Associate Professor of Political Science, Darel Paul will give a Lecture

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. - Associate Professor of Political Science Darel Paul will give the second lecture in the Williams College Annual Faculty Lecture Series on Thursday February 19, at 4 p.m. in The Science Center's Wege Auditorium. His talk is titled "Beyond Tolerance: Capitalism, Culture, and the Politics of Gay Marriage." The public is invited and the talk is free. A reception will follow the talk.

"Growing support for same-sex marriage in the United States is ostensibly the product of an expanding social commitment to the principle of toleration," writes Paul. "Such an argument does little justice, however, to the cultural and material foundations of opinion and politics surrounding same-sex marriage."

In exploring a number of the questions raised - including why legal recognition of same-sex relationships is concentrated in the Northeast and the Pacific West and why same-sex marriage is popular with the professional class but not the working class? Paul says, "We must go beyond tolerance and put same-sex marriage in its cultural and material context, particularly as a product of recent transformations in American capitalism and the American family politically mediated through geography and class."

Paul is the author of "Rescaling International Political Economy: Subnational States and the Regulation of the Global Political Economy" and numerous articles, which have appeared in Urban Studies, Political Geography, Review of International Political Economy, and Review of International Studies. His research interests lie in the contemporary process of globalization, urbanization and commodity deflation in the global political economy.

Paul received his B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and his M.A from The George Washington University.
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Williamstown Planning Board Narrowing in on Subdivision Bylaw Changes

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Planning Board late last month discussed specific features of what it plans to pass as a new subdivision control bylaw this year.
 
The board long has discussed the complex set of regulations as being out of date and cumbersome to both potential developers and the board itself, which has needed to hear requests for waivers of outdated rules for the handful of residential subdivisions that have been proposed in town in recent years.
 
This spring, the town engaged consultants from Northampton's Dodson and Flinker Landscape Architecture and Planning to go through the existing bylaw, compare it to more contemporary regulations in other communities and help craft a revised bylaw.
 
Unlike the zoning bylaw, where amendments require approval of town meeting, the subdivision control bylaw is a creation of the Planning Board, which can make changes on its own after a public hearing process it hopes to complete this year.
 
At a special Planning Board meeting on May 26, Dillon Sussman of Dodson and Flinker and his colleagues walked the board through a dozen different decision points that the board must resolve — either by leaving the bylaw as is or making a change — and offered suggestions based on best practices.
 
All of the issues are technical and ranged from the fundamental, like how the bylaw will define types of subdivisions, to the highly specific, like what turning radii will be required in new streets that are constructed to serve planned developments.
 
One example of a topic that came up in the recent approval of a four-home subdivision off Summer Street is stormwater management.
 
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