25 Years On

Via FB, we learn that twenty-five years ago today our group of friends graduated Wesley College, Dover Delaware. We ourselves were only a junior and transferred to a non-Jesuit school in Washington DC about which no more will be said.

Among this group of friends was our buddy, Paul.

We met Paul in the autumn of 1992. He lived across the hall and one over. One afternoon we knocked on his door to borrow some scissors. He was playing Madden and we asked what that was. We've been close ever since. He's an Eagles fan but don't hold that against him.

Paul's from down the shore, as we say here in New Jersey, and got us into flag flying; it's a thing down there. One of the most thoughtful gifts we ever received was from Paul, an Israeli flag. We still fly it.

Paul is partially responsible for our conservatism. While we played Madden, he put Rush Limbaugh on the radio. We were in student government together, ran the Wesley College Republicans and stole the state chair right out from under the University of Delaware CRs.

That summer Paul and I had Capitol Hill internships, he worked for a south Jersey Republican wanker, we for Delaware Senator William V. Roth. Mostly we ran errands and made copies. We used our hill IDs to get into the Senate gallery to watch the floor vote to remove the arms embargo on Croatia. Back then Joe Biden spoke eloquently and thundered from the floor, 'A nation has a right to defend itself! That was the 104th Congress. The Congress where the GOP was going to clean up Washington, the Congress of Newt, the disastrous Waco hearings, the government shutdown.

It was a hot, sticky Washington summer. We lived in an efficiency at GW University. We got to know some CRs from all over the country (Pittsburgh, Houston, Miami) over Armand's pizza; burgers and beer at the M-Street Fridays two blocks from the White House. They had a lovely porch and we'd run up a tab in the still night DC summer air. Paul got us hammered for our 22nd birthday. We still don't think we're aloud back. Pictured, Will Stroock, the Chris Farley years.

We've Been at this for a While Now

So we were going through our box of direct mail fundraising letters and came upon a handful of Xeroxed newspaper articles from the Wesley College Whetstone: 

Taking advantage of a great defense, the Wesley college football team went 7-3 this past season. Linebackers Kerry Horney, Jim Binder and Jim Krajewski, who missed games due to injuries, proved they could move up and help the defensive line stop their opponent's running game.

At the same time, defensive backs Brian Warren, David James, and John Hardy were able to consistently stop the passing game.

Quarterback Jim Connolley led an explosive offense including running back Petie Davis, and wide receivers Fran and Joe Nasseli.

Also, the aggressive special teams produced several blocked punts and lengthy punt returns for the Wolverines this season.

The season came to a close with back to back losses to Delaware Valley and Upsala These. upsets prevented the team from progressing to the ECAC playoffs.

We wrote pretty good for a scared 19 year old.* 

Incidentally the defensive coordinator of that team, Mike Drass, later became head coach. He died earlier this year. 

*Yes, we could edit this to death.

On the Study of Political Science

Yesterday we read somewhere, someone talking about political scientists being scientists.

[What the fuck does that even mean?-Ed]

Anyhoo...Political science is not a science. We really don't know what it is. At least Poli-sci isn't sociology, a bullshit field if there ever was one. We bet Mike Stivik was a Sociology major...meathead.

We should know, back in our Wesley College days we majored in Poli-sci. Wesley was a small school, and the actual poli-sci student contingent was small, there couldn't have been more than a dozen of us. That included me, Paul, Ben, Lorna and a few others. The poli-sci faculty was smaller still, numbering only two profs, one of whom looked exactly like  Mr. Van Drieson in Beavis and Butthead. We kid thee not. Tony as he insisted we call him, was a great prof and a mentor. He was a leftist who didn't care what you thought so long as you were thoughtful. Sometimes he'd have class at the bar. The other prof in the department was a chain smoking drunk we nicknamed 'shakey lady'.

What did we actually study? During the fall of Freshman year we took Intro to Political Science. We found we liked the subject. Also it was the first time we were the class braniac, so that was kind of cool.

From there we took intro to US Politics and Intro to International Relations. If one wanted to fall asleep one took Public Administration with Shakey Lady.  From there one took Politics in the Third World where we studied the planet's shithole regions. When we did our country reports the class had a contest to see who could find the biggest crap-hole on the planet. We took the bronze with Chad, Paul got silver with Djibouti and Ben took home the gold with Spanish Sahara. It didn't even have a flag. Later we wrote a paper on Paraguay, mostly because PJ O'Rourke visited the place. Then there was the great nuclear war catastrophe of the International Relations Diplomacy Simulation. Oh, and once Tony  tasked us with creating peace in the middle east. Took about an hour.

Did we learn anything? Sure. We learned we could write papers three hours before class after being at our frat party the night before. AXP! We learned Poli-sci was mostly opinion. Pro-tip, use words like 'periphery' and 'hegemony' a lot. Thanks to Tony we also learned to challenge authority. As he once told us while he donned his elbow-patched blazer, 'Never show proper deferentiation to anybody. You're Americans.' We learned political science is not science.

Did the study of political science lead to careers in politics? For some of us. Paul and Ben both worked for congressman before moving on to other government and non-government positions in Washington. Even we interned at the Senate. We used to joke with Paul that one day we'd have a power lunch in Washington. We're at about that stage in our careers. He's deputy assistant something or other, while we're a highly successful writer. 

[Highly? Author, please-Ed]

Mostly Poli-sci was just a major. Got to major in something.

The Full Machete (Wesley College Style)

Man, sometimes I think I got out of the college prof gig at the right time:

Hard to watch, really.

One little nudge and these people will start wielding machetes in the Rwanda style.

This takes me back to my halcyon days at Wesley College in the mid 90's.

My friends and I, Paul, Ben, Lorna, Chris, Kenya, Jen and a few others were student activists. We had good reason.

When we arrived in 1992 anyone could see that Wesley needed work. Actually it was just coming off some labor unrest, a bunch of profs got fired, there were protests and law suits and some such. The admin wasn't putting a lot back into the campus and it showed. The campus was dead. we joined a frat out of sheer ennui.

Anyway, throughout the fall and spring of my freshman year the head of the Poli-sci department kept talking to us kids about taking action to make the campus better. Ahhh, Tony....he's the subject of another post.

Eventually Tony got through to us. A bunch of us got elected to the Student Government. We (I) wrote furious editorials. We had our own underground newspaper. We don't have said editorials and newspapers now and imagine they'd be difficult to read. We generally made a nuisance of ourselves. To be honest we're not really sure what we actually accomplished.

We even arranged a meeting with the president and the college admin. It actually went well. It was nothing like the travesty above. Everyone sat down, we actually wore coats and ties.

We suppose times have changed.

Kids today....