As was first reported by Corey Johns and by the UMBCBBallRallyMonkeyBlog, and by a Facebook and Blog alert from the Retriever Weekly.

Chauncy Gilliam, is out for the first semester due to academic ineligibility.  This could hurt us pretty bad as the sophomore guard, on this young team looked to to be one of its leaders.  We can only hope and trust that he will be able to raise those grades for the second semester when America East Conference play begins.

That said, this is the strongest recruiting class we have ever had.  Hopefully our transfers and freshmen can step up to the plate.  This should be a rebuilding year.  But then again, last year we weren’t supposed to make it to the conference title game.

Most of the founders of UMBCUnderground have now graduated and we hope to continue this website. We are looking to our readers to step up and help out. Please let us know either via the comments section or by emailing founding4@umbcunderground.com if you would like to write for UMBCUnderground.

As long as content continues to exist on this website we will do our best to support the infrastructure that this website runs on (the domain & hosting). If, at some point, we cannot support this infrastructure, we will pass the website on to new hands.

It is difficult to be in touch with what goes on at UMBC after graduation. Please contact us if you are interested in writing for us.

Professor X Wrote in to tell us that today is Free Comic Book Day (Saturday May 2).

Cosmic Comix, a comic book store within walking distance of UMBC is also offering 25% off of all the non-free stuff (as well as having free stuff too).

Sean Mercer, a UMBC student, submitted a song to the Urban Outfitters ‘Your Band Here’ contest.

He has been selected as one of 5 finalists.  You can vote for his song here.  It’s actually really really good.

He can win a slot at some Music Showcase in Austin, Texas and a spot on a playlist.

Lets help him win.

I stumbled across this and it looks pretty cool.

If you can find a group of 3 people. Each group can get paid 20-30 bucks a person for a research session involving the creation of paper airplanes.  It’s for an I.S. student’s thesis project.

Here’s a link with more info!

UPDATE: The Baltimore Sun is running an article stating that UMCP students viewed 30 minutes of the piratey porno last night (the entire movie was truncated “…because students said they had better things to do on a Monday night.”).

The general consensus seems to be that the heavy-handed micromanagement of the university by the state legislature was undesirable, and that creation of an explicit sex-specific university policy is desirable to avoid the same issues in the future.

-Daedalus

Original article

This past week there was a rather loud bruhaha over the plan to screen the porno, PIRATES II: Stagnetti’s Revenge (Sorry, No Link, NSFW) (edit: See: wikipedia [SFW]), at College Park’s Hoff Theatre.  Some news articles about this can be found here.

Long story short, the State Legislature threatened to withdraw all funding for UMCP if this film was shown.  The legislation was apparantly written in such a way that politicians were stuck with either a vote for Porn, or to vote for the anti-porn measure.  UMCP administrators bowed under this pressure and forced the screening at college park to be cancelled.

According to a tip UU received and according to this Baltimore Sun article (sent to us by a tipster (thanks!))  it seems that this may not be the end of this story.  Students at multiple Maryland schools, including UMBC, are protesting this attempt at micromanaging and ultimately a reduction of student’s freedom of speech by organizing screenings on campuses.

I look forward to bringing you more details as this story emerges especially as to when and where the UMBC screening will be.  Apparantly, the UMBC students who are organizing this protest screening already have a license to publicly show this film.  I hope that this will happen in a timely fashion and will look forward to sending more information regarding this.

Also, to those organizing this event, please send an email either to me personally at short@umbcunderground.com or to feedback@umbcunderground.com and I’ll be glad to either update this post or to post a new post with more details.

My personal thought of how students should protest this, is to pick a day, dress up like pirates and head to Anapolis, en masse to protest (as pirates) outside the state house.  If anyone wants to take this idea, make it their own and lead this charge, I encourage you to.

My support on this issue is not for the film itself, but rather for any film that students want to screen.  Stopping this or any other film from being screened creates a dangerous precedent.  Those who disagree with it’s screening have an equal right to protest it or to NOT ATTEND.  College students are adults, or at least 99% of students are.

What’s next Annapolis: Anti-porn filters on resnet?  Eliminating the discussion of evolution in biology classes?

(to clarify one final thing, all opinions posted here are not necessarily those of UU and are those of Short).  Please comment with your opinions on this.

Also, don’t forget about the sendoff!

UPDATE: 40-50 extra tickets will be availabe for purchase for UMBC students at the Commons desk until 5pm Thursday, 3/12. UMBC can only sell these tickets until 5pm.  This is a great opportunity to fill up some more seats with UMBC fans - don’t pass this up if you don’t have a ticket yet!

6th Seed UMBC defeated Albany (at Albany) and  will play for the America East Championship this coming Saturday, March 14th.

Right now, we are awaiting information about the fan bus from Jake Steel and will post as soon as we know.

The family of the student who recently passed away requested that we take down that post.  We are very sorry for any trouble we may have caused them.  We are not allowing comments on this post.  Our thoughts remain with his family.

I was reading an article in the Washington Post when I came across this line.

Aides said O’Malley is still reviewing the bill but has proposed a broader set of initiatives designed to combat underage drinking. Those include legislation calling for a six-month driver’s license suspension for someone under 21 who is convicted of possessing or consuming alcoholic beverages.

I’m older than 21 but this proposed legislation seems to be way too overarching.  Don’t get me wrong, I support legislation that causes drunk drivers to lose their licenses for extended periods of time.  However, if one is not behind the wheel of a car (no matter if they are of age or not) when they are drinking or drunk why should they lose the right to drive?

This seems like the type of legislation that could lead to other problems for this such as a larger percentage of uninsured and unlicensed drivers.