To understand how dynamic a person Mrs. Wrighton is, one only has to look back on her careers. Mrs. Wrighton helps students get acquainted with both the city and Wash. U. through the program she started, Home Plate.

With an aim toward encouraging and developing University initiatives, John F. McDonnell and the JSM Charitable Trust have made a $60 million gift to the University. This is the third largest gift that the University has ever received, after two $100 million donations from the Danforth Foundation.

Chancellor Mark Wrighton on Monday called on community members to turn out for the April St. Louis County election to vote in favor of a sales tax for funding Metro, as Washington University continued efforts to mobilize the community around the measure.

Come springtime, the large supply of tulips on campus will be nipped in the bud. As a part of a plan designed to reduce the Washington University maintenance and landscaping budget by at least 5 percent, the number of tulips on campus will be cut in half. The new plan will also reduce the number of on-call maintenance employees around the Danforth Campus, thereby producing a delay in response time.

On Jan. 14, Chancellor Wrighton unveiled a draft of Washington University’s “Strategic Plan for Environmentally Sustainable Operations” by e-mailing each and every one of us. Rarely do we receive such e-mails. The plan is comprehensive, but may be a bit incomprehensible.

In light of our University’s increasing involvement with coal, I write to invite the Chancellor to travel with me to Coal River, W.Va., during fall break to attend the Mountain Justice Fall Summit. There we can learn from coal town residents and coal miners’ mothers about how to address the high human cost of coal.

The 2008-09 academic year at Washington University was one of many administrative, environmental, political and campus life-related changes. Issues and events that arose in the past two semesters will continue to play a role and affect students throughout this year. Several of these changes have been summarized below.

Chancellor Mark Wrighton announced Tuesday that Washington University will be establishing a Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization, bringing University researchers together with industry leaders and government officials to make St. Louis a hub for clean coal research. The $12 million initiative is part of the University’s $60 million effort to “advance education and research related [...]