Missing roommates? Fire alarms ringing at all hours? It’s all part of the lighter side.

Editor’s Note: This weekly piece highlights some of the more inane calls and incidents to which campus safety responds.

Becky Snider, ’09, Blotter Reporter

With all the “excitement” of midterms, you’d think the campus would be down right chaotic right about now. Think again. The halls of Rouzer have been deceptively quiet, which should raise a few alarms. Speaking of alarms, strange happenings have been occurring in Decker. On Friday, September 21 apparently an audible alarm started to sound within Decker, with no cause for sounding. This could be due to any number of things including a power surge or faulty readings. There is also the chance that the old system still being used in Decker decided to play a trick just for laughs.

Though I don’t think it’s a laughing matter when belongings go missing. Or in the case where roommates suddenly go missing one morning. It seems that a student was missed so much by their roommates that said roommates reported the student missing. Of course this could just be honest concern for a roommate—if a bit dramatic. The missing roommate was found on campus later in the morning. I guess those of us that have roommates shouldn’t go wandering off on campus randomly—it might cause sudden search parties to pop up on campus.

The sound of fire alarms going off at all hours of the day should be the normal occurrence to those who live in the PA and Garden Apartments. Though not caused by anything as simple as a power surge, the fire alarm that sounded just after 1 a.m. on September 29 was most likely quite the wake up call to those lucky enough to have been sleeping. The cause was supposedly due to “cooking.” More like burning if you ask me. First of all, what could you cook that would cause a fire alarm to go off? Second, what were they doing cooking at one in the morning anyway? You gotta eat I guess.

You also have to shake your head about some of the things that happen here. The average domestic argument has just been upgraded.

Apparently third parties who try to stop public domestic arguments must now be wary of being struck by cars of enraged girlfriends. That’s right ladies and gents; a DoCs officer was struck by a vehicle while attempting to stop a domestic argument.

If you’re looking for more incidents on campus involving vehicles, take a walk over to the Rouzer parking lot. You might just be witness to a golf cart backing into a parked car. Now you’d think that a golf cart is easy to drive especially in the “easily navigated” lot that is Rouzer.

I take that back.

And apparently so does the person who decided to damage a golf cart at the Golf Clubhouse. Retribution for the golf cart incident in the Rouzer parking lot? We’ll never know.

Now if you were expecting a long rant on the amount of underage alcohol possession, never fear. Though you might want to go take a look down in the Garden Apartments for that. Whiteford and Rouzer have been going on a suspicious dry spell lately. Well, we do still have half the semester left. Things are bound to happen.

“That’s what we’re working toward and I’m sure it’s very close.” ~ Deborah Vance

By Bethany Grov?

WMCR, McDaniel College’s radio station, has struggled for airtime over the past year as well as many other obstacles. But over the summer, the station moved from the basement of Rouzer and into a basement room in Lewis Hall. That move, ample funding, and plans to re-connect the AM antenna have students and the station’s advisor, Dr. Deborah Vance, optimistic about the station’s future.

“I’m hoping within the next two weeks we should have everyone trained and anyone who wants to show up can still come by. We have a lot of new DJs, and we’re always interested in having new talent,” said senior Kevin English, who says he does “whatever is needed of me.”

The students and faculty involved with the station are currently getting set up through McDaniel’s intranet where students will soon be able to type a URL into iTunes to connect and hear live broadcasts. Many students will enjoy the convenience of listening to WMCR while at school, English said.

At the beginning of last year the radio club discovered that the AM antenna had not been functioning, but nobody knew how long it had been.

“Apparently the AM antenna became unattached in a storm. Nobody checked it, nobody knew, and I think we were just assuming everyone was hearing us,” Vance said.

Despite this setback, they were eager to start streaming live music through McDaniel’s intranet, which is available on campus.

“When people had radios they listened to us on their AM dial, but I guess people aren’t listening to radios anymore,” Vance said. “Everybody is on the Internet and podcasting.”

When Beth Gerl became the Dean and Vice President of Student Affairs, she requested that the students create a manual before they could set up on the intranet, which took them a few months to create, according to Vance.

Its purpose was to set basic radio etiquette guidelines for DJs, such as not using obscenities on the air, Vance added. DJ training and scheduling for live shows is currently under way.

Students and staff are working with Information Technology staff in an attempt to start creating podcasts, which will be more convenient than live streaming.

Ultimately, users will be able to subscribe to the station’s podcasts and listen as their schedules allow, English explained.

All these goals hinge upon funding, Vance and students associated with the station said. They also note that funding, which is primarily from the college’s media board, jumped from $4,360 to $4,860 between 2006 and 2007.

The Media Board, which is headed by Beth Gerl, consists of Mitchell Alexander, director of student activities, as well as student representatives and advisors to the five major media groups on campus. These are Contrast Literary Magazine, McDaniel Free Press, McDaniel “Terror-TV,” Pathways Yearbook, and WMCR.

“What we want is the capacity for people living off-campus, or alumni, or even people in Budapest to be able to hear it [the station]; that’s the goal,” Vance said. “That’s what we’re working toward and I’m sure it’s very close.”

Facebook is outlet for new students to meet each other and feel more comfortable about college. But does it work?

By Juliann Guiffre

Everyone remembers those last few months of summer before becoming a freshman in college, those final moments of bliss and freedom before becoming slaves to homework, sports, and the many activities of college life.

If you happened to experience this within the past few years, you most likely remember something else as well–signing up for the explosive phenomenon that is Facebook. But how beneficial is registering to advertise your life on this public forum?

Senior Eric Danforth, a peer mentor, witnessed the Facebook frenzy of this year’s batch of freshmen firsthand. Along with receiving messages with questions from his own mentees, Danforth had many others ask him for advice as well.

“People asked me if they could switch roommates to a person they had met on Facebook, maybe because they had looked at their assigned roommate’s profile and didn’t like what they saw,” he said.

Danforth recognizes the positive sides of Facebook but is so often faced with the negative. “I didn’t advise it. If you choose your roommate based on Facebook you lose the mystery and could find that your Facebook friend has a really bad habit.

“One of my mentees was really upset because she made all these friendships on facebook and they all ignored her when she got here,” he said.

Besides the trials of establishing lasting relationships over the Internet, there are also risks that come with publicizing yourself in such a way. Danforth was asked to watch for any suspicious upperclassmen that seemed to be befriending freshmen for ulterior motives.

“I actually had to contact one guy about this after receiving several complaints about him,” he said.

Despite the risks of Facebook, Danforth concedes that it can be used for good, such as for getting to know your roommate and others with similar interests.

Freshman Sami Bicknell, creator of a McDaniel ’11 facebook group, strongly agrees.

“I created the [group] the day I was admitted,” said Bicknell. “I wanted to have an idea of the people who I was going to be going to school with.”

Many people, Danforth included, feel that making friends on facebook doesn’t allow for the bonding experience in a freshmen seminar. Yet Bicknell explained, “I made it a point to find everyone in my first year seminar on Facebook and talk to them several times [finding that] the people I talked to more often online did stay my better fiends but it didn’t prevent me from being friends with other people.”

However, she also admits to seeing the other side of Facebook, saying, “I thought I knew a lot about the school before I attended, but it turned out that I didn’t.”

Although Bicknell no longer attends McDaniel, she thinks that she was ultimately very successful in her goal of trying to get to know the kids she would be going to go to school with so that she wasn’t a complete stranger to them.

Dean of First Year Students Sarah Stokely was also faced with trying to understand the complex nature of the Facebook world.

Stokely’s interest in facebook was piqued when she read a USA Today article on the number of families (students and their parents) checking out a roommate on Facebook and deciding their character based on that.

“I think that a Facebook profile does not give a true representation of a person, and students and their families can interpret it differently,” she said.

According to Stokely, at the beginning of the year the first year team (peer mentors, etc) met with counseling services and campus safety to talk about advising freshmen to be safe with Facebook, and be cautious with friends made on the website.

“I think there is a honeymoon period for freshmen where they reveal a lot about themselves, until they realize that not everyone is their friend,” said Stokely.

Yet despite her feelings that “Facebook has the potential to cause unnecessary pain,” she believes that overall, the orientation process is affected positively by Facebook because of its ability to foster strong relationships.

Without a true regulator of this public environment, Facebook will continue to remain in the hands of the students – risks, reimbursements, and all.

Campus gamers excited over the release of Halo 3

By Garrett Eagan, McDaniel Guru

September 25 is usually just a normal day to many people, especially students. Being a Tuesday doesn’t carry too much excitement on a college campus. However, September 25, 2007, will be remembered for excitement, anticipation, and a long-awaited end to the wait.

Bungie Studios released Halo 3, the final installment of the Halo Trilogy on Tuesday, September 25. The first person shooter has broken several sales records since its original release of Halo, Combat Evolved, in 2001.

At $66 a copy, a record setting 1.7 million copies were preordered for the release date of Halo 3, surpassing Halo 2’s number of 1.5 million copies preordered.

Gamers around the globe lined up on Monday awaiting the chance to get the first copy at the stroke of midnight. Halo 3 also broke the record for sales in the first 24-hour period, pulling in $170 million in sales. And this popularity doesn’t stop at the perimeter of campus.

“The game is pure insanity…a lot of people have been anxious to get it,” said junior Jordan Barton.

Like Barton, over 50 McDaniel students have purchased the game so far, vowing to “finish the fight,” a slogan that Halo 3 has coined for its title. But the “fight” didn’t just start at the release of Halo 3, it’s been happening for quite awhile.

After an overwhelming turnout last spring during WMCR’s Game Night, it was evident that Halo is more than just a game. Nearly 30 students participated in the event, playing Halo 2 in individual, teams of two, and teams of four games. It was the first time people actually got a glimpse of the Halo craze.

“The popularity of the game series is straight crazy…obviously from the number of people who play daily,” said junior Brent Toms.

Like many other players on campus, he plays Halo on the college network or on XBOX Live.

The college has allowed students to play on XBOX Live since last spring, and 25-30 students have signed up for it.

“We get on Live every day,” said junior James Isaminger. “[Halo] 3 like [Halo] 2 is really intense…I’ve devoted about 2-4 hours a day to it so far, depending on the connection.”

Isaminger, one-fourth of Team MerkHouse, the squad who won at the WMCR Game Night, sees Halo 3 having new-found popularity around campus. He’s not alone as people admit to their new addiction.

“I used to think Halo was mostly for nerds, but I honestly have really gotten into Halo 3… something that really shocked me,” said junior Matt Teter.

With the growing number of players on campus, it’s hard to think that the game’s popularity will die out any time soon. And as for showcasing Halo 3 talent?

A spokesperson for WMCR confirmed that there will be two WMCR Game Nights this year—one for Halo 2 and the second for Halo 3. All that’s left to do is hook up the sticks and start playing.

Panek and Bendel-Simso send three-hundered-fifty page manuscript to editor

By Dave Robertson

“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.”
~Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, (Sherlock Holmes) A Case of Identity, 1892

Much sleuthing hath transpired in the English Department of McDaniel College. Dr. LeRoy Panek and Dr. Mary Bendel-Simso have compiled an anthology with the working title, The First Chapter: An Anthology of American Detective Fiction.

Able to finally unwind after spending over a year on the project, Panek and Bendel-Simso sent the 350 page manuscript to the editors October 3. The anthology contains short detective works ranging from Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) to the first printing of Sherlock Holmes in U.S. papers (1891), with a four-page introduction to each section.

The royalties from this project will be donated to the Helen C. Hency Fund, in the college’s endowment, for the benefit and uplift of the English Department. Panek believed that this is the first time in school history that royalties of a faculty member’s written work have been assigned to the college.

After Panek’s last book, Origins of the American Detective Story, he initially wanted to include “the firsts” from each subclass within the mystery genre, maybe a collection of 8 or 10 longer stories by well-known authors.

“I put that idea on the backburner because this [anthology] is more historically significant,” said Panek.

He approached Bendel-Simso with the idea and asked for her involvement in researching websites, scanning materials, looking for general information on small and large-scale newspaper databases, and proofreading Panek’s transcriptions.

He describes this aspect of research as “incredibly boring, unskilled laborious scholarship but if you don’t do it, you end up with no results.”

A mystery and American Literature aficionado, Bendel-Simso says she was always doing what she called the “Agatha Christie of the week” in school. This was a perfect pairing, in spite of the work overlapping with the classes she currently teaches—Panek, on the other hand, is on sabbatical this semester.

Panek flatly stated, “How do you say in your language…We came across a ‘shitload,’ a plethora, a lot” of detective fiction by relatively obscure authors that had their works published in newspapers. However, these papers bought authorial rights to the works and syndicated them. Copyright laws were not followed, at least in America, until the 1890s.

“I found pretty good short stories people have forgotten for a long time,” Panek said.

Many of the works are anonymous, making it difficult to determine which ones came first. Few well-known journalists wrote detective stories; series detectives often received recognition, but many newspapers pirated the works, especially foreign authors.

“So much swiping went on,” said Bendel-Simso. “It seems kind of ironic we are publishing all of them again.”

Most early detective fiction, before the explosion of the genre by Sherlock Holmes mysteries, was originally published in newspapers—a more accessible means of publication to the general population.

“They had a different concept of newspapers then,” says Bendel-Simso, pulling out a scanned copy of a paper containing “Vidocq, or the Charcoal Burner of France.”

These stories appeared beneath another creative writing piece—a daily or weekly poem, or some other comparable creation.

Though this initial compilation includes only 20 works, Panek and Bendel-Simso have found roughly 200. Instead of creating multiple volumes, they are applying for a grant to help with a website entitled the “Westminster Online Detective Stories.” Through this public site, Panek hopes to see scholars find more meaningful conclusions about these relatively obscure works.

If you are interested in reading detective shorts in their original context, the online catalogue of the Hoover Library contains a variety of newspaper databases.