Summer Reading from the Editor

Posted on 26. Apr, 2012 by Kelsey Breseman

None of these are light reading, as such. They’re not fluffy; they’re not “beach reads”. But they are bite-sized; each piece of writing is short, so you can dip in and out of the books between your summer adventures. You’ve probably read at least one of these, but you should stick around to read the other ones. They’re mind-blowing.

The Second Tree from the Corner (E. B. White)

With Love, Nicholas Monje

Posted on 26. Apr, 2012 by Nicholas Monje

I, along with Gwyn Davidoff, recently directed The Laramie Project here at Olin. For those of you who didn’t come to see the show, it deals with the beating and death of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, in Laramie, Wyoming. This article is a highly abbreviated version of my director’s note. If you’d like to read the original note, please email me at nicholas.monje at gmail.com.

A Perfectly Polite Proposal

Posted on 26. Apr, 2012 by Harold Jaffe

No doubt you are familiar with the tragedy of the commons (1) —the idea that multiple individuals with access to an unregulated public resource will gradually use it up or ruin it (2). It is with great sadness, increasing cynicism, and frequent exclamations of profanities (3) that I have come to the conclusion that the East Hall kitchen constitutes one such situation.

What it Means to Be an Oliner

Posted on 26. Apr, 2012 by James Nee

As a child, I had one really special toy. It wasn’t pretty, or the most interesting, but it was special to me. It was a little wooden action figure that I had cobbled together from bits of scrap wood I found in the garage. The joints were pipe cleaners, the face scribbled on in pencil, and the torso a rough bit of scrap wood from some 2x4 that had broken off the house.Yet I treated this toy better than anything else I owned; I would even sleep with it like a teddy bear at times. I had a deep connection with this conglomeration of misfit bits.

The Biology Requirement is Broken

Posted on 26. Apr, 2012 by Kendall Pletcher

I chose to study bioengineering. I love biology, but I did not love Modern Biology. It had nothing to do with the teacher (she was awesome) or the subject. It was simply that I was bored. I’d just taken the AP bio exam and the SAT II in biology. Everything we learned in Modern Biology, besides specific interests of the professor, was a review for me.

Do Something with Frankly Speaking

Posted on 31. Mar, 2012 by Kelsey Breseman

Frankly Speaking is important. It is extremely valuable to communication within the Olin community as a forum for people to bring issues to discussion. I’m worried, because as important as the paper is, Frankly Speaking doesn’t seem sustainable.

Most of Olin’s written communication takes place over email. Important issues are brought up and discussed on ThinkTank, Radical Notion, even Therapy and Sexuality. But there are two major problems with these email lists as public forums: they are self-selecting, and they are not fully developed as pieces of writing.

Choose Wisely: Embrace Fear

Posted on 29. Feb, 2012 by Kendall Pletcher

So you want to study away. You’re stoked, but where should you go? The world is full of choices, and it’s overwhelming. I’ll narrow the field for you: you should study away in a developing country.

First, be fearless. Think of all of the places you’ve been to or would want to go on vacation. Now, cross them all out.

Chances are, most of the “first world” is now off your list. When I chose my study away location, I circled the parts of the world that were so foreign that I would almost certainly never visit them on my own, and I chose from those countries.

A Few Thoughts

Posted on 29. Mar, 2011 by John Rosenwinkel

I would like to challenge some of the underlying assumptions upon which much of the argument in “The Meaning of Empowerment” was based.

The author states that much violence is due to greed or hateful religious beliefs. This is a gross oversimplification of reality. The reasons that people commit acts of violence are complex, but I believe that people are driven to violence because they have needs that are not being met, whether those needs be physical, emotional, social, etc.

The Meaning of Empowerment

Posted on 28. Feb, 2011 by Tom Pandolfo

Reading the front-page article in the most recent issue of Frankly Speaking, this reader became very perplexed. The article used phrases like “military-industrial complex” and “ultimate institution of disempowerment, of aggression, domination, and death” to describe the U.S. Armed Forces. The article included radical implications – that a nonlethal defense-sponsored project, or even a project sponsored by a company whose customers include the U.S. Department of Defense, is undeserving of Olin students’ time and effort and just plain immoral.

Excellence or Innovation: Choose One

Posted on 26. Jan, 2011 by Allen Downey

Suppose you are creating an innovative new college. You want it to be excellent, right?

Actually, no. Because the pursuit of excellence undermines real innovation. Excellence is defined in terms of existing standards, and innovation is about changing the standards. You can’t win the old game and make the new rules at the same time.