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Randolph Township parents recently received a small, gold-colored booklet in their mailboxes -- a district directory of several hundred parents who have pledged to allow no underage drinking or drugs at parties, and to supervise their children's social events.

The mailing, issued for the first time in the district since 1999, follows an incident earlier this year in which more than 100 Randolph High School seniors were arrested for illegal underage drinking at a post-prom party in Vermont.

The Governor's Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse distributes more than $10 million annually in grants statewide without proper review of how the money is used, according to an audit released today by the Office of the State Comptroller.

The audit found that dollars intended for drug and alcohol prevention and education have been used to finance petting zoos, community fairs and, in one instance, a "rent expense."

Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-LedgerComptroller Matthew Boxer in his Trenton office overlooking the city and the Delaware River in January.

Michael Chertoff is speaking today at Kean University.

The U.S. Homeland Security chief is scheduled to talk about the nation's homeland security and preparedness and the challenges facing President-elect Barack Obama.

Classes in one building at Montclair State University were canceled tonight after officials discovered fires in "multiple" trash cans, officials said.

Classes will resume Thursday morning as scheduled, they added.

The seven-story building, University Hall, was evacuated shortly after campus police received a call about 6:30 p.m., university spokeswoman Minne Ho said.

Sean Patch, a a high school algebra teacher who works in Manhattan, has begun commuting to work from Weehawken by kayak to save money, according to a report on WCBS880.com.

The report said Patch bought a kayak for $850 and no longer has to pay for the ferry $7.75 each way. In addition to the savings, Patch said, "It's really peaceful."

A former Camden elementary school principal pleaded guilty Tuesday to taking part in a scheme to bill the district for more than $25,000 in extra wages for meetings that never took place, according to a report in the Philadelphia Inqurier.

The report said Juanita Worthy, 61, of Evesham, admitted to third-degree attempted theft by deception, a felony, before Superior Court Judge Stephen M. Holden. The state has indicated that it will recommend probation when Worthy is sentenced on Feb. 6. She previously resigned from the district and will be barred from public employment in New Jersey.

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by New Jersey's school administrators that sought to block new state limits on their employment contracts, ruling the regulations are in the state's "perfectly legitimate" interests.

But the decision by U.S. District Judge Joel Pisano appeared to leave at least some of the limits open to challenge in state court, and a lawyer representing administrators said a challenge would likely be filed within the week.

Officials of New Jersey's school construction program today announced plans to step up the pace of work on at least six new schools next year, including a long-delayed Phillipsburg High School project, through a streamlined building process.

"What we're trying to do is work essentially toward meeting the governor's mandate to accelerate these projects," said Kris Kolluri, the former Department of Transportation Commissioner who announced the streamlined building program during his first meeting as chief executive officer of the state Schools Development Authority.

Matt Rainey/The Star-LedgerThe road leading from Belvidere Rd. to the site of the yet to be built Phillipsburg High School, shown in July.

Students in Drew University professor Kesha Moore's Thursday afternoon class must follow an unusual list of requirements: no weapons, sharp objects, cigarettes, cell phones, condoms, candy or cosmetics.

When you're holding class in a women's prison, a few rules must be enforced.

Moore's sociology class, held at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Hunterdon County, is a first in New Jersey. It is part of the national Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, which brings students and prisoners together in 35 states to explore the justice system.

Matt Rainey/The Star-LedgerDrew University students and inmates at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility share a laugh after a group presentation in Kesha Moore's sociology class, which is part of the national Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program.

New Jersey Transportation Commissioner Kris Kolluri today leaves his post to start overseeing the state's Schools Development Authority, according to a report in the Asbury Park Press.

The report said he leaves a legacy of tackling the growing list of deteriorating roads and bridges and having been the point man to help the governor sell his plan to "monetize" the state's toll roads and the latest toll increase. Experts lauded Kolluri for beating the drum to get the state's aging bridges and highways fixed, for making mass transit investments and starting pedestrian safety projects by giving towns grants to build sidewalks to schools.

Rutgers University is using a $633,885 grant from the National Science
Foundation to start a five-year program to "promote the participation and advancement" of women in science, engineering and mathematics, according to a report in the Asbury Park Press

The report said Joan Bennett, a university associate vice president in charge of the Office for the Promotion of Women in Science, Engineering and Mathematics, and principal investigator for the NSF-funded project, said "Rutgers has one of the finest women's studies programs in the world."
On the other hand, she told the newspaper, "the math department has 62 faculty members, and two are female. Half the students are female. Something's wrong with that."

A paperwork snafu proves costly for the Camden school district.

It means the district must return nearly $400,000 in unspent federal aid that it wanted to roll over from the 2004-2005 school year to the following year.

District spokesman Bart Leff told The Philadelphia Inquirer that such rollover requests are routinely made, but this one apparently "either wasn't made or it was made late."

For the eighth year, the staff and students of the Robert N. Wilentz School in Perth Amboy observed Thanksgiving by portraying the Puritans landing on American shores. A traditional turkey dinner followed the festivities.

A year ago, Luigi Marciante was heartbroken. He lived through the worst nightmare of any father, attending the burial of his youngest son, 25-year-old Luigi Marciante Jr., killed in Iraq.

But as he stood behind a podium today addressing the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Spotswood, he could do nothing but give thanks: Joseph Cary, a neighbor of some close family friends, was so touched by Marciante's story he decided to fund a scholarship in Marciante's name with the church.

Patti Sapone/The Star-LedgerA plaque honoring US Army Corporal Luigi Marciante, Jr. is seen at left, while Msgr. Joseph Curry, right, prays during a special Thanksgiving Celebration today honoring US Army Corporal Luigi Marciante, Jr. killed in Iraq.

Liberty Science Center is asking Jersey City for $2.5 million to keep its doors open, according to a report in the Jersey Journal.

The report said City Council is expected to pass a resolution tonight to authorize a loan application to the state Urban Enterprise Zone Authority. The $2.5 million is about 10 percent of its annual operating budget, according to LSC President Emlyn Koster.

APLiberty Science Center

Princeton University will cut $300 million from its 10-year capital plan's original commitments in response to the recent economic downturn, according to a report in the Daily Princetonian.

The report said no projects will be eliminated from the long-term building plan, some will be shifted beyond the plan's 2016 end date. The deferred projects include a storage facility for the Princeton University Art Museum, an art-museum satellite building slated to be part of the Arts and Transit Neighborhood, a renovation of Green Hall, the development of more faculty and staff apartments.

WASHINGTON -- Three 2008 Nobel laureates from the United States, two with ties to new Jersey, lined up with President George W. Bush today for an Oval Office photograph to mark their achievements.

Bush visited with Martin Chalfie of New York and Livingston High School graduate Roger Tsien, who now lives in La Jolla, Calif., two of three U.S.-based scientists who won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for turning a glowing green protein from jellyfish into a revolutionary way to watch the tiniest details of life within cells and living creatures. Former Princeton University researcher Osamu Shimomura, a Japanese citizen who works in the United States, shared the prize.

The third laureate at the White House was Paul Krugman, a Princeton University professor who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade patterns. Krugman, a frequent critic of the Bush administration who opposed the recent $700 billion financial bailout, is a New York Times columnist.

AP Photo/Gerald HerbertPresident George W. Bush poses for a photo with Nobel Prize winners in the Oval Office of the White House today in Washington.From left are, Dr. Paul Krugman, a professor of economics at Princeton University, the president; Dr. Martin Chalfie of New York for chemistry; and Dr. Roger Tsien, a Livingston High School graduate who now lives in La Jolla, Calif. for chemistry.

PHILADELPHIA -- Two New Jersey students and three at Princeton University were among 32 U.S. winners today of Rhodes scholarships.

Joshua A. Lospinoso of Sparta, who attends the United States Military Academy, Myron L. Rolle of Galloway, a student at Florida State University who attended The Hun School in Princeton, and Princeton students Scott M. Moore of Louisville, Ky., Timothy A. Nunan of Palos Verdes, Calif., and Stephen Hammer of Carrollton, Texas, were selected to enter England's Oxford University next October.

Mitsu Yasukawa/The Star-LedgerDell High School 11th-grader Courtney Stroever looks at photos of the 9/11 attacks during class on Sept. 9 in Oradell.

The teachers around the paper-strewn table knew it was the diciest subject of the day, as they began work on a curriculum for teaching about the events of 9/11 and how they affected the nation and world.

What are the causes of terrorism and how is it even defined?

Local school officials always grumble about top-down proposals when the state says their districts should merge to save money.

But these days, a new frustration has been added to the mix: a sour economy.

That makes the state less likely to propose financial incentives for districts to regionalize, a state official told more than 200 unhappy local school officials yesterday, at a panel sponsored by the New Jersey School Boards Association.

On a day when the Dow plunged more than 440 points, with analysts predicting the worst is yet to come, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker insisted time is the only solution in a crisis that has become as much a "psychological" problem as it is real.

Volcker, who served as Fed chairman from 1979 to 1987 and is now a top economic advisor to President-elect Barack Obama, told nearly 50 students and faculty members collected in a lecture hall Drew University in Madison today that, eventually, this crisis shall pass.

Jim Pathe/The Star-LedgerPaul Volcker, left, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, speaks at Drew University in former governor Brendan Byrne's "Politics and the Media" class. Former governor and former Drew president Tom Kean, right, joined Volcker as a guest speaker.

A student at North Hunterdon High School faces multiple charges after she and two classmates attacked a fourth teen in a dispute over a boy, according to police.

Authorities said the three attackers assaulted the victim in a school locker room around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The 16-year-old charged in the beating allegedly threatened to stab the victim with a nail file, and then tried to discard the weapon, Lt. Ryan Melsky, a police spokesman.

A Sussex County Community College professor is suing the school, claiming she was sexually harassed by a superior who retaliated against her when she rejected his advances, and that she was improperly denied a promotion.

The professor, Darla Silverman, is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, fees and costs from the college. The civil suit, made public today in Superior Court in Newton, names as defendants the college, its president, Constance Mierendorf, vice president Harry Damato and associate professor of psychology Richard Linden.

Kathleen Scott, a spokeswoman for the college, declined comment on the lawsuit.

Annette Gordon-Reed

Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor of history at Rutgers-Newark, has won the 2008 National Book Award for Non-fiction for her work "The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family."

An interview with the author.

Gordon-Read is the first African American woman to win the nonfiction award.

Thirty minutes before the final moves were made, the outcome was already certain.

"It's over," whispered convicted killer Carl Gooding, grinning as he looked confidently over the remaining pieces on the chess board.

The 41-year-old prison inmate had a rook, a knight and six well-placed pawns. Atanas Petkov, 19, a Princeton University economics major from Bulgaria, was struggling to regain his posture with one rook and a somewhat bunched and useless assembly of six pawns.

John O'Boyle/The Star-LedgerPrinceton University student Sudeep Doshi (only hand in photo) makes a move during a chess match with inmate Amir Winn at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton.

A proposal to make fees that support the Rutgers University's student newspaper optional for students will not go forward, according to a report in the Record.

The report said the plan to allow students to opt out of a $9.75 per-semester fee for the Daily Targum was to be considered Friday during a meeting of the University Senate, but it will be removed from a list of recommendations. Targum supporters organized an e-mail campaign and set up a page on Facebook.com, a social networking website, to voice their opposition.

The Rutgers athletic department was allowed to become a virtually independent operation within the school - bending rules, answering to no one and spending freely.

Those findings were contained in a much anticipated report released late Wednesday by the university. The 35-page internal review said the athletic department veered out of control because Rutgers president Richard L. McCormick and the school's board of governors failed to monitor Athletic Director Robert E. Mulcahy in the drive to bring athletic success to Rutgers.

The overall conclusion from a panel of business leaders, judges, lawyers and Rutgers officials was that the state university was ill-prepared to handle its push into big-time football.

"The university operated with inadequate internal controls, insufficient inter-departmental...communications, an uninformed board on some specific important issues and limited presidential leadership," the report said.

The report found no wrongdoing on Mulcahy's part.

Chris Faytok/The Star-LedgerRutgers Athletic Director Robert E. Mulcahy.

Thousands of new teachers coming into the classroom as a second career will need to take many hours of additional training under rules approved by the state Board of Education today.

These "alternate route" teachers now make up more than a third of all new hires in New Jersey public schools, and had previously been required to take 200 hours of training once on the job and to work alongside veteran teachers in their first months.

Wanaque's school board Tuesday approved cutting 8 and one-half custodial positions and soliciting bids for private custodial services, according to a report in the Record.

The report said Superintendent Richard Weisenfeld told the 80 or so attendees that the changes, although unfortunate, are needed to pay for unexpected and unbudgeted costs. Linda Marton, president of the 133-member Wanaque Borough Education Association, the employee union, said the district was putting savings over children's safety, because it would be relying on strangers.

When the federal government decided to put a dock at Fort Hancock in Sandy Hook Bay, it needed to explore what environmental habitat it might disturb in the process.

Today, scientists from Rutgers University provided a high-tech answer, sending an unmanned, torpedo-shaped vehicle under the bay to give a precise picture of what lives beneath the surface.

Researchers have been using the submersible -- equipped with a camera -- up and down the East Coast and beyond to go places man cannot easily go. And today, they used their research as a teaching tool, inviting along a group of curious students who may one day build their own version of the Remote Environmental Monitoring Units, better known as REMUS.

The state Supreme Court today rejected Gov. Jon Corzine's request to pull the plug on the long-running Abbott v. Burke court case, a case that has forced a succession of governors to steer billions of dollars in special state aid to Newark, Camden and 29 other needy communities.

Instead of closing the case, the court opted to set up a special set of hearings where Corzine will be given the chance to prove to a "special master" whether his new formula for distributing $7.8 billion in state school aid eliminates the need for the special consideration the court has demanded for the so-called "Abbott" communities. The court named Superior Court Judge Peter Doyne as the Special Master.

The text of the opinion is available online.

Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-Ledger Supreme Court Justice Jaynee LaVecchia during arguments in the Abbott v. Burke case at the Hughes Justice Complex in September.

The leader of a national movement to rethink the legal drinking age told New Jersey lawmakers today the law isn't working, but those under 21 shouldn't expect the state to lower the age anytime soon.

"That's not going to happen," Senate President Richard J. Codey told the Senate Education Committee during a hearing in Trenton where college leaders and law enforcement officials debated how to tackle underage consumption and binge drinking.

fileSenator Richard Codey

The Union County Prosecutor's Office has charged a husband and wife, both teachers in Linden public schools, with tampering with records to boost their overtime pay.

Kimberly DeMatteo, 38, a Linden High School teacher, and her husband, Michael Maurer, 34, who teaches at the middle school, have each been charged with one count of tampering with public records and one count of altering reports, Prosecutor Theodore J. Romankow announced today.

Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-LedgerBartholomew McInerney is arraigned this afternoon on charges of child endangerment at the Monmouth County Courthouse

Bart McInerney's attorney Charles Uliano pleaded not guilty on his behalf. McInerney's only words were "Yes, your honor," when the judge asked if he understood he must return to court or face arrest.

The 42-year-old Spring Lake Heights resident remains free on $200,000 bail, which the judge continued today. After the 5-minute court proceeding, McInerney walked quickly from the courtroom to his car.

Middlesex County College officials announced today plans for an honors program to make students more competitive when transferring to four-year colleges and universities.

The program, which officially launches next semester with three courses, is for students with either a 1,200 on the Scholastic Assessment Test or a 3.5 grade point average.

New Jersey lawmakers want to learn more about underage and binge alcohol drinking, following what some say is a worsening problem on college campuses.

The Senate Education Committee will address the problem today during a special hearing.

Jerry McCrea/The Star-LedgerHugh Willett of Massachusettes, left, and Dean Shtainhorn of Millburn discussed underage drinking on campus by students of Drew University.

Ed Murray/The Star-LedgerJudy Ortman, interim executive director of the Concordia Learning Center, is interviewed by student Indigo Estevez from Newark for the school paper.

There's a buzz in the newsroom of a New Jersey start-up newspaper, and not a whisper of the falling revenue, layoffs and closures buffeting the industry.

Reporter Indigo Estevez has just wrapped up an interview with an official regarding a school name change, her questions typed in advance and printed large enough for her to read.

Ashley Kivelier questions her subject from her wheelchair, probing Mary Dixon about her 43-year career at the same Hudson County school. In the back of the newsroom, Omar Tzic types his tape-recorded notes on a computer that speaks aloud every letter, tab and backspace the blind 11-year-old enters on the keyboard.

Indeed, this is no ordinary shop. It's a classroom that turns newsroom twice weekly for the 16-member staff of The Student Voice, a periodical from Concordia Learning Center at St. Joseph's School for the Blind in Jersey City.

Craig Thomas Jr., who was 14 when he and two cousins killed two Roxbury video game store workers nearly six years ago, could be free in 2½ years after a judge let him plead guilty to manslaughter this morning because he helped get a conviction against the mastermind of the crime.

Superior Court Judge Salem Ahto reluctantly accepted a plea deal that calls for a 10-year prison sentence, after Thomas admitted he accidentally fired the first shot at 21-year-old Jeffrey Eresman during a botched robbery on Dec. 1, 2002. Thomas said his cousin, Omar Thomas, then finished Eresman off with a second shot to the head, and did the same to 26-year-old Erik Rewoldt when he entered the Funcoland store.

Photos by Jim Pathe/The Star-LedgerCraig Thomas Jr. is escorted from Superior Court in Morristown after he was sentenced in the Funcoland homicides. J

Dalecia Apple would buy what she wanted when she wanted it. If the Newark teen had $20 it was gone by the end of the day. All that changed after a summer of learning about savings, budgeting and the ins and outs of how to be a bank teller.

In an effort to help educate young people about financial planning and to introduce Newark students, including Apple, to careers in finance, Capital One opened a bank branch at West Side High School today.

"I was not good at saving at all but now I have control of my money," Apple said laughing. "It doesn't feel good to be broke."

Tim Farrell/The Star-LedgerCapital One is opening a student run bank branch in West Side High School in Newark. Student bankers Satchmo Hastings, Dalecia Apple and Oritseneye Oyowe meet on the eve of the banks grand opening.

Star-Ledger FileFormer state Sen. Wayne Bryant

Federal prosecutors launched an "aggressive" and "nasty" investigation into former Sen. Wayne Bryant's work as a legislator and a UMDNJ employee, but all they were able to prove was that he brought money in to benefit needy South Jersey communities, his attorney argued in closing arguments for his corruption trial today.

Halfway through attorney Carl Poplar's 2 1/2-hour remarks, the judge warned him he was coming dangerously close to arguing the U.S. Attorney had prosecuted Bryant because he is a Democrat. U.S. District Court Judge Freda Wolfson prohibited Poplar from using a selective prosecution defense.

Full coverage from The Star-Ledger

Boonton police have charged a 14-year-old boy from Lincoln Park with starting a small fire in a bathroom at Boonton High School Wednesday morning that led to students' early dismissal, authorities said today.

Police Capt. Curt James said the teenager was charged late last night with arson, unlawfully causing or risking widespread injury or damage and criminal mischief. The boy was smoking in the bathroom and used his cigarette to burn holes in a roll of toilet paper in the stall, "to see what it would be like," according to a statement released by police.

When an Indian student brought her new husband to Sherri-Ann Butterfield's sociology class at Rutgers-Newark, their arranged marriage became the lesson of the day.

"It was a powerful moment," Butterfield said -- the kind of "unscripted" moment she hopes other faculty members will embrace on a campus where the students come from 81 countries and those born in the United States are largely from minority and immigrant households.

With no racial group claiming a majority, Rutgers-Newark once again has been dubbed by U.S. News & World Report as the most diverse campus in the country. Rutgers-New Brunswick is No. 26.

CHART: Diversity at Rutgers

Aristide Economopoulos/The Star-LedgerMegan Smith, left, and Anthony Colon, both members of the Latin dance group Rutgers Dedicado, perform a salsa dance at the Douglass Campus Center.

Star-Ledger FileWayne Bryant

After nine weeks of testimony, thousands of pages of documents and several dozen witnesses, the prosecutor in the federal corruption case against former state Sen. Wayne Bryant summed it up today as a very "simple" and blatant case of bribery and fraud.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Lurie described how Bryant shook down the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey for a job, got a phony $35,000-a-year position at the university's School of Osteopathic Medicine and used his influence as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee to help funnel $10.5 million to the school between 2003 and 2006.

Full coverage from The Star-Ledger

Peter S. Amenta, interim dean of UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School since 2006, has been named to the post on a permanent basis, university officials announced today.

Amenta, 55, a pathologist who also holds a doctorate in anatomy, was chosen following a national search, officials said.

"I'm grateful for the confidence that the university has shown in me," Amenta said in a statement.

Star-Ledger FileWayne Bryant

After nine weeks of testimony, thousands of pages of documents and dozens of witness, the prosecutor in the federal corruption case against former state Sen. Wayne Bryant and former medical school dean R. Michael Gallagher today called it a very "simple'' and blatant case of bribery and fraud.

Full coverage from The Star-Ledger

Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Lurie said Bryant shook down the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey for a job, used his influence as Senate budget chairman to help funnel $10.5 million to the school in state aid between 2003 and 2006, and got a $35,000 sham job that boosted his pension.

New Jersey school officials do not need a warrant to search a student's car if it is parked with special permission on school grounds and if they reasonably suspect evidence of illegal activity will be found in the vehicle, a state appellate court ruled Monday, according to a report in the Press of Atlantic City.

The report said the case involed a suspected drug sale at Egg Harbor Township High School in 2006. The court said the privacy interests of the student are outweighed by the interest of administrators in maintaining a drug-free environment.

Two Rowan University students were recovering after they were assaulted in armed robberies on and near the Glassboro campus early today.

The university said three students were robbed at gunpoint behind the facilities building around 12:45 a.m. The school said one student sustained minor injuries after being punched and kicked.

No signs of trauma were found on the body of the New Jersey college student who died of alcohol poisoning at a fraternity party in Delaware, police said today.

As friends and family in South Brunswick coped with the loss of 18-year-old Brett Griffin, police in Newark, Del., said they were still piecing together details of the night he died. Griffin was found unconscious early Saturday at an off-campus party hosted by members of the Sigma Delta Mu fraternity at the University of Delaware, authorities said.

Brett Griffin's senior portrait from the 2008 South Brunswick High School yearbook.

Despite growing concerns that the second phase of Rutgers' stadium expansion plans will be delayed, scaled down or perhaps even grind to a halt because of a major financial shortfall, head coach Greg Schiano Thursday remained resolute in his belief that the work will get done.

Bids for the project, with the centerpiece being an additional 13,000 seats in the south end zone, are due back in approximately two weeks, associate director of athletics Kevin MacConnell said.

Construction w