Message to University of Vermont students: Leave the cigs at home when you come back to school this fall, because you won’t be allowed to smoke them anywhere on campus.

Vermont’s state university will go tobacco-free August 1, UVM President Thomas Sullivan announced this week in a campus memo.

The decision shouldn’t come as a surprise. As Seven Days reported, a campus committee studied it for two years and students debated it. Some urged the administration to bring on the ban; others saw it as meddling by a nanny campus government.

UVM already prohibits smoking inside buildings and right outside them. The new policy goes further: Tobacco and smoking utensils with anything in them, including pot, will be banned from campus paths, greens, parking lots and garages — in other words, all UVM property.

That’s good news to students who complained of being forced to walk through clouds of stinky smoke on campus walkways, but an unwelcome development for smokers who will be forced to puff on sidewalks and greenbelts at the edge of campus. 

A federal judge has granted a new trial to a Bosnian refugee convicted in January of lying to immigration officials about wartime crimes he allegedly committed in his home country.

Judge William Sessions III on Monday ruled that prosecutors, in their closing argument, introduced new allegations against Edin Sakoc, 55.

"The government's new theories in closing were not included in the indictment and therefore broadened the possible bases for conviction," Sessions wrote in a 27-page ruling, later adding: "The court is convinced that the error seriously affected the fairness, integrity and public reputation of the judicial proceedings."

Sakoc had been accused of kidnapping and raping one woman and assisting a soldier who murdered two other women during the Bosnian War in 1992. Sakoc was in a military unit that battled ethnic Serbs. Sakoc is a Muslim, and the women he is accused of targeting were Serbs. He denied the rape, and said he participated in legitimate wartime actions.

His trial in U.S. District Court in Burlington focused almost exclusively on testimony in which prosecutors tried to show that Sakoc had committed those acts, then concealed them in applications to enter the U.S. and eventually become a citizen.

But in his closing argument, prosecutor Jay Bauer argued "almost as an afterthought," Sessions wrote, that Sakoc had failed to tell immigration officers that he had been part of a local militia and a controversial political organization.

It's July 1, and the new superintendent of schools in Burlington is ... not in Burlington.

The school district still has not obtained a work visa for Canadian citizen Yaw Obeng, the suburban Toronto school administrator who was originally supposed to start his $153,000-a-year job in Burlington today. 

Obeng's contract has been amended to a start date of no later than October 1. Interim superintendent Howard Smith has agreed to stay on to fill the gap. 

In an interview Tuesday, Smith said he's optimistic that the district, which has applied for two different types of visas on Obeng's behalf, will obtain a preferred visa that would allow him to stay in the country permanently. Until then, the district cannot pay Obeng.

The government asked for additional documents about 10 days ago, Smith said. Attorneys hired by the district for the visa application say it's moving along routinely, Smith said.

GlobalFoundries announced Wednesday that it completed its acquisition of IBM's chipmaking division. That includes the Essex plant, which GlobalFoundries has pledged to keep running.

The two companies announced last October that IBM would pay GlobalFoundries $1.5 billion to take over its money-losing chip unit, which includes the plant in Essex. But the deal had to clear hurdles first. Because GlobalFoundries is owned by the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, it needed to obtain clearance from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an interagency panel charged with reviewing major business deals to safeguard national security. The companies announced Monday that the committee had approved the deal.

Under banners that read “Orange is the New Blue,” GlobalFoundries executives Wednesday held a press conference at the Essex plant and pledged to keep all employees. They said they will likely invest in the facility, which has been one of Vermont's economic engines for decades.

The employees who worked at the plant before the takeover were allowed to keep their jobs, pay and benefits package they had with IBM, said Janette Bombardier, Global Foundries’ Vermont senior location executive.

“We refer to it as no one left behind,” said Mike Cadigan, head of GlobalFoundries Product Management Group.

It's rare to encounter Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger without his energetic chief of staff, Mike Kanarick, by his side. But the mayor announced Tuesday morning that his right-hand man is departing city hall to work at the Burlington Electric Department as its director of customer engagement and communications.

Kanarick has worked for the mayor ever since serving as his spokesman during the 2012 campaign. His responsibilities will be split between the two other staffers in the mayor's office. Weinberger is appointing projects coordinator Brian Lowe as the new chief of staff. His administrative assistant, Jen Kaulius, will take over Kanarick's press duties and Lowe's old role under the new title "communications and projects coordinator."

Kaulius, who interned with Weinberger's 2012 campaign as an undergrad at the University of Vermont, has worked in the office for three years. Last spring, she managed the mayor's reelection campaign. Lowe, previously a policy advisor at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, has been working in the mayor's office for roughly two years. 

A proposed city planning document for Burlington's South End that supports new housing in the Pine Street arts and industry district won an unpopularity award Tuesday night.

More than 100 people packed a presentation at Arts Riot about the draft PlanBTV South End, and many panned it. The zoning changes envisioned in the plan could lead to gentrification and displace artists and makers who have turned the neighborhood into Burlington's own version of SoHo, many speakers proclaimed.

The discussion also veered off to criticism of the proposed Champlain Parkway, a long-discussed road that would help carry traffic from Interstate 89 to Pine Street and downtown.

The draft planBTV South End assumes the road, which has the support of Mayor Miro Weinberger, will be built. Several speakers said the proposal is outdated and will only increase congestion in the neighborhood. Don't build it, said Amy Rubin. "This is '60s thinking. This is 20th century thinking. We have to stop accommodating cars."

The parent company of Burlington-based Dealer.com will be bought for $4 billion by Cox Automotive Inc., a provider of digital marketing and e-commerce services in the auto industry, the companies announced Monday.

A spokeswoman for Dealer.com said the company has no plans on moving and is seeking to fill 63 open positions. It's headquartered on Pine Street in Burlington's South End and has become, with 903 workers, one of the area's largest employers.

"All of our plans for Burlington are unchanged and we will continue to grow here business as usual," Dealer.com spokeswoman Alison Von Puschendorf said.

The Burlington School Board on Tuesday approved the hiring of a new principal at one of the city's two magnet schools. The decision came over the objections of about a dozen parents who attended Tuesday night's board meeting at City Hall.

With little discussion, the board voted to hire Lashawn Whitmore-Sells to serve as principal of the Sustainability Academy at Lawrence Barnes, a prekindergarten through fifth-grade school on North Street.

Parents called the decision hasty and the process rushed, especially following the sudden departure of the school's former principal, Brian Williams. He abruptly left his job in March. Parents were initially told he was on medical leave but nothing more. It has since been made public that Williams has resigned and will return to teaching English at Burlington High School, which he did earlier in his career.  

Numerous parents asked the board Tuesday to hire an interim principal and conduct a national search for a leader who could demonstrate understanding of and experience with the school's driving principles around environmentalism and service learning.

"It's sort of our last desperate plea" to be heard, said Erika Lowe, a teacher in the district and a mother who said she is moving her daughter out of the Sustainability Academy.

Burlington parents are circulating a petition contending the hiring process for a new principal at the Sustainability Academy at Lawrence Barnes was rushed and undemocratic. They want the school board to go with an interim administrator and delay a hiring decision set to be finalized Tuesday night.

The school board will be asked to confirm the hiring of Lashawn Whitmore-Sells as a permanent principal earning $101,000 at the elementary school on North Street, which is one of two magnet schools in the city.

Parents, including Tiffany Tillman, vice president of the school PTO and one of the petition organizers, say school officials ignored suggestions by parents who were asked to help with the hiring process. "They give their feedback, they make a recommendation and then that recommendation is completely unheard," Tillman said. "So it feels like a very token effort on their part, sort of a charade of democracy."

Perhaps school officials already had their mind made up about who should be hired, she added. "Maybe the writing was on the wall with their decision before we really began this process,” said Tillman, who has two children at the school. About 100 people had signed the petition by Tuesday morning, less than a day after it started circulating online, Tillman said.

The 15th annual Spring Move Out Project (SMOP) brought hundreds of people to the center of Burlington Wednesday. Many students took advantage of the opportunity to disgorge the contents of apartments they were vacating at designated drop-off zones on Loomis and Buell Streets. As they got rid of stuff, mostly for free, throngs of people gathered to shop for items that would cost them absolutely nothing. (Dirty mattresses, shredded couches and other beyond-hope items went into dumpsters for a small fee.)

The event is designed to reduce illegal dumping on greenbelts as thousands of students move out and new ones prepare to take over their leases. Word has definitely spread about SMOP and many freegans were on hand to peruse the (non)merchandise. I took a look too, and while I left empty-handed, I collected a fair bit wisdom by examining seven items.     

Thing One
 
A long coat made from emerald green velvet with a lavender satin lining and brass buttons caught my eye. Double-breasted and loosely constructed, it reminded me of something Kate Moss would wear to the opera with her haughty, aging-supermodel expression, after stepping into some crazy high heels. I wondered about the provenance of the coat as it lay crookedly against a blue tarp on the ground on Loomis Street. But before I could check the label and inspect the mild discoloring on the front, I was distracted by an excited cry of "Car coming in!" The crowd moved toward an SUV with Connecticut plates as it pulled into the swap zone. I walked over to watch a tatty couch being unloaded, and when I came back to the blue tarp, the green coat was gone.

Moral No. 1: Don't get too picky.

Thing Two

The next item that stood out to me was a chocolate-brown faux leather double recliner. Everything about it said "man cave." Perhaps it had started out in a den, with a bachelor who didn't know or care that it takes a rare woman to attach herself to such an ungainly piece of furniture. Maybe the guy came to understand this basic truth and outsourced the recliner to his nephew's college apartment. The kid loved it, until it was time to move on, let go and accept that form matters just as much as function. So it wound up at SMOP.

At least this is the backstory I was imagining. Then, as I watched, a man loaded the recliner into a vehicle. Of course, I thought, smirking, he just couldn't resist. But as I eavesdropped on his conversation with the woman in the front seat  I realized with a shock that the recliner wasn't for him. It was for her.  

Moral number two: Assume nothing. 


Thing Three

Gender roles and relationships are an important topic, and I don't understand the first thing about them, as illustrated by my stereotyping about recliners. But who knew a board game exists to help novices like me master this tricky terrain? And wasn't it a coincidence that a spanking new edition of the Men Are From Mars, Women Are from Venus board game, based on the hugely popular book, was sitting atop a pile of jigsaw puzzles? Eagerly, I lifted the lid and peered at the directions, which quickly established that the 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of a sunset next to the game would be more elucidating than the game itself. 

Moral number three: Popular wisdom often isn't.  


Thing Four  
    
I perused the pile of books littering another tarp. They promised to teach readers all kinds of useful things: how to knit a sweater, book an ecotourism vacation and understand the meaning of life with a little help from Plato . A young man named Dan Fairley picked up a copy of a self-help manual titled Difficult Conversations: How To Discuss What Matters Most. He decided to take it home. The 22-year-old UVM graduate student, who was among some 50 volunteers who helped run the SMOP, has a job supervising RAs in the dorms and also deals with parents whose sons and daughters are involved in conduct hearings at the university for breaking various rules. Not all the parents are as mature as Fairley, apparently, and he has to say no when they occasionally announce the following: "I don't want to pay the fine so make it go away."

Moral number four: Trust in youth.

Thing Five

Is it clear by now that possessions say a lot about us? Our quirks, our pasts — our feet? I spied a handsome pair of men's dress shoes made from soft, brown leather and wondered if I should scoop them up for a friend or relative. Then I realized the shoes were very large, so large in fact they looked like all of Loomis Street could fit inside. I picked them up because I had to know the size: 14. I immediately felt sympathetic for the former owner, who must have a very hard time finding footwear or even an ottoman large enough to accommodate such planks. I felt a surge of affection for my own size 8 1/2 feet, fallen arches and all.

Moral number five:  Be grateful for what you've got.

Thing Six

Brenda Lee Riley looked pleased with the contents of her brown grocery bag: She'd found a curtain rod, a vase, and wall art of a glamorous woman vogueing in fur and shades. The Essex Junction resident was still looking for a carpet runner, but didn't let that get her down. The smile on her face was a reminder that free is good. "I like it all," she said, of the items all over the street.

Moral number six: Leave home without a credit card more often. 

Thing Seven

Amy Junger sat atop the three-drawer chest she found shortly after the SMOP began. "I just liked it. It's an old one, and it's pretty," she said. 

The Shelburne resident had heard about the event from her daughter, who just graduated from UVM.  "I think it's great, I love recycling," Junger said. Their strategy was to have Junger stay with the items they wanted until they could load them into the car. Meanwhile, her daughter checked out new wares as they came in. Junger watched the castoffs arriving and carefully weighed the fix-up time required, rejecting some items and quickly claiming others. As a wooden bureau on casters appeared in the swap zone, she called out to her daughter: "Get that dresser!"  

Moral number seven: Be decisive.