SJB to shut down all Eclectic events this semester

Wesleying just received the following e-mail from Alex Chaves '12 on behalf of Eclectic Society:

Recently Scott Backer and the Student Judicial Board has informed the Eclectic Society that all events, lectures, gatherings, and shows will be canceled and prohibited at Eclectic due to a “House Hosting Restriction” through April 30th, with the exception of the weekend of WesFest for pre-frosh.

These charges are being made over noise complaints during one night last semester. As a society we are distraught; if this Hosting Restriction is to remain, it will mean that NO EVENTS will be able to occur at Eclectic for the remainder of the semester. We as a society feel that the exception for WesFest indicates that the administration is more interested in creating the appearance of student life for prospective students than actually supporting student culture.

This ban includes a Das Racist and Ponytail concert, an STI testing day, lectures by Lynn Owens and Patricia Clough with the Sociology department, a college in prison fundraising event with Bro-zone, along with many other events. Many students outside of the Eclectic Society have worked hard to plan these beneficial events, and we as a society want to provide a space for them. We feel that these charges will do great damage to the Wesleyan student body, and will undermine the purpose of Eclectic’s presence on this campus.

Eclectic is asking you, the student body of Wesleyan, to help support us in lifting these charges and maintaining the planned events over the course of the semester (events we all were looking forward to). We will be distributing a petition for this Hosting Ban, please sign. We feel that Eclectic makes a positive contribution to the intellectual and artistic atmosphere of Wesleyan’s campus and this punishment is overly harsh. We have tried to provide Wesleyan with fun and stimulating events that improve student life at Wesleyan, please support us in continuing this tradition.

Please join us in appealing these charges,
The Eclectic Society

So, I'm conflicted. On the one hand, in my experience, the SJB tends to be pretty fair. When they dish out harsh punishment, it's usually justified. Minor violations really are given warnings. Without further details about the violation that led to this punishment, I'd be hesitant to sign a petition.

That said, this totally sucks for the entire campus. Some of the proposed events benefit the whole community in remarkable ways - the free STI testing is an obvious example, but so are the academic lectures and cultural events. (Patricia Clough? As a soc major, can I just say, that's AWESOME.)

I know we at Wesleyan tend to get very angry very quickly, but I urge Wesleying's readers to channel that frustration. Instead of getting angry at the administration/SJB without knowing the facts, let's try to find a way to react calmly, while still appreciating the fantastic events Eclectic throws every semester, and finding a way to help Eclectic continue doing so.

[edit 12:30am] Anna Wiener '09 wrote a letter on AuralWes that clarifies what Alex wrote, and has more information about where to find the petition to sign. Definitely read that.

[edit by Sheek, 3/3, 2:15 pm] An online petition is also up, sign it!

Wesleyan is smokin'

Over at Roth on Wesleyan, our beloved University President reports:

One of the most exciting bits of news we had over break was the extraordinary number of applications we’ve received for next year. More than 10,000 students have asked for a place in the class of 2013, a surge of well over 20% from last year. As many of you know, our Early Decision Applications were up over 30%, and we’ve now learned than most of our peer institutions are not seeing anything like this spike in interest. It’s a lot more work for the tireless group in the Admissions Office, but the fact that more and more people are hearing about the great things going on at Wesleyan is very good news indeed.

So, umm, that's pretty cool. But why the spike of interest in Wesleyan this year? Was it the Obama commencement? Mainstream musical alum success? A widespread revelation that "Ivy" status doesn't mean a better education? (Yeah, right.) A nationwide shift toward more liberal discourse, making Wes not seem as crazy-radical and more awesome-radical? Whatever it is, keep it up, Wes.

Deep FryDay

Tomorrow, on Friday October 3, Keep Wesleyan Weird will be holding a deep fry sale.

We've got a deep fryer--it's called Fry Daddy. We've got chocolate bars. We'll deep fry anything else you bring us [within reason--no babies]. $1. Usdan bottom floor. We'll be open 11 - 8. Come by and deep fry something!

Date: Friday, October 3rd
Time: 11am - 8pm
Location: Usdan

Remember the Boon!

Way back in the second week of Wesleying's existence, Xue posted about the long-forgotten legend of Boon Tan, the most infamous pre-Internet meme Wesleyan had yet known back in the '70s. Boon Tan languished in the subconscious of alumni of decades past until it was dredged up in April 2006 by blogging Wes grad Plain(s)feminist from an archived Argus article:

"Boon Tan was a Malaysian student who failed to show up in 1972 and again the next year though his face was in the face book. Shortly thereafter 'the Boon began to appear on the University walls; not a representation of the missing student, but a symbol of evil incarnate. Midnight ceremonies were held. Mass gatherings cried out the word of Boon...' Boon Tan had the largest following on campus."

Apparently the whole thing started out as a practical joke on Tan's ertswhile roommate in WestCo Down 4, with hallmates pulling pranks on him and blaming them on the absent Boon Tan. The spirit of Boon Tan became a WestCo in-joke and was eventually drawn as an "evil" version of the Smiley Face, which became the central character in a series of comics drawn by the head of WestCo for his residents as a sort of a vessel for the decidedly un-PC darkly humorous side of the "peace and love West College environment".

The drawings were passed around campus and caught like wildfire, with spontaneous Boon graffiti soon going up all over Wes in all sorts of contexts. The phenomenon culminated in a giant Day-Glo Boon being painted on the roof of the former power plant building (which stood where Usdan is now) in the spring of 1977, and kept going strong through the '80s as a manifestation of Wesleyan weirdness, though by then students were probably unaware of the intentionally offensive origins of the legend.

Incidentally, Boon Tan the human being apparently ended up going to school in Malaysia and becoming a successful doctor, unaware of his inadvertent cult status at Wes.

This brief history is paraphrased from Wes alum Oppyman's firsthand account of the origins of Boon Tan on the Plain(s)feminist blog, which is kind of fascinating as a window into what Wes was like in the late '70s.

I bring all this up because the one thing Xue's post lacked was an actual picture of the infamous Boon - which Wes alum Tod Norman '79 very belatedly emailed us earlier this week after idly Googling "Boon Tan", finding Wesleying's old request for a drawing, and realizing he had one lying around:
A little underwhelming, after all that? I guess you definitely had to be there. Norman reminisces about the heyday of the Boon:

It was ’75. I was a freshman that year... But I was also in West College, and a participant in the very first Zonker Harris day, so I don’t remember much more.

By the way, on the original ZH day, we had over 100 West College residents on a very special batch of…well…. Something. It had been cooked up in the chemistry lab – which, of course, had been noted in the 1974 ‘Underground Guide to Universities’ as producing the best acid on the East coast and Timothy Leary’s favoured supplier.

I do know that about 1979, on a brief return to the states, I saw Boon Tan all over the New York subway (in those days it was covered in graffiti – I understand it’s clean now). It even appeared on two sides of a lift door in a building down in the village, which closed to reveal evil in all its glory.

Well there you have it, an icon of Wesleyan past thoroughly exhumed. Keep Wesleyan Weird advocates, if you're still around and looking for a vaguely offensive former symbol of weird Wesleyan glory to rally behind, look no further!

Links:
Wesleying: Where is Boon Tan?
Plain(s)feminist: The Legend of Boon Tan
Plain(s)feminist: Behind the Wesleyan Legend: Boon Tan, Part Two

Administration to "make Wes normal" over the summer

the butt tunnels: RIP

South College:

The administration gave the go-ahead to a top secret plan this morning called "Operation Make Wesleyan Normal," set to begin in late May, immediately after senior week. 

An anonymous tipper informs us that the plan includes:

painting over the butt tunnels (again)

closing WestCo cafe

bulldozing the tomb

making Eclectic the new admissions building

replacing the heat-sensitive detectors with smoke-sensitive detectors in the foss dorms

possibly flattening Foss Hill, and much more...

Our anonymous tipper writes, "This is bullshit. I think it's obvious that they're doing this over the summer so we won't be here to protest. Spread the word!"  

another anonymous student, a graduating senior, said "I've been afraid that this plan was in the works for years. Now it's finally out. I knew something was up when they demolished the M7 building last summer."

In an exclusive interview, David Pesci, director of Media Relations, defended the projects under OMWN: He says of the butt tunnels, "who wants graffiti sprayed all over the place where they live, work, and learn?"  (ok, we took this one from here. but the rest was from an exclusive interview, really)

Pesci had similar things to say about everything else: 

on closing WestCo cafe: "who wants dirty hippies all over the place where they live, work, and learn?"

on bulldozing the tomb: "the tomb? who wants a constant reminder of death all over the place where they live, work, and learn?" 

and on the smoke detectors: "Where there's smoke, there's fire. Who wants fire all over the place where they live, work and learn?" on making Eclectic the new admissions building: "I think it's a nice building. Good old classical columns and all that. Who wants Eclectic kids all over the place where you would want prospective students with rich parents?"

When asked about why the plan is taking place over the summer, Pesci said "who wants Wesleyan students all over the place where you live, work, and learn?" 

In Response to the Courant Article

Here is a Letter to the Editor from an alum in today's Courant about that article:

A Disconnect At Wesleyan

In response to the March 6 article "Students Want Wesleyan To Keep The Weirdness" [Page 1]:

The comments of Wesleyan University's vice president for public affairs, Justin Harmon, which belittled Wesleyan students, illustrate the growing unfortunate disconnect between the university administration and its student body (of which I am a proud alumnus).

Wesleyan attracts the nation's elite students to Middletown: the world's future intellectuals and activists. Yet the underlying message in Harmon's comment that "students ... may lack some perspective" is that they can hardly be trusted with a halogen lamp or toaster because the building will go up in flames.

The valedictorians and newspaper editors I went to Wesleyan with certainly could be trusted with the occasional lit candle. Sadly, the administration lumbers with a bureaucracy befitting a university twice its size and views its students more like widgets than human beings whose opinions are valued.

Why the sudden rush to tax an already overworked maintenance staff with painting over three decades of graffiti in unused tunnels when leaky toilets and burned out lightbulbs go ignored for weeks?

If Wesleyan focused all this energy on improved course selection, financial aid and the like instead of over-parenting by proxy, students would learn to trust the administration and think that it actually had their best interests at heart.

Alden Ferro New Haven

Wick Sloane Writes on the Presidential Search, How to Keep Wes Weird

Anonymous passes on this fascinating article about the presidential vacancies at Wesleyan and Haverford on Inside Higher Ed.

"Let’s start by blowing the whistle on the tired formula for elite higher education — accept only the perfect; incarcerate and coddle for four years; pass on to the dreariest jobs. No clothes on this emperor.
When will elites concede that students who began competitive sports, classical music, and SAT prep in utero have finished traditional college long before freshman year begins? Students said so in the buried New York Times article “The Incredibles.” The reaction of mighty Stanford to students arriving with a B.A. full of Advanced Placement credits: Simple — ignore AP exams, for credit or placement. Among my crazy ideas is that education is a process for everyone — students and faculty — to learn and to stumble and to grow.
As president, I’ll redraw the playing field. A liberal arts education is about curiosity and imagination and creating solutions from connecting disparate facts and ideas. Let Wesleyan or Haverford guarantee to create citizens with the courage to pummel the new problems of the 21st Century, not more who prattle back standard answers. Forget U.S. News college rankings. Tie my pay to the Washington Monthly rankings, which measure net contribution to a better world."

Read the full article here.

Who is this guy?!?

How to Respond to Martin Benjamin '57

Ok, it's fairly obvious that Martin Benjamin has nothing better to do than write bitter, angry Wespeaks because his life peaked in Old Wes. He carefully reads each and every Argus, picking out ammunition for his next bout of conservative diarrhea.

Mr. Benjamin loves taking anecdotal evidence, generalizing it and then applying it to the entire student body. Yes, because one girl could not write a footnote, none of us can. Because some students had trouble in a math class, we all must be morons. Because one group got pissed off at the student body for not showing up to its anti-war rally, we're all lazy fucks. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

The man has something for everyone. He hates on women, minorities, children, poor people, professors, non-heterosexuals...and as one professor he quotes apparently said, we love squabbles.

But before you begin writing your response, I ask you to read all his Wespeaks first. He's written quite a few in recent history. Here is a list:

• Open letter to President Bennet from Benjamin '57 (December 1, 2006)
• Prof. Zwelling stacked the deck (October 31, 2006)
• The Argus needs to punctuate correctly (September 29, 2006)
• Response to Pfister (September 19, 2006)
• Letter to Thorpe, Carp, Guha (April 25, 2006)
• Reply to McAteer (March 7, 2006)
• Incorrect Grammar (February 28, 2006)
• Open letter to Sam Fleischner '06 (February 24, 2006)
• Open Letter to Claire Potter (December 5, 2005)
• Diversity Training is Unnecessary (March 25, 2005)
• No Frats means no diversity (October 22, 2004)
• Letter to Goldstein (April 20, 2004)
• Is Weissman’s course caricatured, and what is the purpose of COL 289? (October 29, 1999)
• Wes alum challenges sincerity behind university’s charges of diversity (September 28, 1999)
  

Get the idea? I'm sure there are more, but this is all I could find.

The man has nothing better to do than respond to your wespeak. So if you're going to write one, write a good one. Make it worth your time. You know he's sitting at home, licking his lips, waiting for the opportunity to write another open letter to Wesleyan.

Secondly, remember that writing to a bitter old man reminding him that his ideas are racist, conservative, sexist, etc, etc, probably won't change his mind on anything. Though his ideas are, in fact, dated, hardly on the cusp of intellectual enlightenment, and, well, conservative, he's been thinking that the silver spoon he's carried in his mouth since birth entitles him to think that whatever he spits out of his mouth is gospel. Take it for what that's worth.

Thirdly, the best thing you can do in response to Benjamin is keep Wesleyan weird. Wesleyan became special in the hearts of many (albeit not to Benjamin because his heart is probably made of tin) precisely because the student body rejected the "Old" Wesleyan for the spirit of the new. Look through old yearbooks and student newspapers from the late 60's, early 70's onwards and you can literally see the transformation. I'm not trying to romanticize the activism or the specific time period, but you can witness a change in what students wanted their Wesleyan degree to stand for. Not the dated ideals of the past, but for the bold, progressive ideas of the future.

So if you still feel you must respond, feel free to shoot the Argus your reply. Use the handy dandy online submission form and have at it.

RIP: Exchange of Ideas

This Keep Wesleyan Weird-esque display was set up outside of Davenport last night and pieces of it had been blowing away all day, but it was partially reconstructed by the time I got out to take a photo of it. Hopefully it'll stay up for a while.

Finally, Another Chalker Masturbation Manifesto...

So there's like a shit ton of wespeaks in the Argus this week about chalking and activism and identity and revolution and disney lyrics. Great, I say. Who the fuck doesn't love the Argus full of Wespeaks?

And while if you asked me personally my opinion on the whole matter of chalking (hell, if you asked me my opinion on fucking toast), I'd talk your ear off, the one thing I'm homing in on in particular tonight is I guess the whole why we bother.

Mike Pernick '10 writes in his column this week:

Going out and spray painting in the tunnels is a great way to show that you care about your what's happening in your life. The campaign to bring back chalking is a wonderful expression of free speech within the Wesleyan community. Every day there are countless examples of people who are concerned about their environment. Yet few here at Wesleyan seem to truly care about the fate of our nation. Sure, many individuals spend time talking about how much they hate Bush and they despise Republican policies, yet what have they done about it? Ask yourself the key question, "What have I done to fight against dangerous conservative policies in America?"

And I think this is on the minds of many at Wesleyan who don't really understand where the chalking and the butt tunnels are fitting into this grand activist vision we all have for Wesleyan.

And to be fair, at first glance, it doesn't seem to fit. They seem like highly insular forms of resistance that have no bearing on the outside world whatsoever. And granted, a lot of the shit we do at Wesleyan is pretty much just angry masturbation because, well, Wesleyan is one of the toughest colleges in the country and god forbid we let off some steam now and then.

Regardless, the theme I'm hitting on is that a lot of chalkers here do not chalk just for the sake of chalking. They do not chalk simply for the experience of expressing themselves. Yes, as Bennet has said over and over again, we have tons of venues for expressing ourselves. But as I argued before, chalking is about building a community. It's about constructing a home for ourselves and a claiming some sense of communal identity.

Wesleyan as an institution does not really build social cohesion. We as a school do not have an institutional memory that binds us all together as Wesleyan students. We cannot all appropriate traditions and ideas from the school's past and really rally around them. And so when Wesleyan tries to take away some of the very few traditions that remain--say chalking or tunnel graffiti--it serves to again, alienate us and separate us into individualized factions that cannot build a socially cohesive campus.

And there are a ton of other factors that play into this (like GRS, the disperse locations of student housing, the lack of campus-wide events, fucking Facebook, iPods, cellphones etc, etc), so I'm not just saying that chalking is the only thing to get pissed off about here.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Wesleyan used to be known as an activist campus. It really doesn't carry that reputation anymore and I don't think it's because Wesleyan students are lazy. I don't think it's because they don't care. But I do think that it's because in order to build campus-wide support for any issue, you must first overcome the utterly insane degree of alienation that we experience every day as students.

I've heard this alienation described mostly as awkwardness (as if awkwardness is somehow a more palatable word for it). With few notable exceptions, I think students at Wesleyan feel extremely awkward breaking ranks with their comfort circle and engaging anyone for any reason--from hooking up, to dating, to friend-making, to petition writing, to eating dinner with strangers...whatever. I think you get my drift.

So in sum, I think by protecting chalking, we are taking a step in the right direction. We are creating a community and we are saying fuck the awkwardness. Who the hell needs it?

And you can do this without chalking. Make a new friend tomorrow. Talk to someone completely different. Stop pulling out your cellphone every fucking five minutes and finally look your classmates in the eye and smile when you pass them by.

But for Pete's sake, get out there and engage with the rest of this school.

Engagement is a form of activism, perhaps even the strongest. Perhaps it's not protesting against a war and it certainly won't end up in any newspaper, but I think part of what made Wesleyan so weird in the first place was a solid refusal on the part of the student body to accept alienation, to accept the awkwardness.

By allowing the administration to take shots at whatever institutions we have left to build this community, we are making it easier for them to push over the next generation of Wesleyan students. The more alienated we become, the harder it is to fight for old Wesleyan. We are being weakened and by perpetuating this sense of awkwardness we are complicit in the whole process.

Chalking won't fix the problem but I'm sure it'll help.

(I'd like to direct you all at this time to Zach Strassburger '06's awesome wespeak today about chalking and its effects on community.)

Tunnels

There is a general feeling of unrest on campus and the sense that the stasis may be ending. The paint on the tunnels wasn't even dry before tagging started back with a vengeance. The Keep Wesleyan Weird facebook group reached nearly 700 members within 24 hours of its creation (right now it's at 720--that's 25% of the student body). The very next day, news came via RAs that the administration would not be continuing its work in the tunnels because off the backlash.

And no one really knows why all this is happening now. The general sentiment is "Fight for ol' Wesleyan", but in a time when none of the undergraduates were here for chalking's heyday and when the past few years have been so quiet...We've all been such good little children.

There's a fear that the administration has taken the bait for the prestige game, the old anxiety about "mainstreaming", ten thousand buzzwords, etc., and while painting the Butts tunnels hasn't woken any sort of sleeping giant, it's set some strange gears into motion.

This is not a call to action for any righteous cause; No one is under the impression that they are starting a revolution. But the fact is that Wesleyan is not a Little Ivy, not a Little Three, not a Small Idyllic Liberal-Arts College In The Northeast. Wesleyan is Wesleyan, and as one tagger in the tunnels wrote, "There are decades under this."

Bennet is leaving, the university is in transition. We've gotta get serious about this shit.

Keep Wesleyan Weird

From this facebook group:

There comes a point where enough is enough.

When the administration outlawed chalking, an understandable uproar went through the campus. This uproar, however, was not nearly loud enough, and that transgression has been imposed upon us for far too long.

When the administration required Eclectic's parties to be held in Mocon a collective groan of disapproval was heard on campus. Can we let them ruin our already limited nightlife by housing parties in a cafeteria?

Now the administration has just had the Butt's tunnels painted over. All of the beautiful colors and forms on the walls have been replaced by white and black paint.

Now, with Middletown's recently added ordinance, the administration is allowing police onto our campus. Can we let them take away the very atmosphere we love?

Bring back chalking.

Bring back Eclectic parties.

Bring back tagging.

Get police off private property.

Even if you don't agree with chalking, the party scene, tagging in the tunnels, or the new police presence I urge you to join this group. This is clearly not the end of their attempt to strip the entire campus of culture.

I want wespeaks and I want them now. ON IT, BITCHES.

Edit: Anonymous commenter, you made my day:

"Fuck Wespeaks. I'm buying a spraycan and a crowbar first chance I get. It won't be pretty paint, but this is not the school I wanted to go to. I'll take it back."

!@#$

OH FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU.

They painted over the Butts tunnels!



WHAT THE FUCK, WESLEYAN. You know, I think the mainstreaming argument is mainly bullshit, I wasn't here for the chalking ban, I don't really care that you've been trying to shut down the frats for years now. But what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck?! One of the things that attracts people to Wesleyan is its quirkiness, its culture, its "free spirit" of sorts. If we wanted a homogenized campus, we would've fucking gone to Williams and joined the equestrian team. Where else can you get this kind of education with this kind of atmosphere? Home rule by the students, if you will. And there you go, literally whitewashing it.

Who are you trying to please? And what the fuck are you trying to prove?!

You should bring tour groups into the tunnels, if anything. You assholes, you fucking assholes.