First-Year Programs
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University Magazine Winter 2017 Beginning the Climb F I R S T-Y E A R PROGRAMS Inside This Issue 108 Years of Laurentians The Wheeler/Manning Family Snapchat Unsnapped Year One SLU Hockey’s New Coach Mark Morris Every St. Lawrence student is expected to acquire speaking skills. At St. Lawrence it is not enough to write well; St. Lawrence students must also learn to speak well and express their ideas clearly and confidently in front of groups. We build rhetoric skills into every aspect of our curriculum. The result is that our history majors and our math and science majors graduate with superior rhetorical skills just as do our philosophy, English and government majors. This is a unique distinction. Gilbert C. Maurer ’50 Director & Former COO, Hearst “In Pursuit of Harmony” —TEDxSt.LawrenceU ten speakers—faculty, students and alumni—were selected to present talks at the first TEDxStLawrenceU titled “In Pursuit of Harmony,” on November 12, 2016, in Peterson-Kermani Hall. The newly formed TEDxSt.LawrenceU student club has begun organizing for a second event in 2017. Photo: Anabel Encarnación '17 presented "The Afro-Hyphen: Understanding Black Identities" at the event. Wınter ’17 First Things First: 20 Shaking the High School Out St. Lawrence University’s First-Year Program continues to evolve after 30 years. 11 Decades of One Laurentian Family 50 Celebrating the Wheeler/Manning Family 108 Years Departments 4 Generations 6 27 1 2 A Word From the President 28 Philanthropy in Action 34 Class Notes LAURENTIAN Students COUPLES 16 On Campus 32 On Social Media 69 From the Archives 16 Sports 33 First Person On the Cover: Emily Viehl ’19 finding her hold on the Munro Family Climbing Wall. Emily’s First-Year Program was titled An Outdoor State of Mind in which students explored how the development of outdoor skills (and outdoor leadership skills) affect the way we see ourselves, our physical bodies, and our well-being. A Word From the President Hockey Night in Canton f there were a North Country And yet, all who enter and leave jazz tradition, equivalent to the St. Lawrence, inevitably, learn a little music evoked by the Mississippi something about hockey and acquire Valley, it would be expressed as some agreeable feeling for a beloved ice hockey. The pleasure of college tradition, played by a varsity men’s syncopation and groove are team on campus since the 1920s and inside that distinctive game, played at from the 1970s by women. Ibebop speed. Even when the goalie slaps Why is St. Lawrence hockey and slaps that oversized stick on the ice to noteworthy? What is there to think about signal the end of a penalty kill, a when the community gathers in Appleton percussive beaver-tail sound beating Arena, or is the point not to think too upstream, you can hear the cadence of a much? Is there anything to it other than kick drum in a jazz set. an easy vicarious brush with intense Hockey, like the term jazz itself, is an physicality and the release of otherwise odd word. There is no trace of linguistic tethered emotions? At St. Lawrence, we origin, not in English, French, Dutch, or live in a serious academic setting, Algonquin. The game’s history, however, immersed daily in concepts, motifs, has a more confident beginning on the analysis, discourse, and creative frozen St. Lawrence River around the expression. How do you “read” this game time of Canada’s national self- if the story is new to you or how do you determination as a dominion, rejecting rediscover it if it’s a familiar old book? its status as a colony in 1867. To start, I like seeing fresh, untouched, It seems that a convergence of early and glimmering ice, immediately before The majority of Laurentians have athletic influences from Celtic, Northern the competing teams appear from their European, and Native American cultures locker rooms. Maybe it’s like Emerson’s never played ice hockey, so for lots eventually produced a game played by preference for the sanctuary quiet before skaters, carrying bent sticks, chasing a the start of church. The St. Lawrence of people it is an untried, purely small petrified disk, while other emerging “barn,” as hockey insiders often call sports incorporated a lively, pliant ball their home rink, preserves this quality of second-hand experience. Many with more predictable spin. There are still contemplative stillness when people forerunner remnants of hockey called arrive early, different from the feeling of have never seen hockey until their shinny and bandy preserved on frozen wired expectancy now commonplace in outdoor patches. the rock concert atmosphere of most first semester of college life, The majority of Laurentians have never sports arenas. played ice hockey, so for lots of people it The father of a hockey student, who is sometimes beginning their is an untried, purely second-hand himself a scholar of the game, once said experience. Many have never seen hockey to me that he loved “the metaphysic” of spectator’s career with one of the until their first semester of college life, Appleton. It would be overreaching and, sometimes beginning their spectator’s therefore, contradictory to the most legendary college rivalries career with one of the most legendary transcendent golden mean, for anyone college rivalries known in America, to claim Aristotle’s presence in this known in America. usually played right before fall finals and corner of campus. And yet, before the the first big snow—the Clarkson game. action begins, there is something 2 ST. LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE | WINTER 2017 ST. LAWRENCE university magazine A Word From the President VOLUME LXVI | NUMBER 1 | 2017 VICE PRESIDENT FOR COMMUNICATIONS Melissa Farmer Richards subliminal about the knotty-pine instead, a hive, an ordered purpose; there EDITOR-IN-CHIEF woodwork and the empty surface is a dance, and the swarm is trying to tell Deborah Dudley beneath, a flat, unscratched looking- each other something. The journal page CONTRIBUTING WRITERS glass, as if bringing an Adirondack pond turns, and the writer scratches out the Ryan Deuel indoors to admire on a cold night. new words: elegant, flowing, humbling, Meg Bernier Keniston ’07, M’09 Once the puck drops, the game erupts precise, and adaptive. June Peoples (1963-2016) into a state of chaos, which by all As eye and mind adjust to the drama on appearances will seem abstract, merely ice, also to the full-blown sensory PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR formless athletic power and speed. What environment on the safer side of the glass, Tara Freeman to think or notice, whether it’s your first we begin to find and follow the puck game or one among the hundreds more easily. It can rip the air with the CREATIVE SERVICES DIRECTOR Ed Lemire before? An observer’s journal entry cleanest aerodynamics or wobble begins in staccato syntax, no full dangerously like a slow-motion bad day. ART DIRECTOR sentences, just words: hard, scrappy, The cloud of unknowing descends upon Jeff Macharyas profane, intense, and discordant. All player and observer for about as long as a seems frantic and quickly exhausting, human can take intense uncertainty. ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Susan LaVean and then the next wave jumps the boards Hockey requires, more than any other to renew the desperate hopes for game, intervals of rest. And this CLASS NOTES MANAGER possessing an object worth no more than necessary structure is one of the most Anna Barnard a piece of kettle coal. The stakes are high important lessons drawn from the for something so small. lecture hall of college hockey. The curious ratio of inverse effect, that Once the puck drops, the game oftentimes, the less you do, the more insight and productivity you gain, is a erupts into a state of chaos. proof-point easy to miss during an hour of top speed and highly technical performance. Yes, Coltrane and Dizzy St. Lawrence University does not discriminate against students, faculty, staff or other beneficiaries Trained to be theoretical (as are the took breaks, even while in the music. on the basis of race, color, gender, religion, age, best jazz players), can we find a pattern Hockey represents a quiet irony or, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or national or ethnic origin in admission to, or access in this scene of blinding hyperactivity? better, a wise counterpoint to the to, or treatment, or employment in its programs and activities. AA/EEO. For further information, After a while, strangely perhaps, a dizzying pace of riffs, licks, and contact the University’s Age Act, Title IX and student’s intellectual capacity to analyze improvisation today, when the Section 504 coordinator, 315-229-5656. A complete policy listing is available at the action may seep into the prevailing adage everywhere, especially www.stlawu.edu/policies. experience—ah-ha, a paradox on the on a college campus, is “to power Published by St. Lawrence University four times yearly: January, April, July and October. Periodical page. The perpetual motion of twelve through,” no matter what. Hockey, as it postage is paid at Canton, New York 13617 and at players, colliding, spinning, falling, turns out, resembles some of the best additional mailing offices. (ISSN 0745-3582) Printed in U.S.A. All opinions expressed in signed articles are while the most heavily armored of them courses taught at St. Lawrence because those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors and/or St. Lawrence University. also darts sideways like a bumble bee in it abides the wisdom of self-reflection, Editorial offices: Office of University Communications, a jar, suddenly breaks into a design, not how getting off the ice, taking a breath, St.