Some professors would have been offended, but not Pamela Thacher. As she noticed a trio of students dozing off during her psychology class at St Lawrence University in New York State, she spied a research opportunity.

"If you've ever stood in front of a class of 20-year-olds and had three of them fall asleep sitting up, you start to think, is it me? So I was trying to strategise: do I wake the students up? I asked one of them (about it), and he said he had stayed up all night. He told me that was how he kept his grades up."

The study Thacher was inspired to undertake as a result of the trio's snores found that the opposite was true. By comparing the sleep patterns and academic records of 111 undergraduates, she found that those who fuelled themselves with caffeine and studied late into the night, or even "pulled all-nighters" (in American campus jargon), had lower grade-point averages than those who got enough sleep.

"Once you start getting less sleep, you are less able to cognitively cope with the demands of college," Thacher says.

Many students consider staying up all night a rite of passage, she adds. But all-nighters also seem increasingly necessary as universities intensify their demands that students supplement their coursework with community service; prospective employers require them to participate in extracurricular activities and internships; and parents urge them to get part-time jobs to help cover the spiralling cost of tuition fees.

"Most of our culture tells them that they're making the right choice. It's very macho. It's that idea that you're tough, you're better."

But Thacher's research shows that rather than helping students to complete assignments or to learn material for exams, sacrificing sleep to study can result in delayed reactions, a tendency to make mistakes and lower academic performance overall.

The resulting report, "University Students and the 'All Nighter': Correlates and Patterns of Students' Engagement in a Single Night of Sleep Deprivation", published last month in the journal Behavioral Sleep Medicine, is part of a growing body of research into students and sleep deprivation. Other US universities and faculty have responded by encouraging their students to get more sleep.

Colgate University in New York State last year ran a campaign called "Come to Bed". Camp beds were placed around the campus and tents were pitched indoors for an event attended by 250 students, who were invited to nap in front of virtual crackling fireplaces while listening to sleep-inducing noises including crickets, rain, waves crashing on the seashore and the institution's vice-president and dean, Charlotte Johnson, reading aloud from the children's book Goodnight Moon.

Tufts University in Massachusetts gives its students sleep masks, earplugs, a sleep diary and a better-sleep guide. It and several other higher education institutions including Indiana University, the University of North Carolina and the University of Texas encourage their students to download sleep-inducing white noise and relaxing music from their websites. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose students are infamously nocturnal, asks parents to report signs of sleep abuse such as emails sent in the middle of the night.

And the all-woman Wellesley College, alma mater of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, last year ran a campaign to encourage sleep called "Want As? Get Zs". It threw dormitory pyjama parties, gave away wristbands and badges and used catchy slogans brainstormed by members of the faculty, such as "E=MZ squared" ("energy equals more sleep").

One staff member contributed to the campaign by revamping Wellesley's motto - turning "For women who will make a difference in the world" into "For women who will get some sleep".

"The messaging is a counterpoint to all the things that erode our time and sabotage our sleep," says Vanessa Britto, Wellesley's director of health services, who attended the campaign's pyjama parties in her PJs to talk about the importance of sleep.

"And it's such a low-tech thing. You don't have to pay for it. This is something that needs to be attended to. We're educational institutions, and part of teaching people new things is teaching them about who they are and how to be productive people - physically, intellectually, socially."

Staff are "invested in getting students to sleep because they want (them) to learn their material".

But, Thacher notes, many universities are sending mixed messages - hers included. During final examinations, she found that the library was open 24 hours a day and food was being served until 11pm. Particularly popular was a vast selection of highly caffeinated energy drinks, made available to students in huge quantities.

"'Oh,' I thought, 'this is not what I need them to be doing'," Thacher recalls.

"Although the universities are trying to encourage more sleep, they are also providing ways for students to pull all-nighters or at least stay up until they're jittery and zombie-esque from sleep loss," she says.

Nearly 40 per cent of students surveyed by the American College Health Association said they felt sufficiently rested no more than two days out of seven. The result is not only poor grades, but also heightened stress, headaches, stomach-aches and listlessness.

"One of the top reasons why students come in for counselling is because they're not doing well academically," says Richard Shadick, director of the counselling centre at Pace University in New York and an adjunct professor of psychology. "Among our first questions to them is: how's your sleep?"

Jane-Anne Jones, co-ordinator of alcohol and drug education at Colgate, shudders at the mention of all that caffeine. "Oh my God, (students consume) those energy drinks, and then they come in (to the health centre) because they're anxious or they can't sleep, and wonder why."

Jones says there are two groups of sleep offenders. First are the overachievers who have always been rewarded for their success, but have never been taught balance.

"What you see is this tremendous 'they gotta' - they gotta finish this and they gotta have this incredible paper. Their standards are so high and the pressure is self-inflicted. They think the only way they can achieve ... is through self-inflicted punishment."

The second group is made up of students who have always achieved good grades without working particularly hard.

"Then they come to college and it sneaks up on them that that paper is due. So they'll start doing all-nighters. But they're not learning material. What they're learning is how to pass. You don't have any mastery of the topic."

Events such as Colgate's Come to Bed are only small steps in the right direction, Jones says. "Did we make a cultural change? Oh gosh, no," she says, relaxing after running a make-your-own-granola study break for 300 students during final examinations the previous day. "But maybe we got one or two people to think, 'I can do this or I can adjust that'."

Students are increasingly recognising the connection between sleep and good academic performance, Britto says.

"They sort of smile sheepishly when you ask them how they're sleeping, but most of them (now) understand that new memory won't get laid down effectively, they won't learn, they'll get sick when their immune system hits a wall and all (these) things can be attributed to lack of sleep."

But some of her counterparts are less certain that the message is getting through.

"This is a difficult thing to solve because, of all the things they do, students don't see it (sleep deprivation) as a problem," says David McBride, director of student health services at Boston University. "They can see, for example, the visible negative effects of alcohol. Lack of sleep is much more subtle."

For two years Boston has tried to encourage its students to get more sleep by issuing healthy sleep handouts and starting awareness campaigns.

"Our efforts are primarily focused on ... awareness-raising," says McBride, who is a physician. "I don't know if the information we put out has had that much of an impact. If you ask students if they are aware that lack of sleep is harmful to your body, a lot say 'yes'. Whether they incorporate that into their behaviour is another question."

Thacher adds that sleep deprivation is a wider social issue.

"We have to change the culture. Some primary and secondary schools in the American Midwest, for example, are pushing back their crack-of-dawn start times and seeing improved attendance and lower dropout rates. It's happening slowly but surely."

Thacher will continue to research the topic, inside and outside the classroom.

"The great thing about this research is that you have a ready population to study. You can see what's happening right in front of you."

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At Onondaga Community College, no classroom in Mawhinney Hall has a garbage can inside, so students and staff are more likely to sort and recycle items they might have otherwise thrown away.

A dozen staff members in Whitney Hall turned their office into "The Green Suite" about a year ago. By making recycling bins more accessible than trash cans, reducing the number of trash cans and keeping temperatures cooler in winter and warmer in summer, they have saved the college about $2,000.

And this year, OCC entered the national RecycleMania competition for the first time, joining several other Upstate colleges in weighing their trash and recyclable materials for prizes.

Thursday, colleges and communities around the country will celebrate the National Teach-In for Global Warming and try to educate people about the environment. One of OCC's events is a workshop called "Green OCC," where campus leaders will discuss efforts the college has taken to become more eco-friendly.

"The long-term goal to become carbon neutral, to me, is like trying to eliminate poverty. You keep striving for it, but you never quite get there," said Dave Wall, the college's director of corporate and public partnerships. "It's about a cultural change."

That cultural change is not limited to OCC.

Colgate University has hired its first sustainability coordinator, John Pumilio, who will oversee the college's environmental initiatives and work with the campus community to improve awareness and advance green efforts. Pumilio, a graduate of State University College of Environmental Science and Forestry, will begin in April.

Wells College plans to serve "low carbon meals" on campus, meaning all the food is locally grown and produced, is minimally processed and does not take much energy to get to campus, said Gary Aubin, general manager of food services. Dining halls that day will stock local potatoes, squashes, eggs, grains and dairy products, he said.

And although the 100 percent low carbon menus are just for Thursday, the campus regularly has a number of local foods served on campus and has taken other steps to reduce its food-based carbon footprint.

Examples include eliminating dining hall trays so students and staff only take what they can carry and reduce their waste; using bulk ketchup and mustard dispensers rather than individual packets; and low-phosphorus, low-water dishwashers in the kitchens, he said.

"We're really trying to stay away from things that contribute to our carbon emissions," Aubin said.

Many college presidents in the region have signed a national pledge to cut their campus greenhouse emissions, and a number of them have already converted to using significant amounts of renewable energy.

To mark the teach-in, college campuses across the nation are showing "The First 100 Days," a film about global warming, and many are having lectures, group discussions, community events and service activities to promote environmental awareness.

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Kiira Dosdall's family ties run deep at Colgate University. So deep, in fact, that she's able see her father, Mike, a former Colgate player himself, any time she chooses.

“They have pictures lined up in the hallway where we warm up in the rink, so my dad's team pictures are there,” said Dosdall, a native of Fairfield, Conn. “One time we were warming up and one of my teammates was stopped in her tracks. She pointed at this one guy in the picture and said ‘Oh no! Look at this guy's hair.' It was my dad. There were 200 photos to choose from, and she had to pick out my dad's bad hair.”

But that's was no sweat off Dosdall's back. Her father has been important part of her career ever since she began playing the sport as a 5-year-old. Mike coached his daughter from age 5 to 16, first on boys' teams in the Darien (Conn.) Youth Hockey Association, and later with the Connecticut Polar Bears girls' teams. Mike grew up in White Bear Lake, Minn., and played at St. Paul Academy.

Dosdall cov“He and my mom [Carol] have definitely been great supporters of mine,” Dosdall said. “They were always the ones getting me up at 5 a.m. to go to practice. I don't think my mom has missed a game since I've been here.”

As a youngster, though, all Dosdall wanted to do was be like her older brother, Tom. Like their mom and dad, he also graduated from Colgate.

“When I was 5, I would sit there and put on all of my brother's equipment,” Dosdall said. “One time I took it on and off about 10 times in a row, and he didn't really like that.”

Dosdall eventually secured her own equipment, and is now among the potential candidates for the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award, given to the most outstanding player in women's college hockey. Her 23 points (4 goals, 19 assists) in 27 games ranks third in the nation among defensemen in points per game (0.85).

Dosdall quarterbacks a power play that ranks third in the nation, scoring at rate of nearly 25 percent.

“Our power play has been unbelievable this year,” she said. “I just stand at the blue blue line and pass it to Sam Hunt and she fires a one-timer. She's got a scary shot that I would not want to be in front of.”

Dosdall played on boys' teams in Darien through her Squirt years, then moved to the Polar Bears. The well-established Polar Bears allowed Dosdall to thrive in an ideal situation.

“I was about average on that team when I first started,” she said. “It was a nice change from playing with the boys. I was just talking to one of my teammates the other day about how much nicer it was to start playing on girls' teams because you fit in so much better socially.”

Thanks to a Polar Bears team that was loaded with Division I players, Dosdall secured the USA Hockey 19-Under national title as a junior in high school.

“That was really cool because we only had eight skaters at the national tournament,” Dosdall said. “Some of the players couldn't make it. Sarah Vaillancourt was on the team, but she couldn't make it to nationals. We played defense with three players. I loved it that way. We consistently only had three or four defensemen at my high school [Loomis Chaffee], so I was used to it.”

Vaillancourt, now a senior at Harvard, claimed the Patty Kazmaier Awad last year, so Dosdall knows the pedigree that comes with the honor.

“It's a huge honor, and one that I never thought I would have been considered for,” Dosdall said. “I can't imagine what other people are being considered—the Vaillancourts of the world. I follow it every year because the players who are up for it make it the most honorable award in college hockey.”

Dosdall didn't need much of a push to land at Colgate.

“There was definitely a huge family attraction to the decision to come here,” she said. “It's become sort of a tradition in our family. Plus I thought it would be cool to play where my dad played. I didn't even consider that part of the decision at first, but it ended up making my decision. I love the team and I love the team. It's one of the best schools in the country, and they offer scholarships.”

Colgate also provided Dosdall with a chance to show steady improvement of her tenure there.

“The coaches here are so dedicated to improving every player,” she said. “When I look at myself from freshman year to now, I'm a completely different hockey player. I owe that to the coaches. They force you to dedicate yourself. I get a lot of motivation from them.”

Dosdall readily admits her favorite part of playing the game is the competition.

“Being part of my team is the most fun,” Dosdall said. “My team keeps me going. I like to think I have the best team in the world. From a hockey-playing standpoint, playing teams like Harvard or Dartmouth or any of those ranked teams is always the best part.”

She also will bring some fun-filled memories with her when she departs the campus in Hamilton, N.Y.

“One of the best moments was in my sophomore year when we beat Princeton for the first time ever. We were playing in the ECAC Tournament for the first time, and we beat them,” Dosdall said. “That, and when our goalie, Brook Wheeler, got up to speak at the banquet before the ECAC Tournament. She brought an inhaler up and had the funniest speech I've ever heard.”

Off the ice, Dosdall, a sociology major, participates in the team's annual Walk for Cancer. A “Pink at the Rink” event raised money for cancer research by auctioning player-worn jerseys. Dosdall also reads to second grade classes at elementary schools in Hamilton. Dosdall holds a 3.4 grade-point average while achieving elite status on the ice.

“Hockey and school are my two focuses,” she said. “I can't imagine abandoning hockey. I'll definitely be connected somehow. I'd like to work at a prep school and coach.”

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My first reaction to the news of Manhattan Theatre Club's revival of Richard Greenberg's 1990 play The American Plan was "Why?" I recalled the original MTC production as a contrived melodrama peopled with clichés: the domineering mother, the sheltered daughter, the closeted homosexual. It was a cross between The Glass Menagerie and Tea and Sympathy, enlivened only by Joan Copeland's subtle limning of the mother. Well, either I didn't fully appreciate Greenberg's vision, or this production's director, David Grindley, has dug deeper into the play's depths. This new Plan is a stronger, more insightful one.

Set in a Catskills resort in 1960, this examination of American values is in the vein of the film Revolutionary Road, based on Richard Yates' novel of disillusionment amidst upper-middle-class comfort and set in roughly the same period. Like the unhappy couple of Revolutionary Road, the characters here all lead lives based on deception, and eventually it desolates them. When the childlike Lili falls in love with the handsome writer Nick, her cosmopolitan mother, Eva, plots to stymie the match. But is Eva really the selfish dragon she appears to be? Or does she have the best interests of the fragile Lili at heart? Lili's mental health, Nick's background and identity, and Eva's motives all come into question when the not-quite-total stranger Gil wanders on the scene.

In his later works, Greenberg sometimes falls in love with language at the expense of believable character development. The wordplay is kept to a minimum here, and the dysfunctional characters are more focused on attaining their goals than dazzling each other with their vocabularies. Likewise, The American Plan's dramatic metaphors are not quite as obvious as those in symbolic works like The Violet Hour and The Dazzle. We are not hit over the head with the comparison between the mass consumption of food at the resort and American mass consumption.

Grindley does not call attention to Greenberg's points but allows them to seep into the audience's consciousness. Similarly, the precise performances don't telegraph the author's intentions but slyly suggest them. Lily Rabe carefully builds Lili's edifice of irrational behavior, a defense against a world of disappointment and what she sees as her mother's oppressive love. In the final scene, which takes place 10 years after the main event, Lili has created another protective shell, this one of mature politeness. When she's confronted with a repentant Nick, her protection shatters for a harrowing moment and she dissolves in tears. But then she holds up a hand, and the armor snaps back into place. The transformation is just as terrifying as the breakdown.

Mercedes Ruehl is Rabe's equal as the sly and manipulative Eva. It's a joy to watch this veteran performer relish Greenberg's description of a typical enormous Catskills meal, which Eva finds repellently excessive. In another memorable scene, she draws a secret out of the mysterious Gil like a cat playing with a mouse. Kieran Campion, Colgate University alumnus, perfectly embodies the many levels of the seemingly golden WASP prince Nick. Austin Lysy gives full vent to both the public and private Gil, and Brenda Pressley adds sharp vinegar to the family maid Olivia.

Jonathan Fensom's simple set uses lush curtains to suggest the idyllic setting of this vital revival.

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Take a stroll through a Dallas park, study in a public school or visit the grassy knoll where JFK was shot – they were likely built, beautified or enhanced by unemployed workers during the Depression.

We may not know it, but everywhere we go in Dallas, we're surrounded by places that were touched in some way by these workers, who got a paycheck and some hope through the national Works Progress Administration.

Their work – along with that of other Depression-era programs, such as the Public Works Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps – helped transform the face of the city and others across the country, scholars say. The WPA employed 8.5 million people and spent $11 billion on public projects nationwide.

"They did make lasting contributions to Dallas," said Darwin Payne, a Dallas author and historian. "It's so surprising that so many of us don't realize that."

As many call today's economy the worst since the Depression, the WPA is again making headlines. Scholars and pundits propose a modern version of the agency to put Americans back to work and rebuild the country's infrastructure.

President Barack Obama has said he wants to create 3 million jobs and launch the biggest public-works program since construction of the interstate highway system.

To pump up the economy, the House last week approved an $819 billion stimulus plan, some of which would be spent on infrastructure improvements. The Senate will now take up the matter. Obama wants a package approved by mid-February.

Some say the stimulus package is reminiscent of parts of the WPA launched by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1935. Across the country, WPA workers built or improved roads, bridges, dams, schools, airports and courthouses.

But they didn't just build stuff. In Dallas, they wrote books, performed concerts and even sewed clothes.

In particular, the WPA lives on in Dallas parks.

Workers built pavilions, picnic shelters, playgrounds, foot bridges, trails, comfort stations and recreational buildings. Most parks were touched in one way or another by WPA, according to historical accounts.

Restoration planned

Dallas officials have plans to restore several of the WPA park projects.

Many city parks received their first significant improvements because of the WPA, said Willis Winters, Dallas' assistant director for park planning, design and construction.

"It addressed a profound need for improvements in the city parks when there was little to no public funding," he said.

At Reverchon Park, near the Katy Trail, a series of stone steps form an iris garden, a half-circle that resembles a mini-amphitheatre. Winters calls it the "most spectacular" WPA improvement in a Dallas park.

Last month, at Kiest Park, crews discovered WPA remnants in the woods, including a footbridge, Winters said. Officials plan to keep searching for other items.

At Lake Cliff Park, WPA workers built a retaining wall, picnic units, a bridge and a rose garden. At White Rock Lake, WPA workers widened Lawther Drive with help from another Depression-era workers' group, the Civilian Conservation Corps.

WPA employees beautified and improved Dealey Plaza – decades before it became infamous for the JFK assassination – by building the white pergolas near the triple underpass.

The WPA, as well as other government programs, also bolstered the city's arts and music scene. At Long Middle School, artist Olin Travis painted a mural in the library. Local writers produced a book on Dallas, the WPA Dallas Guide and History, which was eventually published in 1992.

Workers did mundane tasks, too. They indexed birth and death certificates. They transcribed notes from early Commissioners Court meetings. They sewed shirts, overalls, pants and underwear for the needy.

In Dallas, the WPA was one of the most significant Depression-era efforts because it helped the city "retain its footing," Payne said.

The WPA "seemed to be evident everywhere you looked, from the courthouse to City Hall to the parks to social services to adult education," he said. "They spent a lot of money and kept a lot of people on the payroll."

Throughout Texas, WPA workers opened and expanded libraries. Singers, orchestras and musicians performed and taught music education. Crews improved San Antonio's Riverwalk, adding sidewalks and stairways.

Across the country, WPA workers built or improved LaGuardia Airport in New York, Camp David in Maryland, as well as zoos, stadiums and golf courses.

By the late 1930s, WPA projects were winding down.

WPA projects eventually receded from our nation's memory because the Depression "was a hard time and people don't want to remember it," said Kathy Flynn, executive director of the National New Deal Preservation Association.

"We all got healthier and wealthier and times were good, so why go back and talk about the bad times," she said. "But if you get somebody to start talking about it, they'll tell you it was the most important thing that happened in their family's life."

The WPA had a "sweeping, nation-changing mission," Nick Taylor wrote in his book American-Made, the Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work.

'We Piddle Around'

WPA, however, had its critics. They nicknamed the effort as "We Piddle Around" and called its projects "boondoggles."

While the WPA and other New Deal efforts helped lower unemployment, World War II preparations put more people to work, said Michael R. Haines, an economic historian at Colgate University in New York.

But with the economy in its worst shape since the Depression, the time seems ripe to compare the government's current stimulus proposal to the New Deal programs.

"It's a way of legitimizing the [current proposals] by saying, 'We did this before and it worked. We're going to do this again,' " Haines said.

The stimulus package may also be appealing because of a perceived need for infrastructure improvements, from roads to bridges, Haines said.

The proposed plan includes funding for highways, bridges, mass transit, broadband Internet and the electric grid. The House version even includes funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.

At least $27 billion would go to Texas for transportation projects, school improvements, food stamps and other efforts.

But critics – including John Boehner, the House Republican leader – said only a sliver of the proposed infrastructure spending would be spent by this fall. Other infrastructure funding wouldn't be spent for several years.

Some unions, including the Laborers' International Union of North America, say the government needs to do more to give the economy a boost. Union officials say that inadequate investment in infrastructure means the U.S. will fall behind other countries.

Infrastructure funding won't necessarily provide immediate employment relief. Getting road, school and bridge construction projects off the drawing board takes time, said Haines, the Colgate professor.

"By the time that gets going, we might be out of the recession," he said. "But I think we have to try. We don't know how long this thing is going to last."

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She gets it from her father.


Daria Devlin's talents entered the local spotlight at an early age. The Erie Daily Times published a winsome poem she wrote about school memories in 1990.

Her classmates at what was then Central High School elected her as the first student representative on the Erie School Board in 1993.

She was class valedictorian at Central, and she went on to graduate Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from Colgate University.

She won admittance to law school and explored the foreign service. During a stint studying abroad in Russia, she worked as an intern for ABC News.

"I knew that wasn't it for me," she said.

Slowly, a strong ethic of service, community and family exemplified by her parents drew the talented Erie native back home to raise her children, serve her church and, now, her community.

It was the kind of life decision modeled by her father, the Rev. Pimen Simon, when he left the practice of law to become rector of Erie's Russian Orthodox Church of the Nativity, 251 E. Front Street.

Devlin, 31, whose maiden name is Simon, is the recently hired grant writer for the local Ophelia Project, which aims to promote positive, productive environments for children by reducing bullying and other nonviolent forms of relational aggression.

It is a mission that for Devlin helps ensure Erie keeps providing to other children the same nurturing environment Devlin said she knew growing up.

She said some of her former Erie classmates have been surprised to find she's returned home and that she is a mom.

But for Devlin, it is a way of giving back.

Devlin's father, like her, left his hometown of Erie for Colgate University. He studied law at the University of Pittsburgh. But in the 1970s, he gave up the practice of law to lead his church, which was hemorrhaging members amid linguistic changes in the liturgy.

He and his wife, Jayne, traded their home for the church rectory, where Devlin and her two siblings, John and Catherine, were raised.

Devlin said her parents took the children with them on service projects, such as the delivery of food at Christmas. They did "not miss an opportunity," Devlin said, to remind them to think of others' needs as well as their own.

"Making money is not the most important thing," her father used to tell them.

Devlin met her husband, Neal Devlin, a Connecticut native, their first week at Colgate. They married after graduation. He earned his law degree at the University of Pittsburgh and began practicing there.

But when it came time to start her own family, Daria said she knew where she wanted to go.

"My father always told me in Erie, you can be a big fish in a small pond. You can make a difference here," she said.

The couple moved to Erie. She had three sons: Nicholas, 6, Nathaniel, 4, and Alexander, 2. She became involved in their preschool, Covenant Preschool, 250 W. Seventh St., and in the Russian Orthodox Church community. Now that her Nicholas is a student at Harding Elementary School, she has joined the Parent-Teacher Organization.

She learned she was good at organizing and raising money for nonprofits.

She was just thinking about re-entering the work force when she spotted the ad for the grant writer position at the Ophelia Project.

Devlin was an outstanding student, but had been a victim of bullying herself for a time in elementary school.

The Ophelia Project, she said, "really understands that kids face really tough issues." A recently launched project tries to educate students about cyber-bullying. The Erie Community Foundation last week awarded the Ophelia Project a $2,000 grant for the cyber bullying project.

The work has brought Devlin full circle.

"Erie, to me, is pretty wonderful," she said. "There is always so much caring."

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The founder of New Yorkers for Verified Voting has left the reins of his grassroots advocacy movement in the hands of former Colgate professor Wanda Warren Berry.

Software engineer Bo Lipari announced his resignation Monday after five years of lobbying as New York State struggled to make the switch from voting machines with levers to those that complied with the Help America Vote Act.

The non-partisan, not-for-profit organization pushed for paper ballots counted by optical scanners over touch-screen voting devices, saying the latter were too unreliable and prone to tampering to be trusted, while the former were backed up with paper ballots filled by voters themselves.

In his blog, Lipari said he is leaving the daily leadership of NYVV to pursue national election integrity issues and several other projects.

Hamilton resident Berry, Lipari's replacement, has been active in the election integrity movement in Central New York and Madison County since 2005. She became interested in the field after hearing from students and colleagues in other states about difficulties that occurred with touch-screen voting machines in the 2004 elections.

Berry said her first focus as executive director will be fighting against a statewide movement to keep the lever machines.

"We had hoped that by now everything would be done, but it's not," Berry said. "This is an argument that we have to make again; that the lever machines no longer meet the standards for verifiable voting."

Berry will be at the helm of the organization for two years as the state Board of Elections continues its process of certifying the new optical scan system.

Berry has lived in Hamilton for 50 years and began teaching at Colgate University in 1962. She retired as professor emerita of philosophy and religion in 2004.

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Jim Nagle knows it is a calculated gamble. He believes his Colgate University men's lacrosse team can make it pay off.

The Raiders, coming off their first Patriot League championship and Division I NCAA Tournament appearance, will test their expanding muscle on a nonconference schedule that will include February trips to No. 7 Duke, No. 8 North Carolina and No. 10 UMBC. Later, they will tackle No. 21 Ohio State at home and No. 2 Syracuse on the road.

"You would never put that kind of schedule together with a young team," Nagle said. "This team went through a lot of adversity last year, and I know we have guys who can bounce back. That said, we lost some pretty key guys from last season, so I don't know how competitive we'll be. But we'll find out."

Indeed. The adversity to which Nagle referred occurred when his team fell to 4-5 midway through last season but bounced back with seven consecutive victories, including one over top-ranked SU, which went on to win the national championship.

"There were not a lot of optimists out there," Nagle said. "But we did a great job of fighting through that. This is a totally different year, but I believe that experience will allow us to be able to fight through some adversity again."

The No. 17 Raiders have been picked by the league coaches to defend their Patriot crown and have one of the nation's top players returning in senior attackman Brandon Corp (Chittenango), yet they are ranked behind Navy (No. 11, captained by CBA graduate Andy Tormey) in Inside Lacrosse's preseason media poll.

"I don't have a problem with that," Nagle said. "I still think Navy's the team to beat, but our league definitely has a lot of parity. I think the race will be even more interesting than it was last year."

That should be something to see, as last season was plenty interesting, with Colgate avenging regular-season losses to Army and Navy in the Patriot League tournament to gain an automatic berth in the NCAAs, where it lost in overtime at Notre Dame in the first round.

Now, Nagle is hoping the imposing nonconference schedule will prepare his team for league play. That is the plan, anyway.

"The kids are excited about it," Nagle said. "They love playing tough teams. They're confident. I don't know how many we'll win, but I believe it will make us a stronger team by the end of the season."

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