"A Civil Action"
to be Retried at Smith College
On Tuesday, April 20, all the events,
facts and testimony documented in Northampton author Jonathan
Harr's best-selling "A Civil Action" will be reexamined
in a staged trial at Smith College. Students in Geology 109,
"The Environment," a course taught by Amy Rhodes, a
lecturer in environmental sciences,will enact the trial from
7 to 10 p.m. in McConnell auditorium. The event is free, open
to the public, and wheelchair accessible.
"A Civil Action,"
released as a John Travolta movie last year, tells the true story
of a Woburn, Massachusetts, court case in which several families
collectively brought charges against two local companies, W.R.
Grace and Beatrice Foods, accused of contaminating the local
groundwater supply and causing high occurrences of leukemia among
the families' children.
Harr visited Rhodes' class in March
and spoke about his writing process and what his life was like
during the arduous course of following the Woburn case.
Rhodes' class members, many of whom
are nonscience majors, will take on the roles of the nonfiction
novel's characters, some developing arguments supporting the
Woburn families as lawyers for the prosecution, some as attorneys
for the defense, others playing the roles of geology, medical,
statistical and contaminant experts who have compiled information
or will testify before the mock court.
Rhodes, who has focused on global warming,
energy and other environmental issues in the past in her class,
this year decided to study water-quality issues and groundwater
contamination in conjunction with her personal research of water-quality
and land-use issues related to the local Mill River watershed.
"While we discussed these issues
in class the students were reading of a parallel situation in
'A Civil Action,'" says Rhodes. "By focusing on the
book I aimed to tie a popular, nonfiction story with some basic
geologic principles that relate to groundwater movement, human
water supplies and, in this case, an apparent environmental health
problem."
Rhodes emphasizes that by reviewing
the facts in the case documented by Harr, her class may not necessarily
arrive at the same conclusion as that of the real-life case.
"The book provides the framework for the students to do
their research. It sets up the problem that students need to
solve. How they solve it depends on their own initiative. The
verdict need not be the same as what occurred in the actual story.
The students will have access to more recent data and a different
judge presides."
The judge for Rhodes' class trial will
be Tom Schwab, a retired corporate lawyer from Holyoke. A jury
will be made up of students in Environmental Science 300, a senior
seminar taught by lecturer Elizabeth Farnsworth.
April 14, 1999
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