Felons Made to ‘fess Up in Print

--”It’s a 20th-Century form of the stocks that used to be in front of the courthouse” in Newport, Ore., said Ulys Stapleton, chief prosecutor of Lincoln County. Instead of using that old form of punishment to expose criminals to the public, Stapleton has decided to order some convicted felons to publish apologies for their crimes in local newspapers. He said that orders to place such advertisements have been included in some plea bargains because Oregon’s prisons are so overcrowded that many felons never serve time behind bars. Stapleton said that he hopes the public embarrassment will compel convicted criminals to re-evaluate their behavior, and that the ads will give residents of the coastal county of 37,500 people something to think about. “They’ll see that people that normally would go to jail will be living next door to them instead,” Stapleton said. The first advertisement, headlined “Criminal’s Apology,” ran in the weekly Newport News-Times. It included a police mug shot of Tom Kirby, who was convicted of burglary. In the ad, Kirby said: “I wish to apologize to the people of the city of Newport for all of the problems I have caused. I know now what I did was selfish and wrong.”

--When they hand out the sheepskins at Wesleyan College, they do it literally. Fifty-seven Wesleyan graduates got genuine sheepskin diplomas as part of efforts to uphold tradition at the 150-year-old women’s college in Macon, Ga. There is something else traditional about a Wesleyan diploma--it is printed in Latin. Not all Wesleyan students are Latin scholars, but they don’t have to be. Says college public relations director Jill Bigler: “A translation is available to students at some point, so they know what it says.”

--Henry Clay of Kentucky was ranked the greatest U.S. senator ever in a national poll of college professors. Clay was followed by Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, Robert M. LaFollette Sr. of Wisconsin, George W. Norris of Nebraska, Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, Everett M. Dirksen of Illinois, Jacob K. Javits of New York, Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and Arthur H. Vandenburg of Michigan, the Milwaukee Sentinel reported. The survey, conducted by Siena College Research Institute in Loudonville, N.Y., was a random sampling of 400 college historians and political scientists, of whom more than 110 responded. The senators were rated on leadership ability, political leadership, luck, imagination, intelligence, ability to compromise, integrity, value to the Senate, value to the country and legislative creativity.