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By 6 a.m. on Oct. 4, a group clad in t-shirts and shorts had already gathered outside the former Saunders Hall of Chemistry. As soon as the doors opened, the whir of exercise bikes and the rhythm of treadmills replaced the clatter of construction equipment that had been sounding for the past nine months. The new Charlean and Wayland Blood Fitness and Dance Center was finally open.

The fifth annual Clinton Community Fall Fest will take place on Sunday, Oct. 8 on the Village Green from 1-4 p.m. Fall Fest is free and open to the public. Members of the community are encouraged to attend with their families.

Hamilton's annual Fallcoming Weekend will be highlighted by the dedication of the Charlean and Wayland Blood Fitness and Dance Center and the Little Squash Center. Athletic naming donors will gather on Thursday evening, and the weekend begins in earnest on Friday with Alumni Association and Trustee programming. Fallcoming is a traditional time for alumni to reconnect with classmates and friends in our beautiful autumn campus environment.

About 300 Hamilton alumni and guests attended a New-York Historical Society event featuring historian Richard Brookhiser, Douglas Ambrose, the Sidney Wertimer Associate Professor of History, and Associate Professor of Government Robert Martin on September 26.  “The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton,” took place at the Historical Society’s Manhattan building and was co-hosted by New York University Press. It was part of the New-York Historical Society Series "History and Current Affairs."

Hamilton College will host its annual Fallcoming Weekend from Thursday, Oct. 12, through Sunday, Oct. 15. In addition to campus tours, a football game and dedication of new athletic facilities, the Fallcoming celebration brings a broad spectrum of arts opportunities to the community that are free and open to the public. Highlights are listed below.

Six students from the Government and History departments along with three faculty members attended a talk by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis on September 28.  Ellis, author of several best-selling books and frequent contributor to the History Channel and C-SPAN came to the area at the invitation of the Oneida County Historical Society, and gave a talk titled, "The Founders and Today."

Jon Milgrom ‘08 spent his summer living amid reptiles. Milgrom and Visiting Professor of Biology Peter Zani engaged in a non-traditional summer project. Milgrom was awarded the Renwick Prize in Biology, which supports summer scholarship in biology and Zani was conducting research on behavioral responses of lizards to a snake predator.

Thirteen Hamilton students received college funding to pursue an unpaid internship over the summer. While pursuing internships is an increasingly popular move for students, the realities pose certain problems. Most available positions are unpaid, requiring students to fund their own housing and living expenses as well as working for free, all in pursuit of relevant work experience. Thanks to grants from alumni and parents, Hamilton students can apply for funding to support their unpaid summer internships. For many students, these grants allow them to pursue an internship they could not otherwise accept.

Government professor Stephen Orvis spoke at the Conference on Conflict in the Horn of Africa hosted by the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the United States Department of State on Sept. 29 in Washington D.C. Orvis, who served as an international election observer in Kenya's transitional elections to democratic rule and led 11 Hamilton students on the Kenya Field School in summer 2000 and 2004, spoke on Kenya. The State Department organizes these conferences to solicit the views of nongovernmental specialists and to facilitate the exchange of views between these specialists and government officials.

Edward S. Walker, Jr.’62, former U. S. Ambassador to Israel and the Christian A. Johnson Distinguished Professor of Global Political Theory, participated in a discussion hosted by The Woodrow Wilson Center on September 28, in Washington. Walker was joined by freelance journalist Mohammad Hakki and Nicholas Veliotes, former assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs, for the panel discussion titled "Collateral Damage: Is the Widening Middle East Crisis Damaging our Relations with Egypt and Other Regional Allies?"