Every day news about the dicey retirement years baby boomers are looking at becomes grimmer and grimmer, to the point where those Walmart greeters’ jobs and MacDonald’s drive-thru cashier positions seem like attractive options for a second career. Not so for four-time “Professor of the Year” Gerald E. Gause, late of University of Florida’s College […]
Last week there was a dust-up at Dartmouth College. During accepted students’ day, the Ivy with the biggest inferiority complex had its “Dimensions Welcome Show” disrupted by a group of current students whose urgent message required that their voices be heard. Explains one of the messengers: Attempting to engage in a real conversation about the […]
Question: What upcoming contest has Lexington turf accountants working overtime? If you answered “the Run for the Roses”: no mint juleps for you. The match-up that has fans of diversity rushing to place their bets is a barn-burner at the University of Kentucky, where three diverse finalists are running neck and neck in the Provost’s […]
Press releases from colleges and universities rarely evoke feelings from me, other than a vague sense of embarrassment or a twinge of nausea, but yesterday’s announcement from MIT made me cry: MIT announces plans to commemorate Patrol Officer Sean Collier Absent the phalanx of committees and recommendations that usually accompany a “naming opportunity,” the good […]
In the campus pecking order, somewhere down the line, well below the dean of faculty and the vice president of finance, but perhaps slightly above the directors of community affairs and buildings and grounds, one finds the alternatively named dean of the college, dean of students or vice president of student affairs. Those who hold […]
Breaking news, dateline: Bar Harbor, Maine: At a special meeting of College of the Atlantic’s Board of Trustees on Monday, March 11, the trustees accepted a student proposal to divest the college from all fossil fuel-related investments. The divestment of all stocks goes into effect immediately. “The elation on campus is palpable,” says COA President […]
Randolph Bromery was Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts from 1971 until 1979. After he retired from that position, he became the go-to guy for troubled or scandal-wracked institutions in the Commonwealth. If a campus was destroying itself from within, Chancellor Bromery would ride to the rescue–and fix things, for real. I stood in awe […]
Those awful racists that breed like rabbits on liberal arts campuses are at it again: Classes at Oberlin College were canceled on Monday after a series of “hate-related incidents” on campus, the school announced on its website. Officials say the latest problem occurred Monday morning near the African Heritage House, where a person wearing a […]
January in Collegetown, USA is bleak: if it’s not bone-chillingly cold, it’s overcast and foggy. The days are short and the nights are long, and last week I spent $750 for one hundred or so gallons of oil to heat my home. So I read with interest in this morning’s update from the Chronicle of […]
Right now we’re in a fallow period in the academic calendar: most students and faculty have arrived back on campus from their December-January vacation, and are busy putting on their critical thinking caps to figure out where best to decamp for Spring Break in a few weeks’ time. Cancun? Florida? Gstaad? It’s important to have […]
