Entrepreneurial students tackle the "thorny problem" of declining audiences at the symphony

When you enter Collins Memorial Library on a regular day, it’s usually filled with students finding reference materials or working quietly, but one evening in early November, this was not the case. Instead, small groups of people sat in various spots throughout the first floor, having lively conversations. And the reference materials being checked out were not books, but people.

When it rains, it pours.

And it poured most of the weekend while students from Puget Sound’s chapter of Habitat for Humanity raced to build a tiny house for the homeless in two days—but they didn’t let a little “liquid sunshine” dampen their spirits.

Under the microscope in neuroscience professor Siddharth Ramakrishnan’s lab, the tiny heart of a Japanese rice fish embryo was beating.

And the group of fifth-grade visitors from Tacoma’s McCarver Elementary School had questions. “When will they be born?” one student asked. “How long does it take for them to grow up?” asked another.

On a recent late-winter evening at the North Tacoma home of Jill Nelson Jackson ’84 and Martin Jackson ’84, a tradition was being revived.

Eddie Moore Jr. captivates the audience at 32nd annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration

Marching through the streets, fists pounding the air, banners flying, voices raised in chants of "Survivors unite! Take back the night!" and "Yes means yes! No means no! Whatever we wear! Wherever we go!"

“Do they bite?” It is an obvious question for one small, ponytailed visitor standing almost nose-to-beak with a common murre splayed on the dissecting table. The Puget Sound student scientist at work doesn’t answer as she carefully takes a scalpel to the dead bird’s white belly, amid an “ooooohh” from the gaggle of children. “Did he fly?” the same girl persists, with more curiosity than consternation.