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Williams College Chaplain Richard E. Spalding gives the invocation.
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Williams College President Adam Falk warns students to avoid the senior slump.
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Bicentennial Medal winners, from left, Steven Rothstein and David Spadafora
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Bicentennial Medal winners, from left, Ethan Zuckerman and Kenard Gibbs.
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Bicentennial Medal winners, from left, Mary Cotton and Kristen Anderson-Lopez.
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Williams College Council Co-Presidents Emily Dzieciatko and Erica L. Moszkowski address Convocation.
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Williams Seniors Urged to Be Open to New Experiences

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
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Bicentennial Medal winner Ethan Zuckerman delivers the convocation address on Saturday.
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — As the Williams College senior class entered the home stretch of its collegiate career, the college's president reminded the students not to coast.
 
Adam Falk used Saturday's Convocation to point out that it was natural for members of the class of 2015 to enter their final year on campus with a sense of what to expect and an expectation of what the year will be like.
 
"Resist that particular impulse," Falk told the students gathered in Chapin Hall. "It's natural to want to be comfortable, but you didn't come to Williams to be comfortable."
 
Falk urged the students to approach their last months on campus with a sense of openness that will serve them well in the "real world" many will enter in June.
 
"I hope that in your last year at Williams ... you'll become someone ever open to seeking new experiences and understandings."
 
Convocation day at the college, which included an afternoon ceremony to dedicate the new Sawyer Library, saw the return of six distinguished alumni to receive Williams' Bicentennial Medals at the morning ceremony.
 
Falk presented the medals to librarian and scholar David Spadafora of the class of 1972, educator Steven Rothstein '78, media mogul Kenard Gibbs '86, Internet scholar Ethan Zuckerman '93, composer and Oscar-winner Kristen Anderson-Lopez '94, and author and entrpreneur Mary Cotton, 2001.
 
"Six outstanding alumni ... none of them could have imagined where their lives would lead or how experiences here would guide them in that path," Falk said.
 
Zuckerman delivered the convocation address on behalf of the six honorees, and he picked up on Falk's theme of openness, imploring the students to be open to new ideas and engagements with their classmates.
 
Zuckerman, who made his mark as a Web developer and advocates for free expression online through his direction of the Center for Civic Media at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that while humans have access to more information than ever, people are not necessarily receptive to it.
 
"When given a wealth of choices, we still tend to choose the familiar," Zuckerman said. "This is a basic human tendancy — to pay attention to our tribe."
 
But an interconnected world demands that its citizens pay attention to what's going on outside that tribe, Zuckerman said.
 
He said the Williams seniors can practice that engagement by making connections with their fellow students, who come from 49 states and dozens of countries around the world, and continuing to engage different people throughout their lives.
 
Recalling the apocryphal tale of the theft of Williams' library for the founding of Amherst College, Zuckerman said that story was from a time when information was scarce, but even then, the loss of a few hundred books was not as significant as "the loss of one quarter of the student body."

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Williams Seeking Town Approval for New Indoor Practice Facility

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Planning Board last week gave Williams College the first approval it needs to build a 55,000-square foot indoor athletic facility on the north side of its campus.
 
Over the strenuous objection of a Southworth Street resident, the board found that the college's plan for a "multipurpose recreation center" or MRC off Stetson Road has adequate on-site parking to accommodate its use as an indoor practice facility to replace Towne Field House, which has been out of commission since last spring and was demolished this winter.
 
The college plans a pre-engineered metal that includes a 200-meter track ringing several tennis courts, storage for teams, restrooms, showers and a training room. The athletic surface also would be used as winter practice space for the school's softball and baseball teams, who, like tennis and indoor track, used to use the field house off Latham Street.
 
Since the planned structure is in the watershed of Eph's Pond, the college will be before the Conservation Commission with the project.
 
It also will be before the Zoning Board of Appeals, on Thursday, for a Development Plan Review and relief from the town bylaw limiting buildings to 35 feet in height. The new structure is designed to have a maximum height of 53 1/2 feet and an average roof height of 47 feet.
 
The additional height is needed for two reasons: to meet the NCAA requirement for clearance above center court on a competitive tennis surface (35 feet) and to include, on one side, a climbing wall, an element also lost when Towne Field House was razed.
 
The Planning Board had a few issues to resolve at its March 12 meeting. The most heavily discussed involved the parking determination for a use not listed in the town's zoning bylaws and a decision on whether access from town roads to the building site in the middle of Williams' campus was "functionally equivalent" to the access that would be required under the town's subdivision rules and regulations.
 
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