Dear Families,

There is so much happening at Bard this spring! It’s an action-packed semester so let’s dive right into some of the highlights coming up!

Room selection for the 2025-2026 academic year will take place in April. The Office of Residence Life and Housing sent out an announcement email about this to all undergraduate students in February. The email included lots of helpful information about the room selection process in general, how to sign the 2025-2026 Room Selection Housing Agreement, and how to apply for Intentional Community Living, Themed Living Communities, and Special Application Housing options. Over the next few weeks students will receive additional emails, invitations to information sessions, and more. Click here for more information.

Bard Athletics will host their inaugural Day of Giving campaign, Raptors' Call to Give, on March 27, 2025. Bard Athletics administrators and coaches invite you to join fellow alumni/ae, family, friends, and supporters of Bard Athletics in celebrating and empowering the next generation of Raptors. Contributions to this campaign helps bolster resources for Bard's eighteen varsity programs, including: Equipment, Travel, Recruiting Opportunities, and Facility Enhancements. A link to the giving website will be available closer to March 27.

We’re looking forward to celebrating the Class of 2025 at Bard College’s 165th Commencement Weekend from May 23-25. The full schedule is now available online along with the registration form and an FAQs page. Please take note of the important information below and direct questions to the Events Office at events@bard.edu.

• Commencement is not ticketed but the families of graduating students should register for commencement using this registration form. 
• The barbecue following commencement is free for graduating students but they need to be registered for commencement in advance to receive their complimentary barbecue ticket. They will be prompted to register themselves closer to commencement or families have the option to register them through the registration form.
• The commencement tent opens at 1:00pm and the procession begins at 2:30pm.
• Commencement tent seating is offered on a first-come, first-served basis.
• To provide the most enjoyable experience for all of our guests, we request limiting each party to 6.
• Registration closes on Monday, May 5th at midnight.
• Please bring your favorite reusable bottles to the ceremony. Bard is reducing the use of plastic bottled water on campus. Bottle-filling stations will offer water refills around the perimeter of the commencement tent. 

As always, we are here to help so please do not hesitate to reach out to families@bard.edu with questions about campus events!

Sincerely,

Mackie Siebens ’12
Assistant Director of Development for Family Programs
families@bard.edu | 845 758 7316

P.S. For a full list of events taking place at Bard this month, visit Bard’s events calendar!

 
 

Seven Raptors Ran Personal Bests at NYU Invitational

Seven Raptors ran personal bests in their individual categories for the Bard College track and field team at the NYU Invitational, reports Hudson Valley Press. Gabrielle Parchment ’27 broke her 60-meter school record, finishing 8.41 seconds in her second indoor meet, and ran the 200 meters with a finish time of 29.24 seconds. Carina Cooke ’26 improved her 60-meter time from 8.61 to 8.56 seconds, while Jynaiya Grizzle ’25 and Lismery Guzman-Cruz ’28 both ran a personal best in the 60-meter and the 200-meter. Avery Crafton ’28 ran a personal best in the 200 meters, while Kai Washington ’27 competed in his first indoor meet, running the 60 meters and 200 meters. Ilyas Hotak ’26 shaved nearly 20 seconds off his 800-meter time, while Bo Hopwood ’26 shaved six seconds off his mile time with 5:06.26 minutes.

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Artist Tschabalala Self ’12 Commissioned to Create Portraits of Denzel Washington and His Sons

Visiting Artist in Residence and alumna Tschabalala Self ’12 was commissioned to create portraits of the Washington family—father Denzel and sons John David and Malcolm—who were behind the recent movie adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play The Piano Lesson. Rochelle Steiner writes for TheWrap, “In Self’s hands, images of the Washingtons are intertwined with the film’s characters, such that the real and fictional commingle as references that exemplify Black America.”

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Josephine Sacabo ’67 and Dalt Wonk ’65 Interviewed on New Orleans NPR

Bard alums Josephine Sacabo ’67 and Dalt Wonk ’65 talk to The Reading Life host Susan Larson about their new book New Orleans 1970–2020: A Portrait of the City. Sacabo and Wonk, who are married, reminisce about their first arrival in New Orleans from France 55 years ago and life in the French Quarter during the 1970s.

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Dinaw Mengestu Interviewed in World Literature Today

Dinaw Mengestu, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of the Humanities and director of the Written Arts Program at Bard College, was interviewed in World Literature Today about his latest novel, Someone Like Us. “In this brilliant novel, both mystery and meditation, Mengestu challenges that dominant narrative with a multiplicity of stories which make it impossible for us to look away,” writes Renee H. Shea for World Literature Today.

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Professor Joshua Glick Writes About AI in Film for the Los Angeles Review of Books

Professor Joshua Glick critiqued the movie Here in his recent article for the Los Angeles Review of Books. He considers the movie through the lens of its use of AI, finding that the film’s dependence on the technology mirrors “an embattled film and television industry in dire need of creative reinvigoration and struggling to find a path forward.”

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The Fisher Center at Bard Announces Summerscape 2025, Bringing Opera, Dance, Spiegeltent, and the 35th Bard Music Festival: Martinů and His World, to the Idyllic Hudson River Valley, June 27 – August 17

SummerScape 2025 premieres Pastoral from Fisher Center LAB Choreographer-in-Residence Pam Tanowitz who collaborates with painter Sarah Crowner and composer Caroline Shaw to create a work that muses on and transforms Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F Major. The festival’s other centerpiece is the first full US staging of Czech composer Bedřich Smetana’s 1868 opera Dalibor, which follows a 15th-century knight on trial for his role in a peasant uprising, directed by Jean-Romain Vesperini with the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein.

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