What to Do Weekly: 2/27 - 3/6

(Poster by Louis Roberts ‘22)

I could say that there’s nothing to do this week, but that would be a LIE! Here’s this week’s What to Do Weekly—enjoy!

1. Get your comic on. Chris Ware, American cartoonist of New Yorker fame, is coming to Skidmore courtesy of the Tang and you should get excited. As part of the Winter/Miller Lecture series, Chris will be on hand for a book signing at 5pm and talk at 6pm on Thursday, Feb. 28 in the Tang atrium and Payne room, respectively.

2. Go see the Blackbox. Opening night for Men on Boats, the upcoming theater production, is this Friday, March 1 with performances running through March 7. The play tells Jaclyn Backhaus’ original story with “performers who embody ANYTHING OTHER than our country’s most historically dominant group of people.” See them shake things up on sage this week and next!

3. Eat for a good cause. Look, I know there’s a food festival on nearly every one of these lists, but I can’t help that upstate New York has a thing for low-cost samples. This weekend’s indulgence is mac-n-cheese as Siena College hosts their 10th Annual Mac -n- Cheese Bowl to benefit the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York. The event will be held at the Marcelle Athletic Complex (a.k.a. MAC—I can’t make this stuff up) in Albany on Sat., March 2, from 11am-2:30pm.

4. Hear live music Skidmore style. Lively Lucy’s is putting on a Skidmore band-only show at Falstaff’s this Thursday, Feb 28 at 8pm featuring three great acts (Kickball, Tiberius and Nu-Note, a nu band on campus you can read more about here!). There will be indie, R&B and some things in between, so come out for a good time.

5. Figure out your major. Yeah, this seems like a good idea. Good thing Exploremore, Skidmore’s two-week advising block, is still going on. Events are hosted daily by different departments so that students can best figure out what they’d like to pursue. Know what you want? Maybe you don’t! Don’t know what you want? Great! These panels are for you.

Philosophy Club: From News Headlines to Kanye West

College may be a time for learning big ideas, but it is also a time to interrogate them. And what better place to do so than Skidmore’s Philosophy Club? Every week, the Philosophy Club meets to try to answer big questions, ranging from the philosophy of love to the philosophy of Kanye West. Skidmore News sat down with Amanda Marlowe, club president, along with board members August Rosenberg, Maximillian Lowe and Meghan Tucker.

Students do not have to be philosophy majors to join the club; in fact, many of their members are from all different sorts of majors. “What I like about Philosophy Club is it’s like a little of a departure from real philosophy,” said Lowe. “Philosophy majors come occasionally, they usually provide a different perspective, but I’d say maybe some people have taken one philosophy class, or people don’t know anything and just come,” added Tucker.

How exactly do they come up with their different discussion topics? “Sometimes [we] pull from the headlines,” explained Lowe. Other times, however, the topics are a bit more out-there, like when they covered Kanye West in a past meeting.

The meetings generally start with a topic and a few discussion questions from the board, who then let the conversation flow freely with some moderation. Rosenberg explained that the club uses “gentle reminders” to keep the conversation flowing and to ensure everyone has a voice in the discussion.

“We don’t want to make it feel like we’re in some kind of straight-backed, academia classroom-tense space,” explained Marlowe. “We just want to make sure that if someone maybe is talking for a little bit too long, we’ll say ‘does anyone have something to add?’”

The Philosophy Club’s goals for the semester include becoming an official club, working on their partnerships with other clubs and increase their presence on campus. Despite the club’s existence for quite a long time, currently it is not ‘official’ — or, as Lowe put it: “It was a philosophical thing genuinely for a while.” Now, however, the e-board hopes to change that.

The club has some exciting partnerships coming up this semester. “In just a couple weeks we’re partnering with Feelgood, which is another club on campus that is working to end world hunger and do it in a sustainable fashion,” said Marlowe. The Philosophy Club is going to join Feelgood at their grilled cheese stand in Case and ask people about their decisions about where to spend their money, which will then lead into the following week’s discussion, “Why do we want to be good; is it selfless or selfish?”

The Philosophy Club meets on Mondays at 5:30 in Ladd 207. They’re always welcoming to newcomers, and you don’t need any background in philosophy to show up. “There’s no prerequisite of knowledge of any philosophy of philosophers, so we try to make it an open environment for anyone who wants to come and share their thoughts,” said Marlowe.

The Climate Crisis: Two Perspectives, United in Rationality

On Thurs., Feb. 7, Skidmore students filed into Gannet Auditorium for the annual policy debate hosted by Skidmore’s Honors Forum. This year, the Honors Forum chose a topic that is more than a little controversial – climate change. Specifically, the two speakers were to debate if the issue of climate change constitutes a true crisis.

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