Congratulations to Dr. Marie desJardins, who placed 44th out of 593 competitors in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Brooklyn, New York last weekend. The tournament—directed by New York Times Crossword Puzzle Editor Will Shortz—is the nation’s oldest and largest crossword competition.

Competitors are judged based on their accuracy and speed while solving eight original crossword puzzles. Dr. desJardins placed 5^th of the 87 Mid-Atlantic competitors, she was the 8^th ranked woman in the entire tournament, and the top-ranked woman from the Mid-Atlantic.

Dr. desJardins was also awarded an “I Beat Dr. Fill” button for scoring higher than Dr. Fill, a crossword-solving program designed by software engineer Matt Ginsberg. The program pulls answers from databases of old crosswords, dictionaries, and sources like Wikipedia, but can sometimes get caught up on tricky clues, says a Boston Globe article.

Photo Courtesy www.crosswordtournament.com

The deadline to apply to run for an elected position in SGA has been extended until the Monday after spring break, March 26th at 5 pm! 

So if you’ve been thinking about taking the plunge but need an extra nudge – this is IT!  You’ve got four more days to fill out that application…what better way to spend an hour of your spring break? 

In the meantime, if you’ve got any questions about SGA, the elections, the campaign process, shoot an email to cait13@umbc.edu.  Hope we’ll be reviewing your application at 5:01 pm on Monday!

Looking for Baltimore City housing?  Local leaders, especially Mayor Stephanie Rawlings Blake, sure hope you are.

Every decade since 1960, the City’s population has been steadily declining.  Baltimore City residents have been moving their families out of the City and into homes in the surrounding counties.  This wouldn’t be so bad, except for one problem…many of these prior city homeowners never sold their old Baltimore residences.

Now Baltimore has an excessive amount of boarded-up vacant houses.  These vacants overrun many inner-city neighborhoods in East and West Baltimore, created blight for current City residents.

Why did this happen?

The majority of homeowners who fled Baltimore City over the decades were middle-class professionals with families.  They were seeking safer environments and better schools for their kids.  Their houses were difficult to sell, so many just left their homes boarded up.

This rash of vacant properties is turning into a headache for ALL citizens of the city.

With so many plots of City land being uninhabited, Baltimore is not getting the amount of revenue it needs from property taxes.  To cover the shortfall in city revenue, other current residents have to pick up the slack.  While Baltimore County property tax rate is just 1.1% of the cost of a house, the City tax rate is more then double that, standing at 2.268%,  the highest of any Maryland jurisdiction.

This creates yet another problem.  The high property tax rate in the City drives away potential new home buyers, and even causes some residents to leave the City.  A terrible downward spiral ensues.

Every ten year’s a population census is taken. The Mayor has set a goal of adding 10,000 household owners to Baltimore by 2020. There were hopes that by 2010, the City’s population would be increasing for the first time in four decades, but instead, since 2000, it lost another 30,000 individuals.

In comparison to previous decades, this loss wasn’t so bad, and many downtown neighborhoods grew by as much as a staggering 20%.  With house rehabilitation projects underway in the City, and programs in the works to make Baltimore a safer environment, government officials are optimistic about the future.

Now that Baltimore is trying to reclaim its name as Charm City, the only question left is, are you looking for a house?

When some folks think of college sororities and fraternities, they think of parties. But this week, certain sororities and fraternities in California were not in a partying mood.

That’s because the US Supreme Court was in the house.

Here’s the story:  The Alpha Gamma Omega-Epsilon Chapter fraternity and the Alpha Delta Chi-Delta Chapter sorority sued San Diego State University  in 2005 because of a campus policy that prohibited the two groups from limiting their membership to only Christians.

The university agreed the two groups had the right to a organize a limited membership program.  However, campus authorities refused to provide funding and other campus benefits to the groups as the schools do not allow discrimination on the basis of race, religion, gender, national origin and sexual orientation.

The two organizations argued that the ban unfairly targeted religious organizations. They claimed, under the policy, secular organizations are allowed to make viewpoint-based distinctions (the college Republicans, for example, can opt not to admit a Democrat). They also added the policy specifically exempts Greek life organizations from the ban on gender discrimination.

The litigation went all the way to The Supreme court who recently upheld a previous decision in the University’s favor.

Some celebrate the decision as a step forward for equal rights for students.

Curtis Lester, President of the Aztec Christian Association at San Diego State said,

“I think it’s a great policy. I don’t think there should be any discrimination at all, in any way.”

Others criticize the decision as unfairly limiting the free activity of student organizations.

Unaffiliated campus organizations are banned from privileges such as getting student funding, posting signs on campus, reserving office and meeting space, using the school name or mascot and promoting themselves on the university website.

So what do you think? Does this policy unfairly target religious organizations? Or is it a step in the right direction for free speech?