T HE F LAT H AT
Vol. 113, Iss. 5 | Wednesday, April 19, 2023
The Weekly Student Newspaper
RYAN GOODMAN / THE FLAT HAT
of The College of William and Mary
COURTESY PHOTO / OFFICE OF UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATION, NEBRASKA-LINCOLN
flathatnews.com | @theflathat
COURTESY PHOTO / SARAH JACKSON
Three candidates strive for dean of faculty of Arts and Sciences Questions during three town halls highlight faculty concerns over future of humanities, faculty role in administrative decision-making
DANIEL KALISH // FLAT HAT NEWS EDITOR
On March 22 and April 4-5, the final three candidates for the dean of Arts and Sciences position at the College of William and Mary each gave presentations and answered questions from faculty members during hour-long town halls. The candidates are acting Dean of Arts and Sciences of the College Suzanne Raitt, Divisional Dean for Social Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Cincinnati Sarah Jackson and Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln William Thomas. The three candidates met with student leaders and other campus representatives during their visit to the College. The dean of Arts and Sciences position has been vacant since August 2022, when Maria Donoghue Velleca stepped down two years after taking the role. Raitt, who has served in the role since Jan. 1, 2023, held the first town hall on March 22. Approximately 30 faculty, staff and administration members attended the event inperson and over 70 joined via Zoom. “We’re funny, we’re smart, we’re erudite, we’re eclectic. But we don’t have a structure right now that articulates and dramatizes all our strengths and all our differences,” Raitt said. Raitt, a co-chair of the Steering Committee for Computing, Data Science and Applied Science Initiative, proposed an umbrella structure in which five schools – computing, data and applied sciences; creative and performing arts; humanities; social sciences and natural and lab sciences – would all fit under Arts and Sciences. Raitt emphasized her deep institutional knowledge during the town hall. Since arriving at the College in 2000, she has served in a number of positions, including chair of the English department, faculty representative to the Board of Visitors and vice dean for Arts, Humanities and Interdisciplinary Studies. “I’ve been here for a really long time,” Raitt said. “I really like working here, and I know that we can transform ourselves and move forward in a way that we want to do if we can build the right kind of culture with the right kind of leader.”
Jackson held the second town hall on April 4. According to Jackson, her interest in working at the College stems from her undergraduate experience at Harvard University, where she enjoyed being challenged and stretched across disciplines. “[William and Mary] is one of those really extraordinary places that combines a student-centered liberal arts experience, a real commitment to the transformations that happen during that experience, with the energy and vitality of a research institution,” Jackson said.
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I hope to be able to make an announcement by the end of April, after I receive the search committeeʼs report, review the community feedback and make the final decision. - Provost Peggy Agouris
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As an archeologist and anthropologist, Jackson argued that this combination of a liberal arts and a research oriented education produces empathetic students who are well-suited for analyzing data. She also said that the key strengths she would like to build upon and advance as dean include fostering an environment that promotes creative thinking and building and furthering an inclusive community. “I am good at moving us from a space of talking consulting to starting to pull out threads, pull out big ideas, start to bring them
together and say, ‘Hey, let’s start to think about what actions are going to come out of this, how we’re going to make decisions about what will come next,’” Jackson said. Jackson also explained some of her ideas on how to build on the goals of Vision 2026, prompting a faculty member to point out that the plan is a sore subject for some members. The faculty member cited an open letter that over 200 members signed, which explained their concerns with the administration over being excluded from major decision making at the College. Thomas held the final town hall on April 5. Prior to his time at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Thomas served as a professor of history at the University of Virginia. Throughout his career, he has led efforts to promote digital humanities. “I’m here today because in my view, William and Mary is the leading public university committed to the arts and sciences, to the liberal arts in teaching and research,” Thomas said. Thomas described his experience working on an interdisciplinary project that brought together leaders from across the University of Nebraska-Lincoln system, culminating in the creation of an animated film chronicling the largest attempted slave escape in United States history, “The Bell Affair.” “What I’ve learned from that experience is how working together across disciplines and across colleges, bringing different expertise to the table, including working in and with communities involving graduate and undergraduate students at the heart of that project … changes everything,” Thomas said. During each town hall, faculty asked the candidates questions about building morale, their leadership style and future plans for the College, including Vision 2026 and the potential school for computer, data and applied science. Faculty also asked Jackson and Thomas about their relevant experiences in anticipation of the potential new school of computer, data and applied sciences at the College. See ACADEMICS page 2
WILLIAMSBURG
First Baptist Church Excavation project reveals genetic link to church community
The Colonial Williamsburg project finds bodies at site of original First Baptist Church are of African descent, possibly original church members EMMA HENRY FLAT HAT NEWS EDITOR
Thursday, April 6, archaeologists working on the First Baptist Church Excavation project in Colonial Williamsburg presented their findings on burial sites and human remains found on the grounds of the original First Baptist Church in 2021 at the Williamsburg Stryker Center. Colonial Williamsburg, the First Baptist Church and Let Freedom Ring Foundation partnered with the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation in May of 2020 to “conduct ground-penetrating radar,” according to the project’s website. Initial results concluded that the original First Baptist Church site, founded by free and enslaved Black men and women at the start of the American Revolution, had been covered by a parking lot on South Nassau Street in Colonial Williamsburg. Over the next few years, an excavation project revealed the original foundation of the church as well as evidence of burial sites on the property. In February 2021, members of the First Baptist Church congregation met to agree on the next phase of the project, ultimately deciding to excavate the deceased in order to learn about their identities and properly honor their memory. In July 2022, archaeologists began their excavation of the burial sites and presented their findings to the community at the start of April.
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“The First Baptist Church was organized in 1776 by enslaved and free Black people in defiance of laws of the day forbidding the congregation of African Americans,” the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation said a press release. The physical church site, built in 1856, was purchased by Colonial Williamsburg in 1956 and torn down, with the payment for the land then used to construct the second iteration of the First Baptist Church on Scotland Street. Member of the First Baptist Church and President of the Let Freedom Ring Foundation Connie Matthews Harshaw spoke about the initial goals of the excavation project. “The Let Freedom Ring Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, we are associated with the historic First Baptist Church, and we are directly responsible for protecting and preserving the historic building and landscape and collecting and preserving artifacts,” Harshaw said. “I say that because we were looking for artifacts on the original site of the First Baptist Church when we met with CW in March of 2020, and we thought if we could just find some of the artifacts on the original site, that would be great.” Since the initial excavation began, experts from the College of William and Mary, the University of Connecticut and Colonial Williamsburg have completed DNA, osteological and archeological studies of the bodies buried on the site of the original church. Their findings have now proven
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that the individuals buried on the site are of African descent and many are believed to have constructed the original 1856 church building. Out of 63 confirmed burials, Colonial Williamsburg decided to test the extent of preservation on three deceased individuals. National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the University of Connecticut Raquel Fleskes aided with the osteological and DNA analysis of the exhumed remains. “The Virginia area has very high clay soils that are very acidic and very wet, and so those three factors usually lead to poor preservation of human remains,” Fleskes said. “We wanted to make sure that we weren’t going to be uncovering these graves unnecessarily.” According to Fleskes, out of the three burials tested, burial No. 26 was the best preserved, potentially due to the location of his body which excavators found underneath the foundation of one of the church buildings. “With burial No. 26, we were able to generate really good DNA data — this individual is male, he has an X and Y chromosome and he is of African descent,” Fleskes said. “These findings are really important because it provides the only definitive estimation of the ancestry of these burials. Because the osteological remains were very poor, they could only very tangentially estimate ancestry affiliation. So the DNA provides that concrete estimate of what population [these individuals]
are closely associated with.” Harshaw emphasized the importance of the input from descendent community members, and the significance of the accomplishments on the property since 2020. “America has heard the story told by others for a very long time,” Harshaw said. “This is the descendants’ story, and they must have a voice. They must make the decisions about what happens on that site, they must make a decision about anything that’s found on that site. And this was before we knew about intact burials – we needed to make sure we had 100% community and descendent engagement.” Harshaw mentioned that the team working on this project and partners at the College’s Institute of Historic Biology will be recognized this fall as one of the most successful community engagement efforts currently going on in the United States. “It is, right now, considered to be the most historically significant archaeological project in the country,” Harshaw said. “It was a challenge at first because we had to rebuild trust in the community in Colonial Williamsburg and also the other partners in the community because of the treatment they received during the Jim Crow era. A lot of the descendants that were here then are still alive, so I have to tell you that we have made remarkable progress in improving those relations.” See WILLIAMSBURG page 4
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