Kumar the professor, Gamecocks set new yo-yo record

By Eric Horowitz

Kumar becomes a professor, "the Dude" pays a visit to college campuses, a Penn athlete becomes an inventor and South Carolina goes for a new world record. All this and more in this week's Campus Chronicles.

Kal Penn, seen here in The Namesake, will teach two courses at the University of Pennsylvania next year. Photo courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures.

• The University of Pennsylvania has also announced that next year actor Kal Penn, the star of Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj and Harold and Kumar Go to Whitecastle, will teach two courses in the school's Asian American Studies Program. Somewhat surprisingly, Penn was the one who originally initiated the discussion about teaching a course--he began to express interest in a more extensive position after giving a speech at the University's Asian American Pacific Heritage week. If all goes well, the school will consider hiring Will Ferrell to teach broadcast journalism classes and Sacha Baron Cohen to teach Eastern European history.

• The Dude still abides. This month Jeff Dowd, the man who was the inspiration for the Dude in The Big Lebowski, returned to his alma mater, the University of Washington, to give a speech to students about political involvement. It was all part of his nation-wide college speaking tour aimed at promoting political activism among young adults. More than 200 students showed up for the talk, and they were not disappointed despite the fact that Dowd left early to go bowling.

• Penn kicker Derrick Zoch can now call himself the Thomas Edison of field goal kicking. Zoch has invented a mechanical football holder that simulates the snap and hold that occur in a live game situation. Zoch's invention is one of 10 finalists in Penn's "Winning Pennvention," the school's annual contest for student inventors. Zoch is calling his invention the "Quicker Kicker, which he narrowly chose over his second choice, Machine That's Smarter Than Tony Romo.

• The University of South Carolina may soon be in the record books. Earlier this week the school's radio station attempted to break the world record for most people yo-yoing at one time. Event organizers claim that more than 900 people participated, shattering the previous record of 630. Football coach Steve Spurrier encouraged his players to attend, telling them that yo-yoing might be the only thing in which they will ever be able to beat the University of Florida.

• There undoubtedly were a lot of unruly fans at this month's NCAA tournament games, but there was only one unruly athletic director. Illinois AD Ron Guenther has come under fire after a columnist sitting next to him at the Illini's first-round game against Virginia Tech penned a column criticizing his repeated outbursts. Guenther reportedly glared at officials, yelled at Illinois coach Bruce Weber and called an Illini player "an idiot." The good news for Guenther is that not only did university officials decide not to discipline him, but Mark Cuban has invited him to come to Dallas to watch a Mavericks game.

• It doesn't happen often, but MIT has taken home an athletic championship. The Engineers won the NRA-sponsored National Pistol Championship that was held last week at West Point. En route to winning the title MIT defeated the Army, Navy, Coast Guard and Marine Merchant academies. So the students at MIT are better with guns than those at Army and Navy -- and people still wonder why we can't win a war.

• There's good news for collegiate bike racing fans who feel that Indiana's Little 500 doesn't involve enough alcohol. This weekend Rice University will be holding its 51st annual Beer Bike. The competition involves teams of bikers racing around a track, with the added rule that designated chuggers must chug beers before their team's bikers are allowed to start. This year's race will go on despite the constant warnings from Floyd Landis that combining drinking and bike riding will lead to positive steroid tests.