| While
you were away...
Welcome back! It has been anything
but a quiet summer on and around campus, and we here-with
provide a news roundup to keep you in the loop.
National: A Princeton University admissions officer
hacked into a Yale University website created for applicants
who wanted to know if they’d made the cut. Princeton’s
stealth visitor said he was testing Yale’s website security.
Right. What he really wanted was to find out how many applicants
the two Ivy League schools had in common and how many were
planning to accept Yale over Princeton. He and the director
of admissions were suspended, briefly, but then were given
other jobs in the Princeton administration, mostly because
the director of admissions was a year from retirement.
Commonwealth:
Tuition at Pennsylvania’s public universities has gone
up a whopping 14 percent. But the Pennsylvania Higher Education
Assistance Agency got a raise of 3.5 percent and thus will
be able to offer grants to an additional 4,000 stu-dents,
for a total of 154,000. PHEAA grants are need-based and can
be given to students at both private and public institutions.
But they max out at $3,300. An editorial in the Morning Call
suggested that, the economy being what it is, the cap should
be raised.
Bethlehem:
Note the bright new stripes down the middle of Main Street
between Elizabeth and Laurel. These are the first phase of
a project to put an island there—a forcible way to control
those drivers intent on making hood ornaments out of pedestrians
who dare to cross Main Street during business hours. When
completed, the island means the end of parking on Main Street,
so resign yourselves.
The left-turn-lane goblins have
been on the loose, as you can see on Union Boulevard. Watch
for new lane configurations.
Also, a new McDonald’s,
with a self-conscious retro design and enough neon to make
it visible from the moon, went up in just six weeks at Five
Points in South Bethlehem.
 College:
We have an imposing new sign at the corner of Main and Elizabeth.
The Seminary has a new sign. And Colonial Hall, identified
as “Pardon our appearance” for the last academic
year, will have a handsome stone sign, too.
The HUB got a new computerized
cash-register system, and we’ve all gotten new ID cards
to accommodate it. These cards now are legal tender at the
bookstore as well as the dining rooms and Food Court.
The new academic building has
beautiful expanses of windows, decorated with neat gray-blue
panels, and the connecting walkway to Collier Hall has been
boxed in and squared off. As for the copper downspouts under
the eaves, well, three are real and two ornamental.
Let us know if you can tell
the difference.
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