May 10, 2008
Robert Bork and Yale Club Settle $1-Million Lawsuit Out of Court
Robert H. Bork, the rejected Supreme Court nominee and longtime scourge of liberals, has settled his $1-million lawsuit against the Yale Club of New York City, where he tripped, fell, and hurt himself while stepping onto a dais in 2006.
Mr. Bork’s lawsuit, filed last year, accused the club of “wanton, willful, and reckless disregard for the safety of its guests,” and blamed it for the “excruciating pain” he has suffered since the accident and subsequent surgery.
According to the Associated Press, the terms of the settlement are secret, so it’s not clear if Mr. Bork, who is 81, won justice or the $1-million he sought.
One thing’s for sure, however. The settlement keeps the case out of court, and spares the litigants any further unwelcome moments in the spotlight. —Andrew Mytelka
Posted on Saturday May 10, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [8]May 2, 2008
The Next Best Thing to a Student Loan: Selling Cocaine?
How’s a kid to cover tuition if his mom has bad credit? Wait tables? Work at Wal-Mart?
Or sell cocaine. That’s what a straight-A student at Pennsylvania State University at Altoona told the police he decided to do after he couldn’t get student loans, according to The Altoona Mirror.
Twenty-year-old Michael Conforti, of Hackettstown, N.J., was charged on Thursday with, among other things, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession with intent to deliver cocaine, the newspaper reported. The police say they found drugs, almost $3,500 in cash, and other incriminating items at his residence. Mr. Conforti’s lawyer declined to comment on the charges to the paper.
Maybe it’s time for a War on Bad Credit? —Elyse Ashburn
Posted on Friday May 2, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [11]April 24, 2008
UC-Santa Cruz, New Home for the Dead Letter Society
Yet more evidence came out today that studying a rock band can be a legitimate academic pursuit.
Just a few months after the University of Massachusetts played host to a three-day conference on the legacy of the Grateful Dead, the University of California at Santa Cruz is announcing today that it has struck a deal to archive and house thousands of pieces of the band’s memorabilia, collected over three decades of touring.
The collection of photographs, letters, artwork, newspaper clippings, posters, and backstage passes will be blown safely home to the library at UC-Santa Cruz, just 75 miles south of the San Francisco streets where the Dead began its crawl to fame more than 40 years ago.
The items currently fill 2,000 square feet of a warehouse in Marin County, just north of San Francisco, and are valued in the millions of dollars. The band’s surviving members considered donating the trove to such places as Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley, but settled on UC-Santa Cruz in part because it agreed to terms allowing the band continued access for future albums and other projects.
UC-Santa Cruz was the institution most “flexible in understanding our contractual needs,” Tim Jorstad, general manager and chief financial officer of Grateful Dead Productions, told The Wall Street Journal.
The university also was helped by the overall culture in and around UC-Santa Cruz, which offers a popular undergraduate course about the Grateful Dead’s music. “Santa Cruz seemed the coziest possible home for it,” one band member, Bob Weir, told The New York Times. —Paul Basken
Posted on Thursday April 24, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [5]April 23, 2008
Zombie Horde Tracks Fearful Humans at Goucher College (Video)
A zombie-themed game of tag played with Nerf dart guns and socks has become a craze on several campuses. The latest contest took place last week just outside of Baltimore at Goucher College, where students invented the game about three years ago.
In an epic battle on Saturday, most of the remaining humans faced off against the zombie horde. The Chronicle was there to bring you a video report on the action.
The game starts with a single zombie, who must tag humans to turn them into zombies. Humans can use Nerf dart guns or balled-up socks to stun zombies for one hour. During the game, human players perceive danger around every corner—zombies hide outside of dorm-room doors, lurk in dining halls, or reach into windows. Humans tend to keep their Nerf guns on them at all times.
The toy guns have drawn controversy on some campuses where the game is played because nonplayers have mistaken the orange plastic guns for real weapons, as reported in The Chronicle this week. —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Wednesday April 23, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [14]April 17, 2008
Yale Student Now Denies Having Made Abortions Into Art
(Updated at 9 p.m.)
A Yale University art student who told the campus newspaper that she had repeatedly inseminated herself artificially and then induced miscarriages as part of her senior thesis has retracted those statements, a university spokeswoman announced late today.
The student, Aliza Shvarts, was quoted in the the Yale Daily News as saying that the project was meant to explore the relationship between art and the human body. “I hope it inspires some sort of discourse,” she said. The project was to culminate in an exhibit of video recordings of the miscarriages and plastic-wrapped blood from them, the newspaper said.
Ms. Shvarts told the News that she did not pay the sperm donors, but did require them to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases. She also said that she had induced the miscarriages by taking abortifacient drugs that were legal and herbal, and that she was not concerned for the effects repeated miscarriages might have on her body.
After the article’s publication, however, Ms. Shvarts told senior officials at Yale that she had not impregnated herself and had not induced any miscarriages, the spokeswoman, Helaine S. Klasky, said in a statement posted on the university’s Web site.
Ms. Shvarts “has the right to express herself through performance art,” the statement says. It adds: “Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns.” —Beckie Supiano
Posted on Thursday April 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [104]Ad Campaign by New Zealand's Colleges Seems to Promise Carnal Knowledge
What does making out have to do with higher education? A recent advertising campaign sponsored by New Zealand’s higher-education industry draws an intimate connection. According to the ads, going abroad to get your degree means “You’ll Go Far.” Just how far you’ll go is left to the imagination.
In a steamy hot-tub video, a young, presumably Chinese couple essentially tries to swallow each other’s tonsils. As the camera pulls back, it turns out the couple is not alone. Their disapproving parents, also in the hot tub, are watching the make-out session. The words “Get further away from your parents” flash at the bottom of the screen.
The campaign, “Study in New Zealand: You’ll Go Far,” appears to be aimed at young Asians, particularly in China, which is New Zealand’s largest source of international students. Several short videos are showing up on YouTube.com but are clearly meant to run as television ads, at least in markets without zealous censors.
The videos are sponsored by New Zealand Educated, a nonprofit group that promotes the country’s colleges and universities. The group’s Web site contains information on scholarships and courses of study in several languages, including Chinese, Indonesian, and Korean. Using adjustable meters to set priorities — such as “city buzz,” “surf,” and “snow” — it also allows potential students to find the university far from home that is just right for them. —Martha Ann Overland
Posted on Thursday April 17, 2008 | Permalink | CommentApril 7, 2008
An Alternative to NCSCBHEP: Union Research Center Seeks Shorter Name
New York — Wanted: A much shorter name for the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions.
Richard J. Boris, executive director of the center, announced today at the group’s annual conference that the search is on for a “shorter name and shorter acronym” for what is known as NCSCBHEP.
“People always ask us when we’re going to do something about our name,” Mr. Boris said. “The board has agreed that it’s just something that we have to do.”
The long-winded name is not the only thing that can be confusing. The center is housed at the City University of New York’s Hunter College; its conference of college administrators, scholars, and union leaders is being held at CUNY’s Baruch College; and Mr. Boris is a political-science professor at CUNY’s York College. —Audrey Williams June
Posted on Monday April 7, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [4]University Team Shows How to Slap a Hamburger Together -- in 156 Steps
The task before contestants in this year’s Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, held at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., was to assemble a hamburger the way the famed cartoonist might have imagined it — that is, as elaborately as possible. The Purdue Society of Professional Engineers walked away with top honors on Saturday after designing a machine that accomplished the task in 156 steps, as this video shows.
According to a university news release, the winning machine’s round-the-world theme started at Purdue and spun through England, France, Germany, China, and Mexico, before ending back at a tailgating party at Purdue, where the hamburger was finally made. For its effort, the 17-member team collected a trophy and a $1,000 prize.
Among the six other college teams that competed, Texas A&M University at College Station placed second, and the State University of New York at Buffalo came in third. —Charles Huckabee
Posted on Monday April 7, 2008 | Permalink | CommentMarch 28, 2008
You’re Not the Biggest Loser. Or Maybe You Are.
As a contestant on the reality-television show The Biggest Loser, Roger Shultz is still going strong—as of last week he had shed 127 pounds in the weight-loss competition. Unfortunately reality is far different at home in Alabama, where he has lost his job as an associate athletics director at Jacksonville State University.
Mr. Shultz was hired last May to help beef up the fund-raising and marketing efforts of the athletics department, but because he was gone for several months to tape the show, officials decided to fire him, according to The Birmingham News.
“In this day and time, fund raising and marketing are critical in athletics and we just felt it was time to move forward since we had lost almost one-half of a year in this area,” said Jim Fuller, athletics director.
Mr. Shultz, who was a member of the University of Alabama’s football team 20 years ago, said he has no hard feelings about the decision. Although he was not allowed to comment on the outcome of the competition, he told the newspaper that he appears on the episode airing on April 8. The finale is scheduled for April 15, when the “biggest loser” will win $250,000.
There’s no word on whether Mr. Shultz’s replacement will ask him to donate any potential winnings to Jacksonville State. —Erin Strout
Posted on Friday March 28, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [12]March 18, 2008
Gordon Gee's Bow Tie Rockets Into Space
E. Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University, is renowned for his skill, substantial pay, and ever-present bow tie. Now the president’s neckwear has gone out on its own and made history — as the first bow tie in space.
Richard M. Linnehan, an Ohio State alumnus, took one of Mr. Gee’s scarlet-and-gray bow ties aboard the space shuttle Endeavour before it was launched last week, according to the Associated Press. Dr. Linnehan and the bow tie are on a two-week trip to the International Space Station.
After all, what’s space travel without accessorizing? —Elyse Ashburn
Posted on Tuesday March 18, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [9]
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