Williamstown - Williams College President Morton Owen Schapiro will present six of the college's Bicentennial Medals during the college's annual Convocation ceremony Saturday, Sept. 17, at 11 a.m. in Chapin Hall. The event is free and open to the public.
Established in 1993 on the occasion of the college's 200th anniversary, Bicentennial Medals honor members of the Williams community for distinguished achievement in any field of endeavor. The college awarded 23 Bicentennial Medals in 1993 and has added five to seven in each year since. This is the first year that the medals will be presented as part of Convocation.
This year's recipients are:
Bernard Bailyn, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian
Edgar M. Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress
A. R. Gurney, Jr., playwright
Glenn D. Lowry, director of New York's Museum of Modern Art
Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, artist
Marisa E. Reddy Randazzo, threat assessment expert
Bailyn
Bernard Bailyn's time at Williams was cut short by World War II. He left in 1943 to serve in the army and received his diploma in 1945. He then earned his Ph.D. in history at Harvard, where he spent his whole career as one of the country's most influential historians. The author of a dozen books, he won his first Pulitzer Prize for "The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution" (1968), which shifted attention on the motivations of the revolution from economic to ideological.
His second Pulitzer was for "Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution" (1986). The book was based in significant part on the use of new computer technology to analyze a register in London's Public Record Office of every British resident who migrated to the colonies in the three years before the revolution. He complemented this statistical record with lyrical accounts of individual immigrants. He is also former president of the American Historical Association.
Bronfman
Edgar Bronfman, a member of the Williams Class of 1950, was the son of a poor Russian immigrant to Canada and eventually became head of the family business: The Seagram Company. Since 1981 he has also served as president of the World Jewish Congress and one of Jewry's most visible and effective statesmen. Under his leadership, the congress won freedom for Soviet Jews, protections for embattled Jewish communities in South America, and financial reparations from Swiss banks for money taken from Holocaust victims.
He also serves as chairman of the Board of Governors of Hillel, the world's largest campus Jewish organization and he helped found the group called "Israel Birthright," which enables young Jewish adults around the world to make their first trip to Israel. President Clinton appointed him chair of an advisory commission on Holocaust assets in the U.S., which recommended ways to pursue justice for elderly Holocaust survivors and their families and also awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Gurney
After graduating from Williams in 1952, A. R. Gurney served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War and earned a master's degree from the Yale School of Drama. He has gone on to become one of the most prolific and produced playwrights in America. He has examined middle class WASP life both comically and poignantly in more than 40 plays, including "The Dining Room," "The Perfect Party," and "The Cocktail Hour," which are performed across the country and abroad. He has won a Drama Desk Award, a Rockefeller Award, and two Lucille Lortel Awards: one for outstanding play, "The Cocktail Hour," and one for outstanding body of work. In 2000, he won the Distinguished Achievement in the American Theatre Award at the William Inge Theatre Festival and Conference.
Lowry
Glenn Lowry grew up in Williamstown, graduated from Williams in 1976, and earned a Ph.D. in art history at Harvard. While a curator at the National Museum of Asian Art in Washington he oversaw the acquisition of a heralded collection of Persian and Indian painting and produced two catalogs on it. He directed the Art Gallery of Ontario from 1990 until moving to New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1995, where his major initiatives have included the design, building, and funding of the museum's new building. When it opened last year, it was praised as a spectacular new home for one of the world's greatest collections of modern art. And the public has lined up at its door ever since. A strong advocate of contemporary art, he also helped conceive and initiate MoMA's merger with P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center.
Manglano-Ovalle
Inigo Manglano-Ovalle creates art in a variety of media, including painting, video, sculpture, and sound and their combination. His work, as described by one reviewer, combines "heady intellectualism with homeboy street smarts." He has had solo shows across the U.S. and in Europe and been exhibited on three continents, including at MoMA, The Guggenheim, and The Whitney. The MacArthur Foundation awarded him a "genius" grant. The New York Times called his hanging sculpture representing a digital analysis of a thunderstorm cloud "possibly the most beautiful object to be found in a contemporary art gallery in New York." After graduating from Williams in 1983, he earned an M.F.A. at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and serves as associate professor of art at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Randazzo
Marisa Reddy Randazzo focuses on understanding and preventing violent behavior. Until recently, she served as chief research psychologist and research coordinator at the U.S. Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center. She directed all research on assessing threats of all kinds of violence, including assassinations, stalkings, school shootings, workplace shootings, and terrorism. She also translated research findings into training units for law enforcers and regularly led training sessions for local, state, and federal law enforcers, for agencies in the U.S. intelligence community, and for school and corporate security officials.
She briefed members of Congress, the Cabinet, and the White House. Her work is credited with preventing an uncountable number of violent attacks through early detection of homicidal and suicidal tendencies. Randazzo, who now works in private practice, graduated from Williams in 1989 and earned a Ph.D. in psychology at Princeton.
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Lanesborough Town Meeting to Vote Budget, Bylaws & Vehicle Purchases
By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff
LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — Tuesday's annual town meeting includes a $14 million operating budget, new short-term rentals, accessory dwelling units and sign bylaws, and free cash article appropriations.
Voters will gather at Lanesborough Elementary School on June 9 at 6 p.m. to decide on 20 warrant articles.
The fiscal 2027 budget is up a little over 10 percent. Some of the main increases are the Mount Greylock Regional School District and McCann Technical School: the McCann assessment is up more than 30 percent based on factors including enrollment and the school renovation project, and Mount Greylock's is up 11 percent.
Article 11 is for the town to vote to approve from free cash the sum of $16,298.48 for the McCann Technical School roof and window replacement project so as not to impact the budget. Article 3 is appropriate $7,586,284 for Mount Greylock Regional School assessment.
Another notable increase was in life and health insurance, showing an increase of about 26 percent.
Ambulance Director Jen Weber is planning 24-hour coverage, which means more staff and a hike in her budget. One of the articles asks the town to appropriate $234,100 to operate the Ambulance Enterprise Fund for salaries and expenses.
Many town departments are looking for new vehicles. The Fire Department is looking to replace its outdated 1996 fire engine. There are two articles related to the truck at a total of $813,366. Article 12 would transfer $225,000 from free cash into the Fire Truck Stabilization Fund; Article 13 would transfer $605,000 from the fund and authorize the borrowing of $208,366.08.
The total includes a $100,000 contingency cost to cover any additional costs if a 2026 model-year chassis cannot be secured before new emissions standards go into effect in 2027.
The board at its last meeting moved the $225,000 transfer to come before the borrowing article, changing the stabilization number. If the $225,000 is not voted on, then they will amend the next article's number on the floor, subtracting the $225,000. This shows the borrowing number significantly lower.
Article 17 asks for the transfer of $80,000 from free cash to replace a police cruiser.
Police Chief Rob Derksen's aim is to replace one vehicle every other year, meaning the oldest vehicle gets replaced about every 10 years.
He stressed that if delayed this year, the town may have to double up in a future year to get back on schedule, and that paying later usually costs more. The article will ask for $80,000 from free cash, the vehicles used to be funded by the BHRD.
Lastly, the Highway Department is looking to replace a 2014 International dump truck that will be a total of $330,000 and will take two to three years to receive.
Money will be used from last year's approval of $250,000 from free cash for the replacement of a 2012 highway front-end loader that was underspent $49,261. Town meeting is being asked to approve a transfer of $53,274.85 from free cash and the use of $227,464 from funds from the Sale of Town Real Estate to fund the balance.
Other free cash proposals include $1,200 to purchase software to support tracking and ongoing maintenance schedules of town-owned vehicles; $42,000 for the replacement of the Highway Department's storage shed roof, $200,000 to reduce the tax levy.
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