By Uglytusk

It’s time to celebrate achievement folks, so break out your best dance shoes, form up the soul train and do your best J-Bo shuffle as we take a look back at another year gone by here at the Capstone.

Before we begin, though, dear readers of our illustrious campus newspaper, we here at the Ugly Tusk (www.uglytusk.wordpress.com and @UglyTusk) would like to express our extreme dissatisfaction with being relegated to the opinions page of this venerable rag. Thoughts like ours belong on A1, above the fold (that’s where the important news in a paper goes for all of you who have never sullied your fingertips with the cheap ink they print this paper on.)

How does one sum up a year at the Capstone? How does one capture lightning in a bottle? How does one explain why “the biggest Starbucks in the world” is also, somehow, the slowest? On the real, y’all need to stop ordering smoothies at a coffee shop. My blood pressure can’t handle it. But let’s stop waffling here and get down to business, because it’s been a busy year at the Capstone.

Oh, and what a year it’s been; we here @uglytusk (uglytusk.wordpress.com) have watched, agape and agog, as the Capstone experienced a major shift in dynamics to start the year. We had a new savior, a liberal with a perfectly manicured beard came in to rescue us all from the oppressive corporate nature of this place! We knew that when the Guy (that’s what we call him when we tweet at him @uglytusk) was going to change this place. We knew that we were being ushered into an era when growing (you know admins use this word this way) the student body population was no longer the paramount concern. We knew we were entering an era when the Capstone would become a Southern bastion of classic liberal education. We knew, knew, we knew, we knew. We knew this so hard that we repeatedly tweeted (@UglyTusk) and posted (uglytusk.wordpress.com) about it. The Guy. The Guy was gonna save us.

Little did we know that ruffling the feathers of fraternal tradition would lead to (we can only assume) a backroom donnybrook that would usher in a new era – an era of Celebrating Achievement and the Judy Bonner Dance Party. In moves that were more confusing than that senate scene in whatever Star Wars movie that was or the climactic scene of “Trading Places” (you haven’t seen it, but trust us, it’s confusing), The Guy was ousted and J-Bo shuffled into his place, re-establishing the status quo and inundating us all with emails that no one, not even those whose achievements are being celebrated, ever reads.

So where are we now, dear students? Where are we? As we look into the crystal mason jar of future-telling and think about what we’re going to tweet (@uglytusk) and post about (uglytusk.wordpress.com) next year, we are saddened. We are saddened like a teacup pig with no hind legs that uses a jerry-rigged wheel-cart to move to and fro. But, like this sad teacup pig, there is joy and hope in our hearts.

We believe in a future for the Capstone. We believe in a future where you can get a f*cking banana or something approaching healthy food at the Ferg. We believe in a future where a year passes without a racial incident on campus (we made it this year, didn’t we? We’ll be damned.) We believe in a future where emphasis is placed on quality, not quantity, in all things at this university. We believe in a future where the upper echelons of the administration openly support students involved in activities that don’t involve archaic alphabets! We believe in a future where students demand the right to voice their opinions wherever they damn well please without a permit! We believe in a future where The University of Alabama becomes the petri dish for the future leaders of this state who want, nay need, to fix the many ills plaguing it instead of perpetuating Alabama’s self-defeating insistence on keeping itself in the stone age! In the words of the immortal Clark Griswold, “Hallelujah, holy sh*t. Where’s the Tylenol?”

In closing, we’d just like to say: @UglyTusk and uglytusk.wordpress.com.

The UglyTusk is an anonymous blog by UA students that posts commentary on University news and culture, including critiques of Crimson White stories. The writer submitted this column on condition of anomymity.