News Briefs

$10 million donated for new dorm

The University announced yesterday that Trustee Dr. Bernard Gordon has donated $10 million in cash to help finance the construction of a new residence hall. The new dorm will be named Sophia Gordon Hall, in honor of Gordon's wife.

The residence hall will be built across the road from the Aidekman Arts Center on Talbot Ave. and will require demolishing the music building at 20 Professors Row. The school expects to break ground on the building this summer and finish it by September 2004.

Gordon donated $20 million during the Tufts Tomorrow Campaign to support engineering education at Tufts, and created the Tufts Gordon Institute, a program which offers masters degrees in Engineering Management.

The trustee is chairman of the Lahey Clinic and the founder and chief executive of Analogic Corporation. Considered the father of analog to digital conversion, he has led teams that have created devices such as the fetal monitor, the instant imaging CT scanner, and an advanced security imaging system to help detect explosives and other contraband.



Charges laid against Greek houses

The University will hold disciplinary hearings in the next two weeks for Zeta Psi, Delta Upsilon, and Alpha Phi, three Greek houses facing charges of providing alcohol to minors and hazing.

The Committee on Fraternities and Sororities announced the charges last Friday after an investigation by the Tufts University Police Department and the Dean of Students Office.



Tufts TAs, students march

Teaching and research assistants from Tufts will travel to Columbia University on Thursday to rally in support graduate student unionization.

Tufts representatives will join clerical and maintenance workers from several other private universities including Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, and Columbia.

The employees are rallying after Columbia's administration blocked a vote for assistants to be represented by the Graduate Employees United Union (GSEU) by filing an appeal with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The University's appeal was filed on the grounds that teaching and research assistants are students, not employees.

In 2000, New York University became the first private university to have a union. Since then, Columbia, Brown, Tufts, and the University of Pennsylvania have held a referendum on unionization. After the vote at Tufts in April, the NLRB impounded the votes to prevent them from influencing the board's subsequent hearing on the matter.

Last month, proponents of unionization said they holed the NLRB would deliver its decision by the end of the semester.



Junior wins Goldwater science scholarship

Junior Thomas Baran was named the recipient of a Goldwater Scholarship yesterday, an award aimed at encouraging students to pursue careers in mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering.

An Electrical Engineering major whose work focuses on the use of digital signal processing, Baran and other recipients receive up to $7,500 annually to cover tuition, books, and other expenses.

The scholarship's selection process rests heavily upon the input of a faculty representative at each school, the "key person" who publicizes the scholarship and solicits faculty recommendations for candidates. Tufts' faculty representative is Dean of the Colleges Charles Inouye.

Scholarship recipients are selected on the basis of their "potential to make a significant contribution to his or her chosen field of study," according to the website. Up to 300 students are selected each year, and a total of 3,632 students have become Goldwater scholar's since the program's inception in 1988.

Compiled by Warren Davis, Jonathan Graham, and Sarah Dalglish