The Clap Your Hands Say Yeah show at The Varsity Theater Thursday night was all smiles, good times and nostalgia as the band (and fans) celebrated their return to the Twin Cities, the release of their comeback album, Hysterical, and lead singer Alec Ounsworth’s birthday. Save for Ounsworth solo shows, and side-projects from various members, this was the first time CYHSY has played the Cities for a few years, and there was no shortage of excitement from the crowd who was eager to see the band who’s been on a mutual break since early 2009 to pursue other outlets.
Opening the show was Milwaukee’s Sat. Nite Duets, a five-piece band that plays tongue-in-cheek, sing/talk alternative tunes who take bits and ques from 90s bands like Pavement and The Dismemberment Plan. I had heard about and seen a few videos from these guys through friends and I didn’t quite know what to expect from their live show. (See: video for “All Nite Long”) But it only took one song to get the room buzzing from their chopped up, blasted energy. Over the course of the set, four out of the five members took turns rotating instruments and lead vocals duties, making it a very exciting and varied set. I definitely recommend catching these guys when they come through the Cities as they probably come through fairly often.
Next up were San Francisco band Waters, the new project from ex-Port O’Brien frontman Van Pierszalowki. The band played their brand of rock-solid, run-of-the-mill indie rock, running through tracks off their recent John Conleton-produced debut album, Out in the Light. Pierszalowki and crew seared through their set with big guitar riffs and even big vocals hooks from the high-pitched Pierszalowki, letting their previous on-stage experience shine through. They played a loud set, but were outmatched by Sat. Nite Duets’ youthful energy.
After Thursday night’s performance, it’s abundantly clear the like their fans, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah know what has worked and what hasn’t in their career as a band. Their 2005 masterpiece (at least to me) is head and shoulders above anything the band has put out. Only in rare glimpses on aforementioned efforts has the band been able to capture the same kind of quirky energy that was delivered on their self-titled debut album. They know this and we know this. Luckily for us, they don’t mind to cater to that fact. What fans were greeted with at The Varsity was an almost full front-to-back revisiting of that album, while only touching on Hysterical and the still-curious Some Loud Thunder briefly – and I don’t think anyone was complaining. After kicking off with “Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away” they broke into their new single “Same Mistake” and quickly reverted back to CYHSY, playing favorites like “In This Home On Ice,” “Details of War,” “Over and Over,” “Skin of My Yellow County Teeth” and closed out the set with the radiant “Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood.” Since being introduced to CYHSY during my freshman year in 2006, I’ve always wanted to see those songs performed by the Brooklyn band. I don’t want to completely discredit the band’s other albums, but they really haven’t captured the majesty of the first release elsewhere, so I, along with the most the crowd, were more than happy to hear our old favorites from a band we’ve loved for years.
Mass. welcomes its first public law school: officials launch national student recruiting drive, citing diversity as top goal.(noteworthy news)(University of Massachusetts School of Law at Dartmouth)
Diverse Issues in Higher Education April 1, 2010 | Cooper, Kenneth J.
A temporary white tarpaulin sign, stretched outside a single two-story building, announces the creation of the first public law school in Massachusetts, the University of Massachusetts School of Law at Dartmouth.
The sign drapes over that of the former Southern New England School of Law, a small private school that gave over its more than $20 million in assets to merge with UMass Dartmouth. The merger, endorsed by Gov. Deval Patrick and approved by the state Board of Higher Education in February, ended a long battle to create a public law school in the state. In 2005, a similar plan had been rejected under Gov. Mitt Romney. see here mitt romney news
News of the historic change reached a wide audience, with aspiring lawyers across the state and country submitting 97 applications the same month the merger was approved. The former school received 23 applicants in February 2009, according to Dean Robert V. Ward Jr.
The UMass Dartmouth Law School was created to build on the diversity of Southern New England’s campus, where 34 percent of 235 students are minority, the highest level of the state’s eight law schools.
Each of the 8,000 minorities who took the LSAT in February was sent information about UMass Dartmouth Law. In addition, administrators plan to work through existing contacts at historically Black colleges.
“For us and the university, minority enrollment is important. It’s the first thing we wanted to do” in a national recruiting drive, Ward says.
Chancellor Jean MacCormack says the law school will strive for diversity, not just for race and ethnicity, but also for older, nontraditional or working-class students. “I’m the first in my family to go to college. My dad was a mechanic. My mother was a waitress,” says the former longtime administrator at UMass Boston.
The school’s geographical distance from large minority populations, however, will require officials to “work really hard to attract diverse students to campus,” says MacCormack. The law school will remain at its current site, three miles from the main campus in southeastern Massachusetts near the Rhode Island border. The economically struggling region is overwhelmingly White and not the most obvious location for a diverse law school, though the area has pockets of African-American, Cape Verdean and Guatemalan populations.
“I think we’ll be attractive from all across the state,” MacCormack says. “But we’re going to put special effort into pre-law programs at colleges and universities that are close to the urban centers” of Boston, Springfield and Worcester.
Affordability will be one attraction for students. In-state tuition will be $23,500, significantly lower than the $38,000 or more that other Massachusetts law schools charge. Out-of-state students will pay $31,200.
About a quarter of students are to receive a 50 percent discount in exchange for committing to practice public interest law in Massachusetts’ underserved areas for five years after graduation. “Wherever you have significant pockets of poverty, you’ll have unmet legal needs,” says Ward.
A 2008 Boston Bar Association study found 90 percent of individuals who appeared in the state’s housing, probate or family courts did not have legal representation. Most of the 1 million low-income residents eligible for free legal aid in civil matters did not get it because of the dearth of available lawyers.
In addition, the state’s bar is less diverse than its population, which is about 9 percent Hispanic and 7 percent African-American, according to 2008 Census Bureau data. Only 3.5 percent of the state’s lawyers are either African-American or Hispanic.
Dr. Richard Freeland, the state commissioner of higher education, said the UMass system had been trying to create a law school at least since 1970. But justifying the need for one has been a hard case to make in a state that houses notable law schools at Harvard, Boston and Northeastern universities. website mitt romney news
“Public higher education has always labored in the shadow of private institutions,” he says.
In recent years, however, the strongest opposition came from three lesser-known law schools in the state: New England, Western New England and Suffolk University. Lacking the prominence of the state’s other private law schools, they feared a growing, state-supported competitor would place them at a disadvantage by offering lower tuition and siphoning off potential students.
Massachusetts is the 45th state to have a public law school. Freeland says it was a “huge missing piece” in the state university system and will provide Massachusetts residents with educational opportunities comparable to what other states offer.
The school will also be “importing talent” from other states in hopes that some nonresidents will set up practice in Massachusetts after they graduate, says Freeland.
“I’m confident this is going to take off and be a real asset to the state,” he says.
To solidify its national appeal, the challenge for the law school is to win accreditation from the American Bar Association. Southern New England, founded in 1983, had been awarding law degrees for two decades with authorization from the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education. Since 1995, the school has also been accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.
ABA accreditation would allow graduates to take the bar exam in every state; currently, they can in Massachusetts and Connecticut only.
Cooper, Kenneth J.
