Carleton Through the Eyes of a Nine Year Old

On campus, I hardly ever see anyone younger than 17 or older than 50. Everyone I spend time with is with a few years of my age. But last weekend my nine year old sister Claire came to visit me and I got to spend a day seeing the campus as she does.

Claire woke me up on Saturday at 8:30AM. That early in the morning the campus is like a ghost town. We went to the library and didn’t see more than half a dozen people.

Claire looks at the giant maps.

While at the library, I showed Claire the cushioned area next to the computer lab. You might not have noticed, but none of the pillows are attached and some of them are more than five meters long. We made a fort out of the pillows big enough that I could climb into it. Claire was ecstatic until she hit her head on the wall.

Construction

I'm in the castle.

Claire in the castle.

Afterwards we went ice-skating on the newly frozen Baldspot. I taught Claire how to play broomball, and she loved it. We played for something like two hours before I gave up. Claire fell and hit her head again.

We went swimming for an hour and were scolded for for too much splashing. For dinner we went to ASIA house for Japanese Cooking Night and ate shrimp and pork baozi. I don’t much like shrimp or pork, but the baozi were delicious. Claire and I ate a dozen between the two of us.

Baozi with Japanese Circle

We concluded the night with a painfully long game of charades. Claire tried to mimic Aretha Franklin, even though she didn’t know who she is. We went to bed at 11PM, and Claire was awake the next morning at 7:30AM.

Wherever we went on campus, students were welcoming and eager to interact with Claire. At Dacie Moses sunday brunch, two students sat down with her for an hour to make sock puppets. Carleton can be a very serious place, and students really begin to miss the simple pleasure of playing with children.

Claire sees the campus in a different way than I do. I’d seen the pillows in the library many times and thought they were cool, but I never thought, “I should build something out of those.”

Trayless Fridays

We’ve all seen somebody go the dining hall, pile up their tray with four plates of food, and then throw half of it away. If there weren’t trays, students would make better decisions about what they were actually going to eat and take only as much as they need.

When Bon Appetit met with CSA at the beginning of the year, they said the would be in favor of going trayless. The only roadblock to the proposition is fear of student backlash.

This friday when you go to lunch and see there are no trays, just think about all the food the college is saving and tell your friends to quit complaining.

Elections Focus Attention on CSA

In the CSA Senate, discussions about how to involve more students in the work of CSA senate is a constant topic of conversation. Now, with the CSA elections upon us, it briefly becomes a topic the whole student body has something to say about. CSA Senate wonders how it can involve more students, and at the same time candidates running for senate demand to know why the student government is so secretive.

I decided to take moment to look at what’s being written about CSA Senate by those involved, but first I would like to say that I support Khant Khant Kyaw and Eric Hitimana for Senate, and Jinai Bharucha for Vice President. I know Robert Stevens and I hope he continues to be active in Senate and Budget Committee, but I truly believe Jinai would make an excellent Vice President and I urge you to vote for her.

Please also vote on these important referenda.

Okay, now a few words about CSA.

The Bad

• Avery Morrows’s platform: “If elected I will do my best to shut down all non-financial CSA committees and replace them with clubs, which anyone, CSA senators included, can voluntarily join as suits their interests.”
• Moshe Lavi’s platform: “All students attending will be able to vote on vital issues, rather than letting the Senate have all the power of voting.”
• Current senator Jack Boller’s Carletonian viewpoint describing senate as “stifled procedure” and “arguing over petty language.”

These comments are discouraging because they show a weak understanding of how CSA Senate works. I’ve been to almost every meeting for 5 terms now, and I truly believe that it is an open environment. There is nothing stopping regular students from joining the senate “task forces.” Students who visit CSA Senate can simply raise their hand if they want to speak, and I’ve seen visitors become more active than senators in the discussion.

Unfortunately, these quotes are representative of a conception in the student body that CSA Senate is arcane in its procedure and works only on trivial issues. Most disappointing is that most of the candidates have rarely, if ever, visited senate. There is no ban on visitors in the CSA Senate.

The Good

• Juni Muskrat’s platform, “Give me the opportunity to effect change by maintaining and continuing to nurture bridges of communication to CSA for all of Carleton.”
• Heather Yang’s platform, “Democracy can not exist without YOUR involvement.”
• Eric Hitimana’s platform, “I am interested in becoming a CSA senator because I love helping people in any capacity that I can.”

These candidates understand what CSA Senate is trying to do, however imperfectly. Behind the occasional trivial issue or complaint about procedure, CSA Senate is trying to inform, represent, and involve students. Not every student needs to be a senator to be involved in the campus life, but I think every student has at least one issue they care about.

Again, Boller’s editorial, “When you are encouraged, or pestered into voting this weekend, take a second to think about your place within the college, and if there is anything specific you care about. If you do, don’t regret you missed a chance to put your name on the ballot, join a committee or talk to someone about how to do something different. Senate is doing this, plus more busy work.”

The New Dorms Get a Rocky Start

Here’s the CSA Weekly Update for this week. Steve Wisener, Director of ResLife, explained some key issues about Northfield Option and the New Dorms. The CSA Elections have begun, I’ll write more about them later.

The dorms under construction.

Elections are this week!
•    Go to the CSA Website (http://apps.carleton.edu/orgs/csa/) to read platforms and vote!
•    Elections will be open until Sunday
•    Important referendums will appear on the ballot
•    Write-in’s are possible, your chance to become famous

What is going on with Northfield Option and housing next year?
•    Administrators have been talking about reducing Northfield Option for years
•    With the completion of the new dorms next year, there will only be 100 Northfield Option spots
•    Currently there are 43 juniors in Northfield Option housing. If they are allowed to renew their housing, that will be almost half of the Northfield Option spots
•    Steve Wisener, Director of ResLife, is looking for solutions that will be fair
•    Several areas on campus where students currently live (Stadium, Page House) will be unavailable next year
•    In addition, 20 rooms on campus will decrease occupancy (Watson triples)

Is the LDC going to be crowded next year?
•    Yes.
•    Students living in the new dorms will all be full board
•    There will hopefully be “grab-and-go” options located around campus
•    They will increase the seating at Burton and the LDC
•    The Block 130 plan will no longer be available. Currently it is only utilized by 100 students
•    Vice President Fred Rogers is in charge of housing and meal plan decisions.

House: Music, Dance, Culture

Over midterm break, a number of students came out to present at the Carleton Symposium. The Symposium was simply a venue for students to share their research with other students. While I was there, I thought it would be great to get more students to post about their topics of interest on my blog. Here’s a piece by Adam Anderson about House music.

House culture began with music. House music is pretty much anyhting you hear in a club that is not hip-hop, R&B, or techno. It’s upbeat dance music with a heavy “4-to-the-floor” beat, and is characterized by the fusion of synthesized perussion, bass lines, and harmony with samples from other vocal or instrumental recordings. The genre began in a Chicago club called “The Warehouse” in the 80s when DJ Frankie Knuckles set crowds off with a mix of impeccable taste in dance music and “tight mixing” of just the meatiest parts of great records. Eventually, people started asking around for music from “The Warehouse,” or, as it came to be known, “that House music.”

Although the music began in “The Warehouse,” house dancing started in another Chicago club, “The Muzik Box”. Ron Hardy, the resident DJ, would blast records so loud that people would bounce around and rub up against each other uncontrollably. Eventually, people started to enjoy the rubbing, and “grinding,” or “punking-out” (as it was called then) was born.  House dance is not grinding, however.

What we call house dance today was born out of a movement called “the jack,” which evolved from from grinding, but is not a partner exercise. It is sort of like a body wave, that moves your limbs and torso around your core. When New York dancers of various backgrounds combined “the jack” with footwork from latin, jazz, tap and many other styles and groundwork derived largely from Brazilian capoeira, house dance was born as its own style. We have “The Loft,” a New York club, to thank for much of the innovation and fusion of styles that has made house dance what it is today.

Without a doubt, drugs, alcohol, and sex have played a large part in the evolution of house culture, but most people agree that at the core of house is its mentality. House clubs were originally almost exclusively gay and black, and the inclusion of other groups as the movement spread underground resulted in a new kind of club that welcomed everyone. House clubs have been described as oases where social classes and norms dissolve. They are places where people can find a strong feeling of group unity and expressive individuality at the same time.

“The Loft,” sometimes nicknamed the “soul” of the house movement, was a non-alcoholic club, devoted entirely to dance, music, and good company. People involved in house culture today find in the music, the dance, and their fellow clubbers a positivism that is really at the heart of everything. It’s about creating a venue, a kind of music, and a dance that allow people to mingle and express themselves safely and freely. It’s about having a good time.

Check out some house dancing:

Old School: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znKm_EDB8JI
New School: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLurw0myi84

Written by Adam Anderson

Studying Languages

Carleton, despite being a relatively small college, houses a wide range of academic experiences. Every department has a unique environment and social network, although there is of course lots of overlap.

Because of my interest in languages, I’ve spent more than a third of my time at Carleton in the Language and Dining Center studying German, Chinese, and Japanese. I know almost all of the professors in the Asian Languages Department, and it’s where I feel most comfortable on campus.

I learned German during one year living in Germany. German grammar is complicated but concise, and the advanced vocabulary is almost identical to English. Japanese has been, needless to say, more difficult. I’ve been studying Japanese for something like five years now and I still don’t feel like I’ve really begun. When I get graded essays back from my professor, there are so many mistakes that I can barely read all the corrections.

My professor's comments on a short essay I wrote

Studying languages is more than learning new grammar and syntax because words in different languages aren’t merely different ways to say the same thing. They’re separate ideas which seldom match up perfectly. It’s a personal journey to find the context in which the word has meaning.

Unfortunately, the beauty of linguistics can be lost in a college classroom. My japanese textbook, for example, focuses almost exclusively on college life and rarely moves into more interesting vocabulary. I’ve written the characters for study (勉強) so many times that I can write them in my sleep. Just because we’re studying basic grammar doesn’t mean we have to study boring things.

Here is an example of teaching basic language in an engaging way. Japanese school-children were asked to fill in the blanks on Penny Arcade comics. The results are hilarious, and because the students wrote it themselves, they’ll remember it better.

My Presentation on the New Graduation Requirements

Tomorrow, as part of the Carleton Symposium, I will be presenting about the new Graduation Requirements. My presentation will be at 2PM in the Library Athenaeum.

I’ll lay out the outline of the curriculum, the important changes that were made, and briefly discuss how the faculty goes about a shift as major as the rewriting the graduation requirements. I hope to see you there!

CSA Senate Weekly Update 02/02/2009

A photo I took during a walk in the arb.

CSA Senate Exists to Represent You!

Here are some of the questions we asked this week:

RUN FOR CSA SENATE! PETITIONS DUE FEBRUARY 8TH
•    In addition to the SEVEN at large senate seats, there will be elections for President, Vice President, and Treasurer.
•    Senate is fun, exciting, and promotes healthy bones!
•    Look at the CSA Website for more information apps.carleton.edu/orgs/csa/

Where can I discuss the new graduation requirements?
•    The Moodle page discussing the graduation requirements has been updated with the proposals which the faculty are discussing. Feel free to comment.

What is the Initiative for Community, Equity, and Diversity (ICED) Leadership Board?
•    It is the committee which will be continuing discussions which began in the Campus Climate Survey and the Diversity Initiative Group (DIG).
•    The group will be focusing on how to improve the social environment at Carleton.
•    Senate appointed two students, Helen Ashton and Sam Ritter.
•    CONTACT Sam Ritter (ritters) or Helen Ashton (ashtonh)

What can we do to make New Student Week better?
•    Senate discussed the recommendations of the First Year Experience Task Force
•    The Task Force recommended that instead of being run by Campus Activities, it should be organized by a council of involved groups.
•    The days could be organized thematically.
•    The common reading is not popular among faculty, and may be dropped from future NSW plans.
•    NSW may be integrated with the freshmen seminars that will be part of the new curriculum.
•    CONTACT: Nimo Ali (alin)

What is the Student Leadership Council?
•    The Senate officers proposed a new council of students, each of which represented an administrative division of the college (CSL, OIL, etc.).
•    They would inform each other about the activities of different branches of the college, and how they might impact students.
•    The focus would be a) cohesion between peer leaders on campus, b) cross-group dialogue, and c) collaboration.
•    CONTACT: Pablo Kenney (kenneyp)

Join us for a meeting. Every Monday, Sayles 251, 7PM. We can’t represent you unless you tell us what you’re concerned about.

Portraits Put a Face on Homelessness

Gene, formerly a member of the Iowa National Guard. Photo by Carlos Gonzales.

The library is currently featuring a series of photos called Portraits of Home 2, focusing on homelessness and veterans in Minnesota. The photos themselves are accompanied by short narratives and quotes. One reads, “The army turns a switch on inside of you, and they don’t turn it off when they leave.”

Yesterday I went to a presentation with one of the photographers of the exhibit, Carlos Gonzales. He spent one day photographing Gene, a homeless veteran living out of his car. He said that most of Gene’s days are quiet and monotonous. Gene spends most of his time just trying to avoid notice.

If you haven’t stopped to look yet, you still have a chance. The portraits will be up until the end of February.

The Knights Concert Online

The Knights, one of Carleton’s best known a Capella groups (and there are quite a few to choose from) has put its concert from Fall term online. It’s an awesome concert, which I was lucky enough to attend. Here’s Kids by MGMT:

Those interested in a less polished, but equally awesome Carleton musician should check out Drew Chambers: