Riding a robust platform titled “Building Community Through Programming, Outreach, Accessibility, and Formation,” juniors Mike Kitlas and Jill Long were elected president and vice president of UGBC, shouldering aside candidates represented by “Think Big” and “Achieving our Capabilities.” Twenty-one athletic teams had a perfect Graduation Success Rate, the largest number among Division I programs, according to the NCAA. Patrolman Kevin Browne was honored by the state’s campus police organization for his role in treating a student struck by a hit-and-run driver in December 2009. Assistant professors Dunwei Wang, of chemistry, and Stephen Wilson, of physics, were awarded National Science Foundation “career grants”—highly regarded awards made to American junior faculty of particular promise. The $1.5 billion Light the World campaign announced that it had achieved half its monetary goal. The University held a reception to honor the maintenance staff who, between December 21 and April 1, had cleared a cumulative eight feet of snow from campus roads, sidewalks, parking lots, staircases, and flat roofs. Some 1,600 tons of snow were ultimately trucked to a “snowfield” on the Brighton Campus and shaped and pounded into sturdy little hills by front-end loaders. Students greeted Boston Marathon runners this year with an inflatable maroon and gold arch at the main entrance, on which was printed “The Heartbreak Is Over,” a reference to the University’s position at the summit of “Heartbreak Hill”—just before runners begin their five-mile descent to the finish line in Boston. Nearly 300 Boston College students ran the marathon to gather contributions for the Campus School. In other student philanthropic activity, Boston College’s fourth annual Relay for Life raised $140,000 for cancer research, while 14 student participants in the seventh annual BC Idol competition raised $3,600 in ticket sales to support a music program at St. Columbkille School, in Brighton, an elementary diocesan school that is managed in partnership with the University and the Lynch School. Patrick Kessock ’13, who performed Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” solo while strumming the ukulele, would have received Digest’s vote if Digest had been in Robsham Theater to vote. Paul Daigneault ’87, the founder and artistic director of Boston’s SpeakEasy Stage Company, was appointed Monan Professor in Theater Arts for the 2011–12 academic year. Boston College will house archives of the international commission that oversaw the process by which weapons used by Catholic and Protestant militant groups during “The Troubles” were destroyed. Under British and Irish law, those archives will be closed for 30 years. Khaled Anatolios, a member of the School of Theology and Ministry faculty, has been named one of seven Luce scholars in theology for 2011–12. Anatolios is a scholar of early Christianity. Urged on by students, Dining Services initiated “Meatless Monday” in Corcoran Commons this year, a program that joined “Eat on China Wednesday” and other programs for the month of March (Green Month) as part of the unit’s “sustainability” effort. Moved by similar sentiments, one supposes, the MBTA increased the number of three-car “trips” on the Green Line from 13 to 32 per day. Thornberrys and Rugrats danced the night away in O’Connell House during this year’s Nickelodeon-themed Middlemarch Ball. The most recent U.S. News rankings had to do with graduate programs and saw the Connell School of Nursing rise from 26 to 21 in the nation; the Lynch School of Education moving from 19 to 15; and the Law School moving up one position to 27. Among A&S doctoral programs, economics landed at 31, and chemistry at 45. Trustees approved an operating budget of $845 million for 2011–12. Tuition will be $41,480. Two undergraduate students were among the Americans flown out of Egypt during unrest there in February. Three seniors founded the Revolutionary Government of Boston College—an RGBC to compete with the UGBC. Main item on the agenda: high cost of food in campus facilities. True to its name, the RGBC said it will not seek University recognition. Digest applauds the uncredited editor at the Boston College Police Department who has overthrown years of “Police Blotter” tradition by describing the proximate cause of residence hall smoke alarm alerts as “burnt food,” rather than “bad cooking,” which, unfortunately, is neither easily detectable nor an interest of law enforcement. The University has received a $1 million grant from the Keck Foundation for a group of physicists to develop a microscope that would use nanotechnology to deliver clearer images. Electron microscopes, said researcher Jonathan Rosenberg, allow viewers to distinguish materials separated by at least 200 nanometers (billionths of a meter). The project aims to reduce that distance to 20. The slim, white-haired Adelaide (Addie) Lalli, the best-known Dining Services staff member in living memory—and an individual immortalized like a billionaire donor in “The Loft @ Addie’s,” in Corcoran Commons—died on March 20, at age 88. She retired this year after 35 years on the Heights.

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