Plans are underway to merge the Community Service Office (CSO), Internship Office, and the International Center into a new Center for Global Studies and Citizenship. The organizers of the plan say that the changes are designed to better integrate leadership and civic engagement into the student experience.
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In part due to President Rosenberg’s efforts at engaging alumni in the life of the college and donations from young alumni, rates of alumni giving have improved in recent years.
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Responding to allegations of human rights violations by The Coca-Cola Company and its bottling partners in Colombia, Macalester has asked the company—whose local distributor is the school’s exclusive soft drink supplier—to cooperate with an independent investigation or lose its contract with the school.
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At its weekly meeting on Tuesday, the Legislative Body (LB) overwhelmingly passed an amended resolution urging the Board of Trustees to postpone its vote on modifying Macalester’s need-blind admissions policy.
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Due to increased complaints from students, faculty and staff, Computer and Information Technology (CIT) Services has begun examining the possibility of changing the college’s e-mail system.
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The leadership of Queer Union decided not to hold the annual “QU” dance this year due to their feeling that the dance reflected badly on the organization and the queer community. They said that students have lost track of the dance’s original purpose: to create a safe and fun space for Macalester’s queer community.
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President Brian Rosenberg announced the formation of a search committee to find the next provost of Macalester College last week. The committee, chaired by English Professor Michelle Wright, will recommend a candidate to the president in the Spring, after conducting a national search.
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More than ever, the students that come to Macalester are coming to stay. According to statistics recently released by the Office of Institutional Research, Macalester’s graduation rates have reached an all-time high.
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Faculty and students described this year’s International Roundtable, held last weekend in Weyerhaeuser Chapel as one of the best in recent memory, owing to the caliber of debate and the range of the political spectrum represented.
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The Smail Gallery in Olin-Rice is now hosting a new exhibit entitled “Rivers of North America from Space.” According to those involved with the exhibit, “Rivers of North America from Space” fulfills the gallery’s intended purpose of displaying the artistic side of science.
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Could the Red Sox have beaten those Damn Yankees without some intense scrutiny of the Yanks’ own strategies? We think not. The lesson that we have taken away from this series: Know your enemy.
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These conversations typically start out with semi-routine discussions and at some point always involve my mother ridiculing my racial identity. For a mixed-race person these conversations are always a possibility, certainly because our race is more apt to not fit into those static and constructed categories that the world is so eager to place our family members into. When someone negates your identity it feels like they are trying to erase your history. But why would my mom want to do this?! Although my mother is also mixed-race she does not always think of herself in this way. This has always confused me, since my mother had grown up in a bona fide non-English-speaking, downtown-D.C.-living, non-white family.
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The debate over the retention of the need-blind admissions policy is fundamentally a question about allocating scarce resources. We believe that foregoing spending on teachers, labs, and equipment in order to pay for student financial aid will have serious detrimental effects on the quality of our education and student life in general. We do not believe that moving to a need aware system is morally bankrupt or that it will greatly harm Macalester’s character. We have no illusions about our privileged and marginal (in the sense that it involves very few people) position in society at large. For those reasons moving to a need-aware policy seems very reasonable.
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In the short term, the problem of needblind admissions is economic. Opponents of the full-need policy proposed by the RPC fail to recognize that budget cuts are hurting, indeed have already hurt, education at Macalester. It is therefore useful to recount how limited funding is damaging the college.
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With the election scorching our brains, the future has seldom looked less certain. Asmall network of ideologues, analysts and bureaucratic adventurers known as neoconservatives have shaped our strange generation in ways unimaginable only a few years ago. As Washington reporter Josh Marshall put it, the war in Iraq will forever be known as the war that neocons agitated for, framed, planned (poorly), and finally carried out, by persuading a trusting American public with fake intelligence, over the resistance of the vast majority of the world. Thomas Friedman stated that this war could never have happened without a couple dozen in the capital leaning on the levers of power.
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It’s tough for an NCAA Division III school to go into a meet that includes a top-ranked Division I university and come out pleased with the results. But both the men’s and women’s cross-country teams did just that on Saturday.
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In the latest episode of a great MIAC women’s soccer rivalry, the St. Benedict Blazers held the Scots to a 1-1 tie at Macalester Stadium last Friday.
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Withstanding shoving matches and an aggressive opposition, the men’s soccer team spoiled Bethel College’s bid for an undefeated season by toppling the Royals 2-1 last Saturday, Oct. 16th. All three goals came during the final 13 minutes of the contest.
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Elizabeth Lostetter ’05 is many things: a farmer’s daughter, a student of opera, a margarita enthusiast. She is not, I learned, a firefighter nor a fan of Culture Club. Somehow we still got along. After sampling one of her homemade pumpkin bars, I sat down to get inside of E. Lo’s head.
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So, you are driving down the freeway when you notice a discourteous vehicle coming up on you from behind, unsafely fast. Upon closer inspection it appears that the car is driving itself, you can’t see any human form in the drivers seat . . . Wait, perhaps the car is being remotely controlled, because in the shadow that would be the vehicle’s operator you spot the telltale antenna. Surely we can all recognize this type of obnoxious driver, but have you recently noted similar behavior around the Macalester campus?
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The transition from Wyoming’s Middle School of Gifted and Talented Youth to Stonewall Jackson High proved especially strenuous for one grossly effeminate, albeit melodious, Greek god.
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It all began last Thursday at approximately seven o’clock in the morning, while I was walking my gerbil, Darla, across campus, as is routine. I was jerked out of my state of contentment when Darla began pulling furiously on her leash. Looking about I immediately identified the cause of the commotion to be three of Macalester’s finest students: Jeffrey Rogers ’07, Daniel Schroeder ’07, and Amy Hutchinson ’08. Just ahead of me, near the chapel, the three of them, fully attired in wet suits and flippers, had come sprinting from behind a row of bushes only to dive at a spot in the ground from which a black squirrel had only just fled. Sitting up, Hutchinson watched the squirrel disappear, yelling “Fiddlesticks! We’ve missed again!” Ah yes, I’d almost forgotten it was Squirrel Chasing season. How foolish of me.
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Too much theory, too much psychoanalysis, too much Jude Law, too many damn commercial interruptions for Wal-Mart during the denouement of America’s Next Top Model. With that list as a somewhat-fair representation of my current situation, I don’t think anything was made better by seeing “I Heart Huckabees.”
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As I don’t have much space left, I’d like to take our criticisms in a slightly different direction.
While watching the film I was constantly aware of three specific ways “Huckabees” relates to Macalester. First, both Hoffman and Huppert’s characters bear uncanny resemblances to Macalester Professors. While I won’t reveal their names, Hoffman seems to channel a new age persona (if it could exist) of Macalester’s resident Kantian. Huppert, on the other hand, plays Katerine, whose name and propensity to expose the “dark subjective misery of late capitalism” (to quote Mr. Sawyer) seem eerily similar to Macalester’s postmodern professor par excellence.
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I walked into the Uptown Theater with a jug of sangria and a flask-full of the cheapest Canadian whiskey available. I walked out with two empty bottles and the eternal laughter of the Great Existential Joke ringing in my ears.
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With Halloween readily approaching, we anticipate seeking out horror films to compliment those mounds of Twix bars and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Fortunately, the next two weeks bring what look to be three reasonably welcome additions to the genre.
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Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy has always been bleak. In his Uncle Tupelo days he was writing dispirited songs like “Black Eye,” and “Watch Me Fall.” Scoring a college radio hit with “Gun,” a self-defeated Tweedy sings, “Climbing up the ladder/Breaking my shin on the very first rung.” The metaphor might be heavy handed and indicative of an unseasoned songwriter, but Tweedy’s Uncle Tupelo and early-Wilco recordings make their marks in the accessibility they possess.
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The Irish quintet The Thrills is about the worst-named band in the history of the world. Their music is about as thrilling as a slow-motion picnic with the cast of Antique Roadshow, and the band would be more accurately titled The Happy Valley Orchestral Gang instead of the monosyllabic title that is reminiscent of bands like The Strokes, The Hives or Jet.
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Last fall, singer-songwriter Elliott Smith took his own life, leaving fans across the country broken-hearted. Smith had long been famous in indie circles for his soft, sad, Beatlesque ballads, as well as his battles with alcohol and drugs. Now, amid suspicion that Smith’s death may not have been a suicide, comes the release of his final album, From a Basement on the Hill. The album was near completion at the time of Smith’s death, and by listening to it one would not suspect that it was unfinished (except, perhaps, by the inclusion of too many tracks). It is important not to get too wrapped up in Smith’s death; this album stands on its own and must not be listened to simply for clues of suicidal despair (as we tend to do with last albums by artists such as Nick Drake, Kurt Cobain, and others).
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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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