Entries for January 2009

Five Greek organizations at Dartmouth may face social probation after a series of disciplinary hearings, several of which stemmed from incidents that occurred at the organizations' fall formals, the Dartmouth reports.

The Sigma Delta sorority and the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity were both put on probation for four weeks, and banned from hosting off-campus formals for two terms. The Dartmouth reports that Sigma Delta's sanctions stemmed from disorderly conduct charges levied by the college during a fall formal, where some students were escorted out by security officers, several students got sick in the bathrooms, and the site of the event was left in disarray. A Sigma Delta officer told the paper the sorority was unaware they were expected to clean the site. Sigma Phi Epsilon is filing an appeal for their probation.

The Delta Delta Delta sorority also faces sanctions for fall formal-related incidents, while the Kappa Kappa Kappa and Chi Heorot fraternities also face probation hearings for unrelated events. Tri-Delt is deciding whether to appeal the sanction, and Tri-Kap said they might not be responsible for the charges against them. Chi Heorot declined to comment for the Dartmouth's story.

Not everyone is slashing hiring during this economic downturn. A number of colleges and universities in New England are using the weak job market to snap up top-notch faculty, the Boston Globe reports. Northeastern is trying to fill 46 professor positions; Tufts is out for 52. Emerson, Holy Cross, and Amherst are looking, too.

Not surprisingly, the few spots that are open have gotten extreme amounts of interest.

Northeastern has seen its applicant pools swell between 10 percent and 25 percent, depending on the position, compared with last year. At Emerson, more than 100 candidates have applied for an assistant professorship in world history—four times as many as in a similar search several years ago. . . .

Jeff Abernathy, a vice president and dean at Augustana College in Illinois, explained his decision to accelerate hiring by quoting billionaire investor Warren Buffett.

"The path to riches, he says, is to be 'fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful,' " Abernathy wrote in a column this month for the Chronicle of Higher Education. "Being greedy now, in this most fearful of markets, might just be the right path to the kind of riches we value most: excellence in student learning and growth."

College of William and Mary officials say the school's endowment has lost 15 percent of its value since the beginning of the fiscal year, the Flat Hat reports. "This was a bad time," said Sam Jones, the college's top finance official. "And there was nowhere to hide." Luckily, William and Mary does not rely heavily on its endowment to pay its operating expenses (just 12 percent). "Most of the time, I'm very envious of schools that have a higher percentage of their budgets supported by their endowments," Jones said. "Not now, though."

Brown University expects to lose $800 million by the end of the fiscal year—almost 30 percent of the $2.8 billion it had at the beginning of the fiscal year in June, the Brown Daily Herald reports. The school expects it will need to slash $60 million from its budget next year.

Columbia University announced it had lost about 15 percent of its endowment, which actually isn't as bad as was anticipated. Various departments in the school can expect budget cuts because of the losses, the Spectator reports

The University of California system lost 20 percent of its endowment over the past six months, the Daily Californian reports. That's the biggest decline since World War II. The endowment is currently valued at about $6.2 billion.

Dartmouth's endowment is down 18 percent, or $700 million, which will most likely lead to layoffs, the student newspaper, the Dartmouth, reports.

The University of Florida reports an endowment loss of slightly less than 20 percent since the beginning of the fiscal year, leaving its endowment at about $1 billion, the Independent Florida Alligator reports.

A large-scale study suggests that 21.2 percent of medical students suffer from depression, compared with the 10 percent rate commonly reported for the general population, Inside Higher Ed reports. The study, a survey of 2,000 students that was reported in Academic Medicine, also said that black medical students are particularly prone to suicidal thoughts, with 13 percent reporting "suicidal ideation," versus 5.7 percent of the general population.

More stats:

For medical students, the highest rates of depression—nearly 25 percent—occurred in the second year of study. For residents, the third year proved the most perilous, with 14.6 percent reporting depression.

Over all, medical students reported rates of depression nearly twice as high as those of residents. Of the sample, nearly 22 percent of medical students exhibited signs of depression, compared with about 12 percent of residents.

There were also significant differences in responses based on gender. Women had a 21.6 percent depression rate, compared with a 15.6 percent rate for men.

Applications to The George Washington University's graduate programs have increased 7 percent over last year, the Hatchet reports. The jump is particularly apparent at the School of Business and the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy, where applications have increased 21 and 20 percent, respectively. The School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Graduate School of Education and Human Development both reported increases of over 8 percent. Three other graduate programs did not report increases.

President Bush and Laura Bush attended a Baylor women's basketball game Wednesday evening, marking one of the former president's first public appearances since moving back to his Crawford, Texas, ranch, the Lariat reports.

Bush spoke to the team before the game and was later received with hearty applause when he arrived at the court. "This is our first outing since I left the presidency, and I can't think of a better place," Bush said.

Crawford is about 25 miles from Waco, home of Baylor University.

Arizona State University announced university-wide furloughs Wednesday, some of the longest to hit academia so far, the State Press reports. The furloughs—involuntary unpaid leave—must all be taken before the end of the fiscal year, June 30, and may force the university to cancel some classes.

University administrators like deans and the president will be forced to take 15-day furloughs, while all other will be forced to take 10 to 12 days off.

The furloughs would save the university $24 million and prevent more staff cuts at the university, which has already eliminated 750 positions in the past two years.

In his State of the State address, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland reiterated his commitment to freezing tuition at four-year universities for 2010 and to capping a tuition increase at 3.5 percent in 2011, the Daily Kent Stater
reports. He also announced a freeze at two-year and regional campuses for two years.

The promise sounds like good news for students, but the schools themselves are likely hoping the governor's commitment to tuition is followed through with no drop in state funding to higher education. Or else he might end up like this guy.

Around 70 UC-Santa Barbara students rallied to protect student resource centers—such as career, counseling, and student health services—from system-wide budget cuts, the Daily Nexus reports. The event included a pro-resources rallying cry, testimonials from students who had benefited from counseling or other services, and later a petition signing to encourage the university to charge students a fee to offset cuts.

At Illinois State , about half its faculty members can expect midyear salary hikes, from 0.5 to 6.2 percent, the Daily Vidette reports. Is this finally some good college fiscal news? Sort of, except that ISU is just doing its best to boost its already below-average salaries. The salary hikes are part of a multiyear campaign to catch up in faculty pay. Just four years ago, ISU salaries for full professors were 14 percent below the national average. Now they're 10 percent below. Similarly, associate professors were 10 percent below the average, and now they're behind by 6 percent. The program will cost the school $900,000 for the year and has been budgeted for $3 million over the past three years.

The faculty senate at Michigan has asked the university to reconsider its student-athlete eligibility procedures—criticizing the separate treatment athletes receive, as well as the perks offered to faculty in a student-athlete eligibility committee, the Michigan Daily reports.

Currently, a faculty committee is responsible for reviewing the academic eligibility of all student-athletes and making recommendations to the provost. The same committee members also receive perks from the athletic department, in the form of reimbursements for airfare, hotel, ticket, and meal expenses if they want to travel to a football bowl game. A 2007 university audit criticized the practice, citing a conflict of interest. University officials, including the president and athletic director, defended the practice, pointing out that the final decision still rests with the provost, who receives no such perks. The Michigan faculty senate agreed with the conclusion of the audit and has recommended that the university stop the practice.

The faculty senate also criticized the existence of such a committee in the first place, saying the eligibility of student-athletes should be reviewed just as it is for other students: by their individual departments.

Days after the Brandeis faculty discussed significant changes to its liberal arts curriculum, the university's president announced that the school would be closing the Rose Art Museum this summer and selling its entire 6,000-piece collection because of a $10 million budget deficit, the Justice reports. The student newspaper said the money from the art auction would go to the university's general fund.

"No one feels really good about closing the Rose," said a Brandeis spokesman. "It is being done with a strict emphasis on what is best for the students who are here now and what is best for the students who are going to be coming in future generations."

According to Inside Higher Ed, the museum is known for its works of American modernism, American social realism, abstract expressionism, and surrealism. It houses pieces by Marsden Hartley, Thomas Hart Benton, Andy Warhol, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Morris Louis, Larry Rivers, Helen Frankenthaler, Jim Dine, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Max Ernst, René Magritte, and many other leading figures of art in the past century.

The "monkey got out of the cage" message that went out to 40,000 University of Florida students and faculty has been traced to a former employee of Mobile Campus, the company the school had tapped to implement an emergency text-message alert. Andrew Tatum tells his story to the Independent Florida Alligator:

Tatum, a 24-year-old former Mobile Campus employee, said he was at a friend's house when he decided to see if the company's password was still the same.

He said the message was a joke, spurred by the show "Family Guy" and YouTube Internet cartoons.

Many who received the message assumed it was racially charged, particularly because it went out on the day of President Barack Obama's inauguration.

Tatum said he hadn't taken that into consideration and added that he voted for President Obama in the election.

"I just don't want people thinking I'm racist or that the message was racist in any way," he said.

Mobile Campus, a mobile communication system Florida uses to inform students and staff of emergencies, labeled the text message as improper use and locked its system after the message was sent out at 8:45 p.m. on Jan. 20.

The former UF advertising student said when he clicked the "next" button on the screen after typing the message, he expected to get a screen saying, "Are you sure you want to send this?" with a proceed button. But there was no such screen. And seconds later, the phone of one of Tatum's friends let out a beep. Tatum did not get the message because he's not a UF student.

"I didn't call UPD [the campus police] at that time because I didn't think it was that big of a deal," Tatum said. "But immediately after it went out, I thought, 'This is going to suck.' "

Last fall, Brown University offered leniency to students with outstanding tuition payments, a policy that has helped around 360 students this semester, the Brown Daily Herald reports. Typically, students are not allowed to preregister for spring classes if they owe the university more than $1,000, but a tough economic climate prompted Brown officials to make exceptions this year for hundreds of students.

Additionally, around 40 students with more than $5,000 in outstanding payments were allowed to remain enrolled despite rules that would have prohibited them from living in dorms or attending class. Ten more with dues of more than $7,500 were allowed to stay enrolled after working closely with financial aid officials.

All seven Greek organizations catering to black students at Ohio State are on "social moratorium" imposed by the National Pan-Hellenic Council at OSU until February because of violence at a fraternity party in November, the Lantern reports.

An official from NPHC at OSU, the umbrella governing organization of the school's four black fraternities and three sororities, said the moratorium was a result of "multiple incidents of violence within the NPHC community" in November. The Lantern points to at least one incident that followed the OSU-Michigan football game in November where firearms were allegedly involved.

Although some members are worried that the ban on social activities will cut the black Greek system off from the rest of the community, as well as affect fundraising, none of the member organizations have spoken out against the move. "Agree or disagree, everyone has supported and abided by the moratorium," said an NPHC official.