Ripon College Days

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It's official! The entire campus will be receiving autographed guitars, while the music department will receive all new instruments and equipment, compliments of our newly elected guest celebrity Dave Matthews!

Boy, it's nice to dream isn't it? Senior art major Austin Wenker incorporated his dream into a recent art project for his "Mining the Media" course, instructed by Assistant Professor of Art Ben Potter.

Potter assigned his students to create a public, interactive piece of art. Wenker decided to create a project that would allow the students to vote from 10 celebrities that he believed to be the best representatives who are currently and consistently in the spotlight of the mass media.

"I knew that I couldn't satisfy everybody so I gave the students 10 choices, and the possibility to write in any other celebrity," says Wenker. "I wanted athletes, actors, actresses, pop musicians, and even a chef representing the cuisine world. I wanted diversity in the choices so each race and gender was equally represented."

Each celebrity had on the ballot a fictitious platform in which they would propose different options to better the campus if they were to be elected.

"The project is supposed to represent the views of the student body. My idea behind this is to initiate a non-political means of expression for the campus, and I knew that a celebrity vote would get the biggest response," says Wenker.

Wenker decided not to put a limit on the number of times one could vote because he wanted to encourage "the highest participation rate." The outcome was successful as a grand total of 314 votes were accounted for in 6 days.

"The most enjoyable part was the large response. I was impressed with the number of people who voted," says Wenker.

The top five candidates were Dave Matthews, who received the most tallies (73), with a strong contest coming from the runner up Johnny Depp (55), followed by Paris Hilton (21), Arnold Schwarzenegger (17), and Selma Hayek (14).

Other notorious write-ins included Ripon College's very own Jeff Dodson, David Hasselhoff, Micheal Jackson, Jesus Christ, Keith Richards, Ross Perot, and Ol' Dirty Bastard.

Senior Andy Kanak, also in Potter's class, created an art project that caused some controversy.

"I painted an image of Bush on a bed sheet that I bought from the thrift store," says Kanak. "My initial plan was to hang it somewhere around campus. When I got done painting it, I realized the paint bled through onto the floor. And that gave me the idea to tape the sheet to the floor in front of the doorway, giving students the choice to walk on it or over it."

Kanak's project received quite a bit of interesting feedback, both against and in favor of the piece.

"Nobody directly communicated with me but people picked up the sheet off of the floor three times the first day it went up, and then it eventually got stolen," says Kanak.

Disappointment in the presidential election was Kanak's motivation for this piece.

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