The Rhodes Trust awarded an all-inclusive scholarship to the University of Oxford to 32 American students, although no Dartmouth students were selected from a pool of 830 candidates, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported Sunday. The winners consisted of 17 women and 15 men, marking the fourth time women outnumbered men since 1976, when women were first included in the competition. The scholars come from 18 institutions. Stanford University led with five scholars, while Brown University, Harvard University and Princeton University each saw four students receive the scholarship. The recipients will join 14 international scholars from around the world in October 2012 to begin two to three years of study at Oxford in England, The Chronicle reported.
Two police officers at the University of California, Davis are on administrative leave after using pepper spray on protesters at an on-campus Occupy Wall Street sit-in on Saturday, The New York Times reported. The protesters were sprayed after refusing to move when police officers attempted to take down their tents, according to The Times. Although one police representative claimed that pepper spray was used in self-defense, no threats from the protesters were seen in videos documenting the event. Two protesters sought hospital treatment after they were sprayed, while 10 were arrested on misdemeanor charges of unlawful assembly and failure to disperse. University Chancellor Linda Katehi said an investigation into the officers' pepper spray usage would be concluded in 30 days, according to The Times. Student protests have sprung up throughout UC Davis in response to the police's action, and a Facebook page is calling for Katehi's resignation and encouraging a general strike, The Times reported.
The 12-member Congressional supercommittee charged with cutting $1.2 trillion in federal spending by Thanksgiving came to a close Monday after committee members failed to reach an agreement, Politico reported. Since the committee was unable to make recommendations, domestic and defense programs' budget will be automatically slashed. As the last hours of the deadline neared, several committee members struggled to cut between $500 and $600 billion in a last-minute attempt to save at least part of the committee's efforts. Politicians blamed the committee's failure on members' adherence to party politics instead of focusing on the financial crisis at hand, and looked to Congress and President Barack Obama to encourage compromise. Obama urged Congress to find another way to close the deficit in a news conference Monday and remained adamant in his opposition to reducing the automatic cuts in spending following the supercommittee's failure, according to Politico.
