After Due Process, Caroline Kennedy Gets Her Degree

There was a famous name among the 380 students honored during a pre-commencement ceremony at the Columbia University School of Law in New York--Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg. The late President John F. Kennedy’s daughter, whose diploma reads Caroline Bouvier Kennedy, was among the graduates who shook the hand of Dean Barbara Aronstein Black during a ceremony marking the end of their law studies. Her mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis; her brother, John F. Kennedy Jr.; her husband, Edwin Schlossberg, and other family members were in the audience. Mrs. Schlossberg did not attend the official university commencement ceremony, when degrees were conferred upon 7,200 students from Columbia and three affiliated institutions.

--Ray Polvani, principal of Frye Elementary School in Chandler, Ariz., apparently learned some lessons two years ago when he served on a panel that selected the first elementary schools singled out for recognition by the U.S. Department of Education. Polvani’s school was among the 287 recently chosen in the government’s biennial search for the best elementary schools. Principals and other school representatives will be invited to Washington in the fall to receive “flags of excellence.” Education Secretary William J. Bennett said the winners are “models of quality.” Winners include not only Polvani’s largely Latino school, where nearly two-thirds of the children come from low-income families, but also Grosse Pointe Academy in Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich., where tuition reaches $5,700 a year. The award shows “that a school doesn’t have to have a demographic breakdown that is mostly high socio-economic to be considered an excellent school,” Polvani said.

--John D. Folse is getting ready to dish it out during the upcoming Moscow summit between President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Folse, a Cajun chef and owner of Lafitte’s Landing in Donaldsonville, La., will serve spicy gumbo, catfish filets and other delicacies for 10 days at Lafitte’s Landing East at the Moscow World Trade Center. Nearly 30,000 pounds of seafood, spices and other supplies were loaded on planes in New Orleans for Moscow. Folse was invited to make the trip after he introduced visiting Soviet scientists to Cajun food last August. The summit will begin May 29.