Four Macalester students were arrested in Miami while protesting the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The students, Jason Tanzman ’06, Jay Bowman ’07, Hiu Yan Choi ’07 and Julie Ramsey ’07, all served time in the city’s jails. Twenty Macalester students attended the protests from Thursday, Nov. 20 to Sunday, Nov. 23.
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Contributing Writers
Macalester made news locally and nationally when newspapers, radio stations and television stations reported on the possibility of gender-blind housing at the college. The Mac Weekly reported on the possibility in the Nov. 14 issue. The following week, the Associated Press (AP), Star Tribune, Saint Paul Pioneer Press, New York Newsday, Detroit News, Minnesota Public Radio, WCCO-Radio, television stations KSTP Channel 5 and KARE Channel 11 and several other newspapers across the country gave the story coverage.
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Macalester recently announced its nominees for the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, a grant that gives students the opportunity to pursue a one-year independent project outside of the United States. Watson Fellows receive a stipend of $22,000 as well as an amount of money equal to a twelve month payment of an outstanding federal or institutional student loan.
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Minneapolis CBS affiliate WCCO-TV excluded a botched hidden-camera investigation at Augsburg College from its television report on dorm security on Oct. 30. The report featured Macalester, St. Thomas University, the University of Minnesota and University of Wisconsin-River Falls in the television report, which included footage and interviews from a three-month undercover investigation. Concordia was also in the investigation, but excluded from the television report.
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Programs, in conjunction with the Outing Club, has begun preliminary preparations for an outdoor orientation program it hopes to begin in the fall of 2004.
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The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) Institute recently released its Documenting Effective Educational Practice (DEEP) report, which analyzes Macalester’s educational policies.
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This week is World AIDS week. Macalester has hosted several events promoting awareness and solidarity.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic is more than a medical issue. Fighting the disease on the ground requires confronting issues of sexual education, gender roles, cultural differences, language barriers, politics, intellectual property rights and religion. Indeed, HIV/AIDS is at the nexus of a great many issues, not the least of which is human rights. Discrimination against those infected with HIV is not prohibited in 40 percent of countries.
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The boycott is unquestionably an intrinsic and important tool of activism, used regularly by groups seeking to incite change within a system that has been deemed oppressive, offensive or in need of modification. Elementary school teachers tell students about the Montgomery bus boycott with the moral in mind that banding together against something that is wrong can create progress. Many of us have seen those same teachers go on strike to demand better salaries and resources. Here at Macalester, we are often advised to stop consuming everything from livestock treated with antibiotics to diamonds to Coca-Cola. The message is this: a large enough boycott movement can force the change that participants seek.
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By HEATHER COVER, RENA KARIPIDIS, ANDRE MOULTON and CATHRYN O’SULLIVAN
The temperature in Montréal, Canada during the first weekend in November was a frigid -10 degrees Celsius. So why were thousands of people from the Caribbean gathered there for the weekend? Despite the cold outside, the fifth annual conference held by the Concordia Caribbean Students Union was hot, hot, hot! Not ones to miss out on the action, our very own Caribbean Students Association sent four representatives to the gathering.
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“Is that a girl?” the bouncer asked each of the boys standing near me before he grabbed my shoulder to escort me out of the club. We were at Gay ’90s on a Sunday, and the club was packed from the 18+ crowd and drag show spectators. Treading through the downstairs bars and dance floors, we made our way toward the back rooms of the club. As we grew increasingly frustrated with the scene, my friends decided to head toward a back bar through the men’s bathroom. A large sign warning “Men Only! No Exceptions” hung on the bathroom door, but an acquaintance told me it wouldn’t be a problem. I didn’t think too much of it. I’ve used male bathrooms in clubs, and it usually draws little notice. Beyond the bathroom was a large room with a bar, two video screens showing porn and bunches of boys standing around. I found my friends and hung out for about 45 minutes.
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Any average person can tell you that the key to a healthy relationship is balance. What most people do not realize is that our relationship with the environment works the same way. Most people can understand why you may want a healthy relationship with an individual (your spouse, your grandma, your dog, etc.) but too many people do not realize that it is important to have a healthy and balanced relationship with nature.
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The poker industry has been expanding exponentially in the past few months. Online poker has exploded, new technology and production have led to entertaining and profitable television poker coverage, and Jim McManus’ Positively Fifth Street has climbed up the New York Times bestseller charts. While deciding whether or not to cover this rapidly expanding industry, The Mac Weekly evaluated poker’s eligibility in the sports realm. Here are some of the major arguments for and against poker’s qualifications as a sport:
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Women’s swimming team wins Macalester Invite On Saturday, the Macalester women’s swimming and diving team placed first in 10 out of 17 events at the Macalester Invitational. The Scots ended with a score of 412, allowing Macalester to handily win the eight-team meet for the second year in a row.
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Dinner, supper, lunch: The trilogy
Some of us decided to steer away from the hassle (i.e. fun) of the holidays and stay on campus during the break, enjoying the peaceful (i.e. nothing-to-do) atmosphere and dining at the classy Bon Appétit (i.e. old Café Mac). Yes, I am bitter. But what I am still trying to get over is the fact that we had “Thanksgiving dinner” at noon. I thought dinner was something you have in the evening! I was even more perplexed when I was informed that some people in the South actually use the word dinner instead of lunch and supper. Hmmm. I don’t know about you, but supper reminds me much more of Oliver Twist’s “please sir, can I have some more” (with a cute British accent) than anything Southern American … I did some research on these words and realized that nothing is certain in this world. Here’s the lowdown on the trilogy:
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Words are simply a sequence of arbitrary signs. Sometimes it seems as if we at Macalester make too big a fuss about them, but really they deserve careful scrutiny. They represent the culmination of new and unique phenomena that can’t bear to remain unnamed. A small set of letters can alter the identity of a group’s members forever. While many terms come from prolific wordsmiths like Shakespeare, others emanate from deeper within the culture. They’re coined by the small players—a perverted film critic, a slimy advertiser, a desperate academic—but somehow work their way to the tongues of pop stars and ordinary folks alike. I’ve tried to pay close attention to the terms of our time because in addition to being culturally reflective, they’re often unintentionally amusing. Here are four of the ones I’ve had the pleasure to learn this year.
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America grieves today as beloved ARBY’s celebrity, Oven Mitt, sits behind bars, somberly awaiting trail on charges of drug possession, public urination and prostitution. According to witnesses, Mitt stumbled out of a Los Angeles bar last Saturday drenched in melted cheddar, wearing high heels, and a bikini top made of two ARBY’s buns. Fellow commercial celeb. and friend to Mitt Ronald McDonald commented: “That homely pervert was always trying on my wig, stealing my big red shoes.” In his defense, all Mitt had to say was “I have no ears? I have no ears!”
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Dear Rock Hardy and Fleshy Fox,
I’ve been hanging out with a hot first-year all semester. We talk, we eat at the cafeteria together – I really like him. It’s just that he doesn’t really seem available. It’s not like there are other girls, or any old relationships – he just always seems – involved. With himself. Like, he’s always checking himself out (flexing in front of the mirror, hello) instead of checking me out. Now that the end of the semester is coming up, I’m feeling pressed to tell him that I like him. Just one kiss before the long, barren January break would be nice! How do I get him to notice me, instead of his biceps? How do I get his attention?
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I’m tempted to take Bad Comedy at their word and look at their last show (which ran on campus two weeks ago) as a revisionist take on Chekhov’s The Seagull. Ignoring some excerpts of the play tacked on to the beginning and end of the revue as something of a literary joke. The show contained no allusions to Chekhov’s classic. Nonetheless, the major themes of this and every other Bad Comedy show I’ve seen––sexual and romantic dysfunction, the sense of disillusionment that comes with education and maturity, professional and social failure––bear striking similarities to Chekhov’s.
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After spending half of the three years that I have lived in the Twin Cities as one of the Arts Editors for the Mac Weekly, I’ve had the opportunity to experience many arts events—everything from plays and movies, to symphony concerts and ballets. The Twin Cities have an excellent arts scene that everyone should experience during their years at Macalester, no matter what their artistic tastes. Here are some easy, cheap ways to take advantage of what the cities have to offer:
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The Macalester Art Gallery (you know, that light enclave in the center of the humanities building) is currently hosting, Facets of Clay, an exhibition exploring the use of clay as a fine art material through the work of fourteen artists.
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Ryan Adams has had a pretty illustrious career so far: he won critical praise with his influential alt-country band Whiskeytown; while still with that band he released a solo album, Heartbreaker, which also won rave reviews; and after the demise of Whiskeytown, Adams released a solo album, Gold, which was not only popular with critics but also with fans, becoming his first commercially successful album. This time around, Adams’ ego matches his level of success. He has released two albums simultaneously; Rock n Roll and Love Is Hell Part Two, the former and more popular of which I will review here.
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What is most striking about Yo La Tengo is how they’ve never been lost to an era. The brash, lo-fi, amateurism of New Wave Hotdogs and Ride the Tiger gave way to the controlled-noise soundscapes of Painful, the epic noise-pop and keyboards of I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, the somber unplugged ballads of And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out and finally the soft-spoken, Brian Wilson-on-a-rainy-day, Summer Sun. Each album, though distinctly Yo La Tengo, is sonically and temporally different. The reason for Yo La Tengo’s longevity and continuing musical relevance lies in their constant sonic permutations.
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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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