Total Clips: 14 Headline Date Outlet The Meter Is Still Running 04/06/2007 Wall Street Journal How to write a great application essay 04/03/2007 Post-Standard Making Math Fun 04/03/2007 Post-Standard - Oswego County Bureau, The Taxi!: A Social History of the New York City Cabdriver 04/01/2007 Library Journal Stepping into the light 04/01/2007 Post-Standard Colgate hockey players plays through disease 04/01/2007 News 10 Now Getting a break on taxes 03/30/2007 Post-Standard - East Bureau, The Campaner said he wanted to inspire other people 03/30/2007 Observer-Dispatch, The Colgate's Campaner has no plans to quit playing 03/30/2007 Associated Press (AP) - Syracuse Bureau Colgate University taps NetMRI, tweaks net performance - Network World 03/29/2007 Network World Library dazzles Colgate 03/27/2007 Post-Standard - East Bureau, The Protecting education from politicisation 03/26/2007 Daily Star, The (Bangladesh) The Changing College Library 03/26/2007 U.S. News & World Report A culture of corruption in Memphis 03/25/2007 Commercial Appeal The Meter Is Still Running 04/06/2007 Wall Street Journal Bordewich, Fergus M. Return to Top TAXI! A SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK CITY CABDRIVER By Graham Russell Gao Hodges (Johns Hopkins, 225 pages, $25) Back in the early 1970s, I drove a taxicab for several years while I was trying to figure out, not all that successfully, how to make a living as a writer. The hours were grueling -- typically 10- or 12-hour shifts -- and the work nerve-racking, in rattletrap vehicles with bad brakes, slippery transmissions and untuned engines that often conked out in heavy rain. But there were compensations: discovering some new corner of the city, cruising empty avenues in their stark nocturnal grandeur, encountering the unexpected -- on one occasion Richard Burton climbing into the back seat of my cab tipsily clutching an antique chair. The money was pretty good for a single guy with modest needs, and once I was on the road I felt that for the rest of the night I owned the streets of the greatest city in the world. For generations, New York cabbies occupied a peculiar place in American culture, part roughneck and part homegrown philosopher, simultaneously celebrated and despised by writers, filmmakers and ordinary taxi-riding New Yorkers. In "Taxi!," Graham Russell Gao Hodges journeys into this paradoxical world of the taximan, extricating him from the limbo of folklore and offering him up in his multiplicity of forms -- working stiff, Hollywood invention, perennial problem for organized labor -- as a template for the transformation of New York in the 20th century. "Taxi!" is not only lively and erudite social history, it is probably the best account of taximen that is ever to be written. Through most of the 20th century, the cabby served as an icon of the American urban working class, a cocky wiseguy who cruised the boundaries of class and respectability, flaunting his unsavory independence like the red flag on old-style taxi meters. Virtually from the start, New Yorkers "regarded the world of hacking as loose and lawless and recommended that aspiring young men learn to drive cabs as a lesson in how to gain life goals ruthlessly and without rules," writes Mr. Hodges, himself a former taxi driver who now teaches history at Colgate University. The first self-propelled cabs appeared on New York streets in 1897. They were battery-powered, requiring a long recharge every 25 miles. But they were popular, and for good reason: In the first decade of the 20th century, horses dropped more than a million pounds of manure a day on New York's streets. Inevitably, the internal combustion engine accelerated the shift away from horsedrawn carriages. By the 1920s, taximen had acquired a colorful reputation as key players in the nighttime world of illicit sex, booze and crime. Chaos often reigned in the streets as fare wars raged, and cabbies slugged it out with their fists for spots in the hack lines in front of popular hotels. Scare stories about their wild driving habits were commonplace. Frightened New Yorkers called them the "Yellow Peril," playing on the era's racist fear of Asian immigrants. Within a few years, however, cabbies were being lionized as colorful "characters" with an oracular knowledge of everything from politics to the human heart, a notion that seems to have taken root when wartime prosperity boosted income and temporarily elevated many drivers into the middle class. Mr. Hodges reminds us of a fairytale time when fleet drivers were required to wear jacket and tie and magnificent DeSoto taxis sported roll-top roofs that were convenient for drunks to rise through to make speeches to pedestrians as the cab flew past. The city then seemed like the center of the world, and in the art of the era the taxicab was often portrayed as a streaking emblem of a new age. For the New Yorker writer E.B. White, however, the taxi and its driver were metaphors for a city that was now changing in ways that he didn't quite like. "Taxis roll faster than they rolled ten years ago -- and they were rolling fast then," White wrote in the late 1940s. "Hack men used to drive with verve; now they sometimes seem to drive with desperation, toward the ultimate tip." Mr. Hodges is particularly good on the portrayal of taxi drivers in the movies. From Harold Lloyd's manic 1928 comedy "Speedy" to Martin Scorsese's dystopic 1976 drama "Taxi Driver," taximen were cast as adventurers attempting to penetrate the forbidden world of the elite by romancing one of their upper-class passengers. Occasionally they succeeded, like Dick Powell's operatic cabby in the 1935 film "Broadway Gondolier." Far more often they were kicked out of the Park Avenue boudoir and back onto the streets. Their good-natured smiles, though, suggested that they had learned their lesson and now knew -- along with other working-class mugs -- where they belonged. Despite low pay and the abuse by fleet owners, taxi drivers proved hard to organize. Labor activity reached a violent climax in the 1930s, when during strikes passengers were physically dragged out of taxis driven by scabs and cars were wrecked and burned in the streets by the scores. Repeated efforts by the Transport Workers, Teamsters and other national unions met with no more than temporary success until the mid-1960s. As often as not, collective action was thwarted by the cabbies' notorious independence. "Red Mike" Quill, a 1930s radical and head of the Transit Workers' Union, once observed: "We had a feeling they were not like us. They didn't understand the meaning of solidarity." Mr. Hodges devotes the final portion of his book to what might be called the Travis Bickle era, from the 1970s to the present. The sociopathic Bickle of Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" incarnates every paranoid driver that New York taxi riders have ever met, but he is also the last gasp of a certain white American working-class type. Bickle represents, Mr. Hodges says, "the angry, threatened white driver, who is aware that the older segregated world of hacking is declining, and that African Americans and immigrants are encroaching on his preserve." Since the 1970s, the once monolithic, fleet-dominated taxi industry has undergone a succession of upheavals, including the rise and fall of minifleets, the collapse of the drivers' union, a precipitous decline in the percentage of drivers who own their medallions and a dramatic ethnic transformation of the work force. In keeping with his scholarly approach, Mr. Hodges takes no firm position on most of these matters. His years as a driver, however, clearly lead his heart to sympathize with the quixotic desire of some Asian drivers -- no less than 38% of today's taximen are from the Indian subcontinent -- to resuscitate the industry's moribund labor movement. Contemporary passengers are far less likely to hear an Irish-American cabby swearing in Yiddish, as James Cagney memorably did in his 1932 film "Taxi," than they are to hear a recent immigrant from India or Pakistan schmoozing over his two-way radio about a chota (or short run) to LaGuardia, a badda (or long one) to JFK, or a fare asking to be taken to babba, the "old man," otherwise known as Lincoln Center. But in many ways the cabby remains the same overworked, underpaid working stiff he has always been. The cabby is fortunate, however, to have found his sociological poet laureate in Graham Hodges. In the taxi trade, we would have called this fascinating trip in his gregarious company "a great fare." How to write a great application essay 04/03/2007 Post-Standard Return to Top The Post-Standard asked Gary Ross, Colgate University's dean of admission, how students can write a great college essay. Here are excerpts of his responses: Q: What makes a standout college essay? When it really creates a word picture of the applicant or someone who is important to the applicant or an experience that has been important to the applicant. . . . These are all examples of where an applicant has an opportunity, even if he or she is not talking about themselves, to kind of jump off the page and grab us and say, "Here's who I am. Here's what I'm all about. Here's what is important to me." Q: What are common errors to avoid? Spell-check is fine in pointing out misspellings, but it doesn't point out if the word is spelled correctly but is still the wrong word. . . . Proofreading can prevent a lot of the common errors. Q: Are there topics to avoid? One shouldn't assume that just because they scored the winning points in an athletic contest, or they lost someone that was close to them . . . that that act alone is going to be sufficient to get them into the college of their choice. It's how they go about discussing that aspect and what it has meant to their life that is really so important. Tips -- Keep your focus narrow. -- Develop your main idea with specific facts, events, quotations, examples and reasons. -- Bring something new to the table, not what you think they want to hear. -- Don't include information already in your application. -- Proofread. Typos and spelling or grammatical errors can be interpreted as carelessness or bad writing. Source: College Board Making Math Fun 04/03/2007 Post-Standard - Oswego County Bureau, The Groom, Debbie Return to Top Giovanna Buccina loves math. The first-grader at Walberta Park Primary School in the Westhill district works on math each night at home with her dad, Vito. "I learn a lot," Giovanna said at a recent Family Math Night at her school. "He adds things up and then I count 'em." Math is one of those school subjects that often causes consternation for students. But those in the know say it doesn't have to be that way. There are tips that parents and adults can use to make math fun and interesting - even for youngsters. At the kindergarten through grade two Walberta Park, Principal Maureen Mulderig makes math enjoyable by putting on three Family Math Nights each year. Parents come to school and join with their children for a night of math. "We like to show them math can be a lot of fun," she said. "And I like to get parents involved with working with kids at home." Some math experts believe that the more parents and adults work with children on math, the more they will like it, understand it and not fear it. That, in turn, could lead to better scores on the state's standardized tests. Colgate University math professor Thomas Tucker said that for some reason, math isn't considered cool in the United States. "Society in general excuses difficulties with technical things like math and science," he said. "By doing this, you are giving somebody an out, telling them it's perfectly OK to hate math." In fact, he said if someone says they don't like math, "they will high five each other. Peer pressure is big. It's not cool to like math," he said. One of the most important things adults can do to get kids interested in math is to show that it is fun, that it is part of everyday life and that it's not difficult. Terry McSweeney, a math teacher at Driver Middle School in Marcellus, said it is imperative for parents to get involved with their children, even if it's with simple activities that most kids don't consider as math. She tries to get kids to see that math is a part of life, such as showing sports-minded youngsters that computing batting averages for baseball players is math. "You can give them math games, like Sudoku puzzles. Or show them math in cartoons - Far Side, Charlie Brown, Fox Trot, they're always doing math," McSweeney said. Parents shouldmake math a part of fun conversations, said Nancy Zarach, coordinator of science, math and technology for the Syracuse city schools. "'How many shoes are in the doorway?' or 'how many napkins do we need for the table?' are questions parents can ask youngsters in regular conversation at home," Zarach said. "Make it a natural part of their day." Tucker loves the idea of Family Math Night. "It shows the kids that parents still like math," he said. And McSweeney adds another no-no for parents. "The most important thing I tell them is don't ever say, 'I didn't do well in math,' " she said. "When parents say that, the kids think it is OK not to do well." Taxi!: A Social History of the New York City Cabdriver 04/01/2007 Library Journal Augustyn, Frederick J. Return to Top Hodges, Graham Russell Gao. Taxi!: A Social History of the New York City Cabdriver. Johns Hopkins . Apr. 2007. c.256p. illus. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-8018-8554-X [ISBN 978-0-8018-8554-9 ]. $25. HIST New York City cab drivers have been depicted as streetwise, loquacious, lonely, petty nocturnal criminals or accomplices, amateur psychologists or philosophers, and repositories of folk wisdom. In this social history of the icons-published to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the introduction of meter-equipped, gas-powered vehicles in the Big Apple-Hodges (history, Peking Univ., Colgate Univ.; Anna May Wong ) combines an academician's assiduous use of archival sources with the penchants of a popular culture enthusiast (and former cabbie). He studies drivers' relationships with the city government, employers and unions, customers, and other cabbies. Readers will learn about the succession from Irish, Jewish, and Italian to today's largely South Asian (especially Muslim) and Russian drivers; women cabbies during World War II; the vehicular transfer from Checkers to Crown Victorias; the class-ridden transition from owner-drivers to fleet (lease) drivers; and the evolution of "gypsy," or nonmedallion (without permit), cars. He utilizes cabbie interviews, articles from New York newspapers, hackers' memoirs that began appearing in the 1920s, and doctoral dissertations on hacking (indicating the academy's interest in this topic); he credits Biju Mathew's Taxi! . Hodges's story will be a pleasure for both scholarly and general interest readers. Highly recommended.-Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Library of Congress Stepping into the light 04/01/2007 Post-Standard Kramer, Lindsay Return to Top Colgate University defenseman Mike Campaner hates needles, which makes jamming one into his thigh or stomach every morning such a rotten way to start the day. He knows he should just clench up and push it in, but he can't help but tap, poke, prick, and then finally, inject. "Once you get near the skin, it's tough to put it in. There's a hesitancy," he said. "Then you get the (guts), and go, boom." At that point his daily dose of Copaxone leaves the syringe and courses through his body, bolstering Campaner's defense against multiple sclerosis. Campaner, a senior, was diagnosed with the disease in November but, after a brief period of treatment, completed his last season of hockey with the Raiders this winter. Campaner, 24, lived with the secret for several months, telling only his teammates and family. Earlier this week, he decided to publicly discuss his challenge in an effort to raise awareness and set another example for others that, like him, those with the illness can still do just about anything. Including admit to their fears with the hope that a torrent of information and support can dilute them. "Oh, the first three months I was scared. I thought I'd never be athletic again," Campaner said. "I didn't believe I was going to be normal. The big question was, Why me? Why me?" It turns out that Campaner had them all fooled. On Nov. 15, Colgate team physician Dr. Merrill Miller sat him down in her office in the student health center and said that all indications and tests pointed to him having MS. The disease, which has no cure, is a disorder in which the body's immune system incorrectly attacks its own healthy myelin tissue. Myelin is the protective covering surrounding the nerve fibers of the brain and spinal cord. Its destruction can lead to interference with the transmission of nerve signals, potentially causing blurred vision, poor coordination, slurred speech, numbness and fatigue. Miller said Campaner was stoic at the news. But here's what Campaner was really thinking: My father knows someone with MS, and that person is in a wheelchair. That's my fate, too. "I was like, 'Oh, I'm going to be in a wheelchair,' " he said. Time, personal research and medicine have calmed Campaner, who said he feels fine. Miller said the disease is in remission and in his current condition there is no activity off-limits. But Campaner, understandably, can't shake the temporary betrayal by his body. During the first weekend of the school year, Campaner started to feel some numbness in his arms and legs. But he kept pushing on, going through hockey practice and starting the season. On Nov. 10, in a game against Dartmouth, Campaner tried to hit a player but his opponent just bounced off him and scored. Raiders coach Don Vaughan couldn't believe what he was seeing. That simply wasn't like Campaner, who was one of his most reliable defensemen. Campaner pulled himself from the game and away from the team. "I knew something was wrong. I knew right away, I'm not playing anymore," he said. The team was initially told that Campaner was suffering from a leg problem stemming from a lower back ailment. When specialists confirmed the real problem, Vaughan and Campaner gathered the players on Nov. 27 and broke the true story. "Not a lot of guys in the room knew exactly what it meant," Vaughan said. "I wanted to deliver the news as honestly as I could. But I also wanted to give Mike and the team hope he would be back." The players were instructed that this was a secret that had to remain within the room. "I just didn't want to be a distraction. I hate when people feel sorry for me," Campaner said. Campaner took several weeks off from hockey to start his treatments and recover from debilitating fatigue and weakness. After missing nine contests he returned Dec. 29 against Northeastern. Vaughan told him that any practice drill that was too tiring, he could skip. Campaner didn't beg off one. Vaughan checked with Campaner after every pregame warmup, making sure he could go. Campaner said yes every time, not missing a single game after his return because of the illness. "Never once did he want his teammates to look at him and think he was going to back down," Vaughan said. Coming back and playing at full speed, though, were two entirely different things. Campaner was limited to seven points this season after contributing 20 as a junior. The energy that MS had drained from his body, although slowly coming back, was still below elite athlete level. "I just kept on fighting it," Campaner said. "When I first got back, it was an extreme struggle. I would be out there for 20 seconds, and my legs would seize up. I knew I had to play smart, take 20-second shifts." Miller said Copaxone strengthens Campaner's immune system, and the plan is to keep him on it for the foreseeable future. She said his earlier symptoms may not return for years, if at all. As such, Campaner has the go-ahead to live life the way he wants, a plan that includes pursuing a free-agent contract in pro hockey next season. "Is there some element of fear? I think for him it's not so much fear as wondering about the future," Miller said. "But there's no reason for him not to be optimistic." Campaner has basis for that outlook in the person of Providence Bruins goalie Jordan Sigalet. Sigalet was diagnosed with MS during his college days at Bowling Green but has controlled it and is in his second year as an AHL goalie. Campaner has tried to get ahold of Sigalet, but so far the two have been trading phone messages. "The biggest thing I learned right away is how important your attitude is," Sigalet said. "I was 23 at the time (of the diagnosis). You feel invincible. All of a sudden this is thrown in your face. You're in denial. I find I still live a pretty normal life. It's not a death sentence. I think he'll feel a lot better when he goes out there and talks about it." Campaner is counting on that. Colgate is working on plans for a fundraiser in his honor, and he said he'll gladly partake in any public education efforts. "It's part of the deal. I've come to terms with it," he said. "I don't even think about it any more. The only time I think about it is when I take my needle, inject myself. It leaves small welts on my body. As long as I don't have what I went through in November and December, I'll never say, 'Why me?' anymore. I'm glad to be able to move now again." Colgate hockey players plays through disease 04/01/2007 News 10 Now McCann, Jim Return to Top Mike Campaner finished his career at Colgate as one of the most talented defensemen in school history. But, he never would've thought he'd be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in his senior year. Campaner said, "It was the biggest shock of my life. I didn't know what to do, what steps to take right from there." Campaner was officially diagnosed in December, and he said he started feeling symptoms during the first tournament of the season. Campaner said, "I thought it was something like I got hit. I always had back problems, so I thought it was maybe disc problems. And, I always was trying to think of some excuse like I didn't come to grips that it could've been that." In mid-November, Campaner finally decided to pull himself off the ice. Colgate team physician Dr. Merrill Miller said, "He went to the trainer and the coach, and he said I just don't feel right, I just don't feel strong. And, I saw him that evening, and that's when we started doing some tests, and by the end of the week, we had an idea that he had multiple sclerosis." After hearing this devastating news, Campaner decided not to go public with it, which is something his coach says speaks volumes about his character. Colgate Head Coach Don Vaughan said, "His first thought was about his teammates. He didn't want to bring this distraction into the locker and have the focus shift to him and his illness and away from what, at that point, was the most important thing, and that was us and us trying to string a few wins together." Now, he wants to get the word out about this disease. "My main goal is to help people that would be diagnosed with the disease in the future to give them hope like you're allowed to. You can live a normal life and succeed in your goals in life," said Campaner. After graduating this spring, Campaner plans to play professional hockey. Campaner missed only one game after the diagnosis and helped the Red Raiders to an ECAC playoff victory. Getting a break on taxes 03/30/2007 Post-Standard - East Bureau, The Potrikus, Alaina Return to Top Colgate senior Elizabeth Noyes filed her own tax returns for the first time this year. It wasn't a hard task for the 22-year-old Chicago native, who has filed nearly 40 returns this year for low-income families in Madison County through a volunteer program run by Colgate University, Community Action Partnership and other local social service agencies. Noyes isn't studying to be an accountant. She plans to go into consulting after she completes her degree in economics and philosophy. She said she joined the college's corps of volunteer tax preparers because she wanted to make a difference for working families. "I like giving them a service that they couldn't get anywhere else for free," Noyes said. Using training and tools provided by the Internal Revenue Service, Noyes guides eligible families through the tax process, educating them on what tax breaks they might be eligible for and electronically filing their returns with the IRS with a few keyboard strokes on a laptop computer. That sort of service could cost anywhere from $75 to $300 at a professional tax company, Noyes said. "That's a big deal when you're making $8 an hour," she said. But it's not the numbers that keep her motivated. She spoke of preparing tax forms for a family of six living on a combined income of $35,000; of a man out of work on disability who was going to use his refund check to pay bills and buy his children new outfits for school; of a young husband and wife trying to make a better life for their infant. "Money is a personal issue, and they're laying it all out on the table," Noyes said. "When you go to college, you kind of feel like you're in a bubble," she continued. "But with this, I've been exposed to so many people from so many walks of life." In 2006, the program helped more than 450 families, who received an average refund of $2,500 per household. The 35 Colgate students also work with community volunteers, who say they are proud to work alongside the enthusiastic young adults. "What's great is that the students that are involved are doing it because it's something they want to do," said Chuck Macaulay, a CAP volunteer from Cazenovia who worked at H&R Block for nearly a decade. The students "come from all different backgrounds, and they're interacting with the rural poor of Upstate New York. "It's great experience for them," he said. Campaner said he wanted to inspire other people 03/30/2007 Observer-Dispatch, The Muder, Craig Return to Top Mike Campaner defined toughness on the ice as a Colgate University hockey player. But he didn't know how tough he was until his opponent became multiple sclerosis. "I was in extreme fear when I first learned I had the disease," said the senior from Thunder Bay, Ontario. "I was questioning whether I'd be in a wheelchair. I was devastated." No one – outside of a few insiders in the Colgate program – knew of Campaner's condition. He missed only 10 games this season, and returned after the diagnosis to help the Raiders win an ECAC playoff series. Campaner went public with his condition Thursday. The stoic 24-year-old, never one to seek publicity, felt he owed it to the 400,000 Americans with MS – and those who will be diagnosed in the future. "You have a choice," Campaner said. "You can sit there and complain all the time or go out, fight the disease, be active and live a normal life." Campaner's journey began in October with a chronic back problem. The injury was slow to heal, and then Campaner began to experience numbness and weakness in his limbs. On Nov. 10 against Dartmouth, Campaner could stand it no more. "I can remember the moment," Colgate head coach Don Vaughan said. "A Dartmouth player just went by him, something that would not normally happen, and went right to the net. I went down the bench and talked to my assistant coach Andrew Dickson. Andrew said Mike came off and said he felt really funny." "At that point, I had an instinct that it might be something more than this." Vaughan's instincts proved correct. Campaner, who had earned regular minutes at Colgate since his freshman year because of his speed and savvy on the ice, also knew something was terribly wrong. "His physical exams were fully normal," said Dr. Merrill Miller, Colgate's director of student health services. "But when an elite athlete like Mike says he has symptoms, I believe him." A battery of tests showed Campaner has MS, a chronic, incurable disease that attacks a protein called myelin that helps the conduction of nerve impulses. But the disease is not fatal, and with medication patients can go for months or years without symptoms. By the end of December, Campaner was back on the ice and taking his regular shifts for the Raiders. He finished the season with seven assists in 30 games – and an overall performance so steady that no one suspected his condition. "I let my teammates know in December, but I didn't want them to feel sorry for me," said Campaner, who helped the Raiders win 20-plus games in each of his first three seasons. "The guys in my class actually found out before my parents. The toughest thing in my life was to tell my parents." Now, Campaner is telling everyone – including prospective employers. He will graduate in May with a degree in economics, but before entering the traditional workforce Campaner plans to try his hand at professional hockey – a move not without precedent for MS patients. Goalie Jordan Sigalet of the American Hockey League's Providence Bruins has MS, as does NASCAR driver Kelly Sutton and actress Annette Funicello, a former Utican. "I have a lot of determination to prove myself again," Campaner said. "I'm going to work harder than I ever have this summer." But whatever his impact on pro hockey, Campaner has left a lasting legacy as a collegian. "He'll always be remembered as one of the best defensemen we've had since I've been here," said Vaughan, who has been Colgate's coach for 14 seasons. "He could skate as well as anyone I've had back there. "But from this point on, he'll be remembered for how courageous he was. He really has inspired us all in the program." Colgate's Campaner has no plans to quit playing 03/30/2007 Associated Press (AP) - Syracuse Bureau Kekis, John Return to Top Mike Campaner, a senior defenseman on the Colgate University hockey team, revealed Thursday that he suffers from multiple sclerosis but has no plans to quit playing the game. "I feel great and am back to normal health," said Campaner, 24. "I want to tell my story because I want to give hope to others who are diagnosed with MS -- that they will be able to live a normal life and accomplish any goals that they set for themselves." Campaner was diagnosed in November after pulling himself out of a game against Dartmouth. "I was devastated," Campaner said. "I knew it was a crippling disease. Most people end up in a wheelchair. I didn't know what to do." MS is an unpredictable disease with no known cure that causes the body's immune system to attack nerve tissue. Scar tissue forms on the nerves, scrambling impulses that control muscles. It can leave people tired and numb, with poor coordination, blurred vision and loss of muscle control. Some have one attack and never experience another, or go years before a second. Others end up becoming more disabled. Campaner underwent a series of tests and missed nine games while his condition was being evaluated. He is managing his condition through medication and currently is in remission. "I can't begin to tell you how impressed I have been with how he has handled this situation," coach Don Vaughan said. "The first few days after he was diagnosed were frightening times for all of us." An ECAC all-rookie team selection in 2004, Campaner finished his collegiate career as one of the most talented defensemen in Colgate history. He scored a career-high 20 points as a junior and completed his career with 62 points in 137 games. Although he's an undrafted free agent, Campaner plans to pursue a professional career in hockey after graduation. And he has a source of inspiration in Jordan Sigalet of the American Hockey League's Providence Bruins. Sigalet, a former star at Bowling Green, also has multiple sclerosis. He once couldn't feel how hard he was gripping his stick or squeezing his glove and couldn't even tie the laces on his shoes. Colgate is planning a fundraiser in honor of Campaner to benefit Multiple Sclerosis Resources of Central New York, Inc. Colgate University taps NetMRI, tweaks net performance - Network World 03/29/2007 Network World Dubie, Denise Return to Top For many IT managers, money -- or the lack thereof -- outweighs the need for technology to make their networks run smoothly. For Jubel Caudill, senior network and systems administrator at Colgate University, finding a product that made network optimization easier but didn't strain his budget seemed unlikely. "Most products are expensive these days and we have to be very judicial with what we do with our money," Caudill says. Caudill oversees some 300 closet switches and 100 servers at Colgate's Hamilton, N.Y., and other campus locations, and says tweaking network configurations before performance problems happen prevents the faculty, staff and students from experiencing problems with the network. "I am always on the lookout for the product that would make my life easier." Last spring while browsing the floors of the Interop conference in Las Vegas Caudill happened upon what he thought could be such a product. Caudill visited Netcordia's booth and become intrigued with the vendors flagship NetMRI appliances. He says the features exceeded the product fee; NetMRI comes in various models, starting with the NetMRI campus model for up to 200 routers and switches for about $25,000. "[NetMRI] took a different approach to monitoring than I had seen in the past. It provides more analysis and is constantly chewing on the data out there in your network. The way it presents the data really caught my eye," Caudill says. "With NetMRI, you can be as anal as you want to be when it comes to working on your network. You can fine-tune and tweak to your heart's desire." The premise behind Netcordia's product is the medical MRI exam, except on your network. NetMRI installs on a switch port or router interface and identifies network devices and the ports, or interfaces, being used to route traffic across the network. Network managers input blocks of IP addresses for the appliance to scan, and NetMRI begins collecting data such as CPU utilization, routing table information, VLAN activities, MAC addresses, port connections and much more. "When you first install it, it finds basic rules you are breaking in terms of networking best practices," Caudill says. "It will show you communications between modes and the main switches and trunk ports. Yon can really dig into it and start addressing these issues." Caudill installed one NetMRI E-400 appliance on the main campus and says it handles the entire network. Now in the process of upgrading to Version 2.0, Caudill reports he is now taking advantage of the tool to learn how his network should be tweaked for optimal performance. NetMRI's "scorecard" feature helps him to quickly understand how his network is doing day-to-day and to prioritize the issues that need immediate attention. "I check it every morning and depending on what it tells me, I know what I need to work on," Caudill says. For instance, the NetMRI scorecard for a switch dropped significantly and Caudill was able to discover the wrong script was being used on some of the switches so several trunk ports weren't configured correctly. "Most of what it tells me is not stuff that can take the network down in an instant, but information that can really go a long way toward improving performance. Library dazzles Colgate 03/27/2007 Post-Standard - East Bureau, The Kollali, Sapna Return to Top After more than 18 months of using a temporary library and makeshift study spaces across campus, Colgate University students have a newly renovated library. The Case Library and Geyer Center for Information Technology opened to the public when students returned from spring break last week, although parts of the building are still under construction. University Librarian Joanne Schneider said the fully remodeled library will be open in the fall, and a celebration is planned for October. "We couldn't stand another year of seniors saying to us, 'When can we get in there? When can we see it?' " Schneider said. "At least this way, they can see most of it, even if they can't use all of it. They have access to a lot more books, computers, study spaces." Colgate has been planning the $57.5 million renovation project for more than five years, said David Gregory, chief information technology officer. For the past three semesters, students have been working in the temporary Case Library at JCC, housed in James C. Colgate Hall - home to the student union, the radio station and the Hall of Presidents. The college had planned to preliminarily open the library in December, Schneider said, but the Asian tsunami in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused delays in receiving building materials. The renovation overhauled the campus's information, technology and reference structure and materials. For the first time in Colgate's history, the library and information technology departments are in the same building, Gregory said. The reference, circulation and information desks are all now easily accessible from the main library hallway, and a grand central staircase has been added, Schneider said. "The day we opened, it was fun to watch students walk in here, and their jaws just dropped at how dramatically different it looks," Gregory said. "They were trying out all the seats and the computers." He said the temporary library had about one-quarter of the space of the old Case Library. The new Case-Geyer center is about 50 percent larger than the old Case Library. A major changeover will occur this summer, Gregory said, when the university's network servers will be moved from their current locations across campus to the library's first-floor IT hub. That will take the campus offline for two days, he said. "The whole university will go dark," he said. "We're not used to being without our Internet and computer anymore, but I think we'll be fine." When the fifth floor is completed this summer, more than one-third of the student body will be able to study in the library at once, Schneider said. The library will have 917 seats, 144 computer stations and 11 group study rooms. The library also boasts Colgate's first audio and video production studios for student classroom projects, which are separate from the campus radio and TV stations, Gregory said. In September, the library plans to open a Starbucks cafe on the fifth floor, Schneider said, something students are eager to see. Sophomore Matt Ordon said the change in space and appearance is "incomparable." "It's amazing. It was so cramped (at JCC)," he said. "It's really well-organized here. Everything is really easy to use." Among the library's new prized possessions is LASR - Library Automated Storage and Retrieval - a high-tech, space-saving book storehouse. A computerized machine linked to the library's card catalog determines where in the three-story, 85-foot-deep warehouse a requested book is located, and a mechanical crane retrieves it. Schneider said about 462,000 volumes are currently in the LASR system, which is at about 85 percent capacity. Some of the highest-use books will return to the library stacks for old-fashioned browsing this summer. The low-use collections - about 6 percent of the library's inventory, currently in storage and unavailable - will then be put into LASR, she said. The fourth floor even includes a LASR viewing area to see the retrieval process. "This gives us so much more storage space, and it's really quite efficient at finding volumes," Schneider said. "And it's really fun to watch." Protecting education from politicisation 03/26/2007 Daily Star, The (Bangladesh) Return to Top The political impasse that we witnessed with the exit of the last government was perhaps inevitable. Political parties have been turned into family properties; the misdeeds and power lust of these camps are perhaps not very surprising, given the fact that neither of them practiced even the minimum forms of democracy within their own party structures. What is appalling is that it appears that most political leaders have entered into a 'race to the bottom'- the bottom being an irreversible doomed future for Bangladesh. Conventional political wisdom holds that for any government to function smoothly, the machineries of the state, namely the legislative, executive and judicial branches, must be adequately competent as well as be granted sufficient autonomy within constitutional bounds. Not only does this allow any administration to operate according to the needs of the general people, but also inherently creates a check and balance mechanism, which in turn ensures sustainability of the system. Case in point or rather case in point of failure of this setup is Bangladesh. The parliament was made ineffective due to the mindless decisions of our parties; both parties have shown utmost disregard for the major channel of dialogue in our political system by either domineering the parliament or boycotting it, depending on their side of the house they happened to be. The parliamentary committees were mostly dysfunctional. The executive branch, namely the Prime Minister's Office and the ministries, have been busy politicizing the office they were in charge of. Perhaps this is not surprising either, given the fact that most of our ministers lacked operational knowledge and expertise to upkeep their portfolios and instead resorted to appointing officials who would be just glad to act as aide in ensuring the ministers' personal gains. Thus professionalism and work ethics in the civil administration for the most part took a blow. A national crisis, such as the failing electricity system, was turned into an opportunity to enter shady deals at the cost of the suffering of the people. Why didn't anyone question? Perhaps this in itself is an absurd question - a faltering legislative and executive branch can never manage to check each other or ensure any accountability. Equally frivolous is the way that the governments acted in dealing with the separation the judiciary. It was evident that our politicians did not want let go of their control of legal proceedings either, lest a channel for civil accountability opens up. A close look at any successful democracies would show that a democratic political system is a two way arrangement. While we, the citizens, are active in being critical of our political leadership, it appears that the citizenry lacks general political consciousness that is so crucial in creating a strong democracy. A flourishing system arises not when leaders, by chance, formulate effective policies, but when informed citizens select the right representatives, judging on their expertise and education and in turn is awarded by competent decisions. And this consciousness has to be present in all citizens, in varying extent, to make a democracy work. Education thus becomes quintessential. By no means is the state of our educational setup satisfactory or geared to meet the needs of the nation. More importantly, it is not competent enough to deliver individuals a sense of political astuteness. While it can be argued that the dismal state of education is one of the many products of the failed governments that have been in office, it is also important to realise that the potential presence of a strong educational setup would have averted such political impasses. A fundamental pillar of the Platonic civil system, designed in ancient Athens, was the creation and preservation of elementary education which would induce civic virtues. In one of the most influential political works of all times, Plato quotes Socrates in the Republic, stating that a political society must 'ensure and preserve (the effectual education and upbringing of citizens) and see that it isn't corrupted…..guarding it against everything'. Any decisive solution to our present political crises must be to include vital reforms to our educational system, if we are to guarantee a new generation of Bangladeshis who truly believe and work towards a democratic society. The educational system must be effectively protected from politicization, namely that objective truth about our liberation struggle and birth as a nation must be presented to our students. Altering details on our war for independence every five years serves no purpose other that creating disillusion amongst the generation of Bangladeshis who will take charge of the nation tomorrow. On a more fundamental level, the nature of our educational system both in the public and private institutions at all levels must be examined carefully. A simple reason why Western democracies have been successful so far is because their schools have embedded analytical thinking and rationality in the education of the youth. We ought to do the same. Our curriculum must be revised so as to ensure quality of learning and not quantity of pointless information which does little for intellectual enrichment. We have to create an entire upheaval in our culture of education. Courses, which push students to think, critically analyze and design solutions on issues ranging from arsenic problems in drinking water to inept local governments, must be inducted. A balanced education built on where interdisciplinary involvement and research must be encouraged- the social sciences must meet the natural ones, foreign languages must meet our love for Bangla and learning must reach beyond the four walls of our drab classrooms. At the tertiary level, both private and public institutions, must initiate strong research gradually and involve students in organizations ranging from public policy think tanks to the Atomic Energy Commission. It is this strong education, based on analytical skills and rational which will create citizens- who in turn will foster a transparent and democratic political system by exercising civil rights and constructive criticisms. The passion to learn, think and create meaningful changes can only be delivered by a modern and effective educational system. Clean politics and beyond, are all achievable for Bangladesh if this magical wand is waved once. The author, Safwan Shaba, is an undergraduate at Colgate University, Hamilton. The Changing College Library 03/26/2007 U.S. News & World Report Green, Elizabeth Return to Top Books are still books, but the 21st century has brought other changes to college libraries. The 24/7 news cycle is one. Many college libraries, including most recently the library at American University, says the Eagle, are opening their doors all day and all night, even on weekends. Starbucks is another change. "Academic libraries are finally facing the reality that most students prefer to read, focus on, and contemplate ideas over food and drink," Colgate's university librarian tells the Maroon News. "Cafes provide a pleasant social space with food to encourage such exchanges." A culture of corruption in Memphis 03/25/2007 Commercial Appeal Return to Top As a young City Councilman, Rickey Peete took money under the table -- literally -- at a Midtown Shoney's restaurant. That $1,000 bribe for a zoning vote cost Peete two years in federal prison, but not his political livelihood. He stepped out of custody and back into power in 1994, the slate wiped clean by a forgiving North Memphis electorate. By 2000, he was back atop the council's zoning committee and, according to new allegations, open for business. Peete, a stocky, bald man with a wide smile and an electric personality, doesn't entertain questions about his past. But approached repeatedly, he finally relents last fall. "I think it speaks volumes for a community," he tells The Commercial Appeal begrudgingly. "The Bible speaks to everyone being able to be forgiven for a mistake that they made. OK?" At the time, Peete is unaware FBI agents are filming a sequel on his life in politics. Within weeks, a grainy undercover surveillance tape made by a trusted friend-turned-government-informant is used to indict the councilman -- again -- this time the alleged cash payoff left on the back of a toilet. Working now to raise $100,000 for a promised, spirited defense, Councilman Peete -- derided as Rickey 'Re-Peete' -- is hardly alone in his legal misery. Memphis is in the midst of such an epidemic of scandal that it rivals other historical hotbeds of public corruption, notably Washington, New Orleans and Philadelphia, for the dubious crown as the nation's most venal city. In the last decade, only the nation's capital has ranked in the top 10 of per capita public corruption prosecutions more often than Memphis, according to an examination by The Commercial Appeal. Since 2000, no fewer than 66 lawmakers, judges, councilmen, police officers, jailers and other public employees have been arrested, convicted or otherwise implicated in corruption schemes. And the investigations, the government stings, keep coming. Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton recently told supporters to expect more indictments of police officers. And the FBI, so swamped that it's borrowed at least one agent from another jurisdiction, is exploring a potential new vein of corruption at city-owned Memphis Light, Gas and Water. • • An emphasis on corruption by President Bush's Justice Department has triggered an upsurge in the prosecution of local officials all over the country. Yet, the feds have found especially fertile ground in Memphis where corruption schemes are uncoiling like so many dime-store novels. One employee steals so much seized cash from MPD's property room that federal agents find it stuffed in trash bags and molding in his attic. Former state senator John Ford, arguably Memphis' most powerful lawmaker, is arrested in a Nashville hotel elevator and stripped of a $45,000 diamond-studded Rolex -- an alleged payoff for influence peddling. At a court hearing the next day, he is seen on a surveillance tape stuffing cash into a suit pocket and bragging, "I'm the guy that gets the deals." A county commissioner whose family name is synonymous nationally with civil rights is caught on tape in the bathroom of a dingy Downtown bar pocketing bribes and bragging that he, too, has power to steer government contracts. A veteran police officer, the son of a popular TV news anchor, goes to prison for transporting drugs and hookers across state lines -- one of 23 officers indicted since 2004. "You're rivaling New Orleans now," said Dartmouth professor Richard F. Winters, a student of corruption. "When you started talking about Memphis police, I'm saying to myself, 'Did this guy say he was from Memphis or New Orleans?'" • • Few places are as identified with corruption in America as is Louisiana. Former four-term governor Edwin W. Edwards, 79, is in the middle of a 10-year federal prison sentence. Three of the state's most recent insurance commissioners have gone to prison, as have more than 50 New Orleans police officers over the past decade, and countless judges and politicians through the years. "Public corruption in Louisiana has been described to me as epidemic, endemic and entrenched. No branch of government is exempt," Louis Reigel, special agent in charge of the FBI's Louisiana operations, said in 2004 when considering opening a third anti-corruption unit there. Yet in 2005, federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Louisiana -- with its home base in New Orleans -- recorded only four more public corruption convictions than the 22 logged in the Western District of Tennessee, which includes Memphis. The same was true in Philadelphia, where mob payoffs to politicians are legendary and where kickbacks on city contracts led the FBI in 2003 to plant a listening device in Mayor John Street's office and bring indictments against a dozen officials. Department of Justice reports show the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, with a much greater population than West Tennessee, also recorded 26 official corruption convictions in 2005 -- just four more than the Memphis region. Overall, only 14 of the nation's 95 federal judicial districts had more public corruption convictions, according to the newspaper's examination. But in pound-for-pound comparisons, few outrank Memphis. The Memphis district has ranked in the top 10 in per capita corruption convictions for seven of the last 10 years. Only the District of Columbia, the gathering place for politicians from around the U.S., has been in the top ten more often. "We have really sunk to a sorry state," said Joe Saino, a Memphis activist who advocates more transparency in government as a way to fight corruption. "The quality of people we have is really bad." Part of the increase reflects a renewed focus on corruption by federal crime fighters. Nationwide, corruption charges against local officials have increased 40 percent over the past 10 years. Encouraged by the successes of high-profile convictions such as those of former California Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Illinois Gov. George Ryan, the feds are taking closer looks at America's cities and counties, arresting local officials in record numbers. "Public corruption is just as important at the local level as the national level," said Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra. "These high-profile cases tend to raise the bar a little bit." • • Two weeks from his federal bribery trial, public attention is focused on the recalcitrant Ford. The publicity is nothing new. He's dominated headlines for years, leading police in a car chase, pointing a shotgun at utility workers, standing trial (and winning acquittal) for allegedly shooting at a trucker, and living in two homes at the same time with two women and their children. All while sitting on three powerful Senate committees and winning respect as one of Capitol Hill's toughest and most effective legislators and earning as much as $356,000 a year as a consultant. But another larger than life political figure is credited with shaping the culture of Memphis politics. For nearly 40 years, E. H. 'Boss' Crump controlled Memphis politics, rigging elections, hand-picking elected officeholders, and enriching himself through connections to local government. While several books have been written about Crump, none provides a raw glimpse of the man and his motives available of Ford and many others via FBI surveillance tapes. This rare, unfiltered look into the backroom of modern Memphis politics dramatically portrays a coarse culture of greed and entitlement. "I need to get in the big leagues, man," former state senator Roscoe Dixon tells an undercover agent. "Legislators, we don't make no money, man." Dixon's convicted bagman, Barry Myers, appears on a number of the tapes as the foul-mouthed hustler who might appear in a Craig Brewer flick about Memphis street life. "You got to operate under the (expletive) curtain," Myers tells an undercover agent on one tape, bragging on another that local businessmen and politicians trust him to deliver "suitcases of money." He refers to elected officeholders as "the big juice," and of Dixon, with whom he shares a father-son relationship, he says, "I'm his boy. I'm his bagman." What surprised Meyer's lawyer most about the tapes wasn't their fly-on-the-wall candor, the admissions, the filthy language or the stacks of cash lying around. "What surprised me was that if a public official was going to commit a crime and compromise his morals that he would do so for such a small amount of money," said attorney Leslie Ballin. "That shocked me the most." Dixon was convicted of taking $9,500 in bribes -- and some of that he shared with others. • • Political scientists, ex-prosecutors, even politicians themselves, cite a Hobson's choice of possible causes of the city's level of corruption, from voter apathy to a poorly educated citizenry. But most often, the question can be answered with an economic equation. Many of those ensnared in the stings simply couldn't afford their lifestyles on a government salary. "This is the way things have always been done here going back to the time of Crump. That's the bad part," observed County Commissioner Sidney Chism, 67, who for decades has had a front-row seat to local politics as a labor leader and Democratic Party activist. "If you go through all of them, every one of them that got in trouble, it's because they desired to be somewhere in life that economically they shouldn't have." In Memphis, the federal crackdown has come through a series of sting operations that have nabbed cops, jailers and elected officeholders, all willing to risk their careers and liberty for a little green -- some for as little $1,000. One who allegedly took the bait last fall was Ford's brother, Edmund, the cash-strapped Memphis city councilman who had been living on the edge -- yet in luxury -- for years. Despite three bankruptcies and habitual delinquency in paying his utility bills, Ford drives a $50,000 Cadillac -- the lease co-signed by a prominent developer who often appeared before the council. Ford filed two bankruptcies 10 months apart in 1998 in a bid to jettison debt owed the IRS, BellSouth, two hospitals, two banks and his soon-to-be employer, the City of Memphis. Both cases were tossed out for failing to honor repayment plans. Four months later, Ford filed again, only to be shown the door again for nonpayment. Arrested last fall after allegedly taking $8,900 cash from an informant in the FBI's "Main Street Sweeper" sting, Ford asserted the alleged bribes were loans, saying the only thing he's guilty of is having friends kind enough to extend him credit. "I do have a right to have friends," he said. That mindset is something Chism said he's seen exhibited time and again by part-time elected officials who aren't "economically independent" of government and see it as an opportunity to advance their station in life. "The way you make it is to get in politics, cut deals," Chism said. "And even if you didn't get rich, you looked like it, and you were perceived as having a whole lot of power, a lot of influence." No one is more associated with that model than Peete. Peete used smarts and savvy to work his way out of poverty and up the political ladder, learning along the way there was money to be made in public service. Hustling on the periphery of government, he became a consultant, leveraging his standing as an elected official to command fees from candidates for Election Day endorsements and for advising businesses on how to navigate government red tape. Despite a 1989 bribery conviction, he was re-elected after serving his prison sentence. "In the African-American community, because of our history as a people of struggle, of discrimination and trials and tribulations, there is a strong motivation to be supportive of someone who is strong enough to get up off the mat once they've been knocked down," Peete said. Upon re-election, Peete positioned himself as chairman of the council's zoning committee, won appointment to key development boards and found a job as executive director of the Beale Street Merchant's Association. He assembled a personal fleet of fancy cars, a new home and a condo near the horse track in Hot Springs, Ark. "My life serves as a model for a lot of people," Peete said last fall. Then came "Main Street Sweeper." Similarly, Darrell Catron, a top administrator in the Juvenile Court Clerk's office in 2000, had grown up poor in Orange Mound and saw government as a financial opportunity. Less than three years after he started, Catron pleaded guilty to embezzling funds with a county credit card and conspiring to submit phony bills to Juvenile Court -- the payments kicked back to him and others. Court employee Steve Stamson said he'll never forget Catron's attitude when then-Juvenile Court Clerk Shep Wilbun brought him onboard. "Catron leaned across my desk and said, 'Look. We got 20 months here and we're going to take full advantage,'" said Stamson, now the elected Juvenile Court clerk. "I didn't understand at the time what exactly he was saying. But later it became obvious." • • Many of the FBI's recent, high-profile probes of local corruption have come in cities such as D.C., Atlanta, Cleveland, Houston, Memphis and Philadelphia where African- Americans control local government. Consequently, many of those charged are black, prompting allegations of racism. At the same time, university researchers studying corruption trends are finding a correlation between race and official wrongdoing. The thinking is not that any one racial group is more prone to corruption. Rather, where there is ethnic division or racial polarization, corruption often follows. Those who study white collar crime have long recognized its practitioners require three elements -- opportunity, a perceived need, and an ability to rationalize -- and some like Dartmouth's Winters say it's clear ethnic rationalization often plays a role in public corruption. "The rationalization is, 'I'm not extracting from a people like myself. I'm really extracting from others unlike me when I engage in this corrupt act,'" said Winters, a professor of government studies. Winters said ethnic rationalization helps explain a place such as Chicago, where Poles, Germans, Latinos, Irish and African-Americans have been grafting from the public treasury for decades. "It's my turn, and I'm going to take it," Winters said of the mindset. Not everyone buys that. "I see a lot of variation," said Colgate University professor Michael Johnston. Ethnic diversity can produce "different kinds of corruption depending on the level of education in a community -- not necessarily more or less." On the more sophisticated end of the spectrum, he said, are individuals who are simply more crafty in their dealings. For evidence of that sentiment, some point to City Council Chairman Tom Marshall, an architect who with a partner was paid $4.84 million by Memphis City Schools and the city's Board of Education, and former County Commissioner Bruce Thompson, who received an undisclosed consulting fee for helping steer a city school contract to a builder. Marshall and Thompson, both well educated, successful businessmen -- and both white -- obtained official opinions from government lawyers deeming their actions legal. Mayor Willie Herenton didn't name names recently while defending embattled MLGW president Joseph Lee but jabbed at hypocritical politicians he described as "crooked." "Depending on the color of the skin, depending on the class group they're in, they can recuse themselves and this justice system looks the other way." • • For decades in Memphis it was the turn of white officeholders. And by many accounts, not only did they take it, they got away with it. Crump got rich from his influence over government, and he funneled vice payoffs from brothels and saloons to his political organization to keephand-picked candidates running the city he controlled for the better part of four decades. But unlike other big-city political machines in the early 20th century that let top officials, police and ward bosses enrich themselves, Crump wouldn't tolerate theft or bribery by public employees. "Crump's organization remained assiduously honest," biographer G. Wayne Dowdy wrote in his recent book, "Mayor Crump Don't Like It: Machine Politics in Memphis." "...Consequently, inefficiency and corruption failed to take root in the Bluff City." For years after Crump's death, through the 1950s and '60s, Memphis had few open scandals, particularly in City Hall, yet a spoils system operated below the surface. Some elected officials often helped themselves to public property, and only the most flagrant of violators ever landed in a criminal court. When Election Commissioner Lester Brenner was convicted in 1966 of pocketing forged payroll checks, he found a way out of his dilemma with a pardon from Gov. Buford Ellington. In 1965, after then-County Commissioner Bruce Jordan received Penal Farm food supplies and used inmates to work on his Halls, Tenn., farm, authorities filed an ouster suit -- a civil action -- and removed him from office for willful misconduct. On appeal, Jordan maintained that, as far as the 400 pounds of meat he was accused of absconding with, he'd only done what other commissioners had. "Bruce Jordan believed he was entitled to those same privileges," his lawyer, the pre-eminent Lucius Burch, argued before the Tennessee Supreme Court. • • It wasn't until the 1970s that Memphis authorities began to see these practices in a new light. Starting in 1976, the U.S. Attorney's Office prosecuted a succession of state and county officials from Memphis -- nearly all of them white -- as well as a number of rural sheriffs and judges, many for taking payoffs from businessmen, real estate developers, nightclub owners and others. Suddenly, Shelby County began to look like a very dirty place. Authorities convicted powerful state Sen. Edgar Gillock for taking $130,000 in kickbacks to steer government contracts to a vendor. They also proved that, for years, a number of top county officials had been taking bribes from real estate developers. "It's no problem covering up a payoff. In the first place, nobody knows about it other than the persons who are involved in it," former county public works director Jerry Butler told a reporter in 1979 after he was convicted of extortion. A bagman for others, Butler estimated he saw as much as $1 million change hands and said he and his cronies lived for three things -- money, whiskey and women: "You can't raise a family on $20,000 a year and still have money for whiskey and women and live the life I lived." The anti-corruption crusade was headed by federal prosecutor W. Hickman Ewing and his boss, then-U.S. Atty. Michael Cody. Together, they led the post-Watergate charge by making official wrongdoing a priority along with traditional federal responsibilities such as prosecuting bank robbers, dope dealers and car thieves. Never did the pair believe public corruption was a sudden development in Memphis. In a 1980 article for the Memphis State University Law Review, Ewing and Cody recounted the dramatic increase in corruption cases, writing: "This is not to say that public officials were more corrupt during the 1970s," but rather that prosecutors had become "more concerned with activities which threaten the very moral fiber of our nation." "It runs in cycles," said Ewing, who believes it's the role of federal authorities to keep local officials honest. "One of the reasons you prosecute people not only is to bring people to, quote, justice but the deterrent effect."