This is an update of fran’s post.
Good luck getting one of those coveted library desk jobs tho lol
This is part of our 2021 Unofficial Orientation Series. A quick reminder that you can check out the welcome post here and past years’ series here.
Looking for a job? Here are some tips on where to look, who to ask, and the logistics of being a student employee.
Over the past year-and-a-half, students and administrators have been working together in the First-Generation, Low-Income (FGLI) Committee to address gaps of resources for underrepresented students on campus. (You can read a more detailed interview about the history of the FGLI Committee here.) I’ve been involved with the committee since it was created the spring of my first-year in 2017, and have focused on both financial aid initiatives and academic accessibility via the Office for Equity and Inclusion.
A topic of conversation was the financial aid application process itself, and how it’s stressful waiting until late June/July to find out your financial aid package. As it stood, the deadline for all documents was May 15th, just after the CSS Profile closes. However, due to some changes to the documentation required in the application, Wesleyan’s financial aid office now creates our packages from the previous year’s tax forms (i.e. 2017), rather than the current year’s (i.e. 2018).
Because moving the deadline up doesn’t affect the availability of the necessary tax forms, the financial aid office decided to push the deadline four months up to January 15th, 2019 so they can receive all information faster and give us notification earlier. When searching through my emails, I ~discovered~ that this was announced in November, with some subsequent reminders of the new date.
Combating classism has been a major topic on campus for quite some time now, and the WSA is looking to do something about it.
Below is a “press release”/statement from Aidan Martinez ’17, Vice President of the WSA, talking about a new resolution that hopes to provide stipends to students on financial aid who participate heavily in a particular student group. If you want to discuss the program with the Assembly, they’ll be meeting this Sunday, January 31st, at 6:30pm to 41 Wyllys Room 114.
And as always, if you have affirming/dissenting/random thoughts and opinions on this issue and wish to have them put on Wesleying, feel free to email us at staff(at)wesleying(dot)org.
Aidan’s statement is after the jump.
From A.N. Kini ’13:
In an event benefitting financial aid, Freestyle Love Supreme comes to campus during Reunion & Commencement. Tickets are $25 for this hiphop improv show–buy them before May 13! Performing are Andrew Bancroft ’00, Daveed Diggs, Christopher Jackson, Arthur Lewis, and Chris Sullivan.
Deadline to buy tickets: Wednesday, May 13
Performance Date: Friday, May 22
Time: 9-11 PM
Place: Crowell Concert Hall
Cost: $25 (for financial aid!!!)
Photo by Nikita Rajgopal ’17
This morning, the Wesleyan Track Team boycotted their track meet at Amherst to protest an unfair scheduling change. The J. Elmer Swanson Invitational, an annual track meet hosted at Wesleyan, was abruptly cancelled so that the Men’s Lacrosse team could play on the turf field (the turf field was built in the middle of the track a few years ago). Members of the track team claim that the cancellation was due to the fact that many lacrosse team parents are big donors while the track team is comprised of many students receiving financial aid. Thus, the track team does not have the same financial clout. The track team sent an open letter explaining their reasoning as well as their demands for the future. I also reached out to the athletic department for comment and Athletic Director Mike Whalen’s response is below.
Paying tuition never looked so bucolic
Please put your iPhone back in your Patagonia sweatshirt pocket for a second. Apparently it’s time to rethink the idea that the Wesleyan student body is entirely made up of students from upper-class families, at least according to new data from the New York Times. In conjunction with an article on colleges recruiting from an increasingly diverse set of economic backgrounds, the Times has published a chart comparing the economic diversity of various schools. And Wesleyan has come out at number 13 on the list.
The chart ranks colleges according to a College Access Index, which is based on the percent of the past few freshman classes who came from low-income families (measured by the share receiving a Pell grant) and on the net price of attendance for low- and middle-income families. The data states that 18% of freshman classes arriving 2012-14 have received Pell grants, and that the average cost for low- and middle-income students is $8,700 a year. This gives Wesleyan a College Access Ranking of 1.5, putting us below Amherst and above Williams, for reference.
(Image: Catherine Avalone, The Middletown Press)
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.
Student activism has led Stanford‘s Board of Trustees to vote to stop investing in coal-mining companies. This action is a significant step in the ever-growing fossil fuel divesment movement on campuses across the country.
In the growingly visible national conversation on sexual assault on college campuses, including a recently launched campaign by the White House to confront the issue, many local movements have been getting increasing attention.
Interested in staying on campus to take classes this summer? While you can register for classes until June 1, you MUST register for at least two classes and submit your form to the Summer Session office by Wednesday, March 26 if you would like to apply for financial aid. More information on Summer Session, courtesy of their website:
Wesleyan University offers an intensive Summer Session in which students can complete semester-long courses in only five weeks; courses are offered in both June and July. Wesleyan Summer Session is open to students who feel they have the academic qualifications and stamina to complete an intellectually challenging course in a compressed schedule. Residential options are available for both Wesleyan undergraduates and non-Wesleyan students.
There will be two sessions with different classes: May 28 – June 26, and June 30 – July 30. For a full listing of courses, click here.
Prez Obama is running away with our #ThisIsWhy campaign.
What do you do when the leader of the free world hijacks your hashtag campaign? Barack Obama recently launched a new site featuring stories on why health care (reform) matters. The tagline’s Twitter-translation? #ThisisWhy.
It all began on January 1st, with Virginia.
Virginia may be able to go to the doctor again but does she have anything on James W. Thomasson ’63, an alum who gives us this story as part of Wesleyan’s #ThisIsWhy campaign?
At the age of eight, in socially divided Middleburg, Virginia, I was “reported” to my mother by a neighborhood “wag” for playing in the street with “John Henry”—yes, a ten-year-old black boy. As big a disgrace as that must have been for the neighbor, it paled in comparison to the embarrassment of my mother and the rage of my father.
