“I am proud of our students for all of these ways in which they reach out beyond campus,” wrote Hill. “So many of them have a very strong commitment to the local community where they live the vast majority of the year. They also by law have the right to register and vote locally.”

Read Hill’s letter in full below:

Ease Voting Process For Vassar Students

Vassar College students take part in the local community in many ways: several hundred volunteer each semester, working in human service agencies, at health-care clinics, as tutors in local schools, to note only a few examples. Through internships in the community, they contribute what they’ve learned in classes and gain additional on-the-job experience in government, business and social services. They raise money for local causes, including contributing to the college’s annual Community Works campaign, which to date has raised more than $500,000 for local nonprofits. I am proud of our students for all of these ways in which they reach out beyond campus. So many of them have a very strong commitment to the local community where they live the vast majority of the year. They also by law have the right to register and vote locally.

For that reason, I would ask election officials for the opportunity to work together to resolve the obstacles for future elections that made it difficult for students to vote in the last election. Many of our students were challenged as they went to the polls, being required to vote by paper “affidavit” ballot rather than using a voting machine. The issues cited involved students’ addresses on campus, a situation complicated by the fact that the Vassar campus is in multiple voting districts.

We need to be able to assure our students who are registered voters of their opportunity to participate in elections.

Catharine Hill

President, Vassar College

Poughkeepsie

Karl-Dietrich Wolff, a former student activist and German publisher, was denied entry into the US at JFK International Airport this weekend, according to British newspaper The Guardian.  Wolff was set to attend and speak at the conference, “African American Civil Rights and Germany in the 20^th Century”, October 1-4 at Vassar College. 

 Other speakers are to include members of the Vassar community and international activists and educators related with the history of African Americans in Germany, including Associate Professor of History Maria Hoehn and Angela Davis of the University of California, Santa Cruz.

 Wolff spoke to The Guardian and said that as he went through customs, “They filtered me out of the line right away. They had a print-out which had my picture from my visa [saying] in big spelling ‘revoked, revoked, revoked’. They told me I was trying to enter the country with an invalid visa.” 

 Wolff was under the impression that his Visa was valid until November 2010, but found out that the US had considered his Visa revoked as of 2003.  According to The Guardian, he was questioned for six hours, during which his fingerprints and photograph were taken, and then sent back to Frankfurt.

Wolff, now 66 years old, became involved in the civil rights movement when he visited the United States as a high school exchange student in the 1960’s.  Since then, Wolff has served as the head of the Socialist German Students’ Organization and in 1969 founded Germany’s Black Panther Solidarity Committee.

 Many international civil and human rights organizations have spoken out against the United States’ treatment of Wolff, including PEN, the international writer’s organization, who has condemned his denial of entry and said the actions of the US are “outrageous and must be interpreted as a curtailment of human rights”.

 President Hill issued a statement expressing her disappointment in the decision to deny Wolff entry and said that at the conference she had hoped that Wolff could “share his biographical experience with the international academic community.” 

 Speaking about the conference and his ability attend, Wolff stated to The Guardian that he will not return to the US without a letter of apology, and that “the University is trying to get some video conferencing going so I can speak at the conference after all.”