“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” do you always have to start with the title its bad form you know relying on the same tricks over and over again still on with the rest of the review oh look a witty lead oh that’s real original Davies that opening paragraph loses its train of thought midway through copying to go on a truck towards the subconscious instead leaving the reader famished for information blimey the plot synopsis does not need to be that long what do you mean Gary Oldman is spelt wrong Microsoft Word curse you Bill Gates you and your army of Windows god wouldn’t that be terrifying an army of Windows that crash the moment you attempt to start them up anyway back to the review of the review why do I always sound pretentious when writing a review I mean I do like my thoughts and feelings perhaps more than I should certainly more reliable at providing intelligent conversation than some still not sure if that’s the best way to approach this particular review well the middle paragraph is obviously a load of twaddle written by me to make myself look amazing covering up the fact that the rest of the review is contemptuous drivel balderdash that’s a fragment sentence if I ever saw one and that word is not even in the Webster’s Dictionary let alone the Oxford finally reach the end just summarize the damn thing don’t prattle on about how the Academy got it wrong that’s common knowledge oh shut up wait I think its over huzzah so what if it does not make any sense to you the reader at least you did not have to bloody well write it!

Bridgewater College will celebrate 132 years since its founding on Tuesday, April 3. However, this year Bridgewater is celebrating a different way than it has in the past.

   After the annual Founder’s Day ceremony and extraordinary lunch, a campus wide pool party will take place from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The Nininger Hall pool will hold a number of games and will hold competitions such as best belly flop and biggest splash contest. Diving boards will be installed and students are encouraged to come out to this competition. “I am so glad Bridgewater decided to do something like this. It’s about time,” sophomore Travis White said.  

   The celebration will continue outside as lawn chairs and umbrellas are placed around campus and multiple slip n’ slides will be placed behind the Wampler Towers. Hundreds of inflatable pools will cover the campus mall.

   This is the first time ever Bridgewater has decided to celebrate Founder’s Day in this way. It is such a special day for the college and the celebrations are bigger than ever. Bridgewater never considered celebrating any other way and plans were to continue with the usual celebrations until late February. “The main reason we decided to throw a celebration this year and not any other is because this is a celebration for the class of 2012. They have been such a special class and one of the best Bridgewater has seen in years,” explained Dean Miracle. “The confusion and heartbreak of transitioning from two college presidents in four years did not break these students spirit. Their school spirit is undeniable and their outstanding behavior deserves to be recognized,” he said.  

   Students will be served a “cookout style” lunch while Bridgewater faculty and staff grill hamburgers and hotdogs for students. Water balloons and water guns are said to be present at the festivities.

   At 3:00 p.m. each student from the class of 2012 will be recognized and individually praised for their extremely hard efforts throughout the years and patience with the college and its rules. Each senior will also receive a plaque to place on the wall so students and community members can witness the legends of Bridgewater College’s class of 2012.

All you need is your bathing suit and a smile to join this party. Come join Bridgewater to celebrate its founding because without it, well we wouldn’t be here.

   Despite the unending publicity, much of the populace, myself included, has no idea what on earth “The Hunger Games” is about. As such, I have done some research and I am now attempting to present what I found. (Note: Spoilers follow)

   In a dystopian future, the peoples of Indeciperhablename are addicted to reality television (what else is new), thanks to the efforts of their forefathers, Hollywood and the Studio system, as well as their currently leader, President prime minister. In particular, one event has fascinated them for generations: The Hunger Games. This yearly event pits two legends against each other: The Swedish Chef and Cookie Monster, in a battle royale as they attempt to not only solve the ongoing food shortage but also their own personal problems as neither of them can eat their own creations; the Swedish chef is constantly mocked by his own ingredients as they fight their own captivating battle for freedom while Cookie Monster is locked in an un-ending cycle of eating his masterful creations before they can be even shown to another living being, let alone actually being consumed by the populace.

   The struggle goes on for three books and a film series as each Muppet faces numerous trials and tribulations before ultimately, and quite hilariously, failing, despite the help of their mutual friend Kermit the Frog. Meanwhile, a very basic and uninteresting love story takes place between a fly and a bacteria, both defying their families before ultimately dying tragically: the bacteria is eaten by the fly while the fly is stepped on by a ten megaton bomb. The story comes to a thrilling conclusion as all stories do: it is revealed that all the books, as well as the film adaptations, were in fact all a dream of man on a psychiatric hospital, which itself is encased in a snow globe. It then cuts to black in the middle of the scene just as everyone walks into the light…

I hope that this is enough of a substitute for those who are too lazy to actually read the books.

Professor: You’re turning 21, just remember you have your entire life to do stupid things

Guy: You don’t go into labor any more, you go into mild discomfort

Guy: Africa has no books

Guy: Friendship doesn’t matter when it comes to the law

Guy: Would y’all come to my wedding?

Girl: Not if it’s long

Professor: I’m not as stupid as you thought!

Guy: He should lose the use of his cheating stick, and by cheating stick I mean his manhood

Girl: Your boyfriend’s the male version of you, if only I could find my male counterpart. Oh wait, I have, except he’s gay!

Guy: I can’t even take you to the damn KCC without you embarrassing me

Professor: I don’t care if you like the book but did you find it edifying?

Guy: It’s catchy, like herpes

Guy: If we were in the Wizard of Oz, the house would have fallen on you

Guy: When has the library ever had a book on the subject you were researching?

Girl: No one wants to see your Hello Kitty underwear!

Guy: When have the students ever had a say in what goes on at this college

Guy: It went down Mean Girls style

Girl: While our professors are partying it up at the Artful Dodger on a Tuesday night, we’re sitting here doing homework

Girl: I shaved and it feels so good, my legs are out of hibernation!

Guy: Those girls are housewife material

Girl: There’s about to be a dead boy on campus

First take all your troubles and soak them in happy thoughts. This will make them much easier to work with. Meanwhile, you’ll need to get your rainbow (two tablespoons) and blend it with an endless amount of patience. This is really going to be the base for your happiness.

When you’re done, take your positivity and spread it across your lifetime.  Place this in a dish that has been prefilled with character. Fill the rest of the dish with your rainbow blend. Drop in spoonfuls of happy thoughts. Bake them with a little sunshine for the rest of your life. To top it off, garnish with a smile and enjoy with good friends and family. After all, happiness is best served with good company.  Remember, there isn’t only one recipe to make this. Feel free to add other ingredients to your mix, after all happiness is what you make of it.

Ingredients

-Apples (4 apples)

-Vanilla Ice Cream

-Caramel Syrup

-Chocolate Syrup

-Cinnamon (1 tsp)

-Butter (2tbsp)

-Brown Sugar (1tbsp)

Directions

This week we have another delicious desert that takes almost no time or work at all to make. Start by washing your apples and cutting off a little bit off the tops. Then using a spoon, scoop out some of the apple. Hollow out the apple enough to fit a scoop of ice cream in it.  How hollow you make the apple is really up to you, it all depends on how much apple you want compare to how much ice cream you want.  Just make sure to leave the apple thick enough so that it doesn’t break or loose its shape in the oven.

In a small bowl mix two tablespoons of softened butter with a teaspoon of cinnamon and a tablespoon of brown sugar. Using your spoons spread a generous amount into the apples, ensuring that the inside is coated entirely.

Place all your apples on a cookie sheet and place them in the oven at 275 degrees for 20-25 minutes.  When your apples are done take them out of the oven and let them cool for five to ten minutes. If you put the ice cream in it too soon it will turn into a soupy mess before you get the chance to enjoy it.

After the apples have cooled down you’ll notice that they are full of butter and leftover cinnamon, just pour all the leftovers into the sink.  Finally its time to add the best ingredient, the vanilla ice cream.  Scoop in some vanilla ice cream and top with caramel syrup.  Depending your personal preference you could also top it with chocolate syrup and chopped nuts. 

Now, if you don’t have time to cook the apples don’t stress out too much, this also makes a great treat with uncooked apples. Just hollow out the apples and fill them with the ice cream and toppings of your choice. These make a great desert for the warm days to come, so why not treat yourself to something delicious?

For more recipes visit veritas.bridgewater.edu.

   I have been talking and writing about the weirdness of never seeing the students of our college openly making a demonstration or protest for or against anything on our campus. When I first heard of the march for justice entitled “The Valley Hoodie March,” in memory of Trayvon Martin and led by The Visible Men of Bridgewater College, I was ecstatic. According to Nahshon Ford, 300 people gathered in the protest, approximately 100 more than in Virginia Tech, which has nearly 30,000 students. I was just very happy to see our students caring about something enough to take it to the streets and do what you do in a true democracy: voice their opinion.

   On the other hand, when I arrived on campus on Monday, the first piece of news I received was that Rebecca Downs’ sculpture, the one I talked about in one of my recent columns, had been vandalized and destroyed with the use of tools. Although the police can’t comment on an ongoing investigation, the information I got it was that the vandals not only tried to destroy the sculpture once, but actually managed to come back with wire cutters to finish the job. I personally went and took some pictures before Facilities cleaned the mess. A few minutes later, JJ Krehbiel, our special reports contributor, sent us an open letter, which you can read in this edition of Veritas.

   Just the idea that someone would not only take time to hate a work of art so much, but actually come back with a cutter to make sure it was properly destroyed shows me the upside down of “freedom of expression.” If on the top side, we have students like Rebecca Downs and Nahshon Ford building something that will enrich and empower not only the students, but also all of us who live and work in this community; on the bottom, we have people who instead of building a counter argument for whatever they don’t agree with, they persecute, tear down, shoot, and kill to silence the constructive voice. What they are too ignorant to notice is that, when you kill a person or tear down a work of art, you are not really silencing the message; as long as we have people who can think and act reasonably, we will have people to carry on the message and even multiply it.

   For those who are out there, thinking not on how they can build their own messages, but on how they can silence others’ messages here is something for you to think: you can physically destroy a person or a work of art, but you can never silence an idea once it has been voiced. The marches in memory of Travyon will go much beyond the person he was and spread the message that we are free to walk wherever we want without being harassed. And I think we will see Rebecca Downs’ message becoming even louder in the next days…  

   I am usually called many names to describe my taciturn personality. The truth is, I hate dancing, I am fundamentally against people breaking into songs when they are supposed to be speaking, and, above all, detest sweets. For those “traits” of character, people tend to see me as colorless as the clothes I typically wear.

   Now, just to be clear, I think I have been judged rather harshly and I decided to prove them wrong. Just by entering my office, you will probably realize that covering the very vibrant “puke green” wall you will see an assortment of colorful things, such as a few comic strips, a world map, a map of great migrations from National Geographic, a couple of weird outwardly green objects saying “Aliens Welcome” given to me by a student, and of course, a desk and a TV perfectly gift-wrapped by the Veritas staff during Interterm… not to mention the giant fish, seagull, and a certain yellow submarine from the communication studies department’s last performance at the “BC Got Talent” show, but let’s not talk about it.

   I, the taciturn, therefore have the most colorful office in all Memorial Hall (and we share the space with the art department!!!) and probably in the college. And to put a stone on top of this topic once and for all, get your tapping shoes, top hats and canes and follow my lead:

And… 1 and 2 and 3 and 4

“Don Lockwood:

 Doo-dloo-doo-doo-doo

 Doo-dloo-doo-doo-doo-doo

Doo-dloo-doo-doo-doo-doo

Doo-dloo-doo-doo-doo-doo…

I’m singing in the rain

 Just singing in the rain

 What a glorious feelin’

 I’m happy again”

…

 Happy April’s Fool!

And now, back to profoundly boring philosophical thinking… (and 1 and 2 and…)

By JJ Krehbiel

   Last weekend something occurred that did not suit me. Maybe “not suiting me” is too nice. It didn’t settle with me. No, still not harsh enough. It greatly irritated me. Still beating around the bush. Last weekend something occurred that made me wish Bridgewater had higher drop-out rates. There we go, that honestly represents how it made me feel. Someone, or more than one person, for whatever reason decided to tear down a student’s sculpture in the middle of the mall. I’m sure the outcome of this event was noticed by every student on campus; it is certainly hard to miss the mangled pieces of wire and rubbish that were previously making a political statement about the inadequacy of Bridgewater’s recycling efforts.

Photo by Bernardo Motta

 This is no ordinary act of rambunctious vandalism. It is not a matter of students rebelling against the institution and “sticking it to the man.” This is the destruction of the work of a fellow student, someone in our own community. This is merely a display of extreme disrespect where we should be displaying camaraderie. There are two major reasons why I think this deviant behavior crosses, no, obliterates the line of accepted behavior. First of all, this was a student’s senior project. Something she needs in order to graduate. Something that serves as a culmination of her artistic skills which she refined at this college. For a student like me who is not an art major, the equivalent would be someone destroying all copies of your senior seminar paper. Secondly, and more importantly, this was a student’s work of art. Whether you enjoyed the sculpture or not, it is a reflection and a statement of how the artist views the world. By vandalizing this statement, the culprit(s) are essentially trying to suppress the expression of this student, and any other students who wish to make a public statement. To me, that type of suppression is far worse than the effect it might have on the student’s final grade.

Photo by Bernardo Motta

So, if the guilty person or people are reading this editorial, which I doubt because I assume literacy is not your strongpoint, this is what I want you to do: Don’t bother coming forward and apologizing. Just drop out. Seriously, this is not hyperbole. Just leave. You tried the college thing, and it seems like it is not the place for you. Bridgewater professes to be a college of character. I’m not sure what this alleged character is, but I am positive that it is not exhibited by destroying the work of another student. I know that normally, high drop-out rates are frowned upon for colleges. However, if you would stoop to act so maliciously towards the efforts of another student then I cannot imagine how you could possibly bring any value to this campus. So, if you have miraculously made it this far into my short editorial, you know what to do.

The hotel room in Tennessee one gun shot made all to see

That the dream of MLK was left to float in this stream

I say this to set the scene for what I’m to say

Cuz this protest march is about racial equality

Now this stream turns to rain as I’m walking down this gated community

With a bag of skittles in my hand and I get this sense that I’m being followed by this suspicious man

He comes up to my side, one single flash and I die

Flooding the streets with a broken bottle of Ice Tea

A solid gray hoodie and pool of broken dreams

So between these Two Kings I’m marching for this Martin

Call Me Luther How I Post My Theses On the doors of the Justice Department

They say never judge a book by its cover

But before we peel back the skin and discover whats underneath

The different colors we already assume, that lonely boy on the street is doing some scheisty

Business undercover

Trayvon left us with a symbol we all need to apply in life, and that was Skittles.

Skittles is the candy of race because there are different colors in one bag

We all have preferences but you don’t segregate cuz each color is good

So the motto is right: Taste The Rainbow

Give each race a chance ain’t no sense to segregate

Only premediate how to elevate awareness so we can depreciate Racism in America

Which gives a cold stare at ya but combat that with “clothes out the dryer feeling”

Which mean clothe ya heart out with warmth now that sounds more appealing

So it seems that inequality hasn’t really changed cuz from the 1960s to the 2000s things have stayed the same

It’s like we walk in a haunted house and don’t know what to expect

So we neglect with little intellect the equality we should project.

Like a projector with no light, can’t really see what’s ahead.

So is my future dim? Or is the younger generation gonna be like Trayvon, left for dead.

How many of our sons and daughters will get slain in the street because of the color of their skin before society realizes that Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream has yet to be and is far from becoming a reality?

We treat life like Bob Marley, everything is gonna be alright.

But the dread-locks leave us dead-locked, stuck in our ways

So every second there doesn’t go one day where these years of racism are only put on display

On CNN or FOX, but when will we have our voice box? When are we gonna stop getting locked up like Fork Knox? Cuz you’re making this mission…impossible the way we cruise through life

Being subservient, like an Uncle Tom trying to differentiate right from wrong

How many more will it take for the ignorance to desist?

How many more self-proclaimed neighborhood watchmen will take it up themselves to spring some racial slurs and bullets around to ride their neighborhood of suspicious activity?

God said vengeance is mine I shall repay

So this debt of injustice God will invest in

Because to loan our lives to a correct verdict to the justice system

Will add up and make no difference for equality

I say this cuz we bank on them yet we have such animosity

Which is an atrocity cuz our minds our crippled

So we’re walking with Zimmers…man

We take shots of suspicion at others we don’t even understand

So those who stand here have taken Trayvon’s life lesson at hand

Take it to heart, let it ruminate in your head

Cuz we don’t want the younger generation Being like the Walking Dead

All bark and no bite bottled emotions and no fight

So we stand here tonight with a bag of skittles in our hand

In a demand that you stand for a dream of one man

For a kid whose life got all turned around

So we rip the seams of inequality and let it fall to the ground

Not just for Trayvon but for future generations

We got to start living in a color blind nation

Much has been written and discussed about change recently. Over the past two years I’ve discussed change in the context of the College, its strategic plan and external forces that are impacting higher education today. I have nothing new to say about that subject presently. But before moving on at the end of the year, I did want to share with students in particular my perspective about change as it relates to individuals.

   The amount and pace of change in my lifetime has been remarkable. When I was in college, we didn’t have personal computers, ATMs or the Internet. On the flip side, we did have more reasonably priced education than most people can access today.

   I paid my way through college on the back of great summer jobs (road construction), a few scholarships and penny pinching. If I were going to college today, I might be graduating with a mountain of debt. I’m not sure how large student loans would have affected my life, but I’m quite sure I was better off without the debt.

   The social environment has changed radically as well. When I was in college, women and people of color had fewer options than they do today. Gays and lesbians had to stay in the closet.

   The Cold War was still being waged. Today, former foes are friends and former friends are foes.

   We had energy crises back then, but no mention of global warming (at least not that I recall). Politics was played mostly at center court, not at the fringes like it is today.

   My family didn’t own a color TV when I was in college. Today my eighty-year-old mother uses FaceTime to call me on her iPad.

   Later in life I was CEO of a large chemical company. At each of our plants, we made a lot more product, with a substantially smaller workforce, than we had in 1976, the year I graduated from college. Technology transformed manufacturing.

   Aside from making me sound really old (FYI, I still feel like I’m in my 20s), what is the purpose of this litany? It’s simple: to remind you that change is constant and will occur whether you want it to or not. You won’t have any control or influence over much of the change that will impact your life. What you will have is some control over how you adapt and react to the change about you.

   Some people handle change well. They adapt, work at staying contemporary and relevant, and accept new ideas and social orders. Other people struggle with change or actively resist it. Some flee to cabins in far-away mountains. Some allow their skills and knowledge base to become obsolete or rusty. Others push back politically or socially.

   From a political and social standpoint, I make no judgment on whose approach is best. I need only decide how to live my life, not yours. From an employment perspective, however, it is clear which approach is more prudent, namely, the path of adaptation and flexibility.

   It is possible today’s students might live with even more rapid and dramatic change than I experienced over the last four decades. Technology, the key driver of change today, might exponentially expand the amount and rate of change. Or not. Only time will tell for sure.

   But whether it is as extensive in your lifetime as it has been in mine, I have no doubt you will live through an incredible amount of change. From a lifetime of observation and reflection, it seems to me those who navigate change the best are those who fear it the least and live for the present and future. If you do that and relish the creative process that is often at the root of change, you will flourish and enjoy immeasurably the world that is about to unfold before your very eyes.