Green’s story notes that after Maine voters elected Lewiston native Paul LePage, a Republican of French Canadian heritage, as governor in November, some called Garcelon Maine’s first Franco American governor.

Not exactly, explains Green, who interviews Garcelon’s great-great-grandson David and visits Bates’ Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, which houses the Garcelon family papers.

While Gov. LePage’s Roman Catholic family came to Maine from French-speaking Canada, Green says, the Garcelon family’s French connections are much less distinct.

The Garcelon ancestors fled France for England in the early 1700s during the persecution of the Huguenots (French Protestants). In fact, Alonzo Garcelon’s great-great-grandfather Pierre was an Episcopal priest on Guersey island, long a British dependency in the English Channel, in the mid-1700s. His son James emigrated to America in 1752, settling in Lewiston in 1776 after fleeing Falmouth the night before it was burned by the British.

“We are partners,” said Cable, who spoke at a Nov. 11 panel discussion and reception sponsored by the College’s Garcelon Society in partnership with the Office of Admission.

Whether or not a local student is considering Bates, “the Bates Admission Office is a partner with local families around the college search process,” Cable said. “We can serve as a resource through events like this that provide information about admission, testing, admission criteria and financial aid.”

The evening included tips for the college visit and admission application; athletic recruitment; and the meaning of frequently used admission terms.

Acting Director of Admission Leigh Weisenberger led the panel discussion, and she was joined by Associate Dean Johie Farrar ’03, Senior Associate Dean Jared Cash ’04 and Tom Esponette ’11 of Auburn, one of several Senior Admission Fellows who interview prospective students. Also joining the discussion was Kim Jenkins of the University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn College.

An Oxford Hills High School graduate, Jared Cash’s admission responsibilities include central and northern Maine. While deadlines and applications are critical parts of the college search, Cash mostly wants Maine families to know they can approach the process with confidence.

“You should feel empowered to get the answers and information you need,” he says.

Trepidation is rarely warranted, he says, because a family’s sincere interest in a college will be matched by equal interest and help from the college. “Colleges are approachable places. It’s a big myth that they are somehow impermeable.”

Above all, Cash advises students, “be yourself. Be comfortable telling your own story.”

The evening’s sponsor, the Garcelon Society of Bates College, supports links and pathways between Bates and the Lewiston-Auburn community, including the Androscoggin Scholarship Fund, which provides need-based financial aid to talented and deserving students from Androscoggin County.

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If the absence of Republican candidate Paul LePage from last night’s gubernatorial showdown at Bates disappointed some spectators, you wouldn’t have known it from the debate watch party that took place just downstairs from the debate held in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall.

Though attentive and informed, the 50 or so students — for the most part Quimby Debate Council members and students in a campaign rhetoric course — still brought a certain wisenheimer energy to the gathering as they and their professors watched the Maine Public Broadcasting Network debate on the big screen.

Of course there were cheers whenever Bates was mentioned, and a particular candidate’s folksy appeals to the viewers at home reliably drew a response. But the laughter and exuberant mock applause practically broke through the ceiling when candidate Kevin Scott, alone among the four, expressed support for a conditional legalization of marijuana.

“I laughed too,” said Associate Professor of Rhetoric Stephanie Kelley-Romano. “It was so unexpected and unorthodox for a candidate.”

• Complete video of the Oct. 28 Maine Public Broadcasting Network gubernatorial debate at Bates.

• Video of Associate Professor of Politics John Baughman’s Muskie-flavored welcome to the audience.

Featuring four of the five candidates for the Blaine House — Democrat Elizabeth Mitchell and independents Eliot Cutler, Shawn Moody and Scott — the debate held in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall capped a day at Bates largely centered around the event. A crew from MPBN was on hand bright and early to start setting up in the concert hall, and Bates folks from Physical Plant and Dining Services had plenty to do setting up green rooms for the debaters and prepping the Museum of Art for a welcoming reception.

Public events began with a late-afternoon presentation, by seven students, designed to give spectators context for the main event that evening. Four members of the Brooks Quimby Debate Council summarized the candidates’ positions on the economy, social issues and the environment. And three students from Kelley-Romano’s “Presidential Campaign Rhetoric” course offered tips on debate strategy and likely outcomes.

The seven had done their homework. Quimbyites Nate Sweet ’11, Sam Schleipman ’12, Spencer Collett ’13 and Daniel Lambright ’12 effectively differentiated the candidates (including LePage, who bailed out of the debate the day before), providing basic themes for each contender that were helpful in relating them to larger currents of political thought.

From Kelley-Romano’s course, Kevin McCandlish ’13, Daniel Waters ’12 and Jordan Conwell ’12 laid out debate strategy and tactics. If candidate debates offer great insights into policy, Waters noted, the real takeaway is so-called relational strategies — the language, posture and gestures candidates use when they address each other.

A debate has less to do with scoring policy points, he said, and “everything to do with how candidates are judged [as people] by the voting public.”

Partners from way back

The evening’s events picked up momentum around 6 p.m. as guests, ultimately 100 or so, converged at the Museum of Art for a reception co-hosted by Bates and MPBN. Bates President Elaine Tuttle Hansen and MPBN President Jim Dowe welcomed the visitors, both taking care to remind us that, in fact, the relationship between the two organizations goes back a ways: Bates and sister colleges Bowdoin and Colby founded WCBB, one component of what’s now MPBN, back in 1961.

“MPBN wouldn’t exist without Bates,” Dowe said, recalling that then-Bates President Charles Phillips was among a Bates group that went to Washington on the first day that licenses for public television were issued, in the early 1960s. “They waited on the steps for the doors to open” at the FCC, Dowe said.

“It’s very fitting for us to host debates at Bates,” Hansen said, referring not only to the college’s long and proud debate history, but also to the fact that the city of Lewiston welcomed Bates debates in City Hall before the college had a suitable venue of its own. Now, she said, “we’re thrilled to be able to reciprocate.”

As the hennaed Moroccan women of Lalla Essaydi’s photographs looked on, guests at the reception sipped champagne and munched chilled shrimp, chocolate-dipped strawberries and mustard-rubbed lamb.

In attendance were members of local government such as Auburn Mayor Dick Gleason P’93; well-known Bates faces such as dance program founder Marcy Plavin and Professor Emeritus of Psychology and state Rep. Richard Wagner; and two of the candidates, Shawn Moody — with son James ’12 — and Kevin Scott. A second Bates student had a candidate connection too — David Cutler ’12, nephew of Eliot.

No empty podium

As showtime drew near, MPBN crew members, all in black shirts, put the final touches on the stage and camera setup. Would there be a symbolic empty podium for the absent Lepage, we asked? No, one staffer joked, “but we did get them from Marden’s.” (LePage is general manager of the discount store chain.)

By showtime, about 280 of the Olin concert hall’s 300 seats were filled. About half the audience was invited, with the rest of the seats going to members of the Bates community, including some 70 students.

Associate Professor of Politics John Baughman greeted the gathering. Picking up the thread from Hansen of Bates’ debate history, he raised the spirit of a great Maine and U.S. politician who, before all that, was a debater at Bates: Edmund S. Muskie ’36.

Baughman pointed out that when Muskie ran for governor in the mid-1950s, the candidates never debated one another. So even in a political season as rancorous as this one, it’s clear that there has been at least some kind of progress.

Indeed, as silly as the students got during the watch party in the basement, there was no question that each had a critical eye — in the best sense — on the discourse emanating from the auditorium upstairs.

In an age when so many potential voters shun the polls, director of debate Jan Hovden said before the event, “anything that engages people in the political process is a good thing in and of itself.”

The Caribbean-inspired, Massachusetts-based Pan Loco Steel Band opens the annual Bates College Midsummer Lakeside Concert Series on Thursday, July 8, in the Florence Keigwin Amphitheater at the college’s Lake Andrews.

Midsummer Lakeside concerts start at 6 p.m. on six consecutive Thursdays in July and August. The series will continue with Maine singer-songwriter Anni Clark, the folk band Highland String Trio, eclectic folk-rock group the Zulu Leprechauns, hammered-dulcimer player Harry Vayo and the Celtic-bluegrass fusion band Irish Hill.

Sponsored by the Garcelon Society, the Bingham Betterment Fund and the Harward Center for Community Partnerships at Bates, these family concerts are open to the public at no cost. Listeners are encouraged to bring a picnic and lawn chairs or blankets.

An alternative site will be announced in case of rain. For more information, please call 207-786-6400.

Here’s the complete schedule:

July 8, Pan Loco Steel Band: Former students at Berklee College of Music and the University of New Hampshire, the Pan Loco Steel Band came together in 1991. Consisting of two steel drummers, an electric bass player and a percussionist, the group concentrates on authentic Caribbean music.

Steel pan players Bob Lucas, a Bay State native, and Justin Petty, who grew up in the U.S. Virgin Islands, founded the quartet in Boston, and they arrange the band’s music. Bassist Gerry Rollock hails from Trinidad, and teaches and plays in the Boston area. Percussionist Sean Skeete has performed with ensembles as diverse as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Alvin Ailey Dance Theater and Blue Man Group.

July 15, Anni Clark: Nominated for “Female Vocalist of the Year” at the 2006 Texas Music Awards, this veteran Maine singer-songwriter has released seven albums and appeared with the likes of Shawn Colvin, Richie Havens and Patty Larkin. Audiences love her humor and expressive power.

Clark’s music has been described as “folk, pop and blues with a dash of Maine humor.” Twice a finalist in the well-known songwriters’ competition at the Kerrville Folk Festival, Clark was invited to be a judge for the event in 2001. In 2003, she won both “Female Artist of the Year” and “Folk Artist of the Year” in Jam Music Magazine’s Readers’ Pix Awards. Clark also works as an education tech in special education in Saco, Maine.

July 22, Highland String Trio: Lauren Scott, Chris Bannon and Walt Bannon are known for their energetic blend of Celtic, bluegrass and Americana. Scott is a fiddler who also performs with the band Fiddle-icious. Chris Bannon plays guitar and mandolin, and Walt Bannon provides vocals, flute and guitar.

July 29, The Zulu Leprechauns: These eclectic, improvisational folk-rockers play a mix of original and familiar music, incorporating styles from West Africa, rock ‘n’ roll, bluegrass and folk. In addition to their own songs, they cover such artists as Neil Young, Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, Lou Reed and Robert Johnson, among others. They have made three recordings: the eponymous “Zulu Leprechauns,” “Mixed Messages” and their latest, “L.A. To Zaire.”

Founded in 1993, the ensemble comprises bassist John Shaw, banjoist and electric dulcimer player John Schwellenbach, percussionist and violinist Annegret Baier and percussionist Jeff Howe. Their instrumental arsenal includes djembe, six-string bass, guitar, dumbek, conga, shakers and cymbals. They have played the Maine Festival, Congress Square Festival and New Year’s Portland, along with such venues as Portland’s Oak Street Theater, the Waldo Theater and the Camden Opera House.

Aug. 5, Harry Vayo: A master of the hammered dulcimer and a self-described healing musician, Vayo performs his own compositions, Celtic and Asian tunes, Beatles songs, Cajun sounds and an occasional classical piece. He has made two recordings and has appeared at the Common Ground Fair and New Year’s by the Bay in Belfast, among many other Maine venues.

Aug. 12, Irish Hill: This local quartet offers a heartfelt blend of Celtic, bluegrass and old-time fiddle music. The players are guitarist Scott Williams, mandolinist Roberta Hill, fiddler-banjoist Michael Conant and bassist Tim Clough. Rich harmonies by Hill and Conant round out Irish Hill’s distinctive sound.