Wednesday, January 24, 2007

It's a boy for Sonia!

Big Congratulations to Sonia and David Fried Oppenheim!

Samson Elias Fried Oppenheim was born Sunday October 15, 2006 to Sonia and David Fried Oppenheim. The family is happy & healthy and currently living in Easthampton.

Sonia also writes that her and her husband currently run the Pioneer Arts Center of Easthampton (PACE), which is a community performance space promoting community and self-expression through the arts.


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Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Congrats to Chris Gajilan


Chris Gajilan ('99) won an emmy last September at the 27th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards for "Outstanding Feature Story in a Regularly Scheduled Newscast" for her work as producer on Anderson Cooper 360. The feature story was Charity Hospital.

Congrats Chris!!!!!

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Monday, January 22, 2007

Fantastic NYTimes Article about '97 Alum

From the Smith Press Release: In Clarkston, Georgia, soccer coach and Smith alumna Luma Mufleh '97, spends as much time helping her players' families build new lives as coaching. Her team is made up of refugees from war-torn countries around the world -- some enduring unimaginable hardship to get to America.

Refugees Find Hostility and Hope on Soccer Field

CLARKSTON, Ga., Jan. 20 — Early last summer the mayor of this small town east of Atlanta issued a decree: no more soccer in the town park.
“There will be nothing but baseball and football down there as long as I am mayor,” Lee Swaney, a retired owner of a heating and air-conditioning business, told the local paper. “Those fields weren’t made for soccer.”

In Clarkston, soccer means something different than in most places. As many as half the residents are refugees from war-torn countries around the world. Placed by resettlement agencies in a once mostly white town, they receive 90 days of assistance from the government and then are left to fend for themselves. Soccer is their game.

But to many longtime residents, soccer is a sign of unwanted change, as unfamiliar and threatening as the hijabs worn by the Muslim women in town. It’s not football. It’s not baseball. The fields weren’t made for it. Mayor Swaney even has a name for the sort of folks who play the game: the soccer people.

Rest of the Article

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Thursday, January 18, 2007

Smith & Hampshire colleges prepare for visit by the Dalai Lama


Smith College, Hampshire College and the Tibetan Association of Western Massachusetts will welcome the 14th Dalai Lama to the Pioneer Valley on Wednesday, May 9, 2007. This momentous visit by the leader of the Tibetan people and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize recognizes the colleges’ thriving exchange program with exiled Tibetan scholars in India. Years ago, Hampshire began the Five College Tibetan Studies in India Program, and since then the Dalai Lama has followed its growth as Smith collaborated with Hampshire to sustain the annual academic exchange.

Smith President Carol T. Christ and Hampshire President Ralph J. Hexter will host the daylong visit, during which His Holiness the Dalai Lama is expected to deliver a talk to thousands of students, faculty, staff and invited guests from the two colleges and the Tibetan community. That talk will take place at Smith’s Indoor Track and Tennis facility (ITT). Although the audience will be restricted to members of the two college communities, the event will be broadcast live on local television and accessible to anyone in the Pioneer Valley.

During the visit, His Holiness the Dalai Lama will also address an audience of invited members of the area’s strong Tibetan community.

Further information about the visit >>

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Friday, January 12, 2007

Big End of Week News Post

Smith Athletics Receives Jostens/NADIIIAA Community Service Award

Northampton, MA: Smith College was honored this as a recipient of this year’s Jostens/National Association of Division III Athletic Administrators (NADIIIAA) Community Service Award at a reception held during the NCAA National Convention in Orlando, Florida. Smith student-athletes were recognized for their impressive community service project performed during the 2005-06 academic year.

Rest of Story >>>




Movie patrons say sad goodbye

NORTHAMPTON - The ghosts were out in force last night for the last picture show at the Academy of Music.

Although the audience for "Casino Royale" occupied just a fraction of its 804 seats, the theater seemed haunted by the spirits of the performers who have appeared on its stage and screen and the people who have worked there over the academy's 117-year history.

The board of trustees announced this week that the academy would stop showing films after last night and remain closed for the foreseeable future.

Rest of the story >>>

I am so sad to see that the Academy of Music is closing. One of my fondest memories from Smith is stumbling down there during finals for a study break movie and being greeted by the Kids In the Hall movie. We laughed so hard we cried and totally feel in love with this unique place. Anyone else have fond Academy memories?




Smith Art Museum Exhibit: Godless Communists - Soviet Antireligious Propaganda

On view November 10, 2006 - February 11, 2007, Godless Communists: Soviet Antireligious Propaganda features graphic posters that were used to promote a harshly antireligious agenda between 1918 and 1939.

The exhibition includes 17 recently conserved posters given to Smith in 1964 by Mrs. D. Spencer Byard (Margaret Mather, class of 1933), in addition to loans from other public collections.

Recent Press on the exhibit >>>
Smith Museum Site for the exhibit

This seems like a really interesting exhibition and it is getting a lot of press. If you are in the area it may be something to check out. Also the Smith Museum is a must stop if you are in the area and have not checked out the art building since the remodel. It really is amazing and beautiful what they did and so much nicer than when we were on campus.



Does anyone know what this refers to? I got this little tidbit from my google news feed and I'm just really curious.

Get Naked. Get Married. Get on TV.

The WE channel will be airing three competition-esque shows: A swimsuit makeover show, a lingerie makeover show and a wedding dress special. Flummoxed by their inability to cast the show entirely from Smith College, the casting directors asked FBLA to lend a hand. More

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Thursday, January 11, 2007

New Smith College Study

Don't Tell Her She Can't Succeed; Smith College Study Reveals How Stereotypical Messages Affect Women's Brains

NORTHAMPTON, Mass., Jan. 4 (AScribe Newswire) -- When told she will not succeed, a woman's brain can take on an emotional burden that inhibits her ability to succeed, according to a Smith College study that documents, for the first time, the brain regions affected by positive and negative stereotypes.

Researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to document the brain activity in 54 women between the ages of 18 and 34, after they read a stereotypical message about women and then performed a spatial reasoning task. The task required them to view pictures of objects and describe what the objects would look like from different, imagined perspectives.

The group exposed to a negative stereotype made 6 percent more errors than the group exposed to a neutral message, and 14 percent more errors than the group exposed to a positive stereotype. No difference was found in the response time across groups.

Poor performance in the negative stereotype group corresponded to increased activity in brain regions associated with increased emotional load. By contrast, the better performance of women in the positive stereotype group was associated with increased activity in visual processing areas and complex short-term memory processing areas.

"The results demonstrate the remarkable power of culture in determining performance," said Maryjane Wraga, associate professor of psychology at Smith, and lead author on the study, published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

Read the rest of the article

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Monday, January 01, 2007

HAPPY NEW YEAR!


Best wishes to the class of 1999 and their family and friends for a healthy and happy new year!

There is much news to catch up and the blog should be more active in the coming months. Reunion is just over 2 years away, so expect to hear more from us soon concerning planning and fundraising.

Cheers everyone!

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