Grand Illumination, a Williamsburg holiday tradition, was held Sunday evening and included a fireworks show.

p. 1930

p. The Cramton Bill, which authorized the Secretary of the Interior to buy land around Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown, was passed by U.S. Congress. All land bought would become a new national park and all of the scenic highways would be owned and maintained by the federal government.

p. 1964

p. Moliere’s play, “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme,” was performed for the first time in Virginia at Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall. The play, based on an incident that occurred in the court of King Louis XIV, was brought to audiences at the College through cooperation from the theatre and music departments.

p. 1975

p. Bill Mims ’79, a freshman at the College, started a one-man campaign to collect signatures asking the General Assembly to increase its support for a new building at the Marshall-Wythe Law School. Mims became interested in collecting signatures after hearing about the impact losing the law school could have on the College.

p. 1995

p. The Self-Scheduled Exam Committee, with endorsement from the Student Assembly and other groups, proposed that the College should adopt a schedule that consisted of two three-hour blocks each day for a week in which students could schedule their exams to their liking.

p. 5

p. The number of graduate schools at the College, which include the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, the Marshall-Wythe Law School, the Mason School of Business, the School of Education and the Arts and Sciences graduate school.

p. 2 percent

p. The proportion of the vote that Venezuelan socialist Hugo Chavez lost by in his bid this week to change the constitution and extend his presidential term.

p. 26 percent

p. The proportion of socks sold in the United States that are also made in the United States. That is down from 76 percent seven years ago.

p. 16 tons

p. The amount of bacon and ham that thieves stole from a warehouse in Australia. Before leaving, they wrote “Thanks, Merry Christmas” on the building.

p. Mary Fabrizio, associate professor at the College’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science, was recently elected as the president of the American Fisheries Society.

p. The AFS, a 9,000-member group that focuses on the conservation, development and efficient use of American fisheries, is the oldest and largest group of its kind in the world.

p. Fabrizio, whose work focuses mainly on the population dynamics of finfish and conducting annual juvenile fish surveys of the Chesapeake Bay, hopes to promote proper management of fishery resources and to provide channels of scientific information to private fishery owners. The annual fish surveys of the Chesapeake Bay have helped to record fish populations and control overfishing in the Bay since 1955.
VIMS is the graduate institution for marine science at the College.

p. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a national organization that reviews the policies of colleges and universities in the United States, issued a statement calling for the College to eliminate the newly revised bias reporting system.

p. ACTA complained that even after revisions, the bias reporting system still violated the First Amendment.

p. “The administration can tinker with the system all it wants. The fact is, it needs to go,” ACTA President Anne D. Neal said in a press release Nov. 20. “The system is ripe for abuse, and the administration has offered no reason for why it’s needed. What’s wrong with free speech?”

p. ACTA’s official website, goacta.org, describes the group as “an educational organization committed to academic freedom, excellence and accountability at America’s colleges and universities.”

p. Originally called the National Alumni Forum, ACTA is a bipartisan organization founded in 1995 by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Lynne Cheney, Richard Lamm and others.

p. The goal of the organization is to improve the quality of American higher education.

p. It has members from over 600 colleges and universities in the United States, including the College.

p. ACTA previously expressed its disapproval of the bias reporting system in a letter Neal sent to College President Gene Nichol.
“Speech codes of this sort, whatever they are called, betray the College’s legal obligation to protect individual rights on campus,” Neal said. “Under the guise of creating a more welcoming ‘community,’ William and Mary has undertaken to adjudicate which viewpoints are acceptable — and which are not.”

p. Charles Mitchell, spokesman for ACTA, told the Daily Press that President Nichol has not yet responded to the letter, which was sent Nov. 1.

p. He also mentioned that ACTA is in the process of researching bias reporting systems at other colleges and universities and comparing them to the system in place at the College.

p. The College is does not plan to take the system down anytime soon.

p. Sam Sadler, vice president for Student Affairs and chair of the Bias Incident Reporting Team, told the Daily Press that since the revisions were made over two weeks ago, he has not received any complaints about the bias reporting system.

p. When Board of Visitors members meet tomorrow, Thursday and Friday of this week, they most likely will not be making the much-anticipated decision of whether or not to renew College President Gene Nichol’s contract.

p. Rector Michael Powell said in a Sept. 28 e-mail to the College community that a decision should be expected in the spring, which means a vote on Nichol will not come until the February or April meeting.

p. Controversy has surrounded Nichol’s presidency since his Oct. 2006 decision to remove the Wren Chapel cross from permanent display. Vocal alumni have used websites, blogs and the media to amplify their concerns about Nichol, and questions were raised when it became known that Nichol misinterpreted an e-mail warning him about a revoked $12 million donation.

p. Despite controversy, Nichol believes he is qualified.

p. “Should it be the case that if you’re going to pursue some of the values that I’ve tried to pursue that the College should reject that?” Nichol said in a Nov. 15 Flat Hat interview. “That simply has to mean that you get a different kind of president, and I think that would be quite unfortunate for the College.”

p. He added that anti-Nichol attacks will continue until the BOV reaches a decision.

p. “There are a number of people who will criticize me regardless of what I do,” he said. “I’m not going to quit in the face of that.”

p. Jim Jones ’82, the leader of the anti-Nichol website ShouldNicholBeRenewed.org, said he asked the BOV to make a decision on Nichol in December but that Powell would not commit to a time frame. He also said that if the BOV renews Nichol, ShouldNicholBeRenewed.org will stop fighting to oust him. “I can’t invest any more intellectual and psychological capital in this,” Jones said.

p. The BOV meets tomorrow from 5 p.m. until 6:30 p.m., Thursday from 8 a.m. until 6:45 p.m. and Friday from 8:15 a.m. until 12 p.m. Meetings are held in Blow Hall and are open to the public.

The government information department at Swem Library will shut down in January. The staff will be transferred to other departments in a move Dean of University Libraries Connie McCarthy attributes to the budget crunch and necessary restructuring.

“There’s been ongoing discussions of … how many service points you [should] have in a library,” McCarthy said. “We’ve been talking about changes that we will need to make in the organization to move ahead and to maximize our staffing and our services.”

To this end, McCarthy announced shortly after Labor Day that the department would be shut down and the three full-time librarians moved to other areas of the library. She said that other services and interests needed to take priority, such as expanding the Media Center and purchasing more computers for the constantly crowded Information Commons. McCarthy said that Provost Geoffrey Feiss has supported her decision.

However, Alan Zoellner, the government information librarian and head of the department, has been critical of the way McCarthy carried out the department shutdown.

“I sort of feel like a condemned man who now is being asked to plan the details of his execution … but never had a chance to participate in the trial that led to his death penalty in the first place,” Zoellner said. He was careful to point out that he is not sure whether the shutdown of the department is a good decision, but he was clear that he was upset with McCarthy for not consulting him on the change.

McCarthy says that the change will benefit the library and streamline the process of acquiring and cataloguing materials as well as assisting students with research.

“By building this service into Reference, we will be able to offer a higher level of assistance for more hours of the week than is currently available, certainly on evenings and weekends,” McCarthy wrote in a response to Clay Clemens, chair of the government department. Clemens had written McCarthy with concerns about the shutdown, especially any decrease in quality of service to students and faculty researchers. Clemens also wrote that he wished Swem had consulted the department before it made the decision.

Zoellner agreed that the number of questions received by staff has decreased in the past several decades. He noted that many government documents are now electronic. He disagreed, however, with McCarthy’s claim that the change will be more efficient.

“By splitting up the processing of government documents from the public service work of government documents, I think you make everything less efficient, especially as it affects the students and faculty,” Zoellner said.

What Zoellner was more upset about was the treatment of the staff, including himself and librarians Linda Templeman and Cynthia Dellaposta.

McCarthy responded that she made the decision herself.

“It was an administrative decision for the long-term benefit of the library and I felt I had to do it myself,” she said.

Together, the three librarians have almost 70 years of service, experience that Zoellner feels was wasted when McCarthy failed to consult him. One of the librarians was only given a week to decide whether or not she would move to content services.

“She had 33 years of service, and you don’t ask someone to make the decision in three days whether they’re going to completely change what they’re doing,” Zoellner said. “That’s not the way to operate.” McCarthy declined to comment.

Zoellner says he will make the best of the situation.

“I grumble plenty about the dean’s decision, but I believe her when she says that she is proud of the fact that we have provided good service and she’s going to see that that continues,” he said.

“As much as the dean and I say service quality will continue to the best of our ability, it’s bound to slip a little bit,” Zoellner added.

After the shutdown in January, visitors can seek assistance with government information at the reference desk. The department librarians will continue organizing documents throughout the next semester before transferring to other areas of the library.

p. Friday night proved to be more than an average evening of dancing and fun on fraternity row.

p. Around 1:30 a.m., a fight broke out on the dance floor of Unit D during Phi Kappa Tau’s “Naughty or Nice” dance party, resulting in the arrest of two individuals.

p. According to the police report, Campus Police were in the midst of routine rounds at Unit D, where Phi Tau is located, when an officer heard shouts of “fight, fight.” The officer entered the unit, observed multiple skirmishes and called for backup. Further details of the incident were withheld due to a pending investigation by Campus Police.

p. “There was a police officer doing a walkthrough while the incident happened,” Phi Tau President Sammy Hamididdin ’09 said. “Who knows what kind of level of escalation the fight could have gotten to? Who else could have been involved, and how many more potential injuries could have resulted? The William and Mary police handled the situation as best they could.”

p. Numerous witnesses said that pepper spray was used by Williamsburg police officers, who responded to Campus Police’s call for backup.

p. “The Williamsburg police did not really seem to have a handle on things,” Hamididdin said. “They pepper-sprayed the entire area, spraying non-combatants as well as combatants directly. They also detained a [Phi Kappa] Tau brother for obstruction of justice for what appeared to be no real reason.”

p. After police assumed control of the situation, Andrew Brown, 19, of Virginia Beach and DeBrian Holmes ’08, 22, were arrested. Brown, who is not a student, was charged with disorderly conduct, being drunk in public and underage possession of alcohol.

p. Holmes, the starting running back of the football team, was charged with assault and battery. Holmes is accused of punching one of the non-students and knocking out a tooth.

p. Rumors concerning the extent of the altercation varied throughout the night. Speculation as to the severity of the matter was heightened by the administration’s decision to cancel events scheduled for Saturday night on fraternity row.

p. “We wanted to make sure that any problems from the night before did not carry over,” Campus Police Chief Donald Challis said. “The incident involved some off-campus people, and we sought to minimize the risk to William and Mary students. This was not about showing up the fraternities.”

p. A dance party planned by Theta Delta Chi for Saturday night was one of the events canceled. In a message posted on the party’s event site on Facebook, Theta Delta Chi cited cancellation “per instructions of [Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs] Mark Constantine and Campus Police.”

p. “I’ve been here 10 years now, and this is the first time that I can recall that we actually canceled an event because of an incident on campus,” Constantine said.