You probably noticed that we took a week-long hiatus for the holidays. Well, as it turns out, the news didn’t. Even during a week when all anyone wants to think about is turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie, the world of higher education keeps working. Here are some of the highlights from last week (and even a couple we missed from the week before):

After facing six straight losing seasons, Northeastern University has made the controversial decision to terminate its footfall program. According to The Associated Press, the cost of program had simply become too high to sustain — approximately $4 million.

The Rhodes Scholarship winners were announced last week.

The Board of Regents at the University of Nebraska defeated an effort to limit the University’s ability to conduct stem cell research.

In California, a group of faculty and students at Saddleback College and Irvine Valley College are suing their Colleges’ trustees and administrations for allegedly leading official prayers at school events.

Here at Penn, University President Amy Gutmann was named chairwoman of President Obama’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

The Washington Post wrote an interesting piece on Wednesday about Mario Rocha, a George Washington University student. When Mario was 16, we was wrongly convicted of first-degree murder in California. It took 10 years in jail before he was found innocent. In the meantime, he was stabbed twice in prison. Now, he’s a 30 year old undergraduate. Read his story here.

In interesting high school news, the ACLU is suing Alachua County School District in Florida for allegedly prohibiting students from wearing t-shirts with anti-Islam messages.

And finally (I always save the most shocking news for last), student drink more than ever. Apparently it’s because girls and boys live in the same dorms.

Tags: ACLU, Amy Gutmann, George Washington University, Irvine Valley College, Northeastern University, Rhodes, Saddleback College, University of Pennsylvanian

This entry was posted on Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 2:33 pm and is filed under TRC Round-Up. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.