Entries for October 2007

Officials at Arizona State University are inching toward a plan that would raze the houses of five fraternities on the school's prominent Alpha Drive and, in their place, construct a complex that includes new housing, a hotel, and a conference center, along with retail, restaurant, and entertainment venues reserved for the Greek system, the State Press reports. Proponents of the plan (mostly university administrators) like the idea of a cleaned-up and modern fraternity row—one that is also subject to school residence hall policies. But critics prefer the nostalgia of traditional frat houses. "I want my kids to come down in 20 years and live in the same house I lived in," said one brother. "What is a fraternity without a house?" And more important, how can you have a frat party without one?

The Los Angeles Police Department Bomb Squad was deployed to a University of Southern California-owned strip mall after a suspicious object in the parking lot was reported to 911, the Daily Trojan reports. Found in the back seat of a car, the offending items—two fake clusters of dynamite—were part of a suicide bomber Halloween costume belonging to an Army recruiter working at the shopping center. You couldn't make this up if you tried.

The "bomb" was made of "two clusters of red cardboard tubes attached to hemp string and covered in black tape," while other accessories in the car included a "loose, white and purple body-length garment and a scarf-like headdress." A photo obtained by the school's newspaper shows the costumed man at a party with the dynamite strapped to his chest functioning as beer holders. "In my opinion," said an LAPD detective, "he was going a little strong with a Halloween costume that looked like a Muslim [terrorist]."

Despite the wasted time, manpower, and energy, the police were able to make good out of a bad situation. Reports the newspaper: "Officers quickly realized the situation was no longer serious and went to Starbucks for Frappuccino."

In its continuing "boy who cried wolf" saga, an Arkansas State University residence hall just tallied its 26th fire alarm this semester, the Herald reports. "I'm so sick of it," said one annoyed freshman. "People need to grow up." The situation has gotten so obnoxious that the school is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the people pulling the alarms.

A county judge amended his original court order and has called for the removal of all (instead of just one) protesters atop trees scheduled to be chopped down for an athletic center, the Daily Californian reports.

The judge's ruling was met with a shoulder shrug from protesters ("None of us are dismayed by any of this"), but university officials see it as another small win in their continuing legal struggles. "This latest ruling makes it seem even more difficult for reasonable people to see this as a benign protest," said a public relations official. Considering tree life has been ongoing since Dec. 2, 2006, "reasonable people" are likely few and far between.

*At the University of Utah, 200 of the 1,400 red flags representing rape victims treated at the Salt Lake Rape Recovery Center were vandalized, the Daily Utah Chronicle reports.

*A nuclear reactor at Penn State University continues to leak "slightly radioactive water," but school officials assure that "it's an operational issue, but it's not a health issue," the Daily Collegian reports. Where's John Travolta and Julia Roberts when you need them?

A step show after-party at Harvard University resulted in "something of a melee," resulting in more than 20 police cruisers being deployed, a number of party participants forcibly subdued, and two non-Harvard students taken into custody.

The Harvard Crimson reports that the ruckus began sometime after "Knuck If You Buck" was played ("a song where everybody goes wild"). "The crowd started touching each other and bumping into each other," said one witness. "Then I saw a whole bunch of people screaming, and I saw people fighting." Another witness added: "The next thing I know a chair flies by my face, literally 3 inches away."

While the DJ turned off the music and turned up the lights, the fight migrated outside the building into the courtyard. Eventually, the skirmish was brought under control, but not before the commotion could leave a lasting impression on one Cambridge police officer: "We haven't seen this many bodies since the Red Sox won the World Series the last time."

Between the Aqua Teen Hunger Force fiasco and the MIT student arrested for wearing an electronically-enhanced shirt that Logan International Airport security thought was an explosive, Massachusetts has had its fair share of bizarre bomb scares. Now, there's an empty Keystone Light box at the University of Massachusetts to add to the insanity.

The Daily Collegian reports that last week a custodian discovered a box with a battery attached to the front and a note reading, "If this is moved it will explode." The school immediately evacuated several buildings and sent the bomb squad to investigate.

Turns out the gussied-up beer box was part of a class presentation about the book Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill. The prop was used to show "how easy it was to build a bomb with directions he found on the Internet." Turns out it's also pretty easy to cause small-scale campus chaos.

The unofficial, unsanctioned return of Chief Illiniwek passed under the politically correct radar this weekend at the University of Illinois homecoming parade, the New York Times reports. Chief Illiniwek and other Native American imagery have been officially "retired" by the Illinois Athletic Department, but the school's chancellor lifted an Illiniwek ban on parade floats by invoking the First Amendment. According to the Daily Illini, the school's statement said, "The University values free speech and free expression and considers Homecoming floats, decorations, costumes and related signage all representations of such personal expression." More than a thousand spectators were still sporting Chief Illiniwek gear at the parade, and no protesters showed up to challenge the ban's reversal. So much for moral outrage.

*Several female students at St. Louis University have received anonymous E-mails attacking their modesty, the University News reports. The seven identical messages have been sent over the course of seven years, but officials have not been able to determine the identity of the sender because the messages do not originate from a school account.

*In an attempt to stave off "reverse culture shock," one Brigham Young University professor wants to help returning missionaries adjust to regular life as typical lazy, time-wasting Americans, the Daily Universe writes.

*A brewery at Indiana University coordinated the launch of its new black beer with a fundraiser for the Exotic Feline Rescue Center, the Indiana Daily Student reports. Now if only someone could rescue the growling and clawing 2-year-old caged black panther that was the "guest star" at the event.

At the University of Wisconsin's Freakfest, an organized event that features live DJs and bands, 300 law enforcement officials will flood the streets of Madison to try to control the estimated 50,000 homecoming revelers, according to the Badger Herald. With memories still fresh from 2002's riots, which left State Street stores looted, burned, and vandalized, police hope the recent years of costumed peace will continue, the Daily Cardinal writes.

The city of Athens—home of Ohio University—has put its own method to the madness, with concerts plus a massive costume contest, according to the Post. The raucous party is a huge draw for non-OU students all over Ohio. Less than half of the revelers arrested last year were even college students, and not all of those students were from OU. The voices of reason have offered the Post's readers some easier-said-than-done advice to stay out of trouble: "Use common sense with drinking, and know your limits."

Down south, the Reveille reports that Louisiana State University is bracing for "its own little parade of freak shows" at its annual State Street block party, and on the West Coast, UC-Santa Barbara police officers are cracking down on every law imaginable: "We have a zero-tolerance enforcement posture for all crimes alcohol-related, party-related—anything that you can think of," a sheriff's department sergeant told the Bruin. "Drunk in public, open containers, minors in possession of alcohol, indecent exposure, and loud music ordinances [are] all zero tolerance." Isla Vista residents must also obtain Halloween parking permits to park their cars near campus, and perhaps most drastically, police have asked UCSB students to not invite their outsider friends. The nearby wildfires have already strained the resources of Santa Barbara, and the arms of the campus have become metaphorically more closed. A letter from UCSB's chancellor to neighboring schools' newspapers reads, "We hope that your students will consider the risks and possible penalties of coming to Isla Vista this year and decide to stay away for their own safety and protection." It's all fun and games until those handcuffs chafe against that bright-blue Superman spandex.

Two University of Michigan students were arraigned Wednesday on charges relating to a 2006 online attack during student government elections, the Michigan Daily reports. Each are facing a felony charge of use of a computer to commit a crime, with a maximum penalty of four years in prison and a $5,000 fine, and also misdemeanor charges of interference with an electronic communication device. Neither student offered a comment to the Daily reporters.

In the midst of voting during the March 2006 election period, the website of one of the school's political parties was attacked by a computer program designed to overload the site's servers. That party eventually lost most of its races by slim margins, and the arrests are the latest in a saga in which the college's top three student government parties were almost disqualified for elections violations amassed during the process.

Law enforcement, not surprisingly, deems student government election fraud a low priority, which explains the 19-month gap between the incident and this week's arraignment.

It's official. Facebook is ridiculous. For just $240 million, Microsoft has secured a 1.6 percent stake (yes, there's a decimal point there) in the social networking site founded by Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg, the Harvard Crimson reports. That values the company at $15 billion and makes Zuckerberg, with his 20-percentstake, a $3 billion man. The deal ends a three-way fight over Facebook between the software giant and rivals Yahoo and Google and also blows away rumors that the Microsoft offer would value the company at a mere $10 billion. In other news, Zuckerberg has become the sexiest Harvard dropout since, well, Bill Gates.

*Minding its reputation for cutting-edge cool, the Ivy League is home to an online Risk tournament, the Daily Princetonian writes. Like the classic board game, students vie for world domination—good practice for a privilege-filled future.

*For its upcoming rivalry game against the University of Missouri, the University of Kansas will be searching for a phrase to replace its "Muck Fizzou" slogan on game day T-shirts, the University Daily Kansan writes. The school will hold a contest looking for a "clever but not vulgar" shirt. What's so vulgar about "muck?" And "fizzou," for that matter?

Wildfires may be closing schools all over Southern California (UC-San Diego, San Diego State University, and Pepperdine University have shut down), but a bomb threat in the Midwest brought midterms to a screeching halt at the University of Minnesota, the Minnesota Daily reports. The school canceled class late Tuesday, and several buildings were searched and evacuated after an E-mail stating no specific time and a handful of possible locations was sent to a university account. That E-mail was originally sent around 9:45 a.m., but it wasn't discovered by university personnel until 3:45 p.m. Luckily for the school, no bomb was found.

What's the fastest way to get outed on those anonymous professor evaluations? Write antigay comments and death threats, and then get reprimanded for your unnice words. That's what happened to one University of Georgia student who has since written an apology letter and a "1,200-word essay on how his remarks affect the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community," the Red & Black reports.

While the university went as far as hiring a handwriting analyst to confirm who wrote the nasty remarks on the evaluations, the LGBT community is angry, saying the university was slow in its efforts to find and punish the perpetrator of the antigay remarks. "Just last week, Columbia had a very ugly racist incident," said the teacher involved in the incident, referring to the noose hung on a professor's door at Columbia University. "At one institution, nothing is done. At another, the university president goes public."