U.S. Senate holds hearing on grad student unions
Senator Arlen Specter (R-Penn.), chair of the Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on labor and education, held a hearing Thursday to discuss the rights of teaching assistants (TAs) to unionize.
Committee members discussed a recent decision made by the National Labor Relations Board, which held that that TAs at Brown University could not unionize. The decision overturned an earlier result that had led to the establishment of the first TA union at New York University.
After allegations surfaced that the members of the Board had voted along partisan lines and not according to the letter of the law, the issue came before the Senate subcommittee.
Specter said that national legislation on TA unionization is unlikely, however.
After the Brown decision, similar cases, including one involving Tufts, were sent back to regional boards to rule on the use of the new standards.
Female Harvard professors complain about lack of tenure
Twenty-six female professors at Harvard University have complained recently about the lack of tenure awarded to female professors there.
The women are alleging that the numbers of newly tenured female professors has dropped dramatically since Lawrence Summers, Harvard's president since 2001, took office.
According to the letter of complaint, in the 2000-2001 academic year, the year before Summers took office, 36 percent of the newly-tenured professors were female.
The letter alleges that this percentage dropped to only 11 last year, when only four of the 36 instructors offered tenure were women.
The University is disputing some of the numbers in the letter, but Summers did make a statement that hiring more women is a priority at Harvard.
The letter alleges that the University's goal of hiring "young scholars" may be to blame, as women's research careers tend to peak later than men's.
Colleges seek publicity and popularity on reality TV shows
Reality television shows have recently featured several universities, and colleges are seeing the free publicity as a boon in a time of tight budgets and increasing competition for student enrollment.
One such college is the University of Richmond, where the TLC network featured one of its fraternity houses on the show "While You Were Out." The show has an audience of 9 million every week.
A public relations official for the University was on set during production and gave the University's approval. "I don't think anything but good can come from this particular show," he said. Richmond students were also featured on TLC's "A Makeover Story" last year.
Other shows, however, such as MTV's "Fraternity Life" and "Sorority Life" make university officials nervous. Potential students and alumni donors could be deterred from enrolling or donating due to what they view on the shows, which follow members of universities' Greek houses and often show alcohol use and sexual situations.
-- compiled by Jillian Harrison from The Chronicle of Higher Education.
