By Alex H. Nagler

In a report released by Stony Brook’s Center for Regional Policy Studies on August 5, it was announced that the university has an annual economic impact of nearly $5 billion dollars on the Long Island economy. The report found that the university is responsible for nearly 60,000 jobs on Long Island and makes up 4% of the total economy between Suffolk and Nassau Counties. Roughly 7.5% of all Suffolk County employees are employed through the university in one way or another, with the average full-time employee salary resting at $76,010, far greater than the regional average of $47,913.

The report details the positive economic impact the university has on the surrounding community, but can also be seen as an appeal to the state to invest more money on the youngest of its University Centers. In a time when the state budget is being tightened and things are up for cuts, it would appear that this report is timed to make a case for more spending on Stony Brook. One of the more startling conclusions comes from the figures on the net return on state investments. Stony claims that the $207.2 million in taxpayer funds that Albany allocates to Stony Brook can be seen in the $4.7 million impact on the Long Island economy, claiming that it represents a 2,300% return.

From this figure, the report claims that for every one dollar invested in Stony Brook University, the state sees $23 dollars in economic gain. Whether this will convince Albany and Governor Patterson to allocate more money to the SUNY system is unsure, but one thing to be noted is that recent talks of cuts only mentioned CUNY and not SUNY. President Kenny commented that “…Stony Brook represents one of the state’s best and savviest investments. With a return of over 2,000 percent, we’re the Warren Buffet of the SUNY system.”

The economic benefits are forecasted only to increase with the opening of the Research and Development Campus across the road from West Campus and the construction of the Center for Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology.

While some of the economic news is good news, it underscores the cuts that have been made to departments that have led to some areas being crippled in favor of frivolous allocations, like the Monorail Exploratory Fund. All building discussion has failed to mention the fact that, save the Humanities building, no academic buildings have been constructed or fully renovated for the past decade. Additionally, it neglects the petition addressing these points from concerned faculty, which aided in the retirement announcement of President Kenny.

Stony Brook wants to be the center of the SUNY system, and for some of the things it does, it deserves it. It certainly has the biggest impact of any Long Island school on the local economy and has the best medical facilities in the SUNY system. But until reports talk about a commitment from Albany to spend money on construction of new buildings or repair crumbling infrastructure, Stony Brook isn’t ready. In this budget climate, that commitment may not be coming for a long time.

By Jake Conarck

         On the afternoon of September 15, about 150 research assistants, students, elected officials and union members gathered in the SAC auditorium to rally for research assistants’ right to unionize. RAs work for the SUNY Research Foundation and assist professors in conducting research but many feel they deserve better working conditions, including higher wages and health benefits.

         Teaching assistants and graduate assistants employed by the university are already members of the Graduate Student Employees Union, a member of the Communication Workers of America Local 1104. However, research assistants do not enjoy the same benefits as TAs and GAs and have been organizing to join the GSEU for several years.

         Out of the approximately 800 RAs who work at Stony Brook, about 500 have expressed their support for joining the union by signing onto the RA unionization mission statement.

         Several RAs as well as union officials and elected officials chastised the university for what they believed to be union-busting and intimidation tactics carried out by the administration.

         Although the GSEU had a written permit allowing them access to use the SAC auditorium for the rally, the administration had revoked that permit the Friday before the event.  Any efforts to organize a union are prohibited on university property according to state and SUNY policy.  

         Despite the revocation of the permit for the rally, the GSEU and RAs decided to go ahead with the rally in the auditorium as planned. 

         “If we don’t have a place to hold our rally, we no longer have our freedom of speech,” said Xiao Xu, a research assistant studying cures for leukemia.

         The administration eventually decided to allow the GSEU to hold the rally in the SAC auditorium after arriving at a compromise with union officials. “Our friends who are elected officials and legislatures helped us and put pressure on the university to allow us to hold our rally,” said Xu.

         Several local officials were present at the rally including State Senator Craig Johnson, State Assemblymen Marc Alessi and Pat Eddington and representatives for Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy and Congressman Tim Bishop.

         Many of the officials expressed dismay at what they perceived to be the university’s intimidation tactics in preventing the RAs from unionizing.

         “The Research Foundation is acting like a schoolyard bully.  When you dealt with a schoolyard bully you got your big brother or sister and you went back and kicked the bully’s ass,” said Chris Shelton, a representative for the CWA, to wild applause. “Well we’re coming back to kick some ass.”

         Administration officials were unavailable for comment at press time, despite several calls and emails.

         Although SUNY is bound by state law to ensure that its workers and not subjected to union-busting pressure tactics, the SUNY Research Foundation is a private corporation and claims to be a separate entity. 

         “SUNY respects the right to organize. So should every SUNY entity, including the Research Foundation,” said George Bloom, president of the CWA Local 1104. “The past lies and intimidation by the SUNY RF, which is a research institution supposedly interested in public service and the pursuit of truth, were outrageous.”

By Najib Aminy

Not many students know about the Undergraduate Student Government at Stony Brook. In fact, last year’s election polled a total of 1,059 students for the two presidential candidates, which Jeffery Akita won by 113 votes. A thousand students may seem like a lot, but it is small compared to a total of 15,523 undergraduate students, according to the 2007 Stony Brook Office of Admissions Enrollment Guide. Mathematically, nearly seven percent of all undergraduate students voted last April for their USG president and respective senators.

To recap, last year’s USG presidential election came in with the resignation of an overly ambitious Executive Vice President, the de-funding of NYPIRG, and the possible impeachment of Jeffery Akita from his post as Vice President of Clubs and Organizations. Agreeing to talk to The Press, Akita was open in discussing his goals as USG President and responded to the critical views against him stemming from last year’s election.

Though Akita was not impeached, previous USG Senators sought to indict Akita for his failure to get in touch with clubs and execute his job properly. Akita responded saying that the prosecuting Senator’s “stance was that I wasn’t visible, which was not true. Most of their accounts that they tried to hold against me were not true, they said I was corrupt, which they found I wasn’t, I had no relationship with money. They told me I didn’t meet with various organizations and clubs. I did, and different people testified. The whole thing last semester has passed, but the whole goal was to prevent me from being in this position [as USG President] and, as you see, I am in this position today.” 

However, prior to the elections, Akita did resign from his Vice President position to preserve his run for presidency. Had he been impeached, Akita would have been prohibited from running for USG president under the current USG constitution. Regardless, Akita has high expectations and goals for the upcoming year and wishes to strengthen the relationship between the executive council, the senate and the judiciary. “If there is turmoil within the council, it affects the delivery and the amount of feedback we get from students and as far as how we can do things and how we should address things,” said Akita. Outside of the halls of USG, Akita said he is looking forward to “ensuring that academics are always provided, [that] there is a healthy lifestyle on campus, the safety of students is always recognized, and to ensure that student life is actually going on as expected and that more students are getting involved and staying on the weekends,” said Akita.

Despite having articles brought up against him claiming that he was not present, one of Akita’s big plans is to become a visible president. Akita assured that he is willing to help out students as much as he can. “I am a student but I understand that I am here to serve the students, so if I am not available, then how am I serving the students?”

With Akita at the reigns of the USG, he is to face, like the rest of SUNY, a possible 10% budget cut. Though a 3% cut was announced earlier in the year, the talks of an additional 7% cut have led to speculation as to how this may affect Stony Brook students. “I want all students to know that the budget cuts are not directly affecting the student activity fee, but it will affect the things it goes towards. For instance, the prices of certain things are going to up and [the number of] personnel will be going down,” said Akita. Examples given where shift in office hours of personnel due to the freeze and possible reduction of the budget. Alongside USG, Akita is working on holding a rally during the last week of October to protest the budget cuts. In conjunction with SUNY Old Westbury and Farmingdale, USG intends on setting up petitions to let Albany know that SUNY students cannot live through a 10% cut. “Look out for the protests. It is going to be big. We are going to need everybody’s support if we really want to send a message about these cuts,” said Akita. Regarding the current club budget, a potential cut would not interfere with the money allocated by the USG for 2008-2009 USG fiscal year rather it would hinder the formation of new clubs due to the reduction of funding. 

With a constricting budget, the future for clubs such as the Social Justice Alliance and more notably NYPIRG seem grim. Both the budgets of the SJA and NYPIRG were rescinded and currently have no 2008-2009 budget. NYPIRG was not given a budget due to insufficient attribution of its 2007-2008 funds, according to the USG. In response to their de-funding, Akita said he believes in his treasurer and urges whoever was denied to still apply before the upcoming deadline on September 26. “Last year was last year. It is a new year, you don’t know what is coming. You may get your money, you may not get your money. Anything that happens there is going to be a reason behind it, it is not bias or anything.” Regarding NYPIRG, Akita says he has thought about allotting money for NYPIRG. In essence, the USG would freeze money, in which NYPIRG would allocate for in efforts of documenting where NYPIRG’s funds would be going.   

With the absence of NYPIRG and the upcoming November presidential elections, the USG has taken up the task to coordinate voter registration with NYPIRG’s assistance. “We’ve taken that role, but in the last senate meeting a member of NYPIRG expressed that they are still going to continue with their involvement in voter registration. They are still playing their part and are encouraging other people,” said Akita. The USG, under Sophomore Representative Kadeem Hylton, have started mobilizing people in promoting the efforts for students to register and vote. Through contacting various clubs and organizations as well as Residence Hall Association, Akita says that everyone is “coming together to work as one team to register as many people to vote.” Akita also said that Hylton is organizing a “Rock to Vote” movement, an event that educates students on the importance and essentials of voting.

Regarding Stony Brook’s own vacancy, Akita holds a chair in the Presidential Search Committee. With Shirley Strum Kenny’s lame-duck status, Akita is looking for a president “who is going to be there for the students, going to advocate for the students, provide for the students, and love to be the president of Stony Brook University. “In efforts of truly representing students, Akita plans on taking advantage of the USG Rep. center and intends on using polls and feedback from campus media organizations in what he calls “a unified effort.” 

In closing, Akita made an emphasis on availability and shed light on the fact that USG is not a negative, but a rather positive institution on campus.  He said, “I am going to treat this as a business and a relationship. What has to be done must be done, what can be done should be done, that’s how this government is going to be run. And together with the students, my representatives, senators, and the judiciary, we are going to work together to make that happen. What happened last year are lessons for the future. Today is here, and we are going to focus on today move forward.”   

By Najib Aminy

 Stony Brook senior Adam Felline is unlike most video game fanatics. He is not a virgin, or at least he claims not to be. Yet Felline finds himself in the same boat with millions of gamers sailing the waters of foul mouthing, poor sportsmanship, and lewd behavior, of which the most notable is tea bagging. 

In the continually evolving world of video games lies the ritualistic tradition that marks the ultimate humiliation for any victim and a momentary ecstasy for the victor. Akin to celebratory dances in professional sports, tea bagging is the repetitive crouching motion over a deceased player’s face, mirroring that of a tea bag placed into a mug. 

Tea bagging was developed in 1908 when New York tea importer Thomas Sullivan sent tealeaves in gauze packages. Sullivan’s clients would dip their packages into the warm water and shortly after enjoy their imported tea. Alas, tea bagging was born. 

According to Urban Dictionary, a user submitted slang dictionary website, tea bagging is the act of a man inserting his “scrotum into another person’s mouth in the fashion of a teabag into a mug with an up/down (in/out) motion.”

Tea bagging gained prominence in the 1998 comedy, Pecker, which displayed a male stripper performing the tea bagging motion to another man’s forehead. Quite gay, yes, but as tea bagging developed into another peculiar fetish in bondage, discipline, submission and masochism culture, it would later be endorsed by the hip hop culture. Three-time Grammy Award winner Ludacris dedicated a track to tea bagging on his 2004 album Chicken and Beer. The skit was titled, “T Baggin” and is about a phone service in which the user presses the number seven indicating that they had “woke up with a hang over and a pair of hairy balls on their face.” More recently, in 2006, hip-hop group Trap Squad released their song titled, “Teabag Dat Hoe,” a song about one’s experience with tea-bagging women. A lyric from Trap Squad’s song reads, “I ain’t trynna’ fuck you hoe I want my balls to meet yo’ lip. Yo’ throat be like some chips so my nuts is what I dip if you do a good job I might just leave dat hoe a tip.”

As of late, tea bagging has been subjected to a wider audience through online game play, primarily with first-person-shooter games such as Battlefield, Call of Duty, and Halo. According to Giantbomb.com, a video-gaming website, tea bagging was first introduced in Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, which was released on the major video game platforms by early 2003. Now in 2008, the ability to tea bag appears in 54 games ranging from games like Call of Duty 4, Gears of War, Halo 3, and even Super Smash Brothers.  With the advancement of technology, video gamers can now experience virtual tea bagging with services such as Xbox Live, a network where gamers can play against each other through the Internet. Behind the TV screen blaring gunshots and a headset that allows players to enhance their “trash talking skills,” many gamers separate themselves from reality, and this may cause a problem with some.

Despite Xbox Live refusing to officially comment on the act of tea bagging, an Xbox Live Support agent named Carlos explained that there are consequences to players who express poor sportsmanship. Carlos, who would not give out his last name due to Xbox Live customer support policy, said that players have the option of leaving feedback to other gamers. If a certain gamer gets a certain amount of feedback within a given amount of time then that player will be notified and suspended from any Xbox Live game play for a given time frame that may last up to about a month.

Felline during the act of tea bagging

Ignoring the consequences, many gamers find that screaming expletives, racial slurs, and insulting the mothers of other gamers’ is all part of the experience, but when it comes to tea bagging, it is taken more seriously due in part of what many gamers agree to be a respected art. Senior Adam Felline, of Staten Island, sees tea bagging as an art that requires much time and dedication in executing properly. Felline mentions that in order to be truly good at games such as Halo, Call of Duty, and Gears of War, one must be good at tea bagging. If one lacks the skill of tea bagging, then according to Felline, one can never really be good at any game. “It is completely impossible. If you are good at the actual game then you are an all-star at tea-bagging.” Felline is an avid tea-bagger who specifically mentioned tea-bagging Xbox Live gamer “Creasy Bearr.” (“Creasy Bearr” was unavailable for comment.)  Felline’s description of tea bagging as “an orgasm,” could be agreed upon by many gamers, but when one is the victim of tea bagging, the feeling is “like a little school girl being violated.” The goal and top priority for Felline and many tea baggers alike is to win the game and then tea bag later. In spending countless hours of refining his tea bagging skills, Felline says that he, “Creasy Bearr,” and “Petepetefire” have mastered tea bagging and challenge anyone brave enough to take them on.

Yet on the other side of the fence lies the group of gamers who see tea bagging as excessive, unnecessary, and pointless. Senior David DePouli, of Port Washington, sees tea bagging as something that “detracts from the gaming experience.” DePouli is proud of the fact that he has never tea bagged any one in a video game and sees tea bagging as something “very demoralizing and insulting. Nothing boils my blood like someone sitting on my face after they’ve just killed me.” DePouli also stated that there are many gamers who use the tea-bagging maneuver despite the fact that they may be the worst player in a given match. DePouli plays the game for the sake of playing the game and prefers not to showboat or create any momentary feuds. When asked about a given instance of a stellar player who chooses to tea bag, DePouli was not fazed, saying that it is good for him. “That is the beauty of the game, he can play it how he wants to.” DePouli chooses to travel the calm and collective manner and sees himself as verbally and intellectually superior. Viewing tea bagging as possibly the worst thing in Xbox Live play, DePouli sees that as a good thing in that it is not that big of a deal. DePouli has come to a realization that everyone has the right to enjoy the game as they choose to. “Everybody pays their $60 for a game, so who am I say to they can’t enjoy something as stupid as tea bagging.” All in all, DePouli has learned to cope with tea bagging as well as excessive taunts and trash-talking. Gamers take advantage of Xbox Live’s service, which offers, as DePouli puts, “a level of security where people can act out, can talk trash, tea bag you, and there are no repercussions really, and I am not surprised that young gamers and even old gamers continue to do it. I don’t let it detract from my experience.”

Despite where one stands on the issue of tea bagging, it is important to fully understand the true art of tea bagging. Many times novice and inexperienced gamers jump eagerly to a newly deceased body to enjoy a momentary ecstasy, yet they do it all wrong. The proper tea bag lies in simplicity, location, and timeliness. For one, the tea bag is to be a simple act; there is no need to form clans in learning to synchronize tea bagging. In addition, excessive jumping, crouching, and bashing of the deceased body would take away points from a perfect ten. Simply approach the deceased body, position oneself over the head area of the body, and place oneself on top of the deceased body’s face region. Then cautiously proceed in a repeating crouch motion with the seasoning of an occasional beat down, nothing more.

Location is something that many people ignore due in part to the rush of just trying to reach a deceased body and tea bag said body before a player from the opposing team discovers you. Rather than positioning one’s body over the face, players often situate themselves on the abdomen or leg region of the deceased player’s body. This would result in a huge deduction of style points and would clearly indicate to any person witnessing such a tea bag that you are a douche and should return not only the video game which you are playing, but the system, and never play video games again. Also, if the body is face down, ignore it. There is no satisfaction of dry humping the back or buttocks of a deceased player, it does not work; only face up. Remember, location, location, location.

Timeliness is another important factor when it comes to the physical crouching. One must judge through mass amounts of experience the appropriate time increments between crouching and releasing. A tea bag that is performed with a very fast CPS, or crouches per second, would be deemed poor. It tells the gamer and any witness that you are in a rush or hurry and that you do not value the true art of tea bagging. A slow CPS can work if executed perfectly however with a slow CPS one would increase the TOA, or threat of attack.

The ideal tea bag would be where a player plants himself squarely on the face of the deceased player, crouches in appropriate increments, touched up with an occasional beat down. Too many beat downs and deductions will arise. One should also be cautious with jumping since it takes away from the precious seconds of humiliation for the victim. One will know that they have performed the perfect tea bag when the head of the lifeless body bobs up and down from the ground. At this point, one should return to game play in hopes of repeating the same action.

Tea bagging, like any other form of taunt or trash talk, allows gamers to express themselves in ways that they could not before. Some see this as a way of making video games more competitive while others see it as unnecessary. Tea bagging can capture the best of times for one player and indicate the worst of times. Yet as Felline put it, “all is fair in love and war.”

By Steve McLinden

As the sun set on Williamsburg on that late Sunday afternoon, Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo made a more symbolic reference to a sunset.  The frontman of the Hoboken-based band that has been making indie rock since before you knew that phrase (or since before you were born, for that matter) half-joked that the closing of McCarren Pool was a “passing of the mantle,” that this was the end for Williamsburg and Brooklyn, an end to its reign as a home to culture and budding artistry and the hipster epidemic.

At that point, Kaplan brought back another band from the Garden State that also played that day in the last free show at McCarren Park Pool: Glen Rock’s noisy, guitar-loaded Titus Andronicus. Suggesting that the future focal point of culture would be “across the Holland Tunnel, in New Jersey,” he added, “When you get there you’ll find… The Misfits!” At that point, the two bands launched into an enthusiastic cover of Where Eagles Dare.  That kind of organized chaos is what the shows at McCarren Pool were all about, exemplified by the dozens of free shows sponsored by JellyNYC.  There was a gigantic inflatable slip-and-slide, some sort of 30-foot tent that I was afraid to go inside, and a fenced-in game of dodgeball happening in one corner while Ebony Bones, a creepy English girl whose backing guitarist was dressed like an Aztec warrior, put on a mildly adequate performance.

Emptied of water since 1984 (the New Jack City era of our city), the pool began opening for concerts, film showings, and other cultural events thanks in part to ClearChannel Entertainment.  However, the authorities of New York City apparently saw what a cool place the pool could be if they cleaned up the graffiti (such as the “EVAN IS GAY” scrawled on one of the fountains that sits in the middle of the general-admission pit) that made the pool iconic to its concertgoers. People even talked about the dead body that was found in a storage shed earlier this summer like it was one of those childhood neighborhood legends.  And so, earlier this summer, Mayor Bloomberg announced that by 2011 the pool would be reopened as a community swimming pool; presumably it’d be hard to play rock and roll music for people who weren’t in their bathing suits, so the days of music ended this Labor Day weekend.

The park is operated by the NYC Parks and Recreation Department, though at its shows, it was obvious that the Open Space Alliance for North Brooklyn (OSANB) was doing most of the organizational work.  Earlier this summer, a sold-out Wilco show was held as a benefit for the OSANB.  At the August 24th show, there was a “recommended donation” of $20 to the Obama campaign, but the only person I saw who tried to donate was accosted by twenty-something uptight Brooklynites, shouting about FISA wiretaps.

I was there for Titus Andronicus; I admit that even though they are the founding fathers (and mother) of indie rock, Yo La Tengo was just icing on the cake for me.  After seeing Titus Andronicus put on a really frenetic and really, really loud show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in June, I became something of a religious follower. I was like a Grateful Dead fan who needed a miracle, except that I only saw them in New York and half of the time it was free. The band plays the same nine or so songs, most of them off of their Airing of Grievances album (yes, a Seinfeld reference), but they always bring a different form of energy.  While he seemed like a man possessed at Music Hall, frontman Patrick Stickles was mellower at the pool, joking dryly that “Barack Obama is here… and so is Joe Biden. And John McCain. Everyone’s drunk. Hell of a party.”  On this day at the pool, they sounded tight and rehearsed, and not as loud or drunken or monitor-stomping as they had been in June.  Stickles brought out his girlfriend to turn “No Future Part One,” a slow bluesy song, into a bit more of a romantic duet.  But that’s not to say they were boring: the three to four guitar players jammed as hard as ever, and during the band’s self-titled song, Patrick Stickles took out a pair of scissors to chop away at his unkempt neckbeard whilst he sang the refrain, “your life is over, your life is over, your life is over.”  So he’s no GG Allin in terms of on-stage antics, but it was still pretty amusing.  Yo La Tengo also put on a hell of a show, with more than two hours of fuzzed-out rock and roll and two long encores that took us past dusk.  Towards the end, the band joked that we might as well start saying goodbye and filling up the pool, at which point they brought out convenient props of gallon jugs that had been filled with water and dumped them over the edge of stage into the pool.  As a footnote, comedian David Cross showed up and decided to DJ for an hour or so, standing at his Macbook, drearily selecting his playlist and wearing plaid shorts.

Less than a week later, I was back at the Pool for the last actual show, Sonic Youth.  Paying almost $50 for the ticket did feel ridiculous, but I’ve been a fan since I was a kid, and I just had to be there for the historic last concert.  I got there early to get close, so we sat through Vivian Girls, Brooklyn’s own all-girl rock trio with a very sixties sound infused with shoegaze sounds.  Following that, Times New Viking, a fuzzy band from Ohio often accused of wanting to be like Guided By Voices, put on a rather uninspiring performance, but I think that was due in part to the fact that the lead singer is the drummer, and so the keyboardist just stood there and the guitarist didn’t even want to be seen by people.  Wolf Eyes, a legendary and prolific name in the world of noise, came with instruments including some kind of rectangular block of wood with no strings that was played like a guitar, and an old saxophone with a microphone shoved into it.  They knew how to create an atmosphere (the skies even went overcast during their performance) but I tend to believe that making noise sound good requires a tremendous degree of musical talent, and to me, Wolf Eyes was kind of just making, for lack of a less-ambiguous term, noise.

Sonic Youth was as awesome as it was when the band played for free on the Fourth of July down in Battery Park this year, but I was disappointed that the setlist was so similar for a band that has been putting out records for a quarter-century now.  The most exciting thing, however, was that they opened with two brand new songs that will appear on their upcoming album (they just signed with independent label Matador in September), and though “they don’t really have titles or much lyrics yet,” as Thurston Moore explained,  they had a very classic Sonic Youth feel.  The band did, however, play “The Burning Spear,” which Thurston called the first song they ever wrote.  He and his wife Kim Gordon, the band’s bassist and sometimes-singer, shared a beautiful moment when they hugged and clashed guitars while making some feedback-laced noise against their amps. While I was not expecting a second encore, the band extended the night by seven more minutes with their mid-1990s epic “Expressway to Yr. Skull.”

I’ll miss the hundreds of beach balls that bounced around during shows there, thanks to corporate sponsorship, and the douchebags who would throw them onstage.  I’ll miss seeing the diving board and the overpriced ice cream truck parked next to it.  I’ll miss how easy it was to drive in from Long Island and park just off of the Bronx-Queens Expressway.  But most of all, I’ll miss standing in the pool and listening to the rock and roll during its stint as the most unique venue in New York music history.

By Najib Aminy

            In what ESPN’s radio program Mike and Mike named the “Battle for the Butter,” the Stony Brook men’s football team fell to the Black Bears of Maine, just one week after a drowning loss, 30-20, in tropical storm conditions against Elon Univeristy. Despite an impressive start in their home opener, in which they defeated Colgate University 42-26, the Seawolves have lost two consecutive games.

            With a recorded seven sacks, red-shirted freshman Stony Brook quarterback Dayne Hoffman (Ada, Michigan) had a 50% passing completion rate, throwing a total of 38 times with 19 completions, of which two were picked off by Maine. Hoffman totaled 199 passing yards and one touchdown when connecting with freshman Melaquan Saffold (Syracuse, NY). Hoffman’s rushing stats were tainted with a rushing net yardage of negative 34 yards. Junior Conte Cuttino led the team in rushing with a net yardage of 75 yards but failed to produce a score leaving one to wonder about the strength of the offensive line. Senior kicker Luke Gaddis (East Patchogue, NY) was two for two in field goal attempts with a 32-yard kick early in the second quarter followed by a 22-yarder in the middle of the third.  

            With a lack-luster performance by the offense, Stony Brook’s defense was unable to stop Maine’s aerial attack in the first half of the game. Maine’s quarterback, sophomore Adam Farkes (Boston, Mass) threw for 148 yards but connected with three receivers scoring four touchdowns, two by sophomore receiver Tyrell Jones (Gaithersburg, Md.). Junior Carl Teague (St. Petersburg, Fla.) recorded Stony Brook’s solo sack of the game for a loss of nine yards along with four tackles of his own. Junior Tyler Santucci (New Kesington, Pa.) had a team high of five recorded tackles, which netted a total of eight yards lost. Stony Brook was successful in stopping Maine’s run game, and essentially held Maine from scoring again the in the second half. However the Seawolves failed to produce any sort of a comeback with four turnovers, one in red-zone territory.

            Though scoring the first touchdown of the game late in the first quarter, Stony Brook was outscored 28-10 in the first half. The Seawolves would nibble at their differential by three with a field goal in the third, making the final score of the game, 28-13. Maine improve their record to 2-1 while Stony Brook has staggered from an impressive start to a 1-2 season.

            Tired of hyping up games such as Saturday night’s match up between USC and the Ohio State University, ESPN’s Mike and Mike radio program challenged their audience come up with the most creative name for the Stony Brook vs. Maine game. Names such as “Slaughter at the Sea,” “Laughingstock at the Lighthouse,” “The Rock Lobster Bowl,” “The Bore on the Shore,” and “Commotion by the Ocean” were offended. Yet, the winner was “The Battle for the Butter,” and the winning coach would be interviewed. Despite the loss, Stony Brook is up for a difficult schedule traveling to Providence, RI next week to face Brown University in their season opener on September 20, at 12:30 p.m. Following Brown, Stony Brook is to face Hofstra University for the clash of Long Island supremacy at home on Friday, September 26, at 7 p.m.