Year in review | A look back at 2010-2011

While the 2010-2011 academic year will mostly be remembered for the launch of Vassar's Sesquicentennial celebrations and a $400 million capital campaign, several stories concerning various aspects of campus life also came to the fore during the year. Following is a brief description of the top headlines and front-page stories covered last year by The Miscellany News.

Fall, 2010

Office of Development merges with AAVC

In resonance with the activities of the previous academic year, the merging of the Office of Development and the Alumnae and Alumni of Vassar College (AAVC) to form the Office of Alumnae/i Affairs and Development reflected a continuing effort by Vassar's administration to purge operational inefficiencies in light of anemic economic recovery.

The Office of College Relations also became the Office of Communication, and took on the editorial responsibilities previously held by the AAVC and the Office of Development, such as creating the alumnae/i magazine. A large collaboration between the two offices was the recent creation of the Web site worldchanging.vassar.edu, the focal point of the Vassar 150: World Changing campaign.

The reorganization led to approximately a 10 percent reduction in staff between all the offices, most of which was the result of voluntary retirement. As a result, certain employees had to take on new responsibilities. The merging of the offices also ushered in changes beyond purely organizational ones: "[the changes are] giving us some clear charges with how we are going to interact with our alumnae in the coming years," said Vice President for Alumnae/i Affairs and Development Cathy Baer.

Vassar's eighth President Virginia B. Smith dies at 87

 An economist, lawyer and devout supporter of the liberal arts, President Emerita Virginia B. Smith boasted a career marked by a commitment to advance higher education across the United States. Smith, Vassar's second female president, passed away on Aug. 27 in Alamo, Calif. at 87.

Before joining Vassar as its President in 1977, Smith taught labor and economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and used her experience in academia to shape higher education policy. After leaving her post as assistant vice president at the University of California, Smith joined the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education in 1976 as the Commission's chief researcher. Due in part to Smith's work on the Commission, President Nixon appointed her as the Founding Director of the Fund Improvement of Post Secondary Education, which provides grants to support innovative educational reform.  

Her vast experience in this field drove her selection as Vassar's President from among hundreds of candidates. Smith swiftly devoted herself to Vassar upon joining the College: Within a short tenure of just nine years, Smith oversaw a $100-million fundraising campaign; the inception of such structures as Walker Field House and Mudd Chemistry; the introduction of the Freshman Writing Seminar and Vassar's unwavering support to the value of the liberal arts.

CIE releases document auditing campus life

In the midst of widespread but informal dialogue about issues of racial awareness and gender identity on campus, the Committee on Inclusion and Excellence (CIE) released its Audit of Campus Life and Learning on Sept. 15 last year. The report detected four major themes that concerned students, and suggested means of dealing with them. 

 The findings were the result of a three-year-long effort by the CIE to collect data that came in response to a question posed to a diverse group of students: "What would it take for you to thrive at Vassar?" In the spring of 2009, 25 student facilitators led 12 focus groups of 65 students through conversations that arose from that question. The Committee then assessed the transcribed conversation to find that issues of "inclusion," "dialogue," "governing and governance" and "success" seemed most pertinent to the student body.

The CIE unveiled the audit without any direct instruction on how the campus community should implement it. It was up to various areas of the college — from academic departments to student organizations — to take heed of the comments and address them. One example of such an implementation was the creation of a political journal The Chronicle — the Moderate Independent Conservative Alliance's step towards countering the "dominant, assumed, and controlling liberal secular viewpoint on campus" that the audit identified.

The ways in which the audit will be used in the future are still unclear, although the document has made a large stride in formalizing student voices on a range of campus-life issues.

Concern about campus drinking culture increases

The Arlington Fire District's emergency response team responded to 20 intoxication cases at Vassar during the first three weeks of the academic year, and Vassar College Emergency Services (EMS) responded to 41 percent more alcohol-related calls in that period compared to the previous year. Such statistics prompted Dean of the College Christopher Roellke to send an all-campus email to the Vassar community asserting that the numbers indicate "serious health, safety and community concerns on campus."

One factor suspected to exacerbate the number of intoxication calls last year was the increased consumption of caffeinated alcoholic beverages, such as Four Loko. This trend was not limited to Vassar, and was addressed by officials from New York State and the Food and Drug Administration. In November, New York's State Liquor Authority agreed to end the distribution — and ultimately, the manufacture — of Four Loko.

Back at Vassar, the Vassar Student Association (VSA) administration and the Dean of the College Division joined forces to control excessive drinking on campus. Largely due to their efforts to create healthy alternatives to drinking on Halloween, the number of alcohol-related calls to EMS reduced by 12 percent from the previous year's Halloween night. The Campus Activities Office also teamed with the VSA administration to create a space on weekend nights where students could engage in activities other than drinking, efforts for which materialized the following semester.

Vassar launches Peer-Advising System

In addition to their pre-major and major advisors, Vassar students will now have the opportunity to get some advice from their own peers by digging through an online database of juniors and seniors, searchable by academic and extra-curricular interests. A formal review of the system and survey results to ascertain its success are still pending.

The launch was a culmination of a year's worth of work by VSA Vice President for Academics '09-'10 Stephanie Damon-Moore '11 and her successor, Laura Riker '11. The network, hosted by Vassar College Computing and Information Services, was conceived as a response to some criticism of the pre-major advising system Vassar has in place. Students felt that their pre-major advisors were at times not in their academic field of interest, and varied in their dedication to guide incoming freshman. 

While in no way intended to replace the current advising setup, the peer-advising system aims to supplement it as a more flexible variant that can keep up with the dynamic needs of the advisees. Ultimately, the new system "[hopes] to foster academic conversations among students at Vassar," Damon-Moore wrote in an emailed statement.

Vassar Governance goes under review 

The Governance of Vassar College — a document that bears the blue print for running and maintaining the institution — was up for a review last year when the Middle States Commission on Higher Education suggested it during the College's reaccreditation process. The Governance Revisions Steering Committee is leading the review, which will eventually need approval from the Vassar Board of Trustees.

No concrete suggestions from the Committee have emerged thus far, with members claiming that talks have yielded only nascent ideas to address Middle States' concerns. The Commission has found the document provides "a wealth of detail at risk of obscuring any clear path for getting from one point to the other, for getting any given task accomplished," and has critiqued the number of joint student-administrator committees having "parallel" conversations. Another factor adding to the formidable length of the document is the presence of non-constitutional language, one that would reside more appropriately under the label "policies" or "regulations."

A large challenge for Vassar, then, is to carefully edit the Governance to address issues pointed out by Middle States but at the same time maintain the spirit of joint-governance at the core of the document.    

College reveals Landscape Master Plan

Around the end of the fall semester, Vassar released the Campus Landscape Master Plan, which represents a vision of Vassar's campus years in the future. The Master Plan proposes physical changes to manageable bits of the campus to be implemented as and when funds allow, while keeping in sight broad changes to the entire landscape.

A conviction to revisit "pedestrian sovereignty" ran through the Master Plan. If implemented in its entirety, the plan will effectively eliminate the presence of vehicles in the center of campus (behind the College Center) and install more pedestrian walkways capable of accommodating service and emergency vehicles.  Expanded north and south parking lots will take on the burden of lots that are to be removed from this area. 

Ultimately, the College is not bound the follow every suggestion the plan makes, but the plan still proves to be a very useful document to keep in mind when any sort of construction works takes place in the future. "Having a plan gives us the opportunity to say we know where we're headed, so if something comes up—if we asked to add parking, or build a new building, or make an entrance universally accessible—we've got a reference point for future development," said Vice President for Finance and Administration and Chair of the Campus Master Planning Committee Elizabeth Eismeier.

Spring, 2011

Vassar launches its sesquicentennial celebrations

A nod to the past, a celebration of the present and look forward to the future, festivities during Vassar's 150th year brought together all members of the campus community throughout the spring semester. The series of sesquicentennial events — which launched at Vassar on Jan. 18 but quickly spread across the globe — included speeches, parties, dance, drama and plenty of cake.

As a part of the sesquicentennial tour, a production titled "Vassar Voices" comprising dramatic readings of letters, diaries and other memoirs toured U.S. and world stages after debuting at Vassar's own Skinner Hall of Music. Serving as a focal point for these celebrations, 150.vassar.edu listed these performances as well as offered various features highlighting Vassar's history in pictures, video and text.

The budget for these events was non-existent, according to VSA Vice President for Operations '10-'11 Ruby Cramer '12. Indeed, several already-scheduled events on campus were given a "sesqui-twist" in order to maximize programing and minimize the cost associated with it. In addition, this method also served to include large parts of the community in a celebration that may otherwise have left them behind.

Vassar's goes public with its $400-million fundraising campaign

In conjunction with the launch of sesquicentennial celebrations, Vassar went public with the Vassar 150: World Changing campaign, an effort to raise $400 million to support various aspects of the College and to secure its place as a provider of an excellent education to its students in the years to come. 

The campaign rests on three pillars towards which the funds raised will be directed: "Access to Excellence," which creates the means for providing equal opportunity to all students; "Science for the 21st Century," which raises funds for an Integrated Science Center and "Vassar's Annual Fund," which supports most of the everyday minutia on Vassar's campus.  Each pillar is a testament to a belief of the institution — whether it be a belief that every student deserves a world-class education or a belief that an understanding of science is indispensible for tomorrow's global citizens. 

To date, the College has raised close to $300 million. Updated figures and current information about the campaign can be found at worldchanging.vassar.edu.

ACDC's UpCDC becomes space for alternative programing

The second floor of the Students' Building became a venue for alternative programming on weekend nights, where students will not feel pressured to drink. The space came about as a result of several Town Hall meetings President Catharine Bond Hill and Dean of the College Christopher Roellke where students expressed a need for alternative programming. In light of the previous semester's issues with campus drinking culture, the creation of the space seemed a timely move by the administration.

Open from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., the space will house games such asping-pong, pool, foosball, Scattergories and Cranium, a 52-inch television and a Nintendo Wii. These activities, however, displace several campus-wide parties that student organizations arrange throughout the year. To compensate for this loss in programming, the College aims to devise new events more in tune with the laid-back attitude of the space, reported Assistant Dean for Campus Activities Teresa Quinn. These activities — such as having outside food vendors cater to crowds on weekend nights — are subject to change as of now, and will depend on student feedback received by the VSA and the College.

Class Gifts merge to form All-School Gift

To honor the College's sesquicentennial, the sophomore and senior classes merged their individual gifts to Vassar, and joined forces with the freshman and junior classes to create the 2011 All-School Gift. The gift — created by a combination of student fundraising efforts and alumnae/i matching gifts — raised over $300,000 for Vassar's Annual Fund.

The President's Advisory Council (PAC) challenged the 2011 All-School Gift to get 1,861 students to gift any amount to the College, the specific number representing the year Vassar was founded. If the Gift met that goal, PAC promised a celebratory matching gift of $150,000. Additionally, because of the senior class's commitment to sustainability, an anonymous donor promised a matching gift of $15,000 if the class achieved 80 percent participation in the gift towards a new "sustainability" designation within the Annual Fund. The 2011 All-School Gift met both these goals, announced this victory to the entire community during this year's Commencement ceremony and became the largest student-led fundraising effort in the College's history.

Dean of Planning and Academic Affairs retires

Holding her office for all three yeas since its inception in 2007, Dean of Planning and Academic Affairs Rachel Kitzinger announced in the spring that she would retire from the position. While this new position was mainly what Kitzinger made of it, it was envisioned to take some of the load off of the Dean of the Faculty Office, and to take on long-term planning projects with the Office of Finance and Administration.

"It was sort of a sequence of decisions," said Kitzinger during an interview with The Miscellany News. "When I accepted the position in 2007, I told [President Catharine Bond Hill] that I wanted to the possibility of re-evaluating it after three years because at that point I was going to be eligible for phased retirement through my faculty position. And I thought that that would be good for her in case she felt that she needed a change and good for me because this was such an unknown position."

To fill the vacant deanship, the College created a search committee that began reviewing nominees at the end of March.  Because the position is Vassar specific and requires an intimate understanding of the College's unique needs for this position, the committee is conducting an internal search for the new dean. "We're looking for someone who knows the College and knows those kind of values," said Professor of Political Science Peter Stillman, who is serving on the committee. Students can expect an announcement about the new dean to come their way shortly.

VSA administration fails to restructure its Council

In response to criticism voiced by students, the VSA Council engaged in discussions to change its structure to better serve its constituents and make the governing body more inclusive. Despite the concerted efforts of Council members and an ad-hoc organization by the name of Students for a Better VSA, the proposal for change failed at various steps of the adoption process.

A critical component of the changes was the movement to a senatorial system, whereby each class would have a president and three senators representing it on Council, instead of just one president as the system stands now. Residential House presidents — instead of automatically serving on Council — would have sat on a Residential Council, from which three representatives would serve on VSA Council. When Council members took these changes to their constituents, some of them received overwhelmingly negative feedback; proceeding from this opinion, Council members voted to fail the amendment on Sunday, March 27.

Still, hope was not dead for the senatorial system, and was resuscitated when Students for a Better VSA gathered 15 percent of the student body to sign a petition sending the decision to the student body as a referendum. The Board of Elections deemed that a simple majority of those casting votes must vote in favor of the changes for them to be adopted, a goal that was achieved during the referendum. However, sophomore Alex Koren filed a petition with the Judicial Board claiming that the referendum was unconstitutional, as it relied on a majority of those casting votes, not a majority of the entire student body; the latter, claimed Koren, was mandated by the VSA's governing documents. The Judicial Board upheld this complaint, and deemed the referendum unconstitutional. 

In a last-ditch effort to fight for the changes, the VSA Executive Board filed a complaint with the Judicial Board challenging its previous decision based on a claim that the Board used evidence that was not brought forward during the trial. The Board rejected this claim and argued that the "outside evidence" comprised documents the Board has the right to use at anytime during the decision-making process and, in doing so, sounded the death knell for the senatorial system.

In the midst of this long process of technicalities, there was general agreement that the spirit of reform that buttressed the changes needed to be maintained. These changes, while by themselves not considered sufficient to effect the change Council wanted to see, represented an introspection by the governing body, something that several of next year's Council members cited as a goal for next year.

Former Vassar employee arrested for embezzling $1.98 million in College funds

On April 1, former Vassar Project Manager Arthur H. Fisher and his wife Jennifer Fisher were arrested and charged with felony grand larceny following an accusation that the couple embezzled  $1.98 million in Vassar funds set aside for construction projects. Following the arrest, police seized four BMWs, a Ford F150, three Rolex watches, 10 unregistered handguns and various fraudulent law-enforcement identification badges from the Fishers' residence in Ossining, New York.

Fisher — who worked at Vassar from 2005 to 2010 — sent up red flags for the members of the College administration through his arrest. In an email to the entire Vassar community, President Catharine Bond Hill focused as much on the details of the case as Vassar's response to the development. "We are taking all available steps to recover the funds. In light of this discovery, the College is evaluating its financial and operating controls, and has already taken steps to enhance their effectiveness," wrote Hill.