Quick Takes
Chemistry Nobel
Researchers in Britain, Israel and the United States are sharing the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on "the structure and function of the ribosome." The three winners are: Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, senior scientist and group leader at Structural Studies Division of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, in Britain; Thomas A. Steitz, Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, both at Yale University; and Ada E. Yonath, Martin S. and Helen Kimmel Professor of Structural Biology and director of Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly, both at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Israel.
Progress on Sustainability
The 2010 edition of the College Sustainability Report Card, being released today, shows that despite the economic woes facing many colleges, many also made significant progress in adopting "green" policies. Grades are awarded based on reporting in a series of categories,including policies on climate change, food, recycling, buildings, transportation, endowments and so forth. A new feature of the project this year is to make the colleges' responses to survey questions public so students or prospective students can examine the status at their institutions and comparison groups. Twenty-six colleges earned A-, the top grade this year. They are: Amherst, Carleton, Dickinson, Luther, Macalester, Middlebury, Oberlin, Pomona,
Smith and Williams Colleges; Arizona State, Brown, Harvard, Pacific Lutheran, Stanford, Wesleyan and Yale Universities; the College of the Atlantic: and the Universities of California at San Diego, Colorado, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Washington.
Maryland Universities and Explicitness
Sexually explicit materials continue to create controversies for Maryland's public university system. The Baltimore Sun reported on efforts by system officials, at legislative request, to develop a policy on student displays of pornographic movies. Lawmakers were upset last year about plans to show a porn film, for which a viewing was called off and then restored in part at Maryland's flagship campus at College Park. Under the drafts being considered, any porn film would have to be paired with educational discussions, the Sun reported.
At Towson University, meanwhile, the editor-in-chief has resigned and a controversial sex column will appear only online and not in print, following criticism -- from the university's president among others - over its explicitness. A statement from the newspaper defended the column's content, but said that the student journalists on the staff regret a break in the Towerlight's normal procedures by letting the columns appear anonymously and that the article wasn't written "less provocatively." The column that sparked the criticism was about how to perform several sexual acts. Reactions posted on the Web site back up the claims of administrators that the piece offended many, and also the claims of the newspaper that many students value the frank discussion of sex.
Exorcism Claim Stirs Debate at Berry College
A student's claim that he performed an exorcism on a former student at Berry College has set off a debate about certain religious practices at the institution, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The exorcism has drawn attention to the WinShape program, in which 100 students are given scholarships and tend to live together, while pledging to attend chapel services together and to abstain from using alcohol and drugs. It was during a WinShape program that the exorcism is said to have taken place.
