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  Louise Brinkerhoff '13 (BardCorps)

  Louise Brinkerhoff '13

  "Well I mean I came to Bard because I wanted to, you know, develop my mind, and I’ve done that. And now I think the right thing for me to do is to go into service. Because I have so much, and I think the only thing you can do is try to give something back."

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  Donald "Don" Baier '66 (BardCorps)

  Donald "Don" Baier '66

  “I’m in this book club, and the book club decided that they would read some novels of Balzac...I went back and [re]read some of these books…And I thought well, I was right about a lot of this stuff...I went down and got my [senior] project out of the library and copied it and reread it. And I...sat down and wrote a new ending for it because...I had seen stuff that I hadn’t seen before.”

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  Michael Dewitt '65

  Michael Dewitt '65

  "I don't want to say I've never met a Bardian I didn't like but it's kind of close to that."

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  Leora Fulvio, '97 (BardCorps)

  Leora Fulvio '97

  "I would say my experience at Bard has pretty much informed my whole life."

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  Nick Lyons '60 (BardCorps)

  Nick Lyons '60

  "I still, at this late stage of 88 years old, I can still remember walking down to the creek, to the Saw Kill and Bill Humphrey talking about short stories; neither of us having books in our hands, he would practically have a whole story in his head. I’d never seen anything like that. He could recite the beginning of it and then show where it modulated into another key and then moved into a series of expansions and digressions and finally came through at the end. I was astounded by the way in which he thought about it. I think Bard was exciting to me also because someone like Humphrey had never graduated from college, and there he was, a brilliant teacher, just having his first major book Home from the Hill published which was a runner up for the National Book Award. But it was a year in which, to use an athlete’s expression, I was stretched, I was shown new ways of thinking, new ways of reading. And it wasn’t so much the knowledge that I got as the spirit of the place, the spirit of learning."

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  Maureen Osborne, '76 (BardCorps)

  Maureen Osborne '76

  "I think they [her professors] had faith in me that I didn't really have."

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  Carolee Schneemann, '59 (BardCorps)

  Carolee Schneemann '59

  "I was wondering about having been kicked out in my sophomore year, still bewildered... I thought maybe it was from necking with Wayne, but everyone was doing that. And then it occurred to me it was the nude self-portraits I had done in my room, with open legs [...] and they disappeared very quickly. They were stolen away."

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  Carole-Jean Smith, '66 (BardCorps)

  Carole-Jean Smith

  "My experience here was life changing for me. It was an opportunity to live with and learn from people who were serious about the life of the mind and the creative life. Bard opened the world for me."

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  Joy Steinberg '81 and Brian Gale '81

  Joy Steinberg '81 and Brian Gale '81

  “I did study with Adolfas, and he was my mentor, Adolfas Mekas, film. And he taught us we’d never make a living doing it, I did surprise him by actually now living doing it.” -Brian

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  Christopher "Chris" Wangro '80 (BardCorps)

  Christopher "Chris" Wangro

  Wangro on being admitted: “Anyway, so, they were like, “Oh you do a lot of theater and you’re a clown, you’re in.” So it was a different kind of experience.”

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  Avron "Avi" Soyer '60 (BardCorps)

  Avron "Avi" Soyer '60

  “Every question that is worth asking is a personal question; every intellectual question worth asking is a personal question, and that you don’t do it for the money and you don’t do it just because of tradition.”

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  Malia Du Mont, '95, and Joshua Ledwell, '96 (BardCorps)

  Malia Du Mont and Joshua Ledwell

  "The perspectives I learned from having a more diverse group of people to learn from has helped me a lot in understanding that there's a much more multifaceted world out there."

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  Randy Faerber '72 (BardCorps)

  Randy Faerber

  “That was the thing about Bard; if you believed in something, they believed in you, they made it happen.”

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  Richard "Dick" Jenrette and Elliott Lindsley '52

  Richard "Dick" Jenrette and Elliott Lindsley, '52

  "I was a new member of the board of the Historic Hudson Valley. I called Laurance Rockefeller and told him 'I have a place your dream can be furthered of house museums from New York to Albany.' And so he came [to Montgomery Place] and saw it and liked it."

  -- Dick Jenrette

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  David Schardt, '71 (BardCorps)

  David Schardt

  “This was a hotbed of opposition to the war. And in fact, we had rallies on the campus; anti-war rallies...I’m not certain how it was arranged, but we had two busses go down for one of the marches in Washington. So I remember going down and marching and getting tear gassed. This would have been ‘69 or ‘70.”

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  Esther Wanning '66 (BardCorps)

  Esther Wanning

  “Bard hired both women and people who hadn’t written books, because they were really serious about the teaching … here, the teaching really was primary and they didn’t care that he [Andrews Wanning] hadn’t finished the book.”

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  Susan (Wender) Lowenstein-Kitchell '48

  Susan (Wender) Lowenstein-Kitchell '48

  “One springtime, they were not going to give us a spring break, but they had a very–there was a real water problem, they were only on one pump, and they said if you take a shower, make it quick. And there was one young woman who really wanted spring break, and she went in and turned the showers on and the pump broke and they sent us home, but they expelled her. And I don’t know if I should mention her name, but … she flew her plane over Commencement and buzzed the group, and I’ve never forgotten that.”

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  Francis Whitcomb, '47 (BardCorps)

  Francis "Whit" Whitcomb

  "[Tony Garvin] was my adviser in American History, and advised me on my senior project about my great grandfather...He must have been high in social circles...and my senior year he was having a garden party in Rhinebeck, and he comes up to me and he says, 'Frank I want you to meet Mrs. Roosevelt.'"

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  Michael Bell, '82 (BardCorps)

  Michael Bell

  "We are ... what I lovingly refer to as 'Nat's Children.' Natalie [Lunn] was a wonderful person."

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  Ellen Rogovin Hart, '66 (BardCorps)

  Ellen Rogovin Hart

  "Well, I remember Bob Dylan coming up a couple of weekends and trying to hit on the young ladies here...also we had...Reverend Gary Davis...I remember going to a concert next to Doc Watson; he was blind and he said 'will you please hold my guitar for me?' And I was so thrilled."

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  Adam Janos, '06 (BardCorps)

  Adam Janos '06

  "I got here and I remember immediately thinking that I was amongst my people."

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  Roderick Michael, '80 (BardCorps)

  Roderick D. Michael

  "My next term paper was titled 'Socrates and the Bronx.'"

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  David Schechter, '76 (BardCorps)

  David Schechter

  "I remember standing in the ruins [of the Coach House Theater] in this self important way, saying 'the establishment has burned down, but we shall continue; our theater can exist in the ashes. We need no theater to present our drama!"

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  Johanna Shafer, '67 (BardCorps)

  Johanna Shafer

  "I think in some ways I missed a lot of what should be a normal college experience because I didn't have the time to goof around or spend a lot of hours at Adolph's or anything like that."

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  Michael Shafer, '66 (BardCorps)

  Michael Shafer

  Reamer Kline had to make a speech at one point to a little demonstration about 'the woods.' "Those of you who want to do what you do at Bard, there's a facility: it's the woods. Go do it in the woods." He had a great sense of humor.