The “Picture of the Year” at the second annual Baldwin Awards for student films was Pisces, directed by Lulu Wang ’05. A moody 12-minute meditation on the domestic life of a teenage girl, the film was one of 26 honored in 13 categories. Among faculty presenters who sacrificed dignity to read lame jokes devised by student scriptwriters was Cutberto Garza, who became the first academic vice president in BC history to lean toward a microphone and say “Knock, knock.” Boston College placed seventh in a Princeton Review survey of parents of college applicants who were asked: “What ‘dream college’ would you most like to see your child attend were prospects of acceptance or cost not issues?” Princeton finished dreamiest. Evidence of how the applicants themselves view Boston College emerged from a record 26,589 bids for some 2,200 places in the Class of 2010—a 12 percent rise over last year. On the afternoon of the Ides of March, five students wrapped in bedsheets and wielding cardboard knives assembled on the quad, summarily reenacted the murder of Caesar, and melted into the crowd. President Leahy sent a letter to faculty and staff outlining a draft of BC’s strategic plan for advancement in the liberal arts, natural sciences, research programs, student formation, and Catholic-Jesuit programs. Students published a second issue of Elements, a journal devoted to scholarship by fellow undergraduates. This edition featured articles on Koranic manuscripts, J.M. Coetzee, malaria, Epicurean philosophy, Mark Rothko, feminist views of pornography, and the effects of vitamins C and E on estrogen receptors. Brian Roundy, a senior from Coupeville, Washington, won the second annual “Mr. BC” contest, a festival of ironic gesture, in which he bested five other worthies by, among other things, portraying Robert Goulet as a rapper in the “talent competition.” The unironic lead editorial in the March 23 issue of the Heights was titled, “No better time to be at Boston College.” Among the reasons cited by the writers: prospective academic and campus development and an upcoming Kanye West concert in Conte. Ines Sendoya, who had been associate director of AHANA Student Programs, was named director, succeeding longtime director Donald Brown, who left BC for a position at a university in California. Finish work began on the four-story BC residence hall at 66 Commonwealth Avenue, which has been off-line since May 2005. It will house 239 students come September, with Honors Program enrollees on the second floor, and the top floor devoted to study and lounge spaces. Church Ethics and Its Organizational Context: Learning from the Sex Abuse Scandal in the Catholic Church, the first of six planned books emerging from the Church in the 21st Century initiative, was published by Roman & Littlefield Publishers. Dining programs at BC and Stanford won this year’s top award for universities from Restaurants & Institutions magazine. BC was praised for “carved-to-order sandwiches, Thai barbecue, fresh Boston seafood, and a chocolate bar.” With 36 alumni currently serving two-year assignments, BC placed 11th in the country among universities of its size for the number of its Peace Corps volunteers. Relatedly, 700 student volunteers spent spring break working in Appalachia or on the Gulf Coast. Books by professors Mary Bilder and Stephen Schloesser, SJ, were honored by the American Historical Association and the Catholic Historical Association, respectively. Bilder’s The Transatlantic Constitution takes issue with accepted wisdom about British attitudes toward Colonial law, while Schloesser’s Jazz Age Catholicism looks at the collision between modernism and Catholic ideas in 1920s Paris. Six sets of student government candidates campaigned under the slogans: “BC United,” “Strengthening the Connection,” “Respect,” “Real Community, Real Change,” “EXPECT more and GET more,” and “Regular Guys.” BC United, fronted by juniors Santiago Bunce and Justin Nunez, won. In the adding insult to injury department, on February 15, at 3:26 p.m., BC police logged the following: “A fire alarm went off in the Mods. Upon arrival, officers determined that the cause was bad cooking.” A student-sponsored forum subtitled “Implications of ‘Nigga/Nigger’ as Used in the Mass Media” brought about 300 students to Robsham Theater and featured Tricia Rose, of UC–Santa Cruz, author Tim Wise (White Like Me), and Randall Kennedy, of Harvard Law School, who told the audience: “Any symbol, any word, is flippable. That’s what human beings can do. . . . I do not think that nigger should be an unmentionable. People should be able to see it, hear it, deal with it, play with it, and master it. And not be mastered by it.” Also among recent visitors were New Yorker writer William Finnegan, Joel Cohen, of the Boston Camerata, who offered a recital and lecture on the religious music of medieval Andalusia, and Peter Milward, SJ, a British scholar whose explications of Catholic referents in Shakespeare’s works has made respectable the notion that the Bard was, as the title of Milward’s latest book puts it, a “papist.”

Ben Birnbaum

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