University Jewish Chaplain David Leipziger has been working with administrators, faculty and students to alter the Baccalaureate given at commencement. "Ritual is not something that has found its way into Wesleyan graduation," Leipziger said. "We want to make Baccalaureate something that everyone feels comfortable with and gets excited about, something that can incorporate the creativity of the entire class."
Neil Alan has been the owner of Pelton's drugstore and home health care center on Main Street since 1999. Recently, Pelton's made the news when it announced its decision to sell the store to Brooks Pharmacy.
Rhonda Trembaly is the friendly cashier who works throughout the week at First Harvest, the vegan café in the Campus Center. Although she is a veteran of foodservice work, she has only been working at Wesleyan for about seven weeks. Rhonda loves her job and is thankful to come to work in this environment everyday.
It is widely known that Wesleyan has a diverse student body. There are hippies and there are jocks, there are painters and poets, musicians and ping-pong players. And then there are those who study at Olin Library and those who study across the street at the Science Library, or "Sci-Li."
In a recent development, the Undergraduate Residential Life Committee (URLC) has agreed to dissolve the gender-blind hall. Based on some of the University's recent decisions, it would have been reasonable for the student body to take a pessimistic attitude of this announcement. However, the move appears to provide a reason for students to hope once again.
I live in a house of all American girls or rather, All-American Girls. Most of them are named Kate and born in 1982. This is where our similarities end. Their favorite place to go in London is called The American Sports Bar Café. This also happens to be Justin Timberlake's favorite place to go in London. The American Sports Bar Café is my least favorite place to go in London.
Last Friday night, a little after midnight, I was sitting in my room minding my own business. All of a sudden, I heard lots of loud shouts and the sound of glass shattering. The shouts are a fixture of Friday night at any university, but the shattering glass should not be. I went out to the balcony to find people in the room above me tossing empty beer bottles out onto the campus walkway where they broke into shards.
Oh Leslie, darling. I sooooooo know what you're talking about. After reading your Wespeak entitled "Sick of being an underachiever" I realized that I, too, have to embrace my loser/I don't-do-anything newfound identity. I'm sitting here in the library freaking out because I don't know how to use my computer.
Demonstrating that Cardinals are successful on and off the field, senior soccer captain Nick Vincent '04 and Cross Country and Track captain Brittany Allen '04 were both honored with the Roger Maynard '37 Memorial Award for their academic and athletic achievements.
The men's tennis team fell to Little Three rival Amherst this weekend, in a match that can be best described not by looking at the overall score. While the team lost 5-2, the tables could have just as easily been reversed, as the Cards put forth a solid effort.
Dominate: it's not a word heard too often in the world of sports. Most of the time, games or matches are decided by small margins with the outcome being in question at some point in the proceedings. Last Wednesday against Smith College, the Wesleyan women's tennis team dominated.
It was a tough week for the Cardinals as the men's baseball team pulled in just one win out of five games. Despite this fact, the Cards managed to post a 6-0 shutout in Saturday's second game against Tufts, the only shutout by either team in the series. Wednesday, Wes met Western New England College and lost a tough game, leaving the Cards with a record of 6-12-1.
The cold wind that blew across the lacrosse pitch on Tuesday acted as a reminder to the Cardinals of Saturday's heartbreaking loss to Bowdoin, but the Cardinals came back to life with a big 17-2 victory over the Smith College Pioneers. The Cardinals improved their record to 7-2 overall (2-2 NESCAC).
Due perhaps to the somewhat low-key response of the crowd early into his performance, NYC-based rapper J-Live staged a little pop quiz during last Saturday's show at Eclectic. After only a few songs, he stopped the music.
Our pick for this week's In the Spotlight is the student band Franny, made up of Lee Pender '07 (lead guitar and vocals), Ashraf Rijal '07 (bass guitar) and Caley Monahon-Ward '07 (drums). Named after Franny Glass of J.D. Salinger's "Franny and Zooey," this exceptional indie-rock band has recently released its first CD, "Franny," available for $5 at www.frannyband.com.
Topping the box office last weekend, director Guillermo del Toro's "Hellboy" is the paradigmatic early Spring Hollywood release; the type of modestly budgeted adventure movie with just enough action, humor and showmanship to attract a large enough audience to turn a profit but not enough skill and creativity to qualify as a genuine blockbuster.
With the new ban in Ireland that illegalizes smoking in pubs, restaurants, and other workplaces, many wonder if the Irish music pub scene will die out. This is a cause for concern among modern Irish musicians, but on March 29, the day the ban went into effect, Irish music was very much alive on the Wesleyan campus.
On Wednesday night, Russell House attendees were treated to a poetry reading by Harryette Mullen that tantalized both the ears and the intellect. Mullen is visiting from Los Angeles, where she teaches African American Studies and Creative Writing at UCLA. Her work, including the collections "S*PeRM**KT" (1992) amd "Muse and Drudge" (1995) have been much praised and anthologized, and she was nominated for a National Book Award for her most recent book, "Sleeping with the Dictionary" (2002).
The audience clapped their hands, stomped their feet, and raised their voices into a thunderous applause under the direction and instruction of Eliot Fisher '05. Fisher was training the audience for their interactive role in "The Outlaw Barber of Living Proof," a musical western melodrama written by, directed by, and featuring Fisher himself on the piano.
For five years Afghanistan's airways were silent. From 1978 to 2001, the government there repressed music, but from 1996-2001 the Taliban forbade it entirely. Sunday March 28, as part of a weekend-long festival "Seeing Through Afghanistan: Re-viewing Afghanistan through Film, Photography and Music," Wesleyan broke its own silence in that arena with a concert of traditional Afghan music.
Dearest readers, fans of filmdom, I return to you after a week's absence from the glorious yet thin pages of this publication. Now that the April Fool's Day issue has come and gone, I want us to return to the task at hand; to a frank and honest discussion of the cinematic urge. I need to get right to the point. I have a serious concern. And it's about President Douglas J. Bennet. It's not about chalking. It's not about mumbling.
I've met Eli Roth twice. The first time was at a party. The second was in an L.A. synagogue, at my cousin Mason's Bar Mitzvah. As Mason read his Torah portion, I kept glancing back and thinking that there was a sick and brilliant mind in the house of God. Roth's first feature film, "Cabin Fever," blows my mind.
The Undergraduate Residential Life Committee (URLC) decided yesterday to give all incoming frosh the option of living in gender-neutral housing in any first-year residence, enabling two members of the different genders to live in one room.
In a recent study, only 63 percent of students at Wesleyan said they were generally or very satisfied with classes. According to the study, which cited 31 similar colleges, 70-90 percent of students at peer universities responded by saying they are generally or very satisfied. The Administration believes the dissatisfaction comes from a lack of proper class distribution.
On March 29 a new ordinance banning underage drinking on private property came into effect for Middletown. A state statute prohibits underage drinking in public, but until recently underage drinking on private property, like the Wesleyan campus, was not prohibited.
Wesleyan's claim to be top in science research has been further confirmed by the achievements of Emily Jacobs-Palmer '06 and Rob Judson '05, who won Goldwater scholarships this year. This national scholarship, in honor of Senator Barry M. Goldwater, provides funding for students who wish to pursue careers in the natural sciences, mathematics or engineering and conduct research in their area of interest.
I recently learned some shocking news, and something needs to be done about it. We are living in the waning days of the internal combustion engine. For those of you who aren't automotive minded, an internal combustion engine is the big chunk of metal under the hood of your car. The hood is the big door in front of the windshield that you never open.
It takes a lot to prompt me to write a Wespeak, but right now I just simply can't help myself. This whole chalking controversy has outraged me lately, and my anger has been building up gradually. My situation has been quite comparable to that of the Balkan Islands after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand—a powder keg on the verge of explosion.
The March for Women's Lives is NOT called the March for Choice for a reason. Contrary to the belief that the name change was a way to water down the political nature of the march, the name change occurred to broaden the framework of the march to include reproductive rights and justice.
You got woken up at 6:30 in the morning? That sux. Half a year ago I registered my dorm number on the National Do Not Call Registry (http://www.donotcall.gov) and I no longer receive phone calls from solicitors. Since the number will not change for people who have my room in the years to come, if everyone at Wesleyan fills out the form, we can have the campus permanently telemarketer-free in three months.
Are you interested in ethnic studies at Wesleyan? Do you want to know what kind of work students have been doing in the field? Check out the Asian American studies conference to hear Wes alums and current students present their research.
Incessantly recalling memories of high school, I've been contemplating how I choose to remember events in my life lately. Of course, the only ones I seem able to recollect are mostly self-indulgent. The rest floods back thanks to the assistance of an old scrapbook long abandoned. It's a disturbing sensation borne of a misrepresented past, especially one so definitively gone.
Brian Weatherson's lecture to a small crowd Wednesday night, entitled "Morality in Fiction and Consciousness in Imagination," focused on the interdependence of concepts in fiction and philosophical thought experiments.
Week two, round two, of the three week long senior theses exhibition featured six theses; two architecture, one drawing, one photography, one sculpture, and one German thesis of print making. The most colorful project was "Making Room," a sculpture thesis by Myra Rasmussen.
I have a strange way of idolizing bands I've never heard. I'll read a glowing review and get all excited, then another will work my hopes up and as the band grows to God-like stature before my eyes I start to realize that nothing could possibly live up to my expectations. For this reason I bought the Libertines' 2003 debut album, "Up the Bracket," and shelved it for approximately TEN MONTHS.