Macalester College Student Government (MCSG) will hold an election for the position of Academic Affairs Commission (AAC) chair on Oct. 21. The filing period for the position ends Oct. 20.
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Macalester Geography Professor William Rowe recently had the rare opportunity to interview the President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai over the phone. British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) sponsored the interview.
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Macalester hosted the tenth annual International Roundtable last weekend. The roundtable included presentations by three world-renowned scholars, student and faculty respondents and a Korean music ensemble.
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At the Macalester College Board of Trustees meeting in early October, three new trustees began their three-year terms. The new trustees are Lois Quam ’83, Paul Anderson ’73 and Brian Berkopec ’91.
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Members of the Knitting and Sewing Club are applying for an Action Fund grant to finance a “warm accessories drive.” The grant money would go toward the cost of the production of at least 15 scarf and hat sets for donation to homeless shelters and other community organizations. Also budgeted into the proposal is money to cover potential costs for transportation of goods and the cost of one visit to the recipients of the knitted sets.
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Hundreds of Macalester students filled the John B. Davis Lecture Hall on Oct. 8 for a screening of Trembling Before G-d and a question-and-answer session with director Sandi Simcha Dubowski following the film.
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Macalester. I love it here, I really do. However, those emotions only extend as far as the classroom and academics in general. For the most part, everything else just seems to be a source of frustration for this C*** girl. I mean, the cultural organizations are great, but it sucks to feel like you carry the burden of making sure they continue. If you drop it, who will teach Macalester students about who I am?!...but oh wait, it seems like people don’t care anyway. To an extent, it seems like some aren’t willing to even learn. I remember that at the start of this year, someone said something about not wanting to have to educate everyone about their community. Afterwards, I was with a group of white students who were mad at her for not being willing to educate others and were trying to figure out what her problem was. When that subject was first brought up, I sat there and took a moment to reflect upon it all. But everyone else just seemed to jump the gun and went straight into how unbelievable such a comment was. Luckily, someone there had actually thought about it and told the rest to put themselves in the shoes of a student of color here at Macalester and to consider what that would entail (and this person wasn’t a student of color, either). For those of you who need some light shed upon what this means, let me help.
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In the fall of 2003, Wesleyan University joined the ranks of a growing number of colleges and universities worldwide to institute a “gender-blind” housing option. What this means is that all students can choose their roommates regardless of their assigned legal or chosen genders and sexes, sexual orientations, expressions or identifications. As Kevin Hall, a junior at Wesleyan University, says, the idea is to “create an environment where student housing is not restricted to traditional limitations of the gender binary….ideal for students whose gender identification and/or gender expression varies from this standard paradigm.” The problem at universities worldwide, including Macalester, takes on many forms: some heterosexual students feel uncomfortable with homosexual roommates, homosexual students sometimes feel awkward with same-sex roommates, transgender students feel it’s difficult to assert a gender with which to be grouped and some students just relate better or would prefer to room with members of the opposite sex.
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I like trees. Especially during the fall when the leaves are changing colors and the sun is shining and the whole world has an iced tea-colored tinge to it. This is why last week, as fall descended on the cities, was a perfect time to try to save some trees. How serendipitous then, that Oct. 8 was a national day of action in protest of Office Depot’s paper-buying policy.
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Roland McKay recently contributed an article stating, “I believe that Wesley Clark is the only electable candidate among the nine” (“How to vote: a liberal’s guide to the 2004 elections,” Oct. 10, 2003). I feel that Howard Dean is not only a more democratic alternative, but that he is also a more practical alternative.
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Maybe it’s because I’m a political science major, but one of my favorite things about Macalester is how informed the students are about politics and current events in general. In the library you can always find students reading the newspaper or reading the news online. In class, current events are often related to the course material, and outside of class politics is discussed just as enthusiastically.
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A few weeks ago, I was complaining to a male friend of mine—we’ll call him Matt—about another male friend, who had said and done some things that suggested he was interested in me. I was complaining because I was not looking forward to telling this guy, “Sorry, I’m a lesbian.” I asked Matt, half-jokingly, “Why does he have to screw things up by finding me attractive?” Matt responded, “Well, Lisa, you don’t look like a lesbian.”
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Hat of the Week Take a baby. Make him big, no, make him fat. Really fat. Add some gray hair and give him jowls. Teach him baseball. Throw in a hint of Pillsbury Doughboy, a sprinkling of George C. Scott and a generous helping of bourbon. Oh, and make him old. Really old. Like 72. The result, dear reader, is Don Zimmer.
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On Sunday, the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh men’s soccer team snapped Macalester’s 27-game home winning streak with a dramatic 2-1 overtime victory. The undefeated UW-Oshkosh Titans kept the pressure on the Scots’ defense for much of the game, hitting the post and crossbar and forcing Macalester ’keeper Tom Klezcewski ’05 to make some difficult saves. Shane Lohr finally broke the deadlock in the 64th minute to give the Titans the lead. Macalester proceeded to pick up its game, and in the 72nd minute a superb long-ball from defender Stuart Peacock ’05 found Joe Wertz ’05 in the box. Wertz passed to substitute Adric Mueller ’07 who fired the ball into the back of the net to tie the game. This was Mueller’s first college goal. In the final minutes of play, both sides missed good opportunities at goal and regulation time ended 1-1. Less than two minutes into the first overtime period, Klezcewski failed to hold on to a shot from Derek Kasten and Mark Foster tapped the loose ball in to give eighth-ranked UW-Oshkosh the win. The last time Macalester lost at home was also in overtime play with Oshkosh.
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On Saturday, Hamline defeated Macalester’s football team 40-0. It was Hamline’s second win of the season.
Wait...before I continue with a bullshit article about how we played well in the losing effort (which I seem to write every week), allow me to use this space more creatively and provide my two cents worth on the plight of our football program. Think about that: 40-0. That sounds like a tennis score.
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Hi Ms. Sarah,
I'm writing to request your consent to be the subject of this week's featured spotlight interview in The Mac Weekly...I, of course, would be the interviewer, and just thought you would be a great/involved/cute/awe-inspiring person to talk to. We would have to do it tomorrow or Wednesday afternoon. Let me know when you're free and I'll be as flexible as I can. It's gonna be loads of fun! Let me know if you're into the idea. Maybe we can each get boyfriends out of it. Somehow.
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“Handsome, clever and rich,” I always felt there was a lot to like about Jane Austen’s, Emma Woodhouse. Being too choosy to find a proper suitor for herself, Emma ignores her own romantic desires and endeavors to find a match for her friend. And really, isn’t this as romantically magnanimous as we all hope to be? I’m not quite as naturally generous of spirit. Left with this column when my dating object went out of town, I decided it was time to give the tricky art of the match a trial.
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Some call it animal cruelty, I call it good discipline and good exercise: Tomato, Tamato. My poodle takes a daily jog on a treadmill, big deal. My home, my rules. If Pancake didn’t want to live with me, he would have never run away from his previous owner and taken a crap on my front lawn in the first place. You win some, you lose some. Obviously Pancake was in a winning mood that day. He’s better off with me now than he ever was in the snooty upper class dwelling from whence he came. Nowadays, my Pancake spends his days in his personal doghouse, probably licking his dog-genitalia, kickin’ back and listening to some ODB over the built-in loudspeakers. He’s just your everyday teenaged dog.
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The morning after I flew back home for spring break, I found myself fumbling around the kitchen cabinets for breakfast food that didn’t boast high-fiber content. It was an unwelcome reminder that my 60-year-old parents, unlike Café Mac, do not accommodate my penchant for sugar cereals at every meal. As I stood sleepily weighing whether to make it a Wheat Chex or Total morning, my mom came into the kitchen with a proud bounce in her walk, like a kitten walking away from using the litter box for the first time. She couldn’t wait to show me what she had in store and the excitement was intriguing. Was it a surprise for me, a welcome-back present for her little boy? Although I don’t have any brothers or sisters, I was never the spoiled child given all the presents that would have gone to them on Christmas morning. But maybe that was all about to change.
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It’s currently an exciting time to go to the movies in the Twin Cities. Brief runs have just ended for Olivier Assayas’ incredible Demonlover and a revival print of Singin’ in the Rain; tonight marks the beginning of the annual GLBT film festival at the Oak Street Cinema; the next few weeks will unveil retrospectives of documentarian Frederick Wiseman and Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky; and thanks to Mac Cinema president Dorothe Singer ’06, the German thriller 23 (a huge international hit that’s never been given a theatrical release in the U.S.) will screen on campus this weekend.
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For music lovers, this weekend will provide a number of free on-campus concerts that will provide access to a variety of musical forms and styles. Tonight, the Macalester Jazz Ensemble will take the stage, followed by a performance by the Minnesota Chinese Music Ensemble (MCME) on Sunday. For those who aren’t leaving for Fall Break, the principal flute of the London Symphony Orchestra will perform on Wednesday.
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You’ve probably seen posters around campus encouraging you to submit your fine poetry, prose or any kind of artwork to Chanter. If you are a student enrolled in English or Art department classes, you’ve probably had some attractive, if somewhat dweeby, student come into your class and accost you for submissions. If you like playing chess in Campus Center room 206 at 10 p.m. on Thursday nights, you’ve had the Chanter staff interrupt your games of strategy with their literary and artistic rabble-rousing. (Sorry about all that.)
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Belle and Sebastian are the quintessential college rock band, and those who are fans know the formula: somber, somewhat strange lyrics with sweet, peppy music. On their sixth album, Dear Catastrophe Waitress, which was released last week, the band finds themselves staying somewhat true to their formula while evolving into something different at the same time. An indication of this is that their lyrics and their melodies have gotten more upbeat and happy; the juxtaposition between Dear Catastrophe Waitress and an album such as If You Are Feeling Sinister is like hearing “Keep the Customer Satisfied” right before “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright” on Bridge Over Troubled Water. In fact, Dear Catastrophe Waitress draws many comparisons to Simon and Garfunkel, containing upbeat material (and the brass instruments that includes) and some somber balladry.
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On Sunday, Oct. 19, Macalester will host musician Stuart Davis, an accomplished singer-songwriter who has been producing spiritual, introspective folk music for a decade. Davis has not only released numerous albums, but he has also founded his own label, Dharma Pop. He is a folk singer with spiritual roots; he is a Buddhist who meditates daily. Davis, who started out in Minnesota and now lives in Colorado, has developed a very loyal following over the years. He has just released a new album entitled Bell, and his show at Macalester will be a CD release party of sorts. Davis believes strongly in touring as his livelihood, and he usually plays anywhere from 150 to 200 shows per year.
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Knitting and Sewing Club member Hannah Popish ’06 sure loves her knitting...and she, along with the rest of her club, wants to share her passion with those less fortunate. Full story. Photo by Brent Hecht.
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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