Week in Review

Wednesday, May 27, 1998

Never Take Big Yellow Taxi

Never take Big Yellow Taxi.

This 'business' flagrantly violates the major tenets of consumer relations —and this warning comes from seasoned veterans of the menacing world of New York City taxis.

Big Yellow Taxi arrives late for its pick-ups, is oblivious to shortcuts, and is so slow you are lucky to make the train or bus that you were going to arrive half an hour early for. It's so unresponsive it's as if it was run by the College. Big Yellow Taxi cabs often carry a rank odor and their drivers are surly. In short, Big Yellow Taxi is nothing but a big fat atrocity.

Take instead New Face Taxi. Call them at 802.295.1500.

Soft on Crime

Microsoft is facing an antitrust lawsuit from the Justice Department and twenty states. Lawyers going through employees e-mail and documents has become so prevalent that Tod Nielson, general manager of software development, says, 'It's just a normal business practice, just like I dial nine to get an outside line. This legal action is sort of at the white noise level.'

The Justice Department claims that Microsoft's practice of adding features to the Windows operaring system is a way of snuffing competition. A Microsoft spokesman responded that that 'any regulatory action would threaten Micrsoft's core strategy of controlling everything.'

American Invasion?

In a curious twist of fate, Japan is now concerned about US investors buying all of Japan. In a complete turn around, there is no longer any fear of Japanese investors taking over this country, but the Japanese themselves are fearful of continued US investment at an unprecedented pace. Japanese right wing commentators are warning of a 'second invasion.'

In 1989 Newsweek ran an article titled 'Japan invades Hollywood' which the Japanese called racist and xenophobic. Now, the Japanese equivalent of Newsweek, Aera, has run an article titled 'American Money Buys Up Japan,' which warns the Japanese that 'One day, we may suddenly find that all our landlords are foreigners.' Americans find this bit reminiscent of Japanese investors buying Rockefeller Plaza.

While there is a growing anti-American spirit, as former trade minister Hiroshi Kumagai says, 'Most Japanese would rather work for Americans than be unemployed.'

Puff Daddies

On May 21, A San Francisco Superior Court judge issued an edict that declared San Francisco 's Cannabis Healing Center, the city's largest medical marijuana club, to be a public nuisance. Four days later, the sheriff's deputies raided the club and forced it to shut down.

The Cannabis center had been operating in defiance of a Federal District Court order that found Proposition 215, a ballot initiative approved last year that allowed for the medical use of marijuana, could not override a Federal ban. Clubs in Oakland, Ukiah, and Fairfax, meanwhile, continue to operate. The merry band who frequent the Cannabis Healing Center do not, surprisingly, have any plans for moving to a replacement center. 'Yeah, we started to head over to the center in Oakland,' said a spokesman, 'but we found a Dunkin' Donuts on the corner and, well, I guess we've never left.'

Unctuous Ute Uproar

In October, Brandon Winn, a sports columnist for the Daily Utah Chronicle of the University of Utah, derided the 'fair weather fans' of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in print , claiming they were 'as bright as a parks and tourism major.'

Members of the parks and tourism community, however, were not amused. Gary Ellis and John Crossley, professors in the parks, recreation and tourism department at the University, decided to have their revenge on the hapless Winn. They hacked into the records database and obtained a copy of Winn's lackluster academic record.

Armed with this evidence that it was not they who were mentally deficient, the professors wrote a letter to the Chronicle detailing Winn's performance. An uproar arose over the violation of privacy inherent in the professors' counterstrike and Crossley and Ellis duly apologized.

Winn attempted to redress his grievances through legal action, enlisting the assistance of the local branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU initially pursued the case , but quickly dropped it. According to Carol Gnabe, the ACLU's local representative, 'I thought the case legitimate and the issues worthy in abstract, but when I read the brief I realized the involved parties went to the University of Utah. I found intelligent discourse impossible, and dropped the case.'

Smoking In The Boys Room

In their quest for another meaningless issue to address, Student Assembly has recently heeded the whinings of a small group of campus activists and considered protesting the investment of part of the College's endowment in tobacco company stock. The concern, aside from the standard anti-tobacco rhetoric, appears to be that the monetary support given to the industry by Dartmouth will encourage students to smoke.

It is to be assumed that SA has hard evidence linking administration policy to student behavior, though said evidence has yet to be released to the public. Requests for student input have yielded, sources say, an unsurprisingly low number of responses.

Lock-Down!

The Student Assembly recently voted to support Office Of Residential Life (ORL) Director Woody Eckels' recommendation that all residence halls be locked. Nearly all students are opposed to this decision, which would create a campus-wide prison-like lock-down. When asked about this decision, freshmen Evan Hoffman responded, 'If I wanted to live under a lock-down, I would have gone to Columbia or Yale.'

Popular conspiracy theory holds that this is an attempt by the College to shut down EBA's and revive the ever-failing DDS by making food delivery impossible. When examined retrospectively, this program may rank near the 1770s meal program in which the trustees' inquiry into campus food quality found that 'for a few days some beef was served by the cooks which (though accidentally tainted in a small degree) was judged by them to be such as the students would generally approve.'

Those Merry Pranksters

Classes at Ottawa Hills High were canceled this week after a senior prank filled the halls of the school with hundreds of Madagascar hissing cockroaches. Some of the roaches were over two inches long and an inch wide. Not all students were amused by the joke.

'You really can't prepare for it,' Karen Chahal, a senior at Ottawa Hills told the Associated Press, 'It surprised everyone. This is the worst prank I've ever heard of.' After a similar incident in a Jersey City high school, investigators have determined that there was no prank.

Spartans Riot

On the the morning of Saturday May 2, chaos broke out at Michigan State Univeristy. A crew of East Lansing, Michigan police officers shot tear gas to subdue a horde of rioting Spartan students. The students, many of them drunk, were protesting a new university alcohol policy, which prohibited MSU students from consuming alcohol on Munn Field, the traditional Spartan Football tailgate spot.

Infuriated by the the new policy which stands to rip away one of the long-time Spartan traditions, approximately 3,000 distempered partiers took to the streets.

After meeting at the center of campus, the angry Spartans threw bottles and cans of alcohol at officers, breaking one officer's arm and injuring others. They proceded to stampede over the fence surrounding the famous field and finally ended up on the front lawn of the president's house.

After causing havoc all over the campus, the uproarious clan marched into downtown East Lansing, where the real pandemonium began. Leaving a trail of raging fires and strewn debris, the insurgents chanted obsenities at officers, injuring a total of six in the melee.

While a similarly incindiary event seems unlikely at Dartmouth, consider the new alcohol policy, effective since May 1.

The latest amendment allows Safety and Security ofiicers to enter fraternity parties and patrol their basements for underage drinking, unregistered kegs, and alcohol policy violations. The failure of student monitors in the past to report underage drinking during parties at least partially prompted this new policy.

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