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.
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)
Williams Alum Drags Bowdoin’s Name Through The Mud
This past Wednesday, the National Association of Scholars released a 359-page report criticizing the academia, policies, and practices at Bowdoin College. The report was generously funded by Thomas Klingenstein, a Williams graduate.
Why, one might ask, would a wealthy suit expend money towards digging into Bowdoin’s curriculum and social dynamics? The story goes that Bowdoin President Barry Mills found himself playing a game of golf against Klingenstein. As Barry swung his iron, Klingenstein purportedly said, “I would never support Bowdoin—you are a ridiculous liberal school that brings all the wrong students to campus for all the wrong reasons.”
The only way we know this story is because it was retold in Mills’ convocation address in 2010. Klingenstein caught wind of the uncomplimentary portrait and herewith published an extensive correction piece in the “Claremont Review of Books” in which he denied all of Mills’ accusations.
(Source: inthecac)
87 Things I Learned In College: An Annotated Listicle
On Thursday Thought Catalog unleashed perhaps one of their longest listicles ever, an 87-point beast about what Chicago-based writer Jasmine Neosh learned in college. In the spirit of all the new NESCAC 2017’s we present a ‘Cac-centric commentary on this list for the incoming frosh. Enjoy, and get excited!
87 Things I Learned You Will Learn In College:
1. How to play flipcup / Oh shit us too! But ‘Ruit will always be king.
2. How to break into an abandoned building / Sneaking onto library roofs for make-out sessions is more our speed.
3. How to get down from a four-story building without a fire escape / Make sure you have friends in the Outing Club.
4. How to bluff my way into bars without an ID / Fairly essential.
5. How to get the bartender to totally forget I have a cash tab / Only attempt if female.
(via politicaltrampsailahjas)
(Source: scullandoars, via politicaltrampsailahjas)
"Pynchon novels, like certain dishes, tend to suffer only from excessive explanation. I advocate surrender to Pynchon; letting your mind toss on the wild currents of his language is a lot more enjoyable than treating his novels like puzzles, wondering where the pieces fit: Who is Rachel Owlglass? Why are we in Egypt? Just enjoy the bumps—or try to."
(via newyorker)
Important Administrative Appointment At Trin
This week, Trinity announced the appointment of a new Dean of Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Thomas Mitzel.
In the past, we talked about how important this appointment would be for a school at a proverbial ‘crossroads’:
“There’s an elephant in the room, and it’s the size of 20 additional students in every intro-level course. It’s the attrition rate, the impersonal relationships between students and professors, the change in faculty incentives, and, yes, the social climate.”
(Source: inthecac)
(via toujoursjamais)
(Source: jesuswasclassy, via myendlessabsorptionandhunger)
"There’s a strong sense here in the culture that it’s not all about individual achievement. It’s about […] a sense of collective good. And the collective culture here, the culture of care and concern for others, the culture of intellectualism with respect, is among the strongest I’ve seen on any campus."
please
(Source: transitory296-50, via strategic-archaeology)
Amherst Students Standing For Freedom (For a Really, Really Long Time)
On Tuesday, March 12th, Amherst students started noticing one or two people standing in front of Valentine Dining Hall out in the cold, pouring rain, holding up signs saying: “27 hours/27 million lives.” They were there at breakfast, then at lunch, then again at dinner. What were these students doing?
They were standing for freedom. Beginning yesterday (3/12) at 11am and going until today (3/13) at 2pm, the Amherst Christian Fellowship (ACF) is hosting a 27 hour event called “Stand For Freedom.” Students stand on the Valentine quad continuously (in shifts, or in one person’s case, all the way through) for 27 hours to show their solidarity with the estimated 27 million people still held as slaves today.
