Food point frenzy

24 Sep 2011, Posted by Ashley Mooney in News, 0 Comments

Jisoo Yoon/The Chronicle

Bella Union, the Lobby Shop and the East Campus Store all proudly sport the infamous source of student addiction—bin candy. You can mix and match between gummies, yogurt pretzels and many more sugary sweets! The prices are by weight, so eat as much as you—and your food points—dare.

The Coffeehouse offers a unique atmosphere (including giant, multiple-person beanbag chairs) and crazy milkshake combinations.

“You can combine pretty much any flavour you can think of—when we are stocked up—and make something pretty fun,” sophomore employee John Scott-Jones wrote in an email. “[My] personal favourite is the blood orange and vanilla ice cream milkshake, but I hear chocolate and pumpkin spice is good and I can always down something chocolatey mixed with nutella and something surprising.”

He added that they also have cool snacks and t-shirts for the truly daring.

“Deep v-necks are all the rage, man,” he said.

For the health conscious, you can charge your fresh-cut exotic fruits, energy bars and even nutritional supplements to your food points at Alpine Atrium in the Bryan Center. The food stop also offers delicious smoothies that you can customize with fiber, energy or other supplements.

The Great Hall features “The Great Hall Farm Stand,” where you can buy fresh produce by the pound. All of the produce comes from family farmers in North Carolina and varies by season. Along with fruits and vegetables, they are currently selling jarred local molasses, which is great for baking.

Food points are booze points if you’re 21 and over, according to the Duke Dining Services website. Twinnie’s is known for its brews, the Armadillo Grill serves everything from beer to mixed drinks, Plate and Pitchfork is great for wine connoisseurs and the Food Factory at Devil’s Bistro offers both bottled options and beer straight from the tap.

And finally, for those who magically have leftover food points at the end of the semester (kudos to you), you can buy groceries from the Lobby Shop in the Bryan Center and donate them to a food drive. There are usually boxes set up near the entrance of the store, so you don’t have to travel far!

Graveyard of the lost

24 Sep 2011, Posted by Nguyen Tran in News, 0 Comments

Brittany Zulkiewicz/The Chronicle

When the class of 2015 came to Duke, parents, administrators and upperclassmen alike tried to beat into them the lesson that “thou should never lose thyself.”

There is a more practical lesson that the concerned adults seemed to overlook: do not lose your iPhone.

Or Android. Or iPad. Or key. Or wallet.

Based on an unofficial count of the official class of 2015 facebook group, this year’s freshmen have lost 17 phones, 23 wallets, 45 Duke cards/driver’s licenses/state IDs. And this does not even include the occasional odd missing items such as a backpack or a single flip flop.

More often than not, people lose their belongings during the weekends.

As for the reason, we can only guess, as not many people are willing to share their stories. But, it’s not incredibly hard to find out why you should lose your phone at a certain place on Morgan Street.

There are quite a number of people who lost personal items when they were sober too, however.

For freshman Stefan Gorham, he lost his phone during an On Time Taxi trip to a party off campus.

“I tried calling the company to have them meet me, but they didn’t show up where I told them to,” Gorham said. “And I tried consistently for three days afterward but they kept saying they hadn’t found it.”

“I’m not 100 percent positive,” he added. “Some of the finer points of the night are a little fuzzy.”

For freshman Rebecca Holmes, soberly losing her keys was the worst thing that has ever happened to her.

“I don’t even drink,” she exclaimed. “So this shouldn’t be happening to me.”

Rebecca lost her key during a late night run to Cosmic Cantina, and as her roommate was out the next morning, she could not get back to the room.

“I had to wash my hair in the kitchen sink!” Rebecca said.

Freshman Danielle Colson recalled how she lost her ID “completely sober” on the quad after the football game last week, and got it back unexpectedly.

“A lady from Smith Warehouse found it while they were cleaning up from the football game,” Colson said. “She called me, and we met at Smith.”

But for some people, it’s not that easy to get back what they have lost.

“I lost my dignity last weekend,” said freshman Cameron Tripp. “Anyone can give it back to me?”

And judging from the reaction, his is not the only one that needs to be found.

Do ginger sperms have no souls?

24 Sep 2011, Posted by Kotoe Oshima in News, 0 Comments

When the world’s largest sperm donor bank stopped accepting sperms from redheads this week, and I was reminded of Cartman’s presentation, “Ginger kids have no souls!” from a South Park episode two years ago. With popular media making fun of ginger kids in the U.S. and the U.K., do parents shopping for their baby’s DNA avoid the red-headed gene?

Special to The Chronicle

Perhaps playground bullying is one reason parents look away from the ginger DNA. Cyros, the sperm donor bank, considered supply and demand factors before deciding to restrict red-headed sperm donors.

Director of Cyros Ole Shou told the Danish newspaper Ekstrabladet, “There are too many redheads in relation to demand. I do not think you chose a redhead, unless the partner—for example, the sterile male—has red hair, or because the lone woman has a preference for redheads. And that’s perhaps not so many, especially in the latter case.”

Many students at Duke were not quite sure how to react to this news, and some redheaded students were taken by surprise.

“I’ve never really thought of red hair as a disadvantage until now,” sophomore Philip Doerr said. “I am sad about it—it’s like everyone thinks I’m ugly.”

Aside from South Park, The Catherine Tate Show also featured an excessive amount of redhead jokes. Ginger-spiral-haired Sandra Kemp, ostracized from her ginger-phobic town, moves to a ginger refuge where she encounters confused gingers, gingers in denial and militant gingers.

From flame-haired to strawberry-tinted, how true is gingerism—prejudice against redheaded people—outside the fiction world?

Doerr never encountered bullying in school playgrounds.

“The ginger jokes only started two years ago, just amongst my friends,” he said. “Before South Park, [my hair] was not a big deal.”

Junior Guy Tracy, who had not even thought about donating sperms, also had peaceful lunchtimes at school.

“I haven’t had any kind of bullying or anything as a child,” he said. “it only started in college after the South Park episode.”

Maybe Shou should rethink his donor restriction, and look to advertise the perks of being a redhead.

Tracy easily gets mistaken for other gingers and comments such as, “You look just like Prince Harry!” are not rare, he added.

If resembling the British prince or Harry Potter’s sidekick isn’t enough bonus for parents shopping for sperms, Doerr described his experiences in the dating world.

“I think they’re especially attracted to the red hair, it’s like a cult classic,” Doerr said.

Redheads represent approximately two percent of the world population, according to the Washington Post.

Personally, I beat the odds and acquired two ginger boyfriends in the past.

Both, contrary to the South Park fan beliefs, had souls, were not creepy and were not part of any ginger separatist movement.

To those in situations where you are able to pick your baby’s sperm—look beyond the hair color DNA. There’s more to the soul than meets the eye.

Local schools amend facial piercing policy

22 Sep 2011, Posted by Marianna Jordan in News, 0 Comments

Nicole Savage/The Chronicle

The school board of Johnston County, a school district in North Carolina, recently amended their policies regarding student dress and appearance. The district faced a lawsuit this past October regarding the suspension of a girl sporting a nose stud in religious observance.

Facial piercings—which fall under the category of jewelry and accessories—are now allowed in the Johnston County schools as long as they don’t constitute a threat to a student’s health or disruption of the integrity of a school’s learning environment, said Terri Sessoms, public information officer of the Johnston County school board.

Some believe that the Johnston County school board’s decision was based off a lawsuit that the district faced last year after suspending high school freshman Ariana Iacono for her decision to wear a nose stud despite the school’s ban on facial piercings.

Jim Lawrence, Johnston County school board attorney, explained that Iacono, a member of the Church of Body Modification, believed she would be entitled to a religious exemption to wear a small nose stud.

“In this situation, the deputy superintendent followed school board policy and upheld the principal’s decision to have her not wear the nose stud,” Lawrence said. U.S. District Judge Malcolm J. Howard issued a temporary restraining order so that Iacono could return to school while the litigation was underway.

The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina Legal Foundation. Charges were dropped in June.

Sessoms explained that the lawsuit had nothing to do with the change in board policy.

“About two years ago, the chair of the board began drafting changes because of legislation issues, community input changes, and a variety of other things. He directed the Board of Education to go through each of the board policies and make decisions to update [our school policies],” Sessoms said.

Schools across the state face similar policies in regards to dress and appearance.

According to the policy in Durham Public Schools, “students are prohibited from wearing clothing, jewlry, book bags, or other articles of personal appearance which…may create a threat to the health or safety of the student or others….may create a significant risk of disruption to the educational process.”

Jeffrey Nash, interim chief communications officer for Durham Public Schools, has heard no discussion within the district regarding the suit or the decisions made by Johnston County Schools.

“I don’t believe there is one standardized answer to the question of facial piercings disrupting a child’s learning environment. There are two distinct variables involved—the eccentricity of the facial piercing and the distractability of a peer,” Nash wrote in an email.

Sophomore Lillie Reed, who recently got a nose piercing, said that she thinks it is out of line for authorities to tell a student what he or she should or shouldn’t put on one’s body.

“I’m not just saying this because I have my nose pierced,” Reed said. “Facial piercings are becoming a much more common thing, and I think [authorities] need to adapt with the times.”

It appears that schools are beginning to take heed of this viewpoint.

Pop culture grid: Moneta & Nowicki

22 Sep 2011, Posted by Christina Yuting in Backpages, Pop Culture Grid, 0 Comments

Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle