Hot off the virtual presses…
It’s the latest Class Agent Letter. Read it by clicking here.
If you haven’t sent us an update in awhile, you have three easy options:
Don’t forget to include any pictures of kids, vacations, anything.
***Bookmark: After Framing
I’ve talked a lot on this blog about how Scott Crawford is doing great things with Career Services. Further evidence comes from a recent WorkIndy Interview Day that our students recently participated in with DePauw students last Friday.
Scott reported that our guys did very well in the interviews. “They had excellent resumes, fantastic interviewing skills (employers were asking me how they could recruit even more Wabash guys) and they all dressed perfectly and showed up on time. And of course, they all practiced their interviewing skills and honed their applications with us before the event.”
Scott tells me that the employers were so impressed with our guys that they wanted to schedule more on-campus interviews. Indy-area employers such as Walker Information, Crowe Chizek, Aerotek, eTapestry, Capital Group, and John Hancock were at the event. If you or your employer want to participate in the spring event, be sure to contact Scott.
Pictured: Steve Woods ‘93 gives some guidance to a student at an August Job Search Boot Camp.
Does the thought of traveling to the Fourth Bolgia of Hell (e.g. Greencastle) for this year’s Bell game have you reaching for the Tums? Or are you far afield in some remote locale (like DC, NYC, or LA) and can’t make it back home again to Indiana?
Never fear, a Monon Bell Telecast Party may just be in your neck of the nape. Just click here for a continually updated Google Map that lists our cities and venues for the Monon Bell Telecast Parties. The Alumni Office tells us that they anticipate having over 50 party locations again this year. The game will air via Mark Cuban’s HDNet.
I ran across a new blog that has been set up for parents of college students. Check out the name of the blog…
I bet the other ideas to title the blog included Apron Strings, The Worry Wort, and The Overprotective Times. I guess as someone of our generation whose parents actually let us play outside unsupervised in a century-old barn with rusty nails and creaky boards, I have a lot of trouble understanding how this college generation will ever learn to navagate their own way through the perils of life. How do colleges and businesses even begin to deal with so many in a generation who feel such a great sense of entitlement? With many who seem unwilling to pay their dues and work hard for respect, recognition, and accomplishment?
Believe me. As someone who resented the Baby Boomers labeling our generation as “slackers,” I am very keen on any epithets I throw at those our junior. But I do see a huge difference in the aggregate characteristics of those who now attend college. But then, I do see examples that break the stereotypes and perceptions. Here, and here, or even here.
Maybe that’s where schools like Wabash come in: to teach the Nintendo Generation how to think for themselves, how to deal with adversity, and how to lead.
Man, I feel old sometimes.
Builders have been framing the new Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion. This is the site where Kingery Hall once stood. Here are the latest pix.
(Showing the west side of the building while driving the alley toward Grant Ave. behind Martindale.)
(Facing the same viewpoint as you would approach the old front entrance of Kingery.)
The first column by the new Opinion Editor of The Bachelor goes a familiar route. Senior Josh Harris bemoans how the forces of the outside world are encroaching on the freedoms and traditions enjoyed by the Wabash community and especially its students. It’s certainly a motif of many columns and editorials that graced the pages of Bachelors that we produced in our day.
Given the advantage of life experience and exposure to the “real world,” I’m often taken with how my opinion has changed since my graduation. Do I think that the current freshmen should endure the Chapel “Scream” melee that we fought in? Absolutely not. Shredded vocal chords, broken bones, and stitches may have been rites of passage in the late ’80s, but they seem downright irresponsible now.
We were the first freshman class to experience a Dry Rush. And to many of us, the thought of being bombed out of your skull and waking up with a pledge pin on your chest seems silly. Joining a fraternity is a decision that should be made with a sober head, even if its not that sober after you pledge.
So, it’s with mixed feeling that I read Josh’s commentary, excerpted below:
It becomes more evident in each passing year that the outside world is encroaching within our established social order here at Wabash. Our vivacious traditions, both spoken and unspoken, are deteriorating.
It is the natural order of things is to grow old, change, and be reinvented. Our mascot changes. The logo of Wabash College changes. Aesthetics change. Progression is an undeniable truth that can be slowed, but never stopped.
There were once gates to the entrance of Center Hall. There is a metaphor to be found symbolizing the infiltration of the surrounding society and the college.
Gates are meant to be a divider: sometimes socially/economically; in other instances it’s a matter of safety from the outside. The gates were eventually taken down, opening our campus further to the permeation of external, uncontrollable forces.
And so this deterioration spreads. It spreads every year. From Freshman Pots to Chapel Sing, our established ethos fades. This is mostly to say that because of the changes in society (namely, it being liability-driven) we are forced to change. Worrying about what could happen affects what does happen.
In a letter dated August 9th, 2007, Mr. Larry Griffith, the Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the college, was informed by our insurance carriers, Gregory & Appel, that another change has come to our gates.
No longer will any pet be allowed in any campus owned living units including dormitories, fraternities, and other housing.
…For generations, Wabash men have spent their collegiate days with their childhood best friends. Some animals become mascots of fraternity houses, earning themselves a portrait among the ranks of the brotherhood.
…However, that was in a day that the fraternities were selfowned, self-governed, and selfinsured. Now that the college owns most of the fraternity houses on campus, the choice is no longer the students’.
For the newly renovated houses, this is an early reminder that there are strings attached to the updates of the houses.
The recent decision on the part of the insurance company has put Dean Raters and Dean Bambrey in a difficult position, and understandably so.
The Dean of Student’s office is between a rock and a hard place: they are charged with both upholding the policies of the college while simultaneously promoting student life and its traditions.
This paradox parallels, to an extent, Jefferson’s idea of a free and a firm society. There must be some sort of established balance between the two concepts. Afree society cannot exist without some sense of firmness. Conversely, a society that is completely “firm” has no joy or contentment.
For our survival in a world of complicated legal entanglements, Wabash men don’t have much choice for compliance. We can hate it, but there isn’t much to do about it.
We can just keep fighting the barbarians at the gates.
A brand-new house full of guys is hard enough to maintain–just walk into any of the new fraternity houses. Having a menagerie of pets only makes things worse. Still, there are the exceptions, and you know as a Phi Delt I’m going to bring up General, the beloved St. Bernard donated by Gen. Earl Johnson ‘38. (The fourth one is pictured here.)
That the decision of which pets stay or go has been wrested from the hands of our College’s administrators strikes me as particularly unfortunate. Just as the current state of health insurance takes medical decisions away from doctors and patients and places them in the hands of actuarial tables and bean counters, that’s the way the world works.
I admire the columnist for coming to the same mature conclusion while still maintaining that wonderful youthful zeal to fight the injustices of the system.
Want an easy way to check in on your favorite blogs (including this one)? You can “subscribe” to a blog using the RSS feature. (RSS stands for really simple syndication, so it just has to be easy, right?) Just follow these steps:
1. Go to the blog to which you want to subscribe.
2. Find the orange button. It’s usually on that blog’s sidebar. It will say RSS, XML, or Atom. You may also see a link that says “Syndicate this site.” Click on any one of these.
3. (I’m using Firefox as my browser. Your browser may vary.) You should see something like this:
4. Press Subscribe Now. You can send the RSS link to your Bookmarks Toolbar. I recommend renaming a long name. (For instance, “Wabash ‘91″ instead of “Wabash College - Class of 1991.”)
5. Press OK, and it appears on your browser.
6. If you click on it, you can see the last few posts, and select one that you want to read.
You can also do this for Wabash headlines. We’ll just make it easy. Here are some Wabash links that you can subscribe to:
Questions? What am I tech support? Try this guy.
Strangely, it’s the occasion of tomorrow’s first home football game that leads me to this topic. Roughly twenty years ago this week, I met Major Gen. Earl “Punk” Johnson, ret., Wabash class of 1938. I was a green be-potted Phi Delt pledge, and Gen. Johnson, who was on campus for the Class Agents Forum, stopped by the house to check in on the big St. Bernard he donated.
We snapped a picture of the General with General, and he proceeded to tell us the story of how he had a St. Bernard named Ben in the house when he was a freshman. In the winter, he was tasked with warming up the beds in the cold dorm for the upperclassmen. He’d lie in each bed for a period of time, and then call out that person when the bed was warm. Well, Punk being the resourseful guy he was, enlisted the dog to help warm the beds, which got him in some big trouble.
Gen. Johnson would sign up for the Army Air Corps in WWII and fly bombing raids over Tokyo. He also served during the Korean Conflict and the Vietnam War. Today, he lives on a golf course in Orlando. As with anything, it was always great to hear his stories.
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In April, I attended a lecture by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns about his upcoming series for PBS simply titled “The War,” premiering Sept. 23 (check local listings). He showed about 45 minutes worth of clips that were just phenomenal. He pointed out that he was convinced to do another documentary about war, specifically the much-trod ground of WWII, because of two factors:
* In 2000, WWII veterans, many of whom were in their 80s, were dying off at a rate of 1,000 per day.
* A poll of graduating American high school students showed that the majority of them thought that we fought that war with the Germans against the Russians!
So, in my meandering way of getting to the point, this documentary brought about a partnership with the Library of Congress to document the stories of veterans of all American military conflicts. It’s a worthwhile project, and I encourage you to sit down with a family member who is a veteran, and ask him or her the tough questions about what they experienced. Who knows? Maybe we can get Wabash history majors to take this on as a project.
After all, those who don’t remember our history are doomed to repeat it.
