• The WT is not the New York Times. It is not The Cynic. It is not the Daily Show. It is not The New Yorker. It is not Fox News. It is not a blog. So, then WTF is it then?

By Max Bookman & Nate Bradbury

Summer is beaches, parties, road trips, and late mornings. It’s a hotter version of the school year, minus the classes and snowboarding. With the end of summer comes the return to Burlington, and all that it entails – coordinating with the roommates, worrying about finances, and maybe hitting up Facebook to poke that girl from Philosophy whom you hooked up with back in May. As we pack our bags, we get the sense that summer is more than just a hiatus from school, it’s a vacation from life.

Now that the summer’s over, we begin to restart our hibernating brains, and life itself gets back in session.

By Kurt Weiss

Late on a Saturday night, with the bars closed and every house party either busted by Vermont’s finest or having long since kicked the last keg of Natty Light, there’s really only one thing left to do: eat.

No one’s actually hungry at 2 in the morning. No one starves to death in his sleep. No one would usually be consuming a full meal at that hour. People don’t normally wake up in the middle of the night famished with a craving for a full pizza.

We eat at these absurd hours because it’s social and after buying drinks for that girl in your Econ class all night it’s time to lay it all down on the long shot that she finds kebabs to be the most romantic food to come out of the Mediterranean since Roasted Red Pepper Hummus. Chances are she doesn’t and you end up back at the house with your buddies and some permutation of Domino’s 3-for-$5.99 deal on the table.

By Lauren Foley

Cook Commons, as we once knew it, is dead. Gone is the freedom of retail points, as it’s been replaced by a monstrous carte blanche creation similar to the likes of the Harris Millis Grundle.

More than just an easy stop for a caffeine fix, Cook Commons offered its students much more. Next door to most classes, the dining hall made convenience a priority. Students could buy a single item on the go, exchanging coveted points for their booty at the register. It was a place where even the most bizarre concoctions of spinach, yellow banana peppers, and honey mustard failed to raise an eyebrow when requested at Planet Healthy, a station formerly specializing in made-to-order wraps and salads. Sidewinder’s grilled paninis were plentiful and the potato cheddar soup, so achingly delicious in its refreshing simplicity, was a godsend to many cold and hungry patrons.

1. They’ve already begun to repack your things in an effort to not-so-subtly suggest you move out.

2. Personal possessions like your toothbrush and underwear are being commandeered in an effort to foster a sense of “roomatiness.”

3. People are starting to assume you have STD’s just by association.

4. The legitimacy of cyber relationships is a topic you’ve already been forced to discuss and feign interest in.

5. The “amazing” stories of his/her high school years have turned out to be the story lines of various teen angst movies — how you missed that one you’ll never know.

By Max C. Bookman

“You have to work at it harder”

-Jack Menager, an 83 year old man, discussing sex in old age. He is one of the countless seniors asked to comment on a recent survey reporting that more than half of senior citizens have an active sex life. Kinda gross, but right on, grandpa!

Documenting Society’s Worst Moments Since 1989
In this issue: Miss South Carolina Attempts to Answer a Question

By Rose Couzens

My best friend died the other day. Together since kids, she had worn many hats in my life—she had been my confidant, my unconditional provider of love, and even a mother-like figure. Her name was Darling and that’s exactly what she was—the most beautiful and darling cat a person could ever ask for.

Darling was eighteen when she died. I’m told that’s about equal to 126 human years, but the loss I’ve felt as a result of her death has only been compounded by the fact that she and I had been together for so many years. But what has really made her death so unbearably hard is that it marked the end of an era.

1. They’re wearing their Class of 2011 yellow T-shirt like a badge of honor (see this issue’s tri-factor).

2. They’re the three kids already in class when you mistakenly get to your 11:15 class at 11, convinced you’re already 15 minutes late—a fete only possible due to a mad dash up the hill from off campus during which you cursed every drink and cigarette you’d had the night before.

3. They’re the kids who when you see them beg one or more of the following questions: Has that poor little guy/ gal fallen off of one the famous UVM tours? Is that person walking with them a professor or parent? What the hell is in the water nowadays?

Illustration by Wesley Bascon

Friend or foe? Pinnacle of the new UVM or harbinger of everything evil? Without a doubt, the Dudly H. Davis Student Center stands in stark contrast to its late predecessor. The Davis Center’s wide hallways, breathtaking architecture, and impressive array of destinations are nothing like the outgrown, ancient, and sometimes musty Billings Center we had all come to know and love. School officials, of course, fall into a sort of post-orgasmic euphoria when firing off the infinite list of how the DC is the

…

By Lauren Foley

The “hangs” of the Davis Center, in their entire earth tone splendor, seem to offer a little something for everyone.

On the 1st floor, you will find one of the largest lounges in the building, located on your right when you walk in the back entrance. Most of the floor space in this room was being monopolized by a poster sale while I was there although there was ample room for several clusters of chairs and small coffee tables.

I was admittedly surprised to see President Fogel himself relaxing in a chair, clearly enjoying the plush seat. I couldn’t seem to find the name of this particular lounge area and upon asking someone at the info desk, they jokingly suggested that someone probably needed to donate some more money first.

By Suzanne Lunden

The newly expanded bookstore is truly a site to behold – that is, it will be once the clamoring mob of anxious freshmen and irritated upperclassmen clears out and you actually can behold it. Soon enough, you will be able to appreciate the two full floors of merchandise: the bottom floor is entirely devoted to textbooks, while the upper floor showcases a brilliant array of old staples plus new and unusual items.

In just a few steps you can grab an eco-friendly notebook, that Universitas Viridis Montis-embossed marble apple you’ve really been hankering for (a steal at $27.95), and a UVM planner, which includes among other informative tidbits a guide to cardio workouts (an entirely superfluous addition in my opinion, given the number of stairs you need scale just to purchase the planner).

By Wesley Bascon

By Lea McLellan

Imagine the Davis Center is a Six Flags with much cleaner bathrooms. Not too much of a stretch, right? So if the Center is a Six Flags, New World Tortilla is without a doubt, Superman Ride of Steel. The line is annoyingly long, but when you finally get up to the counter and the guy in the tan baseball hat hands you your six-dollar and thirty-cent beef burrito, well it’s just plain exhilarating.

1. Their elusive presence on campus makes seeing them equivalent to a “siting”

2. When in class, they’re the group that fills up the back row and doesn’t speak—not out of fear but disinterest

3. On the flip side, they may be the only ones talking in your classes due precisely to underclassmen fear

4. They’re the group that sports those “gnarly” beards not because they’re totally in this season, but because they can

5. They’re the ones rolling their eyes with disdain while you and your friends recount the “bitchin” house party you and your floor went to this past weekend

By Peter Casasa-Blouin

I am a patient student who feels that the erection of the Davis Center on 590 Main Street was well worth the wait. Although it overwhelms and dwarfs even a growing student body, it feels like it belongs there, especially considering it muckled (I like the word) itself onto an infamous Terrill Building. This juxtaposition of old school UVM and new school expansionism is just one of the many oddities of this massive structure. We are passing through its halls and ascending its stairways as if it had always been there, and it hasn’t even been completed. Students sit cross-legged in cavernous lounges while their minds compete with traffic and construction. It seems that a crane is as natural on campus as a tree.

By Lea McLellan

I swallowed the lump in my throat as I called home to say that my first couple days at college were “fine” and that I was having “fun.” Meanwhile, my suitemates were laughing and gossiping like they were old friends instead of people who had met each other two days prior. I was starting to think that I was the only freshman who missed my mommy.

But then something happened that changed my mind. We had an assignment in one of my classes to read a short essay. It was boring. Everyone thought so and everyone said so.

You can imagine my surprise when the same people who had complained about the reading the night before, were raising their hands in class to share what points they found most interesting. They couldn’t wait to comment on how the writer’s tone and clever one-liners kept the reader hooked, or how his flawless imagery made his argument just that much more effective. I was sitting at my desk, feeling sort of confused and annoyed, when something clicked. Most people are a little bit full of shit. I guess I should have remembered that from high school.

By Mac Smith

For those of you who haven’t been following professional sports recently, here’s a recap of some of this summer’s most outrageous scandals.

On July 26th, Atlanta Falcons star quarterback Michael Vick was indicted along with three others on charges of competitive dogfighting, procuring and training pit bulls, and conducting enterprise across state lines. The operation, known as “Bad Newz Kennels,” took place at Vick’s 15-acre estate. Vick was specifically blamed for financing the operation and handling thousands of dollars in gambling revenues.

This section deconstructs the styles of today. The tripartite nature of the section demonstrates the intersection of image-word-mathematics. Inspired by Joseph Kosuth.

A Day in the Life of Marissa Trudank:

9:52 am: wake up, struggle to wash face, hurry to 10:10 class

10:13 am: find friend in giant lecture hall, begin texting about ‘mad random’ hook up from last night

11:30 am: out of class, grab overpriced sushi-lunch @ dudley h. davis ‘deathstar’ center

By Suzanne Lunden

I finished Zadie Smith’s On Beauty about an hour ago and am staring out of my bedroom window at the wreckage of Friday night on Buell Street glinting in the sun. As I sit down to write I’m realizing that I don’t really like book reviews.

It doesn’t matter if you read them after you read the book, and agree almost entirely with what the reviewer says, or if you feel you have found a kindred spirit among books. Still, there is that lurking feeling that something has been lost, that your tears and giggles and turns of stomach are weakened, even as they are made immortal by their translation to words by a stranger.

By Erin Sullivan

In regard to other genres of film, foreign films can be ignored or overlooked. Perhaps it is because some people simply want to be entertained by a film and do not want to or cannot read subtitles while viewing the film (I know people who use this excuse), or perhaps it is because some people do not know where to start. Whatever the reason may be, here are a few very different films that are worth checking out.