College News Roundup

Squirrel Causes Power Outage

One squirrel's fatal misstep cost Dartmouth students an hour of Facebook stalking when he attempted to jump between two power lines Oct. 26.

The north substation on the power grid burst into flames when the squirrel apparently touched two high-wire lines at once, knocking out power for many student residences on the north and west sides of Dartmouth's campus.

Firefighters arrived at the substation to douse the fire but came too late for the squirrel, whose dead body was found on the scene.

Plant operator Shaun Impey but he told The Dartmouth, the school's student newspaper, that the squirrel had a similar effect to that of a fallen branch, but he said did not believe there were any specific measures in place to deal with squirrel-related outages.

In many residence halls, generators kicked in to keep exit lights glowing and card readers working.

Some students moved into the McLaughlin cluster, a group of six buildings where the lights stayed on. Others said the outage had no effect on their routine.

"I was in my room doing nothing, and now I'm doing nothing," Jerry Gao '10 told The Dartmouth.

NYU Considers Sending Students to Israel

NYU students support the creation of a university study abroad site in Israel, according to a survey by the Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life.

The study comes nine years after NYU officials announced plans to open a site in Tel Aviv with the University of Tel Aviv, only to cancel them when violence erupted in the Middle East in 2000.

Scott Hughes, NYU's manager of global administration told the Washington Square News that an the survey is an early step in the process of establishing such a Tel Aviv campus, but the results indicate that students are already interested in the possibility.

"It sounds like this has the potential to be a very large program," Bronfman Center executive director Cindy Greenberg told the News, referring to the survey responses she had reviewed. Joshua Borenstein, College of Arts and Sciences '08, who studied at the University of Tel Aviv in the Spring of 2006, said NYU could have an impact if it opened a site in Israel.

"As a world leader and a leading academic institution of America, NYU would lay the groundwork as the first American institution in Israel," he told the Washington Square News.