Nineteen out of the 41 seats in UNC Student Congress are vacant. What’s your take?

“46% vacant? 46% slash in funding. Cut it up.”

Thom Tillis, Speaker of the House, North Carolina General Assembly

“My resume is a little thin. How many of those can I take?”

Parker Bluefort, Political Science, ’17

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate–we can not consecrate–we can not hallow–this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain–that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom–and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

“Those are just my thoughts on it.”

Abraham Lincoln, Ph.D. candidate, Information and Library Science

CHAPEL HILL, NC— In an unprecedented conservation effort, the town of Chapel Hill announced in a press conference last Tuesday that it will begin recycling the discarded hopes and dreams of its residents.

“People have been throwing away their hopes and dreams in Chapel Hill for years,” said Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt. “Now we are finally putting them to good use.”

Since the program’s inception, supporters have noted a decrease in dreams scattered along the sides of roads, windswept and decaying in the hot sun.

“Our town looks more beautiful than ever before,” said senior Emily Lewis, who was one of the first to collect and reuse dreams. “And you’d be amazed at the treasures people throw away. Just last week I found someone’s hopes of writing for the Daily Show. They fit my 17 year-old brother perfectly.”

The city plans to install recycling bins across campus and on Franklin Street in order to facilitate responsible dream disposal.

“Some of the more unusable dreams, such as playing in the NBA, are melted down and sold for scrap,” said town spokeswoman Barbara Rollins. “The more realistic ones are sanitized and put back out in the community for general use. We’re seeing good recidivism rates on these; most of them eventually end up with someone who holds on to them so fiercely that they take them to their grave, no matter how impossible they become.”

Fifty-eight year-old Lonnie McGraw, standing outside of a recycled hopes and dreams distribution center at the Chapel Hill homeless shelter where he has been living for the past several months, said he was grateful for what the new program had provided him.

“I haven’t had [hopes and dreams] since I can’t remember when,” McGraw said, proudly displaying the recycled ones he had been given. “But now all I care about is acing the MCAT next year so I can get into Johns Hopkins med school.

“I just hope my grandparents back in India think I’m doing well enough,” he added.

This initiative is not without its detractors. Kenan-Flagler Business School chair Don Walders spoke out against the program in a fiercely worded email to the town council.

“Once hopes and dreams have been thrown away, nobody’s got the right to dig them up again,” said Walders, whose hopes and dreams of being a lawyer were thrown angrily into a trash can along with a just-returned B minus paper outside a Policy 210 lecture twenty years ago. “Some things are better left alone, forgotten.

“Forgive me mom,” he said. “All I ever wanted was for you to be proud of me.”

Due to the initial success of the program, the town council has already approved plans to establish a program headquarters in the Steele Building, where students consistently abandon futures they imagined for themselves since childhood.

“I have so many unclaimed hopes and dreams just lying around in my office,” said advisor Hank Bradwell. “Funny thing is, I think I lost my own somewhere in here.”

CHAPEL HILL, NC–  After five months of intense introductory Spanish, sophomore Matthew Harris said that he is”pretty sure” he’s now dreaming in Spanish.

Harris made the statement at approximately 11:00 am Tuesday morning, after a night of particularly vivid dreams, which came after he fell asleep completing the online work for this Spanish 203 course.

“I didn’t understand everything people were saying,” Harris said of his dreams, “but we were definitely trying to buy drugs in Costa Rica or something. It must have been Spanish, because I don’t know any other language.”

Harris, who maintains a solid B+ in his Spanish class despite his shaky grasp of the preterite, is optimistic about his progress.

“They say that you’re not really fluent in a language until you start dreaming in it,” Harris explained. “And I think I’m pretty much there. At this point, I feel like there are some thoughts I can’t even express in English.”

Harris’ suitemates were not surprised to learn about his newfound ability. Andrew Thompson, who regularly consults Harris for his own Spanish 101 homework, described him as a “Spanish genius.”

“Matt knows all about the weather, and like, the genders and shit,” he said. “I’ll say something like, ‘la día está calor’ and Matt will be like, ‘No, no, no. It’s el día hace calor,'” he said. “Spanish is super confusing, but Matt really gets it. He could totally dream in Spanish.”

Harris said he was worried his Spanish might have deteriorated after the summer, which he spent working in his dad’s law office in Charlotte, only practicing when he “talked to gardeners and stuff.

“The first day was a little rough,” Harris said of his 203 class this semester. “I couldn’t figure out how to say what I did this summer, but now that I’m dreaming in Spanish that kind of thing won’t happen again.

“Puedo decir todos las cosas,” he said.

When asked if he remembered any of the dialogue from the dream, Harris, who is working toward the Spanish for the professions minor, claimed that he “couldn’t really remember specific words,” but that his dream was “definitely Spanish.”

“I couldn’t understand what the dude selling us drugs was saying, but then I would say shit to him that I couldn’t understand either, so I must subconsciously know Spanish,” he said. “It’s just a part of my experience now.”

Harris, who uses Google Translate to complete most assignments, has updated his resume to “proficient” in Spanish.

CHAPEL HILL, NC— Joanna Davis, sophomore philosophy major and active member of the University Presbyterian Church, has, according to her classmates, ceased to say anything of worth in her History of Ethics class since quoting The New Testament last week.

Contributing to a class conversation concerning virtue-based ethics on Tuesday, Davis offered Philippians 4:8 as an example of Christianity’s penchant for universal tenets of goodness. Since then, Davis’s classmates have found many of her comments in class “biased,” “stilted,” and “fanatical.”

“She’s clearly intelligent and her reference to scripture was spot on, analytically” said Ankita Paatni, classmate and sophomore. “I just wish she wouldn’t shove her Bible so far down my throat that I can’t breathe.”

Davis has not made any more comments related to Christianity since Tuesday, but, according to sources within the class, it is clear that she’s always itching to bring it up.

“She just loves making the rest of us feel bad,” said junior Benjamin Carulo. “When I mentioned John Elerick’s Huffington Post article about how sin doesn’t exist I saw her started scribbling down notes on her notebook. I get it, I’m going to hell. Fuck off.”

Davis, the daughter of accountant Todd Davis and nurse practitioner Linda Davis, grew up in a Christian home in Raleigh, attending church each Sunday. Her philosophy professor, Dr. Richard Reichart, has taken notice of her faith.

“Today Joanna made an astute observation regarding Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy,” said Dr. Reichart. “I was impressed by her restraint. We certainly didn’t need another outburst like last week’s.

“I suppose it’s good that someone like her is at least interested in taking a philosophy course,” he added.

Davis is considering dropping History of Ethics because of her discomfort in the class, though she is not sure what triggered her peers’ quiet derision.

“One day we were all discussing the Categorical Imperative;  the next, people started rolling their eyes whenever I spoke up,” Davis said. “One guy scoffed because he thought my hand was raised while I was stretching.”

Davis’s classmates say they are disappointed that she might drop the course.

“I’ve enjoyed hearing Joanna’s perspective these past few weeks,” said sophomore Dylan French. “I also really like discussing with my friends whether we think Jesus girl has sex with her boyfriend. She totally does, right? You can tell. She is such a hypocrite.”

The Office of the Chancellor has released a brand new advertisement for UNC-Chapel Hill. You can see it below:

CHAPEL HILL, NC— Waiting in the Undergraduate Library for his flyers to print and chatting with people in line behind him, junior geography major and quad guitarist Derek Suggs announced dates for his upcoming quad tour.

Suggs said his performances will take him all over the quad, hitting Polk Place’s biggest venues, as well as smaller, more underground ones.

“Playing a high-traffic spot like the Wilson steps is a real confidence boost,” said Suggs. “But it’s at the hole-in-the-wall joints, like the bushes by Murphey Hall, where I really connect with my fans.

“I want to see the whole quad, just get out there and play for the people,” he said.

Suggs entered the quad music scene after transferring from UNCG last year. He’s since been gaining attention from people walking to class and fellow quad performers.

“He brings a real energy to his performances,” said friend and slackliner Corey Hoffman. “There’s some cutting-edge stuff happening in the quad these days, and Derek’s right at the center of it.”

Suggs plays unaccompanied on an acoustic guitar which he bought last year at Guitar Center. He performs popular covers as well as original songs written in his RA suite in Ehringhaus.

“I can’t really describe my songwriting process,” he said, readjusting his leather wristbands. “It’s like the songs are all in me, swirling around in a thick paste, and I use this guitar to scrape them out of my body and into my audience’s ears.”

He said he will respond to fan interests on his upcoming tour.

“This one girl who walks by Saunders every morning around ten. I think she really digs my stuff,” said Suggs. “I’m gonna play ‘Parachute Panties’ whenever she’s passing by.”

After the fall tour, Suggs hopes to take a sabbatical and perhaps study abroad in India in the spring. But he has already made reference to a 2015 fall tour, which he said would hopefully include dates in exotic venues like Rams Plaza, the Davis ATMs, and the bench in front of Waffle House.

But for now, Suggs said, he’s thinking about the quad.

CHAPEL HILL, NC—The search continues today for Honors Carolina’s tangible benefits, which vanished sometime between midnight and 2:00 a.m. on February 15^th, 2002.

Honors Carolina, a program designed to facilitate the advancement of UNC-Chapel Hill’s best students, refused to comment on the missing benefits saying they could not discuss an ongoing investigation.

But, in what has now become a famous YouTube video, Professor James Leloudis, Associate Dean of Honors, can be seen telling an Honors Carolina student to keep quiet about benefits’ disappearance.

“Don’t you go asking the questions you don’t want answered. Ya heard?” Leloudis said to one freshman interested in how Honors Carolina could help him do research. “There ain’t nothing you need to be asking about. Go on and get out of here, you asking too many questions. Scram, boy.”

Since the video’s release almost three years ago, the benefits have not been found.

According to police reports, the benefits were last seen helping UNC alumnus and biology major Jack Rickler get into a smaller section of Chemistry 102.

Since their disappearance, the sole benefit of being accepted into Honors Carolina has been the requirement to take Honors classes, in which any UNC student can enroll. Sources close to the investigation made it clear that Honors Carolina students receive no ‘Honors’ distinction on their diplomas.

“We just don’t know where the benefits went,” said an Honors Carolina student speaking anonymously. “We thought, ‘They can help with scholarships,’ or ‘It’ll help me get a job,’ but then you discover that all the successful people on the Honors Carolina website are just Morehead-Cain Scholars who have to be in the program.”

“I’m scared we’ll never see the benefits again,” she said.

Students in the Honors program have looked all over campus, concentrating their search near Graham Memorial Hall, the benefits’ last know place of residence, but all has so far been in vain.

“Everywhere we expected to find the benefits–whether it was connecting with professors, taking smaller classes, or exploring unique opportunities at Carolina–they just aren’t there,” said Sarah Chang, a student in the Honors program. “We haven’t even found a single alumnus who can remember seeing them during his or her time at Carolina. It’s disheartening.”

Orange County Police Commissioner Greg North said his force’s investigation has been likewise fruitless, but new evidence in the case might open things up.

“We never ruled out the possibility of foul play,” said North. “And our evidence now suggests that UNC’s administration may have known Honors Carolina’s benefits had vanished long before reporting the disappearance.”

Responding to her office’s implication in the investigation, Chancellor Folt delivered a firm denial.

“It’s preposterous to think that we would go on advertising Honors Carolina as an excellent opportunity after finding out that all of its benefits had disappeared,” she stressed.

“Also, just again, the main point is come to UNC! We understand that you think you are better than our school, but if you come here, you can tell everyone back home you got into the Honors program, which will give you special opportunities,” she said. “We just have to find them.”

Some students at UNC say they are not convinced. Melissa Gabriel, who is currently working–through the comparative literature department and independent of Honors Carolina–to complete her senior honors thesis on notions of gender in the poetry of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore and Ada Negri, is leading a movement of students who believe UNC’s administration is part of a cover-up.

“I don’t think they ever even came to this school,” she said, referring to the missing benefits. “I haven’t been able to reach a single honors alumnus to comment on whether being in the honors program helped them do anything except feel better than other students.”

To boost student’s spirits, the Honors Carolina staff will be hosting a screening of Shutter Island in Graham Memorial this Thursday night at 7 p.m.. The proceeds will be dedicated to the ongoing search.