Irene Rojas, The Flat Hat. Students dress up and swing the golf club at Kappa Delta’s 12th annual Campus Golf tournament Saturday.

The Committee on Religion in a Public University heard the history of the Wren Chapel at its second meeting yesterday afternoon as it began the process of studying the issue in order to later make an informed decision about the Wren cross policy.

p. In its first meeting Feb. 23, the committee determined that it needed information on the topic before presenting a conclusion in the form of a written report to College President Gene Nichol, who announced the committee’s creation in his State of the College address Jan. 25.

p. Most of yesterday’s meeting was spent learning about the chapel and the cross’s history from Director of Historic Campus Louise Kale.

p. The committee learned that the cross has been removed before. After Sept. 11, 2001, the cross was removed to create a quiet, welcoming space for students of all religions.

p. “Since then, the Chapel has seen an increased use of students just dropping by; it seemed to dawn on students that it was not a tourist part of the building,” Kale said.

p. Vice President for Student Affairs Sam Sadler made this decision, and he called Kale to see it through.

p. “It was not seen as any kind of statement; it was very much a no-brainer,” she said. “It’s been done other times, such as for a World Aids Day service.”

p. The committee posed questions about the diversity of the chapel. Kale verified that the chapel has been used for gay and lesbian unions, and the cross has been replaced with alternate religious symbols for other ceremonies. Meese remarked that he had recently seen a 1966 picture of a Torah on the altar.

p. However, Kale has never been asked for the cross to be removed in a request for private use. The committee’s resolution to obtain more information led to the formation of two subcommittees at the last meeting — one to find appropriate speakers for the overall committee to hear and one to compile information on public university and religion policies. These subcommittees met individually since the last meeting and reported on their progress since then.

p. History Professor LuAnn Homza, who chairs the subcommittee looking for speakers, reported that they compiled a list of potential speakers. They presented this list to the provost, who approved it. If the invitees accept, the speakers will address the committee sometime between March 19 and April 6.

p. “They will provide a large intellectual and legal analysis of the President’s actions and the reactions to those actions,” Homza said.

p. Committee co-chair and Law Professor Alan Meese presented the data-gathering subcommittee’s progress. His group is focusing on other public and private universities in the College’s peer group, including Virginia state institutions, “Colonial Colleges” and public schools that have or have had chapels.

p. Meetings with student religious organizations included Wesley Foundation, Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, Catholic Campus Ministries and Canterbury Ministries.

p. “They were very, very helpful meetings; we saw a broad spectrum of points of view,” Livingston said.

p. The subcommittee will have a meeting March 6 with Campus Ministers United. The next meeting of the complete Committee on Religion will be March 21. It will be public, though not open to comment; however, at 7 p.m. that day, there will be another meeting during which public input will be allowed.

The Virginia legislature unanimously passed a bill Feb. 23 prohibiting the state’s universities from punishing or expelling students who seek mental health treatment for suicidal tendencies.
The legislation, sponsored by Democrat Delegate Albert C. Eisenberg, comes after several suicides at the state’s institutions in the past 10 years.

p. According to Vice President for Student Affairs Sam Sadler, the bill also responds to the expulsion of a George Mason University student last year. GMU dismissed the student after he expressed suicidal thoughts to school counselors.

p. Sadler said that the legislation would have little effect on the College, which already has an outlined mental health protocol.
Sadler added that the College has never — and never will — expel a student for having suicidal thoughts.

p. “We just don’t do that,” he said. “We do have a specific policy for suicidal students. If a student says ‘I’m going to kill myself tonight,’ the first thing we do is get medical attention — the kind of attention that can keep that person safe.”

p. After seeking immediate medical attention, the College must decide whether or not the student is mentally and physically able to continue academic work. To do so, the College follows a “medical/emotional emergency procedure.”

p. According to the student handbook, the MEEP policy allows the College to search for and confiscate a suicidal student’s personal belongings. The College can also suspend the student from academic and extracurricular activities and from residence halls.

p. “When the College medical/emotional emergency procedures are initiated, a student may not attend classes or activities or return to a residence hall until he or she has been given clearance to do so by the Dean of Students or a designee or the Vice President of Student Affairs,” the handbook says. “Failure to comply with the provisions of the College medical/emotional emergency procedure may result in judicial action.”

p. Dr. Kelly Crace, the director of the College’s Counseling Center, said that 10 percent of the College’s 5,500 undergraduates seek counseling during the academic year. Half of those students, Crace said, suffer from depression and anxiety. One third of all students who seek counseling also say that they have considered suicide.

p. To care for depressed students — especially those who are suicidal — Crace said that the MEEP protocol is the most effective. Crace also said that the protocol is enhanced by a four-person system, which involves the student seeking help, Dean of Students Patricia Volp, Director of the Student Health Center Dr. Gail Moses and Crace himself.

p. “Our primary goal is to devise an optimal treatment plan for a student who is suicidal,” Crace said.

p. Crace added that the four-person system addresses all of the students’ emotional, physical and academic concerns. Doing so allows the school to better assess the student’s ability to return to academic and social life at the College.

p. According to Sadler, most students who undergo MEEP soon return to academic and social life. There are instances however, when the College prohibits students from returning to school.

p. “[A student’s] return is based upon a counselor’s recommendation,” Sadler said. “If you can’t be sure that the student can stay safe [at the College], you have an ethical obligation to help that student get a medical withdrawal.”

p. Sadler also said that the program has been very successful.

p. “I do believe that the [mental health] policies, practices and protocols of the College have really been life-saving,” he said.
Sadler acknowledged that the school has experienced some problems with depression, including multiple suicides in 2005. He said that, while any loss of life is tragic, those deaths represented “strange proximities” and did not indicate that the College had an above-average suicide rate.

p. “If you look at William and Mary’s numbers over time, the rate of suicide is about half the national average,” Sadler said.

p. “You’ll be more than just a number.”

p. It looks like an advertisement on one of the pamphlets distributed by the admissions office, but it was one of sophomore Jasmine Lister’s actual reasons for transferring to the College.

p. Reasons for transferring to the College from an equally or more academically challenging university like Lister’s, who transferred from Tufts University this spring, seem less obvious than those of someone who is upgrading their academic atmosphere. However, the reasons read just like the admissions office pamphlets: it’s a great deal, professors are dedicated and the student body is involved.

p. Senior Chrissy Adkison, who transferred from Johns Hopkins two springs ago, was looking for stronger classes outside the sciences, among other reasons.

p. “Many of the social sciences and humanities departments were not very strong [at Hopkins],” she said.

p. Sophomore Raissa Dalusung, who transferred this semester from Wake Forest University, values the small classes here, like Wake Forest. Lister, who was trying to decide between the College or the University of Virginia, felt she would benefit from more attention from professors. In addition, she felt the “preppy” atmosphere of U.Va. played a role in her decision.

p. But transfers considered the student body beyond the basis of preppy style. Talking to friends from the College while at JHU, Adkison felt she was not getting the same general experience.

p. “I was very unhappy with the undergraduate experience I was having at Hopkins. The overall student body was not very interested in student activities or volunteering outside of the classroom,” she said.

p. Talking to friends, she realized she lacked connections with the student community and admired her friends’ fun traditions, school spirit and closeness with professors.

p. “They had great rapport with their professors, were involved in research and got tons of personal attention. The JHU body was very disconnected because everyone was so focused on completing their engineering degrees or competing with each other in the pre-med program,” Adkinson said. “Also, juniors and seniors had to live off-campus because there was not enough on-campus housing. This also led to a greater disconnect.”

p. Junior Stephanie Shaffer transferred from Colby College, which has only about 2,000 students. She transferred from Colby in search of a larger student body.

p. “I transferred because I was looking for a prestigious school with a somewhat larger student body that would offer me the same close-knit relationship between students and professors while also offering an even broader range of extracurricular opportunities,” she said.

p. Sometimes a school does not fit the student’s expectations. Dalusung realized at Wake Forest what she did and did not like in a school, she said.

p. “I’ve heard students say [that their former schools] are just not their best fit,” Associate Dean of Admissions Kim VanDeusen said.
Financial reasons also play a role; as a resident of Virginia, Dalusung felt she would benefit from saving money with in-state tuition without a drastic change in her college experience, since Wake Forest and the College are academically comparable and similar in size.

p. “I felt like I was paying too much for the experience I was getting at Tufts,” Lister said. “Definitely in-state tuition was a great reason for me to transfer. Why pay close to 50 grand a year to go to a school you do not like, when you can pay in-state and still get an excellent education?”

p. The College, often referred to as a “public ivy,” makes sense for residents of Virginia, but it is also worth it to Adkison, who ran into trouble with her Hopkins finances.

p. “At first I had a full ride to Hopkins, but they changed my financial package halfway through the year. I was upset most by how the administration treated me; they acted like it was my fault somehow, and it was bothering them that I was asking for their help,” Adkison said.

p. Despite the fact that she will have some debt after graduating, she does not regret coming to the College, she said.

p. Some had not considered the College when applying as seniors in high school, such as Shaffer, who originally looked at small private colleges, only to end up wanting something bigger. Her father’s friend, a successful judge, suggested the College to her, she said.

p. On the other hand, the College was Adkison’s number one choice in the beginning of her college search, but she decided it would be nice to go out of state.

p. Regardless of the reason for their transfer, they all seem to agree that they made the right choice. They were appreciative of the welcoming student body and transfer orientation program for the transition.

p. “I thought the transition would be harder than it was. Orientation definitely helped make the transition smoother because everyone was really friendly and genuine,” Dalusung said.

p. The workload has been an easy adjustment as well.

p. “Work-wise the transition was easy because the work load at Wake Forest is just as tough,” Dalusung said. “I can definitely say that although Colby offered me a top-notch education, the education provided at the College of William and Mary is equally if not more challenging and intriguing,” Shaffer said.

**1929**
After only 244 out of 700 men passed all of their February academic course work, the College enacted stricter requirements to help reduce the number of failures. Freshmen who failed would be required to attend 10 nights of supervised study hall. Delinquent sophomores, juniors and seniors whose names appeared twice on failing lists in a semester would be automatically separated from the College. Copies of the failing list were sent to faculty to encourage staff to give special attention to the failing students.

p. **1967**
The men’s tennis team had to make daily trips to Ft. Eustis to practice. The old tennis courts were torn down to make room for an addition to Phi Beta Kappa Hall, but the College failed to maintain the courts designated for team practice.

p. **1975**
RAs and the Commons Manager organized a campaign to return stolen utensils from campus cafeterias. The Commons estimated that 3,600 glasses, 2,400 plates and 4,200 pieces of silverware had disappeared. The RA who started the campaign, estimated that it cost the Commons Dining Hall $10,000 a year to replace stolen utensils.

p. **1985**
The Kappa Delta sorority was closed because of low recruitment numbers. The president of Kappa Delta said that half of the members graduated and the number of incoming pledges for the current year was 10. The College had a pledge quota of 34. The sorority planned to reorganize the following year.

**Thursday, Feb. 22** — A 25-year-old man was arrested at 700 Scotland Street and charged with being drunk in public and for defrauding an innkeeper. (1)
— A 41-year-old woman was charged at 600 York Street with assaulting a police officer. (2)
— A 34-year-old man was arrested at 5600 Monticello Avenue and charged with driving under the influence, refusal to submit to arrest and possession of a controlled substance. (3)

p. **Friday, Feb. 23** — A 21-year-old woman was arrested at 1500 Richmond Road for a DUI and refusal to submit to arrest. (4)

p. **Saturday, Feb. 24** — A man was arrested at 100 Nicholson Street and charged with being drunk in public. (5)
— A 35-year-old man was arrested at 200 Scotland Street and charged with being drunk in public and possession of marijuana, marking the fourth time he had been charged with marijuana possession. (6)
— A 46-year-old woman was charged with larceny for stealing health and beauty items from the Food Lion at 1200 Richmond Road. (7)
— A 33-year-old man was arrested for stealing a CD player from the CVS at 1200 Richmond Road. This was the third time he had been charged with larceny. (7)

p. **Sunday, Feb. 25** — A man was arrested on Jamestown Road and charged with vandalism, being drunk in public and underage possession of alcohol. (8)

p. **Tuesday, Feb. 27** — A 39-year-old male was arrested at the 3000 block of Richmond Road and charged with being drunk in public and possession of marijuana. It was her second offense on possession charges. (9)

p. **Wednesday, Feb. 28** — A 24-year-old man was arrested on the 100 block of Merrimac Trail for being drunk in public. (10)
— A 48-year-old man was charged with domestic assault on the 1900 block of Richmond Road. (11)

p. **Saturday, March 3** — a 19-year-old College freshman was arrested at the corner of Harrison and Richmond Roads for stealing an orange construction cone and underage possession of alcohol. (12)
— A 41-year-old male was arrested on the 1200 block of Richmond Road for being drunk in public. (7)
— A 28-year-old man from Newport News was arrested on the 200 block of New Hope Road on trespassing charges. (13)
— A 31-year-old woman was arrested at 1400 Richmond Road for being drunk in public and disorderly conduct. (4)