Congress is becoming concerned about spending…Ivy League spending, anyway. The Senate Finance Committee is asking the wealthiest schools in the country to reveal details about their endowments and financial aid. (Full story can be found here). After holding hearings on endowments in September, the committee wants to make sure that universities are spending enough money on aid.

A reasonable question, given that 76 U.S. universities have over a billion dollars growing moldy in endowments. A fascinating viewpoint against government involvement in university tuition makes the argument that price control will lead to stagnation and eventually irrevelance.

Whether or not price controls and regulation will damage U.S. prestige is hard to tell now, it certainly is true that very few students are paying the sticker price of college. Of the 21,000 full-time degree-seeking undergraduates at Temple, 14,000 were determined to have financial need, according to the Common Data Set, found here. Of that 14,000, all but about 900 were given aid. The average aid package was $13,000.

Hopefully college students won’t have to make the choice between paying massive tuition bills, and becoming obsolete. Then again, maybe the second option has already chosen itself.

You’ve heard it before. For one of the largest universities in the country, less than a decade removed from an Elite Eight-caliber men’s basketball program, Temple doesn’t always have the most attended sporting events.

Al Golden and our football team are nearing relevance. Frannie Dunphy and the men’s basketball team are hot, having beaten No. 20 ranked Xavier not too long ago, but still can’t sell out the Liacouras Center to smack down on Big 5 rival Penn, as the Owls did on Wednesday.

Well, seems someone is trying to do something about it. Board of Trustees member Lewis Katz has put up some big cash to solve the problem.

If you have some suggestions for how to bring more fans to Temple athletic events, Katz is willing to give you $5,000… all for just 500 words. Check it out here, scroll down to find the Enthusiasm Competition. Just make sure to throw some money my way if you win.

The other day, I was running late, and I decided to drive to campus rather than try to catch the bus or subway. Of course, parking was a nightmare. I did not want to use the ten dollar lot on 15th and Montgomery, so I hunted the surrounding streets for a spot that did not have a two-hour time limit. I parked on Diamond Street. Near where I parked, there was an official looking sign erected on a metal pole. At first I thought it was a parking restriction sign; but the sign was actually one informing the public that the area was a “Drug Free School Zone.”

What is the purpose of this zone? Due to the War on Drugs, I have been under the impression that pretty much the entire continental United States is a Drug Free Zone. Since all United States schools are, by their very nature, contained in the United States, a zone surrounding the school is always going to be drug free. So why is the government spending our tax dollars erecting this manner of signage?

My first thought was that perhaps the signs are an attempt to take a symbolic stand against drug use by children. The sign might be a proclamation to all who would listen that this zone is even more drug free than the surrounding zones. Perhaps a drug dealer would see that sign, and in a fit of moral clarity, realize that he should ply his trade in another zone. However, this theory does not hold water. If we accept as fact that there is high demand for the drugs in the middle and high school student population, then the Drug Free Zone signs act as markers, informing the dealers that a significant portion of their customer base is in the area, flush with lunch moneys. Then the sign would seem to be counterproductive.

I have done a little research, though, and I do understand that the sign is more than symbolic. In many communities, being a purveyor of drugs in the Zone carries harsher penalties than selling drugs near, for example, a church or synagogue. The jail terms are much stiffer. However, I think that what I wrote before still holds. If the demand among middle and high school kids is so high for the drugs, then plying the drug trade in the Zone is simply a high risk/high reward situation. I am actually thinking I might leave campus and sell some drugs right now.

Everything I am saying may turn out to be silly nonsense. An MSNBC article from 2006 on the subject of these zones noted that in one study of drug arrests in three Massachusetts cities, 80% were Zone arrests, and only 1% involved minors. Further criticism in the article suggests that the penalties for Drug Free School Zone violations are draconian and disproportionately enforced on black and Hispanic folks.

All of it to ineffectively “protect the children.”

Temple’s resident public intellectual, Marc Lamont Hill, who can be seen a whole lot answering the tough and less tough questions on cable news has a (relatively) widely read blog.

The reason your sex life sucks? Because you aren’t reading it.

Hill, either the most well known academic this school boasts or the prof who dabbles in pop culture so much that this school hides him, offers his Web site as a forum for Timaree, a former college sex columnist and current Widener University grad student. It is typical shock fare, but sometimes it gets too good to not mention.

Like one from last week, about a question I didn’t entirely understand on a type of intercourse I thought I knew everything about. Yeah, I know, you really ought to check it out here. But, trust me, it’s (verbally?) graphic.

This old article contains some interesting tidbits about Temple U. and its programs. Martin Gardner, the author, wonders why Temple has UFO believers and proponents of other controversial theories and ideas on the payroll. Apparently, Temple has a program, called the Center for Frontier Science, through which scholars and scientists can get together and discuss their unorthodox ideas.

This probably does not mean much, but there is a person working for the Pentagon on the editorial board of Frontier Perspectives, the journal of the Center. His name is David Stein.

Although the “skeptical inquirer,” as he refers to himself, has some valid points, he also should be a little more skeptical about his editing skills:

“…C. Alan Bruns, at Franklin and Mitchell College, in Lancaster, sent a copy…”

There is not, in fact, a Franklin and Mitchell College in Lancaster, and I couldn’t find one anywhere else, so I assume he means Franklin and Marshall, located in Lancaster, PA. Perhaps I am being harsh, but skeptical inquiry can go either way.

Gardner claimed Temple is “sliding into absurdity,” and part of his evidence was David Jacobs, a history professor here at Temple U. He is also a huge UFO buff, which is what Gardner felt was contributing to Temple’s slide to irrelevance.

Jacobs does seem a little bit off the wall. He is a professor of 20th century American history and culture, and according to his biography, has done over 900 hypnosis sessions on over 140 “abductees” since he became interested in UFO’s during the nineteen sixties, but only began trying to “ascertain the proper methodological techniques” for hypnosis and therapy in recent years.

Difficult, you say? Not at all, if you act in a crush film. Crush films are a type of domination film that involves a woman, usually wearing high heels, stepping on and torturing a victim. They have been causing uproars around the world, after videos have surfaced of cute little kittens and guinea pigs being trampled and punctured to death.

I do not have a link to any crush films, although I’m sure they are out there, if you happen to be feeling sick and twisted.