CLASS CUTS

Former Grad Student Sentenced For Poisoned Teabag

A former Princeton graduate student was sentenced last month to five years in prison after he was found guilty of lacing supermarket teabags with cyanide.

Federal Judge Maryanne Trump Barry recommended that Dragol-job Cetkovic, whom she said acted out of "the depths of despair," serve his sentence at a psychiatric prison.

Cetkovic, a native of Yugoslavia, was a graduate student in Princeton's physics department before 1983, when the university declared him a persona non gratafor repeatedly teasing a female student,The Associated Pressreported.

After Cetkovic poisoned the teabag in February, he allegedly called the supermarket to warn them of the cyanide, The Associated Pressreported. The 32-year-old Cetkovic said in his trial that he wanted officials to test the cyanide to determine whether the amount he used was enough to kill.

If the dose was lethal, Cetkovic said, he would use it to commit suicide.

"I shall never forgive myself for it. I did not hold anything in my mind to harm anybody. I was very troubled," he said.

Professors described the former student as a brilliant scientist with extraordinary natural gifts. UMASS

Pay Raises Cut for Top Administrators

The Chairman of the University of Massachusetts Board of Trustees announced this week that pay raises for two top university administrators would be cut down in the wake of criticism by Chairman of the Board of Regents of Higher Learning, L. Edward Lashman.

The original August agreement gave UMass President David Knapp a $20,000 pay raise and Chancellor of the UMass Amherst campus Joseph Duffey a $15,000 raise.

But after sharp protest from Lashman, who is Harvard's senior planning counselor, Chairman of the UMass Board of Trustees Andrew Knowles announced a new agreement that will give the two educators raises of $12,000 and $9000 respectively.

Lashman, who oversees projects for the Kennedy School, said he protested the proposed raises because they were not "what was appropriate."

"The Board of Regents had a private company look at a salaries for educators at public universities, and the Board issued special salary guidelines based on this report," Lashman said.

"It said that the Board of Trustees could approve salaries within these limits, but then we learned they had given increases beyond the guidelines," Lashman said.

Earlier this week, Knowles told The Boston Globethat he supported the original increase because it would have made the salaries of Massachusetts educators more competitive nationally. COLUMBIA

School-Affiliated Doctor Shoots Himself By Accident

A gynecologist at a Columbia-affiliated hospital shot himself in the scrotum and then told police and campus security he had been shot by an unknown assailant, The Columbia Spectatorreported.

Blood stains on the seat of the car of Dr. Terry Andrews indicated that he accidentally shot himself in the scrotum when a gun he was carrying in his waistband went off, according to campus security director Dominick Moro.

Andrews, who works at the St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital, later recanted his original story, and told detectives investigating the incident that he invented the story about an unknown assailant to avoid embarrassment, Moro said.

"At least we know that there isn't a murderer out there shooting physicians," Moro told The Spectator.

"When you have a gun license, it's your choice how to control it, although common sense would tell you not to put a gun in your trousers," Moro told The Spectator. BRANDEIS

Addition of Pork to Menu May Put Off Observant Jews, Counselors Say

Because of changes in the campus cuisine, observant Jewish students may just say no to traditionally Jewish Brandeis University, according to college guidance counselors representing Jewish high schools nationwide,The Justicereported last month.

Brandeis's decision to serve pork and shellfish in the cafeteria may make the school less appealing to the religiously observant than other schools that have "strong Hillel programs," the counselors said in a panel discussion.

A guidance counselor at the St. Louis Block Yeshiva told The Justicethat his students may choose "a Harvard with a strong Hillel program" over Brandeis.

In addition, several counselors and Brandeis officials are concerned about the decision to replace the names of religious holidays on the university calendar with the term, "no University exercises."

"[The calendar change] goes hand in hand with other changes that say Brandeis is denying, subverting its Jewish soul, its Jewish roots," Rabbi Albert Axelrad, university chaplain, toldThe Justice.

Parents of students have written "angry letters asking how we could send kids there in good conscience," according to Rabbi Jay Goldmintz, who is a guidance counselor at New York's Ramaz High School. MIT

Police Arrest Women Students

Boston police arrested two MIT women students and one other area college student following a series of fights that involved racial slurs and may have alcohol-related, the MIT Techreported.

Three women students from MIT's Women's Independent Living Group (WILG) and two women from Fisher Junior College were involved in the confrontations. The fight reportedly stemmed from a dispute at a Phi Delta Theta fraternity party when the students spilled beer on each other.

One of the Fisher students, who followed the MIT students from the party, reportedly screamed,"You fucking nigger, I'm going to kill you" at Roberta C. Gwynn, a Black WILG student, witnesses told The Tech.