WesArt: Carolyn Wachnicki, '05

These paintings rank highly among my favorite senior thesis art exhibits. Carolyn Wachnicki is a talented artist with a great sense of humor, and rumor has it that she's re-entered the world of painting recently. She is certainly an inspiration for art majors like myself who think their major will get them nowhere in the real world.

SEE MORE!

WesMusic of the Past and Present: Isto

Christopher White '06, commonly known by his musical moniker of Isto, makes some songs that may offend some. Then again, others may find them to be hilarious. Unfortunately, Mr. White is graduating next week...and you probably won't ever get to see him in person. BUT YOU CAN HEAR HIM...HERE! And, um, see him in the picture below.

Feeling Strong.

• ISTO- The Banana Song: This is arguably one of the catchiest and well-known songs by Isto. The chorus is just the word "Banana" repeated.
• ISTO- America Masturbates: Here is where it gets sort of offensive. Obviously, it's not to be taken seriously.
  

Isto has been heavily involved with all three of Wesleyan's spring melodramas (which involve throwing marshmallows, and he wrote a few songs this past year. I have to say that he is one of the most talented, clever songwriters on campus today.

Previous posts:

• MGMT
• Andy

a wesleyan moment

Today I was asked to perform a piece for my boyfriend's experimental music final. This entry, however, is not about him.

One of the students in the class recorded himself reciting the first 30 lines of a Walt Whitman poem. He then played the recording into a speaker that was inserted in his ass, which was in turn picked up by a microphone (also in his ass).

That microphone then ran to a speaker that was in his mouth, which was then amplified by a more typical microphone on a stand in front of him, which, in order to pick up any sound, had to be literally right next to the speaker in his mouth. So he spent the entire 5 minutes or so of his piece basically fellating this mic.

It's not over yet. That microphone was then connected to a small speaker which he had a friend rub all over the various surfaces of his body. Half way though the piece, smoke was visibly rising from an indeterminate area above his head.

As to how it sounded--Imagine insects talking, interjected with really loud feedback.

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?