Welcome back! I hope everyone is well-rested and ready to go after a long break! I certainly am. I also hope that our readers can notice some of the changes we've made to the Wire. The biggest change is one that might not be noticable, but is very important to us.
I am very excited to share with you an opportunity I am pursuing this coming spring. Along with twelve other Wheaton students, and nearly 100 other students from New England, I have decided to spend my Spring Break serving the city and people of New Orleans as part of the Katrina Relief Urban Plunge (KRUP).
Why does it always seem that once you've finally figured out how to use Blackboard, your professor's switch everything to OnCourse? Or how the latest Microsoft Window's 2007 version is much more difficult to use than the old 2003 version? It feels like once you finally get the hang of one program, the "new and improved" version comes out in stores.
At the risk of seeming gauche, I am a little concerned by the graphs that have been taped up around campus by the President's Advisory Committee on Inclusive Excellence (PACIE). They use graphs to lend a sense of hard fact or data to represent subjective second-hand accounts in a skewed graphic.
Oscar Wilde told us that what seem to us bitter trials are often blessings in disguise. A sour economy initiates trends towards prioritisation and prudence; war teaches the significance of peaceful hours. These are without question trying times, and blessings as such are few and far between.
On Nov. 4, 2008, I stood in Hindle Auditorium with about 300 fellow students to celebrate the historical election of the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama. And three-and-a-half months later, I had the privilege to walk to the National Mall in the District of Columbia with two million fellow enthusiastic citizens to witness him take the oath for the highest position of office in the country.