National Campus News
Page 6 - Thursday, October 22, 1998 - The Behrend College Beacon £_
Alpha Chi Omega closes Colorado State
chapter after offensive float display
By Allison Sherry
Colorado State University
Rocky Mountain Collegian
FORT COLLINS, Colo. The
sorority that expelled one of its
members after discovering she was
partially responsible for
vandalizing a float that ran in
Colorado State University’s
homecoming parade announced
this week that it would be closing
the university’s chapter because it
doesn’t want to be “mired in this
senseless campus incident.’’
The beleaguered Alpha Chi
Omega sorority expelled one
member Saturday after discovering
she and other members of the Pi
Kappa Alpha fraternity had
vandalized a scarecrow hanging on
the float by scrawling the words
“I’m Gay” on one side of it and “Up
My Ass” on the other. One
fraternity member claimed
responsibility for his actions and
resigned from the organization this
week.
The sorority thought it had done
enough by expelling the member,
but national sorority officials
disagreed even though no sorority
Police Blotter: A Look At Campus Crime Briefs
By Peter Levine
Campus Correspondent - University
of Wisconsin at Madison
College Press Exchange
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (CPX) - Police
at Northern Arizona University
arrested a student who allegedly tried
to light another student’s hair on fire.
According to The Lumberjack,
police arrested 18-year-old Sean
Marshall Magnusen on Sept. 24. He
is accused of spraying aerosol air
freshener on another man's head and
trying to ignite the spray with a
cigarette lighter. Police said some of
the victim's hair was burned during
his struggle with Magnusen.
Magnusen told police he didn’t
intend to hurt the victim, only scare
him.
The Lumberjack also reported that
several students living near
Magnusen have complained about his
disruptive behavior.
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (CPX)
- New Brunswick police arrested four
people - including one Rutgers
University student - after breaking up
a party allegedly filled with
prostitution and illegal alcohol sales.
According to the Daily Targum,
police charged Rutgers senior Ryan
Brown, 22, and his three roommates
(not enrolled at the university) with
maintaining a nuisance and illegally
selling alcohol in their apartment.
Police also arrested two women on
charges of drug possession and
prostitution.
New Brunswick police Lt. Les
Levine told the Targum that
investigators decided to monitor the
three-story building after seeing fliers
advertising a pay-at-the-door party
with lap dancing, “special VIP
rooms,” and “very tight security” that
would allow patrons to “cum in
peace."
Over the course of their three-hour
surveillance, police watched nearly
100 people pay for admission to the
house, Levine said.
“Several people were milling in
and around the area,” Levine said.
“There were several local residents
with whom we were familiar, and, for
the most part, what we assumed to
be college kids.”
The Targum reported that police
entered the house, they found
between 150-175 people - nearly all
of whom were male - and a strong
smell of marijuana. Police allege that
Brown and his roommates were
running a raffle in which the winner
would get to have sex with one of the
women in the house. Police found
two women - half-dressed and lying
on beds amid condoms - on the
second floor of the house, Levine
said.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. (CPX) -
Students living near the University of
California at Los Angeles are worried
that their lingerie will be pilfered by
a man who obviously has a thing for
members were riding on the
offensive float as it made its way
down the parade route.
“Our actions today reflect Alpha
Chi Omega’s intolerance for this
kind of behavior,” Jan Crandall,
national president of the sorority,
said in a prepared statement “We
abhor discrimination and any
actions that are insensitive to, or
disrespectful of, any human being.
Our board and membership sends
its deepest condolences to the
Shepard family.”
At the sorority house Wednesday
night, members carried boxes to
cars and hugged one another. Most
members refused to comment about
the incident, saying a later release
will be issued.
“I’m really at loss for words,”
said one member who refused to
give her name. “It wasn’t the
organization as a whole by any
means. It was one girl who was
expelled. We’re all very upset.”
The woman also said “it’s up to
the members” when asked if some
sorority members will continue
living at their house.
“This is horribly traumatic for
these women,” said
women’s underwear.
According to the Daily Bruin, Los
Angeles police have followed a string
of unusual burglaries since January
1997. In each case, a burglar has
entered an apartment, sorted through
the victim’s belongings and taken
lingerie and other personal items,
leaving behind no mess and little
evidence that he was ever there.
“He seems to like Victoria’s Secret,
but he is not limited to that,” Los
Angeles police Det. Charles
Dempsey told the Bruin. “He has also
taken a cocktail dress; he has taken
phone numbers and called the
apartment; he takes personal items. I
think he’s trying to reach out to them
(the victims)."
At least two victims have come
home to find the suspect in their
apartments. He told both women he
was looking for a female friend.
The suspect - who is also reported
to be a peeping tom - is described as
a 28-to-30-year-old white male,
approximately 6 feet tall and
weighing 165 pounds. He has green
eyes and a slender build and tries to
blend in with the campus
surroundings.
“He acts like a student and he
dresses like a student, but all of these
people are saying he looks too old to
be a student,” Dempsey told the
Bruin.
CHAMPAIGN-URBANA, 111.
(CPX) - The Delta Tau Delta
fraternity at the University of Illinois
at Champaign-Urbana held an
“Animal House” theme party and
wound up with police on their
doorstep not once, but twice.
Officers first interrupted the Oct.
2 party because of neighboring
complaints about excessive noise.
They returned only an hour later to
find a car and mattress that had been
used as decorations for the big event
on fire. Also during their second visit,
police officers conducting a safety
search of the house seized drug
paraphernalia and stolen street signs.
Fraternity members say they
complied with officers’ orders, and
that the party was definitely “not out
of control.” Nevertheless, university
officials are looking into the matter.
BOSTON (CPX) - About 40,000
people recently crowded onto Boston
Common for the ninth annual
Freedom Rally - an event designed
to, among other things, support
efforts to legalize marijuana.
Despite promises of increased
patrols and tough law enforcement,
the Free Press reported that police
arrested only 62 people. Last year’s
rally ended with 150 arrests. The drop
in arrests, rally-attendees said, was
the result of pot smokers being more
secretive.
“This year, in order to smoke weed,
we had to leave the rally and go all
around Boston into alleys, smoke and
then come back,” Dana Ross of
Boston told the Free Press.
Pro-marijuana speeches met the
ImMasche, the university’s
assistant director of Greek Life.
“They are taking full responsibility
for the event, meaning that the
incident represented all of them.
They were looking at the overall
situation and instead of dying by
inches, they took full responsibility
and now they have closure.”
ImMasche said the women
needed to “get on with their lives,”
noting that many are excellent
students involved in several
different activities. Prolonging the
sorority’s existence, she said, was
not in everyone’s best interest.
“We were very surprised to hear
they were closing,” said Tom
Milligan, director of media
relations at CSU. “But this will not
affect the investigation. Next week,
the hearings will start and we will
proceed as we planned to.”
Eleven people are being
investigated so far, Milligan said.
Despite the sorority’s demise, the
university expects full cooperation
with the members of Alpha Chi
Omega as the investigation unfolds,
he said.
“People seem very willing to
cooperate here,” he said.
most enthusiastic response from the
crowd, but many at the rally doubted
the event would further efforts to
legalize the drug.
“Government is government, like
it always has been,” said Rob Rodden
of Boston. “And speaking out about
legalization isn’t going to change it. I
think they’re just wasting time and
blowing hot air.”
Edith Palleria Cox, president of
Concerned Citizens for Drug
Prevention, criticized the event’s
efforts to attract young people. “They
shouldn’t be able to target kids when
they’re idealistic, and the kids who
have bought this message don’t know
the group’s real agenda,” she said.
MARYVILLE, Mo. (CPX) - One
student at Northwest Missouri State
University found the incentive to gel
the lock on her dorm room door
repaired after she found a strange man
in her bathroom.
According to the Missourian Daily,
the young woman returned home and
found her door unlocked. Because the
lock hadn’t worked properly, she
didn’t notice anything out of the
ordinary until she heard the shower
curtain open and saw, through a
mirror, a man “pulling himself up out
of the tub.”
The woman told police she ran to
another floor and called campus
security for help. Officers found no
evidence of forced entry and no sign
of the man.
RALEIGH, N.C. (CPX) - Five
students at North Carolina State
University recently learned that there
isn’t necessarily safety in numbers
when they were held at gunpoint and
robbed of about $ 150.
According to The Technician, the
students were walking back to their
dormitory around 3:15 a.m. on Oct. 5
when a man riding in a car.pulled up
and asked them for directions. The
students obliged and kept walking.
The car approached a second time,
and at least three men
brandishing a gun - got out.
“You know what this is,” the
victims said one man told them. “Get
on the ground.”
According to police reports, the
students complied and were ordered
to empty their pockets. The men took
from them $l5O, a wallet, a driver’s
license and two packs of cigarettes.
One first-year student told The
Technician that the robbers were
actually polite. He said that when
someone took his wallet, he asked if
he could keep his license so he
wouldn’t have to have another made.
The robbers left the license intact, he
said. And after the incident, the
students said the robbers circled
around and honked twice as if to say
“You can get up now.”
Nevertheless, the students agreec
that the incident was scary.
“I just keep thinking, ‘What if the}
would have shot?’” one student said
Re-release of ‘Animal House’ shows
what Belushi started 20 years ago
By Tom Maurstad
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
Since it opened in 1978, “National
Lampoon’s Animal House” has
developed a reputation summed up by
the typical critic’s blurb, “one of the
funniest films ever.”
In the days before omnipresent
media, “Animal House” was a home
grown sensation. A little comedy
starring, for the most part, a bunch of
nobodies, it came out of nowhere and
pulled in more than $2OO million at
the box office, making it the highest
grossing comedy in history (topped
in 1984 by “Ghostbusters,” which
featured “Animal House” alums
Harold Ramis and Ivan Reitman).
In the days before political
correctness, “Animal House” was an
outrage, a pre-emptive strike at the
public restrictions to come. The film
pulls no punches; it burns with the
energy of its unapologetically low
ball humor. The first big laugh is frat
snob Doug Neidermeyer slamming
the door not just in but on the face of
a fat guy who will later become
affectionately known as “Flounder.”
It’s fitting that “Animal House’s”
20th-anniversary celebration -
centered on Tuesday’s release of a
commemorative “special edition”
video - comes as “There’s Something
About Mary” plays on in theaters. A
little comedy that took Hollywood by
surprise this summer to become one
of 1998’s few big hits, “There’s
Something About Mary” inspired a
few weeks of magazine covers and
talk-show segments fretfully
exploring the rise in crude culture.
“Animal House” is the
contemporary archetype of crude
humor. Its popular presence boils
down to two essential contributions
to crude lore - John Belushi’s mashed
potato-spraying impersonation of a
zit, and that mantra of decadence, “to-
ga, to-ga, to-ga.”
But 20 years later, what keeps this
film so funny is all the smart humor
Student accused of threatening
professor with gun to
By Christine Tatum
College Press Exchange
COLLEGE PARK, Md. (CPX) -
Police have arrested a former student
of the University of Maryland a,t
College Park on assault and weapons
charges after a math professor
reported that the student threatened
him with a gun and insisted that he
get an A in the class.
Investigators aren’t releasing the
professor’s name, but they said his
sharp eye for detail was instrumental
in helping police with their
investigation of his claims.
Campus police charged 22-year-old
Stephen Clancy Hill, an economics
major, with first-degree assault,
carrying a concealed deadly weapon,
carrying that weapon on campus and
using a handgun to commit a felony.
If convicted on all four charges, he
could spend up to 51 years in prison.
Hill remained in jail on Tuesday with
no bond.
Two college students charged with first-degree murder
By Josh Funk
College Press Exchange
Daily Nebraskan (University of
Nebraska at Lincoln)
LINCOLN, Neb. (CPX) - Two
college students, along with their
companions, are charged with first
degree murder in connection with the
stabbing death of a Denver, Colo.,
man.
Twin brothers David and Kevin
Bills, 21, of Iowa; Joshua Wright, 18,
of Colorado and Kevin Snyder, 19, of
Nebraska, are accused of killing 34-
year-old Patrick Perry - a man whom
police say had a lengthy arrest record
for charges of domestic violence,
carrying a concealed weapon and drug
possession.
All four men were being held in a
Denver, Colo., jail without bond after
being charged Thursday.
Attorneys for the brothers, Phil
Chemer and Jim Castle, said David
Bills, a senior at the University of
laced through the stupid yuks.
Establishing a conflict between the
“good” fraternity and the “evil”
fraternity, the movie is less a story
than a series of sketches. The fun
loving, anarchic Delts are the
sketches’ Road Runner; the fun
scorning, fascist Omegas are the
Coyote.
“Animal House” was the revenge
of the nerds six years before a movie
with that title would come out. The
class conflict here is between the
privileged stupid people and the
slightly less privileged smart people.
The film champions the downwardly
mobile smart-aleck, the gleefully
irresponsible screw-up. It celebrates
college as that blissful time between
childhood and adulthood to be filled
with as much self-indulgent excess
as you can manage.
Not exactly radical doctrine. And
20 years later, “Animal House’s”
insular world and central smugness
can wear a little thin. Its all-white
world is only occasionally broken by
interactions with the Delts’ favorite
soul band, Otis Day and the Knights.
Those interactions are invariably
played for lazy, cheap laughs. The
entire roadhouse scene, in which the
guys and their terrified dates stumble
into an all-black club, radiates with
an ugly arrogance, encapsulated in
the sight-gag when one of the girls
shouts over the music that she’s
majoring in "primitive cultures” and
the camera cuts to Day and his
Knights onstage.
Likewise, the movie is abrim with
wantonly gratuitous nudity. And
while a lot of it occurs in the midst
of some very funny sequences, the
roles open to women in “Animal
House’s “boys club are strikingly
limited. But unlike so many of the
films it inspired and influenced,
“Animal House’s” loutish excesses
are countered and ultimately
transcended by its higher
achievements.
Topping these is John Belushi’s
According to a police report, Hill
requested a meeting with the
professor on Oct. 12. The two agreed
to meet around noon. When Hill
arrived he asked the professor’s
officemate to leave so he could have
a private discussion with the
professor.
The professor told police that Hill
lifted his jacket to reveal a handgun
tucked in a shoulder holster as he
talked about needing an A in the math
course and his expectations that the
professor would give him one.
“Mr. Hill further told the victim
that he was going to give him an A or
Mr. Hill would make the victim
disappear, leaving no evidence,” a
police report stated. The professor
told police that Hill warned him not
to say anything about their
conversation and then left the office.
After the professor reported his
encounter with Hill, police
discovered that Hill had recently
purchased a gun closely matching the
Nebraska at Lincoln, was in Denver
visiting his brother, Kevin Bills, who
is a senior at Metropolitan State
College, when the stabbing occurred
on Oct. 4.
The attorneys said the four men
were merely Good Samaritans who
are being punished for trying to help
a woman in distress. They said the
foursome tried to stop Perry from
attacking a woman who lives near
Kevin Bills. Police found nothing
wrong when they arrived at the scene
but discovered Perry’s body when
summoned again only two hours
later. According to police reports, the
four men said Perry had disappeared
before police arrived the first time but
returned later to cause more trouble.
“This guy comes back to the
apartment complex and threatens my
client and his friends and brandished
something that appeared to be a
weapon,” Chemer said. “It is dark,
he is bigger than they are, he is
making verbal threats and coming at
performance. As Bluto, he is a primal
force, and, fittingly, he rarely uses
words to communicate. Belushi steals
scenes with his eyebrow. His midnight
ballet as he dances up the steps to
break into the dean’s office is a
timeless thing of beauty. His walk
through the line at the cafeteria, eating
anything and everything, is a visual
spectacle in which Belushi creates his
own special effects.
And then there is Tim Matheson’s
ice-cool and silky-smooth Otter. His
performance is still a wonder of timing
and inflection - his wink to the dean at
just the right moment, for example. A
ruthless seducer (who whistles “Peter
and the Wolf’ whenever zeroing in on
his next conquest) and unflappable con
artist, Otter is the flip-side to Bluto.
In one classic moment, he picks up a
girl by pretending to be the distraught
fiance of her recently deceased
roommate. By the film’s denouement,
when Bluto and Otter call their
beleaguered brothers to arms against
their evil oppressors, Otter is the
dashing Robin Hood and Bluto his
faithful Little John.
Twenty years later, “Animal
House’s” faults may be a bit more
glaring, but its crazed spirit and
rollicking humor still shine through.
More surprising is that so do the
occasionally tender moments -
freshman Pinto (Tom Hulce) getting
all deep and metaphysical after
smoking marijuana for the first time,
Boon (Peter Riegert) listening to the
phone ring and ring as he makes an
early-morning call to his estranged
girlfriend’s house.
With today’s continuing conveyor
belt of low-ball fare - “There’s
Something About Mary,”
“Baseketball,” “A Night at the
Roxbury” - “Animal House’s”
anniversary has arrived to give us a
much-needed reminder. As the King
of Crude still proves 20 years later, the
two most important body parts in
comedy are the brain and the heart.
get an A
description the professor had provided.
Investigators got search warrants for
Hill’s off-campus home and car and
kept both under surveillance.
On Oct. 14, soon after Hill drove
away from his house, police pulled
him over. Officers arrested Hill and
found a loaded 9-milimeter
semiautomatic handgun and three
loaded ammunition clips on the seat
next to him, police said. After
searching Hill’s house, police also
reported finding a shoulder holster
very similar to the one the professor
said he had seen Hill wearing.
Police said they would send the case
to the state’s attorney’s office for
review.
Meanwhile, Hill was dropped from
the school’s enrollment on Monday.
School spokesman George Cathcart
said federal privacy laws prevented
him or any other university official
from discussing the circumstances
surrounding Hill’s departure.
them and actually gets into an
altercation with them. And that’s when
he is stabbed.”
Police said the Bills brothers
admitted to the Oct. 4 stabbing,
claiming that they were only trying to
defend themselves after Perry attacked
Kevin Bills.
Witnesses at the scene and friends
of Perry, disagree with the men’s
version of the events leading to Perry’s
death. Witnesses say the Bills brothers
jumped on Perry and held him down,
while Wright and Snyder kicked him.
The Rev. Patrick Demmer, senior
pastor at Graham Memorial Church of
God in Christ where Perry was a
deacon, said that the Bills’ attorneys’
attempts to portray the men as heroes
are “the worst case of spin-doctoring.”
While Perry was black and the four
men charged with his death are white,
police have not said the attack was
racially motivated.