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A letter to the editor by Hamilton College President Eugene M. Tobin concerning the length of college sports seasons, was published in USA Today on Thursday, Sept. 5. Tobin wrote the letter in response to an Aug. 30 editorial, "Longer college sports seasons hinder progress off the field." Tobin noted in his letter that New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) football teams won't play their first games until Sept. 21, "part of a conference philosophy that says students are students first and athletes second." He noted that nine NESCAC teams finished among the top 100 in the Sears Cup 2002 standings for overall athletic excellence, and three teams were among the top 10.

Professor of Geology Eugene Domack is quoted in a Science magazine article (August 20, 2002) on the demise of the Antarctic Peninsula’s ice shelves, in particular the Larsen B ice shelf. In 1999, Domack’s team, working on the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Nathaniel B. Palmer collected ice cores in waters where a section of the Larsen B broke off. Based on the age of the glacial till under Larsen A, said Domack, “the erstwhile Larsen B was at least 11,000 years old, implying that the breakup [of the ice shelf] is now extending farther south than ever before in the Holocene.” These findings suggest that ice shelves break up faster than anyone thought before, and global warming may be an important factor in this region.

Assistant Professor of Economics Ann Owen was interviewed for a Journal News article (9/3/02) about the Federal Reserve's actions since the Sept. 11 attacks. Owen discussed this year's battered equity markets, and noted that if they're looking to the Fed to save them by lowering interest rates further they may be looking in the wrong place. She said the Fed's obligation is to stablize prices and moderate rates since it's difficult for businesses to plan in the long-term without them. "It's not a question of 'Should they be expansionary,?'" Owen said. "It's a question of, 'Should they be more expansionary?'" Owen is a former Federal Reserve economist.

Professor of Anthropology Douglas Raybeck was quoted in the Boston Herald in a September 11 anniversary article. Raybeck said, "The psyche that recovers from these wounds of a year ago will be more mature, more sensitive, and profoundly more pessimistic than the psyche which has, for generations, characterized the United States...We will become closer to the world at large and less insensitive to its pain," he said. "The result may well be an even grander nation. But globally, at any rate, the tragedy of 9-11 should result in a more cautious nation, too."

In September, Rand Carter, professor of art, was invited by the Karl Friedrich Schinkel Gesellschaft to speak on the occasion of this year's awarding of the annual Schinkel Prize. The award ceremony and the accompanying colloquium was held in Neuruppin, Germany (Schinkel's birthplace). The subject was "Schinkel und die Gegenwart." The lecture will be published by the Schinkel Gesellschaft.

After more than a year in the making, Hamilton unveiled a new graphic identity this summer and began the year-long process of implementing the College’s new signature. The new identity features the wordmark "Hamilton," a stylized cupola of the Chapel and a horizontal line above the wordmark to support the cupola.

Another book has been published in the Theory and Interpretation Series that Professor Comparative Literature Peter Rabinowitz co-edits with James Phelan at Ohio State University Press. The book, Telling Tales: Gender and Narrative Form in Victorian Literature and Culture, is by Elizabeth Langland.

The Kirkland Project at Hamilton College will sponsor a conference, "Making Change: Working for Social Justice," on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 4 and 5, on the Hamilton campus. The keynote address will be delivered by Robert Moses '56, founder of the national math literacy program, the Algebra Project. His talk, on Saturday, Oct. 5, at 11 a.m. in the Chapel, will be followed by a series of panel discussions related to social change. The conference is free and open to the public.

Before we could even begin to comprehend the magnitude of the tragedy, before the grieving or healing processes had time to begin, Americans woke up on the morning of September 12 with a new spirit of compassion.

Ann Frechette, Luce Junior Professor of Asian Studies, presented a paper, "State Building without a State: The Role of the Refugee Camp in the Tibetan Diaspora," at a conference on "Revisiting the Asian State" sponsored by the International Institute for Asian Studies at Leiden University, the Netherlands, June 30-July 1, 2002.