The Williams Record (https://williamsrecord.com/category/features/)
Dr. Richard Besser ’81 said he met his wife during his “first outbreak,” a befitting idiosyncrasy for the CEO ofthe largest philanthropic health organization in the United States, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Besser’s career spans almost four decades, including as former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under President Barack Obama and later as ABC’s chief medical correspondent.
As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads throughout the world, the past few weeks have been unprecedented for the College. President Maud S. Mandel’s email on March 11 announcing the closure of the campus and transition to remote learning set off a flurry of logistics and decisions; there were events to cancel, flights to book and emails to send.
Tuesday, Feb. 4, at 4:21 p.m.: President of the College Maud S. Mandel sends an email to the entire campus community, titled, “Update: Williams prevention and preparedness measures for coronavirus.”
At that point, China had been the only country with confirmed cases of COVID-19, and the tone of the email is mostly precautionary, listing advice and resources available for members of the College community.
With student departures from campus coming far earlier than expected this year, Williams students rushed to move their belongings into storage until the fall. Many used the ubiquitous purple pods marked “Connors Brothers Moving and Storage” that crop up on campus during move-in and move-out.
We randomly select unixes from a list of all current students at the College for our weekly One in Two Thousand. So long as the owner of a selected unix is willing to be interviewed and not a member of the Record board, that person becomes the subject of our interview. For this week, the computer (using a very simple script in R) chose Darren Wang ’23.
In early May, students at Williams and other colleges across the country went on strike in protest of the U.S. invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Fifty years later, at a virtual faculty meeting on March 11 after in-person classes were canceled in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, President of the College Maud S. Mandel referred obliquely to the strike.
In early May, students at Williams and other colleges across the country went on strike in protest of the U.S. invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Fifty years later, at a virtual faculty meeting on March 11 after in-person classes were canceled in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, President of the College Maud S. Mandel referred obliquely to the strike.
Seniors snapped photos in cap and gown, unsure of whether graduation will happen in June. Storage pods, usually only seen in August and May, popped up as students began to move out.
While hundreds of students stood on the Paresky steps and
screamed to express their intense emotions after the College announced its
switch to online learning due to COVID-19, many students were preoccupied with
another thought: romance. After receiving many requests Ephmatch developer
Aidan Lloyd-Tucker ’22 sat on Paresky steps immediately after the scream’s
conclusion and relaunched the app.
We randomly select unixes from a list of all current students at the College for our weekly One in Two Thousand. So long as the owner of a selected unix is willing to be interviewed and not a member of the Record board, that person becomes the subject of our interview. For this week, the computer (using a very simple script in R) chose Maddie Dekko ’21.
We’ve all heard the famous statistic: since the College became coed in 1972, more than one in five married or partnered alums are in an all-Eph couple, according to Williams Magazine. But less well-known is a rival figure, supplied by the Provost’s Office: 11 percent of the College’s employees are married to another Williams employee, a group that spans both sides of the faculty and staff divide, from high school sweethearts to undergraduate cycling companions to the lucky few who met here on the job.
