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Speculating on America's obsession with movie box-office weekend returns, Hamilton anthropology professor Douglas Raybeck suggested that it is our means of diverting attention from threatening world events over which we have no control. In "Behind America's box-office obsession" in the Christian Science Monitor on Friday, June 1, Raybeck said "We display an increasing ability to take the trivial very seriously, in no small part because the trivial is understandable and non-threatening."

A scholarship established to provide need-based support for students attending Hamilton, with preference given to students coming from Clinton or the Mohawk Valley, has been awarded for the first time. Clinton High School graduate Tom Williams is the inaugural recipient of the Frank and Mary Lou Owens Scholarship and will be a member of the class of 2011. The scholarship fund was created by Hamilton alumna, charter trustee and Clinton native Amy Owens Goodfriend ’82 and named in honor of her parents.

Estelle Wilhelm, whose late husband Curtis "Curt" R. Wilhelm was a member of Hamilton’s class of 1940, has pledged $1 million toward the renovation of the Kirner-Johnson Building and has included the college in her estate plans. Hamilton President Joan Hinde Stewart observed, "Hamilton's ability to offer our students a superb liberal arts experience is strengthened by the generosity of people like Estelle Wilhelm."

A retrospective exhibition of the work of Hamilton alumnus Spencer Finch '85 will open this Saturday, May 26, at 6:30 p.m. at MASS MoCA with a reception including remarks by the artist. His first retrospective show, "Spencer Finch: What Time Is It On The Sun?," includes more than 40 works - comprising more than 160 pastels, 62 photographs, 6 major sculptural installations, plus a 30-foot long drawing -- made over the last 14 years. The show will also include four major new works, two of which are site-specific installations created for MASS MoCA. The exhibition will run through the spring of 2008.

Hamilton’s admission office has a new home. On Friday, June 1, at 11:30 a.m., the former Sigma Phi fraternity house, having undergone extensive renovation and expansion, will be dedicated in honor of Joy and Chet ’70 Siuda. Later on Friday at 4:30 p.m., the Annex will be formally dedicated and named in honor of Patricia and Winton ’28 Tolles.

Hamilton College volunteers with the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program calculated tax refunds for low-income residents of Oneida County totaling more than three times the dollar amount refunded in 2004, the year the program began.

Philip Klinkner, James S. Sherman Associate Professor of Government, was quoted in a Los Angeles Times article on Wednesday, May 16, titled “Giuliani's pro-choice tightrope.” The article referenced Klinkner’s analysis of data from the 2004 National Annenberg Election Survey that found that more than one-third of Republican primary voters wanted to ban all abortions.

Throughout the year, Hamilton plays host to a broad spectrum of approximately 200 speakers, from a former U.S. vice president to an organic farmer, on myriad topics, from film direction to congressional budgets. As the academic year comes to a close, a review of a list of some of these visitors highlights the diversity of disciplines, views and interests represented on campus as well as the opportunities afforded our students and our community.

That the content of many websites is inaccessible to visually impaired computer users is not surprising. But surfers with vision problems can view sites using special software that reads web pages aloud - if sites are properly designed and coded. Students in a section of the computer science department's innovative new course “Explorations in Computer Science” led by Assistant Professor of Computer Science Brian Rosmaita learned how to increase accessibility and usability, focusing on the sites of a half dozen non-profit Utica-based organizations.

Three Hamilton juniors have spent the spring semester participating in the Hamilton-New England Center for Children (NECC) Cooperative Educational Program, in Southborough, Mass. Sociology concentrator Amanda Iturbe and psychology concentrators Jennifer Franco and Katherine Ribble have worked directly with children with autism or other developmental disabilities, while taking advanced courses in applied behavior analysis. In this program, Hamilton juniors spend a semester in full-time residence at NECC, where they earn full academic credit and work intensively with children who have special needs.