Vermont Cynic Fall 212 Issue 2

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A FIRST-YEAR’S GUIDE TO UVM

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BTOWN LOCAL MUSIC SCENE MORE BOOKS CREATE SPACE ISSUE

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C YNIC THE VERMONT

20TH ANNUAL ART HOP

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The University of Vermont’s independent voice since 1883 w w w . v e r m o n t c y n i c . c o m

T h u r s d a y , S e p t e m b e r 6 , 2 0 1 2 – Vo l u m e 1 2 9 I s s u e 2 | B u r l i n g t o n , Ve r m o n t

Library out of room Professors not pleased By Devin Karambelas Assistant News Editor

ERIKA COLBERTALDO The Vermont Cynic

Police cars line the parking lot of the Burlington Police Department parking lot Sept. 2. The University and the police department have partnered to increase weekend patrols in response to resident concerns.

Police to bring the heat Undercover police, liquor enforcement arrives Sept. 7 By Devin Karambelas Assistant News Editor It’s that time of year again when college students take to the red cup-littered streets for a night on the town, but this time the police may not be too far behind. This weekend, students can expect to see the increased presence of Burlington police as another law enforcement agency called the Stop Teen Alcohol Risk Team (S.T.A.R.T) hits the streets. S.T.A.R.T is an initiative formed by Chittenden County police officers, liquor control and the DMV in which law enforcement volunteers dress in civilian clothes and raid house parties in Burlington’s student populated hill section every other month. “We’re going to Burlington (Sept. 7) because it’s the beginning of the school year and all the kids are out,” said Sgt. Caleb Casco of the Hinesburg Police Department and member of S.T.A.R.T. In addition to S.T.A.R.T., the University decided to partner with the Burlington Police Department (BPD) to increase weekend police patrols last February, allowing the presence of six to eight patrols in response to concerns voiced by Burlington residents. “These patrols are really about safety,” Community Relations Director Joe Speidel said. “Students have rights and responsibilities and these patrols are a way to address that.” Director of Student Affairs Tom Gustafson agreed with Speidel and said that while the majority of UVM students are not responsible for disruption downtown, the few who are tend

NEWS

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Class of 2016

to give the University a bad reputation overall. “This isn’t a punitive measure,” Gustafson said. “But 36 students were either suspended or dismissed last year and maybe more policing could prevent that.”

“We’re going to Burlington because it’s the beginning of the school year and all the kids are out.” Sgt. Caleb Castro Hinesburg Police Dept. As the Cynic previously reported, the patrols cost around $35,000 per semester to maintain, and administrators said they would use community response and data — the number and types of violations given — as benchmarks to determine the trial program’s success. Officer Andi Higbee of the Burlington Police Department said this past weekend from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2 resulted in 62 noise incidents compared with 54 in 2012 and 59 in 2011. Higbee said that while he thought the increased police patrols had a successful first run because of the higher number of contacts made, he did not expect to see a dramatic change in noise complaints yet. “There’s not a decrease in noise yet because it is so new,” he said. “We don’t expect to see an impact yet.” As for residents, some feel it

LIFE 4-5 — Enviro-nerd finds beauty in composting

may be too early to determine how effective the patrols will be. “There were police patrols this weekend?” asked Jay Williams, a middle-aged man who lives on Bradley Street. “You could have fooled me — I didn’t see them.” Williams said he believed See POLICE on page 2

Special crime report Sept. 3 4 a.m.

UVM police found several vehicles that had been broken into in the Patrick Gym parking lot around 4 a.m. on Sept. 3 according to an email sent out by UVM Police Services. Two unidentified white male suspects were seen in still pictures on surveillance cameras entering the garage at 3:22 a.m., wandering around and entering cars on the first and second levels of the garage. The first suspect is heavyset in his 20s, wearing a dark colored baseball hat, a dark colored fleece jacket, jeans and sneakers. The second suspect has a medium build and is also in his 20s, wearing a dark colored baseball hat, a dark colored fleece or sweatshirt, light colored shorts and sneakers. “These robberies are a UVM police case,” Burlington Police Lt. Larry Magnant said. “I don’t have much information on them because they are still open. No arrests have been made yet.” More crime on page 2

DISTRACTIONS 6-7 The world of science crossword and facts

ARTS 8-9 Animal Collective rewinds

The racks are stacked at Bailey/Howe. As UVM’s enrollment outpaces its resources, the Bailey/Howe library has decided to transition five percent of its printed journals to an electronic format. “So we’ve got this box called Bailey/Howe and we’ve known for a while that we were going to be in a space crunch,” Dean of Library Mara Saule said. “We receive nearly 15,000 new books a year and we’ve had up to 8,000 people in the library on any given day. We have students sitting on the floor or going to the top floor of the Davis Center to do their work.” With the library’s general collection shelves filled to over 80 percent capacity and special collections filled to almost 90 percent, storage concerns have cul-

minated in an initiative known as the JSTOR Withdrawal Project that would place dozens of academic journals on the web. Once it goes into effect this fall, the withdrawal project will discard any print journals in Bailey/Howe that can be found online through JSTOR, an online archive that holds digitalized back issues of academic journals. UVM currently subscribes to about 2,000 scholarly journals, down from around 4,000 subscriptions a few years ago, Saule said. With JSTOR, she said that students and faculty are able to access 50,000 titles. While there may not be any loss in actual content or images, some members of the UVM community feel that there is something irrecoverable in the shift of the format itself. “The printed page is still See LIBRARY on page 3

University gets serious about solar production By Ben Plotzker Staff Writer The UVM horse farm on Spear Street just got an upgrade in the alternative energy department. UVM unveiled 134 solar panels, which were installed over the summer onto the roof of the Ellen A. Hardacre Equine Center in a ceremony Aug. 29. Starting this month, the solar panels will produce an average of 100-kilowatt hours of electricity per day to support 8.5 percent of the farm’s energy needs, University Communications stated. “The establishment of the solar panels is what typifies Vermont and what we are,” said Tom Vogelmann, dean of UVM’s College of Agriculture and Life Sci-

ences (CALS). “The 100-kilowatt array can support five to six medium sized homes.” The total price of the solar panels was $135,990, Sustainability Director Gioia Thompson stated in a press release. “With the Clean Energy Fund supplying $80,250 of the total, an incentive grant of $55,740 from the Clean Energy Development Fund made up the difference,” Thompson said. Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets Chuck Ross said roughly eight or nine years from now, the University will see a return in the investment they made on the panels. See SOLAR on page 3

NATALIE WILLIAMS The Vermont Cynic

Rubenstein school Ph.D. student Rebecca Pincus cuts the ribbon in front of the new solar panels at the Equine Center Aug. 29.

OPINION 10-12 What’s with all the shootings?

SPORTS 13-16 It’s football time: Jake’s Take


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