Pedro Segarra, the second person of Hispanic heritage to serve as mayor of Hartford, delivered an address to Trinity, kicking off four weeks of activities honoring the contributions of Hispanic Americans. Among the events were softball games, a dinner, community service projects, discussion nights, movies and an art exhibition.  The speech and activities were sponsored by La Voz Latina (LVL), a club that is open to all Trinity students interested in Hispanic culture. LVL provides social and cultural programming to the Trinity community.  (photos by Jeanika Browne-Springer ’12)

Students, faculty, and staff gathered at Mather Hall for a Common Hour panel to discuss the revised Policy Statement on Discrimination, General Harassment and Abuse, Sexual Harassment, and Sexual Misconduct, in the Student Handbook.  The language was strengthened to make clear that the College, acting within its legal rights, “will impose sanctions, up to and including expulsion from the College” for those found to have violated the College’s Harassment Policies.  In addition, students discussed ways in which the College can proactively limit and prevent these violations from occurring.  Chaplain Allison Read, former co-chair of Campus Climate, is leading a subcommittee to organize our campus response to incidents, which will include guidelines for how Trinity communicates when offenses occur.  Please contact her at allison.read@trincoll.edu with ideas or concerns you wish to share with the subcommittee.

This video highlights former Trinity College football star Mickey Kobrosky ’37, who was inducted into the 2011 College Football Hall of Fame Class this summer.  Kosbrosky led the Bantams to a 19-2 record on the gridiron from 1934 to 1936 and played professionally with the New York Giants, and became the first Trinity player or coach to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame during the Hall of Fame’s Enshrinement Festival on July 15 and 16 in South Bend, Ind., where he was represented by his son, Gary and his family.  To read more about Kobrosky and the event, visit: http://bit.ly/oPquAm 

For a short slideshow from the induction ceremony with photos by Michael & Susan Bennett Lighthouse Imaging, as well as other historic photos of Kobrosky from his playing days at Trinity, visit: http://bit.ly/pxn90z.

Fans and friends gather with organist Christopher Houlihan ’09 (center) outside Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris on July 10.

Houlihan’s performance capped a series of appearances starting in mid-June at two regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists in Oklahoma City, OK, and  Des Moines, IA. Houlihan then traveled to Paris to perform at the Cathedral of St. Louis in Versailles,  then to the Celebrity Organ Recital at Glasgow Cathedral in Scotland before returning to Paris where he received a standing ovation at Notre-Dame.

While the campus is in its quiet summer phase, the Megacities of the Yangtze River program in China has been running on all cylinders. This year’s program has enrolled 16 Trinity students from a variety of personal, family, and academic backgrounds and interests, including students from India, Nepal, Burma, and Italy, and is led again by Professors Xiangming Chen, Michael Lestz, and Joan Morrison. After 10 days of intensive study on campus and field visits in Hartford, the group arrived in Beijing on June 1 and is conducting field visits and investigations, listening to lectures by local professors, and interacting with NGOs and government officials in four megacities along the Yangtze River, namely, Chengdu, Chongqing, Nanjing, and Shanghai, where the program will end on June 24. 

Trinity was one of 15 global sites to host a Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) gathering of volunteer software developers on June 4 and 5, an initiative designed to help find technology solutions for natural and man-made disaster response.     
 
RHoK is a unique collaboration between Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, NASA and the World Bank, and is dedicated to using technology to make the world a better place by building a volunteer community of innovation. This is the fourth RHoK event the partners have hosted since 2009.

Two teams shared first prize at the Hartford site – “First Responder Bluetooth Based Alerting and Tracking System” developed by a team with students from St. Johns University in Queens, N.Y. and Connecticut College, and “Commodities Tracker for Haiti” developed by a team from Trinity. 

(Photo courtesy Trishan de Lanerolle) 

 These photographs of flowers on the Trinity campus were taken by Nancy Fleming, Administrative Assistant to the Departments of Engineering and Computer Science.  Music is entitled “America’s Stonehenge,” by Laura Sullivan.

James Morrow recently spoke to Trinity students at McCook Hall.  Morrow is the author of Blameless in Abaddon, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1996, and has written several other award-winning books, including The Wine of Violence, called “the best short fiction novel published in English in the last ten years” by the American Book Review, and Way the World Ends, which became a Nebula Award nominee and the BBC’s choice as the best short fiction novel of the year.  He holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University.  (Photo by Nick Lacy) 

According to Tony Olivares IDP ’12 (above), students wondered aloud: “who is he?” and “what is he doing?,” as the theater and dance major and sculpture minor painted his entire body as part of a public outdoor performance in celebration of International Dance Day, established by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1982. 

“It spurred a lot of questions,” he said about his act, The Traveler, which he performed for nearly two hours on the Mather Quad on Friday, April 29. “It was good to see the students communicating and interacting with each other.  As an artist, that is always a goal.” 

Olivares, an Asst. Director at DancEnlight in Hartford, said he’s performed this piece, “about a character that comes to Earth to figure out what humanity is all about,” every year since 2006 in public spaces as far south as Washington, D.C. and as far north as Montreal, Canada. 

(Photo by Margaret Lindsey) 

On Thursday, April 14, Trinity’s men’s and women’s ice hockey teams took part in the First Annual Skate-A-Thon held the Koeppel Community Sports Center to benefit both the Greater Hartford Community and the Trinity College Community Child Center.  The money raised (current totals are over $3,500) will help provide tuition scholarship assistance to Hartford residents who would otherwise be unable to afford quality early childhood programming.  “Our families were able to participate in an exciting evening where exercise was promoted in a positive community experience,” said Christina Gedemsky, Director of the Early Childhood Program at Trinity.  “We loved having the hockey teams participate and some of our children experienced the joy of ice skating for the very first time with their assistance.”
(Photos by Dominique DiDia ’12)