Dartmouth College tested DartAlert, a new campus-wide emergency notification system, on Tuesday, shutting down all campus landlines for the afternoon. The system sends e-mails to everyone on campus and an automated phone call to those telephones in the College's system in case of a campus emergency, such as a natural disaster or violence, according to Roland Adams, the College's director of media relations. The test went well, and many people received the e-mail and phone call in a timely fashion, Mark Wilson '09, the MIR3 College Committee representative, said. The system is currently in its initial phase, but if the College continues to use MIR3, the company that operates DartAlert, later phases may allow for a registry of phone numbers to which notifications can be sent, according to Adams. Students would then be able to receive alerts on cell phones and in Greek or other off-campus housing.
Nicholas Rule '04 gave a presentation on "gaydar," a slang term short for "gay radar," that denotes one's ability to determine homosexuality in individuals, to a women's and gender studies class on Thursday. Rule has researched people's ability to gauge whether or not a person is homosexual based on physical appearance. According to Rule, when presented a photo, people tend to guess based on hair, eyes and mouth. When shown pictures without those features, people's judgments are no more accurate than leaving their decisions up to chance, Rule's research shows. The ability to gauge homosexuality does not depend on race or gender, he said. He added that after analyzing facial features for such a long time, he himself can no longer differentiate between gay or straight faces. During his presentation Thursday Rule had students participate in the study, giving them "clicker" devices from Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning, which allowed the audience to make their own judgments. The majority of audience members' assumptions were correct. Rule is currently continuing doctoral research on facial recognition of homosexuality at Tufts University.
The United States ranked 27th out of 130 countries for gender equality, according to the Global Gender Gap 2008 report, released Wednesday. The rankings were based on economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment, and health and survival, the report said. According to the report, the global gap on life expectancy and sex ratio is over 97 percent closed, while 95 percent of the gap on educational attainment, 62 percent of the gap on economic participation and 16 percent of the gap on political empowerment have been closed. According to the article, Norway, Finland and Sweden were the highest ranked countries in the report, and countries in the Middle East and North Africa were ranked lowest. More than two thirds of the 128 countries covered in both 2007 and 2008 increased their overall index scores over the year, indicating higher gender equality in those countries, according to the report.