Four Up
Centre College: Forbes magazine named this quaint Kentucky utopia its top college in the South. Still no word on soon-to-be-released rankings for “Best Driver in New Jersey” and “Most Talented Kardashian.” (Hate on the South? Check. Sell out Jersey? Got it. Trash some West Coast celebutantes? You bet. Figured I’d lay out the pretentious New Yorker biases up front…)
Dartmouth College: The Big Green’s basketball team staged a successful mutiny against head coach Terry Dunn, with each player signing a letter stating that the squad would not take the court for its January 9th contest against Harvard if Dunn was still at the helm. The pride of Hanover, N.H., has lost two of three since Dunn’s resignation - and sits at 4-12 overall - but as a mild history buff, I’m still a sucker for a good coup. Especially from a school so preppy that Stephen Colbert pretends to be an alum.
Abilene Christian University: The student paper at this private institution in central Texas announced it would become the first collegiate publication to run its content on the new Apple iPad. Reached for comment Thursday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs marveled, “We sold a-bil-ene already?”
Northwestern University: A&O Productions, the campus event committee, tapped “30 Rock” and “Saturday Night Live” hilarity-dispenser Tracy Morgan to appear on February 6th as the school’s winter quarter speaker. According to a highly-placed source with knowledge of the booking - er, a friend from Northwestern with a Facebook account - A&O typically hosts an after-party for its guests of honor, allowing star and student to co-mingle. “They usually end up blazing and playing beer pong,” he wrote. Updates to follow.
Four Down
University of Notre Dame: Under increased pressure from LGBT rights groups - and other radicals who empathize with the pro-not-getting-beaten-senseless agenda - the editor of the school’s student newspaper resigned after running this cartoon in the paper’s January 13 edition. The punch line: “What is the easiest way to turn a fruit into a vegetable?…A baseball bat.” Epic burn! In hell, you psychopaths…
Regent University: Not a good run for religious institutions on the big board. Regent booked a spot here when its founder, televangelist Pat Robertson, attributed the earthquake in Haiti to the country’s centuries-old “pact with the devil.” Regent should recover, though. If it isn’t the best private coeducational interdenominational Christian university in the Virginia Beach area founded by a TV minister, it’s got to be close.
University of Minnesota: According to school officials, incidences of cheating have ballooned by 44-percent over the past year. In a related study, researchers reported a sharp spike in “manly tears” after Brett Favre’s fourth-quarter interception last Sunday kept the Vikings from reaching their first Super Bowl in over three decades.
Tufts University: Former lecturer Suzanne Young, 42, filed a sexual harassment suit last week against 62-year old chemistry professor Samuel Kounaves, who hired Young as a research associate in 2005. Among myriad alleged transgressions, the complaint divulges this little nugget from Kounaves’ sexual philosophy: “A woman wears makeup to indicate that she wants sex.” Not quite Shakespeare, but what do you expect from a chem professor?
