Wesleyan in the News
Lauren Rubenstein
In this recurring feature in The Wesleyan Connection, we highlight some of the latest news stories about Wesleyan and our alumni.
Wesleyan in the News
1. The Middletown Press: “Wesleyan Students Helping Former Prisoners to Gain Job Skills”
Wesleyan Students for Ending Mass Incarceration (SEMI) is a group of students working to help formerly incarcerated individuals acclimate back into society by providing them with job skills. The goal, according to member Asiyah Herrero ’22, is “making re-entry into the workforce a little bit easier. There are usually a lack of resources when people get out of prison, and starting to look for work, especially because there are a lot of jobs that do discriminate or have discriminatory ideas about people who have been in prison.”
2. NBC Connecticut: “Should Colleges Require Applicants to Submit SAT or ACT Scores?”
President Michael Roth is interviewed about Wesleyan’s decision five years ago to stop requiring applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores. The move was aimed at increasing accessibility for underrepresented groups of students. “We did find right away that we got more applications from low-income students and students of color, and that’s what we’re really hoping for,” said Roth, adding that grades tend to be a better predictor than standardized test scores on students’ future performance at Wesleyan.
3. U.S. Naval Institute Magazine: “#InstaEquality: Gender Inequality on the Armed Forces Instagram Accounts”
Carina Flaherty ’19 conducted an analysis of the U.S. military’s Instagram presence and wrote about her findings in U.S. Naval Institute Magazine. She explores whether the military’s social media postings challenge or reinforce male stereotypes about women soldiers and how they should be treated.
4. Fox61: “Tickets Go on Sale Monday for TEDx Conference at Wesleyan University”
Eunes Harun ’20 and Leo Merturi ’20 are interviewed about the second annual TEDxWesleyanU event they are organizing, together with other students, on campus on April 27.
5. The Hartford Courant: “What If the Founding Fathers Were on Facebook?”
In this op-ed, Professor Emeritus of Government John Finn muses about how the process of drafting and ratifying the Constitution would have been changed by the presence of social media, as well as social media’s present-day impact on our constitutional well-being.
Alumni in the News
This Q&A offers Gottlieb, who was commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for nearly two years, an opportunity to reflect on his work. A medical doctor and former health investment advisor, Gottlieb will next join a D.C. think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, as a fellow, and focus his attention on drug pricing.
Asked what he is most proud of in his time at the FDA, Gottlieb responded: “We started to talk explicitly about the agency having a role in reducing the rate of new [opioid] addiction by taking a more activist role and trying to address inappropriate prescribing, trying to reduce the total number of prescriptions, making sure that when doctors wrote a prescription, it was for an appropriate medical purpose, and that when prescriptions were written, they were for a duration that comported with why the doctor was prescribing the opioids in the first place.”
2. New York Times: “Fosse/Verdon Is Full of Broadway Legends. Here’s Who’s Who”
This FX mini-series about the professional and personal lives of two award-winning dancers was “[c]reated by some more big Broadway names—Thomas Kail [’99] and Lin-Manuel Miranda [’02], of Hamilton, are executive producers….” Additionally, it’s based on the biography by Sam Wasson ’03, Fosse (Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013).
3. Ithaca College: “Izzy Award To Be Shared by Earth Island Journal and Journalists Laura Flanders, Dave Lindorff [’71, P’05] and Aaron Maté”
“The Park Center for Independent Media (PCIM) at Ithaca College has announced that this year’s Izzy Award ‘for outstanding achievement in independent media’ will be shared by a publication and three journalists who undertook path-breaking and in-depth reporting in 2018…. Dave Lindorff uncovered the opaqueness of Pentagon accounts and bloated military budgets.”
4. GridPhilly.com: “In Search of the Colored Girl: Germantown Museum Highlights the Overlooked Contributions of Black Women”
Vashti DuBois ’83 is founder and executive director of The Colored Girls Museum (TCGM). “‘So much depends on cleaning women, childcare workers and other colored women who remain anonymous,’ says DuBois, a Brooklyn native who lives in the 129-year-old Victorian twin that houses the museum. ‘TCGM shows colored girls from the ordinary to the extraordinary.’ … DuBois, a theater artist and literacy coach, came up with the idea of a museum of black women’s artifacts during her sophomore year at Wesleyan University.”
5. The National (Amtrak Magazine): “Retracing an Explorer’s Journey Down the Colorado River”
John F. Ross ’81, P’12, whose most recent book is The Promise of the Grand Canyon: John Wesley Powell’s Perilous Journey and His Vision for the American West (Viking, 2018), traces a section of Powell’s pioneering 1869 trip with his wife, son, and daughter Grace ’12. Ross begins the account: “First, a rumbling. Then the froth of white water. But that provides no real idea of what lies ahead. When our bow hits the rapids, the peaceful Colorado River snaps into anarchy, and the bottom of our boat drops out. My wife, Diana, screams. Forget your garden-variety roller-coaster scream—this is something primal.”
Mike Mavredakis
Ziba Kashef
Andrew Chatfield