Campus news knows no vacation. Without the majority of the student population around to pay attention, Northwestern’s athletes, teachers, administrators and Qataris plugged ahead and made news in the name of our university. Here’s the abridged version of what went on in NU circles while you were on vacation.
What may most affect your life (besides NU jumping two spots in US News rankings) is the Be Aware You’re Uploading (BAYU) system, Northwestern’s attempt to stem the number of RIAA complaints about illegal downloading. The university will be hooked into computers on its network and shoot e-mails to bogeys informing them of their potential transgressions. Before you camp outside 1800 Sherman Avenue with anti-Big Brother slogans tattooed on your foreheads, do know the university won’t be enforcing anything. It’ll simply be making you aware that it “does not condone unlawful P2P file sharing.”
Speaking of trouble-making, remember that story in The Weekly about the intense hazing at Lambda Phi Epsilon? The University Hearing and Appeals system did, suspending the fraternity “after the chapter was found responsible for hazing, freshmen freeze, and other violations,” according to an e-mail from the Office for Fraternity and Sorority Life. “All appeals have been exhausted, and the suspension takes place immediately,” the e-mailed stated. “The fraternity may not conduct any further activities whatsoever either on or off-campus.”
Far away from American copyright law, Northwestern’s inaugural Qatar freshman class and its 3:1 female-to-male ratio began school while we were still halfway through summer. But don’t worry: Just because they’re on the other side of the world doesn’t mean they’re spared the fun of Essential NU. In the words of Gulf newspaper The Peninsula, “Yesterday’s opening of classes were preceded by a Dean’s Convocation on August 10 and an intense four-day orientation programme known as ‘Wildcat Welcome.’”
In an equally faraway land, Matt Grevers did Northwestern swimming enthusiasts proud, winningtwo swimming silver medals in Beijing. But despite reaching the pinnacle of world sports, Grevers still managed to regain some sense of our sporting inferiority complex: After comprising one-fourth of an Olympic-record-setting 4×100 relay team in the preliminary round, Grevers got to sit on the sidelines to watch now-legendary University of Michigan alum Michael Phelps nab one of his eight gold medals.
The happy sports stories don’t end there: The football team has roared to a 3-0 start, beating Syracuse,Duke and Southern Illinois. Granted, Syracuse and Duke combined for a 3-21 record last year, and Southern Illinois isn’t in the NCAA’s top division, but hey, at least we avenged last year’s heartbreaking loss to the Blue Devils, which snapped their 22-game losing streak.
But the most productive group of Wildcats in the past weeks has been our professors. Without the shackles of noisy lecture halls and mountains of five-page papers, our teaching core created an interactive Web site for preserving fertility for cancer patients, informed America of poor treatment for colon cancer at hospitals, constructed an “informal forum” for high school science enthusiasts, were named second-most-impactful in HIV/AIDS research, and found out that teens are feeling an information-overload about the election.
In much sadder news, Northwestern recently lost two of its own professors. McCormick associate professor Alexander Golovin succumbed to cancer at the age of 45. He was “an outstanding applied mathematician with an international reputation,” according to a statement by Michael Miksis, chairman of the engineering sciences and applied mathematics department. This summer also saw the loss of law professor Richard Speidel, age 75.