By DAN FEIDT, SHANNON MILLS, SARA NELSON & TIFFANY SMITH
Macalester students and alumni turned out in large numbers at Mar. 2 state caucuses to support presidential primary candidates, offer resolutions to party platforms and select precinct representatives.
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Ruminator Books fell short of its goal to raise $450,000 through a limited offering of public stock and will not become a community-owned bookstore, said owner David Unowsky on Monday. Ruminator raised less than $200,000 through the public offering and all of the money that went to purchase shares of stock will be returned to the individual contributing investors, including $1,500 given by more than 150 Macalester students.
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Kathleen Purvis-Roberts, assistant professor in the Joint Science Department at the Claremont Colleges, discussed the environmental and health effects of nuclear testing in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan at a presentation on Feb. 20.
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Residential Life offered workshops recently for students living off campus next year. The workshops covered tenants’ rights and rental advice for current sophomores and juniors, many of whom will be renting for the first time.
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From Thursday, Feb. 26 through Saturday, Feb. 28, Macalester hosted the Lilly Project’s Committed Living Symposium on the topic of “Life, Work and Values after Macalester.”
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A group of Macalester alumni, working to enact social change at the local level, spend their days scattered about a political landscape that reaches from the state capitol complex to the city government center in downtown St. Paul.
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Macalester’s Women and Gender Studies department, in association with the Program Board, hosted speaker José Esteban Muñoz on Friday, Feb. 20. He delivered an address entitled “Cruising Utopia: Notes on Queer Futurity.”
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A new campus organization supporting the legalization of marijuana is hoping to receive a charter and official club recognition from Macalester College Student Government (MCSG) by next week.
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Café Mac patrons can expect to dine on more organic produce and antibiotic-free meat next fall. The pending changes stem from the “Circle of Responsibility” program unveiled by Café Mac’s parent company, Bon Appétit, last October.
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St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, has received excessive attention from me recently, despite the fact that I am not Catholic. However, I feel that St. Jude is morally obliged to take pity on me and the cause I support—the campaign of Dennis Kucinich.
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This is in response to Anthony Todd’s article that appeared in The Mac Weekly last week. My first response to this is, if his opinions are negative, so what? Let him speak. Let the discussion continue! Progress cannot be made if criticism is reserved. I will make several points that may lead you to conclude that I am in direct alignment with Morales’s beliefs, but this is not necessarily the case. I am considering the validity of his beliefs.
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As many of you may already know, there is a now well-established boycott of Taco Bell in effect. The situation is this: tomato pickers in Immokalee, Fla., have not received a raise in 25 years. The median farm worker income is $5,000 to $7,500 per year (National Agricultural Workers Survey, 1998). Farm-workers receive no overtime pay, health insurance, sick leave, paid holidays or vacation or pension. Furthermore, they are specifically excluded from right-to-organize laws, though it is widely believed that all workers have the legal right to organize and join labor unions. In 1997, three agricultural employers “held over 400 men and women in debt bondage in Florida and South Carolina.” This is just one of five slavery operations exposed in the past five years involving Florida farm-workers. These operations have been documented not only in Florida’s local newspapers, but also in National Geographic, The New Yorker, and The Guardian.
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In the course of some recent discussions of current events and politics, several friends have asked me what the GLBT community has to say about all the commotion surrounding gay marriage. While I don’t presume to speak for the entire queer population at Macalester, much less that of the United States, I do think it is time to have an open dialogue about the issues surrounding the marriage controversy and look at why marriage as a word and as an institution is so important.
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The Macalester women’s water polo team started off the season 4-0 by dominating the field at the Carleton Polo Invitational. With dominating wins against Wheaton, Carleton, Knox and Carthage, the team is shaping up well in its bid to return to nationals.
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The men’s basketball season came to an end last Saturday, Feb. 28, as the Scots fell to Gustavus Adolphus 69-75. Over 3,000 fans in St. Peter, Minn., were treated to a MIAC championship game that lived up to all the hype. For the entire season, a Gustavus vs. Macalester match-up seemed inevitable. The two teams split their regular season games, with Macalester winning at home in January 66-54 and the Gusties pulling out a thrilling 73-72 overtime victory on their turf a month later. Gustavus finished off the season with the number-one playoff seed, and Macalester was right behind at number two. The stage was set for a third fierce battle and the teams did not disappoint.
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Nordic Skiing
The men’s and women’s Nordic Ski teams ended their last season as a varsity sport this past weekend (Feb. 28-29) at the NCAA Central Regional championships in Houghton, Mich. The Macalester women placed sixth out of 10 teams, and were led by Emily Stafford ’06 in the 5K freestyle race and Renee Schaefer ’04 in the 10K classical race. The men placed seventh out of eight teams and were led by Dan Risch-Boody ’07 in the 10K freestyle race and Ari Ofsevit ’06 in the 15K classical race.
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The Macalester men’s and women’s track teams traveled to Carleton Friday, Feb. 27 for their final tune-up before the MIAC Indoor Track Championships. In a competitive field, the Scots tested themselves against other conference schools in the pre-MIAC meet. The women’s team earned a second-place finish while the men took fourth in the overall team competitions. Both teams were able to qualify several competitors for the championship meet.
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Joseph Dinovelli-Lang ’04 is a sexy, sexy boy. Piercing eyes and a confusing wit. I interviewed him during one of his breaks from lying in the sun like an iguana. He giggled like a child upon introduction.
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Knights of the Old Republic
Few things warm the cockles of my heart more than pleasant memories of Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight. Rich in game play and story, this fantastic game reshaped first-person action history. Unfortunately, it’s been quite some time since we got a Star Wars-licensed game of the same caliber. Star Wars Galaxies, Galactic Battlegrounds and even Jedi Knight II, all lacked that spark of brilliance. Luckily, the latest pickings from LucasArts and Black Isle have what it takes to transport us back to the Star Wars universe and help us forget about Episodes I and II.
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Being a sailor aboard your lady ship is one thing. Wearing your sailor suit and crying whilst standing on the quay where your comrades so wrongfully left you is quite another. “All aboard!” One on dock. They called him Two-Finger Jimmy. Not so much because he lacked any of his 10 fingers, but really for the sheer irony of it. And because he had eight robotic finger transplants in place of his natural fingers due to a tragic getting-honey-from-a-beehive fiasco.
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Cont’d from Feb. 13…
As Johnny wiped his lips with a satisfied grin, he felt uniquely pleased with himself. It was a good thing he had read that article in the campus newspaper last week, telling him what to do when confronted with 10 inches of man flesh, or he would have been completely lost.
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Remember our Constitution, that wonderful beacon of liberty, that fountain of hope, that collection of self-evident truths which has guided our nation over the last 213 years? The Mixed Blood Theater in Minneapolis has brought that document to life by commissioning 10 eight-minute plays, each depicting a feature of the Bill of Rights. The resulting production, Bill of (W)Rights is a commentary on contemporary America in all its dysfunctional glory.
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Amongst the smell of corned beef, spring rolls and vegan cookies, in February the top floor of the Campus Center hosted the photographs of Tobechi Tobechukwu. Last Friday it also hosted Tobechukwu himself, striding back and forth in front of his work, willing to talk to anyone who approached. He presented himself, from the outside-in, as an artist who sees his work as both a stationary beauty and a call to action against injustice toward minorities in America and abroad.
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Just think of it: sensual bodies, beautiful melodies, positions you never even knew were possible! Then imagine yourself: an onlooker to this sizzling extravaganza. And all you have to do is walk down the street! On April 2-4 the Macalester Dance Program will present its annual dance concert featuring 10 original pieces by professional choreographers Krista Langberg (Macalester alumnus and former member of numerous professional dance companies including the elite New York-based Susan Marshall & Company), Becky Heist (program head) and Sharon Varosh (staff) and student artists Jessica E. Brown ’04, Nicole Forbes ’04, Zachary Nelson ’04, Emily Potter ’04, Nell Saunders ’04, Amanda Smith ’04, and Jennifer Wichmann ’06 (whose hot bod is featured on the promo posters!). The show this semester promises to be the most exciting in my three-year Macalester dance career. From Britney Spears-inspired hip-hop to wholly original works of modern dance, the participating choreographers have created unique dance pieces that in combination reflect the diversity of the dance world and of the dancers that comprise the Macalester Dance Program.
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I was a bit skeptical when I first heard about England’s The Darkness, an ’80s metal throwback that had supposedly taken over the British music scene. So I did a little research, and all signs do seem to indicate that The Darkness are poised to envelop the world of rock ’n’ roll. As of Feb. 17 they had sold 1.2 million albums in Britain and nearly 1 million more worldwide (400,000 of those in America). They cleaned up at the recent 2004 Brit Awards, beating out revered rockers Blur and Radiohead to win the British Album and British Group awards. And a recent Spin cover featuring audacious Darkness frontman Justin Hawkins, an appearance on David Letterman and several sold-out dates for their American tour foretell growing success for The Darkness in the states.
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Two years ago when the New York retro scene was just starting to emerge as a rock music revival/movement all looked well. Bands like The Strokes and Interpol were here to save America’s youth from Limp Bizkit and Creed as well as make MTV as good as it was in the 1994 of your nostalgia. However, hype subsides and history does its duty—we’re now void of cock rock but where has my retro rock gone? Was it just a contrived ploy invented in a Manhattan office to spark my faith and then stomp it out for the next big thing? Could The Strokes, albeit fun, have sounded any more artificial on their second album and where is Interpol going to go after they fake the rest of Joy Division’s small catalog, New Order?
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The Mac Weekly is an entirely student-produced publication. The opinions expressed in this document are those of its authors and editors, not of Macalester College.
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