THE SURGEON GENERAL’S THIS CAMPUS MAY BE DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH AWARD: Yale University Medical School, New HAven, Conn.
Officials at Yale University are still puzzled by the mysterious disappearance, last spring, of three terminally viral hamsters from their laboratory cages. Embarrassed medical school administrators speculate that the missing rodents, who had been injected with a “deadly” strain of virus, were accidentally discarded with the trash from the minimum security lab — at least that’s what they hope happened. However, there’s really no telling for sure since the garbage from that particular lab is routinely sterilized and burned: perhaps the fugitives went up in smoke, perhaps they didn’t. Yale officials have promised a complete review of laboratory safety measures in the wake of the scaresome incident.
In the meantime, if you happen to see any suspiciously hostile or feral hamsters in the vicinity of the New Haven campus you are urged to call the Yale University Campus police at 203-694-8842. That’s 203-694-8842…
THE ROBERT VESCO SELF-IMPROVEMENT THROUGH GRAND THEFT, EMBEZZLEMENT, FORGERY, AND CRIMINAL IMPERSONATION TRAVELLING FELLOWSHIP AWARD (one way airfare to Costa Rica): Edgar P. Berube, 27, New England College ’82, Beloit College ’83, Iowa State University ’83, etc., etc.
His brothers at the University of New Hampshire though he was a member of the Kennedy family. The admissions counselor at Beloit College was convinced that he was a scion of the DuPont clan. Friends at New England College were under the impression that he was a grandson of millionaire industrialist Armand Hammer — so was the gullible local banker who invited the distinguished young man to establish a joint checking account under his and his wealthy grandfather’s name.
Indeed Edgar F. Berube was well on his way to establishing himself as the greatest confidence man in the annals of American campus crime when the arm of the law belatedly caught up with the poseur par excellance last September.
It all began six years ago, apparently, when Berube started boasting to his fellow fraternity members at the University of New Hampshire that he was a nephew of Senator Edward Kennedy — a ruse which quickly succeeded in making Berube a very big man on campus. Berube soon discovered that he needed money — in addition to chutzpah — to maintain his new beautiful person status, and he began using his illustrious alias to borrow money, establish checking accounts, and so forth. When Berube’s aggrieved creditors began getting suspicious about the true lineage of the royal miscreant in their midst, he dropped out of sight for a while and successfully applied for admission at Beloit College in Wisconsin, where the unsuspecting campus community eagerly cooperated in launching yet another phase of Berube’s increasingly profitable, and brazen, career: anything for a Dupont!
By the time it was all over, five years and five campuses later, the high living, fast talking Berube had stolen or embezzled an estimated $200 000 from students, administration, and miscellaneous townspeople in Iowa, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin.
Financial aid applicants who are interested in more details of the “Berube plan” may write Berube directly at the New Hampshire State Prison, where he is currently serving five to seven years after having been convicted by a Concord court of 33 counts of forgery and embezzlement.
THE CHOCOLATE GEORGE* GOOD TASTE IN UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING CITATION: the editors emeritus of the New Mexico State University yearbook, The Phoenix nee The Swastika, 1945–1983.
During the early 1900s the editors of the New Mexico State University yearbook decided to call their annual publishing effort The Swastika. Nothing so nefarious about that — at least, not at the time: the swastika, an ancient Greek symbol which had been appropriated by numerous cultures over the centuries, including several American Indian tribes, had yet to be indelibly associated in the public mind with Adolf Hitler and his president of San Francisco Hell’s Angels, 1941–1968 Nazi goons, who did not actually make it their logo until 1935.
However, four decades, one Nazi-triggered World War — and one Holocaust — later, the New Mexico State yearbook was still being called (you guessed it) The Swastika. Despite years of complaints from both on and off campus the editors steafastly refused to change their besmirched standard, blithely insisting that the four-armed cross only connoted good friends and good times to them.
It was not until last year, when the university publishing board finally stepped into the matter an “appropriate” title for one of its imprints, that the yearbook’s name was changed — once again, over the determined resistance of its diehard editors — to the less bloodcurdling Phoenix…
THE CAMERON CROWE* YOU CAN’T GO HOME — BUT YOU CAN ALWAYS GO BACK TO HIGH SCHOOL TROPHY: Arhur Levene, president of Bradford College, Lawrence, New York
College administration are continually being criticized for being out of touch with their students. Well, perhaps they are, but you can’t blame Arthur Levene, president of Bradford College, in Lawrence, New York, for not trying. Levene, 38, was so anxious to get a better idea of where his mixed-up charges were coming from that he decided to “drop out” of Bradford for a few weeks and “drop back” into the nearest high school.
As a re-enlistee at Lawrence High School Levene dutifully fell into step with his fellow upperclassmen, taking a normal workload of four classes, eating lunch in the school cafeteria, “hanging out” after school, etc. Indeed Levene was so eager to retrace his pedagogical steps that he even signed up to take the College Boards again. Somewhat to his chagrin, the pioneering college president did less well than he had the first time, scoring a full thirty points below the SAT total he had originally achieved during his first trip through high school some twenty years before.
Whether or not Levene’s noble experiment will yield warmer student-administration relations seen. However, upon his return to the Bradford campus the chastened official immediately took a step which should enhance his popularity with future generations of Bradfordonians. From now on, the newly enlightened college president declared, high school seniors with their hearts set on going to BRadford no longer have to take the SATs…
AND YET TO BE ANNOUNCED:
THE TIMOTHY LEARY A. MIND IS A WONDERFUL THING TO WASTE AWARD
THE INCENSE AND PEPPERMINTS CRUNCHY CURRICULUM AWARD
THE GEORGE E. CUSTER STAND BY YOUR COLLEGE AWARD
THE ANIMAL HOUSE BEST – BEST ARGUMENT FOR THE ABOLITION OF FRATERNITIES AWARD…
