Each month, Ink-Stained Wretch scours the Forum archives in search of forgotten VLS history.

By Blake Weinard, Lifestyle Editor

You might think that Vermont Law School has always been a sleepy, little place free of scandal. Think again.

VLS Winter Weekend ’92 was “perhaps the most eventful snowfest in the school’s history.” There was a broomball tournament, 25-cent drafts at the South Royalton House (back when it had a downstairs pub), and even a student-faculty ski trip to Pico.

Instead, everyone on campus was talking about the three State Police cruisers that hauled away eight kegs of Catamount Brewery gold and amber from the SoRo House.

“It seems that the rumor mill was working as usual and I heard several different and varied renditions of the weekend’s events,” Kim Kearney wrote in the Feb. 21, 1992 edition of The Forum. “While none of the stories completely jive with any of the reports I’ve received, none of the reports I’ve received completely jive with each other.”

Sound familiar?

According to Kearney’s account, the owner of rival bar The Four-Legged Duck reported the SoRo House and the Student Bar Association, which had organized the party, to the state Liquor Control Department.

Or who could forget the rash of VCR thefts that rocked campus to its core in 1988? Two VCRs were stolen from the General Practice Program and Library. The thefts led the front page of the Nov. 18, 1988 edition of The Forum under the headline “Vanishing VCR’s” [sic] and at least one of the thefts was reported to the State Police.

According to then librarian Les Peat, the perpetrator either did not want to buy or rent their own VCR, or they intended to hamper the ability of their fellow students to learn.
Peat said there had been instances where books had disappeared from the library, only to rematerialize after the end of the semester—luckily, unthinkable at today’s VLS.