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On an Alternative Spring Break trip last year, Alysha Banerji ’11 was working with first-graders at a school in North Carolina when one of them proclaimed that his cat had just birthed kittens. The boy asked if Banerji wanted one, but when she told him that pets weren’t allowed in college dorms, he exclaimed, “I want to go to college!”

The Kirner-Johnson Building, typically a space designed for quiet study, was converted into an epic battle arena Saturday afternoon. While no blood was shed, the Hamilton students participating in “The Mp3 Experiment” cast off something much less tangible – their reserve. As the collection of students obeyed the orders of “Steve,” the omnipotent voice on their Mp3 devices, they demonstrated the capacity to let loose and be silly among friends and strangers.

Caitlin O’Dowd ’11 has led a life largely driven by international travel. But the effect of having been immersed in so many foreign cultures is like that of a slingshot – despite the heavy pull of foreign relations on her social philosophy and background, O’Dowd is catapulting in a different direction with her research project funded by the Kirkland Endowment. She hopes to concentrate on domestic affairs in what will eventually be a one-year post-graduate research experience.

Maeve Gately ’12, Allison Eck ’12, Courtney Flint ’11 and Olivia Wolfgang-Smith ’11 participated in a joint conference by the International Writing Centers Association and the National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing, Nov. 4-6 in Baltimore, Md. The students, all peer writing tutors at the Nesbitt-Johnston Writing Center, were accompanied by Director of the Writing Center and Lecturer in English Sharon Williams.

A college student dressed as Ms. Frizzle – the red-haired and eccentric science teacher from The Magic School Bus – relaxes on a couch as she scans the room that was once just an ordinary common space for dorm residents. Now it’s been transformed into a haunted house, with the help of some jack-o-lanterns, cobwebs, fake spiders, pumpkins and plastic rats scattered across the floor.

Look into Hamilton’s List Art Center from the outside and you’ll see what appears to be a burly man slumped over in a chair. Although he’s bundled up in winter clothes, he’s not about to go on a ski trip. His name is “Junior,” Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Cindy Tower’s handmade dummy. This fall, Tower is having students in her Introduction to Drawing class build and decorate their own dummies – a project that Tower calls an exercise in sustainability and community.

Eleven students in Policy, Poverty and Practice (Econ 235) are acquiring valuable life skills this semester – skills that they otherwise would not be able to learn in a classroom. Students enrolled in the class are required to participate in the VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) program, a joint project of the Economics Department and the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center. The program offers free tax help to low- and moderate-income (generally $49,000 and below) families who cannot prepare their own tax returns.

The Hamilton College Music Department hosted several esteemed musicians and conductors last week as part of a workshop that Heather Buchman, associate professor of music and director of the College Orchestra, instituted last year.

Although he has read it once before, Jason Oberholtzer ’08 wants another crack at a book that he says “nobody” reads.

Strange, but exciting. That’s how Kate Harloe ’12 described the somewhat unusual academic pursuit that she and Corinne Bancroft ’10 took on this semester. Not only did Harloe and Bancroft propose a new interdisciplinary course for the upcoming spring semester, but they wrote the syllabus and recruited an enthusiastic team of faculty to teach it. The enterprise was strange due to its role-reversing nature, and exciting in that the students assumed a new involvement in their education.