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Around 80 members of the Hamilton community were given an early taste of Thanksgiving last weekend, as the student-run Woollcott Cooperative (Co-op) invited 60 guests to a full-blown Sunday Thanksgiving feast.

The Colorado River is one of the United States’ most impressive rivers. At 1,450 miles long, the river drains almost 250,000 square miles—10 percent of the United States—down the spine of the Continental Divide. The Colorado, though, is not as mighty as it once was. Because of population growth in the Southwest the Colorado no longer reaches the Pacific Ocean, but trickles dry in the deserts of northern Mexico. In his Nov. 1 talk in the Taylor Science Center, adventurer Jonathan Waterman detailed his journey down the Colorado and discussed the implications of the overuse of the river as a water resource.

The world is definitely warming, and it is directly due to factors that human beings have caused—these are two things that Dr. Richard Alley is certain of, and the premises on which he based his Oct. 20 lecture in the Taylor Science Center. Alley, a glaciologist and member of the UN climate change committee that was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize,  spoke on present state and future implications of sea-level rise due to a warming planet.

One of the great resources for the Hamilton Outing Club (HOC), is the College’s proximity to the Adirondack State Park. The Adirondack Park is the largest state or national park in the lower 48 states, and boasts thousands of miles of hiking trails, hundreds of waterways ideal for canoeing and whitewater rafting, and some of the largest tracts of undeveloped land in the Northeast.

Diversity in the United States Armed Forces has always been a contentious issue; debates about the inclusion of women and ethnic minorities have been raging since the Revolutionary War. Two officers in the U.S. Military, Col. Maritza Ryan of the U.S. Army and Col. James Durant of the U.S. Air Force, participated in a panel discussion on Sept. 26 in the Days-Massolo Center, discussing the evolution of diversity in the history of the military.

Bicentennial Colleges and tours continued on Saturday of Kickoff Weekend. Faculty authors read from their works; Professors Douglas Ambrose and Robert Martin discussed the life and legacy of Alexander Hamilton; and Professor Rick Werner talked ab out the idea of happiness as put forth in the Declaration of Independence.

Among the Bicentennial Kickoff celebration weekend activities were more than 30 Bicentennial colleges and tours. Besides several dedicated to the life and times of Alexander Hamilton, these lectures and historical tours covered topics ranging from the Archaeology of Hamilton College to Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.  Student writers attended the Colleges throughout the weekend to provide a glimpse of the range of topics covered.  Following are synopses of a few that took place on Thursday and Friday, Sept. 22 and 23.

Seven Hamilton students—trip leaders Pat Dunn ’12 and Leonard Teng ’12 along with Makenna Perry ’12, Leslie Cohen ’12, Lucas Harris ’12, Marco Scheuer ’13 and Max Lopez ’15—were part of a Hamilton Outing Club (HOC) backpacking trip last weekend that tackled two of the Adirondack High Peaks: Algonquin Peak, the second highest mountain in the state at 5,115 feet, and Iroquois Peak, the eighth highest at 4,843 feet.  

Nick Richards ’12 was a member of a research team whose article, “CTCF-binding elements mediate control of V(D)J recombination,” was recently published in Nature, an international weekly science journal. The article presents the results of work conducted at the Departments of Genetics and Molecular Medicine at Harvard Medical School/Boston Children’s Hospital/Immune Disease Institute.

Captain James Yee, a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and former U.S. Army Chaplain, will present a lecture titled “Islamophobia: Fighting Ignorance and Promoting Peace” on Tuesday, Sept. 20, at 4 p.m., in the Days-Massolo Center.  The event is free and open to the public.