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october 21, 2010
T H E I N DE PE N DE N T S T U DE N T N E W SPA PE R OF S Y R ACUSE , N E W YOR K
INSIDENEWS
INSIDEOPINION
INSIDEPULP
INSIDESPORTS
Open secrets The founder of the website
Presidential debate?
Dress to impress Ditch the grungy look in favor of
Mountain climb The Syracuse football team travels to West Virginia
Ben Klein and Roman Acosta battle over Obama’s health care bill in part 1 of a 3-part series. Page 4
PostSecret shares stories with SU students. Page 3
looking for its first victory over the Mountaineers since 2001. Page 28
tailored, presentable looks. Check out Pulp’s fall fashion guide for this year’s latest stylings. Page 13
Rolling in Use of Molly – the purest form of Ecstasy – growing on campus, becoming party staple By Kathleen Ronayne and Beckie Strum
D
photo illustration by brandon weight | staff photographer
Energy T
drunk
By Abram Brow n | St af f Writer
he drink earned the nickname “liquid cocaine.” Four Loko tastes something like artificial fruit, and downing a can of the malt beverage is like downing a cup of coffee with three beers. Four Loko is one of the newest caffeinated alcoholic drinks to hit the market. It comes in tall-boy, 23-ounce cans with bright blue, green and yellow logos that advertise flavors like watermelon, raspberry, lemon-lime and lemonade. The beverage features doses of guarana and taurine, in addition to caffeine — more than enough to give drinkers a jolt of energy during their drinking
SEE FOUR LOKO PAGE 17
Smash hit on college campuses, Four Loko sparks criticism
130 more UVA residents than last year overwhelm, crash Internet By Michael Boren ASST. NEWS EDITOR
Rich Tehan was taking an online quiz from his bedroom at the University Village Apartments complex when his Internet crashed. “I lost connection completely to Blackboard so it cut out, and I got a zero on the quiz,” said Tehan, a junior information management and technology and entrepreneurship and emerging enterprises major.
Tehan’s professor let him make up the quiz after he explained the Internet collapse. But it was not the fi rst or last time Tehan’s Internet went down in the apartment, and it has happened with both wireless and Ethernet connections. He now uses Syracuse University’s network to complete homework and has had to travel to Goldstein Student Center six times to connect to the Internet, which he said was a
SEE INTERNET PAGE 8
THE DAILY ORANGE
im lights, blaring music, students crammed into a dirty basement: It’s a typical Friday night. Enter Molly: The room brightens, the heart races, the crowd becomes comforting. Molly is the nickname for the purest form of MDMA, or Ecstasy. A highly popular drug in the 1990s rave scene, MDMA, an amphetamine, is reemerging as a common party drug at Syracuse University. The limited research on the drug’s long-term effects, combined with the euphoric feeling it induces, has led some students to perceive it as a safer alternative to other hard drugs. “I know a lot of kids that say they don’t do drugs would do Molly,” said Casey Siegel, a sophomore fashion design major. Siegel said she heard about MDMA in high school and knew students who did it last semester. But this semester, she has witnessed an increase in the drug’s popularity among students, she said. MDMA usage was at its height in New York state in the 1990s, said Erin Mulvey, special agent and public information officer for the New York field division of the Drug Enforcement Agency. Recent investigations have shown the drug coming across the Canadian border and being marketed to college students as a “club drug,” she said. Pure MDMA reduces the serotonin in the brain. This induces happiness, but the user cannot tell if it is real or fake happiness, she said. But there is no way to tell if the pills or powder are pure MDMA unless they are tested. The ingredients are often mixed in unsanitary places like bathtubs and toilet bowls, Mulvey said. MDMA
SEE MOLLY PAGE 6
Panel debates student blog controversy By Jon Harris ASST. COPY EDITOR
Freedom of speech and the Internet was supposed to be the topic of debate at the College of Law Wednesday, but despite organizers’ efforts, the focus derailed to the controversial blog SUCOLitis. The debate, “Anonymous Free Speech and the Internet at a Private University” held Wednesday at 12 p.m. in MacNaughton Hall, was part of National Freedom of Speech Week and was hosted by the Tully Center for Free Speech and
the American Constitution Society. Ryan Suto, president of the American Constitution Society chapter at SU, said the event was not held to promote SUCOLitis, the satirical and controversial WordPress blog. The blog pokes fun at the Syracuse University College of Law and is written by a group of second- and third-year law students who began posting online in early October. The blog had more than 12,000 hits before it became private Wednesday night. “This event is not supporting
any particular blog or any specific speech,” Suto said. “The participants in this debate do not necessarily support what they argue today. They are merely playing a role.” SUCOLitis is not a news blog and has no actual news and “should not be attributed to any persons, living or dead,” according to a disclaimer on the blog. Len Audaer, president of the Parliamentary Debate Society, is the sole person currently being investigated for harassment by the College SEE LAW PAGE 7