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!]

' U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy — who ripped Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito for ties to a group that discriminates against women — says he’s going to quit a club notorious for discriminating against women “as fast as I can.”

Kennedy was outed by conservatives late last week as a current member of The Owl Club, a social club for Harvard alumni that bans women from membership.

In an interview with WHDH Channel 7’s Andy Hiller that aired last night, Kennedy said, “I joined when I . . . 52 years ago, I was a member of the Owl Club, which was basically a fraternal organization.”

Asked by Hiller whether he is still a member, Kennedy said, “I’m not a member; I continue to pay about $100.” '

'Sports teams at Oregon State and Portland State universities didn't pay for themselves last year, requiring more than $7 million in subsidies from money that the colleges could have spent on academics, a new state report shows.

The State Board of Higher Education will take up the report today at its monthly meeting at PSU. Several state board members have raised questions in the past about how long university leaders intend to subsidize athletics at the same time campuses are making cuts in core academic areas and tuition continues to climb.

Universities with Division I football programs generally expect their athletic departments to become self-sufficient through ticket sales, donations and other sources.

Athletics at PSU received $3.1 million in university subsidies last year, down from $3.4 million in 2003-04. At OSU, athletics received $4 million, up from $3.9 million the year before.

By contrast, University of Oregon athletics reported receiving no financial assistance "in any form" from the university last year. In past years, the university subsidized tuition for student athletes from out of state. UO athletics now pay all tuition for full-time scholarship athletes and a portion for partial scholarship athletes.

However, athletics at all three campuses rely on student fees. The fees come out of a mandatory "incidental fee" that supports campus activities, including clubs and student publications. Student leaders recommend the amount and use of the fees. At PSU, a full-time student pays $411 in incidental fees each year; at OSU, $540; at UO, $573.

UO athletics received $1.4 million in student fees last year, OSU athletics received $1.5 million, and PSU athletics received $2.3 million.

At PSU, university support and student fees made up 70 percent of athletics revenue last year.

"I feel that student fees cover a lot of the cost of athletics and that some reform needs to be made," said Erin Devaney, 22, a senior who is PSU student body president.

"I think there's a lot of wonder by a lot of students who pay one-third worth of their student fees to athletics and don't see how it's benefiting the campus and is actually sucking money from the campus."



In their dependence on university support, PSU and OSU aren't alone. Most athletic departments at Division I universities spend more than they earn, according to a 2005 NCAA report.

In Division I-A, to which OSU and UO belong, 60 percent of universities reported expenses exceeding revenues, after subtracting university support. In Division I-AA, which includes PSU football, 90 percent reported the same.

PSU President Dan Bernstine said it is unrealistic to expect athletics to support itself outside of a handful of big-name programs. Few other areas of the university, such as academic departments, are expected to pay for themselves, Bernstine said.

"I think the subsidy for athletics is not unreasonable, but of course, we're working to make that subsidy as little as possible," he said.

The better question, he said, is whether athletics is worth paying for at PSU. Bernstine's answer is yes, particularly as PSU seeks to attract more residential students, including international and out-of-state students who pay higher tuition than Oregon residents.

"There's pressure to enhance the quality of the student experience, and athletics is an important co-curricular activity," he said.





…At OSU, officials this year expect to pump another $4 million in university support into athletics. That subsidy should drop to $2.5 million in 2006-07, said Mark McCambridge, vice president for finance and administration. That expectation is based on projections of higher ticket sales at the newly renovated and expanded Reser Stadium, he said.

The $1.5 million not spent on athletics will go "directly into the classroom," McCambridge said. The university projects $8 million to $10 million in cuts in various university departments in 2006-07 that are driven by rising costs for health insurance, retirement benefits and salaries.

"The long-term goal of (OSU President Edward Ray) and the institution is, we would like to have it be a zero subsidy. Whether we can get there or not is unclear. It's certainly not going to happen in the next two years," McCambridge said.'

The panhandlers who work the streets of Ashland are finding donations a bit lacking lately — and they are pinning the blame squarely on a homeless couple whose claim that they make $40,000 per year from street donations was highlighted recently in a Medford newspaper.

The couple in question, Jason Pancoast and Elizabeth Johnson, have three children, bounce from motel to motel in Southern Oregon, and told The Mail-Tribune that on good days, they can make as much as $300.

A man who would identify himself only as "Cliff", age 20, told the Medford paper that the most anyone he knows makes is about $50 a day, and that other homeless people have told him that donations are down since the article appeared.

"I'm pissed off about it," Cliff told the paper.

Others said they were just amazed at the amount of money that Pancoast and Johnson were able to make by begging.

…For his part, Pancoast said he and his wife are lying low for a few days because of all the publicity, staying in an Ashland motel and avoiding any panhandling.

The state Department of Health Services audited the couple's income on Friday, he said. "They were trying to find out if we were making $50,000 a year," he said.

Pancoast, who said the notoriety has been intense, said he's gotten into heated discussions with some people in town.

"A lot of people are freaked out about it," he said, adding that he won't be trying to ask for money in the next few days. "We haven't been collecting anything lately."

'Dan Short, now dean of the Neeley School of Business at Texas Christian University, [says that]...[e]ven if studies cast doubt on the positive effects of sports, he's not buying it.

"I believe the engine of K[ansas]-State's growth was the national prominence of the football team," Short says.

Education is an intangible, he adds, and sports is part of the package ... Picking between athletics and academics is like trying to pick between steering and brakes on a car.

"It's a lot better if both are good," Short says.'

"While few question the generosity of Boone Pickens' historic donation, some say it may be an indication sports trumps academics at the Stillwater campus."

'OWNER' KEEPING OSU COMPETITIVE

Here’s the best way to think of Oklahoma State football.

Mike Gundy is coach. Athletic director Mike Holder is general manager. OSU president David Schmidly is president.

Boone Pickens is owner.

This is not necessarily a bad thing.

If you’re one of those OSU fans who decry the school’s sellout to commercialism, one of those fans who recoil when a foe chants “Pickens State,” one of those fans who say they simply want their university back, I have a solid alternative for you.

Conference USA. Without Pickens and his hundreds of millions, ...OSU athletics would belong in a league with Rice and Memphis.

...This is 21st century reality. ...[C]ollege football demands megabucks, and a school that just a few short years ago was wallowing in debt has a benefactor willing to give the Cowboys an engine in this arms race.

...Is this seemly for a college campus? Is that ideal for the ivory towers?

No. But that's the real world, a world in which Texas, Oklahoma, Texas Tech and Texas A&M have all completed football cathedrals in the last five years.

"Understanding and appreciating works of art is a very important part of a liberal education," said Kimerly Rorschach, director of Duke University's newly opened Nasher Museum of Art and an authority on college museums. "It seems quite natural to me that any university would want to address that."

"A Norwegian cancer expert made up fictitious patients for an article about treatment of oral cancer published in a leading medical journal, the hospital said on Sunday.

"The material was fabricated," said Trine Lind, spokeswoman of the Norwegian Radium Hospital where Jon Sudbo has worked as a doctor and a researcher. "We are shocked. This is the worst thing that could happen in a research institution like ours."

Sudbo, 44, invented patients and case histories for a study of oral cancer that was published in the British medical journal the Lancet in October 2005, she said.

The Norwegian daily Dagbladet said that 250 of his sample of 908 people in the study all shared the same birthday."

University of South Florida officials fired three employees of the school's English Language Institute after finding $275,000 in misplaced checks and cash scattered throughout an office there.

Nearly half the money - $133,647 - is in checks as old as a decade and cannot be deposited, which means lost money for the university, USF spokeswoman Michelle Carlyon said.

The institute's director, Richard Schreck, found the cash and checks Dec. 21 inside desks and underneath books and office machines, among other places, Carlyon said. Much of the money was in payments to the program, which provides intensive English study for international students and prepares them for college.

Some money was for student health-insurance premiums, which never reached their insurance carrier.

The discovery comes about a month after a state audit of USF found lax financial controls.

…In addition to the more than $133,000 in old checks, investigators have counted 132 checks from 2005 totaling $92,734. University officials are trying to deposit them, although some banks may consider them too old, Carlyon said.

Think of the last time you had a question in class; did you raise your hand in front of the entire classroom, did you wait until the class had finished, or did you email your professor later that day? The numbers most certainly increase toward the latter with every passing day.

Even professors feed into this impersonality. Lectures are now put up on the Internet in the form of powerpoint presentations. It is no longer necessary for students to attend classes or even talk to other students to copy their notes. Yes, this is a system of convenience for those that cannot always make it to class, but it is a system that is abused, and breeds laziness as well as a student population that is detached from its university.

The Jan. 5 column by Michael Fumento about new biotechnology products from Monsanto should have included more information. We believe the column should have disclosed a $60,000 grant from Monsanto that Fumento received in 1999 for a book about biotechnology. Fumento's column will no longer be distributed by Scripps Howard News Service…

Currently, almost all biotech crops reduce the use of either insecticides or herbicides. Upcoming Monsanto products, however, more effectively kill pests and even combine the two traits. The Agriculture Department has just approved one that protects corn against both weeds and rootworms..…..[Monsanto’s] pipeline represents a fraction of what the biotech industry as a whole -- large companies and small, here and abroad -- will bring to your supper table. These are truly exciting times for producers, consumers, and those who care about the environment.

Their difficult childhoods and interest in drug culture quickly solidified their bond, the couple say. One of their first experiences together was canoeing on the Withlacoochee River and taking LSD. "Both of us coming from broken homes," says Johnson, "and needing to develop ourselves." …"Well, I think we had no love," Pancoast quickly adds, "we had no clarity … we were both so disassociated for different reasons.…"

[One townsperson] points to the drop in the number of tourist visits to Oregon Shakespeare Festival last year as evidence. He says the city has gotten letters from disgruntled tourists and fretting business owners, as has the festival and the Chamber of Commerce.

"I bet you [a local newspaper] have too," he says.

He's right. We have. Not waves mind you, but a trickle
of frustrated visitors who are fed up with
panhandlers, nudists















and transients who make them uncomfortable as they come for a weekend of plays, gourmet meals, wine tasting and drives in the country.

The homeless camp, [one observer says], will do nothing but invite an explosion of all the aforementioned problems, which will in turn ensure a mass exodus of the tourists.

…The entire ethos of the city is a delicate balance. The very qualities that make the city the mystical theatrical place that it is can also be confused with less charming behavior, like aggressive panhandling, vandalism and petty theft.

"AFFLUENT BEGGARS" DRAW SCRUTINY FOR THEIR LIFESTYLE

By The Associated Press

ASHLAND, Ore. — A couple with three children who make a living as panhandlers say they are surprised by public attention to their lifestyle.

Jason Pancoast and Elizabeth Johnson, who describe themselves as "affluent beggars," say they are able to maintain a well-fed and well-dressed family by living off the streets.

"What has happened is that we're going along with a lifestyle that you couldn't imagine we should have," Pancoast said.

A story in the Sunday edition of the Mail Tribune newspaper in Medford noted the couple sometimes make up to $300 a day and once made $800.

But the report also triggered an outcry from residents. People have yelled at Pancoast and threatened him since the story was published, he said.

Angry e-mails and letters to the Mail Tribune have described the couple as tax evaders, bad role models for their children, "common thieves" and abusers of a food-stamp program designed to help people temporarily down on their luck. Pancoast and Johnson said they receive $500 a month in food stamps.

Local radio talk shows have spent airtime taking calls about Pancoast, 34, and Johnson, 30. The couple appeared this week on a Portland radio show, and national media also have expressed interest in interviewing them.

The couple say they use their money to get a safe place for their children to sleep, a warm meal and good clothes.

"We're challenging the stereotype of being a beggar," Johnson said.

But former Ashland mayor and local businessman Alan DeBoer, who gave Johnson $200 before Christmas, said that after learning more about the couple, he believes they are conning people, even using their 3-month-old baby as a prop.

DeBoer said he regrets his generosity toward Johnson and would not give her any more money.

Begging has become so commonplace that you find people at almost every freeway offramp, he said.

"You almost have to make panhandling in Oregon illegal," DeBoer said.

Pancoast, who estimates he and his wife can make $30,000 to $40,000 a year panhandling, said people have certain expectations of the homeless that are vastly different from the way he tries to live.

He said that he and his wife have no assets and are currently living in an Ashland motel. The couple were staying at another local motel, but the manager asked them to leave because of negative publicity, Pancoast said.

The couple say they stay in motels because it is difficult for a family with no consistent income and three children to find housing.

Pancoast, who is outspoken in many of his beliefs, said Ashland is being run more and more by the rich who can't tolerate different lifestyles.

Pointing to the expensive homes on the hills surrounding town, he said, "Is this community theirs or is it ours?"

Patty Claeys, chief executive of ACCESS, a housing agency, said she commends the couple for being with their children and taking care of them. But she noted most people have to sacrifice time with their children in order to earn a living.

She said ACCESS could help the couple find a house, but they would have to show some kind of income.

"As long as people live in that kind of lifestyle, what are they teaching their children?" Claeys said.

I was in awe of the book as a writer, and grateful for it as a recovered drug addict. He had the guts to tell you how dark it gets down there and how it’s like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride when your brain spins out on crazy hairpin turns and you can’t find the road back. Or any road at all. He didn’t sugarcoat the rage or the pain or the awful loneliness. The truths he told weren’t easy to read and they certainly weren’t pretty. But they were truths. No one could have made up what he wrote. You have to have taken that long dark fall. You have to have known the madness of trying to pull yourself out, but then maybe not wanting to because in a lot of ways you like it down there.

But the one moment that broke my heart was when he said he’s never going to write about himself again. I knew in that instant how wounded he is by all that’s happened. Don’t say that, I whispered to myself. Even though I understood. …I don’t care how many days Frey did or did not spend in jail. I care that he keeps writing with a heart that doesn’t hold back.

“What I'm finding in my own book-writing is how much the blog has helped inform the book, how it has become a treasure trove of information and comment and ideas from all over the place. When looking to buttress a particular point or hunt down a piece of evidence, I find myself searching my own blog for links and data.

The readers - that's you - have also helped me immensely. Take the recent discussion of zygotes and dispensationalists. They are minor parts of the book, but I've gained a huge amount from your input. Not only is blogging compatible with book-writing, it may be helpful. The main problem is finding long spaces of time to wander around in your own thoughts. Books need that. Blogging makes it very hard. But that's the only real conflict I've found.”

'The project originally known as the ASU Scottsdale Center for New Technology and Innovation is still officially named the slightly shorter ASU Scottsdale Innovation Center.

But you can call it SkySong.

Developers of Arizona State University's new research center at McDowell and Scottsdale roads have settled on SkySong as a brand name that they hope will take off in an international market.

"We knew we needed a name that would be memorable, catchy, excellent for marketing," said Sharon Harper, CEO of the Plaza Cos., which is co-developing the site. "It invokes vision. It invokes imagination."

For some, it invokes a grimace.

"I don't like it," said Scottsdale City Councilwoman Betty Drake. “…It seems a little contrived."

SkySong also is the name of the tent-like, shade structures that will soar up to 125 feet over the campus.

Steve Evans, trustee of the ASU Foundation, said that the foundation, Higgins Development Partners and the Plaza Cos. went through an "exhaustive" research effort to develop a name that might stick.

The developers hired an outside company to survey the brand name SkySong and found the word was a hit.

"We learned from designers that you don't want a long name," Harper said. "People will forget and it would be hard to find on the Internet. How will somebody in India remember it?"

The developers pointed to the names Yahoo and Google and reminded everyone how strange they seemed when they first appeared.'

'Jos Anshell, chief executive officer of the major Phoenix advertising firm, Moses Anshell, admitted that his initial reaction against "SkySong" went the other direction once the name started to grow on him.

"At first, it made me think of Delta Airlines’ shuttle service, ‘Song,’ so it reminded me of a failing airline," said Anshell, who said his firm isn’t currently doing any work for ASU, though it had in the past. Then he did some free word association.

"But then I looked at it, said, ‘OK, it’s about incubating, free thinking, free thinkers, open, free,’ " he said. "The more I thought about it, the more I liked it."

Shorter, catchier names work, he said, even if they don’t conjure up much association with anything.

…Above all, Anshell said, SkySong fits ASU President Michael Crow’s desire to create a new kind of university by forcing people to think about things differently.

"Educational communication is steeped in the past," he said. "Whenever you encourage thinking outside the box, you get people scratching their heads."'

'[O]ne of the best-kept secrets in college admissions today [is] the affirmative action campaign to recruit men. Most admissions directors sifting through stacks of applications from men and women can only sigh at the contrast. The average male applicant has far lower grades, writes a sloppy essay, and sports few impressive extracurriculars. Those admissions directors face a choice: Either admit less-qualified men or see the campus gender balance slip below 40 percent male, a point at which female applicants begin to look elsewhere.

…Last spring, Scientific American summed up the best gender and brain research, including a study demonstrating that women have greater neuron density in the temporal lobe cortex, the region of the brain associated with verbal skills. Now we've reached the heart of the mystery. Girls have genetic advantages that make them better readers, especially early in life. And, now, society is favoring verbal skills. Even in math, the emphasis has shifted away from guy-friendly problems involving quick calculations to word and logic problems.'

The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that George Washington University is breaking the law in its refusal to recognize its adjunct professors' union, which won a labor-board-certified election held in October 2004.

Sticking to the position it has held for months, the university maintained that the election was "flawed" and, on Wednesday, filed a petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, asking for a review of the labor board's decision.

The university administration first took issue with the union election results last June, when it announced that it would not negotiate with the Service Employees International Union, the elected representative of the adjuncts.


...The ruling orders university administrators to bargain with the union and to post notices around the campus which read, in part, "The National Labor Relations Board has found that we violated federal labor law."

In a statement posted on its Web site, the university said that the ruling, "reached at the administrative level and based on a motion filed by the NLRB's own general counsel, was not surprising."

Kip Lornell, the lead organizer for the union and an adjunct professor of music, said he was likewise not surprised by the university's response. "They are desperately clinging to the hope that they will not have to bargain collectively," he said. "We assumed that the university would continue to spend students' tuition money litigating and not educating."

'Earlier, Specter said staffers had examined records of a controversial Princeton University alumni group once cited by Alito in a job application, but had found no mention of Alito.

…Alito, President Bush's nominee to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, listed membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP) on a 1985 application for a job in the Reagan administration. Democrats said the conservative group resisted admissions of women and minorities, and they cited statements in its magazine that expressed racist, sexist and homophobic views.

Alito has repudiated the statements, saying he deplored those views and would not associate with any group that held them. He said he could not remember much about the group by way of explaining why he listed it, other than that he had been concerned during his Princeton days about efforts by some students to kick ROTC programs off campus.

Specter said committee staff members and representatives of Kennedy finished examining the files at 2 a.m. today, reviewing more than four boxes of documents concerning CAP.

"Judge Alito's name never appeared in any document," Specter said. It was not mentioned in any letters to or from the group's founder or executive director, did not appear on any canceled checks for subscriptions, was nowhere to be found on any articles, lists of board members or contributors, and was not in any minutes or attendance records from CAP meetings," Specter said.'

[D]emographic data from the U.S. Census suggest that enrollment will be dropping for the next 20 years. Investment in any kind of facility is risky now, when fewer students will be around to use it. Fewer students means fewer alumni, which means fewer pockets to pick to support an athletics village — never mind academics.

Another consideration is that alienating the Stillwater community and embarrassing its faculty, graduate students, and alumni will have far-reaching consequences for OSU. If you’re a motivated student looking to be challenged academically, you’ll go elsewhere. If you’re a recent Ph.D. looking to build a career, you wouldn’t pick a place that goes into debt for academics facilities but seeks out cash for athletics.

And a final consideration lies in Dr. Schmidly’s [OSU's president] last statement, as quoted in this news article: “I can’t tell a donor, ‘Don’t give us this money for this, because we really wanted to give it over here.' I’ve got more sense than that.”

How is that sensible? I’m neither a university president nor an oil tycoon, but I think any president who CAN’T speak truth to power has big problems. Any president who CAN’T say to a donor, “Gee, thanks for your interest, and here’s how much more benefit your money will have if we invest it in academics” lacks courage and creativity.

And I think this lack of worthy leadership at OSU is going to be the biggest problem of all, if the Regents go forward with this Boone-doggle.

As a lifelong supporter of higher education, I’m living in a Dali landscape. A record-breaking gift to OSU — to any institution of higher education — should be a cause for rejoicing. We should all be thrilled. But this is sickening.

Marion Agnew

"A 70-year-old Italian law professor has discovered a new career writing erotic memoirs after losing his university job following accusations that he offered students high marks for sex.

Ezio Capizzano, a former law teacher at Camerino University in central Italy, gives detailed accounts of his amorous "tutorials" in the book, The Last Baron In A Campus of Tulips, published this week.

When it emerged in 2002 that he had video-taped his "one-to-one" tutorials he became a household name in Italy and a role model for ageing Casanovas. Far from condemning him, the media lauded Prof Capizzano.

The respected Corriere della Sera newspaper described him as "Italy's answer to Sean Connery".

In 2004 he was acquitted of any wrongdoing after the court accepted his claim that the students had all given their full consent."

About the best television I've seen in forever.

Last night, Larry King interviewed James Frey, author of factually-challenged best-selling "memoir", "A Million Little Pieces."

First off, you have the spectacle of a public person insisting that he did too do lots of crack and spend months in jail and so on and so forth. Then you have a website that usually exposes the lurid pasts of public people actually exonerating the guy, and depicting him as a nice middle-class boy, struggling with addiction. Then it dawns on you that all this will only help sales of the book.

Then Larry King brings up the Jerzy Kosinski controversy as an analogy [This isn't quite right. According to my notes, Frey brought it up.], Frey demurs [Frey didn't demur.], and then Larry reminds Frey that Kosiniski was so ashamed he killed himself. Then Frey's mom shows up, and we watch mortified as this woman is asked to pick between her love for her son and his obvious deceptions.

And then, just when you think it can't get any weirder ... God descends. Oprah's on the phone [Deus ex Operah?], and claims she was ringing for ages but couldn't get through. Weirder? The nation falls silent as God speaks. She doesn't exactly defend the fraudulently packaged book, she blames the publishers and then somehow manages to bring you almost to the point of thinking that a book that does so much good need not be trashed for basic misrepresentation. For Oprah, the therapy trumps the integrity. Or there's a deeper integrity to the guy's recovery that should trump concerns about his obvious misleading of the reader.

At this point, you are as gob-smacked as Anderson Cooper. And then he brings up his mother. And with images of Gloria Vanderbilt floating in my head, we find ourselves watching Project Runway. Bravo.

We live with a few familiar ideas. Two or three. We polish and transform them according to the societies and the men we happen to meet. ...And, I don't know why, but faced with this ravined landscape, this solemn and lugubrious cry of stone, Djemila, inhuman at nightfall, faced with this death of colors and hope, I was certain that when they reach the end of their lives, men worthy of the name must rediscover this confrontation, deny the few ideas they had, and recover the innocence and truth that gleamed in the eyes of the Ancients face to face with destiny... I feel certain that the true, the only, progress of civilization, the one to which a man devotes himself from time to time, lies in creating conscious deaths.

Random House will refund readers who bought James Frey's drug and alcohol memoir "A Million Little Pieces" directly from the publisher, a move believed to be unprecedented, after the author was accused of exaggerating his story.

Readers calling Random House's customer service line to complain on Wednesday were told that if the book was bought directly from the publisher it could be returned for a full refund. Those who bought the book at a bookstore were told to try to return it to the store where it was bought.

"If the book was bought directly from us we will refund the purchase price in full," one Random House customer service agent told Reuters, noting readers would have to return the book with the original invoice. "If you bought it at a book store, we ask that you return the book to the book store."

Asked why the publisher, which normally sells books directly to consumers as nonrefundable, would offer refunds, the agent said, "because of the controversy surrounding it."

Several customer service agents called by Reuters reporters also agreed to pay refunds. A Random House spokeswoman said the company would issue a formal statement about returns later.

Van Sant said he believes the person he dined with was indeed LeRoy but admits the possibility of being hoodwinked. He turned philosophical: "But is anyone who they say they are? Is Amy Pascal really Amy Pascal? Am I really me? How do you know you're talking to Gus Van Sant?"

King: I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

Frey: Oh! Of course I have been rather reckless.

King: I am glad to hear it.

Frey: In fact, now you mention the subject, I have been very bad in my own small way.

James Frey, whose best-selling memoir about substance abuse, "A Million Little Pieces," has come under intense scrutiny for alleged fabrications, has agreed to give his first interview since the controversy broke a few days ago.


He will appear Wednesday night on CNN's "Larry King Live."

The ever-larger sums of money spent on college sports create "a looming crisis" that could threaten schools' integrity, a group of university presidents warns.

"The prospect of distortion and even corruption of the academic values of individual institutions is very real, and in time, the entire academic enterprise can be diminished by such disasters," according to a draft version of a report from the NCAA presidential task force's fiscal responsibility subcommittee.

The problem: There's little the NCAA can do to stop its members' athletics spending spree. One ill-fated attempt several years ago — legislation that restricted the earnings of one men's basketball coach on each staff — resulted in a lawsuit that cost the NCAA millions of dollars.

…On Monday, the NCAA Division I Board of Directors deferred until April action on proposals that would revise restrictions on the use of athletes' names or pictures in charitable or educational promotional campaigns.

At least one member of the board expressed concern about those promotional campaign items linking athletes with commercial products that act as partners with the school.

"The using of a student's image to sell a product is for me a slippery slope," University of Georgia President Michael Adams said Sunday.

Universities took a step down that slope years ago with a rule change allowing commercial logos, such as the Nike Swoosh, on team uniforms.

…Cutting baseball to 52 games hits a roadblock

Should baseball teams play 56 or 52 regular-season games? The athletics department and conference administrators and faculty athletics representatives of the Division I management council want the season left at 56 games. Many of the presidents on the Division I Board of Directors want to cut it to 52.

…"A lot of us are concerned about the academic performance of baseball teams," said board member Walter Harrison, president of the University of Hartford.

Baseball teams performed poorly in the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate.

Oklahoma State University officials announced today that legendary oilman Boone Pickens has donated $165 million to be used to fund one of the nation’s most comprehensive collegiate athletic complexes during the next five to 10 years.

..."Developing those facilities [said Pickens] will help move the university into a new era, both in athletics and academics. Athletics have proven to be a significant contributor in the academic success of an institution, both from a fundraising and a performance perspective.”

'When recalling criminal activities, looming prison sentences, and jailhouse rituals, Frey writes with a swaggering machismo and bravado that absolutely crackles. Which is truly impressive considering that, as TSG discovered, he made much of it up. The closest Frey has ever come to a jail cell was the few unshackled hours he once spent in a small Ohio police headquarters waiting for a buddy to post $733 cash bond.'

But there's nothing new or compelling (let alone heroic) about this pose: It is, in many ways, the classic arc of the genre Frey claims he's boldly renovated—the conversion memoir. From St. Augustine to Rousseau to Dave Eggers and Elizabeth Wurtzel, readers of memoirs are invited to marvel at the incorrigible badness of a narrator as a sort of trust-exercise: Surely someone who conceals so little of their unpleasant behavior can't be lying.

...Indeed, sentimentality is often the enchanted mirror into which the practiced nihilist preens. After all, the nihilist worldview holds that most things are beneath the self, and the sentimentalist concludes that most things are about the self—the point being in either case to keep the narrating ego at center stage. So, while Frey begins the vast majority of his flat, pain-ridden sentences with the word "I," many of them resolve into emotional set pieces reminiscent of Victorian melodrama.

His suffering is both incredible (using so much "bittersweet peppermint gasoline"–scented crack and meth and speed and PCP that he vomits and blacks out seven days a week for years) and simply not credible (undergoing a root canal without anesthesia because patients at his rehab clinic aren't allowed drugs of any kind).

...The plotting—a sign of trouble when a memoir brings this word to mind—is stilted and conventional.

Even under the colleges' newly liberalized system for counting athlete graduations, the rates show averages of just 64 percent for football players and 58 percent for men's basketball. Dozens of teams, especially in men's basketball, have virtually no athletes reaching the academic finish line. And the top-25 ranks in football and men's basketball are middling at best. The current No. 1 and 2 in basketball, Duke and Connecticut, have 50 percent rates of basketball player graduations.


...The organization soon will decide whether to impose penalties on teams graduating fewer than half of their athletes. Consequences could include losses of scholarships, restrictions on recruiting and bans on post-season play.

The NCAA mustn't back off from these intentions. Nor can it let schools crowd athletes into soft courses and curriculums that lead nowhere. Universities exist to educate students and give them futures, not to exploit them. When they are true to that principle, the athletes always win. So do the universities.

[T]he Jockocracy [is] a faction of immense power at most public and many private universities despite being utterly alien to education, scholarship or learning in any form. This consists of the administrators and chief functionaries of the athletic programme, most notably the coaches heading the school's football and basketball teams.

Such programmes are run for the economic benefit of these worthies while also enriching media outlets, purveyors of jock-related trinkets, and manufacturers of athletic shoes.

Their viability depends, ultimately, on the eagerness of young athletes, typically profoundly deficient in academic skills, to be ruthlessly exploited while largely surrendering their personal autonomy.

The underlying looniness of the situation is epitomised by the fact, no doubt mind-boggling to most non-Americans, that at a university with a 'big-time' team, the football coach will earn eight or nine times as much as the most distinguished professor.

Athletics is the most hypocritical, corrupt, cynical, vicious and depraved aspect of university culture and, therefore, it is the one aspect of university culture unreservedly approved of by politicians, businessmen and the general public.

'A November 2002 internal balance sheet for University High showed $11,385 for office salaries and $64,205 for advertising - the largest expense - but no spending for instructors.

…John McLeod, a retired Miami-Dade Community College professor, was listed as principal of University High in a welcome letter to students as recently as last year. [School owner] Kinney said: "It was there when I got there. I've never met him." McLeod has said he never heard of University High.'

According to a Nov. 29, 2005, Post article, [OU football coach] Solich was found slumped over the steering wheel of his car, which was facing the wrong way on a one-way street.

He had trouble opening the car door when police arrived and refused a Breathalyzer test.

His license was suspended for 180 days, and he was fined $250 and sentenced to a three-day driver intervention program.



But despite Solich's legal problem, this university would not give up on him.

And kudos to them for that decision. Nothing says party school like a president and athletic director who decide to retain a coach who breaks the law - especially a law involving alcohol - when the first-year students at the "party school" must complete an alcohol education requirement before starting classes in September.

The State Highway Patrol did, however, decide to stop using posters on which Solich promotes safe driving, according to a Jan. 4 article on ESPN.com.

I suppose if the first-year football coach can't yet give us a winning season and consistent national exposure, the next best thing he could have done was improve our party school reputation. And what better way to show the country we are a party school than to have one of OU's highest-paid employees publicly embarrass the university (and himself) by reaffirming the image of OU students around the nation.



But it doesn't stop there. Even OU's president, who has repeatedly pleaded with students to drink responsibly, told Solich that it's OK and he can keep his job, as long as pays his fine and acknowledges his mistake.

I wonder if McDavis will begin extending that type of amnesty to students who just smoke pot, just drink underage or just plagiarize. I mean, we don't really pay thousands of dollars in tuition to learn and obtain a respectable degree, do we?

…OU students don't pay for college; we pay the four-year cover charge - plus the cost of drinks.

Challenging bosses is uncommon and failing to bow to superiors invites reproach. With most men forced to serve a stint in the military, a culture of following orders prevails.

Nowhere is this more evident than in academia, a field that has been roiled by the fraud scandal surrounding the once esteemed stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk. Blindly obeying lordly professors is seen as the surest way to success. Graduate students compete for coveted tenured faculty positions known here as an "iron rice bowl" -- a Chinese idiom meaning a guaranteed lifetime job.

"In relations with professors, the graduate school students are the absolute weak," said Baek Seung-ki, a fourth-year doctoral candidate in physics at state-run Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. "You must do whatever you are told to do."

But some are now questioning this system, including a few in academia and a newspaper that editorialized against the university culture.



Hwang, 53, rose to international fame in 2004 when he announced the creation of the world's first cloned human embryo at his laboratory at Seoul National University, South Korea's most prestigious school.

Last year, he claimed to have created embryonic stem cells tailor-made to patients, which stunned the world and suggested fast progress toward developing treatments for Alzheimer's disease, paralysis and other afflictions.

Kim Sun-jong, a former researcher at Hwang's lab, has told South Korean media that Hwang ordered him to fabricate data for a paper on the designer stem cells published in the journal Science in May.

Hwang said last month he would quit his professorship amid a university investigation. Seoul National University says it has yet to receive any letter of resignation, meaning he is still employed by the state-run institution.



The university has confirmed all the research in the 2005 paper was faked. It plans to release final results of its probe Tuesday, including the veracity of the 2004 embryo report as well as whether Hwang actually cloned the world's first dog, as claimed last year.

The problem, editorialized the Segye Times newspaper, is "an outdated, premodern lab culture of obeying seniors' orders. While it was Professor Hwang who should have ensured truth and conscience, it is lamentable the researchers couldn't restrain such misconduct and instead blindly followed the orders."

Some experts say Hwang's underlings had no real choice.

"Professor Hwang's researchers followed the only logic of survival available to them ... even if it meant faking the research results," said Vladimir Tikhonov, a professor of Korean studies at the University of Oslo. "Questioning your professor means full loss" of job opportunities, he said.



MBC television network, which has played the leading media role in uncovering the cloning scandal, reported Tuesday that one of the two researchers at Hwang's Seoul lab who donated eggs for research, was pressured to do so for fear Hwang would not list her as a co-author for a paper.

Hwang admitted in November the scientists donated eggs -- widely considered unethical. He says he didn't know about the donations until later.

"I regret that I didn't stand up against the professor," MBC quoted the graduate student researcher, identified by her surname Park, as saying in an e-mail message to an acquaintance before donating eggs in 2003. Park said she was "exceedingly disgusted" with herself for having to conduct cloning experiments on her own eggs.



Influential professors at prestigious schools "are allowed to build their own private kingdoms, promoting and demoting their underlings largely at will," said Tikhonov, a naturalized Korean of Russian origin also known as Pak Noja.

Listing professors as senior authors on papers even if they contributed little, fabricating receipts to cover up their personal use of research funds, and running errands for them are just a few of the headaches grad school students say they face.

"Most professors tend to think graduate students are their personal secretaries," said a doctoral degree candidate at Seoul's Hanyang University, requesting that his name and even his major not be revealed.

"It's hard to refuse requests in fear of retaliation," said the 34-year-old, who once had to go to his professor's house on a weekend to fix a computer.



Professors argue such misconduct is uncommon.

"I think it's just a small number of professors who make such absurd requests," said Cho Dong-jun, who teaches international relations at the University of Seoul. "If these were common practices, I, as a professor, would have easily known about them, but I've never seen such a case."

Cutthroat competition for a professorship sometimes involves large sums of money changing hands.

In the first eight months of last year, prosecutors penalized 61 professors and administrators, mostly for receiving bribes in exchange for granting tenure. In 2004, prosecutors punished 23 professors and officials on similar charges as well as misappropriation of funds.

In one case last year, a university chancellor received $4 million from 42 candidates in exchange for appointing them as professors, prosecutors said.

The first time I saw "Absolutely Fabulous," when Comedy Central imported it from Britain in 1994, I wondered what all the fuss was about. But the show grew on me, and today I am an ardent fan of Patsy Stone and Edina Monsoon, the dissolute, middle-aged Londoners whose enthusiastic substance abuse, rampant superficiality and desperate clinging to the values of their mod youth made that series so great.

If "Campus Ladies" is not America's answer to "Ab Fab," it comes close. The series, which has its premiere Sunday night on Oxygen, is often hilarious but it may be an acquired taste.

The two women whose adventures this show chronicles are 40-ish and American. When Joan (Carrie Aizley), a widow, and Barri (Christen Sussin) walk in on Barri's husband in bed with another woman, they head straight for a bar and some reassuring umbrella-in-the-glass drinks. Seeing a couple of pretty blond twins having a good time and toasting their sophomore year with friends, Joan and Barri are inspired. To spice up their boring lives, they'll go to college.

Their pal Gail (Jane Kaczmarek, the show's first guest star) thinks this is a terrible idea. "All they do in college is have sex over and over again," Ms. Kaczmarek says with the voice of authority that has made her the emotional center of Fox's long-running sitcom "Malcolm in the Middle."

Gail is wrong. They do a lot of other things, as Joan and Barri learn upon enrolling at the fictional University of the Midwest.

Their normal-college-age roommate, Paige (Miranda Kent), is horrified to meet them. "No offense to the elderly or whatever," she says in extreme distress, babbling apologies as she rushes off to the housing office to ask for a room switch. (Housing says no.)

The sorority sisters at Gamma Delta Rho are equally appalled when the relentlessly cheerful older women turn up hoping to join their group. Joan and Barri don't understand half the younger women's questions, like "Lacto-ovo or vegan?" and "Jude or Johnny?"

The boys down the hall at the dorm, Drew (Derek Carter) and Abdul (Amir Talai), are much more welcoming. They invite Joan and Barri to a party, where the ladies enjoy Jell-O shots (unaware of the liquor involved), play spin the bottle and do some spontaneous making out with very young men.

Guy (Jonah Hill), the young residence counselor, embraces and defends Joan and Barri too. "You know who else didn't like to party with old people?" he says to Paige. "Adolf Hitler!"

In next week's episode, both women are picked up at a poetry bar - Barri by another guest star, Anthony Anderson, and Joan by Will Forte of "Saturday Night Live," playing a poet who finds her intriguing.

One of the major characters has sex in that episode, but off screen, and the indications that this is going on are absurdly good-natured. The closest thing to bawdy or raunchy in the episode is an observation that Mr. Anderson's character shares with Barri: "They say when a woman hits 40, she's the most orgasmic that she'll ever be."

And what a lovely fantasy for any woman who knows what cellulite looks like! These boys show no revulsion at the idea of getting naked with women who may be wrinkly or more than a little overweight or just not as taut as they used to be. (Compare, for instance, Jack Nicholson's character's reaction to seeing Diane Keaton's character nude in the film "Something's Gotta Give.") In fact, in keeping with scientific estimates of the average 19-year-old male's sex drive, the young men are quite eager.

Cheryl Hines, who plays Larry David's wife on HBO's mostly improvised series, "Curb Your Enthusiasm," is an executive producer of "Campus Ladies." Ms. Hines, who was once in the Groundlings comedy troupe with Ms. Sussin and Ms. Aizley, has said that the new show is largely improvised too.

I'd love to know who came up with one particular line in the premiere episode. Abdul, who is from Iran, doesn't offer to help with the women's heavy luggage at first but quickly realizes his error. "I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking," he says. "Back home, you would carry our bags."

“These are the earliest findings of the Knight Commission's poll. More will be released at the Summit on the Collegiate Athlete Experience to be held at George Washington University on Jan. 30, 2006.”

During Thursday's [labor] hearing, both [diploma mill graduate] teachers acknowledged they did no course work, did not correspond with any instructors, took no exams and wrote no thesis papers. They paid less than $3,000 for their [MA] degrees and were required only to compile transcripts from previous college courses and workshops and provide information on classroom practices.

...The board [and the superintendent of schools] …demanded the teachers return the difference in pay accumulated since the 1999 raise [given on the basis of the bogus degrees], about $37,000 each.

The teachers union filed a grievance, forcing the labor hearing.

[Abramoff] is like a really bad novel. An Orthodox Jewish lobbyist stealing money from Indian tribes, funneling it through a yoga instructor at the beach, and being a possible accessory to a gangland hit in Florida?

It's a bit unusual that Sheldon, a young schlemiel accountant wants to join a Chevrah Kadisha (a traditional Jewish burial society that prepares bodies for interment), but the elders decide to give him a try. Then two million bucks go missing from Sheldon's former employer. Canadian director Nicholas Racz uses the little-seen world of the Jewish burial society as a backdrop for a quirky, darkly funny murder mystery complete with Jewish Mafia thugs, devious detectives, and nervous breakdowns.

THE BURIAL SOCIETY
Canada, 2003 - 100 minutes

My stars! This would mean, among other things, that almost no philosophers deserve tenure in PhD-granting philosophy departments. Taken together with some of the other skeptical remarks in this thread, I’m inclined to believe that many people think philosophers have poor scholarly standards, as well — all because they don’t require monographs for tenure.

Now, before the philosophers set upon me: I’m being facetious, of course. But I have a serious point, namely, that the monograph-for-tenure standard is not universal in academe. It’s not even universal in the humanities. The idea that monographs and monographs alone can serve as guarantors of scholarly integrity bespeaks a particularly parochial view of the scholarly world.

Personally, I’m not against monographs. I like many of them, and I own lots of ‘em too. Furthermore, the Task Force is not calling for all scholars to refrain from emulating books like Mimesis or The Mirror and the Lamp. We’re simply trying to make the case for multiple pathways to tenure and promotion, some — but not all — of which would involve monographs.

On Sunday, we lamented the fact that Nevada regents last week got cold feet over raising admission standards at the state's two major, four-year universities, UNLV and UNR.

The regents -- cowed by defenders of mediocrity who claim higher requirements would be elitist or even racist -- put off for at least another month a decision on demanding that incoming freshman earn at least a 3.0 GPA in high school in order to enroll at either institution. (The GPA standard would be waived for those who achieved a reasonable score on either the ACT or SAT.)

Also last week, Nevada higher education officials revealed that the state was near the bottom when it came to college graduation rates in the West.

The state's community college students were dead last out of 15 states in terms of graduation rates, while just 45 percent of Nevada freshman students enrolled at UNLV or UNR in 1998 had earned a diploma by 2004. (UNR was at 49 percent, UNLV was at 42 percent.) That was fourth from the bottom in the West.

Do you suppose the lax admission standards and the poor graduation rates are related?

In fact, it's been an embarrassment for the past few years that a significant percentage of freshman who earn the state's coveted Millennium Scholarship -- essentially free tuition at a state college for those who achieve a 3.0 GPA at a Nevada high school -- have had to take either remedial math or English upon enrolling at UNLV or UNR.

Yes, graduation rates can be deceptive -- especially at community colleges. People change plans, they transfer to different schools, they may enter the work force planning to return years later to finish their course work.

But if entrance requirements at UNLV and UNR remain unchallenging, the schools will inevitably continue to attract too many students who simply aren't prepared for the work required at a four-year institution. Graduation rates will remain low.

That doesn't do the students -- or taxpayers and the community -- a bit of good.

Olesker's credibility was questioned more than a year ago by members of the [Maryland Governor Ehrlich’s] staff. They complained about a Nov. 16, 2004, column in which Olesker wrote that Ehrlich's communications director, Paul E. Schurick, was "struggling mightily to keep a straight face" when he said political gain was not a consideration in the governor's appearances in commercials promoting state tourism. Olesker acknowledged that he did not attend the hearing at which Schurick spoke and apologized, saying the reference to Schurick's expression was intended metaphorically, not literally.

A Chinese professor adopted as the intellectual poster boy of the Communist party has come under fire for plagiarising the work of a dissident jailed by the government in the early 1990s.

[The source of the plagiarism here wasn’t dead (the preferred orientation in the west), but in jail… and maybe the plagiarist figured he’d never get out…]

Zhou Ye Zhong [the plagiarist], a professor at Wuhan University, is credited with much of the inspiration behind the current leadership's new ideological approach, with its emphasis on the "harmonious society".

He has lectured the Politburo and Communist party chief Hu Jintao and has been at the centre of the party's efforts to square its ideology with formerly taboo topics such as human rights, the rule of law and constitutional government.

But his position as Beijing's golden boy has started to tarnish after he was accused of plagiarism by Wang Tiancheng [the plagiarized], a former Beijing University professor who was jailed for five years in 1992 for attempting to form a rival political party.

[Five years, and then he got out and read ZYZ’s book…]

Mr Wang used an internet discussion board to denounce Mr Zhou's work, and has threatened to take legal action against him if an explanation is not forthcoming.

He told Reuters that his book, The Constitutional Interpretation of Republicanism, was quoted "word for word" in Mr Zhou's recently published works.

"He's risen to the top by repackaging fashionable terms - human rights, democracy, rule of law - for the party's ends," Mr Wang said. "But he reflects the emptiness of the party's ideology. They've got nothing and so he needs to raid the opposition camp for any new ideas."

The Youth Daily, a newspaper given leeway to report stories suppressed by the rest of China's tightly controlled media, further publicised Mr Wang's claim of plagiarism. But that debate has now been muted following an order from propaganda officials to end further discussion of the matter in the domestic media.

[China can just shut everyone up.]

Mr Zhou has made little attempt to defend himself, although in an interview with a Youth Daily journalist in November he hinted that because of Mr Wang's history of dissent it was not politically sound for the publishing house to leave his name in the accreditation notes.

[Classy, and a familiar move. Blaming your plagiarism on the person you plagiarized is a time-honored tradition.]

The propaganda department last week ordered Youth Daily to suppress a dissection of Mr Zhou's book by a liberal law professor, He Weifang, but discussions of the case have spread on the internet.

[Actually, China can’t just shut everyone up.]

Mr He said Mr Zhou took dozens of sections from Mr Wang and other liberal scholars without attribution. "[Mr Wang] strains very hard to make liberal political thought consistent with the official line, and that doesn't fit," Mr He told Reuters.

[Also in line with established plagiarist behavior -- copying from many sources.]

The University of Southern Mississippi … wins the Ayn Rand Memorial Self-Actualization Award. What do a pensive painter, a guy in a library, and a woman at a computer have in common? "The courage to think for themselves and a university that fosters it. Southern Miss: Freeing the power of the individual."