2010: Spring Verbatim

Overheard on campus

"I was in the room with the IT person, and I was very, very nervous."

Dean of Admission Tom Parker describing to Amherst trustees his state of mind on the occasion of pressing “send” on the spring 2010 e-mail informing 1,126 applicants (from a record-setting pool of 8,088) they’d been admitted to the college. This was the first time the college has notified the students by e-mail.

"Some days we’re Hamlet, sometimes we’re Ferdinand, but our time and place confronts us with those young men’s dilemmas."

Associate Professor of English Anston Bosman in a March lecture, titled “Globalizing Shakespeare: New Languages, Cultures and Stages” and delivered via conference call as part of the college’s new Telephone Lecture Series

“Nothing—nothing—has as good a record as education at lifting people’s living standards and, indeed, at fostering economic growth.”

David Leonhardt, who writes the Economic Scene column for The New York Times, speaking on Feb. 3 in Converse Hall on the future of the American economy

“If you ever have not cleaned your kitchen dishes right away after breakfast, you know that egg dries very quickly and very stiffly onto a plate. The same thing occurs here with tempera paintings.”

Andaleeb Banta, visiting assistant professor of the history of art, speaking at the Mead Art Museum in March on the tempera painting The Adoration of the Child with Saints Bernard and Bernardino, by 15th-century Sienese artist Sano di Pietro

“The painting, if it’s working, tells you what it wants. If it’s not working, you’re doing all the telling—not interesting.”  

Robert Sweeney, the William R. Mead Professor of Art, speaking on Jan. 29 in the Eli Marsh Gallery at the opening of an exhibition of his paintings from the past decade