Tag Archives: 2012

FEATURED
Interview: Peter Frank ’12, Former Owner of CollegeACB, Launches New Textbook Venture

“If a campus as tight-knit and progressive as Wesleyan can’t come together to defeat yesterday’s monopolist and incumbent powers, then maybe it just can’t be done.”

Peter Frank ’12, the famed Internet entrepreneur who ran the CollegeACB empire from his Fauver dorm room and made his way into the pages of TIME Magazine before selling the site in 2011 for an undisclosed six-figure sum, is back in the game with a new start-up. Not quite as juicy as the ACB (but probably far more useful), Frank’s latest venture is Texts.com, a “lean, green, student-first platform” for students to buy and sell textbooks to and from each other online. The start-up made its Wesleyan debut on Foss Hill around 4:20 p.m. yesterday; you’d be forgiven for assuming it’s a service that provides free pizza to stoned Wesleyan students at all hours of the day (that’s my new start-up idea, don’t tell anyone):

With help from Lisa Sy ’13 and Benjamin Halpern (a student at Mount Allison University in Canada), Frank aims to build a “commission-free, zero-fee, student-to-student textbook exchange” that eliminates the middleman.

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FEATURED
2012: A Very Wesleying Year In Review

Another beautiful kitten-filled photo brought to you by the fabulous waynesworld.

Happy_New_Year_from_Wesleying

As the year draws to a close and we put away our “Congrats on surviving the Rapture… Again!” cards (until 2015, that is), it’s time to look back on life at Wes during the past twelve months.

In this nifty Year in Review, you will find an assortment of Wesleyan’s biggest debacles, triumphs, incidents, and protests from the year 2012 as told by the wonderful bloggers of Wesleying.

If anything, I hope this little post helps you regroup and remember that we go to a damn interesting school. Maybe it makes you appreciate Wesleyan more, maybe it just makes you reflect a little. Or maybe it makes you angry, I don’t know. But no matter what, I wish you all a happy, crazy awesome New Year.

A note before I begin: yes, I missed some things. It is a truly difficult task to fit all the fascinating/weird/emotionally-charged events that happen at Wesleyan and their subsequent Wesleying articles into a single post. Feel free to write about other big moments or your favorite Wesleying posts from 2012 in the comments section.

Second note: all of the Wesleying articles under “For further reading” are in chronological order (for the most part) from oldest to newest.

Last note: these events are in no particular order of importance, seriousness, or enormity.

Read after the jump to see what events made the Top 10 and what happenings are Honorable Mentions. Happy reading, brochachos. 

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FEATURED
NYT Magazine Remembers Alex Okrent ’05

Alex Okrent '05

The New York Times Magazine’s “The Lives They Lived” issue features a stirring tribute to Alex Okrent ’05, the Wesleyan alumnus who collapsed and died last July at the Obama headquarters, where he worked, in Chicago. The cause of death was later determined to be cardiac arrhythmia. Okrent, 29, was a College of Social Studies major at Wes, and his passing inspired expressions of condolences from both candidates that day in July:

As journalist Mark Leibovich tells it, Okrent was on board with the Obama cause well before the senator even announced his candidacy in 2007—he took off a semester off from Wesleyan in 2004 to work on Obama’s Senate campaign. Between organizing a campaign book club and dressing up as Tobias Fünke on Halloween in Iowa, Okrent was “demanding, fun and irreverent,” Leibovich writes. “And he was never shy about telling people that he loved them.”

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EVENT
Apply to Work for Homecoming & Family Weekend 2012

Want to escape from your parents/make some bank during homecoming? Well… (from Alumni & Parent Relations Interns):

Have you ever wanted to…
Meet alumni and parents from around the world?
Make money, friends and gain a whole new perspective on life at
Wesleyan?
Drive a shuttle van around campus and use a walkie-talkie?
AND get a FREE Wesleyan T-Shirt?

Apply now to be part of Homecoming/Family Weekend 2012. Student workers play an integral role in the weekend by greeting guests at the registration site, assisting with activities and event preparation, escorting guests around campus in shuttle vans, and much more! 

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WesGrub: Eating and Drinking Things on Campus

Our first installment! We at Wesleying are here to tell you all about stuffing your faces at Wesleyan as part of our Unofficial Orientation Series 2012. A tradition begun by the Wesleying legends Holly Wood ’08 and Xue Sun ’08, this post has evolved a bit over the years. I’m trying for brevity, so if these details aren’t enough for your Wes-crazed brains, then check out this post from 2011.

Everything after the jump:

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Peace Out, 2012!

Bennet ’87 to 2012: “Your generation has so many more opportunities to lead, to make change, than the Class of 1987 ever did.” Also, tear down those walls. Like Reagan. Sort of.

Congratulations, Wesleyan Class of 2012! Now go tear down some walls. Or something.

In case you’ve somehow missed it, a whopping 713 members of the senior class graduated on Andrus Field this morning after remarks by President Michael Roth ’78 (featuring references to WesRave, the ACB, and, err, “hipster pessimism”), a senior class welcome from Kennedy Odede ’12, and a stirring, historically heavy Commencement Address from Senator (and presidential heir) Michael Bennet ’87, who instructed one and all to “bring down those walls” and embrace “some period of public service” as the debt for the privilege of attending Wesleyan. “You will transform American politics for this new age,” said Bennet, “because otherwise it will become as irrelevant as the British parliament in 1776.”  Meanwhile, about halfway through Roth’s speech, a few unidentified students dropped a banner from nearby Clark denouncing ongoing changes to Wesleyan’s need-blind admissions practices. From my vantage point, the silent protest offered a large-scale complement to the “Keep Wes Need Blind” stickers I saw affixed to the shirts of student workers, graduates, alums, and even a few parents all day (more on this later). But what say you?

Seniors, you’ll be missed. But for now, go hug your grandparents. I’ve been driving them around all day on golf carts, and they’re totally psyched. (You can wait until tomorrow, I guess.)

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EVENT
Direct Action and Radical Social Theory: Interest Meeting

Welcome back, nerds. I wish to take this occasion to welcome you into a Joyous New Apocalyptic Year of 2012, one which probably no longer feels very New at all. It’s just more school. School’s a drag. Also, the whole 2012 thing is bullshit. Regardless, we carry on with classes starting tomorrow, and I’m totally gonna get trashed December 21st regardless. I hope you understand.

Anyway. You might recall last semester’s announcement that students were planning a student forum on the subjects of direct action and radical social theory, inspired by the recent Occupy movement and what was seen as a lack of institutional attention to alternative social theory. Using a syllabus based on the one anthropologist David Graeber drew up to teach a course on the same subject, we’re planning on having the participants themselves teach the course – each week, students will put together a discussion of the reading, viewing, and other material everyone will be engaging with.

Interested? Do one or both of the following: a) Show up to the interest and application meeting tomorrow, Thursday, at 7 PM in the UOC, where we’ll discuss our vision for the course and give out the application questions for all those interested. b) Contact someone involved in the planning of the forum – say, Jon Lubeck ’14 (jlubeck at wesleyan dot edu), Dan Fischer ‘11.5 (dlfischer at wes), or Maxwell Hellmann ’13 (mhellmann at wes) for more information and an app, when it’s ready.

Date: Thursday, January 26
Time: 7 P.M.
Place: UOC (190 High St., in between Beta and Eclectic)

Click through for a little more information about applying:

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Senior Events Begin

This past Friday the Senior Class Council sponsored a free trip to Destinta for any senior who made a $2 donation to the Senior Scholarship (a fund that will be given to one worthy Wes admittee from the Class of 2016, with a goal of $25,000). Seniors enjoyed entrance to any movie of their choice, (for those of you that chose 50/50-excellent choice!) and free popcorn and soda (wonderful treats). Don’t forget! The Senior Class Council is selling passes to all official Senior Events all this week during Usdan lunch on Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday and in the Exley lobby from 7-9pm on Tuesday and Wednesday. Get em’ while they’re hot! (and so you don’t have to pay for each event separately, not the best call) Enjoy a mini-slideshow of great senior timez at Destinta below.

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EVENT
OFA Neighborhood Team Meeting!

From Gabriela De Golia ’13:

Want to get involved in your community, protect Democratic progress, and learn how to organize support for President Obama in 2012? Join Ben Florsheim ’14 and Gabriela De Golia ’13, Wesleyan students and interns with Organizing for America, along with Middletown residents for an event to discuss the policy progress of the Obama Administration, our goals for the future, and community organizing strategies that will be crucial as we kick off the 2012 campaign. We will also talk about how to advance the President’s priorities in our own community, and begin organizing our grassroots 2012 campaign.
Sign up for the event here.

 

  • Date: Saturday, April 23
  • Time: 3:30 PM – 5:30 PM
  • Place: The Buttonwood Tree, 605 Main Street

New WesMaps is here

The new Wesmaps is up and it’s lookin’ mighty fine. Thanks to the shoutbox shouter for the tip and sorry for the tardiness, buddy. As always, this is a preliminary list and is pending to (perhaps a lot of) change. In related news, I damn well better get into West Af this time.

In other related but more relevant news, the themes for next year’s Center for Humanities (CHUM nom nom nom) projects are:

  • Fall 2011: Fact and Artifact
  • Spring 2012: Visceral States: Affect and Civic Life

… which I think might be old news by now. Anyway, for more information, check out their website.