Williamsburg Mayor Jeanne Zeidler M.A. ’76 announced Jan. 8 that she will not run for a fifth term in the Williamsburg City Council elections this spring. Zeidler has served as the City of Williamsburg’s first female mayor since 1998. She was elected to the city council in 1994, having previously served on the Williamsburg-James City County School Board.

“Together with my colleagues on city council there have been many accomplishments over the past 12 years that have made this city a better place,” Zeidler said in an e-mail. “One of those accomplishments is improving the town-gown relations. That has also been one of the biggest challenges.”

Zeidler’s tenure as mayor saw the purchase and renovation of the city’s Transportation Center as well as the creation of Williamsburg Area Transit, which improved bus routes and provided schedules to Williamsburg residents. Other expansions to the city with which Zeidler was involved include the Prince George Street streetscape project and the High Street development on Richmond Road.

“Mayor Zeidler has been a serious, pragmatic mayor for the past 12 years,” Josh Karp ’11, founder of Students for a Better Williamsburg, a student-run, non-partisan political action committee, said in an email. “Over her nearly 20 years in city government, she’s earned the respect of every member of the Williamsburg community.”

Zeidler spoke with students last October as the last speaker in SBW’s “Meet Your City Councillors” series. The series brought council members Paul Freiling ’83, Clyde Haulman, Judy Knudson and Bobby Braxton to campus in the weeks prior to Zeidler’s appearance.

“I always enjoy interacting with William and Mary students and always feel welcome,” Zeidler said. “My appearance last fall was one of many that I have had on the campus with student groups and classes over the past 16 years.”

According to Zeidler, the atmosphere between students and the city has changed substantially in the past decade.

“Twelve years ago there were no regular meetings between the [College] and the city,” Zeidler said. “Now the [College] president and his chief of staff and the city manager and the mayor meet once a month. One or two times a semester, the mayor, vice mayor and key city staff meet with the leadership of the Student Assembly. Twice each year the president and the mayor, along with their leadership teams, meet.”

In addition, the Neighborhood Council of Williamsburg holds regular meetings with College officials in Morton Hall, and for the past several years the city has produced a special student edition of the new resident’s handbook.

“Mayor Zeidler made the best choices she could given the difficult political climate here in town,” Karp said. “In the past year she has tried very hard to solve town-gown problems, with the Focus Group on Rental Housing and recent legislation increasing occupancy to four people in certain areas around town. I think that she understood how to fix the problems around town, but she wasn’t able to overcome town-resident opposition.”

The city charged residents of nine houses with violating the three-person rule last November. Students proceeded to protest the rule during the Grand Illumination Dec. 6 in downtown Colonial Williamsburg.

“My advice for the next mayor is this,” Zeidler said. “Leadership is restraint; you are first among equals; build consensus and avoid polarization. The most important idea to keep in mind is respect — respect the citizens, respect the institutions, respect the city staff, and respect the other members of the city council. All have perspectives that need to be considered.”

Zeidler’s replacement has yet to be announced. Braxton has not announced whether he will seek the position of mayor. He is one of five city council members who may be selected to fill the position.
Zeidler may be ready to move on, but some are not ready for her absence from city affairs.

To Zeidler, however, it is important that a new face is given the chance to serve as mayor.

“When my term is over on June 30, I will have served the citizens of Williamsburg for 20 years — 12 as mayor, 16 on city council, and before that [four] as a member of the school board,” she said. “I am proud of the accomplishments of the city government and the school division during my service. I believe that an important principle of our democratic system is that others should have the opportunity to serve.”

__Sarah Mellman contributed to this report__

Approximately 200 College of William and Mary students crammed into Blow Memorial Hall Wednesday for William and Mary Supports Haiti’s first interest meeting.

“I am here for the same reason as so many of you,” Kaveh Sadeghian ’12, a member of the organization’s steering committee, said. “We see a tragedy like [the earthquake] happen, and we get this raw, human desire to help.”

A 7.0-magnitude earthquake occurred 16 miles from the capital city of Port-au-Prince Jan. 12, causing widespread destruction throughout the country.

Students at the College have rallied their Tribe spirit to support Haiti’s earthquake victims.

“I know that William and Mary students are incredibly passionate about service,” WMSH member Lamar Shambley ’10 said. “I knew that there would be a group eventually, and I knew it just had to be done to unite the students on campus.”

WMSH’s goal is to serve as an umbrella organization to help campus groups plan events. This includes setting up a universal bank account, ensuring that the donations get into the right hands, and by ensuring that local organizations are chosen as recipients for donations rather than large international charities like the Red Cross.

“Service can be very hierarchal,” WMSH member Mohammad Torabinejad ’10 said. “We want a partnership, a way to make it more horizontal.”

With the guidance of College students and recent graduates who were in Haiti at the time of the quake, Shambley, Sadeghian and three other steering committee members hope to channel fundraising efforts toward Haitian charities that can best help the victims of the catastrophe.

“With the work of Jonna [Knappenberger ’09] and Landon [Yarrington M.A. ’09 Ph.D ’15], we know groups in Haiti who will directly benefit from our help,” Shambley said. “They are smaller organizations, so we can see exactly how we develop a change.”

Both former anthropology undergraduate students, Knappenberger and Yarrington, who is now a graduate student at the College, were in Haiti conducting research when the earthquake struck.

One hope for the organization is to help Fondwa University in Haiti, a new college working on sustainable development for the island nation.

“We all need to know that this isn’t something that’s going to be fixed in three months when it runs its press course,” Sadeghian said. “This is decades and decades of rebuilding we’re looking at, and who better to empower than the youth of Haiti, the generation that will be doing this rebuilding? Groups that are smaller and run by Haitians are essential because they know that rebuilding and restructuring don’t end at food and water. They are going about these essential services with an eye to the future.”

Another organization that is organizing relief efforts for Haiti is Ruritan, a new on-campus service organization. President of Ruritan, Paul Lendway ’10, organized HEART — Haiti Earthquake American Relief Team — as a project to unify campus organizations’ charitable efforts.

“We’ve gotten groups involved from the [International Relations] club to honor fraternities to SOCA [Students of the Caribbean Association],” Lendway said. “The IR club has a deal with the College Deli whereby the deli will give 10 percent of its profits on February 4 to the Bush-Clinton Foundation. HEART is helping with publicity.”

Ruritan is planning a Valentine’s Day fundraiser.

“On Valentine’s Day, HEART is going to make construction paper cut-outs of hearts and sell them at the Sadler Center,” Lendway said. “Any profit we make will go to the Red Cross.”

While both WMSH and HEART are focused on uniting the campus to provide relief for victims of the earthquake, leaders of both projects emphasized that they intend to collaborate on fundraising.

“People know that we don’t need to compete, we’re just all trying to unite and focus ourselves in one direction,” Shambley said. “I just hope William and Mary students stay tuned and involved, even though now it’s a hot topic.”

WMSH member Mallory Johnson ’10 said that she hopes the outpouring of support for Haiti will lead to a continued charitable spirit at the College.

“We want this to be something that will last,” Johnson said. “There is so much to learn from this … We want to make sure this isn’t something that [will] come and go.”

College of William and Mary students Jonna Knappenberger ’09 and Landon Yarrington M.A. ’09 Ph.D ’15 are safe in the United States after enduring the trauma of Haiti’s devastating earthquake Jan. 12.

The 7.0-magnitude quake struck 16 miles from Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, causing massive destruction. 70,000 bodies have been buried already, and estimates of fatalities rise as high as 200,000.

Knappenberger and Yarrington, both anthropology students in the country for independent research, were in the Delmas 17 neighborhood of Port-au-Prince when the earthquake struck.
“All of a sudden we saw the dust in the street rise, and then a water pipe broke,” Knappenberger said. “The best way to describe it is that the earth rolled in and tried to slap us in the face. It was like riding a wave of land.”

At first, Knappenberger said she was not sure if the tremor was normal for Haiti.

“The two [Haitian] friends we were with were on their knees,” she said. “They were our protectors and our friends. When I looked into their eyes and saw their fear, I knew this was abnormal.”
The damage done to the city was tremendous.

“We heard the houses falling down everywhere. People on the street were asking us for help. Landon wanted to help, but it was unsafe to go into the buildings. Every house was damaged,” Knappenberger said.
Following the earthquake, Yarrington tried to gather the people of the neighborhood in order to create some sort of organization.

“He put me in the car to the [United Nations] headquarters at the airport, [and] we were reunited three hours afterwards,” Knappenberger said. “We stayed at the UN for three days [before returning to the United States]. We were very shaken.”

Danny Yates ’13 was also in Haiti at the time of the quake with a five-member church mission group.

“We were in a town called Hinche, 50 miles north of Port-au-Prince,” he said. “The earthquake wasn’t that severe where we were, but the aftereffects were awful. It was worse than any end-of-the-world movie.”

Yates said the number of refugees fleeing to smaller, poorer towns worried authorities, as the towns lack the sufficient infrastructure sufficient to accommodate the large influx of people.

“In Haiti, they are afraid that starvation and violence will cause more fatalities than the earthquake itself, like a ripple effect,” he said.

Yates is concentrating on helping the people of Hinche.

“My effort is to focus on the people I know down there, and their main issue is that they do not have enough food to support the people coming in from the big cities,” he said.

Yates said seeing the abundance of food at the College is especially difficult for him.

“It’s hard for me to walk through the Caf and see how much food we have here, knowing that there are people in dire need in Haiti,” he said.

Knappenberger and Yarrington said they are both focused on helping the victims of the quake they left behind in Haiti.

They are working with William and Mary Supports Haiti to direct relief efforts toward charities that most need the resources.

“Of course groups like the Red Cross [are] incredibly important for delivering food and rescuing people from buildings, but the issues in Haiti go much deeper than that,” Yarrington said. “Groups that are smaller and run by Haitians are essential because they know that rebuilding and restructuring do end at food and water. They are going about these essential services with an eye to the future.”

Knappenberger and Yarrington recommend that William and Mary Supports Haiti’s funds benefit the organizations Sonje Ayiti, SOIL and Fondwa.

College of William and Mary students Jonna Knappenberger ’09 and Landon Yarrington M.A. ’09 Ph.D ’15 are safe in the United States after enduring the trauma of Haiti’s devastating earthquake Jan. 12.

The 7.0-magnitude quake struck 16 miles from Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, causing massive destruction. 70,000 bodies have been buried already, and estimates of fatalities rise as high as 200,000.

Knappenberger and Yarrington, both anthropology students in the country for independent research, were in the Delmas 17 neighborhood of Port-au-Prince when the earthquake struck.
“All of a sudden we saw the dust in the street rise, and then a water pipe broke,” Knappenberger said. “The best way to describe it is that the earth rolled in and tried to slap us in the face. It was like riding a wave of land.”

At first, Knappenberger said she was not sure if the tremor was normal for Haiti.

“The two [Haitian] friends we were with were on their knees,” she said. “They were our protectors and our friends. When I looked into their eyes and saw their fear, I knew this was abnormal.”
The damage done to the city was tremendous.

“We heard the houses falling down everywhere. People on the street were asking us for help. Landon wanted to help, but it was unsafe to go into the buildings. Every house was damaged,” Knappenberger said.
Following the earthquake, Yarrington tried to gather the people of the neighborhood in order to create some sort of organization.

“He put me in the car to the [United Nations] headquarters at the airport, [and] we were reunited three hours afterwards,” Knappenberger said. “We stayed at the UN for three days [before returning to the United States]. We were very shaken.”

Danny Yates ’13 was also in Haiti at the time of the quake with a five-member church mission group.

“We were in a town called Hinche, 50 miles north of Port-au-Prince,” he said. “The earthquake wasn’t that severe where we were, but the aftereffects were awful. It was worse than any end-of-the-world movie.”

Yates said the number of refugees fleeing to smaller, poorer towns worried authorities, as the towns lack the sufficient infrastructure sufficient to accommodate the large influx of people.

“In Haiti, they are afraid that starvation and violence will cause more fatalities than the earthquake itself, like a ripple effect,” he said.

Yates is concentrating on helping the people of Hinche.

“My effort is to focus on the people I know down there, and their main issue is that they do not have enough food to support the people coming in from the big cities,” he said.

Yates said seeing the abundance of food at the College is especially difficult for him.

“It’s hard for me to walk through the Caf and see how much food we have here, knowing that there are people in dire need in Haiti,” he said.

Knappenberger and Yarrington said they are both focused on helping the victims of the quake they left behind in Haiti.

They are working with William and Mary Supports Haiti to direct relief efforts toward charities that most need the resources.

“Of course groups like the Red Cross [are] incredibly important for delivering food and rescuing people from buildings, but the issues in Haiti go much deeper than that,” Yarrington said. “Groups that are smaller and run by Haitians are essential because they know that rebuilding and restructuring do end at food and water. They are going about these essential services with an eye to the future.”

Knappenberger and Yarrington recommend that William and Mary Supports Haiti’s funds benefit the organizations Sonje Ayiti, SOIL and Fondwa.

University of Notre Dame’s student newspaper, The Observer, is in hot water after publishing a not-so-humorous anti-gay comic strip. The paper has since discontinued the comic strip, which made a joke about violence against gays.

According to the U.S. News and World report, the comic strip, named The Mobile Party, featured a saw with eyes, hands and feet telling a human a joke. The saw says, “What’s the easiest way to turn a fruit into a vegetable?” A man responds, “No idea.” The answer: “A baseball bat”.

The original version of the comic strip featured the same two characters; however, in the saw’s final line, “AIDS” replaces “baseball bat”.

The newspaper editors rejected the “baseball bat” version but published the “AIDS” version.

The paper’s assistant managing editor, Kara King, resigned Monday and announced her move in a public letter to the Notre Dame community. King said a miscommunication with another editor led to the strip running without her reviewing the material.

“As assistant managing editor, I have failed in my duties to protect the quality and uphold the standards of The Observer,” King said.

The Student Press Law Center wrote that the comic’s creators, Colin Hofman, Lauren Rosemeyer and Jay Wade, a trio of Notre Dame seniors, apologized for the cartoon’s insensitivity in a letter published Friday.
They claimed that they were merely attempting to mock the homophobia they observed on campus, not add to it.

“Intolerance of homosexuality is a major problem on Notre Dame’s campus,” the letter read. “We tried to address it in our comics using the tool character to emphasize a mindset that we simply find ridiculous. We consistently try to write comics that rely on shock value and now we have gone too far, we realize we have abused the privilege and responsibility of contributing to The Observer.”

Notre Dame President, Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., is quoted in a statement that appears on the university’s website.

“The University denounces the implication that violence or expressions of hate toward any person or group of people is acceptable or a matter that should be taken lightly,” Jenkins wrote.

The FBI has re-opened an investigation of the unsolved 1980s Virginia slayings known as the Colonial Parkway Murders. It has created a new e-mail account in the hope of acquiring tips regarding the murders.

Between 1986 and 1989, eight people were killed or went missing along the 23-mile route spanning Jamestown and Yorktown. The FBI stated that DNA tests and other new techniques will be used to give new insight on these crimes. More than 3,500 investigative reports composed during the peak of the killings are being re-examined, prioritizing a list of approximately 130 suspects.

Authorities believe the four incidents are linked and resulted from either a single person or two people working together.

The College of William and Mary and the City of Williamsburg announced the creation of a new town-gown relations task force Friday. The task force hopes to build on the ongoing community dialogue that began last semester by the city’s focus group on rental housing.

“The [Williamsburg] Neighborhood Relations Committee will play a key role in enhancing our residential neighborhoods by bringing together representatives of all the appropriate groups for discussion and problem solving,” Williamsburg Mayor Jeanne Zeidler M.A. ’76 said in a statement. “This committee will be an important vehicle for sharing points of view, fostering understanding, and developing a shared vision toward which to work.”

The committee will be composed of five members: a university representative, a city representative, a student, a landlord and a neighborhood resident. The committee will meet monthly to discuss concerns, evaluate progress, and offer recommendations.

Wednesday, Dec. 16 — An individual reported larceny in Lodge 10. The estimated value was $160.

Thursday, Dec. 17 — An individual reported vandalism at 101 Wake Dr. The estimated value was $500.

— An individual reported an attempted burglary in the Landrum attic. The estimated damage was $50.
Friday, Dec. 18 — An individual reported stolen computer parts in Jones Room 4. The estimated value was $950.

Monday, Dec. 21 — An individual reported larceny at 631 S. Henry St. The estimated value was $100.

Thursday, Dec. 24 — An individual was arrested and charged for allegedly driving under the influence of alcohol at the intersection of Jamestown and Walnut Hills.

Friday, Jan. 8 — An individual reported vandalism outside the Childcare center. The estimated value was $200.

Wednesday, Jan. 13 — An individual reported a simple assault at 101 Wake Dr.

The five mascot options have evoked countless reactions among students and alumni of the College of William and Mary, but one thing is for certain: No one likes the pug.

“The pug is not very mascot-like,” Hannah Thornton ’10 said. “It isn’t a very tough animal and is a very odd choice.”

The Mascot Search Committee justified the pug concept by saying that King William III and Queen Mary II, the College’s namesakes, both owned pugs. Students are not impressed.

“The fact that William and Mary owned pugs is not a good enough reason to have one as a mascot,” Michelle Noyes ’10 said. “It is unattractive and weak and fails to capture the elegance, history and academic excellence of the school. No one will understand it.”

Joining the unfavored pug on the list of finalists released by the Mascot Search Committee Dec. 8 are the king and queen, the phoenix, the griffin and the wren. Torch Creative, LLC. developed the concepts final artistic rendorings.

The committee created an online survey for people to share their opinions of the concepts, and, according to the committee, nearly 11,200 people participated. Roughly 3,500 of the online survey’s voters were students, representing nearly 45 percent of the student body.

With numerous Facebook groups devoted to the mythological bird, the phoenix had strong support even before the mascot search committee had been formed, and its favor has not dwindled.

“I like the phoenix because it symbolizes the school’s history and how it’s still standing after all these years,” Noyes said.

Thornton, however, prefers the wren because of its connection to the College and the historical significance of the Wren Building as the oldest academic building continues in use in the country. Thornton also said the wren would be a unique mascot.

“No one else has the wren,” Thornton said.

The mascot committee said the new mascot should reflect the spirit of the school but also be an intimidating force during athletic events. Students said the mascot should convey the college’s athletic determination and competitive nature despite its small size.

“The phoenix and the griffin are my two favorites,” said Tribal Fever executive board member Robert VanGundey ’13. “The phoenix is fiery and excitable. The griffin is strong and forceful. I don’t think the queen and king would be good for Tribe pride; they are kind of awkward. It strikes me as something that would not be good on the sidelines.”

There are some who think that none of the concepts would give the College a competitive edge during games.

“I wasn’t crazy about any of them,” Douglas Wood ’63, J.D. ’72, President of the Williamsburg Alumni Chapter, said. “There really aren’t any of them that struck me as anything that would be suitable for William and Mary. I didn’t think they added anything to the William and Mary sports teams.”

According to the committee, the five finalists are just concepts, and the ultimate appearance of the mascot will be developed after a basic idea is chosen.

College President Taylor Reveley will choose the final mascot. The Office of the President said there is no set date for Reveley to reveal his choice and the decision is still in the works, though Revely has said that he hopes the decision will be reached sometime this year.

In the end, students said they would still support the College no matter which mascot the committee ultiametly chooses to represent the school.

“Whatever mascot we end up with, we will always be the Tribe,” VanGundey said. “We won’t let [the mascot] diminish the spirit of the Tribe.”