Naked In The Ivy League

For decades, thousands of male and female students at some of America’s most prestigious institutions, in the Ivy League and among the Seven Sisters, were routinely required to strip down and have their nude photos taken.  Why?

Journalist Ron Rosenbaum tells the fascinating story in a long, but riveting, New York Times piece that is almost 20 years old, but new to me.  Rosenbaum himself was a student at Yale who had to undergo the bizarre ritual during the 1960s.  He appeared at a Yale gymnasium, was required to completely disrobe, had metal pins attached to his vertebrae with adhesive, and then was photographed.  Everybody had to have their “posture photos” taken, and students whose posture was deemed unacceptable had to take a remedial posture class where they presumably walked around rooms balancing books on their heads.  Similar photos were taken at schools like Vassar and Wellesley, and urban legends circulated among the Ivy Leaguers about purportedly stolen posture photo collections of young coeds being available on the black market.

But the real story runs deeper than posture and pranks and has a disturbing element.  In reality, the photographs were also part of an anthropological study undertaken to explore theories that contended that study of the human physique, through measurement and analysis of ratios, could reveal intelligence, moral worth, and other characteristics.  It was a branch of eugenics that apparently was scientifically accepted for a time, with its own scientific-sounding names for character components — “ectomorphs” for thin and nervous people, “endomorphs” for the tubby, and “mesomorphs” for the Charles Atlases among us.  Under the theory, each person purportedly had some mixture of the three components that was genetically determined and described by a three-digit code, and those components controlled your character.  The “science” was married to concepts of posture and propriety, accepted by many educational institutions as a progressive, scientific step forward, and the result was thousands of mystified, often humiliated students at elite schools being required to troop before cameras and have their nude photos taken, to be studied by practitioners of a pseudoscience.

The concept that your body shape determines the content of your character seems ludicrous now, as bizarre and unscientific as Nazi “master race” theories, phrenology, or medieval notions that good health required periodic bleedings.  The concept no doubt would have seemed ludicrous to many of the unfortunate students who were forced to shed their clothing — but of course they weren’t told.  They did it because the institution told them to do so and because everyone else did it.  No one questioned authority, and for decades no one at any of those lofty institutions asked whether there was any true scientific basis for the practice or raised any moral or ethical qualms about the “posture photos.”

The students weren’t the only ones exposed by the “posture photos” and their true back story; the schools and the scientific community were as well.  We should all think of “posture photos” the next time an institution tells us to shut up and follow along on a course that seems absurd, that the science is settled and can’t be questioned, and that because everyone else has done it we should, too.

Getting The Sheepskin

Today we witnessed the Vassar Commencement.  This year is Vassar’s sesquicentennial (i.e., its 150th birthday) and it was a special day for everyone who attended.

At Vassar, the commencements are held outdoors in a beautiful setting.  The stage is set up in a natural amphitheater with the Vassar lake in the background and tall pines framing the stage, and the chairs for the graduates and guests are set up on a gently sloping hillside.  As a result, there really isn’t a bad seat in the house — unless you get stuck behind one of those annoying parents who won’t sit down.

The skies were threatening but the rain, thankfully, held off.  We got to see many Vassar traditions, such as the “Daisy Chain” carried in by Vassar undergrads in white dresses, which has been a commencement staple for decades, and we learned about a number of other traditions in a speech given by Vassar’s president.

In fact, all of the speakers at the commencement did a good job.  There wasn’t a real clinker in the bunch, which means that the Vassar commencement is different from every other commencement I can remember.  The main speaker — Chip Reid of CBS news, himself a Vassar grad and the first male alum to be a commencement speaker — was especially good, and struck exactly the right note with a speech that was encouraging, funny, interesting, and not overlong.  (Great job, Chip!)  And, of course, we got to see Russell cross the stage and get his diploma.

The new graduate and his proud Mom

Commencements are, of course, memorable for the graduates and their parents.  As a parent, I feel great pride and satisfaction about Russell’s accomplishment, and it was a real pleasure to meet his professors and fellow students.  But the emotions felt by parents, I think, pale in comparison to the confusing mix of emotions felt by the graduates.  There is relief at having stayed the course and happiness about your achievement, but also a certain wistfulness at realizing that your friends of the last four years will never again be so close and so close by — and, likely, trepidation about what will happen next.

Because commencements are so charged with emotion, I think the appreciation of the accomplishment may be get lost somewhat, only to be found in coming days when things have settled down.  That’s a good thing, in a way, because graduating from a fine school like Vassar College is an accomplishment to be savored.  Congratulations, Russell!

Russell’s Senior Art Show

Yesterday we went to Russell’s senior art show.  It was held in two floors of a large, empty, decrepit building in a somewhat run-down part of Poughkeepsie, where Russell’s work was displayed along with the work of many other seniors graduating with arts degrees from Vassar.

Although the conditions were not what you might find in a museum, the venue worked because the empty building had plenty of space that allowed each student to place their pieces on bare walls in one or more rooms.  The shabby surroundings — with exposed wires, damaged floors, and cracked windows — gave the place an eclectic feel that was well-suited to the eclectic mix of artwork being shown.  And what a mix it was!  There were paintings, and ink drawings, and pieces made of wax, and pieces made with lights, and toasters, and strings and mirrors, and flimsy chairs chained to the floor.

Russell’s pieces primarily occupied two rooms, although a few of his works were scattered at other locations in the building.  As always, we enjoyed seeing Russell’s works.  One of Russell’s friends mentioned that Russell is good at creating space in his pieces, and I thought that was a really interesting observation.  It also looks, to my uneducated eye, like Russell is experimenting with shapes and working with different kinds of objects that get away from reliance on the standard, rectangular canvas.  One of my favorite pieces, shown above at the top of this post, was totally outside normal canvas-oriented artwork, and the unusual shape really added to the feel the piece created.

There was a good crowd at the event, and we got to meet some of Russell’s professors and friends.  From looking at the show, it seems obvious that the collective Vassar arts community has had a real impact on Russell’s art — and my guess is that the reverse is true, too.

A Final Stay At The Alumnae House

This weekend, as we attend Russell’s graduation, we also will enjoy our final stay (we think) at the Alumnae House at Vassar College.  For the last four years, it has become a home-away-from-home for us whenever we visit the campus.  Kish and I will miss coming here.

The Alumnae House has been around for more than 80 years, and it is one of those interesting, quirky places that you are happy to find and explore. It isn’t so much a hotel as a combination of diverse elements variously found in dormitories, hostels, and homes.  The ground floor features large common rooms, including a kind of living room, a library, and a dining room.  The upper floors include many different types of sleeping rooms that range from larger rooms with double beds to small rooms equipped with a simple single bed, a dresser, and a chair.  You share bathrooms and shower rooms with your fellow guests, and as a result the whole place has a kind of gentle, friendly, communal feel to it.   It’s hard to walk down the stairs of the Alumnae House in the morning without having a smile on your face.

The Alumnae House is an old building and is filled with the kinds of distinct touches that you would expect to find in an old building, like dark hardwood paneling and dark hardwood floors in the library, oil paintings, large fireplaces in the common rooms, tall windows and old-fashioned furnishings.  In the upper floors the hallways to the sleeping quarters are lined with black-and-white photos of stern-faced women and female Vassar students of days gone by playing sports in improbable outfits that had to hinder athletic performance.  The sleeping room areas include push-button light switches, wall sconce lamps, and glass doorknobs.  It all reminds me of my grandmother’s old house in Akron, Ohio.

For a parent, the visits to campus become a big part of your view of your child’s college experience.  The Alumnae House has always made our visits to Vassar more memorable.

Vassar Reflections

On Sunday, Russell will receive his diploma from Vassar College.  I’m sure every parent of a graduating college student says this — but it is hard to believe that it has been four years since we first drove to the Vassar campus and, on an excruciatingly hot day, moved Russell and all of his stuff into a cramped room on one of the upper floors of Main, the oldest building on campus.

Whenever a child picks a college and then starts school, the parent holds his breath.  Will it be what he expected?  Will he make friends?  Will he get a good education?  Most importantly, will he be happy?  Or, will you get the dreaded middle-of-the-night phone call from the weeping child who says they hate the school and just want to come home?

By all of these standards, I think Vassar has been a good choice for our son.  Russell has been happy there.  He seems to have received a solid liberal arts education that has challenged him intellectually.  He has enjoyed the arts curriculum at Vassar.  His range and, I think, his confidence as an artist has grown.  He has made many good friends who hail from every corner of the country.  He learned how to play rugby and traveled with the team to Ireland.  He received an award that allowed him to spend a memorable, sweaty summer traveling throughout Vietnam and creating art in the midst of the Vietnamese people.  He participated in a number of art shows and got to organize the Vassar contribution to the Masters on Main Street exhibit.

And, when he receives his sheepskin on Sunday, he will have completed his schooling in four years and be ready to move out into the world.  It is hard to believe that that day has come so soon — but it will be an occasion worth celebrating.

Russell And The Masters On Main Street (Cont.)

A web album of photos of the pieces of Vassar students who are participating in the Masters on Main Street exhibition in Catskill, New York is now available on-line.  It is a diverse mix of paintings, photography, sculpture and drawings and can be seen here.  The web album includes five pieces by Russell from the show, including the one pictured above.

Fortunately, the Masters on Main Street exhibition runs until the end of May, so Kish and I will be able to see all of the pieces when we go to Vassar for Russell’s graduation.

Russell And The Masters On Main Street

Today Russell will be part of a new show opening up in Catskill, New York.  Catskill is a scenic town located along the Hudson River, north of Poughkeepsie.

The show is part of an effort by the Catskill Arts Initiative to fill the empty storefronts along Catskill’s quaint Main Street with art.  The project is called “Masters On Main Street” and will feature participants from Vassar College, The Art Institute of Chicago, Bard College, the School of Visual Arts, and SUNY New Paltz.  Their work will appear in space donated by owners of the Main Street buildings.  According to the Catskill Storefront Arts Project website, Russell will be heading up a group show of 20 Vassar College artists, whose pieces will be displayed at 396 Main Street.  A piece in the Vassar Miscellany News, which features some quotes from Russell, is here.

Filling vacant storefronts with art sounds like a good way to increase interest in a struggling downtown area.  Congratulations to Russell for his hard work on the project, and good luck to the Catskill Arts Initiative as it works to revitalize a charming area that has been hard hit by our struggling economy.

Phase One of the project, including the collective Vassar College show, will run until May 31, 2011.

Summer Work

The Miscellany News, Vassar’s student newspaper, has posted on Flickr some photos of pieces displayed at the “Summer Work” show at the Palmer Gallery.  Although the slide show doesn’t identify which pieces are by which artist, I have a pretty good idea of which pictures show Russell’s work.  In any case, I think all of the pieces are good.

Russell On Display

Vassar College announced today that some of Russell’s summer work will be exhibited, along with the summer work of other Vassar art majors, at the James W. Palmer Gallery in the Main Building on the Vassar campus.  The Palmer Gallery is the same venue where “This The Range And Recent,” a showing of work by Russell and some other Vassar artists, was displayed in February and March of this year.

The Palmer Gallery at Vassar

It will be interesting to see what Russell decides to display from his summer work.  He was prolific on his travels through Vietnam, and selecting only one or two pieces may be challenging.

The exhibition runs from September 10 to September 25.  If you find yourself in Poughkeepsie, New York with some time on your hands, I’m sure it is well worth seeing.

At The Floating Markets of Can Tho, With The Durian Fruit

Russell’s Vietnam journey continues.  He has left the pristine beaches of Phu Quoc behind and moved on to Can Tho, a city of more than a million people in the middle of the Mekong Delta region in the south of the country.

Can Tho is famous for its floating markets, and when we last heard from Russell he was just getting ready to check them out.  The Mekong Delta region is Vietnam’s breadbasket (rice bowl would be more accurate, actually) and the floating markets offer all manner of food, from vegetables to insects to snakes, as well as flowers and other goods.

The market apparently is a good place to get the fabled Durian fruit, a fruit that is so foul smelling and distasteful that even Andrew Zimmern of Bizarre Foods fame couldn’t choke it down.  When Russell gets back home, I want to know whether he outdid his fellow Vassarite and savored the piquant flavor of the Durian.

A Good Way To Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day

Blarney Castle

Today Russell and the members of the Vassar men’s rugby team are in Cork, Ireland, where they visited Blarney Castle and kissed the Blarney Stone.  What better place to be, and what better thing to do, on St. Patrick’s Day?

We can only hope that the intrepid lads ended the day with some corned beef and cabbage and boiled potatoes, chased down with a few pints of Guinness and perhaps a Smithwick’s or two, to fortify them all for tomorrow’s match.

A Report From Ireland

According to this posting on the Vassar website, the men’s rugby team lost in their first match with an Irish team.  I don’t know enough about rugby or its scoring system to figure out how close the contest really was, but it appears that Russell was put into the game after Vassar’s captain was injured.

The report does not describe post-game festivities, but I understand from Russell that the team members were expected to learn songs about America — like Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land — to sing to their Irish opponents during the after-match libations.  Let’s hope the Vassar lads were in good voice.

Erin Go Bragh

Russell and the Vassar rugby team are leaving today for a spring break tour of Ireland, where they will face off against a series of Irish rugby teams.

The Vassar college athletics website provides some detail on the tour.  The team will start off in Dublin, where they will play a match against Dublin City College, and then will travel to Cork for matches against Kinsale and Fermoy.

My understanding of rugby (which admittedly is sketchy) is that enjoying a frothy adult beverage is a crucial part of the experience.  While they are in Dublin, the Vassar squad will have that opportunity and be able to quaff a Guinness at the home of that legendary brew.  This is entirely appropriate, because the Vassar sports teams are called the Brewers after Matthew Vassar, who made his fortune as a brewer.  When the team visits Cork they may have the chance to visit the nearby Blarney Castle, bend over backwards, and kiss the Blarney Stone, which supposedly confers the gift of eloquence.  Even better, the team will be able to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in Cork, which has a St. Patrick’s Day Festival and lots of fine pubs to toast the man who according to legend drove the snakes from the Emerald Isle.  If their tongues aren’t loosened by the Blarney Stone, a few pints of Harp should do the trick.

Erin go bragh, by the way, is Gaelic for “Ireland until doomsday.”  For the Vassar rugby team, the day after a well-celebrated St. Patrick’s Day may well feel like doomsday.

This The Range And Recent (Cont.)

Vassar’s Miscellany News blog has a nice slide show up on the reception for the art show by Russell and his fellow artists.

This The Range And Recent

Back At The “Buddy Inn”

Kish and I are back in Poughkeepsie for Russell’s show, and because there is a Vassar Board of Trustees meeting this weekend we were not able to stay at our normal lodging of choice, the Vassar Alumni House.  Instead, we were forced to return to the “Buddy Inn.”

The “Buddy Inn” is really the Poughkeepsie Days’ Inn.  In the Webner family we call it the “Buddy Inn” because of a notorious incident that occurred when Russell was still at Academy and we took a trip east to look at colleges.  On that trip, Vassar was our first destination.  As the trip started, Russell was in a surly mood, groaning about wasting his days looking at schools rather than having fun with his Academy classmates.  We got to Poughkeepsie around the dinner hour, checked in to the Days’ Inn, and walked to a nearby Italian restaurant for dinner.  We then went back to the hotel and went to bed.  At about 2:30 a.m. the “Buddy incident” began.

The "Buddy Inn"

A fire alarm directly over the headboard of our bed went off, screeching loudly and waking us out of a sound sleep.  At first, I thought it was the clock-radio alarm in the room that a prior guest had set and left cranked to full volume.  After a few seconds, however, I realized it was the fire alarm.  Kish bolted out of the room to make sure that Russell was up and okay.  She left the door to our room open as I got dressed.

When I walked to the door, I noticed that I strange overweight man, about 50-something, was standing there, wearing only dingy jockey underwear and a t-shirt.  He was wild-eyed and his hair was askew; he was very agitated and saying something I couldn’t make out.  I thought he was a fellow guest who had been rudely awakened and said something like:  “Don’t worry, I’m sure it is just a false alarm.”

I quickly realized,however, that something was definitely “off” about the guy.  He came into our room and started wandering around, looking at our luggage and clothing.  He sat on the bed and started to pick up and examine things on the nightstand.  By then, I stopping caring about the possible fire and started to focus on how I could get this guy out of the room.  He weighed about 350 pounds and reeked of body odor and cigarette smoke.  I started to say things like “C’mon buddy, you need to go.”  He was unmoved by such entreaties.  He wandered to our bathroom and started to pick up things like toothpaste tubes and aspirin bottles.  In the meantime, the screeching fire alarm was continuing at ear-splitting volume, and Kish was outside, saying:  “Just leave him, we need to leave the building.”  Russell, our strapping offensive tackle who could have helped me wrestle the guy out of the room, also stood outside, chuckling at my predicament.  He wisely decided to have nothing to do with “Buddy.”

Finally, I just grabbed “Buddy” and shoved him out of our room.  Pushing him was disgusting, like having your hand sink into the spongy material they sometimes use for packing where your handprint stays visible for a few seconds after you take your hand away.  By the time I had locked the door, Buddy was nowhere to be seen.  I went outside, met up with Kish and Russell, and waited for the fire crew that had by then arrived to make sure that it was, indeed, a false alarm.  It turned out the “Buddy” had set off the alarm and also had visited other rooms during the early morning incident.  He was a developmentally disabled guy who had escaped his companion traveler.

When we got back to our room I wanted to do nothing but wash my hands.  The next morning the Days’ Inn comped us on our rooms, and I noticed that Russell’s mood had changed remarkably, from glum surliness to barely disguised glee at my interaction with “Buddy.”  He quickly called Richard and recounted the “Buddy incident” in blow-by-blow detail, and remained cheerful for the rest of the trip.  He also ended up selecting Vassar for college notwithstanding the night’s events — which is why we are back at the “Buddy Inn” today.