inauguration – The Hilltop Monitor

A Time for Hope: Vice President Kamala Harris’ Historic Inauguration

Teresa Mainzer — Fri, 05 Feb 2021 14:00:00 +0000

“Kamala Harris” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

On Wednesday, Jan. 20, Vice President Kamala Harris was sworn into office, marking a historic and momentous event. As the first woman, first person of South Asian descent and first Black person to be sworn as Vice President of the United States, her accomplishment is not only a win for the Biden administration but for Americans of diverse backgrounds.

Reflecting upon the historic nature of Harris’ inauguration, the past struggles and barriers women and people of color have faced in the United States come into focus. History is fraught with discrimination, and accessibility to public office, representation and civil liberties have been denied to many Americans. Only 101 years ago, women did not have the right to vote and the immense progress our country has made is reflected by Vice President Kamala Harris.

People of color have been barred from voting or holding office for most of American history, and it would be unthinkable to someone who lived 100 years ago to believe that a person of color would hold the office of Vice President. Historically, this moment will mark an important change in politics as more women and people of color are being elected to public office to represent an increasingly diverse population.

For people of color, especially the South Asian and Black communities, Harris’ victory offers hope in a political climate marked with violence and racial discrimination. After the Trump administration’s lack of protections for people of color and the Black Lives Matter protests, Harris’ inauguration is a moment of victory and a long-awaited representation.

Although it is undeniable that there is a lot of progress still to be made to heal racial injustice and scars inflicted by history, representation in the highest levels of politics moves towards a more equitable future. Representation ensures that individuals have their voices heard and is also vital to creating policies that address issues within specific communities.

As a woman of color, Harris’ inauguration gives me hope for the future of politics because it creates a path in which more women and people of color can enter to implement new ideas and promote equality. I hope to see positive and far-reaching changes through Harris’ work and dedication.

It’s inspiring to see someone who has had similar experiences overcome racial and gender norms to reach the highest level in politics. It sends a message that barriers can be broken. Personally, I know the impact that seeing yourself represented holds for creating motivation and passion. For countless girls and boys, having someone who looks like them as a role model carries hope that they one day could aspire to reach their goals or change the world. It is vital for our future that it be diverse and intersectional, and this starts with representation in politics.

Kamala Harris often quotes her mother’s words, “You may be the first to do many things, but make sure you are not the last.” These words are inspiring and hold an important message for the future of the United States. Harris’ historic victory is ushering in a brighter future for women and people of color and is not only an exciting first.

Endowed Chairs Announced at President’s Inauguration

Hania Osman — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 13:00:44 +0000

At President Elizabeth MacLeod Walls’s inauguration Oct. 20, it was announced that four professors at William Jewell College have been selected as endowed chairs. The four newly endowed chairs are Dr. Yuriy Bots, assistant professor of economics; Dr. Debbie Chasteen, professor of communication; Dr. Bhupinder Vohra, associate professor of biology; and Dr. Rose Reynolds, assistant professor and department chair of biology. Six other professors will remain in their current endowed chair positions.

An endowed chair is an honorary position that grants access to special funding from a donor who wants to assist faculty in maintaining the quality of the academic program. The money is typically used for professional development and research.

There are currently 10 endowed chairs. Positions are initially held for a three-year term, and chairs can be re-elected. The other six endowed chairs are Dr. Calvin Permenter, professor of music; Dr. Donna Gardner, professor and department chair of education; Dr. Elaine Reynolds, professor of history; Dr. Mark J. Walters, professor and department chair of English; Dr. Kenneth D. Alpern, professor of philosophy and Senior Tutor of the Oxbridge Honors Program; and Dr. Blane Baker, professor of physics.

In the past, the donations have given chairs an increased capacity for research and career enhancement opportunities, such as conferences.

“I have used the funds primarily to travel to professional meetings such as the American Association of Physics Teachers summer meeting. At those meetings, I have presented scholarly work done with WJC students to improve physics education. Recently, I have used part of the Hilton funds to set up a laboratory to design, develop and test new protective gear for sports such as baseball and football. Several students are working with me on these new efforts,” said Baker.

Dr. Yuriy Bots

Bots was awarded the title of John W. Boatwright Professor of Economics endowed chair. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s of science degrees in economics in the Ukraine. He later received another master’s of science and a doctorate of philosophy from Purdue University. Bots is currently working on research focused on the importance of service firms in international trade and differential stock markets’ reactions to various types of mergers.

“I will use the money to travel to more and better specialized conferences that otherwise I won’t be able to afford and to present research to get feedback and make good progress in that field. With extra finances, one could consider attending international conferences,” said Bots.

Chasteen was awarded the A. Major and Dorothy Hull Chair of Communication in Business and Leadership. She earned her doctorate of philosophy from the University of Kansas, a master’s of arts from the University of Central Missouri and a bachelor’s of arts from WJC. She teaches Public Relations, Communication Theory, Interpersonal Communication and a Critical Thought and Inquiry Capstone. She is also the advisor to Lambda Pi Eta National Communication Association.

Dr. Debbie Chasteen

“Since the initial chair is for three years, I am trying to decide how best to use that because I can use it this year or I can use it the next year or the third year. I am planning to go to a conference next year that is more regional. It happens to take place in Omaha, and I go frequently for the central states I am involved in. Some [of] the research interest that I have [are] in public relations and also typically in instructional communication and how we can make communication better for students. So I plan to use the money to travel to this conference and deliver a paper in Omaha and I am hoping that, if I don’t use my funds in the first two years, to be able to go to an international conference because that is much more expensive,” said Chasteen.

Dr. Bhupinder Vohra

Vohra was awarded the Monte Harmon Chair in Biology. He earned his bachelor’s of science in chemistry and biology, a master’s of science in zoology and a doctorate of philosophy in neurobiology of aging from Kurukshaerta University in India. At Jewell, Vohra does research on Parkinson’s disease and whether the early sign of enteric neurodegeneration can be used as an early marker of neurological and neurotoxilcological conditions.

“I will use the money to get more reagents, chemical and biological, and [it] will be used to do more experiments that we cannot do with the limited amount of money we have. I will also be able to buy [a] few more tools for the research,” said Vohra.

Reynolds was awarded the Dr. Burnell Landels Chair in Biology. She earned her doctorate of philosophy in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oregon. At Jewell, she performs research to determine the genetic relationship between the capacity of an organism’s cells to respond to stress and an organism’s lifespan.

Dr. Rose Reynolds

“I am going to use [the money] to present my research at a conference and present some of the research that my students have been doing, probably the [conference] offered by the American Aging Association. They have an annual conference in the summer. It is a very nice conference to go to because it is about 160 to 200 of the world’s top experts in biology of aging. I’d really enjoy going to that conference because it focuses enough on basic biology that research like mine and my students’ research would really make a big impact, but there is also an emphasis on translational research,” said Reynolds.

Inaugural Art Brings New Meaning to Ceremony

Elliott Yoakum — Fri, 20 Oct 2017 15:30:46 +0000

On Oct. 21, 2017, Elizabeth MacLeod Walls was officially inaugurated the 15th president of William Jewell College. The Inauguration began at 10:00 a.m. and included a performance by the William Jewell Concert Choir, the reading of an inaugural poem and a speech by President MacLeod Walls herself.

Unlike past Jewell inaugurations, this inauguration featured art MacLeod Walls commissioned from three different faculty members: a choral piece composed by Dr. Anthony Maglione, associate professor of music, a poem written by Dr. Ruth Williams, assistant professor of English and a set of prints created by Nano Nore, professor of art and art history.

“It is a tradition at many other institutions, so I was borrowing from what I had learned from some of my peers in the presidency,” said MacLeod Walls.

This tradition extends beyond college inaugurations. Five former U.S. presidents have had poetry commissioned for and read at their inaugurations. Legendary poets like Robert Frost and Maya Angelou have been among those selected to present at these historic events. Music is another traditional part of presidential inaugurations, which have included performances by artists from Jessye Norman to Barbra Streisand to Beyoncé.

Jewell’s Inauguration however is special in that it will feature original works by members of the College community.

“It is a terrific opportunity to showcase the talents of your faculty for a wide community that gets to come and appreciate their gifts,” MacLeod Walls said. “So that was really the impetus behind inviting them to create original works of art.”

Each of the faculty artists had a different understanding of the importance of inaugural art.

For Maglione, the commissioning of inaugural art shows the College’s commitment to liberal arts education.

“It shows Dr. MacLeod Walls’ commitment to the whole student education, and to the liberal arts,” Maglione said. “You can’t have liberal arts without the arts and [commissioning inaugural art] shows her commitment to education of whole student as well as the importance of STEM fields.”

Dr. Anthony Maglione

Maglione’s perspective on the value of inaugural art is in keeping with his piece entitled “Only Connect.” MacLeod Walls gave Maglione the text for the work, which comes from chapter 22 of E.M. Forster’s “Howards End:”

“Only connect! … Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.”

E.M. Forster published the novel in 1910. It follows two families, the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes, through many years, vast differences, love interests and even deaths.

MacLeod Walls noted Forster as her favorite novelist. She has a framed photo of him on her desk and “A Passage to India” is her favorite novel. Scholar of British literature written from 1880-1945, MacLeod Walls co-edited “The BBC Talks of E.M. Forster, 1929-1960” in 2008.

“‘Howards End’ is a very complex story about different human beings with different perspectives being thrown together and having to figure out how to manage difference among them, and the results of efforts are clumsy at times, but they’re ultimately very beautiful. They focus on the love that we can create for one another even when we radically disagree, even when we have very different experiences,” MacLeod Walls said.

The specific passage chosen for Maglione’s composition is especially significant for MacLeod Walls.

“That passage is probably the most defining passage in literature for me personally, both as a human being and as a professional,” MacLeod Walls said. “Especially given this moment for us at Jewell, and in the United States, where we are trying to bridge differences, and we are trying to make change. I love the passage, but it was also an obvious passage for us to use.”

Maglione, who read the novel this summer, mirrors the concept of connecting different perspectives within his composition.

“Essentially what I have is that I took two parts of two different modes and I connected them together via a common tone,” said Maglione. “I took these two disparate ideas and was able to make them act as a cohesive whole which is like connecting prose and passion. Taking an idea and having it amplify the other.”

Maglione believes that the harmonic shifts in the piece can be easily understood when heard.

“They are unexpected to your everyday listener,” Maglione said. “It goes places that one doesn’t expect it to.”

The concert choir performed Maglione’s piece at the Inauguration. For MacLeod Walls, the concept of mode mixing made perfect sense in light of the passage.

“[Maglione’s piece] mirrors the novel beautifully,” MacLeod Walls said.

Williams wrote the poem that she read at the Inauguration. She believes that art can help express the feelings of a culture or community.

“[Inaugural art is important] because there is something about art that makes the occasion feel any more ceremonial,” Williams said. “There is something about art as an expression of a culture or community that makes it feel like a nice add-on to a ritualistic event.”

Dr. Ruth Williams

Williams’ poem is entitled “Uphill,” and it can loosely be placed under the subgenre of documentary poetry. Williams incorporated direct quotations she found in the archives.

She was given no stipulations, but said she knew she wanted to include a celebration of women at Jewell because of MacLeod Walls’ status as the first women president. Williams began researching for the poem this summer, but she didn’t start writing until the start of the academic year. She decided to write a documentary poem because she wanted the poem to be deeply rooted in Jewell’s history.

“My role as an inaugural poet, or as a poet who is writing for an occasion, is usually writing as a member of a community or trying to speak to a community, so I wanted to put [in] voices from the community,” said Williams.

Aside from resources pulled from the archives by Abigail Broadbent, Archives and Technical Services Librarian, Williams used information from H.I Hester’s “Jewell is Her Name: a History of William Jewell College” and Georgia Bowman’s “The Distaff Side: Women at William Jewell.”

“My goal was to do something that would be palatable and relatable to a wide audience but also delight me as a poet,” Williams said. “A good inaugural poem should invoke the moment, but also be forward looking. It should manage simultaneously to be of the moment but also transcendent of the moment.”

Williams uses the metaphor of the hill to describe the challenges women and others face in Jewell’s community. She celebrates MacLeod Walls as the first woman president and lauds the achievements of the women who came before her.

“I wanted to celebrate the moment as a moment of progress especially for women at Jewell,” Williams said. “Women did not start out as students at Jewell and there was a long road for that to occur, and even after women were admitted, it took a long time for them to rise into positions of leadership and prominence.”

MacLeod Walls was exceedingly pleased with Williams’s poem, she called it brilliant.

“Dr. Williams’s poem, I mean, it’s the kind of poem that one must read several times,” MacLeod Walls said. “I hope that people leave the inauguration and read her poem again and again. They will hear it once, but it’s really rich and layered. She makes brilliant connections between history and the present—she did a lot of archival research around that—and I found myself the more I read it finding allusions that I had not realized the first time.”

Nano Nore

Nore, a printmaker and painter, created an edition of five prints for the Inauguration. She stressed the importance of commissioned art for artists throughout history.

“Commissioned art is really important for all artists because for time immemorial the church, the state, private people originally only commissioned work,” Nore said. “Artists just didn’t produce a lot of art like they do today and maybe only get one sale out of it. It’s really expensive to do all that financial inlay without any hope of it coming back, so commissions are the way that artists made a living.”

Though for most commissioned works, artists work within parameters set by the commissioner, Nore had no such stipulations.

“The president did not specify any subject matter,” Nore said. “At the time, I figured out I wanted to do something about the school since this is about her inauguration, and I hunted around for symbols that could symbolize the 15th president who was a woman.”

Nore found her subject in an unlikely source, the columns at the front of Curry Hall, the building housing the president’s office.

“I found inspiration in the Ionic capitals on Curry. Ionic is a form of architecture, according to the Greeks, that is female in orientation, and of all our major buildings, Curry is the only one that has female columns,” Nore said. “The volutes, the things that look like scrolls, are a very feminine symbol dating back to prehistory.”

When she brought the finished prints to MacLeod Walls, a moment of pure serendipity, a word both women used independently, occurred.

From a quad-facing window in the office, one can see perfectly the Ionic capitals on the Curry columns. Although Nore had never been in the president’s office before, her print captured a view upon which MacLeod Walls had often remarked.

“I have to tell you that’s when I brought her over to show her the column—it was just a beautiful and serendipitous moment—when she saw the column, we both cried a little, we both hugged a lot,” MacLeod Walls said. “She’s retiring this year, and it was so powerful for our community that she was able to create this and that the prints will always live as part of the ceremony.”

Nore had a similar reaction to the view.

“Serendipity, such serendipity,” Nore said. “I had been up to Anne Dema’s office, but I had never been inside the president’s office, and she just grabs a hold of me and says, ‘Look what I see outside this window.’ She had remarked that it was one of the things that stood out to her and how did I know?”

All three artists are featured in the Inauguration program created by Susan Arbo,’86, Director of Ceremonies and Signature Events. Along with copies of the text of Maglione’s piece and Williams’s poem and a photo of Nore’s print, the program includes statements from each artist.

“Inaugurations are singular moments in the history of an institution, and what comes out of an inauguration, as opposed to a regular convocation, is that it is instantly archived and kept forever,” MacLeod Walls said. “It is really important that we have artifacts from the day that talk about the academic endeavor going on here, that gesture toward it. Otherwise, it is just me as a talking head and various constituents coming up and saying things, which is important, but this is what will live beyond the Inauguration, so I wanted the best of who we are at Jewell to be on display for our community, but also to be artifacts of the event from now until the end of our history.”

Hilltop Voices: Are you ready for Hillary?

Brianna Steiert — Fri, 13 Mar 2015 22:39:18 +0000

I am! Clinton’s experience and positions on the environment, women’s issues and education make her a strong candidate.

Although I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Presidential Inauguration January 2013, I was unable to vote for the president in 2012. For many students of the Class of 2018 at William Jewell College, the 2016 election will be the first presidential election in which we will be able to vote.

The candidates for the 2016 presidential election are a mystery for both the Democrat and Republican parties. However, Hillary Clinton is the presumed frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. When asked the question, “Are you ready for Hillary?” I can answer, yes.

There are more notable qualities to Clinton than just her infamous pantsuits. Clinton’s experience in politics, her position on social and fiscal issues and her network of support all make her a strong candidate for the presidency.

Clinton has served as a senator, Secretary of State, First Lady of Arkansas and First Lady of the United States. She is the only first lady to have ever run for office. During her time as First Lady of the United States, Clinton was actively involved in public policy and assisting her husband, Bill Clinton, in the presidency.

Going into the 2016 election, I am looking for a candidate who supports education, women’s rights and renewable energy.

“If we remember how to work and grow together, we can help more families find their footing in the middle class and make sure every one of our kids has a fair shot to climb that ladder of opportunity,” Clinton said.

For me, this ladder of opportunity starts with education in which Clinton has always had an interest. While First Lady of Arkansas, she was chair of the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee and worked to reform Arkansas’ education system. Clinton also served on education-related committees when she was a senator.

Clinton’s proposed agenda includes increasing the number of women who have access to quality education, increased quality and quantity of early childhood education and overall education reform. It is important to me that the next president enacts policies that make quality education in America more accessible and affordable to all students, and increases the quantity and quality of science and math education at all levels of schooling.

Clinton said, “[Equal rights for women and girls is] great unfinished business of the 21st century.”

During her time as Secretary of State, Clinton worked to put women’s rights and human rights on the agenda. Clinton has a strong focus on men and women’s equality in the workplace and at school, which is what I want from a presidential candidate. Clinton not only wants to close the gender gap in education and the workplace in the United States but also internationally.

“When women and girls have the opportunity to participate, we can lift up not just ourselves, but our families, communities, even our countries,” Clinton said.

I am also looking for a candidate that opposes projects such as the Keystone XL Pipeline and will work to increase renewable energy in the United States.

Clinton said, “The science of climate change is unforgiving. The political challenges are also unforgiving. There is no getting around the fact that the kind of ambitious response required to combat climate change is going to be a tough sell at home as well as around the world.”

Clinton has not taken a position on the Keystone XL Pipeline, but she has endorsed increased use of clean energy and reducing CO 2 emissions.

One event that could harm Clinton’s run for office are the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya in 2012.

The Benghazi attack killed four American citizens, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, and led to an investigation of the State Department. Clinton took responsibility for the lapses in security, although she had no direct role in conversations about security prior to the attack. Clinton resigned from the position of Secretary of State Jan. 23, 2013 during her formal testimony.

“As I have said many times since Sept. 11, I take responsibility, and nobody is more committed to getting this right,” Clinton said. “I am determined to leave the state department and our country safer, stronger and more secure.”

She officially stepped down from her position as Secretary of State Feb. 1, 2013.

Recently, it was released that Clinton used a personal email address during her time as Secretary of State, which is another event that could hurt her presidential chances. Clinton has responded to this by urging the public to see and read her emails, which I think was a proper way to handle the situation. Since Clinton is the presumed frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, this purported scandal may drag on for many months, but in hindsight what Americans should focus on are her potential policies if she is selected as the Democratic presidential candidate.

Hillary Clinton’s experience and positions on important issues make her a viable candidate in my eyes. Her stances on issues that are important to me, such as education, women’s rights and the environment, are what I am looking for in a candidate. Even though it is the beginning of 2015, I would encourage all my fellow students at Jewell to stay caught up and to continute to research candidates so everyone can be informed voters come November 2016.