I have been here at Wesleyan for three years, and have had the pleasure of getting to know many of you. I want to let you know that it has been a blessing to have you around. I am sad that it’s your time to leave, but even if I cry, nothing will stop you from facing the outside world.
Students crammed into the Usdan Café on Monday evening to listen to Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) presidential candidates Joe O’Donnell ’13, Melody Oliphant ’13 and Zachary Malter ’13 debate their qualifications for the position.
I was in disbelief when I got the email that invited me to speak at the fourth annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U). There is no way I can share a platform with President Bill Clinton and Sean Penn, I said to myself. This must be spam. How could the former President of the United States share a panel with a Kenyan slum boy?
In an effort to improve the lives of impoverished Bangladeshis by providing them with a clean water supply, the recently-founded student organization Brighter Dawns, is amongst the groups competing for the $50,000 prize given by Dell Social Innovation to the group with the most votes.
Two years after its founding at the hands of Ali Chaudhry ’12, Kenneth Feder ’12, and Kumail Akbar ’12, the student-run organization Possibilities Pakistan has, in Wesleyan tradition, entered the competition for the Dell Social Innovation Prize, which awards $50,000 to an organization “with innovative ideas to solve a social or environmental problem.”
In Pakistan, educational guidance is an extremely novel concept, and for 99 percent of the population it does not exist at all.
As far as I have seen, people are naturally self-interested—given appropriate direction, I believe this is a good thing. We protect from danger both our physical bodies and the fundamental ideologies that give our Selves meaning and worth.
On a campus where “Wesleyan time” runs about fifteen behind being fashionably late, arriving half an hour before the start of an event is almost unimaginable.
Upon returning to any left-leaning liberal arts college in the fall and asking the typical “What did you do over the summer?” question, one occasionally hears about community service trips to developing countries.
On July 19, Jessica Posner ’09, the Managing Director of Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO), stood onstage in a blue sequined dress at The Do Something Awards live on VH1 in Hollywood. The next day, back in a pair of jeans, Posner boarded a flight to Kenya with a check for $100,000.