Wells College

A replica of the Athena Giustiniani that greeted students at Wells College for more than 150 years was accidentally decapitated in the scramble to close the institution forever.A marble statue of the Roman goddess of wisdom that presided over Wells College for 156 years, surviving both a devastating fire in 1888 and an attempted kidnapping in 1975, was embraced by students as a symbol of resilience for generations.Until Minerva was decapitated by a backhoe.The statue was accidentally damaged during a hasty move this month after the college, nestled against one of the Finger Lakes in central New York, said financial challenges would make the spring semester its last.At a college where students have long kissed Minerva’s feet for good luck and referred to “her” as a fellow student, the beheading is an unavoidable metaphor for the angst surrounding the institution’s sudden closure.Wells was a women’s college for the bulk of its history, and many alumni cherish how the godly representative of wisdom and war, embodied in a woman, looked over the campus on Cayuga Lake for generations.“I lost my mother a couple years ago,” said Caolan MacMahon, who graduated from Wells in 1985. “This is almost harder.”Workers moving the statue on June 12 strapped Minerva to a furniture dolly before hanging the statue horizontally from a backhoe’s bucket with moving straps. Too heavy for the supports, her head snapped off.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More