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BOSTON, MA - South End residents have sued in both state and federal courts to try to stop the construction of BU’s infectious disease lab, which will include a biosafety level 4 facility working with dangerous pathogens. So far, they haven’t been successful, although the state judge did order an additional environmental review. BU appealed that case. Yesterday, the Supreme Judicial Court, Massachusetts’s highest court, said it would hear the case, essentially expediting the matter in allowing the case to skip the appeals court. So hopefully, both sides will soon get some final answers in this four-year battle between BU...

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Boston College administrators have agreed to change the school's statement of nondiscrimination to make it more welcoming to gay students and employees, but the revision stops short of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The policy changes were agreed on after weeks of meetings between BC's general counsel, two high-ranking student affairs officials, and student leaders. Jack Dunn, a spokesman for the Catholic university, said the compromise was drafted last week and is expected to become policy after further internal review.

After applying and getting denied twice, the Boston University Nemeton Wicca Student Group was approved by the Religious Life Council as a new religious organization on campus Wednesday afternoon at Marsh Chapel. The RLC denied the group, which applied as a pagan organization the first two times, because paganism is not formally recognized as a religion. But, last semester the organization changed its affiliation to Wicca, which is considered a religion, changing its name to the Wicca Student Group this year. Nemeton President Aubrey Hooser said renaming the group was not an issue. "The majority of the group follows Wicca,...

The earnings of many top university presidents are spiraling up toward $1 million a year, according to an annual survey by The Chronicle of Higher Education, rising far more quickly than faculty salaries. Forty-two presidents of private universities were paid $500,000 or more in the 2003 fiscal year, the most recent for which figures are available, compared with 27 presidents the previous year. Just two earned half a million in 1994. The highest-paid private university president, William R. Brody of Johns Hopkins University, earned $897,786 in university compensation, not counting at least $100,000 in annual pay for membership on several...

"[On the eve of what would have been the presidential inauguration holiday for Bill Clinton's NASA Administrator Dan Goldin, Boston U. remains without a president and Goldin has received a $1.8 million dollar severance package without working a single day.] [In protest] a group of professors has launched a website called "BUWatch" to pressure the administration for reform. [B.U. graduate Peter] Bernard founded an alternative alumni association. And one informal group of alumni is even mulling a class-action suit against the trustees for devaluing their degrees. "If this is not the time to stand up, when is?" asked Neidle, a...

<p>Boston University's Board of Trustees selected Daniel S. Goldin as president in July after a rushed search and only one brief meeting with him, then found themselves stunned by a series of demands from Goldin, including his plans to fire almost all of BU's top administrators and to live part time at his home in Malibu, Calif., several BU officials and sources close to the trustees said yesterday.</p>

<p>Boston University will pay $1.8 million to their president-designate as severance pay from a post he never filled, the New York Times reported.</p> <p>The school's trustees had chosen former NASA chief Daniel S. Goldin, 63, as the university's next president.</p>

Daniel S. Goldin, the former head of NASA who was just a day from becoming president of Boston University, resigned Friday amid reports of souring relations with the school's trustees and its outgoing chancellor, John R. Silber. The announcement ended a tumultuous week that began Oct. 24, when an executive committee of the board of trustees agreed to reconsider the offer to Goldin. (snip) University officials said they reached a financial settlement with Goldin that terminated his contract, reportedly worth $750,000 per year, plus other perquisites. The settlement was widely reported as $1.8 million. (snip) The Globe reported Friday that...

<p>Incoming Boston University president Daniel S. Goldin told the school's board of trustees 10 days ago that he feared he lacked the support he needs to run the university, according to a trustee who attended the meeting where Goldin spoke.</p>

Boston University senior Fran Fincke grins sheepishly and confesses he is known, in campus parlance, as ``BU cute.'' Translation? ``You wouldn't normally be (considered) cute,'' Fincke says, ``but since it's BU, and there's a lot fewer guys . . .'' A year after BU chancellor John Silber made headlines declaring the school's 60 percent female undergraduate majority a distraction for male students and a harbinger of woes for men in general, the emotionally charged debate over lopsided enrollments at college campuses in Massachusetts and across the country has hardly subsided. ``There's a lack of diversity of opinions,'' said BU sophomore...

Boston University senior Fran Fincke grins sheepishly and confesses he is known, in campus parlance, as ``BU cute.'' Translation? ``You wouldn't normally be (considered) cute,'' Fincke says, ``but since it's BU, and there's a lot fewer guys . . .'' A year after BU chancellor John Silber made headlines declaring the school's 60 percent female undergraduate majority a distraction for male students and a harbinger of woes for men in general, the emotionally charged debate over lopsided enrollments at college campuses in Massachusetts and across the country has hardly subsided. ``There's a lack of diversity of opinions,'' said BU sophomore...

A group of 128 US intellectuals opposed to the notion that the "war on terrorism" is a "just war" has sent a letter to European counterparts calling for "a sane and frank European criticism of the Bush administration's war policy."The letter challenges the framing of the war as a struggle between good and evil, as well as President George W. Bush's explanation for anti-US sentiments.It was conceived as a response to an earlier letter defending the war on terrorism, signed by 60 American intellectuals, which recently received wide publicity in European newspapers."We felt that their notion of 'just war' should...