CHAPEL HILL, NC–Listening wistfully to his youngest daughter Natalie talk and laugh with her new roommate while he helped the girls set up their room, Jim Cox wished that his own roommate were similarly excited to live with him. Sitting behind him, Sharon Cox, his wife of 28 years, stared at the father of her three children until he grew uncomfortable, looked over his shoulder to meet her eyes, and then looked back down again.

Before her move to Hinton James Residence Hall on Sunday afternoon, Natalie Cox had lived in Charlotte, NC, since just after she started high school, when her father was laid off from his job near Atlanta, GA, and relocated the family for a new, worse-paying one. Natalie was randomly assigned to room with Liz Colburne early in the summer before her first semester at Carolina, and the two immediately connected on Facebook, soon chatting for hours several times a week. Late in July, Natalie and Liz met midway between their hometowns to get lunch and shop for dorm furniture, a trip which affirmed their fast-blossoming affinity.

Immediately after her daughter left that morning, Sharon Cox announced to her husband that she was leaving  for a long weekend at her friend Donna’s beach house and would drop him off at work because she needed the family’s other car.

A few weeks later, just as the Cox family was taking their second load of stuff from the Honda Pilot up to Natalie’s new room, the roommates-to-be sighted each other across the parking lot behind Hinton James, screamed, ran toward each other, and hugged.

“Did you remember to lock the car, Jim?” Sharon said while her daughter was still embracing her new friend. “It was unlocked when we came back down here. You forgot to lock it the first time.”

After helping the girls loft their beds and listening to them joke about keeping each other up too late watching and talking about movies, Jim Cox considered his night before, when, like most nights, he came into his bedroom with his own roommate already asleep, changed in silence, read until he fell asleep with the lamp on, and was awoken several hours later by her drowsily elbowing him to turn it off.

As the girls decided to just share their closet and cabinet space because they were the same size in most things and envied each other’s clothes, he reflected on the brief, strictly missionary intercourse to which his wife acquiesces on Thursday nights, typically drinking three to four glasses of wine at dinner beforehand, and afterward immediately getting out of bed, going into the bathroom, and remaining noiselessly inside for up to 20 minutes.

“Goodbye sweetie,” Jim said to his daughter as the Coxes departed for their newly childless home. “I love you so much. I know you’re going to be happy here.”

As he and his wife walked separately down the hall from the still-open door of the room, he heard his daughter and her roommate resolve to walk their class schedules together the next morning and to head to the dining hall later in the evening with other people on their hall.

“What do you want to do for dinner?” he asked his wife as they got in the car.

“I don’t know, that meal at Spanky’s is making me sick,” she said. “And my neck hurts. I’m going to yoga in the morning. James is teaching again.”

CHAPEL HILL, NC–Early this morning, while Fraternity Court stood empty and strewn with red cups, experts confirmed that the best weekend of the 2014-2015 academic year had come to an end. Researchers at UNC indicated that, during any of the 36 remaining weekends of the school year, students are unlikely to have as much fun as they did in the preceding 72 hours.

“Students didn’t have any work, so they could party and relax without guilt,” said Shannon Nicols, a psychologist at UNC. “Every other weekend will be less fun because people will either stay in to work or feel bad about the work they’re not doing.”

“Nobody at UNC is going to have as good a time as they had last weekend,” she said.

Nichols called particular attention to freshman students, whom she said have passed the weekend pinnacles of not just their academic years, but also their college careers.

“Freshman who expected college to be a continuous stream of socially open, responsibility-free dorm room hangouts and house parties had their hopes more or less confirmed this weekend,” she said, “but virtually all of them will grow disillusioned over the coming weeks.”

“The image of college that first-years have seen in movies is totally unrealistic, except for the 72 to 96 hours before the start of classes,” she added. “Nothing else is like that.”

Many freshmen said that they were unconvinced.

“I’m going to do this every fucking weekend, just getting turnt up with my friends,” said Sally Lunell, freshmen pre-med student. “I love college, it’s like, um, like they finally respect us. My parents were like, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that,’ but no one says that here–there are no rules. Just get fucking turnt.”

Lunell has not yet read the syllabus for her Chemistry 101 lecture.

For upperclassmen, the report held similar findings, but with different causes. The first weekend of the year, it said, has an exceptionally high “Friends to Fucks Ratio” (FTF) for most returning students, according to information released by the US Census Bureau. The FTF measures the number of interactions between actual friends relative to those with “the fucks you have to put up with but actually kind of hate.”

Darl Nugent, chair of Duke University’s Sociology Department, who also contributed the report, explained that the unstructured time of the first weekend allowed most to avoid unwanted encounters.

“Students returning to school used the first weekend to reach out to friends; without time on campus it’s much easier to avoid raging tools,” he said. “Every other weekend of the year it’s much harder, if not impossible, to avoid interacting with complete fucks.”

The situation is compounded, the report noted, for students in work-intensive natural science majors, for whom the first weekend of the year was also the only opportunity to participate in “the college experience.” Eric Sanders, a junior chemistry major at UNC, explained that, once his classes start, keeping up good grades and having a good time are “basically mutually exclusive.”

Extending the report’s findings, data compiled by the Center for Disease control indicated that the first weekend of the year also stands as the most opportune time for students seeking to lose their virginities.

“It’s definitely the best shot you have all year to pop your cherry,” Surgeon General Boris D. Lushniak told reporters. “People are down to get outside their comfort zone. If you didn’t get it done this weekend, you might as well wait until next year.”

Accordingly, the first weekend was also a highlight for students interested in taking virginities.  

Dan Yelden, a senior undecided major and unofficial chair of predatory grinding at the Sigma Alpha Delta fraternity, said that the first weekend is typically when he and his fraternity brothers can “get most of [their] work done.”

“We get to be real fucking creeps,” he said. 

Asked for her thoughts, UNC Chancellor Carol Folt said that she “just feel[s] bad for all the people who let this weekend slip by.”

“Compared to the first weekend, the rest of the year is basically a pile of dog shit,” she said. “Oh, and for the seniors, I guess that’s pretty much it for you, huh?” 

by Senior Editor Nestle C. Ricardo | The Minor

Four score and seven years…what!?!?

That’s a speech you hear a lot. Sorry to get it stuck in your head again.

This year’s been crazy. We never thought all this would happen, but it did. It reminds me of that old Cat Steven’s song–the first cut is the deepest.

From P.J. Hairston to PB & J’s, this year has thrown everyone for a loop, including me. Through my time at The Minor, perched high in the offices at Gimghoul Castle, I have seen an up-close and personal view of the university, through its good days and its bad. From Chancellor Folt’s problem of needing to moon everyone, to Chancey Mathers, the university’s head librarian, climbing atop South Building to do a fire-breathing trick for a Sakai tutorial, I was there for it all.

As this school year and, for some of us, our college careers come to an end, it’s important to remember all the important stories of this year. Here are the most important ones:

External Reviewers Find Mary Willingham a Witch

Following months of heated speculation, a board of UNC-appointed external reviewers determined conclusively that the tutor of student-athletes was, in fact, a witch.

“Through rigorous administration of the Herman-Blocke Witch Test–more colloquially known as tying a rock to the witch and throwing her into the sea–we found with 95% confidence that Mrs. Willingham was indeed a witch, despite the fact that she drowned,” said Terry Uranz, a witch researcher at the University of Virginia,  head of the external review board. “As many in the field know, the Herman-Blocke test is flawed because it does not the account for the ability of a witch to return from beyond the grave, a trick at which we know witches of Willingham’s sort are especially adept.”

“Death to the witch,” he added.

According to the review board’s official report, Willingham employed flawed methodologies in the research from which she concluded that a high percentage of UNC student-athletes lacked basic literacy skills, failed to seek proper IRB approval before reporting her conclusions to the national media, and baked small children into tasty little pies after luring them into the woods behind Ehringhaus.

The university has gone on the attack since the release of the board’s findings, creating a website called WitchTruthKillTheWitch.unc.edu to publicly display the report and releasing a YouTube video of frenzied high-level administrators and student leaders gathered around a wood plank jutting into the sea for the execution of the Herman-Blocke Witch Test.

30 SafeWalkers Dead in World-Record Blumpkin Attempt

With the image of a ruined SafeWalk headquarters surrounded by police tape and HazMat units indelibly marked in their memories, many on campus were saddened and horrified earlier this semester when 30 students affiliated with the nighttime safety service were lost in a grisly episode that investigators eventually surmised had been a world-record bumpkin attempt.

The university has launched a full investigation into the events leading up to the upsetting incident, extensively questioning the few surviving SafeWalkers. The SafeWalk program has been suspended indefinitely.

Colony of Feral Iguanas Runs Rampant in Craige Residence Hall

Lurking in the recesses of nearly every room in the more than 600-person dorm, large, aggressive members of a colony of feral iguanas terrorized Craige residents for much of the year.

The colony is thought to have descended from a pregnant pet iguana, illicitly kept by freshman student Lindsay Jenner early in the fall semester, which escaped into the Craige ductwork. With the iguana’s offspring thought to now outnumber human residents of Craige three-to-one, many in the dorm have found themselves unable to sleep, eat, or study without the reptiles nibbling at their ankles, crawling up their legs, and falling into their hair from holes chewed in ceiling tiles.

With residents moving their iguana musk-reeking possessions out of the dorm this week, Craige is set to remain inhabited by the iguanas, many of whom have registered for Maymester classes.

UL Group Study Turf War Continues

With an all-time-high 43 unaffiliated students and 11 librarians falling victim to the inter-gang violence this year, the fight for control of group study rooms in the Undergraduate Library between economics students, know as the ‘Cons, and chemistry students, knows as the Chems, has intensified and show no signs of abating next year.

Each gang is a network of loosely affiliated sets or “study groups” that engage in bloody warfare not only with the rival gang, but also with each other, especially when studying for classes that grade on a curve.

The ‘Cons and the Chems have elaborate systems of slang that can be mostly deciphered from the glossaries of their textbooks but are almost unintelligible to the uninitiated.

The ‘Cons can be identified primarily by their faded baseball hats and sorority mixer long-sleeved t-shirts. They mark their turf with supply and demand graphs and styrofoam cups half-filled with dip-spit.

The Chems, a predominantly but not exclusively Asian-American gang, never walk campus without their heavily-annotated, 7th edition Yurkanis and Bruice Organic Chemistry textbooks visible in their arms. They mark their turf with elaborate hexagonal symbols and a strange, characteristic tag of ‘RXN’ atop a double-sided arrow.

The warring gangs have muscled out weaker factions, like biology study groups and those who reserve the group lounges to hang out and do nothing. As an initiation rite, both sides are know for requiring would-be members to abduct and beat unaffiliated students who occupy entire group studies by themselves.

The ‘Cons have come to dominate the study rooms on the east side of the Undergraduate Library, and the Chems those on the west side. Despite efforts on the part of librarians and campus police to patrol the UL extensively, it is generally regarded as unsafe to travel the library’s second floor halls after midnight, and heightened inter-gang violence has many questioning whether the gangs or the librarians have greatest control over the UL.

The ‘Cons and the Chems are known to become even more violent during finals, during which time they also expand their turf to empty classrooms and even the Business School, on weekends.

Graduating Seniors Prepare for Careers as Doctors, Lawyers, Firemen, Astronauts, Princesses, Dinosaurs

With their graduation ceremony set for Sunday, May 11, members of UNC’s class of 2014 are bidding farewell to close friends and fondly remembered places as they prepare to embark on the various careers that many have been planning since their early childhoods.

“I’ve always dreamed of being a doctor, and thanks to my UNC education, I’ll be enrolling at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the fall,” said senior Annika Yancey. “I’ve known all my life that I wanted to wear the stethoscope and heal people’s boo boos. Now I’m one step closer to that dream.”

Yancey’s sentiments were echoed by virtually all members of the graduating class.

“I sure will miss this place, but UNC has given me not only great friends to keep and good times to look back on, but also the tangible, real-world skills that will allow me to follow my aspirations in the professional world,” said senior Bradley Duncan, who accepted a full-time position with the fire department of his hometown of Greensboro, NC, earlier in the spring.

“I’ll save people from the fires and drive the big red truck and have a Dalmation named Spot who rides on the truck too,” added Duncan. “Weee-oooh-weee-oooh-weee-oooh!”

Some indicated that they have begun their careers even before graduation.

“I’m a velociraptor!” said senior Kara DeFord, raising her hands and curling her fingers like claws. “Yaeckkkk! Screee scree!”

CHAPEL HILL, NC – Reclining in a La-Z-Boy in his Granville dorm room, junior business school student Barry Wannamaker began cramming for his golf exam in his Business 450 class, Strategic Negotiation. Taking a sip of his Shock Top Lemon Shandy, he stared intently at the TV, flipping through and finding The Golf Channel.

“It’s a little different than what I am used to in a final,” said Wannamaker, followed by a little belch. “It’s unusual that you get such practical skills from a course. I’ll be out there, actually testing my ability to drunkenly play golf with my friends and call it a business meeting. Classes like [Business 450] are what make the business school special.”

Wannamaker began by watching an episode of In Play with Jimmy Roberts – “just skimmed it, really, I’ll get notes for it later,” – followed by a two hour marathon of Playing Lessons, after which he got up to try a couple of practice swings with one of his empty bottles.

“It’s nice that I don’t even have to buy new clothes for the final,” he said. “My boat attire will work on land. Perhaps golf is the sailing of the land… Foooooore!” He smiled, shook his head, and chuckled. “I’m just kidding. We’re in a room, and there aren’t any actual golf balls or anything. Finals mean high stress and high humor for me.”

After a few more practice swings, Wannamaker made his way to the golf course for 4:00 pm office hours with his professor, George Sanders.

“Fellas, and ladies, we are just going to play a quick nine to get y’all ready for the exam. Remember that this is just a practice nine, so the banter that you have out here is not necessarily the banter you’ll have during your exam. I just want to make that clear,” Sanders told the class. “Make sure to focus on fundamentals. You know the material: when to drink beer, when you should be smoking a cigar, and how to turn conversation away from business analytics to just saying things like, ‘that kid has got gumption and spunk.'”

When asked how much studying he had done for the upcoming final to date, Wannamaker said only caddying for bar golf last week.

“I am not too worried about the exam though,” Wannamaker added. “I did great on my frisbee golf final for my environmental studies class.”

Chapel Hill, NC—Local Phillips Middle School student Zackary Sims has been working on his language arts book report, based on The Giver, in the UL during the last couple days.

“Ms. Applebaum says we’re supposed to actually read it,” said Sims. “That’s dumb.”

“The only thing I read are girls’ minds, am I right?” he added, flipping his shoulder-length blonde hair and nudging the arm of the clearly uncomfortable young woman sitting next to him.

Sims, perhaps better known to the world by his gamertag of zackattack69, has been using the UL for book reports since early September.

“The UL is the best place for kids like me–all the adult losers go to real libraries,” said Sims.

Sims said that he also enjoys the collegiate atmosphere.

“Girls have boobs here, I like that,” Sims said, pointing across the room at a woman’s chest. “Like the ones you see in American Pie, bro.”

Sims describes himself as a typical 11 year-old, who enjoys his classes and has a thriving extracurricular life.

“My favorite class? Definitely social studies,” said Sims. “They have some nice desks in there, and you can pop a boner all day long without anyone seeing. David Walters and I compete; my record’s thirty minutes fully torqued.”

Sims presence in the library has not been well-received by all.

“He’s been chewing Big League Chew for the last two hours and spitting it into a Mountain Dew bottle,” said sophomore Josh Paulson. “I’m not sure he knows how Big League Chew works.”

Some complaints have been more serious, especially from young women.

“He was looking for The Giver,” said junior and UL employee Caitlin Parsons, “but he was staring at my chest the entire time. I don’t think we made eye contact once during the whole conversation.”

As Sims was beginning to pack up his things for the day, his thoughts were already on the summer ahead.

“I’m hoping to avoid a dry summer, if you know what I mean,” said Sims, adjusting his new Oakley sunglasses. “Tammy Watkins is supposed to be wearing a bikini at David’s pool party next week and we’ve been texting. It’ll be a true test of boner concealment.”

Sims scurried out of the UL, flashing the peace sign as he headed for his mom’s Honda Odyssey, after a day working harder than most at the Undergraduate Library.

As the van pulled away, Sims’ mother was chastising him for wearing the same graphic tee three times this week and suggested that maybe they should go back to Kohl’s soon to restock.

by the Chi Psi Kangaroo | The Minor

I guess I always knew this day would come. For the last six months, I’ve been telling my parents that I got a job working at the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, a 500-acre enclosure with plenty of grass and room to roam—a real respectable place. I remember the look on my mom’s face when I first told her the news. She was so proud of her little Jill.

But the truth was I hadn’t been accepted to Asheboro, or Charlotte either. I didn’t get accepted anywhere. At that point, I knew that I couldn’t just go back to living at home—there’s no way we would’ve had enough food for me and my sisters—and North Carolina is no place for a broke, unemployed Jill. So I did what I could. I started working petting zoos, birthday parties, anything I could find. I didn’t make much, but I was alive. I was making it.

One day, a friend of mine brought me along to a gig at the Sig Ep house over at the University of South Carolina. All I had to do, she told me, was jump around on a stage for ten minutes every two hours and maybe do some kicks, nothing too crazy. As it turned out, I made more money that night than I had in my entire life.

After that, fraternity parties became my business: cocktails, beach bashes, jungle nights, you name it. I was there, kicking big blow-up dolls, hopping over stacks of beer cans, the whole nine yards. I only had two rules: No touching, no pictures. Simple enough. The brothers needed entertainment and I needed money to reapply to zoos next year and, as long as the guys kept their hands to themselves, we all got what we wanted.

But then things started to change. One night, over at ECU, a group of brothers decided they wanted to have a competition to see who could shoot a ping ball into my pouch the fastest. It took two hours. Another night, at the Delta Tau Delta house at the University of Richmond, a group of girls made me put on a red jumpsuit and started screaming, “KANGAROO JACK! KANGAROO JACK!”

It was demeaning, and a total misappropriation of an American kangaroo icon.

After that, I decided I was done with fraternity parties for a while. Or at least I thought so. A few days later, I got a call about a huge gig at the Chi Psi fraternity house at the University of North Carolina. They were going to pay me twice what I had made in Richmond and, as a bonus, they said they would throw in some Bahia Grass for me to eat. I got a call from my parents that night, too, just to see how I was doing. I told them I was fine, that the zoo was fine. I hated lying, but I knew I still needed the money. I called Chi Psi back and told them I would do the party.

At this point, it’s worth making something clear: If you’re down on your luck and you feel like you need to hop and kick to make some money, there is nothing wrong with that, but you should never let someone disrespect you. I emailed Chi Psi weeks in advance to tell them my rules: No touching, no pictures. But when I showed up for their “Last Day of Classes Party,” three brothers scooped me up and started passing me from girl to girl, taking my picture with each one. “Look at the little Joey-oey-oey,” they all squeaked. “He’s such a cutie.”

I’m a Jill, a god damn Jill. I’ve never felt so disrespected in my life.

Needless to say, my parents saw the pictures on Facebook—every other profile picture online had me in it. I’m living at home again and my family is still coming to terms with everything one day at a time. I, on the other hand, finally feel like I know what I need to do. The fact that, even in 2014, a kangaroo can’t work at an LDOC party without being harassed is appalling, and I for one will not be a part of it. We need to wake up. This culture we live in, where men and women treat kangaroos like pin-up playthings and pets, has got to change. Next time you go to a fraternity house and you see a Jill, try opening your eyes, rather than trying to open her pouch.

Around campus, everyone is talking about how their exam schedules are looking. What’s your take?

“Yeah, mine’s pretty rough. I’m gonna be up all night and then sleep until noon so, you know, I can say I was up all night.”

Trenton Batchwood, Biology, ’17

“I had orgo this morning at 8:00 am, then I have Econ 101 tomorrow afternoon, genetics, Policy 101, and intro to comp sci all on Wednesday, an English paper due on Thursday, a drama final on Friday morning, but that should be easy, then Busi 101 after that, an anthropology final, two more English papers and a creative writing final due Saturday, a marine science take-home due Sunday, and physics, Poli 150, calc II, Psych 101, Comm 400, Econ 410, and analytical chemistry on Monday, but then I’m done. What about you?”

Wilma Stackhouse, Pre-Health, ’16

“Must be why everyone been sayin’ they too busy to see the dead body I gots behind TRU. That’s alright. It ain’t going nowhere.”

Lonnie McGraw, Vagabond

“I live an intense, work-hard, play-hard lifestyle, but whether I’m grinding it out in the library or at the skatepark, I know I can count on the kickass flavor of Mountain Dew Kickstart to tune in and rock out. Mountain Dew Kickstart: Kickstart Your Day™.”

Chad Nitro, EXSS, ’15