Davidson College Celebrates Record-Breaking Fundraising, Remarkable Engagement, Extraordinary Impact
Davidson College wrapped up a tremendous fiscal year June 30, 2024, celebrating a record-breaking fundraising total of $130.8 million.
The previous record was $115 million. This year’s historic total includes $19.4 million given through The Fund for Davidson and $31.8 million received for the college’s endowment.
“What a year for Davidson College! Record-breaking totals reflect the loyalty and commitment of our community,” said President Doug Hicks ’90. “I’ve known for a long time that Davidson people show up for Davidson, and they show up in every way, eager to support our students and our future. I can’t wait to see what we, together, will accomplish in the coming year. I want to offer my sincere gratitude to every person who chose to make the ’Cats a priority this year. You make so much possible.”
Fundraising highlights:
- More than $15.5 million was raised in support of scholarships, helping Davidson continue its policy of admitting students without looking at what applicants can pay and meeting the full demonstrated need of students without including loans in financial aid packages.
- More than 1,200 young alums who graduated in the last decade made a gift.
- The college celebrated more than 1,280 household gifts at the Ne Ultra level. The Ne Ultra Society is Davidson’s leadership annual giving society.
- Davidson Athletics raised more than $8.6 million this fiscal year, helping coaches and scholar-athletes compete to win across the institution’s 21 Division I programs.
- More than 85% of the anticipated costs has been raised for the upcoming library transformation project, which will create The George Lawrence Abernethy Library.
- The visual, literary and performing arts, including WDAV public radio, raised more than $2.4 million in support.
- Alumni giving rate continues to be ranked in the top five of all colleges and universities (41%).
This year also welcomed the November launch of the women’s philanthropy initiative, Women ACT, introduced as part of the college’s 50+ Years of Coeducation celebration. New leadership contributions to the initiative exceed $11 million, surpassing the $10 million goal, with donors representing women alums (spanning 1977-2017), family members, former faculty and staff members, and current and former members of the Board of Trustees. The Wildcat Women Fund, as a new Fund for Davidson designation within the Women ACT effort, has welcomed more than 420 donors and commitments exceeding $1.1 million against a $1 million goal to this year’s priority area, student health and well-being.
Krejcikova Barbora wins Wimbledon for her 2nd Grand Slam trophy
Barbora Krejcikova kept insisting that nobody — not her friends, not her family, not even herself — would believe she won Wimbledon for her second Grand Slam title.
Her first major championship, as an unseeded player at the French Open three years ago, certainly was a surprise. This one, which came via a 6-2, 2-6, 6-4 victory over Jasmine Paolini in the final at the All England Club on Saturday, was maybe just as unpredictable, sure, but perhaps now it's time to recognize that these sorts of results from Krejcikova are not only possible but make perfect sense.
“It’s just unreal what just happened. Definitely the best day of my tennis career — and also the best day of my life,” said Krejcikova, a 28-year-old from the Czech Republic, who thanked her late mentor, 1998 Wimbledon champion Jana Novotna, for pushing her into professional tennis.
Even while holding her gold champion's plate, Krejcikova described herself as “the lucky one” for getting past the seventh-seeded Paolini, who also was the runner-up at the French Open last month.
Krejcikova was only the 31st of 32 seeds at the All England Club after illness and a back injury this season limited her to a 7-9 record entering this tournament. Then came a three-setter in the first round last week, adding to the doubts.
But by the end of the fortnight, there Paolini was during the trophy ceremony, telling Krejcikova: “You play such beautiful tennis.”
Krejcikova is the eighth woman to leave Wimbledon as the champion in the past eight editions of the event. Last year's champion also is from the Czech Republic: unseeded Marketa Vondrousova, who lost in the first round last week.
Paolini is the first woman since Serena Williams in 2016 to get to the finals at Roland Garros and Wimbledon in the same season — and the first since Venus Williams in 2002 to lose both.
Saturday's finalists took turns being in charge.
Playing coolly and efficiently — seemingly effortlessly — Krejcikova claimed 10 of the first 11 points and quickly owned a double-break lead at 5-1.
As much as the crowd, likely because of a desire to see a more competitive contest, pulled loudly for Paolini, yelling “Forza!” (“Let’s go!”) the way she often does, or “Calma!” (“Be calm!”), Krejcikova never wavered.
She has net skills, to be sure — that’s part of why she has won seven Grand Slam women’s doubles titles, including two at Wimbledon — but Krejcikova mainly was content to stay back at the baseline, simply delivering one smooth groundstroke after another to its appointed spot and getting the better of the lengthiest exchanges.
There really was no need for anything other than Plan A in the early going in front of a Centre Court crowd that included actors Tom Cruise, Kate Beckinsale and Hugh Jackman.
Paolini did try to shake things up a bit, with the occasional serve-and-volley rush forward or drop shot, but she couldn’t solve Krejcikova. Not yet, anyway.
After the lopsided first set, Paolini went to the locker room. She emerged a different player, one who no longer looked like someone burdened by residual fatigue from the longest women’s semifinal in Wimbledon history, her 2-hour, 51-minute win over Donna Vekic on Thursday.
Paolini had come back from dropping the first set in that one, so she knew she had it in her. And she began the second set against Krejcikova in style, using deep groundstrokes to grab a 3-0 advantage.
Once the match was tied at a set apiece, it was Krejcikova who left the court to try to recalibrate.
Her shots that suddenly went so awry in the match’s middle — after just four winners in the second set, she accumulated 14 in the third — were back to being crisp and clean.
“I was just telling myself to be brave,” Krejcikova said.
At 3-all in the deciding set, it was Paolini who faltered, double-faulting for the only time all afternoon to get broken.
Krejcikova then held at love for 5-3, but when she served for the championship, things got a little tougher.
She needed to save a pair of break points and required three match points to get across the finish line, winning when Paolini missed a backhand.
“Nobody believes that I got to the final. And I think nobody’s going to believe that I won Wimbledon,” Krejcikova said several minutes later. “I still cannot believe it. It's unbelievable.”
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Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who encouraged America to talk about sex, dies at 96
Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the diminutive sex therapist who became a pop icon, media star and best-selling author through her frank talk about once-taboo bedroom topics, has died. She was 96.
Westheimer died on Friday at her home in New York City, surrounded by her family, according to publicist and friend Pierre Lehu.
Westheimer never advocated risky sexual behavior. Instead, she encouraged an open dialogue on previously closeted issues that affected her audience of millions. Her one recurring theme was there was nothing to be ashamed of.
“I still hold old-fashioned values and I'm a bit of a square,” she told students at Michigan City High School in 2002. “Sex is a private art and a private matter. But still, it is a subject we must talk about.”
Westheimer's giggly, German-accented voice, coupled with her 4-foot-7 frame, made her an unlikely looking — and sounding — outlet for “sexual literacy.” The contradiction was one of the keys to her success.
But it was her extensive knowledge and training, coupled with her humorous, nonjudgmental manner, that catapulted her local radio program, "Sexually Speaking," into the national spotlight in the early 1980s. She had a nonjudgmental approach to what two consenting adults did in the privacy of their home.
“Tell him you’re not going to initiate,” she told a concerned caller in June 1982. “Tell him that Dr. Westheimer said that you’re not going to die if he doesn’t have sex for one week.”
Her radio success opened new doors, and in 1983 she wrote the first of more than 40 books: “Dr. Ruth’s Guide to Good Sex,” demystifying sex with both rationality and humor. There was even a board game, Dr. Ruth’s Game of Good Sex.
She soon became a regular on the late-night television talk-show circuit, bringing her personality to the national stage. Her rise coincided with the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when frank sexual talk became a necessity.
“If we could bring about talking about sexual activity the way we talk about diet — the way we talk about food — without it having this kind of connotation that there’s something not right about it, then we would be a step further. But we have to do it with good taste,” she told Johnny Carson in 1982.
She normalized the use of words like “penis” and “vagina” on radio and TV, aided by her Jewish grandmotherly accent, which The Wall Street Journal once said was “a cross between Henry Kissinger and Minnie Mouse.” People magazine included her in their list of “The Most Intriguing People of the Century.” She even made it into a Shania Twain song: “No, I don’t need proof to show me the truth/Not even Dr. Ruth is gonna tell me how I feel.”
Westheimer defended abortion rights, suggested older people have sex after a good night’s sleep and was an outspoken advocate of condom use. She believed in monogamy.
In the 1980s, she stood up for gay men at the height of the AIDS epidemic and spoke out loudly for the LGBTQ community. She said she defended people deemed by some far-right Christians to be “subhuman” because of her own past.
Born Karola Ruth Seigel in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1928, she was an only child. At 10, she was sent by her parents to Switzerland to escape Kristallnacht — the Nazis’ 1938 pogrom that served as a precursor to the Holocaust. She never saw her parents again; Westheimer believed they were killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
At the age of 16, she moved to Palestine and joined the Haganah, the underground movement for Israeli independence. She was trained as a sniper, although she said she never shot at anyone.
Her legs were severely wounded when a bomb exploded in her dormitory, killing many of her friends. She said it was only through the work of a “superb” surgeon that she could walk and ski again.
She married her first husband, an Israeli soldier, in 1950, and they moved to Paris as she pursued an education. Although not a high school graduate, Westheimer was accepted into the Sorbonne to study psychology after passing an entrance exam.
The marriage ended in 1955; the next year, Westheimer went to New York with her new boyfriend, a Frenchman who became her second husband and father to her daughter, Miriam.
In 1961, after a second divorce, she finally met her life partner: Manfred Westheimer, a fellow refugee from Nazi Germany. The couple was married and had a son, Joel. They remained wed for 36 years until “Fred” — as she called him — died of heart failure in 1997.
After receiving her doctorate in education from Columbia University, she went on to teach at Lehman College in the Bronx. While there she developed a specialty — instructing professors how to teach sex education. It would eventually become the core of her curriculum.
“I soon realized that while I knew enough about education, I did not really know enough about sex,” she wrote in her 1987 autobiography. Westheimer then decided take classes with the renowned sex therapist, Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan.
It was there that she had discovered her calling. Soon, as she once said in a typically folksy comment, she was dispensing sexual advice “like good chicken soup.”
“I came from an Orthodox Jewish home so sex for us Jews was never considered a sin,” she told The Guardian in 2019.
In 1984, her radio program was nationally syndicated. A year later, she debuted in her own television program, “The Dr. Ruth Show,” which went on to win an Ace Award for excellence in cable television.
She also wrote a nationally syndicated advice column and later appeared in a line of videos produced by Playboy, preaching the virtues of open sexual discourse and good sex. She even had her own board game, “Dr. Ruth’s Game of Good Sex,” and a series of calendars.
Her rise was noteworthy for the culture of the time, in which then-President Ronald Reagan’s administration was hostile to Planned Parenthood and aligned with pro-conservative voices.
Phyllis Schlafly, a staunch anti-feminist, wrote in a 1999 piece “The Dangers of Sex Education,” that Westheimer, as well as Gloria Steinem, Anita Hill, Madonna, Ellen DeGeneres and others were promoting “provocative sex chatter” and “rampant immorality.”
Father Edwin O’Brien, the director of communications for the Catholic archdiocese of New York who would go on to become a cardinal, called her work upsetting and morally compromised.
“It’s pure hedonism,” O’Brien wrote in a 1982 opinion published by The Wall Street Journal. “’The message is just indulge yourself; whatever feels good is good. There is no higher law of overriding morality, and there’s also no responsibility.”
Westheimer made appearances on “The Howard Stern Radio Show,” “Nightline,” “The Tonight Show,” “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” “The Dr. Oz Show” and “Late Night with David Letterman.” She played herself in episodes of “Quantum Leap” and “Love Boat: The Next Wave.”
Her books include “Sex for Dummies,” her autobiographical works “All in a Lifetime” (1987) and “Musically Speaking: A Life through Song” (2003). The documentary “Ask Dr Ruth” aired in 2019.
During her time as a radio and television personality, she remained committed to teaching, with posts at Yale, Hunter, Princeton and Columbia universities and a busy college lecture schedule. She also maintained a private practice throughout her life.
Westheimer received an honorary doctorate from Hebrew Union College-Institute of Religion for her work in human sexuality and her commitment to the Jewish people, Israel and religion. In 2001 she received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and the Leo Baeck Medal, and in 2004, she received the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, from Trinity College.
Ryan White, the director of “Ask Dr Ruth,” told Vice in 2019 that Westheimer was never someone following trends. She was always an ally of gay rights and an advocate for family planning.
“She was at the forefront of both of those things throughout her entire life. I met her friends from her orphanage saying even when she met gay people throughout her life in the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s she was always accepting of those people and always saying that people should be treated with respect.”
She is survived by two children, Joel and Miriam, and four grandchildren.
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