A front-page article published in yesterday's Wall Street Journal scrutinizes the lifestyle and spending habits of Gordon Gee, the chancellor of Vanderbilt University and former president of Brown.
The article reveals that Vanderbilt spends $700,000 a year on a personal chef and parties at Braeburn, the university-owned Nashville mansion where Gee and his wife live.
Gee left Brown for Vanderbilt abruptly in 2000, after just 25 months as president. According to the article, Gee, whose $1.4 million annual compensation is higher than most university leaders, requested a renovation of Braeburn when he arrived at Vanderbilt. The project ultimately cost the university $6 million and was never approved by its full board.
Now, Vanderbilt's board has created a committee to examine Gee's spending.
Gee defends his spending in the article. "We paid for that house over and over and over again," Gee told the Journal. Of the $1.2 billion raised since he arrived, "A lot of that was raised in that house," Gee said.
The article carried the byline of Joann Lublin and Daniel Golden, whose new book, titled "The Price of Admission," includes a chapter alleging that Brown favors the children of celebrities when making admissions decisions.
The article describes the arc of Gee's career as following "a recurring pattern: disrupt the status quo, lift the university's image, raise a lot of money, and leave for another job." Brown spent $3 million renovating the president's house on Power Street for Gee, former Vice President for Finance and Administration Donald Reaves told the Journal. That included a $400,000 conservatory built in England that was dismantled, shipped and attached to the house. The conservatory sits near the back of the president's house.
In 2005, when Vanderbilt trustees discovered Gee's wife Constance, a tenured associate professor of public policy and education, was using marijuana at Braeburn, they confronted the chancellor in his office. Gee said she was using the drug for an inner ear ailment. An anonymous source told the Journal that a trembling Gee told the trustees, "I've been worried to death about this."
Sobering rule change to Harvard-Yale tailgatePartly in response to a particularly rowdy tailgate before the 2004 football game between Harvard and Yale - during which 29 students were ejected for underage drinking - Harvard recently announced that alcohol will be prohibited at this year's event, which begins three hours before the actual contest.
Benedict Gross, Harvard's dean of the college, released on Sept. 19 a list of rules governing the festivities, which will take place Nov. 18 in Cambridge.
The fourth rule bans "all forms of alcohol" at the tailgate as well as "drinking paraphernalia, items that promote rapid consumption of alcohol, and drinking games." Vehicles will be searched upon entering the tailgate area.
The 2004 tailgate resulted in Boston Police Department officers ejecting 15 Yale students and 11 Harvard students, according to a Sept. 19 Harvard Crimson article. BPD officers also confiscated 97 IDs and made two arrests.
"I was embarrassed to be a policeman on that field seeing what I had to see," BPD Captain William Evans said after the 2004 tailgate, according to the Crimson.
Yale College Council Secretary Zach Marks, a sophomore, recently told the Yale Daily News he believes the rule change might actually lead to increased alcohol abuse, as students may be more inclined to drink outside the tailgate area or prior to arriving.
Yale junior Steven Engle, who is vice president of the YCC, voiced similar concerns.
"It's unfortunate that Harvard has passed this policy," Engler said in a Sept. 20 YDN article. "We obviously respect their decision, but this is obviously going to put a damper on the game. ... I think students who choose to drink on Harvard-Yale weekend will do so, either off campus or in dorms."
This year's game will not be an entirely dry affair. Students of legal age will be able to purchase beer and spiked hot chocolate for $1 at stations monitored by professional bartending staff.
Those who drink too heavily before arriving at the tailgate may have trouble getting in. The last rule included on the new list states "visibly intoxicated individuals" will be denied entrance. The rule also states, "Unruly behavior and public urination do not meet our community standards and will not be tolerated in the student tailgate area."
UVA latest school to end early admissionOn Monday, the University of Virginia became the third university this month to eliminate its early application option for prospective undergraduates. The current binding early admission policy will stay in place for applicants to the class of 2011 but will not be an option for applicants as of fall 2007, the Washington Post reported Sept. 26.
"This action is an effort to remove an identified barrier to qualified low-income students and their families who have long believed that top-tier universities were not within their reach," said UVA President John Casteen III in a Sept. 25 press release available on the school's Web site.
UVA's decision follows similar moves at Harvard and Princeton universities earlier this month. The University of Delaware, which, like UVA, is a large, public institution that draws many out-of-state applicants, eliminated its own early decision option last May. The change at Delaware is already in effect for this year's admissions cycle.
The change at UVA may not come as a surprise. Following Harvard's policy change, UVA Dean of Admissions John Blackburn noted that "change is good" in a Sept. 13 Washington Post article.
"I think what most of us are seeing is that low-income students do not apply to early programs," Blackburn said. "I suspect that Harvard's decision will eventually say to other schools, 'Maybe we'll try it, too.'"
