Tiger of the Week: Reginald Gibbons ’69

When Tiger of the Week Reginald Gibbons ’69 was named one of five finalists for the 2008 National Book Award in poetry for his new collection, Creatures of a Day (LSU Press, 2008), he understood the significance of the honor. “It’s very exciting, very gratifying, and it makes me feel that my work is very present at this moment in the U.S.,” Gibbons told interviewer Craig Morgan Teicher. “The country is so huge and so many thousands of books are published, that it’s not often enough that a writer can feel that a book is present — you can publish it but it still remains absent from the culture.”

Gibbons, a professor of English, classics, and Spanish and Portuguese at Northwestern University, did not win the poetry award (Mark Doty received the prize Nov. 19), but he was right to believe that his work is “present”: His hometown newspaper, The Chicago Tribune, published one of his poems, “These Sideways Leaps, Remembering.” Nov. 22.

(Photo by Marc Hauser, courtesy LSU Press)

Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW’s Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.

Panelists critique the Lewis Library

Most students seem to like it. Most alumni seem to hate it. And the faculty? A panel of four experts and “interested semi-amateurs” gave the Frank Gehry-designed Lewis Library mixed reviews.

The four panelists and moderator Gideon Rosen *92, philosophy professor and chairman of the Humanities Council, which sponsored the event, spoke Nov. 19, one day before the dedication of the new science library at Washington Road and Ivy Lane.

Architecture dean Stanley Allen *88 was the most sympathetic. He said the building combines Gehry’s “exuberant forms” with “low-tech” details that bring to mind the architect’s early work. He gave Gehry points for “making the best of a bad situation” on a difficult and tight site, and defended him after a questioner asked about the “environmental message” sent by a building with so much glass and open space.

Esther da Costa Meyer, associate professor of art and archaeology, took pains to be diplomatic. First, she lauded some of the “beautiful interior spaces,” including the reading room known as the Treehouse because its users have a view over the tops of trees. She continued: “That said, this is the most exasperating building to find your way around in. … Once you get to the Treehouse, there is this sense of catharsis - but it’s short-lived, because you realize you’re going to have to find your way out again!”

William Gleason, associate professor of English, studies how American writers represent architecture and buildings, including libraries. He considered the message of the library’s design, which provides for books in the basement while the upper floors are used for reading, computer use, and “social networking.” Gleason called that approach disorienting but efficient, and noted the disconnect between scientists and humanists on such matters. As a member of a committee exploring the renovation of Firestone Library, Gleason heard scientists ask if they needed any books in the library. “The humanists were horrified,” he said.

The strongest criticism of the Lewis Library came from the panel’s Hal Foster ’77, a professor of art and archaeology who has questioned Gehry’s work in the past. Foster began with a rather backhanded compliment: “As far as Gehry goes, it’s a good building,” he said, before launching into a critique of its “dead spaces,” “programmatic confusion,” and other shortcomings. Nor did Foster think highly of the Princeton’s other massive construction project: the collegiate gothic Whitman College, completed in 2007: “It’s said they complement each other - so two wrongs make a right.”

And what of the “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” the Richard Serra sculpture that now stands right outside the library’s door? Before the library was built, people who walked through the large sculpture would exit onto a wedge of grass; now, with little warning, they come right up against Gehry’s building. The building “really is a disservice to Serra,” said da Costa Meyer, who suggested that the $1 million sculpture is now “shoehorned into a back lot.” On the sculpture’s sad fate, the panelists all seemed to agree. By Marilyn Marks *86

Tigers show their stripes at ‘The Game’

In his Nov. 21 column, David Brooks of The New York Times submitted — apropos of the emerging Ivy League-heaviness of President-elect Barack Obama’s projected cabinet — that, “If a foreign enemy attacks the United States during the Harvard-Yale game any time over the next four years, we’re screwed.”

Princetonians might have been justified in taking issue with Brooks’ statement … if they weren’t likely to be at said game, too.

Nov. 22 brought the 125th football face-off between Harvard and Yale. Ho-hum — n’est-ce pas? And yet “The Game” in fact served as an impetus for a rallying of Princetonians from Boston and beyond. Some alumni spent the better part of November planning pub crawls, tailgates, pre-parties and post-parties, negotiating rides from New York, buying plane tickets from D.C., and designing T-shirts. The theme? “You can stop arguing… you both suck.”

Admittedly, this reporter was able to locate scores of freewheeling Tigers but no centralized, official unofficial Princeton tailgate in Saturday’s sea of crimson and blue. Nevertheless, the benefit of being so unequivocally above the fray — particularly when, with the wind-chill factor, the midday temperature in Boston was 15 degrees Fahrenheit — was having the option to simply cancel plans to stand around a parking space and move the party indoors to reunite with friends and show off our new T-shirts, above, at John Harvard’s Brew House. For the record, Harvard won, 10-0. By Rachel L. Axelbank ’06

Senior Thesis Spotlight: Getting ‘Lost’

Mayday! Mayday! Oceanic Flight 815 is down.

Cut to scene walking along the beach. Fast-forward through survivors arguing by the scene of the crash.

Adrian Diaz ’09 has been turning a careful eye to her television as she examines the narrative structure of ABC’s Emmy- and Golden-Globe-winning series Lost for her senior thesis.

Inspired by a lecture given by associate professor Jeff Dolven on Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Diaz was prompted to study what she saw as a similar interplay between memory, flashbacks, flash-forwards, and storytelling in the popular TV drama. “In Lost, the way things happen is different from the way it’s told,” she said.

Diaz has been intrigued by the way memory, knowledge, ritual, and group hierarchy have played out in the series. In her work, she has isolated a taxonomy of knowledge that shows how the characters use scientific, rational, and religious knowledge along with gossip to control others. Dr. Juliet Burke, a fertility doctor recruited to the island, for example, is manipulated in such a way that the leader of The Others, Ben, gains control over her expertise. Diaz also anticipates that the process of coercion within the two rival island groups, The Others and the Oceanic Six, can be related back to secret societies.

“The whole show is a process of revealing a secret,” Diaz said. “The characters are lost on the island and the audience is also lost in an attempt to figure out what is going on.”

The hardest part of her project may be bringing it to an end, since the show itself will still have a sixth season after the senior thesis is submitted. With a focus on seasons one through four, Diaz said, her thesis will inevitably mention the apocalyptic motifs already present in the show.

“I think I will focus on analyzing how knowing an ending is coming affects how we think of the show,” she said. By Julia Osellame ’09

An opera, born in a garage

On a hot summer day five years ago, composer Mark Zuckerman *76 was puttering in his garage and spotted his neighbor, poet and writer David Herrstrom, across the street. Zuckerman, who has written choral music, chamber music, and for orchestra, wanted to compose an opera. He asked his neighbor if he would write the libretto. Neither of them had ever tackled an opera, and although they had been friends in the small artistic community of Roosevelt, N.J., for about 30 years, they had never collaborated on any projects. Herrstrom was up for the challenge. “I guess we both felt life was short and why not go for broke,” said Zuckerman. “We knew this wasn’t going to be a short-term thing and were both looking forward to spending years together on this.”

The two men have worked on their opera, The Outlaw and the King, since 2003. Act II will premiere at the Nicholas Music Center at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., Dec. 1, at 8 p.m. (Act I premiered two years ago, also at Rutgers.) The opera is based on the biblical story of King Saul; David, the warrior and Saul’s son-in-law; and Saul’s son Prince Jonathan. The cast for Act II is comprised of four male characters and a trio of women portraying the voice of God. The opera is scored for woodwind quintet, harp, and percussion.

Herrstrom chose the story — a tragic tale that explores how David’s growing love of himself as the chosen one leads to the destruction of his adopted father and brother — and recruited neighbors to stage a dramatic reading in Roosevelt’s borough hall in 2005. Roosevelt, built during the New Deal as a utopian cooperative for immigrant Jewish garment workers and farmers and their families, became an artists’ haven, home to painters, sculptors, playwrights, poets, and composers. Living in such an artistic community, said Zuckerman, who was a N.J. State Council on the Arts Fellowship Recipient in 2004, helps feed his creative juices. “Almost the entire town gets involved with artistic goings-on in one way or another,” he said. By Katherine Federici Greenwood

Above, composer Mark Zuckerman *76 at work. (Photo courtesy Mark Zuckerman *76)

Princeton (3-6, 2-4 Ivy) vs. Dartmouth (0-9, 0-6 Ivy)

Nov. 22, 1 p.m. — Princeton Stadium, Princeton, N.J.

(Photo courtesy Joe Shlabotnik/Flickr)

History

Princeton-Dartmouth has been one of the Ivy League’s most evenly matched rivalries over the years. The Big Green lead the all-time series by the slimmest of margins (42-41-4). Neither school has beaten the other in five consecutive seasons, but the Tigers could accomplish that feat with a win this year.

Tiger of the Week: Jeff Bezos ’86

Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos ’86 has changed the world of online shopping and pioneered high-tech advances like the Kindle, Amazon’s e-book reader. But we’ve chosen him as Tiger of the Week for his leadership on a relatively low-tech issue. Bezos is working to eliminate hard-to-open packaging, including the “clamshell” plastic cases in which many electronic devices are sold. “I shouldn’t have to start each Christmas morning with a needle nose pliers and wire cutters,” he told The New York Times. “But that is what I do, I arm myself, and it still takes me 10 minutes to open each package.” Amen!

While the change could save time and preserve parents’ patience, the move toward “frustration-free” containers also may have a real — albeit small — public health benefit: According to the Times story, the Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that each year, 6,000 Americans are treated at emergency rooms for injuries incurred while prying, stabbing, or cutting through packaging.

(Photo courtesy Niall Kennedy/Flickr)

Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW’s Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.

Fehlandt celebrates with a signature solo

When Tina Fehlandt e-mailed renowned choreographer Mark Morris, with whom she had danced for 20 years, about a piece of his she could perform at Princeton’s bi-annual faculty dance concert, he suggested Peccadillos, a signature solo set to short piano pieces for children composed by Erik Satie. When Fehlandt, a lecturer in theater and dance, performs it Nov. 21-22, at the Patricia and Ward Hagan ‘48 Dance Studio at 185 Nassau St., it will mark the first time a woman has ever performed the work. It has been danced only by Mikhail Baryshnikov, Morris, and current Mark Morris Dance Group member Joe Bowie. Fehlandt, who retired from dancing with the Mark Morris Dance Group in January 2000 and turned 50 earlier this year, says, “It seemed appropriate to do something special to commemorate such a momentous occasion!”

Peccadillos, which originally premiered at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in 2000, is “a 10-minute solo with nine different sections, each with its own distinct mood,” explains Fehlandt. She likens it to a “young child playing make-believe. … The dancer is in her [or] his own world of make-believe.” Critic Tobi Tobias described it as “a charming little joke and turns out to be a tragedy in miniature.”

Fehlandt, who is teaching Beginning/Intermediate Modern Dance Technique and staged a Mark Morris work at last year’s spring dance Festival, is among several faculty members and guests performing or having their choreographed works performed at the concert, Now Dance. Elizabeth Schwall ’09 will dance Cloud Song, choreographed by Ze’eva Cohen; Rebecca Lazier will present Terminal, performed by her New York dance company Terrain; and Dyane Harvey will perform The Corner, a work-in-progress based on the life of Muhammad Ali. Now Dance begins at 8 p.m. Nov. 21 and 22. By Katherine Federici Greenwood

Above, Tina Fehlandt danced front and center with other Mark Morris Dance Company dancers. She will perform Peccadillos at the faculty concert, Now Dance. (Photo by Tom Brazil)

Early freeze

Cold temperatures on Nov. 19 put a hold on the water flowing from the Fountain of Freedom in Scudder Plaza.

(Photo by Lolly O’Brien)

Political activism in a digital age

In his Nov. 13 campus speech on the “cute cat theory of Web activism,” Ethan Zuckerman, a research fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, talked about how social activists are using Web-hosting sites to combat government censorship. Zuckerman, who helped to found the Web-hosting service Tripod.com, has developed a weak test for the success of a user-generated content system: If it does not attract pornography, then it does not work. If users actually begin to use the site for political activism, he argued, that’s an even stronger measure of the participatory media’s success.

Zuckerman recalled an example from his days at Tripod in the mid-1990s. He was surprised to see Malaysia ranked third among Tripod’s user countries, behind the U.S. and Canada. “What are we hosting here?” Zuckerman asked political scientists at Williams College.

The political scientists found that Tripod was hosting the Malaysian political opposition movement, which used the site to push for imprisoned Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s return to power. The Malaysian government’s heavy investment in Internet infrastructure allowed the Web to become a powerful propaganda tool for the opposition.

Trivial uses of the Web can play a role in fighting what Zuckerman called “an increasing censorship trend” in some countries. When governments block sites used by activists, they anger citizens who use these sites for banal purposes. The group of citizens who visited the site “to see the video of the cat flushing itself down the toilet” begins to ask the government why it was shut down. In this way, censorship heightens political tensions. Zuckerman advises activists to use banal sites like Google’s “Blogger” because government opposition simply “is not going to take down Google.” By Sarah Harrison ’09

Princeton (3-5, 2-3 Ivy) at Yale (5-3, 3-2 Ivy)

Nov. 15, noon — Yale Bowl, New Haven, Conn.

History

The Princeton-Yale series, now in its 131st installment, ranks second on the list of college football’s most-played rivalries, behind Lehigh-Lafayette. The Bulldogs have the all-time edge (71-49-10), but the Tigers scored a major victory in their last trip to New Haven, winning 34-31 in 2006 and earning a share of the Ivy League championship.

Head coach Roger Hughes said that when he was hired, he was told about the matchup’s importance, but he didn’t understand the magnitude until he received a flood of messages from alumni after Princeton’s 2000 win in New Haven. That passion, combined with the long history, makes Princeton-Yale “a very special rivalry,” he said.

This year

Princeton suffered a disappointing 14-9 loss to Penn Nov. 7, while Yale enters this week’s game on a high note after beating Ivy frontrunner Brown, 13-3, in Providence Nov. 8. Princeton’s seniors are 1-2 against Yale and are anxious to even the score. The game will be televised nationally on Versus.

Tiger of the Week: Chris Lu ’88

President-elect Barack Obama’s transition Web site counts down the days until inauguration — 69, as of Nov. 12 — and in that time, the new White House will name 15 cabinet-level secretaries and members of more than a dozen councils or offices, such as the Office of Management and Budget and the Council of Economic Advisers. As executive director of the transition team, alumnus Chris Lu ’88 will help to manage that list of key appointments. “My job is basically to keep the trains running on time,” Lu told The Daily Princetonian last week.

Lu, a Harvard Law classmate of Obama who until recently served as the senator’s legislative director, has worked in law and government for the last two decades. He also has plenty of experience meeting deadlines, faithfully filing class notes to PAW as the secretary of the Class of 1988. With the slightest hint of favoritism, we’ve chosen Lu as our Tiger of the Week. And though he probably needs no reminder, class notes for the January issue are due Nov. 25.

(Photo courtesy Chris Lu ’88)

Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW’s Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.

Filmmaker Davids ’69 probes ‘missing years’ in Jesus story

Paul Davids ’69’s latest film, the feature documentary Jesus in India, which explores where Jesus might have lived and what he did from age 12 to 30, will premiere nationally on the Sundance Channel Dec. 22, with a repeat broadcast Dec. 26. Those years, sometimes called the “missing years,” are noted in only one sentence in the New Testament, said Davids, but an ancient tradition in India suggests that Jesus traveled throughout India and lived with both Hindus and Buddhists before returning to the Holy Land to begin his public ministry.

In his controversial film, Davids, the producer and director, follows a former fundamentalist Christian from Texas, Edward T. Martin, who was ousted from his church for wanting to explore those years in Jesus’ life, as he searches for answers and evidence of Jesus’ travels in India. Princeton’s Professor of Religion Elaine Pagels appears in the film. By Katherine Federici Greenwood

For his film, Paul Davids ’69, at left above, interviewed Monsignor Corrado Balducci, a representative of the Vatican in Washington, D.C. Balducci died in September. (Photo courtesy Paul Davids ’69)

View a trailer for Jesus in India

Author outlines recommendations for Obama in the Middle East

As President-Elect Barack Obama sets the U.S. agenda in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he should learn from the policies of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, author Yossi Klein Halevi argued in a Nov. 10 speech at Robertson Hall entitled “Israeli Society and Politics After the Gaza Withdrawal.”

Nov. 4 marked the 13th anniversary of Rabin’s assassination by a right-wing Israeli who opposed his peacemaking efforts with the Palestinians. Halevi, at right, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Israel and contributing editor of the New Republic, explained that “Rabin is responsible for two Israeli policies” that could shape Obama’s involvement in the Middle East: the Palestinian peace process and the prevention of a nuclear Iran.

Halevi urged Obama to “resist the advice of well-intentioned but wrong-headed advisers…urging you to go for a comprehensive agreement” between Israel and Palestine, despite all past failed attempts. The new president, he said, will have to understand a paradox in Israeli public opinion: “There is a profound Israeli willingness to adopt the two-state solution. There is an understanding that the occupation is a long-standing disaster [for Israel], but most Israelis don’t believe that peace can be attained.”

Secondly, Halevi said Obama must operate on a tight timetable in preventing Iran from gaining nuclear capabilities. If it does, “the appeal of Hamas will almost be certainly irreversible,” he said. A nuclear Iran will mean a “decisive end for any chance for a negotiated end to the Middle East conflict. … No country with Iran over its shoulder will dare enter into a peace agreement with Israel.”

Halevi advised Obama to “be humble in your expectations” but work for “the limited goals that you set for yourself.” By Sarah Harrison ’09

Above, author Yossi Klein Halevi. (Photo courtesy Tzahy Lerner/Wikipedia)

NOTE: The third paragraph of this item was updated Nov. 12 at 2 p.m.

Fall champions crowned on busy sports weekend

On Friday, Nov. 7, the Princeton men’s hockey team dropped its home opener to Cornell, and the football team fell to Penn a few hours later. But those two losses were offset by plenty of Princeton wins in an exciting weekend of overlapping fall and winter sports.

In the brief period between the men’s hockey loss and football’s opening kickoff, Princeton fans at Class of 1952 Stadium cheered a Tiger victory as field hockey shut out Penn, 5-0, to win its fourth consecutive Ivy League championship. Coach Kristen Holmes-Winn’s players tried on new Ivy-champion T-shirts and hoisted the league trophy.

On Nov. 8, women’s soccer, paced by two goals from senior Taylor Numann, topped Penn 2-1 in overtime at Roberts Stadium. That victory earned Princeton a share of this year’s Ivy title, along with co-champion Harvard. While the Crimson received the league’s automatic spot for the Women’s NCAA College Cup, the Tigers reached the 64-team field with an at-large bid.

Men’s water polo, host of the CWPA Southern Championships at DeNunzio Pool Nov. 8 and 9, topped George Washington, 16-9, in the opening round and advanced the tournament finals with an 8-4 win over Bucknell. In Sunday’s championship game, the Tigers completed their title quest, beating rival Navy, 12-11, to win the Southern crown for the first time since 2004. Junior Eric Vreeland’s goal put Princeton ahead with 1:29 remaining.

Women’s volleyball, women’s hockey, and men’s hockey each won weekend games, and the men’s soccer team tied nationally ranked Penn. The final tally, Friday through Sunday: nine Princeton wins, three losses, one tie, and three championships.

Professors respond to Obama’s victory

This is what comes to mind when Cornel West *80 thinks about the election of the United States’ first African-American president:

First, tears: “the tears of my mother, almost 80 years old,” the tears that signify both “great suffering and great hopes” for the end of the age of Reagan, with its “indifference to the poor, the weak, the most vulnerable.”

Next, symbolism “without measure,” in the idea of Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson Obama ’85 in the White House with their two daughters paying on the manicured lawn — “with that puppy.”

But let’s not forget the questions, West says. West — scholar, public intellectual, hip-hop artist — would say this to Obama: “I want to know, now that you’ve won, what you’re really made of.”

West was one of five professors on a panel convened less than 24 hours after the votes were counted. Everyone - panelists and audience members alike - still seemed giddy over the results. When Obama’s name was announced, audience members (many of whom were sent from the overcrowded Friend Center lecture hall to watch the proceedings on simulcast) rose to their feet to applaud. “Oh, happy day!” said Woodrow Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter ’80 as she began her presentation, taking the words from Edward Hawkins’ gospel song.

Other panelists were professors Julian Zelizer (history), Eddie S. Glaude Jr. *97 (religion and African-American studies), and Farrah Griffin (Columbia University, African-American studies). Together, they discussed the challenges that would face Obama after January.

Princeton (3-4, 2-2 Ivy) vs. Penn (4-3, 3-1 Ivy)

Nov. 7, 7 p.m. — Princeton Stadium, Princeton, N.J.

History

Friday night’s game will be the 100th between Princeton and Penn, and everyone associated with the rivalry has a favorite. Tops on the list for Princeton head coach Roger Hughes: the 2006 game, when Rob Toresco ’08, stalled at the goal line, flipped the ball to quarterback Jeff Terrell ’07 for a key touchdown in overtime. Defensive coordinator Steve Verbit, who has been at Princeton for 24 seasons, fondly recalls a goal line stand in 1995 that helped the Tigers secure a 22-9 win. For more memorable moments and historical photos, check out “100 and counting,” a story from PAW’s Nov. 5 issue.

Above, Frank McPhee ’53 caught this Dick Kazmaier ’52 pass for a touchdown against Penn in 1951.

Tiger of the Week: Henry H. Kennedy Jr. ’70

In a week dominated by elections for executive and legislative offices, our Tiger of the Week comes the judicial branch. On Oct. 31, U.S. District Court Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. ’70 made headlines by ordering the Justice Department to produce memorandums from the White House legal counsel’s office that describe and outline the legal justification for the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. (The Justice Department has argued that the memorandums are protected attorney-client communications.)

For Kennedy, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1997, this is the latest in a list of difficult cases, from the Elian Gonzalez custody dispute in 2000 to the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes last year. But Princetonians may know him better as a former University trustee and the oldest sibling in an accomplished legal family that includes brother Randall Kennedy ’77, an author and Harvard Law professor, and sister Angela Acree ’85, a D.C. lawyer.

(Photo by Beverly Rezneck/Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts)

Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW’s Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.

Cross country teams win Heps

On Oct. 31, Princeton’s men’s and women’s cross country teams swept the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships for the third consecutive year — an unprecedented feat. This year’s meet included a narrow win by the men and a dominant race by the women. For more details, watch PAW’s exclusive video.

Students cheer returns at ‘White House bicker’

Groups of friends left their reading assignments and problem sets behind on election night, and no, they weren’t heading out to The Street. “White House bicker,” an event sponsored by the class governments, P-Votes, Whig-Clio, and the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students, drew large crowds as students gathered to get free T-shirts, kettle corn, apple cider, and donuts while they watched the results roll in. For many students, this was the first presidential election in which they were eligible to vote.

Those not willing to brave the crowds at Whig Hall gathered for televised viewing of the results in the residential colleges, eating clubs, and at the Frist Campus Center. Student groups like the James Madison Program provided pizza and dessert for their members while tracking the results on the big screen.

At Whig, cheers erupted as electoral vote projections came in for the respective candidates. Republican stalwarts held out, hopeful that red would creep over the map, but it was clear that the majority of students — 79.3 percent, according a Daily Princetonian poll — supported Barack Obama. By Julia Osellame ’09

Above, students at Whig Hall watch the early returns Nov. 4. (Photo by Julia Osellame ’09)

Names in the news, election edition

A Princetonian — future first lady Michelle Obama ’85 — will take residence in the White House for the first time since the final days of Woodrow Wilson 1879’s presidency. The new presidential spouse told Reuters that her first job will continue to be “mom-in-chief” for daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7.

In other news from the Nov. 4 election, Jared Polis ’96, D-Colo., became Colorado’s first openly gay congressman, winning handily in the state’s 2nd district. Woodrow Wilson School graduate Leonard Lance *82, R-N.J, right, won a seat in the House of Representatives, beating Democrat Linda Stender in a hard-fought race in New Jersey’s 7th district. And Lance’s classmate, Jeff Merkley *82, D-Ore., went to bed late last night with a narrow lead in a too-close-to-call race for a U.S. Senate seat.

Alumni incumbents fared well. Rep. Jim Marshall ’72, D-Ga., left, had the most significant challenge, retaining his seat by winning 55 percent of votes in his district. Rep. John Sarbanes ’84, D-Md., won by a wide margin, earning a second term. Indiana Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels ’71 also had a strong victory in his re-election bid.

(Photos: Lance — Wikipedia; Marshall — Congressional Pictorial Directory)