This year, Rites of Spring, held on April 18 and 19, will host headliners Spoon and Lil’ Jon. A little over a month ago, the Hustler carried the announcement. In the weeks that followed, various publications praised the Music Group, a subsidiary of the Vanderbilt Programming Board for their choices.
Dear Joseph Williams and Wyatt Smith:
Congratulations on your election as Vanderbilt Student Government’s second president and vice president. For two weeks, one couldn’t flip to the Hustler’s crossword without being inundated with the campaign platforms of you and your two opponents. Thankfully, the election is over. With only a third of the campus even bothering to cast a vote that takes thirty seconds, you won. Now it’s time for you to get to work on all those promises you made. Having a mandate from less than a third of campus, let us take a look at your campaign promises in order to focus on what you should actually accomplish in your term.
In only its fourth year in the College of Arts & Sciences, the Managerial Studies Department has grown from single-section classes of thirty students to three-and four-sectioned classes of ninety plus students. In addition, the number of courses offered and the number of professors in the department has also increased to meet the growing demand. Last month, The Hustler highlighted the rapid growth of this department with a front-page article regarding the recent popularity of the managerial studies minor.
This month, the Office of Housing and Residential Education (OHARE) is in the process of collecting and reviewing applications for the positions of resident advisor and head resident. Like always, applicants will be placed in one of seven dorm areas. For the first time though, the Commons will be fully operational and ready to hold the entire freshman class. The master plan to quarantine all of the freshmen away from the fraternities and close to the hospital will be complete. A new bridge was even built to connect the hospital and the Commons, speeding up the transfer of students from bathroom floors to emergency room doors.
Considering the quality of new television shows this fall season, the writers are the last people who should be on strike. If anyone needs to be picketing, it’s the viewers. These shows are so bad the writing could be outsourced to New Delhi and no one would notice a shift in quality for “Cavemen” or “Pushing Daises.” Who comes up with these plots? Manatees? Are we so desperate for new show ideas that we’re starting to surf the commercials between already bad shows? What ever happened to having a show about nothing?
In late September, Congressman Bobby Rush (D-Illinois) took a break from doing nothing in Congress to call a hearing entitled “From Imus to Industry: The Business of Stereotypes and Degrading Images.” This hearing, like the Parents’ Music Resource Center hearings of 1985, accomplished about as much as Nancy Pelosi’s charge to end the war in Iraq. Tax dollars were spent, Congress looked busy, and the public was left wondering what exactly their representatives do in Washington. Once again, Congress stuck its nose into something it cannot even begin to comprehend, the music industry. Like 1980’s Al Gore failing to comprehend Frank Zappa’s mind-blowing conclusion that printing music lyrics would cost money, Representative Rush didn’t realize that college educated rap artist David Banner would be able to speak eloquently about the industry in which he makes a living. In this hearing, Banner, along with Master P, successfully defended their right to use certain offensive words - the same offensive words, they pointed out, that appear in such required high school readings as Huckleberry Finn and Invisible Man.
With Commons construction almost completed, what began as a vision almost a decade ago has come to fruition. Four new dormitories have been completed and are currently housing students. The five “historic” buildings, as they are now euphemistically called, have all undergone some form of renovation. Only the construction of Dean Wcislo’s house and the behemoth dormitory to be known as Hank Ingram Jr. House remain.
With these final projects slated for completion by the start of next year, the Commons will be up and running for next year’s freshmen class. In addition to these fifteen hundred plus new students living on the Commons next year, ten faculty members will take up residence in the dormitories as well. Here follows an introduction of each faculty member.
In the past month, student media has been littered with news and
opinions regarding Vanderbilt’s housing system. While it is inevitable
that someone will complain every year about the “unfairness” of a blind
lottery, this year’s deluge of complaints has been uncharacteristic.
The cause of these new complaints is the impactthe Commons, the first
stage of Vanderbilt’s residential college system slated for completion
in fall 2008, had on the housing process. With the completion of new
dorms and the renovation of others on Peabody, the university is, for
once, experiencing a surplus of housing. As a consequence of this
surplus, off-campus housing is sounding its death knell, something long
predicted by the administration.
The two-day festival of binge drinking, mediocre bands, and general chaos that is Rites of Spring is scheduled for April 20-21 this year. While some schools prepare for finals with multiple reading days, Vanderbilt celebrates with a stress fest complete with iPod drawings, mocktails you couldn’t give away, and, of course, a music festival that directly contrasts the very notion of higher education.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Rites of Spring and the 48 hours of lost studying that come with it. I like my concerts like I like my food, sleep, coffee, and alcohol. While one can live on Quizno’s, 5 hours of sleep a night, Rand coffee, and Natty Light (a debatable subject), these are not the finer things in life. I myself would rather eat at Morton’s, sleep till noon, drink two dollar cups of Starbucks coffee and two hundred dollar bottles of Johnnie Walker.
The midterm season has arrived. By the time of publication, we will already be in the middle of the festivities. This joyous season brings with it normal daily work, research papers, two hour tests in 50 minutes, bitter cold walks to Starbucks for five dollar coffee, and, of course, the classic all-nighter. It’s beginning to look a lot like finals, ev’rywhere you go.
