'Everybody's campaign'

Two months to the day after the public kickoff of the $1 billion Campaign for Washington University, Central Fiscal Unit and school staff will launch their component of the campaign in a festive event from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Nov. 19 in the Athletic Complex.

A continental breakfast will be served and door prizes awarded, including a weekend for two in Chicago.

Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton will speak, along with staff campaign chairs Barbara Feiner, chief financial officer, and John Schael, director of athletics, and three staff members.

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John Hoal leads team effort to renew downtown St. Louis

"Critically important to the success of downtown is the necessity for high quality design that creates distinctive and compatible places for people to live, work and play," said Hoal, who heads the School of Architecture's Master of Architecture and Urban Design program.

"St. Louis already has done many of the big projects like Union Station, the Kiel Center and the TWA Dome," he observed. "In addition to large-scale catalytic projects, we now need to do some of the small, yet arguably more difficult things to link the assets together and create long-term, self-sustaining economic growth."

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Welcome to Wonderland

It's not your ordinary laboratory. There is a distinct lack of beakers and not a centrifuge in sight. But make no mistake about it -- serious research is under way in Mallinckrodt 100.

"Today, class, we're playing with toys," Jeffery Matthews announced gravely at a recent session. Matthews, an artist in residence in the Performing Arts Department in Arts and Sciences, gestured to the juggling pins and jump ropes, the foam snakes and stuffed monkeys and plastic bric-a-brac that lay scattered about the room. "Let's make some chaos."

Welcome to Drama 321, otherwise known as "Topics in Theatre: Staging 'Alice in Wonderland.'" Over the course of the fall semester, Matthews and his 20-odd students have unleashed a bit of their chaos on the Lewis Carroll classic, creating an original stage version that will debut next spring in Edison Theatre. What makes the production unique, however, is that everything, from researching and writing a script to composing original music and designing sets and costumes, will be completed by the students themselves.

"Whatever it ends up being, it will truly be ours," Matthews noted wryly while waiting for class to begin one recent Thursday morning. So truly, in fact, that one entire session will be spent with a copyright lawyer discussing the legalities of group authorship.

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Alcohol Intro

The Record Report on campus alcohol use and abuse continues this week. Joining the conversation begun last week are the voices of:

• An administrator who has dealt with profound tragedy;

• An alcohol-poisoned student;

• The University Police chief on new expectations for compliance;

• The Student Union president on student responsibilities;

• A professor on enforcing the law; and

• A South 40 administrator on renewed education efforts.

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