lane and sorrow: love detectives.

Got a love problem? Worried about whether or not you should break up with your significant other before college? Worried that you won't get laid at WesFest? Confused about who you slept with last night?

J.M. Lane and L. Dam Sorrow are willing to hear your troubles. If there is a case, they will take it on. Their goal is to solve, "crimes of the heart, specializing in finding out who has crushes on who, who touched what parts of who, and the identity of your drunken one night stand. ("Who was that girl that I slept with last night? She had brown hair...and a...umm...vagina?")" They are Love Detectives.

If you have a case, give them a call at 206.350.0875. Rest assured that you will not speak to an actual person upon calling the Inquiry Line.

a list.

things I have seen at wesleyan:

-10 people dressed up as giant fruit do an interpretive boogie in the cafeteria.
-a plastic anatomy-lesson-esque skeleton chained to a bench outside of the campus center.
-people diving belly-down and head-first down a giant slip-and-slide spanning the entire length of foss hill and greased down with palmolive.
-a giant, fat, black rabbit hopping around outside the campus center at lunch, pausing to be pet.
-the expressions of sheer joy and exhilaration on everyone's faces as they go sledding.
-the expressions of sheer joy and exhilaration on everyone's faces the day thesises are due.
-students streak a tour group.
-PREFROSH streak a tour group.
-giant chicken-wire spheres filled with flowers.
-people strewing rose petals all over andrus and foss hill.

things I have done at wesleyan:

-drank homebrew apple wine in the rain.
-went mud-wrestling on andrus field in the rain.
-dropped a television four stories just to see what noise it made when it hit the ground.
-ditched class to sunbathe on a roof.
-explored the tunnels.
-discovered a giant cape made of AOL CDs in the tunnels.
-defaced a building.
-chalked.
-climbed a tree at night just to scare people passing by underneath.
-eaten birthday cake in a graveyard.
-attended less than 30% of the lectures for a course.
-squaredanced under the stars.
-climbed into: the rafters and clocktower of memorial chapel, the roof(s) of the science center, hall-atwater, and judd.
-pet the stuffed buffalo in the science tower.
-spent an entire weekend locked in my room drinking green tea and reading furiously.
-spraypainted a VW bus.
-waltzed in a mosh pit wearing a sundress.
-had my naked body on display in the all-glass Zelnick pavilion.
-ran around in the snow taking pictures in jeans, a Unicorns t-shirt, and fairy wings.

The Jewish Community

First off, hey guys! I'm Mad. It's short for Madeline. I'll be an RA next year in WestCo and that should be hardcore exciting. I'm sure we'll update you with good information about housing for next year at some poitn in the near future. But for now I'd like to concentrate on...

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY!

I've heard it said that Jews represent about 30% of campus. That's kind of, um, a lot. A good deal of these Jews are pretty non-practicing, but if you check off anywhere, anywhere, that you're Jewish, the Rabbi will start sending you tons of e-mails and automatically add you to the Jewish Student Listserv with information about Jewish activities going on each week.

There's a Shabbat service and dinner every week on Friday nights. Home-cooked amazing delicious dinner, I might add. It's usually vegetarian, but sometimes there are meat options as well... the services themselves are student-led. We don't split up into subgroups by denomination, and we're just one big happy community that really likes to sing. Especially "L'chah Dodi." Extreme.

Rabbi David is our Rabbi; he's reconstructionist, a fantastic guy, and he has an ADORABLE LITTLE BABY and you can watche him grow up, because he comes to services each week! He's just now starting to be able to walk with support.

There's a kosher kitchen if you keep kosher. Actually, there are two kosher kitchens; one, you can use your meal points at (like MoCon or Summerfields) and is a little restauranty thing in the basement of the Butterfields. The other is an actual kitchen, located in the Bayit, which is kept completely kosher and you can make use of whenever you like.

Speaking of the Bayit, the Bayit. Remember when you may have learned that "Bayit" means "home" in Hebrew? That's what the Bayit is. It's not a big fancy Hillel building like Brown has - it's a house. A really adorable cushiony wonderful house. It's a program house, so students can live there as a sophomore, junior, or senior, and plenty of programs go on, as well.

Note that we not only don't have a Hillel building, but we don't have a Hillel. What, you ask?! We do have an organized Jewish community, but we prefer not to be bound by the restrictions of an umbrella organization, AKA the man, AKA Hillel. That's mostly jest, but in reality, we truly don't have a Hillel - though we do have a "Havaruh" group that functions to organize Jewish events on campus and is basically what Hillel would be if it existed. It's a fantastic group of students and meets on Sundays.

We also have Kol Israel, a Zionist organization. There's also Lunch & Learn every Saturday afternoon which has FREE BRUNCH with bagels and humus and yummies and occasionally actually discussing something intellectual. There are tons of random events and lectures and good stuff throughout the year, as well.

And, if you've never been B'nei Mitzvahed, but have always wanted to... now's your chance! A subgroup of people organizes B'nei mitzvah lessons, teaching each year's "class" for free about Judaism and reading Torah... culminating in a B'nei Mitzvah ceremony and party in April!

That's all for now, but if you have any more questions, feel free to ask.

Wesmappin'

Greetings and welcome to the chaos that is class selection at Wesleyan.

Every student, twice a year, chooses classes for the following semester. We use a web-based catalog called Wesmaps.

It's fairly easy to navigate and doesn't really change that much from year to year.

Luckily for you (or unluckiy, we don't know yet) they have changed the system for class selection as of this semester. Rather than a stressful "clicking" thing we all went through, you will simply list your courses and a computer program will spit them out using lots of complicated math stuff I don't know anything about.

Anyway, happy class hunting.

Relationships, Wesleyan and You

I remember when many of my prefrosh asked me long ago what the dating scene at Wesleyan is like. To answer, I have asked several of my friends in an email about their take on said dating scene. Needless to say, most of my friends don't read their email. They may, in fact, not be good friends at all.

Ahem.

Anyway.

Janet DeWar '09: I have seen so many varieties of relationships at Wesleyan that I hesitate to make any sort of blanket statement. But I will say that a lot of them seem to start out with sex and add the realtionship part afterwards. It's rather disheartening. I hear a lot about how we're horrible at relationships and none of the guys here have the emotional maturity to keep them up, but I know of a bunch of pretty successful couples.

So, in short: Relationships at Wesleyan can happen, but it's not that easy.

Marianna Foos '08: Some people are looking for relationships, and some aren't. If you start pursuing someone, you want to be sure which type they are. My advice to frosh is not to get into a relationship until you know who your friends are, and what your priorities are. It's really easy to spend too much time with a significant other, and neglect your friends.

And on the lack of "dating" by college aged students:

Janet DeWar '09: By "date" I'll assume you mean "take each other out for nights on the town involving movies and dinners and awkward conversations about who's paying." I think that we don't date because it requires too much effort. We all live together, so there's no need to date in order to see each other like there is in the real world.

Actually, I'm a big supporter of the lack of dating. Too much pressure. Can't we just hang out?

You'll probably do better than these characters

"Gore arrived at Harvard with an impressive 1355 SAT score, 625 verbal and 730 math, compared with Bush's 1206 total from 566 verbal and 640 math. In his sophomore year at Harvard, Gore's grades were lower than any semester recorded on Bush's transcript from Yale. That was the year Gore's classmates remember him spending a notable amount of time in the Dunster House basement lounge shooting pool, watching television, eating hamburgers and occasionally smoking marijuana. His grades temporarily reflected his mildly experimental mood, and alarmed his parents. He received one D, one C-minus, two C's, two C-pluses and one B-minus, an effort that placed him in the lower fifth of the class for the second year in a row." (source)

hello.

I'm Xue, a sophomore Neuroscience and Behavior major and displaced Chinese-Canadian national. I was recruited from Birmingham, Alabama, but now I live in Hershey, hating every breath of chocolate-scented air.

I am:

--a research assistant in Professor Michael Singer's biology lab. (Translation? I breed caterpillars for money),
--an usher in the Center for the Arts,
--a pre-med drop-out,
--a general slacker.

Additionally, I'm one of the illustrious ladies boarding in a fraternity (Psi Upsilon, in my case) next year.

I am much less witty/ambitious than Joe John and Holly.
This is going to cost me in the future, say, in the job market.
but for now, I am going to take a nap.

I can be helpful, really. My AIM screenname is action disaster. You should talk to me. I can talk to you.

Later there will be anecdotes, photos, what have you.
I have big plans.

Mmm, Film Series

Hello, little prefrosh! I am here to tell you about one of my favorite parts of Wesleyan, the film series. We have an amazing cinema that shows movies at 8:00 on Wednesdays ($4), Thursdays (free), Fridays ($4), and Saturdays (free). The more recent and popular movies tend to be the ones that cost $4. The free ones are less popular, but still definitely worth seeing (and you don't usually have to show up early ot get a good seat!). The film series won't show movies more often than once every four years, so they manage to pack in a LOT of different movies. Movies shown this year include:

The Philadelphia Story
Hotel Rwanda
Oldboy
Lenny
Born into Brothels
Bad Education
The Five Obstructions
Ran
Videodrome
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
My Summer of Love
Microcosmos
Little Otik
Mysterious Skin
The Last Waltz
Moolade
Babe: Pig in the City
The Beat that my Heart Skipped
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Casablanca
The Last Picture Show
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
King Kong (old school)
The Aristocrats
Wedding Crashers
Junebug
Don't Look Back
Titicut Follies
The Elephant Man
Paradise Now
Brokeback Mountain
The Shining
Parineeta
Mr. Death
Syriana
Bonnie & Clyde
Transamerica
Gilda
Tropical Malady

That's probably an obnoxiously long list, but it gives you a good idea of the kinds of things we have. Everything from popular new releases to bizarre indie films to really old movies no one's heard of.

Especially wonderful are midnight movies, which play two or three times a semester at midnight on a Saturday. They're usually cult classics that are chosen to be fun to watch at midnight in a theatre full of moderately drunk college students. This year we had Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Showgirls, Newsies, The Warriors, and Pink Flamingos. Midnight movies are generally fantastic experiences. The showings of Newsies and Hedwig are two of the college experiences I would most like to relive.

We also have a fantastic film studies program, but I don't know much about that. I just like to watch movies.

WesBands of the Past and Present: MGMT

Who knows, some of you may already be MySpace friends with MGMT. Some of you may have seen them on tour with Of Montreal. But did you know they are (mostly) WesAlums?

My frosh year, I was hanging out in a friend's room. She introduced me to the concept of "hipsters" and "indie" music...something that was entirely foreign to a (then) emo boy like me from the NJ 'burbs. It was in this room that I first heard The Postal Service's Give Up and, for the rest of the year, proceeded to think I was really cool for listening to that album. Moments later, she played me a song called "Kids" by a little old band called The Management. I fell in love with it immediately.

The Management includes Andrew VanWyngarden ('05), Ben Goldwasser ('05) and a third member who did not attend Wesleyan. After Wesleyan, they changed their name to MGMT, recorded a new album, and went on tour with Of Montreal.

MGMT makes electro-indie-pop tunes that make you dance.

• MGMT- Kids: A song with nonsensical lyrics that somehow defines my experience at Wesleyan.
  
• MGMT- Time to Pretend: This is a newer jam by the band.
  
• THE MANAGEMENT- Just Becuz: This song doesn't have the punch of "Kids", but this is an exclusive that you probably won't hear many other places on the net.
  
• ANDREW VANWYNGARDEN & ETHAN LEINWAND- Supervolcano!: This was a final project by a member of MGMT and another student at Wes for the class "Hazardous Earth: Stuff that Will Kill You". Yes, classes with titles like that DO exist. The professor is still hosting it on his Wesleyan webspace.

Take a trip to their website at Cantora Records, or friend them on MySpace. Watch a music video they made for a song called "Boogie Down" directed by Max Goldblatt ('05), a man whose name appears on the back of a seat in the Center for Film Studies. He'll hate me for writing this, but Max was also in Heavyweights.

WesBands of the Past and Present: ANDY

The first band I ever encountered at Wesleyan was ANDY. I was at WesFest when a girl from the community service office invited me to her show later that night. This girl was Zoe!, one of two female vocalists of ANDY, a Ska band on campus.

I was probably over Ska by that point of my life, but ANDY took me to a nice place. I would skank all over the place any time I heard a song. At their final concert, I threw myself to the front of the crowd, dancing half-naked in the dark WestCo Cafe. I was flailing about so wildly that I almost knocked down the sound equipment. I had such friend crushes on the lead singers that it was borderline actual crush. My friends made fun of me for it. I had many awkward experiences because of it.

For example, once I went to audition for Vocal Debauchery, Zoe's acappella group. I wrote on my audition sheet something along the lines of, "I love Zoe, and I heard she wasn't going to be at this audition which is good because if she was I'd probably pee my pants." She was there. Fortunately, I didn't pee my pants. I didn't get into the group either.

• ANDY- E.mail My Heart: This is a cover of a song from Britney Spears' debut album. The original is probably the worst song that Britney Spears has ever done, but this version takes it to a new level. A heavenly level.
• ANDY- Washington St: Washington St is a street on the edge of the campus. Some people live on the other side of it, and have to cross the street to get to classes and the rest of Wesleyan. This song must have been inspired by it. It has a nice little "ba-ba-da-da-ba-ba" bridge in it.
• ANDY- Pizzas: The epitome of dork rock. A song about being in love with the boy in The Neverending Story. It namedrops Falcor, Atreyu, and The Swamps of Sadness. This was my favorite.

Unfortunately, most of ANDY's membership have graduated and moved on in life. They no longer make music together, but you may be able to track down a copy of their album Makes the Cut once you get onto campus. Enjoy!

Meet the WesBlogger: Holly Wood, '08

Meet the WesBlogger: Holly Wood, '08

I am the notorious H to the Wizzle, Holly Wood, inc. Yes, before you ask, Holly Wood is my birth name. I did not create it to be "cool" or "with it" upon arriving at Wesleyan. Incidentally, I have never been "cool" or "with it" since birth, either.

To steal the template shamelessly from Joe John:

• I am a Wesleyan student.
• I am a double major in Sociology and Government.
• I am a political junkie. Yes, this is important.
  
• I, too, was a member of the WSA for approximately 28 hours.
• I am a research assistant to Visiting Sociology Professor Lynn Owens. I study New Orleans. This does not, in fact, make me very important.
• I own a pet hedgehog. He looks like this:

  

So how does one girl lead a life so spectacular as I do? I don't know. I don't do it very well.

Anyway, above all that crap, I work hard towards freaking out in general about my life and all its complexities. Mostly, I hate one of my majors and adore the other. Therefore, I have a very love/hate relationship with academics at Wesleyan. Despite this, I have secured an internship this summer with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee this summer which I hope will lead to the kind of connections one person such as I would need upon leaving Wesleyan for a career in political strategy. Now approaching my third year at Wesleyan, I am convinced nothing I learn in college will do me any good after graduation and am patiently waiting to be convinced otherwise.

In keeping up with Joe John's penchant for dropping out of clubs, as mentioned, I was a write-in candidate for the WSA and my political career lasted until the first meeting, where I announced my retirement in protest to the WSA internal elections. I was also a member of the Wesleyan Debate Team, until the weekend tournaments began conflicting with my academics and dignity (I adore most members on the Wesleyan debate team, though). There are probably other clubs I was in for a brief amount of time, but obviously, they were so unimportant to me that I can't remember to mention them now.

Every few months or so I drive back to my hole in East Stroudsburg, PA where I claim residency on most of my federal documentation. I come from a Working-Class Background which entitles me to nothing except I get to say "Fuck, I'm poor as SHIT, yo," come financial aid season (which is now, by the way).

I am "Wesmarried*," a term you will hear a lot your first week and will never be used again, in that I am in a long-term, monogamous relationship with one (1) person and am very often seen in this gentleman's company. He is a runner on both the Cross-Country and Track teams.

I am liberal, but not really liberal, depending on who you ask. I consider myself a student of the practical rather than the radical with a tendency to lean obnoxiously to the left. I am a solid Democrat and take great pride in my party affiliation.

So in conclusion, I should be in bed right now, but I am not. Oh the places you will go, and all that.

*Depending on who you ask, relationships at Wesleyan are fucked up in general and fall into either of two categories: "hooking up" or "wesmarried." There is no dating. However, this is true of most college-aged people in general, not just Wesleyan students. I should elaborate.

WesSledding: tray or ice-cube?

Here is a video of someone sledding on campus.


Here is a story about sledding on campus. Without snow.

Last spring, I was minding my business on Foss Hill* when all of a sudden I see people sliding. No, they were not rolling. They were sliding down the hill. I looked a bit closer and saw what they were sliding on. HUGE ice-cubes. Now, you often hear on tours that people go sledding on dining trays...but have you ever heard about people sledding on ice-cubes? Other schools: 0, Wesleyan: 1

*Foss Hill is a place we like to gather at when the weather is warm. You probably have seen it in pamphlets. People play bongos on the hill. People tan on the hill. People eat on the hill. People spin fire near the hill. Sometimes, people do illegal things on the hill.

Meet the WesBlogger: Joe John, '07

Who am I, Joe John Sanchez (III)? If you googled my name, you'd find little information about me...or who am I kidding? If you googled my name, you'd find out everything you need to know about me.

• I am a Wesleyan student.
  
• I am a blogger.
• I was a member of the Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA), essentially Wesleyan's student government.
• I have choreographed once or twice.
• I took a student forum about Harry Potter. Yes, I received credit for talking about muggles and wizards.
  

Beyond that, I work for ResLife (residential life). I've been working in the office since this past summer, and currently I am an RA in the Fauver Frosh building. I was once a member of an acappella group called Waiting in Line. I was once a member of a co-ed Greek literary society called Alpha Delta Phi. I obviously don't stay a member of organizations for too long.

I'm just a boy from Somerset, NJ. An Art major who wishes he had been an American Studies major. I'm just a boy with a dream...to be a rapper? A boy with a wireless connection, a heart of gold...and a lot of free time on his hands**. This summer, I started WesBlog '09 in order to rope potential pre-frosh in. Now, I started WesBlog '10 because Wes wants you, and it wants you hard.

* MoCon is short for McConaughy Hall. This is the main dining area for the freshman class.
**I actually should be sleeping. Or working. Or both.