A Cautionary Tale

With hopes of becoming a doctor, the running back Sports Illustrated called the best in his state had been leaning toward Dartmouth back in 2006, but Jared Turcotte ended up staying at home and playing instead for the University of Maine. After taking a redshirt as a freshman, the 6-foot-2, 230-pound fullback lived up to the hype when he was named an All-American in his first collegiate season. Now, five "surgical procedures" (including three knee operations) later, Turcotte is hanging up his cleats with one year of eligibility remaining and hoping to transfer to Bates College to improve his chances of attending medical school. He will be one semester shy of a degree at Maine at the end of the spring semester and doesn't know how many of his credits will transfer if he is admitted.

From a story in the Sun Journal:

He intended to pursue a pre-med curriculum when he enrolled at Maine in the fall of 2007. but the time commitment to football led him to take on a lighter academic load and study kinesiology instead. He said enrolling at Bates gives him a better chance of matriculating into med school. For now, the plan is to become an orthopedic surgeon, although that could change, he said.

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From Turcotte's bio: kinesiology & physical education major/exercise science.

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We've all heard of "Likely Letters." As the Daily Pennsylvanian writes, Penn is now trying out "Likely Videos." For those of us who would never get one, this is from the story:

Early in the video, (Dean of Admissions Eric ) Furda tells applicants that “you’re among a small group of students who are designated as likely candidates, meaning that on March 30 you’re going to be admitted to the University of Pennsylvania.”

Sounds a little more than "likely," don't you think?

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The Stanford Daily writes about athletes having "access to a list of 'easy' courses." From the story:

Stanford officials said the list was designed to accommodate athletes’ demanding schedules and disputed that the list was made up of easy courses. Officials discontinued the list last week after student reporters working for California Watch began asking about it.

The list, which has existed at least since 2001, was widely regarded by athletes as an easy class list. More than a quarter of the courses on the list did not fulfill university general education requirements.

Green Alert Take: How many colleges have official lists that can be interpreted the way the list at Stanford was interpreted we may never know, if for no other reason than a few colleges are probably running them through the shredder right now. But rest assured, even in the Ancient Eight word gets around pretty quickly about which courses to take and which to avoid. Folks, it's called college.

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As noted here yesterday, Dartmouth's Sam Tarling won the NCAA national championship in the 10K cross country ski race yesterday in Stowe, Vt. Dartmouth entered the second day of the competition in second place behind the University of Colorado.

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This list of Ivy League championships so far this year is pirated from a message board posting:

• Princeton 11
• Yale 4
• Penn 3
• Cornell 2
• Harvard 2
• Brown 0
• Columbia 0
• Dartmouth 0

Princeton's titles have come in men's basketball, women's basketball, men's cross country, women's cross country, men's swimming, women's swimming, men's indoor track, women's indoor track, men's soccer, women's fencing and field hockey. Whew!

Dartmouth's lone Ivy League title last year was in baseball.

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With Dartmouth's tuition and fees going up significantly next year and That Hanover High School Junior tremendously excited about taking a tour of Penn State next month, it was tough reading this (link) shared by a regular reader (italics added):

Penn State and other Pennsylvania public universities are slated for the most dramatic appropriation cut in the history of American higher education, based on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's budget proposal released today (March 8) by Gov. Tom Corbett.

The budget cuts Penn State's appropriation by 52.4 percent, a devastating reduction of $182 million.

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Given those bits of news, I figured it was time to breathe some life into my slumbering non-Green Alert writing website. In case you are sitting there bored today, the main page has links to some football stories you may find interesting including:

Buddy Teevens' press conference on his return to Dartmouth; a football player who named his musical composition "Antithetical: in direct and unequivocal opposition;" the 2004 team's tribute to a dying boy; the catch that was the talk of the Ivy League; the former Dartmouth and NFL linebacker who lost a famous friend, and the decision to return for a fifth year by a certain Dartmouth quarterback now working in the football offices. The site also has an interview with former New York Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton, a fun story about a local comedian and a link to my "family history" work. Enjoy. Or not ;-)