WSU Digest – for the week of March 29 On the Calendar

Cougar Pride Days 2004, the Pullman campus and city annual spring clean-up and beautification event, will be held March 29 to April 2. Washington State University faculty, staff and students as well as children from the City of Pullman Park and Recreation Preschool will participate. On Wednesday (March 31), WSU President V. Lane Rawlins will assist workers at several campus sites and will also travel to downtown Pullman where employees of the WSU Foundation, which has its offices in the Pullman Town Centre, will landscape a parking lot used by the foundation. For more, see https://wsunews.wsu.edu/detail.asp?StoryID=4452

Doug McAdam, an acclaimed sociologist and faculty member at Stanford University, will give the 2004 Phillip C. Holland Lecture on Wednesday (March 31). The 4:15 p.m. lecture will be in the Samuel H. Smith Center for Undergraduate Education, Room 202. McAdam, who has earned an international reputation for his research on the civil rights movement, is director of Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He will discuss “Disruption or Persuasion: What Makes Social Movements Successful?” For more details, see https://wsunews.wsu.edu/detail.asp?StoryID=4456

Alan J. Auerbach, professor of economics and law and director of the Robert D. Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance at the University of California, Berkeley, will be the guest lecturer for Washington State University’s Fourth Annual Bertha C. Leigh Distinguished Speaker Series in Economics at 7:30 p.m. April 1 at Todd Hall 216. A Fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Auerbach will speak on “U.S. Fiscal Policy: Disaster in Progress?”  For information, see https://wsunews.wsu.edu/detail.asp?StoryID=4454

In the news

Higher broadcast standards?: The rapidity with which both Congress and the FCC responded to the “offensiveness” of Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl halftime performance and shortly thereafter imposed sweeping penalties on Howard Stern’s long-running radio program suggests that politics, not public interest, is at the base of this election-year regulation of broadcasters, according to Susan Ross, an associate professor in the WSU Edward R. Murrow School of Communications. Ross said while reasonable people disagree on whether stringent standards of decency should be applied to broadcast programming, Stern has been challenging community standards with relative impunity for years. Moreover, issues related to media consolidation and exclusion of independent content from broadcast offerings generated the greatest public outcry in the history of the FCC last year. Yet neither Congress nor the FCC found it necessary to take action on these concerns. Ross said that a cynical observer might conclude that swift, symbolic action to curb indecency generates votes without alienating media owners, whose dollars help fund election campaigns. From a political perspective, Ross said, it’s a win-win situation. She can be reached at 509.335.5842 or suross@wsu.edu.

Job outlook for grads: As prospective spring college graduates prepare to enter the job market, they face a slightly rosier situation than their immediate predecessors. The National Association of Colleges and Employers is projecting an overall increase in hiring of new college graduates in 2004, the first projected increase since 2001. And early projections show members of the Class of 2004 also may be in line for slightly higher starting salaries than last year’s graduates. Still, the job market remains highly competitive. Debbie Edwards, interim director, and the staff of Career Services at WSU track employer interest in new graduates in this region and provide advice to students seeking employment. Edwards can be reached 509.335.2547 or dedwards@wsu.edu.