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The Dirt on Canyon Day

Our sister blog, Voices From Reed, has a great report by Antonia Heffelfinger '12 on how current Reedies honor the grand tradition of Canyon Day.

The Politics of Pleasure

Author and academic Dr. Shira Tarrant explored issues of consent and the dynamics of sexual assault before an attentive audience in Vollum Lounge on Tuesday, tackling issues as diverse as confidentiality, the honor principle, and how men can help prevent sexual assault.

While acknowledging Reed's distinctive culture, she emphasized that sexual assault is a problem on college campuses nationwide.

"Reed is a unique place," she said. "You are smart, you're independent, you're encouraged to speak and think for yourselves. But believe me, the sexual assault issues at Reed are not unique."

Tennessee Williams and the Persistence of Memory

Few figures towered over post-World War II American theatre like playwright Tennessee Williams. From the premiere of The Glass Menagerie in 1944 through Sweet Bird of Youth in 1959, Williams was to drama what Rogers and Hammerstein were to Broadway musicals--celebrated and prodigious. Williams won two Pulitzer Prizes and a Tony award. His plays are peopled with drawling misfits in lyrical titles like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Clothes for a Summer Hotel.

Reed Theatre celebrates the 100th anniversary of Williams' birth with a production of his first commercial success, The Glass Menagerie, directed by Kate Bredeson, assistant professor of theatre. A four-character memory play, it is told from the perspective of Tom Wingfield, an aspiring writer who both narrates the play and acts in it.

Calligraphy Leaps off the Page

The greatly anticipated exhibition, Lloyd Reynolds: A Life of Forms in Art, has begun its run in the Cooley Art Gallery. Just hours after it opened, Robin Tovey '97 and I convened at the Hauser Library and headed to the gallery. An arresting exhibition poster hangs just outside, featuring an enlargement of Lloyd's piece "Calligraphy for People." It's a powerful piece--the words connect to one another through serpentine pen strokes--and aptly chosen. Lloyd, who was passionate about teaching, made this "beautiful writing" accessible to people in all walks of life, just as he made calligraphy at Reed prestigious worldwide...

The glass gallery doors carry a stenciled image of Thor's thunderbolt and Poseidon's trident, one of Lloyd's symbols that is featured in the show. Inside, we found outreach coordinator Greg MacNaughton '89, and curator Stephanie Snyder '91, along with gallery registrar Colleen Gotze, were busily putting the finishing touches on signage.

Clamoring for Elyse Fenton '03

It was standing-room only in the psychology auditorium when poet Elyse Fenton '03 read from her award-winning collection, Clamor, on Thursday night. OK, nobody was actually standing: late arrivals sat on the floor or reclined against the wall, situational discomforts that paled in comparison to the striking corporeality of the poems we heard.

Professor Lisa Steinman, Elyse's thesis adviser, praised her aptitude for "making things that are lost or imagined real" in a warm introduction. Steinman noted with pleasure that Elyse's Reed experience is evident in her work as much through references to Orpheus and Dante as through a distinctive "physicality of language" honed by a rugby player...

Reedies explain threat from Japan's radiation release

The alarming news coming out of Japan about potential nuclear reactor meltdowns has sparked considerable interest in Reed's research reactor. The March 17 Oregonian did a nice job of assessing the minimal risk associated with Oregon's two research reactors (Reed and OSU) in its story, "State research reactors can't melt down."

The reactor is used for experiments such as measuring the amount of specific elements in samples. A recent experiment searched shards from an ancient ceramic pot to find impurities in the clay that could help pinpoint the location where the pot was made. Using the reactor allowed researchers to identify the elements while leaving the artifact intact.

Rogue Environmentalist Draws Protests

Earth-lovers of the world, hop off your solar-powered composting toilets. Environmental provocateur Stewart Brand is here to tell you that nuclear energy will save the planet.

With a thesis like that, it's little wonder that Brand drew an uncustomary crowd of Portland protesters to campus last Tuesday--in spite of a torrential spring downpour. The raincoated group distributing fliers were admittedly of the non-pitchfork-waving, middle-aged, friendly Oregon environmentalist mold, but a glance through their pamphlets warned students that they were in for a night of lively controversy.

March Madness Results

The senior Griffins clinched the 2011 March Madness championship with a decisive victory over Right Bank in the final round of Reed's madcap elimination basketball tournament.

The tournament, now in its 23rd year, features teams composed of students, alumni, staff, faculty, and other life forms in various combinations. In past years, departments, dorms, and even teams from other sports have competed for the title.

This year, the alumni were represented by two teams: the House Husbands, captained by Erik Brakstad '89, mainly composed of alumni of--shall we say--antique vintage, and Right Bank, most of whom graduated in the last decade or so. In their first-round match-up, Right Bank notched a 27-17 victory over HH thanks to skillful play by Imran Ahmad '04 and generally superior conditioning...

March Madness Preview

Game on.

Reed's annual one-of-a-kind basketball tournament is happening tonight. Started over 20 years ago by Erik Brakstad '89, the event features students, alumni, staff, and various other life forms in a bouncy, spherical celebration of America's tallest sport.

Here is the bracket as of press time:

Shipwreck in Eliot Circle

RAW is in the air. Since Wednesday morning, projects have been cropping up throughout campus, with concentric circles of laundry rising from the front lawn, surreal living rooms materializing in Commons, and rolling pallets of grass drifting around the ground floor of Eliot.

Today, a grubby crew of artists in sweatshirts and Carhartts could be seen industriously striding around Eliot Circle, stacking and welding several tons of scrap metal into a labyrinthine tower. The piece, entitled Assembly of Freight, is the brainchild of sculptor and installation artist Ben Wolf.

"Redwood College" a new kind of academic fraud

Like most Americans, I am concerned about internet scoundrels who might try to steal my identity. But it never occurred to me that entire institutions could be vulnerable to identity theft.

In the last few days, however, the Chronicle of Higher Education and the Wall Street Journal have reported on a disturbing development: an unidentified scam artist copied Reed's website to create a fictitious "University of Redwood," taking the concept of academic fraud to a whole new low.

A Reed Valentine

Our sister blog Voices from Reed reported on this delightful chalk graffito, which materialized on the Blue Bridge on Valentine's Day:

Dear Ovid,
Apollo loves a certain Daphnia pulex,
but alas she reproduces
parthenogenetically
and is uninterested in
even the love of
some god.

Sincerely,
Aphrodite

A Winter's Ramble with Schubert

I had to chuckle at the brouhaha stirred by New York Times music critic Anthony Tommasini recently with his ambitious attempt to rank the Top Ten Classical Composers Ever. (In case you haven't heard, JS Bach was #1.)

Lists of this sort are an old journalistic standby--subjective, outrageous, infuriating, and a marvelous device to spark debate and spur readership.

Does College Work?

Considering the enormous quantities of time, energy, money, and anguish that are invested in higher education in this country, you might imagine that we'd have more hard data about how well it works. Yet research on the true purpose of a college education--whether it produces an educated person--is surprisingly sparse.

A major new book on the subject--Academically Adrift, by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa--presents plenty of data, and the conclusions aren't pretty. Approximately 45% of the undergraduates surveyed showed no improvement in their overall analytical competence after two years of college, and 36% showed no improvement after four years of college.

"Large numbers of U.S. college students can be accurately described as academically adrift. They might graduate, but they are failing to develop the higher-order cognitive skills that it is widely assumed college students should master," the authors write.

Hello, World

When I was a freshman at Reed, professor Jean Delord [physics 1950-88] taught me some elementary computer programming. I can still remember the thrill of compiling my first snippet of code, which simply printed the immortal words "Hello, World!"

Now, many years later, the same words leap to mind as we introduce Sallyportal, a new blog hosted by Reed magazine.

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Archives

• The Debate over Hum 110
• Reed Faculty Adopts Anti-Racism Statement
• Reed Launches Neuroscience Major
• Reed College Supports DACA
• Hum 110: the Lost Lecture
• Is Gilgamesh Relevant?
• Total. Reed.
• Reed Welcomes the Class of ’21
• Physicists use AI to Probe Mystery of Subatomic Jets
• “You Can Do Anything,” a Business Writer’s Ode to the Liberal Arts
• Tyler Nordgren ’91 Sees the Solar Eclipse in its Totality
• RIP Prof. Scott Smith, Historian and Humanist
• Senior Wins Award for Thesis on Chilean Art Resisters
• 12,280 Feet Later: Reedies Summit Mt. Adams
• Senior Wins Award for Thesis on Cyberfeminism
• Annual Fund Raises Record $4.6 million
• Bio Profs Win NSF Grant to Study Shapeshifting Cells
• Defining Your Own Career
• Westwind’s Whisper Echoes Still
• New Initiative Helps Students Work for Social Justice

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