Students Should Be Aware of University Awareness Week

As is always true at the start of a new school year, unawareness about awareness weeks is disturbingly high. A herd of freshmen have arrived who know almost nothing about our five-day orgies of Pit-sitting and sit-ins, films and fliering, panel discussions and pot-lucks all devoted to celebrating, protesting or lamenting just about anything. It's time for the class of 2006 to catch awareness week fever!

To kick off Awareness Week Awareness Week, I'm devoting this column to providing a guide to the awareness week season. The following are a sampling of this semesters most exciting offerings:

Sept. 23-27:Left-Wing Conspiracy Awareness Week

Organizer : The Chancellor's Office

Family Policy Network and David Horowitz, mark your calendars! The University is finally going public with its until-now secret campaign to Islamize and communize our campus. The highlight of the week will certainly come on Wednesday when a panel of business school professors will explain how they've managed to turn Business 24 into Proletarian Revolution 101. On Friday at 2 p.m., the week will conclude with the dramatic unveiling of the plans to convert the Bell Tower into the largest minaret in the Southeast.

Oct. 7-11: "Music Even We Don't Like" Awareness Week

Organizer: WXYC

An inside source at our campus radio station told me that, "Selecting music to be played in the Pit for our week has been really difficult. For example, I found a six-inch with a drill-n-bass remix of Incan hill chants overlaid by a Sanskrit poetry recitation by Ja Rule. I thought it was terrible, but I didn't know if it quite made the cut. However, I knew I had a winner when I played it for my boyfriend and his ears started to bleed." The remix is scheduled to be played at 11:45 a.m. Tuesday.

Nov. 4-8: SUV Awareness Week

Organizer: The Inter-Fraternity Council

This one sort of speaks for itself.

Nov. 18-22: Rick Dees Awareness Week

Organizer: Students for Rick Dees

Two years ago, our campus celebrated the 100th birthday of alumnus and novelist Thomas Wolfe with a weeklong celebration, the highlight of which definitely was the 28 hour Pit-reading of his classic novel "Look Homeward, Angel." This year, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the graduation of "Weekly Top 40" host Rick Dees, a similar week has been planned.

Mirroring the Wolfe celebration, organizers have planned a 28-hour reading of the 1970s Dees classic, "Disco Duck." Shivers run up my spine when I imagine his powerful words reverberating through the Pit at 3 in the morning: "All of a sudden I began to change/I was on the dance floor acting strange/Flapping my arms I began to cluck/Look at me ... I'm the disco duck." Notables such as football coach John Bunting and journalism Professor Chuck Stone are currently scheduled to read.

Dec. 2-6: "Dean Smith Was Once Burned In Effigy" Awareness Week

Organizer: Matt Doherty.

Just in time for basketball season, Coach Matt Doherty has taken time out of his busy schedule to organize this exciting awareness week! Coach Doherty's spokesman said, "Coach loves history, and the purpose of this week is to better inform the student body about the history of Carolina basketball. For example, did you know that Coach Smith went 8-9 in his first season? How about that it took him six years to win his first ACC championship! Who knew?"

So, as you can see, students new and old have a lot to look forward to this semester! New York has Broadway. Hollywood its studios. Paris its fashion runways. But none of them compare to our Pit and its stage for awareness weeks.

Jim Doggett was coordinator of Cancer Awareness Week in 2000. He can be reached at jdoggett@email.unc.edu.