Thanks to student and alumni recruitment efforts, the number of African-American applicants this year has risen by 18 percent. This number is the highest seen in at least eight years. Wesleyan received 504 applications from African-American students this year, compared to 428 last year. This increase may be in part due to greater participation by alumni of color in recruitment efforts; a letter sent out to all alumni of color in October outlined initiatives that Wesleyan planned to take this year to build student of color enrollment.
Questioning marriage's status as a civil right, Connecticut's lawmakers and citizens came together in Hartford on Monday to discuss the passage of Bill 963: An Act Concerning Marriage Equality. The public hearing was held in front of the Connecticut General Assembly's Joint Committee on Judiciary and several hundred people came out to hear citizens speak for or against gay marriage.
Plans are underway for the development of Wesleyan's 160-acre Long Lane property, which the University purchased a year ago from the state for $16 million. The construction of a retirement/life-long learning community on the western side of the site is under discussion, and a variety of concrete projects are underway or will occur as soon as this spring, according to Wesleyan administrators. These projects include a system of nature trails, a new turf field for lacrosse and field hockey, and the consolidation of Wesleyan physical plant operations at Long Lane.
Halley Feiffer ’07 started her semester with a trip to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, UT. Feiffer has a substantial part in the upcoming film "The Squid and the Whale," a dark divorce drama from director and writer Noah Baumbach, who took home directing and writing honors at the event. Feiffer plays Sophie, the girlfriend of teenager Walt (Jesse Eisenberg), whose divorcing parents are played by Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels.
Tsunami Relief Week took place this past week to raise money for and awareness regarding the recent disaster in southeast Asia. The series of events that week followed a widely attended forum that was held at the beginning of the spring semester. The original forum created the momentum that has led to the formation of two separate groups, the Wesleyan Tsunami Relief Campaign, run entirely by students, and the Tsunami Relief Committee, comprised of both students and administrators. Both groups worked in conjunction to plan and organize the week.
After making their debut last fall at La Boca restaurant and bar on Main Street, "Kindness of Strangers," a rock band composed mostly of Wesleyan students, will return to the venue to perform every other Wednesday night this semester. The band, which includes Mike Drucker ’05, Logan Durland ’05, Ray Rowland ’05, Amar Shibli ’05, Rob Weinstock ’06, Kumar Nair ’05, and Elvee, a Middletown resident, had its first performance this semester on Jan. 28.
After bouncing from his home in Louisiana to Wesleyan, then transferring to NYU’s Tisch School, then coming back to Wesleyan, Michael Lavigne ’07 has managed to settle down and make a nice home for himself here. He makes some cash as the voice of the Cardinals, announcing at both wrestling and football games, while also participating in Second Stage. Also, between designing dances, filling out transfer forms, and directing plays, he finds time to sit down, relax and solve logarithms in his head.
The third Patriots Super Bowl win in four years demonstrates Bill Belichick’s ’75 status as one of the greatest NFL coaches of all time. Belichick is coaching in an era of free agency and salary caps, making it difficult to keep together winning teams for any prolonged period of time. The Patriots have lost a few players in his tenure, but their ability to keep most key players stems from the team’s cohesion and lack of superstars and superegos.
The New England Patriots under Belichick are a pleasure to watch. They represent everything that a team should be, from unity and selflessness to depth and raw ability. This team is certainly great, no question about it. My problem is not with Belichick nor with the Patriots and their "golden boy" quarterback, but with sports writers and broadcasters who need to come up with the big story to follow up the big game. The sports world has begun to consider the recent past as an era that stands by itself, with new standards and new rules for determining excellence.
Recently the Associated Press obtained a preliminary manuscript of a book written by a former Arabic translator who had worked at the U.S. military facilities in Guantánamo, Cuba from December 2002 to June 2003. Former Army Sgt. Erik R. Saar outlined some of the standard practices used at the prison to interrogate prisoners. The AP reported, "The manuscript is classified as secret pending a Pentagon review for a book Mr. Saar is writing about the military's use of women as part of tougher physical and psychological interrogation tactics against terrorism suspects."
There were certain weeks my sophomore year when my hall in the Nicolsons felt like a home. I’m not talking home in the Hallmark sense of the word, but rather home as in "Grandpa lives in a Home now." These were the weeks when a little brown package ordered off the Internet from some pharmaceutical company in Canada (that manufactured drugs in Mexico) arrived in the mailbox of one of my hall mates. Slowly, over the course of the next several days, peoples routines (ranging from the hygienic to academic) would unravel.
Up front, I would like to acknowledge the amount of time and hard work that has gone into raising money for relief efforts. But where is this money being channeled? Terms such as "grass-roots" or "non-governmental" are of very limited value in determining anything about the organizations in question. In fact, since the mid-nineties, non-governmental organizations have been increasingly funded by bilateral or multilateral governmental organizations such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) or the World Bank. These are not charitable institutions, but powerful agencies with underlying political-economic ideologies and objectives.
I recently took a job running a weekly open-mic down at Javapalooza, the hippest new cafe in town. However, despite my ingeniously clever postering, I have been unable to get very many members of the supposed Wesleyan music/art/performance scene to come by. What's with that? I thought that if anywhere had the potential to provide a solid community of musicians, poets, comedians and likeminded individuals, it would be Wesleyan.
We’re looking for multi-media submissions--contact sheets, sketch book doodles, found art, design work, drawings, paintings, sculpture. If you’re interested, contact dwilson@wesleyan.edu (Dave) or ktypaldos@wesleyan.edu (Kathryn). We’ll come to you to check it out. Also, watch for an upcoming benefit CD (compilation of student bands) and promotional roller skating party on Thursday, February 17.
Microsoft CEO and ultra-billionaire Bill Gates announced today that he has purchased Friendster, the Facebook, MySpace, and every other online social-networking website. Within the next month, Gates said, he plans to combine all the websites he has bought up into one site: theGatester.com. Gates described the premise of theGatester.com: "Members of theGatester.com will have only one option, which is to be my friend. Members will not be able to be friends with one another, nor will they be able to form groups from which they can then exclude me."
Our Parents: "Gee whiz, wanna go to the sock hop with me?" Us: "You have been poked by Katie Brown."
All of today's jokes were stolen from the internet. We Googled "liberal-arts university humor page," hit "I'm Feelin Lucky," and grabbed whatever came up. We didn't bother to read it, but, you know, whatevs. God bless the worldwide web.
Remember back in the nineties when we had to stand in lines to see movies? That was awful. I hated the nineties. But not any more, because now we have Fandango, which, in case you’ve been living in a time hole warp, lets you buy your movie tickets on the internet. And that’s why I love Fandango. Or should I say, I loved Fandango. "It’s so easy!" they say — yeah, easy to get hooked, that is. And then you find out about the fine print. Here’s what Fandango doesn’t tell you in their commercials.
Cute. Cuddly. Freakishly distorted. Four words to describe the ultimate in internet fads— the bonsai kitten. Mass e-mails circulated in our favorite internet groups, begging us to sign the petition. And who couldn’t help but heed the call? One look at www.bonsaikitten.com, which opens with the sound of a lone, cramped feline mewing longingly, and my eyes welled with tears. My friend Essie’s heart soared with laughter. Was I a fool, or was she just dead inside?
The Wesleyan women's basketball team now knows exactly how good they will have to be in order to be crowned NESCAC champions at the end of this month. Unfortunately for the Cardinals, that learning experience came to the tune of a 58-42 loss to the Bowdoin Polar Bears last Friday night. Despite the tough loss, the women rebounded with a dominating 57-42 win over Colby the very next day, improving their record to 18-3 and 5-3 in conference games.
On a Saturday that pitted men’s squash against two higher ranked teams, the bottom of the Cardinals’ lineup proved strong. Against the St. Lawrence Saints, the lower six seeds accounted for all of the Red and Black wins in its 6-3 victory. Later in the afternoon, the men fell to the Colby Mules 5-4 despite wins and close matches in the lower half of the ladder.
Wesleyan's indoor track teams continued to roll with several strong finishes at the Smith College Classic Saturday. The women finished fourth in a field of ten teams and the men managed a fifth place finish despite resting several stars. Captain Courtney Quirin '05 returned from an injury and won the 5,000-meter race in her first indoor track event of the season, covering the distance in 18 minutes and 23 seconds. Steph O'Brien '08 finished first in the 600-meter event (1:43) and Ellen Davis '07 topped the field in the 3,000-meter event (10:27), giving the Cardinals three first place finishers at the meet.
The Cardinals finished their regular season in Freeman on Saturday against the Bears of Coast Guard Academy. It was Senior Appreciation Day for the quintet of Tom Cleveland '05, Dominik Heynen '05, Mikki Columbus '05, Laurel Daen '05, and Rebecca Chapman '05. The men faced an uphill battle and were ultimately sunk 157-131, while the ladies blew their opponents out of the water to the tune of 187-96. The men head into NESCAC finals at 6-4 and the women are 7-3.
The Cardinals picked up crucial points toward a playoff spot with a 9-2 victory over Castleton State and a hard-fought 2-2 tie against Skidmore in action on Friday and Saturday. In a chase for the eighth playoff spot, Wesleyan gained ground with their 3-point weekend, as Conn. College (9) dropped two games and Tufts (8) split in play against UMass Boston and Babson, moving Wesleyan into the number nine spot in the NESCAC.