By TINA IYER
Features Editor
 

Caught off guard, I had no immediate response, but when I found my tongue, I answered, "My sneezes are inconsistent. Sometimes two, three, even five. I like five because I like to sneeze; it's so refreshing."

"So," Reese said, "when you sneeze, you think, `Damn, that felt good.'" I nod.

Sneezes behind us, we waited patiently in line to order our sandwiches. Reese, apparently well-known and well-liked by all, is greeted enthusiastically by proprietor Austin H. Connor. "James!" Connor bellows, "it's great to see you!" Reese takes this with a smile, reaching out his hand to Connor, who is immediately called to attention by another customer.

Our orders finally placed, Reese and I snagged a table in the back room, surrounded by a room full of people who all looked up as he entered and smiled in greeting. "James, how are you?" "James, where have you been?" And so on. Graciously, Reese introduced me to them, and after a few minutes of casual chatting, joined me in our tiny space.

We snapped open our bottles of juice and took equally hefty swigs. I did not know where to begin with Dean Reese, what to ask or what to say. For lack of anything better, I mentioned that a few years back, the summer before my Bates career began, a good friend of mine and a 1992 Bates graduate, gave me this sage advice, "Get to know Dean Reese. I never did, but my friends did. And they have jobs now. I don't." I asked Reese to comment.

He grinned his lazy grin. "What I like to focus on is information that helps everyone accomplish what they want to get accomplished. In the case of getting jobs, I try to provide particular information and insights to students. OCS [Office of Career Services] gives general information, but I can pass on to students the views of past students. It's experiential information."

Austin brought over our plates of food (special treatment for Reese), and Reese took a substantial bite of his curried chicken on wheat. We began to talk about this year's first-year orientation, specifically the Dean of Students sponsored Playfair, where all the students had the opportunity to meet one another on an informal and "goofy" level by participating in "crazy exercises."

"It was a good way for the students to get a real sense of who people are ... to think, `these people are all friendly and wonderful, like myself,'" he said.

The deans did not participate in this event, but according to Reese, most first-years do not expect to get to know their deans.

But people know you, I said. You pick students up from the airport at odd times of night and help them move furniture into their rooms. Dean Reese does have a reputation for being the most accessible dean on campus. "Most deans have a lot to do," Reese said, "and they try to do their work in the confines of their office, and to serve effectively."

However, Reese himself has spent forty of his almost forty-two (his birthday is September 18) years on campuses, both college and high school. Reese's father was a minister on campuses from Alabama to New Jersey, and Reese learned by example that "talking outside of the office setting is something that students enjoy."

The elder Mr. Reese used to chat casually with university students, and at an early age Reese himself understood that his father didn't employ a planned, formal approach to getting students to like him.

"It was just what he did," he said. "And that sort of interaction really worked. Something about those students experiences just talking with my dad enhanced their time at those schools. College is about more than classes and dining halls, its about interaction."

As for picking people up at the airport, Reese said "I don't look at that as part of the dean's role. I'm just interested in helping people out when they need it. I credit my parents for that."

All of a sudden I realize that I have devoured my veggie and cheese sandwich, and Reese, who started out with a big bite, is now lagging behind. But as many a student can attest, Reese is very rarely on time. On the ball, yes. On time, no.

After a brief rundown on his childhood in the south, and his final two years of high school in New Jersey, talk turns to Reese's years at Middlebury College.

He prefaced his story with a tidbit about his experiences on college tours: "We'd [Reese and his parents] be on a college tour, and my only question for the guide was `Are there unlimited seconds on the meat in the dining hall?' My parents were so embarrassed."

I wondered aloud if Reese only cared about extra helpings of meat. "Well, if there were seconds on meat, the potatoes came too. If the school didn't offer seconds, it was knocked off my list." So, Middlebury had seconds. Apparently most schools did, with the exception of Trinity College in Connecticut.

Reese said, "I played basketball at Middlebury. Now it's sort of a tradition that when the Bates team goes to Middlebury to play them, they look for my picture on the wall. Basically they're just checking out the difference in the size of my hair." I refrained from expressing astonishment that he once had hair; I merely looked surprised.

"Oh ... I had an afro back then. A full afro that I would say was memorable to all. It was a statement. Personal or physical, I don't know, but it was a statement."

Hired at Bates only three months after his college graduation, the afro existed no longer after a few years of work at the College. Without gaining consent from Reese, Mother Nature decided to rid him of his hair. "At least she decided when society wasn't doing afros anymore," Reese said.

Being a college brat all his life has made Reese a lover of campus life; he has promised himself that "if I'm not working on a campus, I'll always live next to one."

His particular fondness for Bates stems from what he perceives as the genuine community life of the College, which he claimed is unique. He also said he sees a distinctive worth and value in every individual on campus.

Furthermore, Reese said that Bates is "a campus where issues can really be discussed, more so than at other institutions." He has seen former Bates students come back to him and comment on their surprise that in the "real world," non-Bates graduates are not nearly as informed about issues of race, class, gender and sexuality as Bates students are.

Reese has now been at Bates for more than twenty years. His parents remain in New Jersey, where, still unused to Yankee weather, they continue to complain about the cold.

This makes their son an enigma to them, and now when Reese's father introduces his son to others, he says, "This is James. He works at Bates. He's been cold for half his life."

Austin's Fine Wines and Foods
78 Main St. in Auburn
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