Good morning, Mayor Vincent Gray!

Just trying that one on for size, given the BIG NEWS in the mayor's race! What does everyone think: "Can We Do Better"? How could we not, with a "dyed in the wool homey" at the city's helm? (How do you spell that word anyway? Backed up by Webster's New World, we're going with "homey." The Washington Post, though, which everyone knows is super-hip, likes  "homie." So we and Webster's might have to reconsider.)

Anyway, the Post likes this all very much, because the Post told Vince to run. And, you see, "A Gray-Fenty mayoral race opens up choices for the District." Now I suppose it does!

Nine people were shot last night in a driveby in the 4000 block of South Capitol Street SE; police at the scene told City Paper's Rend Smith that three people were killed, including two males and one female, after a van pulled up and opened fire on a porch full of people.

In case you missed it yesterday, Cara Cottle, the former girlfriend of Dirk Smiler, a mainstay in the D.C. goth scene who was shot in the head in February, was arrested and charged with his murder. Reached by WCP Arts Editor Jonathan Fischer, who has reported extensively on what went down the night Smiler died, Cottle declined to comment, saying: "Go to hell."

A D.C. Council oversight hearing into the conditions and mismanagement at the D.C. General shelter will be held today beginning at 10 a.m. It's a hearing and all, so Families Forward, which has the contract to run the place, will have to say something. So will honchos from the Department of Human Services. Jason Cherkis will be there to write down in his notebook whatever it is.

And finally: As the official Booty Wall and Booty Clock correspondent for City Desk, I must bring to your attention another Booty-related event: Yo Mama's Big Fat Booty Band is coming to D.C.! Well, Falls Church, Va., but still. The booty cannot be stopped.

Happy hump day, City Desk! Happy hump day, Maybe-Possibly Mayor Gray!

Today, however, we return to links to teachers bitching about Michelle Rhee, those random crime stats in that made-up neighborhood, and some important, breaking burrito news in a slowly gentrifying renaissance zone. Well, no burrito news today, but you know what we mean.

Harry Potter and the Urban School Nightmare writes about Rhee and blame:

"I think I just solved Michelle Rhee's PR problems.

OK, not me so much as two researchers from California whose study argues that blaming other people is contagious. This article gives details about the study, which found that when people were exposed to articles by people who blamed failure on others rather than accepting responsibility, the subjects were more likely to blame others for their own personal (and totally unrelated) failures. I'm not sure I'm doing the study justice, so read the article."

14th and You has the lowdown on a crime meeting in Shaw with Phil Mendelson that yielded more fingerpointing than results.

Left for LeDroit writes about fractals. Fractals!

At Congress Heights on the Rise, The Advoc8te talks tough with fellow Ward 8 activists by offering this message: Stop with the crabby, selfish, counterproductive attitudes and actions!

"Don’t get me wrong. I love Ward 8. I really, really do love Ward 8, but sometimes navigating through the dysfunction, childishness and jealousy (that’s right I said it) of community politics is like watching children fighting over a toy. They would rather break it than share it.

What is this crap of ‘old residents vs. new residents’ or ‘middle class vs. working class’ or ‘East of the River vs. River East’? It’s nothing but a diversion; a diversion to keep us busy fighting each other instead of working together to solve real problems like homelessness, illiteracy and unemployment. If you live in Ward 8  then you are my neighbor – it's that simple. It is time to smarten up people. Stop letting third-parties play our community for fools. Let’s stop playing to the stereotype. Let’s stop being crabs!"

The 42 has details on this weekend's Holiday Booty Market, featuring local indie designers. (Note: This event is not affiliated with the Booty Wall at Howard University.)

Someone with noisy, asshole neighbors writes in to Prince of Petworth seeking advice.

We don't know what The New Teacher on the Block is up to, since she has made her blog private. Email her at newteacherontheblock (at) gmail.com to see if she'll give you an invite.

And, if you like, follow me on Twitter.

Jules Cooper was a resident in the all-girls Vault in the 80s, when it was on the sixth floor of West Ambler Johnston Hall (the building has since become much better known as one of the sites of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre). Cooper didn't live there by "choice," as the rest of the students did (meaning their parents had carefully considered the risks of girls living among boys, and chosen it for them); she had a forced roommate switch a few weeks after the school year began, and the new roommate was a Vaulter.

The accommodations were such that everyone on the floor – mostly freshmen – shared a common bathroom, Cooper says. And the highlight of the day – I mean, not counting the days when there were panty raids – was "when an old guy from Roanoke came in to get trash and yelled, 'Man onna hall!'"

She writes:

Everyone on that hall was certifiable in one way or another. ... None of my friends on the hall made it past sophomore year, most dropped out from drugs, grades, booze, and yes, [conflicts over] sexual orientation. So much for clean living sequestered away from the boys.

From the outside world, though, we were the girls in the Virgin Vault, whispered reverently. I cannot explain the guy mentality, but it was there. There would be huge panty raids in front of the hall with 100s of frat boys yelling "Vault Vault Vault Vault."  We never threw panties. Mostly we lit a candle and sat on the floor until it passed. Also, a favorite hazing ritual from fraternities was to chain a guy to the lamppost in front of West AJ and make a bunch of noise so we'd all watch him take off his clothes to escape.  We watched that. Average time to work up nerve to unclothe? Shockingly, a minimum of 45 minutes.

(My, how times change.)

Not everyone living in a "Virgin Vault" is a virgin, believe it or not. Kelly King attested to that fact in a 2002 article in the campus' University of Virginia's Cavalier Daily newspaper called "It takes all kinds to be in the V-Club."

She wrote:

When I was in high school,
 I decided I no longer wanted to be a virgin. I was the last of my friends remaining in the precious V-club and I hated it. They would sit around and talk about sex with their boyfriends and all I could do was sit and listen or add the occasional oral sex tip. I wanted to know what I was missing....

Fortunately, when I left "the club," my fears were put to rest because I found the right guy, and I didn’t have to wait a decade to get some. Moreover, when I got to college I realized that real life virgins over the age of 16 actually did exist (OK, maybe my friends were way ahead of the game). I was actually one of the only people on my hall who had ever had sex, hence our nickname: the "Virgin Vault."

Jeff Craley, a 22-year-old Tech senior who works at the campus radio station, WUVT, has heard of the Virgin Vault, of course (the housing office says it does not have a "freshman-only, female area" on campus, though there are single-sex female dorms). His impression of anyone who would live in such a place: "I'd probably just assume that they're religious."

Other schools have so-called Virgin Vaults, too, as it turns out; some are all-girls floors, some are girls-only dorms (when the VV at the University of Wisconsin went co-ed in 2006 it was said the dorm had been "deflowered"). Some girls at Indiana University tried to get some T-shirts together commemorating the end of their time in the Vault there. Sadly, they couldn't get the money together in time, but here's the design:

Note: This item is not affiliated with the Booty Wall at Howard University (as far as we know).

My having written about said Booty Wall for City Paper's City Desk blog yesterday unleashed nothing short of a wrath in the Comments field. I was labeled, among other things, a "backwoods racist ass jerk," a "bigot," and an "elitist," for writing about what someone else had written about the Booty Wall on a site called HU Reaction (some commenters on my post used profanity and racial epithets about other commenters as well).

Wrote Vanessa: "How dare you write some crap like this. why are you all so intimidate by africa americans. what about the drinking parties at maryland university or the other all white schools. Howard University should have a african american home coming queen, it is a HBC and Hampton should have one also. I am so sick of undercover, backwoods racist ass jerks trying to stereotype africa americans..you need to take you ass back to minnesota."

I was also accused of disparaging Howard's Homecoming, being held this weekend, by pointing out that Homecoming comes around only once a year, while the Booty Wall is available for fun year-round. That line prompted a comment that I had insinuated "that Howard University has prostitution on campus and the freshmen students sell 'booty' 24/7, rain, shine, sleet or snow." One person wanted to see the police report backing up my prostitution "claim."

Anyway, this is all so important that it's going to be one of the main stories the Hilltop is reporting on during this homecoming weekend. Barnett, a junior from Winston-Salem, N.C., said that he himself had been upset when he read my post, and that the headline ("Who Needs Howard's Homecoming When There's the 'Booty Wall'?") seemed "a little inflammatory to me."

Barnett was kind enough to answer some of my questions after I finished answering his: He told me he learned of the Booty Wall about a week into his freshman year, when some guys said they were going there. "I'm thinking, like, what is that?" he said. Barnett described it somewhat like the original poster did, without going crude: It's a place outside the girls' dorm, the Quad, where "freshman girls and freshman guys get to meet and congregate." Down the line, sure, they "may be able to get a relationship going or whatever," he said.

(The original poster wrote: "Ladies sit beside it as if they were in a gallery as males try their luck with cliché pickup lines and desperation tactics. The young male may wait patiently along this wall for days – weeks even to be accepted by one of the women who sit by it. It is a freshman’s dream to be invited inside the Quadrangle, however at best they will just be able to look inside the lobby as one of the girls go back to her room.")

Barnett estimated that only about 50 to 75 guys "use" the wall. And he isn't one of them. "I haven't met anybody at the Booty Wall," he told me.

Barnett said that things had gotten "a little out of hand" in terms of the reaction to my post but suggested that, if I hadn't mentioned Homecoming, the reaction may well have been less vigorous. I asked him how he felt about the original post, from which all this stemmed, and he said it bothered him (he hadn't read it before yesterday).

"It upset me a little bit – more than yours," he said of the HU Reaction item. "Because I realize your post came from his post. Howard is a very conservative institution. It does not help the conservatism of our institution. It doesn't help us keep the prestige of our institution."

There is another way to deal with all this, though: Just blame me.

Ideas? Comments? I’m at eniedowski@washingtoncitypaper.com, and on Twitter.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Kent Cookes! The landed gentry of Middleburg, Va., by way of a Canadian encyclopedia salesman made a United States citizen by an act of congress! They had a town named after them, and then they didn't! Late-night rides through Georgetown with a boy-toy clinging to the hood of a Jaguar! Throwing shoes at cops! Angry wills! John Kent Cooke was supposed to run the Redskins, and then he wasn't!

You can blame Dan Snyder for a lot of things. But foremost has to be depriving us of this family through his "appalling" use of the same free market system that brought them to us.

Other stuff is happening, too. Korean exorcisms, for instance. (Joe Eaton, where are you on this?) The country's least consequential gubernatorial race (1) (2)! MoDos in Crystal City! Booty walls! Check out the Web this morning, it has a ton of great stuff!

BIKE COMMUTING CORNER. Cars try to hit bicycles. They often succeed! Commuters try to defend themselves with high-visibility clothing. But sometimes a blindingly yellow jacket is not la chose juste. Dude. Get yourself some neon stickers. A couple on your helmet, one on your fender, maybe on your bag? You can provide just enough visibility to have a case in your lawsuit.

Dang! Out of time! I'm bounceville! Follow me on Twitter!

It's a big week over at Howard University, what with homecoming festivities and all. There's all kinds of stuff on tap: the Homecoming Fashion Show, the Homecoming YardFest, the Homecoming R&B Concert, the Homecoming Step Show, the Homecoming Kings and Queens Reception (IMPORTANT NOTE: Unlike its rival among historically black institutions, Hampton University in Virginia, which recently picked its first non-black Miss HU, Howard has an African-American queen, Kendall Isadore. Phew!).

But really, one need not attend any homecoming events at Howard to have a good time. There's always the Booty Wall. Available year-round, if you don't mind the cold.

A recent post on HU Reaction offers this rather insightful look at the wall and those who apparently frequent it:

This wall, located to the left side of the females-only dorm The Quad, is designed for underclassmen males and females to get better acquainted, so to speak. The Booty Wall epitomizes everything about the roles virgin males and unwilling females play in society. Ladies sit beside it as if they were in a gallery as males try their luck with cliché pickup lines and desperation tactics. The young male may wait patiently along this wall for days – weeks even to be accepted by one of the women who sit by it. It is a freshman’s dream to be invited inside the Quadrangle, however at best they will just be able to look inside the lobby as one of the girls go back to her room.
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As a friend of mine once said, “It’s a place for students (and old ass niggas in cars) to chill with the opposite sex despite the fact that they’re broke. There’s a lot of potential on that wall, you just got to pick the right one.”
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For the past few years there has been a dirty ice cream truck notorious for parking right outside by the booty wall. We haven’t bothered to look inside to see what the driver has to offer, BUT YOU KNOW IT’S NOT SELLING ICECREAM!
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Also the Campus Police have been keeping a careful eye on the booty wall recently, claiming that it is now “illegal,” to sit beside it. I guess Campus Police is good at cockblocking campus-wide traditions. I thought HU was all about keeping the legacy alive?
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Regardless, ALL HOWARD UNIVERSITY ALUMNI KNOW ABOUT THE BOOTY WALL! Ask your Uncle Tyrone the Q about it and he will tell you a story or two, followed by loud groans and pelvic thrusts. If an alum does not know about the Booty Wall, then you should ask for their diploma. Seriously.

My friend Tanika Davis, who used to be Tanika White when she graduated from Howard in 1995, is obviously not a real alum. "I lived in the Quad (the freshman girls' dorm) and hung out on that wall from time to time," she emailed me when I asked her about it. "But never did I call it the Booty Wall."

She thought it was just a wall!

City Desk intends to follow up with campus police.

Ideas? Comments? I'm at eniedowski@washingtoncitypaper.com, and on Twitter.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery. For more Howard football pictures, click here.