BU poised to alter dorm rules
After years of heated student opposition, Boston University appears poised to relax the unusually strict rules that prohibit students from hosting overnight guests of the opposite sex.
Under the new proposal from the dean of students , dorm residents will be able to host other BU students of either gender and, on a more limited basis, non-BU students. (The school will continue to preach respect for roommates.)
In 1988, BU enacted a complex set of rules governing all evening guests (residents could have guests from 8 p.m. to midnight, but they had to sign in and out). The rules were approved amid concerns that parties, sex, and a free-for-all atmosphere were driving some students out of the dorms, and their enactment was one of the biggest student gripes against former president John Silber . Silber wrote to the student newspaper in 2002 that BU was not "in the business of providing weekend love nests."
The new rules would give students more freedom while also maintaining the security needed in large urban dorms, said Brooke Feldman , the student government president, who helped draft the proposal.
Students, she said, frequently joke that "if you are smart enough to get into BU, you are smart enough to get around the guest policy."
HOT TOPIC: The woman photographed lounging in a tight red skirt, her cleavage visible and blond hair flowing, wouldn't raise an eyebrow in a car advertisement. But the scene sparked a host of complaints from scholars at Harvard and elsewhere when the photo appeared in a science catalog.
The cover of the recent catalog released by Edmund Optics exhorted readers to "Check out our new red hot mechanics," with the words "red hot" in big red letters, and the model posed in front of an optical device.
The New Jersey company's catalogs are ubiquitous in physics laboratories and are read widely by professors and students.
Nancy Brickhouse , an associate director at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, e-mailed the company president to say that she's responsible for maintaining a workplace free of discrimination and sexual harassment. "Will I need to ban your catalog?" she asked.
A spokesman said the model is Edmund Optics's trade show manager and that six of the company's nine optical engineers are women.
POLITICAL PICKS: The governor's office is trying to make the nominating process for public college trustees less political.
Governor Deval Patrick has tapped Judith Block McLaughlin as chairwoman of the little-known Public Education Nominating Council, the group that makes recommendations for empty seats on public college and university boards. McLaughlin, director of the higher education program at Harvard University Graduate School of Education, said the council in the future will seek out nominees rather than only vetting a list of names coming from the governor's office.
"It will be a partnership with the campuses," McLaughlin said. "We will be asking campus boards to look at needs, assess their current strengths, look at the mix, and identify any gaps in skills or experience or expertise."
McLaughlin, who ended a 10-year term as a Bridgewater State College trustee last year, and the council have a big job ahead. There's at least one empty seat on every college board of trustees in the state. The group also makes recommendations for the state Board of Higher Education, which has an empty seat.
Shaun McNiff, chairman of the council under the Romney administration, disputed the characterization that the nominating process was political.
"Romney made good appointments without regard to ideology," said McNiff, dean of Lesley University's undergraduate college.
MAKING MOVES: Harvard president-elect Drew Faust has shaken up her team already, asking the university's chief fund-raiser to step down at the end of June.
"President Faust would like to hire her own vice president for alumni affairs and development and I completely respect that," Donella Rapier, who's been in that job for 3 1/2 years, wrote in an e-mail to the Globe.
Rapier oversaw Harvard's second-best year for donations. Faculty and alumni critics, however, said she lacked a strong vision and aligned herself too closely with former president Larry Summers .
Campus Insider runs on alternate Sundays with Ask the Teacher, an advice column written by a teacher. To submit tips, e-mail campus@globe.com. 
