When Andrew Luck was taken first overall in the NFL draft last year, I thought it would be tough to come up with a better name for a quarterback. But as it stands, he’s been outdone in the nickname department, as well as nearly every statistical category, by the man known as RG3. With a quarterback rating exceeded only by Aaron Rodgers and Peyton Manning, opponents and teammates alike gush about the abilities of Robert Griffin III.
I always regret looking up reviews for a new movie because I inevitably find out how long it is. The twists and turns just aren’t as moving knowing that the ending is still 20 minutes off. Watching close NFL games, I tend to have the same problem. Make no mistake; there are few sporting spectacles consistently as exciting as the last two minutes of a tight football game, precisely because unpredictability runs rampant on every play.
I don’t know that television stations can keep track of how infrequently viewers channel surf while watching their programming, but if they did, I think football games would win out in keeping remotes glued to coffee tables everywhere.
A pooled fund comprised of resources designated for investment by donors or the Board of Trustees, there are a variety of budgets and strategies at the College yoked to the market performance of the endowment. After peaking at just over $1.7 billion in June 2008 (resulting in an endowment-per-student ratio of over $1 million), the endowment shed almost a quarter of its value in the ensuing financial crisis. It has bounced back over the past couple of years, with a 19.2 percent investment return last year leaving the College with $1.641 billion in its back pocket.
At the start of their last meeting of the semester, the faculty took a moment to acknowledge Professors Richard Goldsby and Lawrence Babb, of the Biology and Anthropology departments, respectively, who are both retiring at the end of the semester after distinguished and lengthy careers.
Much of the meeting thereafter focused on the increased accreditation demands of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), which is one of six regional associations providing the more than 3,000 institutions of higher learning with their accreditation.
In our issue before break, we published an article entitled “Missing AAS Budgets Raise Questions.” We’d originally planned for an article that took a closer look at the changes in AAS finances, in order to examine if and how spending changed from year to year. That article, however, proved difficult to write, as much of the data we needed was not available online, nor was it readily available offline, despite the AAS’ efforts to make them available on relatively short notice.
For the third consecutive year, the Association of Amherst Students (AAS) has shored up budgets for programs that were previously stewarded by the administration. Following the 15 percent budget cuts imposed by the administration in the midst of the financial crisis in 2008, the AAS established a fund to help defray some departments’ budgetary shortfalls. The Take Your Professor Out (TYPO) and Faculty Tea programs were among a bevy of programs that requested AAS aid when the fund was established, in addition to the Health Education branch of the Health Services Center.