Quick hits.
- Before the pandemic, there were many test-optional colleges, and hardly any test-blind ones. After the pandemic, a new study finds, there will be many more test-optional colleges, but perhaps relatively few test-blind ones. (The Chronicle)
- The dean of the University of Iowa’s College of Dentistry announced he would step down a year earlier than planned, after an uproar over his October email that condemned the Trump administration’s ban on diversity training. (The Gazette)
- A former female student’s Title IX complaint, concerning an alleged sexual assault by three men’s basketball players at Michigan State University, was rejected by a federal judge on the grounds that the student could not prove “systemic” harassment by the university. (ESPN)
- Two former University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign students are suing the University of Illinois, alleging that it failed to investigate claims of sexual assault and harassment by a former professor. (Illinois Times)
- More than 50 faculty members at Wesley College, in Dover, Del., anticipate losing their jobs when the college is acquired by Delaware State University this summer. (The Whetstone)
- Wofford College, in Spartanburg, S.C., has received a $150-million gift — the largest in its history — from the alumnus and former Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson. (WSPA)
On Covid-19.
- The University of North Carolina School of the Arts, in Winston-Salem, has warned that it may have to send students home if the spread of Covid-19 on campus continues. (Winston-Salem Journal)
- A new Covid-19 testing site at Gallaudet University will process samples from three other colleges in the Washington, D.C., area: American University, Catholic University of America, and Marymount University. The strategy to stop the spread of the coronavirus is a partnership between the four universities and Baltimore City Public Schools. (University Business)
- The president of Pennsylvania State University said the pandemic had cost the institution $400 million to date. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
- Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge administrators wrote in a letter to the campus that, for the fall-2021 semester, they expect to “be able to operate the way we did before the onset of the pandemic,” with a return to face-to-face instruction. (The Advocate)
Fired for tweeting?
Collin College, a community-college district in Texas, has pushed out a third professor for questionable reasons — the latest in a string of firings that faculty members say are evidence of a hostile work environment. H. Neil Matkin, the college’s president, has garnered a reputation for dealing harshly with members of the faculty who criticize the administration. He also faced a firestorm of outrage after he minimized the Covid-19 death of a professor. The history professor Lora D. Burnett was perhaps Matkin’s most outspoken critic. She was told on Thursday that her contract, which expires in May, would not be renewed. On Twitter, Burnett complained that she was apparently being let go because of “mean tweets.” Our Michael Vasquez has more.
Advocacy group continues effort to end affirmative action.
Students for Fair Admissions, the anti-affirmative-action nonprofit led by the activist Edward Blum, was busy on Thursday. The group filed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up its case against Harvard University, an unsurprising move that marks the start of the latest phase in a yearslong legal battle. SFFA also filed a lawsuit against Yale University on Thursday, essentially filling in for former President Donald Trump’s Justice Department, which had investigated the university for bias in its admissions practices. The department dropped the case once the Biden administration took over. Both SFFA complaints accuse the universities of discriminating against Asian American applicants in admissions, which the universities deny. SFFA also went to trial last year in a case against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which the group said had discriminated against white applicants. A judge has yet to rule in that case. It’s impossible to say whether the Supreme Court — the most conservative in years — will take up the Harvard case this year, but if it does, it will have major implications for the admissions policies of selective colleges.
Weekend reads.
Here are some Chronicle staff-recommended reads to bring February to a close:
- Britney Spears, fame, power, misogyny, and control: This author provides commentary on it all. (The Cut)
- A 105-year-old woman beat Covid-19, and credits her success to her daily intake of gin-soaked raisins. (The New York Times)
- One victim of sexual abuse by the Ohio State physician Richard Strauss tells his story. (Esquire)
- These are some of the youngest people we’ve lost to Covid-19. (The Washington Post)
- Post Malone, Hootie and the Blowfish, and Pokémon don’t seem as if they belong in the same sentence. This weekend, they do. (Rolling Stone)
- McSweeney’s offers a listing for one unique internship opportunity. (McSweeney’s)
Stat of the day.
More than 120,000
That’s how many Covid-19 cases have been logged at American colleges since January 1, according to a New York Times analysis.
Comings and goings.
- Tynisha Willingham, dean of the College of Education at Mary Baldwin University, in Virginia, has been named interim provost and chief academic officer.
- Aimee Uen, vice president for finance and controller at Loyola Marymount University, in California, has been named senior vice president and chief financial officer.
- Colin Crawford, dean of the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville, in Kentucky, has been named dean of the School of Law at Golden Gate University, in California.
Footnote.
This week, a 23-year-old computer-science student in Paris solved a puzzle on another planet.
The puzzle came courtesy of NASA’s Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars last week, and was the brainchild of the man in charge of developing the rover’s parachute. The orange-and-white design on the parachute, as a NASA engineer hinted during a news conference on Monday, turned out to contain a secret message: When each colored section of the design was assigned a number in binary code — 1 for orange and 0 for white — they formed strings of 10 numbers that could be translated into letters of the alphabet, as Maxence Abela, the student, and Jerome, his father and collaborator, discovered.
When deciphered, the parachute’s color pattern spells out “Dare mighty things,” a motto NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory takes from an 1899 speech by Theodore Roosevelt. The puzzle reminded Adithya Balaji, a graduate student in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who also worked on it, of sci-fi movies. “It’s exciting that real life can be sometimes even more exciting than the movies,” Balaji told The New York Times.
And there are more surprises to come as Perseverance continues its work, a NASA representative teased. Sleuths of the internet, get ready.
