Incoming news from The Japanese, a 1/3 Japanese-American band composed of Adrien DeFontaine ’13, Neo Sora ’14, and Dan Moakley ’13 (and back in the day, Will Solomon ’13, who has unfortunately dropped off the face[book] of the earth):

We’re the Japanese. Some of you may know us from various shows around campus. We’ve been together since freshman year, and now that our time here is coming to an end, we wanted to release a professionally recorded EP. We’ve already started the recording process at a studio in New York, but due to monetary constraints, we are far from finishing it. We’ve explored all avenues with raising money with the school and on our own, but we need your help! Please check out our kickstarter page. We greatly appreciate any contributions and check out our rewards including “dress up Neo,” “quiche by Dan,” or “meat with Adrien.”

Hop to it, folks. A lot of these gifts are pretty time- and location-specific (there are only two Finals Week Specials left!), so you should help out for the story, even if you hate this band a whole lot or are just mad that they opened for Linus back in the day. I get along fine with ‘em myself, but hey.

Got a creative project of your own that you’d like help funding? As long as it’s Wes-relevant, feel free to let us know, especially if you don’t know us, because we would be kidding ourselves if we ignored that people who happen to know regular Wesleying contributors pretty well just happen to have a much better chance of ending up on the blog frequently, and even though there’s not really intent to do this people who do work that doesn’t get put up on Wesleying often rightly feel shorted, and so we probably should do a better job of reaching out to underrepresented artists on Wesleying, but in the meantime please don’t feel intimidated to just shoot us an email about whatever it is we’re doing that we’re fools for not knowing about and maybe we’ll stop being fools so much.

As you may know if you read the Argus or are just generally more well-informed than the slackers over at The Wesleyinger, the WSA recently passed a resolution advocating for an end to the chalking ban that’s been in place since 2003. Read the article itself for a quick-and-dirty history of the events that inspired the 25-2 vote a couple weeks ago.  You can see the resolution itself here, courtesy of sponsor and WSA member Scott Elias ’14, until the WSA uploads it to their website, but be warned – there’s a prominent date error at the top of the document that may or may not irk you. For those of you who haven’t had a chance to see the typical format for WSA resolutions, by the way, you may find the writing here amusing, infuriating, or both. Oh well!

WSA resolutions, if you’re wondering, have no binding “legal” force on the University, but as presented to administrators often are used to further discussions or enact real policy changes in accordance with the resolution (yes, real changes do actually happen because of resolutions). So, y’know, optimism and all that. Check out some words from Elias (you may recognize the style) on why this matters to some people (continuing under the cut):

I think most students when they hear that there is a chalking ban think its insane. So our purpose was to create a consistent communications policy that won’t preemptively restrict student speech, that will be more consistent with our institutional priority of advancing social justice, and that will put an end to the exorbitant cost of enforcing a broad ban– an easy and logical way to curb costs in an era of austerity in which we terminated need-blind admissions.

It is incumbent upon the Wesleyan Student Assembly to reflect the fervent desire of many for a more inclusive campus culture and improving areas in which we, as a community, have fallen short. And our policy on chalking is one example of an area in which we can improve. So it will be interesting to see what kind of leverage this resolution will have with the administration. I’ve met with various administrators and they definitely understand where we are coming from, but they fear that past concerns will manifest again, which, as I understand it, is their main reservation. But let’s not kid ourselves. The chalking ban isn’t the last bastion of social justice the university wants us to think it is. It brushes oppressions and micro-aggressions that occur at Wesleyan under the rug and is thus inconsistent and antithetical to our university’s institutional goal of advancing social justice.

The resolution sends a strong and resolute message to the administration and community that overturning the chalking ban is entirely reasonable and consistent with the prevailing rational consensus. We passed an alternative institutional mechanism to address concerns with chalking without maintaining the broad chalking moratorium. We can’t promise there won’t be “problematic chalking,” but neither does the current policy. The persistence of non-intimidating, non-hostile, non-offensive chalking despite the moratorium’s implementation demonstrates that the ban can’t really guarantee no chalking, and thus isn’t the remedy the university thinks it is. If there is chalking that contributes to a hostile work environment, maybe they have to wash it away, but they can still do that under what we propose. When the chalk doesn’t, there’s no logical rationale.

Instead, because the messages that have been chalked in recent years, despite the moratorium, have been largely around political issues on campus, a broad moratorium functions to curtail positive student activism and political speech. That’s wrong. That’s why we are calling for the termination of the moratorium on chalking on sidewalks, thereby removing the chalking provision from Regulation 15 of the Code of Non-Academic Conduct, ceasing the practice of preemptively erasing/washing away chalk and allowing chalk to be subject to the same communications policy/regulations as other media. And that’s why we are recommending the use of technology to facilitate a reporting process and ensure that if there is negative dialogue via chalking it is documented in the Campus Climate Log.

I’m hopeful that the administration will at least agree to a temporary trial period lifting the moratorium, giving the community an opportunity to demonstrate that chalking can be legal, responsible, and a mode of expression that can compliment the Wesleyan experience for those who choose to participate in chalking.

Seeing as I’m putting up the second post on chalking in about 24 hours, by the way, this may be a good place to address a comment on Zach‘s last post, where “alum” notes that they “still don’t understand the obsession with chalking…“. First of all, I am so0oOo0oOo0 deeply hurt by the idea that Zach and I are “obsessed” with chalking that you should actually ignore the entire following commentary, because it’s just my fists slamming into my tear-drenched keyboard. But if you’re ~illogical~ and }*irrational*{ enough to read anyway, you should know that the reason it looks like Wesleying has such a big old chalking fix is just that two of its most frequent proponents on this blog – Zach and myself – are chalking fans of above-average-but-decidedly-not-obesessive intensity (though maybe I should only speak for myself). Wesleying is a blog that (like anything else) reflects the perspectives of its contributors (direct and indirect) and readers, as well as its own historical practices, so the fact that we’ve written way more about chalking on here in the last year than we have about Music department-run concerts (and we’ve done way more student-run concert reviews and a capella auditions posts than either of these) may mean something, but not what you[, alum] think it means, since I’ve attended and thought about far more Music department-run concerts in the last year than I have participated in or thought about chalk happenings. Will what Wesleying cares about change with its authors? Yes. Should we be more responsive to criticism about our interests? In my opinion, yes, but it would help if issues were raised in a more substantive manner than offhanded comments about the fervent passions of the Generally Terrible People who write for this site. (It would also help if we reached out for constructive criticism. That actually should be happening soon.)

I’m going to end here because I’m writing this little editorial before writing up what this post  is supposed to be about and I have other things to do that I should stop putting off. But, uh, tl;dr Wesleying is a social construct. If you wanna know more about how the presentation of the chalking resolution to the administration worked out, hit up Elias or another WSA member, because I actually have no idea and the minutes aren’t up for any meetings that happened after this.

[If it's news to you that we write about chalk a lot, check the 'chalking' tag for a whooooole lotta news.]

Police brutality has been a growing problem in Middletown that people are dealing with every day. Come to express your support of a peaceful Middletown and hold police accountable. Meet at Union Park near Church and Main St.

Sponsored by RISE (Students of Color Resist Imprisonment for a Safer Existence).

Date: Saturday, May 11
Time: 1 p.m.
Place: Union Park, near Church and Main St.
Facebook: Event

Come join your peers and alum Dan Fischer ’11 in discussing their experiences in Palestine this past year. Learn more about the conflict from students’ personal stories.

Featuring Dan Fischer ’11, Natasha Phillips ’14, Carina Kurban ’14, Danny Blinderman ’14 and Samantha Sikder ’14.

Natasha spent a month in Nablus (in the West Bank) teaching English through the organization Project Hope. She spent the preceding semester studying Arabic in Amman, Jordan. A government and economics major at Wesleyan, she has always been interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for academic and personal reasons. In the future she hopes to spend a lot more time in both Israel and Palestine.

Sam taught English with Project Hope (projecthope.ps) in the city of Nablus during winter break, following three months studying abroad in Amman, Jordan. She is an Arabic-studying government major interested in development and human rights in the Middle East. She’ll be returning to Palestine this summer to volunteer and research in Aida Refugee Camp, near Bethlehem.

Carina worked in the Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem over winter break with her family’s nonprofit organization (1for3.org), researching ways to bring better access to clean water to the camp. She is a cultural psychology major studying languages and emotions, and she is especially interested in the many different cultures in Lebanon and Palestine, where her father’s family is from. This summer, she will be returning to Aida Camp in Bethlehem and the Al-Buss refugee camp in Tyre, Lebanon, to volunteer and collect research for her thesis.

Danny visited Ramallah and the village of Taybeh during his fall break in the midst of a five month term studying Hebrew and Conflict reconciliation at the University of Haifa. A College of Social Studies major, he is extremely interested in the Israel-Palestine conflict for both academic and personal reasons. He will be writing his thesis on the relationship between Democracy, Nationalism and Identity, specifically as they relate to Israel and Palestine. This summer he will be in Washington D.C. working and doing research, but he hopes to return to both Israel and Palestine in the near future.

Come join workers at Wesleyan, WesDEF, and  USLAC for the Worker’s Day Picnic!

12pm on the Lawn by 200 Church.

Come and meet our campus workers and enjoy a meal with them. We will also have a facilitated conversation where our fellow students and workers will share their stories. Feel free to bring your friends and food.

Date: Today, May 3
Time: Noon (90 minutes!)
Place: 200 Church
Cost: Nope.

CRITICAL UPDATE: Wesleying has just learned via SMS that the lunch will be provided by Iguanas Ranas. Awwwwwwww snap.

More information, carefully reproduced from the original:

no talent needed, you can even have negative talent. just email iwaldron@wes with your team of 3-5 people(3 if you got that cray endurance). its 5$ a person but donations welcome too if your gettin’ money like that. try tog et your teams in sooner rather than later so we can set up the bracket and all that jazz. we did this 3 years ago and it was a blast so get involved.

When: Saturday, May 4
Where: bottom of Foss Hill
Cost: $5

Queering Prison Abolition:

There will be a panel presentation with three rad anti-prison
activists. If you would like to take part in a student lunch with
these folks on the day of the presentation (it’s okay to come late),
please email Professor Weiss at MDWeiss(at)wesleyan(dot)edu to RSVP and for
further details (please try to do this by Wednesday the 23rd).

Here’s a little bit of info about each of these awesome folks:

Ryan Conrad (Prisons Will Not Protect You) is an academic who
organizes with Against Equality and will speak about queer critiques
of the prison industrial complex and the inequality and violence
perpetuated by hate crime legislation.

Reina Gossett is a trans activist, artist, and writer. She will speak
about the vital role of creativity and imagination in movements for
self-determination.

Eric Stanley (Armed Struggle, Trans Resistance, and Prison Abolition)
is an activist, filmmaker, and academic who will present on radical
trans/queer resistance to state violence.

Date: Friday, 26 April
Time: 4:15-6 PM
Space/Place: Russell House

Fresh off a wild ride of a spring break with the Poor People’s
Economic Human Rights Campaign, a few Wesleyan students will be
talking to you about how you can join into the next step in an ongoing
experience of learning by living, communal living, anti-poverty
organizing and bridging barriers through dialogue and action in one of
the poorest urban neighborhoods in the country. The Poor People’s
Economic Human Rights Campaign is the largest multi-racial poor
people’s movement in the United States. In Philadelphia, the affiliate
organization is led by Cheri Honkala, the organization’s National
Coordinator and 2012 Green Party candidate for Vice President. The
Philadelphia affiliate has many roles–it is a political voice for the
poor, it works to solve the problems of poverty (such as housing,
welfare, and food), and it works to organize so that society can be
more fair and cooperative. Interns will help in the daily operations
of PPEHRC, doing everything from working on the occupied farm to
collecting information for housing takeovers to creating fliers to
distributing food to helping people move through bureaucracy to
writing grants to marching, and much else. Internships are also
possibly available in other cities with PPEHRC affiliates, please be
in touch if you would like more information.

Date: Tuesday, 4/23
Time: 4:15-5:15 PM
Place: 41 Wyllys Ave, Room 110

Please join me and some awesome friends for my senior recital.

‘Virtuality: Myths of Future Imaginations’ is an exploration of the computer and technology as tools of creation, represented by a collection of songs I’ve been working on. Visuals, too.

4/20 ~ 7PM ~ WORLD MUSIC HALL ~ FREE

featuring / with help from:

Dylan Bostick  ’13
Kevin Brisco ’13
Jaime De Venecia ’15
Will Feinstein ’13
Hannah Jenkins ’15
Alex Lough ’13

Date: Yeah, 4/20.
Time: 7 PM. No, not 4:20.
Place: World Music Hall, CFA
Facebook: Yeah. (And yeah.)
Which IGBEE song popped in my head when I put up this event?: This one.

The Palestinian Justice Film Series continues this week with Salt of this Sea. Join us a for a viewing, snacks and discussion.

“Annemarie Jacir’s politically charged feature debut is the story of Soraya (Suheir Hammad), a Brooklyn-born woman who travels to Palestine to retrieve her grandfather’s savings, frozen in a Jaffa bank account after his 1948 exile. Struggling to feel at home in the land of her ancestors — and rebuffed by the country’s financial institutions — she meets Emad, a young Palestinian whose ambition, contrary to hers, is to leave forever. Tired of the constraints that dictate their lives, they devise a plan to reclaim what is theirs — whatever the consequences may be.”