The Student Organ of the University of the South
Recently the New York Times ran an article in which Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg defended the use of foreign law in United States Supreme Court rulings. Consistent with her liberal jurisprudence, Ginsburg noted, “I frankly don’t understand all the brouhaha lately from Congress and even from some of my colleagues about referring to foreign law.”
Continue reading ‘Ginsburg’s Comments Underscore Deeper Disregard for Constitutional Authority’
By Sam Johnson
While nobody has ever tried to log on to Banner Web early to enroll in their favorite physical education class, that does not mean that all of the offerings are without merit, and some are even fun. Since Mommy and Daddy are not around anymore to pull you away from the glow of your computer screen as you and your friends try to rule the fantasy land in World of Warcraft, Sewanee, in locis parentis, offers a great variety of P.E. classes for the student body. At one end of the spectrum there are classes such as weight training, running, and even mountain biking. On the other end is Bocce Ball, whose main purpose is to turn you into a pear-shaped Italian, Stretch and Relax, where the only thing missing is the Kool Aid and Nilla Wafers snacks while you stretch out on your beach towel and take a nap, and of course T’ai Chi, which prepares you for gang fights in B movies. While many of the offerings will be beneficial for a lifetime (like scuba diving accreditation), others are forgettable to the point of providing no motivation for attendance and no consequences for omission. So what is the importance of two P.E. requirements to fulfill by the end of your junior year? Larry Jones, Dean of the College, explains, “We say we value the development of the whole person—body, mind, spirit. Physical involvement is necessary to foster development of the body. I think that is why we have a P.E. requirement.”
Continue reading ‘P.E.: “Lunch has been canceled due to lack of hustle…deal with it”’
The upcoming change in the office of Vice Chancellor and President of the University presents the selection committee with a momentous decision. As with every Vice Chancellor this University has had, the decisions and policy of Cunningham’s successor will affect the morale of the student body, the regard with which the University is held on a national level, and the financial stability of the institution, among many other things. A few suggestions:
By Sam Sheridan
I get along with all but one of my ex-girlfriends. She was in a psych class, told me I was ENFJ, I thought she was EVIL. That’s a difficult situation. Being friends with exgirlfriends? WAY more complicated. Life can be really hard. I’d been awake for over fifty hours when my dog, Ajax, got hit by a car. It was only a few days after I had to go crying to Dean Bruce asking him to help me because the Police wanted to charge me with the felony of owning a firearm on a college campus. And, did I mention the complicated ex thing? Le sigh.
Continue reading ‘Food For Thought: Well… that’s interesting…’
There is a war going on for your mind. The greatest and most hard-fought battle of the 21st century will be for a very different kind of freedom than Americans are usually fighting to keep. Every aspect of you as a human being is at stake. I could not begin to stress the importance of this to the point of hyperbole. There are literally thousands of different factions vying for your attention, energy, money, and loyalty. It’s not a Good and Evil conflict, you can’t pick a side and hope to win. The only way to survive is to acknowledge the fight and be aware of it with every decision.
By Robert Daniels, Willie Cram, & Julianne Harris
Since the economic downturn, the market value of Sewanee’s endowment has
fallen by over 21% between June 30 and December 31 of 2008. Faculty
member, students and local residents alike continue to feel the affects of
the economic crisis.
By Lena Yarbrough
Students in Dr. Lohr’s Psychology 100 lab classes spend part of their first lab class taking the electronic “Checkup to Go” survey, or what is more commonly known as the “e-Chug” test. The e-Chug test, which was developed by researchers at the San Diego State University Research Foundation, aims, according to the website, to “motivate individuals to assess their alcohol consumption using personalized information about their own drinking and risk factors.” It is used at hundreds of universities across the United States and in other English-speaking countries. Students complete the survey by answering a number of very specific questions about their drinking habits, ranging from how often they consume alcohol to detailed questions about their family’s alcohol-related history. After students have completed the survey, they are immediately provided with reports concerning information about the long-term (and not so long-term) ramifications of their drinking habits. This information includes comparisons of the survey taker’s alcohol consumption to the consumption levels of students nationwide, facts about what the student could afford to purchase for the same amount of money that he/she would normally spend on alcohol in a year, and information about the student’s risk of alcoholism and B.A.C. sensitivity.
Continue reading ‘e-Chug Test Stimulates Interest, Controversy’
By Alexis Blair
The arrival of Spring in Sewanee is not announced by the usual chirping birds or blossoming tulips, but by one special event: Spring Festival Weekend. More commonly referred to as Spring Party Weekend by students, this past weekend the Sewanee campus was out and about celebrating the beautiful weather, good music, and general frivolity as we approach the end of the academic year.
Claiborne Buckingham, a senior Art major and honors candidate from Richmond, VA, presented her honor thesis to the community in Nabit Gallery on April 9. Her body of work, entitled Inscapes, is a collection of watercolor paintings. Thematically, Inscapes incorporates a fusion of plant and human imagery, and is centered on three major themes: fantasy, isolation, and control – three ideas that are at the heart of her work.
Continue reading ‘Claiborne Buckingham, Honors Thesis Talk: Inscapes’
Liz Frierson, a senior Art major and honors candidate from Shreveport, Louisiana, presented her honors thesis in a public presentation on Thursday, April 16, in Nabit Gallery. Her parents were in attendance, and it is interesting to note that her mother graduated from Sewanee as an Art major as well. Frierson’s work, entitled Unwritten, is a combination of photographs, sculpture, and paintings, in which Liz “re-wrote” family photographs and letters of her ancestors by presenting them in a new, colorful light. A fundamental part of her work is a collection of past family photographs that she stained with tea to make them appear ancient, and furthermore, give them a murky look, as if they could have been found in ruins. These tea-stained prints are overridden by silhouettes that were created with encaustic wax, and Frierson layered the photos with these (often bright-colored) silhouettes to as a form of visibly representing the present as well as the past, in an attempt to display “the depths of memory and identity,” and how like generations, layers “merge and coexist.” She reminds us of this layering of generations in our family histories, stating, “the ascension of generations within ancestry is layered. However, the nature of this layering is neither static nor evenly distributed. It is susceptible to interruption, manipulation and overwriting.” Hence, layering, both conceptually but also as an artistic technique, is essential to our understanding of her body of work, Overwritten. Frierson reveals her ability to overwrite her past through the layering process: the dominant leitmotiv throughout her work.
Continue reading ‘Elizabeth Frierson, Honors Thesis Talk: Overwritten’
By Erin O’Reilly
On Thursday, April 9, Betsy Sandlin, Assistant Professor of Spanish, spoke at the Pinnacle Luncheon on the subject of Julia de Burgos (1914-1953), who is considered to be one of the greatest Puerto Rican poets. The title of her speech was “Nuestra Julia: The Most Important Female Cultural Icon You’ve Probably Never Heard Of.”
By Clarkie Crawford
The Fulbright Program, sponsored by the United States government, annually awards 7,500 grants to recipients around the country. Grantees vary from recent college graduates to experienced and established PhD holders. The main goal of the Fulbright Program, our country’s flagship exchange program, is to provide grantees with “the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.” Only those with high academic achievements who demonstrate superior leadership potential are considered as possible “Fulbrighters.”
By Emily Beeson
“Take the Power Back: Worker-Owned Factories in Argentina,” is the title of talk delivered by Grant Burrier, Sewanee ’05, a double major in Political Science and Spanish, who is now a PhD Candidate at the University of New Mexico.
By Michael Mansfield
It was truly a grassroots affair; students, professors, Tennessee health officials and a concerned community came together Wednesday night seeking answers to one question: why is America’s healthcare system (or, in the opinion of many present, lack thereof) so expensively, unapproachably, bankruptingly broken? In order to shed some light on the issue, the University’s philosophy department screened a PBS documentary entitled “Sick Around the World”, a film that examines the structures and accessibility of health care access in countries around the globe. From Britain and Tokyo, to Germany and Switzerland, healthcare systems were examined in order to find if there were operational aspects that might be adopted into our own medical structure that would lessen the arguably unwarranted post-doctor-visit economic pains.
By Crawford Roark, Hanna Sheesley, Daven Hassell
On Wednesday, April 15, T. Boone Pickens spoke with interviewer David Johnson C ’71, in front of a large audience of students, faculty, and community members. Mr. Pickens, founder of Boone Pickens (BP) Capital Management, is a nationally recognized energy entrepreneur who recently proposed the Pickens Plan. In response to our country’s dependency on foreign oil, he believes it needs to be the number one question for policy makers because it is the number one problem.
By Samarth Chaddha
Mountain top removal is referred to as the surface mining of mountains, in which companies use explosives to blast off mountaintops in order to obtain their coal. This has replaced high wall mining, which is what would usually take place in the Appalachian region. According to Eric Belvins who was hosting the presentation at Gailor on behalf of the Sewanee Peace Coalition, Mountain Top Removal (MTR) is being preferred since it produces more coal in a shorter period of time and does not require excessive numbers of people to be employed.
Continue reading ‘The Highs and Lows of Mountain Top Removal’
All Saints’ Chapel, bereft of decoration in honor of the Lenten Season, reflected the somberness of the crowd gathered within its bare walls on March 30. Hundreds of students responded with their presence to an email message sent by Mark Kelly, Director of Marketing and Communications, which stated that Elizabeth Claire Rogers, C’09, had passed away. All were invited to convene in All-Saints’ Chapel immediately.
Liz had been transported to Emerald Hodgson Hospital at 12:30 PM when she could not be roused from her bed in Humphreys Hall. At 1:30, the Sewanee senior was pronounced dead. Her cause of death, though determined to be accidental, remains unknown.
By 1:45, All Saints’ was filled with Liz’s friends, acquaintances, peers, professors and deans, all awaiting the answer to a question that may never be answered: Why?
What happens when you have a selection process with several subjective components and one objective component-and that objective component is later removed? The answer should be obvious: you are left with an entirely subjective process that leaves things up to the whim of those whose job it is to make the decisions.
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