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March Madness at Reed—Yes, Reed

High fashion and devious fakery abound at Reed's March Madness (Photo from 2005). Photo by Orin Bassoff

Reedies packed the sports center on March 15 for an event they had been waiting for all spring. This wasn’t part of RAW, Reed’s annual arts week; it was a very different type of exhibition—March Madness.

Although March Madness at Reed may not feature as many teams—or as much advertising—as the NCAA version, its passion and intensity are unrivaled. This year marked the event’s 25th anniversary, and it showed in the approximately 200 spectators, participants, and supporters alike, who came out to watch the fun.

March Madness is a one-night, single-elimination tournament, featuring eight teams, compiled of Reed students, alumni, professors, and staff. The contest has its origins in 1989 when the Reed student team, which included Erik Brakstad ’89, was clobbered by a team made up of professors. “I thought to myself, where else would the student team lose to the faculty?” Erik said. He founded the tournament as a chance to get even for the loss, and the mania has only mounted since then.

Kroger Inaugurated—with Iliad

President John R. Kroger sports snazzy Reed medallion at inauguration. Photos by Leah Nash

Amid the call of bagpipes and the flourish of horns, roughly 1,500 people descended on campus on Friday to welcome John R. Kroger as Reed's 15th president. Under the big top on the great lawn, Roger Perlmutter '73, chair of the board of trustees, invested Kroger with the trappings of office—including a copy of the Iliad and a bottle of spring water drawn from the Reed Canyon—in a grand inauguration ceremony.

Student body president Brian Moore '13 hailed Kroger as "the ultimate prospie" for his infectious enthusiasm for all things Reed and for enrolling in Hum 110.

The Dipylon Analogy

Dear Reed Alumni:

The academic year is underway! The campus looks beautiful, the Paradox Café is packed, and the mood on campus seems excellent. My enthusiasm for Reed, and my conviction that the college is in great shape, have only grown deeper in the last two months. I look forward to my formal inauguration on September 21 and the accompanying Alumni Leadership Summit. I hope to meet many of you at these celebratory and informative events.

Fighting Malaria On the Cheap

Malaria is a killer. Over 200 million people are infected every year, and over one million, mostly children, die as a result. It is not a lack of medicine that allows malaria to run rampant; a highly effective treatment called Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT) has existed for years. The issue is cost: ACT's main ingredient, artemisinin, is prohibitively expensive. A research team led by Indiana State University professor Silas Cook '99 has found a way to change that.

Artemisinin is usually obtained in one of two ways: harvesting it from its natural home in the sweet wormwood plant, or using a bit of biological alchemy to create a synthetic version. Harvesting it from wormwood is a difficult process to begin with: combined with crop shortages caused by poor planning, natural disasters, and other unpredictable disruptions, this method has proven incapable of providing a consistent, cheap yield.

Reed Griffin is Rose Parade Royalty

Photo by Dan Schaffer

Six-inches high and stuffed with cotton, a griffin sits atop a few worn books stacked on the cluttered desk of Mike Teskey, director of alumni & parent relations. For years this figurine—a plush model of the mythical creature, half lion, half eagle, which Reed takes as its mascot—had fixed its glassy eye on Mike while he worked, and it must have made an impression, because when he walked into the office of the Portland Rose Festival representative to discuss what Reed's float would look like in the upcoming parade, Mike had the stuffed griffin in his hand.

Mechanical wizard and construction leader Rob Mack '93. Photo by Patrick Bryan '13

The last time Reed entered a float in the Grand Floral Parade was in 1936. From time to time, alumni would broach the dream of returning to the parade, but like a lot of great ideas, they never got past the broaching stage. Then, at a centennial apple-pressing party in the canyon orchard, Mike struck up a conversation with Jon-Paul Davis '93 and mechanical wizard Rob Mack '93. Rob was the natural choice to spearhead the project; during his Reed days he turned an old Nissan into the infamous Mobile Outdoor Plush Super Upholstered Den (MOSPUD), a mobile beverage-distribution system that graced several Renn Fayres. Rob signed on as Reed's construction leader for the 2012 parade with just one demand: Reed would build the float.

Fanfayre honors history and achievement

Cricket Parmalee '67, Babson Award recipient. Photo by Leah Nash

Reunions 2012 traveled backward and forward through time at the Fanfayre ceremony celebrating outstanding alumni, staff, and faculty.

John Sheehy '82 presented his the epic oral history of Reed College, Comrades of the Quest, an volume of "almost biblical" dimensions that was, he said, the closest thing Reed has to scripture. Despite its size, he noted that the "director's cut" would be about 30-percent longer: "Reedies appear almost incapable of expressing themselves in a single sentence when a full paragraph—or a full dissertation—will do just as well."

Paradox Embraced: A History of Reed Presidents

Reed President Richard F. Scholz, ca. 1920.

Reed's presidential history, like that of the college itself, is a history of paradoxes.

This was the argument of trustee and historian John Sheehy '82 in his lecture "The Presidents of Reed" at Reunions 2012. The central paradox of Reed, he said, is the combination of academic conservatism with cultural progressivism. This has given birth over the years to such quandaries as Reed's historically high attrition rate (as students struggled to impose the self-discipline required for intellectual freedom) to ongoing debates like faculty pay equity or marijuana use on campus.

These conflicts, though, have by no means held Reed back. Instead, Sheehy said, "the only way to move forward was to work within the paradoxes." The Honor Principle was one example of this, occupying the "middle ground" between rules and anarchy. In the end, it has been how well each president has embraced the Reed paradox that has determined his success.

Griffin to Make Triumphant Return to Rose Parade

After more than 75 years' absence, a Reed College float will once again join the Portland Rose Festival's Grand Floral Parade, taking place this Saturday, June 9.

Reed first entered a float into the Rose Parade in 1936; although Reedies have played many important roles in the festival since, our beloved institution has never again been represented by its own float.

Class of '12 Unleashed

The bright May morning was filled with enthusiasm and laughter, as family and friends descended on campus to celebrate Reed's 98th Commencement with the 288 members of the class of 2012 under the majestic white tent on the Great Lawn.

The ceremony began to the rousing (or as one senior commented: "awful") sound of bagpipes. Graduating seniors applauded faculty members who guided them during their time at Reed. In an act of symmetry and acclaim, the graduates were then applauded by their professors after they had collected their shiny new diplomas.

In his last commencement speech, President Colin Diver poked fun at graduating with Reed on the "10-year plan." He was surprised nonetheless, when Don Berg '12 shouted from the audience that he had gone to Reed on the 25-year plan. (Don first arrived on campus in 1986!)

Reed Prof Finds Fractal Geometry in Mouse Cortex

Fractals, the bizarre geometrical shapes that undergird natural phenomena from snowflakes to lightning bolts, have been discovered in a new and striking location: the synapses of the brain.

In a recent paper, professor Richard Crandall '69 [physics 1978–] and colleagues at the Reed Center for Advanced Computation found intricate fractal patterns in synapses in the somatosensory neocortex of a mouse brain.

Kroger Named Prez

Reed has just announced that Oregon Attorney General John Kroger will be the college's 15th president.

"John impressed us with his brilliance and clarity, advocacy for the primacy of the liberal arts education, and his commitment to the mission and vision of Reed College," said board chair Roger Perlmutter '73. "We are very excited about his arrival on campus this summer."

"Invisible" Indians Converge on Campus

The thunder of drums and the syncopated chant of voices echoed through Eliot Chapel last month when traditional dancers swept a captivated audience of students and faculty into a culture, a community--even a world--often overlooked by those outside of it: the Native American community.

The dance introduced Reed's fifth annual Vine Deloria lecture, a panel discussion titled "Making the Visible Invisible," referring to the striking fact that Portland has the ninth largest Native American population in the United States, including more than 20,000 residents drawn from 380 different tribes, according to a recent report titled "The Native American Community in Multnomah County: An Unsettling Profile," released by the Coalition of Communities of Color and PSU.The panel discussion served as a powerful counterpoint to the energy and brightness of the dance, and presented a sobering portrait of prejudice, racism, and repeated attempts by mainstream culture to define Indians out of existence.

Reed Conquers the Globe

"Reed jus ah stress mi out…and that means reed is stressing me out," said Shanee Harriot '15 setting off the audience into splits of laughter. Shanee's Jamaican-English creole routine was only one of the performances that delighted the audience at the International Festival, held on April 1. There were no stand up acts but Shanee made sure that everyone at the SU that afternon had a good laugh, "jah know ah weh mi ah go do fi get dis ya work done, mi salt to bauxide!" (Oh my God what am I going to do to get this work done? I'm screwed!)

International Festival, organized by the International Student Advisory Board (ISAB) is an annual celebration of Reed's cultural diversity. The center of the festival was the student union, which had vibrant flags of all the countries represented at Reed draped across its rafters. "I didn't know Reed had students from so many countries," remarked one observer who dropped into the SU because he heard music and laughter streaming out. That was exactly one of the reasons why ISAB was eager to promote the presence of the 116 international students from 35 nations at Reed by having everyone share a piece of their culture.

Fiercely Feministing

Who needs credit cards when you have a junior vagina? read one of the slides in Samhita Mukhopadhyay's talk, arranged by the Multicultural Resource Center on March 21. Mukhopadhyay, who is the executive editor of feministing.com, emphasized in her stirring talk why feminism is still needed in today's world.

She highlighted the case of the panties sold in Walmart's junior section with the phrase "Who needs credit cards . . ." printed on the crotch and "when you have Santa" on the derriere. After spotting the undergarments in the juniors department of a Walmart in Cary, North Carolina, a horrified reader alerted the blog, which broke the story, triggering an uproar from parents that ultimately forced Walmart to pull the offensive underpants from shopping aisles.

"The message broadcast to adolescent girls was that they don't need to worry about finances since they have their very own moneypot between their legs," said Mukhopadhyay.

Reed Gripped by March Madness

Spring is sprung, the cherry trees in Eliot Circle are blooming, and Reed is gripped—gripped, we say—by March Madness. We refer not, of course, to the obscure proceedings of the NCAA but rather to the world-famous 24th annual Reed Basketball Tournament, held Friday, March 23, at the Watzek Sports Center.

No fewer than eight teams have registered for the prestigious tournament this year. Here's the bracket:

Title IXers vs Leftovers
Amateurs vs Lil Grifs
Right Bank vs Ya B-Ballers
Beserk vs OGs

Bridging the Disability Divide

At Reed's first-ever Working Weekend, it all came together for Gabriel Forsythe-Korzeniewicz '12, an economics senior. The career-focused event, which was held February 3-5, was designed to help students and newer alumni get a jump-start on internships, contacts, and careers. Alumni organized and led panels in 10 different subject areas and participated in a three-day StartUp Lab, where they served as entrepreneurs and led teams of students through the presentation and marketing of their original ideas to investors. On Sunday, the Lab culminated with final pitches to a live panel of Angel, Venture Capital, and Incubator investors.

Gabriel, whose brother has Down syndrome and is a self-advocate in their hometown in Maryland, has always been very active in the disability community. In high school, Gabriel mentored disabled kids and volunteered during his junior summer at Reed with the Northwest Down Syndrome Association in Portland. He also won the prestigious McGill Lawrence Internship award in 2011 and used it to work for the Autism Centre in Accra, Ghana. He has been focusing his academics on disability related themes besides doing other non-profit work related to disability outreach in Portland.

Reedie Wins Gates Scholarship

Elizabeth Honor Wilder '11 has won a prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship, recognizing exceptional academic achievement and the capacity for leadership.

The award will allow Elizabeth to spend a year at Cambridge pursuing Victorian ideas about wardship, education, the family, and the individual.

"Thinking Reed" hits bookstands

Given Reed's proud tradition of intellectual fellowship between students and faculty, it seems only fitting that two professors chose to commemorate our centennial by honoring the careers of an amazing group of alumni. To coincide with Reed's big centennial bash, Roger Porter [English 1961-] and Robert Reynolds [physics 1963-2008] have put together Thinking Reed: Centennial Essays by Graduates of Reed College, available from Reed's bookstore for $19.95.

"Our graduates have carried something of the college with them wherever they've gone," write Roger and Robert in their introduction to the collection, "Reed is known to the world largely because of them."

Welcome to the Working Week(end)

The campus pulsed with energy Feb 3-5 as scores of alumni traveled across the country to participate in Reed's first ever Working Weekend, a giant career-focused event that featured speakers, panels, and synergy designed to help students and newer alumni get a jump-start on internships, contacts, and careers.

Alumni organized, led, and participated in a day of panels in ten different subject areas on Saturday. One panel was Non-Profits: Changing Lives, where alumni doled out expert guidance and advice on working in the non-profit sector. The panel was lead by Jan Liss '74, Emily Corso '10, Sarah Costello '95, Nell Edgington '95, Craig Mosbaek '83, and Jeremy Stone '99. Together the panel debated and discussed a range of issues, such as the merit of having a law or an MBA degree in the non-profit sector, and how to make yourself the most viable candidate for a coveted job or internship.

Dr. Demento goes "Here, There and Everywhere"

"I Want to Hold Your Hand" began climbing the U.S. pop charts in January 1964, heralding the arrival of both the Beatles and the British Music Invasion. Though "Surfin' U.S.A." was the number two hit of 1963, the list was chockablock with such easy listening fare as "The End of the World," "Sukiyaki," "Blue Velvet" and "Puff, the Magic Dragon." Six of the top 20 hits of 1964 were by the Beatles and the list now included songs by the Supremes, the Dave Clark Five and the Animals. It was a seismic shift (though Louis Armstrong did ring in with the number two hit of 1964, "Hello Dolly').

But of course the Fab Four didn't exist in a vacuum. In a Paideia talk entitled "Here, There and Everywhere," Dr. Demento (Barry Hansen) '63 presented a curriculum vitae of music influences that shaped the Beatles and rock n' roll.

 1 2 3 Next >

• The Turning of the Thesis
• Looking back, thinking ahead, loving Reed
• Davis Winner Hatches Scholarship Plan
• Celebrating “4/20” At Reed
• The Perfect Dinner
• Occupying Wall St--From the Inside Out
• Farewell Professor Rhyne
• Reedies Hold Union on Student Autonomy
• Memorial for Professor Emeritus Steve Arch
• Watson Winner Will Go to Africa
• RIP Professor Steve Arch
• March Madness at Reed—Yes, Reed
• How Do We Define Reed in the 21st Century?
• Educating Women Steadies the World
• Lena's Paintings on Display
• Memorial for Ottomar
• Beyond Paideia
• March Gets RAW
• Reed Takes to the Road in Seattle
• Paideia Pandemonium

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