Fall Table of Contents / UMass Magazine Home Page / Highlights / The President's Men / Snapshot / Follow up on drinking / Campaign News
Photo by Stan Sherer
LL
THROUGH THE LATE SUMMER AND early fall, we'd been hearing that the Isenberg
Naming Celebration on Homecoming Weekend in October was the most complicated
event the campus had ever had occasion to arrange.
Here's the detail that made us think this
might not be standard, stress-induced hyperbole. Sometime early
in the month, staff in charge of the arrangements were said to
be scoping out where in Amherst precious jewelry can be deposited
for safekeeping. Not an issue for many of us, perhaps, but an
issue for some of the Isenberg friends who were gathering from
across the country and abroad, and for whom a black-tie dinner
calls for more than shaking out the old feather boa.
Eugene and Ronnie Isenberg are first-generation college graduates from Chelsea who last year pledged $6 million to the campus where Eugene got his undergraduate degree in 1950. It was by far the largest gift in UMass history, and by no means the Isenberg's first. Intensely interested in the intersection of science, business, and technology Isenberg is chairman and CEO of an international oil- and gas-drilling company the couple also fund scholarships for ISOM students whose interests bridge those realms.
Over the past three years, they've put close
to a quarter of a million dollars into these scholarships, and
the evidence was there at the Mullins Center gala on Saturday
evening in the persons of eighteen young Isenberg Scholars among
the family, friends, and dignitaries at the first few rows of
tables.
Photo
by Ben Barnhart
The evidence was also there for a shrewd strategy
of giving. The "$6 million bolt of lightning," as management
dean Thomas O'Brien called the Isenberg gift, is intended to
light fires under other donors: $2 million is an outright gift
to fund a faculty chair, but $4 million is a challenge grant
toward a large and expensive addition to the school (see Branches
of Learning). Even before the celebration weekend, the challenge
was doing its work: the first million had been contributed by
alumni. The celebratory spotlight of the events of Homecoming
Weekend was expected to accelerate the process, and it did. Among
the pledges stacking up against the challenge grant was a million-dollar
gift, announced at the gala, from Isenberg friends Harold and
Bibby Alfond. "I was glad to hear there's going to be a
hall with your name on it at the Isenberg School," said
the guest of honor from the podium. "Not in as big letters
as our name, though!"
That affectionate joke between men in tuxedoes
conveys the happy tone of the gala, which was certainly the most
glamorous happening of the celebration weekend. (Lights! Cameras!
Jewelry!) The events leading up to the dinner shared its qualities:
from the naming celebration itself, on Friday morning in the
ISOM building, with glowing young business students in their
very best blazers everywhere you looked; through the Homecoming
Convocation in Bowker Auditorium, with its appropriate pomp and
chrysanthemums; to Saturday's Homecoming Parade, for which Mr.
and Mrs. Isenberg, nobly ferried in a vintage ivory Chevy convertible,
served as grand marshals. All these events, it seemed to us as
observers, were marked by a good-natured fullness of intention
and execution, so as to say: these are our very great patrons;
we do them every honor.
Patricia Wright
UMASS PRESIDENT WILLIAM M. BULGER WAS ON TUXEDO DUTY every time we looked, it seemed, this fall: at the Isenberg celebration on campus, of course, and also at his second annual fund-raising gala at Boston's Hynes Convention Center September 24. About 800 elegantly attired guests attended the black-tie event, which raised $1 million for scholarships. "There is greater and greater recognition of the excellence of our university," Bulger told his guests. "We work on this task and insist on having the recognition we deserve."
PRESIDENT'S
MEN: Celtics coach Rick Pitino '75, left, and Minuteman basketball coach Bruiser
Flint at the "Power of Learning" gala.
Photo by Kay Scanlan
Dept.
of noble callings: "Teaching is a complex art that no one can ever
really master, I believe only hope to grow in wisdom and skill as one gains
and reflects on experience. I still haven't learned all I hope to learn about
teaching, and I must confess that one of my first reactions to the news about
the award was to think of all the reasons why it should have gone to someone
else." This remark by BRUCE
PENNIMAN `71, `74G, `85G
is by all
accounts perfectly characteristic of the dedicated Amherst
high school English teacher, who accepted the 1998-99 Massachusetts
Teacher of the Year Award in Boston in September.
High ground: Ground-breaking
ceremonies for the world's largest radio telescope operating at millimeter
wavelengths, a joint project of UMass and the Mexican National Institute for
Astrophysics, Optics, and Electronics, were conducted September 23 in Puebla,
Mexico
by U.S. Ambassador to Mexico JEFFREY DAVIDOW `65 and Governor of the State
of Puebla Manuel Bartlett-Diaz. UMass professor STEPHEN STROM says the telescope's
unparalleled collecting area (the antenna has a diameter more than half the
size of a football field) and its advanced detectors will enable astronomers
to carry out programs of fundamental importance to understanding the origins
of the universe.
High class: English
professor, author, and "MacArthur Genius" JOHN WIDEMAN
taught a class at Boston Latin. Pulitzer-prize winner and journalism
professor MADELEINE BLAIS met with the women's basketball team
at Boston's Jeremiah Burke High. English professor ANNE HERRINGTON
lectured at Cathedral High in Springfield. All were part of the
statewide ramp-up to PRESIDENT BULGER'S "Power of Learning"
scholarship gala in Boston September 24, and were honored, along
with faculty from the Boston, Dartmouth, and Lowell campuses,
at the banquet at the Hynes Convention Center that evening.
WHEN THE STUDENTS RETURN TO SWALLOW CAPPUCCINO," quipped the Campus Chronicle in August, "they'll find that many of the buildings they call home have undergone the three R's: repairs, renovations, and replanting." The Chron was reporting the uses to which the roughly $2 million in this year's housing services capital improvement fund are being put, but it's not only dorms being spruced up. From a new softball diamond southwest of Boyden Gym to an atrium lobby for the Fine Arts Center, from the reassembled spire of Old Chapel in central campus to the new computer science building in the northern reaches, there was plenty of evidence of physical improvement this fall. Facilities planning director JIM CAHILL summarized the major projects this way:
- $14.5 million initial phase of computer science and engineering complex on Governor's Drive
- $4.8 million animal care facility adjacent to Tobin Hall
- $1.8 million atrium linking the FAC Concert Hall and the Rand Theater
- $1 million restoration of the Old Chapel tower
Cahill spoke in addition of upgrades, repairs, and replacements all across campus, including the patio outside the Student Union and the elevated deck of the Campus Center. "It becomes a staff resource issue and a scheduling issue," he said. "It's a matter of assigning resources to each project while always looking ahead, so that we can keep the flow of work going." It also becomes a matter of working with the state's district building inspector.
As the campus works to reverse the effects of years of deferred maintenance, the challenge was dramatized by the temporary closing of portions of the Hampden and Berkshire dining commons this fall due to safety concerns.
Big men on the small screen: A three-part BBC documentary
inspired by psychology professor ERVIN STAUB's book, The Roots
of Evil, appeared this fall on the Discovery Channel, and
the scholars and authors featured on the four-part PBS special
"Africans in America" included novelist JOHN WIDEMAN
of the English faculty . Also to be featured on TV, on an upcoming
edition of "Discover Magazine," is the work of microbiologist
DEREK LOVLEY, whose research on how microorganisms several miles
underground use iron to metabolize food sheds light on the beginnings
of life on Earth.
Money, honey: More than $8 million in new state funds
and $2 million from early retirement savings will be used this
year to fund technology and infrastructure improvements, expanded
scholarship programs, and key areas of the campus' strategic
action plan, said CHANCELLOR DAVID SCOTT this fall. The campus
received $8.4 million in state funding, an increase of 4.3 percent
over last year's base allocation, as well as a $1.75 million
appropriation for the new honors college. Of immediate interest
to students, tuition for in-state undergraduates is down for
the third year in a row, and housing charges and mandatory fees
remain frozen at last year's level.
On the fast track:
Men's track and field coach KEN
O'BRIEN has been named the NCAA Division I Coach of the Year
for the third time in his thirty-one years at UMass. Last spring
O'Brien's squad completed its fourth straight undefeated dual-meet
season.
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Stan Sherer photo
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All-American activities: UMass student-athletes recently
claimed all-American honors in several sports. The all-American
team of the Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association now include
HAROLD DRUMM , JOHN KASSELAKIS, and MIKE DELPERCIO. The National
Collegiate Baseball Writers Association tapped MUCHIE DAGLIERE
and DOUG CLARK for their All-American squad. And KATIE GROGAN
and ANDREA VAZQUEZ were named to the American Water Polo Coaches
Association Women's All-Americans.
NEASC wants U: Alumni
and friends are invited to participate in this year's reaccreditation
process, wherein the campus is evaluated by its New England peers.
Observations pro or con on the quality of the institution may
be submitted to: Public Comment on UMass Amherst / Commission
on Institutions of Higher Education / New England Association
of Schools and Colleges / 209 Burlington Road / Bedford, Mass.
01730-1433 (e-mail: cihe@neasc.org).
Comments must be signed, include the sender's address and phone
number, and be received by January 15. Further details can be
found at http://www.umass.edu/oapa/selfstudy.
LAST SUMMER, CHANCELLOR DAVID SCOTT embarked on a series of visits to the twenty-eight Hampshire County agencies funded by the United Way. "After my visits to the agencies," he said in August, "I can say without hesitation that United Way funding is helping these dedicated people do heroic things." This fall, the generous people on campus who help the dedicated people in the agencies received thanks in the form of shiny "Caring and Sharing" apples from the UMass orchards in Belchertown. Above, DEBORA GROSBERG, executive chef at Worcester Dining Commons, is thanked by the chank, who is chairing this year's county-wide campaign, and by campus chair and Minuteman Band director GEORGE PARKS. Scott says that in the past five years the campus has raised its participation from 19 to 31 percent; he wants to see us reach 50 percent this year.
Ahead of the curve:
UMass standards already meet or exceed those in toughened admissions
requirements approved by the state Board
of Higher Education this fall, campus officials say. The
board set the year 2000 as its target date for requiring minimum
GPAs of 2.9 and SATs of 1140. This year's entering class at UMass
Amherst had average GPAs of 3.15, and average SATs of 1134.
Sad
coda: We learned shortly after publication of our summer issue that longtime
Drake Hotel bartender WILLIE WHITFIELD , who figured in our cover story on that
Amherst institution, died in June, in Birmingham, Alabama, at eighty-three.
Retired director of auxillary services DUDLEY BRIDGES called with the news.
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ROOFS, we observed in an hour of tagging after
Roger Benoit this fall, are perpetual battlefields in the war
between architecture and the elements: sun, wind, and, of course,
water, in every stage of frozenness, liquidity, and insidious
vapor. In his twenty-eight years at UMass, Benoit has waded through
slime, hacked through ice, mended the tattered aftermath of hurricanes,
and seen one roof Boyden Gym's pulled clean off its hinges. "The
wind just lifted it up and tore it off like it was a sardine
can," says Benoit, who, with Chris Thornton and Bryan P.
Campbell, is the last of the full-time roofers at UMass.
Yet a job that might be alternately petrifying
and mundane at ground level is literally lifted to another plane
for the roofers, who command the very best views on campus. The
day Benoit showed us around, he unlocked a door at the top of
a dark stairwell in Whitmore and stepped onto the roof into the
silvery light of a late September morning. "You think you're
high up in the air `til you see that," he said with a laugh,
pointing to the towers of Southwest. Atop the four-story-building,
this big-chested, square-shouldered man with the mien of a lovable
bulldog is master of the landscape that embraces UMass like a
hug.
Big jobs like the administration building
roof are now performed almost entirely by outside contractors.
Rivet of Boston began work on Whitmore in early fall, and on
this chilly morning dozens of workmen were scattered across the
rooftop laying insulation for a "cold-apply" roof.
New materials have made roofing a less noxious job, says Benoit.
The old pitch-and-gravel method required a boiler on the roof,
and stank, to boot. The new "built-up" techniques use
durable, feltlike material that's simply rolled out and nailed
down. Benoit proudly showed off the new lead-coated copper flashing
along the parapet, which should deflect moisture that used to
seep through aging concrete and saturate Whitmore's inner walls.
Roofs are like floors and faucets in being
taken for granted until something goes wrong. At UMass, that
is quite often. As maintenance projects stalled during recent
lean-budgeted years, six of eight workers were laid off from
the Physical Plant roof shop. Morale slumped as those remaining,
Benoit and Campbell, watched roofs that could have been saved
deteriorate. Eventually the cry for maintenance funds got through
to "Boston," Benoit says, and a tremendous surge of
capital improvements started moving through the system: "I
just can't believe how much they've done in the last couple years."
Not, however, before neglect took its toll
on a number of buildings. In Boyden, Benoit led the way to an
upper-level basketball court and pointed towards the ceiling,
where a vinyl "Divert-A-Bag" dangled from the metal
rafters like a giant interior gutter, catching leaks and draining
them through hoses to barrels on the floor. Buckling floorboards
were patched with plywood. Rust streaked pillars. Water from
yesterday's rainstorm lay in the folds of a tarp.
Boyden, like Whitmore, was getting a new roof
this fall. Other recent roofing projects include the Pierpont,
Prince, Cance, and JQA dorms. Morale is high again, said Benoit,
who had the satisfying experience last summer of replacing a
metal roof at Tilson Farm. A new roof has a twenty- or thirty-year
life-span, he says, but with 110 main buildings and untold acreage
of roof "All I was told was, it's miles" the roofers'
round is endless.
With big jobs out to bid, the roof shop is
now headquarters for trouble-shooting and emergencies. When a
leak appears in some office in some building some morning, it's
the roofers' phone that rings. "Within half an hour of it
starting to rain yesterday, we had nine calls," said Benoit.
He and Campbell and Thornton are thus intimate with the campus's
chronic damp spots, and able to help prioritize repairs.
In their specialized world of soffits and slates, shingles and
fascia, tin-knocking and ductwork, the roofers could operate
on perpetual closeup if they wanted. But why would they? From
the top of Boyden's double-barreled roof, to which Benoit led
the way up a nearly vertical metal staircase, the day was heartbreaking
in its clarity. A cowbird sailed on the breeze to its nest in
a light-stanchion above Garber Field. On the nearly empty playing
fields to the west, a soccer player, solitary and miniature,
charged an invisible goalie; his mote of a ball sailed easily
into the net. An ambulance, lights twirling, cruised out from
campus, its siren carried elsewhere on the wind. Across the street,
Southwest towered fifteen stories higher than we were, and beyond,
the Holyoke Range was outlined tree by tree.
The deep blue sky was lovely, too, reflected
in a lake of standing water on the roof. But that kind of loveliness
brings out the critic in a roofer. Benoit dropped his gaze from
the dreamy panorama to one of the older drains. "See how
they did this, so the drain is higher than the roof?" he
said, tapping the offending installation with the side of his
workboot. "It's not going to work like this!" H.
Ali Crolius
It was the usual intergenerational turnout of fans who gather for the Homecoming game. Tykes in "Refuse to Lose" sweatshirts flung toy footballs around the parking lot while parents conversed with fellow alumni beside sizzling hibachis. Students sipping cola-like liquids leaned against open car trunks, the rap music on their sound systems mingling with the strains of "The Star-Spangled Banner" floating up out of the stadium on a seventy-degree breeze. A trio of policemen on horseback chatted amiably as their droopy-headed mounts mouthed their bits.
Anyone looking for the alcohol-fueled revelry of past years would surely have been disappointed. A leisurely circumnavigation of the parking lots surrounding Alumni Stadium October 24 revealed nothing stiffer than liters of soda and spring water. The only visible signs of alcohol were the trademarks Absolut, Miller on T-shirts worn by some of the students streaming toward the stadium, and some champagne being enjoyed by a cluster of older couples. Standing beside a camper, surrounded by quiches and a giant vase of fall flowers, they were openly and elegantly sipping champagne from long-stemmed glasses. The old friends had been gathering in this style for thirty Homecomings, and it hadn't occurred to them to stop for the new rules.
A parking lot away, a group of younger alumni protested what they saw as a ghost town. "Did you see the parade?" demanded Jeffrey Mannheim `87 of Westfield, who comes every year to meet up with friends from the engineering department. "It was pathetic! There was no one here to hoot and holler!" In previous years, said Mannheim wistfully, the rows between cars were thick with bodies dancing to music blasting from U-Hauls and people doing "ice luges" shots of liqueur poured down chutes carved through fantastic ice sculptures. Sure, Mannheim and his friends want police to boot out the public nuisances who "stumble and bumble" and give their alma mater a bad name. But a little tippling with friends is what Homecoming is all about, insisted this group, whose picnic spread suggested they were drinking orangeade but whose covered travel mugs hinted of something stronger.
For years, football games were the great exception to the campus's prohibition against outdoor drinking. Last fall's ban on drinking at tailgate parties was the first, swift move in a series of actions taken to rein in alcohol abuse at UMass. Another was the formation of a task force to study the effect of that abuse on the campus community. The task force has submitted draft recommendations that, according to some who worked on them, involve few changes in the alcohol policy established in 1992 but do propose changes in how that policy is implemented and enforced. Chancellor David Scott has asked for more details on the legalities and costs of extending current policies to off-campus students, and once the draft leaves his desk it must still be approved by student government and the university's trustees.
In the meantime, UMass has taken one major step toward curbing illegal drinking: early warning. This year, arriving students could not miss the informational material posted prominently in the entrances and corridors of their residence halls. Colorful and dire, the posters spelled out the consequences of breaking the UMass Alcoholic Beverages Policy. Caught once, violators must attend a new, mandatory education class co-designed by the Dean of Students and health educators. Caught again, they must attend individual and group sessions at REAP, UMass's addiction intervention program. Even more severe is the provision that second offenders be relocated to another dorm, forbidden to even visit their old residence for a year. Such severance from the "lifeline of friends" is perhaps the strongest disincentive to underage drinking, providing alcohol to minors, and storing booze in dorm rooms, says assistant dean of students Paul Vasconcellos `79, `81G, `91G. Many a student, said Vasconcellos this fall, has come to his office pleading, "I'll do anything else, just don't take me away from my friends."
As of the last week in October, some 84 students had shuffled into Room 105 of the Isenberg Scool of Management for the two-hour class for first-time offenders. The word among students is that many attendees resent having to "get educated" about drinking a subject in which many consider themselves expert already, or prefer to pursue in independent studies. But if preliminary numbers are indicative, the early warning system is promising. In the first two months of the 1997-98 school year, the dean's office logged 280 alcohol violations. In the same period this fall, there were 136.
Vasconcellos says that while UMass has never condoned alcohol abuse, vigilance and decisive action are definitely the operative words this year. "Previous to this, we didn't deal with drinking violations quite so straightforwardly," said the administrator, who recently visited the University of Delaware to learn about its nationally championed crackdown on underage drinking. "It's a stronger way to let students know ahead of time what the consequences will be, and a way to help those who aren't problem drinkers feel supported to say, `We don't want this in our community.'"
None of this answers the larger and more elusive question, which is, are eighteen to twenty-year-olds who have been marinating all their short lives in the message that drinking is cool, in fact educable? If the answer is yes and UMass hopes that it is, since it's investing so much in programs like REAP, health services workshops, and the new mandatory class for violators why are the DARE graduates of yesteryear ending up in the back seats of police cruisers?
Dean of students Jo-Anne Vanin reports speaking with a police chief from a neighboring town who intervenes every weekend in alcohol-related incidents. The chief "says he's boggled by the level of ignorance of students who don't know the basic laws about drinking," said Vanin this fall. And she believes him. "The social lives of our high school students are so tied into alcohol and drugs, the gap so huge between their habits and the law. So when these young folk get here, the challenge is to impress the rules upon them."
How much of the university's mission should be to teach what has so far failed to sink in? That was a recurring theme in the discussions held by the alcohol policy task force, says Chancellor Scott. Months of discussion, says Scott, revolved around two possible responses: the "harsh approach" of stepping up sanctions, and the "helping-hand approach," which would try to address the deficits in earlier education.
When it comes to an issue as sensitive as alcohol use, Scott seems just the right person to have at the head of your school. In an interview given as he ate a quick lunch in his Whitmore office one day this fall, he didn't rush to answer questions; his responses regarding the problem of student drinking were interrupted by attention to the snack-bar salad on the table in front of him and to his reading glasses, which he is fond of whipping on and off his thoughtful face as he considers each question.
"One can ask, why is there so much focus and attention on this?" said Scott, who has heard from alumni who feel the matter is overblown. "But we have had specific tragedies and incidents, and the statistics, nationally and on this campus, are very alarming." He appeared personally disturbed by the sheet of statistics that he fished out of a stack of papers on his table.
"`Half the college students nationally report they are binge drinkers,'" Scott read aloud. "`At UMass Amherst, 50 percent of our students are binge drinkers, and more than 35 percent binge drink more than once a week. More than 90 percent of the violent incidents on campus, sexual and racial assaults, are precipitated by alcohol . . . '
"Education is the most powerful force, no question, for constructive change on anything in the world," the chancellor said, putting down his glasses. "But it is a very slowly moving force. We've come to the conclusion that this abuse is such a threat to individual lives that we can't sit back and wait for the education efforts alone. The magnitude is just too great."
For all that, Scott would not favor an outright ban on alcohol, if for no other reason than the impossibility of enforcement. Indeed, it could be argued that the increasingly circumscribed use of alcohol on campus starting this year, hard liquor has been banned even at receptions at Hillside, the chancellor's home, encourages sneakiness.
"Our current rules foster an atmosphere of irresponsible use," the Chancellor said. "You go to an event in Oxford or London and you can have wine set up at the table, and it seems a civilized and a nice thing to do. We don't seem to be able to do that here. Yet we have massive binge drinking going on in dorm rooms!"
One issue delaying finalization of the alcohol policy is how far UMass should go in monitoring students' lives beyond the campus boundaries. Those who live off campus are considered, by both the courts and the Code of Student Conduct, to be citizens first, students second. Currently, only serious crimes or violations "that directly affect the university community" are subject to sanction by the university. Drinking per se is not a violation on a par with, say, assault or the use of firearms, and UMass has been hesitant about putting it in that category.
But, citing yet another statistic that 50 percent of students report riding with an intoxicated driver, and 40 percent say they themselves have driven under the influence Scott passionately asserts that the definition of "the university community" must be enlarged.
"One used to say that community was what was contained within the university walls," he said. "Today, it's much more interconnected with the surrounding towns. We're so closely interknit and embedded with each other. And the issue is so serious, is so directly affecting the health of our students and community, that it seems a worthwhile risk to try to deal with it."
At the same time, increased collaboration between, for instance, the town and campus police forces will carry costs, and Scott wants to know more about the price tag before giving the policy his final blessing. "There's no point in adopting something we can't apply practically," he said.
In the end, Scott would like to see students graduate from UMass with a balanced, wholesome view of alcohol. That's not going to be easy when society's stresses make intoxicants so seductive. When he was growing up on a farm in Scotland's Orkney Islands, Scott said, children had access to small amounts of alcohol at an early age. In winter, when there wasn't much milk available, parents wouldn't think twice about cooling the kids' oatmeal with home-brewed ale. Scott doubts that this breakfast nip turned anyone into an alcoholic, yet if he were raising children in Orkney today, he said, he would probably end the tradition in his own home. Under the strains of economic and social change, the islanders are seeing an increase in alcoholism.
Americans are under stresses of different kinds, but they boil down to dealing with a barrage of technological and social change within a strangely isolating context. Maybe the real question, said Scott, is not how to change young people so they won't crave alcohol, but how to change the conditions that create the craving. In the meantime, he believes that a school like UMass must make a stand, and an unequivocal one, even if it is sometimes only symbolic.
Scott compares UMass's stand on alcohol to the early Civil Rights movement, when one of the first and simplest steps was to remove signs separating blacks and whites. "One could say taking down deliberately discriminatory signs was just a mechanical step, that all of the intrinsic racism is still there in the heart," he said. "But there's evidence today that, as a result of those mechanical steps, in conjunction with a whole lot of education, society has changed. There must be some metaphor there for our approach to alcohol."
-H. Ali Crolius
