Hillary Clinton Comes To Campus

After the appearance, Chelsea came outside to say hello.

The view from the green:

Chelsea, Hillary and a guest arrive in the Great Hall via the East Asian Studies wing.

The backstory:

Hillary's turn. It'll be a small (~250 people) gathering inside Founders Great Hall -- and with Chelsea and, it is rumored, Dorothy Rodham in tow, the appearance is being promoted by the campaign as a special "women's event". I will leave the insightful questions to our bright student attendees; personally, I would like to ask Mrs. Rodham what it was like to meet Mick & Keith, as documented in that new Scorsese film about The Rolling Stones.


The same K-9 crew from Obama day has returned for the "sweep" of the building during which everyone had to evacuate:

Big screen TV will pipe the proceedings out to the Green:

Excitement: One of the dogs apparently freaked out at a smell emanating from a TV/video cabinet located in a basement classroom...so out went the cabinet:



...meanwhile, the crowd lines up outside the building:


Metal detection upon entry; a glacially polite security official has asked me not to photograph the process. Sorry. Here's the view from inside:

Michelle Obama Visits Campus

She came, they cheered, she left for UPenn and Stephen Colbert.

This appearance came together over the weekend, a "rally/community gathering" for the faithful and the curious. Yesterday brought several well-organized campaign advance people, all of them young (e.g. under 40), caucusing with our Facilities people to ensure that the Field House will be configured just-so. Hoping to be helpful, I ask Jeff, one of the head guys, whether he'd like me to call him on my cell so he's got the number if he needs anything. "Don't bother - I get so many calls it'll get blown out of the cache by dinner." I note that the window on his Blackberry is shattered ("takes a licking and keeps on...functioning properly").

The campaign office in Wynnewood gave away a thousand tickets, and a thousand more were distributed here at HC/BMC.

Step one:

Mark off the entrance to Ryan Gym, through which she'll walk to the Field House. The fanbase starts arriving at around 1 pm.

Secret Service "sweep" of media gear at 2:30. This involves bomb sniffing dogs, in this case provided by several Delaware County law enforcement agencies. When John Edwards stopped by four years ago, one of the dogs freaked out about a particular tumbling mat. "Decaying nitrites in the plastic foam set him off," noted HC Director of Security Tom King. Speaking of whom:

Tom King and his Secret Service-issue lapel pin: "E" means "unarmed"...8 is the code for this event...black ink means "Tuesday."

For the volunteers, this is a chance to get up close and personal, a payback for their tireless commitment. It's also a chance to recruit more volunteers.

Getting ready.

Bico a cappella gets in place to sing the national anthem.

Applause:

And in she comes.

Video and real photos from a real photog soon...check out the homepage for links to news coverage and maybe...just maybe...details of another presidential primary visit, later this week....

-CM

Can We Have Class Outside?

...and after we chat about Hegel let's toss the friz!

Eyes Wide Open

The fifth anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq has come and gone, but the killing continues. Today, an exhibit on Founders Green invites us all to remember those who have fallen.

Details from Emily Higgs '08:

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in cooperation with Haverford College's Center for Peace and Global Citizenship and the Quaker Community of Haverford College will honor fallen U.S. military personnel and Iraqi civilians with its traveling exhibition: Eyes Wide Open: The Cost of War to Pennsylvania, which will be on display at Haverford College on Tuesday, April 8th. Pennsylvania has the third highest number of causalities in the country.

Eyes Wide Open: The Cost of War to Pennsylvania focuses on the specific costs of war to the state. The exhibit includes 183 pairs of boots representing fallen servicemen and women from Pennsylvania, and a visual representation of the Iraqi civilian casualties.

This exhibit is part of AFSC's national Eyes Wide Open: The Human Cost of War network.AFSC, an international social justice organization, created Eyes Wide Open: The Human Cost of War to illustrate the lives lost in the war in Iraq. It first opened in Chicago's Federal Plaza with just over 500 pairs of boots in January 2004. The national exhibit was last displayed on Memorial Day weekend 2007 with over 3,400 pairs of boots. This was the last time that the entire death toll was represented in one location.

Since then the exhibition has been divided into state displays and traveled throughout the nation to smaller cities and towns. All the state exhibits combined now include more than 4,010 pairs of combat boots representing U.S. military casualties, along with a memorial to the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have been killed in the conflict.

Sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee, Haverford College's Center for Peace and Global Citizenship, the Quaker Community of Haverford College.

The American Friends Service Committee is a Quaker organization that includes people of various faiths who are committed to social justice, peace and humanitarian service. Its work is based on the belief in the worth of every person and faith in the power of love to overcome violence and injustice.

The Clothesline

There's a clothesline strung from that big beech tree on Founders Green, tee shirts flapping in the wind.

Here's the word:

"The Women's Center presents The Clothesline Project as the first piece of this year's Rape and Sexual Assault Awareness Month. It is a visual testimony to the prevalence of sexual violence.

We hung it across Founders Green today, and it will remain up for one week. We strongly encourage you to take a few minutes during this week to stop and experience the powerful and emotional display.

The CLP began eighteen years ago in a small community in Massachusetts and has since spread across the country, and into other nations as well. In each display, a clothesline is hung with shirts that are designed and decorated by community members, representing a variety of voices and experiences. Haverford students made all of our t-shirts. Each shirt is decorated with words and/or images to represent a survivor's experience, by the survivor her/himself or by someone who cares about her/him.

According to the CLP's official website ( www.clotheslineproject.org) the purpose of the project is four-fold:

1. To bear witness to the survivors as well as the victims of the war against women

2. To help with the healing process for people who have lost a loved one or are survivors of this violence

3. To educate, document, and raise society's awareness of the extent of the problem of violence against women

4. To provide a nationwide network of support, encouragement and information for other communities starting their own Clothesline Projects.

While these stated goals and reasons for making shirts are clear, we want to clarify that our version of the CLP is not limited in some of the ways the above suggests. We want the Haverford community to feel free to speak to issues of sexual violence in all ways and forms. Sexual violence is of course not restricted to violence against women; it affects all people. The vast majority of this violence is against women, but the men who are survivors/victims are suffering under the same system. Also, it occurs in a variety of forms; the category of sexual violence does not preclude domestic or verbal abuse.

We hope that this will be the beginning of a long-lasting tradition, as each year we will reuse these shirts and hope that we will accumulate more t-shirts from the community. If you would like to create a shirt, please contact us! We can provide you with all basic materials (blank white t-shirt, markers, paints). In a society where one out of two women will be in a violent relationship (National Victim Center), rape and sexual assault are too often ignored.

We feel that the Haverford Community will profoundly benefit from seeing The Clothesline Project in action."