This is the time of year when students have traditionally packed Trinkle Hall in a frenzied effort to get their hands on the best housing options for the coming academic year. This spring, with the housing lottery taking place online and no more than 60 students vying for rooms during a particular block of time, the housing selection has been, by most accounts, smooth and easy. However, with 326 students bumped from campus housing before the lottery began — an increase of 150 from last year — it remains clear that Residence Life and the housing selection process have serious flaws.

p. While ResLife reports that those who were bumped will eventually be reinstated, offers for housing for these students will likely consist of overcrowd rooms with randomly assigned roommates, a prospect which does not excite many. The issue, then, appears to be a lack of adequate space. There are several ways for the College to address these concerns and make sure that next year there are not so many students left out in the cold.
It is no secret that the idea of living in the Dillard Complex is far from glamorous. Yet, at the same time, the security and knowledge that one has a place to live with people he or she knows outweigh the inconvenience of taking a shuttle to campus.

p. Furthermore, the fact that Dillard has been sitting idle all year, serving little if any purpose, while hundreds of students do not have guaranteed housing is absurd, particularly when housing laws in the City of Williamsburg make it extremely difficult to live off campus. In many cases, students are informed that they have been bumped months after all the available off-campus houses have been scooped up, leaving students to hope that a room with a transfer student in the Units becomes available.

p. Reopening Dillard would provide a short-term solution to this problem, but a more thorough and practical approach would involve rearranging the placement of certain College offices and houses in order to accommodate students. For example, the Stetson House, the Holmes House, the SA House and a host of other buildings on Jamestown Road are currently used as offices, many of which employ workers with access to cars. Moving such offices to Dillard or elsewhere would free up these houses for students. While these houses cannot accommodate the same numbers as campus dorms, they would play a crucial role in taking pressure off ResLife and making the process more convenient and less nerve-racking for students.

p. We understand that no solution will be a panacea for ResLife or for student housing concerns. Some students will still be unhappy with where they end up, but the idea that a top state school, particularly a college of our tradition and supposed commitment to on-campus living, does not have a system in place that can guarantee housing for all of its students is inexcusable. This becomes even more staggering when the facilities are currently in place for guaranteed housing. Students at the College have enough to worry about without having to stress about whether they will have a place to live during the next academic year, and the administration and ResLife need to recognize this concern.

The College is both famous and notorious for its reputable academic intensity. Students receive the revered undergraduate degree after earning 120 credits in various fields. Moreover, students are equally notorious for their over-involvement in extracurricular pursuits: community service organizations, varsity and club sports, student government, religious, cultural and political organizations and publication councils, among others. All in all, we, as students, are heavily overburdened, whether through our choice or through our curriculum.

p. I propose that there is an equilibrium that has not yet been reached. Should students receive credit for producing tangible benefits from their extracurricular work? Should there be an opportunity to synthesize one’s academic work with extracurricular work in pursuit of a degree? Should the plethora of optional education (lectures, conferences, etc.) be worked into a credit-earning system?

p. The SDS MidEast convention will not give anyone credit, but it will hopefully provide the College community a thought-piece as to why our work as active community members is not weighted here. This weekend, April 20 to 22, Students for a Democratic Society will host the SDS MidEast Convention, themed “Keeping it Local.” It is a weekend of participatory education, focusing on the development of student organizations as integral parts of a campus community, and how we, as students with progress and change in mind, can effectively influence our community.

p. Highlighted by three keynote speakers, a series of student-run workshops and an opportunity for direct involvement in protest, demonstration and direct action, the convention is structured in a way that should mimic a standard academic environment, but moves away from the traditional teachings on theory, hard science and singular answer subject matter. In addition, a number of fun activities such as graffiti, banner making, poetry, a documentary about community action and a weekend-long “Food Not Bombs” operation will also take place.

p. Josh Ruebner will hold a workshop on how to organize your group to effectively lobby local and state governments at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow. This is especially pertinent to College students given our current situation with the Williamsburg City Council. At 1:00 p.m., Anotnia Juhasz will speak about the ravages of U.S. corporate-led globalization of the rest of the world, and how President George W. Bush’s policies have fostered such damaging outsourcing.

p. She will relate these international issues to our small town of Williamsburg by talking about the colonialist message that is protected and revered by the existence of Colonial Williamsburg as an economic super-power in this area. Rae Abileah and Sam Miller, two members of CodePink, will be talking about women in activism, and how the current activist movement is largely dominated by men. They argue that the same gender superiority issues that have arisen throughout history are repeating themselves in the activist movement.

p. It is important to know that we are aiming for a non-politically charged event, because it is easy to succumb to the stereotype that all activists are radicals. Instead, this event is meant strictly to share techniques and tools used in organizing at the grassroots and local level: fundraising, networking, publicity, effective action, etc. This education benefits everyone, regardless of political affiliation.

p. So, this weekend, check out the Sunken Garden for a beehive of activity and consider how much you can do for both your personal goals and the betterment of the community by getting involved. Educate yourself on how to be an effective individual.

p. __Sean Sheppard, a sophomore at the College, is a Student Assembly senator.__

For the remainder of this semester, my duties as a staff columnist will mostly consist of gushing (and/or whining, and/or demonstrating to astute readers the classic signs of homesickness, and/or substance abuse and/or exhaustion and/or quietly disappearing from these pages after failing to write yet another paper because of my unfaltering allegiance to The Flat Hat) about Oxford, that venerable bastion of academia, a place so old that it makes the College look, well, not as old; though when one considers the age of the universe they’re both comparatively young, these so-called “universities.”

p. Yep, I was miraculously admitted to the place without even needing to bribe them, unless that was included in the pulse-stopping tuition bill. (If you’re interested in subsidizing these columns, e-mail me. We’ll talk.) After a few months of puttering around Williamsburg with next to no responsibilities, here I am, in England. As Forrest Gump once said, “It’s this whole other country.”

p. Of course, if I’m not careful, these columns may start to read like those rambling and interminable e-mails that everybody gets from friends who’re studying abroad, except that I have the distinct disadvantage of not being your friend. You know the e-mails — you really want to read them, because, hey, they’re from your friends, or they are from people who regard you as a friend, and they’re off in a foreign land discovering the innermost secrets of selfhood, coming of age and getting into international trouble. But somehow, after the fourth or fifth picture in which the main point seems to be, “the drinking age here is 18, sucker,” you’ve had your fill.

p. To stay safe and a little bit lazy, I’m going to let Oxford speak for itself this week. Below are excerpts from various encounters I’ve had in the past few days, all of them demonstrating the unique character of this area. If you get bored, you don’t even need to push “delete” — just tear up the newspaper and frown at passers-by. If you want to read the other columns, well, then you’re on your own.

p. I. Oxford’s I.T. website, on how to pick a password for your e-mail address:

p. “We ensure that [your] password is not a word or name by checking a very large dictionary which includes proper names, words from several languages and many non-words such as ‘qwerty’ and 3.14159.”

p. Because if you’re a math major, hackers will guess pi right away. And confound that O.E.D. — I couldn’t even think of using “absquatulate” or “upendizi,” the Swahili word for “love.”
II. A conversation at dinner: A W&M student asks, “Can I Facebook you?”

p. An Oxford student replies, “Well, you can try.”

p. III. A College nurse, on staying healthy at Oxford:
“I don’t know if you’re aware, but this town runs on alcohol. It really does. You’ll be offered it everywhere: at pubs, at meals, by your friends, by your tutors. I worry about it, because — especially with the young ladies — it can lead to some, well, ‘compromising situations.’ But do try to stay healthy. I’m sure there are all sorts of viruses here you haven’t got back in the States. Sure, you’ll come down with the sniffles. But really, wash up, eat right. Do try.”

p. IV. The tail end of a conversation at an orientation luncheon about punting, a type of boating popular in Oxford and Cambridge: A social club president says, “So, yeah, pints and punting, it’s all a lot of fun, and we hope you’ll come out and join us.”

p. An older female professor replies, “Oh, but, not to bring down the spirit or anything, it can be dangerous. Yes, we’ve actually had students die while punting when they’re not being careful.” (Awkward silence.) “Needless to say, they had been drinking.” (Another awkward silence.)

p. Another professor says, “Well, I suppose we should all be heading back to our offices about now.”

p. V. Overheard at “The Old Tom,” one of at least 10 pubs claiming to serve “the best fish’n’chips in Oxford:” An anonymous patron to the bartender, “Have you ever been threatened by the IRA?”

p. That’s quite enough for the moment. From these snippets, it should be clear that I’m in for an interesting term — one for which you, dear reader, will be privy to every second.

p. Of course, Oxford might turn out to be little more than bizzaro Williamsburg. There’s a Richmond Road here, too, and I’ve already seen my share of Gene Nichol look-alikes. More on this theory next week — assuming I don’t drown during an episode of tippled punting.

p. __Dan Piepenbring, a junior at the College, is a staff columnist. His columns appear on Fridays.__

The Flat Hat reported in the April 10 issue that two separate incidents occurred at Theta Delta Chi on April 1. The first incident occurred in the TDX unit when human excrement was found on the dance floor. The second occurred after the dance floor was cleared when two students of the College argued outside the fraternity. According to a complaint by one of the students involved, the other student began to yell anti-gay remarks at him outside of the units. The Flat Hat staff wrote an editorial about the event in the same issue.

p. First, I think it is important to point out that it was not a Phi Tau fraternity member who put human excrement on the floor of TDX, which was clearly implied in the article, “Prank, slurs probed.” Second, I think that it is unfortunate and indefensible if anti-gay remarks were made during the argument between the two students. However, I think the incident was grossly misrepresented in the article, which only serves to hurt both fraternities implicated.

p. I applaud TDX for declining to comment on the story. They were right to recognize the event as an individual issue, rather than an organizational one. Whatever was said represents the opinions of a single member, not Phi Tau as a whole. There has been no suggestion or evidence that the fraternity supports these types of remarks. However, the article generated more controversy by implying that the dispute between the two individuals was part of, or at least representative of, a broader tension or rivalry between two fraternities. The article refers to the student who made the remarks as “the Phi Tau brother,” as if that is somehow connected to the statements he made. The repeated identification of the fraternity is unnecessary and only serves to paint a negative picture of Phi Tau and Greek life on campus.

p. It is true that when a member of a fraternity is recognized for some positive achievement or good behavior, the fraternity often benefits from that attention. So of course, it should be expected that the same rules apply when a member is recognized for bad behavior. In the staff editorial, it is specifically stated that individual statements are not reflective of the fraternity as a whole; however, such poor statements will obviously reflect poorly on their peers. But it is a question of degree.

p. This incident involves the words and actions of one person, not several or the entire fraternity. All of us who are part of the College community know how quickly reputations can be made and destroyed. The student apologized for what he said and he certainly needs to reconsider his choices for the future. However, now it must be left to the school and the fraternity to decide whether or not a punishment will be issued.

p. Both the article and editorial over-dramatized the event, inciting a false rivalry between the two fraternities and giving the impression that the conflict was somehow connected to such a rivalry. Journalists often dramatize stories in order to make them more interesting to read; however, they also have an obligation to give a balanced account of an event. It is not up to The Flat Hat to manipulate the situation when many of the details remain unclear.

p. While the dispute happened to occur between members of two separate fraternities, their membership in such organizations was entirely irrelevant to the dispute. I agree that any anti-gay remarks which were made are entirely unacceptable and it is certainly no excuse that the individual was drunk. But there is no need to characterize a dispute between two individuals in such a way that unnecessarily polarizes members of two large fraternities.

p. The article also stated that the student who allegedly made such remarks is set to face the Judicial Council, while no such meeting has been scheduled. I think that both articles grossly misrepresented the incident. Both fraternities are well respected on campus, and I would hope that a rivalry between the two organizations does not arise from this incident.

p. __Rachael Siemon-Carome, a freshman at the College, is a staff columnist. Her columns appear on Fridays.__