Power tools buzzed and hammers thwacked on a recent morning at O’Rourke’s Diner as workers busily prepared for the diner’s official opening next Monday, Feb. 11th. The story of the beloved diner’s rise from the ashes of a midnight fire touched the entire Middletown community, spurring the creation of a diverse coalition that came together to help out in their hour of need.
In a victory that The Hartford Courant declared to be “fueled by a record turnout and lopsided margins among urban poor, wealthy suburbanites and the young,” it was clear that the campus community contributed to Senator Barack Obama’s (D-IL) victory on Super Tuesday. University students swarmed the polls in precinct 14, helping log the largest number of votes for Obama than any of Middletown’s other precincts.
Following a trend of increased security at colleges across Connecticut, Public Safety is moving forward with its plans to install surveillance cameras in at least four locations around campus. Like many Public Safety officers in these nearby schools, Public Safety is now indicating that it will reserve the right to install cameras without student knowledge in the future.
Beloved diner O’Rourke’s will be reopening on February 11th, partly due to extensive fundraising efforts by Middletown residents, Wes alumni, University administrators and current students. The effort to rebuild the historical diner is a model for how town-gown relationships should be, in which past divisions are put aside in favor of working for a common good (in this case, the common good involving hash browns and pancakes that all can enjoy).
I don’t know much, in a way. I do not have a detailed and critical engagement with the history of the Middle East and the United States’ relation to it. I could focus the attention of much of my time, even years, learning about it and, as I searched for a clear narrative, the power structure would still do its thing.
We are on a field of battle. “For what?” many will ask. Well I am not fighting for women’s rights or raising the minimum wage. Nor am I petitioning for Beta to be let back on campus or for printing to be single-sided. What we are dealing with here, folks, is the ENVIRONMENT.
When Ariela Rotenberg ’10 told the directors of Second Stage not to get drunk and operate heavy machinery, she was jokingly paraphrasing the Second Stage Manual for directors, entitled “How the Hell to Put On A Show.” I did not mean to imply that Rotenberg was flighty or silly in any way.
On Wednesday, everyone on campus got an e-mail again informing us of the “free & legal” Ruckus music service, which claims to grant students access to over three million songs online. Wouldn’t that be great? Really, I probably try Ruckus every time we get one of these e-mails.
Unbeknownst to much of the Tech, Dave Wilkinson ’09 (a.k.a. “Silky”) is having a monster season for the diving team. After going abroad in the fall, he stormed back into the NESCAC this year, coming in first place in nine of twelve meets, and taking second in the remaining three.
Following two ties this weekend, the men’s ice hockey team picked up a big 3-2 home victory against Trinity on Tuesday, propelling the Cardinals all the way up to fifth place in the NESCAC standings with six games remaining.
The men’s basketball team defeated Salve Regina on Monday night, 69-60, for its second straight win after six consecutive losses. Wesleyan is now 8-12 on the season and has passed last year’s win total (seven). Nick Pelletier ’08 recorded his second straight double-double with 21 points and 13 rebounds, and Stan Grayson ’09 added 16 points and 11 rebounds. The Cards did not trail past the 16:53 mark and led by as many as 14 in the contest.
A close match-up against NESCAC teams Bowdoin and Colby this past Saturday saw the women’s swimming and diving team split their third meet in a row this season. The Cardinals were out-stroked by the Polar Bears 162-134 but managed to stay afloat against the Mules and came out on top with an 18-point lead.
A senior captain on the Cards’ 14-6 squad (4-1 in NESCAC), Lucy Sprung is second in the NESCAC in points per game, averaging 15.7 a contest. Only teammate Ali Fourney ’09 bests her in points per game, with an average of 16.8 points per game this season. Sprung, who also ranks third in the conference in rebounding with 9.2 rebounds a game, was named the NESCAC player of the week on Jan. 28.
When it comes to consistency, look no further than both the men’s basketball team and its leader, starting forward and senior captain Nick Pelletier ’08. A serious presence in the paint for the past three years, Pelletier has been having a monster final season. The Amherst, NH native is close to averaging a “double double” this season, with 13.3 points per game and 8.3 rebounds per game. These two stats rank 13th and 4th in the NESAC, respectively.
A summary of headlines from around the world.
Although the change was not widely publicized and has largely gone unnoticed, two students in particular were pleased to note the absence of familiar Kleenex-brand tissues at Weshop after winter break. As of 2008, Weshop has stopped stocking Kimberly Clark products, and has increased its supply of alternative brands like Green Forest.
On college campuses and school playgrounds across America, kids can be heard using the slang word “yo.” Now, however, this common term is being used in a very different context"as a gender-neutral pronoun. Various articles printed in The Baltimore Sun, The Utne Reader online, Big News Day, The New Scientist and some lesser-known blogs claim the term originated in Baltimore, Md. about two years ago.
Nick Fesenko ’10 once referred to conservatives as “Bible-loving fascists.” Now, he considers himself one. “Before Wes, I’d never had anything behind conservatives,” he said. “But after coming here, I realized that liberal people are insane.” The University has historically been known for its political activism and liberal leanings, but some conservatives on campus contend that students take this notion to the extreme.
Some “traditional” seniors may currently be planning a career in business or journalism, but Janie Stolar ’08 already has a bright future ahead of her and it is chock-full of Bar Mitzvah dancing, eating vegetarian food in far-off lands, and helping her cats take over the country.
Although library call numbers are typically found on the spines of books, a few can be found on campus buildings. These library call letters are remnants of Professor of Studio Art Jeffrey Schiff’s installation “Library Project,” which premiered on campus and in Middletown in November 2003.
Have you ever had a streamed cheeseburger? Neither had we, until we visited Ted’s Restaurant at 1044 Broad Street in Meriden. According to http://www.roadfood.com, the steamed cheeseburger is only available within a 25 mile radius of Middletown, and is virtually unknown elsewhere. Living in its birthplace of Connecticut, we decided that it was necessary to investigate for ourselves some of the hype that surrounds this mythical dish.
Professor Emily Apter of New York University’s French Department offered an intriguing approach to the contentious arena of plagiarism in her lecture, entitled “Properties of Translation: Signature, Copyright, Textual Ownership.”
“There Will Be Blood,” the latest from Hollywood’s youngest auteur, Paul Thomas Anderson, presents the costly rise of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) among the bloody grounds of America’s turn of the century oil boom. Set in Southern California (shot outside Marfa, Texas), we meet Daniel as a mediocre but determined silver miner.
“Death is a given of the human condition that touches everyone in every age,” reads the introduction to “Korean Funerary Figures,” currently on display at the gallery in the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies. Running through March 7, the exhibit features a collection of 19th and 20th century figures called kkoktu, showcasing and contextualizing them in four different categories.
NO DEF dances to the beat, dances a new beat, a familiar beat, pumps up the beat. The new, all-women dance group on campus gave its debut show—titled “Too Hot For TV”—on Feb. 1 in Beckham Hall. DJ Nyth Rydahs, a non-University student, set off the beat to the dance-party-turned-dance-performance at 10 p.m. and, by the time the group began, the dance floor was already at high energy.
Raymond Carver revivalism has become as tiresome as Ernest Hemingway idolatry. Sensitive high school and college creative writers thrive off of both authors’ simple prose style. Whereas Hemingway’s stories and novels have a hard-boiled journalistic integrity, Carver’s stories reveal the redemptive nature of human cruelty.
I’m pretty sure that it is statistically impossible to be at Wesleyan this semester and not be taking either (or both) “The Past on Film” or “Western Movies: Myth, Ideology, and Genre.” The sheer amount of students enrolled in these classes has two direct impacts on the student community.
It’s a sunny January L.A. afternoon, and the view from a loft office in a television studio on an industrial street in Hollywood beckons you to sip an iced latte on a café terrace. But inside, amidst the clutter, there are more serious matters to attend to, as two of today’s most successful television producers sit down for a business briefing.
Authors Paul LaFarge and Kit Reed read from their upcoming and new novels for the first lecture in the Distinguished Writers/New Voices series last Wednesday at Russell House. Director of Writing Programs Anne Greene introduced LaFarge’s reading from his as-yet-untitled book, highlighting his numerous prestigious awards, while the Yale University grad interjected that he dropped out of grad school.
Former Hüsker Dü / Sugar frontman Bob Mould was once asked to respond to the allegation that he is “the most depressed man in rock.” His tongue-in-cheek rejoinder was that whomever would think so “[has] never met Stephin Merritt, obviously.” Merritt’s reputation for a numbly cynical approach to human affection precedes him, and makes “Distortion” an inevitable, if still new and different, step in the progression of his most well-known project, The Magnetic Fields.
Carla Bozulich may be the most transient performer and sound artist of the last 20 years. This isn’t hard to prove when you look through her discography, which documents her stream of collaborations with Nels Cline, Thurston Moore, Wilco and Christian Marclay, just to name a few.