With 14 award winners in 2006, Boston College was again listed among the nation’s top 20 developers of Fulbright scholars. In response to student complaints, the University convened a committee to develop protocols for reporting and responding to campus incidents that appear to involve racial animosity. An association of college business officers released figures that show Boston College’s endowment increased by 14 percent (to $1,447,887,000) in the fiscal year that ended on June 30, outpacing Harvard’s 13.5 percent growth but not approaching Creighton University’s nation-leading 46.9 percent. Dean of Student Development Bob Sherwood joined the Alumni Association staff to work with the 40,000 or so graduates who over the past 20 years have known him as the popular (on most days) supreme ruler of student life. The January 20 “Police Blotter” reported the delivery to medical personnel of “an underage intoxicated party who jumped into a police cruiser thinking that it was a taxi.” Tom O’Brien became the Boston College football coach with the most wins (75) and then decamped to North Carolina State University and was replaced by Jeff Jagodzinski, most recently offensive coordinator of the Green Bay Packers, who has five children, all of whose names begin with “J.” Three of 25 recently discovered paintings purported to be by Jackson Pollock and scheduled to be part of an exhibit next fall at the McMullen Museum were determined by Harvard researchers to contain materials that were not commercially available during Pollock’s life. Museum director Nancy Netzer said the show would go on, with the aim of presenting all known scholarship about the paintings. A Heights column that discloses the contents of local ipods reported that 51-year-old theology professor Stephen Pope’s device hosted Paul Simon’s “America,” Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry,” B.B. King’s “Why I Sing the Blues,” and the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” among other Hair-era classics. Former CSOM dean and academic vice president Jack Neuhauser was appointed president of St. Michael’s College, in Vermont. The Fulton Debating Society was ranked among the top 25 teams in the nation—at 14th or 24th, depending on the poll. Campus conservation efforts in 2005–06 were reported to have reduced annual energy use by 10 million kilowatts (or 15 percent) from the previous year. In an effort to increase the proportion of students who respond to an online faculty review system introduced last semester, the Office of Student Services offered contributors early online access to grades and saw participation rates rise from 30 to 90 percent. In fulfillment of an art course requirement, Elizabeth Stapleton ’08 spent 90 minutes of midday in a self-constructed cage of copper wire on the floor of the lobby outside the Bookstore in McElroy Commons. She asked passersby to write their fears on slips of paper and pass the notes to her. The MBTA raised rates from $1.25 to $2 per ride and eliminated free outbound transportation on the above-ground portion of the B Line that had for years benefited students living in Brighton. Of 166 faculty and staff who reserved seats online for a showing of a movie on the history of women at Boston College, 12 were men. For the third year running, UGBC did not mount a major fall concert, and its director of campus entertainment, Ryan McHaffie ’07, did a credible Sam Goldwyn in rebuffing questions from the Heights: “I’m not gonna force my hand by booking a crummy act just because we don’t have any [open] dates [in Conte Forum.]” Men’s water polo, a club sport since it lost varsity status in 2002, led the North Atlantic division of the Collegiate Water Polo Association and finished the year bobbing at Number 18 in the nation. Boston College implemented a donors-to-athletics-only purchase rule for season tickets covering 1,200 of the best viewing points in Alumni Stadium. Senior Jennifer Arens raised money for charity by selling her friends the rights to shave her head. In an online poll, Heights readers narrowly backed Barack Obama over John McCain for president, with Doug Flutie ’84 finishing third. The world’s most informed baseball reporter Peter Gammons was among guest speakers, as was another eminence, Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, OFM, who met privately with students in the Gasson Hall Honors Library. Also trodding the campus boards: Michael Newdow, who sued his daughter’s California school district on grounds that the phrase “under God” in recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance violated the Establishment Clause; and Susan Shapiro Barash, author of Tripping the Prom Queen: The Truth About Women and Rivalry, who told her Fulton Hall audience, “Women aren’t in it together as much as they pretend to be.”

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