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Hamilton’s Mock Trial team has had a successful competitive year, but it’s not over yet. The team came in 3rd place last weekend (March 6-8) at the Opening Round Championship (ORCs) at Pennsylvania State University, granting them a bid to the national competition in Cincinnati (April 17-19). Of the eight total ORCs tournaments in the country, Penn State’s is known to be one of the most competitive, hosting teams such as Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Columbia and Tufts, all of which frequently compete at the national level.

Twenty years ago in Jacksonville, Ala., Lilly Ledbetter was an ordinary woman who suffered an injustice that women around the world face every day. In a lecture at Hamilton on March 2 Ledbetter recounted how her goals in life were simply to save and create a nest egg for retirement and for her children. Now, she is a noted advocate for equal pay for equal work and has commandeered significant changes in legislation regarding pay discrimination on the basis of sex, including the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that was passed in 2009.

In our society seemingly obsessed with healthy, natural ingredients in everything from food to shampoo, herbal medicines and supplements might seem like a contemporary trend. But their history in fact goes back to the 18th century. A new exhibit at Burke Library is displaying the proof.

Hamilton’s Mock Trial team competed on Feb. 21-22 at the regional competition, held at Buffalo State University. This event determined whether the team would move forward to the opening round championship (ORCs) the weekend of March 6-8.

University of the Arts (Philadelphia) Provost Catherine Kodat read and discussed selections of her recently published book, Don’t Act, Just Dance: The Metapolitics of Cold War Culture on Feb. 17. Kodat taught at Hamilton College for 17 years, and headed the English department for some time. This book, she explained, was aimed at “interrogat[ing] the revisionist thesis of postwar American art.”

Janet Halley, the Royall Professor of Law at Harvard, discussed a realist analysis of rape law on Feb. 12. Halley has an extensive curriculum vitae and has also published several books and articles including: Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism, and Don't: A Reader's Guide to the Military Anti-Gay Policy. The lecture was sponsored by the Levitt Center.

Hamilton commemorated its 15–year partnership with the Posse Foundation by holding a Posse Plus Retreat on Feb. 6-8. The retreat is hosted by the Posse Foundation, a scholarship program that seeks to increase cultural and racial diversity in private colleges by sending students from minority-dominated cities to college together in “posses.” This year marks Posse's 25th year in operation and it has partnered with Hamilton College for the past 15 years. Hamilton’s Posse scholars come from Boston and Miami.

Hamilton College’s student-run Mock Trial team took home 4th place at the recent Cornell Invitational tournament. Twenty-six teams competed. To add to the excitement, two of Hamilton’s attorneys, one from defense and one from plaintiff, won Outstanding Attorney Awards for earning 18 ranks (out of a possible 20). This means that the judges ranked them as being the best attorneys in their trials at least three times.