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June 6, 2001 Class Notes Class Notes Features: Shattering
the glass ceiling Big,
bad PR A
moral victory Email your class notes...many secretaries have email. Check our online Class Secretaries Directory. Shattering
the glass ceiling Rothenberg launched the now top-ranked Law and Healthcare Program at Maryland. Though not yet a teenager
when The Feminine Mystique ignited the women’s movement, Karen
H. Rothenberg ’73 *74 took Betty Friedan’s message to
heart. “Back then,” says the dean of the University of
Maryland School of Law, “women were struggling with the question:
Is it OK to be smart?” Rothenberg has spent
her life shattering preconceived notions about women while following
her passion — health care. A member of Princeton’s second
class of women, the Long Island native earned her bachelor’s
and master’s degrees in male-dominated public affairs from
the Woodrow Wilson School by age 21. Today Rothenberg, who was named
dean a year ago, is the first woman to head Maryland’s law
school in its 184-year history. Spurred by mentor Uwe
E. Reinhardt, a professor of political economy, Rothenberg had planned
a career in government, shaping public health-care policy. Instead,
she earned a J.D. at the University of Virginia School of Law, practiced
law, and, in 1983, found her niche in academia. She had been a law
professor at the University of Maryland just four years when she
launched the now top-ranked Law and Healthcare Program. While planning that program,
the Marjorie Cook Professor of Law says, “I had a full teaching
load, two-year-old Andrea at home, and plans to have another child,
but that was my dream.” Realizing professional goals has never
stopped Rothenberg from fulfilling personal ones. She and her husband,
child psychologist Jeffrey Seltzer, who welcomed a second daughter,
Rebecca, in 1984, have always made time for family. “We’ve
taught our daughters that they have to have a passion in something,
but they also need balance in their lives,” said Rothenberg. A tireless scholar, the
dean has shared her work on genetics testing, AIDS, and women’s
health issues in lectures, publications, congressional testimonies,
and media appearances. She also continues to teach, even as she
tackles curriculum reform and the building of a new campus law facility. “Having a lot of
balls in the air creates excitement and shows you different perspectives,”
says the Bethesda, Maryland, resident. “It lets you see how
everything connects.” By Regina Diverio Freelance writer Regina Diverio is the former editor of Drew Magazine. Big,
bad PR RamptonÕs latest book attacks scientists whose work is bought and paid for by corporations with a stake in the studies. In the early 1990s, Sheldon
Rampton ’82 listened as John Stauber — a fellow Wisconsin
activist — proposed a publication to track the seamy underbelly
of the public relations industry. Stauber got the idea after encountering
a 300-pound, former military man with a crew cut who was paid by
a PR firm to infiltrate liberal groups and tape their discussions.
Rampton was impressed, but he wondered whether they could find enough
articles to sustain a publication. “In retrospect,” Rampton
says, “I feel naive, because we’ve never run out of material.
Actually, we’re kind of swimming in it.” Rampton and Stauber now
publish PR Watch (www.prwatch. org) and they write books. The first,
Toxic Sludge is Good For You!, detailed, among other things, how
the sewage-handling industry tried to replace the term “sludge”
with a less fear-inducing coinage, “biosolids.” Their
newest book, Trust Us, We’re Experts: How Industry Manipulates
Science and Gambles with Your Future, attacks scientists, often
known as “independent experts,” whose work is bought and
paid for by corporations with a stake in the studies and promoted
by PR firms. Though the duo’s
tone leavens combative outrage with humor, Rampton makes clear that
PR can sometimes be good, even necessary. “It would be oversimplifying
to say that all PR people are doing bad stuff,” he says. A Las Vegas native, Rampton
majored in English at Princeton, graduating three years late due
to a Mormon missionary stint in Japan. (He is no longer a practicing
church member.) On campus, Rampton gravitated toward progressive
causes, especially the conflicts in Central America. With PR Watch, Rampton
considers himself “a blend of journalist and activist,”
though he stays away from electoral politics. “Everyone I support
tends to lose,” he says. The books have done better. Toxic
Sludge is Good For You! was a critical success and is still selling
“pretty well.” Now, he says, some college PR courses make
his books mandatory reading. By Louis Jacobson ’92 Louis Jacobson covers lobbying, law, and public relations for National Journal in Washington. A
moral victory Russell worked on the case that found New YorkÕs funding formula for public schools unconstitutional. The decision made headlines
around the country — in January, a New York State Supreme Court
Justice ordered the state to change how it gives out money to its
public school districts because the current funding formula, which
is based largely on the value of real estate, deprives millions
of New York City schoolchildren of a “sound, basic education”
and is unconstitutional. William T. Russell, Jr.
’87, was one of eight lawyers from the Manhattan firm of Simpson
Thacher & Bartlett who worked pro bono on the landmark case
for the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, the nonprofit group that sued
the state in 1993. A politics major at Princeton who later attended
New York University Law School, Russell was asked to pitch in just
six months before the case went to trial in October 1999. “It
was an easy decision,” says Russell, although his wife, Holly,
was pregnant at the time, and gave birth to the couple’s first
child, Liam, as he worked nights and weekends on the case. In fact,
he missed much of his son’s first year. As the firm gathered
evidence that the city schools — the nation’s largest
school system with 1.1 million students — lacked enough state
money to properly educate its students, Russell studied the condition
of school buildings, finding that many were overcrowded and had
crumbling walls and shoddy science labs. In the 182-page decision
by Justice Leland DeGrasse, the judge included “adequate and
accessible” school buildings as one of many resources needed
so that children can learn. “It was a great
feeling,” Russell says of the legal victory, which is being
appealed by the state. “My wife cried when I told her because
she knew how much the case meant to us, the personal sacrifices
that everyone made. “The decision, if
upheld on appeal, will go a long way toward insuring that future
children will have the opportunity for a sound, basic education,
which is their constitutional right,” says Russell. The fight for a more
equitable funding formula is far from over, but thanks in part to
Russell, New York City public school students may be one step closer
to a better education. By Theola S. Labbé
’96 Theola S. Labbé is a reporter in Albany, New York, for the Times Union.
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