{"id":2014,"date":"2004-12-21T17:43:32","date_gmt":"2004-12-21T22:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hub-dev.bates.edu\/magazine\/?page_id=2014"},"modified":"2017-09-06T11:41:03","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T15:41:03","slug":"quad-angles","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/back-issues\/y2004\/fallwinter04\/quad-angles\/","title":{"rendered":"Quad Angles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Take a College to Launch<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Doug Hubley<\/p>\n

October was the month for launchingThe Campaign for Bates:<\/em> Endowing Our Values,<\/em> the College\u2019s largest fund-raising drive to date. Two events, one looking to parents and the second to alumni, christened a campaign freighted with high expectations and a compelling sense of what\u2019s at stake.<\/p>\n

The Parents & Family Weekend launch, on Oct. 9, drew about 500 members of the Bates community to Lake Andrews. Five speakers \u2014 a student, a parent, faculty economist Michael Murray, Trustee Michael Bonney \u201980, and President Elaine Tuttle Hansen \u2014 made the case for a fund drive designed to raise at least $120 million by June 2006. A literal launch provided spectacle and symbolism, as members of the crew team put a racing shell into Lake Andrews to carry spectators\u2019 expressions of hope for Bates, written on cards during the ceremony, across waters glittering in the morning sun.<\/p>\n

Three weeks later, the Homecoming Weekend launch in Merrill Gym featured a second call for guests\u2019 hopes for Bates and a similarly high-powered roster of speakers, including Charles A. Dana Professor of French Dick Williamson and master of ceremonies Tom Renyi P\u201997, P\u201904, campaign co-chair with fellow Trustee Joe Willett \u201973.<\/p>\n

The speakers\u2019 aspirations for Bates, their personal stories, and a touch of Mark Twain lent color and passion to the nitty-gritty of Bates\u2019 financial situation. It fell to Bonney, on parents weekend, and Renyi, at Homecoming, to lay out the financial realities of the situation. \u201cIf we, who know and love Bates the best, can\u2019t stretch to make this happen, who will?\u201d Bonney asked.<\/p>\n

The other speakers at both events illustrated Bates values in action. Julio Guevara \u201907, son of immigrants from El Salvador, said that Bates gave him not only the close faculty interaction he had hoped for, but a surprising degree of personal support.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know that members of the administrative staff would invite me to their homes for Thanksgiving,\u201d he said, \u201cor to eat homemade carne guisada <\/em>when I got homesick.\u201d<\/p>\n

Terry Byrnes P\u201905 recalled her first impressions of a welcoming campus, the kind of place where Professor John Pribram was willing to come over and open up a physics lab on Sunday to show to a prospective student and his parents.<\/p>\n

That prospective student, Andrew, is now a senior (and one of the two rowers to take the shell across Lake Andrews on parents weekend, the other being Karl Dietrich \u201905). Byrnes and her husband Jim now co-chair the Parents Fund with David Sand P\u201905.<\/p>\n

The Byrneses didn\u2019t hesitate to take on that responsibility, she said. \u201cWe believe that the Bates values are important not only to our student, but to the students that follow him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Murray, Charles Franklin Phillips Professor of Economics, detailed the important contributions students are making to a research project he\u2019s involved with. \u201cWhen students are engaged in original research at the edge of knowledge, they tend to have a rich understanding of where new knowledge comes from,\u201d he said. \u201cOne of my focuses for Bates in the future is to continue to have the resources to afford students this kind of opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harmonizing on the subject of Bates, Bonney and Renyi explained that The Campaign for Bates<\/em> is about the basics: compensating faculty at levels competitive with its peers; maintaining academic excellence; ensuring that such excellence stays accessible to an increasingly diverse student body by strengthening financial aid; and addressing long-postponed facilities needs, such as student housing and a new dining commons.<\/p>\n

Through a greater contribution from the annual Bates Fund, the drive will also reduce the operating budget\u2019s dependence on tuition fees. Most important, after years of \u201cdoing more with less,\u201d the Campaign for Bates<\/em> would boost the endowment to a level that can support Bates quality and values for the long haul. (For an in-depth explanation of the endowment issue, see page 22.)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe spend virtually the same dollars on instruction and financial aid as our peers, but our annual budget is much, much smaller,\u201d Bonney said \u2014 with the result that other needs, such as facilities, have gotten short shrift.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot \u2014 we cannot \u2014 sustain this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Starting with Mark Twain\u2019s apprenticeship on a Mississippi riverboat, President Hansen at both events inspired listeners to imagine the transformation Bates could achieve through The Campaign for Bates.<\/em> Campaign planners, she explained, realized early on that Bates \u201cmust match the culture of academic rigor, independence, open exchange and service with an equal culture of philanthropy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAlong with our New England values went pride in our independence, self-reliance, and polite reluctance to talk about money,\u201d she said. \u201cBut pride of another sort, pride in our extraordinary level of accomplishment, now motivates us to mount a campaign for the support that an institution of this caliber requires and deserves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hansen\u2019s hopes for Bates? \u201cOn our watch, let us secure for future generations a Bates that is stronger, more flexible, better-endowed,\u201d she said. \u201cOn our watch, let us make it possible for Bates to flourish as a place where young people of great promise learn indelible lessons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Referring back to Twain, she said,
\n\u201cOn our watch, let us be lightning pilots \u2014 sure, courageous, undeterred navigators for one of the greatest colleges ever founded, our Bates.\u201d<\/p>\n

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