**Wednesday, Mar. 14 —** Faculty members filed two consecutive reports of receiving threatening and suspicious e-mails. **(1)**

p. **Sunday, Mar. 18 —** Two students were arrested for drinking in public and underage alcohol possession in Dawson Circle. **(2)**

p. **Tuesday, Mar. 20 —** A student reported larceny of a barbecue grill from the porch of Unit K. **(3)**

p. **Wednesday, Mar. 21 —** A laptop computer estimated to be worth $2,100 was stolen near Jamestown Road **(4)**

p. **Thursday, Mar. 22 —** A student was charged with a DUI and petit larceny after being found in possession of parking signs and cones near Jamestown Road and Burns Lane.

p. **Friday, Mar. 23 —** A College student reported that a bike worth $350 was stolen outside of Taliaferro Hall. **(5)**

p. **Saturday, Mar. 24 —** A student complained about noise in the Grad Complex Building. Police visited the building and asked students to refrain from making noise. **(6)**

p. — Two students were arrested behind Landrum for drinking in public and underage alcohol possession. **(7)**

p. — Police were called to Unit C to investigate defecation on the first floor common area. **(8)**

p. **Sunday, Mar. 25 —** A student was arrested on Blair Drive for drinking in public and underage alcohol possession. **(9)**

— A resident assistant in Old Dominion Hall reported a broken window in room 111. A student corroborated the story by reporting that she had heard someone banging on the window before it broke. **(10)**

p. **Monday, Mar. 26 —** A male student reported an estimated $400 worth of damage to his vehicle parked outside of William and Mary Hall. **(11)**

— A student in Unit C filed noise complaint against students in Unit D who told the police they would turn down the music. **(8)**

**1931**
Dr. J.A.C. Chandler, former president of the College, chose to abolish the student activities fee, citing issues with how to allocate the funds. Most of the problems dealt with funding for publication organizations, since many group leaders were unwilling to work without pay.

p. **1969**
A list of approximately 400 students’ names that allegedly used marijuana on campus was found to be false, according to narcotics agents that investigated the issue after the report was filed. Several faculty in the Dean of Students office denied that a list ever existed, but an informer for The Flat Hat reported that drug investigations were made to keep track of the prevalence of drug usage at the College.

p. **1981**
New elections for senior class president and vice president were ordered after the Student Association Council’s Election Committee voided the results because of potential fraud. The committee determined that as many as 10 ballots were given to ineligible voters.
Laurie Brewer, who won by a margin of two votes, contested the new election.

p. **2000**
Lynn Garland, a College ballroom dance club instructor, was shot and killed by her fiance in what local police called a murder-suicide. Police found no motive, nor was there evidence of forced entry that suggested the involvement of a third person.

Since opening this past fall, attendance at the new Recreational Center has increased.

p. Faculty and student use of the Recreational Center has increased, but compared to last year, attendance during the day is more spread out. Director Linda Knight said it is now easier to find available machines and open courts.

p. The new facility added about 30,000 square feet, including a two-story climbing wall, a multi-use court, two group fitness rooms and a juice bar.

p. The facility is also environmentally-friendly and has achieved Leed Certification, an award for using natural construction materials. Knight said the College Rec Center is one of very few centers to achieve this standing.

p. “Materials from the project were recycled, and we reduced water flow,” Knight said. Environmentally-friendly rubber and floor paint were also used, as well as low-emitting materials that are “not putting chemicals into the environment. It’s not a lot, but it’s helping the environment,” Knight said.

The following numbers were provided by Phil DiBenedetto, resident district manager of dining services. They include lost and broken items as well as stolen and ones. During room checkout at the end of the semester, Dining Services will put boxes in dorm halls so that students can easily return items.

p. **The Caf**
Approximately $15,328 worth of plates, bowls, glasses, forks, knives and spoons have to be replaced every year.

p. **The UC**
$16,123 worth of serviceware items are replaced every year.

p. **Per student**
Each year, Dining services spends $7.67 per student on a meal plan to replace all serviceware.

p. **Glasses**
The dining halls lose between 120 and 150 glasses each week.

p. **Silverware**
The dining halls spend just under $1,000 a week to replace silverware.

In an effort to increase biodiversity, beautify the area and reduce the smell of decomposing soil, junior Andon Zebal, along with members of the Student Environmental Action Coalition and Botany Club, worked for the past three years to plant arrow arum, a common marsh plant, in the sediment retention pond behind the Student Health Center. According to Zebal, by planting these small marshes, the organic compounds of the soil that collects in the pond will be used up instead of being left to be broken down by bacteria which cause the stink around “the Swamp.”

p. While many students consider the pond an eyesore, without it, contaminants from the soil around campus would be dumped into Lake Matoaka or the Chesapeake Bay.

p. “In the past, before retention ponds were required by the [United States Environmental Protection Agency], Lake Matoaka was serving as an unintentional retention pond while the City of Williamsburg and the College campus developed,” Professor Linda Morse, a member of the geology department, said in an e-mail to The Flat Hat. Mandated by Virginia state law, the pond must be drained once every five years. The next dredging is due in three years.

p. “When I was a prospective [student], I walked by the swamp and thought ‘Hey, I can fix this,’” Zebal said in an e-mail to The Flat Hat. As a freshman, he suggested planting in the retention pond at an environmental meeting. Dr. Randy Chambers, a wetlands ecologist at the Keck Lab, was receptive to this idea and suggested arrow arum. With the help of SEAC and later the Botany Club, the pond has been seeded once a year for the past two years.

p. This year, with the help of Student Assembly senators Zach Pilchen and Walter McClean, both sophomores, Zebal petitioned the SA to pass the Wetlands Reclamation Act, which allocates $892.50 from reserve funds to purchase Virginia wildflowers to be planted in the swamp. “We want to take the swamp and turn it into something not smelly or hideous-looking,” McClean told The Flat Hat in February, after the bill was passed. “It’s good for the campus and good for the wildlife area.” The seeds bought with the SA’s funds were planted during the weekend of March 24.
As a junior, Zebal now faces the task of finding someone to continue his duties after he graduates at the end of next school year.

__Bloggers, Pilchen, Potter use YouTube, Facebook and personal websites to sway voters__

p. I expected him to have a ghostly pallor. I expected him to smoke cigarettes in a darkened corner and to stare at me with beady eyes from beneath the wide brim of his fedora. I guess I expected the College’s first Student Assembly political blogger to be a 20-year-old Matt Drudge. What I didn’t expect was a smiling figure with a cheerful disposition who laughed and, between sips of his Daily Grind chocolate milk, spoke passionately about the current SA campaign.

p. Sophomore David Husband has made it his mission in this election cycle to try to educate the student body about the candidates. In a series of Facebook notes, worth 27 single spaced pages when read from beginning to end, he has chronicled the issues and twists that have come to characterize the current SA campaign. Mixing summary with endorsements and his sometimes contentious analysis and opinion, the resulting articles make an obvious effort to present a fair depiction of all parties involved regardless of any personal political beliefs. His best, perhaps skewed, estimate is that his articles have reached between 1,000 and 1,500 people

p. “I wouldn’t be writing these notes if I didn’t enjoy it,” Husband said. “But I also did it to reduce the information cost necessary for the student body to analyze these candidates. It takes a lot of time and effort to have a firm grasp of what’s going on in the SA, and I wanted to help lower that threshold for people.”

p. Husband’s notes, while impressive on their own, are indicative of a larger movement toward technology-based SA campaigns. The first large-scale sign that the nature of campaigning is changing probably became evident with the burst of Facebook campaign groups that have appeared each spring for the last few years. Seeing the success that many have had with this new medium, candidates have been driven to utilize an ever-increasing number of channels to reach constituents, leading to an arms race-like style of campaigning.

p. “I do think that the technology has changed since I got here four years ago,” current SA President Ryan Scofield, a senior, said. “When I first got involved there was no Facebook, no YouTube, so all of that has really brought something new to the campaign — it allows the candidates to showcase their creativity in a new and different way.”

p. Perhaps the most notable change this year has been the prevalence of YouTube videos during the election cycle. The first videos, representing two different races, came out March 19th — almost a full two weeks before Election Day. The hit counts for the videos soon numbered in the hundreds.

p. Sophomores Zach Pilchen and Valerie Hopkins, presidential and vice presidential hopefuls, presented their platform via voiceover while showing images of the two interacting with different members of the community, all of which was accompanied by the familiar refrain of the “The Eye of the Tiger” theme from “Rocky III.”

p. They quickly followed the first effort with a second video focusing on their program for preventing sexual assault on campus.

p. Junior Matt Brown, a candidate for VP of Advocacy who created another video that also appeared March 19, took a slightly more exaggerated approach to his clip. While his movie presented familiar images of the candidate interacting with the community, Brown played on the clichés of normal state and national campaign advertisements in order to present his platform with a high degree of wit and irony.

p. These movies, which quickly came to dominate the campus political discussion, left many wondering if and when the other candidates would respond. Husband, in notes that came out at the close of the first week, wrote that “the first video of the Pilchen-Hopkins ticket was out the very first day campaigning started and seems to have been a very successful video. Lots of people seem to have viewed it, and it provided a broad overview of the ticket and its goals.”

p. He went on to say that, with the timing and production of the overwhelming shift in the use of technology, there is a sentiment among some that, when we see results reported in the future, it’s not the new methods but the older, more personal ones that will be vindicated.

p. “What hasn’t changed, and is maybe the most important part of the process, is the personal connection, the meet and greets and all of that,” Scofield said. “Making the effort to actually get out and talk to people, rather than just taking five minutes to type a message onto a website, really makes a huge difference, and that’s what really shows a candidate’s worth.”

__Defense Secretary, ‘65, will speak at commencement__

The College announced this morning that U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, ’65, will deliver the keynote address at the College’s May 20 commencement. Gates earned a B.A. in History from the College before receiving an M.A. in history from Indiana University and a PhD. in Russian and Soviet history from Georgetown University. He joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1966, where he worked for 27 years as an intelligence official, working under six presidents.

p. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush appointed Gates the director of the CIA, where he served for two years.
Gates left the government for academia in 1993, eventually becoming president of Texas A&M University, where he remained until receiving his cabinet post last December. That post – unanimously approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee – came after the resignation of then-secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
According to Professor of Government Alan Ward, Gates’ appointment represented an ideological departure from George W. Bush’s original administration, particularly from Rumsfeld. He said that Gates’s politics and character were more analytical and reserved than the “neocons” that surrounded Bush since 2000.
Since his appointment, Gates has been instrumental in reforming and shaping American foreign policy, particularly in Iraq and Iran.
In a statement released this morning, College President Gene Nichol commended Gates’ achievements.

p. “Bob Gates’ service to his country – and his alma mater – reflects the compelling tradition of public engagement that distinguishes William and Mary, long the wellspring of American leadership,” Nichol said. “Already he’s reminded us, in his short weeks at the Pentagon, why so many think so much of his service.”

p. Gates was an active member in Alpha Phi Omega and the Young Republicans while at the College. He also worked as an Orientation aid and was the Business Manager of the William and Mary Review, the College’s literary magazine.

p. His participation in commencement exercises will be his first visit to the College since receiving his cabinet post.
The College also announced that civil rights advocate William T. Coleman Jr. and alumnus William M. Kelso, M.A. ’64, will receive honorary degrees at the graduation ceremony. Coleman is also the former secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation. Kelso is the director of Archaeology for the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities and the Jamestown Rediscovery Project.