Fall Break 2010: Utah Adventure - Foreward

So I'll be leaving for the airport in about an hour. I spent last night at home doing laundry and packing, since then I've unpacked, and now I'm roughly half-packed for my trip. Just gotta stuff the rest of my crap on my carry-on and I'm good to go.



After moving to Raleigh four years ago it's seemed like I'm in a completely different world that Salt Lake, and it warps my mind a little bit to think that in about twelve hours I'll go from strolling to class through the Court of Carolinas (pictured above) to spending time with some old friends in Utah. I know, that's the miracle of air travel, but I don't make the trip often so when I do it makes these two worlds feel awful close.

Fake ID case points to NCSU Students, Frat member

In a case that's been brewing over the last few days since finals have ended, two currently enrolled NCSU undergrads have been identified as middlemen to a NCSU alumn who is accused of selling fake ID's to NCSU students. This according to search warrants attained and reported on by WRAL and the Raleigh News & Observer.

Robert Wayne Bullock, the aforementioned NCSU alumnus who is(was?) a Duke grad student was arrested this week and was soon-after released on bond from the Wake County Jail.

Apparently the authorities had been aware that something was up for a few months when they started confiscating several high-quality fake id's from clubs and bars in the Raleigh area.

They were high quality because Mr. Bullock had procured himself a printer and laminator from the DMV, along with laminating paper with those nifty holograms and whatnot.

The most recent development is the indication by these search warrants that current (and, I'm assuming, soon to be former) NCSU students were helping to distribute the fake ID's to State students. These guys seem to have used the "autobahn of innovation" in a direction not foreseen by State's marketing and recruiting staff.

Here's an interesting tidbit not yet being reported anywhere that I know of: one of the NCSU students implicated in the search warrants happens to be an active member of one of NCSU's more prominent greek fraternaties. I'm not going to disclose this kid's name here since he hasn't been formally charged that I know of, and I also wont name the frat, because lets be honest, I don't have a readership, and twigs in the forest don't make a noise if nobody is there to listen.

Anyway, back to the frat angle. It's entirely possible that his being a brother at a very active campus frat is consequential, or it may turn out that his fraternity connections gave him this opportunity for criminal mischief. Either way, this isn't the kind of publicity you need if you're one of the more prominent social organizations on campus.

What I learned this semester

After spending two years away from the world of academia I made my much anticipated return to college life at a new University in a new state. It's been an interesting semester, so in order to celebrate it's ending (finally), I'm going to jot down a few things I learned since August.

• I don't miss Utah's embarrassingly ridiculous liquor laws

• You can try to take the South out of the University, but you can't take the University out of the South

• Refereeing a flag football game is more difficult than most people would think

• Frat games are definitely the worst to officiate.

• Cutco knives are very sharp. I almost lost the tip of a finger to one

• Kneffel is filling
  

• Deep-fried pecan pie is delicious.

• A deep-fried Snickers bar isn't worth the money.

• Clark Dining Hall is the red-headed stepchild of the NCSU dining halls.

• The NCSU Volleyball team would cut off their nose to spite their face.
  

• Wood Hall is the red-headed stepchild of the NCSU Residence Halls. On the edge of campus, no convenient bus routes to North Campus, basically an afterthought.

• Getting drunk at 10 a.m. isn't as much fun as it sounds