No state legislature ever built a great university.

If we are to attract private investment, if we are to be able to make the legislature feel the moneys from taxpayers are being used properly, we must be ever vigilant of the duty to efficiently use all funds we receive.

Academics often discount the value of top-rated sports programs in helping to develop a campus life and in contributing to the overall success of a college or university. Like it or not, the sports programs a college or university has are the front page of that university.

[At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, David Powicki, Associate Director of Network Services, and Richard Rogers, Faculty Advisor to the Provost for Undergraduate Education, have collaborated to build the university's first Digital Learning Commons. Staffed by librarians, library staff, IT staff and student assistants, it offers 15 group rooms, three electronic classrooms, more than 250 workstations and workspaces and more than 400 ports for network access. Developed to encourage faculty and student collaboration, the Digital Learning Commons is intended to leverage web-based services to improve the integration of information and instructional technologies.] This is where Web technology starts to pay nice dividends, ... With Xythos we now have a safer, richer and more efficient alternative to email for storing and sharing files -- and our faculty, students and staff are becoming more and more comfortable using a web-based system.

I don't think you can make a lawyer honest by an act of legislature. You've got to work on his conscience. And his lack of conscience is what makes him a lawyer.

I was lucky to grow up at a time when it was not difficult for the child of a tenant farmer to make his way to the state university.