Honors Convocation, Founder's Week

Poet Muriel Rukeyser Is Degree Recipient

Frances Steloff presenting the Frances Steloff Poetry Prize to Wendy Ellen Simpson ‘79

Honors Convocation, 1979

Climaxing a week of celebration, a week of art, music and dance and of sporting games and events — all in honor of Skidmore’s founder — came Honors Convocation.

Faculty, administrators and students joined in this annual spring celebration of academic excellence and in the pre- sentation of academic prizes.

Opening the Convocation, Provost of the College, David W. Marcell de- fined the occasion when he said:

“Among all our traditions at Skid- more College, it is Honors Convoca- tion that uniquely compels us to reflect upon our collective reasons for exist- ing. For it is at Convocation that, in honoring your achievements, we to- gether recall the high seriousness of Skidmore’s purposes and the extraor- dinary efforts required of us all to build acommunity worthy of them. A liberal arts college owes its existence to the belief that the quality of the mind directly affects the quality of life, both for individuals and for society as a whole. Thus we at Skidmore assert that mere mental excellence is not enough, that there must be excellence too in action, in public achievement, in the integrity of human relationships, in the policies and procedures which govern our community and establish our priorities.

“The times we live in nourish our anxiety and selfishness which all of us must resist in the most thoughtful and considered ways if our culture is not to disintegrate into a fragmented coun- terfeit of a social order.

“The liberal arts tradition posits an ideal which is the very opposite of this kind of inwardness and withdrawal. While it recognizes| and fosters the lonely questing of the artist and the researcher, and while it celebrates the special energy and scholarly discipline

z

President Palamountain conferred an honorary doctor of letters degree on Poet Muriel Rukeyser

that we must generate from our own most private resources, the liberal arts tradition also requires that knowledge and creativity be tested publicly within the community of learning. It man- dates, further, that this community be open, critical, rigorous, collegiate and dedicated to the loftiest of human aspirations.”

Muriel Rukeyser Is Degree Recipient Steloff Lecturer

Following honor’s convocation, Pre- sident Palamountain conferred the doctor of letters degree on poet Muriel Rukeyser. She gave the Steloff Lec- ture, which has become a traditional part of the convocation.

The poet Erica Jong, in a character- istic hyperbole, called “the mother of us all” has been that certainly for poets of social protest.

Born in 1913 — the year of Sarajevo, she grew up in an era of wars or, as she has said, “I lived in the first century of world wars,” and has published more than ten volumes of poetry and earned acclaim as an author, biographer, play- wright, essayist and translator.

Students were delighted by her de- scription of her early work and study at

Everett Stonequist

Teacher, Author

Everett Stonequist

Everett Stonequist, professor emer- itus of sociology at Skidmore died on March 22, 1979 in Glens Falls, New York. He was 77 years old.

Known and loved by generations of Skidmore students, Dr. Stonequist was a professor and chairman of the Skidmore Sociology Department from 1930 until his retirement in 1970.

The author of numerous articles on race relations, he was best known for The Marginal Man published in 1937. A classic in its field, it covered the pro- blems experienced by people making transitions between different cultures, and, specifically, to pressures felt by minority and ethnic group members in American society. The Marginal Man was a forerunner of later studies of marginal ethnic and _ occupational groups.

In addition to teaching and writing, Dr. Stonequist took an active part in the life of Saratoga Springs as a leader on the Saratoga Springs Planning Commission and Housing Authority

-which led to the construction of a

senior citizens complex, named in his honor the Stonequist Apartments, and to the Jefferson Terrace Apartments for low-income families.

Educational Experience

Born in Worcester, Mass., on Oct. 5, 1901, Dr. Stonequist earned an A.B. degree in history and sociology at

Clark University, and later studied at Cornell and Columbia and the Uni- versity of Paris before receiving a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago in 1930.

On leave from Skidmore he taught and conducted research at the Univer- sity of Hawaii, Duke University and the University of Missouri. During World War II he served as chairman of the National War Labor Board in Al- bany and director of the research divi- sion of the Office of War Informa- tion in Washington, D.C.

Among the honors Prof. Stonequist received were an honorary degree from Skidmore in 1972 and, in 1965 selection as the annual Skidmore Fac- ulty Research Lecturer. In 1970 Union College honored him for his contributions to the field of sociology and the area of race relations. Included in the latter were studies of wartime Japanese-Americans, situations in Hawaii and Jamaica, the problems of Jews living in primarily gentile areas, and conditions in Ethiopia, Cyprus, Egypt, Kenya, Jordan and Israel.

“A Mighty Oak”

Commenting on Dr. Stonequist’s death, President Palamountain said he was “a mighty oak whose shadow extended to Skidmore, Saratoga Springs and the discipline of sociology. His appointment to the Skidmore fa- culty evidenced the young college’s ambitious aspiration for quality, for his great work, The Marginal Man, was to become one of the seminal books of this century.”

Dr. Stonequist is survived by his wife, Edythe Barbier Stonequist; two daughters, Mrs. Beryl Sharr of Rome, Italy, and Dr. Martha Stonequist of Saratoga Springs; and two grandchild- ren.

A service in memory of Dr. Stone- quist was planned for Sunday, June 3 at 2 p.m. in the Filene Music Build- ing during alumni reunion.

Memorial Fund Established

A memorial fund has been estab- lished at Skidmore College to honor the memory of Dr. Stonequist. Contri- butions may be sent to the Develop- ment Office.

er

Vassar College. She shared with them her impressions of learning and the search for something meaningful. She wrote and got turned down until Poetry magazine in Chicago ac- cepted her poetry and the New York Herald Tribune her prose. She realized that one has to face being told “no” in life. “I made a wastebasket of rejection slips and varnished it — they were pictures of my early life,” she said. Speaking of her journey to England to make a biographical study of Thomas Hariot and writing it on her return,

she said “Any way you take, form has much to do with your future life.” “It’s not the journey out that counts, “she noted, “but the voyage back.”

Frances Steloff, native Saratogian and founder of the Gotham Bookshop, who endowed the lecture, was on hand for the Convocation. A vital woman, now over 90, she has all through her life encouraged young authors and poets. Through her Gotham Book- mart she sponsored many unknown writers who later became some of America’s most renowned writers.