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Campus Beat: Power Outages, Subterranean Tunnels, and Banned Books

By Emily Rutherford - Sep 8th, 2008 at 10:08 am

Well, I finally started my freshman year of college this past weekend, and it’s been a surreal experience. Now I almost feel like I can claim to relate to the stories we bring you from the campus papers every week.

My move-in, while a pain, wasn’t as bad as that of the freshmen at Harvard. According to The Harvard Crimson, an electrical surge caused an electrical fire in one dorm, which in turn resulted in a power outage across all the freshman dorms on Harvard Yard. The new students were set to spend their first night on cots in the gym, until the power finally came back on at almost 3:00 a.m.

Also in Ivyland, the Brown Herald reports that “Go Cross Campus,” the Risk clone that pits the Ivy League schools against each other in an online competition, is set for a second successful season. But just when you thought the Ivy League couldn’t get any more elitist, you could read the Yale Daily News to discover that Yale and Harvard also play polo against each other.

In slightly more normal news, the University of North Carolina’s chancellor will not be renewing his college’s apparel contract with Victoria’s Secret, while William and Mary’s student government VP is resigning because he embezzled student-government funds for “movie tickets, cigarettes and sandwiches.”

Speaking of undercover actions (man, that was a terrible segue), the University of Washington Daily has a pretty cool article about exploring the campus’s underground steam tunnels. These exist at many schools, and though they’re invariably off-limits for safety reasons, they’re also invariably invaded by the adventurous.

Finally, although Rutgers’ Daily Targum’s website is down, it did have a great article earlier this week promoting Banned Books Week, an event championed by librarians nationwide which this year runs from September 27 to October 4. Sponsored by the American Library Association, it celebrates the ability to read freely and famous books which have successfully fought challenges of censorship. It’s my opinion that everyone out there should celebrate by picking up a banned or challenged book and making friends with it.

So, for those of you at college now, and those of you on the quarter system who are lame and haven’t started yet, have a fantastic academic year. And remember, if something exciting happens on your campus or gets reported in your paper, send it my way.

Tags: books, Campus Beat, free speech