BardCorps is a collaborative oral history project of the Alumni/ae Office and the Bard College Archives. This is modeled on the famous StoryCorps initiative that travels the country recording personal stories in an Airstream trailer. We are recording the stories of Bardians to preserve memory, and to document and expand our collective understanding of Bard’s history.
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Bob Amsterdam, '53 (BardCorps)
Bob Amsterdam
Alumni“Bard gave me a major scholarship, and I'm grateful to Bard in a number of respects. It’s a beautiful campus, I made good friendships here. In opening horizons for me, it was very, very important for me in my life.”
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Lydia Anderson, '03 (BardCorps)
Lydia Anderson
Alumni“We called [the Ravine houses] an ewok village-- these odd little stilt-houses.”
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Judi Arner Brown '68 (BardCorps)
Judi Arner
Alumni“I really didn’t learn how to do research, I learned how to approach a problem and it was, very– it was perfect for me because it went along with my own way of thinking. I came away from there believing that there was nothing I couldn’t tackle, I didn’t have to have all the information in my head as long as I knew how to get it, and knew how to think clearly, and I’ve been able to use that my whole life; I’ve taken jobs that I really wasn’t qualified for and it never bothered me, I just thought, Well you know, I’m smart, I’ll pick this stuff up before someone figures out I don’t know what I’m doing. And I think I learned that at Bard: give me a problem and I’ll find a way to solve it.”
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Donald "Don" Baier '66 (BardCorps)
Donald "Don" Baier '66
Alumni“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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Robert Bassler, '57 (BardCorps)
Robert Bassler
Alumni“I got a C. I had never gotten a C in art, ever. I was a straight A student, I mean I wasn’t a straight A student in everything but I was a straight A student in art to the point of getting a scholarship to art school... then I come to Bard and I get a C. I was totally mystified.”
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Michael Bell, '82 (BardCorps)
Michael Bell
Alumni"We are ... what I lovingly refer to as 'Nat's Children.' Natalie [Lunn] was a wonderful person."
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Wayne Berman, '87 (BardCorps)
Wayne Berman
Alumni"Now I eagerly read everything on everything. I would have been intimidated, before I came to Bard. I wouldn't have read certain kinds of things because I would have felt like 'that's out of my world.'"
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Louise Brinkerhoff '13 (BardCorps)
Louise Brinkerhoff '13
Alumni"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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Jonathan Cann, '06 (BardCorps)
Jonathan Cann
Alumni"Even the bad days here...were part of a larger interesting story. I wouldn't do anything different."
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Margaret Castleman, '69 (BardCorps)
Margaret Castleman
Alumni"I had a very hard time here initially. [I was] totally vulnerable to peer pressure, and to the wrong kind of peer pressure. So to have to come back and face that, and to disassociate myself [from] that sort of set the rules for my life in terms of how to be an individual. You have to go your own path."
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Tyrone Copeland, '01 (BardCorps)
Tyrone Copeland
Alumni"To get to the beach, you had to jump off the boat and swim. Really, my swimming skills--no they're not great...I did my little doggy paddle...All those adventures pushed me to explore more."
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Arnold Davis, '44 (BardCorps)
Arnold Davis
Alumni“... it was disappointing that I graduated and the next year they decided to go co-ed. They couldn’t wait another year? They could have done it a year earlier!”
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Lisa DeTora, '89 (BardCorps)
Lisa DeTora
Alumni"I used to wear really short fluffy pink things, which was totally not Bard at the time, and I had pink glasses. And I used to giggle all the time."
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Jodi DeVito, '81 (BardCorps)
Jodi DeVito
Alumni"I loved the landscape, the education; especially coming from a very traditional boarding school, it just sounded so alluring."
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Michael Dewitt '65
Michael Dewitt '65
Alumni"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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Jennifer Dewsnap '88 (BardCorps)
Jennifer Dewsnap '88
Alumni“My first year, I lived in Tewksbury and it was very loud and there were a lot of people practicing various instruments. And there was a girl next door who kept lighting candles and putting things on fire and I would get really upset about it.”
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Stephen "Steve" Dickinson '07
Stephen Dickinson '07
Alumni"Maybe Bard has a reputation for being academically rigorous, but I never felt a ton of pressure to perform in a certain way. I was able to kinda take my time getting in to the topic which for me was good– I don't perform that well under pressure."
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Malia Du Mont, '95, and Joshua Ledwell, '96 (BardCorps)
Malia Du Mont and Joshua Ledwell
Faculty/Staff Chief of Staff & VP for Strategy and Policy, Class of 1995"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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Anthony Ellenbogen, '82 (BardCorps)
Anthony Ellenbogen
Alumni"Every once in awhile I'll be loading a dumpster and one of my workers will say, 'Boy, it's a good thing that you spent all that money at Bard for an education.' And I think to myself, it may not be obvious, but it is worth it; it's why they're working for me and I'm not working for them."
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Kit Ellenbogen, '52 (BardCorps)
Kit Ellenbogen
Alumni"I left the college a very different person than when I came."
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Randy Faerber '72 (BardCorps)
Randy Faerber
Alumni“That was the thing about Bard; if you believed in something, they believed in you, they made it happen.”
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Kim Fisher, '01 (BardCorps)
Kim Fisher
Alumni"So I'm just, you know, recording some of the scenery and I turned around and the class was gone. But, what I saw was three wild dogs..."
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Charles Friou '46
Charles Friou '46
Alumni“Some of the courses had horrendous reading lists. I remember sitting in Albee one night, like 3 o’clock in the morning, trying to read a novel that had to be finished by the next morning. And Dean Gray walks in, and says, “Oh hi, I just wondered why the lights were on!” It was that kind of intimate, personal, environment that we were in.”
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Leora Fulvio, '97 (BardCorps)
Leora Fulvio '97
Alumni"I would say my experience at Bard has pretty much informed my whole life."
