Wesleyan has had it's fair share of alumni on reality TV shows, from Kim Stolz '05 on America's Next Top Model to David Olsen '01 on Beauty and the Geek. And now Mike White '92 (as in the actor from School of Rock and Chuck and Buck) is competing with his dad to win The Amazing Race 14. Best of luck, Mike!
According to her tour website, Dar Williams '89 will be on campus to give a concert on March 26th.
Edit: Get tickets for $5 at the Box Office.
It hasn't been confirmed yet, but it looks like Ron Bloom '77 is going to be the advisor to the Obama administration on the whole auto industry failure. Apparently he used to be an investment banker, but left to work for United Steelworkers.
Sounds like a pretty cool dude. Read more about him at the NYTimes.His intention was not to write the great American novel or retire early. Rather, he went to work in Pittsburgh for the United Steelworkers, the nation’s largest manufacturing union.
With that move, Mr. Bloom, now expected to be President Obama’s pick for senior adviser to the Treasury Department on the auto industry crisis, did not exactly surprise his friends. In college, Mr. Bloom was outspokenly pro-union, and he had an aunt who was a leader of the teachers’ union and a great uncle who had been active in the bakers’ union.
...
Michelle Galanter Applebaum, who got to know Mr. Bloom in the 1990s when she was a managing director at Salomon Brothers, said he was different from other investment bankers because of his unusual interest in helping workers, unions and beleaguered industries.
“He felt he could play a meaningful role of fixing it from the inside,” said Ms. Galanter Applebaum, who is now managing director of Steel Market Intelligence. “He is a passionate, committed guy, totally idealistic.”
Last night's How I Met Your Mother (created by Craig Thomas '97 and Carter Bays '97) had even more Wesleyan shoutouts than usual. Three of the show's main characters went to Wesleyan on the show.
In last night's episode, Ted Mosby reflected on his time on the "Mysterious Dr. X" on the WesU radio station. Here's a screenshot of the description on his resume:
As the Mysterious Dr. X, he also organized distinctly Wesleyan "campus-wide" protests...
...at our favorite (though, sadly, soon to fade out of campus memory) dining hall, MoCon.
Watch the whole episode totally legally from CBS.com. Also, someone posted this link in the Shoutbox to to Dr. X's old website, mysteriousdrx.com, with plenty of more great Wesleyan-mocking (three sample truly hilarious radio shows where Dr. X will be "triggering your mental orgasms with his long, hard di...scourses." and hey, there's even a reference to a popular campus web log? hmm...)
Congratulations to the new President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama H'08*!
Read the full text of his Inaugural Address.
The good folks on Jeopardy!'s writing staff decided to have some fun at the expense of one of our most distinguished alumni. This was the $1000 clue in the "Sore Losers" category from the January 7th show:
Required viewing for any true football fan.
I stumbled across this Jan. 3rd New American Media piece "I Helped Smear Helen Suzman" by Brian Shott '90, offering his reflections following the recent death of apartheid activist and divestment critic Helen Suzman. She came to speak at Wesleyan in 1989, to great student protest. Short's article is a fascinating perspective on the history of liberal activism at Wes:
Anti-apartheid activist Helen Suzman died on Thursday at the age of 91. As accolades from around the world pour in, news reports also mention the controversy she sparked on college campuses in the late 1980s.The whole article is worth a read. So, do Brian Shott's words have a lesson for us as Wesleyan students today? Are we still too quick to jump to administration conspiracy theories and to dismiss more conservative voices? More importantly, does our culture of activism overpower our desire and ability to meet concrete goals through activism? I don't know, but it's certainly some interesting food for thought.
I'll say. At my alma mater in Connecticut in 1989, we almost rioted when we heard Suzman had been invited to speak -- a fact that, today, fills me with contrition.
Suzman, who helped found South Africa's liberal Progressive Party, was for 13 years the lone voice against apartheid in the South African parliament. She spoke out fiercely against racist legislation, and frequently visited anti-apartheid activists, including Nelson Mandela, in the nation's notorious prisons.
So what was our beef with Suzman at Wesleyan University, a small liberal arts school in Middletown, Conn.?
We and other campus activists were incensed that Suzman opposed economic sanctions against South Africa. Nor did she favor the divestment movement, still going strong in the late 1980s, which pushed colleges and municipalities to relinquish their financial holdings in companies that did business in South Africa.
Suzman argued that such actions were counterproductive and primarily hurt black South Africans.
We didn't care that Suzman met with imprisoned leaders of the freedom movement; she obviously wasn't listening to their nearly unified calls for sanctions. We thought she should resign her ineffectual post in an inherently racist system. And we were convinced that the university chose her to speak as a way of bolstering its refusal to immediately divest.
Fair enough, I suppose, except for the conspiratorial part. But what followed the announcement of her impeding campus speech was despicable.
In the days before Suzman's arrival, campus radicals started a smear campaign in the university's alternative press. I remember editing articles that attacked Suzman, of whom I had never heard. Quotations of Suzman's own words, which I and other politically motivated editors never fully checked, made her sound downright racist.
When the day of Suzman's speech finally came, many students couldn't fit into the campus cinema where she was scheduled to speak. So we demanded a larger venue -- we made a lot of "demands" in those days -- and eventually a crowd of about 300 marched across campus to the chapel. There, black students from Wesleyan's Malcolm X House lined up behind Suzman, who stood at a podium; they and others in the crowd hissed derisively (and some applauded) as she defended her views on sanctions.
And defend herself she did. Suzman had read everything written about her in the in the days preceding her talk. By reading aloud the complete text of her selectively quoted remarks, Suzman revealed a propaganda effort by left-wing students that would have made Joseph McCarthy proud.
...In the end, in a question and answer session after her talk, Suzman made mincemeat of most arguments for divestment from the campus left. She was like a lion. She destroyed us.
Eric Mangini '94, who was fired by the New York Jets on Dec. 29th, needed only nine days to find new employment. Yesterday, the Cleveland Browns officially made Mangini the 12th full-time head coach in team history (dating back to 1946, excluding three years of "suspended operations" from 1996-98). (Notably, this news came the same day Boston College's head football coach lost his job at the hands of the Jets.) Mangini, who signed a four-year deal, began his NFL career in 1994 as a Browns ball boy under Bill Belichick '75.
The Mangenius inherits a team that went 10-6 in 2007 but finished 4-12 in '08, failing to score an offensive touchdown in its last six games. Cleveland has reached double-digit losses five of the past six seasons. Now that Mangini and Belichick coach teams in different divisions, when is the next "Wesleyan Bowl," you ask? If the NFL decides to maintain its four-year schedule rotation--though no decision has been made on a scheduling system for 2010 and beyond--the teams will meet in Cleveland in 2011.
NFL.com: Browns hire Mangini as next coach
Over at the topmodel Livejournal community, a member just dug up an old Feb/March 2004 Elle Girl magazine with a university fashion feature including Kim Stolz '05 (America's Next Top Model, MTVU) and several other '05 Wes alums I can't find on Facebook. Check out the scanned copy:
Thanks to Marianna Foos '08 for the tip!
We missed this when it was published, but Majora Carter '88, urban planner and environmental justice advocate, was profiled in the New York Times last month.
Carter majored in film at Wesleyan, and has been doing great things for the past decade - advocating on behalf of Bronx residents as head of the nonprofit Sustainable South Bronx, becoming a major voice on environmental issues in the media, and taking a risky pro-Tibet political stand as an Olympic torchbearer last summer.
She's now entering the private sector with her own green consulting firm, the Majora Carter Group:
NY Times: The Green Power BrokerIn just over a decade, Ms. Carter, 42, has vaulted from working as a volunteer for what was a nascent organization called the Point Community Development Corporation and knowing almost nothing about environmental issues to becoming a nationally known advocate for environmental justice.
Her reputation was burnished in 2005 when she won a MacArthur Foundation award for her work at the Point and at Sustainable South Bronx, a nonprofit organization she founded after leaving the Point in 2001....Ms. Carter’s fame is also proving somewhat double-edged for her start-up. She is in high demand for speeches all over the country, yet in the eyes of many she remains synonymous with Sustainable South Bronx, and it is taking time to establish a separate identity.
“Now I go and I talk about what I think I can bring to the rest of the world with this consulting firm,” Ms. Carter said one afternoon in her new offices at 901 Hunts Point Avenue. “And it is hard, because I am still so much seen as this ground-breaking visionary who ran community groups. And I am like, that is nice and all, but I am a groundbreaking visionary who has a consultancy.
“It is fun,” she added. “I am not complaining. I am just so tired I can’t keep my eyes open.”
Many sources close to Governor Bill Ritter have confirmed that Denver School Superintendent Michael Bennet '87 is expected to be selected as the next Senator from Colorado. He was considered a longshot for the job by many; John Hickenlooper '74, Ed Perlmutter, and Mike Miles were some of the other frontrunners.
In fact, Bennet served as Hickenlooper's chief of staff while he was mayor of Denver, before he became Superintendent of Schools. Michael Bennet had formerly been considered a possibility for Obama's Secretary of Education, but that choice went to Arne Duncan. Bennet was at least back to visit Wesleyan in 2006, where he gave a Weseminar called "The Education Race."
Michael Bennet is also the son of our university's last President, Doug Bennet.
Read up about Michael Bennet and his selection for the position of Senator:
Denver Post
Wikipedia
NYTimes Caucus
A fun story from 2003 about the relationship between Bennet and Hickenlooper
FiveThirtyEight
Congrats, Michael Bennet! We're proud of you.
Former New York Jets head coach Eric Mangini '94 got the ax today after three seasons, leaving only one Wesleyan alum among the NFL's head coaching ranks: Bill Belichick '75.
It's worth pointing out that after the Baltimore Ravens canned Brian Billick (FINALLY) last winter, only Southern California had produced more active NFL head coaches (three) than Wesleyan. Also, to the best of my knowledge, we're one of only two schools outside Division I (the other is NAIA member Baker University) that can claim an NFL head coach among its alumni.
ESPN: Eric Mangini out as head coach of New York Jets
[EDIT] Whoops. Mike Shanahan went to Eastern Illinois, not BYU. So we were actually third in the hierarchy behind USC and Eastern Illinois, which has also sent three to the pros. Still pretty impressive, if you ask me. Also, some commenters have reminded me that the Jets could have earned the sixth seed with a win over the Miami Dolphins and a Ravens loss. It's just difficult to see these things through my purple-colored glasses.
Former WSA president Matt Ball '08 writes in to tell us that two names with Wesleyan connections are being mentioned as possible replacements for Colorado junior senator Ken Salazar, who has been named Secretary of the Interior.
Denver mayor John Hickenlooper '74 is one, with the other being Michael Bennet '87, the son of former Wesleyan prez Doug Bennet (though unlike his father, Michael is not a Wesleyan alum). They're probably both longshots, but hey, who says we can't dream?
[EDIT] Multiple commenters have noted that Michael actually is an alum (Wes '87). Sorry for the confusion. Also, for a detailed breakdown of the candidates for the seat, check out FiveThirtyEight.
Joss Whedon appears in the opening sketch of Robot Chicken's fourth season premiere, in which show creators Matt Senreich '96 and non-Wes-alum Seth Green attempt to join the Whedonverse. Wesleyan gets a mention at around 2:06.
Though she's been largely silent about her personal life in recent years, in the new MTV documentary "Britney: For the Record," out last Sunday, Britney Spears opens up about K Fed, the head shaving and her breakdown.
Make of the film what you will, but at least watch this clip in which Britney goes to New York just to see In the Heights, the Tony award-winning musical created by and starring Lin-Manuel Miranda '02 .
Highlights:
2:20- Britney meets the cast, shmoozes with Lin-Manuel
2:48- Britney's post-show reflection: It was really good, I cried.
4:39- Britney goes out to dinner with 2 cast members, scores one of their numbers.
For those looking for a good study break, the 90-minute documentary is available in full on mtv.com.
For a limited time only, Glory at Sea, a film directed by Wes alumn Ben Zeitlin '04, is online for free. It's won a ton of awards, so check it out in all of its splendor.
[EDIT] For a much better quality video, go to Court13.com. Thanks to Ray Tintori '06 for the tip.
[/EDIT, Mad, 11/30/08 11:12 am]
Prior to Obama becoming victorious there was the Maverick. Jon Golbe '06 starred in a great sketch on The Colbert Report about how you too, can be a maverick. Check it out here, and way to go, Jon. (PS, he's the nerd).
President-elect Barack Obama received a Doctor of Laws degree from the University during the 176th Commencement. Watch Obama's commencement speech here.
Put your artistic skills to work and get a sweet $75 in the process, all while helping a Wesleyan alumnus. Pauri Pandian '08 writes:
I'm in the process of starting a paintball company in Lancaster, MA (about 30 minutes northwest of Boston). The name of the company is Orchard Hills Paintball, or OHP for short. I was hoping to enlist the Wesleyan community's help in designing a logo, since I know that someone at Wes can undoubtedly do a better job of it than I can.
We're pretty open to anything, so long as it includes either the words Orchard Hills Paintball or OHP. We're offering a $75 prize to the creator of the logo we use. You can email the submissions, as well as a mailing address where we can mail a check, to me at pauri.pandian@gmail.
"Mad Men" made television history last night with 16 Emmy nods and the award for Outstanding Drama Series. From the AP:
Millions watched "Mad Men" make history as basic cable's first show to win a best drama award at the 60th annual Primetime Emmy Awards.The night's biggest prize belonged to the sleek '60s drama "Mad Men," set in the advertising world of Madison Avenue. Such an honor for a show that's lucky to draw 2 million viewers on a good night signaled that Sunday truly belonged to boutique TV.
"I want to thank all the people that went before us in television to make a show like this because we're just channeling it every day and we love going to work," said "Mad Men" creator Matthew Weiner '87, who also was honored for drama series writing for the show's pilot.
