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Magazines, Monologues, and More!

I can’t believe it’s already March! It feels like the second half of February went by even faster than the first half did. I've been very busy these past two weeks and a lot has happened since my last post; if you’re interested, read more after the jump!The first major thing that took place during these past couple of weeks was that Oxy Housing revealed Room Draw numbers for the 2012-2013 school year! For those of you who don’t know, Room Draw is the process that determines on-campus housing for rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Even though I got an incredibly good room draw number (7 out of 528!), I’m actually hoping to live in themed housing next year. Occidental offers several types of themed housing, from gender-neutral rooms in Rangeview Hall to Pauley, the Multicultural Hall. I chose to apply for a custom theme in Norris Hall (not to be confused with the Norris Hall of Chemistry). The theme that I am a part of is named after a quote from Socrates,“The Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living." We hope to use our theme to promote critical thinking, philosophical inquiry, and open-mindedness on campus. Right now Oxy Housing has yet to approve our application, but they said they would contact us with a decision by the end of next week.

(Picture source: http://www.oxy.edu/residential-education-housing-services/residence-halls/themed-housing) During this time period I also signed up to be an editor for Feast Magazine, the annual arts and literary publication here at Occidental. The magazine features a variety of original artwork by Oxy students, and it’s currently set to be released in the first week of April. It’s still in the fledgling stage of accepting submissions, but after Spring Break things are going to rapidly pick up speed, so you will be hearing much more about Feast from me as the publication date approaches (including details about the release party)!

Image source: http://on.fb.me/zOUs1R Apart from these new extracurricular activities and my academic workload, I’ve spent some time going to several awesome student events! One of my favorites was the 9^th annual showing of “The Vagina Monologues,” a student-run stage production that criticizes misogyny and empowers women through the performance of various monologues. The show was very powerful; I found myself laughing and cheering and crying throughout the entire production. I definitely plan on going to next year’s show, and I highly recommend you do so too. For more details about The Vagina Monologues, The Oxy Weekly published a superb article about it which you can read here: http://bit.ly/wAby1R Another event I went to was a dance hosted by one of the Greek organizations here at Oxy, the locally chartered sorority Delta Omicron Tau. It was their annual Semi-Formal dance, and I had an absolute blast! I really loved getting dressed up, meeting new people, and dancing like there was no tomorrow. Here are a couple of photos from the night:

. That’s it for now! If you have any questions regarding topics I covered in this blog post, feel free to contact me at jchilds@oxy.edu.