CrÈches Banned

THOMAS MORE LAW CENTER, Nov. 12 — Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center has filed a motion to temporarily restrain New York City schools from enforcing a policy that bans Nativity scenes but permits Jewish menorahs and Islamic crescents, the Web news service reported.

The non-Christian symbols are allowed, the city says, because they have a secular dimension, but the representation of the birth of Christ is “purely religious” and is not a historically accurate representation of an event with secular significance.

The More Center's Robert Muise said most Americans do not see it that way: “The birth of Jesus is … of importance for both Christians and non-Christians.”

The federal civil-rights lawsuit was filed on behalf of Andrea Skoros and her two elementary-school children, who are Catholic.

All-Time Winner

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Nov. 8 — John Gagliardi became college football's career victory leader when St. John's University of Collegeville, Minn., rallied to beat Bethel 29-26 earlier this season.

Gagliardi, in his 55th season and his 51st with the Johnnies, is now the owner of 409 victories. He passed Eddie Robinson, who retired in 1997 after winning 408 games with Division I-AA Grambling State.

“I have never have thought about retiring,” Gagliardi said after a lengthy ceremony in his honor on the home field of the Division III school in central Minnesota.

Friar-Doctor

CATHOLIC NEW YORK, Novem ber — Brother Daniel Sulmasy, a Franciscan friar and a medical doctor, is conducting a graduate seminar, “Natural Kinds, Natural Law and Medical Ethics” at St. John's University in New York throughout the current school year as the occupant of the Paul E. McKeever Chair in Moral Theology.

Brother Sulmasy also teaches ethics at St. Vincent's Medical Center and bioethics at New York Medical College in Valhalla, a school affiliated with the Archdiocese of New York.

NCAA Board Member

UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON, Nov. 17 — Daniel Curran, president of the University of Dayton, has been appointed to the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I board of directors — the chief executives who are responsible for overseeing legislation for 318 institutions in the NCAA's top division.

The four-year appointment on the 18-member board of directors begins in 2004. Curran, who just completed his first year as president of the University of Dayton, will serve as the representative from the Atlantic 10 Conference.

The NCAA Division I board is currently focusing on academic reform, including ratings that track the academic progress of athletes.

Debt Paid

FORDHAM UNIVERSITY, Oct. 25 — As part of festivities to welcome the university's new president, several male students carried bushels of wheat in an academic procession that preceded the inauguration of Jesuit Father Joseph McShane.

The gesture recalled the rural origins of the campus, located in the highly urbanized Rose Hill section of the Bronx.

The Reformed Church in America owned the property in 1733, but it was first farmed by a member of the gentry, the first lord of Rose Hill Manor. As rent, he promised to pay the church “two shillings six pence or a half-bushel of wheat.”