By Hazel Ryerton

This week, SLAP (the Student Labor Action Project) will mark the one year anniversary of the Livable Wage Tent City with a second Tent City on the Waterman Green, demanding that UVM pay a livable wage to all University employees and contracted workers.

The administration’s response to last year’s Tent City did not meet the demands of the student protestors, nor did it result in a University-wide livable wage.

In response to the 2006 Tent City, President Fogel created the Basic Needs Task Force, a committee of faculty, administrators, students, and union representatives, with the purpose of making a recommendation …

By Lauren McGonagle-Akin

He was particularly rosy. His shoulders swung like hammocks when he walked. His hands were always in his pockets. He radiated jolliness. He was my trustworthy anonymous Monday-Wednesday-Friday passerby.

Every walk to central campus would surely include a silent and swift encounter with this rosy one and subsequently pleasant musings about him would follow.

I had no romantic interest in this fellow. I knew only that he struck some sort of chord within me, and that his vibe laid the groundwork for some seriously enjoyable internal narrative. He was what I have come to call a …

By Mike Polanski

Isham Street

Hi, so you want to live on me? Fucking wonderful. I know that the endless charms of my numerous potholes, malodorous gutters, and old gel Asics hanging from telephone wires just screams the words “prime real estate” to you and 11 of your friends.

Plus, kids seem to love the fact that most of my houses are available until roughly a week before the actual lease starts!

In the old days, I had soul: young people milled around my lovely block, blasting Joan Baez and exploring the possibilities of group love and the liberations of poor hygiene.

Now it’s Leppard …

By Max Bookman

“Calm down with the threats, there’s a new Congress in town.”

-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, to President Bush, on his promise to veto any legislation that includes a withdrawal from Iraq. Mr. Bush has assured the American people that our presence in Iraq is not open-ended, but a timetable doesn’t seem to be what he has in mind, which makes our commitment…well…open-ended.

1. A) Hare-Brained B) Hair-Brained
2. A) Card-Shark or B) Card-Sharp
3. A) Intents and Purposes B) Intensive Purposes
4. A) Worse comes to Worse or B) Worse to comes Worst
5. A) One In The Same or B) One And The Same
6. A) For an Occasion B) Fornication

By Jen Nolan

The study abroad office at UVM is a disorienting 15 square-foot (windowless) room where brochures for seemingly infinite programs, countries, and schools participate in a sly, heated, and (profitable?) competition.

I am standing in the office for the 5th time this year, comparing the most meaningful aspects of each program as they are illustrated in glossy color on the cover of each brochure. I’m calculating just how many teeth I can count on the smiling students who seem to be thinking, “Wow! This program/country is perfect for me!”

My reasons for studying abroad make up a scattered, contradictory, …

This section highlights academic pursuits of UVM students that never quite materialized. We want to share with you the great papers that never-were.

Thesis Proposal for a Women’s Studies and Sports
Medicine interdisciplinary self designed major.

Title: In the Locker-Room: the female athletes’ appropriation of chauvinist behaviors.

“These look like ants!”

This week’s winner: Dominic Venuti

Next Week’s Caption: “And I suppose you think that’s funny.”

Submission should be put in the Water Tower SGA mailbox in the basement of Cook Commons or e-mailed to thewatertowernews@gmail.com by Friday 4/6. The winning cartoon will be printed next week.

By Nate Bradbury

“Election 2008” is sure to bring many surprises and long, hard-fought battles over significant issues facing the American people.

Social security, immigration, the war in Iraq, and health care reform are all hot-button issues that – if properly mixed and balanced – will be one candidate’s recipe for success.

It is difficult as a college student in Burlington to feel the pressing need for a modified social security system or for immigration reform – they just don’t hit that close to home.

However, as a college student who is peeking around the corner past the relative safety of University health care …

By Elias Altman

Innovations can take place simultaneously. The need to calculate the area of a curve became a necessity in the 17th century due to advances in astronomy and physics. Both Sir Isaac Newton and William Leibniz, working independently and from different starting points, solved the problem identically. They created calculus.

Such an instance of simultaneity demonstrates that there are large forces at work in any epoch. These diverse forces propel societies in one direction and lead different people to reach similar conclusions about the world, though their methods may differ.

10:02 am: Glances in mirror and contemplates length of beard: 3-6 day scruff looks bohemian; long beards scream hippie; and a close shave doesn’t go over well with liberal philosophy crowd.

10:45 am: Arrives at small coffee shop, the one with local flair and integrity. Espresso immediately prepared. Puts Putamayo world music CD on to show that “I’ve been to Costa Rica twice and I’m not eurocentric.” Feelings of self-loathing dissipate.

1. When you mention a semi-obscure band or rap group, the person asks you, “Oh, how did you hear about these guys?” This question not only demonstrates that the questioner knows the group well, but that you have no right knowing about them.
2. The person disdains all forms of popular music. They will exclaim they hate “anything I can tap my foot to” or “anything that can get stuck in my head.” They will grimace when they hear it.
3. The person disdains all forms of popular music. But they will dance to it “reluctantly” at parties because they think they are “being ironic” even though they have fun dancing to “Sexy Back.”

With Love, Emily Watts and Alexis Langer

Who: Lena Jackson, Georgetown student & RaMell Ross, Georgetown basketball player (2001-2004). Both fashion conscious DC residence, vacationing in Burlington.

C&F: Tell me about your take on your personal style? What’s it like being a tall man?

RaMell: It’s difficult to find clothes. ..I take stuff from different genres of fashion all through time…pretty much whatever I like. I’d say most hipsters would do that anyway. But if [whatever Lena wears] turns out not fitting into a genre they have to label it hipster. Hipster is alternative.

Lena: There is much …

By Kurt Weiss

The interval between classes is usually the worst time of my day. I leave every class with only two things on my mind: getting food and finding someone I know. The latter is almost always a guaranteed failure and getting food is simply a disappointment.

I usually end up eating whatever crap roll-up they’re boxing at Cook Commons by myself. I tuck myself away somewhere in the back of my empty classroom (based on my egregious eating habits, some might say this is for the best).