from the wesleyan photo tumblr, probably by Will Barr ’18
The time is here, the time is now: Wesleyan’s class of 2016 is graduating today! Over the course of the past weekend, the median age on Foss has gone up to something like 30, an old dude asked one of my friends where to find drugs, and everyone is hungover. The ceremony begins at 11am and features commencement speaker Bryan Stevenson.
You can watch a livestream here, and read our liveblog after the jump:
The chefs themselves. And yes, the stylish matching apron and Everclear vase are part of the experience.
Comrades, put down the rubbery Usdan chicken and cringe-worthy coffee. Step away from the congealing Summerfields quesadillas and offensively awful pho (do they still have that? I don’t even know). There’s a new Wesleyan food establishment for this semester only, and it’s holy shit amazeballs.
This past week, Abby Gruppuso ’16 sent us an email saying that her and Wolfi Jorde ’16 had created a pop-up restaurant in their senior house called Red Wolf and wanted us to come check it out. Wilk and I said yes for many reasons, including (but not limited to):
Anyway, I already had a good feeling about this, but Abby and Wolfi exceeded all expectations: We were met with a fully set table including tablecloths, dishware, and candles (ResLife, if you’re reading this, they were totally just fake lightbulbs). Each place-setting had its own printed menu with all sorts of bougie things that I haven’t eaten in four years on account of being on this campus.
And all I can say is damn, it was fucking delicious.
Read more after the jump to learn more about Red Wolf’s operation so you can get in on this mouthwatering goodness.
“I’m hoping I won’t be put into a double with a freshman or anything. Maybe I will end up in Hewitt!”
Pictured: Julia Clemens ’16 standing in front of a tractor that is almost definitely more spacious than wherever she ends up living next year. (JK, summer housing works out pretty well sometimes.)
GRS is currently in full swing, and if past years’ experiences are any indication, it will be a stressful, random, and thoroughly hellish week, full of broken promises, ruined friendships, and confusing numbers to decipher.* No one is really entirely sure how GRS really works, except Director of ResLife Fran Koerting, who, according to campus legend, wrote down all of the secrets of GRS on a piece of printer paper in 1986 and then buried it in her front yard so no one else could find it,** and possibly Ben Cohen ’10, who wrote out this exhaustive guide to housing options that I am linking here for your convenience. It’s pretty outdated, and Wesleying is too busy interviewing thesis writers to update it, so make of it what you will.
On the bright side, there’s good news: I don’t have to deal with that shit this year there is sometimes free pizza. The other good news is that as bad as your GRS number is, you still have it better than Julia Clemens ’16, an unsuspecting freshman who has been cursed with the worst GRS number that exists on campus: 590. Clemens, who is pictured above standing in front of a tractor that may or may not be more spacious than her future living quarters, seems to be handling the situation pretty well. Instead of standing in the middle of Andrus moaning “Why meeeee,” she admits that “it’s kind of hilarious” and hopes to fare okay in the summer housing market (as students often do). “My mom wanted to ‘make a fuss,'” Clemens admits, “but I told her I didn’t think that would help.” (It wouldn’t.)
Here is our full interview with Julia Clemens ’16, Owner of the Worst GRS Number Currently In Existence at Wesleyan.
From Kate “Keepin’ It Klassy” Cullen ’16 and the rest of the super snazzy WSA frosh reps:
The WSA Freshmen Representatives will be in Usdan from 12-1:30 on Friday, November 2 to answer questions and hear suggestions about ANYTHING from ANYONE! Have some questions about the need-blind issue? Got suggestions to keep the campus safer? Need some love advice? No problem! Drop by, and we’ll be glad to talk to you about it. See you all on Friday! I heard there might be food too…
Date: Friday, November 2
Time: 12pm-1:30pm
Place: Usdan (first floor)
“I’m really undecided at the moment . . . “
We’ve been waiting for one of those classic Arrival-Day-in-two-minutes speed videos to pop up on the Wesleyan site, and finally it’s here. Thanks, Wesleyan videographer!
This one’s got it all: welcome packets, an impromptu “Go Wes!”, a multi-state license plate montage, families dragging luggage into Clark, frosh stating their place of origin (“It’s just outside Boston”), a family of Wes grads, and this piece of advice from an RA: “My first year I didn’t do anything. Make sure you do everything!” It’s only missing some shots of President Roth high-fiving the Wes cardinal, but this photo will have to do.
On a semi-related note, an anonymous student dropped this note in Wesleying’s tipbox:
“Someone’s moving into Clark! As a former Clark 1st Floor resident, all I can say is: woo hoo!”
As you read this, approximately 800 members of the newly minted Class of 2016 are having their inauguratory hall meetings, stating their hometowns and preferred pronouns, and optimistically including sexile contingency plans in their roommate contracts. They can’t tell Fayerweather from Fauver Bennet, and they still can’t figure out which wall is best for that Big Lebowski poster, but they are endlessly excited to be here (and some of them look suspiciously familiar). Bienvenue, les enfants! We’re not all back on campus yet, but we’re all really pumped to meet you (and I’m sure the 85 or so international students already on campus would say the same thing). As President Roth noted on his blog this morning,
It’s a beautiful morning, and first-year students will see the campus looking its best as they meet their new roommates, find out how to get their food at Usdan, discover the newly renovated Butterfield dorms and the newly named Bennet Hall. Parents will be wondering (sometimes, with misty eyes) how quickly the time has passed since the first day of high school, while their sons and daughters will often be wondering why their folks are lingering on the campus that now belongs to them. Not to worry: Homecoming/Family Weekend will be here before you know it!
If you’re a frosh, you can check out the Orientation 2012 handbook online here, featuring tried-and-true favorites like Common Moment, Bend It At Beckham, BiLeGaTas, and In The Company of Otters.
New dorm rooms also means more triples. But ResLife isn’t calling them “forced triples.”
If you live on Lawn, you can probably hear the power saws from your room. If you don’t, here’s the tip: a whole lot of construction is happening in the Butts. Now that the Career Resource Center and COL/Art History departments have vacated the Butts in favor of 41 Wyllys, ResLife has taken the initiative to snatch up the former office space and build some new dorm rooms.
Here’s the lowdown: there will be new dorm rooms for 92 students. Hallways will become common areas. Each of the Butts will have its own laundry room (no more lugging all your clothes to the Butt B basement). As the Argus reported earlier this semester,
The additional dormitory space is part of a larger plan to increase the student population by 120 undergrads, which the University has been pursuing by increasing acceptances by 30 students each year for the past three years. This goal will be accomplished with the admittance of the class of 2016, and the construction in the Butterfields will help to alleviate the increase in triples in other dorms.
Buckle in, 2016—you’re going to be the biggest class yet another big class, and a whole lot of you will be in triples. You won’t be getting compensated for it, either. As Director of ResLife Fran Koerting explained to me via email, the new triples in the Butts will be sized specifically for the purpose. Consequently, “students in triples will no longer receive a discount nor a point adjustment now that we are able to use rooms that are larger than a traditional double.” Current triple-dwellers: any thoughts on the matter? Since only eight of the new dorm rooms are triples, there’s no word on how this policy will affect frosh assigned to less luxurious triples. (Edit: Fran writes in to clarify: “The other 22 rooms we will be using are triples we have used in the past that are larger than traditional doubles, such as the larger corner rooms in Clark and the triple in Westco, as well as the larger triples we have used in Butterfield.”)
Click past the jump for a brief interview with Koerting about the construction and a gallery of the construction site.
