Wednesday, July 28, 2004

"Roommate Revolution"

Usually, when I receive my Oberlin Alumni magazine, I do what everyone else does with their Alumni mags: I look at the Alumni Notes section in the back and then throw the thing out. For some reason, I looked through the most recent one and noticed the headline, "Roommate Revolution." The revolution: for years, the people in the room next door might have been men or women, by random chance; but now, you can have your very own roommate of an entirely different gender than yourself!

Oberlin has always been on the forefront of permissive (bohemian?) living arrangements, even having been the cover story of a 1970 Life Magazine article on coed dorms. At the time, Life called it an "awkward balance of love and privacy." According to Kim Lafond, today's director of Reidential Life, coed rooming "is not meant to encourage romantic cohabitation, but instead to offer gender-neutral living spaces for students uncomfortable with same-sex roommates." I don't know if this means that Res. Life just doesn't care about romantic cohabitation or perhaps they feel that romantic cohabitation is at an appropriate level already, but the description doesn't really live up to the excitement in the headline.

As far as I'm concerned, the people who benefit the most from this revolutionary change are the would-be roommates of those who'd otherwise be romantically cohabitating. At least they'll get some sleep.

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Want an iPod? Just go to Duke.

Duke U is in the news today because it is giving away free iPods to every incoming freshman!  Don't believe me?  Read it for yourself.  As I sit here listening to Michael Schenker's particular brand of 80's guitar rock on my iPod, I can only imagine the great educational value that Duke's incoming students will find in their shiny new Apple products...

Sunday, July 18, 2004

The RNC

--I'll talk about Africa at some point, but first, my involvement in the political machine....
  
 
I got mail from the Republican National Committee.  It seems that they haven't received my membership "renewal".  Naturally, this concerns me, though probably not for the reason they would like.  My concern is that they think I was ever a member before.  
 
It did remind me of one good thing about unwanted mail containing business reply envelopes: you can return it and cost the sender money.  So, my contribution to the RNC cause is to reduce their huge war chest by the cost of posting back the letter they sent me.  
 
Just trying to help the effort in my own small way.