Ivy League scandal to hit newsstands
The academic scandal of the year may be about to erupt this week when New York magazine publishes feminist author and Yale alumna Naomi Wolf's article alleging that she was groped by none other than Harold Bloom, the prodigious Shakespearean scholar who still teaches at Yale. Wolf's article -- which more broadly attempts to document a systemic pattern of sexual misconduct by professors and students at Yale over two decades -- alleges that Bloom visited her apartment and put his hand on her inner thigh when she was a student in 1983. Her intention in writing about it now "is simply to make sure that women students are as safe today as they deserve to be," she said in a statement released by the magazine. Bloom, who has remained publicly silent on the allegation, did not answer calls to his office or an e-mail.
POINTS TAKEN: Enmity continues to build at Emerson College over the dispute between professors and President Jacqueline Liebergott, who is trying to shut down the faculty union. The alumni representative on the board of trustees -- televison producer Glenn Meehan, formerly of "Entertainment Tonight" -- recently decided to support the faculty by resigning from the board. So Emerson's associate vice president for public affairs, David Rosen, made it clear to anyone who asked that Meehan -- whose position was nonvoting -- often did not attend the board's meetings anyway. Meehan fired back with a set of eccentric "talking points," which he said Rosen should feel free to use, including the fact that he has given over $8,000 to Emerson, cofounded the college's "Evy Awards," and won a president's award when he graduated in 1983. Other talking points: He is a recovering alcoholic who was once arrested for drunk driving; he "did his share of drugs while at Emerson" and "is trying to take his Howard Dean bumper sticker off his car." Meehan told the Globe that his salvo indicates he doesn't have to be a perfect person to love the school. If things aren't patched, and professors go on strike, "The BU's, Syracuses, and Ithacas of the world will get these teachers," he said, "but the Emerson students will lose out."
LAYOFF UPDATE: In the latest of a series of layoffs across Harvard University's many schools, the central administration announced it is laying off up to 60 staff members, 20 of whom heard the bad news this month. The administration is under a mandate to keep costs flat even as financial aid and health care costs grow, said spokeswoman Merry Touborg.
BAD SEMESTER: It's been a rough year at Northeastern University, and not just because of the riots that erupted near its campus after the Super Bowl. Out of the public eye, five of the school's 14,000 undergraduates have died so far this academic year. Though the deaths were unrelated -- two were caused by car accidents, two students died from illnesses, and one, last weekend, committed suicide -- the number is unusually high. "It's an anomaly," said Ed Klotzbier, NU's vice president for student affairs. "Everyone says it's totally unprecedented." The school is handling the deaths on a case by case basis, offering counseling to students. "This is the toughest part of the job," Klotzbier said.
BOOM OR BUST? For visitors to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst website last week, the news looked like a disappointment for the flagship campus: After sunny official predictions that the school would see a 10 percent jump in the number of applications it received this year, it appeared to see a 3 percent drop. So what went wrong? Blame it on the Web. The school actually saw a rise in applicants -- 17,800, up from last year's 16,500 -- and vice chancellor for student affairs Mike Gargano says he is still looking into why the website was trumpeting the wrong numbers.
GRADUATE TAX: Robert Nislick had plenty to keep him busy this winter, between his full-time law studies, two young children, and a new house in Framingham. But when he noticed, while filling out his state income tax form, that he couldn't deduct his tuition -- which undergraduate college students can do -- the 29-year-old decided to act. He called his state representative, Deborah Blumer, and last week Blumer filed a bill on his behalf that would extend the deduction to the estimated 100,000 graduate students in Massachusetts. Nislick, a second-year student at Suffolk University Law School, said he pays more than $28,000 a year in tuition -- and if he were getting an undergraduate degree, would have owed almost $1,500 less in state taxes. He's not overly optimistic about the bill's chances, but said it seemed like the right thing to do. "The best thing I've learned in law school, outside of the law, is that we really are in a position to make changes in society," he said.
Marcella Bombardieri and Jenna Russell of the Globe staff compiled this report. Tip? Question? E-mail campus@globe.com. 
