End of the Semester Crunch

The end of the semes­ter is in sight, and I have a lot of work to do. I don’t fore­see myself writ­ing in the blog very exten­sively in the next month. I’m going to do a rundown/update of what I am work­ing on now and what’s com­ing up.

Post­card Project –Every­thing is mov­ing along well with the post­card project. I will be in India at the very end of May through mid-July to deliver the post­cards that Santa Antia La Union in Guatemala wrote to San­jukta Vikas Coop­er­a­tive in Dar­jeel­ing and col­lect responses. The fonts prob­lem is fixed. Once I actu­ally got the fonts and put them in the right sup­port fold­ers, every­thing was good to go. Maral Minass­ian, a Design & Tech­nol­ogy grad­u­ate stu­dent, is design­ing the book­let of post­cards with the trans­la­tions. (Con­grat­u­la­tions to Maral for receiv­ing an OSI fel­low­ship to do design work for an NGO in Kyr­gyzs­tan this sum­mer!) The Par­sons Stu­dent Sen­ate and the Eugene Lang Stu­dent Union are fund­ing the print­ing of the book­lets in antic­i­pa­tion of events at school about the project in the fall. The pro­gram­ming, includ­ing an exhi­bi­tion and a panel dis­cus­sion about com­mu­nity ori­ented arts and media projects, is being planned in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the stu­dent group Paper Planez, which runs youth pho­tog­ra­phy work­shops locally and internationally.

New Orleans Chase Com­pe­ti­tion — The report is due in a week. We have designed and devel­oped a financ­ing plan for a mixed income res­i­den­tial build­ing in con­junc­tion with an NGO in New Orleans. I have been in three to five meet­ings a week about this for the past month as I am the main liai­son per­son. I am excited about this roll after switch­ing gears fol­low­ing our first trip to New Orleans. I am learn­ing about project man­age­ment as I help coor­di­nate groups of peo­ple who are work­ing very dif­fer­ently from each other on com­po­nents of the same project. We have the finance experts, the graphic design­ers, and the archi­tects. Every­one speaks a dif­fer­ent lan­guage and works on a dif­fer­ent sched­ule. (The archi­tects are my favorite. sh… don’t tell any­one.) I am impressed with everyone’s work. The financ­ing is amaz­ingly com­pli­cated and suc­cess­ful. A lot has to be com­pen­sated for given the ter­ri­ble con­di­tion of the econ­omy. The archi­tects are doing their thing, work­ing nearly non-stop to develop imag­i­na­tive and inno­v­a­tive sys­tems that are respon­sive to the envi­ron­ment in New Orleans and the diverse pop­u­la­tion the build­ing will serve. The graphic design­ers are mak­ing the report look light years bet­ter than any of the pre­vi­ous reports. Com­pe­ti­tion is stiff. We’ll be pre­sent­ing in the final round (pro­vided we make it, which we will) in the first week of May in New Orleans.

Stu­dent Gov­ern­ment — I have been heav­ily involved in stu­dent gov­ern­ment this year, both at the level of Par­sons and at the uni­ver­sity wide level. There is so much going on with this I don’t know where to start. The bot­tom line is that the New School is shap­ing up to have active stu­dent gov­ern­ment bod­ies across the uni­ver­sity for the first time any­one remem­bers. Elec­tions are hap­pen­ing right now for next year’s ses­sion of the Uni­ver­sity Stu­dent Sen­ate (yes, I’m run­ning). For the remain­der for the semes­ter, we are focused on chang­ing the con­sti­tu­tion based on our expe­ri­ence this year, devel­op­ing a bud­get plan for next year, plan­ning a grad­u­ate stu­dent social, and cel­e­brat­ing our vic­tory at secur­ing 24-hour access to the main com­puter labs for a longer period before finals this year (usu­ally it’s only one week of 25-hour access, which is just plain incon­sid­er­ate). Through the Par­sons Stu­dent Sen­ate, we have made amaz­ing progress with the murals peti­tion. The Uni­ver­sity Cura­to­r­ial Com­mit­tee is tak­ing on two stu­dents mem­bers, and we are con­fi­dent that they will be able to con­vince the com­mit­tee to change out the murals for other art­work by the begin­ning of next semes­ter. Par­sons Stu­dent Sen­ate will be hold­ing a pub­li­ca­tions meet­ing to address the large num­ber of appli­ca­tions to the sen­ate for fund­ing of print pub­li­ca­tions. There are also a few events in the works, like a con­cert and a catered study break.

His­tory The­sis — Still work­ing on it. :)

Those are the big ones. I am try­ing to get my sum­mer plans together, as Ethiopia and Brazil are on the slate as well as India. I’ll keep you posted on that as things develop. Now, I’m off to show that his­tory the­sis some love.