Tuesday, March 11

p. — A staff member reported that her wallet was stolen from Phi Beta Kappa Hall Sunday evening. The wallet contained $200 in cash and $210 in other items.

p. Thursday, March 13

p. — A bike was stolen from the Morton Hall bike rack. Its estimated value is $225.

p. Friday, March 14

p. — A student reported his wallet stolen while at the Rec Center. Its estimated value is $55.

p. A student reported that his parking decal was stolen from his vehicle while parked outside the units around March 9. The estimated value of the decal is $330.

p. — A student reported that his decal was stolen from his vehicle while parked in the William and Mary Hall parking lot. The approximate value of the decal was $50. The car was unlocked and items within the car had been moved around.
Saturday, March 15 — A 22-year old student was arrested outside of the lodges for being drunk in public.

p. — A toilet paper dispenser and paper towel dispenser were stolen from the third floor women’s restroom in Yates Hall. The dispensers are valued at $150.

p. — A student from Barrett Hall reported that her wallet was stolen while she was at Phi Beta Kappa Hall. The estimated value of the wallet and its contents is $420.

p. Sunday, March 16 — An 18-year old student was arrested at the units for being drunk in public, possession of a fake ID, underage possession of alcohol and possession of marijuana.

Monday, March 17— A student from Jefferson Hall reported that his credit card number had been stolen online and charges had been placed on his card. Almost $1,000 in charges were attempted but were stopped after the crime was reported.

1929

p. An on-campus post office was established to alleviate the difficulties of the previous dormitory post office system. The office would distribute letters and packages, as well as sell stamps. However, the office would not accept outgoing packages.

p. 1964

p. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands acted as chairman of the 13th annual Bilderberg meeting on international affairs held in Williamsburg. The meetings were informal conferences between leaders in industry, labor, government and education from Western Europe, Canada and the U.S.

p. 1979

p. The Deans of the College voted to consider the possibility of adding a short fall break to the academic calendar. The final decision was to be made in April and implemented the following semester.

p. 1981

p. One of a paddle of ducks that called the Crim Dell home was killed. A group of students kidnapped three ducks as part of a scavenger hunt and made ransom calls to College officials. The group killed one duck, then plucked and cleaned it. Officials discovered the other two ducks in residence hall showers after several days, hungry and neglected. The responsible students were later suspended.

The National Park Service announced plans to enforce parking restrictions along Colonial Parkway, including the area of College Creek. Beginning the week of March 17, parking will now be strictly limited to paved, marked parking spaces, according to a March 18th press release.

p. Park officials have been forced to take action after large crowds adversely affected the park area and have endangered public safety.
College Creek is one of the only public access points to the James River in Williamsburg. It is also one of the more dangerous beaches in the area, with an average of six near-drownings per year, and was the site of a College student’s death in 1997.

U.S. Senator John Warner was named the 2008 Hunter B. Andrews Fellow in American Politics at the College, according to the W&M News.

p. Interim College President Taylor Reveley said in a statement, “Senator Warner’s career of public service holds extraordinary lessons in citizenship for us all. We are honored to welcome him once again to the College, and look forward to recognizing him as the 2008 Andrews Fellow.”

p. Warner will be on campus Friday, April 4 to meet with students, faculty and staff. He will also speak at Friday’s town hall meeting at 3:30 p.m. in Blow Memorial Hall, room 201.

Through actively reaching out to the campus community in the month since his appointment as interim College president, Taylor Reveley, former dean of the Law School, has spent considerable time working with students, faculty and staff.

p. Having accepted the position amidst heated debate over the Board of Visitors’ decision and former College President Gene Nichol’s resignation, Reveley said he entered the office with two goals: to help heal the campus and to keep the school on track through the academic year.

p. Seeing progress in both areas, even Nichol’s most loyal supporters have commended Reveley.

p. “I applaud Reveley for coming into a hard situation and really making the best of it,” Sarah Rojas ’10, a leader of the Renew Nichol student group, said.

p. One of Reveley’s biggest challenges is demonstrating to students that he values their input as much as his predecessor did — a task, he explains, he is more than willing to undertake.

p. “Listening and learning will be crucial for me in the weeks to come,” Reveley said in an e-mail to the College community.
Student Assembly President Zach Pilchen ’09 was impressed to find that by Reveley’s third day in office, the interim president had already set up a meeting with an array of student leaders to convey his “basic philosophy and to meet the student body.”

p. Even with a full schedule of trips to Richmond, teleconferences with alumni and parents and meetings with faculty and staff, Reveley has still found time to connect with students.

p. Reveley held a student forum Feb. 27 to address questions about his plans for the future and to give students a glimpse into his personal life.

p. “His willingness to listen to us was clearly present,” Antonio Elias ’09 said. “He didn’t dismiss any questions and was very open.”
Reveley also doubled the number of student-president lunches and expressed hope that students will schedule one through his assistant, Cindy Brauer.

p. Bailey Thomson ’10, the founder of IHeartNichol.com, said she was encouraged by the fact that “Reveley is making service and volunteer services a top priority.”

p. Reveley even spoke of his hobbies and family life, referring to his “fluffy white dog” and two of his recent favorite movies, “Juno” and “Little Miss Sunshine.”

p. Law students were there, too.

p. “He was a natural choice as interim president,” Brandi Zehr ’06 J.D. ’09, treasurer of the Student Bar Association, said. “He cares tremendously about the university as a whole.”

p. Since the forum, Reveley has met with other student leaders.
Josh Wayland ’08, co-facilitator of the Student Environmental Action Coalition, scheduled a meeting with the interim president to discuss environmental sustainability initiatives on campus.

p. “He was very supportive about what I had to say and I think it speaks to his genuine concern about the students and the general well-being of the College,” Wayland said.

p. Reveley is also striving to continue Nichol’s tradition of attending student events. Reveley said he enjoyed the men’s basketball team’s run to the CAA Tournament title game and was very sad to see the loss to GMU.

p. “I’m going to try to attend a good many sporting events,” he said. “Last Saturday .night my wife and I went to a student play called ‘Twilight.’ We were really impressed.”

p. Reveley has continued to reach out to students. Over spring break, as soon as Reveley heard of the fire at the Chi Omega sorority house, he rushed to the scene. Susan O’Shaughnessy ’08, the only student in the house at the time of the fire, said she was impressed.

p. “I was not [ex]pecting [Reveley] to arrive at all,” she said. “It was great to see that he cared to see that we were okay.”
Many students who compare Reveley to Nichol have noted that he doesn’t seem as captivating as his predecessor. In response to the critique, Reveley is positive.

p. “Nichol might be far larger, more hairy and more charming than I,” Reveley said. “Though I do believe I am large and hairy enough to be charming.”

p. Despite his different leadership style, Reveley said he wants to continue Nichol’s four primary goals: the Gateway Initiative, diversity, internationalization and civic engagement.

p. “Our test in the coming weeks is to support him and help him be successful because his success will be that of the College’s,” Vice President for Student Affairs Sam Sadler said.

Who do you endorse for Student Assembly president?

p. That seemed to be the question among many student organizations for the past two weeks as Valerie Hopkins ’09 and Adam Rosen ’09 campaigned for the SA presidential seat.

p. Endorsements and general public support have become a controversial issue since last year’s election, when The Flat Hat decided for the first time in recent history to endorse SA candidates in an editorial, supporting Zach Pilchen ’09 and Hopkins over Brad Potter ’08 and Brett Phillips ’08.

p. Potter’s campaign later contested the validity of the endorsement, bringing The Flat Hat editorial board before the Elections Commission for violating the election code. Potter’s campaign claimed that Pilchen used the endorsement as advertising and that the editorial had a monetary value that exceeded contribution limits for candidates.

p. However, the Commission cleared The Flat Hat from any violation, setting the precedent for the future. In the same manner, the paper endorsed Hopkins and Pilchen in an editorial last Friday.

p. No other campus publication has endorsed candidates.
Rosen spoke to The Flat Hat’s editorial board about his campaign goals before the Friday editorial, but told the board that he would not accept any endorsements.

p. “I simply think that the members of the editorial staff shouldn’t have any more of a say in an election than any individual voter,” Rosen said to The Flat Hat.

p. In a letter addressed to his supporters on his Facebook campaign page, Rosen criticized The Flat Hat’s endorsement process.

p. “The 5 members of the Flat Hat review board hold an unmatchable political power to handpick the winner of any election they should choose to be interested in,” Rosen wrote. “This is our campus’s smoke-filled back room, reminiscent of a time in American history where party leaders and not the people chose their nominee.”

p. The Flat Hat is not the only source of endorsement controversy. SA Sen. Matt Skibiak ’08 was recently fired from the elections commission for sending out a self-described “joke” endorsement in an e-mail to SA senators last Sunday morning at 3:17 a.m.

p. The e-mail read: “Hey y’all! Party on and I endorse Val and Zach! Probably shouldn’t say that, but whatever. I’m a senior so eff you!”

p. Skibiak said that he forgot that he meant the e-mail as a joke and that he often tries to lighten the mood, which he said had a tendency to take itself too seriously.

p. “Frankly I think the fallout from a little joke has been absolute bullshit and is indicative of the childish nature of the Senate and how seriously they take themselves,” Skibiak said in an e-mail to The Flat Hat. “My endorsement of Valerie and Zach didn’t mean a thing and didn’t change a single mind. Senators and people in the Student Assembly, for the most part, live in a little bubble which they think is a microcosm of the real political world.”

p. Elections commissioner Jennifer Souers replaced Skibiak with SA Sen. Joe Luppino-Esposito ’08.

p. Questions also arose during last week’s SA presidential debate, when both parties claimed to have the support of education professor John Foubert, the founder of the sexual assault prevention program One-in-Four.

p. “I have not formally endorsed candidates for SA elections,” Foubert later said.

Incumbents Valerie Hopkins ’09 and Zach Pilchen ’09 were declared Student Assembly President and Vice President last night after winning a landslide victory with over 70 percent of the student vote.

p. Their platform focused on building on progress made over the past year and continuing it in the coming year.
“We’re going to continue to try to focus on student empowerment,” Hopkins said during a celebratory gathering of all SA election winners at the Library Tavern last night.

p. “So many things have happened this year that we could never have foreseen, so a big thing we want to make sure we do is get a bigger student voice, not only in the committee that selects the president, but getting students to actually write criteria for the selection of the president,” Hopkins said.

p. The reason for the change in positions — last year Pilchen was president and Hopkins vice president — is because both wanted to make a statement that titles do not matter to either of them.
“We approached this as a co-presidency. It doesn’t feel any different to us,” Hopkins said. She is the first female president since 2002.

p. Running against Hopkins and Pilchen were Adam Rosen ’09 and Emily Nuñez ’09.

p. “We ran a great race for two transfer students up against incumbents,” Rosen said. ”We exceeded expectations.”
Many positions ran uncontested, and the majority were secured by incumbents.

p. There was some controversy surrounding the Class of 2010 senator elections after an anonymous e-mail was sent to all class members the night before, outlining reasons why the incumbent senators shouldnot be reelected.

p. The e-mail listed Orlando Watson, an incumbent who was not reelected, as ranking last in the latest Flat Hat Senate Report Card.

p. There were close races, like the one for Class of 2011 president, where incumbent Jazmine Piña narrowly beat opponent Yael Gilboa with 54 percent of the vote.

p. The green fees referendum easily passed with 85 percent, adding $15 a semester to student fees. The Save-A-Professor referendum passed with 83 percent.