A $2.1 million lawsuit over the 1999 collapse of a bonfire at Texas A&M University that killed 12 students and injured 27 others was settled Tuesday, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported. The university will pay $500,000 to the families of bonfire victims who filed the suit in 2003, and the remainder will be covered by the insurance policies of two prosecuted campus administrators, according to The Chronicle. An investigative committee determined in 2000 that the accident resulted from poor construction and administrative failure to address the hazardous building methods."While the university has actively contested the claim that the university employees were legally responsible for the deaths and injuries that occurred as a result of the bonfire collapse, the university deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries that occurred on its campus," university officials said in a written statement on Tuesday.
George Washington University plans to alter its financial aid program to focus on current students struggling to pay high tuition costs, according to Inside Higher Ed. The university should improve current students' aid instead of increasing packages for newly admitted students with high test scores, Robert Chernak, senior vice president for student and academic support, said in a letter to Faculty Senate members this month. Chernak added that GW should prioritize support for current students in light of the recent financial crisis. The letter was issued in response to a report published this summer by Donald Parsons, a GW economics professor, which noted the decrease in GW's enrollment of National Merit Scholars and encouraged more merit-based aid. Almost 60 percent of GW students receive some form of financial aid from the university, where annual tuition, room and board costs exceed $50,000.
Former editor-in-chief of The Dartmouth Review Harmeet Dhillon '89 is running as the Republican candidate in the 2008 California State Assembly race for the 13th Assembly District, which represents nine neighborhoods in San Francisco. Dhillon hopes to effect policy based on the principles of "limited government, responsible fiscal policy, and equal opportunity," according to Dhillon's web site. Dhillon is a founder and partner of the corporate law firm Dhillon & Smith LLP, She was recently named one of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association's "Best Lawyers Under 40" and has won a number of awards for her pro-bono legal services on behalf of political refugees, according to her site. Dhillon's opponent, Democrat Tom Ammiano, is a former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
