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Maine Police Look for Car Flippers
Tweet Share on Facebook November 15, 2007 CommentUniversity of Maine police are offering $1,000 for information regarding a car that was flipped and totaled after the Boston Red Sox won the World Series, the Maine Campus reports. The car's owner—a Maine student and Yankees fan—was on a visit home for his mother's open-heart surgery. "College is stressful enough without kids flipping your car." Yikes, talk about a bad week.
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Trail Mix
Tweet Share on Facebook November 15, 2007 Comment (17)*Harvard University has banned a "data hungry" user from Factiva—a news and information research service—after the academically ambitious offender downloaded more than 5 million articles, almost 55,000 documents per day, the Harvard Crimson reports. The use was so excessive it jeopardized the school's contract with the company.
*The North Carolina fire that killed six University of South Carolina students and one Clemson student has prompted both schools to cancel their annual mascot-burning rituals that precede their rivalry football game, the Associated Press reports.
*A small mouse tripped a power switch and caused a large power outage that affected at least eight University of Minnesota buildings, the Minnesota Daily reports. Power was restored in most of the affected athletic buildings before practices began, but tragically, the mouse did not fare so well. "It got fried."
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Trail Mix
Tweet Share on Facebook November 14, 2007 Comment (22)*University of Massachusetts students are planning a strike (otherwise known as skipping class), hoping to draw attention to contentious issues like student fees and campus policing, the Daily Collegian reports.
*It's wrong to make fun of people doing good things, but the beginning of this Dartmouth story, taken out of context, is too good: "As the holiday season approaches, the Dartmouth Center for Advanced Learning has pledged to pool the money that is usually spent on intra-office gifts to purchase a goat from Heifer International."
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Tree-Sitter Update: The Broken and Naked Edition
Tweet Share on Facebook November 13, 2007 Comment (96)UC-Berkeley's protest has taken a turn for the weird this week. An intermittent tree-sitter fell 30 feet from a supply line between two trees, breaking a wrist and a leg, the Daily Californian reports. Following in the footsteps of a woman who fell and broke both arms earlier this year, the downed protester plans to return to the site once he's recovered in order to resume his environmental efforts.
Meanwhile, around 50 nudists assembled for a photo shoot to protest the fence built around the tree-sitters. The photo, along with another staged in March, is part of the photographer's Tree Spirit Project, a collection of pictures of naked humans with trees. "After a clothed rehearsal, participants peeled off clothing and sprawled over each other along the fence." Inspirational, maybe, but also raising the question: Why can't normal people like trees?
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Iowa Tries to Tame Thirsty Thursdays
Tweet Share on Facebook November 12, 2007 CommentIn an effort to curb binge drinking on Thursday nights, the University of Iowa is doling out monetary incentive for academic departments to hold more classes on Fridays, the Daily Iowan reports. According to the policy, which will take effect fall 2008, the school will pay departments $20 per student per switched class. Suddenly, Friday has become the new Thursday.
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The Fighting Sioux Legal Defense Goes Broke
Tweet Share on Facebook November 12, 2007 Comment (91)After the University of North Dakota's Fighting Sioux (sort of) lost the battle against the NCAA to retain its name, the school finds its legal defense coffers empty and still owes almost $3,000 in legal fees, the Dakota Student reports.
In the settlement, UND must gain approval from both the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and the Spirit Lake Sioux tribe to use the Fighting Sioux nickname. If it doesn't, it has to remove all references to its former moniker from athletic teams and venues by August 2011.
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April Fool's Comes Early for Michigan State Applicants
Tweet Share on Facebook November 12, 2007 Comment (23)Congratulations! You got in. Oops, just kidding!
A "data-processing error" at Michigan State University had 597 applicants thinking they had been accepted to the school, when in fact their status was still pending, the State News reports. Understandably, a potential Spartan lamented, "I was really upset."
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Trail Mix
Tweet Share on Facebook November 12, 2007 Comment*Altercations between two frats that left a brother with a broken jaw have prompted Washington State officials to move 32 freshmen from their chapter houses into the dorms, the Daily Evergreen writes. The fraternities tell the Evergreen the incidents were the result of personal conflicts, not a fraternity rivalry.
*St. Louis University has been debating its Classroom Civility Initiative, a document that classifies misbehaviors from text messaging in class to death threats and gives guidance to professors on how to respond, the University News reports. Sounds like a job for Miss Manners.
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Live Elephant = Ultimate Home Field Advantage
Tweet Share on Facebook November 9, 2007 Comment (3)The University of Alabama's student government is worried about school spirit at football games—and a live elephant may just be their heaven-sent solution, the Crimson White reports. A government resolution points out that other SEC schools like Tennessee (hound dog, 70 pounds), Louisiana State (tiger, 520 pounds), and Auburn (eagle, 14 pounds) have their own live mascots; why shouldn't 10,000 pounds of pachyderm march for the Crimson Tide?
Student officials will begin researching the logistics of an "Operation Crimson Dumbo Drop," since, as you can imagine, "you can't just throw an elephant in the middle of the Quad," points out one student. "It has to be thought through."
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Like Dutch Elm Disease, Tree-Sitting Spreads to Santa Cruz
Tweet Share on Facebook November 9, 2007 CommentInspired by the tree-sitters at UC-Berkeley, activists at UC-Santa Cruz staged their own protest—one that eventually led to a confrontation with police and the arrest of six people, the Daily Californian reports. While Santa Cruz tree-sitters protested the expansion of a biomedical sciences facility into a redwood forest, their supporters allegedly scuffled with police. A spokesperson for the tree-sitters told the Daily Cal that police used batons and pepper spray against the activists. The Daily Cal could not reach the UC-Santa Cruz police for comment. Makes you wish for the days of falling excrement, no?
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