The HuffingtonPost just reported that shots have been fired on campus at Virigina Tech today. The shooter, who has already killed a police officer and possibly another victim, remains at large and is a white male reportedly wearing “gray sweat pants, gray hat w/neon green brim, maroon hoodie and backpack.” Campus officials have placed the entire campus community on lockdown until further notice.

Stay tuned to @CollegeCandy for more details as we receive them.

"DE-FENSE!"

For millions of Americans, the holiday season isn’t only a magical time because of the standard stocking stuffers and gingerbread houses, but also because it means college football bowl season is here (!!!!).

Unless you’re a die-hard football fan or your team is playing in one of these games, you probably won’t have the time to tune into some of the smaller bowl games such as the Beef ‘O’ Bradys’ St. Petersburg Bowl (yup, this is an actual name of a bowl game). But for everyone else (and yes, I mean everyone – from the dedicated college football fan to the dedicated Saturday tailgater), the big bowl games are fun and exciting to watch.

Here is a quick guide to the biggest bowl games this season, and the deets you need to know while watching each. So grab a couple friends and a couple beers (optional) and park yourself on the couch. It’s time to go “bowling”!

Be honest, what else do you have to do over winter break?

Rose Bowl (January 1, 5:00 ET on ESPN)
Who: TCU Horned Frogs (3) v. Wisconsin Badgers (5)
What to know: The third-ranked Horned Frogs (intimidating right?) will take on the fifth-ranked Badgers in the Rose Bowl, the historical New Years day game held in Pasadena. TCU offense is led by quarterback Andy Dalton who is coming off a successful senior season, and their much-hyped defense is number one in the nation for holding their opponents to the fewest points. TCU will be playing with a lot of emotion; they finished the season undefeated and feel as though they should be playing for the national championship.

Wisconsin offense is led by quarterback Scott Tolzien and three standout running backs. Badger linemen Gabe Carimi and John Moffitt were just named all-American first team and will provide a note-worthy match up with the TCU defensive line.
Fun Facts: The Rosebowl is known as the ‘Granddaddy of Them All’ because it is the oldest and formerly most prestigious game… Wisconsin has scored over 70 points in three of its wins this season… This is the first ever Rosebowl for TCU. Read More »

Welcome back to The Rival Rundown! If you’ve always wanted to give props to your school on CC, now’s your chance! Shoot us an email explaining what’s awesome and unique about your school (or what stinks about Rival U) at rivalrundown@collegecandy.com!

Old Dominion fans, take note! This week our rivalry takes us to the fair state of Virginia, where the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech hope to take home top honors.

Quick Facts

Virginia: University of Virginia or UVA, a public research university in Charlottesville, VA with 13,000 undergraduates.  Mascot is the Cavalier (or Wahoo).
Virginia Tech: The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, a public land grant polytech university in  Blacksburg, VA with 24,00 undergraduates. Mascot is the Hokie. Read More »

Study hard, play hard – right? College is a major balancing act. It’s delegating what needs to get done and when, setting priorities and holding yourself to deadlines. And after a long week of working hard (attending class, writing papers, and staying ahead in the reading, just to name a few tasks), it is no wonder that college students have a reputation of wanting to party.

No one should be expected to sit in the library or stare at their dorm room walls every day of the week with their nose in a book. Everyone needs something that helps them unwind, especially on the weekends.

Sometimes finding something to do – especially on a campus where parties are a rare occasion -  is hard. I knew when I signed my life away as a Hollins woman, I was going to be living in Roanoke, Virginia,and that I wouldn’t have a big city as my playground on the weekend. I knew I wasn’t attending a huge state school where fraternity parties are the social factor and that club activities would be endless. As a prospective, I remember asking about the student life on the weekends only to hear the same fib that my fellow peers heard themselves as prospective students: “Don’t worry about it, you will always find something going on.”

Oh, but that is very far from the truth. Options on campus are very bleak. From the first weekend as a first year, I realized as no one was around on the weekends I would have to be entirely responsible for finding something to do Friday and Saturday nights. While not feeling bogged down by having too many social activities planned, I like that Hollins has a sleepy atmosphere (especially for those weekends I need to do a lot of work), but for the most part – I don’t understand why we can’t have some sort of decent entertainment when the weekend rolls around.

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I don’t know about your college, but the food at UMass is well, not the most scrumptious. The salad bar got old after the first week (of freshman year) and I swear the food is mixed with laxatives; I can never keep anything down (TMI, I know, my B).

Anyways, eating in the dining commons at my school was my least favorite option and I imagined it to be the same for every campus, until I came across an article on Yahoo about the Top 20 Rankings for Best College Food and became insanely jealous of these delicious treats.

At Wheaton College, ranked number one in this survey, Klaud Mandl, the General Manager of Food Services at Wheaton, who previously worked at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston, has a menu of Belgian chocolate homemade truffles, lavender-infused pork chops with onion gravy, and cumin-lime baked chicken with avocado cream sauce. Are you serious?!?! Homemade Belgian truffles??? The closest thing we got to that at my school was a help-yourself ice cream machine with watered down frozen yogurt. Read More »

February 8th: Female student shoots two fellow students to death before ultimately killing herself at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge.

February 11th: 17-year-old student shoots and critically wounds a fellow student during high school gym period in Memphis, TN.

February 12th: 14-year-old boy shoots a classmate, 15, at junior high school in Oxnard, CA. The victim is declared brain dead.

These three shootings preceded the most recent school tragedy to take America by the heartstrings. February 14th, 2008 will not go down in history as just another Valentine’s Day: instead, it will be remembered as the day of another fatal college campus massacre, this time, at Northern Illinois University.

Six people, including gunman Steven P. Kazmierczak, were shot to death, with 14 more shot and wounded. The gunman appeared from behind a curtain in a geology class minutes before the period ended and began to open fire. Read More »

John Travolta used to be cool.

I had a HUGE crush on him when I first saw Grease. Like, gigantic. My mom was concerned.

Hard to believe that this is what Danny Zuko looks like now. (Looks like some one’s got a case of the Man Boobs!) And even weirder is how he looks in the upcoming summer movie Hairspray.

I mean, look at him. I’m embarrassed for him.

But worse than John Travolta’s outer appearance is his recent blabberings-on about the horrific events at Columbine and Virginia Tech.

Page Six reports that Travolta said publicly, that all of these tragic school shootings are not really the fault of those who committed the acts, but but on psychiatric drugs. “I still think that if you analyze most of the school shootings, it is not gun control. It is [psychotropic] drugs at the bottom of it,” he said.

This goes along with Scientology, of which Travolta is a devout follower; Tom Cruise, as we all know, is also a major figure in the religion…er…the science…er…belief? Basically, they all believe that all drugs – prescriptive or otherwise – are completely uneccessary and are the root of all evil. Read More »

Did The Matrix spur the Columbine shooters? Was the Paducah, Kentucky high school shooter inspired by The Basketball Diaries? Did Virginia Tech’s shooter Cho Seung-Hui kill because of what he saw in OldBoy (a violent Korean film made in 2003)?

In a recent Time.com article, author Richard Corliss wonders if it’s more than a strange coincidence that one of the pictures Cho took of himself where he “looks fierce and holds a raised hammer” is very similar to a shot in Korean director Park Chan-Wook’s film.

Just because he raises the question doesn’t mean Corliss actually believes there is any connection. In fact, he challenges anyone who thinks these movies are somehow responsible for the aforementioned shooting sprees to “explain why [everyone else] who saw Oldboy, and The Matrix, and Saw, didn’t do the same.” Read More »

As this tragic week for college students comes to a close, I have been pondering one large question over and over again: Should NBC have aired the footage of Cho that he mailed to them after killing two students and before massacring 30 more?

I am a journalism student at a large school of communications, and issues like this one are highly debated in our classrooms. We are constantly given situations in class that a news director or journalist might run into and asked to figure them out ethically. I understand that NBC receiving this footage was a ratings jackpot and it would be hard to keep it contained…But I have come to the conclusion that NBC betrayed fundamental journalistic principles.

Was it wrong for NBC to air Cho Seung Hui’s Video?

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Sometime between the first and second shootings, NBC News reports that Cho Seung-Hui sent a “a rambling communication and videos about his grievences” to the network.

The package containing a 23 page diatribe and a 10 minute DVD arrived at 30 Rockefeller Plaza yesterday afternoon by US mail. The carrier alerted security to the orgin of the package and NBC notified the FBI.

NBC has released photos and video clips of the gunman’s last moments. They are insanely disturbing. He claims “This didn’t have to happen.” “You could have prevented this.” “You threw gasoline on the situation.” “You forced me into a corner.”

Click here to read the full story.