News

The Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture at the College of the Holy Cross is sponsoring a number of lectures by noted experts in the next month. The talks, which are free and open to the public, will take place in Rehm Library in Smith Hall on the campus.

Feb. 13 at 4:30 p.m. — Francis Oakley, president emeritus and Edward Dorr Griffin Professor of the History of Ideas at Williams College and former president of the American Council of Learned Societies, will give a talk titled “The Dominance of the Present Over the Past: The Church’s Forgotten Constitutionalist Heritage.” The event is part of the Deitchman Family Lectures in Religion and Modernity, which explores the place of religious and spiritual life in a world that is sometimes at odds with faith, other times in search of it, and always at work reshaping it.

Feb. 14 at 4 p.m. — Harold Bush, associate professor of English at Saint Louis University, will give a talk titled “Emmett Till’s Body and the Generativity of Bereaved Parents.” [This event has been canceled.]

Feb. 22 at 4 p.m. — Bernard McGinn, Naomi Shenstone Donnelley professor emeritus of historical theology and of the history of Christianity at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, will give a talk titled “Joachim of Fiore and History in Western Culture.”

Feb. 26 at 7:30 p.m. — Matt Cartmill, professor of biological anthropology and anatomy at Duke University, will give a talk titled “Evolution, Creation, and Eternity: What’s Wrong with the ‘Creation’ Part of Creation Science?” [This event has been canceled.]

Feb. 28 at 4 p.m. — Jessica Waldoff, associate professor and chair of the music department at Holy Cross, will give a talk as part of the Faculty Book Discussion series on her book, Recognition in Mozart’s Operas (Oxford University Press, 2006), an insightful discourse that uses both literary and musicological methods to illuminate some of the composer’s best-loved operas. [This event has been canceled.]

Do you know which dormitory is named after a bishop, who was also the valedictorian of the College’s first graduating class? Ever wonder what the view from campus was like before the construction of I-290?

Answers to these and other questions can be found in the newest exhibit prepared by the Archives and Special Collections department. The Angel’s View: Campus Aerials, on view through June 2007 on the second floor of Dinand Library, illustrates the growth and development of the Holy Cross campus through photographs from the Archives’ extensive aerial views collection.

As part of the exhibition, on Feb. 1 at 3 p.m. in Dinand’s Faculty Room, Rev. Anthony J. Kuzniewski, S.J., professor of history at Holy Cross and College historian, will speak on the development of the College throughout the 20th century. He is the author of Thy Honored Name: A History of the College of the Holy Cross, 1843-1994 (Catholic University of America Press, 1999), and “This Holy Cross” (General Alumni Association, 2002).

Archivists Mark Savolis and Lois Hamill observed that many visitors stopped to examine the aerials in the Archives. This gave them the idea for the current exhibit.

The campus saw the addition of academic buildings, a campus center, dormitories, and athletic facilities in the 20th century. The first building on campus was Fenwick Hall, erected in 1843. Since then, Holy Cross has added 26 buildings. The most recent additions include Ciampi Hall (1992), Smith Hall (2001) and the Senior Apartments (2004).

“The beauty of the campus is due to the genius of architect Charles D. Maginnis who designed Alumni, Carlin, Wheeler, Dinand, Kimball, and St. Joseph Memorial Chapel, and to the architects who have been engaged to enhance our campus since Rev. John E. Brooks became president. Moreover, our grounds crew, by their dedicated service, have designed and maintained the outdoor portion of our campus in a manner that is absolutely stunning,” says Rev. Kuzniewski.

In total, the exhibit showcases 44 aerial views of campus. Labels include fascinating facts about construction and changes on campus over the years. For instance, the Field House was originally built as a military drill and recreational hall at Camp Endicott in Rhode Island before being transported to Holy Cross in 1948.

By the way, the answer to the first question is Bishop Healy. As for the second, you’ll have to stop by the exhibit to see for yourself.

In an effort to motivate and educate fellow Holy Cross students to think and talk about global environmental issues, Eco-Action is joining 570 schools in the United States and Canada in a week of action (Jan. 29 to Feb. 2) to demand solutions that end the world’s addiction to fossil fuels and build toward a clean energy future.

Eco-Action, a Holy Cross student organization dedicated to the promotion of conservation through education and local action, will host screenings of An Inconvenient Truth, the acclaimed documentary featuring former Vice President Al Gore crossing the country educating Americans about global warming. The events will take place on Jan. 31 at 8 p.m. in Hogan Crossroads and Feb. 1 at 3 and 6 p.m. in Hogan, Room 519. Discussions will follow each screening of the movie.

The week of action is organized by the Campus Climate Challenge, a project of the Energy Action Coalition. The Campus Climate Challenge unites young people to organize on college campuses and high schools to win 100 percent clean energy policies at their schools. Energy Action Coalition is a network of 41 organizations from across the United States and Canada, founded and led by youth to help support and strengthen the student and youth clean energy movement in the United States and Canada.

Last semester, Eco-Action encouraged more than 100 Holy Cross students to switch from incandescent bulbs to ones that have earned the government’s Energy Star label, part of national challenge called “Change a Light, Change the World,” sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Eco-Action co-chair Lauren Stillwell ’07 believes that there is a lot more to be done on campus.

“We need clean and renewable energy to be purchased or produced on campus, and policies that advocate greater efficiency, she says. “Therefore, we are joining with students from around the country during the week of action to demand real solutions to stop global warming.”

The 570 schools involved in the week of action represent 49 states and eight Canadian provinces.

Learn more about the Climate Week of Action.

Comments and reactions to the latest edition of Holy Cross Magazine  are arriving in the magazine’s offices — and the editors have extended an invitation to “listen in” and join the conversation online.

Last fall, members of the Holy Cross community gathered on campus to discuss the question: what are the tensions and harmonies inherent in a life given to both science and faith? The College’s forum discussion came at a time when the same subject was making headlines of the popular press and being treated as an increasingly polarized, contentious battle between science and religion.

An edited transcript of the lively, serious, and civil discussion that took place on campus was published in the magazine this winter, and is also available online.

In response to its publication, thoughtful responses have followed — from alumni (“When I decided to choose science as my vocation, I knew that I had to come to a resolution with my faith and the scientific findings that seemed to be in opposition to it.”); and from observers around the country (“How does the practice of science or of religion engage, not just put up with, the mix of human nobility and elegance with human violence and mediocrity?”). These correspondents — among them nonbelievers and religious alike — share a keen interest in the topic.

By posting the reactions from readers, the magazine’s editors hope to engage an even wider audience. Already, with references to the work of philosophers, scientists, theologians, and others, the incisive comments from HCM readers are extending the conversation in interesting new ways — and raising new questions.

Read the comments online and consider sharing your own on this timely, provocative subject.

David O’Brien, Loyola Professor of Roman Catholic Studies in the history department at Holy Cross and a nationally-recognized authority on political thought, will address Sept. 11, the war in Iraq and that nation’s future in an on-campus talk.

Junior political science major David Lipke, senior political science major Christine O’Hara, and senior classics major Patrick Whitmore will respond to O’Brien’s talk. Whitmore, from Rocky River, Ohio, is a participant in the ROTC program at Holy Cross. Lipke is from Red Bank, N.J., “a town where you could see and smell the aftermath of 9/11,” he says. He participated in the Washington Semester Program, working for the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and wrote his program thesis on the electoral system installed in Iraq.

The event, titled “The Responsibilities We All Bear: The Legacy of 9/11 and the War,” will be held on Jan. 30 at 7 p.m. in Rehm Library and is sponsored by Pax Christi. The student organization is holding the event to increase campus dialogue about the war in Iraq.

“In light of the ongoing conflict in Iraq as well as the response to terrorism as a whole, our nation is in need of answers and in need of dialogue,” says O’Hara, from Burnsville, Minn. “We have seen and heard what the media and government would like us to see and hear but it is time that college students, leaders, advocates, and the people of America as a whole start raising more questions, start talking, and start acting.”

Nearly four years after the start of the war in Iraq, this is a pivotal time in the nation’s history, according to O’Brien.

“We are at a turning point in the Iraq war and the war on terror, all carried out in the aftermath of 9/11. As we struggle to determine what the right thing to do is, we are driven back to hard questions about the ends, the goals, of American foreign and national security policy. The hard truth is that this war is our war, not President Bush’s war. Men and women die, and kill, for the American people, for us, not for the president or Congress. So we have to decide.”

Many students are trying to figure out the meaning of events in Iraq, says O’Brien, and this event will help them determine what their responsibilities might be.

O’Hara says this is an important event for all students to attend — to hear all points of view in the debate, and gain more confidence in the need for dialogue and peace across campus, the nation, and the world.

“I believe that Holy Cross students aspire to do great things and what could be greater than the need for peace in our world? No matter where you stand on the war on terror, I truly believe that we can agree that peace must be achieved; now it’s just a matter of talking with one another to try and find a common ground to seek out and bring about that peace.”

Celebrate Purple Pride Day 2007 on Jan. 26 with the following activities:

8 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Cocoa, coffee, and cookies will be served in the entry of Stein, Smith, and Swords.

10:30 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Live up this year’s theme and purchase your very own Purple Pride T-shirts in Hogan 1. Price: $10.

4 p.m. – 8 p.m.
Special dinner in Kimball Dining Hall.

7:30 p.m. – 9 p.m.
Come get your free cups, pom-poms and beads in Crossroads before the basketball game. And hear the Delilahs and Fools on the Hill!

9 p.m.
Head up to Hart and cheer on the men’s basketball team as the Crusaders take on Lehigh. Don’t miss the Purple Pride Pageant during half-time of the basketball game. The person most decked out in purple will win a gift certificate!

Senioritis? Pshaw!

For Kara Pipoli, a self-described proud member of the Class of 2007, the last semester in college doesn’t translate into decreased motivation. A sociology and women’s and gender studies double major with a prelaw concentration, she will be participating in no less than six activities her final semester at Holy Cross.

Between working on her honors thesis (she’s reporting on the prospect of a “boy crisis” in the American education system) and sorrowfully counting down her last days on the Hill, Pipoli will serve as the Student Government Association’s director of Gender Concerns; senior interviewer; tour guide; senior resident director for the senior apartments; representative to the Center for Interdisciplinary and Special Studies’ student advisory committee; and member of the all-female a capella group, the Delilahs.

She’ll also be preparing for life after college. As a Washington Semester alum, Pipoli, from Chester, Conn., is excited about her plans of returning to the nation’s capital. As part of Teach for America, she will be teaching social studies for two years at a middle school in D.C.

Through it all — including her admitted love of “trashy celeb gossip magazines, reality television, and dance parties” — she’ll keep us updated on the bittersweet experience that is senior year.

Read Kara’s blog »

Faculty and staff at Holy Cross will gather on Jan. 15 at noon to reflect on the work and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. in an event titled “Lest We Forget.” Mable Millner, assistant dean and director of multicultural education, will lead a presentation featuring talks, music, and film in Rehm Library.

Before the spring semester begins on Jan. 17, Holy Cross student leaders will gather for a luncheon on Jan. 16 in the Hogan Campus Center. Speaker Fran Manocchio, director of the city of Worcester’s Office of Human Rights, will give a talk on the theme of Leadership in Times of Crisis. Student leaders will offer reflections on the theme Tolerance is Not Enough. During the luncheon, Dr. King’s advocacy for civil and human rights will be highlighted as a role model for the development of individual leadership and civic responsibility.

For more information, call Student Affairs at 508-793-2414.

The following films will be shown at Kimball Theatre at the College of the Holy Cross. All films are free and open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis. For additional information, please call the Kimball Theatre Box Office at 508-793-2455.

The Illusionist – Rated PG-13
Wed., Jan. 17: Showings at 3 and 8 p.m. Starring Edward Norton, Jessica Biel and Paul Giamatti. It’s 1900 Vienna and a magician uses his abilities to secure the love of a woman well above his social standing in this lavishly mounted, enjoyable film.

Déjà Vu – Rated PG-13
Fri., Jan. 19 and Sat., Jan. 20: Showings at 7 p.m. Starring Denzel Washington and Val Kilmer. The government, ever eager to know all, has a device that allows agents to solve crimes by seeing into the past. Using it, can our hero find a murderer and save 100 lives?

Fast Food Nation – Rated R.
Wed., Jan. 24: Showings at 3 and 8 p.m. Starring Wilmer Valderrama and Greg Kinnear. Examines the health risks involved in the fast food industry.

The Prestige – Rated PG-13
Fri., Jan. 26 and Sat., Jan. 27: Showings at 7 p.m. Starring Hugh Jackman, Christopher Bale and Scarlett Johansson. Rival magicians fall in love with the same woman and are willing to employ illusions and double crosses to win her.

Flags of Our Fathers – Rated R
Wed., Jan. 31: Showings 3 and 8 p.m. Starring Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford and Adam Beach. This reenactment of the bloody battle on the killing ground that was Iwo Jima concentrates on three of the Marines who were in the famous photograph. They toured the country raising funds for the war effort while trying to deal with their guilt as survivors.

Flushed Away – Rated PG
Fri., Feb. 2 and Sat., Feb. 3: Showing at 7 p.m. Voices by Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet. A rat gets flushed down the toilet from his penthouse apartment where he ends up in the sewers of London. Adventures ensue.

Half Nelson – Rated R.
Wed., Feb. 7: Showings at 3 and 8 p.m. Starring Ryan Gosling and Shareeka Epps. A committed inner-city school teacher tries to cope by numbing himself with crack and a student finds out his secret. Trying to change the world isn’t that easy.

Borat – Rated R
Fri., Feb. 9 and Sat., Feb. 10: Showing at 7 p.m. In this hilariously offensive movie Borat travels from his primitive home in Kazakhstan to the U.S. to make a documentary. On his cross-country road trip, Borat meets real people in purportedly real situations with hysterical consequences.

The Departed – Rated R
Wed., Feb. 14: Showings at 3 and 8 p.m. Starring Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Wahlberg. This complicated cops and Irish mafia saga is a relentlessly violent mean streets drama.

Casino Royale – Rated PG-13
Fri., Feb. 16 and Sat., Feb. 17: Showing at 7 p.m. Starring Daniel Craig and Judi Dench. There is a rough edge to this 21st entrant in the Bond canon. This tough, violent film is an adaptation of Ian Fleming’s first 007 novel.

Marie Antoinette – Rated PG-13
Wed., Feb. 21: Showings at 3 and 8 p.m. Starring Kirsten Dunst and Rip Torn. The doomed queen is played as a charming bimbo in this loosely adapted look at the rich and famous in 18th-century France. The film has atmosphere, beauty, spirit and texture.

Stranger Than Fiction – Rated PG-13
Fri., Feb. 23 and Sat., Feb. 24: Showing at 7 p.m. Starring Will Ferrell and Emma Thompson. Ferrell is a milquetoast IRS agent convinced his life is being directed by a depressed writer who is trying to figure out a way to kill off her main character — him.

Shut Up and Sing – Rated R
Wed., Feb. 28: Showings at 3 and 8 p.m. This documentary focuses on the firestorm created when the Dixie Chicks member Natalie Maines made a comment about President G.W. Bush in 2003. In so doing, the film considers the intersection of art commerce and controversy.

The History Boys – Rated R
Wed., March 14: Showings at 3 and 8 p.m. Starring Richard Griffiths and Clive Merrison. Based on Alan Bennett’s adaptation of his play and set in an English boys’ school in 1983, the film follows a group of eight boys as they prepare for university entrance exams. Their journey is as much about how education works, as it is about where it leads.

Blood Diamond – Rated R
Fri., March 16 and Sat., March 17: Showing at 7 p.m. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connolly and Djimon Hounsou. In a film set against the background of Sierra Leone’s civil war and exposing the global trade in conflict diamonds, a mercenary and a fisherman pursue a valuable pink diamond — one for profit and the other as a means to save his family.

Deliver Us From Evil – Not rated
Wed., March 21: Showings at 3 and 8 p.m. This scalding documentary tells us about Father Oliver O’Grady who raped dozens of children across central California for 20 years and was knowingly moved by his diocese from parish to parish. We hear from victims, theologians, child abuse experts and O’Grady himself, now living free in Ireland.

Happy Feet – Rated PG
Fri., March 23 and Sat., March 24: Showing at 7 p.m. Voices by Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman. You’re going to love these singing, dancing and ecologically alarmed penguins as they frolic under the Antarctic sun.

Little Children – Rated R
Wed., March 28: Showings at 3 and 8 p.m. In this tale of small-town dysfunction, two married suburbanites begin an affair. The film also peers into other houses and other damaged lives, including that of a convicted pedophile who moves in with his mother.

Dreamgirls – Rated PG-13
Fri., March 30 and Sat., March 31: Showings at 7 p.m. Starring Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy, Beyonce Knowles and Jennifer Hudson. The film depicts the rise of a ’60’s Motown-style trio. What happens when one ego-driven singer is bounced from the group?

Babel – Rated R
Wed., April 11: Showings at 3 and 8 p.m. Starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. Four globe-spanning stories are slowly revealed to be linked in this tale of human disconnectedness.

The Pursuit of Happyness – Rated PG-13
Fri., April 13 and Sat., April 14: Showings at 7 p.m. Starring Will Smith and Thandie Newton. This is the story of a single dad in Reagan-era San Francisco who works a brokerage internship by day and shuttles his son to homeless shelters by night.

The Last King of Scotland – Rated R
Wed., April 18: Showings at 3 and 8 p.m. Starring Forrest Whitaker and James McAvoy. A Scots doctor becomes entangled with the barbaric Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin. Flattered at first, he becomes appalled by the dictator’s savagery — and his complicity in it. Can he make amends and escape Uganda alive?

Apocalypto – Rated R
Fri., April 20 and Sat., April 21: Showing at 7 p.m. Starring Rudy Youngblood. Against a backdrop of bloody 16th-century Meso-American violence, a Mayan hunter fights his way back home.

Notes on a Scandal – Rated R
Wed., April 25: Showings at 3 and 8 p.m. Starring Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett. In this tale of loneliness, loyalty, envy and love, a teacher at a London school gets involved with a student. A colleague finds out and blackmails herself into the seducer’s daily life.

The Good Shepherd – Rated R
Fri., April 27 and Sat., April 28: Showings at 7 p.m. Starring Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. The film looks at the early history of the CIA through the actions of a single agent who goes from poetry at Yale to clandestine activities around the world.

Letters of Iwo Jima – Rated R
Fri., May 4 and Sat., May 5: Showing at 7 p.m. Starring Ken Watanabe. The battle for Iwo Jima is seen through the eyes and letters of the Japanese who fought and died there. Clint Eastwood succeeds in giving the complete story he began with Flags of Our Fathers.

When spring semester classes begin on Jan. 17, seniors will face the harsh reality that they will graduate within just a few months.

Indeed, the class of 2007 will have a lot to think about coming into their final semester at Holy Cross this January — how to make the most out of their final semester on the hill and plan for the not-so-distant future.

But seniors will have a chance to reflect on their three-and-a-half years on Mount St. James and what they hope to accomplish not only in their final semester, but also in their life’s work at Senior Convocation on Jan. 16.

The event, now in its third year, was conceived to “reach out specifically to students not only to celebrate all that they have done in the previous three-and-a-half-years, but also to help them focus attention on how they want to best use their final semester here to become the people they aspire to be,” says Thomas Landy, chair of the Senior Convocation Steering Committee and director of the Lilly Vocation Discernment Initiative, which helps students to be more reflective about their life’s work.

“We kept hearing from students that because of fears about what lay beyond and for other reasons, it could be hard to pay attention to what’s happening in the final semester and to really be purposeful about it. Convocation helps focus attention on those questions on the eve of that semester, and provides an enjoyable social event for the class as well,” he says.

Senior Convocation features music performances and speeches from the members of the senior class. Meagan Chuckran ’07, Andrew Jaico ’07, and Kerry Ann Hoffman ’07 will deliver this year’s Scholar Addresses. These students were selected from a pool of applicants to deliver a speech at convocation. They were asked to write about academic, spiritual, service, athletic and leadership experiences they have had over the past few years and describe how those experiences will play a role in their lives after graduation.

“The Convocation represents a wonderful opportunity for the College community to come together to recognize and to celebrate the senior class,” says Mark Freeman, dean of the Class of 2007. “For members of the senior class themselves, it also represents an important opportunity for them to reflect together about their experience at Holy Cross thus far, about how to make the most out their final semester, and about the kinds of lives they hope to lead as they move into the future.”

The class will also hear from Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J., president; Dean Freeman; and Katherine McElaney, director of the Chaplains’ Office.

The convocation will feature musical performances by Tracy Espiritu ’07, Moira Brady ’07, John Leschke ’07, College Organ Scholar Jacob Street ’10, as well as senior members of the College Choir.

“I think that Senior Convocation is a nice chance for our class to get together as a group before we start our last semester. I like that it incorporates speeches and performances from members of our class,” says Marissa Camerota, member of the Convocation Steering Committee.

By Erin O’Connell ’07

Related information:

# Senior Convocation Web site