Stroll through campus, take an English class, broadcast from WRCU, practice on the athletics fields.

From the sleepy early morning hours in the village to the energy radiating off the University’s athletics fields as the sun descended, photographer Laura Barisonzi captured the character of Colgate as she dashed around snapping scenes one day in mid-September.

Observing Bee-havior

People usually avoid being in the proximity of bees, but these students migrated toward them in order to gather data on foraging behavior and pollination. Bees are slower in the morning, making it easier to observe them among the goldenrod and purple knapweed near the Harry H. Lang Cross Country and Fitness Trail. 

The Evolution, Ecology, and Diversity Lab students spread out, homed in on particular bees, and used their phones to time how long the insects would spend on a flower before moving on to another. Honeybees are incredibly preferential and often stick to one type of flower, explains laboratory instructor Christine LaFave, who has been teaching this lab for 25 years now. That’s why there are certain types of honey, like clover and wildflower. 

Pictured above (left to right): Gill Lustenberger ’27, Juliana Way ’26, and Sloan Petersohn ’26.

The Craft of Storytelling 

Students including Zul Ahmed ’24 and Thomas Cernosia ’24 (photo below, top right) participated in a zine-making workshop led by visual artist Chitra Ganesh (photo below, bottom right), whose fall visit also included painting a wall-sized mural in Clifford Gallery. In the workshop, students learned DIY techniques for making foldable books out of simple materials, as well as how to develop their own style in telling a story or sharing information. Ganesh showed a range of visual approaches along with some of her own work in this medium. “It was meant to correspond to and echo her orientation toward graphic novels and comics that is so active in the [mural] exhibition,” explains Associate Professor of Art Margaretha Haughwout. 

Bestselling novelist Emily St. John Mandel (Station Eleven, The Glass Hotel, and Sea of Tranquility), pictured below, left, answered students’ questions in an intimate classroom setting before she delivered her Living Writers talk in Persson Hall auditorium. In a podcast with Professor Jennifer Brice, Mandel said nearly all of her fiction boils down to “the question of what it means to be a decent person in trying times.” Sea of Tranquility was one of nine works of literature in the 2023 Living Writers series, in which more than 6,000 students, alumni, and friends of Colgate participated.

In the Coop 

Community Garden Manager Beth Roy (photo below, left) sells luscious flowers and produce at the weekly stand. 

Liam Davis ’27 (photo below, right), from East Stroudsburg, Pa., takes a midday break for coffee and journaling. Davis, a member of the track and field and cross country teams, plans to major in computer science. 

Caroline Gaskin ’24 (photo below, pictured middle) was grabbing a meal in the Coop when she ran into her friends Andrew Choi ’24 (left of Gaskin) and Toviel Francis ’24 (right of Gaskin). The three decided to catch up with each other and study together.

Cooper Lowell ’25 (below), who is the general manager of WRCU, has been with the radio station since his first year at Colgate. In each episode of his show, called The Critter Corner, “I will choose a place, like a meadow or a city street, where one would find critters, and I play songs that would fit those critters’ vibes,” explains the English major from Free Union, Va. In one show, he played “Train Round the Bend” by The Velvet Underground and talked about the rats in the New York City subway. In a segment about meadows, he played “Simulation Swarm” by Big Thief. “The lyrics in this song hold a certain whimsy that fits right with meadows,” he says.

Laura Barisonzi is a New York City– and Los Angeles–based photographer and director who strives to capture natural action and genuine emotion. “My style is based on the beauty of real people and natural movement rather than stiff poses,” says Barisonzi, who studied at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Her wide-ranging clients include the Guardian, Rolling Stone, Runner’s World, CBS, the NFL, The Nature Conservancy, Calvin Klein, and Cartier.