Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Sarah Hammond passed away over Thanksgiving break. College of William and Mary administrators only became aware of her death when Hammond did not show up for class Monday. The cause of death was unknown at press time.

Chair of the Religious Studies Department John Morreall sent an email Monday to Hammond’s Religion in American Life and Thought to 1840 class.

“I have the awful responsibility of telling you that Prof. Sarah Hammond died unexpectedly over the Thanksgiving break,” Morreall said in the email. “We learned this only after she did not come in to teach your class this morning.”

Hammond was a native of Oberlin, Ohio. She received her B.A. in religious studies from Yale University in 1999, graduating magna cum laude.

According to the Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis, Hammond’s academic interests included 19th and 20th century evangelicalism; the intersection of religion, business and gender; and religion in popular culture.

After working on HIV/AIDS prevention among high-risk young women, Hammond returned to Yale in 2003 to earn her M.A. and M. Phil in religious studies. Hammond received her Ph.D. in American ligious History from Yale in 2010. Her dissertation, entitled “God’s Business Men: Entrepreneurial Evangelicals in Depression and War,” was being revised under contract with the University of Chicago Press.

According to the College website, Hammond specialized in American history and religious history, the relationship between religion and business and the history of Christianity.

While her classes will be cancelled all this week, the final research paper is still due next Monday, to be submitted to another professor in the religious studies department.

For more on this developing story, see Flathatnews.com.

The day after the capture of the last of Col. Muammar el-Gaddafi’s sons, the Libyan ambassador to the United States and the executive director of the Libya Forum for Human and Political Development gave a presentation at the College of William and Mary’s School of Education.

The forum, “Libya’s Transition to Democracy,” was hosted by the College and Libya El Hurra Charity and was moderated by Vice Provost for International Affairs of the Wendy and Emery Reves Center for International Studies Steve Hanson.

“As Vice Provost for International Affairs, my goal is to get William and Mary students in touch with the events that are changing the world right now, and this event to me encapsulates exactly where we want to be as a university,” Hanson said.

His Excellency Ambassador Ali Aujali, the first panelist to speak, discussed the Libyan people’s desire for democracy.

“They all believe in democracy, which they [have not] practiced for a long time; human rights, which have been abused during Gaddafi’s term; freedom of press, they don’t enjoy it for a long time,” Aujali said. “And these people, I am really confident that they will guard this revolution to reach its end.”

Aly Abuzaakouk, executive director of the Libya Forum for Human and Political Development and vice president of the Minaret of Freedom Institute, attended grammar school with Gaddafi. After taking a moment of silence for those who lost their lives in pursuit of freedom, Abuzaakouk explained the human rights abuses of the Gaddafi regime and the Libyan people’s devotion to freedom.

“Libya, which has about 6.5 million [people], lost up to almost 50,000 people dead,” Abuzaakouk said about the revolution. “Somebody told me it’s like losing 4 million in America if we convert the maths. That is the price that the Libyan people paid for their freedom, but it is a worthy price because the people who did it have a debt upon our shoulders that we will never give our country and our freedom back again to any maniac, to anyone who can claim to be solving of the problems of the world while he couldn’t even solve the problems of his family.”

After the discussion, the speakers took photos and spoke individually with audience members.

“I think there’s a genuine desire in the country to form a civil society that isn’t a dictatorship anymore,” Charles McLeod ’14 said after hearing the presentation.

McLeod appreciated the benefit of hearing a first-hand account of Gaddafi’s regime.

“When you hear about these things on television and from reading about them, you know about it intellectually, but you don’t actually make the human connection that there’s actually people who honestly suffer,” he said.

Omar Khalifa, senior advisor for Libya El Hurra Charity, credited the success of the event to “a multitude of truly dedicated and fantastic staff and volunteers both at the university and through the charity itself.”

“Speaking from the point of a charity, it certainly is in our interest as partners in developing civil society and capacity building projects in Libya to engage with distinguished partners such as [the College], and to engage with them in dialogue and discussion to help promote these activities both in Libya and of course engaging in that discussion here in the States,” Khalifa said.

In addition to Aujali and Abuzaakouk, His Excellency Mr. Aburrahman Shalgham, the Libyan ambassador to the United Nations, was originally scheduled to speak at the event, but was ultimately unable to attend.

Bucky Dow’s ’12 voice mixes with sounds of the other College of William and Mary students filtering through Lodge One. Nothing sets him apart from the traditional college crowd snagging sandwiches or catching up with friends — he bears no scarlet “T” to mark him as a transfer student.

Ben Kirby ’12 mingles with the other students bustling about the Grind. He grabs his coffee, relaxes at a table and blends into the afternoon scene. He, too, bears no scarlet “T.”

But both Dow’s and Kirby’s paths to the College differ from those of “natives,” students who apply to the College right after high school. “I wasn’t on the college path at all, and I didn’t even plan on going to college for the tail end of my senior year of high school,” Dow said. “I barely graduated high school.”

Dow eventually enrolled at Richard Bland College, the College’s junior institution in Petersburg, with hopes of transferring to the College in the future.

Kirby enrolled at Virginia Military Institute. He eventually transferred to Northern Virginia Community College but had his sights set on enrolling at the College.

“I came here for prospective transfer day and really loved it,” Kirby said. “I was originally at community college to get those GER credits out of the way. Biology is biology anywhere. I paid maybe $100 per credit at [Northern Virginia Community College], so I was able to save a lot of money.”

Dow and Kirby joined 202 enrolling transfers in the fall of 2010. Community college transfers now comprise 45 percent of total enrollment of transfers as compared to 36 percent in past years, according to Associate Dean of Admission Kim Van Deusen.

With the economy in turmoil, the College has seen an increase in the numbers of students choosing the two-year college to four-year college path and non-traditional students.

Non-traditional students are defined as students who are 24 years of age or older. Referred to as “Prime Tribers,” the students constitute a larger number of students at the College than ever before.

“We had 15 Prime Tribers last fall and 48 this fall,” Assistant to the Dean of Students Ben Boone said. “I think part of that is our relationship with the community colleges, but a lot of it has to do with the economy. They might have had a career before the economy headed down. I know that one student had a 30-year-long career, but when she retired, she wanted to go back to college.”

Financial services company Sallie Mae recently released a nationwide survey for the 2010-11 academic year, showing that families paid about 9 percent less for education than during the 2009-10 academic year.

The study also showed an increase in the applications for financial aid and grants, correlating with the economic recession. The decrease in education payments was also a result of students shifting from higher-cost schools to lower-cost schools.

For high-income families, enrollment at two-year public colleges increased from 12 to 22 percent between 2009-11.

Middle-income families showed a decrease in enrollment at four-year public colleges, with 53 percent enrolled in 2009-10 to 44 percent enrolled in 2010-11, while low-income families remained fairly consistent with 33 percent enrolled in two-year colleges and 46 percent enrolled at four-year colleges.

The College has seen an increase in the number of transfer applications, which also correlates with increasing enrollment at community colleges. According to Van Deusen, the number of applications has increased from around 500 to 950 annually within the last decade.

The number of transfer applications from Virginia community colleges has more than doubled in the past five years.

“Sometimes community colleges aren’t last resorts,” University Registrar Sara Marchello said. “It might be for economic reasons or because the student is place-bound. They might be students with really excellent preparation, but, for whatever reason, choose community college first and then turn to four-year colleges.”

The College has taken multiple steps to accommodate the increase.

“There wasn’t really a large support network there to deal with transfer students at first,” Boone said. “But some years ago we put in an application for a Jack Kent Cooke grant. It was geared toward funding initiatives across campus. We didn’t receive the grant, but out of that meeting, though, came a group effort to look at the transfer population on campus.”

Marchello directs the co-enrollment program, a new program established to allow students at six community colleges in the area to experience the College without the pressures of academic commitment.

Students in the program take classes at the College and receive credit that can go to their College degree, even though the grades go on their community college transcript. They experience life on the campus and interact with both students and professors.

“It lets them put their toe in the water and see what they like here,” Marchello said. “If they decide to transfer, they come in at an advantage because they know the campus. There’s something about having a sense of [the] place that makes the transition smoother. We have a high success rate with those transfer students. They’ve done well here, been retained, graduated and succeeded.”

Virginia also mandates a guaranteed admission program for students at community colleges. If a student maintains a 3.6 GPA and graduates with an associate’s degree at the community college, he or she can enroll at any Virginia public university.

Students can also transfer in from other four-year colleges and can opt to return to college past the age of 24 as Prime Tribers.

“Transfer students bring an incredible amount of diversity, in the greatest sense of diversity,” Boone said. “These are students that have increasingly had greater commitments. That perspective and work ethic is really different from an 18-year-old freshman’s perspective.”

The different experience that the transfer students bring to campus sometimes causes problems in regard to adjusting to the College.

With various commitments outside of academics, transfer students enter the College with different needs. Transfer students are grouped separately from freshmen during Orientation and receive help with other needs such as housing, parking and registration.

As a result of the growing number of transfer students and their various needs, the College hopes to look at changing the structure of Orientation for transfer students.

“We’re looking at making some necessary programmatic changes, especially with Orientation,” Boone said. “I’m working closely with the Director of Orientation to look at how we can accommodate the 30-year-old single mother with two kids. It’s not feasible for her to be here for five days from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. They’ve been going through the same process as other students. We’re pretty flexible, but there are certain requirements that they have to have because of federal regulation or College policy.”

But assimilation beyond Orientation still proves to be the largest struggle. Dow served as a transfer Orientation Aide this past August and hoped to impart some of his experience with the transfer process.

“I feel that of our own doing, [transfer students] tend to wall ourselves out. I just wanted to make sure that they were reaching out,” Dow said. “When I came to William and Mary, I had the fear that I didn’t want to impose myself on groups. But you need to get out there, and no one’s really going to judge you.”

As the number of transfers applying to the College increases, both administrators and fellow transfer students hope to guide a growing population at the College.

“We’re still trying to answer the question of how we serve our different kinds of transfer populations most effectively,” Boone said.

There’s a certain prestige that comes with being the second oldest college in the country, but the College of William and Mary’s age also ties it to some unsavory things. English professor Terry Meyers spoke about his research Nov. 21 concerning a blemish on the College’s long history: slavery.

Meyers first became interested in the subject with his discovery of the Bray School, which may have been the first to educate free and enslaved blacks in the British colonies. The building in question currently houses the Reserved Officers’ Training Corps program.

“[The Bray School] made very concrete to me slavery and the College,” Meyers said.

Pro-slavery and discriminatory sentiments color a large portion of the College’s history. During the Civil War, students wanted to fly a secessionist flag over the Sir Christopher Wren Building, but the College’s president at the time did not allow it. In 1926, the Ku Klux Klan gave the College an American flag as a gift. The College’s president accepted the gift but criticized the Klan in his acceptance speech.

Meyers believes that written histories of the College have tried to sugarcoat parts of the College’s past that allude to its acceptance of slavery. The Nottoway Quarter, for instance, was a tobacco plantation owned by the College and maintained by slave labor.

“It’s not mentioned in any history of the College at all,” Meyers said. “[Profits from it were] used to pay scholarships for the less wealthy white [students].”

The fact that the College owned slaves was incorporated into The Owl, a humorous publication from 1854. A political cartoon depicted slaves in Williamsburg being treated well and laborers enduring terrible working conditions at Yale University.

“[The message was that it was] better to be a slave in Williamsburg than to be a worker in New Haven,” Meyers said.

Meyers explained how controversial the abolitionist movement was at the College. In 1791, the College granted Granville Sharp, a fervent abolitionist, an honorary degree.

“It would be like William and Mary giving an honorary degree to … I can’t think of somebody controversial enough,” Meyers said.

Thomas Jefferson, an alumnus of the College, was also wary of the controversy.

“[Abolition was] such a delicate subject,” Meyers said. When Jefferson wrote on it, he “talked about it in such indirect ways…that the editors didn’t know what he was talking about,” Meyers said.

None of Meyers’ findings are technically new. Most of his work has consisted of finding ambiguous sources that were already published and fitting all of the pieces together.

“It’s almost all published,” Meyers said. “[It’s] been known but just kept isolated.”

The talk attracted a respectable turnout of Meyers’ colleagues in the English Department, who praised the extent of his investigation.

“Professor Meyers has certainly done a ton of research,” English professor Hermine Pinson said. “[It is] definitely a good start.”

English professor Adam Potkay echoed this affirmation of the research.

“[It was] a very good, balanced historical survey of the evidence,” he said.

Meyers’ research overlaps with the Lemon Project, an initiative started in 2009 with the goal of rectifying damages done to African Americans throughout the College’s history. Meyers, however, does not believe that has yet been done.

“We have yet, I think, to go beyond acknowledging our complacence of slavery,” he said.

The College of William and Mary hosted approximately 1,000 high school students for the 25th annual William and Mary High School Model United Nations Conference from Nov. 18 to 20.

The College’s Model UN team, which is part of the International Relations club, administered the conference, known as WMHSMUN. The IR club event attracted high schools from places all around the country.

“We have actually 1,000 high schoolers that come from all over the country, about 60 schools or so, mostly in Virginia, Maryland, some from North Carolina,” Secretary General Will Shimer ’13 said. “This year, we’re excited to welcome some schools from California, Florida and even Costa Rica.”

Expanding the Model UN program and attracting schools from diverse locations was an important goal this year for Registration Director Brendan Greenley ’13.

“I wanted to get schools that could increase the level of debate,” Greenley said.

For the Model UN team, WMHSMUN is an essential fundraiser. Proceeds from the event fund the club’s trips to nationwide conferences throughout the year.

“After a while, you couldn’t ask club members to pay for a bus to Georgetown or up to Pennsylvania, so we needed a club fundraiser, and a lot of colleges around the country started running high school Model UN conferences,” Shimer said. “We charge the high schoolers to come here, and we use that money to travel to other college conferences.”

In addition to raising funds, the conference is meant to encourage conversation and debate among high school students about world issues. The committees the students served on and the topics they discussed reflected current events, and thus were subject to some unpredictability.

“We had the Apple Board of Directors, and then Steve Jobs dies, and so it’s like, ‘Oh. How do we deal with that?’” Shimer said. “Or, we have Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and of course everything with Syria and Libya — it’s constantly changing.”

WMHSMUN also serves as a means of attracting prospective students to the College.

“It’s a great way to promote William and Mary,” Leena Al-Souki ’14 said. “Lots of the high school students who come here to the conference decide that they really like it. They see how we work, how organized we are, and they see William and Mary and how awesome it is, and a lot of them come here because of the conferences that we do.”

Between the opening ceremonies on Friday and the closing ceremonies on Sunday, students attended committee sessions, a ghost tour, a delegate social and a keynote presentation by a member of the U.S. Department of State.

“I think it went really well,” Greenley said. “Of all the emails I’ve gotten, I haven’t gotten a single complaint. Everything from the keynote speaker to the closing ceremonies went flawlessly.”

The Model UN team’s next project is the William and Mary Middle School Model UN Conference, which will take place in February. Meanwhile, planning will begin almost immediately for next year’s high school conference.

The Woodlands Hotel and Suites served as the primary lodging facility for the high school students who participated in the conference.