Annual Northwestern U. dorm-wide party mocks temperance

Daily Northwestern (Northwestern U.)

From a hip-bumping, bass-thumping dance club in Northwestern University's Willard Residential College common room to hell on the third floor, Willard residents and party-goers from around campus and beyond filled the dorm with bizarre decorations and even more bizarre antics during the annual Frances Willard Party. The annual Willard party, held to mock temperance advocate Frances Willard on her birthday, has historically been one of Northwestern's biggest undergraduate bashes. In the 1980s, it was rumored that Playboy magazine named it one of the nation's top 10 college parties, although a magazine representative said last week that the rumors were false. Students spend hours preparing for the party, as each floor competes in a decorating contest. The fourth floor, which has won the past three competitions, was decorated as Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.

`Massage' study at U. Louisville bogus

The Louisville Cardinal (U. Louisville)

Over the past two semesters, two men have been administering supposed reflexology surveys to young female University of Louisville students at Ekstrom Library. The men massage the young women's feet and hands, as well as other parts of their bodies. These surveys, which the men claimed they were performing as part of a study for the medical school, are completely invalid and in no way affiliated with the University. They are also rather overt forms of sexual harassment. Reflexology is the ancient Eastern art of healing through the stimulation of certain parts of the human body. It specifically involves massaging the feet and hands, which are considered microsystems of the body, or reflections of the body as a whole.

West Virginia U. 14th annual Pumpkin Drop goes splat

The Daily Athenaeum (West Virginia U.)

The Engineering Sciences Building on the Evansdale Campus of West Virginia University was the site of mass causalities Friday... pumpkin casualties, that is, as the College of Engineering and Mineral Resources held its 14th annual pumpkin drop. The drop is a contest to challenge engineering students and students from local area schools to design a container that will prevent a pumpkin from breaking once it is pushed off the top of the 11-story Engineering Sciences Building. The pumpkin must be at least 10 inches in diameter, weigh no more than 60 pounds and be free-falling, which means no bungee cords are allowed. The insides of the pumpkins cannot be altered and nothing can be placed inside them. Although 92 teams participated, only seven pumpkins survived the 11-story fall.

U. Pittsburgh Homecoming candidate's topless photo surfaces

The Pitt News (U. Pittsburgh)

The posters bearing University of Pittsburgh senior Mindy Peskie posed topless--with roses covering her breasts--were long gone from kiosks and walls around campus the week after her bid for homecoming queen. By then, the photo of Peskie had already attracted an uninvited audience on the Internet. These new photos showed her exposed breasts. A friend, whom Peskie did not wish to identify, edited the topless photograph in Peskie's presence, adding two roses on top of her breasts that were visible in the campaign picture. The two printed the posters at a University computer lab, and Peskie continued the campaign that she would eventually lose. Whether the original picture was deliberately taken from Peskie's computer account without her knowledge or the misplaced picture was the cause of accidental human error in keystrokes, Peskie said that she was not certain. The original photo later appeared on a pornography site, but Peskie emailed them, demanding they remove it.