24 September ’99
Saladbarring the Freshmen
They have it easy this year.

1 October ’99
An Empty Shell
HC football leaves home.

12 November ’99
Fear and Tyranny
Joey tastes the WoPo's wrath.

19 November ’99
From D.C. to S.G.A.
Is Clinton headed to HC?

28 January ’00
Snow Problem
News flash: it's winter.

4 February ’00
Scary Life on the Hill
Spooked by Mulledy, I-290.

18 February ’00
Dead Presidents
Where's the long weekend?

25 February ’00
Razzies Hit Rock-Bottom
J. Brocklesby, film critic.

3 March ’00
College is Hall
It's a big-[expletive] building.

24 March ’00
The Quorum Question
New SGA Constitution has flaws.

7 April ’00
False Alarms
Sirens interrupt Kimball 'meal.'

14 April ’00
Features Farewell
Crusader star writers graduate.

Last week's entry had a pretty standard fare of criminal achievements: a "disturbance with two people" in quiet, unassuming Mulledy. A "loud party" in sedate Lehy. And a "funny smell," by which we assume is meant funny peculiar and not funny ha-ha, in Hanselman.

These three heinous crimes pale in comparison to the student in O'Kane who was assisted while having "relationship problems" with another student. Sometimes, I suppose, the vagueness of the Blotter is a plus.

Don't think these domestic interruptions quite rate on the scale with unsolved homicides? Consider the property damage: three clogged toilets in Healy. A "substance uncertain" thrown at an H.C.P.S. cruiser. And the shattered trophy case at the Fieldhouse.

Holy Cross, where is thy shame? Shattering trophy cases is not the "men and women for others" ethic that the Chaplain's Office is trying to ingrain into you. Random acts of violence are to be deplored, not to be imitated. These acts of destruction only serve to make our school look worse in the public's eye. And what use is there in taking out your frustration on a poor, defenseless trophy case? What has that trophy case ever done to hurt you?

Better that, if you are truly set on property damage, you put a few dents into the soda machines. These malevolent wards of the monolithic Coca-Cola company are the true source of evil on this campus. For Healyites, Carliners, and the rest of us resident students, the right to curse and yell at the "sold out" light costs eighty-five hard-earned American cents. Eighty-five cents! If there ever were a campus issue worthy of SGA treatment, it's this outrage.

"I know a place back in Winooski where it's fifty for a can," revealed Joey Brocklesby '03, Hanselman's outraged connoisseur of carbonated beverages. "Every time I buy a Sprite, I wonder ... where's that extra thirty-five cents going?"

Where, indeed? Does it find its way back into the College? Or does it go straight to Atlanta, where Coke executives have a good chuckle over their (Administration-sanctioned) monopoly on the Holy Cross non-alcoholic drinking scene?

And the cans stand alone. Twenty-ounce bottles of The Real Thing are reasonably priced at $1 apiece (this is five cents an ounce, for all you math majors out there; at that rate, the 12-oz. cans would be worth 60 cents). Eight-ounce glass bottles are available at the Lobby Shop for 75 cents. While this is clearly less Coke for your buck, one has to consider that you also get the trademark glass bottle and the product is, despite chemists' claims that the package doesn't make a difference, far superior to the canned version.

So where does the Administration, or Coke Corporate, get off overcharging us students for those little red cans? Your thirsty correspondent gets the feeling that this wouldn't have happened if we hadn't signed a Faustian pact with Coca-Cola Co. guaranteeing exclusivity to the industry leader. This campus needs some competition to bring down the prices.

But it's unlikely that the Administration will even deign to put this issue on the "front-burner," since they seem so content to deal with party policy, new upperclassman housing construction, ITS overhauls, and other so-called "issues." Not like they'd be that concerned about stealing thirty-odd cents from us kids in the first place. After all, they've stolen entire holidays.

Yes, entire holidays. Such as Presidents' Day, for example. This Monday -- three days from now - the rest of the nation will be sitting at home reflecting on the father of our country, George Washington, or doing something equally nonproductive, while we sit through lectures and seminars. Washington's birthday is observed on the 21st this year, but don't expect Holy Cross to shut down.

Neither did it shut down earlier this month for the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (12), William Henry Harrison (9), or Ronald Reagan (6). This month is chock-full of presidential birthdays. We should get at least one of them off (I suppose there's still hope -- Andrew Jackson, James Madison, and Grover Cleveland all have March birthdays in the same week, on the 15th, 16th, and 18th, respectively. But how likely is it that we'll get those days off?).

Come to think of it, February's got more than just presidential birthdays. Valentine's Day comes to mind, but if you missed out on all the festivities this year, rest assured that you can still participate in National Flirting Week -- but get cracking now, because it ends tomorrow. On this very day, the 18th of February, the planet Pluto was discovered in 1930. And in 1954, John Travolta was born. The way I see it, when you've got the ninth planet and the "Saturday Night Fever" guy coming into our world on the same day, that should be a Federal holiday.

But instead of William Henry Harrison Day celebrations, our academic calendars show February without school holidays. A complete lack of long weekends stretching all the way into March, when Spring Break will rescue us from our weekly monotony -- although it's worth noting that there aren't any long weekends at all in the second semester calendar, just the Spring and Easter Breaks).

They overcharge us for our Cokes, they cheat us out of our Travolta Day. It's enough to make you want to break a trophy case.

This article ran in the 18 February 2000 edition of The Crusader on page 13 (the third page of Features section).