Over the summer, I kinda got out of the habit of checking in with the three campus newspapers in our catchment because they don’t regularly publish anything when the students are away. But hey, it’s fall, and one college paper has stepped up to the plate to give full coverage to a big story that’s landed on its doorstep. Also in this space: Another potential deportation that makes no sense, another town facing a water shortage, a telling indicator of the soft market for office space, and one story that deserve dishonorable mention. If you’re here for the snark, skip down near the end.

Trump administration trying to bribe Dartmouth. Our authoritarian-minded chief executive has taken a new tack in his war on academia. He’s offering financial incentives to select institutions that adopt his ideological agenda. Which would be the death knell of academic freedom, but hey, if you want an omelet you gotta break some eggheads.

One of the nine bribery targets is Dartmouth College, which has already flown its Trump-friendly colors in a few unsettling ways. And there’s The Dartmouth, its student newspaper, with broad coverage of how the Ivy League’s party school might respond.

First, Ryan Joseph reports that Dartmouth factotum Jennifer Rosales appeared before the Dartmouth Student Government and acknowledged that “‘some parts’ of the Trump administration’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education may ‘go against some’ of the College’s current ‘policies and missions,’ such as those around academic freedom. Which is not to say the College won’t ditch its principles for a quick buck; we shall see. Next, Joseph and Olivia Sapper inform us that participants in weekly pro-democracy protests in Hanover are “invigorated” by Trump’s naked power grab. Finally, The Dartmouth published an op-ed by three faculty members calling on the College to reject “the Trump administration’s latest protection racket… At stake is open-ended federal control over the form and content of higher education, expressed in nakedly ideological terms.” The profs point out the roots of this Trump initiative in the fever swamps of the billionaire-backed far right. Kudos to The Dartmouth for stepping up when circumstances demand it.

Man with “no criminal record” faces deportation. More devastating ICE follies, first reported by The Addison Independent‘s John Flowers (paywall likely) and updated by Vermont Public’s Peter Hirschfeld. Panton resident Juan de la Cruz has lived in the U.S. for two decades. He’s married to a member of the town select board. They have two children. He applied for asylum in 2017 and was found by the federal government to face a “reasonable fear of torture” if he’s returned to Mexico. And now ICE wants to deport him for no good reason. If he’s deported, he would be banned from returning to the US for at least 10 years. Hirschfeld reports that about 200 of his friends and neighbors gathered today on the lawn outside an ICE facility in St. Albans, where de la Cruz had been ordered to report. He was released today, but faces continued action due to the deliberate cruelty of the Trump administration.

Drought is taking a toll… wait, what? This isn’t exactly a case of burying the lede, because the purpose of Briana Brady’s fine story in The Shelburne News was measuring the impact of this summer’s drought in her area, which she traced back from Lake Champlain to Hinesburg. But to me, the newsiest aspect of her story was all the way down in paragraph 12, where she dropped this nugget (which, as far as I can tell, had gone unreported until now):

This summer, after finding a large leak in its water system, which currently operates on a single well, Hinesburg halted all new water allocations.

Umm, that seems more than a bit… consequential… doesn’t it? This news dropped one week after The News & Citizen did a deep dive on Jeffersonville’s critical lack of water reserves.

Update! Turns out Brady did write a story in late August about Hinesburg’s water issues and I missed it. Internet searches are becoming less and less reliable.

This used to be prime real estate. From The WIlliston Observer’s Jason Starr comes word of a property auction that follows bank foreclosure on a five-acre parcel with three commercial buildings near the corner of Route 2A and Route 2 — in the maze of malls, big box stores, and other business and industrial edifices known as Taft Corners. If you’ve ever been on that corner, you know the three buildings: One is home to the Texas Roadhouse, while the other two are identical square office buildings that are “mostly vacant” according to the firm handling the auction. Good grief. Is the commercial real estate market that soft?

So you’re telling me “CSI” wasn’t a documentary. The Valley Reporter’s Lisa Loomis follows up on the September 24 fire that destroyed a pub and damaged a clubhouse at the Sugarbush Resort. She reports that state fire investigators “did not determine a specific cause of the fire” which, fair enough. But then she drops this tidbit: “70% of all fires are deemed undetermined because often whatever caused the fire has also been destroyed in the fire.” Golly. On the teevee, the good guys always catch the baddies. I guess that’s not real?

Kelpy! Kelpy Kelpy Kelpy! …KELPY! The latest edition of Eva Sollberger’s long-running Seven Days video series “Stuck in Vermont” brought her to within a few minutes of my house. Almost every day I drive by, and am delighted by, Kelpy, the beribboned installation created (in her very short driveway) by Montpelier resident Deb Fleischman. ollberger captures plenty of magical footage of kids from the nearby middle school delighting in the public art piece. “The first time I went in with two students, we all just started giggling,” said one school staffer. “Like, uncontrollable giggling.” You’ll know exactly why if you take the time to watch the video. You won’t regret it.

Quick, somebody call in a remedial art history teacher! I close this week’s installment with a swing and a miss from VTDigger’s usually reliable southern Vermont correspondent Kevin O’Connor. He was reporting on a “Graffiti Jam” event in Brattleboro that attracted “15 professional ‘aerosol artists’ from as far away as Slovakia.” The quotes around “aerosol artists” reflect the ridiculous framing of the story: While many communities are trying to fight graffiti, here’s Brattleboro laying out the welcome mat.

Christ on a bicycle. Graffiti art has been a recognized, and highly valued, medium for decades. Have O’Connor and his editors never heard of Banksy? Shepard Fairey? Jean-Michel Basquiat? Keith Haring??? How stupid do they think we are?

And on that absurd note, we close this week’s rundown. Ugh.