Dartmouth's Gay Straight Alliance has changed its name to Gender, Sexuality, XYZ (GSX) after a week of debate, the group announced in its weekly e-mail message to members on Nov. 14. The change came out of a desire to eliminate "gay and "straight" from the group's name due to a feeling that the previous title alienated LGBTQA students, the e-mail reported. The organization voted down The Queer Alliance, Q&A, The Dartmouth Q and The Q as possible other names, and plans to discuss the new name and their goals for next term at their next meeting.
After almost a month of voting, Dartmouth's Grassroots Soccer has reached its goal of 20,000 votes, claiming the $6,000 second-place prize in the GrabLife GiveLife competition, supported by Dodge. Grassroots Soccer hosts a "Lose the Shoes" soccer tournament every term and donates all proceeds to the international Grassroot's Soccer HIV prevention program. The program works with professional soccer players to provide HIV education to African children, and hopes to reach 1.25 million children by 2010, according to its website. All $6,000 earned in this contest will join profits from a T-shirt sale at the group's "Click or Treat" event on Halloween and the profits from this term's "Lose the Shoes" on Dec. 1 in benefiting the cause. Organizers hope this total will surpass last term's donation of $8,000. In the GrabLife GiveLife contest, Dartmouth lost the $20,000 first place prize to Virginia Tech, whose voting campaign supported "Play for Patrick," on Nov 7. GrabLife GiveLife added $1,000 to the original second place prize of $5,000 after Virginia Tech's win.
Economics Professor Annamaria Lusardi won the 2007 Fidelity Research's Institute Prize, an honor she shares with the Olivia Mitchell, a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the Institute announced on Nov. 15. The two were honored for their paper "Baby Boomer Retirement Security: The Roles of Planning, Financial Literacy, and Housing Wealth," published in the Journal of Monetary Economics in January 2007. The paper discusses the retirement preparedness of the Baby Boom generation by "exploring the links between financial literacy, planning, and retirement savings adequacy," according to the Fidelity Research Institute's website. Lusardi and Mitchell's long-term study of people over 50 years of age showed that many Baby Boomers have given no thought to requirement. Lusardi and Mitchell will share the prize of $50,000, and plan to "do as we preach: We will save it for retirement," Lusardi said in a Dartmouth press release. The Fidelity Research Institute's Pyramid Prize honors "published applied research that the Institute believes best helps address the goal of improving lifelong financial well-being for Americans," according to the Institute's website.
