Peter W Fulham -- Politics Daily

Published: 06/4/10

Cape Cod Wind Farm Controversy Still Roiling Nantucket Sound

EDGARTOWN, Massachusetts -- When Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced in April that the federal government had approved the Cape Wind proposal, a controversial plan to build a 24-square-mile wind farm in the waters off Cape Cod, a long and heated chapter in New England politics appeared to reach a resolution. But the final decision has done little to stop an ongoing debate among residents of Cape Cod and the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard over the merits of the proposal -- and how much, if at all, Cape Wind would alter the economy and wildlife of the region. The decision ...

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Published: 05/31/10

With Holy Cross Commencement Speech, Mark Shriver Continues Family Tradition

WORCESTER, MASS. – Mark Shriver delivered the commencement address at the College of the Holy Cross on Friday, returning to his alma mater with a message of humility and service for the graduating seniors. Shriver is the vice president and managing director of U.S. programs for Save the Children, a nonprofit group that provides health care, educational support, and disaster relief for at-risk children. He is also the son of Sargent Shriver, the first director of the Peace Corps, and the late Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the sister of President John F. Kennedy. Shriver made several references ...

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Published: 05/12/10

Unpaid Interns and Labor Laws: Gaining Experience, Enduring Abuse

When one ambitious college freshman from Connecticut decided last year to work as an unpaid summer intern at a university close to his home, he expected to gain some valuable career experience. Instead, he discovered that reality often failed to live up to his expectations. "One day, we came in, and they had a stack of files," he explained, "and they said, 'We need you to put these all in the computer, because we need to put them online. It's your job.' " Much of his workday, he added, consisted of mundane office tasks and repetitive clerical organizing. "We were doing a lot of the work ...

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Published: 04/20/10

New Haven Murders: Yale Students Remain Calm as Homicide Rate Rises

NEW HAVEN, CONN. -- A string of homicides has rocked New Haven over the past two weeks. Five murders over an eight-day period renewed concerns among community leaders about the rising rate of gun violence here and rattled students at Yale University, many of whom live in an off-campus neighborhood where one of the crimes occurred. Several of the murders took place along a group of New Haven neighborhoods known as the "crime corridor," which has been marred over the past few years by gang violence and drug-related crime. In response to the outbreak of homicides, New Haven Police Chief Frank ...

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Published: 04/9/10

In a Plugged-In College World, Weary Students Kiss Facebook Goodbye

WORCESTER, MASS. -- When Matthew Fonte, a junior at the College of the Holy Cross, decided last November to delete his profile on Facebook, the social networking Web site, his life changed in an unexpected way. "The first thing you notice is that you actually start sleeping more," he said, "because you're not up late at night browsing Facebook." Fonte is one of a small but determined group of holdouts -- college students who have either taken down their Facebook pages or refused to create profiles on the site, which has more than 400 million active users. Students often point to a loss of ...

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Published: 03/31/10

A College Rejection Letter Looks on the Bright Side

Conducting interviews and saying "no" to applicants doesn't always have to be stressful. You can almost always find something good to say (or at least something neutral) about a candidate, even when you're not offering them that coveted position. – eHow.com, "How to Write a Rejection Letter" From: Admissions Office, Harvard College To: Harvard applicant, Class of 2014 We regret to inform you that we are unable to offer you a place in the Harvard Class of 2014. Among our massive pool of applicants this year, we were able to admit only 2,095, bringing our acceptance rate down to a ...

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Published: 03/23/10

Insuring College Dropouts: A Bold New Idea From the Philadelphia Fed

What if college undergraduates could have their student loans paid off in the event that they failed out of school? That's the question Satyajit Chatterjee and Felicia Ionescu attempted to answer last November in a paper released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Chatterjee, a senior economist at the Philadelphia Fed, and Ionescu, a professor of economics at Colgate University, proposed an insurance model that would protect against the risk of college failure -- a scheme that would partially reimburse the cost of outstanding student loans for dropouts. "We wanted to see if there was ...

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