Tag Archives: alums

EVENT
Post-Wes Journeys in Social Entrepreneurship

From Makaela Kingsley in the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship:

Beezer Clarkson ’94, Kagiso Bond ’01, and Erica Gersowitz ’01 will speak about their lives after college. Like many Wesleyan alumni, parts of their work can be called “social entrepreneurship.” Beezer managed investments in the microfinance sector and advises a Wes-founded social enterprise that provides accounting and credit scoring tools for micro-borrowers in developing economies. Kai has made a career out of researching, funding, advising, incubating, and accelerating tech startups – many in the gaming industry, but with crossovers to the ‘tech for good’ sector. Erica has used her law degree to work for improvements in the criminal justice system, finding innovative ways to have lasting social impact.

The talks will begin promptly at noon and end by 1 p.m. Beezer, Kai, and Erica will be available for private drop-in sessions immediately after. Lunch will be served for those who register by September 24.

Date: Friday, September 27th
Time: 12pm-1pm
Place: Judd 116
Cost: Free
Link: REGISTER HERE

Whatever This Is: Episode 2

Dylan Marron ’10 writes in to share the second episode of his independent TV show, Whatever this is. In case you missed the first episode, which can be found here, here’s a brief overview that Dylan gave for a previous Wesleying post:

I was recently cast in an independent television show called Whatever this is. It follows three best friends – Sam (Hunter Canning), Ari (Dylan Marron), and Lisa (Madeline Wise) — who work job-to-job in New York City. Sam and Ari work as production assistants on reality television shows and each episode sees them on the set of a different project. Whatever this is. is from the same people who made The Outs, the 2012 series that was made on a shoestring budget, developed a cult following, and drew fans like John Cameron Mitchell and Alan Cumming (who appeared in The Outs’ Hanukkah Episode).

The second episode is called Whatever this is. • Westchester, produced by Rascal Department, and it can be found on Vimeo.

FEATURED
Le1f Heats Up Eclectic

“Whoa!!! This music is…*phew*… this music is awesome! I can’t believe I’m seeing … oh my god … I can’t believe I’m seeing Le1f live. Wow, it’s really hot in here. Anyone else really hot? Ya? Got some gum? I gotta chew something…”

That was a sample of what was being said during the Le1f concert last Wednesday at Eclectic. That’s alright, though. It was wayyyyy too hot, drunk students kept stomping the wires out of their sockets, and many couldn’t get in because it was at a constant capacity, but I haven’t seen drug-addled Wes kids get that sweaty and downright grimy since — well, since I was lucky enough to get on the rink early for Kendrick. It’s been too long.

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Report: Running For Board of Trustees Sort Of Like Running for the WSA, But For Old People

Reveal yourself, Trustee-Candidates-Who-Didn’t-Make-It-Onto-The-Ballot. We know you’re out there.

Andrew Bleeker ’07 was one of 40 nominees for the Board of Trustees—and is now one of six candidates on the ballot for the Board of Trustees.

You know what it’s like to run for the WSA (it’s okay, we were all freshmen once), but do you know what it’s like to run for the Board of Trustees, Wesleyan’s most elite secret society?

According to a recent post on WesConnect, six alumni are in the process of finding out, each vying for a chance to spend sunny weekends in September, November, and May perched up in the Daniel Family Commons sipping Dom Pérignon, Making Important Decisions About Relle Important Stuff, and occasionally asking Public Safety to kick out uninvited student activists. (Or maybe they’re just running for the opportunity to kick it with West Wing star and Wesleyan trustee Bradley Whitford ’81.) The candidates on the ballot, as they present themselves on WesConnect, include:

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“The Funniest Prank Ever,” Part Two: An Interview With the Guy Who Put a Mummy in his Hallmate’s Bed

Last year I interviewed a guy who found a mummy in his bed. Meet the guy who put it there.

A little more than a year ago, I posted an interview with a guy who returned to his Nics dorm room one night in early 1990 to find a rotting, 3,000-year-old mummy occupying his bed. Both the victim, Tim Abel ’93, and the perpetrator went on to champion the incident as the “funniest prank ever.” But what happened after the prank unexpectedly revealed quite a bit about Wesleyan in the early 1990s, the interconnected campus community, disciplinary confusion, mass media, the stranger side of alumni gift-giving, and perhaps even Egyptology. (Okay, maybe not that.)

For months I’ve wanted to talk with the perpetrators of the prank, who remain unnamed in news accounts and faceless in a TV interview. When one of them posted a comment (since deleted) on the post, I managed to get in touch. Let’s call him Craig Smith ’93. Smith (not his real name) is now a professional musician and a dad. But he’s not sure he’ll ever top the prank he pulled in the Nics 23 years ago this month.

As I wrote in 2012, the Middletown Mummy Mystery was more than just a good prank. I was an intergenerational legend that has “solidified its place in the lore of early 1990s Wesleyan history, providing some semblance of levity during a turbulent academic year characterized by generally unprecedented campus unrest, including a firebombing, a week-long hunger strike, racist graffiti in Malcolm X House, and the fatal shooting of Nicholas Haddad ’92.”

And here’s the other side of it.

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FEATURED
The Trustees Are Coming, The Trustees Are Coming

Here’s how to contact them to talk about your feelings or whatever.

Pictured: Joshua S. Boger ’73, chairman of Wesleyan’s Board of Trustees.

Wesleyan’s Board of Trustees will be arriving on campus tomorrow for their annual ~~three-day Buffy marathon~~ Senior Week meeting, which traditionally takes place in the days leading up to Reunion & Commencement. Got a concern that you’d like the Board to address? Want to talk to them about your feelings? Just curious who is on that committee that makes all those decisions about campus in the first place? You can access a full list of the names, class years (nearly all are alumni), home states, and job titles of the Board members here, but unfortunately no contact information is provided, which is kind of weird when you really think about it. We’ve taken the liberty of amassing the Board members’ names and email addresses so you can contact them with thoughts or requests in advance of their meeting, which begins tomorrow:

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Guest Post: Wesleyan Needs To Be On The Correct Side of the Climate Change Fight

“For almost 40 years I have been so proud of Wesleyan students and alumni. But I am not seeing the level of activism that is necessary for this existential fight.”

Pictured: Lauren Steiner ’79 speaks at the Los Angeles Tar Sands Blockade Solidarity Action in March, 2013.

Several weeks ago, members of a student group calling themselves Wes, Divest! put together a petition calling on President Roth and the Board of Trustees to divest from fossil fuels. The petition has since amassed more than 250 signatures, many with accompanying messages of support. President Roth hasn’t yet publicly responded. When asked about the possibility of divestment at a WSA meeting in March, he suggested that it was highly unlikely—and argued that Wesleyan’s endowment shouldn’t be a “vehicle for social change.”

As the push for divestment first starts to heat up at Wesleyan (as it already has at Tufts, Amherst, and much of the ‘Cac), we’re presenting a guest perspective by Lauren Steiner ’79, an environmental activist and Wes alum who urges all Wesleyan students to take up the fight now, before it’s too late:

“Plant trees, create recycled art, tour a chestnut orchard, work on an organic garden and much more during Earth Month at Wesleyan!” So reads the first sentence of an article in the latest edition of The Wesleyan Connection emailed to me in April. As an environmental activist who attended the first Earth Day celebration 33 years ago at age 12 and who planned an LA solidarity rally to the D.C. Forward on Climate Rally this past February, I found this quite dismaying. When I was at Wesleyan between 1975 and 1979, when we hadn’t even heard of climate change, we were actively protesting threats to the environment and human health. In 1976 and 1977, activists from Wesleyan joined the Clamshell Alliance protesting the construction of the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire. Where is that activism now when environmental threats are so much worse?

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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.

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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FEATURED
BandCampWes: ILLEGALIZE Returns with “Tortoise Style” EP

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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