Bye bye bye, SAS!

It seems as if those pesky Students Against Sweatshops clubs are springing up all over the place. And they all have the same original agenda of attacking their local universities for selling licensed collegiate apparel made by tortured seamstresses in Third World countries.

The strategic attack of choice is usually a sit-in staged in the university president's office, until the administrator, growing weary of "socially conscious" protesters lolling about the office, terminates any contracts with Nike and other various Evil Fashion Empires.

The University of Toronto has been suffering from its own SAS saga. But in this case, the president's office decided to inflict the protesters with tunes by the Backstreet Boys at all hours of the night in the hopes of "making life a little more uncomfortable" for the students, according to Reuters.

Would that Nan Keohane display such savvy in dealing with Duke University's very own SAS chapter, which staged a sit-in last fall. After polling many undergraduates about the Toronto affair, many agreed that the Backstreet Boys was indeed the tortuous way to go. Others provided these insightful musical alternatives:

• Guns N' Roses and AC/DC on a loop

• Muzak

• Showtunes sung by beloved acapella groups

• blowing the Dixie horn repeatedly on the Dukes Of Hazzard's General Lee

• Copacabana by Barry Manilow

• William Shatner's rendition of "Hey Mr. Tambourine Man"

• anything by Yoko Ono

• the majestic sounds of the Pikas building "that damn pirate ship outside my dorm room window"

• Liberace

• "musicians" whom Carlos Santana agrees to work with

That's not a bad list at all. Maybe N Sync's "Bye Bye Bye" was a little too symbolic. Guess student input really does matter on the important issues.

-By Angela Fernandes