As the College year draws to a close, I want to share with you some of the successes, concerns, and future hopes that are on my mind this spring.

I am writing first of all to update you on the numerous steps we have taken over the past several months to upgrade Trinity’s campus security. The College’s students, faculty, and staff must feel safe as they go about their daily activities, and the measures that are now in place will ensure this as much as is humanly possible. These measures include the following:

• Ten contract campus safety officers have been added to our staff to patrol the campus on foot at night, so that there is now an average of 18 officers on duty from dusk to dawn.
• James A. Perrotti has been hired as interim director of campus safety. He is the former chief of police at Yale University and has served in a similar interim capacity at Boston College and Old Dominion University. The search for a permanent head of campus safety is under way.
• Margolis Healy & Associates, a firm specializing in safety and security for colleges and universities, has been hired to suggest ways to strengthen our security program. They will advise the College on a strategy called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, which involves evaluating landscaping, lighting, fencing, security cameras, frequency and style of patrols, and other measures. They will provide us with a plan by this summer, with implementation planned for the fall.
• We are also working closely with the Hartford Police to support safety initiatives throughout the College’s broader neighborhood.

While the campus community has given much thought to security matters this semester, I can assure you that other, vitally important initiatives have also been going on, and I am happy to report on some of these.

• As of this writing, we await word from the group of very talented students who have been accepted to attend Trinity in the fall. Three years ago, we had approximately 4,600 applicants in our pool, and this year that number has risen to an impressive 7,700, proof that the College continues to be a highly desirable destination for this generation of students.
• Thanks to the generosity of Trustee John Gates ’76, P’13 as lead donor, we are beginning work on a beautiful new landscaping plan for Mather Quad. This campus crossroads will have a totally refreshed look by the time school opens in the fall, as befi ts its importance as a centralized social space.
• The College has learned that we currently have three Fulbright winners this year—Jessica Cote ’12, Sophia Becker ’09, and Eliot Fearey ’10, and as of press time for this issue of the Reporter, we are waiting to hear about two other potential winners.
• Another forward-thinking donor has come forth with one-half of the funding needed for the proposed new neuroscience wing to be built adjacent to the Jacobs Life Sciences Center. As many of you are aware, the neuroscience program at Trinity is attracting increasing numbers of students to its interdisciplinary classes and laboratories.
• We currently have in hand 60 percent of the funding needed to construct the College’s much-needed music performance and rehearsal building. Throughout a wide range of genres, from classical to samba, our program produces superb musicians, and the new facility will give them a setting to display their talents.
• On the athletic front, there is a great deal to celebrate. At the time of this writing, the women’s lacrosse team finished the regular season with a 14-1 record, and they are the top seed in the upcoming NESCAC Final Four. The baseball team is 23-8, finished the NESCAC East Division at 10-2, and is ranked No. 23 nationally. The men’s lacrosse, golf, men’s tennis, women’s tennis, men’s rowing, and women’s rowing are all in contention for league titles this spring, while the men’s lacrosse, men’s and women’s tennis, and women’s rowing squads have been ranked among the nation’s best.

In closing, I assure you that as we seek to put in place a comprehensive campus safety program, the College remains focused on its central mission, providing a superb liberal arts education for our students. In this issue of the Reporter, you will find articles detailing a number ways in which our excellent faculty is doing just that, through a combination of teaching and scholarly work. I am also happy to report that Trinity has just added eight more new, young teacher/scholars to our faculty roster beginning in the fall, covering a wide range of disciplines from chemistry to classics to political science. This brings the number of new faculty members hired since 2008 to 32, thus ensuring that future generations of Trinity students will continue to enjoy a top-notch academic experience.

Thank you for all you do to support these efforts. Our Trinity alumni and parents are demonstrably among the most loyal of any college in America, for which I am extremely grateful. Very truly yours,

James F. Jones, Jr.
President and Trinity College Professor in the Humanities