I was a bit disappointed I didn’t have my camera on me Thursday night when I was at the House Undergraduate Library and the streakers came by. But I knew somewhere out there was a video and it was only a matter of time before someone caught put it on YouTube.
Here it is! (The video's owner has disabled the embedding option.) Turn the sound up and if you are in an office, you may want to use a set of headphones.
Some of you who are home today may want to try to catch Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC at 5pm eastern. The show will be broadcasting from UNC’s Memorial Hall as part of the Hardball College Tour. Today’s guests include former U.S Senator John Edwards and yours truly will be in the audience.
The show repeats at 3am eastern.
I made a tax move today that was so smart I am tempted to tell the professor who teaches taxes in finance and ask for extra credit when I take his class in Mod IV.
When I worked at AOL, I participated in the employee stock purchasing plan. This means that every six months I purchased a chunk of stock at a 15% discount from the market price. Normally I would sell all the ESPP shares the next day because I didn’t want to invest too much money in my employer. But there was one time when I kept a couple of hundred shares. Those shares have been lying around my brokerage account until this morning, when I sold.
This is a good move for three reasons. First, the stock is trading at a four year high. Second, the sale qualifies for the lower long term capital gains tax rate instead of the higher short term rate in the event I sell within one year. Thirdly, the difference between the discounted price you purchase the stock at and the market price on the day you receive the stock is taxed as ordinary income but that portion is not incurred until you actually sell the shares. So by waiting until now to sell the shares, I deferred their associated income taxes into 2006 and since I am in a very low tax bracket this year, it works out very well for me.
It’s kind of late and normally I would hold off writing this until later today but I need to write this now while it’s still fresh in my mind and I am still giddy over it. Earlier tonight I witnessed the most unusual things I have seen in my entire life, a group of students streaking through the House Undergraduate Library in front of nearly a hundred cheering classmates.
I spend a lot of weeknights at the Undergraduate Library. The library is open all hours but between midnight and 6am, there is a police officer stationed by the front door who makes sure that everyone has a valid student identification. Tonight was not different than any other nights, except that exams begin tomorrow (for undergrads) and there are much more students here than usual.
At around five minutes before midnight I trying to finish a reading assignment when I started hearing a lot of commotions outside in the main foyer. Immediately the girls in the next table began giggling, looked at one another, and ran out. Others followed. Ten seconds later, the only ones remaining in the room were myself, a couple of freshmen who looked like they were international students, and one other grad student. Not wanting to miss anything, we too went outside.
In the foyer there was an atmosphere of anticipation and confusion. Some students were asking “what’s going on” and others were just looking around waiting. The foyer is two floors high and when I looked up I could see students gathering around the railing on the second floor, many of them were looking down on the ground floor as though the were expecting something to happen. I asked the library clerk, who looked like there was nothing out of the ordinary happening around him, what was up. “They streak the library the night before the first exam.”
Oh.
As we got closer to midnight, more and more people began looking at their watches, looking around, taking out their cell phones. There were more people running into the library. The police officer was pacing around and talking into his radio.
Then it started.
It began with the people on the second floor screaming, everyone looked up and saw legs running around. After having completed the “square” on the second floor, the streakers came down the stairs. There were about seven of them, at least one was a woman, and they all had their faces covered with something. By the time they got to the foyer, there were about three rows of students on either side and between the rows the students had opened up a path of about fifteen feet wide. The cheering continued but soon there was a loud gasp coming from spectators on the second when they realized what was about to ensue.
The police officer was attempting to make an arrest.
The officer, who was coming from the opposite direction as the streakers, ran up into the direct path of the streakers, stopped, straddled, and tried to grab a streaker by wrapping both his arms around him (I assume it was a “him”). That streaker got away. The officer then grab the next streaker. He had a firmer grip on this second streaker but the streaker kept moving and both fell onto the ground, falling two feet in front of me and taking down with them four spectators. Both men broke free of one another, and both ran for the entrance. I believe what happened next was the police officer found a clear path to the entrance while the streaker ran into a cloud of spectators who did not get out of the way quick enough but the officer beat the streaker to the front door and the last many of us saw was the officer standing between the double doors and the metal detectors, blocking the streaker’s exit out of the building, and earning his pay for the evening.
The crowd began closing in toward the duo, chanting “let him go, let him go!” Not wanting to contribute to a mob scene, I returned to my books but it was hard to get any reading done. Others in the room were pressing their faces against the windows to see if they could make out what was going on. Others were on the phone. One student said “I have never laughed so hard in my entire life.” Another said "their clothes must be nearby, it's freezing outside." We heard booing from those who had remained to witness the spectacle followed by cheering two minutes later. Some students said they felt sorry for the streaker who was apprehended, there was talk that he got caught because he fell or he was the last streaker and was significantly later than the others.
I finally finished my reading and left the library at around fifteen past midnight. In the main foyer, I saw that two additional officers have since arrived. One was debriefing the arresting officer while the other was standing by the door, exactly where I last saw the apprehended streaker. Next to this officer was a student lying on the ground in fetal position, clothed, hands unhandcuffed and his eyes were closed. As I walked by, I looked at him and said, “have a good night.”
Neither man responded.
I took this picture yesterday at a parking lot on the corner of Franklin (which I found out recently was named after Benjamin Franklin, who died three years before the founding of UNC) and Graham Streets. If this is what conservatives mean when they talk about reverse discrimination, then not only am I all for it, I think it should be instituted in every parking lot at UNC, starting with the Kenan-Flagler garage.
I think “return to ‘square one’” sounds much more positive than “back to ‘square one.’” I got the news earlier today via email that I will not be receiving an offer from the credit card division of the major financial firm.
While I am a disappointed, it’s not the end of the world. In preparing for the interview, I finally got around to flipping through a particular book I have been meaning to look at on how to do well on interviews. I will spend a part of my Christmas break drilling down on a couple of chapters that I found to be particularly useful.
It’s safe to say at this point that the majority of companies that will be coming to campus have already made their visits. This means from now on, my search will shift from me going to companies that come to Kenan-Flagler to me contacting companies that I want to work for. There is an event the first week of January in San Francisco sponsored by Kenan-Flagler and three other business schools. The West Coast Forum is an opportunity for west coast companies to interview business school students. Unlike the “black MBA” or the National Society of Hispanic MBA (pronounced nar-SHIMMM-bar) events that I attended, this is not a job fair but an event for interviewers to interview students they have selected ahead of time. I was not planning on going but this past weekend I saw that the companies that will be interviewing there include the two of the bigger names in the internet industry.
On a lighter note, I was driving through campus earlier today and spotted a fellow Virginian who felt the need to broadcast to the entire world his feelings about one of the finest schools in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Ironically, this picture was taken in almost the exact same spot where I took the other picture last month.
Monday is normally my busiest day with three classes between 2 and 8pm. But today is turning out to be a very good day because there are no classes today and tomorrow. All MBA students get today and tomorrow off so that first years who are looking to go into investment banking can spend these two days going to New York City for their informational interviews.
I went to the gym this morning before meeting with some people for lunch at this place called Hector’s. Hector’s located on Henderson Street at where Off Franklin used to be. As I was putting in my order for a double cheeseburger with large fries, it was hard to not notice the contrast that a year ago, this was the same spot where I would go on Thursday or Friday nights to order a beer and hang out with the post-docs who work at the Linenberger Cancer Center.
Earlier this morning I was feeling kind of bad that my four day weekend was about to come to an end. That was until I realized that since my all day negotiations class met for the last time on Friday, all I have this week are two Wednesday classes followed by another four day weekend.
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