Most of us are familiar with Martin’s Way, the red-brick path that runs from the Science Center to the end of List. Martin’s Way is the main pedestrian route to get across campus and easily the most used path on the Hill. I’ve walked down it almost every day for two years without giving so much as a thought to who “Martin” is, or was. It was only once the Hamilton community received an email from David Wippman titled “Hamilton’s 16th President J. Martin Carovano” that I would discover that “Martin” was the 16th president of the college, and he’d passed away on August 12, 2019.

Dedicated on October 2, 1993, the path that connects the two sides of campus was fittingly named after Carovano, who presided over the College during the merger of Hamilton College and Kirkland College in 1978. Carovano became president in 1974 after 11 years of teaching and five years of professorship at Hamilton.

Not only did the two colleges merge under his presidency, but Hamilton’s endowment underwent a significant transformation. Along with the board of trustees, Carovano oversaw the improvement of fundraising and alumni donations that tripled the endowment and provided Hamilton with the strong financial base that has allowed the college to become both need blind in admissions and meet one-hundred percent of students’ demonstrated need. Extensive construction, renovation, and repurposing of buildings also occurred under his presidency, including the construction of the Schambach Center and Wellin Hall, and the conversion of the old James Library from what is now the Christian Johnson building

Carovano’s term as the 16th president of Hamilton in some ways mirrored Lincoln’s term as the 16th president of the United States. Like Lincoln, Carovano faced the difficult task of merging two divided halves into a united body. The 1978 merger of Hamilton and Kirkland was a controversial decision at the time, especially to the women of Kirkland College, many of whom felt the merger resembled more of an absorption. The new co-educational college retained Hamilton’s name and much of the older school’s curricular elements. While the college community can now mostly agree that co-education on the Hill was an inevitable, positive change, there was a disgruntled sentiment in some professors and students of Kirkland College who felt they’d been “rendered voiceless,” according to Jan Sidebotham K’79 in her 2011 article “Writing the Speech: The First Post-Merger Graduation.”

Sidebotham, who studied three years at Kirkland before the merger occurred in her senior year, delivered the first co-ed graduation speech. She writes that “a prevailing feeling among Kirkland students was that Hamilton professors counted us as unworthy to be Hamilton students,” and says she was treated condescendingly and disrespectfully by an unnamed Hamilton speech professor who was assigned to help write her graduation speech. At the 1979 graduation ceremony where the speech was delivered, women from her graduating class gave President Carovano Granny Smith apples, the traditional symbol of Kirkland College, as a gesture of protest.

Despite some of the dissent that emerged in response to the merger, Carovano is said to have made the transition to co-education at Hamilton as accommodating and smooth as possible, and he continued to preside over the College for ten more years before his retirement in 1988.

The Alumni Review quote President Wippman included in his message to the community describes Carovano as, “First of all, a highly organized and concentrated mind, reflecting a keen sense of priority. Secondly, no-nonsense dedication to the task at hand combined with candor and sensitive concern in his relations with others. Thirdly…, a reflective man who weighs his words carefully, is devoid of pretense or bombast, is devoted to his job, and does it conscientiously and to the best of his considerable ability.”

So next time you cross College Hill Road along Martin’s Way, or dare I say, think of stealing a loose brick, remember Hamilton’s 16th president J. Martin Carovano, and the significance of our unified campus. From the red bricks of Martin’s Way to the green apples of Kirkland College, Carovano left a legacy that will live in Hamilton College for years to come.

Jan Sidebotham’s full article can be found on the Kirkland College Archive

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(www.kirklandcollege.wordpress.com)