Last Sunday evening, BC Hillel held a Seder dinner on campus for the first time in memory. "To our knowledge, this was the first traditional Seder to be held at BC during Passover in recent years," Leon Ratz, Hillel co-vice president and A&S '11 said. The Passover Seder is a meal of special importance for Jewish faithful, with many layers of symbolism and history. The meal celebrates the liberation of the Jewish people from enslavement in Israel, as told in the Biblical book of Exodus. "Ultimately, Passover is the story of freedom," Ratz said. The meal was held in O'Connell House and was open to all BC students.
ON CAMPUS LSOE dean to address issues of Catholic education today Dean of the Lynch School of Education Rev. Joseph M. O'Keefe, S.J., is speaking in Washington, D.C., today on the state of urban Catholic schools. O'Keefe, who published a 2001 study of inner-city Catholic elementary schools, is addressing the White House Summit on Inner-City Children and Faith-Based Schools. "Sadly, one quarter of the 384 schools we studied in 2001 have closed," O'Keefe told reporters. "This is reflective of national trends. Elementary school enrollment has declined faster in the 12 largest urban dioceses than it has in all other dioceses. Across the country, Catholic school enrollments have declined by nearly 400,000 students. The picture is pretty bleak."
UNIVERSITIES Survey suggests professors seek same edge as their students An informal study suggests that some professors, like a segment of their students, might take Ritalin and other stimulants to give them an edge. The journal Nature found in an online survey that 20 percent of respondants had taken pharmaceuticals expressly to obtain a mental advantage over their colleagues. "It tells us what kinds of practices and attitudes are out there - but there's no way you can draw any conclusions about the numbers of people in the general academic population using these drugs from the survey," Martha J. Farah, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania, told reporters. Some have pointed out that stimulants are not a recipe for success and have sometimes been linked to lower grades for students.
Princeton Review to publish green ratings in new edition The Princeton Review will include "Green Ratings" in its upcoming edition, the result of efforts by ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group. Some see the ranking system as a way to bring further attention to the issue of sustainability on college campuses, but others feel that such systems will not lead to real progress. "Rankings are inherently zero sum - there can be only one No. 1 campus. Sustainability includes a really collaborative group of people, and with some of these rankings, there is a concern that could undermine that," Julian Dautremont-Smith, associate director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, told reporters.
UNDER REPORTED If they didn't see this coming, I think I want my money back Angered clairvoyants and mediums marched on the home of the British prime minister to protest laws that they told reporters will leave them "persecuted and prosecuted." The concerned parties fear that alterations of a 1951 law designed to protect consumers will lead to lawsuits that will force them to prove their spiritual powers in court. "If I'm giving a healing to someone, I don't want to have to stand there and say I don't believe in what I'm doing," spiritual healer Carole McEntee-Taylor told reporters. Supporters of the new law claim that psychics provide a lucrative service that should be regulated to ensure the safety and rights of their consumers.
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