11:37 a.m.
When you run out of flyers promoting your student group, just hand out granola bars and frozen juice sticks. Students are always hot and hungry.
“They’re melting, but still refreshing,” announces Tina Gargotta, 22, standing outside the College of Arts and Sciences as students swarmed about her, taking advantage of her charity.
Gargotta, wearing a t-shirt that reads, “got hope?” is serving a fellowship with the Hillell Jewish Student Center of Tampa Bay. Her supply of treats fills a red Radio Flyer wagon, where there was once an abundance of flyers that advertised upcoming events sponsored by the student center.
“Engagement is our plan,” said Jonathan Franks, 22, a USF student who serves on the board of the Jewish center, as he stood with Gargotta.

Dennis Kane, who is not a USF student,
wanted everyone to know he invented something important

The commons area outside the College of Arts and Sciences typically is the right spot to do that. The area swarms with students walking to class, reading the student paper or munching on snacks. On one end, a group is handing out free Vault energy drinks, on another end, 31-year-old Dennis Kane of Tampa, sings the lyrics to Pearl Jam’s song, “Black,” and holds aloft a sign in which he claims to have created a Web site of artificial intelligence.
Gargotta still is hawking her treats. “Get your cold ice!” A can of Vault energy drink sweats in the Radio Flyer. 

11 a.m.
When you sign up for a class on literature and the occult, “wouldn’t you kind of suspect you were going to be reading spooky stuff?” Professor William Heim asks his students.
Sure. But Heim has to write a course objective, summing up his subject, that “someday, when you have time, you can read through,” he tells his class of 25 students.
That summary reads, in part, “Our rational, scientific century has displayed an enormous revival of interest in the occult, one that shows no sign of disappearing. What is it? The term ‘occult’ simply means, something that is hidden.”
Heim sighs. “If you were to turn that paragraph in to me, you’d get a D-minus,” he says.
He holds up a few books. “Has anybody read H.P. Lovecraft?” No one raises their hands. “Has anyone read Henry James’ ‘Turn of the Screw?’ No.
He moves on.
He talks to students about the university’s parking issues. “What is like out there?”
“Like hell,” one student replies.
The silver-haired professor doesn’t list too many demands. But he doesn’t stand for cell phones ringing in his class. “I never had to say this before, and I know you’re extremely important people.”
But, “if it goes off during an exam, I’ll make you eat it.”
“The exam or the phone, sir?” says a student wearing a shirt with lyrics from The Doors’ song, “People are Strange.”

10:32 a.m.
Rokiesha Dowling walks out of the financial aid office, a little bleary-eyed and frustrated. She has problems.
“This is the time when everybody’s stressed out,” says Dowling, 20, a mass communications major.

Matt Davidson waits for his class to begin.

She declines to say what her problems are. But inside the financial aid office, others share her misfortune and misery.
The line snakes around the office with students who are waiting for money that may take days to arrive. Some are confused by the dizzying forms placed in their hands by financial aid staff trying to help. “I think ‘D’ here means ‘development,’ but I’m not sure,” one student says.
A nearby room is packed with students, and none of them are smiling. A sign above them reads, “Waiting Room.”
“It’s not as bad as it’s been before,” said Nick Tester, 22, a senior wrapping up his aid needs. He waited about 20 minutes, he says. Leaving, though, he wonders whether he’ll have enough money for food this week.

10:11 a.m.
Edgardo Valentin sits at a foldout desk in the middle of a busy courtyard. To his left is the financial aid office. To his right, the admissions office. On his desk is a bowl filled with SweeTarts candy.
A sign pinned to a wooden stake advertises that his is the Help Desk. Wayward students come to Valentin, who works for the admissions office, and ask where to find their classrooms or the registrar’s office, or where they can buy a parking permit.
The SweeTarts are going fast.
“This is going to be like this for at least the first three days,” Valentin says. 

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