The cause was the St. Louis Area Dance Marathon (DM), a 12-hour dance-a-thon that raised at least $150,000 for the Children’s Miracle Network of Greater St. Louis.

Around 1,300 registered participants, in addition to local businesses, raised funds to support two St. Louis children’s hospitals—St. Louis Children’s Hospital and SSM Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center.

Dance Marathon participants form teams weeks in advance and raise funds up to the day of the event. Their efforts culminate in the 12-hour event, which features a different theme for each hour, and participants are encouraged to dance the whole time.

“Everybody who’s there is really pumped up and into it and especially all the people who have their own teams are really amped up. People were still dancing the whole time [multiple hours into the event],” senior Jacob Shaw said.

This year, as an added incentive to encourage donations, students received awards for reaching certain fundraising levels. They also collaborated with a national DM initiative, a national dance competition with Ubisoft’s new game Just Dance 3. The footage of participants dancing will be uploaded to the Just Dance YouTube channel, called justdancegame, next Saturday. The video that receives the most votes will win $4,000.

Senior Claire Pluard, one of Dance Marathon’s two executive directors, said more than 800 people attended the event, with at least 300-400 there for the entire time.

The annual event, which lasted from 2 p.m. on Saturday to 2 a.m. on Sunday, began in 2000 and has grown significantly since then.

Fundraising will continue into December, and members of Dance Marathon’s executive board expect funds to continue flowing in. Last year, they raised an additional $14,000 after the event.

The fundraising amount announced for this year is already higher than last year’s total of $139,000—which excludes the $25,000 donation DM received from the St. Louis Community Credit Union last year.

“I’m extremely proud of what we managed to do,” Pluard said. “Our morale captains…did a great job with emceeing and making things light and funny and still connecting things to the things we work so hard for.”

Earlier this semester, they released their first-ever promotional video.

Throughout the evening, families with children who have been treated in the hospitals benefited by Dance Marathon addressed the crowd.

“My favorite experience of the night is normally being able to interact with the kids because that’s really what it’s all about,” Pluard said. “They’re really sweet; it’s a magical time for them.”

In addition to the dance floor, Dance Marathon featured performances by WUSauce, Wash. U. Hip Hop Union and WUCypher., a silent auction, a photo booth, massages by Stressbusters and free dinner and snacks.

Airport closings in cities such as Boston, Providence, New York and Philadelphia resulted in more than 11,000 cancelled flights, according to the Associated Press.

To avoid the hurricane-related travel delays, a large number of students returned to the University early, said Shruti Desai, associate director of the Office of Residential Life.

“We had a lot of phone calls about kids trying to move in early,” Desai said. “More came earlier than later.”

To accommodate those needing special arrangements, ResLife waived early move-in fees for students affected by the storm. Students normally have to pay $50 per night they stay in their dorm prior to official move-in.

“We tried to work with students the best that we could,” Desai said. “We work with students on a case-by-case basis, so we just made that decision as we got the students.”

Other students, unable to find earlier flights, arrived on campus several days after their intended arrivals.

“I was supposed to leave on Saturday morning early [from Newark] but my flight was canceled as of Friday afternoon, and they canceled all of the flights coming out for the whole weekend,” senior Catie Gainor said.

Gainor called the airlines and changed her flight to Monday. Her flight was one of the only few not cancelled on Monday.

“It would have been nice to get here earlier, but overall it’s not that bad,” Gainor said.

Students’ commutes back to school were also affected by alternative transportation failures. Amtrak and Greyhound canceled many of their Sunday routes throughout the northeast. Numerous roads were flooded and impassable.

Parents traveling back with their children found that the storm had an effect on their ability to return home.

Senior Lauren Karp and her mother had to reroute their two-day drive from New York due to the storm. Karp’s mom had to fly back home the day they arrived.

“She was supposed to stay an extra day in St. Louis and she was supposed to help me unpack a little bit and get settled, but [because of the storm] she couldn’t,” Karp said.

Other parents who stayed in St. Louis during freshman orientation programs were forced to make their stays longer than planned.

Irene, which was at one point categorized as a Category 3 storm, passed through North Carolina and Virginia as a Category 1 storm and was later downgraded to a tropical storm as it moved up the east coast. It killed dozens of people, destroyed power lines and buildings and caused massive flooding in multiple states.

Matt Mitgang | Student Life

Six black students who were not allowed into a bar during their senior class trip speak during a town hall-style discussion about diversity.

The year began with the opening of the new South Forty House, which not only included sophomore housing, but also a wide selection of new dining options, including new grill items, comfort food station and kosher station. Construction on the South 40 proceeded around the Swamp to finish building several new modern dorms.

Despite the construction on both the South 40 and the Danforth Campus—focusing on new engineering buildings—the University had budget cuts in other areas. The lower endowment prompted the decision to close the Center for the Study of Ethics & Human Values by the end of the year.

At the same time, adjunct professor Jeff Smith resigned from his Missouri State Senate seat and dropped his course for the semester after he was charged with allegations of obstruction of justice.

But students still took an active role in the community life. WU/FUSED (Washington University for Undergraduate Socioeconomic Diversity) was founded on campus to increase socioeconomic diversity. By the end of the year, it was expanded to become a part of U/FUSED (United for Undergraduate Socioeconomic Diversity) because it had expanded to other universities.

As the year continued, many seniors attended their class trip to Chicago, where they felt that Original Mothers Bar discriminated against several of their black classmates by not allowing them into the bar. The seniors responded with a protest the next morning outside the establishment. After much discussion back on campus, the senior class decided to take a stand against discrimination and involve national anti-discrimination organizations. The bar agreed to publicly apologize to the seniors and to sponsor diversity training for its employees.

Student Union established the Diversity Affairs Council to provide students with a resource to deal with issues of diversity.

On another note, Bon Appétit stopped providing tomatoes to the University community from November to March. Dining Services decided to take a stand against Florida tomato farms not paying their tomato pickers enough money. By springtime, they were able to purchase tomatoes from other states whose farms upheld worker standards, and tomatoes returned to campus.

Coal was another hotly debated issue on campus throughout the year. The University established the Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization at to reduce the usage of coal, but the University continued its dependence on coal companies. The school year ended with the restoration of Metro services as Proposition A passed. Chancellor Wrighton, in support of this bill, was even featured in commercials to encourage its success. The increased taxes provided more Metro services, such as more bus routes and more frequent trains, over the following year.

Courtesy of Ashli Hessel

Junior Ashli Hessel poses in front of the Capitol. Hessel is one of six undergraduates in the Washington University Semester in D.C. Program. The unique learning experience consists of an internship, a core class, a colloquium class and field trips designed to immerse students in the DC culture.

The Semester in D.C. Program was introduced this fall to undergraduates, building upon the successful Administrative and Congressional Law Clinic, which has offered third-year law students the opportunity to work for a member of Congress since 1977.

Currently, 11 law students and six undergraduates are spending the semester in D.C. Twenty law students and about eight undergraduates will participate in the program this spring, and there will also be a summer program.

“This experience has given me a different perspective on politics because instead of reading about policy-making in textbooks, we see it happen in the House and Senate chambers and in our offices,” said junior Ashli Hessel, a program participant.

The new undergraduate program centers on a four day per week, six credit internship, a colloquium class, and a three credit elective course taught at the University of California Washington Center (UCDC).

Core classes are taught by the UCDC faculty, which features professors from the University of Michgan, University of Pennsylvania, UC Berkeley and UC Merced.

The program is designed to immerse students in the D.C. culture and offers smaller seminar classes for a unique learning experience.

When the program was announced, the University emphasized the importance of integrating the program’s environment into its learning experience, and according to students, that goal has been met.

“I would say the best part of the program is just the city itself,” Hessel said. “You’re in the midst of Embassy Row, so it’s definitely vibrant and there’s a lot to do.”

The program has coordinated explorations of the D.C. area through field trips to hockey games, the theater and local museums.

“They definitely do try to make the city a resource for us,” Hessel said.

The mix of undergraduate and law students has been beneficial. All of the students take the core class together, which is taught by Professor Steven Jackson, the director of Washington University Programs in D.C.

“It’s been terrific,” Jackson said.

Since both law students and undergraduate students have different backgrounds, they add to different parts of the class, increasing the collective knowledge.

“There are times when we’re talking about legal issues and the law students bring to bear what they know, and there are times we’re talking about political science,” Jackson said.

Hessel, who is pre-law, has enjoyed having classes with the law students.

“It’s been helpful to hear the law students’ perspectives on law school and the admissions process,” Hessel said.

Jackson said that the one difficulty the program’s students face is balancing internships and class work.

“I think everyone’s found it demanding, and they’re all in it together,” Jackson said. “It’s a lot of work, a lot of time.”

To make the class a little easier for students, Jackson decided to make the core class more flexible.

“I’ve used my flexibility in managing the core class to sometimes make it a little lighter when it was heavy in other things…and I think we’ve gotten pretty close to the right balance,” Jackson said.

As part of the program, the students write a 30-page research paper on a part of legislation relating to their internships.

“This has helped me discover resources to use for legislative research and become more familiar with the policy-making process,” Hessel said. “Because I work in a congressional office, I have access to reading rooms in the Library of Congress, so that’s been a useful perk.”

Overall, Hessel is pleased with her choice to participate.

“Because I’m a political science major, the reason I really wanted to come to D.C. was to learn about the political process first-hand and it does come alive here,” Hessel said.

Currently, students can purchase one rotating flavor of soup, yogurt parfaits and a variety of to-go sandwiches from a cart in Simon Hall operated by Aramark.

“I’m just kind of unhappy with the selection of food that exists,” sophomore business student Jason Yakabu said. “I think it really changes the culture of the B-school because there aren’t many students just hanging out in the lounge anymore because there’s not as much food.”

The only hint of construction is a sign in front of an express computer lab. The sign says the bagel chain will be coming to that location soon.

The University is waiting for St. Louis County to approve the architectural proposals before construction can start.

According to Brian Bannister, the associate dean for administration in the business school, the planned November date was based on guesswork. The University hoped that the contract negotiations and construction would be done by November, but the contract negotiations took longer to finish than expected.

“Essentially as things go back and forth between legal departments of organizations, getting all the particulars satisfactory to both organizations just took longer than we thought it would,” Bannister said. “Typically, we agreed on a lot of the substantive items pretty quickly, but getting all the details squared away is what took extra time.”

By the time the negotiations were completed, the administration decided that it did not make sense to rush the construction for a November opening. Instead, University officials decided that it would be better to open Einstein Bros. in January.

Bannister expects that construction won’t significantly interfere with students’ lives.

“We think it will be minimal impact at this point,” Bannister said. “And of course we are going to make sure that our students won’t be disrupted around the important days around finals.”

The construction will take place away from other important areas in the building since there are no classrooms near the future site of the Einstein Bros. The closest area to the construction is the Undergraduate Student Lounge.

An e-mail was sent out to business school students on Nov. 8 informing them of the delay.

Bannister has not heard complaints from students about the delay in opening the Einstein Bros.

“I’ve only heard an inquiry or two,” Bannister said. “We think that by providing some alternative food service in the building in this time, we have been able to help the students and provide for their needs before Einstein’s is ready.”

When construction does begin on Einstein Bros., the University will have to close the computer-express station that Einstein Bros. will occupy.

Students use the express stations before class to quickly print out work and lecture slides or to check their e-mail.

“That space [for the express lab] is really convenient because it’s right in the hallway,” Yakabu said.

According to Bannister, the computers will be moved to other express labs in the building, both in the Undergraduate Student Lounge and near the Graduate Student Lounge.

But he still feels that the new food option will be for the best.

“It’s all going to plan, just taking longer than we hoped,” Bannister said. “We’re just excited that we’re offering this; we think it will be well-received by the community.”

Judy Sawyer was let go as associate director of the engineering school’s dual-degree program in 2006. Four months later, she took a new job at the University in which she copies transcripts in the registrar’s office. When a new assistant dean position opened in the engineering school, Sawyer, then 64, believed that she was passed over for a promotion because of her age.

The employee selected for the new position was 29, though he eventually passed on the job because it didn’t pay enough.

Sawyer, now 66, is still employed in the registrar’s office.

The University informed Sawyer in 2006 that her program was downsizing—and she was let go after 15 years of service.

Sawyer originally filed two charges against the University. The first charge, which was later dropped, stemmed from Sawyer’s termination in 2006. The second charge, of which the jury acquitted the University, resulted from Sawyer not being hired as an assistant dean in 2008.

The jury decided on Judy Sawyer v. The Washington University on Oct. 29. The St. Louis County Court determined that age discrimination was not the reason she did not get the job.

“The jury unanimously found in the University’s favor on the age discrimination claim, we believe, because there was simply no evidence that the applicants’ ages were a factor in the hiring decision, as reflected in part by the fact that the first person whom the hiring manager contacted and attempted to recruit into the position was older than Ms. Sawyer,” Joseph Sklansky, assistant vice chancellor and associate general counsel, wrote in an e-mail to Student Life.

The jury also decided to award the University $12,000 to cover all litigation fees.

Sawyer claimed that she lost over $30,000 in wages and pension contributions because she was passed over for assistant dean.

The University’s defense attorney also cited a past performance issue that automatically disqualified Sawyer from the assistant dean position, but the University did not find out about that issue until court proceedings had begun.

Sawyer declined inquiries from Student Life for comments on the ruling.

Though the University was not charged with age discrimination in the Sawyer case, in February 2009, the St. Louis Circuit Court decided that the University did engage in age discrimination against former surgeon Joel Cooper.

Cooper worked at the Washington University School of Medicine from 1988 to 2005, until he was 65. He claimed that the University pushed him out of his job by cutting his salary after he did not step down.

The jury ruled in Cooper’s favor and awarded him $525,000.

Cooper now works as the chief of thoracic surgery at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, where he earns an even higher salary than he did at Washington University.

At 8:30 pm Thursday evening, a graduate student’s fiancée was accosted by three suspects outside of her apartment in the 6300 block of Cabanne, located in University City.

After driving to her apartment and noticing suspicious subjects, the fiancee drove to the back of her apartment. After approaching her, the subjects insisted that she give them her keys and money. The victim handed over her possessions and they tried to steal her car. However, as they did not know how to drive a manual transmission, the suspects could not drive the vehicle. They therefore fled the scene on foot.

University City police took three suspects into custody later in the evening. The victim was left uninjured.

The second robbery occurred later that night. At around 11:45 p,m, two suspects approached four students who were walking in the 6100 block of Waterman, located near Rosedale.

“The people in this case followed precautions in giving up their property and walking in a group of people,” WUPD Chief Don Strom said. “You have to be aware of what’s going on around you.’

One robber hit one of the male students in the leg. The robbers demanded personal items, and were given them. They then fled the scene in a nearby car. The car was described as being a black four-door vehicle.

St. Louis police are still trying to find the suspects. The victim whose leg was struck is not seriously injured.

“It’s fortunate that no one was injured,” Strom said.

WUPD and the St. Louis Police Department will be increasing their patrols in the Waterman area.

That the robber was using a car makes finding him more difficult, according to Strom.

“It becomes a little more difficult when someone uses the car and drives in to the area and drives out of the area,” Strom said. “It will be a bit of a challenge, but hopefully the increased resources will end with someone apprehended.”

As always, the police request that everyone reports suspicious activities and persons to the police at 9-1-1. Further, they remind students that they should stay alert and not walk alone after dark. If accosted, they should give a thief what they want immediately and then report the situation to the police.

With additional reporting by Michelle Merlin

However, a wide variety of bans exist at other schools, ranging from all-campus tobacco bans to the prohibition of smoking inside campus buildings.

There are very few campus-wide tobacco bans. According to Amy Heard, co-chair of the Undergraduate Tobacco Ban Task Force Committee, most schools with campus-wide smoking bans are public schools in states where there are already smoking bans on public property.

All universities in Illinois, New Jersey and Wisconsin have policies that prohibit smoking in all residence halls, dormitories and main campuses to protect students and staff from secondhand smoke. These bans are prompted by state laws, not school regulations.

The majority of smoking bans, however, occur on a much smaller scale.

Colleges across the country have had difficulties in enforcing the bans, and still, many schools continue to allow students to smoke on campus. For example, California’s Pierce College will not implement its smoking ban because of its budget.

Washington University in St. Louis
The University implemented a campus-wide tobacco ban on July 1, 2010. Prior to this policy, smoking was only prohibited inside buildings. The University is providing services to help students and staff quit smoking if they would like. Because of the ban, many students and staff have begun smoking along the borders of campus, and many students feel that the ban is not enforced.

Shortly after the April 2009 decision to enact the ban was announced, the Undergraduate Tobacco Task Force Committee was formed to decide how to implement the ban.
While the committee was aware that Washington University was one of the few schools with such a ban, they were not bothered by this fact.
“I think that it is a great public health measure,” Heard said.

The task force committee also presented a survey to students. It showed that more students were against the ban than the number of students who identified as smokers.
According to Heard, these students on campus who objected to the smoking ban were not against the campus-wide tobacco ban because many other schools do not have such a ban, but for their own personal reasons.

“I don’t think that the prevalence of the tobacco ban [on other campuses] really affected what [students who were against the ban] thought about it,” Heard said. “I never got the impression that it had anything to do with what other schools were doing.”

Heard is pleased with the results of the ban but acknowledges that there are still smokers.

“I think it’s kind of an eyesore to see the people lined up on Forsyth smoking,” she said.

University of Missouri-Columbia
In 2009, the University of Missouri banned smoking inside any university building or within 20 feet of its entrances. The university hopes to implement a policy that restricts smoking to designated outdoor smoking areas by July 2011 and prohibits smoking campus wide by 2014. The university is providing programs for students and staff to help them quit smoking.

University of Missouri-St. Louis
The University of Missouri-St. Louis has the same ban as the University of Missouri. However, starting in July 2011, the UMSL smoking ban will become more complete with a campus-wide ban. If students or staff are caught smoking, they will be referred to Student Affairs or Human Resources, respectively.

Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University has a policy that prohibits smoking within 20 feet of building entrances. In 2009, the school started to strengthen its policy. The university decided to ban smoking on campus except for certain designated smoking areas.

Columbia University
Columbia’s proposed smoking ban was not heavily supported—fewer than half of polled students supported the campus-wide ban. In the spring of 2010, it was voted that Columbia should not have any tobacco or smoking ban. Other options are still being discussed, including a smoking ban within 20 feet of buildings.

New York University
New York University’s current policy, which started this fall, does not allow anyone to smoke within 15 feet of any building entrances, exits or air vents. The university passed this ban in the beginning of 2010 after 84 percent of polled students said they favored the implementation. But some students and residents are upset and feel that the university does not have the right to decide whether people smoke on public sidewalks. Employees of the medical center can be fired for smoking repeatedly in prohibited areas.

Rice University
In August, Rice enacted a policy that stopped smokers from smoking inside any university-owned or leased building or in any open-air athletic or recreational area. People are still allowed to smoke when they are at least 25 feet away from any building entrance or exit or in a designated outdoor smoking area. The university posted no-smoking signs on campus so students and faculty are aware of the new rules. If students are not following the ban, they are referred to the college master or judicial committee. If a staff members are caught smoking, their supervisors will be called on to resolve the issue informally.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Students at UNC-Chapel Hill are prohibited from smoking inside university buildings and, since January 2008, in outside areas within 100 feet of a building. Violators have to pay a fine of $25 and court costs of $121. To make it easier for smokers, the university is considering providing shelters outdoors so that students can smoke even when it is raining. The university also provides programs to help students quit smoking.

Azariadis believes that Greece is in a terrible financial position and needs to make large changes to overcome its economic woes.

While others have done research and suggested ways to turn Greece’s situation around, Azariadis and his colleagues have given specific prescriptions for the Greek Parliament.

Newspapers around the world published articles on the economists’ work, ranging from Athens-based papers to Business Week.

This summer, Azariadis, along with Tufts Professor Yannis Ionnides and London School of Economics’ (LSE) Christopher Pissarides, wrote a paper called “Development is the Only Solution-Seventeen Proposals for a New Development Strategy” to generate discussion and help the Greek government improve its situation. Azariadis believes that with Greece’s large debt, the only way to make the country’s income grow enough to repay the debt is through development.

“The idea is very simple: Suppose you are in debt. Find a much better job and make your income grow,” Azariadis said.

The group’s development strategy presents seventeen ways that the government can specifically improve the status quo, including doing away with corruption and improving the country’s education and infrastructure.

According to Azariadis, Greece’s problems can be pinpointed to corruption and a lack of infrastructure. Bribes and embezzlement are not out of the ordinary in the Greek government. There are issues with highways and railroads, and the education system poses many problems.

Greek officials can also improve the situation by lowering taxes on capital gains, which should consequentially increase foreign direct investment, according to Azariadis.

Greece’s problems now reach beyond the scope of bailouts from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. According to Azariadas, immediate development improvements are necessary.

And, Azariadas maintains, the fact that Greece’s standard of living has remained so high despite the country’s increasing debt has only exacerbated Greece’s problems.

“Fixing the problems has been postponed time and time again. We’re at the point of now or never,” Azariadis said.

Azariadas predicts that the proposal he co-authored will better the situation within five years if implemented thoroughly. Otherwise, Azariadas and his colleagues believe that the incomes of Greek citizens will decrease to 72 percent of average European Union income.

Azariadis is thankful for the media coverage his work has received this far. The professor hopes that this publicity will spark conversation, and that the discussion will consequently encourage the Greek government to make the big changes that he and his colleagues suggest.

Even though both Azariadis and his wife are Greek and Azariadis attended National Technical University in Athens, he has never published work on Greece before. Because of Greece’s unprecedentedly poor economic state, Azariadis felt compelled to research potential solutions out of loyalty to his home country.

“The problem is severe enough that people who care about Greece have to contribute to public discussion about what has to be done,” Azariadis said.

Although service-learning classes are offered in many different areas through all of Washington University’s schools, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) is specifically institutionalizing community-based learning in its curriculum.

Across departments at the University, there are more than forty service-learning classes taught each semester. According to Jennifer Harping, the program manager for the Gephardt Institute for Public Service, these courses have been on campus for quite some time. However, they have only recently become popular.

The Gephardt Institute’s brochure on community-based learning courses emphasizes their many advantages, which include applying learning in real-life and developing critical thinking skills.

“You are engaging with whatever it is you’re learning about in a different way, so the community component becomes a new way to learn,” Harping said.

The Olin Business School is also working on making service-learning a larger part of its curriculum; one plan to achieve this is the enhancement of the Olin Experience program, in which second-year business school students can apply the skills they learn in non-profit consulting roles.

Neither WGSS nor the business school require all of their students to participate in the programs, but students are encouraged to do so.

“It’s not advisable to have students in the community who don’t want to be in the community, because that can often lead to projects that don’t go as well or students [who] aren’t as invested in the work,” Harping said.

Next semester, three community-based learning classes will be offered in WGSS. These courses will be capped at 12 to 15 students.

Unlike many of the service-based courses, Jami Ake’s course, “Projects in Domestic Violence,” has been offered for many years. Ake’s students work with Lydia’s House, a transitional facility for abused women and their children.

Ake believes that the service component of the course also allows students to better contribute academically.

The course concludes with a final project including research, reflections and students’ ideas about how to proceed with research after their new service experience.

Other courses offered include “Sexual Health and the City” and “Sex, Lies, and Myths of the Mother.”

The Gephardt Institute offers faculty grants each semester to encourage professors to add a service-learning component to their courses. Faculty can apply for grants in November, and they are given out in January. They then have three semesters to start a community-based learning course. These courses are generally based on professors’ research interests.

The Gephardt Institute is working with departments to assist them in implementing new courses and making connections with community partnerships.

“There’s more courses offered, so more students are involved,” Harping said. “I think we’ve also heard from students that [these community-based courses are] something they want.”