The Wake

The last time I saw Ben Folds was in 1997 in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was still with Ben Folds Five, and Brick had flown up the charts of Modern Rock and Top 40 radio and their album Whatever and Ever Amen was consistently in my dinky five-disc boom box. Ben Folds Five rounded out a daylong festival, and one of my fondest memories is seeing Folds throw his stool at his piano at the end of their set.Now, seven years later and halfway across the country, I made the trek down to Northfield, Minnesota to see Ben Folds play …

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At first, when Gil Schwartz went vegetarian as a seventh-grader he didn’t really understand why. Later, when he got involved with animal rights issues as a junior in high school he became a vegan. Schwartz decided to become vegan because he saw how animals were treated on factory farms. Now as a member of Compassionate Action for Animals (CAA) and president of Minnesota Student Animal Rights Alliance, Schwartz actively campaigns for animal rights.“Animals are raised in wretched conditions,” Schwartz says.While he is not fundamentally against eating meat, Schwartz says he believes humans no longer need to rely on animals for …

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The Progressive Student Action Coalition comprises of many campus chapters, including Jewish Progressive Students, The Young Voter Project and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, joined forces to hold Progressive Student Action Day on Monday, October 11 at Coffman Union. The event helped students become more involved in the political process by registering them to vote. Progressive Student Action Day was the result of student groups concentrating their efforts to get out the vote and make students aware of progressive causes that each student group advocates. “It has worked out really well. We just decided to …

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Names rung out in solemn, clear voices, cutting through the chilly air of early fall on the Northrop Plaza at 12:30 a.m. on Sept. 29.Over a 24-hour period, each volunteer took approximately 15 minutes to read a section of a book that held the names of an estimated 12,000 to 14,000 Iraqi civilians and more than 1,000 Americans killed since the beginning of the war. The event was sponsored by Faculty Against War. David Bernstein coordinated the efforts of 92 volunteers, 60 to 65 of whom were faculty members. “We want to put a human face back on the …

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We find ourselves trapped in the heat of election season once again. So many issues are being discussed and debated that they all blend into one grand argument. However, have you given any thought to human rights lately? Have you heard anyone talking about this hot topic? Has it even been an issue to discuss, since the Nazi internment camps, the horrors of Rwanda or the humiliating incidents of Abu Ghraib? It is an important issue that continues to present itself.In the post 9/11 society we now live in, our country has been forced to re-evaluate its stance on human …

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So, school’s started and you’re finally getting settled into that great new apartment. One problem—you have no furniture. There aren’t many college students that can run right down to Gabberts to gobble up all the latest in home furnishing fashion. So what are our options? The cheap and chic home furnishing market became more than just the offerings of your local Target store this summer with the much-anticipated opening of Minnesota’s first Ikea. Those pesky trips to Chicago (previously the nearest location) are no longer necessary in order to obtain the fabulous Scandinavian flat-packaged items you’ve been drooling over in …

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