By Campus Community

Dear Macalester student:Come join your fellow students, staff and faculty on Thursday, March 29, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., to advocate for the Minnesota State Grant Program at the Capitol. The day will serve as an opportunity to be a part of the legislative process, meet with legislators and endorse increased state grants for higher education.

The Minnesota State Grant Program provides $125 million annually in need-based scholarships to more than 71,000 students across the state from low- and moderate-income families. In an era of tight budgets, rising college tuition and declining support for student financial aid, the need for a strong State Grant Program is great.
At Macalester, 129 of your fellow students receive an average annual grant of $3,400. This results in a total of $442,000 in aid for students at our school—money that would otherwise come out of Macalester’s endowment or operating costs. It would be particularly great to have recipients of State Grants join us at the Capitol to tell legislators how important this program is to them.
This year for Day at the Capitol we will join participants from Hamline, St. John’s and St. Ben’s. We will meet with legislators and ask them to continue supporting the grant program. The college will provide transportation and lunch. Regarding missing class, the Provost has asked faculty members to work with students who participate in Day at the Capitol to make up any work they might miss and we encourage you to consult your professors regarding the event.

The Minnesota State Grant Program not only affects Macalester, but is a social justice issue that affects all people throughout the state of Minnesota. Please join us on March 29th to tell our legislators that we support increased Minnesota State Grants.

Sign up for Day at the Capitol at:
http://www.mnprivatecolleges.org/events
Macalester Student Government, the Civic Engagement Center and College Relations are organizing this event for Macalester. For more information contact Jake Seltzer at the Civic Engagement Center [email protected] or x6040 or Doug Stone at College Relations at x6433 or [email protected]
Thanks for your interest.

Jake Seltzer, Civic Engagement Center
Jess Hasken, president, MCSG
Consuelo Gutierrez-Crosby, Civic Engagement Center
Doug Stone, College Relations

To the editor:

I am extremely disappointed by your decision to place your article “Facebook comment incites response” on the second page of your most recent issue of the Mac Weekly. Apparently, “Students resurrect ‘Pushball'” has been deemed to be a far more important issue to the Macalester community than blatantly racist attacks on specific members of the Macalester College community. Please allow me to explain myself.

After reading your article, I spoke to a member of Ua Ke, who told me that the reason they (Ua Ke) sent their response to the Mac Weekly was because they considered the Mac Weekly to be the best conduit of information to Macalester student body. However, assuming that — like the majority of newspapers — the majority of Mac Weekly readers base their decision of whether to pick up a personal copy of the Mac Weekly from the Campus Center and read through the entire paper on how intriguing the headlines are, I am forced to conclude that the majority of the Macalester community remains unaware that this event has taken place (contrast this lack of a widespread response to the uproar of the Macalester community after the “Politically Incorrect” party was first publicized). Just to make sure there are no misunderstandings, I am not in any way criticizing the quality of your reporting and your articles — but I definitely think some rethinking of priorities where front-page news articles are concerned is definitely warranted.

Thank you very much for your time and attention,
Chen-Yu (Andy) Wu, ’09