Infamous Mast Road Cat Stolen

If you or one of your friends parks a car in Mast Lot then you have probably met the Mast Road cat. It is probably one of the friendliest cats in the world and follows students up and down Mast Road by the UNH Equine center. According the the message I got on facebook he was last seen crossing the Dairy Bar bridge headed into campus, in the arms of two girls. He is wearing a blue collar with a bell on it. The UNH Equine Facility and his owners greatly miss him. So two girls apparently stole one of the few cats I actually like. I'm a dog person, I love dogs. Cats are creepy, but not this one. So if you know anything please call one of the numbers above. And if you're one of the thieves then you should be a ashamed. Seriously, who steals a cat?

Update: He was reportedly seen in the SERC area over the weekend.
Update 2 (Wednesday morning) The cat has been found and returned. Nice job people.

Like a Pro: Doing Nothing Accomplishes Nothing

Maybe it is my obsession with the American Revolution, the counterculture or that fact that I read the Declaration of Independence and the Port Huron Statement for fun or frequently listen to Bob Dylan, but I love when the people fight for what they believe in.

This is why last week when UNH Dining declared that it would be halting the sale of energy drinks on campus, I was so furious, and when President Huddleston denied the ban, I rejoiced. Listen, I understand that getting worked up over energy drinks is silly, especially when they are much cheaper downtown, but it was the principle of the situation that bothered me the most.

Where do you draw the line? What is the next thing that they will take from us?

President Huddleston reversing dining's decision was a minor victory for the student body over the administration, which is something that really doesn't happen at UNH too often — especially with our mostly passive student body. Many people told me I was overreacting through comments and tweets, but it was clear that they did not see the bigger picture.

It wasn't about the energy drinks to me; it was about responsibility and the freedom of choice.

On Twitter, I half-jokingly tweeted "no taxation without representation" because of how dining made the decision without discussing options with its meal plan-paying customers. People said I took my comments too far and blew the situation out of proportion. But the majority of the students who still wanted to pay for overpriced Red Bulls at the library got their way. If people didn't complain, then come January, UNH Dining services would have been energy drink free.

Doing or saying nothing accomplishes nothing.

It was a small victory for the students. We didn't lower tuition or convince UNH to renovate Hamilton-Smith, but like President Huddleston said, the administration listened to the students. They may have all the power, but we have the vast majority. Students can make a difference on this campus if we care enough to try. We won't always succeed, but we definitely won't if we don't try.

That is why I have decided to do something about another UNH decision that has bothered me this year.

I mentioned it briefly last week, and after discussing it with many students, I have decided it is worth a shot. I will personally be writing a respectful petition and circulating it around the Gables asking that Friday and Saturday night quiet hours be restored to 1 a.m. Like President Huddleston said about the energy drink situation, the administration wants us students to make our own decisions. If we fail miserably, so what? At least we tried. If we don't try we have already failed.

If the majority of Gables residents are willing to sign the petition, they have to at least listen to us. UNH might not be a democracy, but America is, and the majority usually wins. I say usually because we all remember the 2000 presidential election.

Is this a major problem on this campus? No, it isn't. But it is a start and something that many students care about, and you need to start somewhere. The one-hour makes a huge difference. The bonus features such as more freedom, responsibility and independence of the Gables and Woodsides are what make them special to the students and worth the extra money. The reason for the change in quiet hours was that housing cited a survey where students complained about noise levels, but I believe the majority of students would prefer the 1 a.m. quiet hours.

During the week, 10 p.m. is understandable, but on the weekends very few students are ready to go to bed or quiet down at midnight. This is not even an issue of being able to party later, but much like the energy drink situation, what comes next? Will there be CAs on every floor like the RAs in the dorms? You may think that will never happen, but did you expect the quiet hours to change without warning?

Many students, such as myself, were annoyed that the change was not announced until after the room selection process was completed and we would have lost our deposit if we sought to live elsewhere. The new quiet hours are not the end of the world, but it is a matter of responsibility.

Obviously, students will not get everything we ask for all the time, but I believe it is worth a shot.

Stay classy, not UMassy

Beer Olympics Recap

Well I'm just wrapping up a pretty awesome weekend and I have been trying to stay away from so many drinking and party posts and get a little serious, but I still got to stick to my roots. The other night was possibly one of the best I've had during my time at UNH. Our youngest roommate turned 21 on Friday and to celebrate we hosted a Beer Olympics. It's something we've all wanted to do for a while, but we never did. We planned it all out for a while, sent out facebook invites and made the brackets. We planned on having three games with 16 teams, each consisting of a guy and a girl who pick a country to represent and dress up as. We ended up with 17 teams, but we solved the matchup problem by randomly making two play a "play-in" game before starting the tournaments. We settled on Beirut, Beer Dodge and survival flip cup as the three games. However, we never got to flip cup and the Beirut tournament ended in the final four, but that didn't matter because everyone had a great time. We had around 35 people in our Gables apartment and never even had a courtesy knock. It was pretty amazing. Everyone had unbelievable costumes, but the best was the birthday boy who represented Vatican City with a pope costume topped off with a pope hat made out of a PBR 30 box.

My partner and I represented Team Romania (so we could dress up as Gypsies.) We have been friends for a while and entered the night expecting to make some noise in the Beirut tournament, but had zero expectations for the other games. We both are pretty good at beirut and can handle our beer quite well. However, it wasn't our night on the ruit table. We lost in the first round to one of my roommates whose partner started off hitting her first 6 cups. That didn't matter to us though because we would go on to win the gold medal in Beer Dodge, the one tournament that we actually completed. On our path to glory we took out Burkina Faso, Scotland (a huge upset over my roommate who is the Randy Johnson of Beer Dodge) and Kenya. In the finals we were matched up against Cuba, who stormed through their side of the bracket. But those commies couldn't handle the power of the gypsies. It was a back and forth game and both teams only had one can left. The next hit for either team would have ended the game if the ball wasn't immediately retrieved and it was my turn to throw. My partner was ready to drink and I nailed the top of the can, the ball took off straight up in the air with an amazing airtime. They caught it and slammed it down, but it was too late, my partner had finished her beer and the Gypsies were Olympic Beer dodge champions. I spent the rest of the night wearing my Gogol Bordello Gypsy flag around my back and I am considering making myself a gold medal.

If you have never done a Beer Olympics you have to add it to your UNH graduation bucket list. It was easily the best party we've ever hosted and I can honestly say that everyone there had a blast.

Lastly, I am asking for readers to submit their best planking pictures around the UNH campus. I already had another one sent in and if I get some more I'll start posting a few at a time. You can email them to me (unhblog@yahoo.com) or send them via twitter or facebook. If you want I can blur out faces if that's something you care about. Yesterday's will be hard to beat, so be creative. I'll try to post some of my or my roommates too. 

Stay classy, not UMassy.

The Wildcat Plank

Have fun out there kids.

Rumor Mill: TKE loses Recognition (confirmed)

(See updates at the bottom of this post.)

The other day one of my roommate's texted me "TKE lost recognition, you know anything?" At the time I didn't and I was busy and completely forgot about it. This evening I got another comment on a post again inquiring about TKE. So I went over to Twitter and posted a question asking if anyone had heard anything about this. Within a few minutes someone responded: "They did, someone stole a gun from their house and they had to report it. But then UNH found out they had weapons."

That is the only explanation I have heard so far; and in the mean time another friend texted me saying he heard the same thing. I guess that will do it, weapons on a college campus are always a scary thing especially in the post-Columbine and Virginia Tech era. I must admit, although they had a gun (and honestly it could have been a hunting rifle or shotgun, those seasons are just beginning) they did the right thing by reporting it to the police.

If you know anymore details, or if I'm completely wrong, please post your comments below.

Now I need to get back to studying watching the Red Sox.

Stay classy, not UMassy.

UPDATES:
I have heard from a few sources that 1 or 2 pounds of marijuana were found, as well as $2000 cash and the gun was also loaded. Read the comment section to see an explanation of their penalty from a current brother.

Like a Pro: Priorities and Contradictions at UNH

Note: This was written Sunday, before more information had been released on the Dining/Energy drink fiasco. At last word, President Huddleston has delayed the ban over the outcry of the student body. At least one administrator has common sense because either way we can get our drinks cheaper (although less convenient) downtown at the DUMP or Store 24 (even though it's not Store 24 anymore, that's all I'll ever call it.)

During my four years at UNH, I have noticed that many people on this campus, including faculty, the administration and the general employees do not always have their priorities quite right and they often contradict themselves and one another. I believe that it has become apparent that there is not enough communication between the different levels of school employees. Often times decisions are made without asking the students opinion, or more problematic, too small of a survey sample.

The priorities and contradictions that surround people at this school are often quite mind-boggling. We have a few current examples that prove my very point. Take UNH Dining for example. I know I pick on them a lot, but some of it is deserved. Ever since I've been here they have tried to promote healthy eating. They even went so far as to remove all the salt shakers from the tables at the dining halls and replacing them with expensive salt and pepper mills. Yet, this semester we returned to campus only to see that possibly the healthiest food source on campus, Panache, had been replaced with a Dunkin' Donuts. Personally, I don't mind this, I love their iced coffee, but it seems like a bit of a contradiction. No salt for you! But have all the Boston Creams you want. Then more news came out that effective in January all UNH Dining services will no longer serve energy drinks. Thankfully, President Mark Huddleston intervened and put the rule on hold.

I have two predictions if the rule is put into effect: It will cause the entire university's GPA to drop a full point and the number of students falling asleep in class will skyrocket. Dining, let me get this straight, salt and energy drinks are bad for us, but it is okay to put a Dunkin' Donuts in the middle of our student center located in the heart of campus? Stick to your guns about healthy eating, sustainability and local support or don't bother. Seriously, UNH dining flip-flops more than Mitt Romney.

Here is another example that deals with the faculty and administration. By now we all know about the Professor Larkin situation. He exposed himself to a teenage girl and her mother in a Market Basket parking lot and was given a three year probationary period where he won't be able to teach and only do research. I wonder if a male student were to be caught doing the same thing what the outcome would be? Probation? Expulsion? Would faculty members support a male student who pulled something like this, or would it be different? We have many student organizations and student support groups on this campus that completely focus on eliminating problems like this, but many of our professors portray Larkin as the victim.

UNH Housing doesn't stray from the pack either. For the first two years of my college career I lived in the regular dorms. I was a proud resident of Williamson Hall as a freshman and as a sophomore I was in Devine Hall. Last year and this year I have been lucky to live in the Gables. When I made the transition housing said that living in the Gables you have more freedom, more privacy and personal responsibility. Then what do they do? Move quiet hours up to be the same as the dorms. This does a few things. Here is my hypothetical prediction. This will drive more of the "party" students off campus.

Personally, if I knew about the change ahead of time, I would have avoided Gables and got an apartment this year. That extra hour makes a huge difference on the weekends. I also believe more students could potentially lose housing do to quiet hour violations that lead to alcohol and other more serious violations. It's the student's own fault, but midnight comes fast on a Friday night. Again this could lead to more students moving off campus and into Durham and the surrounding towns who already despise students living in residential neighborhoods. Durham and UNH relations are already tense and they have been for years and this could potentially add fuel to the fire.

UNH has so many different departments and levels of authority that it would be nearly impossible for them to not contradict themselves or one another. I believe there is going to be a greater need of cooperation and communication especially when the budget cuts begin having an even greater impact.

Stay classy, not UMassy.

Energy Drink Gate

So I just read an article from WMUR that stated the one of the reasons behind the energy drink ban is that it is a common mixer with alcohol and that it makes students not realize how drunk they are. The old Four Loko problem. Personally, this makes me even more angry. It is ridiculous, what's next? Making UNH a dry campus? Students are still going to drink a lot and make stupid decisions no matter what the campus stores sell. I guess we'll just have to go down to Market Basket and buy bulk cases of Red Bull. It's a helluva lot cheaper there anyway. The UNH convenient stores have the most marked up prices I've ever seen. It's almost like they're trying to end the budget crisis on their own.

In the article UNH assistent vice president for business affairs David May was quoted as saying "Just recently, there was an incident on campus involving energy drinks that helped send a student to the hospital." Listen David, it wasn't the energy drink and it wasn't even the alcohol that sent a student to the hospital. It was the student who didn't know how to handle his or her own drinking. Every weekend hundreds of UNH students use energy drinks with alcohol and one person has a few too many and now we're all punished? This is group punishment because of one person's mistake.

So go ahead and take away all the Red Bulls from the UNH dining stores, but students are not going to stop drinking. And there will still be cases of students having to go to the hospital. It happens. This is college and you're only hurting students in the long run. You are taking away our ability to make our own decisions and sometimes people need to learn from their mistakes. Stupid kids aren't going to learn if you never give them the chance. Isn't college supposed to prepare us for the real world? Or are people going to be making decisions for me the rest of my life?

The article continued:

UNH said its plan to remove energy drinks is part of its mission to be the healthiest campus community in the country by 2020. Dining halls have eliminated trans fats from food, removed salt shakers from tables and reduced sodium in many recipes. Officials are also studying how to reduce the amount of high fructose corn syrup that’s served.

So they are giving two reasons for this. Healthy eating and alcohol mixing... oh, by the way, I'm so happy I won't be having to eat here in 2020. Sounds like the dining halls are gonna be gross.