Going Bowling

I wasn't sure if I'd be able to post this morning after battling internet problems up here on the mountain all day yesterday. Very frustrating. Let's see what we've got ...

Dartmouth football recruits Austen Fletcher and JB Andreassi of St. Anthony's High School are on the New York roster for the New York-New Jersey All-Star Classic to be played at Rutgers on June 8. The game was formerly known as the Governor's Bowl. Green Alert Take: Um, given the headlines in New York and New Jersey in recent days do you think they are glad they changed the name of that game or what?

Add Patriot League school Lafayette to the list of colleges making financial aid changes. From the Morning Call:

Lafayette became the latest top-tier college to announce a plan to knock down financial barriers by offering more aid to a wider range of low- and middle-income students so they don't have to rely on loans. The move comes on the heels of Lehigh University's announcement last week of a similar plan

Tuition, room and board next year at Lafayette: $47,338. Find the full Lafayette release here. Find a story about Lehigh's initiative here.

For a good look at what's driving all this, check out this New York Times opinion piece. A few numbers from the piece:

Harvard, with an endowment of $35 billion, and Yale, with $22.5 billion, have more money than the general fund budgets of the states in which they operate. In just a single year, 2006, Harvard added more wealth than the combined total endowments of 188 schools at the bottom of the college money race.

And now what's driving it all, from the same story in the Times:

“It’s fair to ask whether a college kid should have to wash dishes in the dining hall to pay his tuition when his college has a billion dollars in the bank,” said Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa. Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate committee that oversees tax policy, has written to the nation’s 135 leading universities, asking them to explain what they do with their tax-free endowments.

Missed this yesterday but the New York Times also had a story yesterday about the University of Michigan and how some athletes might be getting a little questionable help. Find that story here.

And finally this. Saw a nicely done commercial last night for Dartmouth Coach, which runs buses from Hanover to Boston's Logan Airport. What I couldn't believe was that a company would spend the money to produce a commercial like that and not pay attention to detail. Hearing the "talent" pronounce Lebanon like the country instead of the way they pronounce it around here surely had Upper Valley regulars gnashing their teeth. To make sure you don't make the same mistake, here's what I'll call a "preliminary pronunciation primer" for folks coming to visit the valley:

• The place with all the fast-food restaurants is West Leba-nin. Not West Leba-nahn
• The capital of New Hampshire is Conquered not Con-cord like the grape
  
• The cute little Vermont town on the way to even cuter Woodstock is Kweechee not Cue-chee (and it's spelled Quechee)