LehighWeek Volume 13, Issue 28

              Philharmonic finale
Shostakovich Fifth,
Weber, Barber concertos,
on tap for April 29
See Page 3
Volume 13, Issue 28
LehighWeek
The campus digest for innovation, news and events
South Mountaineer
Stambaugh signs free agent
contract with Buffalo Bills
See page 8
April 19, 2000
LU ranks among
"most competitive"
in Barron's survey
Lehigh has climbed for the first
time into the "most competitive"
category in Barron's Profiles of
American Colleges. The
university's new rating will appear in the 24th edition of the
book, due out in June. Just over
50 out of 1,650 four-year colleges
and universities are ranked in
this top category.
"The Barron's rating is very
important as it confirms by objective standards that Lehigh is
one of America's most competitive universities," said Lorna
Hunter, dean of admissions and
financial aid. "Top students here
and abroad use this rating system as a guide to the top rank of
colleges and universities in
terms of admissions competitiveness, so being in this elite
group will create even more interest in applying to Lehigh."
Barron's editors say of the
"most competitive" category:
"Even superior students will encounter a great deal of competition for admission to the colleges
in this category."
Both Barron's and Hunter
noted that the rating system is
designed primarily for preliminary screening. "We have high
standards for class rank and test
scores, which are used along with
our acceptance rate in Barron's
system," said Hunter, "but
Lehigh considers many factors
in its admissions process, and
we read each application carefully."
Lehigh had nearly 9,500 applications for next year's class,
an increase of 7 percent over the
previous year.
Rarry, speaking at Tresolini Lecture,
lashes out at sovereign immunity
A doctrine established centuries
ago in England still causes problems in the U.S. legal system today, Donald D. Barry said last
week to an overflow audience in
Sinclair Auditorium at the Rocco
J. Tresolini Lecture.
Barry, distinguished professor
of political science at Lehigh, said
the notion of "sovereign immunity," the idea that the king (and
thus his bureaucrats) can do no
wrong has led to the U.S. government exempting itself from responsibility for harming individuals.
The title of Barry's talk was
"Power, Corruption and Law,".
The exercise of governmental
power in today's world often
clashes with individual rights,
Barry said, and the ones who
make the rules can exempt themselves from liability. How a doctrine such as this, originally connected with the English king,
came to be applied in the U.S.
has been called "one of the mysteries of legal evolution," he said.
Although the Federal Tort
Claims Act of 1946 limits sovereign immunity, there continue to
be those who are precluded from
suing the federal government.
There is "a kind of catch-all exemption from liability, the so-
called 'discretionary-function exception,'" Barry said. This includes actions taken when government agents use "discretion"
in decisions that result in individual injury and the courts say
that no suit for damages may be
filed, but do not clarify how extensive the "discretion" may be.
"Our federal government engages in a great deal of activity,
and some of it causes harm,"
Barry said. As examples, he cited
people who sued the government
Photo by John Kish IV
Prof. Donald Barry delivers the Tresolini Lecture.
for negligence that caused them
irreparable harm in nuclear testing. U.S. courts denied them the
right to have their cases decided
because of the "discretionary
function" exception. Others involved agent orange exposure and
Japanese-American internment,
which the late Rocco Tresolini,
former professor at Lehigh,
called "the most flagrant and
shocking denial of constitutional
rights in American history."
"Sovereign immunity has no
place in modern American jurisprudence," Barry said. "I condemn the use of this mischievous
doctrine to fight ideological
battles on the Court. Its use is
particularly deplorable when
employed to strike down individual rights that Congress, the
policy-making body, has provided.
"Sovereign • immunity...is
downright anti-democratic in
preventing plaintiffs from using
the courts as they could if suing
anybody but the government. If
immunity is granted to the government, one never gets the
chance to find out if the government did wrong or not. It is simply excused from being sued."
The Tresolini lectures invite
distinguished experts in law to
campus, and are sponsored by
the Class of 1961, and the
Tresolini Lecture Endowment.
- Kathy McAuley
Keep it clean
At the 16th annual
Community Interaction Day, coordinated
by Lehigh's Alpha Psi
Chapter of Alpha Phi
Omega, the national
service fraternity, students joined town residents to help spruce
up the South Side. The
event was sponsored
by a variety of local
businesses.
Photo Courtesy of CBE
CBE dean Richard Durand
(second from left) and MBA
program director Kathy
Trexler shake hands with
AACSB representatives after
the CBE's reaccreditation.
CBE reaccredited
Lehigh has achieved reaffirmation of accreditation of its
bachelor's, master's' and doctoral
programs in business by action
of the Board of Trustees of the
International Association of
Management Education (AACSB).
Lehigh is among 375 U.S. and
Canadian schools that have
achieved AACSB accreditation
for degree programs in business,
and is also among 142 accredited
in accounting. There are 13 accredited schools in Pennsylvania, and just one, Lehigh, in the
Lehigh Valley.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, about 1,200
U.S. institutions offer the undergraduate business degree and of
those, 700 also offer graduate
business programs.
"AACSB accreditation puts
Lehigh in elite company," said
Richard Durand, the Herbert
E. Ehlers dean of the College of
Business and Economics. "Accreditation is a voluntary process schools elect because they
want to continually improve.
Lehigh was one of the first universities to volunteer to undergo
this rigorous process in 1938.
"In 1997, AACSB informed us
that we had to implement some
changes to continue accreditation, and we've implemented
those changes and more. AACSB
reaccredited our programs for 10
years, which means they are confident that over the next decade
a Lehigh business degree will be
competitive with the best."
Durand said business school
deans from top schools and corporate representatives visited
Lehigh and evaluated a host of
quality standards relating to curriculum, faculty resources, admissions, degree requirements,
library and computer facilities,
financial resources and intellectual climate that all are linked
to the college's mission.
AACSB commended the
college's "communications competency program, freshman introduction to business course,
faculty planning and development process, executive fellows
program that brings minority
managers into classes to discuss
business topics, thoughtful use
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