The end of the line for dining trays at the South Campus Dining Hall. Photos by Kara Rose/For The Diamondback

Students load up trays with dirty dishes, glasses, napkins and the occasional student ID card in the North Campus Diner or the South Campus Dining Hall. Ever wonder where it disappears to along its conveyor belt?

Dining Services spokesman Bart Hipple debunked a theory that an army of goblins descends on trays at the other end of the belt. Hipple said that the trays are actually circulated back around to the dining halls after a crew of employees sorts the items on the trays.

Items on the trays that can be recycled and composted are placed in the appropriate bins, he said, and glasses, plates and silverware are sorted and ran through a dish washing machine that reaches heats up to 180 degrees during the final rinse process.

“At the other end there is somebody there with heat resistant gloves on to sort [the items] and put them back in the racks to bring them out,” Hipple said.

The number of these items tends to dwindle steadily, a problem Hipple referred to as “shrinkage.”

“We are lucky at the University of Maryland — we’ve got good students,” he said. “They don’t take it as much as they do in retail businesses. … Students know this is their dining hall and that they are coming back here.”

-By Kara Rose

A tornado killed two, injured dozens and caused millions of dollars in property damage when it struck College Park on Sept. 24, 2001. See more photos of the tornado damage below the post. (All photos courtesy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.)
————————————————————————

Do you remember the tornado that devastated North Campus and killed two students nine years ago today? Sophomore psychology major Maura Cassidy does.

Her sister, who was a freshman living in Ellicott Hall at the time, experienced the tornado firsthand. Before she could even get a good look at the turmoil outside, she was rushed downstairs into the basement of her residence hall.

“They made everyone go to the basement and said to try to avoid windows,” Cassidy said. “But there were so many that it was kind of hard to avoid them.”

Despite the chaos unfurling around Cassidy’s sister, she remained unharmed. Others weren’t so lucky.

The tornado killed two sisters — students driving in a car that was overturned by the tornado and landed near Easton Hall.

“I walked out of my dorm and I looked in the parking lot. Cars were upside down,” Kevin Simms, then a freshmen communication major, told The Diamondback the day after the tornado. “We walked towards parking lot next to Easton [Hall] to see if everyone was all right. There was a car upside down in the trees.”

Fifty-five peope were injured by the tornado and five people were pulled out from underneath the rubble of flattened buildings.

The tornado caused severe structural damage to the campus and North campus was reminiscent of a “war zone,” The Diamondback wrote on Sept. 25, 2001. The Tennis Bubble on University Boulevard and trailers that were housing members of the Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute were obliterated by the massive storm, and the Denton community’s dining hall also suffered major damage. Dozens of students’ cars parked in Lot 2 were thrown around; one was even blown apart.

“We were sitting in The Diner,” said Lisa Epstein, a freshman government and politics major, told The Diamondback at the time. “We’re watching all these bend over. All of a sudden you hear a crash. We ran and ducked under the tables. All the lights went out. There was a kid [outside] holding onto a pole.”

Tornado warnings were issued on television, but some students like then-freshman Rebecca Burdette told her roommates that it was nothing to be concerned about, according to a New York Times article from Sept. 25, 2001.

“I just told them, ‘Don’t worry about it, we never have tornadoes in Maryland,’” she told the New York Times. “I would never tell anybody that again.”

Burdette wasn’t the only surprised by what students described as a giant black cloud hurdling towards them. According to an account in the Washington Times, football coach Ralph Friedgen was meeting with defensive coordinator Gary Blackney when he saw it.

“We were talking and he said, ‘Oh my Lord,’ “ Friedgen told the Washington Times. “I looked out and I saw the funnel cloud coming over the stadium. And my team was very surprised at how fast an old, fat guy can run. I ran down the stairs into the locker room.”

-By Leyla Korkut

————————————————

Dozens of students’ cars in Lot 2 were damaged or destroyed in the tornado.
————————————————

The “Mighty Sound of Maryland” marching band is hoping to be heard all the way in Hawaii.

The marching Terps are competing in a national competition to win $25,000 and a spot on the newly revamped CBS show Hawaii Five-0.

Starting tonight, fans can help make that happen by going online and voting for the band’s video.

The competition is simple: College marching bands from all over the country have learned the theme song for the popular 1970s show and videotaped their showcase. Voting began tonight after the premiere of the show at 10 p.m. and will close on Oct. 4.

The winning band will be announced during the Oct. 11 episode of Hawaii Five-O and band members are hoping to take home the money and coveted spot on prime-time television.

The Terps’ 1:40 video opens with the band spelling out Hawaii Five-O, continues on to form a rolling ocean wave and ends with spelling out the popular show catchphrase, “Book Em’, Danno.”

Sophomore cellular biology and genetics major Rachel Engster, one of the color guard squad leaders and band office assistant, said the band only had a week to learn the complicated routine. Their performance for the contest was filmed at the M&T Bank stadium during the halftime show against Navy earlier this month.

Engster said they hope to put the prize money towards a service trip, noting that this class hasn’t had a chance to give back to the community because of severe budget cuts over the last few years.

Engster said their video comes in a close second behind Notre Dame, a band twice their size that forms a volcano spouting human lava and smoke during their routine. Because the band is so much bigger, Engster said they can do things on the field Maryland marchers can’t, noting the Terps’ are doing incredible moves for a band their size.

She hasn’t give up hope: Engster said the “Mighty Sound of Maryland” still has a chance, since the winning video is based on the highest number of votes.

“We’re definitely next in line,” she said. “It doesn’t matter whose is better, it matters who gets the most votes. That’s why we need the entire state to vote for us.”

VOTING PAGE

-By Lauren Redding

Up, up and away -- university officials said workers' release of First Look Fair balloons will be a teachable moment about environmental responsibility.
Photos by Kara Rose/The Diamondback.

Balloons soared sky-high over McKeldin Mall Thursday afternoon as the First Look Fair takedown crew folded up tables and chairs at the end of the event.

Men wearing official University of Maryland shirts released into the air the balloons that had been attached to chairs taking down the event’s hundreds of chairs and tables. They also tossed table identification papers on the ground; clean-up crews to eventually picked up after them.

Coordinator for off-campus student involvement Darian Schiffman, one of the people in charge of the First Look Fair, said she was shocked to hear about the workers’ takedown procedure.

“We instructed them to pop [the balloons] and throw them away,” Schiffman said. “I’m not happy to hear that at all.”

Workers dismantle the First Look Fair.

The event hosted more than 500 student clubs and organizations, campus departments and city vendors on Wednesday and Thursday for the university’s 28th annual event. Tables were lined up along the sidewalks of the Mall near the Administration Building, and were accompanied by chairs and balloons color-coded based on the type of the organization.

Until the scissors came out.

“I had no idea” about the balloon releasing, said Mark Stewart, manager of the university’s Office of Sustainability — which had a table and balloon at the fair. “But of course … that’s something we would hope to not see. The better thing to do is just to pop the balloon and throw the remains in the trash.”

Multiple groups were involved in the takedown procedure, including the rental company staff, facilities management, some Stamp Student Union staff members and a handful of students, Schiffman said.

“The only people I gave instructions to were the students…and I don’t supervise the others,” she said. “We handed them scissors to pop the balloons with. They were told to pop the balloons and toss them out.”

When balloons are released into the atmosphere, they deflate and/or pop as they climb to higher altitudes and undergo increasing amounts of pressure. Eventually, the leftover debris will fall back to the ground. While the latex balloons may be biodegradable, the strings that attached the balloons to the chairs are not.

“Some people just aren’t educated about environmental issues, so this may start a conversation among facilities staff,” Schiffman said.

-By Kara Rose

A police officer kneels over Parrot the dog, who was shot during the Adams Morgan Day festival. It is unclear what sparked the shooting, witnesses have said. Photo courtesy of Dylan Singleton

The last thing students in the College Park Scholars’ Arts program were expecting on Sunday was to bear witness to a shooting at the Adams Morgan Day festival — but that’s exactly what happened.

As hundreds of festival-goers looked on, a D.C. police officer opened fire on a dog named Parrot in Adams Morgan on Sunday afternoon. Instants later, the blogosphere, Twitter and Facebook were filled with eyewitness accounts, all claiming the shooting was either completely justified or a grave lapse in judgment.

According to The Washington Post, accounts of why the dog was shot remain unclear, even days later. This much, though, seems certain, according to The Post’s account:

Sometime after noon on Sunday, two dogs started snapping at each other in the middle of a crowd enjoying cheese fries and funnel cake at the annual Adams Morgan Day festival on 18th Street NW. D.C. police officers soon got involved, and at some point, one of them shot and killed the larger dog.

Reports vary as to whether the canine was a pitbull, or a Shar-Pei mix. No student was harmed in the making of this blog post.

- By Marissa Lang

Fire officials said a burning car at the Exxon station never came close to a major crisis. Photo by Adele Hampton/The Diamondback
——————————————-

Students on Route 1 Saturday night were treated to a light show but no major fireworks when a burning car at a gas station was successfully extinguished.

A man was working on his car parked at the gas pumps of the Exxon station across Guilford Drive from Plato’s Diner when flames burst from under the hood, according to Prince George’s County Fire Department spokesman Mark Brady and students who witnessed the blaze.

The man ran away when the fire began, but firefighters arrived at 11:08 p.m. and put it out within five minutes, Brady said. Witnesses said emergency workers kept them away from the station, but Brady said it never appeared that the gas station was in serious jeopardy.

“There is always a concern when you have a fire so close to the gasoline pumps,” Brady wrote in an e-mail. “However, this fire was contained quickly and never extended to the structure or pumps.”

-By Brady Holt

When rapper DK, a.k.a. university alumnus Wayne Watt, came out with his song “Run Route 1” in 2009 — which sampled Jay-Z’s “Run This Town” — students were excited for their first, true College Park anthem.

Refusing to become a one-hit wonder, DK has released a new track titled “Terp Power,” which features a lot of same shout-outs as his first song, including Bel Air Hall, Byrd Stadium, La Plata Beach and Van Munching.

“First they took WaWa’s, then they took Santa Fe,” spits DK, referencing the recent closure of Santa Fe Cafe.

This song is virtually an updated version of DK’s original track. But it’s still just as sick.

“Well at least when we beat Duke we got a riot,” DK says of the March 4 riot on Route 1.

DK also does something “special” on this track. Something “that all Terps, like from freshman to alumni know”: A seemingly never-ending loop of fans singing their “Hey, You Suck” rendition of Gary Glitter’s “Rock ‘n Roll Pt. 2.”

“Stop trippin’ you wish you went to my college, and if you did scream this campus is ours,” DK adds.

While he has pride in the names of basketball greats Juan Dixon and Len Bias (“he would have been the greatest, I wish he didn’t try it”), DK makes it clear to his listeners that he himself is still a Terp at heart — as if you couldn’t already tell by the excessive namedropping and his ending line: “I went to UMD.”

Enjoy your very own “College Park exclusive”: Terp Power

You’re welcome.

-Kara Rose

Trash piles weren’t getting any smaller at a Dumpster outside Common 3 on Tuesday. The university removed the container’s move-in detritus Wednesday afternoon.
———————————————————–

When the university placed Dumpsters around campus during move-in days, many students were happy to have a convenient place to dump lots of trash. But when some of the overflowing trash bins were still occupying prime real estate more than a week later, not everyone was as pleased.

Empty boxes, bags containing expired food, an old bed sheet and a broken mini refrigerator sat in or around a dumpster outside of South Campus Commons 3 until yesterday afternoon, seemingly untouched for days. And as the trash continued to pile up, the rancid smell was building.

“It should’ve been dealt with at the end of move-in,” junior bioengineering major Rob Spetrini III, a Commons 3 resident, said of the Dumpster. “It’s the middle of the week — it shouldn’t be here.”

Commons Director Gina Brasty said the large waste containers were placed outside of the buildings during the apartment complex’s attempts to get the rooms ready for students and through the first two weekends of move-in, which ended this past weekend.

“We keep them there for opening so students can put their trash there in stead of in the trash chutes,” Brasty said.

Brasty said the Dumpsters have been set in place to deter students from disposing of large boxes, cement blocks and full-length mirrors down the trash chutes — items that have previously clogged the Commons trash chutes.

“When our staff go to unclog them, it presents a life safety hazard…because it can hurt and even kill somebody,” said Brasty. “Even when we hang signs, students don’t listen.”

Brasty also said a request was put into Facilities Management Monday to pick up the Dumpster, but the department had told Commons it couldn’t get to it before Thursday.

“They shouldn’t be there now and they’re not explaining to us why,” said Brasty. “We just determine when they will put them there…and be taken…and otherwise we are at their mercy.”

Mercifully, Facilities collected the trash bin early Wednesday afternoon, leaving only a few puddles of drained trash goo in its place.

-By Kara Rose