Rants from the Gnarly Beard

Hello Campus Community! We’ve had an event-filled few weeks so let me get right to the point.

• Daylight saving time just occurred in case you just sat in an empty classroom and can’t figure out what happened to your professor and class! I think this daylight saving time is a pile of hooey! It is more like daylight shifting time. There is no “saving” time!! Otherwise everybody would be looking for more than just an hour! Heck most of us could use a day or two of saved time! So I think we should just forget the entire concept!!! Cell phones are the only things that actually remember how it works and I don’t need yet another example of why my cell phone is smarter than I am!
• The grounds crew continues to collect leaves. These leave will be used to insulate the new student center. If you cram them into plastic grocery bags and stuff them in walls you can save all kinds of utility costs. I mean look at the squirrels. They make their nests out of leaves and you never see them with a sweater or complaining about how cold things are! This new technology is not actually considered green technology as the leaves are yellow, red, and orange.
• Speaking of green … this update’s green tip is to take leaves and stuff them in your pants and shirt. This will insulate you better and thus you won’t have to run the heater in your room and car as much! Please do not over stuff or insulate yourself as the squirrels could mistake you for a tree and try to build a nest in your pants. And let me tell you … you certainly don’t want to get a bad case of squirrely pants!!!

Top three lessons from this year’s Halloween:

1. If a person is dressed like a police officer there is probably a very good chance that he is actually a police office as opposed to someone who is in costume.

2. Eating 4,768 pounds of candy corn will impact the color of your skin.

3. Sweet tarts are actually a dehydrated “Monster” drink. Eating a lot of these will not only cause you to bounce off of walls for several hours, if you listen closely enough you will actually hear your teeth rotting!

• Our Athletic teams nailed it this past weekend. Field hockey and women’s soccer won conference titles and join with our men’s cross country team to bring the number of ODAC titles to three in this semester alone. When you add that the equestrian team beat just about every mid-Atlantic team including D-1 powerhouses and that the volleyball team made it to the finals by beating Randolph-Macon for the first time in about a hundred years, you can see why most of DIII spends their time in counseling! It’s a great day to be a Hornet!!
• Not to panic anyone but Thanksgiving is in two weeks. This would be a good time to look at your syllabi and a calendar.
• We have already raised $4.2 million for the Student Center!! Groundbreaking will occur in May around graduation! Soon there will be big Tonka trucks all over the campus! If you are interested in supporting this project just stop by the Campus Store and pick up an Eccles Army shirt! All proceeds go to the Student Center! If you happen to have a pile of change and/or greenbacks in your closet that you don’t want to take home over Thanksgiving, then give me a call. We have many ways that you can give to this project and be recognized, too! (Seriously … give me a call!)
• Our hearts and prayers go out to the folks up north that were impacted by Sandy. What a mess she made of things! There are many ways to help out those who have lost a great deal! Check out the web, make sure it is legit, and do what you can!!!

Well that’s about all I have time to share! I only got an hour in this whole savings time scam and that’s about how long it took me to peck this rant out! Don’t forget to vote tomorrow. It is a privilege and a right that we should never take for granted. Many of our sisters and brothers throughout the world have given and would give their lives to be able to do what we will do tomorrow. So stuff your pants and shirts full of leaves and get to the polls! Until then, I am …

John G. Eccles
Dean of lost time