We're Better Than You Are

The financial reform wars are on. Check out this response out of New Haven to Dartmouth's announcement in today's Yale Daily:

Director of Student Financial Services Caesar Storlazzi said he is impressed with the many creative approaches being taken in financial-aid reforms, but emphasized that Yale’s policy extends farther than Dartmouth’s.

“Yale’s new financial-aid initiatives are more generous in that they apply to all families — not just ‘under $75K’ families — and that they are targeted at the calculation of the parent contribution and not at the amount of scholarship,” Storlazzi said.

The guess here is that the comment didn't come across in print quite the way Storlazzi intended. ...

Burlington, Vt., TV station WCAX has a story about Dartmouth's initiative that includes quotes from a few very happy students. ...

First Harvard. Then Yale. Now Dartmouth. Will Columbia be following suit? Not according to the Spectator. From the Spec:

On the heels of high-profile financial aid reforms by Ivy League peers Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth, Columbia President Lee Bollinger said that, despite its lucrative capital campaign, the University cannot afford to make similar changes.

Dartmouth football assistant Lance Clelland gets a mention in this story about brother Lane Clelland, a Notre Dame-bound lineman who has helped his Maryland high school become the top wrestling program in the state.

Dartmouth has been extremely fortunate to have hard-working student-managers for football the past several years. It can be a thankless job done done well out of the spotlight. The Columbia Spectator has an offseason story about the Lion manager.

Like the Trustees story, the Return of Beta saga is getting a little old in this precinct. That said, an opinion piece in today's Daily Dartmouth regarding the frat gets a mention here simply because of its lede:

It’s obvious what the football team must do when Beta comes back. No, not win the Ivy League championship (though they should do that, too). The team should really rekindle ties with the house that historically has been theirs and take advantage of the clean slate represented therein.

Jim MacLaren's story has been shared in this electronic space before. About how the former Yale football and lacrosse player was originally diagnosed as dead and eventually lost a leg when he was hit by a bus. About how he returned to athletics as an amputee triathlete only to be paralyzed when his bike was hit by a van during a competition. The Ivy League website reports:

The NCAA Honors Committee honored James MacLaren as the 2008 Inspiration Award winner at its Honors Celebration last week in Nashville, Tenn., and that dinner will be broadcast on ESPN2 on Feb. 1 at 3 pm.

Sounds like a slam dunk choice to me. To read the full Ivy release, click here. To visit Jim's website, click here. ...

And finally ...

Click on the video to watch Dartmouth alum Tanner Glass score his first NHL goal with the Florida Panthers. Unfortunately for Tanner, you've got to watch him get the worst of a fight to get a glimpse of the score.