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May 25, 2012, 02:41 PM ET

4/20 Crackdown at CU-Boulder Was Extremely Expensive, Involved Fish

They say you can attract more flies with honey than vinegar, but at CU-Boulder, attempts to prevent mass marijuana consumption utilized both. For honey, they used a Wyclef Jean concert. For vinegar: stinky fish. Last year, more than 10,000 students rallied on the Norlin Quad to demonstrate for marijuana legalization, and to show the public exactly how said legalization might look, with a "smokeout." This year, to prevent another demonstration, the administration seeded the quad with a fertilizer that included ground-up, stinky fish remnants, which was intended to be more effective than both barrier tape and police presence. As an alternate recreational option, the university also paid for a concert featuring Wyclef Jean. Efforts weren't entirely successful. The Denver Post reported that "A much smaller marijuana smokeout occurred on the field near Duane Physics, with about 300 people... Read More
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May 24, 2012, 06:01 PM ET

A Commencement Speech with a Smooch

Spring means that dignitaries are showing up on campuses across the nation to bestow what guidance they can upon graduates. At some colleges, they even bestow kisses. Andy Samberg, appearing at Harvard, is so swayed by the grandeur of the moment (and Adele's "Someone Like You," which plays as he walks across the stage) that he dances, romances, and kisses Matthew DaSilva, who just introduced him. The grand entrance is at the 2-minute mark. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN_K-UIREYA

May 24, 2012, 12:57 PM ET

Oblivious Law Grad Pays Off $114,000 Loan in Cash, Irritating Everyone

Employees of two different banks have reason to resent University of Toronto graduate Alex Kenjeev, who withdrew $114,000 in cash from his Royal Bank of Canada account, put it in a duffel bag, and walked two blocks to pay off his student loan at Scotiabank. Employees at RBC spent three days processing and counting out the bills for the withdrawal, which he earned in his day job at a venture-capital firm. He had to stay at Scotiabank while employees spent two and a half hours counting it again. Kenjeev told Business Insider, which picked up the story after someone posted a photo of his deposit receipt to Reddit, that he "didn’t really realize how much of a hassle I’d cause for everybody.” Kenjeev, who thought it would be funny to pay off his loan in cash, a mere three years after his 2009 graduation, may have underestimated the emotional toll his symbolic gesture took on others. A... Read More

May 23, 2012, 01:37 PM ET

Egregious Errors and Social-Media Slips

Administrators at the University of Texas (as well as parents, students, and faculty, we assume) were horrified last weekend to find the following misspelling in the commencement program for the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. We can surely let the image speak for itself:

The LBJ school, in its apology letter to graduates, notes that the error originated with the printers, and promised to mail new, wholesome copies. The school also made apologies over Twitter, though that may not have aided their cause, as the Tweet was also misspelled:

Then again, we at The Chronicle can't sit on too high a horse. It shames us to admit that we once sent out a tweet beginning with the abbreviation for University of North Texas (UNT), which is innocuous on its own, but when presented after the large 'C' that makes up our logo, makes for a decidedly unfortunate sentence.

Both of the Tweets in ...

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May 8, 2012, 04:06 PM ET

Video Wednesday

If you spend time on the Web, you've seen some of the clever RSA Animate lectures produced by Cognitive Media on behalf of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Now a group that is critical of Ohio State University's administration has borrowed the whiteboard-animation technique for a video announcing a two-day event called "Re-Imagine OSU," May 16-17. A group of students at Brown University created this video challenging stereotypes about scientists as part of a course on science communication. Harvard University's baseball team went viral this week with a choreographed lip-synch of Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" performed in a team van. (And yes, the guy in the back, Jack Colton, really did sleep through the whole thing.) A research team at Emory University did MRI scans of the brains of two dogs as part of a study into the thought... Read More

May 1, 2012, 08:42 PM ET

Video Wednesday

Last week at MIT, in a carefully orchestrated demonstration of gravity, students rolled a piano off the top of Baker House. This first happened in 1972. Henry Rollins, former singer for the iconic punk band Black Flag, offers advice to the young. The money quote: "That's why you can survive on no sleep, Top Ramen noodles, and dental floss." A freshman at the University of California at Berkeley shows off his Berkeley Ridiculously Automated Dorm room, or BRAD. Read More

April 25, 2012, 02:46 PM ET

The Downside of the Practitioner Faculty Member

When it came to teaching about fraud, Joseph W. Traxler evidently knew his stuff. Mr. Traxler, who was chairman of the accounting program at the Globe University/Minnesota School of Business at Shakopee,  was sentenced on Tuesday to five years in prison for defrauding banks of $8-million through bogus mortgage deals that took place before the school hired him, in 2009, the Minneapolis StarTribune reports. He taught the for-profit business school's fraud course three times and was voted the top faculty member in his first year there. He continued teaching at the school after the charges were filed. Mr. Traxler was an accountant, senior vice president, and chief financial officer of Centennial Mortgage and Funding Inc., in 2007-8. He pleaded guilty last October, the newspaper reports, to "misleading lenders about the status of existing mortgage loans to get them to advance Centennial... Read More

April 11, 2012, 01:40 PM ET

April Fool's Day Carnage Continues for Campus Journalists

Last week we reported that the editor in chief of Boston University's Daily Free Press had resigned after overseeing the production of an April Fool's parody issue that offended many readers.  Now two editors of The Maneater, a student newspaper at the University of Missouri at Columbia, have stepped down under similar circumstances. The Missourian newspaper reported that Abby Spudich, managing editor of The Maneater, resigned Tuesday in response to an outcry over her paper's April 1 issue, which bore the name The Carpeteater, an offensive term used to describe lesbians. Ms. Spudich had apologized to readers for that and for articles that contained derogatory names for women. But after receiving a "mixed response" from readers, she decided to resign. Effective today at noon, Travis Cornejo, The Maneater's editor in chief, also resigned — even though by tradition the newspaper's... Read More

April 10, 2012, 06:11 PM ET

Video Wednesday

In February we mentioned that Drexel University had kicked off National Engineers Week by unveiling seven humanoid robots, one of which was shown rattling a tambourine to a song by Genesis. It was a pitiable performance, but every aspiring musician has to start somewhere, right? Now take a look at how the robots of Drexel's Music Entertainment Technology laboratory have come together as a band in just a few short weeks. Someone sign this bunch! Next Media Animation, the Taiwanese Web site that uses animation to imagine the news, gives its usual treatment to the plans for Yale-NUS College in Singapore. Don't miss the part where Yale President Richard C. Levin helps a student do a keg stand. If you've never visited the Web site of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, you're missing out. Its All About Birds guide allows visitors to sample the sounds and sights of 585 species, and right... Read More

April 4, 2012, 03:03 PM ET

Oh, the Lives That You'll Save

At Dartmouth College
That great font of knowledge
They'll soon introduce
.
Though not a doctor, we all called him one,
A sign of respect for a man who had fun
Telling sing-songy stories that make parents groan
But that left us as children not feeling alone.
.
His real name was Geisel,
Theodor (with no "e").
An incredibly generous
Author was he.
.
An alum from the class of nineteen twenty-five,
They say he gave more than any alive.
And for that they'll remember him and his wife
(the woman with whom he spent most of his life).
.
The medical school will carry a plaque
(one you might see if you swallowed a tack
or got mauled by a bear
or a cat in a hat).
.
That plaque will name Audrey and her late husband, Ted,
As the pair who helped pay for your hospital bed
And the doctors, the X-rays, the pills, and the nurse.
You'll go home all recovered and still have ...
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