[Many people] wonder what is going on with the [Ohio University] football program. Seventeen players have been arrested in Athens County in the past nine months, The Dispatch found, after only a smattering of arrests in recent years.

Not one player has missed a minute of game time because of misconduct — drug abuse, alcohol offenses and assaults — that led to misdemeanor convictions in Athens Municipal Court. Ten have been convicted, four cases are pending, and three cases were dismissed after the players completed a diversion program that involves counseling and community service. [Coach] Solich, in his second year at OU after six seasons coaching powerhouse Nebraska, is displeased with the number of arrests but defends his discipline system.

"We think it’s not only fair, but pretty tough," he said.

A felony, weapons-charge or second offense brings the possibility of game suspensions or dismissal from the team, Solich said. Two players were kicked off the team last year.

Informed that Johnson also was convicted of disorderly conduct in 2003, Solich said he did not consider that a second strike because the offense occurred before he became coach.

The spike in player misconduct is set against an OU crackdown on student alcohol violations and Solich’s conviction for drunken driving late last year. The university’s get-tough policy says that repeated alcohol offenses could lead to student suspensions, and parents of underage students are being notified of arrests.

OU President Roderick McDavis would not comment about the football program. McDavis previously placed Solich on probation for his DUI conviction and ordered the coach to participate in campus alcohol-education efforts.

The chairman of the university’s board of trustees was stunned by the numbers.

"Not good news," said R. Gregory Browning, of Columbus. "I can promise you I will be following up on this immediately. It obviously raises concerns. We’ll make sure it’s dealt with in the right way."

Athletics Director Kirby Hocutt said he was not happy with the number of arrests but did not think further punishment was warranted.

In contrast to the 17 OU players charged in Athens Municipal Court since Jan. 1, four Ohio State University football players were charged in Franklin County Municipal Court during the same period.

OSU Coach Jim Tressel determines player punishment on a case-by-case basis and does not reveal his sanctions, said Steve Snapp, athletics department spokesman.

The OU football team includes 85 scholarship players and 40 walk-on players. The 17 arrested players account for nearly 14 percent of the roster.

A total of 1,127 students have been referred this year by police for potential punishment by OU campus judiciaries following arrests and other misconduct. That number represents about 5.6 percent of the 20,000 students on the Athens campus.

Douglas Bolon, a health-sciences professor and chairman of OU’s Intercollegiate Athletics Committee, promised a review of player conduct and discipline when the committee meets Oct. 16.

Solich regularly issued game suspensions to players convicted of crimes while he coached at Nebraska and removed at least two players from the team.

The coach said most of those players were suspended because they were convicted of second offenses or, in one case, hit a fan of an opposing team who came on the field after a game.

Kraus, night manager of The Pub, suffered head and other injuries on April 23 when [two players] knocked him to the ground and repeatedly punched him after they had been ejected from the bar, according to court records. [One player] was accused of kicking Kraus in the head.

Both were convicted at a trial on Sept. 21 before Athens Municipal Court Judge William Grim. Jackson, 21, of Kiln, Miss., also was charged with assault and found guilty of the lesser offense of disorderly conduct.

Grim declined a request for an interview. The judge typically tries to schedule students’ jail time during breaks or on weekends so they do not miss classes, city prosecutors said.

The Nov. 27 jail-reporting date for Johnson comes during OU’s break between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.

"The university, the athletic department is blowing this off like nothing, when I was being kicked in the head," Kraus said.

Kraus and three other Court Street bar managers and owners say they have contacted Solich and other OU officials since mid-2005 to complain about player misconduct in their businesses.

Solich said players have been forbidden to enter The Pub, where others also have found trouble. Two players, including one charged with punching a police horse, were arrested outside the bar on April 29. Another was charged May 6 with threatening to kill a bar employee.

Two other players were convicted of disorderly conduct for punching and kicking a man who apparently had an earlier altercation with a football player.

OSU will request $25 million from the Oklahoma Legislature to build an engineering research center as a solution to problems recently caused by the construction at Boone Pickens Stadium, said Gary Shutt, director of communications.

The vibrations from the construction machinery make vibration-sensitive research projects in the Advanced Research Technology Center basement impossible, said Alan Tree, associate dean for engineering research.

The projects in the basement are in the scientific category known as nano-science, an area of science that emerged in the past ten years, which deals with nanometers, Tree said. To put a nanometer’s size into perspective, one billion make up a meter.

Shutt said because of the sensitivity of nano-science, it is essential that the work be done in the proper environment. “Research is one of the missions of a land-grant university,” Shutt said. “The important work being done by CEAT in nano-technology is a priority for OSU.”

The vibration problem affects about 40 students — some working on projects to earn their doctorate and master’s degrees — and about eight professors, who each have more than one project, Tree said.

Solutions for what to do until the center is built have been discussed, such as the closing of Hester Street once the construction by the stadium is finished in 2008, Shutt said.

“As part of the construction on the west end zone over the next two years, we will build the road and ramp north of the ATRC that will lead into the west end zone,” Shutt said.

“Once the road is built we will do additional testing to evaluate the impact of vibrations, if any, on the research. If there is a problem, traffic will be limited or halted until the research is moved to a new location,” he said.

Tree said when the ATRC was designed 10 years ago, the designers knew traffic on Hester Street would be one cause of vibrations.

To block those vibrations, part of the ATRC extends deeper than the basement of the building and further to the north and south, Tree said.

“What that does is it creates a large air pocket that shields us from Hester Street,” Tree said. “The issue (of vibrations) has come up recently because we had not anticipated that Hester Street would curve around and be on the north side of the building.”

Along with the change in Hester Street, the ramp built to service the west end of the stadium wasn’t expected by the designers of ATRC either, Tree said.

“Someone who isn’t well-versed in nano-science may not realize that a semi-truck going up a ramp will affect the vibrations in a nearby building,” Tree said.

Alan Cheville, an electrical engineering associate professor, said although there are solutions to end the vibrations when the construction is completed, not much has been decided for what to do right now.

“Basically we work as best we can but there really is no short term solution,” Cheville said. “There’s millions of dollars of equipment that we can’t move. We don’t have a place to put it.”

Special tables that adjust to vibrations could be purchased, but they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and might not solve the problem. And the projects can’t simply be moved to another laboratory because building space is expensive, at hundreds of dollars per square foot, Cheville said.

“For the faculty who are very active in their research field – they’re in high demand,” Cheville said. “If things become too difficult, they can just leave.”

Faculty members have contracts with government agencies and companies who pay about $1 million to have research done, Cheville said.

If a place becomes problematic for the research the scientists must perform, they find other universities at which to do their work.

When faculty leave the university, students usually follow, with the university losing out, Cheville said.

Tree said the researchers who work in the basement are world renowned scientist and the research pertaining to nano-science leads the field worldwide.

Cheville said one of the research groups he’s involved with makes electronic chips for computers, dealing with wires that are one hundredth the size of a human hair.

“When you’re trying to do the process, things have to be very, very stable because any kind of vibration can cause errors in wires of that size,” Cheville said.

Tree said faculty from both the engineering and athletics departments have worked on the problem along with university administration.

Tree said new facilities mean possibilities for even better research.

Before coming to OSU, all of the professors working in the basement facilities were well-established and highly respected researchers elsewhere, Tree said.

“Part of the reason we were able to attract them here was because the ATRC was in the works,” Tree said. “There was a commitment here to facilities they needed and we’ve continued that commitment with this decision.”

'Until earlier today, viewers of BoingBoing, a popular blog, could watch a video clip of a giggling business-school lecturer acting goofy in class, under the heading “apparently-baked biz school prof who was soon fired.”

The professor, Howard J. Hall, a lecturer at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business, appears in a video still on the site brandishing his middle finger. The video was available through links to the college’s Web site. Next to the photo, the poster wrote: “It appears from the content of this video that this University of Florida professor—whom everyone has to take in the business school—got REALLY REALLY REALLY HIGH before one of his classes.”

The poster goes on to say, “He does ramble, but he’s far more entertaining than any of the business school professors I ever sat through.”

By late today, the spectacle on BoingBoing was no longer available because the video had been removed from the college’s Web site, where it had been offered as part of a classroom-video service. Copies of the video are probably still somewhere out in cyberspace, however.

William A. McCullough, senior associate dean at the college, said Mr. Hall had been relieved of his teaching duties, pending a review of his employment status. Mr. McCullough said he had received a half-dozen calls so far from “the curious public,” adding that there are some “unfortunate things” going on with Mr. Hall. “This is a human problem, not an institutional problem,” said Mr. McCullough. “This man has problems.”

Mr. Hall could not be reached for comment today.'

'GLENDALE, Ariz. – The 63,400-seat home of the Arizona Cardinals in Glendale, AZ now has a name: University of Phoenix Stadium.

At a press conference this morning, the Arizona Cardinals Football Club announced an exclusive, multi-year agreement with University of Phoenix to become the team’s naming rights partner. It is the first time a National Football League venue has been named after an educational institution.

The University will invest an average of $7.7 million per year for 20 years in exchange for naming rights, signage and a variety of advertising, marketing and merchandising opportunities. In addition, the alliance will enable the University – already international in scope – to reach an even greater number and diversity of potential students, while staying grounded in its hometown community, according to Brian Mueller, president of Apollo Group, the University’s parent company. ... University of Phoenix, working in the service of the nation for 30 years, provides access to higher education opportunities that enable students to achieve their professional goals, improve the productivity of their organizations, and provide leadership and service to their communities.'

'Schleifer's Curtain Has Yet To Close

Andrei Schleifer '82 used to go invisible hand in invisible hand with Summers.


Depending on your point of view, 2000 was either a great year or a terrible year for Professor of Economics Andrei Shleifer ’82.

On the one hand, the U.S. Department of Justice had chosen to file civil charges against him and Harvard for defrauding the U.S. of something in the neighborhood of $30 million.

On the other hand, the Russian immigrant had just picked up one of the most coveted prizes in economics and continued to have his work cited around the globe. He had a lateral tenure offer from

New York University, and didn’t seem to be in danger of losing his stature as one of the country’s preeminent economists.

Harvard and Shleifer have since settled, and the waters have calmed on the legal front. But this case has been one of simmering controversy that occasionally bubbles over. As such, the settlement may have ended one part of Shleifer’s story, but the whole ordeal might be far from over.

As his star began to rise in the 1980s, Shleifer was often mentioned in the same breath as stellar Harvard economist and future University President Lawrence H. Summers. Indeed, the two had met when Shleifer was a Harvard sophomore. According to an Institutional Investor article published in January of this year, rumor has it that he pointed out errors in one of Summers’ papers, and after that, the two became mentor and mentee, invisible hand in invisible hand.

When Shleifer earned a tenured position at Harvard at the ripe age of 30 in 1991, he was again in league with Summers, who got his top spot at 28. That year, both would take leave from the University, Summers to serve as chief economist at the World Bank, and Shleifer to act as an economic advisor to his native Russia.

It was across the pond that Shleifer allegedly began to falter. During his six years of service in Russia, Shleifer was affiliated with a Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID) program that had been contracted by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to help Russia rewrite securities laws and convert to a market economy.

In the course of his work with the HIID program, Shleifer allegedly invested in Russian stocks and securities. That wouldn’t seem so bad if Shleifer hadn’t been privy to a variety of internal financial changes in Russia, which made any personal investments in the Russian economy a violation of Harvard’s USAID contract. In light of these allegations, USAID withdrew their contract in 1997, and Shleifer was sent home.

Fast forward two years. The economist, instead of being lambasted in the wake of a criminal investigation, received the glowing support of his colleagues. He was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, an award given to the most promising American economist under the age of 40. Previous winners included Paul R. Krugman, Harvard Professor Martin S. Feldstein ’61, Milton Friedman, and not surprisingly, Summers.

Things could’ve been better for Shleifer, but they definitely could’ve been worse. After the prize was announced in 1999, The New York Times asked the head of the Clark selection committee, Harvard economist Dale W. Jorgenson, if the Russia case came up in their deliberations. Said Jorgenson, “It was not even mentioned.”

The Department of Justice elected to pursue a civil case against Shleifer in 2000 and dropped criminal charges. A mixed blessing. Nevertheless, Shleifer seemed to barrel onward. He maintained his position at Harvard and in 2003 was even offered a top spot at NYU’s Stern School of Business. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that NYU offered Shleifer something to the tune of half a million dollars to defect, though the article failed to mention if that was an annual salary figure or a hefty lump sum. When he turned down the offer that year, the then-chair of the Economics Department, Oliver S. Hart, wrote to The Crimson that he was “delighted” that Shleifer would stick around, and many of his colleagues told The Crimson that they were relieved to hold onto him.

During that period, despite the publicity of his case, Shleifer had the distinction of being the most cited economist in the world according to the University of Connecticut’s IDEAS citation project. Again, the Russia case was unresolved, but Shleifer was able to hold on to his academic reputation, at least for the time being.

It wasn’t until 2005 that the civil case was resolved. Harvard, Shleifer, and his colleague, Jonathan R. Hay, who assisted him in Russia, agreed to settle for $30 million. The Crimson reported in August 2005 that Harvard would pay $26.5 million, while Shleifer would cough up $2 million, and Hay would pay between $1 million and $2 million, depending on future earnings.

Neither Harvard nor Shleifer was forced to admit liability.

Shleifer took a paid sabbatical and returned to the classroom this semester. Even with the publication of a scathing, 18,000-word article in Institutional Investor, a high-brow finance journal, outlining the evidence against Shleifer early this year, economics Professor David I. Laibson ’88 told The Crimson in April, “We think about him not as the guy who was involved in the AID lawsuit—we think about him as the exciting, intellectually active colleague that we’ve always known.”

The lengthy Institutional Investor piece, written by Harvard alum David W. McClintick ’62, also alleged that Summers’ cozy relationship with Shleifer may have protected the latter from losing his job. McClintick quotes a Summers deposition in which the former president said that he instructed then and current Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles to hold on to Shleifer in 2001. The article startled and angered many professors, who grew even more furious when Summers, at a February 2006 Faculty meeting, said he didn’t know enough about the matter to comment on it.

But the central administration has also decided to remain tight-lipped, issuing few public statements about the controversy, often explaining to The Crimson that they will not speak about invidivual faculty members’ personal dealings.

“It’s often said that the University won’t comment on the behavior of individual members of the faculty, and I, to some degree, respect that perspective,” says former Dean of Harvard College and McKay Professor of Computer Science Harry R. Lewis ’68, “but this is taking that principle a little bit too far.”

Lewis, who has been outspoken about the University’s lack of outspokenness, is concerned that Harvard has damaged its reputation by not acknowledging any wrongdoing on its own behalf, not just because of Shleifer. “Harvard institutionally did something that I don’t think anybody thinks was very good for the Russian nation,” he says, “so I just think it’s quite remarkable that no one at all has said that Harvard did anything wrong.”

Both The Crimson and the Financial Times reported this summer that Harvard’s internal investigatory body, the Committee on Professional Conduct, has engaged in an active investigation. The Crimson reported this summer that Shleifer could lose his tenured position as a result of the investigation.

It certainly hasn’t been a rosy decade for Mr. Shleifer. The Crimson reported this year that the professor has had to mortgage his home to pay the first installment of the settlement. And the pending internal investigation casts a shadow over Shleifer’s future. But then again, no criminal case was ever filed, and Shleifer is back in the classroom this fall. And as for his reputation, a recent check at the University of Connecticut IDEAS project still puts Shleifer as the number one cited economist in the world.

Shleifer, since the case first opened up in 1997, has been able to have a tumultuous but so far not totally destructive second act. But whether there will be an act three remains to be seen. '

The on-again, off-again effort to bring a luxury Canyon Ranch condominium community to North Bethesda is now officially off, making the high-profile development the region's latest victim of a slumbering condo market that has claimed dozens of projects.

The announcement yesterday from a financial partner of Canyon Ranch, an Arizona-based high-end spa operator moving into condo development, came a little more than a month after the project's developer, the Penrose Group, informed potential buyers that the project would be reevaluated for 30 days because of a slowdown in the real estate market and rapidly increasing construction costs.

In the past six months, developers of 31 condo projects with a combined 5,700 units have abandoned their plans, according to Delta Associates, an Alexandria real estate consulting firm whose clients include Penrose. Condos are taking much longer to sell, as speculators have all but abandoned the market and buyers have become cautious.

Mark W. Gregg, president of Tysons Corner-based Penrose, did not return several phone messages yesterday. However, Kevin Kelly, president of Canyon Ranch, said the deal fell apart because "the market had changed on us."

Kelly said that had the deal hit the market a year ago -- or even a year from now, when he predicts a rebound -- there wouldn't have been a problem. But the development had sold just 30 of 434 units, for $59 million. The project, which also included hotel rooms, retail space and a 90,000-square-foot wellness center, was valued at $1 billion.

"I'm disappointed the market turned prior to us getting it out fully into the marketplace," Kelly said.

So were buyers who had made deposits. "I'm terribly disappointed," said Stuart Bindeman, a Bethesda resident who had put down money for a condo unit. "My wife and I were looking forward to living there. Fortunately I have a beautiful home, and we will stay in that for the time being." [Thank God for small favors.]

The developer is making arrangements to refund the deposits. Canyon Ranch is still interested in pursuing another project in the Washington area, executives said.

The question now is over what will happen to the 53 acres near Old Georgetown Road and I-270 -- a spot many developers say is one of the best undeveloped properties in the region, with quick access to downtown Bethesda, local shopping and a major traffic corridor.

That responsibility apparently rests with Penrose. People familiar with the deal said that Penrose leased a major portion of the land -- for the hotel, wellness center and retail -- from the Davis and Camalier families. For the land under the condos, Penrose had a sales-and-acquisition contract with the families.

"The responsibility for finding new tenants and new land uses is that of the Penrose Group," said Larry Thau, managing director of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.'s Bethesda office and a business associate of the Camalier family.

Most of the other canceled condo projects are being converted to rental buildings or reverting to apartments after unrealized condo conversions. About a third of the planned units were scrapped altogether. In Montgomery County, eight projects, not including Canyon Ranch, have been discarded or will become rentals.

"In the late 1990s, the son of the man often called the most powerful in Hollywood applied to Brown, prompting an intense internal debate over how far the school should bend its rules for a development case.

Brown President E. Gordon Gee was enthused when Christopher Ovitz, son of superagent Ovitz, sought to enroll. Gee, who had recently arrived at Brown after presiding over three public universities, felt hamstrung by its endowment. Ovitz had a track record of educational philanthropy, and Gee believed he might also open doors to a vast array of Hollywood entertainers and executives.

Chris Ovitz's academic credentials, however, were below Brown's standards. Thomas Hudnut, headmaster at Harvard-Westlake private secondary school, says Chris "was very socially mature and got along well with adults. He was physically and academically immature. That's a very tough combination for a boy to have."

Hudnut says he encouraged the Ovitzes to send Chris to boarding school, where he would be under less of a microscope, but "they weren't ready to do that." Instead, Chris transferred to Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences in Santa Monica, an arts-oriented school that caters to Hollywood children.

Of five Crossroads classmates who enrolled at Brown, four were inducted into the Cum Laude Society, signifying that they ranked in the top 20 percent of their high school class. According to a copy of the class yearbook, Chris was not in the honor society. Says Erin Durlesser, one of the four: "He definitely was not academic in my opinion. . . . The ones who also applied to Brown felt it was inappropriate competition."

Michael Goldberger, then Brown's admission director, balked at Chris' lack of credentials. According to people familiar with the situation, he cautioned Gee that accepting Chris would damage Brown's credibility with high schools in Southern California.

The president pressed the issue and they compromised, according to former Brown officials. Chris was admitted as a non-matriculating "special student" allowed to take classes at Brown. If he proved his mettle, he would be granted status as a regular student. The school hoped that would jolt him into performing better, according to a person familiar with Brown admissions. Goldberger declines to comment.

James Ellis, a lawyer for the Ovitz family, defends Brown's admission of Chris. "If diversity in terms of background and experience that kids bring to a college campus has any meaning at all, having spent time with Chris and [his sister] Kimberly . . . these kids have perspectives and experiences and backgrounds that I just think are tremendously valuable and unique and would be a benefit to any campus," Ellis says.

Chris Ovitz left Brown within a year and later obtained a bachelor's degree in history from UCLA, his father's alma mater. According to Ellis, Chris is now director of business development for an Internet startup. President Gee left Brown for Vanderbilt University in 2000."

An article in the Wall Street Journal on Sept. 26 analyzed the changing nature of corporate governance at colleges and universities and featured Vanderbilt University as a case study. The Journal's report on this important issue presented an incomplete portrait of Vanderbilt.

Q: What is your response to the allegation that Constance Gee used marijuana in the University residence?

A: Vanderbilt does not comment on personnel and personal matters involving faculty and staff. Regarding this particular issue, all relevant and appropriate University policies and procedures were followed.

'In its latest sales pitch, Dell Canada directs a simple question to students: "Why go to class when you can download the lecture?"

The Web-based advertisement ran for three days last week under the tag line "Dell PCs. The smarter student's choice." It's part of the company's larger Canadian back-to-school campaign.

The ad has roused the ire of some professors. Many now upload their lecture notes on to the Internet, and some even use video podcasts to allow students to download lectures on a computer or play them on an iPod, a PlayStation Portable and some cellphones.

But, they say these services are meant to supplement classroom exchanges, not provide an excuse for students to skip class.

"I hate Dell's message," said Robert Burk, an award-winning chemistry professor at Carleton University. "All of the video-on-demand and podcasting we do for my course is designed as a review tool for students. I emphasize to them regularly that they must come to class, and to use these things only to watch difficult lectures again."

Last year, Prof. Burk became the first professor in the world to release a video podcast of a university credit course. All class lectures, demonstrations and tutorials of his first-year chemistry course are now available globally at no cost.

Dell Canada says the ad is not meant to encourage students to skip class but to reflect the trend toward online education. Distance education, for instance, allows people to work full-time or live a great distance from a school while attending virtual classes on their own time, so there's no actual class to skip.

"Obviously, that wasn't the intention. We would never encourage students not to go to class," said company spokeswoman Wendy Gottsegen. "We wouldn't be happy if anyone construed it like that."

For his part, Prof. Burk is confident his online options aren't turning his students into no-shows. His data show that the average student in his course watches 120% of the lectures -- typically all of them in the classroom and 20% of them again via video-on-demand or iTunes. And many students watch each lecture twice, he says.

Anyone who thinks they can get through the course successfully without attending the classes had better think again.

"Downloading the lecture to the exclusion of coming to class will not bode well for the student's grade," Prof. Burk cautions.

Dell Canada is actually a little ahead of the curve, says University of Saskatchewan student Brad Flavell. Most professors post lecture notes and PowerPoint presentations to course Web sites, but video podcasting is still the exception, he said. Course Web sites are ideal to review material and prepare for a test, but not to replace a lecture, says Mr. Flavell, a fourth-year history student and vice-president of academic affairs at Saskatchewan's student union.

"The technology that we have out there is great ... It allows people to make sure your notes are right, and just look at that as a second glance. It's an excellent study supplementary."'

Maureen Corrigan, an adjunct professor of English with [a rather middling]... rating ... said she has never visited the Web site.

“I doubt that Hannah Arendt or Gertrude Stein would have scored high on the congeniality meter,” she said, referring to the German political scholar and American writer.

ceaselessly bash yuppies in order to show that [she herself has] not become one. [She] will talk about [her] nanny as if she were [her] close personal friend, as if it were just a weird triviality that [the woman herself] happens to live in a $900,000 Santa Monica house and [the nanny] takes the bus two hours each day to the barrio.

...The union workers who took a day off to protest President Grover Cleveland's deployment of twelve thousand troops to break the Pullman strike weren't campaigning to have their otherness respected.

...It goes without saying ...that there won't... be a National Museum of Lower-Income Americans on the Mall. It's hard to see what good it would be to poor people to start celebrating their culture, much less their survival as a group.

...It's hard to see...how the justification that it's good for the white kids [in college] to get to know a few black kids can be translated into the justification that it's good for the rich kids to get to know a few poor ones. And the kind of diversity produced by a larger number of poor students isn't exactly the sort of thing a college can plausibly celebrate - no poor people's history month, no special 'theme' dormitories (i.e., no Poor House alongside Latino House and Asia House) and no special reunions for poor alumni. Indeed, the whole point of going to Harvard, from the standpoint of the poor, would be to stop being poor...

...[The television show Wife Swap]... is devoted to denying [that it is better to be rich than to be poor]...[ It] succeeds so completely (this is its brilliance) that we find ourselves believing that run-down shacks in the woods are just as nice as Park Avenue apartments, especially if your husband remembers to thank you for chopping the wood when you get home from driving the bus. The idea the show likes is the one Tom Wolfe and company like: that the problem with being poor is not having less money than rich people but having rich people 'look down' on you.

...[W]e can get a sense of how attractive the idea of cultural equality has become and of how successfully it can function to obscure more consequential forms of inequality by recognizing that even in situations where the disappearance of [disadvantages] would seem to be an unequivocally good thing, some people refuse to let go. [With new medical interventions, more and more people can avoid being deaf and having to use ASL.] ... [S]cholars like ... Trevor Johnston have become increasingly concerned about the possibility of sign's disappearance. [Johnston notes that cochlear implants are causing a decline in the signing deaf community which may lead to a] 'loss of language and culture.' 'It goes without saying,' Johnston remarks, 'that this scenario gives me no joy.' ... The hope for ASL is that inadequate health care and some really catastrophic new diseases could keep it alive for a while longer; the fear is that the the cochlear implant and genetic testing will eventually kill it.

[I]f you can get everybody (the rich and the poor) to think they belong to the middle class, then you've accomplished the magical trick of redistributing wealth without actually transferring any money.

So LSU is tired of being a third-tier university.

Somehow, I just do not believe that we are really tired of having at least 126 schools rank higher than us. [Yeah, yeah, this should be "we." But Travis isn't writing for people like UD.]

As I walked the soggy grounds of our campus Saturday through the debauchery of tailgating, I was not hit with the aroma of academic excellence. It smelled more like Keystone Light. ["Aroma of academic excellence." See the alliteration? Very nice. "Soggy... debauchery" is also poetic.]

On game days the University lacks the responsibility needed to be respected by the rest of the country.

I am proud to be a University student most of the time. I think our school has made great advances as a state university; I think Sean O'Keefe has done a good job as chancellor. I feel that the Manship School is an incredible institution.

But on game days I am disgusted by what I see.

There is nothing wrong with tailgating. I enjoy it. But when we begin to ignore our responsibilities as a community, it is no longer innocent fun.

Saturday before our Homecoming game, I walked around all the campsites looking for friends.

As I was walking, I noticed a girl no more than 4 years old playing in the middle of the street with a pick-up truck speeding toward her, the driver distracted by the rows of tents.

The girl's parents were beneath a tent set up next to the street, both apparently drunk.

Two police officers were on the sidewalk, staring at the plate of boiled shrimp between them as they munched away. [The plate of boiled shrimp is a terrific regional detail.]

It was a horrible sight.

I managed to get the girl out of the street before any real damage was done, but after that moment I began to look around with a different perspective.

I saw open fires underneath paper tents in order to stay out of the rain, obscenely drunken adults who probably never attended our University, students climbing into the driver's seats of cars with beers in hand, fans urinating on our buildings and trash strewn everywhere.

What is wrong with us?

How does the University expect to be a pinnacle of higher education and a well-respected institution when every Saturday for a few months we act like drunken animals with reckless abandon with the excuse of supporting our football team?

I do not think there is anything wrong with hanging out, listening to music while grilling burgers with some beer in the ice chest. Tailgating is and hopefully always will be an essential part of the LSU experience. It sets us apart from many other universities across the country.

But I am sure we can manage to do it in a way that does not involve a little girl almost being hit by a truck. I am sure we can manage to do it in a way that does not involve urinating on the institution that we pay for. That I will never understand. We pay for this school, and then we piss on it.

So LSU is tired of being a third-tier university?

Then we better grow up.

Boosting college participation would mean recruiting still more ...disengaged students. Increasing their numbers will not give us a more skilled workforce; it will just put more downward pressure on academic standards.

Already standards have been falling for decades, as schools have lowered expectations to keep weak, indifferent students enrolled. Indeed, many students who graduate from college are deficient in even the most basic skills that employers want. Last year's National Assessment of Adult Literacy found, for example, that less than a third of college graduates are proficient in reading and the ability to do elementary mathematical calculations. Similarly, the National Commission on Writing has found that many business executives are appalled at graduates' poor writing skills.

And although the word on the street is that more jobs demand a college degree (and presumably, college-level skills), that's not necessarily true. More employers require job applicants to have a degree not because the work is so challenging, but because there are so many college graduates in the labor force that they can afford to screen out those with less formal education.

In reality, although we may have entered the so-called "knowledge economy," the true backbone of the economy will continue to consist of low- and medium-skilled jobs. Take a look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics's 10 fastest growing occupations between 2004 and 2014, and you'll find that six of the 10 professions do not require a four-year degree, and four of these call for no academic degree at all.

We currently find many college graduates employed as waiters, cashiers, healthcare aides, and in other jobs that don't require any special background. Expanding college access will just mean more young people with college debts doing low-paid work.

Clearly, the US does not have a quantity problem with regard to higher education. Rather, it has a quality problem. As one student I know puts it, "People would be amazed if they knew how easy it is to graduate without learning anything." Certainly there are numerous positions that demand college-level skills, and we need talented graduates to fill them.

To turn out a more capable crop of young adults, colleges and universities should do their part: Raise academic standards to ensure that only those who want to be in college get there. Also, admissions counselors should remind prospective students that there are good career options for those who don't feel drawn to scholarly work. America is so rich in learning opportunities other than those found in college classrooms that we don't need to raise college graduation statistics for mere numbers' sake.

Above all, the US should stop worrying about the percentage of its younger citizens who have college degrees vs. the percentage in other countries. The truth is, most of what people need to know in order to be successful in life is not learned in formal educational settings. The job skills that help workers advance in their careers are usually learned on the job.

A college education should be accessible to anyone who wants one, but people are pretty good at figuring out what investments in knowledge and skill are best for them. They shouldn't feel undue pressure to obtain a four-year degree. We can all rest assured that our position in the world will not be harmed by the choices of our young people to seek the educational and career paths that best suit their wants and needs.

It is a harrowing story of a young woman’s life destroyed by nuns and priests, and it has raced to the top of the bestseller list. But now a chorus of voices, including those of the author’s own family, claim that the ordeal described by Kathy O’Beirne simply does not ring true and is nothing more than a cruel hoax.

Kathy’s Story: A Childhood Hell in the Magdalene Laundries has sold more than 350,000 copies in Ireland and Britain, securing a place in the top five bestselling non-fiction titles in Britain, where it sells under the title Don’t Ever Tell.

Published last year, the story of O’Beirne seemed to encapsulate the anguish of a generation of Irish people whose experiences at the hands of religious orders left them scarred. And it could not have been better timed, with the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland apologising for the conduct of some of its priests and nuns.

But as the sales continued to rise, so too did the questions. In the book she says that she was beaten by her father and sexually abused by two boys from the age of 5 before being sent away to an institution. She claims that at the age of 10 she was repeatedly raped by a priest and whipped by nuns. Later she was forced to take drugs in a mental institution.

“I was consigned to a hell of beatings and abuse,” she wrote. “It was one long scream of suffering which has haunted all of my adult life.”

The first organisation to challenge the account was the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, one of four religious orders which ran the Magdalene laundries — institutions for young women who were seen to be in moral danger.

The sisters said that they invited an independent archivist to study their files after nobody could remember Kathy O’Beirne. No record has turned up of her attendance. She has said, in radio interviews since the book’s publication, that she could not name the institution in which she was abused for legal reasons.

Now her own family is about to dispute her story. Five of her brothers and sisters plan to hold a press conference in Dublin today. O’Beirne’s older brother, Oliver, 52, has told an Irish newspaper: “I read the book and I can’t figure out where she is coming from. My father was a good man. There are nine kids in the family and she is the only one who has any stories of abuse.” Adding that she did not have a good relationship with her family, he said: “I think she needs help.”

The publishers said that they would continue to support the book. Bill Campbell, director of Mainstream Publishing, said in a statement: “We have used every possible effort to establish the truth of Kathy’s memoir. We invited comments and corrections from the Church and we received no substantive response.”

But an Irish charity called Let Our Voices Emerge, established by people who spent time in religious institutions and who are now dedicated to defending their carers, has its doubts. Florence Horsman Hogan told The Times: “By her own admission Kathy has had psychological problems from an early age. Some members of her family have now come forward to state that their father emphatically was not an abuser and that, on the contrary, he worked extremely hard to support all of his children.” She said that the only record of O’Beirne having been in a Catholic institution was when she spent six weeks in St Anne’s Industrial School in Dublin in 1967.

The author has been refusing to speak to newspapers, but in a radio interview last week she insisted that she had proof of everything in the book.

[Lewis] Lapham’s “Pretensions to Empire: Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration” is by far the more trying of the two [new books under review]. The editor emeritus of Harper’s Magazine and its Notebook columnist for more than 25 years, Lapham compares the Bush administration to a “criminal syndicate” and Condoleezza Rice to a “capo.” He likens the United States to “a well-ordered police state” and the policies of its Air Force to those of Torquemada and Osama bin Laden. He calls Bush “a liar,” “a televangelist,” “a wastrel” and (ultimately) “a criminal — known to be armed and shown to be dangerous.”

Well. At least his point of view is unambiguous. But unless you agree with it 100 percent — and are content to see almost no original reporting or analysis in support of these claims — you may feel less inclined to throttle Lapham’s targets than to throttle Lapham himself. For this book is all about Lewis Lapham: the breathtaking lyricism of his voice, the breadth of his remarkable erudition. He goes across the street and around the corner to confirm the worst stereotypes about liberals — that they’re condescending, twee, surpassingly smug. “What I find surprising is the lack of objection,” he writes of the misguided American public. “The opinion polls show four of every five respondents saying that they gladly would give up as many of their civil rights and liberties as might be needed to pay the ransom for their illusory safety.” Wouldn’t Lapham be a more interesting columnist if he took this finding seriously? And analyzed it, perhaps, giving it its due? (Though later he generously allows that not every Idahoan and Nebraskan “is as dumb as Donald Rumsfeld,” based on his “reading of the national character in the library of American history and biography and a fairly extensive acquaintance with the novels of Melville, Twain, Howells, James, Wharton, Dreiser, Faulkner, Cather, Anderson, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, O’Hara and Roth.” Idahoans and Nebraskans, rejoice.)

People who are serious about politics don’t just preen. They report, explain, explore contradictions, struggle with ideas, maybe even propose suggestions. If they do none of these things, they’re simply heckling, and if the best Lapham can do is come up with 50 inventive new ways to call Bush an imbecilic oligarch, that’s all he’s doing: heckling. Like his worst counterparts on the right, he compares those he doesn’t like to fanatics, as when he refers to David Frum and Richard Perle as “Mufti Frum” and “Mullah Perle,” adding, “Provide them with a beard, a turban and a copy of the Koran, and I expect that they wouldn’t have much trouble stoning to death a woman discovered in adultery with a cameraman from CBS News.” Possibly, but provide Lapham with a blond wig, stiletto pumps and a copy of “The Fountainhead,” and I suspect he wouldn’t look much different from Ann Coulter. He’s just another talk-radio host, really — only this time by way of Yale and Mensa.

There’s one column that’s conspicuously absent from this collection, and that’s the one from September 2004, which included a brief account of the Republican National Convention. Lapham wrote it as if the convention had already happened, ruefully reflecting on the content and sharing with readers a question that occurred to him as he listened; unfortunately, the magazine arrived on subscribers’ doorsteps before the convention had even taken place, forcing Lapham to admit that the scene was a fiction. He apologized, but pointed out that political conventions are drearily scripted anyway — he basically knew what was going to be said. By this logic, though, I could have chosen not to read “Pretensions to Empire” before reviewing it, since I already knew Lapham’s sensibility, just as he claims to know the Republicans’. But I dutifully read the whole book. And I discovered, with some ironic poignancy, that Lapham did have a point: some people never acquire any more nuance as they go.

'Daniel Drezner had been an avid reader of blogs since the 1990s, when the now-ubiquitous online soapboxes appeared. But it wasn't until 9/11 when everyone started talking about international politics that Drezner, a specialist on the subject and at the time an associate political science professor at the University of Chicago, weighed in.

As well as wanting to give a "nuanced" expert opinion amid the clamour of amateur punditry, Drezner conceived his blog as a "pedagogical exercise", an experiment in "talking about international politics to an international audience", that he might later write up. But danieldrezner.com took on a life of its own. "A lot more people read it than I had expected. Within six months, New Republic called [about] an online column and The New York Review of Books [approached], wanting me to do reviews."

Today, his blog carries adulatory blurbs from the likes of Sunday Times columnist Andrew Sullivan, it logs some 4,000 visits a day and its author is newly ensconced as associate professor of international politics, with tenure, at Tufts University.

But along the way Drezner's blogging has been held partly responsible for his being passed over for tenure at Chicago last year, despite previously rapid career advancement and a sterling publishing record, and held up as a salutary example of the perils of the medium for academics. He says part of the problem is academic snobbery. If the blog gets lots of attention, the attitude is "who are you as a junior academic to suddenly be capturing more attention than your senior, better published, more prominent colleagues", even, he says, "if they can't write their way out of a paper bag".

But Drezner is not bitter. Academic hiring decisions can be murky at the best of times, he observes, adding that he doesn't think the blog was the only factor. He has moved on.

But in June the blog issue resurfaced with Yale University's decision to turn down University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole for a Middle East studies chair. Yale Daily News said he had been recommended for the post by two faculties, but because of some of his blog entries The Wall Street Journal had branded him a "notorious anti-Israel academic" and cast aspersions on his seriousness as a scholar because of the time he supposedly devoted to blogging. Both Yale and Cole have refused to comment.

Unlike stamp collecting and other inconspicuous hobbies, a blog has high visibility, says Drezner. These days he counsels against blogging under one's own name if you don't have tenure.

And many seem to agree - a rash of anonymous academic blogs have recently appeared. In his discipline alone, says Mark Thoma, associate economics professor at the University of Oregon, there are at least four anonymous bloggers. One, General Glut, comments: "I'm up for tenure next fall - with the example of the untenured (and recklessly not pseudonymous) megablogger Dan Drezner looming ominously." Thoma, who runs a blog, thinks the web soapboxes aren't central to hiring decisions but, if there is a close decision on who to appoint, it might make the difference. "The big issue is time away from academic work. If they want to use that against you, it's sitting there."

Much may depend on individual institutions' attitude to blogs, though. Many academic bloggers are clustered around certain institutions. Margaret Soltan, associate English and human sciences professor at George Washington University, who blogs on "American university life" at University Diaries, says her campus "seem[s] to have quite a lot of bloggers". This makes it "much easier to think in terms of blogging as an extension of one's already established commitment to public discourse".

The nature of academic appointments makes blogs fair game for hiring committees, says J. Bradford DeLong, economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who is author of the popular Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal. "You're hiring a colleague for up to 40 years. You want somebody who will do very good work, have a positive influence... and increase intellectual diversity. Their web log is relevant."

While blogs may be risky for authors, those who are written about could also be in hot water. Indeed, blogs have been implicated in the downfall of two US college presidents. Last year, an anonymous blog began running stinging criticism of the leadership of Uma Gupta, former president of New York's Alfred State College, by disgruntled staff. She resigned last June.

Benjamin Ladner was fired last October from his job as president of the American University after revelations that he had made extravagant expenses claims. Before his dismissal, he had been trying to shut down a student blog on benladner.com, which was devoted to exposing his alleged high-rolling lifestyle.

But both cases owe more to poor management than the power of blogs, Soltan says. "The airing of what sound like legitimate complaints against a not very good president and the president's threatened and inept response... could have happened via any number of other media - a newspaper, a list serve, even instant messaging," she says.

Despite lurid headlines such as "Attack of the career-killing blogs" in online magazine Slate.com, Soltan and others point to the advantages of blogging. As Drezner's experience shows, it can be a vehicle for professional, if not necessarily academic, advancement. Thoma says that, on the strength of his blog, he got commissions from The Wall Street Journal to write online columns. "It's not a voice I'd have had otherwise," he says. Moreover, blogging can be more than an extracurricular project. Drezner's blog has thrown up leads for his academic work. A draft for his forthcoming book All Politics is Global, which he posted on his blog in 2004, drew a response from an economist that included "very valuable comments".

Ultimately, Soltan says, "all the bloggers I know of who are rumoured to have had trouble with appointments because of blogging landed on their feet, big time". Drezner, for example, believes that, although he applied for his current post at Tufts' Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy before the Chicago furore, his blog may have given him an edge.

"It might have played a small positive role," he said. "This is a professional public policy school. They liked the fact that the blog made me a higher profile applicant."'

'The dean of the University of San Diego's business school – who is in the midst of establishing a program stressing ethics and responsibility – has been arrested in suburban Cleveland and charged with complicity to possess drugs.

Police said Mohsen Anvari, 57, was found meeting with a drug dealer at a hotel.

Anvari was arrested by Beachwood, Ohio, detectives last weekend and charged with a felony Monday as part of “an ongoing drug investigation.” He posted an unspecified amount in bail and was released, police there said.

But Police Chief Mark Sechrist, in the town on Cleveland's eastern edge, wouldn't release details regarding the type and quantity of the controlled substance involved, or what information led to Anvari's arrest.

... In February, Anvari said USD would add a full-time MBA program this fall, a 16-month course that would be limited to 40 students annually. The program, he said, would stress ethics and social responsibility.

“That is in reaction to what is happening in business today – the scandals and the legislative and regulatory responses to them,” Anvari said at the time.

“That goes to the heart of business education today, and we want to make sure that the people we graduate from our program are well-grounded in those issues.”'

The college diplomas of the nation's top executives tell an intriguing story: Getting to the corner office has more to do with leadership talent and a drive for success than it does with having an undergraduate degree from a prestigious university.

Most CEOs of the biggest corporations didn't attend Ivy League or other highly selective colleges. They went to state universities, big and small, or to less-known private colleges.

Wal-Mart Stores CEO H. Lee Scott, for example, went to Pittsburg State University in Kansas, Intel CEO Paul Otellini to University of San Francisco and Costco Wholesale CEO James Sinegal to San Diego City College.

This information should help allay the anxieties of many parents and their college-bound children who believe admission to a top-ranked school with a powerful alumni network is a prerequisite to success in the upper echelons of business management. Today's crop of chief executives are, of course, at least a generation older than current college students, but they are in the position to hire and say they don't favor job candidates with certain degrees.

Is an undergraduate degree from an elite private college worth the cost? "I don't care where someone went to school, and that never caused me to hire anyone or buy a business," says Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, who graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

What counts most, CEOs say, is a person's capacity to seize opportunities. As students, they recall immersing themselves in their interests, becoming campus leaders and forging strong relationships with teachers. And at state and lesser-known schools, where many were the first in their families to attend college, they sought challenges and mixed with students from diverse backgrounds -- an experience that helped them later in their corporate climbs.

Bill Green, CEO of Accenture, never planned to go to college. The son of a plumber, he took a construction job when he graduated from high school in western Massachusetts because he didn't think he had the ability to pursue more education. He changed his mind when he visited friends at Dean College, a two-year community school near Boston.

"Walking around campus, listening to my friends talk, I realized they were being exposed to a big world -- and I had a chance to take another shot at learning," he says.

At Dean, he got help from faculty members who devoted themselves to their students, not "doing research and writing books like professors at four-year schools," he says. Rather than post student-meeting times on their office doors, they posted their class schedules. "All the other time, they were available to any student who needed help," says Mr. Green, who worked part-time to pay for part of his tuition.

Inspired by an economics professor who made the subject "fun and relevant," Mr. Green went on to Babson College to earn his bachelor's and M.B.A. degrees. But he credits Dean with teaching him to think analytically, to gain confidence in his abilities and to learn to work with people.

"You can go to a top-end school and end up dramatically underperforming, or you can go to a place that cares and blow away what everyone thinks," says Mr. Green, who still stays in touch with his economics professor, Charlie Kramer. A trustee at Dean, he feels angry when he encounters "parents who are afraid or ashamed to say their son or daughter is attending a community college," he says.

Some 10% of CEOs currently heading the top 500 companies received undergraduate degrees from Ivy League colleges, according