'Cac Commencement Bracket 2013
Last year, we ran a wonderful, but unilaterally-chosen speaker bracket. This year, we decided to do things the democratic, retrospective way: google search results, for “[name of speaker] commencem…
11 Ways To Avoid Phone Conversations With Your Parents
6. Get Blackout
Suggestions for people wait-listed by Cac schools
The Times published yesterday a piece on the ways people attempt to get off college waiting lists. Featuring a wait-listee of our own Hamilton, the article outlined the various absurd things people…
Amherst Construction Fail
If you go to Amherst, you are familiar with the sounds of drilling, banging, scraping, beeping, men shouting to each other in the early morning, and whatever other cacophony construction entails. F…
Bowdoin's Divestment Demonstration: All Quiet On Set
Two days ago I received a press release from a group called Bowdoin Climate Action (BCA). For months, following similar movements at other schools, this group of students has been asking the colleg…
Wesleyan's Public Safety Nightmare
Wesleyan University has had quite an eventful year in the way of security issues: physical assault, theft, voyeurism, and racial discrimination have all appeared in campus-wide e-mails. Below is a …
Amherst says No to edX
In April, the faculty of Amherst College voted 70-36 (5 abstentions) against joining edX, a non-profit enterprise co-founded by Harvard and MIT, which bills itself as âthe Future of Online Educatio…
NESCAC Strong
Today marks the two week anniversary of the Boston bombings. As a runner and lifelong New England resident, the horrific events hit close to home - the fact that I had two senior teammates cheering…
Weekend round-up: Darty edition
If you’re like us, you probably glanced at your nerdy assignment notebook this morning and felt a pang of ‘Oh shit’ wash over you like so much hangover nausea. If you were too busy attending one of…
What must change for the Tour de Franzia to survive?
Increasing levels of semi-threatening e-mails from Wesleyan’s administration could only mean one thing: it’s officially Tour de Franzia season! The Tour consists of a night in which groups of students run around campus, taking pictures of themselves at destinations or performing tasks the organizers come up with—places like “Where Obama spoke” or things like “Hooking up with an islander (no Manhattanites)”—all whilst chugging Franzia with abandon. The first group to finish the entire list (and box, about five-and-a-half bottles of “wine”) wins. The event usually ends with arrests and hospitalizations, not unlike another weekend night at Wesleyan, but definitely more than average. University administrators are doing everything in their power to end the tradition. Both this year and last year, Dean of Students Mike Whaley e-mailed parents in an attempt to get parents to discourage their children from participating.
Into The Smoke
People write and say that they were not scared…They were. I was. We all, in some sense, were. It was unimaginably scary to watch on a screen at work 2 miles away, let alone be at the site itself. The act was one of terrorism.
A Stand-out Compliment
Someone posted the following letter in Colby Compliments today and I thought it was worth re-posting:
This is not meant to exclude anyone, but to include those who are usually left out by things like this (Colby Crushes, Colby Cuties, etc.) So if you’re offended: 1) My bad 2) Sorry I’m not sorry.
Dear Students of Color:
All too often, our distinct faces and names are the first to be forgotten when it comes to things like this, so I thought it would be appropriate for me to point out the beauty, grace, and glory you all emit, both on and off campus. Now, this is not to say that you as a people are completely ignored by the Colby community, but that (honestly) you don’t receive the recognition you deserve. Furthermore, after reading “An Open Love Letter to Folks of Color” by Mia McKenzie (a MUST read!), I have decided to write a quick post detailing my devotion, admiration, pride, and (duh) LOVE for the student of color community here at Colby.
I don’t want to repeat the article, but my reasons for loving you are pretty much all in the letter aforementioned. The pronounced, indigenous noses of your powerful Incan, Mayan, Aztec, etc. ancestors, your full-figured Afrikan faces, your hypnotizing almond eyes, your innovative minds, the same minds that created math, science, and most of the technology seen today (don’t be fooled, brothers and sisters, it was ALL you), your varied body shapes, languages, religions, hair types, skin colors, cultures, customs and the infinite combinations of all these things that you share as a People of Color (not just people of color) are absolutely beautiful, crazy miracles.
But, of course, I love you for your personality. As stated in Mia’s love letter, “Despite your children being gunned down by cops like every single day, despite your mothers being sent to prison for “stealing” public education, despite your sisters dying in the heat of the desert while “sneaking” into a land that belongs to your own ancestors, not to mention being deported from that same land in record numbers, despite the CONSTANT beatings inflicted on your souls, you somehow still have souls.” Despite being called “”terrorists””, when we as a people are terrorized by our own government, you remain temperate. Despite being made fun of for your accents and backgrounds, you pursue a better life and education and remain true to your roots.
Okay, this was much longer than I expected. I hope I’m not offending anyone, but I thought this was necessary, and if anyone has an issue with this, remind yourself that there are posts on this page about stuffing orifices (besides the mouth) with hot pockets, calling women “ass girl”, and some other pretty questionable shit (but to those who wrote those posts, I love you too, because you’re freaking outrageous and I can appreciate that).
In short (short?), this is dedicated to the few, the proud chocolate chips, walnuts, caramel chunks, etc. in this Colby Cookie. This includes the international students as well as the students of Asian, Afrikan, Latino, Native American, Middle Eastern, Indian, etc. descent. You are beautiful, powerful, brilliant, and most of all: resilient. Again, I don’t mean this to be exclusionary (I have no issue with White folks, and I in no way, shape, or form am trying to downplay your individual beauty), but I cannot help but to love those closest to me, and nothing can be closer than FAMILY. I love you, my brothers and sisters of color. I am absolutely, undeniably, infatuated and enamored by everything you are and everything you’re not.
…And dassit.
Wow. The post has been well liked to say the least, and I’m sure its power rings true at all the ‘Cac schools. In fact, as soon as I read it I related it to some of the voices I’d been reading this week on a new anonymous confessions page for Bowdoin students.
Colgate Article Throws Major Shade At Hamilton
As you’ve probably heard by now, MACKLEMORE IS COMING TO HAMILTON!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (In case you can’t tell, I am BEYOND PUMPED.) Class and Charter Concert, May 10, 6 p.m. Turf Field. Everyone is welcome.
In this vein of inclusivity, last week Hamilton CAB Concert Coordinator Lily Reszi Rothman reached out to Colgate SGA in an attempt to establish a form of mutual publicity that would benefit both colleges. She wanted to allow more Colgate students to be aware of the Walk the Moon concert (where Macklemore was announced) this past Saturday, and Hamilton’s annual Class and Charter concert.
(Source: inthecac)
Tufts Responds to Latest String of Hate Crimes
Yesterday, graffiti (including swastikas and white supremacist slogans) was discovered on and around the Tufts football field. This incident comes one the heels of graffiti (reading “CUNT”) discovered on the opposite end of the Tufts campus: on signs, cars parked in outdoor campus parking lots, and cars parked immediately off-campus.
(Source: inthecac)
Pushing The Water Ahead: Bowdoin And NAS
The following is the perspective of one critically thinking Bowdoin student on the recently released report “What Bowdoin Teaches”. My belief is that the National Association of Scholars’ (NAS) study is a comment on ‘Cac culture at large, and that my analysis of it also functions, at times, as a defense of our way of life.
Pushing The Water Ahead
“‘Before they could graduate, they had to know how to swim,’ [Robert Sperry ’44] said. ‘Some of them were from Iowa and Nebraska, and Curtis Pool was the biggest puddle of water they’d ever seen.’
Sperry, a trained swimming instructor, was pressed into service and told he had to teach the men how to swim through water covered in burning oil, a skill the soldiers would need if their ship or plane were ever attacked. They poured oil into Curtis Pool and lit it on fire.
‘We were the guinea pigs,’ Sperry said. ‘We had several days to learn the technique. By doing a glorified breaststroke, we could swim through the oil quite well by pushing the water ahead of us, and that would open up a flame-free path through the water. It was scary, to put it mildly.’
‘We knew this might save their lives,’ he said. ‘But I was much more interested in teaching them to just stay afloat and not to panic than I was interested in jumping into flaming oil.’”
–‘Life Lessons’, Bowdoin Magazine, May 06, 2010
The NAS report “What Bowdoin Teaches” states that the Bowdoin curriculum’s “lack of attention to America and the West not only impairs critical thinking, it weakens sentimental and reasoned attachment to country.”
(Source: inthecac)
