Study Abroad Fair Stirs Interest! BY SKIP MAXWELL

A big treat for students who want to travel, and a huge disappointment for a few eager men, the “Study Abroad” festival in the Campus Center Terrace was this week’s academic smash. Featuring a bunch of tables, chock-full of free candy and other cool stuff, the festival was used to showcase the many places where students can find solace as part of some globally proportionate university in most any country that doesn’t have active U.S. military presence (sorry kids, no Afghanistan for you …we know what you’re thinking …and for that Amsterdam will make an excellent substitution and there is slightly more yield in the hooker department-meow!). For us good students, however, there are 184 other options that will do just as well (yeah, right).

For example, there is England, and lots of other places that used to be subservient to it-and (thankfully) still speak the language. Many schools based in that Big Ben thing really want your money, and will give you a sick degree. Get all African and sh*t by actually going to Africa! Places like South Africa and some more countries are ready to show you what life is really all about.

The list of tables at the fair looked too numerous and way too much of a hassle to catalog for our readers, but take it from this reporter, there is a whole world out there waiting for you to visit, spend money, and maybe share some quality time with a few of its natives.

Spring Break Approaches!BY JANET TURNER

There are only a few more days! Spring break is coming to UMass and, as always, a week later than everybody else’s. Students all over campus are hurriedly making their finalized plans for a week that will leave no student unfulfilled.

“I can’t wait dude, I am going to Boca, it’s like already going to be so sick,” said one lame-ass student who believes that school vacation is only for “beer, chicks, and beer.”

But what do the ladies have to say about vacations like this? Hilary Beaverton, a second term sophomore, thinks that, “Spring Break is just some pathetic excuse to sell minors like me sex and alcohol… and if that is the case, then as pathetic as it is, I hope they still have plenty of both by the time I hit Panama City Beach,’cause it’s f**kin party time!! WOO-HOO!!”

Not all students are as enthused. David Selmick, a freshman aged 22 years said, “I have two stats finals and a double-calc test to do the week after so why would I ever go and ruin all my brain cells just to be cheated out of my future.”

Mr. Selmick’s point though very well argued, does not (in this reporters seasoned opinion) have anything to do with views that are popular and contemporary in regard to the time-honored traditions of: multiple-beer drinking, body-shot sampling, and wild narcotic induced sex in public places or at motels so cheap that mobsters will not even run prostitution rings out of them, nor use them for inexpensive mobster holidays.

Whatever the reasons, spring break will happen, and sober or normal the students will get a needed break.As for this reporter, she has a date tomorrow-to go “Brazilian.” So no matter what you do this spring break, have fun and don’t do anything that is too stupid or that will make your dad regret paying for it (like the Gone Wild videos).

Students Pay Tribute to Hunter S. ThompsonBy STAN GOETZEM

A group of about ten UMass students held what appeared to be a daylong vigil on the front lawn the other day to honor the life and passing of Hunter S. Thompson. The author, a sixties-era radical who redefined the sardonic tone of American political humor and political life itself, was in the words of one student named Bill, “something great that needed to be cherished.” Pausing, the student took a moment to reflect, looking at his hands and uttering something about the glory of color.Bill’s friend, Orange Juice, was similarly enthralled. “Don’t spill me,” screamed Juice, a lanky 5’9″ sophomore who when asked, “uh…didn’t know” his real name. The ceremony, which began shortly after breakfast, concluded around 3:30 in the afternoon when a few of the mourners became uncomfortable with the moment, with one member exclaiming, “I don’t think we should go to class man…I’m serious.”