Dear Fire Safety, You don’t make me feel safe; you don’t protect me in any way.
Numerous indicators have confirmed my suspicions that the Netherlands is, in fact, a strange parallel — or “bizarro” — universe. Bikes have the right of way. Prisoners are kept one to a cell with a T.V., a coffee-maker and opportunity. The Party for the Animals has two seats in Parliament. But nothing about this bizarro world is quite so confounding as the present holiday season.
Fall in Europe looks suspiciously like fall in the United States: leaves are changing; farmers are hauling their harvests to cities for sale; overcoats appear; and people seek refuge from the freezing darkness in bustling cafés—the days are getting shorter. But, far from being a depressing successor to summer, the first three weeks of autumn play host to the greatest party ever to be invented by a German: OKTOBERFEST.
Around this time last year, I was admittedly jealous of the frosh. Facing up to reality — especially realizing how the experience of orientation and those first sweet weeks at Wesleyan can never be repeated — dealt a harsh blow. Every campus amenity necessitated by Wesleyan's brand of liberality — the subsidized birth control, the frank sexuality, the Ride — seemed, well, normal.
Dear David Knappenberger, to the benefit of the collective Wesleyan consciousness, I would like to defend John Chisholm against your petty, personal criticism of his generous (if at times zealously so) nature, because the man himself is much too humble...
On an ill-remembered night about one year ago, John and I randomly decided to research Connecticut's marijuana laws, you know, in preparation for the unlikely event of ever sampling marijuana. The familiar logo of NORML popped up first on a Google search, and one click sent us spinning through a bad trip of draconian laws, all designed to imprison people for indulging in a plant.
While this is not a commonly discussed topic in government (yet!), we would like today to step outside the box. We want to pause and reflect on issues that affect the lives of hippies across the country—something many a Wesleyan student can relate to. Why should the granola-eating, Birkenstock-wearing citizens of California necessarily be subject to the federal government of the United States when they clearly view themselves as distinct? So today, we ponder….