Officers told investigators that the delivery car driver they pulled over Thursday night offered them cases of energy drinks only after they issued her a warning for a seat belt violation. Photo by Brady Holt/The Diamondback
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Two University Police officers who took cases of drinks from a Red Bull delivery car during a traffic stop may have violated department policy but did not appear to have received the beverages as a bribe, police spokesman Paul Dillon said.

The officers stopped the Red Bull Mini Cooper on campus Thursday night after believing the driver was not wearing a seat belt, Dillon said. The driver was wearing part of the belt behind her back — still a violation of Maryland’s seat belt law — and received a warning, Dillon said.

Police opened an investigation into the officers’ conduct this morning after The Diamondback asked Dillon about the incident. One of the officers and the Red Bull driver told investigators the drinks — at least four cases of Red Bull — were a surplus the driver was trying to give away, Dillon said.

Taking the Red Bull may still violate the department’s rules on “gifts and gratuities,” Dillon said.

“We’re looking at it as a possible violation of that policy. Thankfully, it’s not the more serious one, which is taking a bribe,” Dillon said.

Dillon said the department still plans to interview the second officer and a passenger in the Red Bull Mini to verify the initial account of the situation, which attracted the attention of The Washington Post.

“Rght now we don’t have any reason to doubt, preliminarily, what happened,” Dillon said.

Dillon said the results of the department’s investigation will be finalized by the middle of next week. He did not identify the officers or either occupant of the Red Bull Mini.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

-By Brady Holt

University Police are investigating possible misconduct after officers appeared to take at least four cases of Red Bull from a delivery car during a traffic stop. Photos by Brady Holt/The Diamondback

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Two University Police officers who pulled over a Red Bull delivery driver on campus Thursday night are under investigation for possible “officer misconduct” after they appeared to have taken cases of the energy drink during the traffic stop, police spokesman Paul Dillon said.

Dillon said the department “opened an immediate inquiry” into the officers’ actions Friday morning after The Diamondback contacted him with questions about the incident, in which two campus police cruisers pulled over the modified Mini Cooper just before 9 p.m. along Preinkert Drive, outside South Campus Commons 5.

The three cars pulled into a parking lot, and an officer from each police vehicle approached opposite windows of the Red Bull Mini. When the officers returned to their patrol cars, one was seen leaning into the passenger-side window of the other’s cruiser.

The two officers then returned to the Mini, at which point the Red Bull driver got out and began handing them what appeared to be cases of Red Bull, which the officers stowed in the back seats of their cruisers.

Dillon said a written report from the scene said the officers stopped the Mini’s driver for not wearing a seat belt and issued a written warning. He would not identify the officers or the driver of the Red Bull car.

UPDATE: Officers may have violated department “gifts and gratuities” policy but did not appear to have taken the Red Bull as a bribe, according to the preliminary findings of the investigation.

Full story

-By Brady Holt

The steam released from the ground all over campus may stink, but we’d all smell worse without it.
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Behind the Stamp Student Union, in the middle of the engineering athletic fields, next to the South Campus Dining Hall — what do these locations have in common? A foul odor associated with the gently billowing water vapor that emerges from what the university’s assistant to the director of operations and maintenance David Cosner calls “steam vaults.”

These vaults are located all over campus, in fact, “every approximately 300 to 400 feet we have to have a vault,” Cosner said.

These vaults house miles of valves and piping which is used to transport steam created by the university’s Central Heating and Power Plant. The steam provides electricity for the campus and cools its buildings.

“We actually use steam to produce cold water for air conditioning at Comcast [Center] and at a building called SCUB 4,” Cosner said.

The steam housed in Satellite Central Utility Building 4 alone is powerful enough to cool a total of 16 facilities on campus, including the Chemistry and Jeong Kim Engineering buildings.

But, according to Cosner, that mysterious “steam” that you see billowing out of manholes and vents all over campus is actually water vapor created when cold groundwater touches the hot valves housed in the steam vaults. The rotten smell is from all of the natural minerals and elements in the groundwater, he said.

So the next time you catch yourself grumbling about the suspicious-smelling cloud you have to walk through to get to your next class, just remember that without that vicious vapor, you’d be headed toward a sweltering classroom instead of the cool relief of air conditioning.

-By Julie Baughman

Residents of Commons 5 huddle against their building after they were evacuated for a probable false alarm in the midst of a rainstorm.

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South Campus Commons 5 residents faced a tough decision Sunday afternoon. As fire alarms blared, many reached the emergency exits and, upon seeing a sudden violent thunderstorm outside, hesitated.

“This had better not be a drill,” one student said before running out into the driving rain.

It was not a drill, but it did appear to be a false alarm, possibly related to a simultaneous power failure in the building, according to fire officials and a Commons community assistant.

Students fled to or were stranded in nearby buildings, including residents who were trying to move in or out. The rainstorm, which included tornado warnings and toppled trees and knocked out electricity throughout the Washington area, lasted approximately half an hour.

The fire alarm, however, remained blaring in Commons 5 at 5:30; it was unclear why.

Updates to follow.

-By Brady Holt and Leah Villanueva

UPDATE, 6:37 p.m.: Power is restored and the fire alarm is turned off. Still no definitive word on what happened.

UPDATE, 4:30 p.m. Monday: Prince George’s County Fire Department spokesman Mark Brady confirms a weather-related false alarm. A fire alarm in Commons 3 early Sunday was actually the result of a small fire in an elevator shaft.

The Living Well Café Ethiopian restaurant recently opened near Kiyoko Express on Route 1 in downtown College Park.
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While the Living Well Café may have been open for the past month, a recent grand opening event shed new light on its more ethnic flare.

Owner Roman Seyoum served free samples of her jerk chicken and vegetarian Ethiopian dishes to customers last Saturday, drawing an audience of primarily university students to her restaurant.

While her menu was originally designed to focus on organic coffee and homemade paninis, Seyoum was shocked to find that what attracted most of her customers — and what convinced them to purchase the food after sampling it — was the ethnic dishes.

While business has picked up for this small, cozy café, the lack of summer foot traffic has resulted in a slow start. With fewer pedestrians traversing Route 1 in the summer, Seyoum says its been difficult to draw people to her establishment.

She hopes that another grand opening event, to be held this Friday, will help her business. This time, she will be offering the coffee.

For that event, Seyoum hopes to transform her warm, quiet café with music, flyers and free samples of her smoothies and her organic coffee drinks.

“I firmly believe that once they know what my coffee is like, the line will go all the way down there,” she says proudly, pointing down Route 1.

-By Saron Yitbarek

UPDATE: Living Well Café has rescheduled its second grand opening event from Friday to Monday. The event will feature free samples of organic coffee throughout the day, beginning at 9 a.m.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And I’ll be damned if I let anyone use the other one.
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Students have spent years carving a path into the grassy strip between Commons 5 and Preinkert Drive, and don’t think that the university’s Facilities Management didn’t take notice.

First, the department built a lovely new sidewalk that follows in the students’ footsteps — at least for a little while, before it veers off in a less-convenient direction.

The next step will be to line that sidewalk with bushes to make sure no one walks where they really always wanted to.

Of course, there’s a reason for that, according to Jack Baker, the department’s director of operations and maintenance.

In planning the sidewalk that would replace the perilously pitted pathway near the West Education Annex (better known as The Random Old White House Behind the South Campus Diner), Facilities Management needed to avoid the tree at the top of the hill.

“We don’t want to kill trees,” Baker said.

Besides, the new bushes that will soon keep students on the pavement may give the strip of field they destroyed a chance to recover.

So for those of you keeping score, it’s Vegetation 1, People Walking Around 0.

Sophomore kinesiology major Eric Franklin said he prefers the old route but will learn to adapt.

“I’m staying in Commons 1 and have class in the Benjamin Building, so it’s good,” he said. “It would be better if it cut up that way, but it’s better than nothing.”

The tree declined to comment. More photos below.

-By Richard Abdill

Top: pre-sidewalk conditions — courtesy of Bing Maps’ The Name That’s Not Quite ‘Streetview’
Bottom: the split between the sidewalk (white) and path (brown) — courtesy of Google Maps

Sorry, CNM, looks like you are going to be an accountant after all.
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“Since writing on a bathroom stall is done for neither critical acclaim nor financial gain, it is thus the purest form of art.”

That is, according to the graffiti adorning the first-floor women’s restroom in Woods Hall. The middle stall has some of the most sensitive bathroom reading material since your sister left that Nicolas Sparks book on top of the toilet.

Another: “In 3 1/2 years I will be a Naval officer. I am more proud of my future than of anything I’ve done in the past 18 years.”

But the art of these messages is not in the array of PostSecret-esque confessions, but the words of encouragement fellow writers give in response.

“I asked/ He said no/ Don’t even like him that much/ It still felt like crap” one writer disclosed. But not too far from that writing, someone replied: “Everything will be ok in the end. If it’s not ok, then it’s not the end. Don’t stop fighting for what you deserve.”

So, if you feel like skipping class for inspiration and anonymously pouring your heart out in a public forum — or laughing at other peoples’ melancholy wayfaring — be sure to stop by this graffiti gallery.

Besides, as one individual proclaimed, “Shit happens… Life goes on.”

-By Kara Rose

Are we really high up or is The Diamondback’s real photographer on vacation?

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Having trouble finding a private place to eat lunch or study in the fresh air? Find a hole!

Alternatively, you can check out the sweet balcony sticking out the back of the Plant Sciences Building — that gigantic building wedged in between Hornbake Library and the Regents Drive Parking Garage.

Just go in the door that faces Hornbake Plaza and jump in one of the elevators directly in front of you. Take it up to the fifth floor and walk straight ahead. BOOM, you’re there.

From this vantage point, you can see well past Route 1 and the University View in one direction, and over past the North Campus dorms and the Comcast Center in the other. There are picnic tables and a railing big enough to protect your small children from tumbling off.

You’re welcome.

-By Richard Abdill

Marathon Deli gyros still disappear fast, but customers just don’t demand them like they used to.
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College Park, you’ve gone soft. That is, at least according to Marathon Deli manager Nick Pavlounis. He showed up in 1990, during a time he says held a much crazier nightlife.

Marathon hasn’t been a huge part of any nightlife recently, not since Pavlounis started shutting down at 8 p.m. But back in the day, he said, closing time was 11 — and even that was flexible, if you were.

“It used to be good,” Pavlounis said. “The girls would push the boobs up against the window; the guys would slip you $20 under the door for some gyros.”

Of course, Pavlounis still wields ultimate authority over visitors to his establishment. When a Diamondback reporter requested an interview, Pavlounis refused until the reporter reluctantly accepted a free Coca-Cola.

At least he got to keep his shirt on.

-By Richard Abdill

-”Are you my mother?”
-”No son, she was torn apart, fried and fed to a sorority girl.”
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Long after the tamer restaurants have shut their doors and Starbucks has tucked itself tightly into bed, the 400-watt spotlight in front of Cluck-U Chicken on Route 1 is still blazing. Inside, owner Kenny Brady supplies hundreds of pounds of chicken to the drunken masses every night.

The chicken shack will dish around 80 pounds of chicken tenders and “a few hundred pounds of wings” on a good night, Brady said. Which, he added, is every night but Mondays and Wednesdays during the school year.

According to NutritionData.com, the average chicken wing weighs 29 grams, or about 1.02 ounces. If we conservatively assume “a few hundred pounds of wings” to mean 175 pounds, that would equate to about 2,745 wings.

So, if Brady’s estimates are correct, the stumbling insomniacs of College Park are responsible for the death of at least 1,400 chickens every night they wander by Cluck-U on their way home from the bars. And that doesn’t even account for the chicken tenders, other late-night restaurants or miscellaneous freelance chickenmurdering.

-By Richard Abdill