The national sorority Delta Zeta, accused of evicting 23 members of its DePauw University chapter on the basis of appearance and popularity, sued the university on March 28, after the school kicked the group off campus. The federal lawsuit seeks a public apology to the sorority, unspecified punitive and compensatory damages, a return to Greek life at DePauw and an acknowledgment of no wrongdoing by the sorority. According to the Chicago NBC web site, the sorority's attorney said that the organization hopes to reach an out-of-court settlement. DePauw's director of media relations told NBC, "We believe that this lawsuit completely lacks merit and have every confidence that the courts will determine that the university acted lawfully."
Columbia University censured and issued disciplinary warnings on March 27 to eight students who had disrupted speakers at a public Minuteman Project event last October. The Minuteman Project opposes illegal immigration and has civilian volunteers conduct border patrol. The warnings and censures will appear on the students' transcripts for varying lengths of time. According to the New York Times, one of the students who received a warning said, "I view the fact that I got the lightest possible punishment as a small victory." In a published statement, Columbia's president Lee Bollinger said the university adhered to the rules of university conduct in deciding the penalties.
Arthur Maerlender, an adolescent and behavioral psychiatrist at Dartmouth Medical School, testified to the value of having a middle school in a busy community environment before the Portsmouth, N.H., city council and school board Wednesday. His comments contributed to the debate over a disputed middle school site near downtown Portsmouth, where the city is deciding whether to renovate the current middle school located downtown or build a new school far away from the area. Immersing students in a community environment, Maerlender said, fosters social interaction that contributes to adolescent brain development.
Petition Board of Trustees candidate Stephen Smith '88 omitted the issue of free speech on campus in a March 24 mass mailing to alumni, marking a shift away from his platform of "ensuring genuine freedom of speech" at Dartmouth, which is still listed on his campaign website. Citing the 2001 derecognition of Zeta Psi fraternity over an internal newsletter and College President James Wright's fall 2006 denouncement of "disrespectful" speech after allegedly racist campus incidents, Smith is the only candidate to include free speech as a campaign issue. The March 24 letter targets bureaucracy, undergraduate teaching, class enrollment and disciplinary procedures.
