Archive: Tue Dec 2010

  1. Franco GRD ’16 nominated for Golden Globe

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    Cutting off his right arm on-screen in “127 Hours” has earned James Franco GRD ’16 a best actor in a dramaGolden Globe nomination. Hopefully, he does not need to sever his left one to win it.

    The announcement was made Tuesday morning, marking Franco’s third Globe nomination. He previously earned a Globe for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film in 2001 for his portrayal of the titular character in the biopic “James Dean.”

    In “127 Hours,” Franco plays Aron Ralston, the real-life mountain climber who amputated his own arm to release himself from under a boulder after being trapped for five days, in a performace that has generated plenty of Oscar buzz. All the more reason for Franco to make out with himself.

  2. Yale no. 2 when it comes to graduation rate among research universities

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    Yale has the second highest graduation rate of all research universities, with 97 percent of undergraduates completing their degrees within six years, a new report by the Chronicle of Higher Education concluded. Yale was barely edged out by Harvard, which had a graduation rate of 98 percent in 2008, but topped Princeton (4th, with 96 percent of students graduating).

    The report surveyed students who began college in 1996 and 2002 and tracked how many had graduated by 2002 and 2008, respectively. It also found that graduation rates declined in 33 percent of universities over that period.

    [via HuffPo]

  3. Dartmouth freshman arrested for narcotics possession

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    Two Ivy League drug busts in less than two weeks! After the now infamous Columbia incident, Dartmouth freshman Delos Chang was arrested on six counts of possessing narcotics, the Dartmouth reported.

    Chang allegedly received a shipment of illegal drugs about two weeks ago, IvyGate reported. A dorm-mate of Chang told the Dartmouth that he had been asked by administrators to withdraw.

    Chang was the treasurer of Dartmouth’s 2014 Class Council and a writer for the Dartmouth. He was released on bail, and will attending a hearing on Jan. 3.

  4. New Haven schools get graded

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    Forty-three New Haven Public Schools got report cards from the city Monday morning, the New Haven Independent reported.

    At a press conference at the Sound School, a marine-based school overlooking the Long Island Sound, Mayor John DeStefano, Jr. and Superintendent Reginald Mayo announced which schools would receive Tier I, II and III grades. The school grades are a part of the city’s effort to promote accountability in its public schools, with top-performing Tier I schools being granted more autonomy and underperforming Tier III schools being considered for restructuring.

    The Sound School was the only high school in the city to receive a Tier I score.

  5. Vandalization of LGBT books at Harvard determined ‘accident’

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    After 36 books on LGBT issues were vandalized with urine in a Harvard library last month, Harvard police have determined that the damage was not a hate crime but an “accident” by the university’s library staff, the Harvard Crimson reported.

    The books, which covered same-sex marriage and lesbian and gay issues, were found in a state of irreparable damage in Lamont Library on November 24. Beside them on the shelf was an empty bottle that had presumably contained the urine.

    Library staff did not report the incident until last Friday, December 10, when the news caused a stir as a hate crime. But on Monday the Harvard University Police Department concluded that the bottle had actually been spilled by “our own library personnel,” Harvard College Dean Evelynn M. Hammonds wrote in a campus-wide email.

    Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesman Jeff Neal told the Crimson he does not know why a bottle of urine would be kept in the library to begin with.

    We were wondering the same thing.

  6. Why it might not be Altman for the NEC

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    As rumors continue to spread that University President Richard Levin is under consideration to lead President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, Noam Scheiber posted on The New Republic his view on why investment banker and former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Roger Altman, who has visited the White House multiple times, has not yet been chosen to lead the NEC:

    My sense from talking to administration officials who work on economic policy is that, while no one at the White House really dislikes Altman, no one is particularly smitten with him either. (That apparently describes Summers’s views, too.) Altman lacks an internal advocate willing to go to the mat for him.

    Of course, this wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if the guy making the final decision were super-high on Altman. But that doesn’t appear to be the case either. “I’ve heard that the president didn’t like his short list, so they’re going back to round up people,” one official told me recently.

    What about Levin and former NEC director Gene Sperling LAW ’85, the other two candidates reportedly on Obama’s short list? Scheiber wrote that he had not heard Levin’s name before today but thinks Sperling has his own supporters in the White House and may be a serious contender for the position.

  7. Whiffs to sing at Alice Tully Hall pediatric AIDS benefit

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    Fresh off their network television run, the Whiffenpoofs, will perform in the first annual “Ivy Light: Sing Out, Raise Hope, Eliminate Pediatric AIDS” benefit concert, according to a release from the Yale Office of Public Affairs & Communications. The concert will take place on Dec. 18 at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center in New York City.

    The Whiffs will sing along side R&B singer Deborah Cox and fellow Ivy a cappella groups the Princeton Nassoons and the Harvard Krokodiloes to raise money for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

    Two high school singing groups, the Nightingale-Bamford School Chorus and the Spence School Glee Club, will also perform.

    The Whiffs were recently eliminated from NBC’s “The Sing-Off.”

  8. Plans for new colleges move forward in Board of Aldermen

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    The Board of Aldermen’s legislation committee voted unanimously Monday night to recommend plans for two new residential colleges to the full Board of Aldermen for a vote.

    The decision to send the Planned Development District on Science Hill forward passed without much debate from committee members and the public. Not one community member came forward to register a complaint, and aldermen on the committee asked only a handful of questions of Yale representatives, including the Associate Vice President for New Haven and State Affairs Michael Morand ’87 DIV ’93.

    For Morand, securing the approval held special significance — it was his final official action as the University’s liaison to the city, a role he’s filled for over a decade. He’ll move to a new position in the Office of Public Affairs and Communications that focuses on state communications in January.

    When he announced at the meeting that it would be his final official act, Morand received a round of smiles and applause from aldermen present. Following the meeting, Morand posed for photos around mock-ups of the new colleges, which are slated to be ready for the 2015-’16 academic year.

    “Should we ask the aldermen to bow down?” joked School of Architecture Dean Robert A.M. Stern ARC ’65 — whose firm, Robert A. M. Stern Architects, LLP, is designing the colleges — as the group applauded Morand.

    The legislation committee is made up of six members of the board, including Ward 1 Alderman Mike Jones ’11.