Class of '62, '62, '57 & '82
Best of luck!
My husband Gary D. Mahood ‘62 voted for you both (Ben and Peter) as he did in the last trustees election, because he cares deeply about Hamilton, as do I, and deplores its dumbing down by the relentlessly trendy and worse. You both seem to have the best interests of the college at heart, unlike so many of the hand-picked, politically correct trustees I consider traitors to the college that nurtured them.
I was happy to read your account of Sid Wertimer; that good man personified the Hamilton we knew and valued.
Gar was Hamilton’s Chairman for Special Gifts on Long Island in the early 1990s, but resigned when the college started confiscating the fraternity houses and denying certain students the right of free assembly, while at the same time encouraging other special interest groups to room together in former fraternity houses and dorm floors.
The reality of this pernicious movement struck me when, on a 2004 visit to Hamilton, I viewed bulletin-board announcements advancing the agenda of LGBT(lesbian-gay-bisexual-transsexual) students who gathered in the former DKE house, from which the college had ejected its straight (if memory serves) population, forcing fraternity meetings off campus. Such hypocrisy.
At Hamilton today, some students are more equal under the First Amendment than others.
Gar was also disheartened by the dilution of a solid liberal arts curriculum with cobbled majors such as “Women’s Studies” — as if the Western Canon applies to men only, and women must retire in a huff from the challenges of the academic playing field. How insulting — not only to women, but also to parents who are forking over a sizeable sum in the expectation that Hamilton will turn their offspring into educated adults — and, finally, to alumni, whose own accomplishments are being cast into doubt by the adulteration of their alma mater’s credentials.
I’m standing in as family correspondent because Gar is concentrating his energy on battling a serious illness. If there is anything I can do to assist you in helping Hamilton reclaim its standards as a first-rate institution of higher learning, please let me know.
Best regards,
Jan Mahood
(spouse ‘62, cousin ‘62, parent ‘92, sister-in-law ‘57, aunt ‘82)
hb