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Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Monica Inzer discussed the current pressures experienced by college applicants and how changing national demographics might lessen applicant anxiety in the future with both The New York Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Inzer was quoted in a Times article, titled "College expect to see drop in applicants; Demographic change alters the landscape," that appeared on the front page on Sunday, March 9.

The Hamilton College Debate Society recently participated in Boston University's debate competition. There were 66 teams and 63 novices. Mallory Joel '11, Phil Fraccola '08, Rouvan Mahmud '11 and Andrew Harris '11 represented Hamilton. Mahmud and Harris won second place novice team after facing Mount Holyoke, Yale, Brandeis, Northeastern, Amherst and Smith. Harris also won 5th place novice speaker.

Sixty-nine members of the Hamilton College Choir will spend a portion of their spring break this month traveling to the Midwest for the annual choir tour. This year's tour will take the choir as far south as Cincinnati and north to Appleton, Wisc.

Associate Professor of Music Lydia Hamessley recently published two articles that feature stereoscopic images of musical instruments. The first, "Within Sight: Three-Dimensional Perspectives on Women and Banjos in the Late Nineteenth Century," 19th-Century Music 31 (2007): 131-63, focuses on the relationship between images of women playing banjos and depictions of the new woman.

Hamilton's Mock Trial team competed in the national tournament hosted by Miami University of Ohio, on March 7-9. Liz Farrington '10 won an Outstanding Witness award. Other students who competed at nationals were Megha Hoon '11, Tim Kubarych '10, Caitlin Fitzsimons '11, Andrew Bjorkman '10, Eddie Ajaeb '11, Ngoc Nguyen '11 and Wenxi Li '10.

Hamilton College and Colgate University will co-host a film symposium, "Nature/Place/Cinema," on April 4-6 and April 11-13 that will be held on both campuses. The symposium will focus on the representation of landscape, place and the natural world in film and video. It will feature visiting filmmakers who will screen their films and videos as well as lectures by cinema scholars. All events are free and open to the public.

MTV news correspondent SuChin Pak spoke at Hamilton about MTV, Generation X and multiculturalism as part of the College's Voices of Color Lecture Series on March 6. Pak used examples from her own life to discuss race, identity and empowerment.

U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and conservationist Henry M. Paulson Jr. will deliver the Commencement address at Hamilton College on Sunday, May 25, at 10:30 a.m. in the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House.  Paulson and his wife Wendy, an educator, will be awarded a joint honorary degree at the College's 196th Commencement ceremony, along with 1972 Hamilton graduate and glass artist Josh Simpson and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor Branch.

The final rounds of the annual public speaking competition were held on Saturday, March 8, in the Chapel. Students were selected based on their performance in the February 16 preliminary rounds and competed for three different prizes: The McKinney Prize, The Clark Prize, and The Warren Wright Prize. Winners of the McKinney Prize were Amr Rouvan Mahmud '11, Thomas Coppola '10, Asia Agers '09 and Emma Slane '08. Ryan Murphy '08 was awarded the Clark Prize and Alexandra Berkley '08 won the Warren E. Wright Prize.

Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature Melek Ortabasi co-authored an article with Dr. Charlotte Eubanks (Penn State) for the ADFL Bulletin (38.3/39.1, Spring/Fall 2007), the journal for the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. The article discusses the issues surrounding the study of less commonly taught languages (such as Asian languages) in the context of comparative literature.