A group of 26 Dartmouth students attended the 14th Annual Black Solidarity Conference last weekend at Yale University. The three-day conference allowed black students from various colleges and universities to discuss critical issues and network with professionals and peers, according to several of the Dartmouth students who attended the event. "Society tends to consider issues with African Americans today as centered on poverty, educational gaps and crime-related atrocities," Dartmouth NAACP President Christine Souffrant '11, who helped organize the trip to Yale, said. "However, there are deeper issues within our community that both society as a whole and the black community have been overlooking for generations." Students explored several of these issues at the conference, including the perceived erosion of the black family and changing perceptions of black identity, participants said. "The conference provided me with an incredible opportunity to learn what we can do to promote a positive, uplifting image of the black community," Ariel Murphy '12 said.
More than 200 Harvard Medical School students and faculty are protesting the influence of pharmaceutical drug companies in medical education, laboratories and teaching hospitals, The New York Times reported. Students said they were upset that many professors had financial ties to major drug companies and expressed concern that such ties may compromise the school's reputation and quality of teaching. After Harvard received an "F" from the American Medical Student Association, which measures how well schools monitor drug industry funding, HMS Dean Jeffrey Flier announced the creation of a committee to examine the school's conflict-of-interest policies. Faculty are now required to disclose industry ties to their students, a practice no other leading medical school has implemented, The Times reported. In opposition to these protests, a group of HMS students and faculty is calling for continued cooperation between medicine and industry.
Duke University hopes to address a $125-million budget shortfall by freezing salaries and raising tuition, Bloomberg reported. Duke President Richard Brodhead said that the university has no choice but to reduce its expenses, given the nation's current economic situation. Duke's endowment, which funds almost 16 percent of the school's working costs, has decreased 20 percent since last June. To compensate for this decline, employees earning more than $50,000 will not receive a raise in 2010, while workers with positive performance reviews earning less than that will receive a one-time $1,000 stipend. Undergraduate enrollment costs will rise 3.9 percent to almost $50,000. This increase, though, is the university's lowest in years, Bloomberg reported. Many of Duke's peer institutions have announced similar tuition increases.
