Student Assembly deliberated on the formation of six new policy committees for the coming year at its meeting Tuesday night. The six committees selected were a Diversity and Community Affairs committee, an Academic Affairs committee, an Alcohol Harm Reduction committee, a Sustainability committee, an Accessibility committee and an External Relations committee. Student Body President Eric Tanner '11 said he hopes the Alcohol Harm Reduction committee will increase administrative support for the Assembly, since College President Jim Yong Kim has long been a proponent of harm reduction. The Sustainability committee will address means of reducing College operating costs in addition to environmental issues, and will seek to increase the legitimacy of environmental sustainability on campus, according to a committee description provided by Student Body Vice President Brandon Aiono '11. Despite concerns raised by some representatives that the Accessibility committee would be superfluous in light of the recently formed Access by Leadership and Equality organization, Assembly members concluded that the Assembly's connection with the administration would allow them to contribute to the cause.
The Texas Board of Education has approved a conservative-leaning curriculum for the representation of historical and political events and figures in primary schools, The New York Times reported Saturday. The guidelines will emphasize the roles of capitalist enterprise, the military, Christianity and recent prominent republicans in American history, according to The Times. The standards passed by a vote of nine to five, despite opposition from Democrats and moderate Republicans, as well as nationwide protests, The Times reported. The vote stands to affect schools around the nation, because the large public school population in Texas exerts significant influence over the national textbook market.
Among the 300 organizations that received the most patents in the past year were seven universities, according to a patent compilation by the Intellectual Property Owners Association. The seven universities were: the 10-campus University of California system, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Stanford University, the University of Texas, the California Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois. The UC system ranked highest on the list, at 83rd, with 251 patents issued in 2009. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office noted that the number of patents is not the most important measure of an organization's quality, but acknowledged that it is an objective measure of the system, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on Tuesday.
