Well hello again, class of 2011. I have some great news to report in this column—for the first time I have received a few updates I didn’t solicit (although most of these updates I still had to ask for). Don’t be shy and keep ’em coming!


Hannah Payne is at Stanford studying for her doctorate in neuroscience—talk about brains! In April she was awarded a fellowship from the National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship program and has been enjoying running, skiing, concerts and California’s warm weather. 


Now we’re going international. Ron Chavarria, who now goes by Logan De La Cruz, is pursuing his art career in Munich, Germany. He participated in a group show in October with Young Munich Creatives and had a benefit solo show at Café Regenbogen der Münchner Aids-Hilfe in February—100 percent of the proceeds raised by his paintings went directly to Munich’s AIDS organization. His next show will be in Hanover in June for the “Perspectives on Design” exhibition with fellow ’11, Max Van Pelt. If you’re interested in seeing his work, check out his website: logandelacruz.blogspot.com.


Kashay Sanders has been living in Hyderabad, India, since graduation. She did an IDEX Fellowship in Social Enterprise and is now working fulltime for an organization there called Voice4girls, which was started in part by Averil Spencer ’10. “The organization’s flagship program is a summer camp for low-income girls that focuses on both English-speaking immersion and life skills (goal-setting, confidence, hygiene),” Kashay writes. “Right now we are in the throes of training counselors (who are usually Indian college women) for the camp. Aside from a few trips home I will be spending year two of alum life here in India with Voice4girls!”


Emily Baxter is in London working on a master’s of science in gender at the gender institute at the London School of Economics (LSE). “My program has been flexible in that it has allowed me to continue studying the intersection of politics, gender studies and religion, which was my focus at Dartmouth,” she writes. “That said, I’ve taken classes ranging from gender and development to sexuality in a global perspective. I am writing a dissertation, due in September, on masculinity and patriarchy within the Catholic church.” She told me that she’s also interning with the international state crime initiative at King’s College, which, in association with Harvard, researches crimes committed by states against their own people. She even managed to find time to perform in The Vagina Monologues in February at LSE. She’s looking to be in either New York or London next year working on issues of women’s rights and is guessing more school—perhaps even a doctorate—is in her future.


Kashay and Emily, who lived together at Dartmouth, also traveled in April around northern India together. They visited Pushkar, Udaipur and the Taj Mahal.


Also pursuing academics in England in Neil Basu. He’s getting his master’s in social science of the Internet at Oxford and is writing his thesis about how people cultivate their personalities on Facebook and whether their public image is threatened more by themselves or their friends. He’s been spending his free time traveling through Europe, but is also working hard—when he wrote me he had just finished writing 10,000 words in four days. He’ll be returning stateside at the end of the summer.


That’s all for now folks. Remember, don’t hesitate to send updates big or small my way.


—Drew Joseph, 2727 29th St., NW, Apt. 233, Washington, DC 20008; aqjoseph@gmail.com