Despite the University of California's recent budget cuts and substantial hike in student fees, the school system has spent about $2 million in recent years on bottled water, the New York Times reported April 15.
The San Francisco campus has paid the Arrowhead drinking water company $250,000 to $320,000 each year since 2004, while the Berkeley campus paid a total of $522,215 to Arrowhead in the past three fiscal years, the Times reported.
The San Francisco campus's bottled water budget is at odds with the local government's ban on bottled water for its employees, according to the San Francisco Gate. Prior to 2007, the City of San Francisco — despite producing some of the world's most pristine drinking water — spent almost $500,000 on bottled water per year, the Gate reported.
The Task Force on Bottled Water at Brown was established last year to reduce the use of bottle water on campus, The Herald reported Jan. 29.
"Although the task force hasn't set a timeline yet, we hope to make significant changes happen very quickly and work towards the complete elimination of bottled water distribution on campus," Ari Rubenstein '11, a member of the task force, told The Herald in January.
Celebration cuts class time, ruffles Duke faculty
The day after Duke's men's basketball team clinched its fourth national championship title, Blue Devil fans cut class to celebrate in a packed Cameron Indoor Stadium.
But the campus-wide ceremony breached a 2006 internal Duke contract that celebrations of athletic victories would not cut into class time, the New York Times reported April 8.
Duke's Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta sent an e-mail to the undergraduate student body the day before the championship game to remind them that classes would be in session regardless of the game's outcome, the Duke Chronicle reported April 7.
But Moneta's e-mail did not stop fans from skipping class to attend the midday celebration, which included a speech from men's head basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski.
Duke math professor Richard Hain, who initiated the contract, told the Times that this year was the first since the agreement was made that the basketball team climbed to the Final Four –– and "the agreement was completely ignored." The professor, who fought for four years to curtail celebrations to after-class hours asked, "How can somebody schedule a major event that wipes out basically all undergraduate courses the whole afternoon, without talking to the provost?"
Hot or not?
A new Web site, called Is My Thesis Hot or Not, allows students to post their thesis statements online for approval or criticism, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported April 16.
But the Web site, part of the graduate student community GradShare, gives no criteria for assessment, and there are only two categories for voting: hot or not. Voters can also anonymously add comments to clarify why a thesis is hot or not. Many voters pointed out that the statements posted for voting are topics or titles, rather than theses.
The Web site, launched last week, had about 75 theses posted and 5,000 votes as of April 16, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported.
