Author Traci Dantoni

Is that an orange leaf? You may still be hovering in front of your oscillating fan, but the gut-wrenchingly hot temperatures are slowly but surely beginning to give way to J. Crew sweaters, apple cider and classic Halloween bashes in the Oak Room. Ah, fall.

When I searched YouTube for "Fairfield University," I prepared myself for anything. The worst, I suspected, could be a clip of Jesuits engaging in some type of late-night tribal dance on Bellarmine lawn. Or maybe some freshmen astride a live stag, galloping across the Quad.

One grande iced vanilla latté with a side of a 20-page packet on religion. Two paninis served up with one six-page literature paper. One tuna fish sandwich, a bottle of water and an order of one Ernest Hemingway novel, well done. Well, not quite. But with a plentiful selection of quiet cafés and coffee shops in town, you can combine crunch time and munch time-that is, studying and getting something good to eat.

If you check your Stagweb before class, it's just the usual assortment of meaningless correspondence: a forward you've already been sent roughly 127 times, pesky spam mail and an e-vite to your cousin Sue's wedding. E-what? Vite who? Online invitations, or "e-vites," are becoming increasingly popular in our Internet savvy society.

It is startling but true: sororities today have gotten a reputation as exclusive in the most discriminatory of ways. Only the best dressed, skinniest, and pale-skinned girls are invited to join these pledging Greek life sisters who resemble the likes of Reese Witherspoon in "Legally Blonde.

If students are actually using AIM in them, are classes requiring laptops really effective? I don't think so. I, for one, didn't sign up for one for this very reason. Computers are undeniably a distraction, especially to today's generation which just can't seem to stay off Facebook for longer than five minutes, unless they're checking their e-mail or updating away messages, of course. You know you do it. And come on now; you know you would do it in class too, given the opportunity.

After just a few months at Fairfield, Michele Maggiore '10 is already very familiar with the high cost of living - living off taxis, that is.

The Stag Bus, complete with shocking red exterior, bright white lettering emblazoned on the side, and luxuriously -carpeted interior seating (well, not quite) is Fairfield University's take on student transportation. You can't miss it if you are within 50 feet of the Barone Campus Center, where it pulls in every hour on the hour.

As residence life offices at colleges nationwide rack up the roommate complaints, schools are opting to institute more in-depth housing questionnaires available on the Web. These new surveys contain more comprehensive questions and thus "reduce room-change requests by 68 percent the first year," a recent New York Times article said.