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Entries Tagged as 'education'

Wellesley High gets accreditation warning

The Townsman reports that WHS has been placed on accreditation warning status by the New England association that monitors such things. The school needs to clean up its act in several areas, according to the article, which cites remarks made by Principal Andrew Keough before the School Committee this week:

The school needs to work on curriculum; assessment of student learning; and community resources for learning, according to the commission’s six-page letter.

Deepest, darkest secrets of Wellesley College women revealed!

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“I am in love with a 61 yr old woman,” “I change my ipod to Bach at crosswalks, because I would be mortified if I died getting hit by a car while listening to SPICE Girls,” and “ha ha ha ! no silly, I’m not here because of affirmative action…so you can stop staring now.”

Those are just a few of the secrets voluntarily and anonymously exposed by Wellesley College students (and highlighted in The Wellesley News) as part of a program launched this fall by the school’s Campus Wide Diversity Initiative. Students submitted at least a couple hundred decorated postcards to the project revealing their innermost secrets for all the campus to see as part of a public display that has been shown at the student center among other places.

The project is inspired by the PostSecret web site, which since the start of 2005 has done the same thing but on a much broader scale.

At Wellesley, some debate has emerged (such as in the Counterpoint magazine, Wellesley College’s “journal of campus life”) over whether exposing secrets is cathartic or just another way to keep people from expressing themselves face to face with other humans. Organized discussion has taken place on campus to review issues raised on the postcards and students plan to issue reports for the administration on their findings.


What is Wellesley?

Wellesley College’s comedy troupe gets a plug on a recent episode of the “Jeopardy” TV show

Babson students present “The Piano Lesson” Nov. 13-15 for free

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Babson’s TheatreWorks and Black Student Union present the play.

Location:               Sorenson Theater at Babson College

Dates and times:   Thurs. Nov. 13 at 8:00pm

Fri. Nov. 14 at 8:00pm

Sat. Nov. 15 at 8:00pm

Wellesley Players to perform “Tribute” Nov. 20-23 at Babson

Tribute play

Ticket info here.

School redistricting needed in Wellesley?

The issue has been raised in an annual enrollment report to the Wellesley School Committee in light of student enrollment increases, particularly at Fiske, according to this Globe report.

Kaps feeling economic woes

Don’t mean to give the Kaps menswear stores a free plug, but they’re sounding pretty desperate. From the looks of the big ads in their windows on Central St. in Wellesley and in the newspaper you could almost mistake the retailer for one of those “Going Out of Business!” Oriental rug joints. A big ad in the front section of today’s Boston Globe exclaims that Kaps is having an “unprecedented” sale of up to 50% off merchandise in light of “an unstable economy and troubled times” that has “forced us to re-examine our business” in order to raise cash. Kaps has been around since the late 19th century.

And speaking of the economy, Babson’s Michael Chmura reflects on the writiings of the school’s founder, Roger Babson, including his book “Cheer Up!” that in 1932 encouraged those suffering from the Great Depression that “prosperity always returns.”

Wellesley High principal attempts to clear air on Facebook/drinking episode

Wellesley High principal Andrew Keough recaps the actions of two weeks ago after he received an anonymous email containing photos from a WHS Facebook page of what appeared to be “risky/illegal” behavior on the part of students. The incident involved students being called into administrative offices as part of an investigation that had students crying in hallways and some parents scrambling to delete their kids’ Facebook accounts. Keough says the situation was awkward for him in that while he doesn’t believe in getting into students’ outside business, he does have certain responsibilities for the behavior of student-athletes that require him to report possible code-of-conduct infractions. He said the situation took on a life of its own, with rumors of arrests and “two foot stacks of photos” swirling (neither proved true). In the end, “students receiving consquences represented less than one percent of the student body…,” he wrote.

Wellesley High plan gets big thumbs up at Town Meeting

New Wellesley High

Roughly 91% of Town Meeting members last night voted in favor of the town moving ahead on its $130.6 million Wellesley High School building project. Next up: a debt exclusion vote being put to residents in December. More from the Townsman.

Babson prez inaugurated in Second Life

Babson\'s schlesinger inaugurated

Babson president Leonard Schlesinger’s inauguration this past Friday didn’t just happen in real life, it took place in the Second Life online virtual community as well (as you can see, standing room only). If you don’t know what Second Life is, that probably means you have a real life, but here’s the scoop.