Month: October 2017

These costumes are guaranteed to make you and your squad the life of the party.

What’s the best part about fall?

Maybe it’s the chang­ing of leaves from green to yel­low, red and orange, eat­ing all pump­kin every­thing, feel­ing the crisp, cold weath­er or going apple pick­ing with a few friends. What­ev­er it may be, there is one hol­i­day that every­one looks for­ward to the entire month of Octo­ber: Halloween.

It is the one night (or an entire week­end) of the year that you can dress up as what­ev­er you want no mat­ter how weird, scary or fun­ny you want that to be. You could go clas­sic and dress up as an angel equipped with the halo, wings and white attire. Or, you could go with what’s trend­ing in cos­tumes at the moment like a min­ion or any celebri­ty that’s easy to make a fun­ny cos­tume out of.

While those are fun options, it’s def­i­nite­ly more fun if you and your friends dress up all togeth­er and do a group cos­tume. Why is that more fun you ask? Because when you walk into that Hal­loween par­ty, every­one will know that you and your squad are the life of the par­ty right away. You took the time to coor­di­nate and plan an awe­some group cos­tume that prob­a­bly took only a week to make.

Here are 9 cos­tumes that you and your squad can dress up as this year that are sure to win you any Hal­loween party.

1. Three Blind Mice

This is a clas­sic trio cos­tume that is super easy to do.

All you and your friends need are black mouse ears (which you can prob­a­bly find at any dol­lar store), a black top, black jeans or pur­ple tutus if you want to add a lit­tle pizazz, sun­glass­es and a walk­ing stick. Not only is it easy, but it is also afford­able for all the col­lege stu­dents balling on a budget.

2. Angels vs. Devils

Angels and dev­ils are clas­sic cos­tumes by them­selves, so why not get your group of friends to go head-to-head with them?

Have a friend who is a lit­tle sassy? They can wear a dev­il cos­tume. Or is anoth­er friend sweet as pie? They can dress up as an angel. This group cos­tume will also give you awe­some Insta­gram pho­tos because you can have fun with it and pre­tend to actu­al­ly bat­tle it out or take a cute pic­ture of all of you in your costumes.

3. Orange is the New Black

Turn an awe­some Net­flix show into a great group cos­tume with one friend being Piper com­plete with an orange jump­suit, blonde hair and a prison ID.

Every­one else can dress up as any char­ac­ter they want and go as either a prison guard com­plete with awe­some shades or anoth­er pris­on­er dressed in a tan jump­suit. Not only is this cos­tume super com­fort­able, but it is also good for a large group of people.

4. “Spice” Girls

You’re prob­a­bly think­ing of the clas­sic 90s all-female British pop group when you read Spice Girls, but this cos­tume takes a “pun­ny” twist with it.

Instead of dress­ing up like Scary or Posh Spice, you and your friends can be lit­er­al spices. All you need to do is get an iron-on pic­ture of a spice jar and iron it onto any white shirt you want. This cos­tume is def­i­nite­ly sim­ple, yet effec­tive if you’re look­ing for some laughs this Halloween.

5. Trolls

No, not the trolls you would see in a fan­ta­sy movie with boils on the face, but the cute Troll dolls with crazy col­ored hair.

This cos­tume is great for a group of gal pals who want to be cute for Hal­loween, but also do some­thing that isn’t basic. All you’ll need for this cos­tume is a flesh toned dress, any flesh toned shoes and bright-col­ored wigs that you can mold upward with lots of hair­spray for that wind-blown finish.

6. Fruit sal­ad

Who doesn’t love a good ole’ fash­ioned fruit salad?

This group cos­tume lets you and your friends dress up as their favorite fruit while still look­ing adorable for Hal­loween. If you love grapes, you can wear pur­ple shoes, a pur­ple dress that you can hot glue pur­ple pom-poms onto and make a cute head­band out of fake leaves. If you are more of a cit­rus fan, you can dress up as a lime by wear­ing a green dress and green lipstick.

Or, if you are more of a berry per­son, you can dress up as a straw­ber­ry and wear red shoes and a red dress with tiny white cutouts ironed on.

7. Mimes

This cos­tume is super easy to cre­ate because all you need is black jeans, black shoes, a white striped shirt and a beret. If you and your friends want to go all out (which you prob­a­bly do, let’s be hon­est) you can wear mime make­up. All you’ll need is white face paint, your favorite red lip­stick, black eye­lin­er and black mascara.

8. The Break­fast Club

Bring it back to the 80s with this icon­ic group cos­tume of The Break­fast Club that fits every clas­sic high school stereotype.

You have the lon­er, the jock, the nerd, the pop­u­lar girl and the grungy, qui­et girl. While you and your squad could dress up like clas­sic high school stereo­types any­way, this cos­tume is more fun because you can bring it back in time to the 80s com­plete with Chuck Taylor’s, hair with lots of hair­spray and over­sized clothes.

9. Mad Men

You and your friend group will want to drink scotch on the rocks and mar­ti­nis all night with this classy group costume.

One of your friends can be Don Drap­er with a nice­ly cut suit and tie and slick hair. Anoth­er squad mem­ber can be Bet­ty Drap­er with a 60s-inspired shift dress, pearls, a cig­a­rette in hand and a curled up ‘do. Or, does some­one want to be the office seduc­tress and go as Joan Harris?

They can wear a slim fit­ting dress, a red wig if they want to real­ly get into char­ac­ter or curl their hair up and wear a gold neck­lace for some flair. While Mad Men isn’t on the air any­more, this cos­tume is sure to be a hit on any Hal­loween party.

Bump stocks are more crucial to this debate than you may think.

On Sun­day night, Octo­ber 1 at the Route 91 Har­vest music fes­ti­val in Las Vegas, Stephen Pad­dock opened fire and shot hun­dreds of rounds into the crowd from his hotel room at the Man­dalay Bay hotel. While the shoot­ing only last­ed about ten min­utes, he man­aged to kill fifty-eight peo­ple and injured hun­dreds more.

When police had burst into his hotel suite, they found him dead and with an arse­nal of twen­ty-three guns. At least a dozen of those guns had bump stocks that allowed Pad­dock to shoot close to a hun­dred rounds in the mat­ter of a few seconds.

Still, nobody knows exact­ly why Pad­dock opened fire onto the crowd that was just there to have fun. This shoot­ing, along with all of the oth­er sense­less mass shoot­ings that have occurred over the past few years, has reignit­ed the gun-con­trol debate.

Accord­ing to the Gun Vio­lence Archive, a non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that pro­vides online pub­lic access to gun-relat­ed infor­ma­tion in the Unit­ed States, there have been two hun­dred and eighty mass shoot­ings in the coun­try in 2017 alone, yet we only hear about the dead­liest ones. It took the dead­liest mass shoot­ing in our coun­try and the use of bump stocks to spark some hope for stricter gun con­trol laws.

So, what are bump stocks?

Bump stocks are pieces of plas­tic or met­al that are mold­ed into the part of the gun that is rest­ed on the shoul­der. Once put one on a rifle, it frees the weapon to slide back and forth quick­ly by har­ness­ing the ener­gy from the gun’s nat­ur­al recoil. After the shoot­er pulls the trig­ger, the stock bumps back and forth between the shooter’s shoul­der and trig­ger fin­ger allow­ing the gun to quick­ly fire. This enables the shoot­er to shoot large amounts of rounds with­in sec­onds. It basi­cal­ly turns a reg­u­lar rifle or semi-auto­mat­ic gun into an auto­mat­ic weapon. The main dif­fer­ence though? Reg­u­lar auto­mat­ic guns are ille­gal for pri­vate cit­i­zens to own, but bump stocks are not ille­gal under fed­er­al law.

Why are bump stocks not illegal?

You might be think­ing, well, if this piece of plas­tic turns a reg­u­lar gun into a full-blown, dan­ger­ous auto­mat­ic weapon, why isn’t it ille­gal? Bump stocks were first intro­duced in 2010 and were sold for a few hun­dred dol­lars, which is pret­ty cheap con­sid­er­ing the dam­age they can cause. How­ev­er, they aren’t ille­gal because they don’t actu­al­ly mod­i­fy the weapon’s mechan­i­cal com­po­nents. This is where the debate around bump stocks is formed. Many peo­ple believe that bump stocks should be ille­gal because they turn reg­u­lar guns into dan­ger­ous auto­mat­ic weapons.

The true pow­er of the bump stock

The New York Times recent­ly wrote an arti­cle that com­pared the semi­au­to­mat­ic assault rifle used at the 2016 Pulse night­club shoot­ing in Orlan­do, one of Stephen Paddock’s guns with the bump stock and a reg­u­lar auto­mat­ic weapon. They took the audio of the gun­shots used from each gun and when you lis­ten to each indi­vid­ual weapon, there is a strik­ing famil­iar­i­ty between the gun used in the Las Vegas shoot­ing and an actu­al auto­mat­ic weapon.

The gun used in the Orlan­do shoot­ing fired twen­ty-four shots in nine sec­onds while the gun used in Las Vegas shot nine­ty shots in ten sec­onds and the auto­mat­ic weapon fired nine­ty-eight shots in sev­en sec­onds. While twen­ty-four shots in nine sec­onds is scary in itself, the fact that the gun used in Neva­da shot nine­ty shots for one sec­ond longer, is even worse.

These pieces of plas­tic are chang­ing the gun con­trol debate
On Octo­ber 4, Sen. Dianne Fein­stein, a long­time advo­cate for stricter gun con­trol laws, intro­duced a bill that would ban the sale and pos­ses­sion of bump-stock equip­ment and any oth­er pieces of equip­ment that can turn a semi­au­to­mat­ic weapon into an auto­mat­ic one.

The bill states that, “it shall be unlaw­ful for any per­son to import, sell, man­u­fac­ture, trans­fer or pos­sess, in or affect­ing inter­state or for­eign com­merce, a trig­ger crank, a bump-fire device or any part, com­bi­na­tion of parts, com­po­nent, device, attach­ment or acces­so­ry that is designed or func­tions to accel­er­ate the rate of fire of a semi­au­to­mat­ic rifle but not con­vert the semi­au­to­mat­ic rifle into a machine gun.”

This bill, the Auto­mat­ic Gun­fire Pre­ven­tion Act, is pur­pose­ly broad, so it would not only ban bump stocks but any acces­so­ry that would turn a semi­au­to­mat­ic weapon into an auto­mat­ic one.

And just last week, the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion and the Repub­li­can par­ty pub­li­cal­ly stat­ed that there should be stricter laws for bump stocks. Yes, the NRA and Repub­li­cans who are usu­al­ly against the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty on the gun con­trol issue and fight for few­er gun restric­tions, think that there should be a ban on bump stocks. Even after the mass shoot­ing at Sandy Hook Ele­men­tary School in New­town, Conn., Repub­li­can lead­ers shot down bipar­ti­san leg­is­la­tion to have stricter back­ground checks for peo­ple try­ing to pur­chase a gun.

On Octo­ber 4, Repub­li­cans said that they would be open to ban­ning bump stocks. Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor John Cornyn, an avid hunter from Texas, even stat­ed, “’It seems like it’s an obvi­ous area we ought to explore and see if it’s some­thing Con­gress needs to act on.’”

The fol­low­ing day, the NRA, the country’s biggest gun-rights group, fol­lowed suit and announced they were join­ing the effort. They stat­ed, “’The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-auto­mat­ic rifles to func­tion like ful­ly-auto­mat­ed rifles should be sub­ject to addi­tion­al regulations.’”

How­ev­er, there are still some Repub­li­cans who believe that gun con­trol should not be a thing at all. Like Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Richard Shel­by telling CNN, “I’m a Sec­ond Amend­ment man. I’m not for any gun con­trol. None.”

Despite some politi­cians still oppos­ing gun con­trol, the fact that oth­er Repub­li­cans believe that bump stocks should be banned is a huge step for­ward for the gun con­trol debate and for both sides see­ing eye-to-eye on this issue.

While navigating the complex world of online television, consider putting these shows on your map.

Remem­ber the days when you would come home after a long day of school and watch your favorite tele­vi­sion show?

You would run home from the bus stop just to catch the begin­ning of your favorite Dis­ney or Nick­elodeon show. Or, you would snug­gle up at night and watch the lat­est episode of “Gos­sip Girl” or “Grey’s Anato­my.” Nowa­days, hard­ly any­one watch­es reg­u­lar tele­vi­sion shows. You know, the ones with long com­mer­cial breaks where you have to wait a whole week to see what hap­pens next. Those days are long gone now with stream­ing ser­vices such as Netflix.

Now, you can watch what­ev­er you want, when­ev­er you want and wher­ev­er you want. In today’s enter­tain­ment cul­ture, it’s all about hav­ing what­ev­er you want to watch right at your fin­ger­tips. No more annoy­ing com­mer­cials or wait­ing to find out the big finale. Study­ing in the library? Watch the entire first sea­son of “How I Met Your Moth­er.” Sit­ting at home on a Sat­ur­day night? Binge watch “House of Cards” until 3 a.m.

What’s the best part about stream­ing ser­vices like Net­flix? They have new con­tent every sin­gle month, so if you get sick of one show, they bring in new ones, or if you’ve caught up on all of the sea­sons, they have the new one avail­able for you to watch instantly.

With the start of Octo­ber, Net­flix has brand new shows stream­ing this month that are ready for you to binge. It can get a lit­tle over­whelm­ing, though, with all of the new shows mixed in with the exist­ing ones, so here’s the four shows that you need to binge watch this month on Netflix.

1. Stranger Things

This smash-hit took Net­flix by storm last fall with its per­fect­ly blend­ed hor­ror, sci­ence fic­tion and comedic plot points to meet anybody’s go-to show needs. It was even nom­i­nat­ed for best tele­vi­sion series at the Gold­en Globes.

Fans fell in love with the rag-tag group of boys try­ing to find their friend Will, who goes miss­ing out of the blue. Dur­ing their inves­ti­ga­tion, they find Eleven, a girl who was the byprod­uct of gov­ern­ment exper­i­ments and has psy­choki­net­ic pow­ers. Togeth­er, the group tries to find Will and uncov­er more thrilling mys­ter­ies along the way.

It’s been a long wait for many of the shows’ fans, but on Octo­ber 27th, the wait will be over with its new sea­son. While Net­flix has kept a tight lid on the new sea­son, it is sure to incor­po­rate the 1980s thrill like last sea­son and leave many fans at the edge of their seats.

2. Amer­i­can Hor­ror Sto­ry: Roanoke

Who doesn’t love a good, fright­en­ing show to keep you on your toes for hours on end?

That’s the beau­ty of “Amer­i­can Hor­ror Sto­ry,” with its chang­ing plot and char­ac­ters every year to ensure each sea­son is fresh and just as scary as the last. Sea­son six, “Roanoke,” is a change of pace from the pre­vi­ous sea­son with its faux para­nor­mal doc­u­men­tary style about an inter­ra­cial cou­ple who buy a house in the North Car­oli­na woods.

Things start to take a turn when the house turns out to be a for­mer nurs­ing home owned by mur­der­ous sis­ters and the land they live on is inhab­it­ed by old-timey colonists who don’t like tres­passers. Unless, of course, if they can use the tres­passers for their blood sac­ri­fice. Oh, and there’s also creepy pigs, so the sea­son basi­cal­ly has every­thing you would expect in an “Amer­i­can Hor­ror Sto­ry” season.

Sea­son six is now avail­able to stream on Net­flix, so you should prob­a­bly clear your sched­ule for the next few days.

3. Mind­hunter

This brand-new Net­flix orig­i­nal series takes a more dra­mat­ic route with Char­l­ize Theron as the pro­duc­er and Jonathan Groff, the voice of Krisoff from “Frozen,” as the main char­ac­ter, Hold­en Ford.

Set in the 1970s, Ford and his part­ner dive into the psy­chol­o­gy of ser­i­al killers by inter­view­ing them and study­ing their psy­che. This show is based on the 1966 book “Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Ser­i­al Crime Unit,” writ­ten by two for­mer agents John Dou­glas and Mark Olshak­er. The book chron­i­cles their days hunt­ing the most noto­ri­ous ser­i­al killers and rapists, using pro­fil­ing meth­ods to inter­view the criminals.

Dou­glas and Olshaker’s book has already inspired sev­er­al pop­u­lar shows and movies like “Crim­i­nal Minds,” “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Zodi­ac.” This show will defin­i­tive­ly blend all of those togeth­er with the intrigue of mur­der and the sus­pense of the chase.

“Mind­hunters” debuts on Net­flix Octo­ber 13th, so be sure to mark your cal­en­dars and get ready for a roller­coast­er of emotions.

4. Big Mouth

What hap­pens when you put Nick Kroll, Fred Armisen, Maya Rudolph and Jor­dan Peele in a room togeth­er? They make “Big Mouth,” a hilar­i­ous Net­flix orig­i­nal ani­mat­ed com­e­dy about puberty.

This show tack­les teenage puber­ty, but not in a Dis­ney, PG-13 way, in a bru­tal­ly hon­est way that every­one can relate to. It tack­les every uncom­fort­able teenage hard­ship from get­ting your first peri­od, to mus­ter­ing up the courage to ask your crush on a date. The show is cen­tered around two best friends in mid­dle school, Andrew and Nick, try­ing to fig­ure out how to sur­vive their emo­tion­al and bod­i­ly changes.

There’s even a hor­mone mon­ster who’s basi­cal­ly every teenager’s rag­ing and unpre­dictable voice in their head telling them to do all of the wrong things. While this show is a bit graph­ic, it takes the most awk­ward years of a person’s life and doesn’t sug­ar coat any expe­ri­ences, ulti­mate­ly leav­ing you cry­ing from laugh­ter. It will def­i­nite­ly take you back to your awk­ward mid­dle school days when you were just try­ing to fig­ure out all of the changes in your life.

“Big Mouth” is now avail­able to stream on Net­flix, so if you’re look­ing for a new show that will make you laugh and cringe at the same time, this is the per­fect show for you.

None of them involve your academic advisors being at all helpful.

Every year, in one of the great­est migra­tions in the ani­mal king­dom, thou­sands of under­grad­u­ate stu­dents trans­fer col­leges. Maybe they didn’t like their school’s loca­tion, class size, atmos­phere or price tag, but what­ev­er the rea­son, stu­dents change schools with a sur­pris­ing reg­u­lar­i­ty. Per­haps, though, it shouldn’t be sur­pris­ing, as giv­ing an eigh­teen-year-old the respon­si­bil­i­ty of choos­ing where they plan to spend the next four years of their life has “Actu­al­ly, I changed my mind” writ­ten all over it.

Some­times, stu­dents make it to a mas­sive state uni­ver­si­ty and, in the midst of cav­ernous class­es, stu­dent bod­ies that out­num­ber most Amer­i­can towns and an infra­struc­ture so vast that it feels like your school could dou­ble as its own coun­try, neo­phyte aca­d­e­mi­cians get over­whelmed and want to backpedal their way back to high school.

Often­times, it’s the exact oppo­site. If you were going to a small­er school and felt like you weren’t get­ting that “clas­sic” col­lege expe­ri­ence, the one you see in movies and on tele­vi­sion that fea­tures big sports games, a dynam­ic social life and the buzz of extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ty, you might opt to super­size your sur­round­ings and trans­fer to a bustling four-year university.

Either way, if you decid­ed to switch schools, then you should be pre­pared for these nine experiences.

1. It can be a bit of a shock.

After spend­ing an entire year at a dif­fer­ent col­lege, it should come as no won­der that when you change schools, you can expe­ri­ence some major cul­ture shock.

You got accus­tomed to a cer­tain way of life at your old school where you had your group of friends, a favorite din­ing hall and that one per­fect spot in the library. Those lit­tle things that made your oth­er school great are gone now, but soon enough you’ll find a new group of friends, anoth­er favorite din­ing hall and a dif­fer­ent per­fect spot in the library.

2. It can be hard to meet new people.

While every­one already had the clas­sic fresh­man expe­ri­ence at your new school, you were hav­ing that same one at your old school. So, when you are the trans­fer stu­dent, it can be hard to meet new peo­ple your age because they prob­a­bly already have their own friend group.

Since feel­ing like an out­cast can be very intim­i­dat­ing, you’re going to have to become out­go­ing. Whether you join a club, Greek life or just open up to your neigh­bors, putting your­self out­side of your com­fort zone will help tremen­dous­ly when you are the new kid.

3. Pick­ing class­es can get confusing.

At your old school, you prob­a­bly picked your class­es in a group of oth­er eager fresh­man with step-by-step instruc­tions from an aca­d­e­m­ic advi­sor. When you are a trans­fer stu­dent, your new school thinks that because you have picked class­es before, that pick­ing class­es at your new school will be a breeze. They are wrong.

When you are a trans­fer stu­dent and pick­ing class­es, the aca­d­e­m­ic advi­sors let you have free reign over your sched­ule, but class­es are most like­ly very dif­fer­ent at your new school. And the worst part? Every­one else has already picked their class­es, so you real­ly have slim pick­ings. This is when the add/drop peri­od becomes your best friend, because it will allow you to change your sched­ule around to fit which class­es you actu­al­ly want to take. 

4. You become your own advisor.

Advi­sors at any school are going to be, well, not very help­ful at advis­ing. It might be their job, but the truth is, they do not know you well enough to give you advice on what to do with the rest of your life.

While some advice that your advi­sor gave may have been good, it is ulti­mate­ly up to you to decide what you want to do with the rest of your col­lege career. As a result, when you are a trans­fer stu­dent, you have to become your own aca­d­e­m­ic advi­sor and take class­es that inter­est you, not just the class­es that you are told to take.

5. You will have to explain to peo­ple numer­ous times that you transferred.

The con­ver­sa­tion comes up more than you would think, espe­cial­ly when you go home for the hol­i­days. All of the peo­ple in your home town will prob­a­bly still think you re at the first school you attend­ed, and when you tell them that you trans­ferred, they will most like­ly ask why.

Then you will have to sum up what is, in real­i­ty, a very detailed rea­son for why you trans­ferred into a few words like “It was cheap­er” or “It was just the right move for me.” When you are on cam­pus, it’s no dif­fer­ent. Since it is one of the first things new peo­ple will ask you, the good news is that you will get pret­ty good at explain­ing your trans­fer story.

6. You will have to get all new col­lege apparel.

When you went to your first school, you prob­a­bly decked your­self out head-to-toe in all of the appar­el for that school.

When you trans­fer, you no longer can wear that com­fy sweat­shirt from your old col­lege book­store at your new school. Well, at least not in pub­lic because every­one else on cam­pus is wear­ing appar­el from your new school.

7. Peo­ple will think you are a freshman.

Being a trans­fer stu­dent is a lot like being a fresh­man again: you don’t know where any of your class­es are, which din­ing halls to avoid, what the best par­ty hous­es are on cam­pus, where peo­ple hang out in between class­es or real­ly any­thing about liv­ing at that school. Peo­ple around cam­pus will most like­ly think you are a fresh­man for those first few weeks of school. Get used to it. 

8. You will not feel like a freshman.

While you may act like a fresh­man for the first few weeks, you do not feel like one. You’ve already had the fresh­man expe­ri­ence with the awk­ward room­mate encoun­ters, nerve-rack­ing ori­en­ta­tion and walk­ing into the wrong class­room the entire first week of classes.

How­ev­er, once you trans­fer, you do not feel exact­ly like a sopho­more; you feel like a sopho­more trans­fer stu­dent, which is even bet­ter. You have the expe­ri­ence of a sopho­more, but you are eager to try new things and be in a new place like a freshman.

9. You’ll real­ize trans­fer­ring schools was the best deci­sion for you.

You will prob­a­bly have moments where your con­fi­dence in your deci­sion to trans­fer wavers, but you trans­ferred col­leges for a rea­son. Once the ini­tial shock fades and you became set­tled into your new school, you will real­ize that while your old school was great, your new school is an even bet­ter fit.
 
 

With only two bars on the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut cam­pus, the open­ing of a new bar last spring, Huskies Tav­ern, left many stu­dents excit­ed for a new go-to spot for a cheap burg­er and beer. 

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut Dairy Bar is a state trea­sure with peo­ple from all over Con­necti­cut com­ing to enjoy its deli­cious ice cream made in house using milk from the uni­ver­si­ties’ cows. Below is a tele­vi­sion pack­age that high­lights the growth that the Dairy Bar has seen in the past few years and how they keep up with the increased foot traffic.