_{Ohio Benefits Dayton}

AKRON BEACON JOURNAL, Aug. 8 — The University of Dayton is the biggest single beneficiary of a state program in Ohio that provides grants to Ohio residents who study at private in-state colleges.

The Ohio Student Choice Grant provides $900 a year that state residents can use to defray their educational costs at 63 private Ohio colleges.

Of the $52 million the state paid out for the program last year, $4.2 million was directed to the Marianist-run University of Dayton, the Beacon Journal reported.

But while the students and their families undoubtedly appreciate the help, with the annual cost of attending the University of Dayton running at $32,000 a year, the grants cover only a small portion of financial needs.

“It’s not going to be the determining factor on whether a student comes here in most cases,” said Rob Durkle, the University of Dayton’s director of admissions. “It’s just one of many factors.”

The school is home to the International Marian Research Institute and houses one of the world’s largest collections of written materials on the Blessed Mother.

_{Obama at Xavier}

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Aug. 13 — Pro-abortion Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., spoke Aug. 12 as commencement speaker at Xavier College in New Orleans, the country’s only historically black Catholic college.

In his address to nearly 500 graduates, Obama noted that the school had overcome enormous obstacles to allow students to graduate this year.

After Hurricane Katrina struck last year, the campus was covered in nearly eight feet of water.

Said Obama, “Thanks for allowing me to share in your miracle.”

_{Grave Classroom}

THE EVANGELIST (ALBANY), July 20 — A contingent of 13 people from Siena College in Loudonville, N.Y., did something very unusual during this year’s summer vacation.

They helped to restore a Jewish cemetery near the village of Vselyub, Belarus. The cemetery was abandoned after the Holocaust wiped out the town’s Jewish population.

The Siena students, along with three Siena faculty members, spent a week helping townspeople erect overturned gravestones, clear brush and install an iron fence.

The trip was the idea of Albany-area orthodontist Michael Lozman, whose Jewish father emigrated from Belarus to the United States before the Second World War.

Before they left, the students took a seminar that discussed the Holocaust, Belarus, Jewish culture and its approaches to death and dying.

“It was an enormous sense of accomplishment when you realized what you’ve done,” junior Brian Hicks said of the graveyard restoration. “There was a sense of teamwork and cooperation, of people working together for one goal: to restore justice for a community.”

_{An Arresting Class}

THE TAMPA TRIBUNE, Aug. 8 — Dade City, Fla., Police Chief Philip Thompson and Sgt. James Walters are moonlighting these days — as professors at Saint Leo University.

After the crime-fighting duo earned master’s degrees in criminal justice last December from the Catholic university located 30 miles north of Tampa, they were asked by the college to start teaching courses themselves.

Terry Danner, head of St. Leo’s criminal justice program, told the Tribune that cops need to be well-educated these days.

Said Danner: “It’s not just checking locks and wrestling drunks anymore.”