Investigative Journalist To Deliver Commencement Address May 13
Monday, April 10, 2006

Reported by Jake Weber

ALBION, Mich.  –   Award-winning author and journalist Steve Bogira will deliver the Albion College commencement address to its 2006 graduating class. Commencement takes place Saturday, May 13, at 11 a.m. on the College’s Quadrangle.

Bogira is the author of the bestseller “Courtroom 302: A Year behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse,” an in-depth look at the interaction of race, civil rights, and the busiest courtroom in the country, in Chicago's Cook County Criminal Courthouse.  Bogira spent a year involved with the criminal justice system, as seen in the courtroom, the lockup, the jury room, the judge's chambers, and the spectator's gallery. The book is a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and HBO plans to develop it into a mini-series.

Bogira's son, Peter, is a member of Albion College's 2006 graduating class.

“In my 23 years as a college president, this is the first time a parent of a graduating senior has been chosen to present the commencement address,” noted Albion College President Peter Mitchell.  “I look forward to Steve's thoughtful and inspiring remarks.”

Bogira's father was an El train mechanic who used his transit authority pass to take his two young children on rides throughout the city--rides that instilled in Bogira a love for the city and its neighborhoods.

After graduating from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 1976, Bogira wrote features at the Chicago Tribune for three years. Then he joined the staff of the Chicago Reader, an alternative weekly, where he has been a writer for 25 years. Bogira has written mainly about poor and neglected city dwellers--residents of those neighborhoods he looked out on from his El train window as a boy. Bogira wrote about urban felony courts as an Alicia Patterson Fellow in 1993, and he has focused on the courts ever since.

He lives in Evanston with his wife, Jane Neumann. Their daughter, Natalie, a dancer, lives in Chicago.

In the case of inclement weather, Commencement will be moved indoors, to the Dow Recreation Complex, and will be a ticketed event.  The final decision for the Commencement location will be made at 6 a.m. Saturday, May 13.  After that time, the Albion College Office of Campus Safety will announce the location, and can be reached at 517/629-1234.

For more information, contact the Albion College Office of Alumni and Parent Relations, 517/629-0448 or mstarkey@albion.edu.

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