Take one look around campus. The new Jamestown dorms that you probably will not get into come lottery time, the new addition to Rogers Hall and Millington Hall and the plans for the new Mason School of Business have all been direct results of financial support of alumni and friends of the College. It seems overwhelmingly clear that information regarding the progress of the Campaign for William and Mary — the endowment fundraising endeavor that is so critical for the future of the College — is of public concern, and should be of public knowledge. The editors of this newspaper find it alarming that this is not currently the case, particularly in light of the recent donation and pledge retractions due to the Wren cross controversy.

p. In the spring of 2006, Sean Pieri was appointed by the Board of Visitors as vice president for development, with the task of overseeing the completion of the Campaign for William and Mary — which at the time, stood $50 million short of its $500 million goal. While Pieri and others associated with the Campaign have traditionally released quarterly reports on the progress of the fund, the figures of the previous quarter — a period that ended March 31 — are being withheld without explanation, and, according to Pieri, will not be available until the Campaign ends June 30 of this year.

p. Such a departure from precedent and responsibility is embarrassing and calls into question the level of fiscal responsibility exhibited by our administration.

p. The Flat Hat has closely followed the quarterly and annual progress of the Campaign for the past two years. Given the importance of the fund to alumni and current and future students, we were pleased at the February announcement that fundraising had reached the $500 million goal nearly five months in advance of its closing date; we were equally discouraged when the $12 million pledge withdrawal of former BOV Rector James McGlothlin, ’62, caused the fund to fall about $10 million short of the goal. It is logical to conclude that there is a connection between McGlothlin’s decision and Pieri’s refusal to release the Campaign statistics.

p. While we understand that the Campaign is entering its final quarter, and that discouraging statistics may potentially embarrass the College, we nevertheless maintain that this information must be public — particularly when such information is both relevant and important to members and friends of the College community.

p. Withholding such information until the end of June undermines its importance to students, as most students will be away from Williamsburg during the summer months. Furthermore, such blatant disregard for transparency and openness by Pieri and the development office is a threat to the principles of public information at this public university. While the statistics could ultimately be released before the June 30 deadline — Pieri may simply be waiting for the Campaign to reach its goal — bypassing one’s duties as a College official and withholding public information at the expense of those whom it affects the most is not only unacceptable, but sets a dangerous precedent for the future handling of important College information.

After reading in Tuesday’s issue about Professor Jeffrey Gerlach’s failure to receive tenure, I experienced a fit of what can only be called righteous indignation. “How could they?!” I gave my newspaper a savage glare as if it were responsible — it just wasn’t right to ax the man solely responsible for my interest in economics.

p. My thoughts soured. Images of a ring of professors deep within the bowels of Morton Hall, cackling maniacally and cracking jokes about his marginal utility floated in my head. But after some less cynical reflection on the whole affair, it began to make more sense. Despite the misgivings some might have about its application, tenure plays a vital role in ensuring the free exchange of ideas in the classroom, and the evaluation period is as important to the school as it is to the professor himself.

p. Every year, the tenure game is played out all across the nation in thousands of colleges and universities. Professors are allowed a certain period of time to prove themselves — generally about seven years — after which they come up for tenure review that determines whether they will receive the golden ticket of academic autonomy or instructions not to let the door hit them on the way out.

p. Time and again, the complaint about tenure is that the protection it offers can breed complacency and dispassion for students. Detractors point out that professors stand to gain more materially from research in the lab than from interaction in the classroom, and that concern for students is lost in the “publish or perish” mentality of competitive college world. Also, because of his newfound job security, old Professor Smith would be free to live out his days ignoring students and eating Jujubes if he likes. (I have a hard time, however, believing a professor would start canceling his office hours in favor of writing his book.)

p. The problem with these arguments against tenure is that they assume the Professor Smiths of the world are all too common. I happen to have insider information, however, in the form of an entire family of educators: my mother a third grade teacher, my father an English professor, my brother a chemistry professor, my uncle … ad infinitum (more or less).

p. When I asked my dad about the possibility of a bunch of freeloaders hijacking the tenure process, he was skeptical. “I know of two folks who had no business receiving tenure, but by and large, the decisions have been worthwhile,” he said. Perhaps it’s wishful thinking, then, but one figures there aren’t a lot of folks who complete nearly 10 years of college in addition to an extended evaluation period simply to give up once they receive tenure.

p. “There are people out there who’ll abuse it,” my dad told me, “but overall, tenure protects the freedom of ideas in the classroom. A change in the department chair shouldn’t result in an ideological weed-out.” The main reason for having this kind of job security in the first place: professors need to tackle challenging and sometimes controversial issues in the classroom, and tenure ensures they won’t get kicked out over a single decision or change of heart by the administration.

p. When a popular professor gets the boot, it leaves a lot of students scratching their heads, but in the long run, it might be better for both him and the school. My brother, who, if Ratemyprofessors.com has any credibility, was a hit among students at the University of Memphis, was denied tenure just a couple of years ago.

p. Sure, it was disappointing, but it made him realize his true passion was for teaching more so than for conducting research. His new position at another college gives him a lot more classroom time with fewer publishing demands — a balance, he says, which is much more to his liking. At least now, we’ll never have to go back to Memphis — the Newark of Tennessee, I’m convinced — ever again. Who knew not getting tenure could be fun for the entire family?

p. __Andrew Peters, a sophomore at the College, is a staff columnist. His columns appear on Fridays.__

To consume or to consume to negate consuming? That is the question.

p. Though it’s been available for some months now, I heard of Coca-Cola and Nestea’s new Enviga beverage only days ago. Its marketing angle is quite possibly the most ingenuously contemporary contraption I’ve seen, capitalizing simultaneously on America’s love of scientific breakthroughs, healthy but comfortable living and sleek, futuristic designs.

p. I’ll concede that I’m drinking a can right now. By “right now,” I mean as I write, not as you read — though if Coca-Cola has its way, the latter may turn out to be true.

p. What Enviga demonstrates is the next step in the evolution of American consumer demands. If you haven’t heard already, it’s a negative calorie beverage. Yes, that’s right — not low-cal, not zero-cal, but negative-cal. Coke’s researchers claim that drinking three cans of Enviga daily can make you burn up to 100 calories. The green tea concoction has only five calories per can, and its caffeine and antioxidant content boosts your metabolism in such a way that a net loss of calories is possible.

p. In this sense, consumers of Enviga are actually nonconsumers — they still put something in, but they get less than nothing back. It seems fundamentally unfeasible but, well, it’s 2007. Anything is possible.

p. Health nuts from decades past may have regarded Coke’s science as a load of proverbial hooey, but we of the twenty-first century have been carefully trained by marketers to believe the hype. And who wouldn’t? Even its name, Enviga, sounds like something elemental — a fictitious Latin prefix for “invigorate” that’s impossible to etymologically deconstruct. Depending on how successful the drink is, future generations could eventually mistake the word “invigorate” as having stemmed from “Enviga,” instead of vice versa.

p. Is the science bunk? Well, that depends on who you ask. Coca-Cola is already being sued because some find Enviga’s promise to help you lose weight to be false. Its creators counter that the drink was never marketed as something that helps people lose weight — it merely promotes a healthy lifestyle. Consumer advocates point to the deliberately misleading advertisements that tout Enviga as a “calorie burner.” One attempts to burn calories if one wants to lose weight. Enviga’s slogan uses the middleman.

p. Because “burning calories” is not precisely synonymous with “losing weight,” they are able to profit from our long-standing obsession with quick-fix nutritional solutions. Coca-Cola has carefully abused America’s penchant for catchphrases and linguistic uncertainties to create the first product that can be sold purely in terms of what it does not do.

Indeed, the realm of nutrition is the only one in which a product giving you less than nothing for something could possibly succeed. If a book were sold that promised to make you forget its entire contents and the contents of other recent books you’d read, nobody would waste their hard-earned wages on it. Industries and businesses have spent years convincing us that the calorie is public enemy No. 1. This is their payoff.

p. At the crux of the Enviga enigma is a metaphysical change that Americans are all-too-willing to embrace. It used to be a reasonable assumption that consuming something meant using it and throwing away the excess. Enviga is less than the sum of its parts. One consumes it to reap the benefits of having not consumed it. And yet, the evidence of its consumption remains: there’s still an empty can to throw away, and traces of the beverage probably appear in your urine. The Coca-Cola Company would prefer that you forget this, though, and enjoy the rush of defying the laws of physics.

p. If Enviga takes off (and it probably will), a new class of products will emerge in grocery stores, products that promise to completely reverse themselves and then some — potato chips that make you lose fat and cigarettes whose smoke heals your lungs.

p. Supermarkets will develop bizarro-world sections where people go to buy things to dis-eat and non-drink. New eating disorders will develop — a type of super-bulimia where people guzzle and inhale enough of the new anti-foods to eliminate weeks upon weeks of nutritive buildup. There’s no need to jettison your stomach’s contents when they more-than-totally invert themselves.

p. Granted, there’s a bit of dystopian science fiction to those hypotheses. But just you wait: any day now, Charlton Heston will burst into our Wawa straight out of “Soylent Green” and scream, “Enviga is less than nothing, people! It’s less than nothing!”

p. We will shrug, hoping against hope that he is not armed.

p. __Dan Piepenbring, a junior at the College, is a staff columnist. His columns appear on Fridays.__

Following Georgetown University’s noteworthy run to the Final Four in the recent NCAA men’s basketball tournament, The New York Times reported some questionable information surrounding a former player in the Georgetown lineup.

p. As reported in Tuesday’s Beyond the Burg, Marc Egerson, a former freshman at the university, failed 12 courses throughout high school, earning a 1.33 grade point average in his core courses. He even managed to fail physical education his freshman year. His SAT scores were nothing to brag about either, somewhere in the 600s out of a 1600 scale.

p. Egerson, like many other college athletes, was able to improve his poor academic standing by entering a prep school. The school provided him with a high school diploma, while requiring little to no school work.

p. The concept of athletes being held to lower standards in the admissions process is nothing new to universities in the United States. Most of us have at least one friend who would not have gotten in to his or her college of choice without athletic abilities. While I believe the choice should ultimately be left up to the school, in the end, by lowering standards, every party involved ends up worse off.

p. The coaches are forced to deal with players who, most often, are unable to handle the academics as well as the intense discipline required from a competitive team. Other athletes also lose out. In spite of athletes like Egerson, who don’t deserve to be admitted based on their academics, many athletes do meet the requirements — yet they are all held to the same stereotype. Most people assume that the majority of athletes get into better schools based on their athletic talents, rather than their academic abilities.

p. Of all parties involved, the admitted player is worst off. Acceptance to such a prestigious school provides a false reality, a hope that he or she will be able to get away with doing no work. If the player manages to graduate from the university, what happens next? If he doesn’t get the opportunity to play professionally, he will finally be forced to find a job that actually requires him to meet a common standard. And no boss is going to care if he used to be some basketball star.

p. Georgetown University is currently ranked number 23 in the U.S. News and World Report’s academic rankings. Its student body earned an average SAT score of 1400. So it seems pretty pathetic that they couldn’t find enough students to fill a basketball team without dramatically lowering their standards.

p. While the current report may have tarnished Georgetown’s academic standing, this is also the first year since 1985 that its men’s basketball team has made it to the Final Four in the NCAA tournament. The question becomes: how important is winning?

p. The College prides itself on the impressive efforts of its athletes in the classroom, graduating 89 percent of its student athletes who were awarded an athletic scholarship. However, it’s fair to say that our College is not known as a top athletic school, and there is nothing wrong with that. Our choice to put academics above athletics provides our student body with much better opportunities after college, even if our football team did have a losing record. But, obviously, not every school feels that way. As reported in The Times, Nick Murchison, a junior at Georgetown, said, “To be honest with you, I think as long as they win, that’s the most important thing for people.”

p. __Rachael Siemon-Carome, a freshman at the College, is a staff columnist. Her columns appear on Fridays.__