Daily Debriefing
By Elise Quinones And Rebecca Cress
Published on Friday, March 6, 2009
College President James Wright and President-elect Jim Yong Kim responded to Tuesday's controversial General Good Morning Message in a joint e-mail to the Dartmouth community on Thursday. Tuesday's GGMM -- a daily, tongue-in-cheek news bulletin written by a group of students -- warned of the "Asianification" of the College and referred to Kim as a "Chinaman." Wright said in the e-mail that the message was "hurtful" to the Dartmouth community. The message, Wright said, is not a reflection of the campus' attitude towards Kim and does not represent the "characteristic values" of the College. The GGMM e-mail obscures Dartmouth's commitment to fostering an "open, engaged community," Kim said in his response. "I'm concerned that people outside our community will not understand the tremendous work Dartmouth has done to build a diverse and inclusive campus that cherishes free speech, but also nurtures mutual respect and civility," Kim said in he e-mail. Kim said he did not want the author of the message to suffer long-term consequences, acknowledging that "we all make mistakes -- especially when we are young."
Thayer School of Engineering professor Simon Shepherd recently received a $2-million grant from the National Science Foundation to fund his portion of a collaborative effort to further develop the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network, according to a College press release. Shepherd will work with colleagues from Virginia Tech, the University of Alaska, Fairbanks and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory to build new ground-based remote sensing instruments. Pairs of these new radars will be located in Kansas, Oregon, the Aleutian Islands and the Azores. The new equipment will permit more extensive data collection on the Earth's ionosphere and magnetosphere, which could help scientists understand the effects of geomagnetic storms. The project should be complete by 2012.
Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh, who managed investments for the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, were recently arrested on multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Greenwood and Walsh reportedly embezzled $554-million from 16 investors. The two universities have filed a lawsuit to recover their respective investments, which total approximately $65 million for Pittsburgh and $49 million for Carnegie Mellon. The universities are unlikely to recover most of the money, much of which has already been spent, securities experts told The Chronicle.