Month: February, 2013

News

BC Grad’s Memoir Depicts Inspirational Experience

By: Eleanor Hildebrandt

“I had come to Jamaica for a quick adventure, a fun interlude between college and law school,” reads an excerpt from Raising Gentle Men, a memoir by Jay Sullivan, BC ’84. “I hadn’t planned to stay a second year. Now, only a month into living at Alpha, my life didn’t make practical sense. At times I had considered becoming a priest-but I never anticipated I would live in a convent. I had come from a loving and stable home-and now lived among orphans. I had grown up in a community where the one black family in town had almost celebrity status-and now I was the minority. And the ironies were only beginning.”

News, On Campus

Female BC Students Report Lower Self-Confidence When Leaving College

By: Mary Rose Fissinger

At a faculty forum in April 2012, amidst a slew of data presented by Vice President of Planning and Assessment Kelli Armstrong to the hundreds of faculty members who had gathered that day, one statistic stood out to the crowd: female students leave Boston College with lower self-confidence than they had as freshmen. In contrast, men generally gain self-confidence during their four years here, despite having, on average, lower GPAs than their female classmates.

News

BC To Boston Deals With Weather Contingencies, New UGBC Structure

By: Eleanor Hildebrandt

In its inaugural year as a separate department within the Cabinet of the Undergraduate Government of Boston College (UGBC), BC to Boston has aimed to offer a wide variety of events to BC students. For its first two years of existence, BC to Boston was housed within the Student Life department, and those who worked on the team were not officially considered members of UGBC. Currently, the department consists of director Sarah Slater, A&S ’13, deputy director Tim Koch, A&S ’14, Senate liaison Sean McBride, A&S ’15, 11 coordinators, and five freshman mentees. “This year, we have more manpower, and are also involved in the greater UGBC as an organization,” said Sarah Slater, director of BC to Boston and A&S ’13.

News

Faculty Develop Interdisciplinary Minor In Medical Humanities

By: Eleanor Hildebrandt

Medical Humanities, Health, and Culture (MHHC) may soon be joining the list of interdisciplinary minors at Boston College.
Professor Amy Boesky of the English department said that an array of faculty members, while conversing about their respective courses, realized that in some cases there was significant overlap in subject matter. The group realized that courses on topics such as the representation of the body and the history of illness in narrative could potentially fit into an interdisciplinary program in the medical humanities.

News

Allies Address Assault

By: Eleanor Hildebrandt

With spring a month away and snow still covering campus, “skirt weather” seems like part of a distant future. Yet for a group of Boston College men, a chilly Valentine’s Day was the perfect time to don that particular item of clothing.
Last Thursday, male volunteers stood in the academic Quad between classes, wearing skirts as part of “Don’t Skirt the Issue,” an awareness event coordinated by Allies, aimed at ending gender-based violence.

News

Katongole Discusses Reconciliation, Faith

When Charlotte Atyam, a 14-year-old Ugandan schoolgirl, was kidnapped by rebel forces to be forced into sex slavery with 138 of her classmates, her mother Angelina was beyond heartbroken. When 109 of the girls were released shortly after the abduction, Charlotte was not among them. Angelina immediately took it upon herself to begin a campaign…

News

Faculty Members Weigh In On Pope’s Resignation

By: Eleanor Hildebrandt

After Pope Benedict XVI announced Monday that he would be stepping down from the papacy at the end of February, Catholics across the world began to process the information.
Considering Boston College’s Jesuit, Catholic affiliation, and the areas of expertise amongst the BC community, a number of University faculty members have already been contacted by major news organizations, including The Boston Globe, Fox News, the radio station WGBH, and The Boston Herald-to share their opinions on the situation.

1 2