Zonker Harris Day -- in peril

Apparently the reslife team at Wesleyan is threatening to cut funding for Zonker Harris Day if the name isn't changed.

ResLife looked at a wikipedia page outlining Zonker Harris (a character from Doonesbury) and his past drug use, and decided that giving ResLife funding for this would be a bad idea if the name were to stay the same. This really didn't go over all that well, especially considering that Zonker Harris Day is mentioned in dozens of college search guides, and because the character hasn't done drugs in probably fifteen years (in fact, the first time i realized what a huge drug reference Zonker used to be was a strip where he laments the fact that his plants don't talk back to him anymore, to which one of the plants replies "it was the drugs, man.") Psychedelic drug use is no longer associated with the name of the festival. The event named Zonker Harris Day is already synonymous with assorted drug shenanigans, and a name change won't do anything to change that.

"Psychedelic drug use is no longer associated with the name of the festival" -- what -- what school do YOU go to?

This may not actually reflect accurate information...and let's hope not.

We should do something about it!

WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY: Voted The Most Annoying Liberal Arts School (in the US)

Gawker.com has published a bunch of articles claiming Wes to be the most annoying liberal arts school. We only won over Sarah Lawrence because they published that they were trying to win. The articles are pretty funny. While I think we should be high up there, I think the medal should have gone to Sarah Lawrence or Hampshire...

Article that contains the vote
Wesleyan Wins!

Here are some of the comments made:

"My best friend from high school went to Wes. He was the nerdy Phish technocrat who laid awake at night listening to his amorous roommates fucking. He now works for Merriam-Webster as a dictionary editor."

"One of my friends goes to Wesleyan and lives in the Buddhist House. She is white and not a Buddhist. Everyone in the house is white and none of them were raised Buddhist, either. If that doesn't sum up Wesleyan I don't know what will. To think I almost went there..."

"My girlfriend went to Wesleyan. She keeps dragging me to house parties in Brooklyn thrown by other Wesleyanites. I dread these parties. I have feigned leprosy in order to avoid them. I have claimed to be a Libertarian and Ayn Rand fan in order for the Wes grads to stop telling me stories about the Naked Dorm, the Naked Parties, the Naked granola station.

Last year a good friend invited me to dinner to convince her high school senior son "R____" to choose Wesleyan over SLC, Reed, Kenyon et al. I shot from the hip.

about a certain former women's college :
"Aw, that school is a union busting bastion of rich kids with opium pipes."

about a certain school in the Pacific Northwest:
"Yeah, you'll wake up one day in the quad on mushrooms dressed in your aunts baggy panties with hoof marks branded on your ass."

about a certain school in CT:
"Dude, the guy who created Buffy went there...do you know the Buffy musical episode with Hinton Battle? *sings "Let Me Rest In Peace"*"

about SLC:
"Man, I gotta be honest...you will meet a girl at orientation...by the end of 1st semester, both of you will become THE WORST KIND OF LESBIANS. And then one of you will do prison time alone."

about a school in Minnesota:
"Sorry, they have to import colored people to that hood...and they won't have any pineapple near the cereal bar...just maple syrup."

He wound up going to Wesleyan. I think I am going to Hell."

"Please vote for Wesleyan. Here is why: I recently ran into a Wesleyan undergrad I went to high school with. When I inquired as to his summer plans, he said he had gotten a research grant to study homelessness in New York. This "study" included a two-week stint as - i'm not shitting you - an actual homeless person. The rich hipstard actually lived on the street for two weeks and "hung out" with homeless people, and WESLEYAN PAID HIM TO DO IT."

"You guys realize that outside of New York, no one has ever even heard of half these colleges, right? When I first got here and I met people who said "I went to Sarah Lawrence" I thought they were talking about a secretarial school."

"Vassar made me the fag I am today."

"If we're really looking for a school to replace Oberlin as Gawker's go-to annoying-liberal-arts-grad-living-and-'being'-in NYC, the prize has to go to Wesleyan. Sarah Lawrence grads seem to be at least partially aware that some people might not have heard of their alma mater, this thought has never crossed the mind of a Wesleyan alum. Just about the only bond shared by the two groups coming out of the school (the weirder-than thou hippies and the cooler-than-thou hipsters) is their unmatchable sense of entitlment."

"While I was at Sarah Lawrence, during an afternoon of acid and lesbian experimentation, my "girlfriend" and I came to the realization that Sarah Lawrence was not really a college at all-- it was merely a posh residential mental health care facility that our parents had tricked us into enrolling by calling it School. That's why we were taking classes in Initiation Rituals and "The Psychology of Children's Friendships". Of course we felt driven to tell as many people as possible the incredible truth we'd discovered. It think it's worth noting that some people actually gave this theory creedence, even without LSD.

However annoying (and I lived through an epidemic of girls wearing skirts over jeans on campus, people getting scabies from frolicking in piles of leaves, and I'm sure I contributed as much pretentious poetry as anyone else) I cheerfully write a check for $700 each month to Sallie Mae and will continue to do so for the next 28 years. SLC gave me an incredible education...That said, I hope we get the vote. I'd hate for us to be the second-most annoying liberal arts college. That kind of mediocrity looks better on Bard."

If you needed more reasons to be happy you graduated...

For friends who are still going to Wes, just started, or have siblings going, you should read this. If you haven't heard the policy for parties at Wes have become more restricted by the administration. This article outlines the changes: Party's over: New policy targets woodframe parties

There was a great wespeak I saw that makes some really great points and anyone still attending the university should see it. The nanny university

One point I like was:

Why can't off-campus housing be an option for any student who does not agree with an administrative policy—whether the policy involves pets and tapestries, or parties and cigarettes? We're talking about social regulations, not academic policy, and at what point can we say the administration has gone too far?

So glad I've graduated...

Wesleyan Argus -- Foursquare

Foursquare: the real victim By Brian Jordan

Since the week of May 11th, 2003, chalking has been banned at Wesleyan University. This ban was the result of a contentious battle, fought on the pavement by a group of students looking suspiciously like a Crayola street marketing team. The dispute with the administration was so epic, it was covered by the New York Times. But this fight was just a big cloudy smokescreen hiding the reality; the slow death of an American institution. Won't somebody think of the foursquare? Sure, the complain-o-crats over at the New York Times say the sidewalk chalking had gotten to the point where "obscenity was rampant and unpopular professors were disparaged by name." But just because a professor is named Dr. John Is-An-Asshole doesn't mean the act of writing it down should be punishable. Wesleyan is off the mark here. The real issue can be found wedged between "foursome" and "fourstar" in the dictionary. QED. Let me lay it down for you a little slower. In order for one to play the popular recess game four-square, you need a court and a ball. The ball can be found at the local, if depressing, Toys 'R' Us, or from Freeman when the ball-checkout booth people aren't looking. The lines of the court, however, like the houses of California's Yokut tribe, must be made from whatever materials happen to be around. Hmm... What can one use to make lines on pavement... Tape? Technically littering. Clothing? Streaking is frowned upon. Pressure-sensitive electronics to determine whether the ball bounced on or off the line? Already been done at Wimbledon. Candy? You already ate it, and that would be a waste of licorice anyway. There's only one option left... you know what it is... And it's banned. Keep Wesleyan Weird? As if. We have bigger problems: Keep Foursquare Alive. Jordan is a member of the class of 2010 and self-proclaimed Foursquare Czar. The Wesleyan Argus