Campus Wide Email Conversation

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Bizarre campus wide email correspondence December 2 - 3:

Luce, Nathanial: I just want to tell everyone

that the snow today made me very happy, and I hope everyone is having as nice an end of term as I am. from Nate

von Ammon, Todd P.: *************

getting kind of cold. it's been snowing.

Sarah King: Re *************

Dear everyone,

This is my official, non-anonymous, possibly offensive opt-out notice. I am very sorry that none of you can keep track of your stuff, and very glad that you seem to be having lovely terms despite that. Yes, it is indeed getting cold, which I can tell by stepping outside, or, if I'm too busy to leave my cave, checking weather.com. Now please, stop sending these campus wide nuisance emails. At the very least, stop cluttering my inbox.

Thanks. Merry Chrismahannukwanza, and I do hope your finals go well.

Sarah King

Novick, Megan J. : RE: ************

yeah guys, seriously! Campus wide emails make you such a dick. xoxo

Walsh, Keenan C. : RE: ************

Yeah guys, let's stop bothering Sarah. Seriously.

LaMorey, Joshua D. : RE: ************

I would like to take this time, here and now, to present the Final Senior Reflections of my colleague, and partner, Dan Briggs.

Fractals of Gray and Gold

By Dan Briggs

Close your eyes. Linear narratives tend to squash irregularities. Let us pretend for a moment that time really is like a videotape that can be observed and ignored, edited and re-mastered, paused and rewound. Let us hit pause on my tape – the videotape that I am – and rewind two thousand days. It is July of 2002 and wait - there I am – caught between my junior and senior years of high school, living in Leigh at “July at Bennington”, taking my first philosophy class and arguing for the non-existence of God, getting a feel for Bennington College. Fast forward. I am studying philosophy with Paul Voice and Karen Gover. The ground is shifting and breaking. The meaning of selfhood, what it means for me to be myself – both are unfolding together, dissipating into complications like language games, intentional fallacies, phalluses, feminism, dialectical materialism, original positions, transcendental reductions, fundamental ontology, Oedipal dreams, brains in vats. There I am, reading some of the most important books of the Western canon, works like Plato’s Republic, Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Heidegger’s Being and Time, Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. Watch me undergo the experience of philosophy, bringing me places, physically and metaphysically. Four years of making love to sophia. The visible and the invisible are one, two, and three. Watch my body move around in space and time. It is FWT and a Buddhist monk is striking my shoulder with a large wooden still called a keisaku in rural New Mexico. I am in the Upstairs Cafe presenting a philosophy talk about Heidegger and Descartes and why it is wrong to call ourselves a “Bennington bubble.” I am traveling to philosophy conferences in Boston and Philadelphia and meeting some of America’s most prominent philosophers, thinkers, legends. I am living with my mom and my granny in northeast Vermont and researching new conceptions of human embodiment in the work of Martin Heidegger. I no longer have a body. I am bodily. Watch me fly to Oregon, see me present my philosophy paper on Derrida and Mauss and the metaphysical impossibility of the gift. I am finishing my philosophy thesis, asking my teachers to recommend me to graduate schools in Boston, Nashville, Eugene, and even cities in Canada. Now I am two weeks from being a Bennington alumnus and, looking back, I see that Bennington has prepared me for a promising future of scholarship and inquiry. Being human means that I cannot fast-forward the tape any further. July of 2002 was a time before I had ever fallen in love, before I could develop any significant amount of facial hair, before I could comprehend where philosophy was able to bring me. And strangely, on the cusp of graduation, I have arrived precisely at where I began: still unwilling to say anything definite about love, unable to grow a beard worthy of respect, unsure where philosophy is bringing me. By pointing this out I do not mean to appear cynical. I mean to say that graduation from Bennington is never a limit or a stopping point, but that realm from which the familiar once again unfolds itself into the strange. We think we are there, and yet, not yet. As I said before linear narratives tend to squash irregularities. Like how I went away for a semester in Minneapolis to save the environment and to fight for gay and lesbian civil rights. Or the fact I studied not only philosophy, but dance, social psychology, French, teaching, video, history, and literature. Or how I wrote, directed, and starred in existential experimental multi-media performances like Dan Briggs Live I, or Dan Briggs Live II, or III or IV for that matter. And then there is Dan Briggs the rapper, the cult leader, the international naked phenomenon, the street baller, the silent monk, the peer mentor, the lover. The difficult thought for me to think is that there is no Dan Briggs behind these multiple Dan-Briggs-performances. Sometimes I wish I was German. I have questioned my sexuality, I have questioned sexuality as such. Yes, Nietzsche, I have killed God, but I have worked toward His resurrection - the ultimate indifference of American pseudo-liberated masochistic postmodern uncanny capitalism. Linear narratives are born out of irregularity, chaos, the multiple overlapping contradictions of human existence, not vice versa. This is one thing that I have learned at Bennington College. The videotape I am is beginning to flicker beautiful fractals of gray and gold. Walk with me into the impossible future. I am hungry, not for food, but knowledge: food for thought. Now open your eyes.

Julie Moore: Please Read and Stop With the Email Spam

I know I am just fanning the flames, but I think I speak for most ALL of campus when I say: Please keep all instances of weather commentary, ego stroking, lost and found inquiries and pleas for rides WHERE THEY BELONG - AKA the BENNINGTON LIVEJOURNAL or respective FACEBOOK GROUPS.

- LIVEJOURNAL**

BENNINGTON COLLEGE: http://community.livejournal.com/benningtonvt/profile

- FACEBOOK**

I hope this helps sort things out. I am not trying to be a bitch, but not everyone needs to receive these emails, so please take your queries to their appropriate groups and/or sites. And if you do not have a livejournal or facebook, GET ONE. It's not hard.

Thanks,

Julie Moore

Summers, April J.: RE: Please Read and Stop With the Email Spam

I didn't think I'd be one of the people to involve myself in such a ridiculous argument but here it is:

I understand why people might become annoyed. I do. I say this having never previously sent one of these campus-wide emails. However, it's not that big of a deal, and while you "can" tell people what to do it's not anyone's place to do so. In response, people will send ridiculous emails in response to ridiculous reactions to the occasional unwanted email. It's also not a big deal to take 2 seconds to delete unwanted emails. I know it's the end of term and people are stressed but... get over it. If people had made less of a fuss in the first place, many of these campus-wide emails would not exist. Let's end the drama.

As for Sarah, sorry to break it to you, but I doubt anyone sending a campus-wide email is going to pick your name out of the 600 or so and delete it.

As for Julie, thank you for taking the time to list all of those helpful links. Hopefully people will use them more. Unfortunately a lot of people don't, but whether they want to or not is up to them.

That's it. That's all I got.

Happy Holidays everyone, April Summers

Wolfson, Stacy B.: Read this

I would just like to point out how Julie and Sarah came into my house during Thanksgiving break and filled my microwave with popped popcorn. Now, I don't know them, but I'm sure they thought it was a clever prank. However, until now, I was the only one who noticed, because I had to clean that up, and I didn't appreciate it. So, I hope you are annoyed by something, and if it happens to be these emails, fucking sweet.

Stacy

Conde, Liliana P. : RE: Read this

oh Bennington...(sigh)

Ouellette, Daniel J.: RE: Read this

lol

Simmonds, Kathy : Sending Campus-Wide E-mails

Hello, Bennington Students-

I am writing to you in response from other students’ complaints regarding the number of campus-wide emails that have been sent lately.

Some of these emails were able to be sent from an original email that I sent out at the request of Health Services. Due to a human error, student names were put in the “to” field instead of the “bcc” field.

Because campus-wide emails are intended for important college-related information (ie: health alerts, end-of-term announcements, registration info, etc), we kindly ask that you refrain from sending personal emails to the campus community.

Some examples of methods you should use to communicate things like ride requests, trying to locate lost items, event announcements, etc:

1. White board in Commons.

2. Submit your request to Coffee Hour minutes.

3. Make your own poster(s).

Thank you for your help on this and please let me know if you have any questions.

Kathy Simonds

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Campus Wide Email Conversation

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