The Board of Trustees agreed at its meeting last weekend to vote in early January on whether or not to uphold Macalester’s current need-blind admissions policy, President Brian Rosenberg said.
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For many first-years, registering new voters with the Young Voter Project (YVP) as an Into the Streets orientation activity was a rewarding and worthwhile experience.
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Former Vice President Walter Mondale ’50 was one of the speakers at a symposium last weekend entitled “The U.S and Japan: A 150 Year Relationship.”
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MCSG President Michael Barnes ’06 was unexpectedly missing at the first meeting of the new Legislative Body (LB) on Tuesday. In Barnes’ absence the meeting became an impromptu debate over need-blind admissions between need-blind advocate William Sentell ’02 and President Brian Rosenberg, who supports a proposed change in the policy.
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The Economics, Geography, and Political Science departments are seeing record numbers of students declare majors in their subjects, as more students flock to Carnegie than in recent memory.
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It’s funny how history can repeat itself. When I was in high school and we had some type of Diversity Weekend-esque event it was never very well attended by students. And what I find most ironic about this situation is the fact that my school constantly talked about how it ‘embraced its diversity.’ Then, upon my arrival to Macalester, when I found out that last year’s Diversity Weekend wasn’t very well-attended, I can honestly say that I wasn’t very surprised, though I was disappointed.
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The famed Macalester bubble is enclosing us once again this fall, cleaving campus life from alumni, the local community and students living off campus. The less time we spend on campus, the less chance we’ll have of bumping into the odd campus event poster or hearing about official committee meetings. We are swamped with information, but the tools we use to interact here have become rickety. The online events calendar fails to list many student activities, and blizzards of mass e-mails can only do so much, while organized debate of issues is hard to find.
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As students, we always have a choice: between accepting the title ‘student’ as a guaranteed right, or as something to be earned, a privilege that requires a high-level of self expectation.
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Next week Macalester students will get a rare chance to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth with regard to American foreign policy. Michael Ledeen, the low-profile but highly influential Middle East specialist of the neoconservative persuasion, and Niall Ferguson, the suave and unapologetically-Eurocentric imperialist will appear at the International Roundtable. No doubt, students and faculty will cheer on Tariq Ali, the leftist commentator who once earned a dinner invitation with Marlon Brando (after a series of televised debates with Henry Kissinger so impressed the late actor). I suspect Dean Samatar’s decision to invite these particular personalities to Macalester was akin to the Democrat’s placing Senator Patrick Leahy directly in front of Dick “go **** yourself” Cheney during the vice presidential debate—great exchanges arise out of strategic provocation.
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The spectacle of the Summer Olympics and their glorification of competition made me consider the role of competition here at Macalester. We have competition through sport: varsity, intramural, and casual sports. We have competition in the classroom: certainly well defined within certain departments. But are the goals of competition congruent with the goals of a liberal arts college such as Macalester? Is competition a relic from a time when winning mattered more than diversity, success more than effort? If this is the case, then what does this mean for our athletic department and for those of us who enjoy competition at every level?
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With a 27-20 victory over Knox College last Saturday, the football team got the chance to ring the bell for the first time in over a year. No, not that bell—the other bell, the bell the team rings when it wins.
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The men’s soccer team beat rival Colorado College1-0 in a tense and closely contested match.
The only goal of the match came off of the foot of Macalester mid fielder Michael Blythe ’07 following a crossing pass by Macalester forward Joe Wertz ’06. Blythe’s goal came only 2:37 into the first period.
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As is often the case, the friction between the Turck 2 and Turck 4 teams preceded the game itself. I shamefully admit getting caught up in the hysteria when I lost my temper and, borrowing an insult from my second-grade sister, called my soccer teammate Drew Bahrenburg a “stupidhead.” I have to live with that now. When confronted after the game about the incident, Bahrenburg reportedly accepted my apologies, saying “It’s understandable, adrenaline gets the better of all of us sometimes, I just didn’t think he (me) had the heart to say those things.” I don’t Drew, I don’t.
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Facing rain and temperatures that slid into the thirties, men’s cross country grabbed fifth place in last Friday’s 23-team Division III Pre-Nationals.
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Women’s cross country finished fourth of 22 in the Division III Pre-National Meet last Friday in Colfax, Wisc. The Scots beat all other MIAC teams at the six-kilometer meet, which was made more challenging by 39-degree temperatures and 20-mph gusts of rain-laced wind.
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Playing at home last Friday evening, Macalester Volleyball beat Gustavus Adolphus College in three games, 30-19, 30-23, and 30-24. With the win, the Scots improve their Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) record to 3-2.
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With mid-terms steadily approaching and fall’s chilly winds blowing summer temperatures off into a hazy memory, right about now is just when most Mac students start to lose their grip. Or, at least I do. But somehow, Claire Dawson ’05 manages to project an aura of togetherness and cool-as-a-cuke composure amidst the general zeitgeist of panic swirling about the campus. Is this just a front or has Claire mastered some sort of Zen understanding of the inner-workings at Macalester? I didn’t ask her, so I don’t know. But I did manage to learn her favorite Shakespeare play, where she gets those cloaks, and how closely connected she is to “Back to the Future.”
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Listen, I’m tired of people pushing me around. Yeah, I was born with a “push” sign on my back, a “pull” sign on my bosom. But, that’s the way the good lord made me. You got a problem? Take it up with the big guy upstairs. I’m a goddamn door. What do you expect?
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Do you have persistent feelings of emptiness? Do you have the sense that something is missing? Are you unfulfilled? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then you might want to make an appointment at Winton. But before that, ask yourself, "Am I eating well enough?"
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Guess what? The taboo around the word fuck is still so dense that etymology dictionaries don’t even list it. Which makes me really upset since this mysterious word must have had a very interesting life. Poor thing, to be left out like that. And it’s probably one of the most common words in this language! It wasn’t until 1965 that it was listed in a dictionary, and even then the publisher felt it necessary to do a fuck-free version, known as the Clean Green or “Texas” edition, tailored for the Southwest high school market. Because the word has always been taboo, especially in written language, it’s hard to trace its origins. Fortunately, once again, the Internet comes to my rescue with some etymology of this favored curse.
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One month into college, I suddenly feel like I’ve just woken up from a dream. For the first time, I actually take note of my surroundings when I walk around. I can recall the first couple days after moving in, the days of overwhelming consumption of new places, faces, classes, responsibilities, freedom… but today as I’m crossing Grand and walking toward yet another meal at CafÈ Mac, something feels different.
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The Minnesota Orchestra always manages to impress me. Perhaps for those who come from larger cities with bigger artistic communities, the orchestra may be nothing special. Coming from the state of Nebraska, however, I have been duly impressed by the quality (and quantity) of concerts offered by the Minnesota Orchestra.
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This weekend, the Macalester Theater and Dance Department will open its season with “Tongue of a Bird,” a play by Ellen McLaughlin and directed by department chair Beth Cleary. At face value, the story is deceptively simple—a young girl, Charlotte, goes missing in the woods, and her mother, Dessa, enlists the help of a pilot, Maxine, to aid in the search.
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If you were cool, you derided them in middle school for being “sellouts,” but that doesn’t mean that Green Day’s cheesy folk “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” doesn’t make us all nostalgic for mid-’90s summer camp bonfires.
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Scottish band Franz Ferdinand has had an amazing year. First, they released their debut self-titled album to both critical acclaim and extreme popularity. They became huge in Europe, selling out clubs all over, and were hailed as the next Strokes. Then they managed to do what few popular British acts can: they sold out shows here in the States as well.
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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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