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SBU honors Doyne
for work in Nepal
SALUTING A HERO
Meet Reilly!
HOT OFF THE PRESS
Former inmate shares
story of injustice
USA Today editor
keynotes Hellingers
JOURNALISM AWARDS
#RACEMATTERS
Alumnus delivers
keynote, `A Catholic
Case for Reparation'
FRANCIS WEEK 2015
Dr. Matthew Cressler, SBU class of '06,
was selected as this year's Fr. Jerome Kelly
Speaker for Francis Week at the university.
Cressler's talk was "A
Catholic Case for Repara-
tion."
An assistant professor of
religious studies at the Col-
lege of Charleston in
South Carolina, Cressler
combined autobiography
and history to show the Catholic Church's
case for reparation in his talk. Francis of
Assisi was told to "Go and repair (God's)
home which, as you see, is all being de-
stroyed."
He also explored the question Do
Catholics have a unique responsibility to
repair a nation broken by racial injustice? A
video of the presentation is posted on his
blog, www.matthewjcressler.com.
Cressler earned degrees in theology and
history from St. Bonaventure, received the
Ideal Bonaventure Man award, and was in-
volved with Students for the Mountain.
During his three-day visit to campus,
Cressler also visited history and Clare Col-
lege classes, presented at a Thursday Fac-
ulty/Staff Forum, and spoke at Mt.
Irenaeus.
In December, the university
awarded an honorary degree to
Maggie Doyne in recognition of the
work she is doing in Nepal.
In 2006, during a gap-year service
trip after high school, Doyne was car-
ing for Nepalese refugees at an or-
phanage in India when she went to
Nepal to help a girl find her family.
Awestruck by the number of or-
phans she witnessed in the war-torn
country, Doyne phoned home, asked
her parents for her babysitting money,
bought a piece of land, and founded
the Kopila Valley Children's Home. She
never returned to the U.S. to attend
college.
In 2013, Doyne and her team
opened the Kopila Valley Women's
Center, providing literacy and voca-
tional skills training to the women of
Surkhet.
Now, they are working to build a
permanent nursery-to-12th-grade
campus using innovative, sustainable
technology.
The recipient of numerous com-
mendations for her work, Doyne was
named CNN's Hero of the Year on
Nov. 17. She won $100,000.
"Her life of service has drawn inter-
national attention and we believe
she exemplifies the kind of generos-
ity and moral imagination we wish
our students to possess when they
graduate," said Sr. Margaret Carney,
O.S.F., university president.
You may have noticed the Bona Wolf
has a little more spring in his step this
season.
After 17 years, it was time for the pre-
vious wolf to retire and to pass on the
proverbial baton. The new wolf --
named Reilly through a social media
voting campaign -- has big shoes to fill
but says he is up to the task.
Rem Rieder, editor at large and media
columnist for USA Today, was the
keynote speaker Nov. 5 for the journal-
ism school's annual Mark Hellinger
Awards ceremony at the National Press
Club in Washington, D.C.
The honorees included Emily Steves,
'15, Mark Hellinger Award recipient;
Matthew Tack, '15, Mark Hellinger
Award runner-up; Joseph Pinter, '15,
Buffalo News Entrepreneurial Reporting
Award; and William Holzerland, Esq.,
'02, Journalism and Mass Communica-
tion Alumnus of the Year.
Before joining USA Today in July 2013,
Rieder spent more than 20 years as edi-
tor and senior vice president at American
Journalism Review.
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Campus News
Exonerated death row inmate Anthony
Ray Hinton spoke to a standing-room-
only crowd in Dresser Auditorium in Oc-
tober as he shared his story of racism,
injustice and redemption. Joining Hinton
for the program was senior attorney
Charlotte Morrison with the Equal Justice
Initiative, which has won reversal, relief or
release for 115 wrongly condemned pris-
oners on death row.
Hinton's experience -- 30 years on
death row -- put a human face to the
issue of mass incarceration. The pro-
gram was among more than two dozen
lectures, movies and discussions on
campus this fall designed to spur posi-
tive communication about issues of race
and ethnicity. Learn more at
www.sbu.edu/RaceMatters
.