SUMMER NEWS

Welcome to the Class of 2003!

Strong College will be welcoming new members of the Class of 2003 soon, and welcoming back all of its returning members. This summer Newsletter is sent to everyone in the College, and is a preview of the regular weekly Newsletter that the members of the College receive all year. Welcome to the new year ahead!

When You Arrive

The actual date and time of move-in for all students is established for the entire campus by the University’s Office of Housing and Residence Life. They should be sending general move-in information to all students shortly if they have not done so already. You can call them at 336-334-5636 with general questions about arrival times, etc.

Strong College has its own Welcoming Committee that will bring all of our new members together several times in the first few days to give everyone a chance to get to know each other and to make lots of friends. You will also have your pictures taken when you arrive for inclusion in our annual facebook, so that everyone can start to put names and faces together as soon as possible. There is a general campus orientation program sponsored by the University’s Orientation Office, and we will also have a number of activitiees in Strong College specifically designed for all our new members. Watch the College bulletin boards for details when you arrive.

Visit Us on the Web

Strong College has a comprehensive web site that contains lots of information about the College that may be of help to incoming members (and may make old members feel nostalgic). Learn more about the College even before you arrive, and perhaps visit the personal web pages of some Strong College members. Pay a virtual visit to the College today!

Opportunities

Strong College students have a whole host of opportunities available to them both within the College and without for service, scholarship, and fun. Here’s a tiny preview.

In Strong College you can: be a volunteer Librarian to help keep our Library open each week; go to meetings of the College Council and help organize social events throughout each year; volunteer to help run our legendary Blue Lemur Coffee Bar each week; help keep the conversation going on Strong-L, our e-mail discussion group; come to the weekly Literary Hour sponsored by the Fellows of the College; start a TV group, or a movie group, or a history group, or a basket weaving group, or any other kind of group; watch Star Trek with Dr. O’Hara; come to Tea every week in the Junior Common Room (this is very important!); have lunch every Friday with the Strong College Fellows; start planning now for the Halloween Dance; start practicing your croquet swing for the Fall Tournament; start designing your boat for the Spring Regatta; and much, much more!

In the University at large you can: write for the Carolinian, the campus newspaper (the Managing Editor of the Carolinian this year is Strong College’s own Jon Buford); join the Student Government Association; join the university ambassadors; become a member of the campus orientation staff; explore Peabody Park, UNCG’s century-old educational park; be a disc jockey for WUAG, the campus radio station; join Coraddi, the campus literary magazine; and on and on and on. (These are just a few of the things that have been popular with Strong College members in the past; there are many more opportunities as well.)

Strong-L Keeps Going and Going and Going

Strong-L is our own Strong College e-mail discussion group. Even though people are scattered to the four winds during the summer (or perhaps because they are), Strong-L is full of busy conversation about everything from music to computers to the meaning of life. All Strong College members with an e-mail address are encouraged to join. Contact our own Tammy Thorarinson, the Strong-L manager.

Ad Astra

Strong College Fellow Bruce Caldwell hosted an international conference on the history of economics this summer on campus, and Dr. O’Hara spoke in one of the sessions (he tricked them into thinking he was an economist).

Andy Winternitz, CSC ’99, is living in Washington, D.C., loving it, and preparing for law school at American University in the fall.

Adam Cox is now gainfully (?) employed in the documents department of the Jackson Library.

Gwen Kovalak is spending the year at the University of Oulu in Finland. Perhaps you can follow in her footsteps next year!

Strong College Fellow Susan Buck gave a paper this summer on “Science and Sustainable Environmental Policy” at a conference at Bucknell University.

Sonya Link has donated a copy of the Collected Poems of Maya Angelou to the Strong College Library. Thank you!

Greg Shealy is spending the summer teaching at a 4-H camp (and staying cool, we hope).

Security Officer Alice Chavez has donated another collection of magazines to the College which you will see when you arrive. Thank you, Alice.

Scott Thomason spent part of the summer in Liverpool, England, where he did research for his masters’ project on British involvement in the Civil War.

Poem of the Week

The Strong College Poem-of-the-Week appears on the bulletin board outside the College office and is usually reprinted here. For this summer Newsletter, we offer a sad summer poem. We have talked to enough Strong College parents to know that many of them will miss their sons and daughters when they go away to college. Since this issue of the Newsletter goes to home addresses, we offer this week a lyric from Emily Dickinson (1884) for any new Strong College parents who may be wishing their children would stay home a little longer:

Quite empty, quite at rest,
The Robin locks her Nest, and tries her Wings.
She does not know a Route
But puts her Craft about
For rumored Springs –
She does not ask for Noon –
She does not ask for Boon,
Crumbless and homeless, of but one request –
The Birds she lost –

OFFICIAL DISCLAIMERS: Nothing here is official. Please don’t sue us. This does not represent the official policy of Maxwell’s Demon, Plato’s Cave, Kekule’s Dream, Pascal’s Wager, Schroedinger’s Cat, Zeno’s Paradox, Avogadro’s Number, Occam’s Razor, Newton’s Laws, Spinoza’s Seventh Axiom, James Elroy Flecker University, Blue Lemur Industries, Inc., the Massachusetts State Home for the Bewildered, the Star Trek Ladies’ Sewing Circle™, the Eater of Worlds™, Miss Seafood Festival, the Anti-Lemur, the Lost Birdfeeder of Samarkand™, Kyle Goodman and the Elevator of Doom, Tim the Literary Lemur, Tim the Wizard Lemur, Tim the Presidential Lemur, Tim the Artist Lemur, the late and much lamented Tim the Murdered Lemur, or Flecker Spice. Must stay with clothes after 8:30 p.m. Edibility not known. Promptly refrigerate unused portion. Color swirls are a natural occurrence. The better our fantasies are, the better our realities can become. Second star to the right, and straight on till morning. If we succeed there will be many songs sung in our honor. A decent boldness ever meets with friends. Think continually of those who were truly great. Risk—risk is our business; that’s what this starship is all about; that’s why we’re aboard her. Per aspera ad astra!