Skip to main content

Back to Mac



After a procession of flags, bagpipes and even a mime, Macalester welcomed students, faculty and staff back to campus last Thursday, Sept. at the 2023 Opening Convocation in the Leonard Center. The event, previously known as First Thursday, marks the start of the academic year and is the first school-wide event for new students. This year, Opening Convocation featured keynote speaker Brian Lozenski, associate professor of urban and multicultural education, and highlighted the life and career of Leona Tate, who received an honorary degree from Macalester.

In 1960, Tate became one of the first Black children to desegregate a public school when she, along with fellow students Gail Etienne and Tessie Provost, attended McDonogh 19 Elementary School in New Orleans. In 2009, she established the Leona Tate Foundation for Change, which is dedicated to preserving the stories of the civil rights movement as well as promoting racial equality. She has been working with Macalester and teaching Macalester College Bonner Scholars about school integration since 2013. President Rivera, who conferred the degree, praised Tate's commitment to civil rights.

"Today, we honor you [Tate] for your abiding activism and leadership -- and for the countless people you have inspired to take action to build a more just world," Rivera said.

After presenting Tate's degree, Rivera introduced Lozenski, who is also chair of the educational studies department. Lozenski focused his speech on the difference between "school" and "education" and what Macalester students will take away from their four years. Lozenski likened "school" to the mechanics of classrooms, tests, papers and grades, while defining "education" as the actual knowledge and learning one acquires.

"One of the major things we try to teach here in educational studies is to try to understand the meta conditions that frame education," Lozenski said. "We can all be here at Macalester, and some of us are going to school while others are being educated. Which one's happening for you?"

Lozenski then encouraged students to find their own "education" at Macalester.

"Talk to the staff, talk to faculty, talk to your friends," Lozenski said. "Dare to confront the world outside this campus. Dare to take a risk and explore something that feels too challenging. Don't go to class because you want to, go to class because you have to. Because you need to."

Macalester College Student Government President Mariah Loeffler-Kemp '24 also spoke at Opening Convocation. In her speech, she urged students to take advantage of the opportunities they are afforded here.

"I know Macalester has its hiccups sometimes, but when you put it into perspective, we are all so lucky to be here and to be here together," Loeffler-Kemp said. "Which is why we need to make the most of our time that we get to have here, to build friendships with our classmates, to learn from our professors, and to gain insight from our staff, to be able to build real lasting relationships within this community and to build a community in which people like all of us belong."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Osho Quotes on Meditation

Osho Quotes on Meditation If tea-drinking can become a meditation, then anything can become a meditation — cooking or washing your clothes, any activity can be transformed into meditation. And the real sannyasin, the real seeker, will transform all his acts into meditation. Only then, when meditation spreads over all your life, not only when you are awake in the day — slowly slowly it starts penetrating and permeating your being in sleep too — when it becomes just part of you, like breathing, like your heartbeat, then, only, have you attained to the discipline, to the essential discipline of Zen. Meditation means: drop all thoughts, drop all ideologies, drop all knowledge. Drop the mind itself. The mind is constantly talking. If the inner talk can drop even for a single moment you will be able to have a glimpse of no-mind. That’s what meditation is all about. The state of no-mind is the right state. It is your state. Millions of people miss meditation because meditation has taken on...
2 comments
Read more

Im a mum I save time doing my kids lunches using savvy hacks its easy

EVERYONE parent will know just how crazy the mornings can be when you're getting the kids ready for school. From prepping their lunches, to getting them washed and ready - time can fly by. But one savvy mum has shared just the hack to help speed up the process in the mornings. The mum, who goes by the name of Azure MacCannell on TikTok, has revealed a super time saving trick. She preps all of the sandwiches for the week, and freezes them. Azure has two lines of separate pieces of bread next to each other, On one line she spreads peanut butter, and on the other line she spreads jam. Azure then places the bread on top of each other to make a sandwich, before using a crust cutter to make the sandwiches into smaller squares. She then puts them into a big container and freezes them and use them "as needed." Azure also freezes the crust for "delicious French toast sticks." The video attracted thousands of likes, with many rushing to the comments section to share their...
Post a Comment
Read more

Osho on Witnessing technique

Osho on Witnessing technique – You can witness breathing, you can witness the thought process in OSHO INSIGHTS ON MEDITATION Osho – Societies will come and go. You will take birth and you will die and many lives will come and go, and many, many clouds will pass through you. But the inner sky – AKSHAT – remains uncorrupted, virgin. But you can become identified with clouds. You can begin to feel that ”I am the clouds”. Everyone is identified with his own thoughts which are nothing more than clouds. You say, ”my thought,” and if someone attacks your thought, you never feel that your thought is being attacked – you are being attacked. The sky is fighting – fighting for clouds because some cloud has been attacked. The sky feels, ”I am attacked!” The sky was there when there was no cloud, the sky will be there when there is no cloud. Clouds add nothing to the sky. And when clouds are no more, nothing is lost. The sky remains itself totally. This is the nature – the inner sky, the inn...
Post a Comment
Read more