__David Gordon walks into Lodge 1 carrying a black messenger bag and a rather intense-looking aluminum water bottle. As I look closer I notice that the bottle is printed with “B.Y.O.B” (Bring Your Own Bottle) underneath large lettering that reads “Party On, Earth.” David assures me that the comma is of utmost importance. This talkative senior from northern New Jersey declares himself very easily distracted and admits a major weak spot for both “Man vs. Wild” and Alton Brown, but he’s a hardcore studier, too. I was impressed as he began to explain some of the practical applications of his business and environmental studies majors. He spent a stint as a research assistant in Nairobi, Kenya, with the Global Environmental Governance Project. Full of surprises, David enlightens me on turning trash into treasure, experiencing funky London destinations and what it’s like to help launch your own organization at the College.__

**That’s a pretty cool briefcase. What do you have in there?**

I have gloves and a hat. My laptop, mostly to procrastinate. A book, which I plan on not reading, called “From the Farm to the Table” and it’s for my sustainable agriculture class. I’m pretty sure I have a pen and a pencil here somewhere. I have tissues, business cards for when I went to Kenya. There’s food in here too, I think.

**Yesterday you celebrated the first meeting of the business organization you recently helped establish on campus dealing with sustainability and social responsibility called Net Impact. What would you say is its mission statement?**

It’s to prepare future leaders to react favorably to social and environmental issues in business. It’s primarily for MBA students.

**What did you do this past summer?**

Over the summer, I worked with this small start-up called TerraCycle in Trenton that takes trash and turns it into products, which is actually pretty cool.

**What was the coolest thing the company made?**

We were making so many things. We would take like old Oreo wrappers from Nabisco that they couldn’t use, and turn them into bags or lunchboxes. They were making fire logs out of old cardboard, different cleaning products, a birdfeeder made of a soda bottle. Occasionally they would be like “here’s some trash, what do you think you can you do with it?” and I’d be like “I think you can throw that out.” I was the environmental cynic there.

**You mentioned you took the GRE and the GMAT this year in preparation for grad school. What’s your favorite vocab word you studied for the GRE?**

I actually did block that out of my mind. My favorite word from the GREs is probably “over.”

**What word do you love?**

Conundrum.

**What word do you hate?**

“Baller.” I can’t get into it. I feel like the people who use “baller” don’t deserve to use it. I cannot think of one person on campus.

**What word do you use too much?**

Awesome.

**A lot of people are starting to really like blogs and podcasts. Are you into any?**

I’m not a big blog person yet. I do some podcasts like “This American Life,” which I’m sure every American subscribes to. I have some music podcasts just so I can pretend I’m cool and know all the new hipster music, which I always fall behind on.

**What hipster music do you like right now?**

There’s this new band I just heard of called Blind Pilot that I kind of like. They’re pretty similar to The Avett Brothers, who are my favorite band. There’s another guy called Langhorne Slim who has this interesting style — all of it has this sort of folksy feel. I went on a binge of The Avett brothers, especially when I was in London.

**Coffee or tea?**

Coffee. Unless I’m trying to relax and get stuff done, then its tea, and green tea. I got this awesome green tea in London from this really sketchy guy. I explored a lot and used these dorky “Give yourself a tour of London” cards that would take you places you’d never go in your wildest dreams because they’re local. At one point I went to this far-out market and met this guy who mixed his own tea, this really awesome loose-leaf ginseng tea.

**Did you end up anywhere else memorable?**

One of the cards had me take a bus to the end of London. It’s funny, whenever I’m in cities, I always end up wanting to go to parks, so it’s like I go to a city to get out of a city. I found this awesome trail there that lead to the top of this hill and you could see all of London. Down the hill I found this cafe where Bob Dylan wrote one of his CDs. That was a cool adventure.

**If you could take a trip anywhere in the United States today, where would you go?**

Probably the Badlands, because they’re called the Badlands. Also because they look cool, but mostly because of the name.

**If you could pick your transportation, how would you get there?**

Well, it’s the Badlands so I’d have to pick something really badass. Maybe like an ostrich or something, because how do you ride an ostrich? Or I guess a bull. That would be tough. A bull in the Badlands; I would also be helping alliteration.

**What would you pack?**

There would be emergency supplies, of course, for when I fall off the bull. My water bottle — the metal one. I actually probably wouldn’t have anything because I would have watched enough “Man vs. Wild” that I would know how to make a car out of sticks and a scorpion.

__As we part ways, David mentions that he’s got to run to APO campus escort duty. The prospect of whizzing around on a golf cart on a dark thirty-degree night sounds a little rough to me, but this kid is super involved and loves it that way. He bundles up, winding a grey plaid scarf around his neck and grabbing his bag and water bottle. He waves goodbye, and assures me that we’ll surely run into each other in the Daily Grind sometime soon. Today he seems like the average college student, but with his jet trail already streaming from places like Africa and Europe and his future likely including a graduate degree from a prestigious institution, it will be interesting to see where David’s life leads. Who knows, maybe he’ll be the guy who can help cure the economy and save the ice caps.__

David Berman, a Williamsburg-born singer and poet, fronted the popular lo-fi band Silver Jews until last month when he announced suddenly that he plans to move on to other projects.

There are many theories as to the origin of the band’s odd name. Berman is said to have named the band after his blonde Jewish friends. Another apocryphal story claims that Berman accidentally read an obstructed “Silver Jewelry” storefront as “Silver Jew.”

Berman is best known for sophisticated lyrics monotonously uttered over sparse open chords, a simple bass line and an even simpler drum beat. His lyrics contain the visual abundance of poetry while retaining the immediacy and rhythm of a simple folk song. One example is “People” from the 1998 album “American Water,” where Berman joins the innocent Southern suburb to a bleaker, more risque urban landscape: “I love to see a rainbow from a garden hose / Lit up like the blood of a centerfold / I love the city and the city rain, / Suburban kids with biblical names.” What results is a playful musing on the opposing qualities of the American South that, when armed with a marching bass line, makes for great driving music.

Berman himself has lived a varied past. After forming the Silver Jews and graduating from the University of Virginia in 1989, he moved to New York City with Stephen Malkmus, the future front man of the indie rock band Pavement. The two worked as security guards for the Whitney Museum of American Art, a job that Berman says sheltered him from a dark past and inspired much of his music.

During the ’90s Berman released three LPs under the Jews’ moniker, the most important being “American Water,” which, with the help of Malkmus’ matchless guitar work, established Berman as one of the more-respected but less-regarded artists in music.

After releasing his third LP, “Bright Flight,” in 2001, Berman sank into a depression that nearly killed him. He overdosed on crack cocaine and Xanax in 2003, rehabilitated himself, and managed to release two more excellent LPs. The last was 2008’s “Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea,” an album with a fuller sound and cleaner quality than his previous recordings. By then he had married his girlfriend Cassie (the band’s bassist), rediscovered his Judaism and, for the first time in his career, began to tour. Though Berman isn’t the strongest guitar player or vocalist, his songs have true life as recordings that, like a poem, are delicately and self-consciously constructed. To recreate that deliberation in a live setting is difficult, to say the least.

After ‘Lookout Mountain’s’ largely warm reception, it seemed that Berman was finally becoming comfortable with the Silver Jews. But all that changed Jan. 21 when Berman announced on his record label’s message board — in his typically frank, but elusive prose — that he was ending the band.

“I guess I am moving over to another category,” Berman said. “Screenwriting or Muckraking. I’ve got to move on. Can’t be like all the careerists doncha know. I’m forty two and I know what to do. I’m a writer, see?”
In a second message posted only one hour later, Berman told readers his “gravest secret”. Worse, he said, than suicide: his father is the infamous Washington, D.C., lobbyist Richard Berman, a stalwart defender of the fast food industry (among other dubious interests) who goes by the nickname “Dr. Evil.” Dr. Evil is, in fact, very well-known in Washington and has criticized organizations as benign as Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

The turn toward verbal patricide, while perplexing, seemed to make sense when considering Berman’s artwork. His life and lyrics always embraced bizarre contradictions, so it was no surprise that an unimposing, melancholic, devoutly religious man should be the progeny of Dr. Evil.

“In a way I am the son of a demon come to make good the damage,” Berman wrote.

Admittedly, Berman’s farewell had a quietude that seemed to mask a larger arrogance, but he had made his point. His father, and his band, were part of a life that he was no longer living, and it was time to move on.
In a farewell befitting of their legacy, the Silver Jews played their final show last Saturday at the Cumberland Caverns in Tennessee, a unique venue set 333 feet below the earth. What Berman will do when he emerges from his cave is anyone’s guess. But he won’t come out singing.

Just five months after the College of William and Mary’s campus-specific page launched, Juicy Campus has shut down. The site, which allows users to post gossip anonymously, announced its closure in a press release Wednesday, and shut down the next day.

According to the press release, Juicy Campus’s inability to find sufficient funding forced its closure. Between declining ad revenue and fewer venture capital options, the site was unable to keep up with what the press release called its exponential growth. They blamed the site’s failure, in part, on the current economic crisis.

After a big push in the fall to add hundreds of colleges and universities to its network, Juicy Campus reached over 500 schools, providing a forum for conversations without limits. From the hottest sorority to alleged rapists, no topic is off limits. “It’s clear that we have provided a platform that students have found interesting, entertaining, and fun,” the press release said.

Besides adding campuses, Juicy Campus spent its last months introducing new technology. Over the past few months, it launched two new features: rankings and bartender. In October, Juicy Campus’s founder and CEO Matt Ivester told The Flat Hat that the company was still not profitable, but that he was excited about the site’s then-upcoming features.

As of Wednesday night, the only mention of the site’s closing was a small box at the top of the About page that read: “Enjoy the last day of JuicyCampus … (for more info, see our blog at JuicyCampus.blogspot.com).”
Yesterday afternoon, Juicy Campus’s website, juicycampus.com, was unavailable. Later, it redirected to College Anonymous Confessing Board’s blog, which touts its site, CollegeACB.com as Juicy Campus’s replacement, “the new standard in anonymous college posting.” The blog’s first post was yesterday. The College ACB site offers a similar gossip forum with a different approach to anonymous posting: Logging into the site requires a campus email address.

In the Juicy Campus press release, Ivester expressed regret about shutting down the site. “I’d like to thank everyone who has engaged in meaningful discussion about online privacy and internet censorship.”

It’s one month from spring break, and you have no plans.

You don’t want to sit at home for a week, and the stereotypical trip to some college-crazed tourist destination is looking pretty cliche. Luckily, it’s never too late to jump on the spring break service bandwagon.

Service trips are popular at the College of William and Mary. But even though the Office of Student Volunteer Services organizes 10 spring break service trips, they can still only accommodate 78 people. This year, 45 people were shut out by the lottery system. Most organization-sponsored trips have already selected their teams, but there are still other options for the service-oriented student.

**UrbanPromise**
Julia Stori ’10 and Ben Boyd ’10 are campus liaisons to UrbanPromise. The organization focuses on helping underprivileged kids in an urban setting.

The non-denominational Christian organization works with underprivileged, inner-city kids and teens and is based in Camden, N.J., and Wilmington, Del.

“Both are pretty tough U.S. cities where poverty, drugs and violence are prevalent,” Stori said. “On the spring break trips, we will be working at several locations doing maintenance work in the mornings and working the after-school programs and interacting with the kids in the afternoons.”

The trip costs approximately $260, and the deadline to apply is Tuesday.

**Williamsburg Service**
Another team still taking applicants is based right here in Williamsburg. Long Vinh ’10 and Jessica Kim ’10, organizers of a Williamsburg spring break service experience, have planned a week filled with a variety of service projects including Heritage Humane Society, Housing Partnerships, Lackey Clinic and Sentara Hospice.

Not only does the Williamsburg program allow students to serve in a wide variety of projects in the community, but at $25 it’s also one of the best values of the service trips. Why so cheap? The housing is free thanks to dorms being open over break. Hypothetically, the entire campus could stay over break and do a week of service, but as Vinh pointed out, certain organizations have a limited capacity for volunteers.

Vinh initiated the Williamsburg service experience last winter break.

“I wanted to give people an opportunity to serve the needy in this area,” Vinh said. “Service should be sustainable, long term.” Nine students came back to school early, staying in the basement of the Catholic Canpus Ministries building since dorms were closed.

Students, like Zoya Butt ’10, were able to enjoy a variety of projects through this experience.
“Housing Partnerships was my favorite because I got to go on a roof and pick the shingles off. It was fun,” she said. “I also liked Grove Christian Church where we handed out food rations to families.”
The project offers participants exposure to types of service they can continue through the school year if interested. Vinh’s philosophy for service is simple: “Do what you can with what you have. The best you can do is be in it for the long run.”
Those who’d rather ditch their dorm rooms for the break can adapt Vinh’s philosophy to their own hometown. Plan a spring break service week and enjoy the flexibility.

**Pathways in Petersburg**
For those in the central Virginia area, the College has a relationship with Pathways in Petersburg. Pathways provides a variety of community service, such as food distribution and a health clinic, but focuses mainly on helping at-risk youth. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, OSVS sent a group of students to help renovate houses that had fallen into disrepair.

Meredith Wachs ’10, a participant in the Martin Luther King Jr. Day event, appreciated Petersburg’s architecture but was surprised at the condition of buildings.

“I was expecting the government buildings to be more hyped up — schools, etc. — and I was expecting homes to be old but not as run down [as they were].”

Students were split up among several house sites — some of which were sponsored by Habitat for Humanity — with one group putting up sheetrock, and another doing demolition.

“We tore up hardwood floors and debris in crawl spaces to prepare for renovation,” Wachs said.
The house Wachs helped renovate was particularly run down. “

The whole kitchen floor was a giant hole, but it was weird because there were still curtains up,” she said. “The floor had just given way.”

**D.C. Central Kitchens**
For students who live in northern Virginia, the College has a relationship with D.C. Central Kitchens. The organization cooks the food for some of the D.C. area’s homeless outreach programs, providing other organizations with food to distribute. The chefs are ex-cons who have been taught culinary skills. The center’s upstairs serves as the largest homeless shelter in D.C.

It’s never too late to do service over spring break.

“Think about what you want to do, what your major is and what skills you want to improve on, or an issue you want to learn more about,” Melody Porter, assistant director for OSVS, said.

Spring break is the perfect time to try new experiences, and the service opportunities are endless.
Vinh advises students to “explore new things — your passions. If you could change one thing in society, what would it be? Go from there.”

It started with a nervous stomachache, which grew to a shooting pain that rendered her nearly unable to stand. One-by-one, her hallmates flocked to her side. Embarrassed, she assured them it was nothing. She began to feel nauseated and her face was nearly white. No one bought her story. Recognizing the symptoms, one girl suggested appendicitis, lifting her shirt and pointing to a faint horizontal scar on her abdomen. They were convinced immediately that she needed to see a doctor, even if it turned out to be nothing but a stomach virus. A cell phone call later, a taxi cab pulled up outside my dorm and three girls volunteered to ride with her to the hospital for support, determined to see that she would get the care she needed.

Most of the events of that evening I saw from a distance coming to and from the library, but the significance wasn’t lost on me. I witnessed a girl who, only weeks earlier, had suffered a great loss in the confines of a hospital bravely and selflessly make phone calls to hospitals and act as a pillar of strength for her scared, sick roommate. Another girl had the near “House”-esque brilliance to knock on the door of my room to speak to my roommate, whom she knew had once had appendicitis and might still recognize its warning signs. Suddenly, the residents of Dupont Hall 3rd East transformed from a hall of freshman girls to a hall of EMTs to be there for a friend in need.

The College of William and Mary is a community. This idea usually functions as the official theme of freshman orientation, as the sentiment is reiterated countless times during those few hot weeks in August. By the end of my orientation, I had heard so many lectures on the concept of community that the word completely lost all meaning to me. In my mind, it was one of many in an admissions officer’s arsenal, used to impress parents and comfort worried students.

At least, it was until several nights ago when I watched the girls of my hall band together in the interests of one of their own and the truth finally hit me. Maybe I just needed to see on a larger, more dramatic scale what was all around me. We at the College are a community of communities, of varying sizes and compositions, with functions ranging from the academic to that of a family far away from home.

And yet, as the perpetual Doubting Thomas, I found myself wondering: Surely this community has some sort of shelf-life or expiration date? Best if used by graduation. Sell by 2012. I mean, I love the girls on my hall and the various circles of people I’ve met through classes and extracurricular activities, but can I realistically expect them to follow me beyond the confines of my studies at the College?

“Scrubs” creator Bill Lawrence ’90 certainly did, and sure enough, 20 years later he could return home to the warm welcome of his Kappa Alpha fraternity brothers and drink with the best of them.

I guess I’ll just have to rush a sorority, come up with the idea for a hit show on a major television network, and see for myself.

__Zoe Speas is a Confusion Corner columnist. She can’t wait to write her first million-dollar script.__

In modern hookup culture, a lot of us find ourselves mired in the grey area between just friends and boyfriend/girlfriend (or girlfriend/girlfriend or boyfriend/boyfriend, whatever the case may be). In the past, relationships were more cut and dry. But with the strides we’ve made as a society in allowing for open sexuality without disapproval, we have created whole new classes of relationships.

Our slang — and even Facebook — has evolved along with our notions of sexual propriety to incorporate these in-between categories with titles like “friends with benefits,” “just seeing where it goes,” “it’s complicated,” “open relationship” and “fuck buddies.” Perhaps the most important coinage has been the DTR: the all-important defining-the-relationship conversation. To DTR is to sit down and discuss exactly what one person means to the other.

Is it really necessary to put a label on a relationship? No. It is not essential to a relationship to have this defining conversation, but it can make things a lot easier. Open communication can allow for a tighter bond between people. Beyond that, it has implications for how your friends and family perceive your relationship. When you DTR, you can set down rules for public displays of affection, how you introduce yourselves in public, and the all-important Facebook status change. You can also decide what your definition of cheating will be so that no one gets hurt.

When should you DTR? Whenever the moment seems right to both of you. There’s no set time frame for when it needs to happen. Friends often pressure people into having a DTR early. As with most things sexual, doing something just because your friends want you to isn’t necessarily a good idea.

There are good reasons not to DTR. If you are afraid that your partner will want a different title than you do, avoiding this conversation can save a fight. Or if you’re in a relationship that is just about physicality and nothing else, a DTR seems unnecessary. Why sit down and talk when you can lie down and bang?

A DTR can force you into a situation in which you either decide to be in a relationship or you cut off contact with the person. If you aren’t looking for a serious relationship, avoiding the DTR can give you a chance to bask in the glow of the grey area. Maybe it’s the wrong time — you’re a second-semester senior not looking for commitment, you just got out of a relationship and aren’t ready for anything serious yet, or you have another person you’re with, too, and aren’t interested in being monogamous.

There is the implication that when you DTR, you’re going to end up deciding to be a in a committed relationship. It’s awkward to sit down and say to someone, “Look, I think that I need to be honest about how I feel about you. You’re sexy as hell and I want to go at it like rabbits. That’s really it. I’m not interested in anyone knowing about us or having to meet anyone who is important to you. I don’t even really want to learn anything about you as a person. Let’s just screw until we can’t see straight and call it a day.”

On the other hand, sometimes when you DTR, you find out that the other person is on exactly the same page as you are. You may say the above to someone and find that their response is to strip naked and mount you.

The DTR has becoming an important concept in our sexual culture. It has been coined as a result of the masses of couples straddling the line between no-strings-attached nookie and committed relationships. But whether you’re “just talking” (and sleeping together) or engaged, enjoy where you are. We’re all adults here and that means we can choose to DTR, partake in PDA and hump — or not.

__Maya Horowitz is the Behind Closed Doors columnist for the Flat Hat. She thinks you’re sexy as hell, but doesn’t really want to get to know you.__

Sunday evening, the College of William and Mary basically won the Super Bowl.

With the help of James Harrison, an oxygen tank and some unnecessary roughness calls, Steelers Head Coach Mike Tomlin ’95 led his team to victory in the 43rd Super Bowl.

The game’s announcers even gave the College a shout-out shortly after halftime.

The College found its way into one of the world’s biggest sports pop-culture phenomena, but in the 316 years since its inception, the College has had several other shining moments in American pop culture.

It’s safe to say that every student at the College knows that infamous late-night faux news anchor Jon Stewart ’84 once walked the uneven cobblestone paths of the Sunken Garden. Sadly, Stewart didn’t enjoy his time in Williamsburg, but Bill Lawrence ’90 loved the College. He expresses this love by giving it a place in his hit TV show “Scrubs.” Lawrence made his Williamsburg alma mater the undergraduate university attended by the show’s main characters, Jonathan Dorian and Christopher Turk. JD and Turk roomed together at the College while earning their undergraduate degrees. In flashbacks on the show, Tribe apparel decorates the characters’ dorm rooms.

The College also made a brief cameo in “The West Wing,” when College officials offered a faculty position to a Republican presidential candidate after he lost the election. He did not accept, however, and subsequently became Secretary of State. Another fun fact: Stephen Culp ’78 plays Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, Washington Congressman Jeff Haffley on the show.

In the fourth season of the sitcom “Yes, Dear,” the College found itself in the middle of a marriage crisis. After a disastrous performance as a dinner party host, Protagonist Greg (Anthony Clark), at the request of his wife, met with marriage counselor Adam. Greg begrudgingly talked about his experience at camp Wrigley when he was 11 where two kids named William and Mary once bullied him over a cupcake.

After explaining how this incident related to Greg’s hatred of dinner parties, Adam realized that Greg made up the story. He had noticed that Adam himself was eating a cupcake and it was the 11th day of the month. Similarly, Adam’s diploma from the College of William and Mary as well as a picture of Wrigley stadium were hanging on his office wall, all of which inspired his story.

The College has had ample television time, but several musical groups have also paid homage to our school. Rock band Steely Dan sung about a lost love in the song “My Old School.” “I remember the thirty-five sweet goodbyes / When you put me on the Wolverine / Up to Annandale / It was still September / When your daddy was quite surprised / To find you with the working girls / In the county jail / I was smoking with the boys upstairs / When I heard about the whole affair / I said oh no / William and Mary won’t do.” The song is about Steely Dan band member Donald Fagan’s girlfriend Dorothy White, who sent him off to Bard College in Annandale, NY. After being arrested for possession of marijuana, Dorothy turns in her boyfriend and his friends for drug use at Bard College. The line about William and Mary is actually a reference to Bard College, often referenced as the William and Mary of the North. Bard’s cooperation with the authorities angered Fagan because it resulted in him being busted for smoking pot, though the charges were dropped due to lack of evidence, Fagan did not return to Bard and Dorothy never returned his calls.

Jason Ross and Jason Pollock formed the hard rock band Seven Mary Three (7M3) at the College in 1992. Their one and only semi-hit, “Cumbersome,” gained the band moderate success in the independent music scene; however, this accomplishment quickly fizzled out.

As for movies, the College has appeared in a children’s action adventure film as well as an adult indie film.
“Mr. Brooks,” a 2007 psychological thriller, uses the wit of William and Mary alumnus Detective Tracy Atwood, played by Demi Moore (“Bobby”). The story follows her as she investigates Earl Brooks, played by Kevin Costner (“Swing Vote”), a seemingly normal family man with a secret: he’s also a serial killer. Dane Cook (“My Best Friend’s Girl”), and William Hurt (“The Incredible Hulk”) join Costner and Moore to create an all-star cast.

Jodie Foster (“Panic Room”) wore a William and Mary t-shirt — no feathers in sight — while running on a treadmill in the movie “Nim’s Island.” The movie costars academy award nominee Abigail Breslin (“Little Miss Sunshine”). The movie tells the story of an agoraphobic, hermit author who overcomes her fears to rescue a young girl living on an island and fall in love with the girl’s father (Gerard Butler, “P.S. I Love You”). Needless to say, the movie was no blockbuster, but at least the College received a shout out.
The College makes a more subtle appearance in the 2008 flop “Smart People.” While exchanging flirty chitchat with Sarah Jessica Parker (“Sex and the City”), Dennis Quaid (“The Day After Tomorrow”) clutches a copy of “The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams,” which was edited by English professor Christopher MacGowan.

Though our beloved College may not appear in pop culture nearly as much as the alma mater of a nation deserves, it has had its brief moments in the spotlight.