Featuring BatesNews stories, stories from the news media, alumni photography, and campus event videos, here’s a list of the top 10 Bates Facebook posts of 2021.
The list is ranked by “reach,” generally defined as the number of Facebook users who saw a given piece of Bates content arrive on their screens.
10. ‘Very real and tangible way’
In this quote card, President Clayton Spencer framed the college’s $100 million college access initiative in bold terms.
Reach: 6,912
9. Science on display
Last June, the publication Mainebiz took a long look at the college’s new Bonney Science Center and liked what they saw.
“Bonney’s design approach — with versatile spaces that promote interaction and teamwork — reflects a 21st-century pedagogy that leaves behind the conventional lecture-followed-by-lab model and instead encourages hands-on student engagement, innovation, inclusivity and transparency,” said Mainebiz reporter Laurie Schreiber.
Reach: 8,035
8. Campus Construction Update announces the opening of Bonney Science Center
The popular chronicle of Bates facilities projects, Campus Construction Update reported on a ribbon-cutting for the new Bonney Science Center in August.
“With a champagne toast and synchronized chops from ceremonial Bates-branded shears, President Spencer and donors Michael ’80 and Alison Grott Bonney ’80 snipped a garnet ribbon and the Bonney Science Center was declared open for business on Aug. 23.”
Reach: 8,076
7. Video: Gene Clough goes skydiving
Gene Clough is a retired Bates faculty member beloved by generations of Bates students. He has age-related dementia, and one day at lunch, he and Bates friends Jacob Kendall and Sylvia Deschaine were talking about ways he could stay physically active and engaged.
And so was hatched the plan for Clough to go skydiving — and it was all recorded on video.
Reach: 8,254
6. ‘Love persevering’
This post shares a BatesNews story on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, which looked at the Bates legacy of Peter Goodrich ’89, who died aboard hijacked United Flight 175. Twenty years later, love for Goodrich has persevered, providing a path forward to honor his legacy at Bates.
Reach: 8,917
5. Numbers, facts, and insights about the Class of 2025
Published in advance of the arrival of the Class of 2025, this Facebook post shared a BatesNews story featuring tidbits about the new class, whose members include an eco-friendly business founder, a Maine lobster boat co-owner, a co-creator of a TikTok brand with over 277,000 followers, a self-published children’s book author, and a nomadic sheep and goat herder in Mongolia, just to name a few.
Reach: 9,766
4. Like father, like daughter
This post shared a BatesNews story about Tiauna Walker ’21, who was born when her father, Ed Walker ’02, was a first-year student just finding his place on the Bates campus. “How far we’ve come,” says the proud dad.
Reach: 12,797
3. $100 million game changer
In late September, Bates announced a $100 million initiative to transform financial aid opportunities for talented students who are Pell eligible, low income, or undocumented. The initiative “is a game changer for Bates,” said President Clayton Spencer.
The Schuler Access Initiative is powered by a $50 million challenge grant from the Schuler Education Foundation that will be matched dollar for dollar by Bates donors.
Reach: 12,927
2. The sun set, and a full moon ascended
Photographer Josh Turner ‘20 visited Lewiston at dusk on Friday, Feb 26, 2021, and created these stunning images of campus, with February’s nearly full moon, the Wolf Moon, looming over it all.
Reach: 12,955
1. Angela Davis on MLK Day at Bates
The college’s keynote speaker for Martin Luther King Jr. Day last January was the renowned activist and scholar Angela Davis, who spoke with Professor of English Therí Pickens about the U.S. carceral state, the Black Lives Matter movement, and more.
An icon on the international racial justice movement, Davis made the prescient point that “the electoral arena is not, by itself, going to bring about change”.
With the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, “we’ve finally witnessed one important victory against looming fascism,” Davis said. “But that does not mean that we step back. It does not mean that we don’t continue to demonstrate and make demands that Biden and Harris will be compelled to seriously examine.”
Reach: 13,572
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