Media Coverage

Colby's approach to bringing its campus community together around common themes during the pandemic was noted in the Christian Science Monitor story "Can campus unity get small colleges past pandemic into the future?"  "When students at Colby College arrived on Mayflower Hill for coronavirus testing in mid-August, they got something in addition to a nasal swab: a blue bracelet with the words 'One Colby' on one side and 'Hold the Hill' on the other," the story reports.   

The Oct. 6 announcement of a $500-million investment from the Harold Alfond Foundation drew wide media attention, including in the Portland Press Herald, and those stories included Colby, The College is grateful for the foundation's remarkable generosity in supporting Colby athletics and Waterville’s downtown revitalization.  

An ABC News story on Maine's ranked-choice voting included quotes from Professor of Government Dan Shea. "We're starting to get comfortable with it," he told ABC News. "There are still some who are confused, but they have seen it in action and are getting comfortable." Still, there are political issues surrounding the issue. "Not unlike a lot of issues in the world, the partisan divisions have been strong with this," he said.

Professor of Government Dan Shea was tapped to comment on the Portland Press Herald article "Can Susan Collins survive Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party?" Among the questions the article asks is if Senator Collins has changed or if politics have changed. “I think she has been caught up in what scholars are calling affect partisanship or negative partisanship,” explained Shea. “That’s when we don’t simply disagree with the other side, but see the other side as a threat to the nation. That’s happening on both sides. There is less tolerance for those who shift between parties. Less room for the moderates.”

The painting Étude, by Elizabeth Nourse, is the subject of a Washington Post story titled "Side by side yet worlds apart" as part of the paper's "Great Works, In Focus" series. The painting "hangs in the wonderful Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine," the author writes in his introductory paragraph. 

Colby and its testing program are included in an Oct. 2 New York Times story titled "Colleges Learn How to Suppress Coronavirus: Extensive Testing" about colleges that are "beating the pandemic." President Greene told the reporter how frequent testing allowed a positive case to be caught early, and that contract tracing limited the spread. “It could have been 150 people, and we kept it to one person,” President Greene told the Times. 

An extensive story by USA TODAY details Colby's successful COVID-19 testing program and in-person education approach in its article "Colleges are exploding with COVID and have lax testing. One school is keeping cases down." Reporter Chris Quintana spent a day on Mayflower Hill talking with students and faculty about their experiences with testing and life on campus during the pandemic. "Its leaders bet the institution's testing, preparation, and location in a relative haven from the coronavirus would keep students safe, perhaps even safer than they would be at home. So far, they have been right," Quintana writes.

The headline says it all: "Colby College testing ‘going well,’ official overseeing health and safety plans says." The Morning Sentinel talked to Doug Terp, vice president of administration, who said of the low rate of COVID-19 infections that "overall, these results are well below what we were assuming we’d have,” he said. “From the 10,000-foot level, our goal was to get people here and try to get the campus stable, so we were able to do that.”

Blair Braverman '11 has an essay in the New York Times as part of their series on resilience. In her essay "What My Sled Dogs Taught Me About Planning for the Unknown," Braverman links the unknown distances her dogs must run each time they go out with the uncertainties of the length of the pandemic. "That’s how I feel now, midpandemic: that we humans are falling into uncertainty, stretching ourselves thin, and we have no idea how far it is to the finish line. The difference, of course, is that sled dogs want to run, and people do not want to live through a public health crisis. But there’s a parallel in the unknown distance, the unseen ending. And oddly enough, mushing has prepared me for this."

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Gail Carlson was interviewed on the radio program This Green Earth on Sept. 22. In the 30-minute conversation, they talked about Carlson's new research on PFAS in ski wax, "it's surprising findings, and why changes in the use of this type of ski wax are being pursued. These 'forever' chemicals can get into the snow, soil, and surface water, causing biological harm to the local ecology," the program's teaser states. This Green Earth focuses on the environment and environmentalism and broadcasts on KPCW out of Park City, Utah.