Williams College to Award Annual Bicentennial Medals

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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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Crosby/Conte Statement of Interest Gets OK From Council

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff

Architect Carl Franceschi and Superintendent Joseph Curtis address the City Council on Tuesday.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — With the approval of all necessary bodies, the school district will submit a statement of interest for a combined build on the site of Crosby Elementary School.

The City Council on Tuesday unanimously gave Superintendent Joseph Curtis the green light for the SOI to the Massachusetts School Building Authority by April 12.

"The statement I would make is we should have learned by our mistakes in the past," Mayor Peter Marchetti said.

"Twenty years ago, we could have built a wastewater treatment plant a lot cheaper than we could a couple of years ago and we can wait 10 years and get in line to build a new school or we can start now and, hopefully, when we get into that process and be able to do it cheaper then we can do a decade from now."

The proposal rebuilds Conte Community School and Crosby on the West Street site with shared facilities, as both have outdated campuses, insufficient layouts, and need significant repair. A rough timeline shows a feasibility study in 2026 with design and construction ranging from 2027 to 2028.

Following the SOI, the next step would be a feasibility study to determine the specific needs and parameters of the project, costing about $1.5 million and partially covered by the state. There is a potential for 80 percent reimbursement through the MSBA, who will decide on the project by the end of the year.

Earlier this month, city officials took a tour of both schools — some were shocked at the conditions students are learning in.

Silvio O. Conte Community School, built in 1974, is a 69,500 square foot open-concept facility that was popular in the 1960s and 1970s but the quad classroom layout poses educational and security risks.  John C. Crosby Elementary School, built in 1962, is about 69,800 square feet and was built as a junior high school so several aspects had to be adapted for elementary use.

Ward 6 Councilor Dina Lampiasi said the walkthrough was "striking" at points, particularly at Conte, and had her thinking there was no way she would want her child educated there. She recognized that not everyone has the ability to choose where their child goes to school and "we need to do better."

"The two facilities that we are looking at I think are a great place to start," she said.

"As the Ward 6 councilor, this is where my residents and my students are going to school so selfishly yes, I want to see this project happen but looking at how we are educating Pittsfield students, this is going to give us a big bang for our buck and it's going to help improve the educational experience of a vast group of students in our city."

During the tour, Ward 5 Councilor Patrick Kavey, saw where it could be difficult to pay attention in an open classroom with so much going on and imagined the struggle for students.

Councilor at Large Alisa Costa said, "we cannot afford not to do this" because the city needs schools that people want their children to attend.

"I know that every financial decision we make is tough but we have to figure this out. If the roof on your house were crumbling in, you'd have to figure it out and that's where we're at and we can't afford to wait any longer," she said.

"We can't afford for the sake of the children going to our schools, for the sake of our city that we want to see grow so we have to build a city where people want to go."

Councilor at Large Kathy Amuso, who served on the School Building Needs Commission for about 18 years, pointed out that the panel identified a need to address Conte in 2008.

Curtis addressed questions about the fate of Conte if the build were to happen, explaining that it could be kept as an active space for community use, house the Eagle Academy or the Adult Learning Center, or house the central offices.

School attendance zones are a point of discussion for the entire school district and for this project.

"At one time I think we had 36 school buildings and now we have essentially 12 and then it would go down again but in a thoughtful way," Curtis said.

Currently, eight attendance zones designate where a student will go to elementary school. Part of the vision is to collapse those zones into three with hopes of building a plan that incorporates partner schools in each attendance zone.

"I think that going from eight schools to three would be easier to maintain and I think it would make more sense but in order to get there we will have to build these buildings and we will have to spend money," Kavey said, hoping that the city would receive the 80 percent reimbursement it is vying for.

This plan for West Street, which is subject to change, has the potential to house grades pre-kindergarten to first grade in one school and Grades 2 to 4 in another with both having their own identities and administrations. 

The districtwide vision for middle school students is to divide all students into a grade five and six school and a grade seven and eight school to ensure equity.

"The vagueness of what that looks like is worrisome to some folks that I have talked to," Lampiasi said.

Curtis emphasized that these changes would have to be voted on by the School Committee and include public input.

"We've talked about it conceptually just to illustrate a possible grade span allocation," he said. "No decisions have been made at all by the School Committee, even the grade-span proposals."

School Committee Chair William Cameron said it is civic duty of the committee and council to move forward with the SOI.
 
He explained that when seven of the city's schools were renovated in the late 1990s, the community schools were only 25 years old and Crosby was 35 years old.  The commonwealth did not deem them to be sorely in need of renovation or replacement.
 
"Now 25 years later, Crosby is physically decrepit and an eyesore. It houses students ages three to 11 in a facility meant for use by teenagers,"
 
"Conte and Morningside opened in the mid-1970s. They were built as then state-of-the-art schools featuring large elongated rectangles of open instructional space. Over almost half a century, these physical arrangements have proven to be inadequate for teaching core academic skills effectively to students, many of whom need extra services and a distraction-free environment if they are to realize their full academic potential."
 
He said  the proposal addresses a serious problem in the "economically poorest, most ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse area" of the city.
 
Cameron added that these facilities have been deemed unsatisfactory and need to be replaced as part of the project to reimagine how the city can best meet the educational needs of its students.  He said it is the local government's job to move this project forward to ensure that children learn in an environment that is conducive to their thriving academically.
 
"The process of meeting this responsibility needs to begin here tonight," he said.
 
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