Humanities & Society

It’s called Sketch-a-Song. It’s free and it’s designed to make music creation accessible to everyone — even people without formal musical training. WUSTL seniors Jacob Zax and Adam Segal are members of the team of seven high school friends who devoted last summer to creating the app.

Discovering ways to honor the dignity of individuals coping with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias is the goal of an interdisciplinary symposium on “Finding Humanity in Advanced Dementia” to be held in Wilson Hall on the Danforth Campus of Washington University in St Louis on Saturday, April 27.

More than 1,600 people participated in the 12-hour, overnight Relay for Life April 13 and 14, which raised $220,287 for the American Cancer Society. Organized by students, WUSTL’s 11th annual Relay for Life opened with a symbolic “survivors’ lap” around Bushyhead Track.

Performances of Lucky Stiff, a musical starring and directed and produced by students on the Washington University Medical Campus will be April 25, 26 and 27 in Whelpley Auditorium on the St. Louis College of Pharmacy campus. Shown is Greg Bligard, a third-year MD/PhD student, rehearsing a scene from the show.

Gerald L. Early, PhD, the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters at Washington University in St. Louis, delivered a talk during his induction ceremony into the St. Louis Walk of Fame April 11 on Delmar Boulevard in The Loop. To read the piece, click here.

Professor Gerald L. Early, PhD, an internationally renowned essayist and American culture critic, was recognized with a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame during an April 11 induction ceremony in front of the Moonrise Hotel on Delmar Boulevard in The Loop. His brass star and a bronze plaque will be embedded at a later time near the corner of Delmar and Eastgate Avenue after construction is completed on the first phase of WUSTL’s Loop Student Living Initiative.

Students at Washington University in St. Louis are working around the clock this week preparing for the Thurtene Carnival, which starts Friday, April 19. The carnival includes facades, miniature house-like structures that student groups build and decorate, inside which carnivalgoers can enjoy student-created plays.

On Monday, April 15, President Obama signed legislation rolling back the disclosure requirements of the STOCK (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge) Act, which would have required creation of a searchable, sortable database for the annual financial interest forms of 28,000 executive branch employees as well as highly paid Congressional staff. These forms contain detailed information about employees’ assets, outside income and gifts. Former national security officials raised security concerns about this publication requirement. Current employees filed a lawsuit, resulting in a federal court ruling that publishing such information on the web would violate employees’ right to privacy. “Both the court and the National Academy of Public Administration recognized that federal employees have a legitimate right to privacy regarding their personal financial information,” says Kathleen Clark, JD, government ethics expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.

Alumna Anna DiPalma Amelung, PhD, a facilitator in WUSTL’s Lifelong Learning Institute (LLI), was inducted as a Chevalier dans L’Ordre des Palmes Académiques (Knight in the Order of Academic Palms) for outstanding contributions to the development of French culture and language. Amelung received a medallion on behalf of the French government during a March 22 ceremony and reception at the West Campus Conference Center. Amelung earned a PhD in French from WUSTL in 1980.

On Thursday, April 11, the Senate voted to roll back the STOCK (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge) Act, limiting the web-based publication of government employees’ personal financial information. This action comes in response to a federal court ruling that such publication violated employees’ right to privacy and a critical report by the National Academy of Public Administration. “The court recognized that the federal employees have a legitimate right to privacy regarding their personal financial information and ruled that the federal government failed to identify a compelling government interest that would justify posting that personal information on the internet,” says Kathleen Clark, JD, government ethics expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.