It also might be that UH should have been more aggressive in eliminating programs and increasing support services to students to improve retention and ultimately, graduation rates. We were so committed to access to higher education and to providing a wide range of programs so that students wouldn't have to go to the mainland to pursue a specialty, that we neglected to pay enough attention to success in higher education. Clearly, while students need access to post-secondary education and training, they also need to succeed in attaining the credentials demanded in the workplace.

"In light of his sins against pedantry and obscurity, it comes as no surprise that Mumford's name is almost never heard on American university campuses, except, perhaps, in the architecture and urban studies departments. The fact remains that Mumford was a greater sociologist than most of his contemporaries; who now reads Pitirim Sorokin or Talcott Parsons? And a page of history from Mumford is worth any number of tomes by today's Marxist, structuralist, post-structuralist, or race-and-gender theorists."

'According to a University of Nebraska-Lincoln Police report, a black steer escaped from UNL’s Animal Science Complex on East Campus around 7 a.m.

Calls poured in about the animal as it crossed Cornhusker Highway and made its way to 56th and Superior streets.

Don Beermann, head of the Animal Science Department, said the 1,400-pound steer, valued at approximately $1,400, was one of five animals brought to campus from UNL’s feedlot research facility by Mead for use in an introductory-level animal science class.

“The animal would have been here for today’s class, then processed,” Beermann said. “The carcasses from those animals will be evaluated in class next week.”

However, before it had a chance to be slaughtered, the steer was shot and killed.



The animal was being loaded off a livestock trailer when it pushed through an unlocked gate, making its escape, Beermann said.

Lincoln and university police, as well as several students, tried to contain the animal for about two hours before police decided to shoot it after it bucked one student, pinned another against a cruiser and broke a cruiser’s taillight, according to the police report. Police were also concerned the large animal might crash into an oncoming vehicle.

The steer was shot and killed off campus, on 33rd Street between Gladstone and Superior, the report said.

“Any livestock of that size physically could cause injury to a person (if) they couldn’t escape its path of movement,” Beermann said.

Beermann said he was not aware of any damage to campus facilities or equipment as a result of the incident.



While it was the first time Beermann recalled an animal being shot, it was not the first time one had escaped from East Campus.

Last fall, a young heifer walked through a feed bunk at the complex and managed to escape through open gates, Beermann said. However, in that incident, students were able to locate the animal, restrain it and lead it back to the complex with a halter.'

12 female professors [at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga have] proposed [a] resolution to ban group sex. The initiator of this resolution say[s] the practice has corroded the culture to an epidemic status.

…Anthropology professor Lyn Miles describes group sex as an epidemic. She says every year two to three female students, usually freshmen, come to her with the same story. They were drunk.

She and about 11 other professors drafted a resolution to condemn any form of inappropriate sexual behavior, including sequential sex with drunk people…

By increasing references to religious concepts in scientific journals and by moving religion into public discussion at universities, [John] Templeton [of the wealthy Templeton Foundation] has made it easier for closeted believers within the elite halls of the Ivy League to form communities. Martin A. Nowak directs the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard University, where he spends his time trying to figure out why people have evolved to help each other if evolution simultaneously fosters competition. Nowak is also a practicing Roman Catholic, a fact he has kept quiet at Harvard until recently. He says the climate is changing on his campus. "As a scientist who believes, you feel you are completely in the minority and you should never talk about it," says Nowak, who recently became an adviser to the Templeton Foundation. "It's nice to meet people with whom you can talk about a more complete perspective of the world."

Critics worry that Templeton is buying the support of scientists who are desperate to win research dollars. Sean Carroll is an assistant professor of physics at the University of Chicago. An outspoken atheist, he recently declined an invitation to present at a Templeton conference at the University of California at Berkeley. He says that because funding for quantum mechanics is hard to get, some of his colleagues are willing to take Templeton's research grants even if they don't support his beliefs. The Templeton folks make it tempting, he says, because unlike other academic conferences, Templeton's confabs pay presenters. Carroll says he would have received $2,000 to speak at the conference, a similar sum if he published his talk in their anthology, and a chance at a $10,000 prize for scientists under 40. For an impoverished academic trying to scrape by, that's alluring. Says Carroll: "That's money I could have used to, say, buy a car!"

[D]espite the vast interest in, passion for, and intelligence about sports that so many of us possess, "Sports, Media, and Society" is one of the sole sports-related courses offered at Wash. U.

…I guess what I'm proposing is that sports and sports-related subject matter be treated with more respect and more sincerity. Too often, students who choose to write about or research certain concepts or issues associated with sports are not taken seriously. Too often, professors forget that one of the most strenuous, time-consuming assignments of the semester is due the Monday after Super Bowl Sunday.

Do they ever consider how they would feel with a pile of papers to grade that weekend? And besides, the Super Bowl is in and of itself an inter-disciplinary, educational experience. …

[I] don't believe that I, or any other Wash U student, would invest so much time, effort and interest into something that isn't educational or inspiring.

The 18th varsity sport added at Baylor University recently jumped a major hurdle. Richard (BU '81, '82) and Karen (BU '85) Willis of Colleyville, Texas, have provided the lead gift for the Willis Family Equestrian Center.

…The Willises believe deeply in Baylor's mission, and their support stems from a desire to promote the image of Baylor across the nation.

"Athletics is what people think of when they think of a university," Richard said.

COLLEGE BASKETBALL
IS A FANTASY WORLD

By Robert Lipsyte

If you're a fanatic for fantasy, have I got a series for you. This one has it all: Like the Chronicles of Narnia, the good guys sometimes lose, but the message of Goodness shines through.

Like Harry Potter, the heroes are plucky kids with special powers, and just like His Dark Materials, it takes place in an alternate universe a lot like ours but different. Maybe you are already a fan of college basketball.

These are exciting tales, these hoops dramas, often televised live on school nights with thrilling action set to a throbbing background of hard rock, intrigue and danger. The grown-ups, called coaches and college presidents — like the teachers at Hogwarts — may or may not be acting in the hero's best interests. There is a powerful organization, like the Magisterium in His Dark Materials, that acts in mysterious ways, called the NCAA. And as on the other side of the wardrobe, you have to watch out for shadowy characters — here called agents, boosters and shoe sellers.

If you think I'm having a fantasy fit, you need reality therapy.

The American talent for self-deception and wishful credulousness is apparent in our acceptance of big-time college sports as fun and games for "student-athletes." No wonder we are easily distracted when we try to turn our attention to politics and war. We've been conditioned to believe in fairy tales.

This particular fairy tale, part of a multibillion dollar business, is based on the false assumption that Division I college basketball performers are engaged in an extra curricular activity, much like band or student government, for which they happen to get free educations. Furthermore, these young men (and more and more young women) play for the love of the game, although some may also be considered pre-professionals (like their classmates who are pre-law and pre-med majors) because they hope to make it to the NBA. Their presence on campus, we are told, creates a sense of community, brings in revenue and stimulates alumni contributions.

So what could be wrong?

For starters, more and more studies indicate that a team has to practically be a TV regular before it pays its way. The pursuit of star high school players, whether or not they can handle college courses, or even in some cases read and write, has been a corrupting influence on higher education. School spirit isn't helped when non-athletes discover that the perks, the gifts and the grades are available to jocks but not to them.

What I don't understand is how some people can get so exercised about the Christian sensibilities of C.S. Lewis' Narnia tales, the anti-religious propaganda of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials books (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass), and the celebration of wizardry and witchcraft in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books — yet they never get upset by the commercialism, the gambling and the exploitation in big-time college basketball.

Now that the Potter and Narnia books are movies, and the His Dark Materials books are moving into production, more people will be able to compare them with stories used to promote college basketball.

Potter, for example, is an orphan who escapes from a Dickensian childhood to become a star schoolboy athlete (in a hoop game called Quidditch). A disproportionate number of college basketball stars are poor African-Americans who, we are told, wouldn't get a chance to attend a prestigious university without their athletic scholarships.

The Narnia stories offer the most obvious symbols of good and evil because of their innate religiosity. And there's no question of the religious fervor in rooting for a college basketball team, including prayers, chants, bonfires and the satisfying understanding that our Saints, Spartans, Knights are good and your Blue Devils, Sun Devils and Red Dragons are evil.

His Dark Materials is my own favorite, perhaps because it is subversive. The books were inspired by the battle, in Milton's Paradise Lost, between the angelic bands loyal to God and to Satan. Pullman, an outspoken British atheist, has created groups of witches, armored bears and daring adventurers to fight the religious establishment, much as a few scattered organizations have stood up to the NCAA. The Drake Group agitates for quality education for college athletes and supports faculty threatened for defending academic standards. Katherine Redmond's National Coalition Against Violent Athletes has urged Congress to investigate the NCAA's non-profit status.

Meanwhile, the NCAA, basically a trade association of athletic departments, seems willing to catch flak as a kind of Tolkien evil empire so long as it can deflect news media attention from the systemic corruption of its members.

Since it helps to have a child's mind to enjoy J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings books, they would be perfect for the high school hoopsters who have been jumping directly to the pros lately. Maybe the NBA could institute required reading along with its new dress code. Make their teen rookies read about elves, dwarfs, Muggles and Hobbits so they will understand the rest of us while they happily avoid the brutal fantasies of college basketball.

'The latest thump on the controversial best-seller "A Million Little Pieces" is a Seattle federal court lawsuit seeking damages on behalf of consumers for the "lost time" they spent reading the book.


...In a lawsuit filed Thursday, Seattle Attorney Mike Myers lists as plaintiffs two Seattle residents, Shera Paglinawan and Stuart Oswald, who each received or purchased the book "before news of the book's falsity was disseminated."

The suit, apparently the third of its kind to be filed across the nation, seeks class-action status against Frey and the publisher.

Myers distinguished his suit from actions filed in Illinois and California by saying only his seeks compensation on behalf of consumers for "the lost value of the readers' time."

Myers alleges several legal causes for the suit, including breach of contract, unjust enrichment, negligent misrepresentation, intentional misrepresentation and violation of the Washington Consumer Protection Act.

A Random House spokesman said Tuesday the publisher had not yet been served with a copy of the Seattle complaint and would have no comment.

Meantime, a University of Washington law professor who reviewed the complaint said he thought its chances of success were "fairly slim."

Sean O'Connor, who teaches intellectual property and corporate securities law, said it appears that the plaintiffs were trying to force a "legal apology. ... They want Frey and Random House to say, 'This was wrong what we did.' "

O'Connor thought that angle "might get the most sympathy from a jury — if it gets in front of a jury."

But the professor was generally dismissive of other claims. For example, he maintained that the "unjust enrichment" claim would have problems since the publisher is willing to make refunds and in light of the fact that some booksellers also apparently have offered to do likewise.

O'Connor also foresaw difficulty calculating the "lost time" claim. He noted the value of time could differ widely among consumers, as well as the logistics of distinguishing between "slow versus fast readers." '

When implementing these reforms, however, local universities still must use creative marketing to retain nearby customers who might otherwise shop for their courses over the Internet. Local universities have the comparative advantage of offering personal consultation at a lesser price than their competitors. They also have a comparative advantage in offering laboratory facilities and meeting rooms locally for courses that need them or for occasions when customers demand them.

Beyond that, local universities can offer their customers attractive resort facilities, such as low price memberships in campus entertainment centers, gymnasiums, swimming pools and health clubs. Some universities may even be able to piece together groups of faculty whose research, teaching or community expertise gains sufficient notoriety locally or through the Internet to induce customers to matriculate.

But the biggest local advantage can be found in the universities' athletic enterprises. Harvard may be known for its academic prowess, but how much mass media coverage does it get in prime time or on weekends? And how many pay to see its varsity football or basketball teams? By professionalizing their varsity athletics, many universities have been remarkably successful in fostering the loyalty of local supporters, not to mention increasing their proprietary sales of university clothing and paraphernalia. A smart marketing campaign can turn a significant number of these fans into clients and customers.

“The book is aimed at composition teachers -- that's me next year. It's published by Bedford St. Martins, and called Open Questions. The book is composed of essay groups, each gathered under a particular 'big question,' which the essays then attempt to answer from different points of view. In any case, here is a link to the book's table of contents.

Scroll down to question number 5, read it, and then note the first essay in the group.”

He uses these impoverished characters, including his own persona, as a springboard to attack the dominant white culture, which has, apparently, spurned him. In the pantheon of self-appointed Native spokesmen, this puts him more in the company of contemporary gadfly Ward Churchill, who uses his dubious heritage as a soapbox for an airing of his political ideology and personal grievances.

The question that remains is how these frauds are perpetrated in such abundance. A writer, seemingly white in appearance and lacking anything resembling a verifiable personal history, turns in a manuscript filled with sage-like wisdom from an ancient and secretive people and no one bothers to check the facts? Houghton Mifflin’s Anton Mueller, presumably speaking for the publishing industry at large, has an answer: “As you know, we don’t fact-check books.”

…For some reason people lose their sense of discernment when it comes to Indians,” says activist and Indian Country Today columnist Suzan Shown-Harjo.

Harjo, who is Muscogee Creek and Cheyenne, has had her own battles outing those she believes to be Native American impostors. She challenged University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, who gained notoriety last year when he referred to the victims of the 9/11 attacks as “little Eichmanns,” and who claims to be of Cherokee and Creek descent. Though he has no specialized training in the field, he rose through the university ranks to become chair of the Ethnic Studies Department, largely on the basis of his claimed heritage. Yet as Harjo and other journalists have pointed out, he is not an enrolled member of any federally recognized tribe. Likewise, genealogical research carried out by the Rocky Mountain News and several Native journalists could find no trace of Indian blood in Churchill’s family. Despite the insistence of both the Cherokee and Creek nations that Churchill is not one of them, Churchill maintains his position as a professor of ethnic studies and is frequently paid to lecture on Native and political issues around the country. In response to those who question his identity, he simply denies everything and calls his accusers “blood police.”

Do a deviant act or engage in some form of deviant behavior. The act or behavior must not violate the law (criminal or civil law, municipal ordinance, or vehicle code) and it must not violate University regulations. Failure to heed this warning will result in a F for the assignment and referral to the Deans Office and if warranted to the office of the prosecutor.

' Among the episodes she and the other former counselors have called into question are Mr. Frey's claims of being physically abused by other residents of the treatment center, of being left to sleep on the floor of a common room overnight after an altercation, of regularly vomiting blood and of having his nose rebroken and set by a doctor. "He describes a level of medical care that would not occur at Hazelden," Ms. Jay said. "He would have been taken to an emergency room, and any violent behavior would have been met with a discharge." '

'"Too much online instruction is a bad thing," said Terre Allen, a communication studies scholar and director of a center that provides teaching advice to professors at California State University Long Beach.

This last term, Allen experimented with posting extensive lecture notes online for her undergraduate course, Language and Behavior. One goal was to relieve students of the burden of furiously scribbling notes, freeing them to focus on the lectures' substance.

Yet the result, Allen said, was that only about one-third of her 154 students showed up for most of the lectures. In the past, when Allen put less material online, 60 to 70 percent of students typically would attend.

This term, Allen won't put her lecture notes online.'

'According to a recent Newsweek article, professors at several prominent Universities have implemented the technology called “course-casting.” Similar to Apple Podcasting, professors at Duke, Stanford, Drexel and American University have begun recording their lectures in mp3 format and making them available for students to download over the Internet and potentially listen to on their iPods. At long last, you can now listen to a lecture on the Cuban missile crisis in between “My Humps” and Ashlee Simpson’s latest faux-introspective crapfest.

Of course, as with every other time a professor adapts to the changing technological landscape, the college student will inevitably ask his or herself, “How can I use this to be more lazy?” Because students can download and listen to lectures anytime they choose, the need to attend class becomes less and less. Although course-casting at first might seem like an alternative for attending egregiously bad classes, its implementation ultimately would be counter-productive. It would stand to reason that the professors who are savvy enough to utilize course-casting are likely to be the most popular with students. Thus, course-casting would lessen the appeal of the well-taught and intriguing classes, instead of serving as a substitute for poorly taught ones.

Take Microsoft PowerPoint for example. The presentation software has allowed professors to easily integrate text, graphics, sound and video into their lectures. But let’s face it, when you see a professor load up a PowerPoint presentation, your brain half shuts-off. Moreover, when a professor doesn’t use PowerPoint or some other reproducible visual aid, shrieks of terror, cries of anguish and wails of “There is no God!” rattle the walls of the classroom.

Now imagine what would happen if we adopted course-casting. Of course, there would still be that tool who sits in the front row asking if the upcoming exam will be as easy as the old midterms posted on Blackboard. But behind him/her/it, there would be rows of empty chairs peppered with a few students nearly approaching their REM cycle.

It would be cliché to use the “blame society” cop-out, but few could argue that is what’s happening. TV shows on DVD, Internet video, podcasting and TiVo have eliminated the need to listen to or watch anything when it actually happens. But in the case of television, movies and music, we’re not missing anything by watching it later. The same cannot be said for academia. The best professors I’ve had are the ones who engage students and facilitate interesting discussion during class time. Sadly, course-casting would trivialize such intangibles that some professors bring to their classes.

As a result, technology is unfairly forcing professors down two roads. One, either eliminate class lectures completely and make all of the necessary information available online or go back to a third-grade style attendance policy of assigned seats and role-call.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not paying $40,000 a year for either.'

It is one of the worst ideas to hit academia: paying students to tape their professors, in the hopes of discouraging their expression of views that one side considers to be “radical.” Most alumni associations aim to improve their alma maters. But the Bruin Alumni Association -- an unofficial group, not to be confused with the official UCLA Alumni Association -- seems determined to do just the opposite. If it has its way, the classroom will no longer be a place where students and faculty can discuss ideas freely. Shame on them.

Recently the Alaska State Senate announced that it would appoint a special panel to examine policies and directions of the University of Alaska. It apparently wants to know how the University spends its money and how this benefits the citizens of Alaska. I believe that such a committee has been needed for decades. Hopefully it will have enough clout to make recommendations independent of pressure and lobbying from University administrators and Board of Regents.

Perhaps some basic questions can be addressed and answered by this committee:

1. Could the committee provide a public listing and salaries for all University of Alaska administrators earning $100,000 or more per year? Students and citizens deserve easy access to this public information.

2. Why does the University need so many mid and high level administrators? What can be done to significantly reduce this number?

3. Who determines the salaries of these University managers? Should an outside panel set administrative salaries to reduce and contain these costs?

'Commercial schools, which often advertise heavily, promising quick career training to poorly educated students, are booming around the country. Increasingly, they are drawing the attention of federal and state law enforcement officials.

...A recurring question is whether some schools are enrolling students who have little hope of graduating simply to capture the financial aid. In New York, their students drew $136 million in state tuition assistance grants in 2003-4 - 17 percent of the those grants - even though they accounted for about 7 percent of the undergraduates.'

'A University of Prince Edward Island lecturer makes no excuses for offering students a 70 to not show up for his course. But the administration gives his deal a failing grade.

David Weale said he made the offer because the class is too big and some students aren't interested in being there.


About 20 – out of a class of nearly 100 – took him up on it, he said.

The course is in the history of Christianity.

Weale, a retired professor who came back as a sessional lecturer, said he originally offered students a 68 to go away. "But they negotiated with me and got it up to 70," he said before his class on Thursday night.

A 70 is a B-minus at UPEI.

…Weale had only one assignment for the dropouts: walk to the registrar's office and pay for the course.

The fee? "Over $400, close to $500," he said. "They're not doing something for nothing."

The university has vetoed the idea, however.

…"I enjoy his class," Philip MacIsaac said. "I think he's free to do what he wants to do, and I'd like to see more freestyle proffing, as such." '

'In his time Robert Hyams has posed as one of the world's top microbiologists, claiming breakthroughs in the field of Aids and cancer. He has tricked banks, property agents and car companies out of fortunes.

But it was his pretence to be a millionaire art buyer that finally led to jail for the conman when he attempted to swindle the auctioneers Christie's out of more than £1m worth of French masterpieces.

Sentencing Hyams, who pleaded guilty to six counts of attempting to obtain property by deception and three related offences at Southwark crown court yesterday, Judge Geoffrey Rivlin QC described him as "a persistent, serious and sophisticated fraudster" who had led detectives on a "sorry dance."

The court heard how the attempted art fraud, which a repentant Hyams said had made him feel "dirty", began in February 2002 when the 51-year-old approached Christie's posing as a professor of bioscience and wealthy art collector. He convinced the auctioneers of his wealth with a forged bank reference, purportedly from the Union Bank of California, which suggested Hyams had £5m to spend.

Edmund Fowler, prosecuting, told the court how Hyams' claim to be a professor had been falsely corroborated by a certificate from the non-existent "University of Canterbury," which Hyams had purchased in the US for £200.'

In the late 1980s, a history professor from Marquette University named John William Rooney walked into the French National Archives in Paris [Ah, I remember it well! Many moons ago, UD had a fellowship that sent her to Paris and that library.] and walked out with a copy of the 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau, a woven paper with red wax seals and a green silk cord through which Napoleon Bonaparte agreed to give up the French empire and accept exile.

The opportunity to steal a major piece of history, Rooney said, was too tempting to pass up.

"If you were to stand in front of the pyramids of Egypt, you might pick up a chip, too," he said last week during an interview in which he admitted stealing the document. [What a compelling analogy. How true.]

But the decision is continuing to haunt him more than 15 years later.

In 2002, a federal court in New York convicted Rooney of conspiracy to transport stolen property after his friend, Marshall Lawrence Pierce, put the treaty up for auction. Rooney was placed on probation and ordered to pay a fine. The American Embassy in France returned the document to the archives

Rooney thought that was the end of his legal trouble. But in November, a Paris court agreed to try him and Pierce on charges of receiving stolen goods. The case, which will be heard sometime this year, means that Rooney - now 74, retired and living in Wauwatosa - could be sentenced to up to three years in prison, according to the French newspaper Le Monde. [Prenez vos mouchoirs.]

"We are looking forward to seeing them punished for this major crime to our patrimony," a spokesman for the French Ministry of Culture said in an e-mail interview. Rooney, who was born and raised in Birmingham, Ala., attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery before doing graduate work at a Belgian university, he said.

He was hired by Marquette in 1971. A professor of 19th century history, Rooney made an impression on students and colleagues alike, said James Marten, chair of the university's history department.

"He was very flamboyant," Marten said. "He had a real following among some students."

During summer breaks, Rooney would travel to foreign countries to conduct research. Among his destinations was the French National Archives.

"I took out hundreds of documents from there, if not more," Rooney said. [Excellent preparation for your trial in France.]

Between 1987 and 1988, he checked out the Treaty of Fontainebleau and a cluster of letters from Louis XVIII of France, said the French Ministry of Culture. Rooney said he didn't think it was wrong to bring the documents back to the U.S.

"You could say the document got into the national archives because it had been stolen at some point before," he said of the 1814 treaty. "You could say that they stole it." [UD declares a tie here between cretinism and degeneracy.]

But the French National Archives didn't see it that way. In 1996, the archives received a phone call from Sotheby's in New York. Pierce had put the treaty up for sale through the auction house and inquired about selling the cluster of letters. Sotheby's wondered if the archives were interested.

"Our manuscript expert called the French National Archives and said - 'There's this extremely important French document, would you be interested in buying it?' " said Matthew Weigman, a Sotheby's spokesman.

The National Archives wasn't. Instead, the French authorities launched an investigation of Rooney and Pierce. So did the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Documents still missing

Five years later, the two men were tried in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on charges of possessing, transporting and conspiring to sell stolen goods. The U.S. attorney's office in New York didn't have jurisdiction to charge Rooney for theft.

At the time, Rooney and Pierce were living together in Tennessee. Rooney, who resigned from Marquette in 1992, had moved there to work for the University of the South in Sewanee, where he served as a visiting professor in 1995 and 1996. Pierce, 30 years Rooney's junior, was described in press articles at the time as a student of history and an aspiring novelist. [Did you see the movie A Love Song for Bobby Long? This is like totally the plot, man!]