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ccdJ.K. Trotter
11/09/15 7:01pm
Keenan I think it’s only fair you list your favorite controversy too. A few suggestions:

-When a certain gentleman was an abusive trainwreck but it took him punching a dude in the face to get kicked out, except he wasn’t ever really kicked out

-When everyone flipped the fuck out because the gadfly published a sex column

-The time a tutor professed his love for a student through campus mail written in comic sans

-There was a thing with an s&m club I never really understood, but people were pissed

-Oh, the rebranding thing!

-The whole pretending-we-don’t-have-a-minority-recruitment-problem thing

-The various drug busts, one of which ended with a homeless townie who’d been living in a dorm jumping off the dining hall balcony, and then someone started leaving threats written in chalk on the quad

-There was a juicy plagiarism thing in the class of 08’s senior essays

I’m sure I’m forgetting a couple good ones
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  J.K. Trotterccd
  11/09/15 7:21pm
  Oooh let me think. The big controversy when I arrived involved a bunch of upperclassmen getting in trouble for systemically providing liquor to freshmen during Seducers & Corruptors (I guess in a manner that would get them very drunk?). If I recall correctly the upperclassmen called the whole thing “black ops” or something. A lot of them got kicked out for a year or so. But that was the year prior to my freshman year.
  
  My junior year, there was a medium-sized controversy over my and another student’s decision to hand over editorship of The Gadfly to a friend of ours named Chris, who turned the paper into his personal humor magazine (which was hilarious). People were very upset and there were a lot of meetings.
  
  And then the minor-ish controversy of my senior year was that a bunch of students wanted to institute a speech code because certain students felt that the environment on campus was such that certain students felt that they could not speak their minds. Thankfully that effort collapsed pretty quickly.
  
  I’m probably forgetting a lot of other controversies, but I definitely recognize some of the ones you mentioned.
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  ccdJ.K. Trotter
  11/09/15 7:40pm
  Oh man I forgot about black ops. Those guys suuucked. Chris’ gadfly was great, all the student paper funding controversies were fun as hell.
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caekislove-caekingitupJ.K. Trotter
11/09/15 6:29pm
That jerk Todd constantly playing Green Day’s “Time of Your Life” over and over again in the common dorm area!!
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  caekislove-caekingitupcaekislove-caekingitup
  11/09/15 6:34pm
  I stole that joke from “Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law”, by the way.
  
  When I was in business school, my Professor taught me that if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying and I had to do whatever it took to get senpai to notice me!!
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  puncha yo bunscaekislove-caekingitup
  11/09/15 6:49pm
  When I got to campus it was “Bleeding Love.” Everywhere. All the goddamn time. Blasting out of everyone’s dorms. I blame Leona Lewis for everything bad that happened to me freshman year.
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levarienJ.K. Trotter
11/09/15 6:29pm
Not really a controversy, but at Georgia Tech, a bunch of students littered a road with pretzels when George W Bush was making his way to a speech on campus.
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  The Hammock Districtlevarien
  11/09/15 6:33pm
  
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  The Hammock Districtlevarien
  11/09/15 6:39pm
  Also, that’s pretty droll for college students. I like it.
  
  Now if I want to protest one of his appearances I show up with a poorly painted picture of myself in the shower.
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tito_swinefluJ.K. Trotter
11/09/15 7:04pm
When I went to school, some african-american students were upset with the level of diversity on campus. They threw molotov cocktails into the president’s office and shot an ak 47 at some buildings. It wasn’t terribly successful or really that exciting compared to the other chaos on campus, but it was the controversy of the day.
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  J.K. Trottertito_swineflu
  11/09/15 7:34pm
  what in the...
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  wearegoingtohellinahandbasketJ.K. Trotter
  11/09/15 7:51pm
  Exactly. What in the.....hell. I guess the latest GM memo said to engage your commenters more.
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eric shoreyJ.K. Trotter
11/09/15 6:37pm
My college (Emerson College) had plenty of actual real controversies (a few rape scandals) but my favorite NON-controversy was when there was a rumor that Tobin Bell (Jigsaw from the SAW movies) was going to be our commencement speaker.

Like, there were students frothing at the mouth, creating petitions for administrators, organized calls to influential parents, you name it. The outrage was so intense and palpable that teachers had to interrupt classes to talk about it.

Anyway, turns out he was never actually being considered. Shame, I love the SAW movies.
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  J.K. Trottereric shorey
  11/09/15 6:42pm
  That is incredible
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  Mercury: The Sweetest Of The Transition Metalseric shorey
  11/09/15 7:19pm
  “As I look out amongst the faces here, I ask you, would you like to play a game? You have 30k in student loans and interest starts to accrue NOW... Go find a job before you’re overcome with debt... “
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puncha yo bunsJ.K. Trotter
11/09/15 6:27pm
No fair, ask a different question. I’m a recent alum of Yale. This is my controversy :(

Though when I was there, the biggest hot button issues were

1) The stained glass windows in one of the residential colleges, one of which still depicted slave labor (and was named after the racist secessionist John C. Calhoun). There was a petition to remove them in an effort to rid campus of a nasty history and make the place more welcome to incoming black students (like myself), but it still hadn’t been taken down by the time I graduated. People also wanted to rename that college, but—again, still hasn’t happened. (But we clearly weren’t as baller as Yale students are right now, proud to see the activity going on.)

2) The art student who artificially inseminated herself as many times as possible over 9 months and then induced abortions for all of them and then displayed all of her abortions as her final art project. Shit was crazy for a minute. And then she said it wasn’t real and she just wanted to provoke and start conversation. Cool.

3) One of our fraternities (DKE, the breeding ground of the Bush legacy and the like) holding up “We love Yale sluts” signs and chanting that wonderfully enlightened phrase outside the Women’s Center. Going to Ivy League schools certainly doesn’t make you realize how not to be an extreme dumbass in the digital age (and also in life). And

4) A swastika that was drawn on campus in the summer right before my freshman year, when we got there all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and also were like wait hold on wtf...

Still. That damn school. Best time of my life.
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  agfsrhs655uhw5ejhytpuncha yo buns
  11/09/15 6:30pm
  Drawing a swastika in a college bathroom is just about the greatest effort-to-outrage coefficient on the troll outrage scale.
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  Nimaespuncha yo buns
  11/09/15 6:44pm
  i was at Northern Illinois when the shooting happened. i suppose that was the biggest thing. not sure if that really counts as a controversy.
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flamingolingoJ.K. Trotter
11/09/15 6:41pm
The three controversies I remember most clearly from my undergrad days:

- A campus newspaper article about kids who used Adderall as a study aid. People were kind of angry about how brazen these students were about basically cheating. (They allowed their full names to be published.)

- Two racist idiots who dressed up as “Beyonce” and “Nikki Minaj” for Halloween. I mean, that’s what they claimed, but they were wearing grotesque butt and breast prosthetics, afro wigs, and brown paint—nothing else. They were both seniors, so I think their punishment was writing published apology letters to the community, some sort of sensitivity lecture/training (?) and they didn’t get to walk at graduation. Of course, they still bitched and whined about that.

-A girl got up in the middle of an assembly and called out the administration for allowing her rapist back on campus. He had been “separated” from the community for a year, per Quaker tradition. But he was back for our senior year. Letting him come back was a terrible idea. Not only for her, but him too. It was a small school and everyone knew who he was. He was always sort of lurking at dances or parties, alone.
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  Difficult, Difficult, Lemony Difficultflamingolingo
  11/09/15 6:52pm
  Wait what; I went to a quaker school with “separation” too! When did this stuff happen? I just graduated, btw.
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  flamingolingoDifficult, Difficult, Lemony Difficult
  11/09/15 6:54pm
  Way back in 2003-2004
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token_liberalJ.K. Trotter
11/09/15 6:29pm
The big one was the campus cops wanting to carry guns. That eventually got shot down, mostly because they were glorified mall cops with little training, but that was in the mid-90s before the right made it their mandate to make sure every campus was armed to the teeth.
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  caekislove-caekingituptoken_liberal
  11/09/15 6:41pm
  That eventually got shot down
  
  I lol’d.
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  Boudicatoken_liberal
  11/09/15 6:42pm
  Which school did you go to?
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kmkinger1J.K. Trotter
11/09/15 7:14pm
Not surprisingly, the controversy on my campus occurring during my junior year involved a fraternity on campus which ended up with the frat getting banned from campus AND two members of the fraternity being sentenced to federal prison. Surprisingly, it did not revolve around the expected racial/sexual assault dialogue that is currently plaguing the Gawker site as of late.

It involves, instead, a member of the animal kingdom - a 25 year old Koi fish and a television network not immune to controversy themselves, MTV. MTV came and filmed a lesser known reality show my junior year called “Fraternity Life”, and chose a frat my sorority hung out with quite often. They were a local frat, with no national affiliation, which is why they were able to participate in the show. My sorority was actually approached to do the show alongside them but we respectfully declined - THANK GOD.

As president of our school’s “Inter-Greek Council”, I received a call one afternoon from a member of the press of Santa Cruz’s local newspaper, asking me what I knew about the koi fish stolen on campus. He then stated the rumor was that a member of Greek life had stolen the fish. At the time, I had no clue what he was referring to and just hung up the phone. I then started freaking out because I really did not know what was going on, and had not even heard a whisper of a rumor regarding this. Our Greek system at the time was very very small and when stuff this big happened, everyone knew so I was pretty surprised.

I then received a call from the school administration asking me to send a memo to all Greek life exec councils to set up a meeting, and was finally filled in on what had occurred - a 25 year old koi fish was stolen from a pond at one of the dorm buildings. Someone had broken into a supply closet and fished it out with a rake, and they knew “for a fact” it was a member of a Greek organization”. For those of you who do not know, koi fish are expensive. And as they age, they become more valuable. This particular fish was “BELOVED” by the UCSC community and was also worth the tune of about $25,000. This was bad. As whomever stolen this fish was facing charges of grand theft. This was FELONY BAD.

I then began calling around to all my friends and contacts in respective Greek organizations and no one knew anything. We were scrambling trying to figure out what had happened. Then, my male roommate came home. I lived in a house with 4 other members of my sorority and a member of the fraternity who would later be banned from campus for the act. After much pressing, said fraternity member finally admitted the truth — they had gone to campus the night before, entered the supply closet (legally, with a key, bc on of the frat members was a custodial assistant on campus - this was the smoking gun and how the administration knew it was a frat), took the rakes, and fished the fish out of the pond.

That was not even the worst of it - oh man - they not only stole the fish, they beat it to death with 40 bottles, cooked it, and forced the pledges to eat it. And MTV had caught all of this on camera.

He was clearly freaked out by the situation, I was freaked out by the situation as Greek life was already not well received by the administration or the very liberal and hippie student body of UCSC. Come Monday, the school was in an uproar —- paintings of the fish at every bus top with the phrase “Avenge Me”, protests, signs, etc. I did end up cooperating with the administration, as I did not want the org’s not involved to be punished, including my own. Sorry dudes.

In the end, a trial was had, MTV had to turn over the tapes, and the ring leaders (two “5th year” seniors, go figure) were sent to federal prison. Justice served.

What is sad about this in the present state of controversy on college campuses these days, outside of the story itself in its immaturity and an animal suffering, is that the administration’s actions, the trial and the sentence were pretty cut and dry - everyone sided with “the victim” in this case. Yet, if a girl were sexually assaulted, the campus would have been divided and who knows if the individual would have gone to prison. Sad really.
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  kmkinger1kmkinger1
  11/09/15 7:15pm
  Forgot to add this - a campus article of the incident:
  
  http://www1.ucsc.edu/currents/02-03…
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  J.K. Trotterkmkinger1
  11/09/15 7:33pm
  FRATERNITY LIFE
  
  Oh my god, that was such a great show.
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chitowngirllivinginherchitownworldstillJ.K. Trotter
11/09/15 7:01pm
The frat at ASU which was disbanded for filming a porn: that has to beat most stories here. This was somewhere around 2002-2004.
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  J.K. Trotterchitowngirllivinginherchitownworldstill
  11/09/15 7:22pm
  Wait...do you have more about this story...?
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  chitowngirllivinginherchitownworldstillJ.K. Trotter
  11/09/15 8:01pm
  I don't have an inside scoop unfortunately. You might be able to dig something up though. Here's the only news article I could find regarding it: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/asu-eyes-…
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