Welcome to the second installment of Procrastination Destination, where Wesleying provides you #content to get you through finals!
At least once a day, we get a Google Alerts email in the staff inbox letting us know when Wesleyan is mentioned around the web. Lately, I’ve been collecting some of the more interesting links, but no one has gotten around to actually writing a full post about any of them. Instead of just sitting on this collection, I figured, what do millennials love more than a good listicle? So here we are!
Read below the jump for a collection of recent-ish alumni, student, professor, and Middletown news!
In no particular order, here’s some of the articles that have come through our inbox via Google Alerts:
- Sen. Michael Bennet ‘Seriously Thinking’ About A 2020 Run For President: This article highlights two WesAlums in Colorado politics: US Senator Michael Bennet ’87 and Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper ’74. Both are considering 2020 presidential runs as Democrats.
- Inside the Sunrise Movement (it didn’t happen by accident): This article takes a look at the origins of the Sunrise Movement, which got its beginnings right here at Wes! It follows co-founder Evan Weber ’05 through the journey of activism that brought him from Wesleyan to leading a sit-in at Nancy Pelosi’s DC office.
- A Futile Recipe for Misery: on Comparing Yourself to Your Most Successful Peers: WesAlum Kiri Oliver ’05 juxtaposes her own creative timeline to that of MGMT, the famous band that Ben Goldwasser ’05 and Andrew VanWyngarden ’05 started in their second semester at Wes.
- New downtown Middletown apartments seen as indicator of coming growth: There are new apartments in Middletown. They look like the kind of buildings that pop up in neighborhoods that are about to be gentrified by people like us who move to Brooklyn after graduation. Local businesses and the housing developers seem excited (no surprise there), but you have to wonder what effect this will have on the North End and low-income families’ ability to stay in Middletown…
- They served their country. Why aren’t elite colleges serving them better?: Wesleyan’s Posse Veterans Program, which supports veterans of the US military seeking higher education, was highlighted in this overview of veterans trying to enter elite universities after their service.
- Sleep Pod Companies Want to Disrupt Naps on Campus: If you’ve ever been on an admissions tour of Wesleyan, you know that our libraries boast a handful of nap pods. Apparently, sleep pod businesses are trying to cash in on the endemic sleep deprivation problem among college students by selling their pricey pods to universities, or seeking corporate funding for these pods through a paid advertising model.
- Will Bloomberg’s $1.8 billion gift to Johns Hopkins University expand opportunities for low-income students?: This article mostly focuses on the recent donation from Michael Bloomberg which will allow Johns Hopkins University to disregard income in the application process and substitute scholarships for loans for all undergraduates, thus eliminating financial need from factors that must be considered when choosing who to accept. Wesleyan is mentioned at the end of the article because we “ended [our] need-blind admissions in 2012, citing financial pressures.”
If you want to get Google Alerts about Wes (and not all the other Wesleyans/Wellesley/the Methodist church), here is the search we use (yay boolean search!):
“wesleyan university” -“ohio wesleyan” -“nebraska wesleyan” -“illinois wesleyan” -“iowa wesleyan” -“tennessee wesleyan” -“texas wesleyan” -“dakota wesleyan” -“indiana wesleyan” -“kansas wesleyan” -“southern wesleyan” -“virginia wesleyan” -“wesleyan church” -“oklahoma wesleyan”