By Brianna Shore

Every once or twice a year we like to check in on many of our staffers’ former and current alma mater, the University of Miami, to see if the campus’s suspiciously lovely grass remains greener than the alien patches strewn outside our shitty apartments. Who are we kidding? The voyeuristic aspect is almost bar none – on par with being some limbless Eli Roth character stumped-up helplessly in a bloody corner awaiting the inevitable next pack of fresh, doe-eyed hotties to stumble into the operating room of doom that is the real world. Sorry, my BF will not shut the fuck up about Grindhouse.

It is with true sincerity and even a little awe (why didn’t I think of this when I bathed daily in $40K sunlight? Oh yeah, “What is YouTube?”) that ignore Magazine interviewed UM senior Kathryn Bain, a witty Visual Communication major. Ms. Bain’s superb website University of Miami Complaints has provided us with almost an hour of solid entertainment; an hour of bliss that only current UM students insularly bitching about this nation’s golf course of think-tanks on tiny screens can provide.

Our fave clips on UMC are numerous, many begrudgingly beloved for their semi-cherished flashback quality: “Snooty, little bitches!”; “New gym machines!”; “Parking ‘tattoos’!”; “Duck shit so slippery that I can’t even enjoy the awesome sunsets as I walk to class…those were the only reason I came here!”; “Short intermural sport seasons!” And, well, “Nobody in the UC will read my fucking flyers for upcoming yearbook photos! Can they just read them! Gohd.” Oh yes, this is the crème de la UM.

As the world’s wars rage like so many cliché oil fires in war movies, it’s satisfying to see that UM’s current batch of smarties seem more akin in their decided topics for lethargic protest to NYU’s than the loudmouths at Columbia (and way to go American U). And hey, seeing as how times haven’t evolved much since Outside Providence, they probably didn’t get waitlisted at either of those New York institutions. Fine, acceptance is a wee bit harder. Oh, and now hipsters rival UM’s infamous sorostitutes for around-the-clock sunglasses.

ignore : Where did you get this brilliant idea, and I mean that sincerely? Was it more a case where you finally decided to document UM students citing the same trivial matters since you arrived or did you feel some of these complaints or students were valid?  

Kathryn Bain : Well, actually I was given an assignment for an interactive video course that I am currently taking. The topic was completely open. The only requirement was that you would create a video blog. So, I decided that I wanted to do something that UM students could take part in and watch. It just so happens that the one thing we all have in common is our complaints.

What percentage of these students’ complaints is not ironic? I watched three that seemed to be (all in “Week 5”), but the majority seemed heartfelt wrapped all cozy in a giant Juicy Couture hoodie.  

KB : When I interview some people they choose to joke around and have fun with it but I would have to say that mostly all of the complaints are real, especially the reoccurring complaint about campus parking. 

Was that kid complaining and fighting against the lack of skateboard rights on campus (see “Week 6 ”) filmed in the ‘80s, or are you able to freeze time and revisit that decade for footage purposes?  

KB : Haha, I am assuming you’re talking about Knightly. He was one of my most passionate and interesting complainers. It’s much more amusing to watch the very opinionated and quirky people. 

Is President Shalala now dividing her time between solving those and the ones she’s currently facing as part of the Walter Reed commission?   

KB : I’m not sure that she’s seen it yet but hopefully I can get more students watching it and participating so that some of the issues can be resolved, such as all of our cars getting dented on the first day of class. 

You have 10 seconds: Is there a solution for the parking problem, already?

KB : I think that we need another parking garage put in over on the side of campus where the Memorial Building is. UM is a commuter campus and almost everyone has a class in Memorial, which makes it impossible to park there. Plus it would cut down on the overflow going to the Communication building. 

Has anyone looked at you, spaced out for a second in the sun and said, “I love UM! It’s a private university and we’re all crazy lucky to be here with a war going on?”  

KB : Plenty. There are a lot of people that think for a second and say that they have no complaints. Or I get that “my mom works for the university so I can’t say anything bad.” 

Why did you decided to use some of Banksy’s art in the intro, which is very well done by the way?   

KB : When I pitched the idea to my professor and told him that I wanted a bunch of flashing images at the beginning that in a way mocked the stereotype of UM culture, he suggested throwing some Bansky in there to poke fun a little bit more. 

Do you think all colleges should think about hiring people for an actual job filming students’ every complaint? The results would beat never watching UM-TV or mtvU, right?  

KB : Even if I think that they should do this, they never would because they don’t want to look bad. In my eyes it would help them improve their universities and the student life on it but I guess when your university promotional video shows up on YouTube right next to week after week of complaint videos, it doesn’t look so good. 

What about the war, though?  

KB : I’m not a politician. I’m a blogger.