news, students and stuff
VRUAL



& . S

OMIKO JONES IS YOUR ORDINARY U. OF
Pennsylvania senior except for one small detail:
from jellybeans to VCRs, everything she needs
she buys online.
Jones - along with Alanna Blanco at California State U., Chico, and
Scott Raymond at the U. of Kansas - is one of three daring college stu-
dents participating in Levi's e-commerce experiment. Armed with a
$500 per week allowance (yep, that's right, 500 smackeroos per
week!), these three Web-celebs are discovering if it's possible to browse,
budget and buy everything they need for an entire semester online.
This virtual reality isn't half bad, says Tomiko. After only two weeks,
she had bought some CDs, flowers for her mom, groceries, a VCR and
plenty of Levi's. And even though she shelled out $300 her first week,
she's still looking for a cell phone and a spring break trip.
"I'm having a blast," Jones says. "You click on something on the
Internet and it's delivered in two days. I'm getting used to that."
But what about those fast-food cravings during all-night study ses-
sions? "At the beginning I thought I was going to be able to log on to a
fast-food site and have food
delivered," she says. "I'm still Want to see what the students ae buy-
waiting for 'FeedTomiko.com"' W. Go to www.nt.con. Stay tuned for
their on-line show at 9 pm. EST on Sundays
for suJy i se drop-in celebrity guests
By Jessica Lyons, Assistant Editor

U of Dbiaware oephiemire John ham ha a lot on his mind -
L,41 pounds, to he exact. That sthe weight of ham' rubber band
bail - noffciay the worlds largest. Hes workIng to get it over
2,0120 pounds by April, the cut of f for the g'ea 2000 editon of the
Guiness Book of World Hecords
It's been about a year sine Ham, 21. sarted the bal to kil time
at his Job in the madreoom of a Wdming'ton, DeL, law finn. Then It
kept getting bigger. And bigger "When it got to be about 40 pounds
I thought, 'I might as well go al the way' Ba~n sys The curront
record is 1,022 pounds held by stae Partidge of surrey, Engla
hamn keeps his ba - now 4 1 2 feet high and 12 feet in enom
frmnee - mn the garage of his Wilmington horme. He used to work
on it about It) hours per week, but recently. the bal has grown too
big for the rubber bends supplied ny his sponsor, the Alliance [lubber
Comnpany of Hot spnngs Ark.
While Ham's shopping for a new sponsor e's keeping himself
busy- hes star ted anuther rubber bend ball whic is about base-
balisied. 'This one's for fun." han says. "T he igone is just too
hard to play wlth "
Whoa, that's a lite more Iormaona n we needd John!
& MN Lotm-aLi of f klawre/Fhet byn ChaaloL of Delawre

That 20-page paper on the complete works of Chaucer is
due tomorrow, you haven't read a word, and osmosis just
isn't working. But even if your conscience can't keep you
from buying an "A" paper from last semester, a new web site
might. Integriguard (www.integriguard.com) is an Internet
service professors can subscribe to for $4.95 a month
that checks students' papers against a database of existing
works for suspicious matches. Sounds great for profs,
but this Internet-plagiarism policing has students worried
about false accusations. "My main concern woul
W~j be if it pulls your name up, is it 100 percent sur
k you cheated or 75 percent?" asks North Carolina
State U. Junior Jenny C.J. Chang. Whether it works
u or not, cheaters had
better beware -
__ there's a new )
C cop cruising the
information
superhighway.

i~l

By Jill Carroll,
U. of Massa-
chusetts
Illustration by
Rick Mahr,
Southern
Illinois U.,
Edwardsville

6 www.,utagazine.conm * April/May 1999