College Shorts

Penn State Task Force To Allocate $60 Million Fine (Huffington Post)

A 10-member task forced has been appointed to come up with guidelines for how to distribute the record $60 million fine that Penn State will pay in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, reported the NCAA on Tuesday. Penn State will pay $12 million a year over five years into an endowment that will fund programs for the prevention, detection and treatment of child abuse. This $60 million fine is part of a punishment imposed by the NCAA, which also included a 4-year postseason ban and scholarship cuts, to punish the school for its failure to report Sandusky, the university's former football coach and a serial child predator, to authorities. The endowment will be managed by a 10-person committee that will set policy and select a third-party administrator to choose the nonprofit groups that will receive the money each year.

Historically Black Colleges Receive $228 Million from U.S. Government (Huffington Post)

The Department of Education is granting $228 million to 97 historically black colleges and universities across the country. The five-year grants will go to schools in 19 different states, and are intended to help the recipients strengthen their academic resources, financial management systems, endowment-building capacities and expand their physical campuses. In addition, funds may be used for the purchase, rental, or lease of scientific or laboratory equipment and the development of academic instruction in disciplines in which African Americans are underrepresented. The largest grants will go to Florida A&M University in Tallahassee; Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, La.; Jackson State University in Jackson, Miss.; and St. Philip's College in San Antonio. Those schools will receive more than $5 million each.

Vandalism at UMass (Huffington Post)

A University of Massachusetts student was arrested this weekend after police say he broke into buildings on Amherst College's campus and allegedly stole two computers and spray-painted swastikas on the walls of the campus health center. Bradley Keigwin, 20, of North Falmouth, Mass., was charged with breaking and entering during the nighttime, larceny from a building and defacing property. Keigwin had been observed in the bushes outside the Keefe Health Center building at 12:12 a.m. after setting off an intrusion alarm and ran when spotted by police, Hanna said. He was apprehended in downtown Amherst a short time later after a foot pursuit by college police officers. In a letter addressed to the UMass community, Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy addressed the incident, saying, "While the break-in and theft are reprehensible, it is the painting of the swastikas that is most distressing. A swastika, which symbolizes anti-Semitism and other forms of extreme intolerance and hatred, has no place in any society that values and celebrates the many diverse forms of humanity."