CONTE NT S 6 Different now
Linden Lane
Scholars and a tweeting
audience examine how the Web has changed us
Investing ahead of the curve 9 Interest group
No credit, no grade, just a talking lunch 10 Doo-wah
An alumni reunion for singing the old songs 11 Advances
From the laboratories
4
bcm v winte r 2012
Campus digest
8 Close-up
President Leahy was among nine Catholic leaders in education cited by the White House for service to their institutions and communities. z Exercising its preemptive legal right, Boston College purchased a set of website names that featured “Boston College” or one of its other trademarks joined to the newly established “dot-xxx” domain. z Prudential Financial became the sponsor of a Boston College National Retirement Risk Index, which tracks the percent of workers “at risk of failing to maintain their standard of living in retirement.” The index currently stands at 51 percent, and is produced by the Carroll School’s Center for Retirement Research. z A record 34,000 students applied for entry into the class of 2016. z To the disappointment of Eagle fans, and acting against a Heights columnist’s recommendation that he choose “another year of Baja chicken paninis” over a year of professional football, junior Luke Kuechly, a marketing major, decided to enter the NFL draft, from which he is expected to be plucked in the first round at great expense to whoever does the plucking. z The Graduate School of Social Work and Hunter College have received a grant from UNICEF to develop national curricula for social workers in Afghanistan. z About to celebrate their publication’s 100th anniversary, editors of this year’s Sub Turri have embarked on a campaign to convince 100 percent of seniors to sit
for portraits taken by the yearbook, up from the average of 60 to 70 percent in recent years. z Students played basketball, danced, and collected leftovers from the dining halls while benefiting cancer research, a hospital in the Congo, and the Greater Boston Food Bank, respectively. According to the University’s government affairs office, Boston College students spend more than 375,000 hours as volunteers a year. z English Professor Suzanne Matson received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for fiction writing, for a novel in progress. Among other significant faculty awards, chemist Eranthie Weerapana received both a $300,000 Smith Family Award in biomedical research and a $450,000 Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation award for her studies of biological systems. z A student group calling itself BC Students for Dental Health turned up on the public sidewalk adjoining McElroy Commons to distribute dental floss alongside representatives from BC Students for Sexual Health, who, as is their particular habit, were distributing condoms in protest of Boston College’s policy of not offering birth control devices through its student health center. Floss is not available at the center either. z Asked by a roving Heights reporter to name the Disney princess with whom they “most” identified, three of four (male) students selected Jasmine, of the Aladdin series, while the last named Sleeping