President Doug Bennet announced his retirement yesterday afternoon to a crowd of 500 gathered outside of North College. After serving for 12 years, Bennet will leave the University at the end of the 2006-2007 academic year. "Wesleyan is positioned well to engage new leadership, and the time is right for us to move ahead with the new phase of our lives," Bennet said.
Professor of Economics Gil Skillman led a student discussion focusing on the interaction between students and the administration on campus, the second Talking Points meeting meant to garner student input on campus issues. "I think for any lasting change to happen there has to be institutionalized [student] voice," Skillman said.
Professor of Film Studies Jeanine Basinger will be presented with an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the American Film Institute on June 7. The degree is presented each year to people who have made a contribution both in film studies and in the communities they serve.
Speaking at Beta Theta Pi on Tuesday, Chief Economist and Vice Chairman at J.P. Morgan Chase John Lipsky '68 discussed the state of the global economy. "My claim is that this is one of the three major turning points of the post-World War II era," Lipsky said at the beginning of his talk.
Director of Student Activities and Leadership Development Leilani Kupo, who has been a resource and friend to countless student leaders over the past five years, will resign at the end of this year. "I have heard many students express their fears regarding Leilani's leav[ing]," said Jason C. Harris '09, member of the WSA Leadership Development Steering Committee.
Tom Brockett '87 spoke on the turbulent history of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) Monday afternoon. Brockett was the vice president of the PATCO local at Chicago's O'Hare Airport during the historical 1981 strike that ended when President Ronald Reagan fired all strikers.
Writing a thesis can be many things. For some, it is the culmination of one's academic life at Wesleyan, bringing everything one has learned in the classroom to fruition through an original and independent research project. For others, it is a conduit to graduate school, a means to flex one's intellectual muscles. And for still others, it is hell on earth, a blurry and masochistic academic year spent over a large coffee mug in the thesis carrel.
You might expect to have fights in a relationship, but when you're dating another member of the debate team it's par for the course. "Many people find their life-long friends on the circuit and some even find their significant others," said Amanda Fuller '07, president of the debate team, the Woodrow Wilson Debate Society.
As Doug Bennet said in his retirement speech, "There has been a Bennet family love affair with Wesleyan reaching back to 1929," when his father entered the Wesleyan freshman class. Indeed, the Bennet family has a longstanding connection to Wesleyan—Bennet himself graduated from Wesleyan in 1959 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
I just took a look at the production schedule that I was e-mailed all those months ago and realised that this is my last column. I thought by now I'd have a repertoire of deeply insightful columns that had truly shaped the essence of the Wesleyan community. That's life for you.
For the fourth consecutive season, the men's lacrosse team will travel to Middlebury for the Final Four of the NESCAC tournament, this time taking on Bowdoin in Saturday's semifinal. A win over the Polar Bears would punch the Cardinals' ticket to their third-straight NESCAC Final, in which they would meet either Middlebury or Tufts.
Julian Canzoneri, a beat writer for the Sports Section and a member of the men's soccer team, examines the Duke lacrosse scandal that has taken hold of the national spotlight.
Every few days in April, there is a new headline on the Wesleyan athletics softball site touting a new accomplishment by a familiar player. This player, of course, is Karla Hargrave '08, who pitched spectacularly over the second half of the softball season. The highlights of this run included a three-game win streak, two four-hitters, a school-record 15-strikeout game, and the first recorded no-hitter on Wesleyan University grounds.
Sorry Blue Jays fans, but the AL East in 2006 will once again come down to the play of the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. Expect the Red Sox and the Yankees to once again be battling for the division crown down until the last day of the season. The New York Yankees addition of Johnny Damon gives them an upgrade in center field and their first true leadoff hitter since their last World Series title.
President Bennet's announcement that he will step down after the 2006-2007 school year has inevitably brought to mind everything he has accomplished here since 1995, for better and for worse. As the nationwide search for his replacement is set to begin, we ask those in charge of selecting a new president to learn from Bennet's time as president and, most importantly, actually listen to and value student input.
In closing this little series on health care, I thought I would discuss an issue I find personally compelling, and one I think contributes something interesting to discussions about the provision of health care to others. The issue is essentially the epistemology of disease — how do we define what makes an illness and what constitutes a cure?
While it is no easy task to direct or to write a show, Francie Jones '08 managed to pull off both at the same time. Her original musical, "Being Ordinary," went up last weekend in the '92 theater and featured twelve songs written and composed by Jones.
The real question surrounding the release of "United 93" is not "too soon?" The question is "does it?" Does it denigrate the memory of 9/11 and its victims by turning their stories into fodder for the Hollywood grist mill? Does it have anything new or illuminating to say about the causes or effects of that horrible and defining moment in America?
Instead of opening this article with a mildly witty and mostly stale quip about April showers and May flowers, I'll just cut right to the chase: the senior art theses rocked. Nary a coed should fret about meteorology and horticulture when the Wesleyan student campus is blooming with such phenomenal artistic talent.
The year is winding down and the Film Series is leaving its final, furious imprint on campus with a pair of wonderful films. Though radically different in style and subject matter, "Rize" and "The Graduate" are both terrific films that represent the best of what a campus film series can and must be: gloriously entertaining, artistically innovative films that will get your weekend night off to an appropriately exuberant start.
"Cambodian Stories" is the result of a lengthy collaboration between two renowned movement artists and students from the Reyum Art School in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Eiko and Koma, who have worked together since 1972, were first invited in 2004 to Cambodia by the Daravuth Ly. Ly, in partnership with the late Ingrid Muan, founded the Reyum Institute of the Arts and Culture in 1998 as means of maintaining and developing Cambodian arts of the past and present.
I just wanted to say how much I enjoy reading the Argus since I began working at Wesleyan. It's nice to see that students are able to sound off and not be penalized by the school administration, unlike where I went to college. So, keep up the good work. However, I have a few comments on the article titled "Traffic Emergency" by James Buturla, class of 2006.
We all agree about the importance of diversity at Wesleyan. Or, at least we all say we care about diversity. The Catholic Chaplain is resigning at the end of the term, leading to a kind of "review" of the position. In February, after delaying discussion for four months, the deans spoke with the Catholic community with the goal of creating a new job description.
o whomever it was who chalked on the evening of May 1st: I wish to extend my sincerest appreciation. It was great to see calcium carbonate on these sidewalks again. Rock on.
Discussion at Wesleyan about sexual violence is misguided. Laurie Paul's WeSpeak "Men Should Take Back the Night Too," quotations from the Argus article "Students Take Back the Night," and the "women-only" circle have highlighted this. There is an assumption that women are the victims and men are the perpetrators.
Hey Brittany: Congratulations on your recent win. Just read your Wespeak in defense of the WSA, and I just wanted to respond to a few points. First, regarding legitimacy. Legitimacy, as a point of theory, strikes me as being about how representative the WSA, as a body, is—not whose fault that may be.
They say not to burn bridges, but since I'm a pretty good swimmer I'll take one last opportunity to give a nice big FUCK YOU to Wesleyan University, a school that treated me like dog-shit despite the fact that I'm one of the brightest, most talented and well-intended sons of bitches around here.
In response to Brendan Larkin's obituary: I feel like most people just liked Mr. Pibb because it was retro. There's a reason why Coke trumps all dark colas—and I suggest you jump on that bandwagon before it leaves you behind.
The way the endowment and budget cuts have been talked about this year is a perfect demonstration of hegemonic ideology at work: consent as culture. Every commentator starts from the same assumptions and arrives at the same conclusions—these having already been set by the trustees/administration.
The Argus has done a great job covering campus anti-war activism in the past, so I was surprised to see the picture alongside Tuesday's front-page article "Students join anti-war protest in NYC." The photo is of a sign reading "The Bush Regime Engineered 9-11," and has a caption that could be interpreted to imply that the protesters holding the sign are Wesleyan students and members of Students for Ending the War in Iraq.
I was not even fully aware of the immigration problems until I began researching this issue for a Psych paper last week. In response to the human chain surrounding the Campus Center on May 1, I did not even get a chance to look at the signs or to listen to what the protesters were saying; I think some of it was in a foreign language. I think it is great that Wesleyan students can join together to promote their cause.
On Monday afternoon I had a critique for Sculpture II. My sculpture involved bocce balls with ginger root attached to them and was located on the field next to the CFA. Ten minutes into our critique, while my class was discussing a piece across the field, I noticed two random guys, one of whom picked up and threw one of the balls.
You know the big room in Olin where everyone studies? With the beautiful high ceilings, huge windows with views of Andrus field and the nice wooden tables? The one where there are always lots of people working? Have you noticed that there are plans to turn it into a computer lab?
I have spent four years here now, and if I ever wanted to feel like crap about myself, all I have to do is turn to the Argus Wespeaks Page. This campus is full of passionate activism, and I am all for it. What I am sick of, however, is the implicitly expressed opinion on the pages of the Argus that male-perpetrated violence, male intellectual hegemony, male-imposed moral-social stratifications, and an unwillingness on the behalf of the male population to cooperate with activist movements or share power is the status quo.