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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Oja Family (BardCorps)
Anne Oja, David Oja, and Matt Oja
Friend of Bard"Living on campus during that time was a little bit like having Disney World, a national park and home right there, out your front door, every single morning."
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Maureen Osborne, '76 (BardCorps)
Maureen Osborne '76
Alumni/ae/x"I think they [her professors] had faith in me that I didn't really have."
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Susan Playfair, '62 (BardCorps)
Susan Playfair
Alumni/ae/x"It [Bard] had been lambasted by the Walter Winchells...It was amazing that it was able to keep going through the McCarthy era."
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Tamara Plummer, '02 (BardCorps)
Tamara Plummer
Alumni/ae/x"They came from everywhere, you know. We had really interesting conversations that I never had before about race and gender and ethnicity-- and what does it mean to be this thing? and what does it not mean?"
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Audrey Heumann Regen '56 (BardCorps)
Audrey Heumann Regen
Alumni/ae/x"With great difficulty [he] got off his cart and opened the door for Mrs. Roosevelt...and she stood there very regally and she let him, and she let him do that knowing how hard it was for him."
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Maurice Richter, '53 (BardCorps)
Maurice Richter
Alumni/ae/x"In those days we had what we called the Field Period...I worked for the anthropologist Margaret Mead in her office in the American Museum of Natural History."
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Jim Salvucci, '86 (BardCorps)
Jim Salvucci
Alumni/ae/x"I lived in Tewksbury, which was an adventure in itself."
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David Schardt, '71 (BardCorps)
David Schardt
Alumni/ae/x“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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David Schechter, '76 (BardCorps)
David Schechter
Alumni/ae/x"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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Carolee Schneemann, '59 (BardCorps)
Carolee Schneemann '59
Alumni/ae/x"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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Johanna Shafer, '67 (BardCorps)
Johanna Shafer
Alumni/ae/x"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
Alumni/ae/xReamer 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.
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Edie Shean-Hammond, '72 (BardCorps)
Edie Shean-Hammond
Alumni/ae/x"I came [to Bard] never having seen the place, having absolute faith in Walter Cronkite, telling me it would be okay."
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Carole-Jean Smith, '66 (BardCorps)
Carole-Jean Smith
Alumni/ae/x"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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Avron "Avi" Soyer '60 (BardCorps)
Avron "Avi" Soyer '60
Alumni/ae/x“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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Miranda Spencer, '81 (BardCorps)
Miranda Spencer
Alumni/ae/x"I realized that I was a weird and quirky person. When I was at UNH everyone thought I was a complete freakadoid. When I came to Bard everyone thought I was so straightlaced. They called me 'Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.'"
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Joy Steinberg '81 and Brian Gale '81
Joy Steinberg '81 and Brian Gale '81
Alumni/ae/x“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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Darius Thieme, '51 (BardCorps)
Darius Thieme
Alumni/ae/x“Don’t be afraid to live with a blank page, and at the end of the day wind up with a blank page. That’s not bad. A blank page is just part of what you have to do... because you have to spend that time thinking about it.”
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Joan Tower (BardCorps)
Joan Tower
Faculty/Staff 1972 - Present"To me, it’s not just an education: it’s making a whole life in music. It’s not getting a degree. It’s providing a huge future of ‘this is what I want to do, this is what I love to do, this is what I want to spend my time doing’ kind of thing.”
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Toni-Michelle C. Travis, '69
Toni-Michelle C. Travis
Alumni/ae/x“In the years when I was growing up, we had no vote for anyone in the District. No school board, no mayor, no anything. It was run by three white men, appointed by the President of the United States, known as commissioners... But my idea was ‘I’m going to figure out how Government works.'”
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Al Varady '88 (BardCorps)
Al Varady '88
Alumni/ae/x“It’s like, once you see someone from Bard … you get it. I get it. You know... it’s that kind of bond, that I don’t think you get from other places, or in the same way, or as strong.”
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Marisa Vural, '01 (BardCorps)
Marisa Vural
Alumni/ae/x"I'm like, this New York City girl who likes to sneak Newport cigarettes in the staircase, but I studied opera at Bard. Who would give me the opportunity to sing opera?"
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Christopher "Chris" Wangro '80 (BardCorps)
Christopher "Chris" Wangro
Alumni/ae/xWangro 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.”
