Survey result #1: “I guess…a naughty child?”

Well, no…”the brat man” is not a naughty child, as one Lawrentian guessed.

In a survey of incoming Lawrentians, we asked simply (among many questions), “Have you ever heard of ‘the brat man?'” Whether you end up visiting the famous brat man during your time at Lawrence or not…we’re pretty sure you’ll know of him by the end of your first month on campus.

The statistics are pretty clear – by a margin of about two to one, you have not heard of the brat man…yet. Some of the more interesting answers were:

– As in the sausage that races at Miller park in Milwaukee?

– YES! Some hosts I met during admitted students weekend enthusiastically told me wild tales of the Brat Man!

– …I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it was referencing my younger sisters!!

– no…is this a Wisconsin thing?

– Yes. And I am very excited to meet him.

– No…now I want to know…oh the suspense!

Well let’s end the suspense! For those of you who read the “Quirky Look At Lawrence” brochure, this will be a little repetitive. (If you haven’t seen the brochure, email me at mettillt@lawrence.edu and I’ll send you a pdf version right away!)

If you are not from Wisconsin, you might need some background. First of all, the word sounds like “lot”, not “fat”. Second–according to the good folks at Wisconsin’s premier brat maker, Johnsonville, we know that a brat is a “sausage with finely chopped seasoned pork.” (Brats have been called “Wisconsin’s soul food.”)

Even better–brats can regularly be found just steps away from campus–in a cart, no less. Like NYC’s infamous hot dog carts, we have the brat cart. You can find it usually late at night. (Many students have discovered that “brat runs” are a great study break.) We asked students if they have discovered the brat cart yet, and, if so, how often they visit the brat cart. About half of the respondents are huge fans of the brat cart and about half have not yet feasted on a College Avenue brat. Their responses:

“The Brat Man is awesome! It should be part of Welcome Week.”

“Some of my friends go… they dress up for the vendor.”

“Jay, the Brat Man, and I are on a first-name basis.”

“I go once a week with a group from Plantz Hall.”

“Mmmmm…so good…very often.”

“There’s a late-night brat cart?!?!”

“I don’t like brats. I’m from the West Coast!”

“Yes, I go at least once a week…simply amazing.”

“I go every week with the ‘Brat Run’.”

“He serves turkey chili as his only non-beef product.”

(This student is sadly misguided; we all know brats are PORK.)

As you can see…the brat man can be a great study break for those of you who are open to eating something defined as a “sausage with finely chopped seasoned pork.”

Lawrence University Senior Awarded $28,000 Watson Fellowship to Find the Two “I”s in Indian

APPLETON, WIS. — Madhuri Vijay wants to violate the first rule of writing: write what you know.

Having spent the past four years as a student at Lawrence University, Vijay knows what it’s like to be an Indian living in the United States. But the senior from Bangalore, India, wants to explore what life is like for her countrymen living in other countries.

“I want to turn that rule on its head, travel the world and get to know the things I want to write about,” said Vijay. “I want to tell the stories of people like myself, people displaced from their native country, living in a vastly different one who are forging an identity that must inevitably come to terms with a double-history, a double life.”

Beginning in August, Vijay will embark on a year-long search for those stories as one of 40 national recipients of a $28,000 fellowship from the Rhode Island-based Thomas J. Watson Foundation. Vijay was selected for the fellowship, which supports a year of independent travel and exploration outside the United States on a topic of the student’s choosing, from among 177 finalists. Her fellowship proposal was entitled “The Two ‘I’s in ‘Indian’: Writing the Stories of the Indian Diaspora.”

Nearly 1,000 students from 47 selective private liberal arts colleges and universities annually apply for the Watson Fellowship.

Vijay will use her fellowship to travel to Fiji, often referred to “Little India” because of its large Indian population, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which has had contact with India since the 15th century, Durban, South Africa, where Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi established the Phoenix Settlement for Indians who wanted to peacefully resist oppression, and finally Tanzania, which boasts two distinct Indian populations: one that was born and raised there and one that has recently arrived.

“In this ever-flattening world, Indians are found all over the world, but their stories have largely gone untold,” said Vijay, who will graduate in June with a degree in English and psychology. “As a writer and a social scientist, I have a fascination with people, cultures and identity. I would like to combine my two passions to produce a book of short stories about the lives of Indians around the world.”

Tim Spurgin, associate professor and Bonnie Glidden Buchanan Professor of English, who serves as Lawrence’s campus liaison to the Watson program, calls Vijay “a perfect choice” for a Watson Fellowship.

“Madhuri is bright, talented and basically fearless,” said Spurgin. “Not many college grads would attempt a project as ambitious as hers — and only a handful would be capable of pulling it off.”

During her travels abroad, Vijay will explore what Indian customs and traditions these people still cling to, what aspects of their new country they’ve embraced and how they balance the cultural line of being native Indian with being Tanzanian, Fijian or Malaysian.

“I realize that shared skin color and features are no longer enough to claim a kinship with Indians around the world,” said Vijay. “Writing stories of the people I’ll meet will allow me to understand the unique and multifaceted identities of the Indian diaspora. It will help me develop my own transcontinental identity as a woman from India, a student in America and a citizen of the world.”

In addition to helping define her own personal identity, Vijay sees her fellowship opportunity as a litmus test for her passionate, but largely unspoken, ambition of being a writer.

“I share the seed of self-doubt that plagues all aspiring writers: do I have stories worth telling? And do I have the words with which to tell them?,” said Vijay. “I believe that I do and I want to prove it. My fellowship will be nothing short of a journey of self-discovery, because at the end of it, I’ll know what my next step in life should be.”

If she wasn’t previously a believer in the axiom “first impressions are lasting impressions,” Vijay surely is now. The Watson selection committee started their interview process this year at Lawrence last November and Vijay was the very first of the 177 finalists to be screened.

Vijay is the 67th Lawrence student awarded a Watson Fellowship since the program’s inception in 1969. It was established by the children of Thomas J. Watson, Sr., the founder of International Business Machines Corp., and his wife, Jeannette, to honor their parents’ long-standing interest in education and world affairs.

“The awards are long-term investments in people, not research,” said Cleveland Johnson, director of the Watson Fellowship Program. “We look for people likely to lead or innovate in the future and give them extraordinary independence in pursuing their interests. They must have passion, creativity and a feasible plan. The Watson Fellowship affords an unequalled opportunity for global experiential learning.”

Watson Fellows are selected on the basis of the nominee’s character, academic record, leadership potential, willingness to delve into another culture and the personal significance of the project proposal. Since its founding, nearly 2,600 fellowships have been awarded.

Rolling Stones Classics Get Jazz Treatment in Lawrence University Concert

APPLETON, WIS. — Mick Jagger and Keith Richards may finally get that “satisfaction” they famously sought in song.

The music of the iconic rock band Rolling Stones gets a jazz makeover when Lawrence University presents the U.S. premiere of “The Rolling Stones Project,” a collection of 12 Stones’ classics arranged for large jazz ensemble by New York saxophonist Tim Ries and Los Angeles arranger Matt Harris.

The Lawrence University Jazz Ensemble and Lawrence Jazz Band, under the direction of Fred Sturm and Patty Darling, respectively, present “STONE AGE: Music of the Rolling Stones” March 12 and 13 at 8 p.m. in Stansbury Theatre. The concert is free, but due to limited seating, tickets are required and are available through the Lawrence box office, 920-832-6749.

“This program is going to be played all over the world in the next few years, and we’re thrilled to launch it here in the states,” said Sturm, director of jazz and improvisational music at Lawrence.

The concert will include such Jagger-Richards classics as “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” “Honky Tonk Women,” “Paint It Black,” “Ruby Tuesday,” and “Wild Horses,” among others.

“We won’t be imitating the Stones’ recordings like a ‘cover’ band would,” said Sturm. “Instead, we’ve re-casted them with fresh harmonies, unique rhythms and the power and colorful shadings of an 18-piece jazz ensemble. But fans of the Stones will still be able to recognize the tunes.”

The concert owes its genesis to Ries, a composer and saxophonist who played in the Rolling Stones’ horn section on their “No Security” tour in 1999. In a bout of experimentation, Ries decided to add a jazz arrangement to several Stones’ songs, resulting in the 2005 album “The Rolling Stones Project: Music Of The Rolling Stones.” A second follow-up disc, “Stones World,” was released last October.

Sturm and Ries crossed paths in 2003 after Sturm was named the recipient of the prestigious 2003 ASCAP/IAJE Commission in Honor of Quincy Jones. For the premiere of his work “Abstract Image” in New York City, Sturm assembled an all-star ensemble of jazz luminaries, including Ries, who appeared as the featured saxophonist.

Fast forward to 2008 when Ries collaborated with Sturm’s long-time friend and Eastman School of Music classmate, composer/arranger Matt Harris. Harris expanded Ries’ Rolling Stones projects into 12 orchestrations for large jazz ensemble. Ries first performed the Harris arrangements last October with Denmark’s Kluvers Big Band, one of Europe’s top professional jazz ensembles.

In preparing for the concert, Sturm and Darling exposed their students to recordings of the original Rolling Stones renditions, the Ries and Danish versions as well as treatments that were recorded by artists ranging from soul singers Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin, pop star Britney Spears and jazz great Oscar Peterson.

“Performing and arranging classic and contemporary pop music is an important focus of the Lawrence jazz department,” said Darling. “Our students need the tools and vocabulary to explore the music of their own time. We’re examining process very closely, articulating how jazz players and composers can reconstitute any piece of music in their own voice.”

“Jazz musicians have been fascinated with standard tunes going back to Tin Pan Alley and the American Popular Songbook of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s,” Sturm added. “Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, and other jazz greats have recorded their own treatments of the ‘New Standards’ in contemporary pop music. In that same creative spirit, we’ll be putting our own interpretive stamp upon these great Rolling Stones hits.”

The New York Times, starring Lawrence University (again)

On December 17, the New York Times online ran a piece called Q&A College Admissions, an insider’s perspective on the difficult-to-decipher world of college admissions. To get the perspective, the Times put together a panel of admissions deans from Yale University, Pomona College, the University of Texas at Austin and Lawrence University, starring our very own Steve Syverson.

Paying for College: What the Media Fail to Point Out

It’s a truism to say that the current financial upheavals in the world have prompted many of us to feel insecure about the future. Predictably, the media have begun to run stories about students who are changing their college choices because (according to the media), “they can no longer afford to attend the higher-priced private colleges they originally were interested in.” It’s easy to find these students and to report their stories–there’s dramatic tension in them, so they lend themselves well to storytelling. But, as is so often the case with media stories about higher education, they are also dangerously simplistic.

The most unfortunate part of these stories is that they encourage other students (and their families) to alter their college choices inappropriately. These stories focus on the cost of college–or, more accurately, on the perceived cost of college–as the primary factor on which to base a college choice. In doing so, they distract attention from what should be the primary factor–that of how good a match a particular college is for a particular student. Students who follow the path the media has set out for them are encouraged to “settle” for colleges that are not perhaps the best match for them.

The scenario typically offered by the media makes the assumption that a student’s family would pay the entire cost of college and, confronted by a decline in its financial resources, the family (and the student) is relegated to choosing a lower-priced college. At most high-priced private colleges, many (if not the majority of the) families cannot afford the full cost of education, so they receive financial aid to allow them to do so. If a family in this group has suffered a financial downturn, it will now be eligible for more financial aid than it might have been previously. Similarly, if a family that previously could have afforded the entire cost of education suffers such a downturn and no longer can afford the entire cost, it will now join the ranks of those who qualify for need-based aid.

Certainly, there is a small number of families who, like those featured in the media, have suffered a substantial downturn, but still will not qualify for need-based aid even at a private college. Those families are probably among the top 3 to 5 percent of the nation’s wealthiest families. So even though the cost of college is now higher in relation to their financial circumstances, the argument that they “must” choose a lower-priced college really is not accurate. They may “decide” to choose a less expensive college–but it is a choice, not a financial necessity.

College should be viewed as a long-term investment, as it will pay dividends over a lifetime. Students should not abandon their college dreams because of short-term financial challenges. If a student has a great experience at a college that is a great match for him or her, twenty years from now that experience will still be paying great dividends.

Stay tuned… there is more to come.

Steve Syverson

Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid