The Mac Weekly

11/02/2025

‘The quad’ is a staple of the college experience, front and center on almost every campus. The Great Lawn, for instance, serves as common ground for students, faculty and staff to gather as one Macalester community. Our community’s attention has been especially focused on this space following the recent felling of the large silver maple tree central to the Lawn. Facilities shared in a recent Mac Daily that they and Macalester’s arborist agreed that “despite numerous treatments and regular pruning,” the maple “was old and not thriving anymore, and […] became a safety concern.”

As an environmentally-conscious student, an environmental studies major and an avid enthusiast for wilderness and getting outdoors, the remaining stump of the silver maple inspires other ideas of great change for our campus greenspace. While a de facto symbol of community at Mac, The Great Lawn also represents something more sinister that Macalester can, and should, bring an end to: a system of landscaping at odds with Macalester’s values, reliant on anti-environmental practices and connected to a history of oppression.

https://themacweekly.com/83669/opinion/let-it-grow-a-call-to-rewild-the-great-lawn/

11/02/2025

It was meant to be a simple Monday night concert: arrive a bit after the doors opened at 7, listen to the opener at 8, watch the main set at 9 and be home by 11.

Walking out of that venue purely exhausted at midnight after about 3 hours of pure prog rock still felt pretty good, though.

On Jan. 27, Geordie Greep performed at the First Avenue Mainroom in Minneapolis, touring in support of his latest album, “The New Sound,” released in October. Greep is mostly known as the former frontman of the English art-rock-adjacent band Black Midi, ramping up an impressive cult following with only three albums between 2019-2022 before their breakup in August 2024.

https://themacweekly.com/83673/arts/im-a-greep-im-a-weirdo-geordie-greep-grooves-in-minneapolis/

11/02/2025

Between love triangles, mysterious disappearances and aiding foreign governments, you’d think you were watching a James Bond movie. The Coen Brothers’ 2008 film “Burn After Reading” crafts a picture of life in Washington, D.C. that is more farce than force. In the film, a cast of normal, middle-aged people endure a series of hilarious bad decisions and coincidences that leave the viewer grasping for a takeaway. But that is the film’s message: don’t force life, let it happen.

The plot centers around a group of characters, each representing a different archetype of the lonely adult who are brought together by chance but whose fates are intertwined.

Between love triangles, mysterious disappearances and aiding foreign governments, you’d think you were watching a James Bond movie. The Coen Brothers’ 2008 film “Burn After Reading” crafts a picture of life in Washington, D.C. that is more farce than force. In the film, a cast of normal, mid...

11/02/2025

Reminiscent of “Black Mirror” and aligning itself as a sinister version of “The Office,” “Severance” explores what would happen if we could fast-forward between the hours of nine to five. Created by Dan Erickson and directed largely by Ben Stiller, Apple TV’s psychological thriller confronts the confines of capitalism and the complexity of human relationships through parallel narratives — the life of the worker and the life of the person who exists outside of the office. The first episode of the second season premiered on Jan. 17 to the bated breath of die-hard fans, nearly three years after the premiere of season one. But the darker, twisted resurrection of the series has so far proved more than worth the wait.

“Severance” follows Mark (Adam Scott), an employee at the seemingly altruistic biotech company Lumon, who undergoes a procedure to separate his home and work life, leading him to work on the severed floor of the corporate headquarters. The first season introduced viewers to a star-studded cast of characters including Helly (Britt Lower), Irving (John Turrtorro), Dylan (Zach Cherry) and Burt (Christopher Walken), who brought with them many more questions than answers. We learn that Mark’s team works on macro-data refinement, but what does the clicking of numbers on an outdated desktop really do? Do the “severed” employees, known as “innies,” have any control over their work lives? What are the true motivations of those high up at Lumon?

https://themacweekly.com/83682/arts/long-awaited-second-season-of-severance-premieres-in-full-force/

11/02/2025

When Macalester’s men’s and women’s tennis teams face Gustavus Adolphus College this season, Interim Head Coach Chase Johnson will be itching for a win.

For much of his tennis career, Johnson would have said the opposite. He earned All-American honors as a standout on Gustavus’ nationally ranked team as a student, with an overall record of 78-26 in singles and 86-23 in doubles. He went on to help coach the team after he graduated and earned Intercollegiate Tennis Association Central Region Assistant Coach of the Year in 2022. Still, he isn’t worried about split loyalties.

https://themacweekly.com/83662/sports/tennis-welcomes-interim-head-coach/

11/02/2025

On Saturday, Feb. 1, Macalester’s men’s basketball team won a matchup against the College of Saint Scholastica 79-76. Noah Shannon ’26, on the bench due to injury, sported a bejeweled tiger chain that stole some of the Scots’ on-court show.

As he explained: “[Head Coach] Abe [Woldeslassie ’08] said it was a big game today and to show up like we’re professionals, so we showed up like we’re in the NBA … This is actually JP [Kerrigan ’28]’s necklace. He gave it to me, and I said: ‘Y’know what? I’m gonna wear it like a champ!’ … I think we’re all tigers on the court.”

https://themacweekly.com/83685/sports/scots-style/

11/02/2025

It started with a Mary Daley ’27 three-pointer off the assist from Sydnee Smith ’27. A few possessions later, Daley hit a jumper. And then a layup. Just like that, in under four minutes, the Scots had pulled off a 12-2 run to open the fourth quarter against St. Catherine University on Wednesday, Feb. 5.

The Scots came away from that match with a 64-57 win to keep their playoff hopes alive in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC). That 12-2 run in the fourth quarter represents a season-long trend for the Scots. That late-third, early-fourth stretch has been the Scots’ sweet spot. Yet even Head Coach Katie Kollar doesn’t have an explanation for these runs.

https://themacweekly.com/83688/home/womens-basketball-sophomore-scots-lead-onslaughts/

11/02/2025

The Fall 2024 Literary Publishing class celebrated the release of “The Orchard,” the course’s third anthology at the English department coffee house on Feb. 5, highlighting the power of real-world learning applications within the humanities field and celebrating the creative skills of the class’s contributors and editors. English professor Steve Woodward, who has taught the class since 2019, reflected on the experience of watching his students’ vision come to life.

“In these pages, you’ll find engagements with the nature of reality, sharp-elbowed sportswriting, poetic musings on friends and natural disasters and stories that traverse the limits of form,” Woodward wrote in the introduction to ‘The Orchard.’ “In all of them, you’ll find roving curiosity, questing intelligence, and keen observations. These are writers who have something to say and are ready to make their mark on the world.”

The Fall 2024 Literary Publishing class celebrated the release of “The Orchard,” the course’s third anthology at the English department coffee house on Feb. 5, highlighting the power of real-world learning applications within the humanities field and celebrating the creative skills of the clas...

11/02/2025

Sorrel Virginia Hester never expected that they would become a college chaplain. They definitely did not anticipate that, as the assistant chaplain of Christian life at Macalester College, they would lead a group with one of the more intriguing names a reader of the Mac Daily could see in their inbox last semester — “Muse and Munch.”

What started as a text study over the lunch period during Lent, a religious pre-Easter period, in the spring semester of 2024 became a space for all of the Macalester community to discuss concepts relating to collective liberation and “what Christian traditions teach us about it,” as stated on Macalester’s website.

https://themacweekly.com/83697/features/muse-and-munch-the-mac-dailys-greatest-alliterative-mystery/

11/02/2025

On Thursday, Jan. 30, Macalester College Student Government (MCSG) met in the Weyerhaeuser Boardroom to hear a presentation from Associate Director of Health Promotion Rachel Banen ’16. Their agenda also featured multiple items relating to the Financial Affairs Committee (FAC), and remarks from International Student Liaison Laurice Jimu ’27 on recent executive orders from the Trump administration that threaten the status of international and undocumented students in the United States.

Banen began her presentation by defining the meaning and purpose of health promotion as a series of measures intended to prevent injury or illness, saying: “We absolutely need healthcare… But we also need to be asking, ‘What if people didn’t experience [illness] in the first place?’”

https://themacweekly.com/83691/news/mcsg-hosts-health-promotion-discusses-finances-fac-updates/

03/02/2025

Last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began patrolling neighborhoods like mine, on the West and South sides of Chicago. The air feels heavier as families live in constant terror of being torn apart. Amidst the fearmongering, misinformation and “know your rights” posts, undocumented voices are forgotten. We become generalized stories—spoken about, but not to. At Macalester, some of us do not feel valued or supported by our peers, professors, staff or administration.

The issue of immigration is often pushed aside, and it is assumed that the federal government is solely to blame. This dismissal of the realities we face only deepens our sense of invisibility.

Last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began patrolling neighborhoods like mine, on the West and South sides of Chicago. The air feels heavier as families live in constant terror of being torn apart. Amidst the fearmongering, misinformation and “know your rights” posts, undocumente...

02/02/2025

Winter break marked a seminal occasion for insufferable horror movie fans such as yours truly: the release of Robert Eggers’s long-awaited revamp of F. W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu” (2024). Eggers is best known for his folk-horror film “The Witch” and the seamen-centric “The Lighthouse,” but it is his reboot of the 1922 German film as a bleak, grotesque work of Gothic horror that won me over entirely.

I had been counting down the days since the first trailer gave the world a glimpse inside this depraved tale of nauseating seduction, manipulation and a vampire with a . . . delightfully bushy mustache and fuzzy Romanian hat? Work.

Winter break marked a seminal occasion for insufferable horror movie fans such as yours truly: the release of Robert Eggers’s long-awaited revamp of F. W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu” (2024). Eggers is best known for his folk-horror film “The Witch” and the seamen-centric “The Lighthouse,” b...