Boston College

From the tower of St. William’s Hall, a partial view of the property Boston College recently purchased from the Archdiocese of Boston, an 18.7-acre tract in Brighton with several administrative and academic buildings including the St. John’s Seminary library building, seen at mid center.

The $65-million transaction includes the library, the Archdiocesan Chancery building, Bishop Peterson Hall, a four-story building that contains classrooms, offices, and a chapel, and the Creagh Research Library, which currently houses the Archdiocese’s archives.

The transaction adds to Boston College’s previous acquisition of 46 acres in Brighton from the Archdiocese in 2004 and 2006, which included the former Cardinal’s Residence, St. William’s Hall, St. Clement’s Hall, and the former Tribunal building at 3 Lake Street.

Several administrative offices have already moved to Brighton, and the University is studying plans to locate the new School of Theology and Ministry there. The school will comprise the Weston Jesuit School of Theology, the Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry, and adult education components of C21 Online.

The McMullen Museum of Art’s Diana Larsen (left) and Kathryn Martini of the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York, inspect Jackson Pollock’s Red Composition following its move from Syracuse to Boston on August 6. The 19-by-24 inch oil on masonite painting is one of more than 150 works that will be on display in Boston College’s Pollock Matters exhibition from September 1 through December 9.

The 1946 painting by Pollock, the famed American Abstract Expressionist artist, is one of many in the exhibition that will be on loan from private collections and museums. It was delivered in a climate-controlled truck and then stored for twenty-four hours before Larsen and Martini opened the crate.

Consulting a report that chronicles the painting’s condition, Larsen and Martini examined the work for any new chips, cracks, or other signs of wear. The work was unaltered, they agreed.

Red Composition is considered one of Pollock’s transitional paintings, created with both a brushed and poured paint. It is one of several known Pollocks that will be part of the exhibition. The exhibition, which explores the personal and artistic interrelationship between Pollock and noted Swiss-born photographer and graphic designer Herbert Matter, will also feature works by Matter, Mercedes Matter, Lee Krasner, Hans Hofmann, and Alexander Calder.

Pollock Matters also puts on public view for the first time a group of small dripped paintings labeled “Jackson experimental works” by Herbert Matter. These were discovered in 2002 by Matter’s son in a storage facility belonging to his late father.

Skies were clear and temperatures mild on May 21 as 3,504 graduating students, joined by families, faculty, trustees, honorary degree recipients, and alumni marshals from the 50th and 25th anniversary classes, celebrated Boston College’s 131st annual Commencement Exercises. This year’s graduates come from every state in the union and 49 foreign nations on six continents. (By comparison, 1957’s graduating class, celebrating its golden anniversary this year, hailed from 10 states—Michigan being the most distant—and four foreign countries, all in the Western Hemisphere.)

The University conferred 2,289 undergraduate degrees, 1,408 of them from the College of Arts and Sciences and the remainder from the professional schools and the Woods College of Advancing Studies. Among advanced degree recipients, 147 earned doctorates, 251 became doctors of law, and 817 received master’s degrees or certificates of advanced studies.

@BC presents a slideshow of photographs taken during the morning of Commencement Day, with a background of audio vignettes from the proceedings at Alumni Stadium in the following order:

• Boston College Band, directed by Sebastian Bonaiuto
• From the welcoming remarks of President William P. Leahy, SJ
  (2 audio vignettes)
• Reading of the degree in Latin by Cutberto Garza, provost and dean of faculties
• From the address to graduates by John M. (Jack) Connors, Jr. ’63, recipient of an honorary doctorate in business administration
• Patricia H. Noonan ’07, singing “Hail Alma Mater”

*Flash 8+ required to view slideshow*

During the evening rush hour on August 1, the Interstate 35W bridge, which spans the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, buckled and collapsed. By the following Wednesday, five people were confirmed dead, eight were still missing, and more than 100 were reported injured.

Trained by a 9/11 disaster readiness program he took in 2001, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak ’78 is working with state and federal officials to organize recovery efforts and comfort families affected by the tragedy. According to a local paper, Pioneer Press, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty told reporters that Rybak is “extraordinary… . He has been omnipresent. He’s been effective. He’s been the right person at the right time for this situation in terms of his crisis leadership.”

A native son of Minneapolis, the six-year mayor has become spokeperson for the city as it deals with the tragedy and its aftermath. In an interview with CNN, Rybak said, “I also call on people to remember that this is something that will not be about one news cycle or a couple of days. It is really about families who are now only beginning to understand the depth of what it means to have a loved one who is no longer here, or to have a loved one whose whereabouts you don’t know about. And so it is important for us all to have contained compassion and sustained compassion that will stick with us for a long period of time that it will need for this community to heal.”

A former newspaper reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune, business consultant, and community activist, Rybak is known for his energy and drive. In his six years in office, Rybak, a Democrat, has created a $10 million housing trust fund, strengthened the city’s code of ethics, and closed a $50 million gap in city funding.

Rybak earned his B.A. in political science in 1978 and told a writer for a Boston College Magazine interview in 2003 that he came to Boston College knowing “what I wanted to be—the mayor of Minneapolis.” In 2001, outspent nearly two to one by his opponent, Rybak campaigned with an agenda focused on affordable housing, environmental planning, and the redesign of such basic services as snow removal and the issuing of city permits. He won with 65 percent of the vote in his first race and 61 percent of the vote when he was reelected in 2005.

Rybak, who is 51, lives in Minneapolis with his wife Megan and two children. “The office,” he said, “has given my family the chance to be a part of something a lot bigger than just the four of us.”

• Interview of R.T. Rybak on CNN on August 2
• Article on R. T. Rybak on ABC.com on August 2
• Boston College Magazine profile, Winter 2003
• City of Minneapolis Web site
• R.T. Rybak Web site

Clad in Superfan shirts imprinted with their class motto “For Here All Are One,” incoming freshmen attempt to spell out the word “Eagle” with their arms at the Robsham Theater Arts Center on July 24 at the closing event for a three-day orientation program, one of seven held throughout the summer.

Some 2,400 freshmen will visit campus this summer through the Office of First Year Experience. During their stay, students live in residence halls, meet with faculty advisors, and register for first semester courses.

“We want to help students maximize their experience here,” says Fr. Joseph Marchese, First Year Experience director. “They become familiar with their surroundings and learn more about the uniqueness of Boston College as a Jesuit and Catholic University.”

Elizabeth McPartland ’08 helps (l to r) Brendan, Sophie, and Ryan, preschoolers in the St. Columbkille Summer Program, with an arts and crafts project in a Carney Hall classroom on June 27. The camp is held at Boston College in partnership with Boston Catholic Schools Connect, a school-community-university collaborative that provides programming to help students develop academically and socially.

From June through August, more than 180 children from the greater Boston area and its suburbs participate in academic enrichment and recreation activities on campus, ranging from classroom exercises centered on weekly themes to swims at the Rec Plex pool, soccer games, and campus tours. Ten Boston College undergraduate and graduate students work alongside program teachers to assist campers in the classroom and on field trips.

This is the summer program’s fourth year at Boston College. “The kids love it,” says Jen DeNisco ‘92, program director. “They feel like they are a part of something bigger here on campus.”

Israeli Consul Rony Yedidia (left), Irish Consul General David Barry (center), and comic Jimmy Tingle (right) read from James Joyce’s Ulysses, while actress Elaine Theodore looks on during the Bloomsday Boston 2007 celebration, held at Bapst Library on June 16. Reading from “The Cyclops,” the narrator (Yedidia) sets the scene in a Dublin pub where Leopold Bloom (not pictured: Steven Barkhimer) speaks in defense of the Jews against the anti-Semitic outbursts of “The Citizen” (Tingle).

Bill Littlefield, Margery Eagan, Jim Braude, and Delores Handy were some of the 12 Boston-area personalities who joined six actors in reading more than two-dozen excerpts from the classic work, with many wearing Victorian-style dress. The readings were part of a larger event presented by the New Center for Arts and Culture and Boston College’s Irish Studies Program and Office of the Provost.

“The partnership is ideal to celebrate the intersection of Jewish and Irish cultures in the Boston area, through the medium of a great Irish novel, Ulysses, and its Jewish protagonist, Leopold Bloom,” said Daniel Neuman, chief executive officer and executive director of the New Center for Arts and Culture.

The day’s events included the panel discussion “A City Evolving: the Impact of the Jews and Irish in Boston,” led by Boston College history professor James O’Toole, doctoral candidate Meaghan Dwyer, Michael Feldberg of the American Jewish Historical Society, and social worker Enid Shapiro. English professor and Irish studies chair Marjorie Howes spoke on “Ulysses for the Perplexed: Making Sense of the Novel for the Common Reader,” and two films, Of Stars and Shamrocks and Bloom, were screened.

“This collaboration vividly illustrates the relevance of the Irish and Jewish experiences to each other and, equally important, to those of other diaspora communities,” said Bert Garza, provost and dean of faculties.

The ninth annual Boston College Arts Festival took place April 26-28. Coordinated by the University Arts Council and sponsored by a dozen University organizations, the festival featured artwork and sculpture by 80 student artists, films, talks by guest alumni, crafts demonstrations, and performances by more than 30 student instrumental, vocal, dance, and theatrical ensembles. According to the Arts Council, some 1,000 students and faculty contributed to the event, which was attended by an estimated 13,000 visitors, including 600 children who came for arts and crafts activities on Saturday.

Student clubs and groups performed each day from noon to 5 p.m. under a big tent on O’Neill Plaza. @BC presents eight performances, performed by seven student groups, listed below. (Each group’s name is a link to its homepage or program.)

• BC bOp!
• Irish Dance Society
• Dance Ensemble
• Heightsmen
• Synergy Hip-Hop Dance Company
• Acoustics
• University Chorale

The ultimate purpose of corporations is to make profit for their owners or “shareholders,” and this is not always a good thing for society, argues Kent Greenfield, a professor of law and author of The Failure of Corporate Law: Fundamental Flaws and Progressive Possibilities (University of Chicago Press, 2006).

A faculty member since 1995 and the 2003-04 Boston College Law Teacher of the Year, Greenfield “presents a stunning critique of the shareholder supremacy theory of corporate law, complete with practical and progressive law reform proposals designed to get so-called public corporations back into the business of promoting the public interest,” writes Joseph William Singer, a law professor at Harvard University. Greenfield asserts that current laws, which require corporations to act primarily on behalf of owners’ interests to maximize profits, hurt other corporate “stakeholders”—employees, consumers, the local community, and society at large. He suggests changing corporate governance norms to reflect the principle that “the ultimate purpose of corporations should be to serve the interests of society as a whole.”

In an interview with @BC, Greenfield expounds on the themes of his book by explaining the current status of corporate law in America, presenting the need for change, and describing his proposed reforms.

He came to college on a football scholarship, majored in accounting, and took a job at a major accounting firm after graduating. But Gary Gulman found he was attracted to a different sort of career. As a junior CPA, he would put in a 12-hour day of crunching numbers, and then head for Boston’s open mike comedy clubs. Once he began to make people laugh, he quit accounting and took temporary work—as a substitute schoolteacher, as a doorman, as a barista at Starbucks—which gave him time to develop his talents. He worked in comedy clubs for six years, drawing on his experiences growing up in Peabody, telling jokes about people and places familiar to Bostonians. “That’s how a comedian grows—being funny about specific local things and then expanding to universal things to entertain the masses,” he told an interviewer.

After his appearance at the 1999 Montreal International Comedy Festival, Gulman got regular work writing and producing television comedy. His big break came in 2004 when he placed third in NBC’s stand-up comedy showcase, Last Comic Standing. Since then, he has been “one of stand-up comedy’s fastest rising stars,” according to Laffstock.com, frequently appearing on late night talk shows, and starring in Dane Cook’s Tourgasm, a 20-show comedy tour chronicled on HBO.

Whether the subject is the difference between grapes and grapefruit, the yearning of a Jewish kid to celebrate Christmas, or the disappointing flavor of Chinese fortune cookies, Gulman’s humor “is a throwback to comics of the 80s,” says Jim Carnes of The Sacramento Bee. “His act isn’t frantic or obscene, but is well-crafted and thoughtful, designed to entertain, not to offend.”

• Gary Gulman website
• Gary Gulman’s MySpace page
• Video clip of routine on cheerleaders posted on a Boston Herald blog
• Several video clips of Gary Gulman performances on Comedy Central
• Article on Gary Gulman in the June 1, 2007, Sacramento Bee
• Interview with Gary Gulman by blogger Ben Kharakh

With the help of a crane, construction workers remove the face of one of Gasson Hall’s two clocks from the front of its tower on May 23 as part of a major restoration of Boston College’s signature building.

The repair of the clocks is part of a larger refurbishment of the 94-year-old building, a project that began on April 17. The first phase of construction will focus mainly on Gasson’s bell tower. Crews will replace virtually all of the building’s cast exterior with new stone that will replicate the look of the original masonry. Workers will also replace or restore the tower’s four spires, landings, windows, and various decorative elements. The project, which will intermittently silence Gasson’s bells, may last as long as 18 months.

“This is a building with a lot of emotional attachment to it,” says project manager Jacob Mycofsky. “People love Gasson, it’s the focal point of the University, and we’re going to bring her back.”

Opened in 1913, the Gothic-style Gasson Hall was Boston College’s first building on the Chestnut Hill Campus. The University’s best-known structure, it has also been called the Recitation Building and the Tower Building.