Daily Debriefing
By Fan Zhang And Turia Lahlou, The Dartmouth Staff
Published on Friday, July 31, 2009
The Ledyard Canoe Club is taking initial steps to rebuild Tit-comb Cabin, which burned down in what the Hanover Police called a “suspicious” fire on May 6. The cabin is located on Gilman Island on the Connecticut River. Greg Sokol, former Ledyard vice president, said the project is “still in the planning stages” but lumber will be ordered during the 2009-2010 academic year. Once the wood has been dried, it will be transported to Gilman Island for construction of the cabin in Summer 2010, he said. After the May fire, all that remained were the base logs, chimney and fireplace, interim director of the Outdoor Programs Office Earl Jette said in a previous interview with The Dartmouth.
A U.S. Appeals Court reversed the verdict in a suit between Blackboard, Inc and similar course-management system vendor Desire2Learn, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported. The previous ruling had required Desire2Learn to pay Blackboard $3.3 million in damages for patent infringement, but the new decision found that one of Blackboard’s software patents is invalid, forcing Blackboard to repay the money. Blackboard maintains that new patents the company has received will render many of the lawsuit issues moot. The ruling does not affect the College’s license with Blackboard, according to Ellen Waite-Franzen, Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer.
The American Red Cross summer term blood drive concluded on Thursday after collecting blood from 189 people, according to Diana Lim, one of the drive’s organizers. On Wednesday, 96 people came to donate blood, approximately 40 percent of whom were Dartmouth students. On Thursday, 93 people came to donate blood, and approximately 30 percent were Dartmouth students. The rest of the donations generally came from members of the Upper Valley community. Lim described the event as successful, since organizers exceeded their goal of collecting 90 pints of blood. Organizers hope to increase outreach for future blood drives because there is a need for blood in the Upper Valley, where there has been a decrease in blood donations over the past few years, Lim said.