A Blog on McConnell Center Life

Evan Clark ('20) Prior to my travels in China with my fellow McConnell Scholars, I predicted the planned visit to the site of the terracotta warriors near Xi’an would be one of the most captivating of the trip. When my friends and I finally toured the pits in which the terracotta warriors stand, the sights exceeded my expectations wonderfully. The attention to detail in the armor of the terracotta warriors, their meticulous system of ranks, and the painstaking work of the archaeologists who labor over the course of months and years to reconstruct broken warriors impressed me tremendously. Above all, I noticed the stunning qualities and arrangements of the terracotta warriors as works of art and windows into ancient history took precedence over the role of Qin Shi Huang as their commissioner. Qin Shi Huang, the first ruler to unite all of the warring Chinese states of the third century B.C. and the first emperor of China, had commissioned that the terracotta army be bu...

{Bookshelf Recommendation } The Frailty of the United States Dr. Daniel Krebs By  Dr. Daniel Krebs James R. Sharp,  American Politics in the Early Republic: The New Nation in Crisis  (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). This immensely readable book focuses on the 1790s in U.S. politics, the decade after the drafting and ratification of the U.S. Constitution until the election of Thomas Jefferson to the presidency in 1800. Many historians, and a wider American public, have generally treated the U.S. Constitution and its political system as a fact, established firmly through the drafting and ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1787 and 1788, and the inauguration of George Washington as first president of the United States in 1789. Not so James R. Sharp.  His book  shows the incredible frailty of the U.S. as a political construct during the first decade of its existence. In fact, Sharp argues, the U.S. nearly broke apart multiple times in violent ...

Miranda Mason ('19) In my last semester as an undergraduate, I attended the 2019 Active Minds National Conference at Georgetown University with the theme “Building a Mental Health Culture”.  The purpose of the conference was to share ideas and advance knowledge about mental health education, advocacy, and awareness.  The presenters explained that stress is “the new smoking”, a factor that can negatively affect physical health, as well as the mental well-being of countless Americans.  As such, the conference sought out solutions to diminish the hold that stress has on us, as well as to de-stigmatize mental illness.  First, the conference explored the features of a successful social movement, so that a mental health movement would be able to follow suit.  If a grass-roots campaign against smoking could drastically reduce the amount of cigarette users, then why couldn’t a movement to change the culture surrounding mental health drastically improve the access...

Kieran Waigel ('22) For as long as I can remember I have always been fascinated by flying. Being able to surf with the clouds is such a surreal experience. On trips I found myself more excited for the plane ride than the destination itself. At 12 years old my parents signed me up for an aviation summer camp at Bowman Field. It was a week-long of ground school classes combined with some flight simulator training aimed at allowing kids who might be interested in aviation to dip their toes in the field. The highlight of the camp was on the last day. I got to hop in an old Cessna 172 with a flight instructor and take the controls during a quick flight around Louisville. A switch flicked in my head during that flight and the second we took off I knew that this was something I could do for the rest of my life.   Following the camp, I looked into ways to continue with flight training, but staggering costs combined with minimum age restrictions (17 years old to get a lic...

Eric Bush ('20) There are two types of arguments. In one, debaters seek the truth; in the other, debaters seek to win. In today’s discourse, too many discussions fall into the latter. In his lecture entitled Bulverism, C.S. Lewis astutely outlines the formula for most modern political debates: “Assume your opponent is wrong, and then explain his error, and the world will be at your feet.” Contrarily, he warns that if one approaches an argument with an open mind to determine which side is true, “the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.” Lewis’s observation is unfortunately accurate. Individuals are expected to take a position and fight for it. Critical self-evaluation has been replaced with self-validation. We tune out dissenting opinions and assume those who think differently than us are wrong or worse, bad people.   I live in an apartment of three McConnell Scholars, all three I might add are active members of the debate society. We argue daily, ...