2008 Woodie Awards
I spent January at the Gandhi Ashram, a school in Kalimpong, which is in northern India, near Nepal. I went with a group of about 30 Colby students; we taught mostly English and music. Of course, I'm writing my first column of the semester about this experience.
Most of you are (as we say in Maine) "from away," and you are not about to pick up the Central Maine Morning Sentinel (hereafter the Sentinel) every morning before you romp off to your classes in the new Diamond Building. You might look at the New York Times if you look at anything-well, maybe the Boston Globe.
This semester students will have the opportunity to sign an academic Honor Statement. If two-thirds of the students currently enrolled (including those abroad) choose to sign the document, the Honor Statement will be considered ratified. What is the Honor Statement? It is a voluntary, non-binding statement of academic integrity.
"This is my way. Where is yours? -Thus I answered those who asked me 'the way.' For THE way-that does not exist." Thus spoke Nietzsche's Zarathustra over a century ago. For some time, I've grappled with how far to take this sentiment. Yes, I believe there is more than one right way to live.
With the mid-term elections well behind us, politicians, citizens, and the media have already begun to speculate about the candidates for the presidential election in 2008. Next year will be my first chance to vote for the commander in chief, because I was 17 at the time of the last election.
Don't judge me. Why not? I judge people all the time. Almost everyday I construct an opinion about something or someone. I put people and ideas into categories that make sense of my life and my surroundings. All human beings endeavor to establish rules and guidelines for what they accept and what they don't; it is how they interact with their environment to determine what is advantageous to their prosperity.
The beginning of the semester is a time for reflection, and we should take this opportunity to look back on the problems that we encountered last semester. Many of the problems that we have across campus can be easily avoided or improved upon. Let's look back on last year by the numbers: we were responsible for over $30,000 of damage and fines during last semester, almost 250 false fire alarms, 102 open containers, and 191 noise complaints.