April 24, 2009
The Blockade of Euclid Avenue
For those of you tuning in from my piece in The Observer, this is actually part of one of two in a series about activism at Case Western Reserve. And without further ado...
A typical day on Euclid Avenue will see hundreds of students crossing to and from the Main Quad. These miniature mobs can hold up traffic coming from Adelbert Road, but only briefly. This was not the case on May 5th of 1970, when over 2,000 people blockaded the intersection. This was not people trying to get somewhere on time; this was a message. This was protest.
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March 31, 2009
The Poet in Stone
When you get a statue in order to commemorate your life, usually it means you are fairly important, and usually well liked. For example, Michelson and Morley have sculptures to commemorate their achievement in experimental physics. Amasa Stone has an entire church named in his honor. I suspect that there are already President Obama sculptures in the making, if there are not ones in place already. So it stands to reason that if you have a sculpture that commemorates your life or your achievements or even where you lived, you were important.
So if having a sculpture makes you important, having two must make you doubly important. It takes two monuments to even begin to match your monumental importance, according to this logic. One even has to have your likeness carved into the eternal stone, so that everyone for generations, people will remember your face. So you should not be surprised when I tell you that Hart Crane is so important to the history of University Circle that two sculptures were installed in his honor.
But I am going to guess based upon your confused expressions that unless you are very familiar with early 20th century American literature, you have no idea who Hart Crane was. I would suggest that you keep reading if that is the case.
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March 24, 2009
Two Presidents and a Secretary of State Walk into a Bar...
Before I begin, I would like to advise everyone who has not done so already to read my entry on Amasa Stone, entitled "Amasa Stone and the Western Reserve College” before reading this entry. In fact, while I’m at it, I recommend that everyone read everything that I write. It will truly shake you to the core, question everything you believe. Or, if it falls short of that, it will at least give you something to think about over your cup of warm distilled solution of tea leaves or coffee beans.
When Amasa Stone was on the board of trustees for Western Reserve College, during his tenure he made sure he would get his way. One way he did this was to be the most domineering personality, and so he was noted for being aggressive and uncompromising. Indeed, his tenacity was so well known that it was rumored that to get what you want, all you needed was a little reverse psychology to use the board on the man. However, he also decided he needed to hedge his bets, so he also monopolized the board. Of the twelve positions on the board, he managed to place eleven of his friends before his early death in 1883. In those names included famous people, such as two Presidents, his son-in-law and a Secretary of State.
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Amasa Stone and the Western Reserve College
When it comes to the naming of a building, there are a few ways to go about it. One way is to pick somebody famous or important to the purpose the building and honor them forever in naming the building after them, unless you are the former Cornell Medical School, in which case you can default to option number two. Option two is to sell the name, whether permanently to the biggest donor, or on a lease basis like so many sports arenas. The third option is a variation on the second option: name it after who owns the building.
At Case Western Reserve the strategy has been no different. Buildings are either named after former presidents and famous faculty, or after important benefactors. There is one exception to this rule: Amasa Stone. Today his name has faded into obscurity, but if you were living in the latter half of the 19th century (that’s the 1800s to those who have trouble with century counting), you would have known his name. And you would have known him as owner of the Western Reserve College.
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March 03, 2009
It's Too Darn Hot
Cleveland in the winter makes heat a very relevant topic. With a windchill that typically drops below 0 Fahrenheit, one may think that global warming is the biggest joke of the century. The heating we have today, which is typically electric radiator heating in most public building and central heating in the dormitories, is a wonderful development. People can stride around the Kelvin Smith Library in shorts and a t-shirt, although I often wonder how they get back to where they live. Perhaps they just live in the library.
One does not have to pay a heating bill on campus if you live within the university system, or at least it's lumped in with all the other costs. The situation we live in today, however, has been vastly different. And, of course, the source of one particular legend: the underground passageways.
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Students at Work
The Office of Student Employment can be found on the fourth floor of Yost Hall. Today, students can work for the university in numerous capacities, from supplementary instruction leaders to campus security to being the person who makes sure you don't sneak into Veale without swiping your ID first. The types of work available to students are diverse, but the key to all of them is that they are all fairly compatible with a student lifestyle, in that they are service oriented. This stems from the philosophy of being a student first and foremost. One should not exhaust a student with physical labor such that schoolwork may suffer.
Oddly enough, during mid-1800s the exact opposite approach was taken at the Western Reserve College.
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February 24, 2009
Blowing Off the Dust
To those who don't know me, I am a senior in the College Scholars Program, and you're reading part of my senior project! But first let me tell you a little about what this all this is about.