Former Connecticut Democratic senatorial candidate Ned Lamont visited Dartmouth on Nov. 30 to endorse presidential candidate Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn. Lamont spoke to a small gathering of students at Hinman Forum about his experiences as an underdog candidate in 2006 and applauded Dodd's involvement in the Peace Corps and his ability to connect with voters. While he supports Dodd, Lamont said he was proud of all Democrats and encouraged students to vote Democrat. Lamont defeated Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., in the senatorial primary election in 2006, but lost to Lieberman, who ran as an independent, in the general election. Lamont now serves as a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics and as an adjunct faculty member at Central Connecticut State University. The event was sponsored by the Dartmouth College Democrats and the Chris Dodd Campaign of New Hampshire.
The U.S. Public Interest Research Group plans to execute a campaign to warn college students across the country of the dangers of signing up for credit cards, the Boston Globe reported on Nov. 30. Using funding from the Ford Foundation, PIRG plans to campaign at 40 campuses across the country to warn students about hidden fees and binding long-term commitments from certain credit card companies. "They rely on the fact that students are vulnerable," Ed Mierzwinski, PIRG's consumer program director, told the Globe. The campaign will also include an appeal to colleges to adopt a ban on offering gifts in exchange for signing credit card contracts and a ban on the sale of any lists of student names to credit card companies. Fifty-six percent of college students carry four or more credit cards by their senior year, according to a 2004 study of undergraduate credit card usage cited by the Globe, and the average balance is $2,864.
In 2006, the average 15- to 24-year-old spent just seven minutes per day on voluntary reading, according to "To Read or Not to Read," a report released by the National Endowment for the Arts and reported on in the Nov. 30 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. The study examined all kinds of reading, including literary and online reading, and used statistics from the Departments of Education and Labor, in conjunction with academic and corporate studies, as sources. Participants age 65 and older, the "best-read group" that the study examined, logged less than an hour each weekday. The study also found that the proportion of high school seniors reading at or over proficiency fell from 40 percent to 35 percent between 1992 and 2005. "The report confirms that poor readers tend to make poor students, who become poorly paid workers," the Chronicle reported.
