Spencer Cox '90 Field Work Term Fellowship for Public Action
鈥淵ou make your life as meaningful as you can make it. Live it and don鈥檛 be afraid of who鈥檚 gonna like you or if you鈥檙e being appropriate. Worry about things like being kind, worry about being generous. And if it鈥檚 not about that, then what the hell is it about? That鈥檚 what I鈥檝e learned.鈥&苍产蝉辫;鈥Spencer Cox 鈥90, performer, activist, and citizen scientist
Spencer Cox 鈥90, an artist, performer, and activist who studied drama and literature at Bennington, lent creative intellect and intense focus to help fight one of the most pressing social and public health crises of our time. In 1989, instead of returning to Bennington for his senior year, Spencer stayed in New York City to become a pivotal member of ACT UP, the direct-action advocacy group with a mission to end AIDS through research, treatment, and policy.
Spencer played a defining role in the formation of the Treatment Action Group (TAG) to focus on accelerating AIDS treatment research. A true citizen scientist, he created the study design that led to full approval of Ritonavir, a protease inhibitor, in 1996. Once the drug was approved, the death rate from AIDS in the United States and other first world countries dropped by 70% in two years. Spencer's work helped save millions of lives.
The Spencer Cox '90 Field Work Term Fellowship for Public Action will provide financial assistance to an upper-level undergraduate student(s) with demonstrated financial need; proven commitment to activism and/or public action; and is pursuing a Field Work Term opportunity within public action, activism and/or civil rights. Recipients are those who bring a fearless spirit and incisive intellect to bear on pressing social issues in the ways that Spencer demonstrated in his lifetime