By Ari Ofsevit

Brown University Brown University Party Featured on O’Reilly Factor

Brown University’s annual Sex Power God party, an event sponsored by the school’s Queer Alliance and held last weekend, was featured on the O’Reilly Factor, a nightly show on the Fox News Channel hosted by Bill O’Reilly.

According to The Brown Daily Herald, a “reporter,” Jesse Watters (also

a producer on the show), bought a scalped ticket to the show and, with hidden camera in hand, captured footage of students clad in a manner akin to the QU dance that has been held in the past at Macalester.

O’Reilly’s main concern was that student government funds had been used for the party–a fact refuted by The Brown Daily Herald, and by financial records of the Queer Alliance. Watters, the Fox News reporter, said that a gay group of students set the tone of debauchery at the party, and O’Reilly, who didn’t attend, surmised that many students were using “ecstasy and those kinds of drugs.” Most students at Brown see the segment as an unfair portrayal of the party and their school–and that airing the footage on national television, without any prior permission from the students or the college was a serious ethical violation.

Bowdoin College

Rising Tide Thwarts Armed Robbery

A sophomore at Bowdoin College, Josh Cippel, was attacked by a knife-wielding assailant while he was going to do his laundry in an off-campus apartment, The Bowdoin Orient reported. The thief told Cippel to “give [him] all his money,” although, while going to do laundry, he was carrying none. Instinctively, Cippel raised a large bottle of Tide laundry detergent and “wheeled around and clocked him on the side of the face.” Not expecting a fight, the robber-to-be fled out of the door and into the night. The local police were called and are investigating but have no promising leads.

Cippel took the event in stride.

“Planes crash, but I still fly,” he said. “People get in car accidents, but I still drive. And people creep up behind you in the laundry room with knives, but I still do laundry.”

Grinnell College

Grinnell Votes to End Coke Boycott

Grinnell College, in recent student elections, voted down an initiative that would have renewed a ban on Coca-Cola products on campus, according to The Grinnell Scarlett and Black. The ban was passed last fall. With 59 percent of students casting ballots, the boycott received only 55 percent of the vote–it would have needed 2/3 to pass.

Hillsdale College

Mayor Mike Sessions ’10?

Hillsdale College, a small college southeast of Ann Arbor, Mich., may welcome amongst its freshman class next year Mike Sessions, an 18-year old local resident who was recently elected as the mayor of the town of Hillsdale, a town of 8,000, according to The Hillsdale Collegian. In a write-in campaign less than two months after his eighteenth birthday (he was not old enough to get on the ballot officially), Sessions became what is believed to be the youngest mayor in the country. He wants to go to school at his hometown college, especially since he is now the town’s mayor, a largely ceremonial position with an annual stipend of a few thousand dollars. Not surprisingly, Sessions plans to study politics in college next year.