April's always strange. The weather's so good, I feel stoned. The warm sun, cloudless blue sky, emerald lawns and blooming flowers soothingly beckons me to come outside and wham! The end of semester crunch time. Only one week to go...

Thanks for voting on the colors!

Went to the awards ceremony. I thought Provost looked somber when giving her speech.

In addition to the faculty member I mentioned, I asked two of my profs about this hoopla. The first one mentioned what you've heard a thousand times by now—her now legendary non-charisma. The only times she made eye contact with him were when he talked to her during a formal meeting. When they walked by each other, she never acknowledged him. She's mostly cold and distant. Weiner's cool by his book. Knew Stern but not well.

The class talked about Dr. Anderson. Him not making it to the final round pissed off black students. But in this class, a black student said she heard that during his interview, he compared racism at Gallaudet to the apartheid South Africa, and that spooked the committee and/or BoT. All hearsay, mind you. The prof said it's also that Dr. Anhderson isn't as qualified as everyone thinks—he didn't have much experience in the field of education, for instance.

The second prof was hesistant about discussing the candidates directly but one thing she could confidently say is that she's on the same page with the students about JKF.

Know what's interesting? All of the 3 faculty members are hearing. They're not wild-eyed deaf militants. That shows that students' concerns are legitimate, not just a mindless backlash to what happened last fall. Not only that, students are also forming committees to respond what's happening and a good number of faculty members are in them. JKF's only friends are IKJ and the BoT.

Weiner's presentation: pleasant and cliched. Inclusion, diversity, blah blah. Said absolutely nothing that surprised or impressed me. But he's possibly the least divisive of all candidates—he is a known commodity in Kendall Green plus he can connect to people.

Stern's presentation went great tonight. Extremely articulate. He was able to give good yet honest answers to every question thrown at him. When asked about the lack of experience in higher education, he said it's true that he doesn't know everything yet, he won't be afraid to ask questions. In my opinion, experience is somewhat overrated because anyone'd eventually gain experience in the role he/she's given. Potential, on the other hand, is something people can't just "gain", and Stern has it. Looking forward to JKF's turn.

'Nitey nite.

I think I may be too hungover to blog. Blogging's my favorite way to warm up before working on a paper. See see. Impt try best.

The night started with...church. After eating at a restaurant with my parents, cousin, aunt and uncle, we went to watch a play about Jesus. I went only because my mom begged me to. I had no heart to tell her that I'm not religious at all—it'd be the worst thing she could hear. She'd prefer to find out that I'm a murderer and a Christian than an upstanding agnostic citizen. I'll tell her someday anyway. The play wasn't bad after all—I didn't really pay attention to dialogue, but the production was beautiful.

I saw Jennifer, a blast from the past. Her sister Rachel was the first girl I've had a crush on. We were 13. She was a hearing daughter of the deaf preacher of my family's church. I didn't really notice her until one night my family were at her home and she handed me her cat with a shy smile. I noticed how pretty she was. I found out she thought I was "cute". My heart went a-fluttering.

The next time I saw her was at a new year eve party. I didn't know what to say to her. So I hit her with a pillow. Harder than I meant to. She cried. I apologized later. She glared at me. But when I saw her at church, her shy smile returned. She started coming to the deaf sunday school "class" instead of the hearing one. I still didn't know what to say to her. I'd ignore her and talk with my cousin, who turned out also had a crush on her. He didn't know what to say to her either. Oh the memories...

Usually I hated getting up early on Sunday and had to drag myself to church. All the sudden I was always bugging my parents to hurry or we'd be late. They must've thought I caught some serious Jesus fever.

Then the church kicked her preacher daddy out, because he jettisoned a popular deacon for telling a Gally student God would be down with him joining a frat. I saw her only once since. We were 19. We finally had a real conversation. She was still gorgeous. But I felt a bit sad for her—her life was so constricted and sheltered. She went to small Christian schools all her life. What did she know about real life?

Not too long after, I heard she married a Christian man. Gave birth to a boy. Divorced because the guy was a beater. Since they were forbidden to co-habit before marrying, she didn't know until it was too late. All of her sisters, 2 of them, married when they were very young too and all of them divorced with children. I felt bad for them—they're really good women who happened to be raised on dogma.

Then I heard that Rachel got married to a deaf man with one arm. My first reaction was to feel even sorrier for her—her stock had fallen so much, she was marrying a one-armed guy? Then it occured to me he could be a great guy who's just missing a limb. They now have 4 kids.

Jennifer asked me if I was married. I said no. She was like, "Oh you definitely should take your time! I think all men shouldn't be married until they're 35. They need to date around first." I could've sworn she meant "sow your wild oats first." Regardless, she's wise.

After the play, I went off to DC for a night of debauchery. Went to a small party then to a "science party". = 5th grade science experiments + beer. Hosted by a grad school student. Then some place called Hell & Heaven (the irony of it) @ Adams Morgan. Then a couple of post-parties. KO'd at 6 am. Thank, thank.

My take on the 3 finalists:

Ron Stern: intense, idealistic, gets results. I disagree with Ridor that he isn't qualified—he's a skilled networker who can grease elbows with politicans despite the fact he's culturally deaf. I didn't need gallypreswatch.com to know he's good friends with the governor of New Mexico. One negative is that he can be TOO intense.

Steve Weiner: I don't know much about him, never took a class under him. Heard he's quite personable. But charisma's overrated. Bush was supposed to be more charismatic than Gore and see where he's taking this country. Any substance behind the style? I wouldn't know.

Jane Fernandes: blah. Although the next president doesn't have to be overly charismatic, he/she shouldn't be anti-charisma, either. I talked about it with a faculty member who is pretty neutral, he had this to say about her: she's a capable administrator with poor people skills, and administrating duties fall on the provost position, while the president is more about vision, networking and being the face of the university.

So why might she become the next president? Audist conspiracy theories aside, maybe she has more university-related experience. And of the 3 finalists, she'd be the easiest for the board to control. I'd say Stern's the hardest one to control—I assume so since all of his offsprings are hard-headed and as they say, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. :)

Buck Naked Bison's history. I'd love to see it go on but school and TC are gobbling up my attention and when I do have free time, I wanna chill. A couple of people wanted to take over BNB but didn't follow through. It's hard to stay dedicated to something that doesn't hand you a paycheck, I guess.

Don Tropp told me the Buff and Blue will be online soon.

One nice thing about being a DC area native is that in any given year, there's always at least one good local college team. My #1 team is U of MD but if it sucks, there are always Georgetown, George Washington U...and I never thought I'd say this: George Mason.

Although GMU's based in northern VA, all of their starters came from Maryland. ^_^ Looking forward to their final four game tonite.

A college superstar's reputation crumbled in a matter of minutes because he cried. Has this ever happened before? I couldn't believe my eyes. Adam Morrison of Gonzaga (in Wash. state) started sobbing because UCLA came from behind to take a 2-point lead. The game wasn't even over! His team was only a shot away from winning the game with about 3 seconds on the clock. He just stood around weeping as a teammate's shot bounced off the rim then collapsed on the floor, bawling and covering his face with his jersey. I felt sorry for him—it's gonna take a long time to live that down.

Only two things can happen: after the humiliation of seeing thousands of pictures of him weeping like a 6 year old who fell out of his swing, he goes into a tailspin and become a dud in NBA...or he channels his anguish into becoming a great player and make everyone forget what happened. There's no between.