p. After the April 16, 2007, shooting at Virginia Tech, Student Assembly senators James Evans ’07 and Ryan Eickel ’10 sponsored the Virginia Tech Condolence Act. The Act “commits all energies now and in the future to aid Virginia Tech in rebuilding the spirits of its student body through dedication to make even these darkest times a learning experience for us all in the value of human life.”

p. However, both Evans and Eickel neglected to send a letter of condolence to Virginia Tech. When Senate Chairman Matt Beato ’09 contacted Eickel about this over the summer, he replied, “I realize [now] that simply creating a piece of legislation really had no effect, but I myself was still learning about how the senate functions.”

p. Eickel recently commented on the bill.

p. “It would have been more meaningful to send a physical copy of the bill to Virginia Tech’s Student Assembly, but this was not our original intent,” he said.

p. The Virginia Tech Condolence Act was one of 12 bills passed during the senate’s spring session. Six of these bills took no action. Two bills involved spending. Four bills were passed concerning internal affairs.

p. The We Are All Hokies Act appropriated money for the purchase of memorial wristbands and donated the proceeds to a memorial fund.

p. So far in this session, 21 bills have been passed. Three of these required no action. Three more were approvals of SA spending.

p. There have been five bills this session in which an action was called for and the action has been completed.

p. It should be noted that most of these bills concerned internal affairs and did not need administrative approval.

p. One bill ensured run-off elections in the event of a tie in an SA election, one allowed graduate students to represent undergraduates in Honor Council proceedings, one restructured two senate committees, one allowed students easier access to law advice and one bill established a $15,000 fund to help register voters.

p. This leaves 10 passed bills that call for an action which has yet to be fulfilled. Two of these bills were passed last week.

p. The remaining eight bills require the cooperation of an outside party, with the exception of the Know Your Rights Act, which proposed the distribution of Know Your Rights cards.

p. Of the remaining seven bills, five are sponsored by Senator Matt Skibiak ’08. The implementation of the Handicap Accessibility Act has been pushed to the spring.

p. Meetings have begun regarding the Reasonable Exam Time and Pass/Fail Acts, but Skibiak was told by the chairman of the Education Policy Committee that the Pass/Fail Act will likely go nowhere.

p. “There will be more to come from this,” Skibiak said about the bill. “But since there seems to be less social activities on campus, there hasn’t been much complaining and therefore, not much for me to work with.”

p. Skibiak also sponsored the Syllabus Availability Act, which proposes the establishment of a website where students can search for class syllabi. A designer has been commissioned to create the site, but it has yet to be finished.

p. Observers have criticized the current senate for the poor implementation of bills.

p. “If something is passed in the senate and it doesn’t come to fruition, that’s the responsibility of the entire student assembly,” SA President Zach Pilchen ’09 said.

p. Beato pointed out that it is difficult for any one senator to accomplish anything.

p. “My goal is to alleviate this problem of senators not following up on passed and pending legislation, but I am still limited in that at the end of the day I cannot force anyone to do anything,” he said. “The check and balance on SA senators is ultimately the student body in elections.”

__A sentence has been removed that incorrectly stated that since the SA restructuring, incumbents, with one exception, have held their seats.__

Kinesiology is the study of human movement, and what better way to understand human anatomy than to see the muscles, nerves, organs and bones in a real human body?
For this purpose, the College offers kinesiology 303: human anatomy. Not for the faint of heart, this class offers students an opportunity to learn anatomy as they dissect the body of a deceased individual.
Usually, the College receives two bodies per semester from people who specified in their wills to be donated for the furthering of education and science. When the bodies come to the College, there is very little information provided about the individual. Their names remain anonymous and the cause of death is rarely given.
After the bodies have been studied, they are cremated and their ashes are placed in graves.
While other Virginia universities such as James Madison University and Old Dominion University also have human anatomy labs with bodies, most undergraduate universities do not allow the students to dissect and get hands-on experience; that privilege is usually reserved for graduate students.
Since it offers such a unique experience, the class has continued to gain popularity over the last 20 years at the College.
The class is open to all students — you do not have to be a kinesiology major to participate in the lecture or lab.
Regardless of a student’s major, the experience in human anatomy lab always proves to be unique and fascinating, kinesiology professor Raymond McCoy said.
“Some are hesitant and unsure, and some are excited,” McCoy said. “However, all of the apprehension goes away within five to 10 minutes. It’s interesting to see the changes of the body in the lifetime — enlarged hearts, intestines, broken bones fused back together. You dissect an area and it doesn’t look like the pictures in the book.”
Jamie Weinfeldt ’04, a teaching assistant in the kinesiology department, still remembers her first experiences in the human anatomy lab.
“Both female cadavers had had hysterectomies and one male’s bicep muscle split into three heads instead of the normal two,” Weinfeldt said. “It was crazy to see staples and old scars and look at the human form from a whole new perspective. I continue to be amazed and am constantly learning even as a teacher.”
This method of learning expands on information from the textbook and knowledge from the lecture, while preparing students for future dissection experiences.
“I think it’s the best way to learn anatomy, and I am privileged that I was able to do so as an undergrad,” Weinfeldt said. “It’s a great class and makes you appreciate life in a whole new manner.”

__Student Environmental Action Coalition members shoot nude calendar to promote eco-awareness__

p. Tell people that a campus environmental group is releasing a calendar, they shrug. Tell them it features nude students, their heads turn.

p. Members of the Student Environmental Action Coalition are starring in a nude calendar to raise environmental awareness. The calendar depicts students posing nearly nude, covered only with environmental gear.

p. Besides serving as Student Assembly President, Zach Pilchen ’09 is also an active SEAC member. Pilchen proposed the nude calendar to the group as a way to spread environmental awareness and as a fundraiser, citing as his inspiration the D-minus grade the College recently received in a campus environmental sustainability survey.

p. “Hopefully the calendar will raise quite a bit of money and, more importantly, spread awareness of environmental issues to students who may not have considered such things in the past,” Pilchen said, adding that the proceeds will help fund on-campus initiatives such as a student-run organic garden.

p. Pilchen was careful to point out that the calendar is meant to be more than cheap thrills.

p. “This is not simply a naked photo shoot, but part of an environmental awareness campaign,” he said. “We’ve got artistic shots of students with compact fluorescent light bulbs, organic food, reusable cups, protest signs and a whole host of other things.”

p. Pilchen himself will be appearing in the calendar.

p. “I’ll be featured in the month on sustainable living, holding one of those little blue recycling bins and crushing an aluminum can on my forehead,” Pilchen said.

p. Among the models, there was general excitement and interest in the project.

p. “When Zach Pilchen stood up at one of the meetings to talk about one of his ‘fantasies,’ I was intrigued,” Michelle McKenzie ’10 said. “When he said it was going to be a nude calendar, I was all in.”

p. Model Luke Pickett ’11 said he was so excited about one of the calendar’s concepts, a take on ’90s environmental cartoon superhero Captain Planet, that he volunteered to cut his long hair in favor of the character’s green mullet for the calendar.

p. “I rushed [headlong] into being photographed as many times as I could,” Pickett said.

p. Many models expressed some discomfort about appearing nearly nude, but many said that the jovial atmosphere and mutual discomfort helped assuage any fears.

p. “Given that there was only a small lighted studio above the Phi Beta Kappa theater available to do photography, going into such a secluded and seedy space felt, honestly, as if I were heading into a sex dungeon or to the set of some low-budget porn film,” Pickett said.

p. McKenzie admitted to feeling slightly uncomfortable as well.

p. “I was really uncomfortable at the beginning of the … shoot, but the whole experience has made me really think about how silly that is,” McKenzie said. “I really don’t have any body issues, so why should I be embarrassed? Everyone is both different and beautiful. It really shouldn’t be a shameful thing.”

p. Per Hoel ’08 took many of the pictures in the calendar. Hoel, like the models, said the experience was new and interesting to him.

p. “This was a first for me. I think it actually comforted some of the models when I told them this,” he said. “I suspect some of them wondered whether I did this sort of thing frequently.”

p. The photographer was not immune to the awkwardness of the situation. Hoel, however, said he quickly became accustomed to the situation, that he became “used to, almost jaded by, nudity.”

p. “The theme of the calendar being what it was, I found myself having to direct the models in ways that I was not used to,” he said. “For example, at one time I had to issue a request for ‘more sideboob.’”

p. Everyone involved stressed that the calendar was for a good cause.

p. “I think it’s a humorous and lighthearted concept to cover ourselves with environmental gear,” Pickett said. “And I felt more secure knowing that the campus will at least have not seen my ding-dong.”

p. The calendar will be available for $10 during a SEAC marathon of “Captain Planet” episodes tonight at 7 p.m. in Washington 201.

p. Seated in cushioned leather chairs around a U-shaped, green marble table fit for a United Nations meeting, the College’s Board of Visitors, as well as other observers, were treated to something long awaited by fans, faculty and the student body: the College’s new logo.

p. Vice President for Student Affairs Sam Sadler, the chair of the logo committee, unveiled four new looks, all of them variations on a “W&M” design.

p. “[The new logo is] evolutionary, not revolutionary,” Sadler said.
The logos featured the colors green and gold, as opposed to the green and yellow color scheme that was used in the College’s logo since 1987.

p. “We think green and gold ought to be our colors,” Sadler said. “They have been our colors. And we had strayed way away from that.”

p. Noticeably absent from all four logos was any mention of the name “Tribe.”

p. “[That’s] because it’s an existing logo,” Athletic Director Terry Driscoll said, referring to the current script “Tribe” logo in use by many of the College’s sports teams.

p. The unveiling was preceded by comments from Rector Michael Powell and College President Gene Nichol. Both praised the work of the committee.

p. The next step in the process will be implementing the new logo, stamping it on everything from apparel to admissions materials to team uniforms. Nichol said that an implementation committee is being formed to handle this process.

p. Sadler said that one of the committee’s main goals was to create a look for the College that was distinctive, identifiable and very much its own, in the same way that Harvard University has the “H” logo.

p. “Our committee said it needs to be instantly recognizable as William and Mary, whatever the symbol is,” Sadler said. “And it should reflect the traditions and history of the institution.”

p. BOV member John Charles Thomas expressed his disapproval of the logo’s colors, stating during the meeting that the secondary color looked more like brown than it did gold. Sadler and others attributed this to the poor quality of the printer that produced handouts of the logo for BOV members.

p. For the most part, however, the reaction from those in attendance seemed to be positive.

p. “We may be featherless, but we’re still flying,” Powell said.

p. As of press time, 558 people had already joined the Facebook group “Students Against the New W&M Logo.”

Several things bother me. One of the worst is the needle, which I find to be unnatural. I have ended more doctors visits passed out on the floor than I care to recount.

p. Yet, there are things which irritate me more than needles — like when someone reminds me of how busy they are. To be frank, I would rather be stabbed by a million syringes than suffer through a single conversation about how busy someone else is.

p. We are all guilty of this infraction against goodness. After all, we go to the College. It’s no University of Virginia (zing!), but we still suffer through rigorous course loads. With clubs and jobs, it is a wonder that anyone has time to watch “Grey’s Anatomy.” People tell me this show rocks, yet my instincts tell me that an ensemble drama about young doctors working in a hospital can only be so earth shattering.

p. The point is this: We all lead busy lives. Unfortunately, some of our fellow students forget this fact. These assholes, as I have taken to calling them, come in three varieties. The first can be called the really-is-more-busy-than-you asshole. These jerks tend to major in science or something incredibly boring for which countless exams and lab reports drain them of precious “Grey’s Anatomy”-watching time.

p. Students of another ilk I refer to as assholes who are just as busy but their work is more important than yours. The title explains itself, but fails to capture just how annoying these people can be. With these jerks, it is implied that the lives they lead are more important. Time they devote to a paper on AIDS is significantly more important than the hours you waste writing a pilot about young veterinarians working in a pet hospital.

p. There is a third category of students. These I refer to as people who cannot handle the stress of being busy and get overwhelmed easily. For some students this means a debilitating mental condition like anxiety disorder or manic depression. For others, like myself, this means a slightly inconvenient heart condition; whenever I feel too mentally taxed my heart pumps too fast and I pass out.

p. This happened countless times when I was in high school. I would be in the middle of a presentation when I would pass out and wake up with my technology class cramped around my crumpled form. Or one time I was on a ski trip stressing about an upcoming English paper and then I passed out while in line for the chair lift. It wasn’t until freshman year of college that I realized something was wrong.

p. It was the second semester of college, and I was overwhelmed with important tasks. I had two papers to write and two exams all in the same week. In addition, I was training for a half-marathon the following month. One moment I was standing in line at the Caf and the next I woke up bleeding on the floor. I fainted and fell on my glasses, which sliced open the skin just below my eyebrow. On my ambulance ride to the hospital, I realized I might have a stress problem.

p. My solution has been simple. I did not decide to take an easier academic load. I did not uncommit myself from extracurricular activities. I did not see a heart specialist about my condition. Instead I just try to take things less seriously. This means slacking off on some reading when I feel slightly overwhelmed, or watching an episode of some inane television show when stress leaves me light-headed.

p. When I was a busy bastard, I only felt validated if other people recognized my hard work. We are a generation that constantly seeks validation. We strive for good marks, diplomas from prestigious universities and jobs as high-ranking government officials. We are so busy we often forget the things in life that really matter — things like friendships and crappy television dramas.

p. In lieu of holiday cheer, I will end this column with some sage advice: If you feel overly taxed in the coming weeks, don’t fret. Instead, take a break from what you are doing. In my free time I will be writing a mystery novel about car detailers. If baking is more your thing, have at it. Whatever you do, don’t get too miffed. And don’t complain to someone else about how busy you are. Chances are, they are busy too.

p. __James Damon is a Confusion Corner columnist. He would watch “Grey’s Anatomy,” but they use needles.__