Category Archives: General

FEATURED
Olin Thesis Carrel Assignments Emailed Out

This post mostly concerns the senior thesis writers among us (and their current or future paramours who may be interested in hooking up in a thesis carrel this year).

Thanks to an anonymous tipbox contribution (and many of my classmates who gleefully announced they got a carrel) we now know that Olin thesis carrel assignments were emailed out this afternoon.

Unlike in previous years when a list of carrel assignments and the waiting list were posted only as a sheet of paper in Olin, this year’s lucky carrel recipients received individual emails alerting them of carrel assignments, while those who didn’t get a carrel (aka me) have yet to hear anything official (email after the jump).

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All-Campus Email: CAPS Update

On September 4, CAPS Director Jennifer D’Andrea sent an all-campus email alerting students of some alarming changes in CAPS staffing. Over the summer, there were “three unexpected departures from the CAPS team,” including Katie Scheinberg, the APRN that was hired in February 2017 as a direct result of the student-organized Wes Needs CAPS campaign of 2016-17, which had four major demands: 

  1. Hire two new, full-time psychologists.
  2. Raise our half-time therapist up to full-time.
  3. Approve the hiring of a full-time Advanced Practicing Nurse Practitioner (APRN).
  4. Increase the CAPS operating budget for the first time in six years.

The other two departures from CAPS this fall were Lisa Miceli, Ph.D. and Amber Jones, LCSW. These staffing changes leave Wesleyan with only 6 licensed psychotherapists (most of whom are part-time or have significant duties other than providing counseling services to students) and 6 externs. This is the smallest provider pool CAPS has offered since I began at Wesleyan in Fall 2015. At the same time, CAPS is now severely understaffed for the task of providing counseling and psychological services to Wesleyan’s ~3,240 undergraduate and graduate students (including the largest incoming class of students at Wesleyan in the past two years).

Further context for the CAPS staffing situation and the full text of the email can be found below the jump:

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Repair Cafe

Get involved with the Middletown Community!

Bring your broken phones, busted lamps, ripped pants, dull knives, bicycles, jewelry,

phones, and small appliances to our repair cafe. Skilled volunteers will help fix and teach you how to fix your things—saving you money and keeping items working and out of incinerators and landfills. Tool use and help is free. Participants cover spare part costs or bring their own. Special thanks to Perk on Main for providing coffee and snacks! And to our many volunteer experts for giving their time to help with repairs.

Date: Sunday, September 23
Time: 1-5 PM
Place:Middletown Senior Center, 61 Durant Terrace

S&C MENU WEEK OF 9/17

STAR & CRESCENT RESTAURANT
Located at the Alpha Delta Phi House
LUNCH- 12:00-12:45
DINNER- 5:00-7:00
FIRST THREE FRESHMAN EAT FREE
EVERY DAY!!!

MONDAY-
DINNER- Greens w/ Charred Tomato Vin. Shrimp or Tofu & Grits. Spicy Grilled Creole Style Shrimp or Roasted Tofu, Creamy Cheddar Grits, Grilled Zucchini
DES- Carrot Cake

TUESDAY-
LUNCH- Huevos Rancheros. Cheddar & Scallion Scramble, Garlic Infused Black Beans, Avocado, Bacon or Soy Bacon Chipotle Salsa & Fried Tortilla Strips
DES- Mango Yogurt
DINNER- Greens w/ Balsamic Vin. Pesto Rotini w/ Grilled Balsamic Chicken or Roasted Tofu. Traditional Pesto; Basil, Toasted Pine Nuts, EVOO, Parmesan & Garlic. VEGAN ENTREE w/ Cashew Parmesan
DES- Mint Chocolate Cake

WEDNESDAY-
LUNCH- Closed
DINNER- Closed

THURSDAY-
LUNCH- Corn & Poblano Chowder w/ Crispy Bacon or Soy Bacon & Scallion Garnish. Served w/ Herb Focaccia
DES-Coconut Cookies
DINNER- Greens w/ Curry Dressing. Dal Saag w/ Basmati Rice & Garlic Naan.  VEGAN ENTREE
DES- Lemon Poppy Cake w/ Berry Coulis & Whipped Cream

EVENT
Apply for a Writing Mentor!

It’s only the second week of school, but work is definitely already picking up. The Shapiro Writing Center is putting a call out for potential writing mentees! 

Are you anxious about writing academic papers? Do you want to develop your writing skills over the course of the semester? Would you benefit from having a peer tutor dedicated to helping you with your assignments on a consistent basis? If so, apply for a Writing Mentor! Mentors are Wesleyan students majoring in a variety of disciplines who are specifically trained to help peers with their writing. If matched with a Mentor, you will meet with them once a week for 45-minutes and work on your assignments at any stage in the writing process. This service is completely free, and successfully matched mentees will be given 0.25 credits for working with a Writing Mentor.

Please apply through this form, by Friday, September 14 at 9:00 AM. You will be notified directly about your mentee status through email.

We look forward to working with you!

Date: Friday, September 14th
Time: 9:00 AM
Place: Boger 114
Form

 

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Unofficial Orientation Series 2018: Student Groups

This is a repost of wilk‘s update of michelle‘s update of Maya‘s 2015 post, which was an update of alt‘s 2014 post, which was an update of Q‘s 2013 post, which was an update of Syed‘s 2012 post. 

This is the annual student activities fair, where you can schmooze or, more likely, be schmoozed to your heart’s content.

This is part of our 2018 Unofficial Orientation Series. A quick reminder that you can check out the welcome post here and past years’ series here.

By the time classes start (aka today, happy first day of classes!), you’ll likely be successfully moved into your dorm, blissfully free from your parents, and finally finding the time to figure your shit out. Soon, you’ll realize that you have a little too much time on your hands — and you might want to fill that time with Organized Social Activities.

Thankfully for you, there are about 300 student groups at Wesleyan, so you have many, many options. Joining student groups is one of the best way to meet people outside of your dorm and in different class years. You could find best friends! Mentors! Something new about yourself! It’s all up to you.

As your Orientation Leaders, advisers, and basically everyone else including me will tell you — stick to the Rule of Seven. Each class you take, group you join, job you have, and any other thing you might do counts as one commitment, and you should try to have only seven full-time commitments per semester. With a standard four-course load, that leaves three spots for you to fill with whatever the hell else you want. That’s what this post is for.

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Unofficial Orientation 2018: Rage Update

Wes is known for its history of activism. Rage update outlines all public activism that occurred on campus in the past academic year. It seems to have become an every other year sort of thing for us with our first article in 2014, our second in 2016, and now our third in 2018.  All articles are definitely worth a read and although 2017 didn’t get an article, it was certainly a year worth remembering so I’ll leave some links to further reading in the end.

Rage update wouldn’t be complete without the words of alt, the author of our first rage update:

You’ve now arrived on campus, and we hope that you find your time here enriching and transformative. In that hope, we feel that it would be ill-advised to allow you to not have at least a foundational understanding of the things that have forced us as a community into dialogue, disagreement, and action.

This is not to scare you or to give you a negative impression of the University. However, we are certain that most if not all of you were told about the “passion” that Wesleyan students have and the issues that we care about on campus are at the forefront of those passions. While there is certainly no requirement to take an activist stance on any of these issues and it is in fact easy to sink beneath the radar on these issues and all the others not covered here, we would plead with you to be engaged in the community that you are now a part of.

Read this, ask questions, and reach out to students and faculty that have been here before you. We hope that as you begin your time here, you fully invest yourself as a community member committed to making Wesleyan as good as it can be for you and for those after you. Caring about Wesleyan does not foreclose critique on Wesleyan and as you read this, and other things like it, we hope you understand that too.

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Unofficial Orientation Series 2018: Queer Life

 This post is an updated version of Sam’s update of his 2016 article, because “heterenormativity is [still] killing this country.” 

Taken from the 2017 Showtunes Sideways performance. Showtunes Sideways is a musical cabaret that opens up a space for those to perform roles in songs from musicals which they wouldn’t traditionally be cast in. PC Maia Nelles Sager ’17

This is part of our 2018 Unofficial Orientation Series. A quick reminder that you can check out the welcome post here and past years’ series here.

 

Hello, sweet sweet children! This post is here for all of my children of the rainbow to get a sense of what it is like to be a Queer identifying person on campus. This is a revamped version of the post I wrote last year (which you can find ~here~). Now that I’ve gotten a bit more experience under my belt at Wes (I’m going to be a Junior. Ik. I’m so old), I thought it was fair to update my general feeling on The Community™ at Wes. On top of my general experiences, this post will also contain some resources that are here for all LGBTQIA+ bbys.

 

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Unofficial Orientation 2018: Greek Life

“I mean, I studied abroad in Athens. Is that what you mean by Greek Life?”

frats

This is sdz‘s update of wilk‘s update from 2016 as part of our 2018 Unofficial Orientation Series. A quick reminder that you can check out our welcome post here and past years’ series here.

So this article is gonna be interesting. It includes an aggregation of updates from both 2016-2017 and 2017-2018. Both years included some pretty pivotal Greek Life related things that you probably wanna know about. Some of you may be surprised that we even have Greek life (apparently other lib arts schools don’t?). Others might have already delved into our storied Greek Life related past. Are we about to tell you that Wes Greek Life is back to its prime? No. But there’s some new stuff here that you’re probably gonna wanna know, so it’s probably best that you hit the jump.

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