'As an audiotape spread on the Internet, Alabama coach Nick Saban acknowledged Wednesday using a phrase considered derogatory to Cajuns but said he doesn't condone such language and merely was repeating something a friend told him.

Saban, a former LSU and Miami Dolphins coach, used an ethnic slur Jan. 3 while telling Florida reporters in Tuscaloosa an anecdote about an LSU fan's angry reaction to his hiring.

When asked about the LSU fans' reaction, Saban related a phone call from a friend on the LSU board of trustees, whom he did not name. In what seemed to be an attempt at humor, Saban told of the friend's encounter with an LSU fan, who speaks in a Cajun dialect.

"He was walking down the street yesterday before the Sugar Bowl," Saban said on the taped comments. "He calls me. There was a guy working in the ditch, one of those coonass guys that talk funny."'

Oregon has proven itself a state where a significant number of its residents apparently do not value higher education for themselves or their offspring and are therefore not disposed to support it. It may be a working class mentality, it may be a negative reaction to academia ("Eggheads") [Fine, eggheads. But why capitalized, and why stuck in a parenthesis?], it may be due to a lack of vision among the general population about the difference higher education can make in a person's job and career prospects. Whatever the reason or reasons [just go with "reasons"], the disposition of so many Oregonians not to advocate for the support of higher education in Oregon is probably why so many of the current members of the Legislature are dragging their feet on the governor's proposed budget. In fact, it has been reported that a number of them view the proposed increases as unrealistic and unsustainable. We may have to settle for a low [national] ranking and give up on trying to keep up with the "Joneses" [Drop the quotation marks.]. The alternative for those who espouse the increases being to move to a state where research on the subject discloses more support and a higher ranking! [Number of problems here: "Espouses" is the wrong word. "Support" would be better. Then when you get into the "being to..." formulation it's just awkward -- you end up with a sentence fragment. Rewrite more simply: "Supporters of tax increases should move to a state..." And drop the exclamation point!!]

What's also got me talking to myself [Nice folksy transition.] is the question of salaries for all the administrators at institutions like the University of Oregon. I found it impossible to determine Dave Frohnmayer's salary or the salary of anyone working directly for him or in a teaching or other support position at his school. Using the Internet by way of every search engine I could put to the task, I was frustrated in my effort to find out what he and they are paid. I even called Frohmayer's office and got nothing but a run around...

There is a reason that you pay attention to serious fiction writers. Sometimes they are ahead of the curve and like John on the Isle of Patmos, where he penned Revelation, they warn us in poetic and dramatic ways of ills to come. Mississippi, last in almost everything to do with money, is pretty much first in the written word and one William Faulkner saw this thing coming. In a number of novels he talked of the Snopes clan, a greedy breed of rapacious and oveweening- gain- at- all -cost folks come to power after the civil war. In Faulkner's imagination, they were the ones who would do anything to win, fairness and honor be especially damned.

Flem Snopes is running Tuscaloosa.

'Gov. Sarah Palin has asked Jim Hayes [scroll down to "92 Counts..."] to resign his post as a member of the University of Alaska Board of Regents. It’s a request that Hayes reportedly declined.

Palin’s Chief of Staff Mike Tibbles spoke with Hayes on the telephone late last week and asked him to step down, according to Sharon Leighow, the governor’s deputy press secretary. Hayes denied that request, Leighow said.

“That was followed up by a phone call by Gov. Sarah Palin herself who requested Regent Hayes step down, and again, it was my understanding, that he said no,” she said.


[This one's shaping up to be a real embarrassment for Alaska, which has had its share of embarrassments lately.]

... The governor, who appoints regents to the 11-member board, does not have the power to remove Hayes. Only the Legislature can do that, with a two-thirds majority vote in both houses.'

[The article ends with a bunch of stuff about the hapless legislature, which'll never pull itself together to vote on this, let alone get a majority vote.]

'...At a Scrabble tournament in Toronto, a piece of software called Quackle triumphed in a best-of-five series over David Boys, a computer programmer who won the world Scrabble championship in 1995. The open-source program's chief designers include Jason Katz-Brown, a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who also happens to be one of the top-ranked Scrabble players in the world.

Quackle's win did not come easily. Mr. Boys leapt out to a quick lead against the software, winning the first two games thanks to words like "pithead" and "redyeing." But the computer program roared back and took the final three tilts, making a couple of outstanding plays -- like "deviating," placed through two disconnected I's that were already on the board -- that even top-level human players would be hard-pressed to spot.

Quackle earned the right to play Mr. Boys by edging out another Scrabble-playing program, Maven, in a series of games against expert human players. (Quackle finished the Toronto Computer vs. Human Showdown, as the event was called, with a gaudy 32-4 record, while Maven could only muster a 30-6 showing.)

Mr. Boys seemed to have no trouble keeping a sense of perspective after the loss: "It's still better to be a human than to be a computer," he said....'

The beast needs to eat. It always needs to eat.

There are expectations to meet. A stadium to expand. Championships to chase. TV viewers to entertain. College football poll voters to impress. A state rivalry to control.

The beast needs to eat. It always needs to eat. Sometimes it eats things that could embarrass the beast. Sometimes it eats things that make me wonder if the beast considers itself bulletproof. [All these choppy, choppy little sentences... Usually, of course, this is a bad idea. But there's a primitive something about the whole beast thing that seems appropriate for this me-Tarzan approach...]

It appears that Willie Williams is going to enroll at the University of Louisville and help the Cardinals chase a national title next fall. He is a linebacker who can run like Reggie Bush, hit like Brian Urlacher, fly like Superman. He can feed the beast.

He is also a linebacker who symbolizes good tackling skills will always be more important than good citizen skills in big-time football. You take a guy who can outrun a halfback, even if he has trouble outrunning the law. ["Outrun a halfback...outrunning the law." Clever.]

Williams enrolled at the University of Miami in 2004 with a record that included a reported 11 arrests, including a felony charge of setting off three fire extinguishers during a recruiting visit to Florida as well as a misdemeanor battery charge for hugging a woman without her consent. [Funny stuff, and the writer knows enough to leave it alone and simply report. The message that this dude is seriously fucked comes through all by itself.]

Williams played one uninspiring season for the Hurricanes. Word is he left Miami because of playing time issues. There have not been more arrests.

There were reports he would enroll elsewhere. Never happened. Tennessee reportedly balked. As did West Virginia. Other Top 20 programs balked, too.

So Williams spent last season at a Los Angeles-area junior college. Now, after a recruiting visit here last weekend, he appears prepared to bring his 6-foot-3, 235-pound body to U of L.

It makes you wonder if the Cardinals are taking this idea of becoming the next Miami in the Big East Conference too far. [His readers don't need elaboration of the reference to Miami, and UD's readers shouldn't either. Less is more.]

U of L wouldn’t consider hiring a coach or a dean with this guy’s resume. That would be embarrassing. This should be embarrassing. Williams will be a storyline wherever the Cards go. [What would blogs like mine do without recruits like Williams?]

Bryant Northern was booted from the basketball program with a shorter rap sheet. But Northern wasn’t the prospect Williams is. Standards are different if you can feed the beast.

This will be sold as a story of redemption, another Father Flanagan moment. Everybody deserves a second chance. Some deserve a dozen - especially if they run the 40-yard dash in a time that makes pro scouts hyperventilate. [This is absolutely wonderful. Father Flanagan is a marvelous touch.]



...This is a risky walk across a high wire. Some guys reward schools for taking chances. Some fall -- and flatten coaches, administrations and teams on the way down.

Ohio State took Maurice Clarett - and won before things got ugly. But remember what renegades did to Miami, Oklahoma and Colorado.

It happens a lot in football, a sport where an Illinois judge just cleared Tank Johnson, a Bears lineman with a rap sheet, to travel to the Super Bowl, a sport where the Bengals’ 2006 season imploded to the sound of police sirens.

But the beast has to eat. Now, it’s going to eat at Louisville. [Brings his theme to a nice, neat end. Well done.]

'Three Guilford College football players face assault and ethnic intimidation charges following an on-campus attack on three Palestinian students, authorities said.

...[Three students] were beaten with fists, feet and brass knuckles in an attack early Saturday involving at least 15 members of the school's football team, according to court documents. The attackers called the Palestinians "terrorists" and used racial slurs during the attack.

School officials believe a total of about 12 people were physically involved in the altercation ...


The attack is believed to have happened early Saturday morning... Authorities have charged [three students]... with ethnic intimidation and assault and battery, the News & Record of Greensboro reported Tuesday. They were released Monday on $2,000 bond. The men were listed on the school's Web site as members of the football team.

... Guilford [is] a school in Greensboro [North Carolina] founded by Quakers....

"It was the most horrific experience of my life," [one student] told the News & Record on Tuesday. "This was a horrible, unprovoked hate crime."

[He] said he was diagnosed with a concussion and had trouble walking on his own for several days after the attack...'

I’ll wager that students don’t realize how seriously most of us profs take those student evaluations.

Administrators surely do, and they weigh them in decisions regarding salaries and promotions. Second to grading papers, these can be the least pleasant experience in teaching. We all want excellent evaluations because we want to think we are good at what we do — and we want students to like us.

'Reactions to Putin’s regime vary, but they form a certain pattern, falling within a given range. At one end of the spectrum, there is virtually unconditional endorsement of the Russia that is now emerging. The leading exponent of this view, the economist Andrei Shleifer, helped – not coincidentally – to lay the foundations of the new order, working in Moscow as one of the drafters of Yeltsin’s privatisations, and beneficiaries of the proceeds. Project director of the Harvard Institute for International Development, financed by the US government to promote ‘economic reform in support of open markets’ in the former USSR, he was prosecuted by the Justice Department on his return to the US for criminal conduct – cashing in on his insider position for investment purposes. Harvard had to pay $26.5 million, and Shleifer and his wife $3.5 million to settle the charges against him. This was the scandal that led to the downfall of his patron Larry Summers, who as Clinton’s deputy secretary of the Treasury set up the Harvard project, and was then implicated in the pay-out, as president of the university.'

[A]n on-campus stadium at this point, after recent tuition increases and budget cuts of historic proportions, is a dessert menu item that should have been financed 100 percent with private money. Students should not be paying for it, taxpayers should not be paying for it and the University should not be ordering dessert when it can't afford to pay for the main course.

Rutgers University gave hefty raises this season to football coach Greg Schiano's inner circle, with one assistant getting a bump of nearly $30,000, according to a review of employment contracts.

Most of Schiano's six-figure coaching assistants got double-digit raises even as the university reeled under state budget cuts that forced the elimination of 825 jobs.

Salaries for nine coaches now range between $115,000 and $185,000, according to the contracts obtained by The Record under the state's Open Public Records Act. Each also gets a $7,200 annual car stipend and an additional one month's pay -- a bonus for getting the Scarlet Knights into the Texas Bowl.

The contracts for 2006-07 were signed in the fall as the team embarked on its most successful season, one that saw the once-downtrodden program crack the national rankings for the first time in 30 years.

At the same time, the rest of the university was suffering from nearly $80 million in state aid cuts that resulted in the job cuts and cancellation of at least 459 course sections. Athletic Director Robert E. Mulcahy III also announced plans to cut six high-performing Olympic sports that cost a combined $800,000.

But football was spared the pain. As much as $3 million from the university was pumped into the $13 million football budget this season.

Mulcahy said he hoped that increased revenues from ticket sales would close the gap and allow the program to be self-supporting as early as next season. Experts say it generally takes consistent winning seasons for programs to begin to turn a profit.

Mulcahy said season-ticket sales for next season's home games already have doubled to 23,000 and sellouts are anticipated. When asked about possible expansion of the 41,500-seat stadium in Piscataway, Mulcahy said: "We have to look at all options. I'm a businessman."

Schiano will be paid more than $1.13 million for 2006-07 as a series of bonuses has kicked in for milestones in the team's winning season. The coach's contract, which runs through 2012, also provides him with a Cadillac Escalade.

The contract may be renegotiated upward, however, after the team's celebrated 11-2 season. Schiano, 40, won several national coaching awards, sparking interest from other teams. The charismatic coach has also snagged some of the nation's top recruits for next year.

"I am going to treat him fairly, given all the great interest in him,'' Mulcahy said, when asked whether Schiano will get a better contract.


... Elsewhere in the university, raises averaged between 6.5 percent and 7.5 percent, said spokesman Greg Trevor. President Richard McCormick, who makes $525,000 per year, did not accept a raise this year, nor did most other members of his Cabinet, said Trevor. Mulcahy said his salary was frozen as well.

"Post-National Gastroidentities. We will attempt to answer the question of how food, cuisine, and gastronomy play an important part both in the strategies to instrument normalcy through the imagination of the modern Nation-State, and the ways in which discourses affirming nation, race, ethnicity, hospitality, the universality of humanity, interact with each other fragmenting the national gastronomic field and undermining the unpolluted self-understanding of the modern Nation-State."

If the Carter Conference is like a reunion for former federal officials, journalists and academics, then Leo Ribuffo is the unpopular kid sulking in the corner.

The George Washington University professor, who participated in a roundtable discussion on Carter's legacy Friday, strayed from the party line about how wonderful and historic the conference is, comparing it to a high school reunion.

"We're going to hear two days of fond memories, which is understandable, but as scholars, I think we should look at things with a certain level of detachment," he said.

The self-described "unreconstructed McGovernite" returned to the theme after former Vice President Walter Mondale attacked Vice President Dick Cheney for giving President Bush false information and bad advice after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"I remind you that there will be a conference like this one day about Bush, and indeed a positive one about Cheney," Ribuffo said.

'Finally, the University of Georgia will get press for something other than football, alcohol or fraternity misbehavior when the Carter Conference begins this Friday.'

'The truly rich schools can and should simply end tuition for all. Harvard, Yale and Princeton, for example, all earn at least $75,000 in endowment income for every student, including graduate and professional students. With other private gifts and government grants, total non-tuition income per student far exceeds $100,000. This is several times the national average spending per student. If Berea College, Coopers Union and the service academies can be tuition free, so can Harvard, Yale and Princeton. The reason they are not is that these schools do not want to engage in a modest amount of belt-tightening that such policies would entail, and do not want to end the explosion in the salaries of their most prominent faculty and administrators that has gone on in recent years. Rent-seeking behavior trumps access issues or the national interest.'

...Students and academics claim that bowing to market pressures and ending the state monopoly on tertiary education will lower the standard of education for all and further divert resources from chronically underfunded state universities.

Opponents — who include left-wing opposition parties and labor unions — also fear that additional numbers of university students will reduce the value of state degrees and create a two-tier system.

In my 12 years as president of the University of Oregon, I have watched debates that pit the various elements of higher education against one another.

These debates assume that the success of one comes at the expense of the other - research or teaching, undergraduate education or graduate, in-state students or out of state.

These are false dichotomies.

Equally spurious is the debate that pits athletics against academics. To argue that one must choose academic excellence or athletic excellence is an oversimplification.

Academic quality is the cornerstone of our identity as a public research university. It is defined in our mission statement, "a community of scholars committed to the highest standards of academic inquiry, learning and service."

Duck athletics is an integral part of this university, and we should demand and expect the same degree of excellence on the athletic field as we do in the classroom.

The relationship between sports and academics is kept in proper perspective by basing every decision related to athletics on the fundamental principle that athletes are students first.

We take great pride in such measures of our academic success as the graduation rates of our student- athletes.

Our mission is to achieve excellence in all areas of the university - the classroom, the laboratory and the athletic field. From Bill Bowerman to our prize-winning faculty to our 19 Rhodes Scholars, the UO legacy for academic and athletic distinction can and will continue side by side.

Sometimes I wonder whether I care to the point that I neglect other things, like, oh, my job. Tweaking the blog is seductive in a way that a print deadline never is. By the time I am done posting entries, moderating comments and making links, my, has the time flown. I probably should have made some phone calls about next week’s column, but maybe I’ll write about, ah, blogging instead.

There has always been a feedback loop in journalism — letters to the editor, the phone and more recently e-mail messages. But a blog provides feedback through a fire hose. The nice thing about putting out a newspaper was that, at some point, the story was set and the writer got to go home. Now I have become a day trader, jacked in to my computer and trading by the second in my most precious commodity: me. How do they like me now? What about ... now? Hmmmm ... Now?

'It is really unfortunate and surprising that Gov. Riley has chosen to defend the payment of $4 million by the University of Alabama to the new football coach Nick Saban. His stipulation that the pay will not come from taxpayer money is oversimplification at its worst.

Even the common man on the street knows that such a big expenditure will now force the university to raise its tuition fees, cut scholarships, increase stadium ticket prices and quadruple the lease payments of its stadium concessionaires. Even the donors to the Alabama athletic program will now have to multiply their contributions to offset the pay raise of coach Saban.

Sadly, ordinary students and middle-class ticket holders will be the main victims of such misappropriation of university funds. How about the parents of the students who now have to suffer additional financial burdens by paying more for their children's tuition fees? Are they not Alabama taxpayers?

Such a very big payout also sends a very wrong signal regarding the priorities of the university. It now becomes very apparent that education is no longer the No. 1 priority in the campus. It is also now clear that boosters run the university, instead of academic minds.

It is also perplexing that the university is pleading for more money from the state educational trust funds, but at the same time has the audacity to squander annually $4 million of university funds to gain football prestige. UA is an educational institution, not an NFL franchise.

Mark Esmero
Montgomery'

"University of Tulsa head coach Steven Kragthorpe was earning $327k in 2004, $402k in 2005. I don’t know how much in 2006 – that tax return isn’t available on Guidestar.org just yet. The university president earned $276k and 264k in those two years. Tulsa is the smallest Division I-A school in the NCAA and this private university has an endowment of around $750 million.

Rice head coach Ken Hatfield was earning $489k in 2004, $425k in 2005. The university president earned $425k and 604k in those two years. Rice is the second-smallest Division I-A school in the NCAA, but this private university has a staggering endowment of over $4 billion.

Then Rice hired University of Tulsa defensive coordinator Todd Graham to replace the retiring (because he was on a long losing streak and they made him) Ken Hatfield. They got a bargain, paying him about $325k per year. After just one year he’s leaving Rice (no great surprise)... to go BACK to Tulsa (what! Why?). For a reported $1.1 million annual salary!

We’ve been looking at the Tulsa tax return... then the Rice tax return... then the Tulsa tax return...and can’t figure out where the money is coming from. Tulsa has less than 1/3 the revenues, less than 1/5 the endowment, fewer students and lower tuition rates. Clearly they really, really love football in Tulsa."

Nick Saban, the new head football coach at the University of Alabama, is receiving a salary of $4 million per year, as I'm sure you're aware. You're probably not aware of who I am or how much your University is supposed to be paying me a year. [Starts with the obvious: Massa Saban, as one of UD's readers calls him. Hasn't really said anything nasty yet, but you just know it's coming. Cast your eyes to the letter's last paragraph, where she returns to Saban. She knows how to structure a good essay, giving it a nice rounded feel by invoking the massa at the beginning and at the end.]

My name is Sara Penrod. I am a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. I am a member of the University Honors Program and the Blount Undergraduate Initiative. As a National Merit Finalist, I was offered a full academic scholarship to UA and accepted despite great offers from other colleges. My family has a legacy at this university, and I wanted to continue it. [Simple straightforward unemotional writing. Good way to start. Notice that her sentences will become more complex as she moves along and chronicles the complex screw-ups to which she's been subjected by the university's administrators.]

The bureaucratic idiocy I've had to endure at this university makes me wish I had accepted some other college's offer. [Coming in for the kill here, with the word "idiocy."] Before I even started the fall 2006 semester, I've dealt with administrative mistakes. I understand that mistakes are inevitable, especially at a university the size of UA. The main problem is denial of problems and lack of responsibility. [A basic rule from English Comp 101 being followed nicely here: Always concede stuff at various points in your polemic. Makes you look generous, rational, level-headed.]

During the fall semester, my housing, class registration and even my meal plan were messed up. I made many, many visits to the offices of scholarships, admissions, financial aid, student receivables and dining services. I still lived in a study room in Julia Tutwiler Hall for the first month of the semester and had no working meal plan for the whole semester, despite having the money for all of this taken out of my scholarship money.

This semester, I returned from Christmas vacation to find a notice from the University stating that my spring 2007 registration has been canceled for nonpayment. I never received any prior notification, so I didn't know there was an error that needed to be straightened out.

Now I have been booted out of all of the classes I registered for several months ago. This will set me back for the rest of my undergraduate career; since enrollment is limited, I won't be able to get back in the classes I need and will effectively waste an entire semester. [Now we get to narration. Note that she chronicles her woes calmly, but does not avoid strong language, like "booted out."]

No one on this campus seems to know what the problem is. I once again have talked to people in the offices of Student Receivables, Scholarship and even Admissions. The best I can piece together is the problem, it seems, is that my scholarship has been "lost" again [ The two uses of "is" are awkward. A little rewriting needed.], but no one in your administration seems capable of finding it. [The "your" is very good. Reminds us that this is a letter to the president.] No one will take responsibility for fixing the error, and meanwhile my academic career is being ruined. [Ending the paragraph with the word "ruined" is excellent.]

As I said earlier, you don't know me, and you could probably care less. I'm just one more campus-wide ID number. [This late in the game, she can let it all out. Her anger is palpable. Fine. I'd, though, have written just "campus ID number," rather than campus-wide.] If I leave in total frustration at this university's unwillingness to deal with errors, it won't matter to you. I'm just collateral damage, as long as you get your 28,000 students by 2010.

[Here comes UD's favorite part!] As long as you have a winning football team to keep the alumni donors happy, you can pay a football coach $4 million a year and not think a thing about "losing" an $8,000-a-year scholarship for one more National Merit Finalist. [See what a gift Massa Saban is? Rhetorically, he's given the university the equivalent of the Elgin Marbles.]

Perhaps the problem is that I've been working under the assumption that the University of Alabama is an institute of higher learning. I appear to have been mistaken. It is a temple for the worship of dead pigskin wrapped around cotton. [Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch. Lovely.]

What's one bright, talented National Merit Finalist and honor student, more or less? I see clearly now where this illustrious university's priorities lie.

'The next time someone in Alabama gripes about the educational ranking in the state, let me remind them of hard empirical evidence regarding how highly education is thought of in Alabama.

The recent hiring of Nick Saban by the University of Alabama for a reported $32 million reflects Alabama's commitment to education.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education web site, the average salary of a full professor (the highest academic rank, and hard to get) was $97,800. That means that football at UA is valued 327.2 times more than academics.

And you wonder why we rank last in just about everything?

Henry Barwood
Troy'

'Gov. Ted Strickland wants to make Ohio's chancellor of higher education part of his cabinet, under his direct control. We think it's a plan worth pursuing, given the highly unsatisfactory state of higher education in Ohio. Placing the chancellor directly under the governor's control, Strickland said yesterday, will increase his ability to foster improvements in college graduation and opportunities for getting a college education.

... Strickland's plan to bring the chancellor into his cabinet is unique among the 50 states, according to an Associated Press story citing a Harvard University expert on university leadership searches. The expert, Judith Block McLaughlin, sounded critical of Strickland's idea, noting, ''It's treating education as if it were a state agency and subjecting it to political influence'' which runs counter to the traditional balance between ''accountability to the government'' and ''intellectual independence.'' But what about Ohioans' unmet need for a decent, affordable college education? The Regents don't seem to have a grip on it and could use help.'

'[James J.] Duderstadt said that when the flagship university in Alabama, ranked near the bottom in state spending on higher education — the state’s entire budget for need-based aid in 2004-5 was $3.35 million, according to the National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs — offers a coach $32 million, it sends the wrong message about priorities. (In a nod, perhaps, to perceptions, Saban donated $100,000 this week to a scholarship fund at the university.)

Worse still, Duderstadt said, is the possibility that the enormity of the contract is the last straw for lawmakers looking to take aim at not just the nonprofit status of college sports but of higher education as a whole.'

Sure, Alabama is all smiles now as it has landed its savior coach, Saban. But Moore should ask Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich what it's like to deal with a coach with a perpetual wandering eye. Saban should be content at Alabama, but what happens if he can't dominate recruiting the way he did at LSU? What if he comes to [the] realization that the program he left behind in Baton Rouge is better than the one he takes over in Tuscaloosa? Will he desire to go elsewhere? Plus, the precedent-setting contract Moore gave Saban is sure to making him a pariah to athletic departments across the sport.

We Alabamians can finally say we are No. 1 one in the nation in something -- the highest paid football coach. We not only have one, but two, of the highest paid coaches within the top six in the United States -- Nick Saban at $4 million a year, and Tommy Tuberville at $2.23 million.

But where is Alabama ranked within the nation in health care, the poverty level and public education? Schott's Almanac, 2007, reports Alabama is tied with West Virginia for the fifth highest infant mortality rate in the country. I am a graduate of one of the two schools mentioned above and I am deeply ashamed of the imprudent use of our university funds.

Football in Alabama is no longer a sport, but a religion. The chapel or cathedral is the 80,000-plus-seat stadium where adherents gather during football season. The high priests are the coaches and players. The faithful attendees of this religion also give generously to the athletic fund and fork out top dollar for game tickets.

When will the religious leaders of Alabama and their faithful members see this as a huge moral problem? Where is Christian radio and TV? Where are the social activists who have championed such causes as racial equality or citizens against drunk drivers?

This distorted religion must be challenged. Are we Alabamians morally strong enough to meet and defeat this false god? Only time will tell.

Jim Oliver
Montgomery

'Minutes after a Harvard Business School (HBS) professor collapsed from a heart attack on the Allston campus last Wednesday, a few well-trained Harvardians swooped to his aid. “Within six or seven minutes there were two doctors, three defibrillators and an emergency medical staff,” said HBS Executive Director of Marketing and Communications David R. Lampe. An Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) officer helped a team including two physicians from the HBS branch of Harvard University Health Services (UHS), a campus security officer, and Mt. Auburn Hospital emergency medical personnel.'

'Seifert said he will ask DFL Rep. Tom Rukavina, who heads a higher education budget panel, to investigate the university's contracts with high-paid coaches. He will also ask the university's Board of Regents to examine "golden parachute" packages for coaches more closely and sign off on big hiring or firing moves. Rep. Joyce Peppin, R-Rogers, said she will introduce a bill to ban the university from using any state money - directly or indirectly - to cover buyouts for coaches.'

1. gave its football coach an expensive contract extension last year;

2. fired him yesterday onaccounta he lost a big game;

3. and now (as this post's title, a quote from the University of Minnesota's athletic director, tells us) is draining academic funds to get the money to pay him off.

'Good. I am glad they did it. Finally, the NCAA has embarrassed itself at just the right time. The goofy hillbillies running the coaching turnstile at Alabama, in their perpetual effort to find a way to regain lost glory, blinged out their latest coach, Nick Saban (roughly $32M over 8 years), so much that Congress is starting to take notice.

Thank God.

As a professor at several universities with big time athletics programs, I have always been sickened by the way academics has taken a back seat to making money on TV.

I am a Finance Professor, so I love money as much as anyone else. But I also know that money can turn a pastor into a demon, a professor into a pimp, and a university into a sweatshop.

Last year, a lawmaker questioned whether or not corporate interests have turned universities away from their academic mission. In a letter to the congressman, NCAA president Myles Brand wrote that the salaries of college coaches are “commensurate with other highly paid and highly recruited faculty and staff.”

Wow. That was officially, without question, the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.

After hearing his “profound” statement, I wanted to say to Dr. Brand “Dude, you have a PhD. Can’t you come up with anything better than THAT?” Brand is definitely not earning his mega salary, as every good pimp knows that solid, two-faced public relations is critical to “keeping your hoes in check”.

OK, I’ll stop being silly. But I can’t help it. The hypocrisy of the NCAA is so daunting that you can only laugh to keep from killing someone. Esteemed academics have turned themselves into laughing stocks, absolute clowns in front of the entire world.

Their quest for riches is not as problematic as the fact that they are simultaneously forced to explain why the athletes should not get a serious cut of the money.

They remind me of the dirty pastor explaining why “the lawud” wants you to give him an extra $500, or Anna Nicole Smith explaining how she truly loved the 90 year old billionaire to whom she was married.

While coaches are continuously fired for not winning games, they are almost never fired for not graduating their players. In fact, a coach with a high graduation rate and low winning percentage is more likely to be fired than one who wins games and doesn’t graduate anyone.

Does this sound like an academic mission to you? Me neither.

As I watch my alma mater (Ohio State) play in the national championship (with 18 corporate sponsors paying millions for their ads) on January 8 (the date chosen so that the event can replace the revenue generated by Monday Night Football), I congratulate both teams (who will receive roughly $18 million dollars each for simply participating).

I will watch the game with anticipation (along with the thousands of people in the stadium who paid hundreds of dollars for their tickets), to see the great Troy Smith (who is not going to be compensated). If this is not a great amateur experience, I don’t know what is.

Ohio State guard T.J. Downing said. "We're the reason this money's coming in. We're the guys out there sacrificing our bodies. We're taking years off our lives out here hitting each other, and we're not being compensated for it."

Given that I once taught at Ohio State, I am proud that my former students have been trained to know when they are being screwed. There is nothing wrong selling a product, but you should at least be consistent and fair in the process.

Professional coaching contracts in an allegedly amateur sports league makes as much sense as The Michael Jackson, R. Kelly Child Sitting Service.

And I’m not buying either one.'

'The two-time Oscar-winner [Hilary Swank], who received the 2,325th star on the [Hollywood Walk of Fame]..., wiped away tears as she looked back on her rags-to-riches rise to fame. "I remember my mom using a roll of quarters to call agents from a pay phone and telling agents they should sign me," she recalled at the dedication ceremony.'

'So does Penn attract bad eggs, or just suffer the image problem when a rotten one splats on its public face?'

"It is, indeed, amazing to contemplate so vast a vacuity. One thinks of the interstellar spaces, of the colossal reaches of the now mythical ether. ...[I]t is impossible for intelligence to flourish in such an atmosphere. Free inquiry is blocked by the idiotic certainties of ignorant men."

'The unkind truth is that the sort of vibrant, high-profile athletics program that would transform the campus attitude would cost far more than undergraduates are willing to pony up. At some point, if UCSD is truly dedicated to an athletics program that fully engages the campus community, the school's administrators and faculty will have to bite the bullet and allocate their own funds to the athletic department, which means tough compromises all around. And that will only come about if the ball of financial responsibility is dropped squarely in the court of UCSD's administration and faculty.

It's something of a wonder that UCSD is able to field the variety and quality of teams that it does, given the department's shoestring budget. A "no" vote on the fee referendum - athletics advisers have warned - may mean the death of several UCSD intercollegiate teams. It's a shame that dedicated athletes could be left out in the cold, but the long-term financial health of the athletic department is at stake, and without at least a modicum of support from the other key players on campus, athletics programs will continue to find themselves in the hole.

Somewhat paradoxically, whether you support UCSD athletics or not, a "no" vote on this January's fee referendum is the only choice.'

'As the case weakened last month, with the victim changing parts of her account and the prosecutor dropping some charges against the three players, Baker declined a request for an interview through a Vanderbilt spokeswoman.'

... Saban had three years remaining on his Dolphins contract at about $4.5 million annually. The Alabama deal will guarantee him $4 million a year for eight years. He can also earn performance bonuses of $800,000 a year in bowl-game bonuses.

Though the full contract details have yet to be reported, based on other Division I-A compensation packages, one can assume that there will also be other bonuses, free use of a car or two, free country-club memberships, a heavily subsidized mortgage, upward of $1 million in severance pay and a handsome pension, among other perquisites.

In short, a university outbid an N.F.L. team for a head coach. But Saban’s record after two years in Miami was an uninspiring 15-17....

...[C]ollege athletics are not supposed to be run according to the rules of the marketplace. They are supposed to be run according to the norms of the university.

Athletic departments should not be able to have it both ways: either they are part of academia and are treated as nonprofit institutions, or they are professional enterprises, whose players are paid a salary and covered by workmen’s compensation, and they pay taxes like other business entities.

'Discerning the link between paying Saban $4 million annually and the NCAA's scholastic directive may require bringing in help from Alabama's academic branches of economics, mathematics and philosophy.'

'Gov. Bob Riley said Friday he supports the University of Alabama's decision to pay new football coach Nick Saban about $4 million a year - an amount some have called excessive in a state that often ranks near the bottom nationally for education.

Riley said he called Alabama Athletics Director Mal Moore and congratulated him on hiring Saban, a high-profile coach who won a national championship when he was head coach at LSU. Saban has been coach of the Miami Dolphins for the last two years.

"If he does what the fans hope, if he wins, the payback will be multiplied tenfold," said Riley, who as governor is also the ex-officio president of the University of Alabama Board of Trustees.

"We need to be competing at the highest level in everything we do," Riley said, adding that Saban brings a reputation for excellence to the university's football program.

Riley said the funds to pay Saban will come from ticket sales, licensing agreements and other Athletic Department sources and not from taxpayer funds. He added that when the football team is winning it increases fan support and revenue for other Crimson Tide sports teams.

Riley's comments were in response to criticism that $4 million is too much to pay a football coach in a state that ranks 46th in the country in household income.

Riley said it doesn't bother him that Saban will be making more than 20 times what he makes as governor.

"You don't run for governor in order to get rich," Riley said.'

'As much as I love this state, I'm sometimes embarrassed to be an Alabamian.

I guess I'll just take a deep breath and repeat the unofficial state motto: "Thank God for Mississippi!"'

Everybody who loves Nick Saban and thinks he's a moral, straight-ahead guy, please stand up.

You Alabama straw-chewers can sit down. (Your lives are so impoverished in the post-Bear Bryant era, you'd hire an al-Qaida operative if he'd guarantee yearly whup-ups of Auburn and LSU.)

So it's nice to see nobody else is standing. (I'm not counting you hedge-fund managers, felons and Halliburton execs.)

But here's the deal: Saban is the new face of college football. Like it or not.

And deep inside, all you college fans -- sitting there shaking your heads in disgust -- you love it. It's part of the show. And you do love the show.

Talk all you want about ethics and graduation rates.

But W's are all you care about.

Colleges don't pay their players. So they pay their coaches. They build massive training facilities. Their football teams travel like royalty -- can you believe Ohio State and its legion of coaches and athletic-department jetsam will spend 11 days in Arizona for the BCS title game? -- and they'll do about anything to win.

Hence, a school like Alabama will guarantee a guy like ''Never-Don't-Mean-Never Nick'' Saban more than $30 million for eight years to breach a signed contract, lie bald-faced to the masses and kick Arkansas' booty. (Hopefully.)

You see, the Tide lost to the Hogs this season, as well as Auburn and LSU.

Indeed, Alabama finished 6-7 after a loss to Oklahoma State in the Independence Bowl. Kenneth Lay wasn't available.

So come on down, Nick!

Saban, with a mouth so rubberized it could bounce, said he hadn't planned on leaving Miami, ''but still, if my heart was somewhere else, it would be wrong for me to stay.''

Like he's moving to Tuscaloosa to consolidate body parts.

Hall of Fame former Dolphins coach Don Shula blasted Saban on the radio Thursday, saying, ''If you don't mean it, don't say it.''

Remember, of course, that Shula is just-fired 'Bama coach Mike Shula's dad.

No matter, the old notions that a man's word means something, that dignity comes from steadfastness, that money doesn't rule all, are long gone.

And the street is two-way.

When Minnesota clown/athletic director Joel Maturi fired veteran and successful coach Glen Mason on Sunday -- because Texas Tech rallied from a deep hole to beat the Gophers in overtime in the Insight Bowl last Friday -- he showed why coaches are encouraged to lie and breach and profiteer whenever needed.

I'm not sure how many times in the last couple weeks I heard Saban say he absolutely was not leaving the Dolphins for the Crimson Tide or anywhere else.

But it may have been more times than I have heard Stuart Scott say, ''Boo-yah!'' in the last decade. And, of course, it was just as meaningful.

College football is a mess, even though the 32 bowl games provide us with such splendid and effortless (for us) entertainment. The fan-based yammering for a fool-proof championship game won't let up.

Yes, Boise State is 13-0. And if Ohio State loses big to Florida in a sloppy title game next Monday, don't the Broncos deserve a shot at, well, something?

But the reason there is no playoff tournament -- whether with four or eight or 16 or all 119 Division I-A teams -- is that the players are supposedly college students, and there's a limit to the expectations and physical burdens you can lay on amateur youth involved in extracurricular activity.

Not so coaches.

Just as you forgot about the sneaky maneuverings of Steve Spurrier, who went from college to the NFL to colllege again, making money all the way, you'll forget about the slipperiness of Never-Never Nick.

You forgot abut Lou Holtz going to the NFL and bolting when it suited him.

You maybe haven't forgotten about Gary Barnett e-mailing his Northwestern players and telling them he was going nowhere, just days before he fled for Colorado.

But that affront lingers because it happened here in Chicagoland, and because it was early in the amorality that is fast becoming the coaching norm.

Everybody loved the high action of the recent Fiesta Bowl, with 22 points scored in the final 86 seconds of regulation and 15 more in overtime and Boise State squeezing past Oklahoma 43-42.

But ask Sooners coach Bob Stoops -- himself a one-time bonus baby -- how much fun it was getting knifed by Boise State coach Chris Peterson.

It's crazy to think a budget-tightening state like Alabama can fund $4 million a year for a football coach at its flagship state university.

But then Greg Schiano, Rutgers' head coach, is the highest-paid employee in the state of New Jersey.

And New Jersey is hurting, too.

The point is, we need our circuses. We will have our circuses, by God.

And the ringmasters, ready and running and phony as sin, can you blame them for taking what they can get?

'Kyle Dowd filed [a] lawsuit Thursday against Duke University and visiting associate professor Kim Curtis.

Dowd, who graduated with David Evans in May 2006, was not indicted in the rape case but says that Professor Curtis gave him and another lacrosse player in class a failing grade ... as a form of retaliation after the Duke Lacrosse scandal broke. The two players were apparently receiving passing grades until the scandal, and Duke University revised their grades upward months after graduation.

This does not affect the pending sexual offense and kidnapping case against David Evans, Reade Seligmann, and Collin Finnerty. But it is significant in being the first of likely to be many legal and moral hits against Duke University - critics say that Duke failed to stand by its own students as they came under attack by members of the faculty and community.

It is also noteworthy for its timing, coming one day after Seligmann and Finnerty are reinstated and weeks after a turnaround statement by Duke University President Brodhead, calling for DA Mike Nifong to step off the case.

Duke is being sued for breach of contract and unjust enrichment. Curtis and Duke are being sued for fraud, negligent misrepresentation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, negligence, and punitive damages. For all but one of those claims the lawsuit states that the plaintiffs were damaged in excess of $10,000....'

In a poor state that struggles to fund public schools, the $4 million a year offered to the University of Alabama's new football coach sent the wrong signal to some.

"That certainly makes a strong statement in a state that funds education at one of the lowest per-pupil rates of any state in the country," said state Rep. Richard Lindsey, D-Centre, chairman of a House committee that writes the education budget. "I think we've let it get out of hand."

... "You couldn't have a more stark picture of education priorities in the state of Alabama," said Jim Carnes, communications director for Alabama Arise, a coalition that represents the poor. "We put that kind of money into a college football coach and leave our younger children at the mercy of inadequate schools and underpaid teachers. We strongly need a priority adjustment."

... Cleo Thomas, a former member of the board of trustees at Alabama, said spending millions on a football coach makes the public cynical, particularly when politicians talk about raising taxes for education.

"I think he's clearly the right man for the job, but that seems like an exorbitant amount," said Thomas, an Anniston attorney who was the first black student government president at Alabama.

"How do you explain to the people of Alabama the needs of the university when you have these kinds of resources available to pay the coach?" Thomas said. "How do you make the claim for more public funds, which are scarce, if there are surpluses that permit $4 million coaches salaries?"

'Dolphins fans, feeling jilted as their coach absconds to Alabama, can take solace knowing he left us for higher cause. The gargantuan salary Nick Saban will collect from his new employer is all about furthering ``educational purposes.''

It's the law. Spelled out in the federal tax code. Teachers throughout Alabama must be dancing in the streets, knowing that their flagship university has earmarked $32 million in salary and another $4 million in incentives (not to mention the $4 million buyout to get rid of its previous coach) toward educational purposes.

Most of Nick's salary will be funneled through the 'Bama boosters club, technically a 501c (3) charitable organization. Roll Tide boosters get to write off their contributions on their tax returns. For instance, when one of Alabama's well-to-do fans leases one of 123 skyboxes in Bryant-Denny Stadium, he's able to write off 80 percent of the $42,000 annual fee as a charitable donation. All that drinking, cheering, cussing in fancy digs -- that's as good as a writing a check to the March of Dimes.

FANS CONTRIBUTE

Dolphins fans not only have themselves a losing, coachless team, but, as taxpayers, they get the added satisfaction of subsidizing their ex-coach's new salary.

Critics of big-time college sports have been warning about an ''arms race,'' with universities stealing coaches away from other universities with ever-escalating salaries. College football and basketball coaches (making $1 million, $2 million, even $3 million a year) were becoming some states' highest-paid public employees. Including Florida.

But the Saban hiring takes the arms race to another level. Suddenly, universities are hiring away top-paid head coaches from professional teams, despite that nettlesome tax code requiring colleges to use their exemption for ``educational purposes.''

Of course, one primary ''tax-exempt purpose'' listed on the NCAA's federal tax returns has been to ''retain a clear line of demarcation between intercollegiate athletics and professional sports.'' The Saban hiring establishes a ''clear line of demarcation'' by flat outspending the pros.

College jock factories blame ''market'' pressures for coaches' ever-crazier salaries. Not hardly, said Andrew Zimbalist, the Smith College sports economist and author of books on the relationship between public money and big-time sports. (The Bottom Line: Observations and Arguments on the Sports Business was published in October.)

LOWER OVERHEAD

He called the college market ''very skewed.'' Professional teams work under real market pressures and stakeholder expectations. Besides, they have to pay their players. Big-time college football programs, Zimbalist said, have operating budgets a fourth the size of a typical professional team. Yet, as of Wednesday, college coaches -- charity cases under the federal tax code -- are on their way to comparable, or better, pay.

Not that the corruption of college sports by big money is anything new. In 1929, the Carnegie Foundation Report on Collegiate Athletics warned that commercialism, ``more than any other force, has tended to distort the values of college life.''

The college coaches' salary arms race has caused a few congressmen to question why taxpayers should subsidize one university's football program at the expense of another. The Saban hiring will raise even more bothersome questions. But campus stadium skyboxes come with private bathrooms, wet bars and considerable political clout.

The tax loophole might be insane, but congressmen do enjoy watching college football in luxurious comfort with fat-cat contributors.

The only change likely to come of the outrageous Saban deal will be the size of other college contracts.

Just see what happens when rival coaches learn how much more Nick made when he quit the pros and went off to do charity work in Alabama.'

'Simon Fraser University chancellor Brandt C. Louie was so opposed to taking two small crosses off of the university's coat-of-arms that he persuaded governors to let his office keep it.

"The university is going to have two crests," said Louie yesterday. "One will be used by the university and the other by the office of the chancellor."

And Louie said SFU alumni won't need to buy themselves new ties, as the old crest is still an official symbol of the 40-year-old university.

"I still am opposed to the change, but the board of governors felt it was something they wanted to do to modernize the crest," said Louie. "I argued against changing it because I believe that, basically, tradition should be respected." Two "crosslets" in the top corners of the crest will be replaced by open books, he said.

He said there has never been any question of Christian or non-Christian groups at the university being in a dispute over the coat-of-arms.

"Because we're now a university with global aspirations, a lot of students outside North America thought we were a religious institution because of the crosslets in the corner," he added. "We said, 'No, we're a secular, public university. That happened to be the crest that was given to us when we were founded 40 years ago.'"

He said there are no cost implications, as existing letterhead will be used up before any change is made. The old crest will stay on the chancellor's robes, letterhead and invitations and will remain on existing buildings and SFU property.

The original crest was created in 1964 by Lord Lyon, King of Arms, at his home in Edinburgh. He found the coat-of-arms for the Clan MacDonald, the maiden name of Simon Fraser's wife, which featured the crusaders' crosses.

It wasn't until SFU decided to change its crest that officials discovered the old one had never been registered, said Louie. "So we are in the process of registering both crests for the university," he said.

Louie will be wearing his ceremonial robes, boasting the old crest on its shoulder and sleeves, at spring convocation in June.'

'Of all the problems and needs confronting the state of Alabama, it's telling that the one thing that grips the attention of folks here is the hiring of a college football coach [at the University of Alabama, for four million dollars a year, the highest paid college coach in the United States]. We can accept being at or near the bottom in many quality-of-life rankings, but not in football.'

'At Miami of Ohio, the average student pays $635 a year to the athletic department in mandatory fees. At James Madison, it's $1,186, although the school says the general student body uses athletic department facilities.

The fee at Ball State is $412. For that, students receive free access to all games, but Student Government Association President Asher Lisec said a relatively small number take advantage of that. She said she's glad to hear talk from Ball State officials of lowering the fee.

"If you look at the number of students we have involved in NCAA athletics, it's not a very high percentage," Lisec said. "So that's $6.8 million in student fees going to a select few students."

But it isn't just midsize schools reaching into students' pockets. Chris Cameron, opinion editor of the Daily Tar Heel at North Carolina, described himself as a "huge" basketball fan. But he objected when the athletic fee at his school increased $50 to $248 for next school year. It was $98 two years ago.

"I think it's completely ridiculous that they're making us pay that," Cameron said. "At least a tuition increase has a direct impact on the quality of the academic education."

[Indiana University] instituted a controversial student fee for athletics in 2004-05, which brought in $1 million, but it will be rescinded before the 2006-07 academic year.'

[S]ports spending is growing two to three times faster than university spending as a whole. According to USA Today, athletic expenses in Division I-A increased about 8 percent per year from 2002-03 to 2004-05.

Former Michigan President James Duderstadt, a member of the U.S. Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education, said it's "well-accepted" that, at a large state university, the cost to the school per student is from $10,000 to $25,000. Yet some big schools such as Florida and Louisiana State, which will compete in this weekend's Final Four, average more than $100,000 in athletic expenses per athlete.

"It's an interesting way to look at university priorities, isn't it?" Duderstadt said.

'President Myles Brand isn't happy about the growth rate of sports spending, and the effect that could have on academics. In his State of the Association speech in January, he said the current path is "not a long-term sustainable approach."

"These problems mean that the universities will have to increase their subsidy to athletics," said Brand, who declined to be interviewed for this story. "Some subsidy, in almost all cases, is required, and that is acceptable. But the greater the subsidy, the less funding is available for core academic activities of the university."'

COLLEGES PLAY, PUBLIC PAYS

He is a great guy. All you have to do is read your textbook and you will be fine. He reads straight from the book. No need to go to class. ... He goes by the book so all I did was highlight in it. Great guy, really liked his class. Take him.... He reads his lectures straight from the book, so all you have to do is highlight in class. His tests are pretty simple, but you have to study minimally. ... He's a really nice man and is willing to explain anything. It gets really boring sometimes, but he shows movies pretty often... Please take him! He's the sweetest guy on the planet - but he talks really low, and basically reads the book to you. Attendance is not required or even checked.... He's really nice, and willing to help. Go on movie days - those are good.... He reads straight from the book, so if you have to miss class, you really won't be behind...Teaches straight from the book pretty much word for word. ...Professor Rulhman gives lectures straight from the book; his tests are based solely on the notes...that are in the book .... The tests are super easy...

San Antonio firefighters with degrees in their field won't earn more money.

The firefighter's union ended up on the losing side of an arbitration ruling on Friday.

For years, firefighters were eligible for an increase in pay, if they earned a degree. But with the ease of obtaining a degree online, the city reversed its policy and the arbitration panel backed the city.


... Going back to at least 2001, Chief Robert Ojeda said a degree from Lacrosse University qualified under the incentive pay clause of the union's contract. Lacrosse took "life experience" into issuing their fire safety management degrees and the number of firefighters applying for that degree was snowballing.

"This time there was 12 people. The next year there was going to be 36 people who put in for that degree," [a spokesman] said.

"[The Senate report is] so full of half-truths, untruths and innuendoes that I wouldn't know where to begin in answering it, so I won't."

Foxes perform a valuable service to humans by controlling the small-rodent (mice, gophers, moles, rats) population, so they should be viewed by humans as an ally. Usually this benefit far outweighs the occasional damage they may cause.

The Southtown [newspaper's] coverage of shenanigans, financial woes and academic shortcomings in Calumet Park School District 132 [in Chicago] helped force a state takeover of the school system in June.

Calumet Park has one of the state's worst elementary school special education programs. Its director, Judith Blakely, purchased her Ph.D. for about $250 from an Internet diploma mill specializing in metaphysical theology. This is one of three fake credentials on her resume.

Doris Hope-Jackson, the superintendent who tried to get rid of Blakely, was relieved of her duties by the school board president.

... Florida's college students crowd into fewer classrooms; the state has the most students per full-time professor in the country. ... Florida pays professors less, making it harder to attract and keep good faculty; the state ranks 41st in the nation in the experience level of its instructors. ...[F]ewer Floridians are getting a college degree; the state produces fewer graduates per 1,000 population than the national average.... [N]o Florida university -- not even the flagship University of Florida -- is ranked among the nation's top 25 universities.

I am optimistic about the development of both individual and collective forms of altruism on the Web. Moreover, I believe that what we see on the Web has more diffuse counterparts in society at large. The Web is a network of networks where, at every individual node, many communities overlap, and where local allegiances have at best a weak hold. The World Wide Web is the most dynamic and visible manifestation, and a driving force of a world that is itself becoming one wide web. In this world, more and more altruistic acts—acts that had in ancestral times been aimed just at one's kin, and later extended to tribe, sect, or country—may now, out of sensible sense of common destiny, be intended for the benefit of all.

'[In an] area of nearly one square mile — between Lake Mendota, Lake Monona and Blair and Lake Streets — [the University of Wisconsin's city of Madison] has 120 places that serve only or mostly alcohol. They have a capacity of more than 11,000 people, city officials said. ... According to a recent police department analysis of attacks in which someone was injured downtown, about 75 percent of the victims and perpetrators were intoxicated. The analysis also found that after midnight on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, police officers, paramedics and firefighters often spent half to all of their working hours responding to alcohol-fueled fights and disorderly conduct. Noise, public urination and vandalism are constant concerns.... [One resident] said she quickly grew irritated at being awakened at 2:30 a.m., when the noisy bar crowd usually begins to make its way home, dropping empty beer cans and other trash along the way. One morning she woke to find that garbage had been torched and the flames had charred a tree.

“I want to live downtown, but I also want a decent quality of life,” [she] said.