Eugene Patterson, one of the most respected and influential journalists in the nation, was honored in November as Colby's 42nd Elijah Parish Lovejoy fellow. He received an honorary doctorate from the College and delivered the Lovejoy Address at Lorimer Chapel.

Seldom in the long history of the award have the attributes of the recipient intersected so closely with those of the man for whom the award is named. Lovejoy, a staunch abolitionist, was killed defending his presses from a pro-slavery mob and is considered the nation's first martyr to freedom of the press. Patterson, as editor of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, became one of the few white Southern editors to write editorials in favor of civil rights for African-Americans. He won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1966.

Perhaps his affinity for Lovejoy's cause is one reason Patterson seemed so moved to receive the award. "This will hang on the wall next to the Pulitzer," he said. "This is one award I want my granddaughters to see."

Patterson, reared in Adel, Ga., graduated from the state university while still in his teens and served as a tank commander under Gen. George Patton in World War II. He returned to civilian life as a cub reporter for newspapers in Texas and Georgia, then joined the old United Press in Atlanta, eventually serving as UP's night manager in New York and as London bureau chief. In 1956 Ralph McGill named him editor of the Journal and Constitution.

Patterson left the Atlanta paper when, after a series of clashes with Patterson, its publisher yanked a column that would have offended Georgia Power Company. After serving three years as editor of The Washington Post and helping found Duke University's public policy institute, Patterson was named editor of The St. Petersburg Times and its Washington publication, Congressional Quarterly. He succeeded Nelson Poynter, the founder of the publications and of the nonprofit Poynter Institute for Media Studies, as CEO of the companies in 1978 and served in that capacity until his retirement a decade later.

At a gathering prior to the Lovejoy convocation, Colby President Bill Cotter paid tribute to Patterson and his accomplishments. "Gene Patterson has won most of the honors available to a person in his profession, including the Pulitzer Prize and the William Allen White Award for journalistic merit," Cotter said. "But beyond that, Gene Patterson has won what is perhaps the most eloquent form of recognition-the unreserved respect and affection of his peers." Cotter quoted leading journalists such as Gene Roberts, managing editor of The New York Times, Bill Kovach of Harvard's Nieman Foundation and former Boston Globe editor Thomas Winship in praise of Patterson's courage, vision and dedication to principle.

In the Lovejoy address, Patterson mused on the press's role in America today.

"When [the press] is doing its job, which includes raising inconvenient questions and exposing unhappy facts, those offended will often see it as getting in the way of their pet solutions to society's problems," he said.

But Patterson also reserved some harsh words for the press. He quoted New York Times columnist Herbert Stein as writing that "media pundits, who should be our sages and philosophers, are nit pickers."

"That one stings," Patterson said. "Every sage and philosopher in the news business will instantly know who he is, of course, and all of us will swell with righteousness. It's the nit pickers who will have difficulty identifying themselves. You can help them; they're the ones you see seeking reputations for toughness at televised news conferences by insulting the official at bay. Their toughest questions can be asked civilly, and ought to be.

"In pursuit of villains, nit pickers often miss the hero stories. In preoccupation with the press's vital watchdog role, they neglect its companion, the explanatory journalism that today's complex issues require. In their zeal to send the sheriff to jail (where some sheriffs do richly deserve to be doing their public service) the nit pickers fail to illuminate such larger stories as the building up to the savings and loan debacle in the 1980s and such under-reported present stories as the waste in agricultural subsidies, the advance of the African-American middle class, the full sweep of market-driven reforms in health care that aren't waiting for government action, and the fall-yes, fall-in the crime rate. . . ."

"Judging from the mendacious din of paid-up commercial television that dominated the campaign and fed on the millions of dollars that indentured many of the candidates, the great issues before the nation were crime, welfare, immigration and illegitimacy. . . . A visitor from Mars might have concluded that America's unhappiness could be blamed on mendicants, migrants, miscreants and the misbegotten.

"The press reported the electorate was angry. Angry over what? The candidates' insistence on pressing the hot buttons of scapegoating, which happened to encode an unspoken racial tinge, distracted the news media from fully exploring the deeper causes of the general anger. Americans, white collar and blue, saw an economic recovery rewarding mainly the top quarter of the society where they didn't rank. They felt international competition pressing down on their wages. They saw technology eating away at their jobs. They watched down-sizing lift corporate earnings up while sending jobs down the chute. America's economy and its schools were supposed to promise their children more than they'd had. They saw instead their children may be downwardly mobile. Against this insecure start to each day, Americans struggled to pay taxes to the government, wrestled with the bureaucrats and paperwork of government and resented government's open-handedness with people they saw as freeloaders on their struggles. These angry voters searched the media for explanations of what had hold of them. In a place of finding clarity and insight, they too often blinked at a bedlam of talk show babble, witnessed shouting matches between journalists turned television hams, puzzled over shallow printed squibs and, finally, fell victim to those sleazy campaign commercials. Have I got a scapegoat for you! many candidates assured their angry constituents. Blame that fellow behind the tree!

"And that's the real danger here, isn't it? The election itself may have had a wise result. In its deeper wisdom the electorate may have sensed it was time to shake out the leadership of a Congress the Democrats themselves had helped to gridlock, and to try a change in political philosophies, whether for better or for worse. In the fine tradition of free men and women, voters unhappy with their masters threw the rascal out. The danger lay not in the election's destination, it lay in the route the bandwagon took. By meanness and mendacity, many anti-crime, anti-immigrant candidates channeled the electorate's anger toward scapegoats. And when the voters looked to their sources of information for guidance, the media were too often content to dignify the candidates' definition of issues."

"At every step," Patterson said, "from Lovejoy's martyrdom in the 1830s to Ralph McGill's heroism at The Atlanta Constitution in the 1960s, American journalists spoke clearly and directly to the people's needs for knowledge in their time, though the truth was often unpopular. Their healthy skepticism of power did not descend into cynicism about the promise of self-government to serve American needs. The press should be the last to sap that faith. Its own freedom flows from it. The promise of democracy must remain an article of American faith."

REBUILDING THE SQUARE
Railroad Square Cinema, a favorite downtown destination of Colby students, is dark but not dead. Destroyed by fire on October 10, the alternative theater is raising money to rebuild on a lot near its former location between College Avenue and upper Main Street.

Railroad Square, started in 1978, is owned and operated by Gail Chase '74, Kenneth Eisen '73, former Colby audio-visual librarian Lea Girardin, and three other partners.

Students, faculty members and area residents have rallied to support the cinema's rebuilding plans. Authors on the English faculty donated proceeds from holiday season book sales to the campaign, the Echo called for students to ask for donations to the theater in lieu of Christmas gifts, and Professor of English Richard Russo orchestrated a world premiere showing of Nobody's Fool as a benefit for Railroad Square. Bill and Linda Cotter along with faculty and alumni couples hosted a benefit reception at the president's home before the Nobody's Fool premiere. Colby pitched in on the day after the fire, offering office space in Millett Alumni House to the cinema owners.

Eisen said Railroad Square will be rebuilt as a two- or three-screen theater and is expected to open in 1995. He said the new theater will seat about 300 compared to 180 in the old theater, which occupied a former beverage warehouse near the intersection of Main and Pleasant streets. A new Square Cafe is planned as well.

The old Square Cafe and the offices of Waterville Family Practice, a physicians' group that includes Jeffrey Lovitz '70, also was damaged in the midnight fire in October. The doctors' offices were repaired.

No one was hurt in the fire and the cause remained undetermined, though arson was ruled out by state fire investigators, Eisen says.

B.Y.O.B.
A new College policy restricting the delivery of alcohol to campus has students debating the policy itself and the broader issue of student responsibility. Implemented after a recommendation by the Alcohol and Campus Environment Committee (ACE), the policy allows only kegs to be delivered to parties on campus. Waterville liquor stores previously had been allowed to deliver all types of alcoholic beverages to students on campus, although that practice had never been officially sanctioned by the College.

Student response to the new policy was mixed, with some complaining that prohibiting delivery to campus would invite drunk driving, while others countered that the College's responsibility to students did not extend to providing on-demand delivery of alcoholic beverages.

Drinking was described in a college guidebook last year as an unfavorable element of Colby's culture. The Princeton Review Student Access Guide-the same publication that listed Colby students as the happiest in the nation-said of the College's social environment, "If you're not careful, life can be a drunken blur."

"Once we realized the predominance of this attitude, it didn't seem like something we should be promoting," Dean of Students Janice Kassman told the Echo. "It seemed odd that alcohol has such value in our community that it should be as accessible as pizza."

Debate about the issue settled into two recurring themes: whether restricting the deliveries constituted an abridgment of students' rights and whether the College had an obligation to protect students from themselves. An Echo editorial discounted concerns that the new policy would increase the likelihood of drunk driving by students who would leave campus to purchase more alcohol during a party. "This argument is not only short-sighted, but also disrespectful to the rest of the student population," the newspaper said. "The administration is treating the Colby population like mature adults by instituting this policy."

MUNDY EARNS DREYFUS DISTINCTION
Brad Mundy, Miselis Professor of Chemistry, has been named a 1994 Camille & Henry Dreyfus Scholar, joining a list of some of the nation's most outstanding teachers of chemical sciences. The program, designed to encourage new Ph.D. recipients to undertake teaching and research at undergraduate colleges, will help support a new teacher-a Dreyfus Fellow-to work with Mundy at Colby for the next two years. Since 1987, the Dreyfus Foundation has given grants to some 100 mentors and postdoctoral fellows at 53 colleges around the country. Mundy was nominated by his colleague, Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Biochemistry Julie Millard, herself a former Dreyfus Fellow.

PLAYWRIGHT VIEWS COLBY PRODUCTION
Author and anti-AIDS activist Larry Kramer attended a student performance of his award-winning play The Normal Heart in the Strider Theater on December 1.

Co-founder of the protest group Act Up, Kramer presented a lecture and visited a class during his Colby visit. His semi-autobiographical play was produced by Colby's student troupe Powder & Wig and directed by Jonathan Bardzik '96, a performing arts major from Pelham, Mass. Originally written and produced in 1985, the play was revised in 1987. The Colby production used the revised script and incorporated multimedia imagery. Kramer, who is HIV positive, founded the Gay Men's Health Crisis in 1981, the world's largest AIDS service establishment, and in 1987 helped found Act Up.

At a Spotlight lecture he discussed his personal battle with the federal medical research establishment in the development and authorization of new drugs for AIDS patients. He says he is discouraged by the lack of progress to find a cure for the disease. He blames bureaucracy and mismanagement at the National Institutes of Health and the Federal Drug Administration for inhibiting research and delaying new drugs. "Everybody is sitting around waiting for a cure. It's like waiting for Godot," he said.

STUDENTS SPEAK UP
Want to know how students feel? Look on the wall of the Student Center every Thursday.

A student opinion poll instituted this year by Student Association President Brian Raffetto '95, of Hingham, Mass., provides a weekly pulse check of the campus. Students respond to a different question every Wednesday by filling out a brief postcard at a table in the lobby of the Student Center. Six hundred or more responses per week is not unusual.

Questions have ranged from which night is best for music entertainment in the Spa (Thursday was the favorite) to what foreign language Colby students would most like to study (Spanish). Other polls have dealt with volunteerism, sexual harassment and political correctness.

Results of the polls are posted in the Student Center and reported in the Echo.

"We don't consider them scientific," Raffeto said. "It's just a mechanism to start discussion."

SIDEWALK TALK
Debate about a proposed multicultural house intensified during the fall. The Echo published a series of letters to the editor both in favor of and against the concept of a separate housing facility for minority students. In a student opinion poll on the subject October 12 nearly half (511) of the 1,035 students who "voted" said they favored a multicultural center rather than a multicultural house, which received 81 votes. One hundred eighty students said they would support both a house and a center and 131 said they would support neither. An additional 132 students said it was "too early to decide" about the issue. A decision on the multicultural house is expected later this month.