Supreme Court Justice Scalia to Speak at UVM

The Honorable Justice Antonin Scalia will discuss “Constitutional Interpretation” Friday, Oct. 8, at 4:30 p.m. in Ira Allen Chapel on the University of Vermont campus. Scalia, an associate justice, is considered the Court’s leading proponent of originalism-the view that the meaning of a written constitution is, or should be, consistent with the meaning, as it was originally understood by those who drafted and/or ratified the constitution. “Our Constitution is not only what started this great nation,” Scalia has said, “but is what continues to make us one great nation. There is no other nation that can identify with those principles.” Scalia has served the federal government as general counsel of the Office of Telecommunications Policy, chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States and assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel. He was appointed judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1982. President Reagan nominated him as an associate justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat September 26, 1986. Scalia is the Court’s first Italian-American justice. Scalia attended Georgetown University, the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and Harvard Law School. Prior to entering government service, he was a professor of law at the University of Virginia and at the University of Chicago and a visiting professor of law at Georgetown and Stanford universities. He also served as chairman of the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and its Conference of Section Chairmen. Tickets are required to attend the free lecture. UVM affiliates may receive one ticket per UVM ID beginning Friday, Oct. 1, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. at the Patrick Gymnasium ticket office and from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Student Government Association in room B156, Billings. Tickets will not be available at the door. Security checks will be conducted prior to admission to the Chapel, and all bags may be subject to search. No backpacks, cameras, audio or video recording devices of any kind will be permitted inside.

Lintilhac Foundation Contributes $1 Million for UVM Scholarship Challenge

Students seeking financial assistance to attend the University of Vermont will be the beneficiaries of a $1 million challenge grant to UVM from Vermont’s Lintilhac Foundation. The gift will be used to grow the number of endowed scholarships at UVM by offering donors an incentive to give. UVM sets a minimum threshold of $100,000 to establish a named, endowed scholarship. The Lintilhac challenge offers to match fifty percent of scholarship gifts starting at $67,000, enabling those donors to meet the $100,000 threshold and sponsor a named and endowed scholarship. Crea and Philip Lintilhac of Shelburne, Vermont, are both graduates of the University of Vermont and made the gift in support of the university’s $250 million comprehensive campaign. “It is always easy to give to a pet project, but we want to do something that will help the university with its top priorities, and it is clear that student scholarships are the greatest area of need,” said Crea Lintilhac. “The challenge encourages donors who haven’t given at this level to stretch a bit and take advantage of a naming opportunity.” Philip Lintilhac has been a member of the UVM faculty since 1976, and he sees scholarship support as key to the university’s future. “Quite simply, broadening the base of scholarship assistance enables us to offer support to outstanding students who might otherwise go elsewhere,” he said. “We hope our gift will catalyze scholarship support from others, as well.” As of August 27, 2004, the university had raised $163,474,187 of its $250 million campaign goal, or 65 percent of the total. The goal for student scholarships is $105,000,000 of which $46,572,422, or 44 percent, has been achieved. The halfway point in the campaign timeline was reached on June 30, 2004.

Fogel Talks College at Colchester High

A grin spread across Dan Fogel’s face. Yet another question was coming the UVM president’s way. He extricated himself from the confining table he was stationed behind, strode to the front of the room, and launched into an animated explanation of what a good investment even UVM’s sticker price is, given that college degree holders, on average, earn a million dollars more over a lifetime than counterparts who don’t earn a four-year degree. Fogel added that UVM gives discounts to 70% of its native Vermonter entrants. The 250 or so seniors in the Colchester High School auditorium on Sept. 28 ate it up. The first 15 rows were rapt – or relatively so, for a gaggle of hormone-suffused teens. Even the backward baseball-hat crowd in the last two rows was reasonably attentive, with only a few students whispering to their neighbors Fogel, a Colchester resident, was sharing the limelight with Vermont state senator Dick Mazza at a special assembly on the topic of higher education the high school’s student government had arranged with UVM’s Office of Federal and State Relations. Student leaders went to the mat to make the event successful, soliciting 52 questions in 12 categories from juniors and seniors at the school. Mazza chimed in regularly with useful information, but the spotlight was on Fogel, who clearly relished the opportunity to speak directly to a roomful of prospects.

The UVM president was characteristically charismatic on subjects ranging from how things have changed since he was in college (fatter textbooks, transformations in technology, no Vietnam-induced desperation) to what an “odd duck” of a public university UVM is (near the top nationally in both tuition and financial-aid-per-student). Before heading to physics class, senior Lindsey McGarry said she thought the event was “very informative” and helped students understand what a university was like, “especially UVM.”