On a damp Tuesday night, I had the extraordinary pleasure of chatting with Joan Bennett outside the Campus Center. Just as I had sat down, sipped deeply on my Coca Cola, and opened the Hegemon, Joan bounded towards me, insisting she was late.
 

Joan: I’m sorry I’m late . . .
 

Shane: Well, it’s alright, but I’m a busy man . . .
 

Joan: I’m sorry. This is actually on time for me.
 

Shane: Where are you coming from?
 

Joan: I was just having a late night run.
 

Shane: Was this for pleasure or with the team?
 

Joan: It was for the team, but I was running on my own.
 

Shane: I understand that you are a member of both the Cross Country and Track teams. Which is your favorite?
 

Joan: Well, I love the camaraderie of the Cross Country team, but Track is much more to my attention span. I like how competitive Track is and how quickly the meets go. Cross Country doesn’t really sync up with my attention span.
 

Shane: Plus you’re all peeing your pants and vomiting.
 

Joan: That too. But you get used to it. At first it seems kind of gross and you get embarrassed, but then you realize that everyone does it and you just sort of become one with it. You just become one with your pee and get in touch with the flow of it.
 

Shane: I bet the laundry gets tedious, though.
 

Joan: Actually, they do your laundry for you. Thanks to the Macalester laundry service, they just wash your clothes for you after practice.
 

Shane: And do you have to, like, give them a Christmas present every year?
 

Joan: Actually, no. I’ve never thought of that. I’m so inconsiderate!
 

Shane: Evidently. So being a member of two running-oriented teams you must be in pretty killer shape, right?
 

Joan: I’m not in as good shape as I was before I went abroad. But you’re supposed to get out of shape when you go abroad. I was in Northern Ireland, the land of white starches and fat people.
 

Shane: How was that?
 

Joan: I’m not really as taken with Irish culture as I know a lot of people are, but I learned a lot. I learned a lot about conflict among white people who all look similar and have similar lives but really deep differences. And about hospitality. And brewing things.
 

Shane: You guys had some pretty notorious parties in Wallace a few years back. How did that all come about?
 

Joan: Well, Macalester can be a pretty dead place on a Saturday night and it can be hard to bring people all together into one room, so that was the idea. Then we heard about someone having a DJ doing a set in a Dupre single. And what’s the point of a DJ in a Dupre single?
 

Shane: There isn’t one.
 

Joan: Exactly. So we had a really big room, and when you have a big room you have a duty to have parties there. The DJ liked the first party, so he ended up doing about 4 parties for free that would have cost a lot of money.
 

Shane: Whatever happened with the kittens?
 

Joan: The kittens?
 

Shane: One time you said there would be kittens at your party and when I went I couldn’t find any kittens.
 

Joan: Oh, I’m sorry, Shane. That must have been a lie I told to get people to show up for the party. I told a lot of those.
 

Shane: Well, it worked on me.
 

Joan: It worked on a lot of people. But we only got written up once when somebody set something on fire. People who set stuff on fire always ruin everything.
 

Shane: So you’ve been known to do a badass karaoke rendition of “Private Dancer.” Does that song have any special significance for you?
 

Joan: Well, I’m really just an obscene Tina Turner fan. And it’s one of my favorite ’80s music videos. It really broke a lot of boundaries.
 

Shane: Especially the scene with the dancer wearing the bull mask and the vampire magician.
 

Joan: Yeah, and how Tina Turner’s this older woman with this younger man. When I sing that song I feel like I get to adopt this whole new sexual persona.
 

Shane: Camille Paglia would be proud. Do you have any final advice or words of wisdom for the Macalester community?
 

Joan: Don’t think you have to spend your time at Macalester doing what you think you should be doing. If you start feeling stressed out or start evaluating everything that’s bad about the world, stop reading books and take a nap.
 

Shane: Thank you, Joan. It’s been a pleasure.
 

Joan: Just make sure you make me sound unintelligent.