Kaleidoscope Volume 43: 30th Anniversary Issue

S U M M E R 2 0 1 2

Vo l u m e 4 3

12CASTLE SLEUTHING Uncovering the mysteries of the historical hotel

29DAVID BENNETRemembering Prince Charles’s hot springs commotion

34THE FREEDOM MARCHSpeaking out against Apartheid

SPECIAL ANNIVERSARY I S S U E

THE THINKERS

Odd-Even

Bustness ’89 and

Lieke Luttmer ’89

pose on the

soccer fields.

S U M M E R 2 0 1 23 0 T H A N N I V E R S A RY I S S U E

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LEADERS

Letter From the President 2

Hammer’s Legacy 3

Making Montezuma 4

A Crusader for the Cause 5

Life Cycle 6

Bottling the Magic 7

CLASS OF ’84

The Italian Bed Makers 8

Montezuma Memories 8

Howls and Hugs 9

CAMPUS

Campus Facts 10

Castle Sleuthing 12

THEN & NOW

A Thematic Review of Past and Present 14

Personal Level History 15

Make It END 16

The Anatomy of a Cultural Day 17

The Misadventures of the Student Liberation Organization 18

On Our Shoulders 19

U W C - U S A / W W W . U W C - U S A . O R G2

ORAL HISTORIES

Homelessness, History, and the CIA 20

The Intimate Work of Changing the World 21

A Love for Language 21

On Becoming a Privateer and Marching for Hunger 22

Creating Community 23

Timeline 24

In the Thick of It 26

Fat Envelopes, Moose Horns, and Badminton Stars 27

A Fire Truck and Three Arabian Horses 28

Prince Charles’s Hot Springs Commotion 29

The UWC Family 30

Softball, Singing, and Orienteering 31

Brewing the First Pot of Tea 32

ALUMNI MEMORIES

Blind Faith on Santa Fe Baldy 33

The Freedom March 34

UWC Dancing 36

How We Got Locks 36

Grapevine Canyon 37

LIFE CONNECTIONS

Montezuma Love 38

Country-Mates 39

UWC Connection 39

A Wedding Anniversary 39

REMEMBERING

Halley’s Comet 40

Making Connections 40

Improvisation 41

Misappropriation 41

In Memoriam 42

IN THE FUTURE

Looking Forward 44

©Michael Brown ’90K A L E I D O S C O P E / S U M M E R 2 0 1 2 1

Letter From the President

DEAR FRIENDS,I hope you have as much fun reading this 30th anniversary issue of Kaleidoscope

as we had assembling it! The stories from past school leaders, faculty, staff, and alumni that you’ll find in these pages all share a common theme: the pure affection for this wonderful school. You simply can’t be a part of UWC‑USA without feeling that joy.

When I arrived at UWC‑USA seven years ago, I was welcomed by a deeply expe‑rienced and committed faculty, several of whom had been with the school since its founding. In May, we celebrated many of those dear colleagues as they transitioned to retirement or other projects. Their contributions are immeasurable, but I feel confident that those joining us this fall will build on the foundations set by those before them while bringing new energy and ideas to the campus.

Each of us stands on the shoulders of those who have come before us, and that is truer for no one more than for me. I have had the privilege of knowing and fol‑lowing Ted and Lu Lockwood, and Phil and Amy Geier.

Ted and Lu presided over the school’s founding. They tell stories that make me laugh at the roller‑coaster ride that marked the beginning of UWC‑USA, from makeshift dorms known as “Siberia” to the grand ceremony with Prince Charles that marked the dedication.

Phil and Amy took the school to the next level, improving programmatic qual‑ity as well as building and renovating facilities that continue to serve our students today. With the help of our extraordinary patron, Shelby Davis, they secured trans‑formational philanthropic support.

I am humbled and deeply admiring of the work and impact of my predecessors. It is in their great tradition that my colleagues and I carry on to advance the school and the UWC ideals. As I write this, we are deep into a strategic planning process that will establish new goals for the next several years. The planning process has been an invaluable opportunity for reflection, allowing us to celebrate the passion and brilliance of our students and alumni, the uniqueness of our experiential pro‑gram, and the potential we have to make a significant impact on the world. At the same time, it has helped us think about how we can take this exceptional school and make it even better. I look forward to sharing the final outcome.

But for now, celebrate with us. Return and join in the anniversary festivities in September. Enjoy reading the stories and remembering your own UWC story. And most of all, let us stand together in living out our extraordinary vision, mission, and ideals.

With warm regards,

Lisa A. H. DarlingPresident

CREDITS

editor

Jennifer Rowland

associate editor

Emily Withnall MC ’01

designer

Danielle Wollner

copy editor

Jeannine Santiago

contributors

Francesca Annicchiarico ’12, Daniela Bar-Am (Beran) ’91, Eran Bar-Am ’91,

Bonnie (Horie) Bennett ’85, David Bennett, Geoff Blanton ’05, Jan Boontinand ’90,

Dorrie Brooks ’85, Michael Brown ’90, Fiona Cumberland ’10, Ruaidhri Belfry Crofton, Lisa A. H. Darling, Marie Dixon ’84, Kripa Dongol ’12, Shaila Ekramoddoullah ’90, Gabriel Ellison-Scowcroft ’10, Hannah Freedman ’12, John Geffroy, Don Gray,

Nico Grubert ’12, Tarra Hassin ’91, Henrik Jenssen ’12, Sam Kessler ’13, Shamola Labeodan ’00, Tom Lamberth, Brian G. Lax ’92, Nadejda Marques ’90, Hans O. Melberg ’90, Alexa Melkman ’99, Mohammad Mudaqiq ’12, Joe Nold,

Tandiwe Njobe ’90, Bob and Carrol Pearson, Helle Ringaard ’85, Jennifer Rowland,

Eugenio Ruggiero ’84, Kate Russell, Hannah Saulters ’12, Fernando Skerl ’86, Gareth

Smit ’09, Michael Stern ’89, Demet Tuncer Tanriover ’93, Emma Tilquin ’02, Kevin Thompson, Colleen Lewis

von Eckartsberg ’86, Hilda Wales, Emily Withnall MC ’01, Mark Zelinski,

Offi (Susser) Zisser ’84

contact

UWC-USA

PO Box 248

Montezuma, NM 87731

+1 505 454 4227

[email protected]

Kaleidoscope is published biannually by UWC-USA

to sustain connection within UWC-USA and its extended community.

Cover Photo: Pictured are Kamenna Rindova Lee ’89 and Gina Neff ’89. Photo ©Michael Brown ’90

Back Cover Photo: Pictured are Mahaut de San ’13, Belgium, Chisom Ibekwe ’13, Nigeria, and Kalene

Jones ’12, Bahamas. Photo ©Kate Russell

©Kate Russell

Kaleid scope

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LEADERS

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Armand Hammer loved a challenge. When Lord Louis Mountbatten wondered out loud how Hammer might suc‑ceed in founding a UWC in the United States when oth‑ers before him had failed, Hammer was confident. “I’d be happy to help you,” he told Mountbatten and His Royal Highness Prince Charles in 1978.

Within two years of that fateful conversation, Hammer had purchased the Montezuma site for $1 million. “I had been immediately enchanted with the place but daunted by its dereliction,” he writes in his autobiography. “The castle’s roof was a maze of holes. The grounds were com‑pletely overgrown, and we walked around them with mud up to our ankles. Nonetheless, my mind was made up im‑mediately. This was the place.”

It wasn’t just the challenge that inspired Hammer— although building a world‑class educational institution out of a heap of crumbling buildings certainly was not an easy

task. Hammer, who had lived through two world wars, truly believed in the UWC mission.

“If 17‑year‑olds all around the world could share that dream [of a world without war] and act upon it in their adult lives, they might become ushers to an age of peace on earth,” he said.

Hammer’s generosity and faith in youth have trans‑formed the lives of nearly 3,000 UWC‑USA alumni—and countless communities around the world that those alum‑ni have since touched. When Hammer’s great‑grandson Armie came to visit the campus recently, his pride was pal‑pable—and well‑deserved. Armand Hammer’s legacy will carry on with generations of students yet to come.

Hammer’s LegacyBy Jennifer Rowland

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©Michael Brown ’90

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Making MontezumaAN INTERVIEW WITH TED LOCKWOOD

By Emily Withnall MC ’01

Ted Lockwood may have been UWC‑USA’s first president, but as anyone who has read his book Dreams & Promises: The Story of the Armand Hammer United World College knows, he also played a critical role in the school’s founding.

Armand Hammer, charged by Prince Charles in 1978 to create a United World College in the U.S., assembled a team of people to make the vision of the school a reality. Kingman Brewster, former president of Yale and the am‑

bassador to the Court of St. James, was a part of this team and pulled Ted into the project in April 1981. Having been immersed in U.S. higher education for decades, Ted knew nothing of the na‑scent UWC movement or the Interna‑tional Baccalaureate. But he says he was intrigued by the schools’ description and promise and dove headfirst into the complex planning required to set up a U.S.‑based UWC.

Initially, plans called for the school to be hosted within the larger campus of the United States International Uni‑versity in San Diego, Calif. However, Ted questioned the effectiveness of this idea. The university was failing, and the location was not ideal for the kind of fo‑cus required of UWC students. Ted says Hammer respected his opinion, but tasked him with helping to find a new site as quickly as possible.

When the Castle was discovered in Montezuma and the property was secured as the UWC site, Ted and his wife Lu were officially hired. Visiting the future campus in October 1981 with Pearson’s Founding Director Jack Mat‑thews, Ted remembers, “the soccer field was a complete dustbin and there was no grass, the telephone poles were strung haphazardly all over. We found nothing had been done although we had met with an architect and a builder to discuss what might happen.” Despite these disappoint‑ments, Ted persevered with a fast‑paced renovation that would see the school open in fall 1982.

Of course, there were hurdles. Finding faculty, recruit‑ing students from around the world, and securing the stu‑dents’ clearance required relentless work and negotiation. Ted says, “In the late fall of ’81, I discovered you had to be in operation for three years before the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C. would approve of bringing in foreign students.” Fortunately, Dr. Hammer and New Mexico Gov. Bruce King were able to “pull some strings” so they could move ahead.

“New Mexico was very good because they just said ‘you’re approved.’ So there’s some virtue in being in a state where things are done a little differently,” Ted jokes.

Building the school in Montezuma turned out to be fortuitous in many other ways. Before the school opened, Ted approached all the institutions and organizations in Las Vegas to establish a relationship and to offer ser‑vice where needed. Many of the school’s current servic‑es, such as volunteering at the New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute, owe their existence to Ted’s dedication to community partnerships.

But while it proved to be easy to forge service connec‑tions in Las Vegas, the Kurt Hahn‑based commitment to Search and Rescue presented its own challenge. “Prince Charles couldn’t understand what we were going to do about Search and Rescue because all the other United World Colleges did it on the water,” Ted says, laughing. “I said I didn’t think the Gallinas River was a very good locale for that.” Working with the New Mexico state police, the school soon developed a comprehensive land‑based Search and Rescue team—marking the beginning of UWC‑USA’s integral Wilderness Program.

Ted’s previous work with U.S. universities helped him to appreciate the isolated and intimate nature of UWC‑USA. “Lu and I loved the countryside and the fact that both of us could have lunch every noon and talk with people,” Ted says. “And at night I would take the collie out at 10 p.m. and walk around the campus and see the place and chat with a few people—it was such a wonderful contrast [to what I’d done before].”

Whether it was from faculty from around the world, students who took the “courageous risk” in coming, or the development of key courses like the Conflict Resolution Pro‑gram, Ted says he drew inspiration and momentum from every aspect of UWC life. “We weren’t just teaching algebra and going home,” Ted says. “I think that was rewarding.”

Ted and Lu stayed at UWC‑USA for 10 years—though Ted reveals that his initial plan had been “to get it going and then turn it over to somebody.” He shares, “Having been in education nearly 50 years, in retrospect, certainly our years at Montezuma were the best.”

Ted and Lu now live in Vermont, where they enjoy the proximity of their families. Considering UWC’s future, Ted says he hopes the movement will continue to expand. While there are more UWCs now than there were in 1982, he believes that continued growth will be essential in help‑ing the UWC movement amplify real global understand‑ing and change. “The decision to educate high school stu‑dents was smart and fruitful,” he says of the movement’s founders. “Aspiration, dedication, and knowledge will con‑tinue to be crucial for students to make a real impact.”

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Phil Geier, UWC‑USA’s second president, learned about the school and the UWC movement from a philan‑thropist in Houston, Texas. His interest piqued, Phil ap‑plied for the president’s position, got the job, and quickly realized he was in for one big challenge.

“My first impressions were that I hope we can make this work,” he says. “The school was about a year and half away from being bankrupt. It was a sad situation, but it was a real opportunity, so we considered it a challenge we were willing to grapple with.”

And grapple he did. During his tenure, Phil righted the school’s financial footing, secured scholarships for Ameri‑can students, renovated the Castle, developed many key programs, and spread the word about the school—among several other endeavors.

Phil says he undertook the challenge because he was captivated by the school’s location, history, and—most significantly—by the students. Furthermore, he deeply believed in the school’s mission and had great hope for its future. Phil’s passion, as well as his talent for building relationships and finding donors, drove his success.

Describing himself as a “crusader for the cause,” Phil says it took effort from everyone at the school to build rela‑tionships locally and farther afield. “I can remember many members of the faculty sitting around a dining room table at the president’s house and personally writing appeal let‑ters to people. Everybody really rolled up their sleeves,” he shares. It was faculty involvement, he says, that helped spread the kind of excitement that was vital to finding do‑nors who shared the school’s aspirations.

Phil says his first few months at UWC‑USA were a learning curve, but one of the most surprising things he discovered was in September during a full moon. “We went to bed, exhausted, and in the middle of the night, we got howled out of bed,” Phil recalls. “Ted Lockwood had promised the students the year before that he wouldn’t tell his successor about the tradition so they could shock the new guy. They did.” With good humor, Phil met them at the back door and spontaneously delivered some words of wisdom that elicited much laughter before everyone went back to sleep. “I found that episode to be really indicative of a UWC day,” Phil says. “You could have a surprise, you could have a shock, you could have your world turned up‑side down, but really, it was a learning experience.”

Phil is proud of many positive changes that came about during his presidency, such as cross‑cultural and religious programming in the new Dwan Light Sanctuary, greater emphasis on physical education in the new Edith Lansing Field House, the establishment of the Bartos Institute for Constructive Engagement of Conflict, and greater ac‑cess to educational technology. But he says one of the best

things about his time at UWC‑USA was something that didn’t change very much: the faculty. “The faculty we in‑herited was the faculty I worked with and I was very happy with that. They put in a lot of commitment and a lot of extra energy,” Phil says.

Phil adds that while he and the faculty worked to con‑nect with the local community, he says there is always more that can be done. “There are lots of ways in which we could expand beyond campus work,” he says. “Reaching out to people not just in the local community but beyond is so important for sharing the mission and looking to the far future of the enterprise.”

Phil currently serves as the executive director for the Davis United World College Scholars Program, now the world’s largest privately funded international scholarship program for undergraduates. His commitment to provid‑ing scholarships to potential students is not a new one. “There was no such thing as scholarships for U.S. students when we first came [to UWC‑USA]. So that was a big hur‑dle to deal with and to change, creating a level playing field for Americans to go to all of the UWCs,” he says, “I am very excited about UWC having increased its selectivity and quality of education. A lot has been done since my time.”

A Crusader for the CauseAN INTERVIEW WITH PHIL GEIER


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Life CycleAN INTERVIEW WITH SHELBY DAVIS

By Francesca Annicchiarico ’12

Shelby Davis, a philanthropist who has invested extraordinary resources in UWC‑USA and the UWC movement for 14 years, explains that he is motivated by a singular aspiration: “I hope UWC students will make a contribution to the world—however they make it—by be‑ing good citizens, by being open‑minded, and by living the mission of the United World Colleges.”

“It all starts with students’ entry into UWC,” he adds. “It changes them, and they will bring forward that change. Whatever career they will follow, they will have the spirit of UWC in them.”

It was a traditional UWC‑USA cultural show more than a decade ago that inspired Davis to get involved with the UWC movement. He created an endowment to pro‑vide full scholarships to all American students attending a UWC and partially finance the university education of UWC students—regardless of nationality—who decide to continue their education in the United States.

“When I visited American scholars around the world, it broke my heart to see roommates of the Americans, who were obviously good students and great people, getting into wonderful universities in the U.S. but not getting financial aid,” Davis says. “I just couldn’t bear seeing kids who had studied so hard and had come so far in life—away from their country to a foreign school—getting into the best schools but not being able to go. I’m glad I made a difference there.”

In addition to scholarships, the Davis family has sup‑ported UWC‑USA in many other ways, including contri‑

butions to help renovate the Castle and build the Edith Lansing Field House. But Davis admits it is the students who most interest him. “I’d rather invest in the students than in the buildings,” he says.

Davis is optimistic about UWC‑USA’s future and would like to see it become one of the top schools in the country. As a philanthropist, he says success depends on “a broader base of support from many sources, and particu‑larly from the alumni.”

According to Davis, alumni can play a key role in open‑ing new UWCs in underrepresented regions. “Hopefully some of the students will go back to their countries and find a way to open a school,” he says. “I’d like to see more UWCs, and I’d like to see more in poor areas.”

Davis’s stress on the importance of alumni in the fu‑ture of the UWC movement reflects the philosophy he has inherited from his parents: “The first 30 years of one’s life should be focused on learning, the next 30 years on earning, and the remaining 30 years on returning,” he explains.

Davis is working on developing his foundation to meet the needs of an increasing number of UWC students apply‑ing to U.S. universities from around the world. Davis says his parents inspired him to become an influential philanthropist. “[My work] keeps me more vibrant and more aware of new trends and more hopeful than I would be if I didn’t focus on people. Being a philanthropist is good for my health and happiness,” he says.

SHELBY DAVIS

Surrounded by

scholars, Davis is

pictured center,

bottom row, with

his wife, Gale, on

the far right,

bottom row.© Don Gray

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Tom Dickerson AC ’68, chairman of the UWC‑USA Board of Trustees, has been involved with the UWC movement for more than 40 years. Dickerson was a stu‑dent at Atlantic College during the Vietnam War, when fear of the escalating arms race in the Cold War was at the forefront of global concern. The conflicts of this era infused the UWC movement with a sense of urgency; it was critical to bring students together from around the world before deep‑seated prejudices could be formed.

Dickerson says memories of his engagement with these global issues are among his fondest. After graduating from Atlantic College, Dickerson attended a university in the U.S. He missed the close‑knit UWC community and started the movement’s first alumni association in the U.S. When UWC‑USA opened in 1982, Armand Hammer invited Dickerson to the dedication. Three years later, he was asked to join the school’s Board and has since served on the Board in several different capacities.

The Board’s job is to cre‑ate policy for the school, hire school leaders, raise money, and ensure that the budget is balanced. As chairman, Dicker‑son’s priorities are to facilitate resourceful group dynamics among the school’s trustees.

The Board faces several challenges today. The Armand Hammer Trust, which pro‑vides nearly a quarter of the school’s annual operating bud‑get, is set to expire in 2013. The Board has been building up reserves, but the school is at a major crossroads. Dickerson says he views this shift in fund‑ing as a constructive challenge because it allows a reevaluation of the institution and its goals.

Dickerson participated in the school’s strategic plan‑ning meeting in February 2012; a pivotal weekend‑long

meeting that included the entire student body, faculty, staff, Board, various National Committee members, and International Board members. The meeting’s purpose was to establish a direction for the school’s future in‑formed by broad community input and engagement. The strategic plan is expected to be complete this fall.

When asked about his hopes for the school’s future, Dickerson says the current task is to define what it is that makes UWC so transformational. “Once we know what the magic is,” he says, “we can bottle it and share it with the world.”

Bottling the MagicAN INTERVIEW WITH TOM DICKERSON

By Hannah Freedman ’12


==

On my first day in Montezuma, I walked into my room to find what looked like a full‑size wooden coffin taking up most of the space. After an anxious moment, I understood that the “coffin” was my roommate’s cello case. In it, Agneta Eikelenboom had packed her beloved cello and padded it with all the clothes she brought for school. She traveled by bus all the way from British Columbia to New Mexico because it had been too complicated to take the cello by air. This was the first day of a beautiful friendship.

I also remember when Louseweis Van Der Laan (until recently, leader of a Dutch parliamentary group, but in 1982 a cranky morning riser) found the purring of a cat too unbearable in the early morning hours and stuffed the poor thing in the day‑room fridge. Needless to say,

Back in 1982 when it all started, the school year was scheduled to begin around Sept. 11 or 12. For some reason, Enrico and I arrived two or three days early. As Ted Lock‑wood and some of the teachers later confessed, of all the people one would expect to arrive on time or early, the Ital‑ians were the least likely.

We had the campus to ourselves and got to hang out with Neil Hunter, Charles Hanson, Tunji, and Marcel Roy and his family. We became acquainted with the campus and got to know the security guards and the marvels of the cafeteria (free soda at all times!). Nathalie Roy and An‑drew’s daughters were good company. Tunji’s kids were adorable but too small for meaningful conversation (and besides, our English needed … work).

Everyone in the first class remembers the mud field before the grass was rolled in. But few people know about other hitches. For example, the company that supplied the mattresses had delivered the wrong size; they were shorter and wider than the bed frames. Since we had nothing else to do, our “beloved‑to‑be” housemasters Neil and Marcel

asked if we would help bring down all the wrong mattress‑es and carry up the right ones.

No one expected Italians to be capable of working hard, but apparently we did a pretty good job—which gave the housemasters some ideas. The day before everyone arrived, they had another request: “You know, your classmates will arrive tomorrow, many of them at quite late hours and af‑ter long and tiring trips.” Pause. “Wouldn’t it be nice if they found their beds made when they arrived?”

Well, what could we say? We had nothing bet‑ter to do, right? And we have always been known for having big, big hearts, right? We made 100 beds between us that afternoon. The frames were against the walls, so it wasn’t exactly easy. But we did our best. And as far as I know, our classmates slept sweetly thereafter.

Montezuma MemoriesBy Offi (Susser) Zisser ’84

it was a scene worthy of a horror movie to see this cat jump out of the fridge when the first innocent bystander reached for the milk. I think this was the deciding mo‑

ment that led me to become a life‑long animal‑loving vegetarian.

Louseweis’ first‑year roommate, Janet Jackson, introduced me to the world of people with disabilities who can do just about everything.

Despite her visual impairment, Janet was accepted to UWC‑USA, succeeded in her studies, and even climbed Hermit’s Peak. The only thing she was unable to do was to match the color of her socks, so she would have us pair them up correctly for her. I marveled at her determination and good nature. As a philanthropy professional today, I think of Janet often when partnering with organizations for those with disabilities.

It was a scene worthy of a horror movie...

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The Italian Bed MakersBy Eugenio Ruggiero ’84

No one expected Italians to be capable of working hard, but apparently we did a pretty good job.

THE FIRST CLASS

CLASS OF ’84


=© Henrik Jenssen ’12

I can’t guarantee the veracity of my tales, but I vividly recall galloping down the Castle steps like a herd of wild horses with security guard Dave Bennett pretending to give

chase. It was my first full moon howl up by the Castle. It had been a well‑established tra‑dition long before I ever dared to take part. I remember the moon,

the night air, and the laughter. The feeling was one of tin‑gly freedom and community. Breaking the curfew rule for a spot of moonlight madness was a gleeful experience. My classmate Shaunna and I enjoyed a good howl when she visited me recently, but it didn’t hold the same appeal. Still, we startled the neighbors and had some giggles ourselves.

UWC was a riddled with “firsts.” Along with my first howl came my first experience of snow (WOW! and I wasn’t the only one) and soon afterward my first weekend ski trip. We took a cross‑country ski tour in the mountains with wilderness instructor Ann. I had learned to ski the week before, practicing on the snowed‑over soccer field.

Andre Kandy took a black and white picture of me for his photography club project. I also have a picture someone took of my makeshift pink outfit, waving sturdy gloves bor‑rowed from someone more Nordic. I got trench foot and the return trip was pretty painful. But what happened dur‑ing the trip mattered more.

We unloaded our backpacks and got into swimsuits and sat in a Native American sweat lodge together, pass‑ing a peace pipe. We dashed out of the steam, doused our‑selves in a nearby stream, and rolled in snow. I’d never had a sauna experience before, and that was the most unique experience yet. Then, after we’d dressed again, we stood in a circle and stared at the stars together, marveling at the wonders of the world and ending with a group hug. That hug was one of the most meaningful and memorable in my life. I wasn’t a hugger before UWC, but I became one after that. That group hug encompassed all the love we had for the world. And there was loads of it, an endless supply in fact. It’s not something I recall daily, but it comes back to me often enough. The memory sustains me and fuels my conviction that we may one day achieve all those crazy dreams we howled about.

Howls and HugsBy Marie Dixon ’84

Breaking the curfew rule for a spot of moonlight madness was a gleeful experience.

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NEW MEXICO SUNRISE

Daybreak where

the mountains

meet the plains.

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CAMPUS

Campus Facts

CA

MP

US 1841: Mr. Donaldson becomes the first known

owner of the campus area who is granted the rights to the land by the Mexican government. The area is popular because of the hot springs.

1846: The land is purchased by the U.S. Army. The Army builds a military hospital near the hot springs to serve soldiers injured in the Mexican-American War.

1862: The hospital is sold to O.H. Woodworth who converts it into a hotel called Adobe Hotel. The hotel later burns down and closes in the early 1890s.

1879: The property adjacent to the Adobe Hotel is purchased by a group of investors with the hope of developing the hot springs into a tourist attraction. They build a new hotel named the Hot Springs Hotel, which is today’s Old Stone Hotel.

1880: The Las Vegas Hot Springs Co. buys the hot springs and the surrounding property, including the Hot Springs Hotel.

1881: A new luxury hotel and the first building in the Southwest to have electric lighting and an el-evator is constructed by the Fred Harvey Co. and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. Named the Montezuma Hotel, it opens to the public in 1882. A landscaped park with shops, a water fountain, and even a zoo is created behind the building, which is built on the site of the present-day school mainte-nance area.

1884: The Montezuma Hotel burns down because of a clogged gas line.

1885: The second Montezuma Hotel, designed by Chicago architects Birmingham and Root, is built on the site of the current Castle but burns down four months after it opens.

1886: The hotel is rebuilt on the same site under the new name Phoenix Hotel, but it closes in 1903 due to bankruptcy.

1903: The hotel is sold to the Young Men’s Chris-tian Association (YMCA) for $1.

CAMPUS FACTSBy Francesca Annicchiarico ’12 and Ruaidhri Belfry Crofton

RISING FROM THE ASHES

The Montezuma

Hotel flanks the

opulent grounds.

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RESPITE FOR RAILROAD TRAVELERS

Carriages deliver

railway passengers

to luxurious

accommodations

at the Montezuma

Hotel.

1922: The Castle serves as the site for the South-ern Baptist College until 1931.

1937: The Southern Baptist Church sells the building to the Catholic Church. It serves as a seminary for Mexican Jesuits until 1972.

1978: The Jesuits make a little money by rent-ing the Castle out as the set for the low-budget hor-ror flick The Evil. In the years that follow, several other films also feature campus grounds, including Fanboys and Georgia O’Keeffe.

1981: The Castle is bought by industrialist and philanthropist Armand Hammer as the site of the new campus of the Armand Hammer United World College of the American West, now known as UWC-USA.

1982: The Adobe Hotel is renovated as the school’s cafeteria. It currently serves as the IT Center.

1988: The Kluge Art Center is given by cinema mogul “John Kluge” John W. Kluge. It houses the main auditorium as well as the Arts Department.

1996: The Dwan Light Sanctuary is given by art patron and philanthropist Virginia Dwan to provide a place for relaxation and meditation.

1997: The Castle becomes the first historic prop-erty west of the Mississippi to be placed on America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places list by the Na-tional Trust for Historic Preservation. Historic places on previous lists included Ellis Island, Gettysburg, and Independence Hall.

1998: The Castle is designated one of America’s Treasures by the White House Millennium Council.

2001: UWC-USA restores the Castle with the help of donor Shelby Davis. It now houses the school’s din-ing room, student center, two dormitories, classrooms, and offices.

2002: The Edith Lansing Fieldhouse opens in hon-or of two dynamic American women bearing the same name who both helped to raise Gale Lansing Davis. The fieldhouse is given in memory of both Edith Lansings by Shelby and Gale Davis.

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WINTER CAMPUS

Students play

soccer on the

fields in front of

the cafeteria (L),

Kluge Auditorium

(C), and dorms (R).

Despite the staff’s best efforts to close off the entrances, we always found ways in.

The Castle was sealed in 1986. While I was on campus, it was used only for the campus security offices. Students were never allowed inside. However, the building was enormous, and despite the staff’s best efforts to close off the entrances, we always found ways in.

One entrance required navigating the old “pit of hell” set from The Evil. The most experienced navigators were able to reach both towers. In my second year, the staff boarded these up to make breaking in less attractive. But in an era that came before computers and the internet in Montezuma—where even the local FM radio station shut down at 11 p.m. each night—the building was simply too enticing. Within a week of the barricades being erected, a “SWAT team” of students had torn them down. I even knew one student who would take “dates” to the Castle and serve them dinner in one of the forbidden towers. Security officers could hear us wandering about, and we could hear them, but their portion of the Castle was walled off and they could never get to us.

The building contained many wonders. Some rooms could be reached only by navigating exposed beams where

the floor boards had rotten away. There was an under‑ground passageway that led into a storage room beneath the faculty housing unit across the street. A careless explor‑er might wander in there by mistake, not realizing that he or she was standing just under a teacher’s house, chattering away.

The storage room contained paper records and office sup‑plies, and the sets of colored Post‑it notes that were stored there became a sort of shibbo‑leth. If you saw a set on some‑body’s desk, you knew they were experienced in Castle exploration. At some point, Armand Hammer closed down the chemical division of Occidental Petroleum and had its laboratory glassware delivered to the campus. There was a room in the Castle filled with an astonishing array of distillation equipment and people would fantasize about absconding with some of it, but I don’t know of anybody who ever did.

Castle SleuthingBy Anonymous

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© Michael Brown ’90

© Don Gray

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DEVELOPING THE ARTS

After six years

of cafeteria

performances,

UWC-USA builds

the Kluge Art

Center.

A PLACE FOR REFLECTION

The Dwan Light

Sanctuary provides

a space for medi-

tation, reflection,

and yoga.

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A Thematic Review of Past and PresentTHEN & NOW

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A T H E M AT I C R E V I E W O F PA S T A N D P R E S E N T

President Lisa Darling made an insightful observation to those gathered at the Montezuma Reunion this summer. “When I hear your conversations, I can close my eyes and hear the students today,” she said.

Whether they graduated in 1984 or 2012, UWC-USA students are inherently aware, curious, and passionate. Those traits influence nearly every discussion that takes place in classrooms, day rooms, or even in the streets and plazas of New Mexico. More often than not, discussion leads to action.

In the following pages, you’ll see themes that continue to surface and resurface with each new class. The world may be different—for example, the Berlin Wall is no longer an issue and Apartheid finally ended—but global issues such as environmental sustainability are still at the forefront of debate. Cultural Days continue to play a key role in sharing customs and tackling different perceptions. And activism—from marches to demonstrations—will always be a part of life on the UWC-USA campus.

Most importantly, the dialogue that happens in the cafeteria, on a bench in front of the auditorium, or in a dorm room at midnight continues to be one of the most crucial ways students learn about themselves and each other. Helle Ringaard ’85 captures this beautifully in her piece on the following page, in which she writes about her interaction with a Bulgarian student and the realization that her beliefs may not always sync with those around her. Helle observes, “… some of us thought as we

were told to think, or at least until we met someone who was taught the opposite.”


© Hannah Freedman

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I get dizzy doing the math; it has been 29 years since I left Denmark to attend a very young Armand Hammer United World College of the American West. 1983 was the first year the school had both first‑ and second‑year stu‑dents. It seems like yesterday. A decade seemed like eter‑nity then; it doesn’t any more. A simple timeline shows me how relatively close our graduating class was to the end of World War II; 1983 is separated from 1945 by a mere 38 years, and this is where vertigo sets in. Today, I am 45 years old.

Thankfully, I have never been able to imagine the war‑ridden Europe that Kurt Hahn knew and lived, so I suspect our time is just as distant and unreal for students today. For this reason, I want to share some of the 300 faces from 69 different nations that became my personal points of ref‑erence in a world of many changes.

One of my very first memories is an outcry of disbelief and defence: literal, loud, and all over campus. All of us had just witnessed the film State of Siege, by Costa‑Garvas, in the cafeteria. It depict‑ed the CIA “educating” Uruguayan intel‑ligence officers by means of brutal inter‑rogation. Afterward, a faculty member got up and remarked, “You think these guys are bad, huh? As citizens from the upper levels of society who benefit from these state of affairs, it is your responsibility, too.” The explosion was instant and almost tangible. The student body consisted of children of Latin American union leaders and generals alike.

Another time, an Israeli first‑year girl and a second‑year Jordanian boy got into a heated, teary argument in the common room of the Ives House. He wore a necklace with a pendent in the shape of Israel with “Palestine” written on it. His family did not live in Jordan by choice.

A year later, in the same common room, a Bulgarian girl forever tore the curtain of “trust in the truth of your politicians” from my eyes. Her beliefs in the Warsaw Pact as a defensive, protective, nonaggressive, and totally neces‑sary entity mirrored my own previously never‑questioned belief in the good of NATO. “We do as we’re told, told to do,” sang Pink Floyd—and some of us also thought as we were told to think, at least until we met someone who was taught the opposite.

I remember how intensely serious and well‑schooled the guys and gals from the Eastern Bloc came across. To‑

day, I think how brave—and perhaps scared—some of them must have felt venturing into alien territory. The Cold War was more than just the Bay of Pigs recorded in our history books; for us, it was the two Russian students not coming back from the USSR after the 1983 winter vacation. We could not believe personal matters were the cause. Was it the U.S. or the USSR blocking them out? As I remember it, their attendance had given the school special prestige, their presence on campus a favor to Ar‑mand Hammer from the Kremlin for his trade and early involvement with the Soviet Union.

I remember the pain of a friend who received news of a friend killed while serving in the U.K. military in North‑

ern Ireland. There was no ceasefire then, and the Irish Re‑publican Army bombed a Conservative Party conference in Brighton in 1984.

I remember the raw energy of the South Africans do‑ing the Gumboot dance on African National Day, students exiled from their own country because of their involve‑ment in the struggle against Apartheid. Nelson Mandela was still imprisoned at Robben Island then, discussions about release had not yet begun—and “stomp” was a far cry from being commercialized.

And I remember the lump in my throat and the tears in my eyes one day in the art room when I saw the draw‑ings of a child who grew up in a refugee camp. I remember the scattered two‑dimensional figures and objects and the empty space under the aeroplane and around the barbed wire. How many brilliant kids are destined to remain in that fenced‑in, separated world?

The Berlin Wall stood strong in 1985, and Pink Floyd’s album The Wall did too. I remember that world well. Some of it is gone. Some of it lives on. All of it is ours.

Personal Level HistoryBy Helle Ringaard ’85

THE GUMBOOT DANCE

Thirty years

later, students

still perform

the “stomp.”


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Make It ENDBy Hans O. Melberg ’90Reprinted from Kaleidoscope Volume 7, Number 3, December 1989

“Wake up! The train is leaving!” Gently, yet insistent‑ly, Europeans roused their international counterparts. It was the morning of Sept. 30, 1989, and for the next 12 hours, UWC‑USA would be located in Europe, in the hands of 55 European students from 22 countries.

Tourists, businesspeople, inter‑railers and rail officials greeted students entering the cafeteria for a continental brunch, the first activity of Eu‑ropean National Day (END), one of the three national days held at UWC‑USA during the year.

The train station atmosphere had a dual nature, symbolizing a Europe where public transporta‑tion and the environment were issues of increasing concern. All people, from all professions and social classes, were in‑vited to come together on this environmental “platform.”

Robin Hoods and Maid Mariannes, resplendent in makeshift medieval garb, graced the cafeteria‑turned‑castle that evening for a 15th century feast. Entertained by jugglers, jesters, and musicians, guests enjoyed Grecian souvlaki, Italian fettuccine, and asparagus agrodolce, among other delicacies.

Without a doubt, the day’s highlight arrived in the form of a one‑and‑a‑half hour, three‑part show that presented Europe’s past, present, and future. After a shocking intro‑

duction reminded the audience of the cruelties committed throughout Europe during World War II, the show contin‑ued with a satire on European stereotypes: liberal Scandi‑navians, eccentric Brits, and irrational Italians.

European imperialism, wars, and border disputes were also reviewed. A skit by a Bulgarian and a Turk symbolized the ethnic tensions that plagued their two

countries. In the end, the one concept the two agreed on was that both were European.

The grudging compromise between the Bulgarian and the Turk illustrated that some of the most fundamental global

problems could be solved by finding issues on which all parties agree rather than pursuing controversial is‑sues. European National Day skits attempted to define a number of these themes, as well as remind the audience what effect intolerance and racism have had on Europe in the past.

At the climax of a kaleidoscopic video of wartime im‑pressions, a veil covering the rear stage was removed, ex‑posing a replica of the Berlin Wall. Ripping and tearing

through the wall, European students symbol‑ized the new generation’s hope that European repression and division would soon end.

“The Show Must Go On. The Suffering Can End,” was the European’s message. A simple sentence written on the wall before its destruction read: “Make It End.”

With Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s new openness policies and the political chang‑es taking place in Eastern Europe, ideas of freedom and unity no longer were as distant and idealistic as they appeared just a few years earlier. But our goal was not simply the physi‑cal destruction of the Berlin Wall. We knew the walls in people’s minds, the walls of intoler‑ance, and the walls of misunderstanding must come down.

Less than six weeks after the staging of Europe-an National Day, in a move that sent shock waves around the world, East Germany began disman-tling the Berlin Wall. Travel restrictions for East

Germans ceased, and the Communist Party Central Commit-tee intended to conduct an unprecedented party congress over new policies.

MANIFESTING HISTORY

UWC students

staged the tearing

down of the Berlin

Wall weeks before

the real wall was

destroyed.

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A veil covering the rear stage was removed, exposing a replica of the Berlin Wall.

© Shaila Ekramoddoullah ’90


The Anatomy of a Cultural DayPLANNING STARTS WEEKS (OR MONTHS) AHEAD.

Brainstorming is easier than ever with Facebook groups; ideas

start pouring out in every conversation. Meetings are held to

elect leaders to be in charge of certain aspects of the cultural

day show. Name an activity and we have a leader for it, from

general leaders to T-shirt leaders!

DINNER

Every Cultural Day show goes over board with the dinner these days. It not only about the food

(which is always one of the best meals of the year, prepared by students and faculty) but also

about how you serve the food, how you decorate the cafeteria to give a traditional feel, adding

performances to make the dinner lively and engaging. We make sure that we are good hosts

and that our guests enjoy their time.

1THE ANATOMY OF A CULTURAL DAY

By Kripa Dongol ’12

SHOW

The shows are always a mix of songs, dances, and skits both comedic and serious. Some

are directed toward the wider audience that comes in to witness the “culture,” some are

directed toward the student body, and some are more about enjoying and embracing

our cultures. Fitting a region’s cultural diversity into a two-hour show is a close-to-

impossible feat, and so sacrifices are made in the hope of putting on a balanced show.

REHEARSALS

All-region rehearsals take place at least three times per

week, running between two to three hours per run-through.

Students invest extra time in individual skits, rehearsing in

the dance studio, the auditorium, the squash court, the field

house bathrooms, or any other available space.

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WEEK OF!

Walk-In

With the entire school’s attention and attendance concentrated in our cafeteria, the region walks

in. Students get creative on this mini-parade and incorporate dances, flash mobs, or little acts to

get the community excited for the upcoming Cultural Day. (Google: AND Walk-in UWC-USA 2012)

Activities

What makes you feel at home? Students share their activities with the community. Activity

leaders collaborate with other students to set up activities throughout the week and give

UWC-USA a taste of home. Examples include a karaoke night, movie nights, hot chili

competition, henna or braiding workshops, and traditional games.

Global Issues

The Friday before the Cultural Day, students of the region give a Global Issues presentation that

is open to the Las Vegas community. Whether it be economic ideas, cultural shifts, or sociopoliti-

cal conflicts, students take up bold issues from their parts of the world in an effort to build

awareness within the school community.

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I was part of the second graduating class at Armand Hammer United World College of the American West. In the spring of my second year, we noticed a dramatic uptick in the academic pressure from teachers, as well as a con‑siderable nervousness on the part of Dean of Students An‑drew Maclehose. Many of us felt unreasonable demands to perform brilliantly on the IB. We thought the pressure had less to do with the school’s concern for our well‑being than its own interest in establishing a reputation for academic excellence. We chafed at the demand for shorter curfews and longer study hours. When we reached out to faculty, we were dismissed.

I am sure you can imagine where this is going. We were 17 years old and schooled to respond to injustice with action. A series of common room conversations led to us to form the Student Liberation Organization (SLO) and begin covert operations to “restore balance” to cam‑pus life. Most of what we did was harmless and the stuff of legend. We howled at the moon from the Castle towers and led security on wild goose chases. During the day, we papered classrooms with subversive messages.

One act of the SLO did real, unintended harm and brought an end to many political ambitions.

Pushed to our breaking point, the SLO decided to mount a major covert operation. We planned to stretch a Tyrolean traverse across Campus Drive between the administration building and the cafeteria building, from

which we would suspend four puppets representing the four houses on campus. We broke into teams to carry out different tasks—radio communications, security distrac‑tion, howling, puppet construc‑tion, and engineering.

Kurt Hahn would have been proud. Other than a small tech‑nical glitch of trying to figure out how to hang the puppets on the rope without their heads lolling forward, the entire operation went masterfully. We stretched the rope tight and used a second rope to pull the

puppets into place. We draped the entire installa‑tion in a sheet in anticipation of a dramatic un‑veiling the next morning. When we went to bed exhausted at around 4 a.m., I was convinced that our show of ingenuity would convince our teach‑ers to restore a healthier balance to campus life.

Much to our surprise, the plan backfired into an epic spectacle of poor taste. We unveiled not a message of unity but instead a horrific display of four corpse‑like figures, heads half severed, bearing the names of four devoted members of the faculty. A banner we’d hung from the pup‑pets read, perversely, “Smile, Life’s Okay.” Need‑less to say, the administration failed to glean the deeper import of our message.

For years, I thought the lesson I’d gained from the experience was to tread cautiously whenever I felt the urge to join a radical political movement. But as I grow older, I’m able to re‑evaluate the les‑sons of that night. Perhaps finding the courage to try to creatively solve a problem in our communi‑ty was not a mistake after all. Perhaps the failure

of this complex operation was precisely the experience we needed to learn from our time at UWC. While I managed to pass the IB, my knowledge of Jonathan Swift has done little to shape the course of my life. On the other hand, my attraction to complex communication problems and social justice has never declined. I’ve made a rewarding life of designing and installing large‑scale media installations in public spaces; this itself is a richly ironic result.

The school should continually revisit the question of how to balance academics and experiential learning. If it errs toward academics at the expense of meaningful ex‑perience, I hope the students will be there again, as we were, to try to provide a correction. Hopefully, they will do a better job planning the details than we did. But if not, do it anyway.

During the day, we papered classrooms with subversive messages.

SCHEMING

Passion and

creativity

at UWC

can create

interesting

results!

©Sam Kessler ’13


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I rode in with the coffin, which was perched awkwardly between two seats. I hoped everything would turn out OK.

The plan was to protest and participate in the public hearing that Gov. Susana Martinez and the Environmental Improvement Board (EIB) were holding as they attempted to dismantle New Mexico’s progressive carbon cap regu‑lation—a state policy that limited carbon emissions from coal‑fired power plants.

By the time the bus, the coffin, and I pulled up outside the State Legislature, more than 200 youth from around New Mexico and several dozen local activists had gathered on the front steps dressed in black. We formed a funeral procession, carrying the coffin and mourning the poisoned death of our future. After arriving at the hearing, we lay the coffin ajar, placing our hopes and dreams inside, and stood in unity, holding signs and chanting against the injustice of a future soon to be burdened on our shoulders.

When we began the initial planning for the event, we knew we would lose. The EIB was a group appointed by New Mexico’s Republican, pro‑coal, and economy‑driven Martinez. To sway a group like that, charged with a single purpose and a lot of power, is a hopeless act. But only after the cap was repealed on March 16, 2012, did we understand the extent of our larger ambitions.

It was in early November 2011 when a few of us got word that the carbon cap was being threatened by Mar‑tinez’s tactics. We chose to act fast. But as international students who had spent little time in the state, what right did we have to take action? What could we effectively con‑tribute, having only recently been ex‑posed to the issue?

We could not let ourselves be fooled into inaction by these questions. In‑stead, UWC‑USA worked carefully with youth organizers from Santa Fe—Youth Allies—to ensure that our participation in the pro‑test was a necessary aid.

Purpose‑driven, we had a concept of what we needed New Mexico—and the world at large—to know about our concerns for the environment. School support for partici‑pation in this protest reached an unparalleled level as we filled two 40‑person buses and several smaller ones to take to Santa Fe. Hundreds of signs, flyers, and informational blurbs were made and distributed around campus, in Las Vegas, and online.

In the end, it all felt good. We came here to engage with the power of youth in action. It happened; I was there and I felt the encouragement stay within our hearts. Dozens of students have since joined co‑curricular groups like the Con‑structive Engagement of Con‑flict’s Practical Activism and are learning the skills necessary to implement their own activist initiatives. Enthusiasm in par‑ticipating in global and local movements, as well as discus‑sions and critical evaluations of issues occurring on campus and elsewhere, happens on a weekly basis. The swelling of positive energy at UWC‑USA is irrefutable. We know our inten‑tions, how they move beyond court systems and restrictions of age, culture or gender, and how they culminate into one resonating cry: “We are youth. We’re here to speak the truth!”

On Our Shoulders By Sam Kessler ’13, USA-NY

We formed a funeral procession, carrying the coffin and mourning the poisoned death of our future.

MOURNING THE FUTURE

Students raise

their voices

against unlimited

carbon emissions

at the New

Mexico capitol.

©Sam Kessler ’13


Former IB history teacher Ivan Mustain is a devoted educator and proponent of the UWC movement. Intro‑duced to the school in 1982 after seeing an advertisement in The Chronicle for Higher Education, Ivan says he jumped at the chance to teach at UWC‑USA. Coming from an international IB school in Ni‑geria, he says UWC seemed like the right place for him to share his love for knowledge and world events.

Ivan has fond memories of his time at UWC. “I think UWC is a very special place, particularly in that first year,” he says. “That was a part of my life I will never forget—the teachers and the students mak‑ing a school out of nothing.”

Ivan remembers the first months of the new school were filled with mishaps: “When I got there, the library did not have any books rele‑vant to the IB history course I would be teaching. I said ‘We’re teaching European history.’ Fortunately, [Presi‑dent] Ted Lockwood was an ex‑historian, so he gave me some money and I headed down to the used bookstore in Albuquerque and supplied the school with history books. In 10 years, I was able to develop a good collection of his‑tory books. I’m sure some of them are still around.”

Ivan says that in those early days, people had little idea of what the school would or could become. “We didn’t know if we were going to be kind of a hippie school or a seriously political school. It was still up in the air,” he says.

As the founder of World Affairs (now Global Issues), Ivan stressed the school’s need to encourage greater un‑derstanding of world events and issues. His interest in explicating conflict came to fruition in several encounters with students, but he says two World Affairs incidents stand out. For one class, Ivan brought in a speaker who worked with the homeless in Berkeley, Calif. Prior to the lecture, “he came to the cafeteria as a homeless guy beg‑

ging for food,” Ivan recalls. “I had talked to the head cook [and told him] to throw him out. So they threw him out. The students just sat there quietly and watched the scene develop and watched him leave. An hour later, he was in

World Affairs. He took the students to task for not prac‑ticing their UWC beliefs. It really hit home. It was a great trick to pull on the stu‑dents; they haven’t forgiven me for it yet.”

The retired teacher ad‑mits, “I really liked to blow people’s minds.” That led to another controversy: “The kids got so mad at me af‑ter World Affairs that they chased me around the caf‑eteria because I’d just shown this movie about Uruguay where the CIA was torturing people. At that time, we had a lot of apolitical Latin Amer‑ican students. So I stood up and said, ‘You’ve just seen this movie, and the bad guys are the CIA and the military who are torturing these peo‑ple, but the really bad ones are the people of the country

who are just sitting, watching this happen, and doing noth‑ing. We have a lot of people like that in this audience.’”

Ivan reflects on these incidents from time to time. “One of things I discovered with a lot of those conflicts … people think about them. Maybe the students were right and maybe I was right, but at least they think about it years afterward,” he says.

“When I talk to my former students, they don’t re‑member my lectures on Bismarck or causes of WWII,” he adds. “What they do say is, ‘You taught us how to think critically and ask questions,’ and that makes me feel re‑ally good. A lot of UWC graduates come back and say, ‘you know, I might not have the most famous job in the world, but I have principles I stand for and I’m not afraid to stand up and say what I believe in,’ and that makes me feel very, very proud indeed.”

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By Hannah Saulters ’12

ORAL HISTORIES

“The kids got so mad at me after World Affairs that they chased me around the cafeteria.”


Working first as a receptionist and later as admissions assistant, Head Librarian Ja‑net Gerard has been a part of the UWC‑USA community since September 1983.

Janet began her school career in the Old Stone Hotel, where her job was welcoming visitors and managing the phones. Later, in her role as admissions assistant, she recalled the challenge of fill‑ing seats. “Some years, we would only get 120 applicants or so,” she says.

Janet has witnessed many changes over her career. The landscape changed dramat‑ically when classes were moved from the Old Stone Hotel to the IT Center, the Kluge Art Center, and eventually the Castle.

“When I first came, there was the sense that people really wanted to make it work,” she says. “I loved it from the beginning. I was always interested in meeting students from countries I’d never heard of [and learning about] their backgrounds, their cultures, their traditions.”

Her interest in the students shows in Janet’s daily routine in the library, as she strikes up conversations about schoolwork and recommends movies when students are ready to take a break. Interested in a wide range of topics, Janet says this is a wonderful place to learn about the world be‑cause now she can associate a country and a culture with a student’s story and face.

Taking a wider perspective on the school and the movement, Janet looks back at her time here at UWC as one marked by won‑derful experiences, such as this year’s An‑nual Conference. Recognizing the school’s relevance in the face of today’s issues, Janet quietly and matter‑of‑factly states, “I think it’s really important that we’re part of a whole UWC system. The more people that are exposed to this, the more potential—

intellectual and professional—the more likely we are to change the world. I’m always very conscious of that. After all these years, I still believe very strongly in that energy.”

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The more people that are exposed to this ... the more likely we are to change the world.

The Intimate Work of Changing the WorldAN INTERVIEW WITH JANET GERARD


Sitting in her Santa Fe home with two brindle corgis at her feet, Hannah Tyson recalls her memories of her time at UWC. In response to the question, “What do you re‑member?” she frankly responds, “Very little. I am not a memory person. I’m not the kind of person who takes all kinds of photographs or keeps memory albums.” Despite this admission, Hannah’s eyes twinkle when she recalls her early days at UWC, saying mischievously of her experi‑ence finding a job at UWC, “We wanted a job, so they gave us one. How could they resist?“

One distinct characteristic of early UWC‑USA was the general interest in world conflict that was shared by the student body. There used to be a sentiment of purpose that pervaded the school, “like this is not just a college preparatory school,” she says. “We have a greater mission than that. I remember a highly politicized feeling. People would stay up all night arguing about things. It was very, very intense. … I was really struck by how vigorously peo‑ple took on these issues.”

Formerly a resident tutor for Tyson dorm (now Mont Blanc), Hannah says that the reason she stayed in‑volved with UWC for so long was the stu‑dents and her desire to share a love of the English language. This commitment was not always easy, however, as she re‑calls, “running a dorm, teaching a full schedule and super‑vising 17 extended essays and doing all the other stuff.”

Despite the pressures of her work, though, Hannah maintains a witty and fond recollection of her 23 years at UWC and remains involved in developing curricula for the International Baccalaureate. She says she is busier than ever. “[I] have more ideas about what I [want] to do than there [is] time to do them,” she says. “And of those things is finding a way to stay more effectively in touch with all the impressive students that I’ve taught.”

A Love for LanguageAN INTERVIEW WITH HANNAH TYSON



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Social and cultural anthropology teacher John Geffroy originally came from New York City to live in Las Vegas, N.M. in 1974. In 1981, he heard about the opening of a new school in Montezuma and applied for a position. A year later, he started teaching.

John retired this year, “graduating” with the Class of 2012. A former university professor, he says his experience at UWC‑USA was very different from his previous teaching role: “It is much more rewarding ... and harder in a sense,” he says.

What John appreciates about the school is that “teachers here are expected to find their own niche, their own role. They have a large degree of power and autonomy in ac‑tually defining what they want to do.” John uses the word “privateer”—a word that en‑capsulates the idea that teachers are not told what to do but that they go out and create useful experiences for students.

John has applied his creativity in differ‑ent areas and says he’s always learning. At one point early on, he felt the need to get more acquainted with the IB: “I thought I knew my subject very well. But I did not know the IB,” he says. When he was unsuc‑cessful in his search for an IB workshop, he started his own. It has been going ever since.

Besides his classroom work, John spent plenty of time in UWC‑USA’s the‑ater. “I will never forget doing William Shakespeare’s The Tempest because that al‑most killed me,” he says, recalling how he spent a full Project Week in 1992 building the set by himself.

John also remembers a humorous moment in the production of Luigi Piran‑dello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. “We actu‑ally did it twice,” he recalls. “On the first night, there was a point when somebody had to move a ladder. We moved the ladder and no one had noticed a pot of paint on the top. So paint got all over the place. The student who was playing the part of the director said, ‘Hey you, get the mop.’ I guess the audience thought it was part of the play. Of course it wasn’t. The second night there was less improvisation.”

John cherishes more the consequential memories, as well. “Before the ending of Apartheid in South Af‑rica, we had students who were sponsored not by South

Africa but by the African National Congress,” he says. “These students knew they were not just representing a country but they were representing a movement, a movement to end Apartheid. We have and had students from conflict regions. These were and still are people that we all learn from.”

Above all, the experience that continues to resonate for John is the 1985 Hunger March for hunger relief across Central Africa, a region that was suffering from the ex‑

treme Sahelian drought and subsequent famine and mass displacement. The Hunger March started at the state capi‑tol in Santa Fe and ended in the Las Vegas Plaza the next day. John remembers that by the end of the 70‑mile march, more than 2,000 people had joined the walk. He credits Dean of Students Andrew Maclehose for being the “main sparkplug” for the event, which ultimately raised more than $17,000. “I don’t think we’ve done anything on such a scale since,” John says. He hopes that sharing the story of this “great event of the past” will inspire future classes at UWC‑USA to continue to find large‑scale ways to contrib‑ute to the causes they believe in.

On Becoming a Privateer and Marching for Hunger AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN GEFFROY

By Nico Grubert ’12

U W C - U S A / W W W . U W C - U S A . O R G22 U W C - U S A / W W W . U W C - U S A . O R G22

Hilda Wales was hired to work at UWC‑USA in 1983 as a school counselor. However, she quickly took on a big‑ger role, performing a wide variety of functions around campus and in the community. In addition to counsel‑ing, she took on all external communications, regularly gave campus tours, and was instrumental in the develop‑ment of the Constructive En‑gagement of Conflict (CEC)and Get‑Away programs.

Hilda did it all without a computer and with lim‑ited phone access. “If you wanted to talk to someone on campus, you walked and found them,” she says. “Call‑ing home was also difficult as there was only one pay phone in each dorm. No cell‑phones. No computers. No ATMs. Just lots of exercise!”

In recalling the first days of the school, Hilda tells a story that she will never forget: “The first stu‑dents arrived here by bus at night in the rain, before there were green fields. One student from Hong Kong got out of the bus and started walking toward the dorm, in pure New Mex‑ico mud, and his feet got heavier and heavier. He had never walked in mud because he lived in Hong Kong. He said, ‘I couldn’t believe it, my feet were heavy and I didn’t know what was wrong.’”

Hilda is repeatedly described as one of the “founding rocks” of the school—dedicated, compassionate, and truly committed to creating community on many levels. She handled challenging student issues with grace and dex‑terity, and she was beloved by faculty and students alike. She says she lived in Las Vegas because she wanted to be a part of life in town and to find ways of connecting the school with the local community. “I was a ‘townie.’ It was wonderful,” she says. “I got to know community and I was up here, of course, every day and often on weekends, too.”

Hilda’s desire to unite the school and town led her to found the Get‑Away Program. She shares: “People in town

said, ‘What is this place?’ And the students really needed a place to get away.” The community’s desire to be a part of UWC and the students’ need for time away from cam‑pus provide the perfect combination for creating Get‑Away

families. The program is still going strong nearly 30 years later, and it is kicked off at the beginning of ev‑ery school year with the much‑anticipated Sundae Sunday—an ice cream sun‑dae social in which students meet the families they have been matched with for their two years at the school.

Ice cream was central to another of Hilda’s rou‑tines at UWC‑USA. She often invited students to her house during orienta‑tion to share ice cream and stories, providing a forum for students to share news from their home countries. “Around a large world map on a dining room table was a wonderful way to become acquainted with one anoth‑er,” Hilda shares.

Some of Hilda’s best memories are associated with the CEC Program, a course she helped develop with a professional facilita‑tor and other UWC faculty.

She says the program was positive and influential not only for students, but also for faculty. Seminars associated with actual conflict situations were occasionally hosted on campus, allowing professional conflict‑resolution facilita‑tors to demonstrate ways to deal with real‑world issues. Hilda says students and faculty were able to attend these seminars, and while it was a valuable learning experience for everyone, it was also “a challenge for students when they were not allowed to participate in those dialogues but simply observe.” UWC students, Hilda says, have always wanted to engage and have a voice.

Hilda is grateful to see that her work at UWC‑USA has taken root; indeed, the Get‑Away and CEC programs are integral to the school’s focus. Truly, Hilda brought much of UWC to UWC‑USA.

Creating CommunityAN INTERVIEW WITH HILDA WALES


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“Calling home was also difficult as there was only one pay phone in each dorm. No cellphones. No ATMs. Just lots of exercise!”

Photo courtesy of Hilda Wales


OCT. 9, 1983: UWC-USA holds its first “International Day.” More than 2,500 guests enjoy tours, perfor-mances, and food.

MAY 24, 1984: Ambassador Oliver Wright of Great Britain delivers the first commence-ment address.

1984: The Get-Away Program is created and the IB Summer Workshop for teachers is introduced.

1989: Second-year Michael Stern (now a distinguished UWC-USA Board trustee) meets with President George Bush and Nobel Laureates after being named a finalist in the prestigious Westing-house Science Talent Search. Five years later, Katarzyna Lubowicz follows in Michael’s footsteps and receives the same honor.

1996: Jim Taylor becomes the Chairman of the Board.

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1987: Following a glitzy photo shoot, UWC-USA students are featured in a United Colors of Benetton catalog.

OCT. 11, 1992: The campus participates in National Coming Out Day, an event designed to celebrate coming out and raise awareness around gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues.

1994: UWC-USA hosts an interna-tional conference on women’s roles in the peace-making process in Eastern and Central Europe. Attendees come from countries including Azerbaijan, Albania, Hungary, Bosnia, and Kosovo.

1985: 2,000 people, including UWC students, faculty, and members of the Las Vegas community, partici-pate in the Hunger March to raise money for hunger relief across Central Africa.

1993: President Ted Lockwood retires and hands the reigns over to Phil Geier. The school holds its first alumni reunion for the classes of 1984 and 1985.

OCT. 28, 1982: Official dedication with addresses by distinguished guests including HRH Prince Charles and Dr. Armand Hammer. The event is covered by more than 700 newspapers in the U.S.

1996: The Virginia Dwan Light Sanctuary is completed. Judy Collins sings Amazing Grace at the opening ceremony.

OCT. 1988: Sir Ranulph Twistleton-Wykeham Fiennes, hailed by the Guinness Book of Records as “the world’s greatest living explorer,” presents a lecture and joins stu-dents on a “small day hike” to Gas-con Point in the Pecos Wilderness.

1995: Board Chair Alec Courtelis retires. Nelson Mandela is named president of the UWC International Council and Her Majesty Noor al-Hussein, Queen of Jordan, assumes the role of President of the United World Colleges. A year later, Queen Noor gives the commencement address for the Class of 1996.

Timeline


1998: A new dial-up internet con-nection is introduced.

2006: Nobel Prize Laureate and former Polish President Lech Walesa visits the campus and speaks at a conference organized by the Bartos Institute.

2010: Minnijean Brown-Trickey, one of the Little Rock Nine and Martin Luther King Junior’s follow-ers, speaks at UWC-USA in honor of MLK Day. Primatologist and humanitarian Jane Goodall is the speaker on Earth Day.

2011: The school launches the Global Leadership Forum, a two-week intensive short course. Author/Activist Bill McKibben, founder of environmental group 350.org, and author of 15 books, speaks to UWC-USA students.

2007: The school hosts the UWC International Board meeting. Gracias, Amigos! performance cel-ebrates UWC-USA’s partnerships in Las Vegas, Santa Fe, and other com-munities in northern New Mexico.

2008: Jim Taylor steps down as Board Chair and is succeeded by Tom Dickerson AC ’68.

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2001: Her Majesty Queen Noor al-Hussein of Jordan visits to cel-ebrate the Castle’s reopening, and artist Dale Chihuly donates two chandeliers for the new cafeteria.

2002: The school celebrates its 20th anniversary with One World, a show performed at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe. The Technology Center opens and The Edith Lansing Field House is inaugurated.

2012: The school undertakes a fresh strategic planning initiative. Meanwhile, UWC-USA partners with the Las Vegas First Presbyte-rian Church to open a community center at the Old Mission Church.

2004: UWC-USA hosts Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum of Guatemala, a lead-ing advocate of indigenous rights and ethno-cultural reconciliation.

2000: “Save the Castle—Serve the World” campaign is launched to raise funds for the Castle restora-tion project. Celeste and Armand Bartos endow the Bartos Institute for Constructive Engagement of Conflict. Philip Glass and Jon Gibson perform at UWC-USA. They offer a repeat performance 12 years later.

1998: Shelby Davis endows the Davis Scholars program with a gift of $40 million—the largest private contribution made to the field of international education. The merit-based scholarships allow high school scholars to attend UWCs around the world.

2005: Phil Geier retires; Lisa Darling is installed as UWC-USA’s third president.


“It was an exciting experiment; UWC-USA spread the ideas of the conflict resolution program to Atlantic College, to Swaziland, to Italy—so it was a way in which colleges were in touch with each other.”

A series of misadventures marked Bob and Carrol Pear‑sons’ arrival to UWC‑USA, but nonetheless, they still recall their first visit to campus fondly.

It was sleeting and muddy when they came in May 1983 for Bob’s chemistry department in‑terview. Told they could see the site where housing would soon be available, they trekked past the current Health Center to the empty, mucky site beyond.

When they arrived with their four young sons later that summer, the mud was gone but the house was still absent. “We drove across from Mary‑land, and we had all our possessions in one U‑Haul truck,” Carrol remembers. “The Maclehoses were very good to us. They put us up in a room in their upstairs.”

When the pre‑fab house finally arrived, it got stuck on the bend in the road near the Castle and couldn’t be moved for a few days. The Pearsons lived in the Maclehose house

for many weeks un‑til they were able to settle in to their own home on the hill.

Bob and Carrol agree that Andrew Maclehose, dean and Theory of Knowl‑edge instructor, was a monumental figure on campus in the ear‑ly years. “Andrew was absolutely key in set‑ting the tone for the place. He had high

expectations of the students and faculty,” Bob says. Carrol adds that Andrew’s wife, Heather, also played a vital role on campus and was responsible for setting up community service programs in Las Vegas. “It was through Heather that I got involved in the State Hospital,” Carrol recalls.

After Bob and Carrol had been at UWC‑USA for six years, they were granted an opportunity to teach at Water‑ford Kamhlaba UWC in Swaziland for three years. Hav‑ing lived in Ghana for 17 years previously, they jumped at the chance, and moved to Waterford with their three youngest sons (their oldest was attending Pearson Col‑lege). Carrol reflects, “It was a great experience for our

children and for us. We were there from ’89 to ’92, which was just the time that apartheid really fell apart.”

Bob remembers that Nelson Mandela came straight to the school after he was released. Carrol says, “He came into the staff room without any security guards and he talked with the staff for a long time. And we were able to meet so many of the people who had been involved in the struggle.”

Upon their return to UWC‑USA, Carrol became

more involved in campus life, becoming a resident tutor in the dorms and taking over the Constructive Engagement of Conflict (CEC) Program. Guided by Hilda Wales, Carrol organized the structure and curriculum of the program—which included conflict resolution classes based in every discipline taught on campus. “None of us had any exper‑tise in it, so we were all very much learning along with the students,” she says.

In addition to providing a rich learning experience, Carrol says CEC became a vehicle for connecting UWCs: “It was an exciting experiment; UWC‑USA spread the ideas of the conflict resolution program to Atlantic College, to Swaziland, to Italy—so it was a way in which colleges were in touch with each other.”

Though they have been retired for 11 years, Bob and Carrol remain engaged in UWC and active in the Las Vegas community. Among many other things, the local Amnesty International chapter and the Las Vegas Com‑mittee for Peace and Justice occupy much of their time. Bob says 9/11 and “all the disasters of human rights and civil liberties that followed that” have given them even more purpose to live out their personal interpretation of the UWC mission.

Bob says their experiences at UWC‑USA, as well as overseas in Ghana and Swaziland, “made us keenly in‑terested in what was going on in the world and seeing things through the eyes of other people.” Bob says he hopes “the students who leave UWC are filled with de‑termination to make a change in the world. There are many ways in which this can be done. Some of them will raise families and have ‘regular’ jobs, and as concerned citizens who involve themselves in what’s going on in their communities as widely as possible, they will make a difference.”

In the Thick of ItAN INTERVIEW WITH BOB AND CARROL PEARSON


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Photo courtesy of the Pearsons


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The heart of the small community of Montezuma, N.M. stands at the intersection of Highway 65—leading up to Hermit’s Peak—and the road that dips down to the right and up to the UWC‑USA campus. A visitor arriving during the school year is likely to see students walking across the foot bridge that leads to the “town center”: the Montezuma post office.

The Montezuma post office is a cozy, intimate space. The front windows are filled with plants spilling over their pots: a hanging fern, sprawling geraniums, shiny cactus, and jade plants. Plaques and medals line the walls, plaques for superior postmaster performance for the U.S. Postal Service, and gold and silver medals for Senior Olympics awards in badminton and golf—the postmaster’s pursuits when he wasn’t helping customers decide how they want‑ed to send a package.

Postmaster Rudy Vigil retired after working for the post office for 29 years. “I started working here in 1981 and was appointed postmaster in 1982,” he recalls. “I came here from Las Vegas. I’d already worked for the post office there for 16 years. Alto‑gether, I’ve worked 46 years in the postal service.”

Arriving in Montezuma before UWC‑USA was founded, Rudy watched and participated in some of the school’s most memorable moments: “I met Dr. Armand Hammer, all the school presidents, Prince Charles. The girl who worked for me got to serve tea and wait on Charles; I got to meet him through her. And I met The Beach Boys when they played here.”

But Rudy says the best part of his job was get‑ting to know the UWC students. He remembers the pre‑internet days: “When they started, there was no such thing as email, and selection was all done through mail. The university acceptances would come in and there’d be big, thick packages … and there were kids jumping with glee. A lot of kids come back and stop by and they’re in their 30s and 40s. It’s strange to sit down with them and have a beer!”

Rudy got to know some students really well. “They’d come and tell me their problems,” he shares. “There were some kids who couldn’t af‑ford to send stuff home, and I’d say, ‘don’t worry about it; pay me when you can.’ And they would come back and say, ‘Here’s the 44 cents I owe you,’ and I’d say, ‘For what?’ I’d forgotten, but they were honest.”

One of the most unusual items Rudy shipped in 29 years was moose antlers. A Japanese student wanted to ship them home following his graduation in 1984, and Rudy remembers, “I made a box for him and apparently they got to Japan. I could do that back then because they used to send them by ship, but now they have size limits.”

Rudy also recalls a recent graduate who called him “Sir.” When Rudy asked him to use his first name because “Sir” made him feel old, the student explained that “Sir” was a sign of respect in his home country. “So, he called me Sir Rudy,” he laughs.

Rudy is adjusting to retirement and travels with his wife Nancy. He continues to play golf and badminton and competes in the Senior Olympics. And he still teaches bad‑minton at UWC. He says he often receives postcards from alumni, and remembers the badminton players in particu‑lar. “They helped make me a better player,” he shares.

Fat Envelopes, Moose Horns, and Badminton StarsAN INTERVIEW WITH RUDY VIGIL



Ted Reineke’s last title at UWC‑USA was audio visual and lab technician, but as generations of alumni can attest, he is truly a jack‑of‑all‑trades. Ted, who retired this year, made himself indispensible over the 29 years he worked at the school, whether he was teaching lighting, sound, or set construction; helping science teachers find the equipment they need for their classes; setting up for cultural days and graduation, or driving buses and booking airline tickets.

Ted was hired as the school’s lab technician in 1983. His stories about those early years evoke a campus brim‑ming with energy. “We were the new kid on the block; half the town thought we were a school for the KGB and half the [incoming] students thought we were a farm group for the CIA,” he says.

Ted jokes that UWC‑USA did have its own piece of Rus‑sia on campus the first year: a makeshift dorm dubbed “Si‑beria.” In the school’s first year, six more students arrived than was anticipated, leaving administrators scrambling to make dorm arrangements. The solution? The six were assigned to live on the top floor of the science building—far away from the other dorms and only heated by small space heaters. Thus the moniker “Sibe‑ria” came into being.

Ted also remem‑bers founder Armand Hammer as the source of many stories. Ted’s favorites involve a fire truck and Arabian hors‑es. “[Hammer] always wanted to have a fire department here,” Ted recalls. “And so finally, [the board] found a fire truck, and asked if he’d like it for the school. He smiled and said yes, and they said, ‘It’s $5,000.’ He said, ‘Well, gentle‑men, come up with it!’ And so they all made a donation and got the fire truck.” Ted says it was never used to put out fires, but at a handful of graduations, it was driven down from its park‑ing place by the Castle and “they’d shoot water like those fire boats in New York Harbor.” The fire truck lasted about four years before its brakes gave out in a terrifying wild ride down the hill.

Four years is also about the length of time the school owned its own Arabian horses. Ted says a student, sent to Los Angeles for Hammer’s birthday, revealed the stu‑dents’ difficulty in getting to their horseback riding activ‑ity in El Porvenir Canyon. As Ted tells it, “Hammer said, ‘Oh, well, then you’d like horses!’ And she said, ‘That’d be really nice!’ So right across from the maintenance building, they built stables, and we got two horses which the students named Ted and Neil—the president and vice president at the time. And the next year, we got a third horse, Andrew.” Ted laughs as he finishes the story: “Hammer paid for the stables and for the initial food, but eventually the food ran out and we had to buy more food, and Ted Lockwood went to him and said, ‘It’s pretty ex‑pensive to keep up those horses.’” But Hammer wasn’t interested in ongoing funding, Ted says, so the horses stayed at school for one more year and finally were given to a ranch nearby.

Not only is Ted a gifted storyteller with a sharp mem‑ory for detail, but he also is skilled at helping create the

space for students to tell their own stories. His stagecraft class taught students how to work the auditorium’s sound booth, operate the lights, construct elaborate sets, and manage actors and a backstage crew—all es‑sential skills for the Cul‑tural Day performances.

“I think cultural days are wonderful, a great ex‑perience,” Ted says. “You see leadership develop. You see talent come out that you didn’t ever sus‑pect. Besides taking all the sciences, they can also sit down and play piano like you’ve never heard before.”

Though he has left UWC‑USA, Ted remains

invested in the students and the school’s direction. Ted says he’d like to see the school grow so that more students can experience UWC and so that every student can have at least one country‑mate. “It’s awfully hard on a kid who’s here from a country by himself,” Ted says. “It’s very nice to have someone to talk to.”

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S A Fire Truck and Three Arabian HorsesAN INTERVIEW WITH TED REINEKE



David Bennett was UWC‑USA’s first employee. Born and raised in Montezuma, David watched the land that was to become the UWC‑USA campus transform many times before Armand Hammer purchased the property in June 1981. “I went with the place. I never did do a resume or application. I was a part of the woodwork,” he says.

David had worked for the school’s previous owners, the Catholic Conference, before the Castle and grounds were sold. Before that, he had spent his childhood roaming the area and knew many essential details about the grounds. When the campus was renovated before the school’s open‑ing, David found that his knowledge of the site was espe‑cially critical for contractors. “They’d ask, ‘Do you know where this water line might go?’ And I knew a lot of it because as a child, I had watched it being put in or redone,” he says.

David lived in the New Mex‑ico room in the Castle for the first year and a half after he was hired. “He took a liking to me, Dr. Hammer did. The day after he purchased the place he sent word to me to move into the Castle. It was a cold place. I did get some heat but never did have running water,” David remembers.

Stationed there to keep van‑dals away, David was armed with a .44‑caliber cap‑and‑ball gun and a watch dog. He was able to discour‑age most vandals, but on the odd occasion that they proved resistant, he resorted to other tactics. “I knew where they parked, and I had this little valve stem pin remover,” Da‑vid recalls. “I would remove one or two [pins], and they couldn’t go anywhere because they had two flat tires. I bought a little time that way; I did that many times. Boy, I was a real bad guy wasn’t I?” David’s mild‑mannered laughter and sparkling green eyes make it hard to imagine.

David says people didn’t really know what to make of the school when it first opened. “People thought Dr. Ham‑mer was a communist and starting a communist school up here because he had ties with Russia,” he says. The misconception faded with time, but David misses those the early days. “I was married to that job, and the students were my kids. Now they are grown up and have kids and I am on my own. I want to back up to the ’80s,” David says.

Hammer had hoped to renovate the Castle, David remembers, but Prince Charles was set on opening the school in October 1982 and there was not enough time.

In fact, there was still a lot of work to do even after the stu‑dents arrived in August. David says there was just dirt on the fields, and not many trees. As a result, he remembers crews working around the clock—and through the night— to transform the landscaping. By the time Prince Charles arrived for Dedication, the campus had been transformed with grassy fields and newly planted trees.

Among David’s favorite memories is his story of Prince Charles’ visit. Security was tight, and once Prince Charles had arrived, no one was allowed to leave or enter the campus. David says he was the exception to this rule; with no science facilities in those days, students had to take the bus into Las Vegas to use New Mexico Highlands

University labs. David drove the science class bus in, and at his co‑workers’ request, completed some errands in town.

“My orders were to drop the students off by the soccer field and take the bus up to the Castle,” he says. With the bus parked, David proceeded to sneak down the arroyo to the Welcome Center to make de‑liveries to his co‑workers. Suddenly, he heard a huge ruckus and saw lots of lights at the hot springs. He high‑tailed it back to his room in the Castle and stayed there.

“The next day, I heard Prince Charles had snuck out of his room to go the hot springs,” David re‑

calls. “Earlier that day, I had given a little speech to him about campus history. He asked me about the hot springs and said he would love to try them some time. Well, he did that night, and needless to say, he caused a big com‑motion. I was scared to death and thought I would be shot because I was crawling through the arroyo!”

That wasn’t David’s only scare during Prince Charles’s visit. During the dedication, David opted out of the speech‑es and ceremonies. However, he wanted to take some pic‑tures from the Castle tower. He walked up the stairs only to be surprised by two men dressed in trench coats pointing machine guns at him.

“I guess they recognized me and I had this P on my lapel that stood for ‘personnel.’ They asked what I was do‑ing, and I said I wanted to take a couple of pictures,” he recalls. “They said take the pictures and then get back. You are supposed to be stationed in your room; get straight back there and stay there. I took maybe two pictures and went back. I am lucky to be alive.”

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SPrince Charles’s Hot Springs Commotion AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID BENNETT


Photo courtesy of David Bennett


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S The UWC FamilyAN INTERVIEW WITH LINDA CURTIS

By Francesca Annicchiarico ’12

After more than 25 years of service at UWC‑USA, Dean of Students Linda Curtis says without hesitation, “The students are what made me stay.” This past year marked her last at UWC‑USA, as she and her husband, Spanish teacher Tom Curtis, retired. It was bittersweet;

Linda’s care for the stu‑dent body and sensitive at‑tention to how things have changed over time shine through her words.

Linda says UWC‑USA in the early days was a campus where dorms were co‑ed, the Castle was off‑limits, and the dining hall was in the current IT Center. “There were

no computers or cellphones, so when students wanted to be in touch with their families, it was through writing letters,” Linda says. “When they needed to phone home, they would use the resident tutor’s phone, so we would constantly have students in our house on the phone in any language you could imagine. It was just a joy to be there. I didn’t know what they were saying, but just the excitement or crying on the phone kept the RTs more in touch with the students.”

Over the course of her UWC‑USA career, Linda expe‑rienced many historical events on campus. “I remember when the Berlin Wall came down and having all these students at our house. Just being able to experience that together was great. And I remember all the students singing on the patio when Nelson Mandela got released. Where else can you get that experience?” she says.

Of course, the famous “late‑night conversations” were a highlight of student life even back then. “There was a lot more activity in the day rooms,” Linda says. “That’s what students did in the evenings—hanging out, cooking, and arguing about politics or home.”

Linda has watched the passions and interests of the student body change over time. “In the ’90s, the students were much more politically involved, whereas right now, I see the shift toward more envi‑ronmental and sustainability concerns,” she explains, acknowledging that “the school has changed the way the world has changed.”

The dean of students admits that living on a cam‑pus in rural New Mexico was quite an adjustment for her—as it is for every student. Besides “keeping up

with the rapid pace of the world”—which has been a con‑stant challenge throughout time, Linda believes that one of the challenges the school continues to face is building a community relationship with Las Vegas. However, though Linda thinks that “there is still hesitancy on both sides,” she is also aware that we are actively trying to make it work.

Ultimately, Linda says it’s the everyday life challenges such as roommate relationships and cross‑cultural under‑standing that make UWC‑USA the incredible school it is. Not only is UWC‑USA the place where Linda says she has learned “to be open and to listen well,” but it is also the place that has made her who she is today. “I am confident that UWC students will bring peace to the world some‑day—perhaps not in my lifetime—but sometime. That’s my hope for UWC‑USA,” she says.

Reflecting on her retirement, Linda says she departed with many treasured memories. “UWC is more than a job; it is a way of life that Tom and I, along with our children, have been blessed to be a part of,” she says. “The students have been our family, our sons and daughters, and we are so thankful to have had the opportunity to learn from them and to share with them our hopes and dreams.”

“I remember all the students singing on the patio when Nelson Mandela got released. Where else can you get that experience?”


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Tom Curtis remembers the pioneering years of UWC‑USA fondly, particularly the strong faculty community forged, in part, by the campus children. Hired to teach Spanish at UWC‑USA in August 1985—just before the birth of his daugh‑ter Anna—Tom drove a U‑Haul truck out to New Mexico from Virginia. His wife (and future dean of students), Linda Curtis, opted to fly even though, as Tom recalls, she “was eight‑and‑a‑half months pregnant; they almost didn’t let her fly on the plane.” Their son, Judd, was 3 years old.

Tom and Linda were among many young families arriv‑ing at the school in those early years, and kids quickly banded together and roamed the campus. Tom says that the eldest of the group, Juan Mejia, acted like a big brother while Dan and Hannah Tyson served as communal grandparents. “Dan would organize community efforts to build stuff and get the playground going,” Tom recalls. “We had a treehouse we built that he coordinated.”

Tom says the school’s newness, along with the public’s un‑familiarity with the IB, made it risky for his family to come to middle‑of‑nowhere New Mexico—but it was this risk that created a strong connection among all the faculty and their children. While the children wandered around the campus to‑

gether, the faculty established their own bonds, engaging in heated matches of trivial pursuit, croquet, and softball. “I think it’s why I was actually hired; I was a pretty good softball player,” says Tom, joking.

Faculty kids weren’t the only youngsters with whom Tom interacted. He soon found himself surrounded by children from nearby Las Vegas. Tom’s love of music and passion for teaching quickly led him to inherit the Children’s Chorus CAS from Bonny Hobson. He says directing the Children’s Cho‑rus for 25 years has been one of the biggest highlights of his UWC‑USA teaching career, and he appreciates the myriad of ways teachers can expand on their passions at the school. “That has always been the beauty of this job to me; you can tailor it to fit your interests,” Tom says.

For many faculty—Tom included—Wilderness and Project Weeks quickly became a valued part of their jobs. Wilderness, with its own extensive curriculum, allowed plenty of opportu‑nities for faculty to get involved. Orienteering was particularly challenging, Tom remembers, and he adds that teaching this skill to students was “one of the reasons for check—to make sure that people came back. And if they weren’t back at check, we would know and be able to act upon it.”

And while wilderness trips to the Grand Canyon for Southwest Studies have been a mainstay at UWC‑USA, the early years at the school were rooted also in frequent Project Week trips to Mexico for service work, sightsee‑ing, or both. “Mexico was much more accessible then and much cheaper, as well. We would leave the night of the day of the last class on Friday to go down to the bor‑der and cross it. We had Project Week after trial exams, which was nice because if you had to kill 60 hours on a bus, you had time to study—or grade papers,” Tom says.

This year marked an end to Tom’s 27‑year career at UWC‑USA. He and Linda retired and moved to Albu‑querque, where they’ll stay while they plan the next leg of their life’s journey. As he contemplates the school’s future, Tom says he hopes UWC‑USA will offer a deep‑er study of the Southwest in its curriculum. “We’re here and these cultures are really important and play an im‑portant part in the whole of the U.S. culture,” he says. “We [need to be] exposing people to indigenous cul‑tures—the economic, chemical, scientific, and cultural.”

Tom looks forward to new adventures in New Mexico but will miss the school. “When I found myself complaining about things, I thought, ‘Wait a minute, they’re paying me to do this, and it’s something I love to do.’ We have been paid to do what we love. That’s why we’ve been here so long,” he says.

Softball, Singing, and OrienteeringAN INTERVIEW WITH TOM CURTIS



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Joe Nold, who served as director of the Wilderness Pro‑gram at UWC‑USA from 1983 to 1991, knows quite a bit about challenge.

Joe grew up in the Saskatchewan dust bowl in Canada during the Great Depression. At 15, he spent the summer alone in a cabin in Algonquin Park, where he learned to canoe and be self‑reliant. He took a break from university to bicycle from Vancouver to Los Ange‑les, hitchhike through the Deep South to Miami, and crew on a cargo‑carrying sailboat in the Caribbean.

After graduating from law school, Joe traveled for five years in Europe and the Mid‑dle East, financing his trips by teaching at schools such as Gor‑donstoun, Kurt Hahn’s school in Scotland, and the Doon School in India. He also volun‑teered at Hungarian refugee camp in Austria during the Uprising of 1956 and went on to run work camps for the Round Square International Service in India—another Hahn‑inspired organization.

Later, Joe took up mountaineering, which provided him with an altogether different kind of adventure. He climbed

in the Alps, the Himala‑yas, the Rockies, Mount Kilimanjaro, and Popoca‑tépetel—among many oth‑ers. Joe says mountaineer‑ing gave him not only “an adrenaline high” but also a philosophy of life, a sense of living life to the fullest, a deeper awareness of the

stark beauty and grandeur of nature, and the camaraderie of shared adventure.

Indeed, Joe credits mountaineering with giving him “a whole new vision of human existence.” He adds, “It’s a great way to feel alive. Fortunately I was able to find Out‑ward Bound as a career where this might be relevant.”

Joe served as the director of the Outward Bound School in Colorado for 15 years. That experience, combined with his mountaineering, commitment to service, international experience, and depth of familiarity with Hahn’s philoso‑phies, made him an ideal wilderness director at UWC. “I built on Andrew Maclehose’s design,” he says, referring

to the former dean of students. “I was attracted to his idea that Wilderness was not just an adventure program but rooted in service—a life‑saving service.”

The Wilderness Program at UWC‑USA required all students to spend their first semester learning mountain

craft skills, map and compass, basic first aid, search and rescue tactics and taking part in a wilder‑ness expedition. Joe shares that the star instructor for the Red Cross basic first‑aid course was none other than Tom Lamberth, Joe’s successor following his re‑tirement in 1991.

Joe’s leadership and vision were instrumental in develop‑ing a core component of stu‑dents’ wilderness experiences at UWC‑USA. Indeed, the program set the school apart from many of the other UWCs. Joe says it is vi‑tal to the UWC mission. Wilder‑

ness provides students with insights to self‑reliance as well as “where one fits in in the broad scheme of things,” he says. “One learns that one is a part of a deeper unity.”

Joe says one of his proudest contributions to the school’s Wilderness Program was in connecting UWC‑USA with the New Mexico Search and Rescue (SAR) network’s strate‑gy. “[Once established,] we could field 25 students on short notice. The president, Dr. Lockwood, was supportive of students missing classes in a humanitarian pursuit—and several of the faculty became involved as well,” Joe says.

Joe believes that the Grand Canyon expedition was his most spectacular addition to the Wilderness Program. In addition, he and his wife Theresa helped to expand the program to include expeditions to the Barranca del Cobre in Mexico, canoeing on the Rio Grande in New Mexico and the Big Bend in Texas, and other areas in the Southwest. He views the wilderness as a place where students develop leadership: “[It’s] an area where you see this emerging kid developing the skills, develop the confidence. It’s one of the great vehicles for a shared or cooperative enterprise,” he says.

And although Joe recognizes the importance of dra‑matic rescue service, he values the other opportunities Wilderness and service trips offer. “I think the sweat‑equity type of involvement such as environmental cleanup, tree planting, and restoring adobe churches are equally impor‑tant. … The real heroes on the expedition are the guys that get up and brew the first pot of tea,” Joe says.

Brewing the First Pot of TeaAN INTERVIEW WITH JOE NOLD


Wilderness provides students with insights to self-reliance as well as “where one fits in in the broad scheme of things.”

© Joe Nold


Toward the end of my tenure at UWC‑USA, my wilder‑ness experience led to the opportunity to co‑lead a rather arduous hike to the top of Santa Fe Baldy (at an impressive ~12,000 ft) in New Mexico. While my 17‑year‑old body was fit and toned, this was still a challenge for my skill set. My co‑leader was Irfan Hassan, thin and lithe; I probably best‑ed him in weight even then. We were perhaps the most un‑likely wilderness pairing of the groups ascending that day.

While our enthusiasm never waned, the challenging navigation and our resulting slow pace had us behind schedule. I suppose we should have chosen to bypass the final ascent, but we were determined. Our final push took us slightly off track between trails. It seemed a like a good plan until the grade became so steep we were pulling our‑selves up the hill between trees until our arms and legs trembled. Once committed, it was too late to backtrack, so we labored slowly to the top.

The alpine line, where the trees stopped growing, re‑vealed large open areas at the top of the mountain. The summit, unlike the mountain’s base, was foggy, extremely windy, and cold. We rallied our group briefly in honor of our perseverance as tiny ice pellets buffeted our faces. Turn‑

ing to head back down, mentally weak and physically tired, there was still a euphoric feeling of success. Recognizing we were well behind the planned schedule, we moved the group as quickly as we could with encouragement of warm drinks and decadent snacks. About two‑thirds of the way down, we ran into a small team who had been sent out as a search and rescue party—for us! This seemed incredulous and offensive at first, and then hilarious. Our fearless wilderness god, Joe Nold, had assumed we had gotten lost—or worse.

I didn’t realize at the time how much of a touch‑stone this experience would be for me. Many times in my life, I have recalled that day as my own personal meta‑phor. In blind faith and perseverance, we didn’t give up. We found our way to the top and made it back down, even if it was in our own sweet time.

Blind Faith on Santa Fe BaldyBy Bonnie (Horie) Bennett ’85

It seemed a like a good plan until the grade became so steep we were pulling ourselves up the hill between trees until our arms and legs trembled.

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ALUMNI MEMORIES

© Tom Lamberth


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As the African National Congress (ANC) kicked off 2012 with centenary celebrations in Bloemfontein in South Africa, I found myself reflecting on my involvement in the anti‑apartheid movement and how it defined my child‑hood, teenage, and adult years. Born into a family that was forced into exile before my birth, our lives were driven by the ANC’s anti‑apartheid campaign. So integrated was this campaign into our values, purpose and ac‑tions, that upon com‑pleting high school, my brother showed his commitment by joining the military wing of the ANC (Umkhonto we Sizwe). He was stationed in Angola where he lost his life in battle in 1988 at the height of what had become a global anti‑apartheid struggle.

That same year, I was accepted into the Armand Hammer United World College on a United Nations Scholarship. Given my political background and the recent loss of my brother, it was only natural that when I entered UWC‑USA, I sought an avenue to re‑main involved in anti‑apartheid activities.

I was pleasantly sur‑prised to find an active and well‑informed Anti‑Apartheid Committee (AAC) on campus, and naturally, I joined. The AAC was a necessary connection to my family and friends back in Zambia and Tanzania. I needed to remain involved in the campaign that had defined my life.

Within a few days of my arrival, the whole school headed out for a seven‑day orientation. We spent the week camping and hiking in small groups. One night we had the entire student body around a campfire and each group was asked to perform. I instinctively offered to teach my group a South African freedom song, which we practiced as we trudged up and down switchbacks. Later that evening we marched into the campfire circle singing Shosholoza. I was

told that our singing was haunting and beautiful. Over time, every student learned that song.

Toward the end of my first year, I was elected president of the AAC. In my second year, we organized a landmark fundraising activity to raise awareness within our school and surrounding community. The AAC, with support from the school, organized a 70‑mile march from Santa

Fe to Las Vegas, N.M. The funds raised were sent to the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College (SOMAFCO) in Tanzania.

SOMAFCO facili‑tated a key objective of the ANC’s post‑apart‑heid strategic vision. This high school was established to educate youth so they could contribute to the recon‑struction and develop‑ment of post‑apartheid South Africa. Being the beneficiary of a schol‑arship to UWC‑USA, it was important to me to give back to my South African peers who, un‑der very challenging physical and emotional circumstances, were pursuing their high school qualifications.

The marchers in‑cluded the UWC‑USA community, and just about every student and staff member com‑

mitted to either walk or assist with logistics. Those who walked committed to a distance and raised funds from the community for each mile they walked. Many walked the full 70 miles.

The march was covered in advance by the Kaleidoscope and local newspapers. A heated debate was sparked about the use of proceeds. One camp challenged the decision by the AAC to route the funds raised to an ANC school. In their view, the ANC was a terrorist organization. As the head of the AAC, I was called to respond. I had never felt so affronted in my life. For me, the ANC was the organiza‑tion I had grown up in, the extended family that we did

The Freedom MarchBy Tandiwe Njobe ’90

MARCHING

Alia (Al-Matari)

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apartheid must end.


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not have in exile. There could be no wrong with the orga‑nization that stood firmly behind the oppressed majority in South Africa and committed to bringing change to the unjust system of rule in South Africa. Fearing we would lose sight of the larger objective of the march, my response was meant to persuade par‑ticipants that our cause and beneficiary were worthy.

After months of plan‑ning and fervent discussion among the students—about its purpose, impact, and participants—the day of the march finally arrived. In the early morning hours, the marchers were transported to the Santa Fe Plaza to be‑gin the two‑day walk back to Montezuma. There was excitement among march‑ers about the personal com‑mitment they were about to make and their contribution to a greater cause.

The students marched and sang freedom songs as they snaked their way out of Santa Fe onto the freeway to Las Vegas. As the day wore on, chatter and banter among smaller groups of marchers replaced the sing‑ing of earlier in the day. Exhaustion began to set in, and marchers were relieved to ar‑rive at the overnight rest camp somewhere off the highway about 35 miles from Las Vegas. The next morning, a refreshed and chatty group of marchers returned to the highway to complete our mission.

Later that Sunday at about 4 p.m., with aching feet and sore muscles, a tired but inspired group of marchers representing all continents marched into the Las Vegas Town Square. Some still sang while others hobbled along quietly celebrating their personal achievement of com‑pleting the walk. My spirit was infused with pride at the suc‑cess of the event. I was sure that every marcher, supporter, and some motorists and observers

made a personal connection (and I hope commitment) to the anti‑apartheid struggle. In two days, we had drawn closer as a student body, and the disagreement that divided us at the start of the march regarding the use of funds was forgotten as we exchanged hugs and words of congratula‑

tion in the Las Vegas Plaza. Today, I live and work

in post‑apartheid South Africa. We are a nation in development with many socioeconomic challenges. However, I remain optimis‑tic and hopeful for South Africa—principally because I know firsthand the sac‑rifices made by my family and many other families to achieve the political free‑doms we enjoy. And I re‑main committed because I witnessed the mobilization against apartheid by ordi‑nary individuals who may never set foot in Africa. Be‑

cause of this, I believe South Africans have a responsibil‑ity to uphold and build our young democracy—which we achieved through a shared resilience and commitment by individuals within and outside South Africa—including the students and staff of UWC‑USA.

RAISING OUR VOICES

Catherine “Danny”

Daniel ’90 and

Tandiwe Njobe ’90

sing freedom songs

on the march.

I remain committed because I witnessed the mobilization against apartheid by ordinary individuals who may never set foot in Africa. Because of this, I believe South Africans have a responsibility to uphold and build our young democracy—which we achieved through a shared resilience and commitment by individuals within and outside South Africa.

© Tandiwe Njobe ’90


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When I was a first‑year student back in 1988, I had a roommate from Albuquerque who sometimes went home for the weekend. I never liked to stay alone at night be‑cause I was afraid of ghosts. So on a Friday night when my roommate left, I asked a first‑year friend from Malaysia to come stay with me.

I woke in the middle of the night to the squeaking sound of my door opening. When I opened my eyes, I saw a man standing in the doorway. I knew this wasn’t a ghost! I didn’t see his face clearly, but he had curly hair and looked unfamiliar. I wasn’t sure what I should do. After a few seconds, I shouted: “Who are you?” The man let go of the door knob and ran away. I jumped out of bed and woke up my Malaysian friend, who was sound asleep. When she woke up, I told her what happened. We went out to look for the man in the hallway, the common room, the bathroom, and the laundry room. We didn’t find anyone.

The next morning, I told our resident tutor about the incident. When my roommate came back on Sunday, I told her, too. I felt frightened from then on. At night, I put a chair against the door. Somehow, I had a feeling that the man would return. As Friday approached again, I told my roommate to be prepared in case that man came back. I tried not to fall asleep, but in the end, I did.

I almost didn’t hear the door open; there was no squeaking this time. But I opened my eyes and saw the man standing there. This time, he was wearing only a pair

of shorts. I shouted, “Hey you!” He vanished. I called my roommate, who quickly jumped off the bed. We checked the bathroom, the common room, and the hallway. I saw the man coming out from one side of the hallway and I shouted, “Sara, he is here!”

My roommate screamed and jumped over him, lock‑ing his legs. The man pulled on Sara’s hair. I was in shock and didn’t know what to do. I knocked at students’ doors to get help. Some guys came running down from the sec‑ond floor and pulled the man and my roommate apart. My roommate was all right and the man was OK. My sec‑ond‑year from Fiji took the man away. I was told later that he was from the center for mentally ill patients in Las Vegas where our stu‑dents went to do community service. He had come here looking for his friends.

After the incident, the story that went around the school was that I had used my Thai martial art skills to bring the man down. However, I was unable to help my‑self in that real‑world situation. And I was truly amazed by what my roommate did. She was so brave. And even better than that, she got the school to install locks on the dorm doors. Thank you, Sara.

How We Got LocksBy Jan Boontinand ’90

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Dancing is an

integral part

of the student

experience at

UWC-USA.

Dance always helped me at UWC‑USA. When I was struggling with English during my first months at the school and my first evaluations were quite poor, President Ted Lockwood was kind enough to write, “Nadejda has out‑standing dancing skills.” He was very kind because there were many students who were outstanding dancers—the school seemed like a dancing frenzy with rhythms and moves from all over the world. Add to that the dance vibe of ’80s and early ’90s and you’ll have the picture. It was hard to impress an audience that had seen almost everything.

And my time in the spotlight? Julian Ho was the cho‑reographer. The song was Rock Around the Clock. We re‑hearsed all the aerials, except we had one twist: Instead of having him be the base, I was the base for the throws, dips, and jumps. In the end, the audience erupted in cheers.

UWC DancingBy Nadejda Marques ’90

When I opened my eyes, I saw a man standing in the doorway. I knew this wasn’t a ghost!

© Kate Russell


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CANYON CAMARADERIE

Geoff Blanton ’05

and his team pose

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Our wilderness team wanted to win the hiking permit lottery. Getting a permit in the Grand Canyon the week‑end before you plan to hike is only a faint possibility—but fate was on our side. In March 2005, I and my classmates Andi Cheney, Anna Harvey, Asad Panjwani, and Shannon O’Connor headed to the very trail that had promised me Grapevine Canyon the year before. As I signed the permit, my hand shook with excitement and anticipation.

That same canyon had conquered me the prior year. On that day, we set out in the early afternoon with the hopes of reaching the Colorado River, diving into its cold waters and escaping the merciless Arizona sun. At the end of the day, though, threats of rain and flash flooding forced us to turn around. In the months that followed, my thoughts re‑turned to Grapevine Canyon again and again, and I began to lose hope of ever returning to finish what I started. But in March of my second year, I got another chance.

We woke the day of our departure to three inches of snow, but I hardly noticed. Soon, I would be on my way to Grapevine, and no snow could stand in the way. The first two days passed quickly, and the familiar sights were like a countdown: Day 10‑South Kaibab, Day 9‑Kaibab Tonto Intersection, Day 8‑Cre‑mation Canyon. Finally, on Tuesday, March 15, we reached Grapevine Canyon where we spent the night under a large overhang next to Grapevine Creek. I made my famous torti‑lla pizzas, and I spent a restless night imagin‑ing what the next day would hold.

The side canyons of the Grand Canyon are unlike any other part of the canyon. Wa‑ter flows through many of them year‑round, and the water creates small oases filled with lush green grass that is soft to the touch and blooming with spring flowers. Fresh water springs drip and trees provide refreshing shade. But the biggest prize of all is the chance to reach the Colorado River. There aren’t many access points to the river by foot, and they are sepa‑rated by many miles of trail.

On the way down the canyon, I slid down stone slides, carved into the rock by years of rushing spring waters. I jumped across boulders that had tumbled into place long ago as the canyon was being formed. I stood beneath a spring and drank water sweeter and purer than any I have ever tasted. All the while the river was still foremost in my thoughts, but the last half mile to the river would not be easily traversed.

As we came around a bend in the canyon, we were met by a 30‑foot drop over which cascaded a beautiful water‑fall. The beauty was lost on the group. How would we ever

overcome this obstacle? We had come so far and it seemed the canyon had won again. As I began to make prepara‑tions for the return trip, a team member sighted a small ledge that went to the side of the drop‑off and made its way to the landing below. We scrambled up a rockslide and reached the top of the ledge. It was about one foot wide and covered in small cacti. We slowly began to descend, one person at a time. Each person knocked more small rocks off the stone tightrope. I watched as the stones fell three stories to the bottom of the waterfall and landed with small clinks. I pushed thoughts of falling from my mind as I inched along the ledge.

We all reached the bottom safely and felt a collective sense of accomplishment, but that sense soon left when after two more bends in the canyon, we were faced with

another drop‑off. This time, there was no ledge; there was only a cliff. We decided to free‑climb to the bottom. Look‑ing back on this decision, I realize it was incredibly foolish. We were a mile in elevation below the rim and at least 20 miles from a trail head where we could find help, but we forged ahead all the same. Once again, we all reached the bottom safely, less two bottles of iodine which broke on the way down. According to the map, the river was less than a quarter of a mile away; we were almost there, but it may as well have been 100 miles.

Ten yards. Ten yards. That was all that separated us from the Colorado River. It was within sight but out of reach. Ten yards from the river was a final drop‑off rubbed so smooth by water that it was impassable. Grapevine Canyon won again.

Grapevine CanyonBy Geoff Blanton ’05

© Geoffrey Blanton ’05


Montezuma Love

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When they were both 16, Ben Melkman ’98 and Alexa Muñoz Smith ’99

obtained scholarships to UWC-USA. Ben represented Australia; Alexa

represented Mexico. Ben and Alexa say that their UWC experience has been “a

huge building block” for who they are today and opened their eyes to the world.

UWC-USA is also the place where they met and fell in love, and in June

2009, they married. In lieu of wedding gifts, they established a scholarship

endowment fund at UWC-USA and asked wedding guests to contribute.

They said, “This wedding wouldn’t be happening if it weren’t for UWC.”

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The biggest UWC story I can tell is our marriage. I met Cagri Tanriover at UWC; he was my second‑year. He lived 10 minutes away from me in Istanbul, but I didn’t know him. We became very close friends after we met in Montezuma, and our friendship continued for many years after we graduated. We had no romantic intentions whatsoever; he was my country‑mate, for crying out loud!

We kept in touch over the years, and we always got together when he came home on breaks from the U.K.

where he was completing his master’s degree, and then later his Ph.D. After 17 years of close friendship, we kissed one night. One thing led to another, and we got married. He was always a dear friend and a close con‑fidant. I never wanted to jeopardize that by just having him as a “boyfriend.” If anything happened, it had to be for good. So here we are! Complete with a baby girl we have named Ayza.

Country-MatesBy Demet Tuncer Tanriover ’93

When someone asks how we met, I wonder which time? Brian Lax was my first‑year and began knocking on my door sometime during the year—to see my roommate. Brian was quite involved with my beloved roommate, Cecilia Tholse. I suppose that was one of the main reasons I had never thought of him “in that way.” (For the record, they did eventually break up and he later married anoth‑er first‑year, Rachel Lundgren. Indeed, I am not the first UWCer Brian has married).

We met again years later, by chance, in the Kluge Au‑ditorium for a Blue Moon Café. Brian was working as an EMT in Las Vegas, N.M. and I was about to begin teaching in Montezuma. I noticed him like I hadn’t before. Alas, things were still complicated. Sometimes I joke that when we met (for the second time, at least), Brian already had a

wife and a girlfriend. It was less sordid than it sounds, but it took many more years of us going on in our lives and try‑ing on a few more relationships before we met yet again.

The third time—at Brian’s 10‑year reunion—was the meeting that stuck. Both of us were “unattached,” and we quickly started dating and soon moved in together. After we married, we “honeymooned” on an extended travel adventure, which included visiting four other UWCs and innumerable, wonderful, hospitable friends from our school days.

This summer marked Brian’s 20‑year reunion, and we have much to celebrate—our marriage, our friendships, our lovely children, our great fortune in having attended a UWC, and the luck to have finally figured out that we do think of each other “in that way.”

In 2012, UWC celebrates its 50th anniversary, UWC‑USA its 30th, and we celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary! We came to Montezuma from Germany and from Israel—two very different characters from two very different cultural backgrounds. As a matter of fact, throughout our first year, we did not care much for each other (to put it nicely). But then, in our second year, a series of “coincidences” brought us closer together, and before we knew it, we were a couple.

So what is it like being a UWC couple? Well, it makes some things easier: Your partner never gets bored hearing about how great it was in Montezuma and doesn’t shake

his or her head every time you get excited about the latest gossip about your classmates. Some other issues can get a bit difficult: international telephone bills, for example, or choosing a name for your child that sounds good in both “home countries.”

Jokes aside, the greatest thing about being a UWC couple is that each of our three children is neither Ger‑man nor Israeli but rather German and Israeli at the same time. When you think about the dreadful history that plagues these two cultural backgrounds, it’s almost unbelievable. And it wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for UWC.

UWC ConnectionBy Tarra Hassin ’91 and Brian G. Lax ’92

A Wedding AnniversaryBy Eran Bar-Am ’91 and Daniela Bar-Am (Beran)’91


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It was my second year, and Halley’s Comet was go‑ing to be visible. My roommate Mike Aaron, an amateur astronomer, had a telescope, and I believe the school had another one. It was late at night when I ran across the soc‑cer field carrying a telescope and jumped on the bus that would take us out to open sky where we could best see the comet pass by. The drive was long and the air was chilly. We arrived and set up the telescopes. The sky was covered with clouds; we could not see a thing!

HALLEY’S COMETBy Fernando Skerl ’86

Halley’s Comet

At the beginning of my second‑year service at the near‑by psychiatric hospital, we played a “building trust and con‑fidence” game with the teenagers there. Blindfolded, they had to listen to our voices directing them through a maze of chairs we had built until they successfully emerged from the labyrinth. When they smiled at us, having reached the exit without bumping into chairs, we felt like a connection had been made. We could talk about our doubts and joys together. It made every Wednesday morning an amazing experience, and that reward made up for the lack of sleep we experienced in waking early for the service.

MAKING CONNECTIONSBy Emma Tilquin ’02

Making Connections

HOTEL RESTORATION

The Old Stone

Hotel is repaired

to house

classrooms, offices,

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I remember Julie van Hoogstraten noticing that the dancers got all the attention on International Day and what a shame it was that there wasn’t a good Dutch dance she could perform. Then her eyes lit up as she realized that no one would know what a Dutch dance might look like! So she quickly made one up on the sidewalk in front of Tyson House. She and Mieneke rehearsed just enough to look credible and headed down to the cafeteria where the crowds were assembled. Then they clonked around in their wooden shoes, proudly performing their national dance for a big audience.

In early 1989, we needed to invent a musical instru‑ment for the New Mexico State Science and Engineering Fair. We began at 2 a.m. the night before the contest. My In‑donesian classmate Ilham disappeared to find parts and re‑appeared with a massive television aerial that, we assumed, he had taken from a nearby house. His English would de‑teriorate when convenient, and he never did explain where it came from. We converted it into a set of xylophones and won the contest the next day. Our Malaysian first‑year led the team in playing a made‑up tune which, she assured the judges, was the Indonesian national anthem.

IMPROVISATIONBy Colleen Lewis von Eckartsberg ’86

Improvisation

MISAPPROPRIATIONBy Michael Stern ’89

Misappropriation

GRADUATION SPLENDOR

Flags on the

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occasion.


In Memoriam

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A movement is defined by the com-munity that keeps it vibrant and invigo-rated. Since 1982, thousands of people have become a part of the UWC-USA community and the UWC movement. Along the way, we have been saddened by the loss of some of our brightest stars, but it is through their memory that the rest of us continue on, inspired

by the vision, creativity, and passion of those who have gone before us. As Helen Keller once said, “What we have once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes a part of us.”

We honor the faculty, students, alum-ni, friends, and supporters of UWC-USA. Their legacy lives on.

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DECEASED ALUMNI:

Jorge Ricci ’84

Allan Glenn Bernardo ’85

Roger Kenna ’85

Ann Schroeder-Aryeh ’86

James Gritter ’88

Philippe Wamba ’89

Liza Malkoun ’91

Paul Mugabi ’92

Emeka Dillibe ’93

Marija Dokmanovic-Chouinard ’95

Kyle Faas ’95

Christopher Pancoast ’95

Amadou Cisse ’97

Cesar Simosa ’97

Aaron Anderson ’00

Jeremy McGaffey ’01

Imogen Curnew ’04

Fawaz Lukman ’11

DECEASED EMPLOYEES, TRUSTEES, AND BENEFACTORS:

Armand and Frances Hammer, founders

Armand Bartos, benefactor

Alec Courtelis, chairman of the Board

Linda Halouzka, yoga instructor

Paul Hebner, trustee

Frank Hines, benefactor

K. Don “Jake” Jacobusse, dean of students

John Kluge, benefactor

David Lee, history instructor

Pir Maleki, mathematics instructor

Sadie Martinez, food services director

Pedro Medina, groundskeeper

Dorothy Meredith, librarian

Norman Meredith, resident tutor

Martin Meyerson, trustee

Emma Middleton, trustee

Simon Orme, trustee

Kaushalya Parashar, Ravi’s mother

Krishan Parashar, Ravi’s father

James Pugash, locator of campus

Dan Tyson, resident tutor/college advising

Frances Tyson, benefactor

Kemal Zeinal-Zade, trustee

RE

ME

MB

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43

IN THE FUTURE

A Siberian elder—whose name has long since been lost—once said, “If you don’t know the trees you may be lost in the forest, but if you don’t know the stories you may be lost in life.”

The same holds true for an institution. As this issue of Kaleidoscope illustrates, it’s the stories that ground us, guide us, and teach us. The dual anniversaries of UWC—the 30th for UWC‑USA, and the 50th for the Movement—have offered a rich opportunity to capture those stories firsthand from the very people who shaped our school.

We wish we could have included all the stories we heard. However, in the process of collecting memories,

we were delighted to find that many of the same tales sur‑faced from a variety of sources. Faculty from the early days remembered the fields of mud that swathed the campus during the first few years. Others recalled the fire truck and Arabian horses Armand Hammer sent to the campus, the makeshift dorm dubbed “Siberia,” the traditional howl‑ing at the president’s house, Prince Charles’s visit for the school’s dedication in 1982, and The Beach Boys’ perfor‑mance at the first graduation in 1984. There is an energy to

each of these stories that mirrors the vigor and hard work that went into creating a school from the ground up.

UWC‑USA’s leaders have always embodied this en‑ergy. Starting a new school wasn’t easy. Like all UWCs, funding was a struggle—and still is, as Chairman of the Board Tom Dickerson attests. But as alumni, teachers, staff members and others reveal in these pages, UWC‑ers demonstrate extraordinary perseverance and passion in any challenge they meet—whether it is becoming a “crusader for the cause” like Phil, or navigating the steep slopes of Santa Fe Baldy in an all‑student wilderness expedition. When the way forward appears daunting,

the school’s administration, faculty, and students forge ahead, armed with an un‑shakeable idealism.

Idealism is paired with ac‑tion at UWC‑USA, and that is particularly evident in times of conflict and crisis. With a student and alumni body representing hundreds of countries around the world, UWC‑USA finds itself at the heart of global events. Each conflict or environmental catastrophe is personal and associated with a name and face. In the early years, the students spoke out against Apartheid, staged perfor‑mances addressing the heart‑break of the Berlin Wall (and huddled around televisions later as it fell sooner than anyone thought it would), and marched to end hun‑ger in Central Africa. These events were not distant and intangible; there always was a student on campus who was

personally affected or had friends and family who were.More recently, earthquakes in Haiti and Japan rever‑

berated along the mountainside in Montezuma. Students led the way in fundraising and organizing support for their classmates and the people in need in those countries. And just as the Cold War and Apartheid dominated the politi‑cal discussions of the early years, today’s students discuss and debate the complexities of immigration reform and climate change.

Looking ForwardBy Emily Withnall MC ’01

IN T

HE

FU

TU

RE

READY IN RED

Adilson Gonzales,

Selen Ozturk, Yun-

Yun Li, Mzwakithi

Shongwe, and

Cassandra

Doremus (L-R)—

all of the class of

2012, prepare for

their graduation

ceremony.

© Kate Russell


UWC students are often known for their intelligence and talent, but it is their intelligence paired with deep heart and strong backbone that reveals the character of UWC‑USA. Wilderness is a recurring theme in the for‑mation of that character, demanding students to confront personal challenges—a task they rise to with results that outweigh their own expectations. As former Wilder‑

ness Director Joe Nold observed, it is through Wilderness that “one learns that one is a part of a deeper unity.”

Taking risks in Wilderness helps give UWCers the confidence to take other risks, as well. Students strive for what they believe in no

matter the opposition they face, as Tandiwe Njobe ’90 did when she organized the march against Apartheid during her second year. UWC students always put their curios‑ity and creativity to good use, whether they are engaged in political debate, in a tight spot at a science competition, or facing the alluring call of the fenced‑off Castle. Through these experiences and more, students shed their precon‑ceptions to form close bonds with friends from countries previously unknown. These bonds prove to be unbreak‑able; friendships endure through decades of even inter‑mittent contact—and, as you’ll see in these pages, those friendships sometimes result in marriage!

If students at UWC‑USA have the heart and backbone to get them through the toughest of situ‑ations—from performing on stage for the first time to confronting a religious faith at odds with their own—the faculty has served as their inspiration. Whether it was the adventurous nature of Bob and Carrol Pearson, the hard work and intensity demonstrated by Hannah Tyson, acting on what you believe in like John Geffroy, engaging with the Las Vegas community alongside Hilda Wales, deepening on‑campus community and relationships un‑der Linda Curtis’ guidance, or sim‑ply listening to the funny stories of the early days from Dave Bennett or Ted Reineke, students had a wealth

of role models. Indeed, it was the faculty that Phil Geier appreciated the most during his leadership at UWC‑USA: “The faculty we inherited was the faculty I worked with, and I was very happy with that. They put in a lot of com‑mitment and a lot of extra energy.”

This year, many faculty members who have been at UWC‑USA since nearly the beginning have retired. As a result, the school’s 30th anniversary marks an end of one era and the start of another. Philanthropist Shelby Davis often says, “The first 30 years of one’s life should be focused on learning.” It would not be a stretch to apply this to UWC‑USA. Our first 30 years have been a tremen‑dous time of growth and learning. As new faculty and staff arrive and the school adapts to new technologies and a drier climate, we stand at the threshold of our next 30 years. No one can be certain what the future holds, but our history confirms the passion and perseverance we need to be a recognized leader of making education a force to unite people, nations, and cultures for peace and a sus‑tainable future. President Lisa Darling says it best: “Our history has helped us think about how we can take this exceptional school and make it even better.”

IN T

HE

FU

TU

RE

Just as the Cold War and Apartheid dominated the political discussions of the early years, today’s students discuss and debate the complexities of immigration reform and climate change.

When the way forward appears daunting or unclear, the school’s administration, faculty, and students forge ahead, armed with an unshakeable idealism.

MARCHING TOWARD TOMORROW

Anel Bueno (L)

and Rodrigo

Coronel (R) lead

the graduation

processional for

the class of 2012.

© Kate Russell


UWC makes education a force to unite people, nations, and cultures for peace and a sustainable future.

T H E M A G A Z I N E O F U W C ‑ U S A , T H E A R M A N D H A M M E R U W C O F T H E A M E R I C A N W E S T

V O l U M E 4 3

UWC ‑USAPost Office Box 248Montezuma, NM 87731‑0248 USAwww.uwc‑usa.org

R E T U R N S E R V I C E R E Q U E S T E D

Kaleid scope

© Kate Russell

Documents

Kaleidoscope Volume 43: 30th Anniversary Issue