Tag Archives: senior cocks

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Senior Events To Make Sober Comeback During Senior Week

After more than a month to reflect on February’s Senior Cocktails fallout, the Senior Class Officers have formally announced what some have already suspected: reports of the death of Senior Cocks have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, the events planned for Senior Week—an Outing Day and a Semi-Formal—are still on. From my inbox:

After working with the administration over the past weeks, we are pleased to announce that the events originally scheduled for Senior Week—Outing Day and Semi-Formal—will continue to be held on Tuesday, May 21 and Thursday, May 23 respectively. We are excited that our class will still have these opportunities to bond as a whole in an off-campus setting, and we look forward to planning them so that they are successful and enjoyable for all.

But there’s a twist. Come on, you can figure it out: 

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The Bridge on the Drina

Senior Cocktails, faculty engagement, Espwesso, and the state of Wesleyan society.

The Bridge on the Drina

The media has been having a field day with last Friday’s Senior Cocktails. History, at least as it is popularly understood, often influences the character of the future, so this article seeks to illuminate three brief bits of historical meaning. The first involves the intent of the Allbritton cafe now called Espwesso. The second, an old norm of behavior between faculty and students. And finally, the origins of Senior Cocktails, the third. All told, these elements collectively form the tale of a beautiful and normative aspect of Wesleyan society that aged, became tarnished, and eventually disappeared.

I titled this “The Bridge on the Drina,” after the Ivo Andric historical novel of the same name, for reasons that will hopefully be clear by the end of the article.


Allbritton, Wesleyan’s Kapia

As you might expect, the centerpiece of Andric’s novel is a bridge across the Drina river, lying athwart the town of Višegrad near the border between Bosnia and Serbia. This bridge serves in analogy for many aspects of Ottoman rule in the Balkans (and some of these I will reference later on), but for now its importance lies in the kapia, the widened center of the bridge. Upon the kapia sit the people of the town, resting on benches of carved stone, chatting, sipping coffee and plum brandy bought from the vendor’s stand, and conducting business of both great and little import. The kapia is as central to the society of the town as it is to the bridge itself.

So it was to be with cafe space allotted on the bottom floor of Allbritton.

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Statement: Senior Cocktails are Cancelled Forever, and No One’s Getting a Refund

“The administration has decided that ‘senior cocktails’ will no longer occur in the way they have existed.”

The national media frenzy has come and gone, but the lasting aftermath of last week’s Senior Cocks debacle isn’t going to fade quite so quickly. After a week of tense silence, you knew a statement from the Senior Class Officers was coming. You also knew it wasn’t going to be pretty. Today, it arrived.

The five-paragraph, 600-word email makes clear that last week’s events have put an end to Senior Cocks not only for the Class of 2013, but for all future classes. “Beyond the cancellation of all senior cocktails for future classes, the damage and destruction caused by our senior class last Friday has put our own Senior Week in jeopardy,” the officers write. “There was damage to some exhibits and extensive cleaning necessary at the museum, potential damage to the buses, and possibly damage to the DJ’s equipment as well.” Then there is the damage done to Wesleyan’s reputation among Connecticut venues and services: “The transportation company we have used for our senior events has refused to work with us, and some of our planned Senior Week venues are reevaluating whether they will still host us.” What goes unmentioned in the email is the damage done by viciously mocking media coverage in the week following the event, but that speaks for itself.

In light of this statement, last Friday’s buffoonery went well beyond dinosaur joyrides and escalator injuries. And it was more egregious than vomit on the stairs or gratuitous sex in the bathroom.

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Wesleyan Media Blow-Up: Because Not All Publicity Is Good Publicity

seniors

Watch out, Wesleyan, because according to lots and lots (and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots) of different media outlets, we’re at it again. “What’s wrong with Wesleyan?” ask Business Insider’s Ashley Lutz and Abby Rogers. I’ll do my best to explain that here in this rundown of media coverage regarding the weekend’s debauchery.

Of course, this question could be answered fairly quickly by any number of blogosphere navigators, but perhaps best by Daily Caller commenter “WHATTHEBLANK,” who characterized us as “leftists [who will] just get older and go to occupy protests and still drink smoke weed and act stupid.”

So, as one of those overprivileged WASPs that everyone is talking about, who better to give you your cheat sheet to the media coverage that Wesleyan is getting for our little tryst with the T-Rex?

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What’s Up With the News 8 Van?

Reported quote from the incident report: “Wesleyan student removed from the 6th floor for riding the dinosaur.”

If you’ve recently braved the chilly wintry air to get a snack from Weshop before commencing your diligent studies, you may have noticed a conspicuous white News 8 van perched on the corner of Church and Pine. It’s not every day that our little campus generates local news attention, so the media presence may cause some people to worry. But the answer shouldn’t be much of a surprise:

On Friday, the third Senior Cocks event came to an abrupt halt when the senior class was kicked out of the Connecticut Science Center in Hartford. (Haven’t heard the story? Catch up here and here.) Apparently the scandal has generated so much attention that News 8, based in New Haven, has stopped by to talk to seniors and grab some video shots of our frigid lovely campus. The news van’s been busy, having already visited the museum to talk to employees and gather their side of the story before coming to Wes. The reporter whom I spoke to wasn’t entirely forthcoming with her goals, but I gathered that even she was uncertain whether or not the science center would be pressing charges against Wesleyan.

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Senior Cocks: The Best of the Incident Report

14-Cocktail-Glass-hat-Crazy-Hats

By now everyone is aware that Friday night’s Senior Cocks ended when a band of biology majors went mad with grief and destroyed  the giant brontosaurus statue for reasons that have become quite controversial.

Through a chain of individuals, Wesleying received two quotes reported to be from the museum’s “Incident Report.” They are, to say the least, brilliant. 

The two quotes are copied below, and, as always, your comments and absurdities are greatly encouraged.

1. “Wesleyan student removed from the 6th floor for riding the dinosaur.”

2. “Wesleyan student fell down the up escalator. And continued falling as if in a perpetual motion machine.”

Want to yell about this incident in all-caps until you get your aggression out? Click here.

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Here’s Why Senior Cocks Got Shut Down in Two Hours Last Night

Spoiler: It involves sex, drugs, and rock & roll projectile vomiting.

Last night, around 7:30 p.m., a few hundred well-oiled members of the Class of 2013 piled into buses outside of Usdan, headed—unbeknownst to passengers—to the Connecticut Science Center in Hartford. Two hours later, a drunker, louder, and scientifically inspired Class of 2013 was herded onto the same buses and driven right back to Middletown. The “Freaks and Geeks, Valentine’s Day style”-themed evening—which cost $40 and made for the third senior event of the year—wasn’t supposed to end abruptly in less than two hours, but according to one student who overheard an exchange between museum staffers and Wesleyan coordinators, the ejection may have been well earned.

“I overheard that staffers at the Connecticut Science Center observed students ‘doing drugs and having sex in the bathrooms,’ and that things were getting broken,” explained the student, who asked not to be named. “I am not sure whether or to what extent that is exaggerated or not; it was said rather offhandedly and by someone who appeared to be under a lot of duress at the time.”

If you noticed copious amounts of baking soda lining the stairs of the museum, that, too, had something to do with the staff’s unhappy reaction.

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MUSIC
Senior Cocks Events

It looks like senior cocks is back for another year. Well, almost. This year its called senior events, but that doesn’t mean you can’t dress up in your best, hop on a bus with your senior friends, and ride off to the best university-sanctioned party you will ever go to. The first ‘event’ will be the “Blacklight Halloween Party,” (perhaps riding off the success of [at least] two very successful blacklight parties this year [Warren and ADP]).

Passes this year cost $190 for 5 ‘guaranteed’ events (does that mean there could be more?), including a Winter Formal and Spring Semi-Formal. The full email is included below.

Rock on Senior class, but don’t go too hard.

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Senior Class Officers Respond; Senior Cocks Still On

The senior class officers have finally responded to all the concerns and differing opinions expressed both here on Wesleying (pro and con) and on the acb over the past few days concerning the proposal to cancel the next senior cocks and donate the funds for that event to Haiti instead. As you know, the cocks proposal survey closed on Wednesday and we’ve all been wondering about the results. Here’s the email sent out earlier today, which I have to say was nicely written and did a good job of addressing some of the major points of contention on both sides:

Dear Class of 2010,

First and foremost, we would like to thank everyone who has contributed to the ongoing dialogue regarding the proposal to forfeit our upcoming cocktail. We have received valuable feedback from members of the class both for and against the proposal. We also realize that this proposal has spurned a considerable amount of discussion regarding the appropriateness of donating cocktail funds, the method of gauging the senior class opinion, and of altruism in general. It is worth noting that we fully recognize the shortcomings of our online survey and we should have taken greater responsibility in ensuring that the survey targeted only cocktail-pass purchasers, and that voting was restricted to one-time only.

With these problems in mind, we openly accept that the results of this survey cannot be used in the decision-making process. It was, however, disappointing to see several forums of discussion, including the survey, used for very inappropriate and offensive remarks. We recognize the argument made by some seniors who felt as though the reduction of this issue to a “for cocktails” or “for giving” dichotomy was too simplistic. After considering the class response, we will continue to explore options for our class to make meaningful contributions to this cause without completely eliminating an event that our class holds dear.

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“Cocktail Party vs. Aid” or “Reason vs. Sense”

Why I Chose to Vote “Yes” on the Senior Cocks Proposal

A proposal was raised last week to cancel one of the Senior Cocktails events and instead donate the $15,000 – $20,000 earmarked for the event to relief efforts in Haiti. The idea met with strong support among the senior class, as well as some dissent. Some critics have pointed out that the proposal is illogical: if we wanted to pay for the party in September, why wouldn’t we want it now? There’s a crisis in Haiti, but there was no lack of urgent crises to support across the globe in early Autumn. And why can’t we do both? Certainly any of us who could afford to spend $160 on senior event tickets can scratch together another $20 on our own to donate, without dipping into the money we already decided to spend partying.

Part of me laughs because these critics are right; their logic is entirely sound. Another part of me cries because HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY say that having one more night on the town is MORE IMPORTANT than bringing food and water to thousands of people whose city was just destroyed? Really? I know I was presented with a very similar decision when I chose to buy my tickets. What has changed?

Logic isn’t all we’re made of. The ways that we are sheltered from, desensitized to, or put in intimate contact with certain world realities influences our priorities and actions. When I paid for my senior cocktail ticket, a certain (familiar) configuration of those perceptive filters made it feel like the best way to spend my money. At this moment, the vivid potential of collective action and the startling juxtaposition framed by the proposal ($15,000 for Haiti or a party for our class?) have shifted my direct experience of the situation at hand, and with it my priorities. One could suggest that our usual judgment reflects clear vision, whereas the intense juxtaposition presented in the Senior class survey causes distortions – but it’s just as easy to argue the opposite (everyday judgment is distorted by desensitization whereas moments like this are more lucid). Whether we like it or not, we are ethically and emotionally sensitive to context, and our valuations are conditioned by framing.

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