Mayor Drew Thinks Bookstore is a Good Idea

Originally published at:  http://wesleying.org/2012/11/17/mayor-drew-thinks-bookstore-move-is-a-good-idea/

"Despite all the brouhaha over the potential Wesleyan bookstore relocation—including dissenting voices from Middletown resident Jen Alexander ’88 and Red & Black owner Ed Thorndike ’89—Mayor Dan Drew remains committed to supporting the development on economic grounds. In a press conference on Wednesday, Drew praised developer Bob Landino’s proposal as a potential job-creator in Middletown. As Middletown Patch reports:

“This will bring a $6 million influx of funds into the Middletown economy,” said Mayor Dan Drew. “It will create 30 full-time jobs in the development complex.”
Joining Drew at a press conference in council chamber of city hall were Robert A. Landino, president and CEO of Centerplan Construction; Gerry Daley, longtime chair of the Economic Development Commission; and Larry McHugh, president of the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce.

Drew also compared the model to William and Mary College (though this slab of Washington Street is at least a few blocks from Middletown’s “historic downtown”) and praised Landino’s connections to the Middletown community (read: he’s not from “New York or Boston or Chicago”):

“It’s a model extremely similar to what’s been done at William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.,” Drew said — a university bookstore in the heart of an historic downtown. [ . . . ]
“If this were a developer swooping in from New York or Boston or Chicago that we didn’t know, it would create a tremendous amount of concern,” but, Drew said, Landino is a “known quantity” working with local Realtors, local architects and engineering firms.

Many of the reader comments, interestingly, are in favor of the move—and less in favor of Wesleyan’s involvement with it. As one “Jane” voices:

cant say I trust Wesleyan much with it’s promises to our town- those jobs will probably go to their students not what they call “townies”- people have a short term memory with promises to open the athletic center to our community- its not as accessible as they had us believe-"

For more on the controversies surrounding the bookstore proposal, click here or here.

"No Colored People" Sign Causes Stir at Wesleyan

(Wesleyan) University’s first official celebration of Holi took place Friday, April 27 on Foss Hill...Holi, known as the Festival of Colors, is a celebration of spring...“Holi is celebrated by people throwing colored powder at one another,” said Katherine Yagle ’12, a member of Shakti who helped organize Friday’s event. “[During the festival] in India everyone is intoxicated. There is a lot of dancing, music, and general chaos. People use water balloons and water guns to douse each other with color.”

Last Friday, during the HOLI festival on Foss Hill, several members of Shakti, one of the groups that organized the event, put up signs on the doors of Usdan University Center (Usdan) that prompted broad student criticism and discussion. The posters were intended to prevent festival attendees from entering Usdan while coated in the colored powder that is flung during the event.

(Wesleyan's) President Michael Roth, in an all-campus email, commented on the objectionable content of the Shakti signs.

“Wesleyan’s campus is a place of great multi-cultural learning and festivity,” wrote Roth. “The Holi event is a wonderful example of this. The campus can also be a place of vulnerability and misperception, and the signs posted on Friday for many evoked patterns of injustice and violence that our society has not yet left behind.”

Roth wrote that the incident would be recorded in the Campus Climate Log, and that he had requested that the Student Affairs offices and the Office of Diversity and Institutional Partnerships help in the wake of the posting of the signs."

Much ado about nothing? Your comments please. Read more at:
Middletown Ct Patch : http://patch.com/A-sVhx

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