I probably shouldn't give out this information but, Google Alerts is a great tool. Typically when I can’t find something to write about around campus, I go to my e-mail and Google has provided me with about 10 Penn State related stories. How else am I going to find things like “World’s top universities for Qatar college fair.”

When I think of Qatar, the Persian Gulf nation, I think of the amazing man-made islands they are creating shaped like a huge palm trees. And that is why I'm not a geography major, because that is Dubai, not Qatar. But, I was close (not really). And Qatar (which is the country you heard all the newscasters pronounce as "cutter" during the beginning of the Iraq war), like Dubai, is a rich oil country that seems to be straddling the Arab and Western worlds. So, what does Penn State see when they think of Dubai? Ah, potential students of course.
In what looks to be basically a press release for the Qatar college fair, Penn State is listed with other worldly college like Imperial College (London), Australian National University (duh, Australia) and Cardiff University (Wales) which will be among “60 universities from the UK, US, Australia and Qatar taking part in the first Qatar International College Fair” Penn State is also mentioned as being “ranked among top 50 global universities and offers more than 200 undergraduate and graduate programmes of study.”

Here’s my question about this. Who’s the lucky bastard from Penn State who gets to go to Qatar to recruit students? And how do you convince potential students to move from there to the middle of Pennsylvania?

According to the press release, the fair starts Tuesday at 6pm (which will be 10am our time if I did my math correctly) and goes until Thursday. So does anyone know what Graham’s up to tomorrow? Maybe no one from the university will actually be there, but that’s doubtful.

Well, with the passing of this new Open Records Bill in Pennsylvania, at least we’ll be able to see how much Penn State spent for airfare and food and entertainment to recruit students from Qatar! Oh wait … nevermind.