U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan speaks about diversity
Tuscaloosa News – Oct. 4
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan shared her thoughts about the role of diversity on the high court and the dysfunction of its nomination process during the fall 2013 Albritton Lecture at the University of Alabama School of Law on Friday. Kagan’s talk Friday in the McMillan Lecture Hall at the law school took the form of an informal conversation with interim Dean William Brewbaker and the lecture’s namesake, U.S. District Court Judge W. Harold Albritton III, a 1960 law school graduate and the senior judge for the Middle District of Alabama. Kagan, nominated by President Barack Obama in 2010 to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, described her nomination as a good experience, though she added that she thought the process was “sort of broken” and was unsure how to fix it.
Washington Post – Oct. 4
Chicago Sun-Times – Oct. 4
Pittsburgh Tribune – Oct. 4
Gadsden Times – Oct. 4
Al.com – Oct. 4
NBC 3 (Chattanooga, Tenn.) – Oct. 4
University of Alabama law school is best bang for your buck, according to legal publication’s rankings
Al.com – Oct. 6
For the second year in a row, the University of Alabama School of Law was selected as the best value law school in the nation in annual rankings compiled by The National Jurist. The rankings, featured in the legal education publication’s October issue, are designed to determine the schools where graduates have the highest chance of passing the bar and being hired, without racking up too much debt, according to the publication. Alabama’s law school scored well in most categories, including an average debt of about $67,000 that is well below the average private law school debt that exceeds $100,000. The publication analyzed bar passage rates, employment success, tuition, cost of living and average debt. Only one school – the University of California Irvine School of Law – had a higher employment rate, the factor given the most weight in the analysis. UC-Irvine’s employment rate was 91.9 percent, followed by Alabama’s at 89.3 percent.
University of Alabama pep rally, bonfire kick off weekend of festivities
Tuscaloosa News – Oct. 4
Alabama fans of all ages came together Friday night to celebrate homecoming with the annual pep rally and bonfire. “I think homecoming is a special time for all of us,” head coach Nick Saban told the crowd. “To know that you all have so many traditions and so many memories and so many relationships that occurred here while you were here at Alabama, and homecoming gives you all an opportunity to come back.” For some, like Alabama alumnus A.D. Goode Jr., homecoming serves as an annual family gathering. Goode, 83, graduated from Alabama in 1953 and has been to the pep rally for the past 60 years.
Tuscaloosa News (gallery) – Oct. 5
Al.com (Gallery) – Oct. 5
CBS 42 Gallery (Birmingham) – Oct. 5
Bella Wesley named 2013 University of Alabama Homecoming Queen
Al.com – Oct. 5
Bella Wesley, a senior accounting major from Greenville, was named Homecoming Queen at the University of Alabama Homecoming pep rally on the Quad Friday night. Kappa Delta sponsored Wesley, whose honors include Omicron Delta Kappa president, Beta Alpha Psi, Blue Key Honor Society and Outstanding Junior — Order of Omega. Approximately 10,144 votes were cast in this year’s election. Students voted online. Wesley will be crowned at halftime of the homecoming football game between Alabama and Georgia State. Kickoff is scheduled for 11:21 a.m. Saturday in Bryant-Denny Stadium. The homecoming parade will take place at 7 a.m. Saturday on University Boulevard in Tuscaloosa, traveling from campus toward downtown.
CBS 8 (Montgomery) – Oct. 5
Forum to discuss UA’s path to diversity
Tuscaloosa News – Oct. 7
The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and the University of Alabama Retiree Association will host forum about UA’s path to diversity on Tuesday at the Bryant Conference Center on campus. Katie Hall, marketing public relations assistant for the OLLI, said the community forum coincides with “Through the Doors,” the university’s yearlong effort to commemorate the successful integration of campus. Hall said the nonprofit, which organizes a couple of forums a year, thought the topic of UA’s progress since the civil rights movement would complement the university’s efforts. The free event will be at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Rast Room of the Bryant Conference Center. The forum will be moderated by WVUA-TV anchor Philip Coleman.
All-black UA production excites director
Tuscaloosa News – Oct. 7
Many factors affect how the University of Alabama Department of Theatre and Dance picks its season. Educational challenges weigh heavily. The costume department might get more intense work out of period finery; set or lighting designers might wish to bite into something vast but open to interpretation. Actors want to get on stage. It’s complicated by the growth of the department. Enrollment soared in the past decade, not just because of the severed relationship with the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, which moved more grad students from Montgomery to Tuscaloosa. As the number of blacks grows in the department, directors blind-cast, racially, when they can. But that can’t work in shows centered around racial issues, such as last season’s “Othello” and “Show Boat.” And antique pieces such as “Show Boat” often reflect decades-old attitudes that don’t play as well with modern audiences. “To even that out, I pushed to do an all African-American show,” said Seth Panitch, who’s directing August Wilson’s “Seven Guitars,” openingtonight in the Marian Gallaway Theatre.
UA volleyball game to feature student art
Tuscaloosa News – Oct. 4
The Tuscaloosa City Schools and the University of Alabama volleyball team have partnered for a day of art and volleyball. On Sunday, students from 13 Tuscaloosa city schools will celebrate Art Appreciation Day by creating banners that will be displayed at Foster Auditorium during the 1:30 p.m. volleyball game between UA and the University of Florida. During halftime, fans will be allowed to vote on the best banner created. Any fans who bring new art supplies, such as black Sharpie pens, colored markers, watercolors and acrylic paint, will receive free admission to the game. All art supplies will be donated to city school art classes.
Feds lay down law for bond advisers
Atlanta Journal-Constitution (via Individual.com) – Oct. 5
When Wall Street nearly crashed five years ago, a dozen metro Atlanta governments discovered that some nifty side deals their financial advisers had coaxed them into when they issued bonds a few years earlier weren’t so nifty after all. The side deals — involving complex packages of bonds and related securities — were supposed to lower interest costs. But as the financial crisis deepened they stopped working as expected and costs soared. The local governments, including the city of Atlanta, had to spend a total of about $400 million unwinding the deals. Now, federal regulators have finalized long-delayed rules aimed at protecting taxpayers and communities from a repeat of such costly mistakes … “Right now, [local governments] pay for their advice through transactions” with investment banks and other firms, said University of Alabama finance professor Robert Brooks. Brooks said he began to understand how expensive and risky such advice can be when he looked at one deal Jefferson County signed in 1997. He estimated that investment bankers had structured it to boost their own take by about $3 million at the county’s expense. “It was so bad that I used it as a case in my 1998 class,” he said, as an example of what not to do.
Obama: “Don’t Tell Me How to Mop!”
The New American – Oct. 4
… Well, it’s more than three years since Obama said those words and here’s what he’s saying now: “The average American earns less than he or she did in 1999,” he declared last month at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill. … And why this decline in earnings, the decline in participation in the labor force? At Knox College, Obama didn’t mention how work hours are being cut and expansion plans shelved because of ObamaCare’s mandates. Instead, Obama blamed the rich, saying that pay hikes since 2009 for those at the top have been too large. That was Fidel Castro’s fixed pie argument. Cuba’s poor were poor, he preached, because the rich had too big a slice of the pie, and because the private sector was too big and the government was too small. Well, Castro shot his way into power in 1959 and a steady stream of the most successful and entrepreneurial Cubans ended up in jail or Miami. The result? Cuba’s per capita income in the 1950s was the fourth highest in Latin America, reported Eric Baklanoff, a professor emeritus of economics, finance and legal studies at the University of Alabama, in his 2008 “Cuba Before Fidel” column in the Latin Business Chronicle: “Only Venezuela, Argentina and Uruguay ranked above Cuba, and even Spain and Portugal failed to reach Cuba’s level.”