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Harvard Endowment Down 22 Percent
Tweet Share on Facebook December 3, 2008 Comment (2)Harvard's $36.9 billion endowment fell 22 percent in the past four months, the Harvard Crimson reports—a more than $8 billion loss that by itself is larger than the endowments of most schools except Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT.
Officials expect fiscal-year-end losses to reach 30 percent and say the current 22 percent figure is an underestimation because it does not include some private equity and real estate assets.
Last week, Harvard instituted a hiring freeze and will continue to take a "hard look at hiring, staffing levels, and compensation," President Drew Faust and Executive Vice President Edward Forst wrote in a letter to the deans.
In the past 40 years, Harvard's worst loss in one year was 12.2 percent in 1974, at a time when its endowment was less than $1 billion and funded only a small portion of the school's operations. Now, the endowment funds around 35 percent of the budget; 50 percent at some of Harvard's schools. The announcement could signal even heavier losses at other universities. Harvard's returns last fiscal year were some of the strongest, with its endowment posting an 8.6 percent gain.
Other four-month endowment losses, starting around the beginning of July, include:
University of Virginia: $1 billion loss, leaving its endowment at $4.2 billion.
Penn State: Its $1.6 billion fund lost $300 million, a 19 percent loss. A university spokesman insists the school is still "on pretty solid footing." He added: "Certainly, $300 million is a lot of money; there's no other way to state it. But in the grand scheme of things for us, it could have been worse, and we've certainly done better than the markets have."
Wesleyan: endowment down 20 percent.
Three-month losses ending in September include:
Georgetown—down 9.5 percent, now valued at $964 million. The Hoya endowment funds just 5 percent of its operating budget.
University of California system: Its $6.7 billion endowment lost $1 billion, a 15 percent decline.
Dartmouth: fell 6 percent, or $220 million, and now stands at $3.44 billion.
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Cal Poly Freshman Dead After Fraternity Party
Tweet Share on Facebook December 3, 2008 Comment (18)A Cal Poly freshman died Tuesday morning at an off-campus home, reportedly after attending a party at the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity the night before, the Mustang Daily writes.
Carson Starkey, 18, was found unresponsive at a fraternity member's house around 6 a.m. After residents attempted to resuscitate him, he was transported to a local hospital, where he died. Pending autopsy results, the official cause of death is still unknown.
Starkey was a pledge at the fraternity, although school officials are investigating whether the party was a pledge event.
Cal Poly has since suspended SAE's charter, as has the group's national organization. The Cal Poly SAE chapter declined to comment for the Mustang Daily's story.
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Six Southern U. Students Arrested After Alleged Hazing Ritual
Tweet Share on Facebook December 3, 2008 Comment (34)Police have arrested six Southern University students in connection with a ritual that left two marching band members hospitalized, the Advocate reports. The November 25 incident allegedly involved band members who were repeatedly beaten with a two-by-four as initiation into the marching band's unofficial French horn fraternity—"Mellow Phi Fellow."
According to the police report, the victims were blindfolded, stripped of their shirts, doused with water, and struck numerous times with open hands. They then allegedly were beaten with the wooden plank. A third victim was not hospitalized but reported being struck more than 50 times by the board.
Those arrested Tuesday have been accused of "ritualistic torture" and charged with aggravated second-degree battery and ritualistic acts. Police anticipate a seventh arrest. The Advocate's story offers no comments from any of the arrested students.
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Animal-Rights Activists Torch Wrong Cars
Tweet Share on Facebook December 3, 2008 Comment (7)Animal-rights extremists have claimed responsibility for last week torching the cars of a person who lived near a UCLA animal researcher, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports. School officials say the victim was mistakenly identified as a university affiliate and that they condemn all such attacks. "Words cannot express the contempt we hold for these acts of cowardice," the UCLA chancellor wrote.
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Georgia Committee Weighs Combining Black Colleges With Neighbors
Tweet Share on Facebook December 3, 2008 CommentA Georgia state Senate committee on Monday discussed combining historically black schools with their once segregated neighboring colleges in an effort to alleviate budget concerns, the Athens Banner-Herald reports. Black colleges like Savannah State University could merge with nearby institutions such as Armstrong Atlantic State University.
"It's time that Georgia closed that political chapter," said Seth Harp, the state senator who floated the idea.
Erroll Davis, the chancellor of the University System of Georgia, warned of the difficulties of such a move but did not reject the idea outright.
"We will need a political will to do that, because each of these institutions has been in business for a long time," he said. "Those schools may have been created for reasons 50 years ago. But that was 50 years ago. . . . It's going to be a political decision, not an economic decision."
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Harvard Students Protest Inauguration Day Exams
Tweet Share on Facebook December 3, 2008 Comment (1)Harvard students—poor things—are protesting January 20 finals in hopes of attending President-elect Obama's inauguration or at least watching it worry free from home, the Har vard Crimson reports. A Facebook petition group now has 600 members, and students have brought up their cause to individual professors. "It is our position that every inauguration should be a day during which students are allowed to exercise their civic duty," said one student.
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Court Offers Trademark Protections for College Colors
Tweet Share on Facebook December 2, 2008 Comment (3)College colors are now slightly more protected by trademark law: The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Louisiana State, Ohio State, Southern Cal, and the University of Oklahoma in a case involving T-shirts that used the colors but not the names or logos of major college football programs, Inside Higher Ed reports. The four schools sued Smack Apparel Co. over concerns that its designs could be mistaken for university-sanctioned merchandise.
One of the designs in question featured LSU's winning final score from the Sugar Bowl, with the phrase "Sugar is Sweet." Although "LSU" was nowhere to be found, the shirt did use the university's signature purple and gold.
The federal court wrote:
This is so, we have noted, because Smack's use of the universities' colors and indicia is designed to create the illusion of affiliation with the universities and essentially obtain a 'free ride' by profiting from confusion among the fans of the universities' football teams who desire to show support for and affiliation with those teams. This creation of a link in the consumer's mind between the t-shirts and the universities and the intent to directly profit therefrom results in 'an unmistakable aura of deception' and likelihood of confusion.
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Time Is College Students' Favorite Magazine
Tweet Share on Facebook December 2, 2008 CommentAccording to a 1,000-person survey, college kids these days aren't all "9 Ways to Please Your Man" anymore. Students named Time magazine their No. 1 magazine, besting past favorite Cosmopolitan and skipping over People magazine for the top spot.
Other favorites include Facebook, Nike, and iPod, while CNN.com moved into the top 10 websites as CollegeHumor and Perez Hilton fell off.
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Three SEC Fraternities Suspended
Tweet Share on Facebook December 2, 2008 Comment (1)The Kappa Alpha Order fraternity from the University of Mississippi has been suspended for a year after police arrived at a big-brother party where the floor was covered in vomit and people allegedly were found chugging beer, teary-eyed, blindfolded, and/or bound by duct tape, according to the Daily Mississippian . Members will be allowed to stay in the house, but the fraternity will not be allowed to recruit, host parties, or participate in any philanthropy until 2010.
The Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity will be removed from the campus of the University of Alabama after its national organization cited its hazing practices and "repeated violations of the student code of conduct," said an Alabama spokeswoman.
The University of Florida's Tau Epsilon Phi fraternity has been suspended for a year in an agreement with the university and police to drop a criminal charge of hazing, the Alligator reports. Early last month, 36 pledges were found kneeling in the basement in an incident that police said may have involved thrown food and liquid, duct tape, diapers, and laxatives.
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$16.2 Million Judgment Overturned in Texas Hazing Case
Tweet Share on Facebook December 1, 2008 Comment (1)A Texas judge has overturned his previous $16.2 million judgment against the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, which was sued by the parents of a pledge who died allegedly after a hazing event at the University of Texas, the Houston Chronicle reports. The judge had issued the original ruling in October after the national organization and the UT chapter did not respond to the lawsuit.
The judge has accepted the fraternity's explanation that the failure to respond was an accident, and the lawsuit will now proceed as if the $16.2 million judgment had never been handed down.
Freshman Tyler Cross died in November 2006 after falling from the fifth floor of his off-campus apartment building. Investigators said pledges were given half-gallon bottles of liquor, and Cross's blood alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit of .08. Two pledge trainers pleaded no contest to hazing and furnishing to minors and were sentenced to four days in jail and given two years' deferred adjudication.
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