By Claire Regan
A rare cosmic occurrence brought the Wagner College community together on Monday for an afternoon of solar solidarity as the moon made history while passing between the earth and the sun.
Gathered high atop Grymes Hill on the sloping lawn outside Foundation Hall – a.k.a. “the Found Mound” – hundreds of students, faculty and staff couldn’t help but feel a little closer to the three celestial bodies that were the stars of the show, and to each other.
“We’re all in on it, we’re all here together to experience it,” observed Arianna Martina ‘24. “Everyone is present, and nobody is on their phone.”
Snacks and Wagner-branded protective eyeglasses were available as the excitement started building around 2 p.m. Though afternoon classes were not officially canceled, most were dismissed for the historic event.
Some professors worked the eclipse into their lectures earlier in the day. Giulia Brady ‘27 appreciated the effort Professor Julie Ludwick made to incorporate a discussion about the eclipse and mythology into her Dance Appreciation class.
By 3 p.m., the Foundation Hall lawn was filled for the watch party as sunlight dimmed and eerie shadows were cast across campus.
Isabella Silva ’27 and her first-year friends let out shrieks of delight at 3:35 p.m. as the moon glided into position in front of the sun with 89.6% totality.
“That is so cool!” exclaimed Isabella, who hails from Charlotte, N.C., as she tilted her head back and peered through her protective glasses. “I see just a sliver of the sun. It looks like the Cheshire Cat’s smile.”
Sofi Lopez Meneses ’26, a member of the women’s fencing team, said she was thinking of her parents watching the eclipse at home in Leon, Mexico, where the hotels had “filled up like crazy” for the spectacle.
Ethan Sieb ’25 and Shae McGinty ’26 chose to watch the event lying on the grass, facing the sun with eye protection in place.
A few yards away, Wagner College President Angelo Araimo summed up what he was viewing in just a few words: “The sky looks very funky.” This total eclipse was a must-see event for him, he added, since there won’t be a similar opportunity in New York City until 2079.
Aletta Kipp Diamond ’65 H’15, a member of the Board of Trustees and president of the Wagner College Guild, monitored the air temperature as the sky darkened.
“You can feel it getting cooler,” she observed as a breeze picked up. A few songbirds chirped from above, but there were no signs of a reaction from the wild turkeys that call the campus home and like to nest in the trees at dusk.
Diamond and other community leaders were on hand for the watch party after attending a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the renovated Wagner College Planetarium in Spiro Hall. The facility, which opened in 1968, is one of only two active planetariums in New York City.
As the eclipse crowd dispersed, some students with high expectations after weeks of hype were candidly disappointed, and still focused on a previous natural phenomenon that caught them off-guard with no warning.
“I was underwhelmed,” during the eclipse, said Mia Oliver ’27, eager instead to recall the trauma of the 4.8 magnitude earthquake that rattled the campus and evacuated her residence hall just four days earlier.
Rebecca Desiderio ’25 agreed, but enjoyed the unique opportunity to see the sun “look like a piece of orange peel.”
Dorine Gandon, an exchange student from Lumiere Lyon 2 University in Lyon, France, appreciated the feeling of unity and camaraderie in the large crowd. When the supply of eclipse eyeglasses dwindled, students shared theirs with one another so no one would miss out on the view, Gandon said.
“This was a once-in-a-lifetime event,” she added, “especially for me, because the next solar eclipse in France is in 2081.”
