Dartmouth was recognized as a College Sustainability Leader and received an A- grade in the 2008 edition of the College Sustainability Report Card, published by the Sustainable Endowments Institute. The Institute reviews the 200 schools with the largest endowments in Canada and the United States and grades them in a variety of categories, including food and recycling, green building, climate change and energy, administration and transportation. Harvard University, the University of Washington, Middlebury College, Carleton College and the University of Vermont also received an A- grade, the highest grade given by the report. Four schools received F grades.
More than 250 economists, including two Dartmouth professors, have signed a statement, published on the Gastax08 blog, opposing the proposed suspension of the national gas tax for the summer, declaring the proposal "a bad idea." Instead of lowering gas prices for the consumer, the gas tax break would only increase oil companies' profits and would encourage people not to conserve, the statement argues. Additionally, the tax holiday would exacerbate the nation's financial deficit without alleviating much of the economic troubles of American families. "Signers of this letter are Democrats, Republicans and Independents," the statement reads. "This is not a partisan issue. It is a matter of good public policy." Dartmouth economics professor Jonathan Skinner and environmental studies professor Richard Howarth signed the statement. Other signatories include six Nobel Prize winners, Gilbert Metcalf, a professor at Tufts University, and Henry Aaron, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute.
Opponents of affirmative action in Missouri failed to get enough signatures to propose a measure for fall elections that would ban affirmative action, Inside Higher Ed reported Tuesday. A similar measure qualified for the ballot in Colorado, while not enough signatures were acquired in Oklahoma. Efforts to gain the required number of signatures are continuing in Arizona and Nebraska until the states' deadlines in early July. The campaigns are supported in part by the American Civil Rights Institute, a non-profit organization founded by Ward Connerly, who helped pass measures banning affirmative action in California in 1996, Washington in 1998 and Michigan in 2006, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
