{"id":3646,"date":"2010-04-21T18:05:17","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T18:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hub-dev.bates.edu\/magazine\/?page_id=3646"},"modified":"2017-09-06T11:44:35","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T15:44:35","slug":"editors-note","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/back-issues\/y2002\/summer02\/departments\/editors-note\/","title":{"rendered":"Editor's Note"},"content":{"rendered":"

She’s perfect.<\/strong><\/p>\n

By H. Jay Burns, Managing Editor<\/p>\n

In April, staff writer Doug Hubley spent two days at Haverford College interviewing Bates president-elect Elaine Tuttle Hansen and her colleagues, family, and friends.<\/p>\n

Upon his return, the magazine staff gathered to hear his assessment of the new president.<\/p>\n

“She’s perfect,” he said. Immediately, the room fell silent.<\/p>\n

You have to understand. We’ve all worked in or around newsrooms at one time or another, so a bit of irony, rather than sweet optimism, seeps into the give-and-take of our work, even in the refreshingly low-irony zone within Bates. So after Doug’s cheery setup, we waited \u2014 like sharks circling in chum \u2014 for the punch line.<\/p>\n

Instead, he took us through his reporter’s notebook, reciting a catalog of glowing Hansen assessments. Page by page, Doug’s “they’re-never-gonna-believe-this” exasperation increased.<\/p>\n

So as you read about Hansen and compare her qualities with Bates’ needs in the coming years, consider what President Harward said as he was stepping down last spring: “Bates continues to need champions who will claim the importance of the values of liberal learning and their relevance and their practice beyond Bates.”<\/p>\n

If Bates needs its greatest champion in the President’s Office, then perhaps we can offer an appropriate (and yes, optimistic) punch line to describe the College’s seventh president: “She’s perfect. For Bates.”<\/p>\n

And, finally, lest you think that Hubley is an easily wowed, neophyte president profiler, in his former life as a free-lancer he wrote about Bowdoin’s acclaimed new president, Barry Mills, for that college’s magazine. His assessment of Mills?<\/p>\n

“Almost perfect.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

She’s perfect. By H. Jay Burns, Managing Editor In April, staff writer…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"parent":3644,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_dimp_site_id":"","_dimp_override_contact":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"class_list":["post-3646","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11564,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3646\/revisions\/11564"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}