More progress...

Many thanks to everyone who voted in both polls and gave their feedback in the comments sections! We have taken the poll results and your input into consideration in our conversations with each other and with the Office of Development and have made a few decisions about how the prize will be organized. All of these details are pending the final approval of the College. Please note that the prize I'm talking about here is the monetary prize whose description reads:

Awarded annually to the member of the Wells College Community who has demonstrated a commitment to transgender and queer issues, especially through hir services as an ally to the Transgender, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Queer and Allies (TLGBQA) community via activism, visibility, literary, or artistic endeavors.

This does not mean that we've ruled out the idea of an additional, non-monetary honor, but the details mentioned here refer to the monetary prize only.

Here are the basics:

• The prize will be awarded to a student. This detail is subject to review if/when the prize becomes endowed; for now, we felt that this was the most effective way to honor Will's memory through a monetary prize.
  
• The selection of the recipient will be organized as follows:

  The recipient will be chosen by a group of 6 individuals in the Wells community, including a representative of the Dean of Students Office, two members of the student body (one representing Q&A*, and one representing Sex Collective*), the current faculty member assigned to teach the W401*, the previous years’ recipient of the William Nicholas Liberi ‘05 Memorial Prize and an alumna or alumnus of Wells College designated by the William Nicholas Liberi Memorial Fund Advisory Board.

  * Should there fail to be a Q&A organization, a Sex Collective, or a WS401 instructor during the selection year for the prize a new rep will be selected by the Advisory Board Chairs.
  

• The amount awarded will vary depending on funds donated each year. The minimum amount will be $250.
  

You may notice that we've mentioned an Advisory Board; this is Carrie's brilliant idea! We've designed the Advisory Board as a way to include all of you in the process of selecting the prize recipients. We envision the Advisory Board functioning as follows:

• Anyone interested in joining the Advisory Board may submit their name and e-mail address via the blog (here) or via e-mail to willmemorial@gmail.com.
  
• The Advisory Board Chairs are Carrie and me. We will serve as the acting members for the first two years that the prize is awarded.
• Advisory Board members will be ranked at random on a numbered list and will be informed of their numbered rank as soon as the roster is finalized.
  
• Beginning in 2010, the Advisory Board member at position #1 will serve as acting Board member and will participate in the selection process in cooperation with the prize selection committee as detailed above.
  
• Acting member responsibilities will progress down the list in numbered order and will begin again with the Advisory Board Chairs followed by position #1, etc., when the list has been exhausted.
• The Advisory Board Chairs will be responsible for keeping the Advisory Board informed of relevant news and upcoming selection committee responsibilities.
  

So, if you want to be on the Advisory Board, leave your comments here with full name as you want it to appear on the Advisory Board roster and an e-mail address that you check often! If you don't want to post it here, e-mail us at willmemorial@gmail.com. We'll be setting a deadline, so look for that soon, and stay tuned for more updates!

(Don't forget, if you want to receive an e-mail whenever we post something new to the blog, enter your e-mail address in the box at the top of the right-hand side panel!)

Donating Books in Will's Name

Meghan has been inquiring about the process for making book donations to the Wells College Library in remembrance of Will. She's started a wonderful blog on the subject at:

http://rememberingwillwithbooks.blogspot.com/

Check it out.

Got fliers?

Want to help with fundraising? If you'll be attending a conference, community outreach event, party, or other gathering, drop us a line and we'll e-mail you a copy of the William Nicholas Liberi Memorial Prize flier that Carrie made. It's a great way to get the word out about Will and the prize fund. (This past weekend, for example, I got to spend some time with Vic Munoz, Ednie Garrison, and Jenna Basiliere at the American Studies Association conference in Philadelphia, where we distributed the fliers and posted them on the info boards for folks to look at and pick up.)


If you work at or spend time in a community center, safe space, or other venue with a bulletin board or literature table, we'd love to send you an electronic copy, too. Download our flyer here or send e-mail to willmemorial@gmail.com


(Please note, the flier contains the wording for the prize as of our posting on October 9th, and does not yet reflect any upcoming changes or poll results.)

Poll Extended

We've decided to extend voting on the "Who should be eligible to win the Will Liberi Memorial Prize" poll, which had previously been set to close today. If you've been reading the blog but have not yet weighed in on this aspect of the prize, we encourage you not only to vote, but to leave your feedback in the comments section. To recap:

• The poll is to determine whether the prize should be open only to students or to the broader Wells Community.
• Some of the feedback has suggested that students will benefit more from a monetary prize than faculty or staff will, and also that faculty and staff have the potential to play an equally significant role in tlgbq activism as do students. What do you think?
• For the purposes of the official wording of the prize, we'll have to designate who is eligible, but Maggie Thomas '84 has assured me that exceptions can be made (and have historically been made) with regard to criteria for prize recipients.
  

So, please continue to think about this part of the prize designation and give us your thoughts (even if you've already posted, we'd love to read more!). We'd like to close the poll with a larger majority on one side or the other than just four or five votes.

Suggestions for the Wording of the Prize

A quick recap on all the suggestions that we have received for the wording of the prize thus far.

Lee Bender has suggested this:

Awarded annually to a Wells College student who has demonstrated a commitment to transgender issues through service to the community via activism, visibility, literary, or artistic endeavors.

We've also heard the suggestion that the prize be given to a transgender student specifically.

Vic Munoz has also suggested the prize be named The William Nicholas Liberi Memorial Prize for TLGBQ Activism.

My previous suggestion was: The William Nicholas Liberi Memorial Prize: Awarded annually to the member of the Wells College Community who has demonstrated a commitment to transgender and queer issues, especially through hir services as an ally to the tlgbq community.

Does anyone else have any feedback towards these suggestions or other suggestions on the prize name, or the prize description? We would like to nail this down soon, because we feel that the more stable the terms of the prize are, the more comfortable people will be sending in their donations. All of your feedback helps immensely.

Speaking of donations, some have already come in, and we will be receiving weekly reports from alumnae relations as money continues to come in. We've set a fundraising goal of $5000, and over the coming week, we'll put up an icon that will track our progress towards that goal.

After we get the terms of the prize squared away we can move towards deciding who should judge the prize. Please keep your feedback coming in that area as well. Later in the week we will recap the suggestions for judging committees for the prize.

Good news!

We just received word that our first donation has come in! Thank you to our donor and thanks in advance to those who plan to donate this year! Once we determine a fund raising goal, we'll be posting an application to give you regular updates on the fund raising progress, so look for that soon.

To anyone who has been hesitant about donating to the fund at this early stage, we want to share with you a message we received yesterday from the Development office:

Katie and Carrie: For your records, please note that all gifts made in
memory of Will Liberi, unless otherwise specified by the donor, will be
designated for the William Nicholas Liberi '05 Memorial Prize Fund.

I've copied both of the people (John and Lori) who work in development
services at Wells in on this so that they have this information for gift
entry.

I will also check with each person who made gifts in memory of Will
during Volunteer Retreat weekend to see if they want their gifts
designated this way.

We'll talk more soon!

Maggie Thomas '84
Director of Annual Giving

So, to anyone who's thinking about donating, but wants a little reassurance that the money will go to the right place, we hope that helps! You can donate online now by clicking the link on the top right-hand sidebar, which will take you to the Wells giving page. Don't forget to select "Will Liberi '05 Memorial Fund" under Gift Designation.

Thanks to everyone who's commented so far! We want as much feedback as possible, so if you haven't weighed in yet, get your comments up on the blog or shoot us an e-mail at willmemorial@gmail.com.

There's been a lot of conversation going on so far. Here's what we've taken from the comments that have been made:

1. It sounds like a lot of you want to see a memorial book donation in Will's name, in addition to a prize given out at Honors Convocation.

2. It sounds like people want the prize at Honors Convocation to be a prize for students.

3. Many of you would also like to recognize community members in general (especially faculty) with a second prize. On this end, we're doing research into what's feasible in terms of how the College awards prizes on an annual basis. To the best of our knowledge all the prizes awarded at Honors Convocation are monetary prizes, so if people are interested in an honorary, non-monetary prize for the non-student community at Wells that may be separate from a prize given out at Honors Convocation.


We've been talking to Development at Wells and working specifically on developing a memorial prize that honors Will that will be given in some form during Honors Convocation every year. In order to get one established we need to figure out the terms of the prize. Because we want to establish this prize to be awarded for the first time at the end of the 2007 - 2008 academic year, setting up the terms and fund for the prize is our #1 priority. So to move forward, these are the questions we still need to answer:

1. Do we have a wording and a name for the prize that everyone agrees on? We haven't seen other suggestions for wording besides Carrie's suggestions (The William Nicholas Liberi Memorial Prize: Awarded annually to the member of the Wells College Community who has demonstrated a commitment to transgender and queer issues, especially through hir services as an ally to the tlgbq community.) Should we move forward with this? Do people have specific objections or other suggestions?

2. It's really important that we establish a prize with longevity. This is part of the reason that we've set up the poll on fund raising goals. We need to know that the monetary fund that is established is easily replenished each year, and we need to set dollar amount to award at Honors Convocation every year. Do you plan to donate on an annual basis? Will you commit to donating every year or even a few times a year?

3. Should only students be eligible to win the prize given at honors convocation, or should the whole community be eligible? Opening up the prize to the whole community means that anyone from a student to a professor, to a housekeeper to an employee of the bookstore can win. If the prize is student-only, obviously, it is restricted to the student body. (Look for a poll on this question in the right hand column.)

4. Who should the judges be? There has been a lot of talk about alums judging. We can find out if that is possible. If it is, who wants to volunteer to do it every year? If it's not who should be in charge of making the decision?

Finally, in terms of donating books in Will's name... if people want to get started on that, it's a wonderful idea. Is there someone interested in taking the helm, and finding out the feasibility of the project? We are committed to setting up the prize fund, which we'll have to do directly through the Office of Development. If someone else is interested in contacting the library, or taking charge of doing this book thing as a separate project that would be great. Perhaps the best way to organize book donations would be to set up a separate memorial project and there's definitely room for discussion about how to do that here--or even on a separate, linked blog.

Donations!

Thanks to the External Relations Department at Wells, online donations are up and running ahead of schedule! Please click the link at the top of the sidebar to go to the Wells gifts page. Make sure you specify that you want your gift designated to the Will Liberi '05 Memorial Fund. According to External Relations, "Gifts that come in with that designation will be marked for that fund even before a decision is made as to the specifics of a prize or other memorial."

We're still counting on you to help us work out the specifics of the prize. Any bloggers out there not from Wells, please don't hesitate to comment and/or donate! All who knew Will are welcome here and we hope that this memorial fund will honor his memory and his passions at Wells and beyond.

If you have any questions and don't want to post publicly, we've set up an e-mail for the prize fund as well. Send e-mail to willmemorial@gmail.com

Ok, a second option. How do people feel about:

The William Nicholas Liberi Memorial Prize: Awarded annually to the member of the Wells College Community who has demonstrated a commitment to transgender and queer issues, especially through hir services as an ally to the tlgbq community.

and another aspect to think about, should it be open to the whole college community or just to students. check comments on my last post for more discussion on that topic.

Decisions, decisions...

Now that we've got a thread going on the wording for the prize, we need to decide how we'd like the recipient to be determined. Please keep in mind that all of this will have to be approved by the College before it goes into action, but we are working through the proper channels to make sure that happens.

So, when it comes to judging, many prizes at Wells work differently. Vic Muñoz has pointed out that the Women's Studies department judges for the Dorothy Allison Razor's Edge Prize, the Psych department judges for the Psychology Prize, etc. The Ann Russ Prize, on the other hand, is judged by a panel comprised of various community members, faculty, administrators, and students.

Whom do you think should decide on the annual recipient of the Will Liberi prize?

How about The William Nicholas Liberi Memorial Prize - Awarded annually to the member of the Wells College Community who has demonstrated a commitment to queer issues, especially through hir services as an ally to the queer community.

Thoughts?

Good morning, everyone!

I've got a brief update on our progress toward establishing the financial end of the prize fund. Here are the basics:

• In order to avoid the financial and administrative legwork of endowing a scholarship fund, it makes sense to call this memorial the Will Liberi Prize (or the like) rather than the Will Liberi Scholarship and designate a dollar amount to be awarded at Honors Convocation at the end of each year. (You may notice that change to the title of this blog.)
• Online donations will be up and running very soon! We're working with the Development Office at Wells to get this page linked right up to the Wells giving site and plan to have a place for you to donate directly to Will's memorial prize within a few weeks! (We're very excited about this and hope you are, too!) Remember, these donations will be TAX DEDUCTIBLE!
• We need your input to decide on the specifics of the prize, like the wording, the judging, etc. See Carrie's post for progress on that front.
  

I know there's been a lot of interest flying around about organizing a memorial prize, so if you're reading this, I hope you'll pass the word along that things are happening here! And comment, comment, comment!

Welcome friends and loved ones of Will Liberi, Wells College class of 2005.

This blog is intended to serve as a gathering spot for all those who are interested in building a scholarship fund in memoriam to Will. Please forgive the sparseness of the content for the time being and stay tuned for updates as progress continues toward a successful scholarship fund.

All feedback is welcome, linking is great, and please post a comment if you want to get involved!

Any ideas for fundraising, award criteria, and especially names for this prize are especially welcome in the comments section at this time.