On May 29th, hundreds of Portlanders gathered on their bikes at Colonel Summers City Park. From close friends to complete strangers, all came to ride in memory of Mark Angeles ’15, who passed away two days earlier. Leaving the park at rush-hour, the pack of cyclists rode along 39th Avenue, proudly slowing the flow of cars to a crawl. They passed the white bike memorializing Mark on the corner of 39th and Gladstone, the intersection where Mark was struck and killed by truck on May 27th. On June 14th, friends and colleagues gathered to speak at a memorial service, which preceded another group ride around Reed. Yesterday, the Bike Co-op was dedicated to Mark, and the ceremony was followed by one last group ride.The numerous memorial services and bike rides held this summer, as well as the newly-founded Mark Angeles Memorial Fellowship, serve as a visible testament to the profound impact Mark had on this school and, indeed, everyone who met him. Let us honor his memory every time we ride.

My first night on campus — just over three years ago — I went out looking for the party. I don’t really know what I expected, but what I found was a clutch of crusty upperclassmen, crouching in Sallyport sipping 40s (oh! the lost days of Olde English in glass) and keeping a weather eye out for impressionable kids like me.

Emilio Pucci. James Beard. Gary Snyder. Stripadillas. Reedies have always had a reputation for innovation and creativity. Case in point, Emily Merfeld. At first glance, one might think her skirt is just a skirt, but she in fact has turned a shirt into a skirt. The creativity does not stop there! She continues to build on it with the contrasting plum purple of her skirt adding to the orange sherbet palette, starting the year in a burst of color.

If you were asked what the most important political or social development in the United States has been in this past year, what would you say? Donald Trump, right? Nah, or at least I hope not. A healthy amount of you would probably say the continued development and growth of the Black Lives Matter movement, and rightly so. As such, one of the most timely and essential books to come out in the recent months is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me. Taking on the form of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, Coates writes a long essay-letter to his son, describing his hopes and worries about his son’s continued existence in a society that actively destroys black and brown bodies. Coates’s sentiments are heartrending, and one leaves this book feeling both furious and numb. Put simply, Between the World and Me is a Serious Book. But it is also a serious book, which is why I’m not discussing it here today. I’m discussing funny books.