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Race can come into play at any moment, as Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva was reminded during his stint at Weight Watchers. A formula that determined he should lose 50 pounds, dropping his weight to 185 pounds, shocked him. At a height over six feet, with a fair amount of muscle, how could that amount of loss be necessary? “The scale made an assessment about my ideal weight based on presumably universal data,” Bonilla-Silva noted, but the data is not really universal—it is white.

Every year, Hamilton’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa—the oldest academic honor society in the United States—holds a lecture in honor of Richard Couper ’44. The lecture series, which began in 2005, focuses on the library collections and the institutions themselves, as Couper was a major benefactor of Burke Library. This year’s speaker, Kevin Smith ’81, spoke on “The Impact of Copyright on Art and Scholarship in the Digital Age.”

Ronald Ferguson, senior lecturer in education and public policy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Harvard Kennedy School, will present a lecture titled “Educational Excellence with Equity:  A Social Movement for the 21st Century," on Monday, Oct. 10, at 7:30 p.m., in the  Fillius Events Barn. The lecture,  part of the Levitt Center’s Inequality and Equity series, is free and open to the public.

Hamilton’s semi-annual Wall Street Association meeting on Oct. 5 featured a discussion on the current state of the capital markets with a panel of alumni experts. The event at the Racquet and Tennis Club was moderated by Susan Skerritt K’77, P’11,  of The Bank of New York Mellon. Panelists include Harold Bogle ’75, P’14, Credit Suisse; Andrew Taylor ’88, JP Morgan Chase Co.; and Jennifer Murphy Hill ’87,  Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

One of the great resources for the Hamilton Outing Club (HOC), is the College’s proximity to the Adirondack State Park. The Adirondack Park is the largest state or national park in the lower 48 states, and boasts thousands of miles of hiking trails, hundreds of waterways ideal for canoeing and whitewater rafting, and some of the largest tracts of undeveloped land in the Northeast.

Sheila Fisher, professor of English at Trinity College, will give a lecture titled “The Art of Translating Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales” on Thursday, Oct. 6, at 4:10 p.m., in the Science Center’s Kennedy Auditorium. The event is a part of the fall 2011 Humanities Forum and is free and open to the public.

The Hamilton College Performing Arts continues its 2011 series with the SFJAZZ Collective performing the music of Stevie Wonder on Friday, Oct. 7, at 8 p.m., in Wellin Hall. Immediately before the concert, Professor of Music “Doc” Woods will present a pre-concert talk in Café Opus on the topics of Wonder’s music and arranging for modern jazz.

Catherine G. Kodat, professor of English and director of the American Studies program, has contributed a chapter to A Companion to American Literary Studies.

For the 28th consecutive year, the Ecology course (Bio. 237) traipsed to the top of Whiteface Mountain. This year's class was so large that it was split into two separate trips. As usual, the weather for this trip was unpredictable. The first trip took place on Sept. 25 with Prof. Bill Pfitsch and found warmth, blue skies and grand vistas. The second trip, led by Prof. Ernest Williams on Oct. 2, encountered dense overcast skies, rain and chilly temperatures.

It’s inevitable that at times we can get down on ourselves, daunted by the prospect of what lies ahead. The threat of a double dip recession, prolonged unemployment after graduation, or even just a bad grade on a homework assignment can darken one’s outlook. At these moments, it's important to put things into perspective, as Hamilton Program in New York students learned on Oct. 1 while volunteering at the Bowery Mission, the oldest such establishment in New York City.