On March 10, Grafton County Superior Court Judge Edward Fitzgerald, III issued a preliminary order to dismiss a class-action lawsuit brought by alumni against Dartmouth College. The suit charges that Dartmouth engaged in a fraudulent solicitation of funds in its 1992 “Will to Excel” campaign and that the College has restricted alumni voting rights in trustee elections in violation of a contractual agreement with the alumni and Dartmouth’s fiduciary responsibility (See TDR, 3/13/00).

Fitzgerald’s order does not constitute a final judgement of the case, but constitutes notice of his intention to dismiss. Indeed, the order, only one paragraph long, contains no reason for dismissal and Fitzgerald has yet to write an opinion. “The Court will issue a detailed order outlining the specific findings and rulings,” wrote Fitzgerald.

The distinction between the interim order to dismiss and final judgement is important, because until Fitzgerald files his opinion, the appellants will be unable to file an appeal. The seven alumni who filed the suit, including lead plaintiff William Tell ’56, have filed a motion requesting oral argument, arguing that “due process requires the Court’s consideration of said motions before prior to the issuance of any order on the Respondents’ Motion to Dismiss.” Fitzgerald, of course, seems predisposed to dismiss the case according to the College’s motion, and the alumni intend to appeal that decision. But they can’t do that until Fitzgerald issues final judgement. Theoretically, Fitzgerald could leave the case open until Dartmouth expends the “Will to Excel” funds on the Student Life Initiative—precisely the damage to alumni that the lawsuit was filed to prevent.

“This is a most unusual disposition of this case,” says Tell, “and raises significant new issues as to whether our constitutional rights of due process have been violated.” Still, for the alumni, the matter is far from concluded.

Nationale Nederlanden, a Dutch insurance company, apologized Thursday for accidentally supplying pornographic videos to its agents instead of a promotional film on pensions. “Painful, very painful. Not only for ourselves but notably for our customers,” said a spokesman for the company. The one-hundred pornographic videos originated from a distribution company which had farmed out the duplication to a third party. “We immediately jumped into our cars and got them all back,” said the spokesman. Nationale Nederlanden employees promptly returned the videos to the Women’s Resource Center.

Psi Upsilon fraternity has been placed on six weeks probation after college authorities claimed underage drinking at the house’s annual Winter Carnival keg jump, an event towards which Dartmouth had turned a benevolent eye for more than a decade.

The contest, traditionally held on the Saturday morning of Winter Carnival, has become, since its 1980 inception, a staple of the weekend. Safety and Security officers customarily stand by, making sure that no one gets hurt.

This year, echoing the attitudes of a more punitive, anti-Greek administration, the Safety and Security officers went through the crowd, busting underage drinkers—and later, in a fit of fancy, blamed all underage drinking at the public event on Psi U itself.

The official charges were providing alcohol to underage and intoxicated persons.

Psi U President Daniel Mahoney ’01 told The Dartmouth Review the fraternity has no plans to alter the event for next year’s winter carnival.

A Roman Catholic church on Chicago’s South Side has urged its members to pay prostitutes—to go to church. Over $3,000 dollars has been collected for the program, which will pay prostitutes their going hourly wages to get them to listen to evangelical messages and attend mass. Interest is high.

“We’re overwhelmed,” said the Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina’s Roman Catholic Church. “We got calls from everywhere, including Europe.” He pointed to the wide variety of outreach programs available for prostitutes through the Church: “We’re not just saying God loves you. We have a social service center and can get you counseling, housing, addiction help, employment,” he said, adding that some of the funding would go to finance those types of programs.

What about drug-addicted prostitutes who might use the money to finance a habit? “Do you run that risk? Of course,” he said. “Whenever you do a social program...you run the risk that the money’s not being used to the best advantage. But if you don’t take risks, you don’t help those at risk.”

Phi Delta Alpha fraternity was derecognized by the College last month, following a wide variety of allegations of misconduct, including charges that the house had rushed freshmen, had served alcohol to minors, and had hazed its pledges.

Phi Delt has filed a formal appeal to the College; if that appeal fails, this will be the fraternity’s last term.

The investigation came after Adam Dansiger ’00, a Phi Delt brother, and his father sent a letter to the College allegedly detailing Dansiger’s experiences in the house.

Dansiger has not been on campus since his sophomore fall, when he was involved in a very serious one car accident while returning from Burlington, Vermont with two other Phi Delt brothers early in the morning. Dansiger, who was driving, was paralyzed; his father says he still can never sleep because of his injuries.

Dansiger has been at home in Staten Island, New York for the last two years, rehabilitating.

Dansiger’s father, Zeev Dansiger, told the Daily Dartmouth that his son had decided to send the letter after becoming disenchanted with the level of support his fraternity brothers had lent during his recovery.

The derecognition comes on the heels of another nasty incident for Phi Delt. Damian Williams ’01, a brother, was indicted early this winter on arson charges after he allegedly tried to burn down neighboring house Chi Gamma Epsilon. Two other Phi Delts were charged with lesser, related offenses.

Phi Delt’s appeal rests on significant technical irregularities it claims took place during its trial. All of the charges—the Chi Gam incident and the allegations contained in Dansiger’s letter—were treated as one offense. The fraternity argues that each charge should have been the subject of a separate hearing.

Prominent investment banking firm J.P. Morgan announced that that it will join the Sony Corporation in setting up an online bank. You’ll think we’re making this up, but bank users will actually be able to make financial transactions using their Internet-accessing Sony Playstation 2, shifting their money via the Internet with the touch of a joystick.

Sylvia Patterson, a stepmother, and John Holmes, her business partner, were convicted of hiring a hitman to murder Patterson’s two young step-children. Who did they pay to carry out the foul deed? Banjo, a local, semiprofessional clown. Fortunately, Banjo was unsuccessful in making the two stepchildren “disappear,” as he was directed by his bosses. Banjo was found by police in his home, shaping an inflated balloon into a magnum 45.

Two months after the Trustees tried to justify their attack on the Greek system by saying Dartmouth’s conservative image was hurting minority applications, the Dartmouth Admissions Office sent out acceptance letters to 1,782 potential members of the class of 2,004—a group which includes 52% more blacks than the accepted pool for the class of 2003.

Significantly, the Student Life Initiative had not been introduced when these applicants sent in their forms—which means that, since so many minorities applied, Dartmouth’s purported image problem does not discourage minorities from applying.

The pool for the class of 2004 includes 32% minority students, 7% international students, and higher average SAT math (721) and verbal (717) scores than ever before.

Fewer students from the Mid-Atlantic states were accepted this year than last, and the regional numbers were significantly up for Northern New England, Wisconsin, Texas, Florida, and the Pacific Northwest.

The new Legoland theme-park near San Diego, California, aimed at children 2 through 12, received a license to sell liquor this week. “We know this is not going to be a major revenue generator for the park,” says Jonna Rae Bartges, a spokeswoman for the park. “We see this as a way of enhancing our guest services. We get a lot of requests and we just wanted a way to meet those requests.” Beer and wine will be served on tap in a designated area – roughly the set up used at the Trustees’ theme-park for children age 2 through 12: Dartmouth College.

Fights have broken out between trainee cosmonauts during an ongoing international experiment to see how future space pioneers would cope with long and lonely stretches in space. The ground-based test crammed potential cosmonauts into spacecraft simulators and monitored how they reacted to months of isolation.

The project’s chief psychologist, Vadim Gushchin, revealed that both a “forceful clash” between two male cosmonauts and an incident of sexual harassment occurred during the nine-month simulation. According to Gushchin, the astronauts “displayed excessive irritability, briefly lost self-control, were overly emotional and too categorical in assessments,” due to their personal difficulty in adjusting to isolation.

Similar results occurred in experiments dealing with student roommates in the tiny rooms of the space-age Choates cluster.

Finally there is a good use for the music of groups like the Backstreet Boys and N’Sync. Campus police at the University of Toronto are using the music of the Backstreet Boys and similar pop songs to “torture” student protesters in an attempt to end a six-day-old sit-in at the president’s office.

The student group Students Against Sweatshops has occupied U of T president Robert Prichard’s office, demanding a campus-wide ban on the sale of clothing manufactured by underpaid workers in Third World sweatshops. Three campus policemen remain on 24-hour guard at the office; eight students are still holed up. Campus police have been pumping boy band hits into the office during the day and heavy metal throughout the night.

“Despite the music playing all night, we’re doing alright,” SAS volunteer Sonia Singh, told the university’s student newspaper. “The ear-plugs work pretty well.”

William Boothe and Jim Richardson of St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, learned to watch their mouths on an American Airlines flight out of Miami International Airport on Wednesday afternoon after they boarded the flight they expected to take them home.

Referring to his Taco Bell bags containing $70 worth of tacos intended for their taco-loving wives, Richardson told his traveling companion, “This is the bomb. Here, you want to hold my bag?”

An American airlines crew member overheard the “bomb” reference, and the two passengers were escorted back into the terminal, where the bag was searched while the plane took off without the taco-fans. The men were eventually exonerated, and returned to St. Thomas the next day, after bomb-sniffing dogs could find only some rancid guacamole.

Some 34,500 pounds of Ball Park-brand hot dogs have been recalled by the Sara Lee Corporation because they may be contaminated with deadly bacteria.

The bacterium Listeria, which killed 15 people and sickened over 100 others in Zeeland, Michigan in 1998 (also traced to Ball Park hot dogs), can cause fever, severe headaches, stiffness, nausea and diarrhea, especially in those with weak immune systems.

Sara Lee assured consumers that its best-selling mixtures of nitrates and pork by-products will be of the most impeccable quality in the future.

The Olympic torch relay leading up to the Sydney Olympics later this year will include a first ever underwater leg, through Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. A trial of aquatic flame technology has been successfully completed, allowing the underwater leg to go ahead on June 27, according to Di Henry, spokesman for the Sydney Olympics.

A local scuba-diving marine biologist will swim with the torch, burning at 2000 degrees, on a three-to-four minute journey through the reef. The torch will use “fierce flame” technology, which renders the flame too powerful to be drowned out by water, according to the torch manufacturers, Pains Wessex Australia.

The underwater leg will showcase Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef, a leading Australian tourist attraction, Henry said.