UNDERAGE DRINKING SPIKES DURING HOMECOMING WEEKEND
Twenty reports of underage consumption occurred from Friday night to Sunday night during Homecoming Weekend. Six incidents were reported Friday, nine Saturday and three Sunday. Seven resulted in an arrest, 12 were referred for a university hearing with the Student Conduct Committee and one incident was exceptionally cleared. Nine incidents occurred in residence halls; the remaining 11 were reported in off-campus residencies, concentrated around Cecil B. Moore Avenue to N. 15th Street.
–Lian Parsons
COSBY QUESTIONED IN BOSTON ABOUT 1974 CASE
Former Temple trustee, Bill Cosby, was questioned under oath in Boston last Friday, philly.com reported. The seven-hour deposition addressed the 1974 alleged molestation of a 15-year-old girl at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.
Judy Huth, the complainant, is one of 50 women who have accused Cosby of sexually abusing, harassing or raping them throughout his career. The deposition will remain under seal until December.
U.S. Superior Court Judge Craig Karlan will review the testimony and will hear the attorneys’ arguments over what parts of the deposition will become public. Huth’s lawsuit was filed in December 2014 and is the first significant court case since Andrea Constand, a Temple employee, sued Cosby in 2005.
Cosby could still be deposed at Montgomery County, as the statute of limitations for Constand runs out Jan. 1, 2016.
-Lian Parsons
TEMPLE HIRES NEW FACULTY
Keeping with past trends, Temple has hired 53 new faculty members to the major colleges around campus. For the past 12 years, an average of 57 faculty have joined Temple each year. The professors are all tenured or tenure-track with the university.
Most notable include maestro Andreas Delfs to the Boyer College of Music and Dance as conductor of the Temple University Symphony Orchestra, Ralph Horwitz to the School of Medicine as a professor and director of the new Institute for Transformative Medicine and Kose John and Masatoshi Nei, both distinguished as Laura H. Carnell Professors. Coming to the School of Media and Communication is Edward L. Fink, who will be a professor of Strategic Communication.
The College of Public Health, the School of Media and Communication, the College of Liberal Arts, the College of Science and Technology, the School of Medicine and the Fox School of Business each saw five to eight new hires.
-Julie Christie
JUDICIAL CONDUCT BOARD REOPENS INVESTIGATION INVOLVING KATHLEEN KANE
The Judicial Conduct Board has reopened its investigation into inappropriate emails sent by Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice J. Michael Eakin. The board investigated Justice Eakin last year and dismissed the complaints against him.
According to philly.com, Eakin had been receiving and spreading offensive emails from a private account. The emails included jokes about abuse and rape victims, as well as racism toward Muslims and African-Americans.
In a press release Friday, the Judicial Conduct Board said Attorney General Kathleen Kane provided them with emails sent by Justice Eakin that were not disclosed in the original investigation. The investigation had been concluded with the board believing it had been provided with all email records.
Kane, a graduate of Temple’s Beasley School of Law, has been under fire for providing the press with confidential information about a grand jury and then attempting to cover it up later, the New York Times reported.
-Julie Christie
LEGISLATION PASSED FOR AFFORDABLE TEXTBOOKS
Legislation was introduced to the Senate last Wednesday to make college textbooks more affordable for students.
The Affordable College Textbook Act would create a grant program to support the creation of open college textbooks, which would be accessible under an open license to professors, students and researchers. The bill also would also require the Government Accountability Office to report to Congress by 2017 with price trends updated on college textbooks, as well as aims to improve existing requirements for publishers to make all textbooks available for individual sale, instead of as a bundle.
-Lian Parsons
