CCE News

Edwar Aviles-Mercedes is a Posse scholar at Bard who is determined to pay it forward by empowering Latinx students and asylum seekers.

The Center for the Study of Hate brings together multiple disciplines to examine the history and politics of bigotry and how to combat it.

Bard College has contributed well over 1,000 donations to the Nourish Your Neighbor Food Drive, eclipsing last year's campus total. A joint effort of Bard organizers and community partners, the local food drive has collected about 7,000 nonperishable items for families in need.

Bard College has contributed 1,267 items to the Nourish Your Neighbor Food Drive, eclipsing last year’s campus total. A joint effort of Bard organizers and community partners, the local food drive has so far collected about 7,000 donations of nonperishable foods.

The campus effort has been led by the Bard College Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, Center for Civic Engagement, and Office of Sustainability. Community partners include the Ascienzo Family Foundation, Red Hook Rotary, and Red Hook Faculty Association. Organizers have focused this year on a healthier, more sustainable food drive. Items were collected in several locations on campus and in the Red Hook schools. The Ascienzo Foundation has matched each healthy, nonperishable item with a $1 donation for food vouchers for families in need.

The number of items donated on campus to date has eclipsed last year’s total by 126 items. Student-athletes were leaders in the food drive. The baseball team collected the most items—352—but the swimming team’s total of 313 was perhaps the most impressive because the average donation was 28 items per person.

Bard students, staff, and faculty celebrated the success of the food drive with a dodgeball tournament on Sunday, December 16. The victors collected premium Bard Athletics gear and a $25 gift certificate to Salvatore’s Italian Specialties, a local sponsor of Bard Athletics.

Donations are still coming in. Though the campus food drive officially ended on December 14, Bard EATS will be clearing out the Green Onion Grocer this week and donating everything—well over 100 items—to the food drive. The Center for Civic Engagement will still accept donations for a limited time. Please contact Sarah deVeer at [email protected] if you have any remaining items.
 

Bard College Berlin student Sara Mardini, who spent three months in a Greek jail for her work aiding refugees, has been released on bail. Here she tells her story to the BBC.

Sara Mardini, who spent three months in Greek detention for her search and rescue work with an NGO aiding refugees, has been released on bail.

Alicia Salvatore doesn’t mince words when she talks about how a unique early college program in Hudson helped her successfully make the transition to a four-year college. “Without the Bard program, college would have been a slap in the face,” Salvatore says. “The faculty at Bard Early College Hudson certainly don’t treat you like a high school student. From day one we were writing, reading, and discussing topics that I’d never even thought of before.”

Salvatore, now a first-year student at Marist College, is one of more than 50 area students who have attended Bard Early College Hudson since its inception in 2016. Located in Hudson’s Warren Street business district, Bard Early College Hudson is a partnership of Bard College, the Hudson City School District, and Questar III BOCES, with the support of the Galvan Foundation, and is open to local high school juniors and seniors. Students remain a part of their local high schools for their morning classes and afterschool activities while spending the second half of their academic day as undergraduates at Bard Early College Hudson. They participate in small, seminar-style classes with Bard faculty, most of whom also teach at Bard’s main campus. Course offerings in recent years have included classes in the humanities, psychology, U.S. history, theater, art history, and nonfiction writing.

Students at Bard Early College Hudson can earn up to 26 transferable college credits at no cost. In Salvatore’s case, she will be a sophomore by this spring, thanks in large part to the credits she earned through the Bard Early College program, all of which were accepted by Marist.

All of Salvatore’s classmates from the 2017–18 senior class at Bard Early College Hudson are now attending college full time at such institutions as Pace University, SUNY New Paltz, and Tufts University.

Christine Jackson, who attended the Bard program while a senior at Coxsackie-Athens High School, is now in her first year at Hartwick College. Jackson said she feels undaunted by the assignments at Hartwick thanks to her early college experience. “Writing papers here is a breeze, I must say,” Jackson said. “One of my professors said to write a five-page paper, and I thought, ‘That’s nothing.’” 

Although the Hudson campus of Bard Early College is still too new to report college completion rates, data from Bard Early College programs in New York, Baltimore, Cleveland, and New Orleans show that the Bard Early College experience has a dramatic impact on students’ ability to succeed in and complete bachelor’s degree programs at four-year institutions. A recent analysis found that more than 90 percent of Bard Early College graduates complete a bachelor’s degree within six years, compared to roughly 60 percent of high school graduates nationally.

“Gaining almost a year of college credit for free is a huge benefit of the program,” said Michael Sadowski, executive director of Bard Early College Hudson, who in addition to Bard has taught at both Harvard and Stanford Universities. “But even more important are the skills students learn to succeed and persevere in college.”

Concerned about college completion rates in Hudson, where only about 25 percent of residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher, the Galvan Foundation partnered with Bard College, the Hudson City School District, and Questar III BOCES to establish Bard Early College Hudson in 2016. Galvan has committed $700,000 in start-up funding for the program and provides the program’s classroom space in downtown Hudson. Other donors have included the Bank of Greene County Charitable Foundation, the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation’s Hudson Schools Arts & Humanities Endowment Fund, the Children’s Foundation of Columbia County, the HRBT Foundation, Price Chopper’s Golub Foundation, and the Rheinstrom Hill Community Foundation.

How to Apply
Students can begin Bard Early College Hudson in either their junior or senior year of high school and can apply through school districts that participate in the program. Over the past three years, students from Cairo-Durham, Coxsackie-Athens, Germantown, Hudson, Ichabod Crane, and Taconic Hills High Schools have participated. Currently, all participating districts are located within the Questar III BOCES service area (Columbia, Greene, and Rensselaer Counties), but Bard is currently in contact with school districts in Dutchess and Ulster Counties to offer the program to students in a wider geographical area beginning in 2019. Interested students or families should check with administrators or guidance staff to find out if their school participates. For more information about Bard Early College Hudson, visit bhsec.bard.edu/hudson/.
 

On Saturday, December 8, the Bard Debate Union hosted an online debate between Red Hook High School (in New York's Hudson Valley) and the Good Shepherd's Swedish School (in the West Bank) in the Barringer House Global Classroom at Bard College.

The debate was organized by Bard College senior Templeton Kay and Al-Quds Bard sophomore Dalia Alayassa. Templeton, a Red Hook High School alumnus, is an active member of the Bard Debate Union, soon to represent Bard at the World Universities Debating Championship in Cape Town, South Africa. Dalia, an alumna of the Good Shepherd's school and a decorated high school debater, is currently a leading member of the Al-Quds Bard Debate Union. Both Templeton and Dalia are alumni of Bard's annual Get Engaged Student Leadership Conference.

The topic of the debate was "This house regrets the Arab Spring." The Good Shepherd's team argued in favor of the topic and Red Hook argued against. With the help of Templeton and Dalia, the teams had spent spent over a month researching and preparing. Bard Debate Union Codirector David Register, along with Bard Debate Union members Estrella Frankenfeld '20 and Miranda Kerrigan '21, judged the debate. Several other members of the Bard Debate Union attended. Red Hook was pronounced the winner after a close contest.

"The debate was a fantastic example of the power of student leadership and outreach," says David Register. "Through this debate, not only were Bard students able to collaborate with Al-Quds Bard students, but the communities of each were able to join into conversation as well, discussing a topic of tremendous political significance."

"We could not be more proud of these students—from Bard, Al-Quds Bard, Red Hook, and Good Shepherd's," says Codirector Ruth Zisman. "Events like this only strengthen our commitment to both local and global engagement and reaffirm the need to make debate, dialogue, and public discourse about difficult topics accessible to communities that might not otherwise have access to it."

This concludes the Bard Debate Union's programming for the fall 2018 semester. Their spring events include the Annual Middle School and High School Debate Tournament and the Annual International Bard Network Debate Conference in Budapest, Hungary. Visit debate.bard.edu for a full list of events.
 

On December 8, the Bard Debate Union hosted an online debate between Red Hook High School (in New York’s Hudson Valley) and the Good Shepherd’s Swedish School (in the West Bank).

Sara Mardini, a Bard College Berlin student and Syrian refugee, is among four humanitarian workers to be released on bail following more than three months in pretrial detention.

Bard students, staff, and faculty gathered for a Commemoration Walk on the afternoon of Monday, December 3, visiting new signage around campus designed to encourage critical reflection on Bard’s history. This is a project of students in Professor Myra Young Armstead’s Inclusion at Bard course, part of a series of Engaged Liberal Arts and Sciences courses at Bard, sponsored by the Center for Civic Engagement. The new placards on campus engage community practices of public memory, recognition, and forgetting.
 
A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held at each location, with a historical presentation by students and remarks by a member of the faculty. Professor Armstead kicked off the event at the marker outside Aspinwall Hall highlighting John Lloyd Aspinwall, an early benefactor of St. Stephen’s College, Bard’s first incarnation. Like many antebellum donors to the nation’s colleges and universities, Aspinwall owed a significant portion of his wealth to commercial ventures that profited from slavery in the Americas.
 
A second placard near the library, overlooking Kline with a view of the Catskills, is dedicated to Vine Deloria Sr., Class of 1926. Deloria was an exceptional athlete at St. Stephen’s whose life and work were defined by a proud Native American cross-culturalism. He became the Episcopal archdeacon of Indian parishes in South Dakota and a vocal advocate for tribal governments.
 
A third placard near the Chapel of the Holy Innocents honors Matthew McDuffie, Class of 1889. Born a slave in South Carolina, he was literate by the age of five. Thanks to the efforts of his diligent parents, McDuffie was able to take advantage of opportunities for blacks that opened after the Civil War. He was one of a cohort of four African American students to integrate St. Stephen’s in 1884. McDuffie experienced discrimination from his classmates but he persisted in his education without protest, and went on to become the first resident priest of St. James Episcopal Church in Tampa, Florida.