Celebratory Riots

December 15th, 2006 was not UMass Amherst’s finest moment. After the Minuteman football team lost in the Division AA National Championship, thousands of students poured out of their dorms and proceeded to cause over $100,000 in damage to their own residential area. Unfortunately, these kind of riots are more commonplace than expected, and their frequency is increasing. With the Red Sox on...

Crescent City Comeback

In the fall of 2006 I took a trip with my family to New Orleans for Thanksgiving break. For a few days, we volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, helping to build homes in the upper 9th ward’s musician’s village (read more about the project here.) The next semester, I wrote a story on the city’s attempts to revive itself. Click here to read the...