Move Out Madness

This is a picture of the area in front of Canterbury Hall at St. Mike's on Friday.  Friday was the last day of finals week, and the day most people picked to move out on.

Normally our Public Safety officers are rather strict when it comes to enforcing parking regulations and keeping the different parking areas (zone permits, general permits, faculty/staff areas) free of interlopers. But even they don't bother on Move Out Day. Handicapped spot violations, fire lane violations, people parked all over the lawn...it was like Mad Max out there.  Never mind all the passive-aggressive reactions of people blocked into a space by parents struggling to fit their kid's furniture into the trunk like it was Tetris...

The Continuing Saga of Asher Roth

Though Asher Roth's opening set for the St. Michael's spring concert was canceled over a week ago now, the controversy over his invitation-and-subsequent-uninvitation rages on.

First of all, the S.A programming folks announced Roth's replacement. Local hip-hop group The Aztext will be opening for Lupe Fiasco tomorrow night.

However, a sizable and vocal group of St. Michael's students won't be seeing either act, as they're planning to boycott the concert in protest of Roth's absence. One St. Michael's student, Kate Reynolds, emailed Roth to tell him that students were disappointed in his cancellation, and that it was just "a few administrators and a few 'gender studies' students" that wanted the show canceled. (Quotes around "gender studies" were hers, not mine.) An associate of Roth's posted Reynolds's letter to Asher Roth's blog, along with a video of Roth calling Reynolds. There's also a Facebook event rallying Roth's supporters.

A few of those zany feminists posted their thoughts on the blog and the Facebook event wall, and received a few "fuck you bra-burner"s in response. Classy. Unfortunately the pro-Asher people have yet to really present a convincing argument:

• The views of a small group are ruining it for the majority. If the civil rights struggle (or even the more recent gay marriage debates around the country) have taught us anything, it's the majority cannot be allowed to decide the rights of the minority. When a group of students at SMC feels uncomfortable, offended, and hurt, it's pathetic to expect their concerns to be ignored so that everyone else can get their party on as usual. Besides, it's not just "gender studies" students, or the Center for Women and Gender that were upset. Hell, I'm a straight male journalism major and I was opposed to Roth's concert from the start. Pretending that six people conspired to ruin the fun for the other 1,994 students here is absurd and grossly inaccurate.
  
  
• Roth is just depicting college life as it is. Too bad not all of us can afford (or want) to treat college like it's a teen movie. And yes, girls get objectified at college parties — why is that okay to glorify? Just because that's what happens? It might be too close to reality but that doesn't make it alright. Unfortunately, too many people enjoy the college culture of female objectification to think about changing it.

• Roth has songs with positive messages, too. Uh, that's great, but having a positive song and having a song called "Rub On Your Titties" do not cancel each other out. Not how it works.

• Roth is the victim of censorship. I don't think anyone is denying his constitutional right to say what he does. But Roth does not have the constitutional right to get paid by our tuition money to play a concert at our school. Canceling his concert is not censorship, it's deciding who you want performing for (and representing) your campus.
  
  
• If you don't like Asher Roth, you just shouldn't go to the show. I haven't liked the last two spring concert acts, so I didn't go. This is beyond a sense of dislike. St. Michael's is like home to me and everyone else here, and any performance on-campus means someone is coming into our home. Plus, it sends a message about the school to the greater community — and I'm not okay with Burlington associating me with the college that wants Asher Roth. Maybe that doesn't matter to the people whose social life doesn't extend beyond the 300s townhouses, though.
  
  
• Everyone in hip-hop talks about stuff like this. Yes, so Wyclef Jean, who came to SMC last year, also has questionable lyrics. That doesn't set a precedent. I'm glad our campus has become more conscious in the past year. So you hear songs with similar content on the radio — they shouldn't come to our campus, either.

I don't understand how so many people now think next year's spring concert will now be Raffi, Celine Dion, or the Jonas Brothers, as if there's nothing in between these acts and Asher Roth. UVM's Springfest is headlined by Ratatat — apparently a good choice, since the show is already sold out. St. Anselm booked Third Eye Blind for their spring concert this year. Just a few years ago, St. Mike's had The Roots — a hip-hop group with socially aware lyrics. All of these acts would make for a successful spring concert, likely without sparking controversy and hurting feelings. (They're also all way more artistically relevant, but that's a different argument entirely.)

So, Asher Roth fans, stop blaming hippies, feminists, or evil administrators for ruining your Friday night. Grow up.

For those who aren't boycotting the show, it's Friday night at the Ross Sports Center at St. Mike's.  Doors open at 7:00, show starts at 8:00, and tickets are $20 for SMC students and $30 for everyone else.

Asher Roth Dropped

St. Michael's students who love college, drinking, women, and college again (in that order) are waking up disappointed this morning. Asher Roth, the "I Love College" singer who was announced a few weeks back as the opener for Lupe Fiasco at the SMC Spring Concert April 17, has been dropped from the bill due to outcry from students, faculty and staff.

A campus-wide email from the Student Association Secretaries of Programming last night said that Roth was being canceled because his images and messages are "obviously inconsistent with our institutional mission," which I think is code for "People are understandably pissed."

My feelings on the matter are known, and yes, I'm very pleased with this decision. I sincerely believe that a college is represented by who it brings in for concerts, and being represented by a disposable act who so obviously panders to the lowest common denominator wasn't very comforting. Oh, and the blatant misogyny in his video and his songs like "Rub On Your Titties" (charming, isn't he) was pretty awful, too. Having that on my campus would have been far from my proudest moment at this school.

So while I'm still concerned that no one on the S.A. Programming Committee saw anything wrong with Roth's music and videos when they were considering him initially, I'm glad they were willing to listen to the campus community who didn't want to be represented by sophomoric, sexist nonsense.

Thanks to the St. Michael's Center for Women and Gender, and everyone else who let their feelings on Roth be known — and thanks to the S.A. for making the right decision in the end.

Of Onions and Rock Bands

Enough about student government/media drama for a while. Let's discuss more important things: the arts. Today's a big day for arts of the written, visual, and musical kinds at St. Mike's.

Today is the release date for the 2009 edition of St. Michael's annual literary arts journal, the Onion River Review.  The Review contains poetry, prose, paintings, drawings, and photography, and competition is tough every year to get in. I'm impressed every year at how professional and well-curated it is (and I'm not just saying that because I finally got a photograph accepted this year). There's a release party tonight at 6:00 in the Hoehl Welcome Center, but if you can't make it, you can grab a (free!) copy of the Onion River Review at locations around the area, including Crow Bookstore and Muddy Waters in Burlington and the Green Closet in Winooski.

Later tonight, Higher Ground hosts three St. Michael's bands, all graduates of our campus's Saturday night Turtle Underground concert/open mic series. The headliner is Cadrin, a four piece rock band. The band's titular singer-songwriter, Tom Cadrin, received a lovely review in Seven Days late last year with his previous album, and his music is even more well-rounded with a full band. Cadrin's music is blends emotive, singer-songwriter rock music with prog/math-rock influences like odd time signatures and all kinds of unusual structures. The band's got some chops. It's like pop-rock for music majors.

Opening the show are Fink, a jammy rock band that reminds me of Dispatch or O.A.R. plus jazz, and Free Louis, a scarily-tight bunch that will bring the heady instrumental jams. Show starts at 8:00 and tickets are $10.

Do You Know Where Your Campus Newspaper Is?

So I was walking through the Alliot Student Center on Friday morning when I noticed something awry in the west doorway to the building. This area is where most free publications are dropped off — Seven Days, a variety of free magazines, and the bulk of the copies of The Defender. Well, this past Friday, I noticed that all the copies of The Defender were gone. There were four stacks in that very spot the day before.

I knew people had taken a heightened interest in campus media this week, but that seemed a bit excessive. It was difficult not to wonder if the disapperance was related to the unflattering stories about the S.A. E-board published in The Defender and The Echo earlier that week. But then again, the story about the E-board's food purchases broke too late to be published in print. The top story in the paper was the (relatively less ugly) story about a potentially invalid S.A. amendment vote. (There was a lovely picture of a St. Michael's student working with Dominican children on a service trip there too, but no one ever gets worked up about those stories...)

Of course, Friday was the beginning of Family Weekend and the next day was an Accepted Students Day, so a lot of people had an interest in making the campus look as harmonious as possible for this past weekend.

I let The Defender advisers and executive editor know about the disapperence, and in turn the St. Michael's Office of Public Safety and Security got on the case. They recovered the missing bundles of papers later Friday afternoon and returned them to their usual Alliot place. The Free Press picked up the story and published a short story about the situation on Saturday.

The perpetrator has not been publicly identified, though. Was it an S.A. associate angry about the recent negative press? Was it a member of college administration who didn't want parents or prospective students to see any negative news stories? Was it a janitor on their first day of work who didn't know that was the preferred spot for newspapers? Was a party-happy student looking to build a bonfire later that night? We'll never know...

Recently, 3,000 issues of Catholic University's student newspaper were trashed around campus, apparently in protest of the paper's discussion of gay rights. The Student Press Law Center has an alarmingly long list of similar cases around the country. If wannabe censors are motivated to silence a story, it seems that trashing papers only attract more press and attention.

As for the St. Michael's incident...well, I hope future bonfire-starters will consider using wood instead.

St. Michael's Student Gov't Shenanigans UPDATE

Bad day to be a member of the St. Michael's Student Association E-board yesterday. The Defender/Echo published a pair of stories that did not reflect so well on the S.A. E-board: one on how a recent vote on a constitutional amendment proved controversial and may be void, and another revealing that the S.A. President and Finance Secretary have spent student money on personal food purchases.

Transparency has been raised as an issue this semester, largely due to the efforts of S.A. senator Josh Hoxie, the senator who got access to the E-board's budget and exposed the wings/pizza story. The biggest issue has been the fact that an up-do-date copy of the S.A. constitution is impossible to find — hard copies are tough to come by, and only an outdated version exists on the S.A. Web site.

Similarly, the contents of the E-board's budget have been a mystery until now. Student clubs, funded by the student activities fee that's overseen by the S.A., have the S.A. keeping tabs on their budget all year, and the finance secretary has to sign off on all purchases. Thus it's been something of a double standard that the S.A. E-board has had the ability to spend their money in secret, without oversight. Kudos to Hoxie, the other S.A. members who've been pushing for transparency, and the reporters who followed the story.

Last night there was an open forum for the candidates for Student Association positions for next year. About 150 students showed up, and many posed pointed questions to the candidates about budget and procedural transparency, as well as issues of sustainability and social justice. For example, the (unopposed) Class of 2010 VP candidate was asked, after he made a speech detailing all the sweet senior socials we'll have, if he had any plans for the class to make a wider impact in the community instead of just social events. Zing. Perhaps the Barack Obama era really has inspired a new level of political involvement by our generation, even at the college election level.

(Full disclosure note: I work on the staff of The Defender/Echo. I'm the editor of The Naked Opinion though, so I wasn't privy to the details of this story until I was putting it on the Web site just before publishing. I've got my own bone to pick with the school regarding the selection of Asher Roth as our spring concert opening act, which I discussed here, but that's a story for another time...)

UPDATE: As expected, the plot thickens. S.A. president Steve O'Neil, and finance secretary Jon Kaptcianos sent a campus-wide email today, rebutting the claims made against them. They say that the nearly $2,000 was spent on buying E-board members meals in the campus dining hall, so that they could "increase the visibility" of the E-board after their meal plan of 40 meals ran out. $900 was spent on food for finals-week study spaces.

They do admit to some personal meals taken, though. $70 was spent on Wings over Burlington after an S.A. meeting one unspecified night (no doubt that anyone who's ever been to one of those dreary borefests wishes they could have wings on someone else's tab as a reward for sitting through it). About $70 more was spent on pizza for three E-board members on the day in which they were having budget meetings with clubs. Makes sense that they would want some sustenance for dealing with budgets for an entire day — but clubs have been forbidden from using their funds to buy food this entire year, unless the food was for an event open to the entire campus. In this sense, there's clearly a double standard.

Most interesting is that the email claims that the invoices for all of these purchases "are available to anyone who would like to see them." Based on discussions that occurred in public at the candidates' open forum last night, amongst other evidence, this is not the case. I vividly remember last night that a Class of 2011 presidential candidate said he attempted to get access to the budget "several" times and was never successful. Additionally, the article on the food-spending controversy says, "Defender and Echo editors have made numerous requests to review S.A. club expense reports, as provided for in the S.A Constitution. Each request has been denied."

Maybe those invoices are available to everyone NOW, but this transparency has not been available until this controversy blew up.

Student Media Consolidation at SMC

St. Michael's College is served by a pair of student news publications: The Defender, a traditional print newspaper, and The Echo, an online magazine (for which I served as tech editor this past semester). Both publications publish weekly or biweekly, ranging from 7-10 issues per semester in recent years. They also both cover many of the same stories when it comes to on-campus events. Journalism majors at St. Mike's have traditionally had to spend two semesters writing stories for both publications as part of the two Writing for Media classes (typically sophomore year), and then spend at least one semester working as an editor on the staff of one of the two (typically one semester junior year). This is about to change, though, as the spring 2009 semester will see The Defender and The Echo produced by one merged staff.

Defender advisor Paul Beique and Echo advisor Marybeth Redmond will co-teach the combined class, and both have been adamant that neither publication is going away or getting folded into the other — this is very much a merger of equals. Two of the student staff editors from each publication are returning next semester to help lead the merger experiment, as well (including me, again — I'll be the editor of The Naked Opinion, which is sticking around and becoming cross-platform).

The move is largely designed to provide journalism majors with the wide range of media experience they need to graduate into today's journalism world. No longer is it good enough for a reporter to know how to take good notes and write a print story on deadline. The trend now is for "backpack reporters" — journalists who can write, record audio, take pictures and video, and craft a full media package for a story for a print setting and for the Web. While The Defender does have a Web site and multimedia components, it's clear that those elements take a back seat to print stories, in all honesty. Conversely, Echo staff members never have to learn print design. A glance at the Web sites for NPR or The New York Times will quickly reveal just how converged media forms are getting.

So is the merger of our publications at St. Mike's ultimately a good thing? I say yes, but with some qualifications. I personally love new media and multimedia (and that's why I'm a part-time blogger!), so it's good to see my department validating my interests as legitimate. For the journalism majors who aren't as dorky as me and thus aren't as excited to delve into multimedia storytelling, it'll be good to have the department pushing them in that direction. And from a purely practical standpoint, our campus has just 2,000 students, and two publications to cover a campus this small can get redundant. Prominent sources will surely be thrilled to no longer have two reporters begging to interview them about the same story.

At the same time, though, there is something I'll miss about having two wholly separate publications. Though they would both cover major campus events, I always liked how The Defender covered the campus more in-depth, while The Echo tended to gravitate towards more off-campus stories in Burlington or elsewhere in the area. While the publications themselves remain, I wonder how a merged staff will change story-gathering trends. And plus, it never hurts to have an extra voice in the discussion of campus issues. It'll be fun next semester to find out for sure what's gained and what's lost in our student media.

Journalist Evans Rubara Speaks at St. Michael's on Human Rights Atrocities in Tanzania

Coinciding with World AIDS Day on Dec. 5 and the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Dec. 10, St. Michael's College hosted "AIDS and the Denial of Human Rights," a week-plus of programs from Dec. 1-10. Events included film screenings, a rally in support of HIV/AIDS research funding outside Sen. Patrick Leahy's office on Dec. 5, and a talent pageant that benefited the Ilula Orphanage Program in Tanzania. Last night, the series culminated with a compelling and profoundly moving lecture from Tanzanian journalist Evans Rubara in the McCarthy Arts Center.

Rubara spoke of atrocious human rights abuses being carried out in his homeland by multinational mining companies looking to attain Tanzanian gold, tanzanite, and other minerals by any means possible. He showed a documentary film that showed first-hand how companies like Barrick Gold and Anglogold Ashanti displaced entire villages to build large-scale mining operations, moving the villagers to refugee camps in their own country where water and toilet facilities are nearly non-existent. The companies strip the land of its natural resources and sell them, while the Tanzanian government allows them to operate without paying taxes or reparations to the people who have been displaced. Rubara cited one case where over 50 small-scale miners were allegedly buried alive by one of the multinational companies.

These companies have put hundreds of thousands of small-scale miners out of work — some have since turned to prostitution, exacerbating the AIDS pandemic in East Africa. The conditions brought forth by the multinational mining operations have caused poverty and AIDS alike to increase dramatically in Tanzania — and as Tanzanian and other governments turn a blind eye, the problem is only getting worse.

The most enlightening fact of the evening for me was that the American government invests in some of these mining companies. Rubara challenged the near-capacity audience to take the time to write to our congressmen and demand that our tax dollars be withdrawn from supporting the rape of the resources and culture of Tanzania and the inhumane abuse of its people. The plight of the Tanzanians is something I won't soon forget.

For more information on Evans Rubara and his story, check out this story in last week's Seven Days and a profile of Rubara in the latest issue of The Echo.

Free Live Music is the Best Kind

This Saturday, the St. Michael's student radio station WWPV 88.7 The Mike is hosting a double-bill concert for the always agreeable price of free.

The headliner is a band called Grimis, from Boston. They bill themselves as a "rock/folk/jazz" band, and that's actually fairly accurate. They've got the chops and the improvisational spirit of the jam band world, but with the structure and focused songwriting of the indie rock world — similar to bands like The Slip and Apollo Sunshine, both of whom Grimis has shared a stage with in the past.

Kicking off the night will be a progressive rock/jam group called Delta 9 and the Flo, from Connecticut. Fans of Phish and Umphrey's McGee will be sure to dig this bunch.

This all goes down Saturday in Eddie's Lounge, upstairs in Alliot Hall on the St. Mike's campus. The show starts at 7:00 p.m., and once again, it's free and open to all. Here's the Facebook event page.

It's Like Guitar Hero, But Real

Thursday will see the stately halls of the McCarthy Arts Center at St. Michael's College torn to shreds with PURE ROCK'N'ROLL... and some singer/songwriter folky stuff... and probably some noodley jamming... and at least one a cappella group.

The occasion is a Battle of the Bands happening Thursday evening at 7:30 p.m. The lineup consists of SMC and UVM-affiliated artists Maga, Mic Check, The Sepia Tones, Fink, Free Louis, The Billy Collins Band, Fall Line, John Howland, and Davin. A winner will be decided by the august judging panel of Seven Days music editor Dan Bolles, St. Michael's fine arts department chair Susan Summerfeld, and SMC senior Tom Cadrin, who happens to be a fine musician himself. Admission is $3 for students with ID, and $5 for everyone else. All proceeds benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation, so it's all for a good cause.

Who knows...maybe the next In Memory of Pluto or Japhy Ryder, who got their respective starts as SMC students, is in this bunch.

St. Michael's Tries to Go Trayless

Though it inspired nearly-unanimous good feelings across the St. Michael's College campus this week, the election of Barack Obama as our next president was only the second-most-talked-about issue around the lovely college grounds this week. The primary topic of discussion? Our dining hall in Alliot Hall got rid of its trays this week. The trays will return next week, but they'll be gone for good come January... maybe.

The college's sustainability coordinator, Heather Ellis, along with our environmental group, Green Up SMC, have been advocating traylessness in Alliot for much of this year. Champlain, Middlebury, and UVM have all been trayless since at least last year, but trends take a while to get out here to Colchester. Sodexo and the Student Association finally sponsored this week's attempt at traylessness. To their credit, both sources have been behind the move, with the Student Association distributing a few emails and flyers touting the positive reasons behind getting rid of our trays.

Obviously the environmental benefits would be numerous, as each tray takes 11 oz. of hot water to wash, not to mention the soap and chemicals that are required, as dining services general manager Hank Strashnick says in this article. Indeed, a sign was displayed in the dining hall on Thursday evening announcing that 920 gallons of water had been saved during the first three days of trayless Alliot. The hope is that traylessness will reduce the amount of uneaten food wasted by students, as well. Apart from the green benefits, the costs saved by not having to wash trays will be put towards the planned "fourth meal" program, where the dining hall will open late at night on weeknights — just in case three meals a day of delicious Sodexo college food weren't enough.

Still, the SA and Sodexo have taken pains to make it clear that this is merely a pilot program, and that the plans to go totally trayless in the spring semester could still be called off if this doesn't go well. And there has, in fact, been some outcry towards the no-tray movement. Why? Well, because it's just too damn hard to carry all that food without a tray!

Listen: if you're eating enough food that it requires more than one trip to the serving area, then you could probably use the exercise.

A final decision on whether or not Alliot will, in fact, go permanently trayless next semester has not yet been announced. Despite the complaints, I'm confident that the SA and Sodexo will realize the extensive benefits and make the change permanent. Because it'd be absolutely pathetic if we sacrificed the very extensive environmental and monetary benefits of dumping trays just because a few people can't be bothered to make a second trip to get their extra bowl of pasta and cake.

More coverage on trayless Alliot is available from our two campus media sources, The Echo and The Defender. Notice how the kid in the second picture of The Echo's article swiped a tray from the small pile that's been left for disabled students. What a badass.

St. Michael's Economics Professors Receive a "Manifesto"

Strange times in the St. Michael's economics department. An anonymous letter was taped onto the doors of the economics professors on Sept. 18. The St. Michael's newspaper The Defender has the scoop:

...the same document was found published on multiple Web sites under the title of the True Cost Economics Manifesto, part of a campaign featured on www.adbusters.org. The campaign, which began prior to 2005, invites readers to sign the manifesto and take part in True Cost Economics, a concept aiming to create a “new economic paradigm,” according to adbusters.org.

Intriguing! Check out the article and read the letter. It sure does sound angry. And a bit deranged.

The Defender quotes department chair Reza Ramazani as being "100 percent sure" that this wasn't the work of a St. Michael's student. Though I haven't taken an economics course during my time at St. Mike's, based on what I've heard from those who have, it's a fairly progressive department with intelligent faculty. And other faculty members at the school have high praise for their economics colleagues, especially Ramazani. In short, our economics department are hardly the people responsible for a tanking world economy and environmental degradation.

Lastly, it sure does strike me as lazy activism to simply print out a few copies of a letter. Can't these leftist revolutionaries at least come up with manifestos in their own words? Is that too much to ask? This guy should've taken lessons from the Forest Crimes Unit over at UVM, and figured out innovative use of toilets or something. Now that's a protest.

 

Getting Cultured

This week's issue of Seven Days had an interview with Abigail Washburn of the Sparrow Quartet under the headline "Culture Club," which is a particularly apt headline for St. Michael's students, thanks to our Flynn Center Cultural Pass program.

I know I've spent a fair bit of time on this blog and elsewhere registering my various complaints with my college, but the Cultural Pass is a really awesome idea and a great perk for SMC students. Essentially, students who wish to purchase one just pay a fee of $30 for the academic year, and then get to attend any performance of the 2008-09 Flynn Season. So, for less than the price of a normal ticket to one show at the Flynn, St. Mike's students can attend as many Flynn events as they like during the year. This year I'm going to get to see Abigail Washburn, Cecil Taylor, and Chick Corea and John McLaughlin, all for $30. That's $10 per legend. Brilliant.

Of course these things are what I'm interested in given that I'm a music dork, but it's not just the musical performances that apply. Broadway shows, theater productions, and dance performances are all included in the Cultural Pass too. There's something for just about everyone.

I apologize if I sound like a Flynn sales rep here, but this really is one of the coolest things we've got. Of course Higher Ground and Nectar's (and Tick Tick!) do a fantastic job bringing a wide array of musical talent to town, but concerts at the Flynn are very different experiences that you can't get anywhere else in Vermont. Sweaty, dancey rock club shows are fun, but seeing a jazz legend in a beautiful theater is pretty amazing too. It's really cool that the Flynn Center and St. Michael's work together to make these world-class performances (which are WAY out of the pricing range of the average college student) accessible to us.

An Open Letter to VitaminWater

Dear VitaminWater:

On behalf of the St. Michael's College community, thanks for sending some of your college reps by our campus one afternoon last week in a big fancy VitaminWater van to hand out free samples of your product. I still prefer good old fashioned normal water, and in fact I'll probably never spend any money on VitaminWater, but thanks for thinking of me and my dollar, at least.

And while I'm a little leery of letting commercial enterprises set up shop on campus to prey on our young, impressionable, loan-funded minds, I have a larger issue to pick with you. You see, that VitaminWater van has a hell of a potent soundsystem. And on this day, your college reps chose to use that sound system to blast the music of Eddie Money into the eardrums of all and sundry within a half-mile radius. Yes, Eddie Fucking Money.

This seemed like a questionable choice, from a marketing perspective. While you'd be correct in guessing that the majority of St. Mike's students listen to terrible music, their collective taste skews more towards O.A.R. and Dave Matthews Band than towards Top 40 stars of the late 70's and early 80's. Besides, when I'm leaving the academic quad on a weekday afternoon after a boring class that took much too long, I neither expect nor want to be berated by booming music...especially when that music is Eddie Money. Our relatively quiet campus green is something to be cherished, you know? And those poor kids in Joyce Hall — your speakers were pointed right at them. Not even first-years deserve such a fate.

So, while songs like "Two Tickets to Paradise" and "Take Me Home Tonight" are undoubtedly the cherished classics of SOMEONE's youth...they don't apply to us, much. The next time you roll onto our campus to hawk your enigmatically-named, radioactively-colored drinks, please keep the volume down. Or at the very least, pick better music. I hear Rick Astley goes over real well with the college kids.

Showing Your O-Face

Hey, I'm Tyler. Nice to meet you. I'm a junior at St. Michael's, journalism major/art minor, I like music and food and local beer and long bike rides by the water, etc...

Anyway. All of our freshmen are moving in Thursday to begin that most hallowed of college traditions, orientation. Or as I fondly remember it, the very first time I thought to myself, "Oh, dammit, maybe this school was the wrong choice."

Here at SMC, the new kids are warmly greeted on move-in day by O-Leaders, a pack of neon-clad upperclassmen with entirely too much perkiness and school spirit. Per SMC orientation tradition, all of the O-Leaders have loud, shrill whistles, and use them non-stop. Seriously. All the time. I'm amazed that it doesn't result in half of Colchester calling in noise complaints.

The rest of orientation at St. Mike's unfolds like it does at most other schools. Lots of ZANY and FUN icebreaker games that are supposed to help you make friends. Some larger assemblies, like a hypnotist show, to promote class unity. And, of course, a hilariously over-the-top lecture from a Student Life representative on "responsible decisions" that dissuades nobody from partying. This all culminates in a dance party for the new students and O-Leaders alike (after which comes many first-years' first regretful morning of college).

Now, freshmen/freshwomen/first-years, listen closely here. Your O-Leaders will tell you that the friends you make at Orientation will stick with you for all four years. They might be right, but more likely you'll find your best friends through clubs, classes, service trips, and anywhere else where common interests are the basis for a friendship. They'll also tell you that orientation is the best weekend you'll have in college.  Well, gee, in that case, it's all downhill from there, isn't it? Luckily, they're wrong about that too. If you think orientation is fun, just wait for the weekends you have with friends you know well, and without an itinerary of silly activities you have to go to.

So don't worry, new kids. Orientation might feel like summer camp for 10-year-olds, but it'll be over quick. And then the real fun begins.