed for the holiday, a donor may contact Laurel Palmer, director of the Kalamazoo College Fund, at 269.598.2007. Gifts also may be made online or by post marking a mailed gift by December 31, 2014.

The College’s residence halls open on January 3 at 9 a.m. Students are not permitted to check in early. The first meal in the dining center is lunch on January 3. Classes start Monday, January 5.

The emergency contact number for the College is 269.337.7321, and that number is answered 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year.

120 In Six

Posted on

Olivia GainesNo way Olivia Gaines ’18 will be bored this break!

She’s created an innovative and fun project to connect with alumni during the next six weeks called #Winter120. She’s reaching out (first come, first served!) for book recommendations—specifically books that have been influential to alumni and perhaps have been on their shelves since their very own K years.

She will be reading passages from the submitted books over the break and plans on reading all 120 during the school year. Gaines will collect 120 ‘thoughts’ from the books, 120 answers to questions she will pose (one to each person who makes a recommendation), and a black-and-white head shot of all (hopefully) 120 participants. She plans on making an e-book of the final product and would love to make a printed version if her project proves successful.

The idea came to her during a visit to the Center for career and Professional Development. Gaines does not have an internship for the winter break, but still wanted to connect with alumni. Gaines said, “One thing I learned during my gap year was that you can connect with people you wouldn’t have thought you could connect with. How could I connect with alumni? Books. Everyone has books!”

For her the project represents a different way to connect with alumni, more personal than business. Gaines hopes to feel “the pulse” of who these 120 alumni really are.

And she’s gearing up for the challenge: a reading pace of 20 books a week over six consecutive weeks. Wow!) Gaines says that her project is “big enough to matter, small enough to win”.

If you are a K grad and you would like to participate in #Winter120, you can register here.

Text by Mallory Zink ’15; photo by Olivia Gaines ’18

Advancing Civic Engagement

Posted on

Kalamazoo College alulmna Jillian McLaughlinLike many Kalamazoo College alumni, Jillian McLaughlin ’10 is as creative as she is passionate (in her case, about important public policy issues). This fall the public policy graduate student (she attends the John Fitzgerald Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University) collaborated with photographer Peter Rausse to create the “Unsexy Policy Project.”

The project’s goal is to get people, especially people aged 18 to 29, to think about, and act on, policy issues that, stuffy as they may seem, affect millions of people. McLaughlin’s tactic: bring back the “unsexy!” or, put another way, articulate a matter’s gravitas and hitch it to a metaphor generally recognized as “sexy.” In application, this meant combining cheese- or beef-cake photos of some dozen current or former students of the Kennedy School with short, lay-language summaries of a particular issue, such as voter ID laws, tax reform, telecommunication competition, among others. The project took three days to complete and rolled out before the November mid-term elections. McLaughlin and Rausse made a calendar out of the photos and will donate proceeds from sales to an organization selected by the project’s Facebook fans.

Before she started her graduate program, McLaughlin worked as a researcher for the National Consumer Law Center, an advocacy organization dedicated to improving the economic security of low-income individuals and families. At K she majored in political science and was an outstanding cross-country runner. We love her title at the Unsexy Policy Project: “Co-Founder and Chief Mischief Maker.” Very K-like.
Try and Keep Up - The federal minimum wage should rise with inflationMan lying on desk with four folders

K on the Art Hop this Friday, Nov. 7

Posted on
The Birds of Great Britain
“Nyctea Nivea.” Plate from John Gould’s “The Birds of Great Britain, London, 1862-1873.

Even if you don’t know much about art, there will be plenty to like this Friday, Nov. 7, 5-8 p.m., when K students, faculty, and the campus itself participate in the monthly Art Hop in downtown Kalamazoo.

“John Gould’s Glories” features beautiful images from the College’s permanent collection by this renowned 19th English ornithologist and artist. Aided by his wife, Elizabeth, Gould published numerous monographs and illustrations of birds from around the world. His famous “Darwin’s finches” played a key role in Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.
5-8 p.m. – A.M. Todd Rare Book Room, Upjohn Library (third floor), 150 Thompson St., Kalamazoo College

The Miller-Johnson Art Scholarship and Exhibition for K students concludes in the Park Trades Center. Earlier this year, a jury of K art faculty selected artwork by K students Donna Aguilar ’15, Zoe Beaudry ’14, Lauren Gaunt ’15, and Gabe Montesanti ’15 to be displayed in the lobby of Miller-Johnson Attorneys and Counselors in downtown Kalamazoo. Each student also received $150 from Miller-Johnson. This Friday, the public may vote on their favorite among the four, with the top vote-getter receiving an additional $400! THANK YOU, MILLER-JOHNSON, for supporting Kalamazoo College student artists!
5-8 p.m. – K Community Art Studio, Room 312 (third floor), Park Trades Center, 326 W. Kalamazoo Ave.

More K faculty and student art will be on display from 5-8 p.m. in the Park Trades Center (326 W. Kalamazoo Ave.), including:

  • An exhibit of artwork from the current K Advanced Studio class: Room 312
  • An installation by studio art major Cheyenne Harvey ’15 that explores the individual and social demarcations of “in/out” through use of video and mixed media sculpture: Room 411B
  • An exhibition of K student artwork of all levels organized by the College’s “Arts in the Community Living Learning House”: Room 209L
  • Artwork by Department of Art faculty Tom Rice and Sarah Lindley in the K Faculty Studio: Room 405A.

Philharmonia Director Wins Music Award

Posted on

Associate Professor of Music Andrew KoehlerAssociate Professor of Music Andrew Koehler, who also serves as music director of the Kalamazoo Philharmonia, is the 2014 winner of The American Prize in Orchestral Programming—Vytautas Marijosius Memorial Award—in the community division. Andrew was selected from applications reviewed this summer from all across the United States. The American Prize is a series of new, non-profit competitions unique in scope and structure, designed to recognize and reward the best performing artists, ensembles and composers in the United States based on submitted recordings. The award honors the work of Vytautas Marijosius, who served for 35 years as director of orchestral activities at the Hartt School of Music of the University of Hartford. Andrew has appeared as a guest with the West Michigan Symphony; the Lyatoshynsky Chamber Orchestra in Kyiv, Ukraine; and the Festival South Chamber Orchestra in Mississippi, among others. Recently, he took part in the 9th Grzegorz Fitelberg International Conductor’s Competition in Katowice, Poland, where he won First Distinction and the Youth Jury Prize. Andrew is a graduate of Yale College, where he completed a B.A. in music and German studies (graduating with honors and distinction in both majors). He holds a certificate in conducting from the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna, where he studied for two years as a Fulbright scholar, as well as a Master’s degree from Northwestern University.