The end of the year is upon us, which means it’s time for your final exam on the news of academe in 2009. No essays, just multiple choice. Answers are at the bottom, and no peeking.
1. How much money did a state jury award the embattled ethnic-studies professor Ward Churchill after ruling that the University of Colorado had fired him illegally—only to have the judge vacate the panel’s decision?
a. $1
b. $52,000
c. $1.7-million
d. none
2. New Mexico State University named five finalists in October in its search for a new president. How many of them had recently left their previous jobs amid controversy?
a. 1
b. 2
c. 3
d. 4
3. When a freelance reporter asked the University of Connecticut basketball coach Jim Calhoun about his $1.6-million annual salary during a time of economic hardship for the state, what was the coach’s “best advice” to the reporter?
a. “Get a haircut.”
b. “Go to church.”
c. “Shut up.”
d. “Get your own basketball team.”
4. How many college football coaches are paid $2-million a year or more?
a. none
b. 6
c. 14
d. 25
5. How many private colleges in the United States charge more than $50,000 a year for tuition, fees, room, and board?
a. 5
b. 19
c. 37
d. 58
6. What did the University of Colorado ask its employees to start doing to save an estimated $122,000 a year?
a. copy pages on both sides
b. take the bus to campus
c. empty their own trash cans
d. send around a collection plate in class
7. According to GQ magazine, which university is America’s “douchiest”?
a. Harvard University
b. Pepperdine University
c. Brown University
d. University of Phoenix
8. What did faculty members at Harvard University have to give up to save the university money?
a. cookies at faculty meetings
b. smoking
c. travel to conferences
d. tenure
9. What game returned to Yale University after being banned since 1982?
a. ice hockey
b. truth or dare
c. Texas hold ‘em
d. bladderball
10. Elizabeth Lambert was suspended indefinitely from the University of New Mexico’s soccer team after television cameras caught her doing what?
a. punching a player in the back
b. yanking a player to the turf by her ponytail
c. kicking the ball into a player’s head
d. all of the above
11. In a cartoon created by two community colleges, what happens to students who burden themselves with too much loan debt?
a. they turn into zombies
b. they have to take two jobs
c. they can’t afford to own homes
d. they have to file for bankruptcy
12. Which beloved college sports mascot recently died?
a. Bill the Goat, the U.S. Naval Academy’s mascot
b. Uga, the University of Georgia bulldog
c. Ralphie, the University of Colorado’s bison
d. all of the above
13. What were scientists surprised to see fruit bats doing in southern China?
a. eating rodents
b. using rudimentary tools
c. performing fellatio
d. swimming
14. A group of obese British children were given pedometers to determine how much exercise they were getting. What did they do with the devices, to the consternation of researchers?
a. attached them to their dogs
b. submerged them in a pond
c. dismantled them
d. sold them
15. On which of these objects did scientists perform neuroimaging scans?
a. a pumpkin
b. a dead salmon
c. a dead Cornish hen
d. all of the above
16. When are students at Tufts University permitted to have sex in their dorm rooms?
a. never
b. when no roommates are present
c. anytime, as long as no alcohol is involved
d. only on weekends
17. The University of Arizona was criticized after it arrested a graduate student for what?
a. having sex in his dorm room
b. chalking the sidewalks
c. camping overnight on the quad
d. cutting the tail off Wilbur the Wildcat
18. What did the Oxford University Press select as its 2009 “word of the year”?
a. tweckle
b. teabagger
c. unfriend
d. birther
19. According to Money magazine, who has the No. 1 job in the country right now?
a. college professors
b. yoga instructors
c. systems engineers
d. nurse practitioners
20. What part of the human body has been shrinking over the past 5,000 years, according to paleoanthropologists?
a. the thumb
b. the buttocks
c. the nose
d. the brain
Answers: 1(a), 2(b), 3(c), 4(d), 5(d), 6(c), 7(c), 8(a), 9(d), 10(d), 11(a), 12(b), 13(c), 14(a), 15(d), 16(b), 17(b), 18(c), 19(c), 20(d)
