In messages to students, faculty and staff on Thursday, Gonzaga President Thayne McCulloh said spring semester courses are now scheduled to resume on March 23.

In a unanimous opinion, a three-judge panel of Washington’s Court of Appeals Division III said a new Public Records Act exemption can retroactively apply to the documents in question.

Professors will teach by live video conferencing and prerecording lectures to share with students, among other modes of communication. The move will affect tens of thousands of students.

Former provost Mitzi Montoya continues to work as a professor under the terms of a legal settlement that guarantees her a $460,000 salary for one year, even if she finds a new employer.

As provost, Mitzi Montoya reported directly to President Kirk Schulz and oversaw teaching and research across WSU campuses. She left the position in late September, less than two months after she was recruited from Oregon State University.

“I can only conclude that they are afraid that an independent expert will disagree with their current course, and they’ll have to contemplate large changes,” a professor said in response to the decision.

A physics professor representing concerned faculty members delivered a 10-minute presentation to Eastern Washington University’s board of trustees on Thursday, arguing money spent on athletics would be better spent on academics.

The lecture on March 12 will mark the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.

EWU made cuts of almost $7 million across campus in the past two years; it spent about twice that in a single year to subsidize athletics. Ask yourself if you could imagine the world in which those figures were reversed. Then ask yourself what’s so crazy about this new report.

After less than two months on the job, former WSU provost Mitzi Montoya described receiving sexist performance evaluations and other resistance from fellow administrators. “I learned that there are major concerns about me – I need a personality transplant, I need to be more feminine and conforming in my communication style, and I need to be less intelligent,” she wrote in a September email to President Kirk Schulz.

“Eastern’s not doing anything outrageous. We’re not doing anything extravagant,” EWU Athletic Director Lynn Hickey said. “At the same time, we know that we need to be responsible, fiscally. But we’ve been proactive on that. We’re getting better.”

This year’s EWU “activist in residence” is Lili Navarrete, an alumna of the university who immigrated to Spokane from Mexico City in 1988. She is the director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho, and she manages Raíz, the organization’s outreach program for Latino communities.

A lawmaker is taking aim at administrative bloat in Washington’s universities, with proposed legislation that would take a cleaver to nonteaching jobs in the state’s system of higher learning and save tens of millions of dollars.

Leaders at both schools say they will continue working together, but there are still many details to be worked out, and it’s unclear how much EWU will pay WSU to continue using other spaces on campus.

The Whitman County coroner confirmed Monday that Samuel Martinez, a 19-year-old Washington State University freshman, died of acute alcohol intoxication during a party at his fraternity house last month. Coroner Annie Pillers also determined Martinez’s death on Nov. 12 was an accident, despite questions raised about the time it took his peers to call 911.

Colleges and universities across the United States are bracing for an “enrollment cliff” in about five years – the result of a downturn in birth rates after the Great Recession. Washington and Idaho are expected to fare well compared to other states, though schools in the region are rethinking their recruitment strategies.

In a statement Monday, WSU President Kirk Schulz said the school “placed an interim loss-of-recognition status” on the Alpha Tau Omega house following the Nov. 12 death of Samuel Martinez.

The Catholic Charities Spokane and Gonzaga School of Law have teamed up to offer an immigration law clinic at the law school, where students overseen by attorneys will offer free representation.

The Washington Post reported that despite a 25.5% decline in English majors since the 2008 recession, the skills learned through the major – chiefly, storytelling – are more crucial than ever.