Taken to task over task forces
Some trustees on the Board of Higher Education are questioning new priorities set by acting chairman Aaron Spencer.
At the board's Feb. 15 meeting, Spencer established two new task forces: one to review the system's affirmative action policies and another to examine why the effort to allow undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition at public colleges failed to gain the Legislature's approval last year.
Neither item appeared on the agenda, and a few trustees were surprised when Spencer appointed them to head the committees. They questioned the timing, given that Spencer will be acting chairman only until June, when his second five-year term on the board expires. He asked the task forces to report back in April.
"That sounds like a huge task," said trustee John C. Brockelman, appointed co chairman of the affirmative action task force.
Creating a tuition break for undocumented immigrants generated much debate about board priorities because the board dealt with that issue last year.
Spencer defended resurrecting the issue: "The public has a right to look to the Board of Higher Education for some information and illumination."
HARVARD PROVOST STAYS: In just her second week as president-elect of Harvard, Drew Gilpin Faust made a major announcement -- at her request, provost Steve Hyman would stay on the job.
As the second in command, a provost serves at the president's discretion. Because Hyman was also a finalist for the presidency, many professors assumed that he would prefer to step down or Faust would want to tap someone else.
"Steve has worked with extraordinary dedication and effectiveness," Faust wrote in an e-mail to deans.
In an e-mail to the Globe, Hyman praised Faust and wrote, "I am eager to help her succeed and to follow through with the important work already underway."
The move pleased many faculty members because Hyman, a neuroscientist, is generally well-liked and steeped in some of Harvard's biggest ongoing projects.
POLAR COVER-UP? The polar bear has been the mascot at Bowdoin College for nearly a century, but on Friday the furry snowball's presence on campus was near extinction.
Students at the Brunswick, Maine, college draped black tarps over a 20-ton granite polar bear statue and a stuffed polar bear preserved in a glass case to draw attention to a US Fish and Wildlife Service proposal to list the polar bear as a threatened species. They covered polar bear images on campus walls with poster boards.
One polar bear, sporting a sign that says "What if I go extinct?" was spotted roaming the campus, handing out information about the bear's dwindling population in the Artic. Bowdoin adopted the polar as its mascot in 1913 in recognition of three alums who explored the polar region.
"We grew up thinking that the polar bear is an amazing species," said Ruth Morrison , a Bowdoin senior and student organizer of Bowdoin Polar Bears Against Global Warming. "I think it would change our campus having the polar bear extinct."
NEW FACES: Oscar season is also, apparently, the season for new presidents. Besides Harvard's recent naming of Faust as its next president, Assumption College in Worcester has chosen Francesco Cesareo as its next leader, and Michael B. Alexander will become the president of Lasell College in Newton.
Cesareo, a historian, is dean of the liberal arts school at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. Alexander is founder and managing partner of Echo Bridge Entertainment, a film distribution company, and previously worked for MCA, the entertainment conglomerate, and ran a television station.
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