Tag Archives: Alumni

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Group of Huge Nerds Holds Slumber Party in Exley 137: Meet the Senior Week Hackathon

Breaking: Wes has Computer Science majors, and sometimes they stay up all night, making friends for life.

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The tables and floor of Exley 137 are piled high with gluttonous food remnants—pretzel bags, sandwich displays, Dunkin Donuts bags, half-eaten pizza, chips and salsa, dozens of condiments and wrappers and sauces—but the eleven occupants of the room are far too busy staring at computer screens, coding feverishly behind glazed eyes, to take much notice. Tensions are high. Every once in a while someone grunts or high fives or messes something up and swears at a teammate. Evan Carmi ’13 is pacing furiously, staring at scripts and barking orders at his teammates, who remain surprisingly calm. I take a look at the screen, but it may as well be in Korean. (I don’t speak Korean.)

Meet the participants of the first ever Senior Week Hackathon, a heated, unimaginably sexy 36-hour coding competition organized by Carmi, Julian Applebaum ’13, and Anastasios Germanidis ’13. The participants, most of them Comp Sci majors, have been awake for the better part of 36 hours, camped out in this single, sweat-stained classroom on the main floor of Exley, and in a little less than an hour they will emerge into the world with the shiny, digital results of their tech-savvy soil. Basically, it is a slumber party for nerds. Naturally, they have been tweeting up a storm every step of the way (and enjoying free “swag” from their various sponsors). 

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BandCampWes: ILLEGALIZE Returns with “Tortoise Style” EP

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Ever wonder what kind of band it would take to win Battle of the Bands when most of your band members are freshmen? A damn good one. Sadly, it was 2001, before the birth of the great Wesleying, so I can’t make a witty phrase and have it link to an article about how awesome they were by someone who saw them first hand. I can, however, point you too their new album, Tortoise Style, a unique blend of soul, hip hop, and funk with a shake of Brazilian influence.

ILLEGALIZE was a fixture in the Wesleyan music scene during its time here (2001-2004), and after being apart for some time, they have reunited to create their first EP since 2002. The line up includes Tavi Fields ’01/’02, Jon “Phes” Souza ’04, Kieran Meadows ’04, Joaquin Cotler ’04/’05, and Sascha Weiss ’04. To add on to the Go Wes-ness I’m feeling, you should know that the band included Bill Sherman ’02, Tony/Grammy-winning music arranger from In The Heights and current Sesame Street music director.

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EVENT
Happening Just About Now: Radical Giving and Alternative Economics

Hope Dana Pellegrino ’12 forgives our tardiness on this one:

RADICAL GIVING AND ALTERNATIVE ECONOMICS: a post-Wes conversation with Brendan Martin ’95, hosted by Wesleyan’s Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship.

Lunch will be provided, and registration is required. If you would like to register and are unavailable to attend the lunch at noon but you are interested in meeting Brendan while he is on campus, contact mjkingsley@wes.

After graduating from Wesleyan with a degree in economics and a specific interest in issues of poverty and economic opportunity,
Brendan Martin ’95 started his career as a general manager at a Wall Street information firm. A few years later, he decided to change gears, and using his personal savings, he founded the “La Base” Loan Fund and The Working World, a non-profit which supports fledgling cooperatives and underrepresented workers in Argentina, Nicaragua, and ultimately in the United States. The Working World partners with workers’ cooperatives, helps them with their business plans, and offers other services. It has now made more than 600 loans, worth over $3 million, to some 100 cooperatives, ranging from metal-working to honey-gathering groups.

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Here’s the Poem by Amanda Palmer ’98 that Everyone on the Internet Is Yelling About

Palmer: “It is always very interesting when people misinterpret art, and then get angry about it.”

Wesleying's own Gabe took this ridiculously excellent shot of Amanda Palmer at last weekend's "Humanity Festival." Click for the full gallery.

Wesleying’s own Gabe took this ridiculously excellent shot of Amanda Palmer at last weekend’s “Humanity Festival.” Click for the full gallery.

Amanda Palmer ’98 (whom we haven’t blogged about in a whole week-and-a-half, it’s true, we swear) is not much of a stranger to controversy, so the Internet probably shouldn’t have been surprised or outraged when she responded to the Boston bombing by writing a poem for suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (titled, fittingly, “A Poem for Dzhokhar“) and posting it on her blog on Sunday.

But that’s not really the way things worked out.

As Palmer herself noted in a follow-up post a few days after posting the poem, “there are 1,947 comments on a poem that took me—no exaggeration—about 9 minutes to write. many of the comments have been confused, many of them understanding, many of them angry.” Indeed, dozens upon dozens of readers have called Palmer out for what they perceive as her self-interest and arrogance in the wake of a tragedy. One particularly popular comment, signed “A fan,” argues that “this isn’t a poem for Dzjokhar, it’s a poem for yourself because you imagine you know how he feels.” The comment currently has 770 up-votes and 12 down-votes, if that gives you an indication of what the reaction has been like.

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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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Burfoot ’68, Champion Runner Who Ran in Boston Marathon on Monday, Has High Hopes for Future of the Race

“Personally you feel deprived for a moment of your chance to reach the finish line. And then slowly through the confusion the real story reaches you.”

Amby Burfoot, dressed in his Wesleyan apparel, after winning the 1968 Boston Marathon.

Amby Burfoot, dressed in his Wesleyan apparel, after winning the 1968 Boston Marathon.

In the wake of the bombings at the Boston Marathon on Monday, stories emerge from all corners about the shock and terror of the event, not only from the news, but from friends and family as well. While it’s often easy to feel comforted by the Wesleyan “bubble,” there are also important reminders of the direct effect of the tragedy on our greater community.

One such story comes from Amby Burfoot ’68, who in 1968 graduated from Wesleyan and won the Boston Marathon. As an undergrad, Burfoot was a star runner. He was undefeated throughout his four years in cross-country dual races, earned several New England and IC4A college division titles, and has been inducted into the Wesleyan Athletics Hall of Fame. Since graduating, Burfoot has participated in dozens of marathons, and has gone on to become a writer and editor for Runner’s World magazine.

On Monday, Burfoot, 66, was marking the 45th anniversary of his ’68 win by running in the Boston Marathon yet again. He was about a half-mile from the finish line when he was forced to stop where masses had gathered, and he soon learned the reason for this chaos. In the aftermath of the bombings, Burfoot has written, and been interviewed, about his experience on Monday, as well as his hopes for the future of the Boston Marathon.

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EVENT
The Future of Television: Networks, Content and Delivery

UVL13133_VossVisitingScholarsPoster_0304_smj.inddIt’s the VOSS VISITING SCHOLAR LECTURE *bom bom bom bom*:

Join Tom Rogers ’76, P’14 and Henry Schleiff P’14 for a panel discussion on the business of television. Smart boxes, streaming, and social TV have changed how we watch, while traditional television advertising and cable subscription models are in flux. How will producers fund content in the future, and how will consumers watch it? These top executives will discuss the changing landscape of television. Moderated by Andrea McCarty, Charles W. Fries curator of the Wesleyan Cinema Archives.

Date: Today, April 15th
Time: 8pm
Place: Center for Film Studies
Cost: Free

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Filmmaker Sun-Higginson ’10 Tackles Sexism in the Gaming Industry

From Shannon Sun-Higginson ’10, a message to all the sexist gamers out there: GTFO.

Sun-Higginson, a filmmaker living in NYC, is currently producing a documentary by that very name.  Featuring interviews with gamers, bloggers, scholars, developers, and others involved in the field, “GTFO” aims to expose the harassment of women involved in the gaming industry. To raise money and support for the film’s production, Sun-Higginson has launched a Kickstarter page that will be up through May 10.

Sexual harassment is a rampant problem in the gaming world – one that’s been gaining attention in the news lately.  There has been some pretty impressive backlash online against this sexism, but Sun-Higginson hopes her film will call even more attention to the problem and ultimately spark some change.

Watch the trailer after the jump:

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Amanda Palmer ’98 to Host “Concert and Conversation” During R&C

Because bringing Joss Whedon ’87 to campus apparently wasn’t enough, Wesleyan’s capital campaign website reports that everyone’s favorite Dresden Doll, Amanda Palmer ’98, will also be making an appearance for a “concert and conversation” during Reunion & Commencement weekend. Fittingly, this May marks the 15th reunion of Palmer’s glory days living in the Eclectic basement and schmoozing it up with Momus. Curiously, however, Palmer has made no secret of how much she disliked being a student at Wesleyan. In fact, she once wrote a fantastic song about burning Wesleyan to ash. But everyone knows fundraising is boring without a little conflict, right?

Palmer has been in the public eye constantly this past year, mostly raising conversation and controversy regarding her radical business model and crowd-sourcing tactics, which was the topic of her recent TEDTalk. Last time she was at Wesleyan, in 2011, she gave a surprise “ninja gig” in the Eclectic dining room, performing everything from Dresden classics “Coin-Operated Boy” and “Leeds United” to a radical reimagining of  Rebecca Black’s “Friday” from the point of view of a truck stop hooker. Here’s video of that performance, via Will Feinstein ’13 at Aural Wes. Hope she includes it in her Reunion & Commencement set!

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Boychicks Episode Two

I’m not posting this because I’ve had a crush on Julian Silver ’12 since the first time I saw him freshman year.  Or because he’s witty, cute, talented, and manly in a sensitive kind of way… Where was I?  The latest from him and Josh Margolin ’11: