In the News

• Correction--We didn't get an item about economics professor Jens Christiansen in our last column quite right. Here's the new and improved version.
  The economics journal Challenge features a special report in its September/October issue by Jens Christiansen, associate professor of economics, and Robert Buchele of Smith College. The paper, "Worker Rights Promote Productivity Growth," makes the case that worker productivity has been bolstered in countries where workers are better treated, encouraged to participate in management, and given substantial bargaining rights. Notably, according to the authors, the United States lags behind Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom in both productivity growth and workers' rights.

• Ratings inaccuracies--U.S. News and World Report's 1996 college guide America's Best Colleges--essentially a rehash of the magazine's recent report rating top American colleges and universities--has acknowledged a blunder. In a chart of attributes of the best liberal arts colleges, the guidebook has transposed some of Mount Holyoke's and Colby College's information. Both Mount Holyoke and Colby are tied for nineteenth among the nation's top liberal arts colleges. The magazine article contained the correct information.

• Of Gorse--Patricia Ramsey, professor of psychology and education and director of the Gorse Child Study Center, is much sought after for insights into the workings of very young minds. This September's Sesame Street Parents magazine quotes Ramsey in a story on "The Making of a Civilized Child," and the fall Teaching Tolerance features a lengthy interview with the author of Making Friends at School (1991), a study of children's friendships.

• En Vogue--In a story entitled "Sex: Dialing for Dollars," September's Vogue notes that alumna and highly-regarded playwright Suzan-Lori Parks '85 has scripted the screenplay for a new film by Spike Lee--Girl 6--about a down-on-her-luck African-American actress who becomes a phone-sex operator to pay for a plane ticket to Los Angeles. In addition, according to a profile in the September 17 Miami Herald, Parks' new play Venus will open this spring at the New York Public Theatre.

• Bonn voyage--Featured in the August26 Ashland (Ohio) Times-Gazette, senior Megan Otermat '96 has returned from a sehr interesantes year abroad at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Bonn, Germany. The German and international relations double major hopes to intern in the Bundestag (German equivalent to the U.S. House of Representatives) after graduation.