A New Jersey Student Government Election Made for the Screen

This day, April 29, 2008, I spot a front page headline in my local New Jersey paper, The Trenton Times that reads: Students kept off ballot: District to explore race factor while rescheduling vote. Our local races for school board took place last week, so I thought this was an aftermath.

 

I was wrong: It was a story about a high school student government election in Ewing, the town where I live. Seven students, one black and Hispanic, five black and one white, were barred from running in their senior class elections the previous week—and no one told them why. An assistant superintendent told the reporter in an e-mail that the decision to bar the candidates was based on a “procedural review” by the principal. The quote marks are from the assistant superintendent, not me.

 

Neither the principal nor the faculty advisors for the election offered comment to the paper; the reporter had to rely on an e-mail to one of the parents to get clarification on why her daughter couldn’t run for office. That e-mail from the teachers mentioned that she was ineligible to run because she had not participated in enough class meetings or fund raisers. One teacher later added, according to the mother, that her daughter used foul language when she questioned her ruling on the election.

 

This appears to be a scene from Election, a Tom Perrotta novel and movie starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon where an idealistic teacher deliberately tries to rig a student election and keep the “do it all” girl from winning. Only racism never entered in that movie; it has in the Ewing story, although no one knows for sure.

 

When I was in high school there were no requirements to run for student government, no need for prior participation in anything at all, only current enrollment. We don’t ask adult politicians to have prior electoral experience, why would it be asked of student leaders who must listen to their teachers?

 

It would be one thing if the individual students had some serious blots on their records: academic probations, multiple suspensions or incidents where they broke a law and law enforcement became involved. Even concerns about a platform to encourage an illegal act, such as legalization of marijuana are legitimate concerns for parents and teachers. But no evidence of misconduct was brought forward to the students, their parents and the press. That suggests either arrogance or foolishness; you, the reader can make that call.  

 

The combination of “no comments” and ambiguous rules in a public school in New Jersey is scary. Parents and students still consider teachers authority figures, but not authoritarian and divine; there is a huge difference—and parents know it.

 

Ewing High’s principal is trying to make things right by calling for new senior class elections. However, all of the “no comments” leave this school system open to embarrassment, innuendo, investigation by a state affirmative action agency, and possibly legal action.  If an investigation found legitimate rationale for bias, then two teachers and a principal have put their careers at risk over nothing. 

 

Jon Corzine’s Compassionate Conservatism

Here in New Jersey, the Garden State, we have a governor who has just proposed to make $500 million in permanent spending cuts, refinance state debt, reduce municipal aid, eliminate two cabinet departments, and introduce tougher standards in math and science education.

 

These are proposals that you might expect from a Republican, but Jon Corzine is a fiscally conservative, moderate to liberal social issues Democrat. Corzine, a former chief executive of Goldman Sachs, one of the oldest white-shoe Wall Street investment firms, governs New Jersey as if he doesn’t need the job. He’s taken his budget on the road to the voters; for the most part the media has shown that they have a tough time swallowing the bitter pill, but they are willing to listen. New Jersey does not have the best reputation for honest politics; two journalists just came out with a book calling Jersey the Sopranos State, but Corzine may be just the man to turn that image around.

 

There is a difference between Jon Corzine and the so-called compassionate conservatives who try to sell tax and spending cuts, as well as standards, and hope things all work out before the next election.

 

The debate in New Jersey is not over what government should give up, but on what it should do well. Garden Staters north and south place a premium on environmental protection, toll roads and public transportation, given New Jersey is sandwiched between New York City and Philadelphia. We’re also a state with over 570 municipal governments and over 600 school districts; local control is sacrament in education more than any other public service.

 

Corzine is not trying to force-feed draconian cuts or impose values on others; he’s raised a debate to tell the legislature and the voters that the state can’t afford to be business as usual. His own proposals are a challenge to Democrats—who control the legislature—and Republicans to put up or shut up and come up with a plan. There are services that every state government must perform for its citizens: law enforcement and public safety, judiciary, Medicaid disbursement, K-12 and higher education, maintain state highways, negotiating compacts with other states on transportation and environmental issues, being examples. Then there’s the rest of the budget.

 

For instance, on the surface, Corzine’s proposals to eliminate the departments of Agriculture and Personnel make more sense than other cuts. Agriculture is but one sector of our state’s economy; it makes no sense to give a cabinet level position to a single industry. We don’t have a secretary of technology or pharmacy. Agriculture is but one plank on an economic development platform in any state government. There’s no need for a state department of personnel when each and every state agency has their own human resource professionals who can align their work, jobs and wages to their agency’s mission. There’s no need for another set of bureaucratic hoops.

 

When this was proposed I had to wonder: why didn’t a previous governor think of it before? This makes perfect sense.

 

It’s the kind of creative thinking we need in our state.

Should the High School Military Test Be a Mandatory Test?

High school students interested in serving in our armed forces must take an entrance examination called the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB). The ASVAB is used to not only assess a recruit’s aptitude for military service, but also help identify their Military Operational Specialty—service-speak for job—if they choose to serve. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, over 722,000 high school students took the ASVAB during the past school year

 

The ASVAB is also used as a mandatory test for high school sophomores and juniors at hundreds of schools in 34 states. The schools that make the ASVAB mandatory share the results with the military and assist their students in their career development, regardless of whether they decide to enlist.

 

There are problems with this practice.

 

First, the mandatory test gives the military the opportunity to circumvent the opt-out provisions under No Child Left Behind; a student may be forced to take the test even though he’s asked to opt out of communications with the branches of the armed forces,

 

Second, school administrators have the say as to whether the ASVAB results can be shared with military recruiters, assuming they require the test for their own purposes. In effect, a school administrator is placed in the role of circumventing the wishes of students who are not interested in military service, as well as their parents. A high school principal or superintendent should not be put in this position; an exceptionally vocal group of parents could get him fired.

 

Third, the ASVAB is given to students who have not turned 18. The military should not be contacting students who are more than a year from graduating high school. Given the passage of a symbolic act such as No Child Left Behind, the military should not be recruiting high school drop outs, or asking students disinterested in school to consider dropping out. Reporting to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on January 31, General Thomas Bostick, Commanding General of the U.S. Army Recruiting Command, stated that the percentage of high school graduates among military recruits had fallen to a low of 79 percent. 

 

I don’t believe we need a Congressional hearing to resolve these problems; there is nothing to be gained from such theatre. Instead, we need some solutions that are fair and easy to implement. I personally do not object to the test itself, or the idea of making it mandatory at wartime, but there should be an opt-out check box right on the front page of the exam booklet. If a student checks no, then no should be recorded in the collective database of test takers. It’s not too difficult to add one checkbox to a three hour standardized exam.

 

Second, if a school in need of improvement under No Child Left Behind uses the ASVAB as a career assessment tool, it should allowed to use it as a school assessment. Improvement in performance on the ASVAB should carry bonus credits towards a school’s efforts to take itself out of Need of Improvement status.

 

Thirdly, and I stated this in a prior column, the military should not call high school students until they have reached their 18^th birthday or three months before their graduation, whichever is earlier. If we are to leave no child left behind in the classroom and make all children proficient, we should not try to send them to the battlefield before they have had a chance to earn their high school diploma.

It Pays to Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys or Giants or Eagles or Redskins

The National Football League draft is this weekend and if you’re a pro football fan you already know about the widespread speculation about where your favorite players are going to plying their trade on Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays and, if they’re lucky, the weekends in January and February after their college seasons were over.

 

If you’re a football fan, you’ve also listened to analysts discuss the odds of players making it to the big leagues; the lower you’re drafted, the worse they get. You’ve also heard what it takes to get on the field with most teams; talent and fit are the most obvious qualities, though some franchises place a premium on character. In this sense, the NFL is no different from any other business that hires entry level workers.

 

Each college season, there are between 15 and 25 seniors, and a much smaller number of juniors who played football at 120 Division 1 schools, as well as seniors who have similar talents, but played at lower levels of competition.  A best guess is that there are 3,000 young men who played college football last season who have completed or relinquished their college eligibility and would like to play in the pros. Their resumes are their game films, statistics and workout results from a scouting combine and college pro days. Those who are serious about playing on get at least one chance to impress at a pro day and the big schools often invite athletes from smaller schools to come to their sites to try out.  

 

Those 3,000 young men compete for 256 spots in the NFL draft; there are seven rounds of 32 teams, plus 32 supplemental picks that have been awarded to teams that lost players to free agency. Each team also signs rookie free agents after the draft and invites them to a mini-camp in May along with the draftees. And I haven’t considered openings in the Canadian Football League and Arena Football. But it’s safe to say that a player who is in the upper 10 percent at their position will get at least a tryout in a pro camp if they want it.

 

I look at the numbers and I wonder if the odds of success are that bad. A good college football player who consistently plays well at a high level of competition has a better chance of getting a shot at the pros than, for instance, a business or engineering major who wants to work for the Ford Motor Company.

 

According to data collected by CollegeGrad.com, an entry-level job site, Ford expects to have 300 entry-level hires this year. No doubt they will get more than 3,000 applicants for those jobs through on-campus recruitment and their Web site. Those who have spent some time as interns at Ford will have an edge, just as those who played for the major football powers have a better chance of being invited to turn pro. But there are over 300,000 business majors, and close to 120,000 computer science and engineering majors and the most desired companies are more likely to pursue the top fraction of one percent.

 

I like the odds for the football player much better.

 

I know that NFL also stands for “Not For Long.” Every player has to hang up the helmet and cleats at some point, but that’s no different than other fields. If you’ve read this far you probably know of many people who are not working at the same profession they did after college, even if they didn’t continue their education.

 

The difference is that smart football players who stay healthy have a chance to build a nest egg at a very early age to help them move on to the next station in their working life. The smart players are the ones who don’t expect to fall back on their glory days to land the next job—and we don’t read enough about them in the sports pages. We always read about the first-round talent who hooked up with undesirables and lived beyond his means before losing it all; that makes great copy, but it hardly applies to everyone who played the game.

Chased Away from Student Loans—Some More Digging

This morning, April 17, I checked my inbox and found a message from a reader who had read the previous day’s column on the JP Morgan/Chase decision to discontinue lending to schools with low repayment rates.

 

I had pointed out that Chase’s spokesperson refused to list the affected schools, but that borrowers deserved to know. I also added that such information would end up becoming public anyway, as unhappy borrowers would eventually post it on the Internet. Finally, I stated that the government should provide borrowers, educators and lenders with a list of schools that have below average default rates.

 

This morning, the reader told me that the U.S Department of Education (DOE) already publishes such a list and it is available to the public. So, I went to their site to take a look. One thing I learned was that you needed to know their terminology in order to find the list. It took some digging to find. (For those who would like to read more, please go to http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSFAP/defaultmanagement/dmd002.html).

 

I appreciate the reader pointing this out, because I learned more than I expected. The DOE tracks cohort default rates. A cohort default rate, according to a PDF guide posted on the site, is based on a fraction: the number of borrowers who have defaulted on students over the past two fiscal years divided by the number of borrowers who begin to repay their loans over the past fiscal year. A cohort year is the same as a federal fiscal year, October 1 through September 30.

 

According to the DOE, A school is subject to sanctions, meaning the loss of Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL), Federal Direct Loan (DL), and/or Federal Pell Grant Program eligibility if the school has three consecutive official cohort default rates that are 25 percent or greater. Also, a school is subject to the loss of FFEL and DL Program eligibility if the school has an official cohort default rate that is greater than 40 percent for the most recent cohort year. The Web site also reported that no school had fallen under these sanctions since FY 2005.

 

And there is some good news: the national cohort default rate has dropped from a high of 22.4% in 1990 to 4.6 percent in 2005, the last year that the DOE has available data. Cohort default rates ranged from 4.5 percent to 5.4 percent between 2001 and 2005. That means that someone has done a better job of collecting the money from borrowers.

 

While I can’t draw firm conclusions from limited research, I have to believe that private lenders use their own methodology to decide who qualifies for a student loan, as well as the DOE statistics. A 4.6 percent default rate, along with government guarantees and subsidies suggests that student loans are not a risky business, though it is possible collection expenses and subsidized origination fees—charged to students in direct lending–cut into their profits. Even then, some lenders chose to make gifts to financial aid officers to direct students their way. I’d have to guess that the profitability of student loans for the gift-giving lenders depended on receiving preferential treatment.   

 

But my digging takes me back to my original question: how does Chase, or any other lender, choose the “haves” and “have nots?”

 

According to the DOE Web site, for example, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribally Controlled Community Colleges (TCCs), and Navajo Community Colleges, as defined by statute, have been eligible for relief from the consequences of cohort default rates. As of September 2007, all 98 eligible HBCUs had official FY 2005 cohort default rates that fell below regulatory thresholds. No HBCUs are subject to cohort default rate sanctions.

 

 

 

 

While the federal government has provided relief, I must ask another question: How have the banks treated borrowers from these schools and others? I welcome any reader to answer.

Reading Is Fundamental Honors 25 Programs for ‘Linking Up for Literacy’ with Community Partners

Washington, April 16, 2008— Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) today announced the recipients of the third annual RIF Program Excellence Honors 2008, sponsored by MetLife Foundation. The 25 honored programs and their volunteers will be recognized by RIF during a celebration in Washington, D.C., June 16–18, for successfully partnering with outside organizations to advance children’s literacy in their communities.

“RIF commends these programs and their community partners for helping children and their families discover the joy of reading,” said Carol H. Rasco, RIF president and CEO. “Thanks to MetLife’s generous support, RIF can showcase the work of these great programs and share their best practices with other communities.” 

The 25 outstanding programs were selected from a pool of approximately 3,500 RIF programs nationwide. Partners include public schools, Indian reservations, sororities, fraternities, libraries, television stations, corporations, and law firms, among others. Children in these programs benefit from having reading role models that included NBA players, teen tutors, and grandparents.

“We are pleased to join RIF in honoring outstanding local programs,” said Sibyl Jaboson, president and CEO of MetLife Foundation. “As they spread the love of reading, they are changing lives, building community and sharing important lessons from their success.”

The partnerships vary in length from three to 29 years. For example, the Holland & Knight law firm has partnered with RIF for 12 years, expanding their relationship from Washington, D.C., to sites in Chicago, Jacksonville, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, Portland, St. Petersburg, Tampa, Tallahassee, New York, Northern Virginia, and West Palm Beach. “RIF events draw volunteers from the law firm into the lives of underprivileged children throughout the country, creating excitement around literacy and learning,” said Angela Ruth, executive director of Holland & Knight LLP Charitable Foundation.

During a three-day celebration in Washington, honorees will be recognized at an awards ceremony, and participate in workshops and information sessions. They will also visit with congressional representatives to discuss the impact of RIF programs in their community.

RIF Program Excellence Honors 2008:

RIF Program, Partner Group, Location

1. Hopkins House Center, Northern Virginia Alumnae Chapter Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., Alexandria, Va.
2. Community Action Head Start Program, Western KY University, Bowling Green, Ky.
3. MS Band of Choctaw Indians Head Start , Mississippi Band of Choctaw, Indians  Choctaw, Miss.
4. Woodrow Wilson Magnet School, Writers’ Block International, Danville, Va.
5. Drop In Library – RCPL, Cooperative Extension Service, Eden, N.C.
6. Lansing School District, Riverwalk Theatre, Lansing, Mich.
7. RIF of Lockhart, Alpha Psi Beta Chapter of Beta Sigma Phi, Lockhart, Texas
8. Red Mtn. HS Club RIF, Salk Elementary School, Mesa, Ariz.
9. Phillis Wheatley Elementary School, Council of Small Business Executives, Milwaukee, Wis.
10. PACT Head Start, Beta Phi Pi Fraternity at WIU, Mt. Sterling, Ill.
11. RIF Nashville, Book’em, Nashville, Tenn.
12. Orange Children & Parents Together, Orange Public Library, Orange, Calif.
13. SIEDA Head Start, Iowa Public Television, Ottumwa, Iowa
14. Holiday Park School, Phoenix Suns, Phoenix, Ariz.
15. Reading Is FUNdamental Pittsburgh, Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh  Pittsburgh, Pa.
16. Volunteers In Providence Schools, Local branches of national corporations, Providence, R.I.
17. Ripley RIF  Ripley Women’s Club  Ripley, Ohio
18. Salt Lake Community Action Head Start  KUED Public Television  Salt Lake City, Utah
19. Salazar Partnership, Salazar Partnership (local foundation), Santa Fe, N.M. 
20. Page Ahead, The Boeing Company, Seattle, Wash.
21. Franklin Grande Isle Early Childhood Adv. Council, Franklin County Early Childhood Programs, Swanton, Vt. 
22. Holland & Knight Charitable Foundation, Head Start and Public Schools,  Multistate
23. Reach Out and Read of Northwest Ohio, Ohio Help Me Grow, Toledo, Ohio
24. Libraries, Ltd., Pascua Yaqui Tribe, Tucson, Ariz.
25. Verona R-7, Missouri Gas Energy, Verona, Mo. 

Best practices from these 25 programs will be added to an interactive web-based Portfolio of Excellence that includes narratives and pictures from past winners, and is available on RIF.org.

Chased Away from Student Loans

Today JP Morgan/Chase Manhattan, the bank that recently worked with the Fed to acquire the former Bear Stearns investment bank, announced that they will not be making student loans to entering or continuing students enrolled at schools that have a poor repayment rate. Yet their spokesperson refused to mention the schools that would be affected by the announcement.

 

When I checked out comments on the Chronicle of Higher Education online, commentors speculated that the affected schools would be community colleges and for-profit colleges. They gave no reasons for their speculation, though I can offer one of my own: low graduation rates, meaning, that if students did not finish their education they were less likely to repay their student loans. I guess that government guarantees were not enough for Chase to continue lending to students at these schools. No surprise, they weren’t good enough for Citibank 30 years ago during the Chrysler bailout.

 

I would understand the rationale of Chase’s decision better if I knew which schools were on their list. Without seeing the list, I have to wonder if they have something to hide, such as a lending methodology. The last thing prospective borrowers need to hear is that a money center bank is “redlining” by providing more favorable loan terms to students who attend some schools over others. The very next things prospective borrowers should do, if their college-bound student is sincerely interested in a “redlined” school, is to look at other schools or cease doing any business with that bank.

 

Lending officers have no qualifications to make academic judgments about loan applicants or the academic qualities of a school. If university administrators fear the growing importance of media rankings, I can only imagine their fears if lenders determine the schools that will be their “haves” and “have nots.”

 

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has assured schools and borrowers that there are still plenty of lenders who will make student loans as well as the capacity to expand direct lending, where the government acts as lender of last resort. But she should be concerned that Chase’s decision will have a ripple effect on other lenders. Even with no comments from Chase, word will get out on the Internet from prospective borrowers and that word will spread to other financial institutions as well. It’s difficult to say if other lenders will fill the void to offer, loans offer tougher terms or refuse to take the same risk with Chase’s targeted schools.

 

If nothing else, Chase’s decision has spurred a need for a new form of government intervention in the student loan markets: to publish an annual listing of “deadbeat” schools. There would be only one criterion for this list: a below-average repayment rate for government-supported student loans.

 

The federal government would make no judgment on the academic quality of the schools, nor their graduation and retention rates. This list would be made available to educators, parents, students and lenders so that each may make their own decisions. It’s true that the government would be taking the lenders off the hook; the banks would not need to disclose lending practices to the public if the government becomes the published resource.

 

However, government would be doing all parties: educators, lenders and borrowers an important service. And the federal government has every right to use such a list as a means to collect their money.

Trip to the ‘Ship Part 2: The Shade of Orange on the Game

I’m a New York Giants fan and a New York Yankee fan who is used to attending home games surrounded by the blue-ness of our colors. At Rutgers games real fans wear red; you could just as easily call our wave the Red Sea. But when I attended this year’s final game of the NCAA Women’s Final Four, there was a sea of creamy orange beneath my feet.  The colors and repeat choruses of Rocky Top made me feel as if I were at a Tennessee home game, even though we were in Florida, a state that prefers a different shade of orange. 

 

But that’s to be expected when a team has been as successful as Pat Summitt’s Lady Vols. Wherever they play, a regular crowd shuffles in. I had seen the Tennessee women play three times before the Final Four: once on Rutgers’ home court and twice in an Elite Eight series in Philadelphia and all three games drew a significant turnout of orange-clothed fans, considering the distance from Knoxville to Philadelphia and to Piscataway, New Jersey.

 

I can’t hate Tennessee; their home-town fans are nice in a neighborly way and they are the most loyal fans I have ever seen. According to unofficial attendance figures tracked by the University of Wisconsin, the Lady Vols average nearly 16,000 people per home game. UConn is second best with just under 11,000 fans a game, and they play their strongest opponents off-campus at the Hartford Civic Center. LSU, the Lady Vol’s opponent in the semi-final game, averages approximately 5,500 fans and Stanford, the remaining finalist this season, averages just under 4,000.

 

The Lady Vols are to women’s college basketball what Notre Dame fans have been to college football, a national cadre that always shows up when the team comes to town. And like Notre Dame fans, I have met many Lady Vols fans who are “subway alumni.” They root enthusiastically for the team, even though they might have never set foot on campus. Unlike Boston Red Sox fans who never pass up the chance to “share the love,” Tennessee fans don’t form personal opinions if your root for another team. Lady Vols fans not only love a winner; they also love a team that loves them back. You can’t help but admire a team that might bring enough fans along to help sell out your arena—and Tennessee basketball is very fan friendly. If nothing else, the mascot and band will get you to remember the words to Rocky Top.

 

The Tennessee faithful can legitimately claim that a Woman’s Final Four without orange and white is like a day without sunshine. They would also have claim to a title of America’s Team; five members of the roster hailed from the south, while six are northerners. Only two of Summit’s players come from in-state.  

 

Tennessee’s dominance of women’s college basketball has been astounding. The Lady Vols have played in 13 of 27 NCAA title games—not just the Final Four, but the final game—and won eight times. They have also made the semi-finals five times.

 

Although the regular season series has been cancelled, the Tennessee fans I met this Final Four weekend considered UConn–not an inter-conference school like LSU–their primary rival.   Tennessee has never won an NCAA final tilt against UConn in three tries and Geno Auriemma’s Huskies held an 8-7 advantage over Summitt’s Vols during the regular season games played between 1995 and 2007.

 

Then again, I was wearing a Rutgers shirt at the finals, not a UConn one. Throughout the three days I talked to Tennessee fans, I kept hearing about how much they wanted to play Rutgers in the final and how much they liked and respected our coach C. Vivian Stringer. There was no reason to question their sincerity, though Stringer has beaten Summitt’s teams only once in the past 13 years.

 

In some ways Tennessee’s dominance has been good for women’s basketball, in other ways it has not. Pat Summitt has won more college basketball games than any man or women still coaching and she earned every one of those wins (except I believe Rutgers won the infamous “clock” game in Knoxville this past season). Only John Wooden had won more college championships—ten—and Summitt has plenty of time to pass him. She is one of the most important women professionals in the country and an effective spokesperson for her game. If someone told me that Summitt has elevated the profile and respect for women’s basketball and women athletes in general, I wouldn’t argue.  

 

But one team’s dominance leads fans of the other teams to question the competitive balance of the sport and lose interest. This is an especially serious situation for women’s basketball as successful programs such as LSU, Maryland, North Carolina, Rutgers, Stanford and Old Dominion struggle to fill more than half of their seats at home.

 

Women’s college basketball can look to major league baseball as an example. From 1949 to 1953, major league baseball attendance dropped from 20.2 million fans to 14.3 million as the New York Yankees won five consecutive World Championships, against New York’s National League teams the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. The decline was enough to make me wonder about the interest in baseball outside of New York City.

 

Women’s college basketball is a great game; it’s more team-oriented than the men’s game and the women are reported to be more successful academically than the men. The women’s game is also a young game; its pioneers such as Summitt, Auriemma and Stringer are still going strong as coaches or are working in athletic administration.

 

But I worry about the long term prospects of the sport when there is a dominant team and such a wide disparity in attendance figures.

Trip to the ‘Ship: My Visit to the NCAA Woman’s Final Four, Part 1

Prior to attending the 2008 NCAA Women’s Final Four, I had attended only one championship game of any kind: the last-ever United States Football League title match in the New Jersey Meadowlands. Back then, as now, with the Super Bowl and the NCAA basketball tournaments and college bowl games, the game was played on a neutral site. This year’s Women’s Final Four was held in Tampa in a hockey arena; the Saint Petersburg Times Forum, the host site, opened 12 years ago as the Ice Palace.

 

Going to the “ship” was fun, even though a few little things, like a torrential downpour on the day of the semi-final games, got in the way. This Forum is a fairly new arena, but it wasn’t built to handle the crowds that would be rooting for four teams, fighting to add souvenir t-shirts to their collections. All of the teams in this year’s final: UConn, LSU, Stanford and Tennessee had played in at least two finals before, three have emerged champions while the fourth, LSU, was making its fifth consecutive appearance.

 

There were a lot, and I mean a lot of people wanting souvenirs and the Forum’s staff appeared ill-equipped to handle them. They were more used to handling merchandise for the last place hockey team that plays there. I will say, however, that I am the proud owner of the last Stanford t-shirt that was sold on finals night; it just happened to be my size.

 

I also wished the Forum made some considerations on the food. For one thing, they didn’t make any changes from the fare you would get at a regular season hockey game, right down to the “High Stickin’ Chicken” which was every bit as rubbery as a hockey puck. A personal pizza was ten bucks, a ridiculous sum in any sports market, though the concession dropped the price to two for ten bucks by the halftime of the final game. But the cheese on the pizza was as rubbery as the chicken, so the two-for-one was no bargain.

 

Next year’s women’s final will be played in St. Louis at another hockey arena (there has been no pro basketball in the Gateway City since 1976), while the men will be playing at Detroit in a football stadium. I realized cities bid for the privilege of hosting a Final Four, but why can’t they play it at a place that regularly hosts a college basketball team? I’m sure there are fans who would love to see the more storied homes of college basketball like Bloomington, Chapel Hill or Duke, or in the case of women’s hoops, Charlottesville, Knoxville or Palo Alto. The colleges have plenty of experience handling little things like ticket sales, parking and tailgating.   

 

But to their credit, the Forum redeemed itself on finals night. There was beautiful weather, a band, plenty of free and accessible outdoor games, an ESPN broadcast of the final shown against the parking deck wall (you read that right, the wall) to help manage post-game pedestrian congestion and best of all, friendly fans of all teams, including those that were not playing the finals. I wore Rutgers shirts to both games, not only because I believed our Scarlet Knights should have been there, but also because I couldn’t root for UConn, our main arch-rival. Instead I rooted for Stanford; this was their first trip to the finals in 13 years and I could have never gotten into the school when I was shopping for a college.

 

To be fair, most of the UConn fans I met were better people than me, as far as sports loyalties go. Virtually every UConn fan I met at my hotel and the games said that we should not have played each other in the Elite Eight, and that they would have rooted for Rutgers if we had beaten them to get into the finals. I’m not only a Rutgers fan, I’m also a New York Yankee fan. For me rooting for UConn to win the Finals would be like rooting for the Boston Red Sox to win a World Series. I just don’t have it in my heart to do that, so sorry UConn fans. It’s nothing personal, just basketball.

An Astronaut for Second Chair on the Democratic Ticket

While I went out on a long limb to suggest that Rudy Giuliani may be the best running mate for Republican presidential candidate John McCain, I am at a loss to guess who would run with whom on the Democratic ticket. The highly competitive race between Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Barack Obama has had more than it’s share of drama—and more than it’s share of barbs that will only help Republicans deflate the credibility of the eventual nominee. 

That’s one reason why I do not believe a Clinton-Obama or Obama-Clinton ticket can win. I can just see the Republicans using their own comments against each other. Combine that with McCain’s strengths on defense and national security, and it’s likely we’ll see Bush and McCain on the podium together on Inauguration Day. 

Obama and Clinton have also run very different campaigns, with Obama doing a better job at attracting new contributors and young volunteers. He’s also made better use of the Internet. Clinton has obviously done at better job at winning the larger states through a more conventional campaign. Obama has carried only one, his home state of Illinois. Neither has enough to be on-course to win the nomination outright. Even the uncommitted superdelegates in the states that Clinton and Obama have already won (excluding Michigan and Florida) go along with the popular vote in their state, Obama would have an additional 137 delegates and Clinton would have 91. That would put Obama at 1,759 delegates and Clinton at 1,576; neither close to the 2,024 needed to win the nomination. There are only 48 uncommitted superdelegates in the states that are yet to hold primaries; they are votes to be had, of course, but hardly enough to sew things up.  

It’s going to come down to Florida and Michigan for Obama more than Clinton; he has to prove that he can take better than 45 percent of two large states where his opponent has already won a popular vote. Or the fight’s coming down to the convention floor and one potential bargaining chip can be the vice presidential nod. And it should not go to the losing side.

It’s too difficult to imagine a former First Lady enthusiastically fighting to be further from the West Wing, while the Republicans use the bad old days from her husband’s presidency to defeat the ticket. She would be a stronger public figure if she remained in the Senate with a safe seat from an important state. Hillary Clinton could go down in history as one of the most effective Democratic legislators, like Ted Kennedy. Why should she compromise that legacy by running as the number two on Obama’s ticket? 

It’s equally difficult to imagine Obama as number two on a ticket led by the Clintons. Bill Clinton is one of the finest political minds of this generation and he is still the standard bearer of his party. Hillary would do better to run on the positives of his record—and compare the end results to Bush 43. Obama is charismatic, but can his charisma sway voters, especially the younger ones who volunteered for him, to a candidate he so soundly criticized?  

Which comes back to the notion of the vice presidency as a bargaining chip.  The Democratic vice presidential nominee should be Senator Bill Nelson of Florida.  

A Clinton supporter, Nelson comes from an important swing state. A former six-term Congressman, Nelson, like Clinton, is a second term senator and he was re-elected with 60 percent of the vote from a Republican state. Nelson not only comes from an important state, he lends an experienced contrast to Obama, should he emerge the nominee.  

Interestingly enough, Nelson has gone into space as a payload specialist on the shuttle Columbia. There may be some amusing comparisons between him and Larry Hagman’s Major Nelson from I Dream of Jeannie, but in the rough and tumble world of politics that might not be such a bad thing. Neither Clinton nor Obama would be hurt by Barbara Eden’s endorsement.  

Nelson has also been active in pressuring the Democratic National Committee to seat his state’s delegates; it was a Republican-controlled Florida legislature that moved up the state primary date. It would be wise for the Democrats to position Nelson as a hero from the convention and strong second chair in what promises to be a very tough presidential race.