Student Body

Could the transition of power at Carroll Community College yesterday have been any smoother?Founding President Joseph F. Shields, hours before retiring, gave his successor, Faye Pappalardo, a hug and a simple pep talk.She said he told her: "I'm leaving the college in good hands. I feel very comfortable."Pappalardo takes over as president today. She doesn't pretend to have a grandiose vision.She is inheriting a machine that needs, if anything, mere fine-tuning. The college is fiscally sound.

In the wake of the April 20 shootings in Littleton, Colo., the nation has been forced to examine the interaction among teen-agerswithin our high schools.The latest "Outside the Lines" special, airing Monday at 7: 30 p.m., takes a look at the gap between high school athletes and the rest of the student body, one of the many themes in the midst of the Columbine tragedy.For lead reporter Shelley Smith, the topic is especially poignant, not only since the shootings took place not far from where she grew up, but, also because she is the mother of a 13-year-old daughter who is an athlete.

The biggest challenge Gary Dingle faced as a freshman at Northern High School three decades ago was fistfights among students of diverse backgrounds.Dingle returned to his troubled alma mater yesterday, this time as a probation officer assigned to monitor a new generation of students -- some with easy access to guns -- considered to be among the city's most disruptive.The 47-year-old officer, who graduated in 1969, has a formidable task as he works to overcome the widespread disrespect for authority that claimed the life of a student this month.

George Danielson,83, a former congressman who was a member of the House Judiciary Committee when it considered impeachment proceedings against President Richard M. Nixon, died in Monterey Park, Calif., on Sept. 12 of heart failure.Thomas J. Murphy,91, a union negotiator who led the Newspaper Guild of New York for 22 years, died Wednesday in Hazlet, N.J.John Francis Jacobs,75, who worked on an early digital computer and helped found the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Research and Engineering Corp.

Israel will not die for the world's good wordGeorge F. Will's column ("Arafat's politics of violence," March 27), should be required reading for key officials of every nation represented in the United Nations.Perhaps then a vote on Israel deciding to build apartments in a bare stretch of its own land, among its own people in East Jerusalem, would not go overwhelmingly against Israel.Golda Meir's words that concluded Mr. Will's column are worth repeating once again: ''Jews are used to collective eulogies, but Israel will not die so that the world will speak well of it.''Perhaps the world should at least think twice before believing a liar's promises.

MADISON, Wis. -- During the Cinco de Mayo celebrations today, some Latinos won't be swilling Coronas with lime to observe the holiday, which has become a national excuse to gorge on guacamole. They'll be using the occasion to raise political consciousness among Mexican-Americans and to spread the word about the true meaning of the event.''Back in the '60s, Cinco de Mayo was much more political and cultural,'' says Carlos Munoz Jr., a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California at Berkeley.

Saying "Happy birthday, Gilman," and smiling for a far-off camera, the 970 students of the Gilman School posed yesterday for an anniversary photo that, their headmaster said, "will be on the walls of Gilman for another 100 years."The boys assembled on stone bleachers and spilled onto the grass of the football field on the Roland Park campus, as a photographer stood half a field away shouting, "One more picture."The photo preceded a convocation that marked the opening of this school year and of the private boys' school's 100th year.

THE HALLWAYS ARE fairly quiet now with just the sounds of teachers working to close their classrooms for the summer. No more patter of little feet on their way to the office at Freedom Elementary School.For Bea Mathias, the silence is bittersweet. The longtime school secretary will retire June 20."Miss Bea" began her nearly 28-year career at Freedom Elementary as a classroom volunteer and held a variety of positions, including playground aid, cafeteria aid and health aid before becoming a secretary 21 years ago."

DERRICK CUFFIE took his suspension calmly. He didn't blame a soul.Derrick, a 14-year-old freshman at Baltimore's troubled Northern High School, said he was in the bathroom when he was supposed to be picking up his report card. He wasn't out front yelling obscenities at the school's hapless principal, Alice Morgan Brown.But he was one of the 1,200 students -- two-thirds of the school's student body -- Brown suspended Wednesday in what many saw as a bold stroke against hooliganism and others, including Brown's superiors, saw as an unauthorized exercise in insanity.

St. John's College students long have prided themselves on being unusual, but at first glance that doesn't seem to be the case.Like college students most everywhere these days, they wear flannel, jeans and Birkenstocks. They relax with alternative rock tunes. On paper, their educational backgrounds rank right up there with their Ivy League counterparts.But the Annapolis private college's students say that simply having opted to go through the New Program, St. John's famed curriculum of great books, sets them way apart.

Hancock wrong on Towson U. I take strong exception to a number of statements made by Jay Hancock in his recent column, "Tuition freeze leaves Md. students out in the cold" (Sept. 25). I question the statement that the freeze leads to "rationing Maryland education," but I will not comment on whether holding tuition levels is good or bad. Mr. Hancock seems to have made that decision. I will question his view of Towson University. To say that Towson and its sister schools "were supposed to educate the kids who didn't get into the University of Maryland, College Park" is ridiculous.

As part of its continued campaign to increase the size of its student body, specifically by adding more male students, Stevenson University said Friday that it will field a varsity football team next fall and begin to play games in the fall of 2010. Stevenson, which changed its name from Villa Julie College in 2008, was founded in 1947 as an all-women's school and didn't admit its first male student until 1972. In recent years, it has attempted to attract more male students in various ways and found success by adding sports such as lacrosse to its stable of Division III athletic programs.

For years, students choosing to enroll at Goucher College have received a promise from the school's administration -- four years of on-campus housing, guaranteed. But this month, as 160 sophomores and juniors were set to pick their dorm rooms for the fall, they unexpectedly learned they wouldn't be able to live on Goucher's Towson campus after all. "A lot of people are very upset over this," said sophomore Lizy Hallacy. "They've been at Goucher for two years and have worked their way up the totem pole.

Morgan State University police think that at least two freshmen were involved in the stabbings of three other freshmen early yesterday outside a residence hall, a college spokesman said. Two of the male victims were treated and released from Good Samaritan Hospital. A third male victim was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he remained yesterday evening with injuries not believed to be life-threatening, said spokesman Clinton Coleman. Shortly after midnight, a female freshman left a dorm-room party and was harassed by at least two men outside the Thurgood Marshall residence hall, Coleman said.

Stanford, Yale and Princeton are all considering whether to increase the number of students they admit. Meanwhile, Professor Richard Vedder of Ohio University, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity in Washington, says too many people are going to college. My experience in academia leads me to agree with Professor Vedder. Wanting to be in college is not the same as wanting an education. Among the other reasons for wanting to be in college is that it is a social scene with large concentrations of people of the same age and the opposite sex. It is also a place where immaturity is not the handicap that it can be in other places, from home to the workplace.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays at West Middle School, the casual observer might notice a growing group of students lingering at the end of the day. OK, not just lingering. Walking, with the purposeful stride of people on a mission. They are part of the Westminster school's new walking and wellness club, otherwise known as the Blue Jay Walkers. Health teacher Christine Clarius started the club this year, wanting to "promote wellness throughout the student body and the staff" in different -- and fun -- ways, she said.

The Gettysburg Address. The 50 states and capitals. The Preamble to the Constitution. The fifth-graders at Forest Hill Elementary School can recite them all. And it's not just the fifth-graders. For the first time, the entire student body at Forest Hill Elementary memorized political speeches and documents to become patriots, as defined by the school's Patriot Program. And they did it for their teacher, Adam Lawall, a member of the U.S. Naval Reserve who was deployed to Iraq in November.

The Sun's Allison Baker asked the three student candidates for the Board of Education identical questions. Here are their e-mail responses. Osama Eshera Atholton High School Junior Q: Why is being a member of the Board of Education so important to you? A: "Because of a lack of communication between the student body and the board, many issues have arisen in the school system that need to be addressed. By encountering these issues, I wanted to make a difference and I wanted to help find a solution to these problems.

Basketball has a place in Darnell Edmonds' life six days a week at Hood College. The senior guard has been a four-year starter at Hood, a small private school in Frederick. He's the team's best defender and the unquestioned leader on a team that unexpectedly won the regular-season Capital Athletic Conference title this season. But as the Division III Blazers (20-6, 12-4) host St. Mary's tonight in a conference tournament semifinal at Thomas Johnson High, basketball is a mere slice of Edmonds' profile.

The Eager Street Academy is a Baltimore public school behind bars, with the most troubled student body in the city. Nonetheless, its staff has the impossible job of complying with the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Located in the Baltimore City Detention Center, the school's approximately 130 students - ages 14 to 17 - are charged as adults in some of the city's most notorious killings and other crimes. Many of them had dropped out of school before landing in prison, and about a quarter come in reading at a second-grade level.