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Rip Taylor
Posted on July 14, 2019 / Last Modified July 14, 2019
Facts of Rip Taylor
5 feet 10 inches (1.78m)
Rusty Rowe
Washington D.C
Charles Elmer Taylor Sr.
Rip Taylor Facebook
View more / View less Facts of Rip Taylor
1 How old is Rip Taylor? Wiki, Parents, Nationality, Ethnicity
2 How much is Rip Taylor Net Worth and Salary?
3 Is Rip Taylor Gay?
4 Rip Taylor's Height and Weight
5 Rip Taylor's Career
6 Rip Taylor's Social Sites
Comedian and actor who became known for his wacky antics and his high-pitched voice.
How old is Rip Taylor? Wiki, Parents, Nationality, Ethnicity
Rip Taylor was born in the year 1935 on the 13th of January. He was born in a place called Washington D.C which lies in the United States of America. Currently, he is 84 years old under the zodiac sign Capricorn. He is the son of Elizabeth Taylor and Charles Elmer Taylor Sr.
Rip holds a to American nationality and belongs to the white ethnicity. He was influenced by legendary comedians like Charlie Chaplin, Red Foxx, Mickey Rooney, and Groucho Marx. Rip Taylor's childhood was not lavish at all but it was not difficult too.
His mother was a waitress and his father was a musician at that time. He struggled a lot with bullying while he was at his school. When he was young, he also got an opportunity to work as a Congressional Page and he did not let that chance slip through his hands. He then served as U.S Army Signal Corps in the Korean War. There is no information about his education.
How much is Rip Taylor Net Worth and Salary?
Rip Taylor know for his flamboyant and exuberance personality, has collected decent money from his acting and voice over career. Currently, his net worth is evualted at $3 million. However, his salary yet not provided in media.
Net Worth in 2019 $3 Million
Net Worth in 2018 Under Review
Annual Salary Under Review
Source of income as Actor, Comedian
Being a celebrity he might involve in some sorts of endorsements, brand, advertisements, etc which helps him to add some amount in his account.
Is Rip Taylor Gay?
Taylor's personal life is very confusing to everyone. According to some sources, he is openly gay. He has kept every information under a radar. However, in the past, he was dating Rusty Rowe and the couple lived some years happily married as well. Because of some serious problems, their relationship as husband and wife did not last and the couple went through the process of divorce.
Caption: Rip Taylor with his ex-wife
The main problems might have been his sexual orientation and he might have decided to split. It does not seem like he has had any other girlfriends in his life and neither there are any of his relationship news in the media.
Rip Taylor's Height and Weight
Rip has a standard height of 5 feet 10 inches with an average weight. In addition, his eyes look blue in color and his hair color is brown. But he has not revealed about his other body measurements.
Rip Taylor's Career
Taylor's career in show business starts after he joined the U.S. Army, where he started performing stand-up in clubs and restaurants abroad. Although a lot of his material was jokes stolen from acts he saw in USO shows, his signature piece would be to pretend to cry as he begged the audience to laugh. From there he was able to get a seat on the Ed Sullivan Show, where he had nearly 20 appearances. According to Taylor, Sullivan forgot his name, but always said, "Get me the weeping comedian."
Television/Film career
The Ed Sullivan Show, Taylor appeared in the Jackie Gleason Show in several guest appearances during the 1963-64 season as "The Weeping Comedian". He appeared in 1968 in two episodes of The Monkees and had a cameo in 1969 in the special 33 1/3 Revolutions by Monkee. He continued to work as a voice performer in the 1970s cartoon series Here Comes the Grump (as the title character) and in the second The Addams Family cartoon series (as Uncle Fester).
Throughout the 1970s, Taylor was a frequent celebrity guest panelist on TV game shows such as Hollywood Squares, To Tell the Truth, and The Gong Show, and substituted for Charles Nelson Reilly on The Match Game. Rip became a regular on Sid and Marty Krofft's Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, playing Sheldon, a sea-genie who lived in a conch shell. Moreover, Taylor was also a regular on The Brady Bunch Hour, playing a role of neighbor/performer Jack Merrill. He also hosted a short-lived send-up of beauty pageants called The $1.98 Beauty Show, created by Gong Show producer/host Chuck Barris, in 1978.
Caption: Rip Taylor with his co-actor
Afterward, Taylor appeared as a celebrity on the 1990 version of Match Game. In 1979, he was the voice of C.J. from the Hanna-Barbera TV movie Scooby Goes Hollywood. His other appearances such as the television show The Kids in the Hall. Rip was referred to as Uncle Rip by Buddy Cole, one of the show's characters. He also appeared as himself in the movie Wayne's World 2, one of the special guests invited to "WayneStock" after being visited in a dream by Jim Morrison. In 1990, he voiced the genie in DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp.
Taylor's first major live show was in 1966 when he toured with Judy Garland and Eleanor Powell in Las Vegas. In 1981, Taylor appeared on Broadway when he replaced Mickey Rooney in the music comedy Sugar Babies with the theme Burlesque. In her live shows in Las Vegas, Reno and Lake Tahoe he often played with Debbie Reynolds. Taylor performed frequently in Atlantic City as well. In 2010, he appeared in the one-man show It Ain't All Confetti in North Hollywood, where he shared personal stories about his life and career.
Rip Taylor's Social Sites
Rip is active only on the Facebook account. Besides he is not active on Instagram, and Twitter account. He has more than 3k followers on Facebook account.
Tagged:Actorcomedian
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Crowfall (CF)
ArtCraft Entertainment | Official Site
MMORPG | Setting:Fantasy | Status:Development (est.rel Q4 2020) | Pub:ArtCraft Entertainment
PVP:Yes | Distribution:Download | Retail Price:$50.00 | Pay Type:Buy to Play | Monthly Fee:n/a
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Crowfall - A Chat With The Devs
By Red Thomas on September 05, 2019 | Editorials | Comments
Development on Crowfall continues as the game quickly approaches a state in which all the original goals promised during the crowdfunding campaign have been addressed. The game loop continues to be refined and enhanced through live user-based testing, but not without challenges.
I had a chance to swing by the ArtCraft Entertainment studios for an impromptu interview. I arrived minutes before the team announced their "Decap-a-Thon" competition for the holiday weekend. The obvious decapitation-themed nerd humor ensued, but we also spent a little time talking about some of the near-term development objectives.
The conversations revealed some update information that would be worth sharing, and then there were a few indicators in the conversation that might be worth talking about, as well. Specifically, the "Decap-a-Thon" idea actually tells us a lot more about the state of Crowfall than it would appear on the surface.
Heads Will Roll
Factions competed this weekend to determine the nature of a free cosmetic item that would be made available to all participants after the event. Everyone who participated over the weekend will get a skull item to tie to their belt. As far as I know, the item gives the wearer a 2% bonus to critical hits and healing chances, but otherwise serves no purpose other than being purely cosmetic. Also, while all participants get the skull, the color will depend on the winning faction.
On the surface, it's just a cool competition that encourages a little extra PvP over the long weekend. It's a fun event, but also one that should indicate an important fact about where the team is at in the development of Crowfall. From the lack of marketing around the surprise concept and the rather abrupt announcement, I think it's pretty clear that this was an idea someone came up with and the team implemented it on the fly.
Hundreds of heads were sacrificed in flaming alters over the weekend.
That's not a huge thing typically, as the whole point of an AGILE development program is to take on these smaller challenges and handle them without breaking stride. In this case, it gives us a very good indication of where the game systems are currently because the implementation isn't as trivial as it seems on the surface, or at least wasn't at the time. ACE artists conceptualized the skulls, which were then created, textured, rendered and made available in the game very quickly. A new rule was developed and implemented in equally short time, despite the fact that they were effectively adding a new feature to the system.
I'm not sure if anyone commented on it, but this was an exercise of precisely what I see as being one of the Crowfall's key differentiators in the market. Crowfall got my attention with this idea of multiple temporary "worlds" that would implement a variety of rulesets. In effect, I expected Crowfall to become a game of many games, each spinning up and giving players a chance to try something new, cycling through each season in turn before dying.
The only way that's possible is if new systems can be invented, developed, and implemented rapidly, which is what we saw here. The system was even implemented in such a way that it'll allow the team to easily adapt it to other events with similar ideas in the future. It's subtle, but I think a telling, indication of how modular and well developed the game is.
Infected Lands
Another key update for the game will be the new Infected Lands, which will also create a bit of a rework of the PvP in the game to make room for the new server type. The three-way faction-based PvP will be moving to the persistent Infected Lands as sort of the next step away from Gods Reach towards the Hunger. The Infected Lands will have been impacted by the Hunger and will feature pretty much all the systems players have become used to in the current PvP portions of the game. It might even be accurate to say that the current PvP is moving to a persistent server to make room for a new "Dregs" that will be Guild verses Guild, rather than the faction-based that PvP players have been experiencing for a while now.
Infected will be persistent, but there'll still be fights over points of interest similar to persistent three-way PvP seen in other games in the genre.
The Dregs will remain as temporary campaigns that last for a limited amount of time before being destroyed. While the Dregs will eventually consist of multiple instances of campaigns of varying lengths, the Infected Lands are intended to be a persistent server with PvP for guilds that have just wrapped up one campaign and desire a little downtime before launching into another.
As proposed during the crowdfunding effort, Crowfall is a game of risk verses reward. Resources available in each server type are scaled in relation to the danger expected, along with level requirements for entering each new server type. Gods Reach can be accessed by players level 1 and up and will contain resources up to rank 7. Players will need to reach level 15 for the Infected Lands and level 20 for the Dregs, which will contain resources of ranks 8 and 10, respectively. The last server type hasn't been implemented yet, but resources of rank 9 will obviously be there, and I expect level requirements to shift around again to make room once it is implemented.
The result is a smoother transition for new players into the game. By level-gating access to each new server type, the team is ensuring new players have reached a certain minimum level of understanding about the game before moving on, which is actually a lot more important than the level of the avatar. Since that new player experience is one of the key make-or-break periods for player retention, it makes a lot of sense to ease folks into the community a little. If you hadn't noticed, some of these Crows are vicious when their game-faces are on.
Guilds can engage in PvP in the Infected Lands and fight over resources just as they can in the Dregs, but there's less stress of having to "win" the campaign due to the persistent nature of the server type
The Infected Lands will be persistent and should provide guilds a server to in which to engage in PvP when between campaigns in the Dregs. There'll also be no restrictions on taking items in or out of the server. Besides acting as a middle ground between the PvE of Gods Reach and anarchy of the Dregs, Gordon Walton tells me that the Infected Lands will also server a practical purpose for the game. It will create some needed flexibility and allow for easier patching. The Dregs running in North America and European servers operate in different time zones, making patching a problem until now, but the Infected Lands will resolve that issue going forward.
Loin Your Guilds
A significant impact due to the introduction of the Infected Lands and moving the existing PvP model to there is that the Dregs are now open for a new model, which will be a focus on Guild verses Guild. I did challenge Todd Coleman and Gordon Walton a little on this when we were talking, but I had an impression of where I thought the game was going and I thought it was fair to be a little forceful on getting answers on that point.
My early impressions of the Dregs was that guilds wouldn't matter and that the Dregs would be pure PvP where the only loyalties that mattered were those that formed during the life of the server. GvG was always a thing, but I kind of expected it to be something before the Dregs in terms of PvP and general risk. I have to say that I'm a little on the fence about GvG being the ultimate in PvP in Crowfall and I'm not totally on board yet.
That said, let me just say that despite my own reservations I believe there are a lot of reasons for why this is a good call and I think it's probably the right move from a business perspective. For one, creating a system that would allow multiple people from the same guild to also belong to another collective of players for the purpose of campaigns in the Dregs would probably require some additional development cost, which at this point is something the team should be staying away from. They'll be moving into Alpha/Beta/Early Access/Whatever-the-new-term pretty soon, and that means they need to start looking more towards marketing and being able to cover the initial cost of standing up additional servers to handle the hopeful influx of new players.
Guild vs Guild is going to create the opportunity for a lot of drama, and that should be very good for the game.
The other thing is that servers with these other rulesets could easily come later, as the whole model is designed around modularity and easily adjusted rules on a server-level, as I mentioned above. Not doing it now doesn't mean it won't happen, just that it's not happening right now.
Lastly, it probably just wouldn't make much sense to implement the system since there's nothing to stop a player from creating a guild of one, as Todd noted in our conversation. For the purposes of the Dregs, a guild is just the smallest unit of loyalty for the purposes of calculating contribution, scoring, and eventually determining a "winner."
What they ARE doing is implementing the fealty system that allows networks of guilds to join under single banners and work together for the accomplishment of a goal. Depending on how it's implemented, this could bring a very interesting and compelling player-generated story to the game. Guilds breaking away from alliances mid-campaign could bring interesting drama to the game, and drama is always awesome. That's a fact that EVE Online continues to reinforce every few months or so.
Along with the implementation of caravans and mounts, the guild verses guild mode of PvP will be among a short list of remaining items for the team to check off on before having addressed all the intended features announced during their crowdfunding campaign. This more or less heralds the end of this stage of development and we should be seeing a fully functional game loop very soon. I'm excited to get to that point and I'm interested to see the community finally given free reign to build not just a world, but a persistent story spanning multiple worlds. No matter how well developed the game, it's always the players that write the most compelling content through their interactions with each other. I'm really going to enjoy seeing what emergent story develops in Crowfall and I'm thinking I don't have much longer before finding out.
Full Disclosure: Red Thomas is an SEC accredited investor and has invested in ArtCraft Entertainment, the studio developing Crowfall. While Red makes a good faith effort at subjectivity, unconscious bias is always possible, and readers should take the potential of bias into account.
Red Thomas / A veteran of the US Army, raging geek, and avid gamer, Red Thomas is that cool uncle all the kids in the family like to spend their summers with. Red lives in San Antonio with his wife where he runs his company and works with the city government to promote geek culture. Follow him on Twitter:
Article By: Red Thomas
Created On: September 05, 2019
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Çağ University
Çağ Üniversitesi
July 9, 1997;21 years ago (1997-07-09)
Prof. Dr. H. Çetin Bedestenci
Mersin Province
36°58′37″N35°04′34″E / 36.97695°N 35.07600°E / 36.97695; 35.07600 Coordinates: 36°58′37″N35°04′34″E / 36.97695°N 35.07600°E / 36.97695; 35.07600
www.cag.edu.tr/en/main.php
The Çağ University is a private, non-profit university in Mersin Province, Turkey. It was established officially on 9 July 1997 by Bayboğan Education Foundation (Turkish : Bayboğan Eğitim Vakfı) in Adana. "Çağ" means "epoch".
The Mersin Province is a province in southern Turkey, on the Mediterranean coast between Antalya and Adana. The provincial capital is the city of Mersin and the other major town is Tarsus, birthplace of St Paul. The province is part of Çukurova, a geographical, economical and cultural region, that covers the provinces of Mersin, Adana, Osmaniye and Hatay.
Turkey, officially the Republic of Turkey, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Western Asia, with a smaller portion on the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe. East Thrace, located in Europe, is separated from Anatolia by the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorous strait and the Dardanelles. Turkey is bordered by Greece and Bulgaria to its northwest; Georgia to its northeast; Armenia, the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan and Iran to the east; and Iraq and Syria to the south. Istanbul is the largest city, but more central Ankara is the capital. Approximately 70 to 80 per cent of the country's citizens identify as Turkish. Kurds are the largest minority; the size of the Kurdish population is a subject of dispute with estimates placing the figure at anywhere from 12 to 25 per cent of the population.
Turkish, also referred to as Istanbul Turkish, is the most widely spoken of the Turkic languages, with around ten to fifteen million native speakers in Southeast Europe and sixty to sixty-five million native speakers in Western Asia. Outside Turkey, significant smaller groups of speakers exist in Germany, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. Cyprus has requested that the European Union add Turkish as an official language, even though Turkey is not a member state.
Situated on the state highway D.400 near Yenice, it is 22 km (14 mi) west of Adana, 18 km (11 mi) east of Tarsus and 45 km (28 mi) east of Mersin. The majority of students are from Adana.
Tarsus is a historic city in south-central Turkey, 20 km inland from the Mediterranean. It is part of the Adana-Mersin metropolitan area, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in Turkey with a population of 3 million people. Tarsus forms an administrative district in the eastern part of the Mersin Province and lies in the core of Çukurova region.
Currently, there are two more universities in the Province of Mersin; Mersin University is a public university and Toros University is another private university.
Mersin University is a public university, built in 1992 in Mersin province, Turkey. It has about 25,000 students, 1,405 academic staff, and a number of foreign and guest academic staff.
Toros University is a recently established university in Mersin, Turkey.
Presently the units of the university are as follows
Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences
There is also a vocational school for 9 programs, an English preparatory school and an institute of Social sciences. [1]
Adana is a major city in southern Turkey. The city is situated on the Seyhan river, 35 km (22 mi) inland from the Mediterranean, in south-central Anatolia. It is the administrative seat of the Adana Province and has a population of 1.75 million, making it the 5th most populated city in Turkey. The Adana-Mersin polycentric metropolitan area, with a population of 3 million, stretches over 70 km (43 mi) east-west and 25 km (16 mi) north-south; encompassing the cities of Mersin, Tarsus and Adana.
Ceyhan is a city and a district in the Adana Province, in southern Turkey, 43 km (27 mi) east of Adana. With a population of over 157,000, it is the largest district of the province, outside the city of Adana. Ceyhan is the transportation hub for Middle Eastern, Central Asian and Russian oil and natural gas. The city is situated on the Ceyhan River that flows through Çukurova plain. The Ceyhan River is dammed at Aslantas to provide flood control and irrigation for the lower river basin around Ceyhan.
Çukurova University has sixteen faculties, three colleges, seven vocational colleges, three institutes and twenty six research and application centers. The university campus is located 10 kilometers away from Adana city center, by the Seyhan Dam Lake.
Articles related to Turkey include:
Çukurova, alternatively known as Cilicia, is a geo-cultural region in south-central Turkey, covering the provinces of Mersin, Adana, Osmaniye and Hatay. With a population of almost 6 million, it is one of the largest population concentrations in Turkey.
The Mediterranean Region is a geographical region of Turkey.
Yenice Çağ Private High School is one of five Özel Çag Lisesi schools. The school was founded in 1986 and located between the cities of Adana and Mersin, Turkey.
Özel Çag Lisesi schools is an international school located in Turkey Yenice and serves to different cities including Tarsus, Adana and Mersin.
The Adana-Mersin polycentric metropolitan area is the fourth largest metropolitan area in Turkey with a population of 3 million. The metropolitan area lies in the core area of Çukurova, stretching 70 km east-west and 25 km north-south, encompassing the cities of Mersin, Tarsus, and Adana.
Yenice is a town in Mersin Province, Turkey.
Mersin station is the main railway station in the city of Mersin, Turkey. The station is located in the district of Akdeniz. The station is in use since 1886.
Cleopatra's Gate is a city gate of Tarsus, in Mersin Province, Turkey, named after the Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII.
Tarsus station is a railway station in the city of Tarsus. Tarsus is a city in Mersin Province, Turkey.
Mersin Province is a Mediterraneran province of Turkey. The south eastern plain of the province is a part of Çukurova. But most of the province is mountainous with a number of small alluvial plains at the coastal band. Below are the transport facilities of the province.
Çukurova Regional Airport is a projected airport to be built in Tarsus district of Mersin Province, southern Turkey. It will serve the provinces Mersin and Adana as well as the rest of Çukurova Region.
Taşkent railway station is a railway station in the Mersin Province of Turkey, on the Adana-Mersin railway. Though legally located within the Dikilitaş neighborhood of Mersin, the station is just east of the city. TCDD Taşımacılık operates daily regional train service from Mersin to Adana, İskenderun and İslahiye, with a total of 24 daily trains stopping at Taşkent, in each direction.
↑ Official website
Universities in Turkey
Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt
Abant İzzet Baysal
Afyon Kocatepe
Ağrı İbrahim Çeçen
Ahi Evran
Alanya Alaaddin Keykubat
Artvin Çoruh
Bandırma Onyedi Eylül
Bitlis Eren
Bozok
Bülent Ecevit
Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart
Çankırı Karatekin
Dicle
Dokuz Eylül
Eskişehir Osmangazi
Hacettepe
Harran
İnönü
İstanbul Medeniyet
İzmir Bakırçay
İzmir Democracy
İzmir Kâtip Çelebi
Kafkas
Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam
Karamanoğlu Mehmetbey
Kilis 7 Aralık
Kütahya Dumlupınar
Manisa Celal Bayar
Mardin Artuklu
Munzur
Muş Alparslan
Ondokuz Mayıs
Osmaniye Korkut Ata
Ömer Halisdemir
Süleyman Demirel
Trakya
Turkish-German
Yüzüncü Yıl
Adana Science and Technology (ABTÜ)
Bursa Technical (BTÜ)
Erzurum Technical (ETÜ)
Eskişehir Technical
Gebze Technical (GTÜ)
İstanbul Technical (İTÜ)
Iskenderun Technical (İSTE)
İzmir Institute of Technology (İYTE)
Karadeniz Technical (KTÜ)
Konya Technical
Middle East Technical (ODTÜ)
Yıldız Technical (YTÜ)
Turkish National Police Academy
Gendarmerie and Coast Guard Academy
Mimar Sinan Fine Arts
AKEV
Alanya HEP
Anka Teknoloji
Antalya Science
Atılım
Avrasya
Beykent
Bezmiâlem Vakıf
Biruni
Bilkent
Canik Başarı
Doğuş
Fatih Sultan Mehmet Vakıf
Haliç
Hasan Kalyoncu
İbn Haldun
İstanbul 29 Mayıs
Istanbul Arel
Istanbul Aydın
Istanbul Bilgi
Istanbul Bilim
Istanbul Commerce
Istanbul Gedik
Istanbul Kemerburgaz
Istanbul Kent
Istanbul Kültür
Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim
Istanbul Şehir
Istanbul Esenyurt
Istanbul Gelişim
Istanbul Medipol
Istanbul Rumeli
Istanbul Yeni Yüzyıl
Istinye
İzmir of Economics
Kadir Has
Nuh Naci Yazgan
Okan
Özyeğin
Pîrî Reis
Sabancı
TOBB of Economics and Technology
Yaşar
Yeditepe
Former/Closed
Bursa Orhangazi
Melikşah
Murat Hüdavendigar
Selahaddin Eyyubi
Süleyman Şah
Şifa
Turgut Özal
Turkish War Academies
(İlçe)
Mezitli
Aydıncık
Bozyazı
Çamlıyayla
Erdemli
Silifke
All settlements
List of populated places in Mersin Province
Mersin University
Toros University
Institute of Marine Sciences
Alata Research Institute of Horticulture
Museums etc.
Anamur Museum
Arslan Eyce Private Amphora Museum
Erdemli Yörük Museum
Emirler Archaeological Site and City Forest Museum
Gözlükule Research Center
Mersin Archaeological Museum
Mersin Atatürk Museum
Mersin Museum
Mersin Naval Museum
Mersin State Art and Sculpture Museum
Mersin Urban History Museum
Mersin Water Museum
Narlıkuyu Museum
Silifke Museum
Silifke Atatürk Museum
Tarsus Çanakkale Park Museum
Tarsus Museum
Taşucu Atatürk Museum
Mersin Martyrs' Memorial
Frederick Barbarossa Memorial
Adamkayalar
Akkale
Ala Bridge
Alahan Monastery
Altından geçme
Anchiale
Ancient road in Tarsus
Anemurium
Aphrodisias
Athena relief
Aulai
Aya Tekla Church
Baç Bridge
Belenkeşlik Castle
Canbazlı ruins
Caracalla's inscription
Cleopatra's gate
Corycus
Çanakçı rock tombs
Çandır Castle
Çatıören
Dağlı Castle
Dikilitaş
Donuktaş
Dörtayak
Eğribük (Palaiai)
Elaiussa Sebaste
Emirzeli
Gömeç
Gözlükule
Gözne Castle
Gülek Castle
Hisarin Castle
Imbriogon (Demircili)
Işıkkale
Kabaçam
Karakabaklı
Kelenderis mosaic
Kırkkaşık Bedesten
Kızlar Kalesi
Kilise Tepe
Kravga Bridge
Kuzucubelen Castle
Lamas Aqueduct
Lampron
Mamure Castle
Mancınık Castle
Mausoleum of Danyal
Melenia
Meydan Castle
Meydancık Castle
Mezgitkale
Mut Castle
Nagidos
Olba
Olba Aqueduct
Öküzlü ruins
Pasha's Tomb
Roman road in Cilicia
Shahmeran Hamam
Silifke Bridge
Silifke Castle
Sinap Castle
Sinekkale
Softa Castle
Tapureli ruins
Taşgeçit Bridge
Tece Castle
Tekir ambarı
Temple of Jupiter (Silifke)
Tırmıl
Tokmar Castle
Uzuncaburç (Diokaesareia)
Üçayaklı ruins
Veyselli rock reliefs
Warrior relief of Efrenk
Yanıkhan
Yelbiz Castle
Yumuktepe
Mezitli Producer Women's Market
Mersin Halkevi
Mersin Congress and Exhibition Center
Atatürk Cultural Center
CNR Yenişehir Exhibition Center
Mertim
Mersin Aquapark
Atatürk Park
Mersin Marina
madrasas
Muğdat Mosque
Grand Mosque of Mersin
Mersin Old Mosque
Müftü Mosque
Tarsus Old Mosque
Grand Mosque of Tarsus
Kubat Pasha Medrese
Laal Pasha Mosque
Güzeloluk Mosque
Mersin Catholic Church
Mersin Orthodox Church
Saint Paul's Church
Mersin Interfaith Cemetery
Cyprus Memorial Forest in Silifke
Alaköprü Dam
Berdan Dam
Birkapılı Dam
Gezende Dam
Kadıncık 1 HES
Kayraktepe Dam
Otluca HES
Pamukluk Dam
Silifke HES
ATAŞ (Refinery)
ACS Mersin
Sodakrom
Çimsataş
Transport in Mersin Province
Mersin Harbor
Taşucu Seka Harbor
Yeşilovacık Fishing Port
Mersin railway station
Tarsus railway station
Yenice railway station
Tırmıl railway station
Karacailyas railway station
Huzurkent railway station
Taşkent railway station
Mersin Bus Terminus
Çukurova Regional Airport
İsmet İnönü Boulevard
Adnan Menderes Boulevard
Gazi Mustafa Kemal Boulevard
Kushimoto Street
Boğsak Tunnel
Edip Buran Arena
Macit Özcan Sports Complex
Mersin Seventh Region Sports Hall
Mersin Gymnastics Hall
Mersin Arena
Mersin Olympic Swimming Pool
Mersin Tennis Complex
Mersin Volleyball Hall
Mezitli Sports Hall
Nevin Yanıt Athletics Complex
Servet Tazegül Arena
Tevfik Sırrı Gür Stadium
Toroslar Bocce Facility
Erdemli Shooting Range
Erdemli Sports Hall
Tarsus City Stadium
Tarsus Arena
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ETH Zürich: The scene of Machiavellianism and entrenched power battles.
An astronomy professor at Zürich's ETH university has been accused of harassing doctoral students for years. She's about to be fired, but the question of her purported guilt has never been clarified. How a world-class institution betrayed everything: the professor, the presumption of innocence – and even itself. A reconstruction of the ETH case, part 1.
By Silvan Aeschlimann, Dennis Bühler, Dominik Osswald (Text), Dominic Nahr (Photos) and Paul Cohen (Translation), 27.03.2019
Transparente und unabhängige Informationen sind wichtig für die echte Meinungsbildung. Oder? Das Wesentliche aus Politik, Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft und Kultur. In kompromisslosen Analysen, Reportagen, Rezensionen und Interviews. Als digitales Magazin und in Podcasts. Ohne Werbung. Testen Sie die Republik jetzt 14 Tage lang gratis.
The ETH has demanded a counterstatement («Gegendarstellung»). It is situated at the bottom of this article.
Sunday morning, October 22, 2017. The mild late summer came to an abrupt end overnight. Still lying in her bed, Marcella Carollo reached for her tablet, checked the online news portal – and felt her heart leap into her throat.
«My first thought?» Roughly a year later, in December 2018, Carollo is sitting in her living room and the atmosphere is bleak. The landscape outside her window is firmly in the grip of the fog, and the neighbors' house is barely visible. The shutters of her home in the countryside outside of Zürich are usually kept closed anyway. The house is richly furnished with heavy carpets, antique furniture and black-and-white photos.
«At first there was just emptiness», she recalls, «then a stabbing pain. I had trouble breathing and it was as if, in a matter of seconds, I was being sucked into a deep hole. My husband held me in his arms, I don't know for how long. At some point, my first thoughts formed: How can we go on like this? Can we even go on at all?»
What Carollo read on that Sunday morning changed her life forever: «Scandal at ETH: Professor Harasses Students» was the headline in big bold letters on the front page of the NZZ am Sonntag. The newspaper gave the professor a fictitious name to render her anonymous, but it only took a couple of clicks online for anyone to figure out who «Gabriela M.» really was: Marcella Carollo, 54 at the time, a leading member of the faculty of the Institute for Astrophysics at ETH in Zürich since 2002 – was reportedly a bully.
The article stated that for more than a decade, she allegedly harassed her subordinates, referred to women as weaklings who should spend less time on their make-up and more on their research, and micromanaged everything under the sun while demanding superhuman commitment. «I consider this a dark episode in my life», the article quoted one of the former doctoral candidates as saying.
The news made headlines around the world. «Der Spiegel», the «Süddeutsche Zeitung», «BuzzFeed» and «The Wire» all reported on the allegations of professional misconduct at ETH.
The evidence against Carollo appears overwhelming. Between December 2016 and May 2017, current and former doctoral students and postdocs wrote a total of 12 secret testimonials outlining the ordeals that they experienced at ETH. They all shared similar stories. Astronomy professor Marcella Carollo reportedly harassed her subordinates, placed excessive expectations on their availability and engaged in unfruitful discussions until late in the night.
«Several of us at the time were talking of ourselves sarcastically as ‹their slaves›, which described our feelings pretty much to the point», according to one of the testimonials. In another account: «This woman steals your work, your dreams and your life. She plays with you like a puppet in a theater, and then she breaks you down.»
When fragments of the testimonials were leaked to the public – despite strict secrecy – on that Sunday in October 2017, ETH suddenly became the scene of «harassment» and «abuse of power» in the upper echelons of academia.
The institution still hasn't been able to shake this reputation, but now, presumably, it has acted to clear the air. On March 14, ETH requested Carollo's dismissal. It would be the first time in the 164-year history of this institution of higher education that a professor would have to take leave of their position in this way.
Does that close the matter, as ETH officials hope?
Republik has been investigating this case for half a year, has spoken with the individuals involved, read the minutes of hearings and pored over emails and letters – roughly 3000 pages of documents in all, including 10 of the 12 secret testimonials that are only accessible to the inner-most ETH circle. Carollo is not a member of this select group. And to this day, she has been denied access to the original wording of the allegations against her.
Is the professor guilty?
Or is she the victim of a «vindictive doctoral candidate», as she says?
Or does the truth lie somewhere in between these two extremes?
Nobody knows for sure because no one has mediated the conflict or investigated the allegations: neither the head of department, the office of the vice rector, the college administration nor the external administrative investigation. Professor Carollo's guilt appeared to be a foregone conclusion right from the start.
The investigation by Republik has exposed systematic failure at ETH. An examination of the process leading to Carollo's dismissal reveals serious administrative and procedural deficiencies for an institution that is proud to rank among the world's top 10 universities.
The Case of the Abusive Professor – an ETH Case.
Over the past two years, Carollo has not once benefited from the principle of innocent until proven guilty. The professor has never had a genuine opportunity to explain herself and her work, to concede mistakes and make improvements. The conflict between a doctoral student and the professor degenerated into chaos as players at all levels of the institutional hierarchy began to pursue their own interests – and even ended up toppling the university president.
Ultimately, they could only agree on one thing: Carollo, one of the most cited scientists at ETH Zürich, had to go. Now, she is to be dismissed – without official prior warning – although there are no provisions for such action in the university's personnel statutes.
But Carollo is fighting back. The final report from the administrative investigation states that Carollo showed little understanding for the procedure and never recognized that she was part of the problem. And to underscore her position, Carollo speaks for hours and days on end, in an endless volley of words. The 56-year-old insists that she has done nothing wrong. «All I want is for the truth to come to light», she says.
0:00 / –:––
How could it have come to this point? The following reconstruction describes in six acts how one of the most renowned institutions in Switzerland, subsidized to the tune of 1.3 billion Swiss francs (1.15 billion euros) of taxpayers' money every year, maneuvered itself into one of the most humiliating situations in its history.
The leading roles are played by:
Marcella Carollo, professor of astronomy: allegedly harassed doctoral students, leading to calls for her dismissal
Elisabetta Marignano (not her real name), doctoral student: complains to the ombudsman about her adviser, Carollo, and sets everything in motion
Wilfred van Gunsteren, ombudsman: is determined to push for ethical standards at ETH and plays a highly active role in the so-called «Carollo case»
Antonio Togni, vice rector: is a staunch advocate of better supervision for doctoral students and sides with the ombudsman, van Gunsteren
Rainer Wallny, deputy head of the physics department: reorganizes the physics department and emerges as one of the few winners in the Carollo case
Kevin Schawinski, assistant professor of astronomy: is striving for a full professorship and levels serious allegations against Carollo
Simon Lilly, professor of astronomy and Carollo's husband: is never accused of any misconduct, but is nevertheless dragged down with his wife
Lino Guzzella, ETH president (2015–2018): amid allegations that he tried to «sweep things under the carpet», is forced to forgo a second term in office in the wake of the scandal
Joël Mesot, ETH president (since 2019): serves as Guzzella's successor and has to quickly reach a decision in the Carollo case
By the end of this story, ETH's reputation will be severely tarnished. Some of its doctoral students will have lost their enthusiasm for academia, and one of its professors will be out of a job. And the president – shocked by the revelations made by Republik – will call a press conference at short notice on Thursday, March 14, 2019, and apologize to all the doctoral students who have been treated without respect.
The venerable ETH, which ranks among the best research institutions in the world, will be shaken to its very foundations.
Act One: A Doctoral Student Rebels
This story begins with two women, both of whom are Italians. In addition to their origins, they share a great passion for astronomy. Exactly one year later, one of the two, Marcella Carollo, will rise to dubious notoriety as the ETH professor who allegedly harasses her students. The other woman, who we'll call Elisabetta Marignano, will reap praise as the doctoral student whose courage was instrumental in bringing to light a case of professional misconduct and abuse of power.
During the summer of 2016, everything seemed perfectly fine. Marignano was a doctoral candidate at the Institute for Astronomy and apparently had a cordial relationship with her adviser, Marcella Carollo. Emails between the two often ended on a friendly note with abbraccio, the Italian word for hug. On Marignano's birthday, the professor organized a cake and sang along with the other researchers at the institute.
In order to complete her doctorate within the prescribed four-year time limit, Marignano was tasked with evaluating digital images of 40 million galaxies as part of an international collaboration called the Dark Energy Survey. But she only had a vague grasp of the programs and lacked the astrophysical knowledge to develop her own analysis software, at least according to her adviser, Carollo.
In Carollo's eyes, Marignano had been out of her depth ever since her hiring one-and-a-half years earlier. In a bid to help her, Carollo sat down with the student and analyzed her strengths and weaknesses and recommended what books to read and which lectures to attend.
Marignano saw things differently and felt that Carollo should have been more supportive: «She was very aggressive and treated me very badly saying that my brain doesn't have any logic (...) and that I should ‹go and do philosophy instead of physics›», as she recounted in her testimonial, in which she would later reveal to the relevant ETH authorities what she viewed as the scandalous situation at the institute.
Speaking through her lawyer, Marignano declined to be interviewed by Republik, and she did not respond to a list of questions submitted by email.
In October 2016, the conflict between the doctoral student and her adviser came to a head. Carollo no longer believed that Marignano would complete her doctorate. The professor said that she was progressing too slowly to finish within four years, and perhaps six years might not even be enough, which is the maximum amount of time that university regulations allow students to pursue a doctorate.
Carollo was distressed over the situation. Although Marignano had not transferred to ETH from a top-ranking university, she had received excellent grades while studying for her master's degree. Carollo saw in her a young woman who deserved a chance – and the student reminded her of herself in her younger days: After studying biophysics, Carollo's financial situation had forced her to work for a number of years as a high school teacher, and then as a software developer. It was only then that she was able to pursue an academic career – and only because a professor of astronomy, whom she had met by chance, offered her an opportunity to pursue a doctorate.
The Situation Escalates
Carollo decided to use an employee performance review to confront her doctoral student about her lack of progress and, working together, establish new objectives and deadlines: a last chance for Marignano, but also a formal step that would allow her to terminate the young woman's employment if she failed to produce results. In doing so, she was acting upon the recommendation of Rainer Wallny, the deputy head of the physics department and former director of studies.
In 2013, one of Carollo's doctoral students had exceeded the maximum study period, requiring six-and-a-half years instead of four years, which was only possible thanks to a special exception granted by the rector. According to Carollo, Wallny wanted to avoid a similar situation, so he coolly instructed Carollo to decide at an earlier date whether a candidate was capable of completing a doctorate within the prescribed period of time.
The two women's assessments of each other during the performance review couldn't have been more widely divergent. The doctoral student praised the professor across the board, saying that Carollo did a great job of looking after her students, and that she motivated them and was always willing to find solutions to problems. The professor, though, stuck to her guns and said that the doctoral student's performance was inadequate. Marignano was totally crushed.
The student did her best to provide the results for an initial publication, but Carollo remained unconvinced by them. Shortly before Christmas 2016, the professor informed her that she would not renew her contract beyond February. The situation escalated. The furious doctoral student accused her adviser of unprofessional supervisory conduct.
Up until this point in time, the conflict between Marignano and Carollo had been like many conflicts between doctoral candidates and professors. Not all doctoral students successfully complete their work and, according to the latest statistics, 86 out of 100 successfully complete the doctorate program at ETH.
In fact, ETH has established no quantitative criteria, such as a specific number of publications or research results, that would qualify a candidate for a doctoral degree – nor does it rely on committees or even a second adviser for doctoral students, as is prescribed for instance at the Ecole polytechnique fédérale (EPFL) in Lausanne. The disparity in power between professors and students is huge, and advisers serve as both the judges and executioners of their doctoral candidates.
This state of affairs is dangerous for doctoral students and professors alike. Without clearly defined criteria, when irreconcilable differences arise it remains impossible to unequivocally decide whether the students lack the necessary academic skills and diligence – or whether professors have placed unrealistic demands on their candidates and failed to advise and supervise them properly.
But what differentiates the conflict between Marignano and Carollo from other academic clashes is that this candidate refused to accept failure and decided instead to take a stand against her adviser.
On Jan. 9, 2017, Marignano entered the office of Wilfred van Gunsteren, the ETH ombudsman. Together with his colleague Maryvonne Landolt, van Gunsteren serves as a point of contact for internal conflicts that cannot be resolved with direct dialogue, as well as suspicions of improper conduct. This is precisely the type of conflict that Marignano reported.
Van Gunsteren found her accounts shocking, so he asked the doctoral student to put her allegations in writing. In her testimonial, Marignano writes: «I realized I am victim of psychological abuse by my own supervisor. The amount of offenses I try to overcome everyday is suffocating my work and my own life, to the point that I decided to ask for help and search for another supervisor.»
The list of allegations that Marignano brought to bear against her professor covers six pages. But this time around, there was no mention of the professor's abilities to motivate or her willingness to take a keen interest in her doctoral students, which had only recently been much-lauded by Marignano. Instead, the student described in anecdote-rich detail how Carollo had allegedly harassed her.
Once, she said, the professor admonished her to waste less time on make-up and nail polish and, instead of wearing fine clothing, to don a jogging suit, like her officemate.
On another occasion, she wrote that Carollo refused to bring forward a meeting because Marignano was suffering from menstrual cramps – and had waived aside her request by quipping that men didn't have such problems, so women couldn't afford to have them either.
The ombudsman was appalled. He backed the doctoral student's plan to look for a new adviser and offered his support.
The first act had been launched.
Over the next four weeks, the ombudsman received nine additional reports on Carollo, a total of 24 pages that paint a consistently disastrous image of the professor.
The testimonials are confidential, and Carollo has still not been able to see them. Republik has acquired copies of 10 of the 12 testimonials. The authors are former and current staff members of the Institute for Astronomy, and some of the accounts go back a number of years. The ombudsman later wrote to the school administration that «under no circumstances should the reports be shown to MC (Marcella Carollo), as the people who wrote them would otherwise have to contend with professional repercussions and experience difficulties. The world of astronomers is not large.»
Ever since her appointment to ETH in 2002, Carollo had maintained a spotless personnel file, without a single entry. But now, within a very short period of time, nine complaints had landed on the ombudsman's desk. This was no coincidence. Republik's investigation shows that both the doctoral student and the ombudsman contacted former doctoral candidates and postdocs and asked them to write testimonials. When confronted about this, neither van Gunsteren nor Marignano were willing to comment.
In their search for damaging material, the two received support from the vice rector for doctoral studies, Antonio Togni, who met with the doctoral student on Jan. 10, 2017, one day after she first contacted the ombudsman.
With his round glasses and gray beard, Togni, 60 at the time, is a fatherly figure. In addition to his core activity as a professor of chemistry, for the past nine months he's been responsible for the doctorate program at ETH, from admissions all the way to the granting of degrees. He has a reputation as a good listener, as someone who takes students seriously.
There are no written records of his conversation with Marignano, and all we know is that he was shocked by what she told him. He reached the same conclusion as the ombudsman, van Gunsteren – namely that the doctoral student should apply for a change of adviser – and indicated that he would support such a move in his role as vice rector.
ETH Has No Memory
ETH actually has a sophisticated, multi-tiered conflict resolution process that is anchored in the regulations for doctoral studies. If significant differences of opinion between professors and doctoral students can't be resolved, the department head is to mediate the conflict. If need be, the vice rector assumes the role of mediator. If that fails to produce results, the vice rector appoints an arbitration committee, whose membership is clearly defined. If this committee fails, the next step is decided by the rector, who may opt to assign a new adviser.
If this process in the conflict between Marignano and Professor Carollo had been followed to the letter, the situation might not have escalated the way it has. But ETH has been flouting its own rules.
Vice Rector Togni has declined to comment on the situation to Republik, stating that as long as the process of dismissing Carollo has not been completed, he views it as too sensitive a matter to discuss with representatives of the media.
Instead of first trying to mediate the conflict, Ombudsman van Gunsteren and Vice Rector Togni advised the doctoral student to switch advisers. Neither of them thought it was necessary to investigate the accuracy of the descriptions provided by the doctoral student.
Although nothing official had been brought against her, Marcella Carollo had a reputation for being «difficult person» – an ambitious and dogmatic control freak. According to the rumor mill, she had only been appointed to her position at ETH thanks to her husband, Simon Lilly, an outstanding British astronomer. When ETH negotiated a contract with Lilly in 2002, he reportedly demanded that his wife also be given a professorship, and the university agreed to sign them both on as part of its dual-career program. Carollo and her husband built up the institute together, but some gossip holds that he was actually the brains behind it.
The testimonials that the ombudsman received appeared to confirm the rumors that Carollo overcame her presumed inferiority complex by taking out her frustration on her subordinates. Van Gunsteren concluded that Carollo had been systematically harassing her doctoral students for 15 years.
At this point in the chronology of events, two additional serious flaws appear in the ETH system. First, at the end of an ombudsman's tenure, they don't pass cases on to their successor – there is no managerial administrative system. In other words, ETH has no memory. Second, since the role of ombudsman is always assumed by professors emeritus of ETH, they are all biased. They are familiar with all the rumors and stories that have been circulating and have either a positive or a negative relationship with the professors.
«Do We Have a ‹Battle Plan›?»
While a storm was brewing around Marcella Carollo, her husband, Simon Lilly, 58 at the time, was celebrating a success. The physics professors at ETH had encouraged him to seek a second term as department head. This lanky man with glasses and a touch of red in his hair is a quiet, hard-working man who doesn't make a lot of waves. His unpretentious manner made him popular among his colleagues, and one-and-a-half years earlier they had elected him to be their boss for two years. Now, he had been asked to consider adding another two years. At this point in time, he had no way of knowing that the conflict between his wife and her doctoral student was also about to turn his career on its head. In order to avoid conflicts of interest, Lilly is not responsible for his wife. Instead, this role falls to his deputy, Rainer Wallny.
In early February 2017, Carollo got summoned by Vice Rector Togni to his office to explain why she was no longer willing to work with her doctoral candidate. The professor handed the administrator a dossier with a comprehensive explanation for why, in her view, there had been too little scientific progress to merit continuing in the pursuit of a doctorate. The meeting lasted three hours. There is no record of what was said, only a file entry by Togni.
During their discussion, Carollo said she suspected Marignano had changed the password, preventing all access to her research data in an effort to block her dismissal. In fact, the data belongs to ETH. Togni promised to look into the matter.
But instead of mediating between the professor and the doctoral student, as prescribed by the regulations for doctoral studies, Vice Rector Togni met two days later with two doctoral students who, until then, had not complained about Carollo. Once again, there is no record of what was said. A few weeks later, though, ETH's administration informed Carollo that the two doctoral students had been removed from her tutelage because they reportedly wanted to change advisers.
The ETH receives 1.3 billion Swiss francs of taxpayers' money every year: main entrance.
After Togni had met with the two doctoral students, he organized another meeting with Professor Carollo and wrote an email to Rainer Wallny, the deputy head of the physics department. The situation in Carollo's group had become intolerable, Togni wrote, «because it is unworthy of ETH», adding: «I'm therefore prepared to pursue the objective of allowing no more doctoral candidates to be assigned to MC.» He closed his email with the question: «Do we have a ‹battle plan›?»
Wallny responded that he would be happy to attend an upcoming meeting to elaborate a «battle plan», although he expressed little hope that Carollo could be persuaded to change her attitude. He also sent a copy of this email to ETH Rector Sarah Springman.
In view of the unmistakable tone of the exchange between Togni and Wallny, the rector must have assumed that there was a serious problem, and yet the facts of the matter still had not been clarified. Nobody knew what, if anything, the professor had actually done wrong, or when it had allegedly happened.
On Feb. 9, 2017, Vice Rector Togni, department deputy head Wallny and Professor Carollo held a meeting. The two men read excerpts from the ETH Compliance Guide and, based on the testimonials, reproached her for violating university regulations, alleging that she had not sent her doctoral students to conferences, had not provided them with helpful supervision, had not clearly communicated with them and had forced some of them to sign compromising documents. Carollo was not permitted to view the testimonials and was forced to comment on the allegations without any knowledge of their context. The professor felt like she had been convicted without a hearing.
In an email that Wallny sent to Rector Springman the next day, he portrayed Carollo as intransigent. Although he admitted that «none of the truly successful doctoral candidates» had written a testimonial, and that the complaints had moreover come «from the (female) postdocs whose careers were over after Marcella», he nevertheless was convinced that Carollo was a person who subjected herself and her staff to «extreme quality criteria». In his eyes, she was a «tortured soul who tortures other souls with the intention of wanting the best for them».
After the meeting with Togni and Wallny, Carollo went to speak with the ombudsman. She shared with him her concerns that officials at ETH intended to proceed against her without investigating the accuracy of the allegations that had been lodged against her. She added that they were concealing the concrete allegations against her, thus depriving her of the possibility of defending herself.
Although he had been working on the case for a month, the ombudsman acted as if this was all news to him. To make matters worse, only a few hours earlier he had spoken with the top school administrators about Carollo in a conversation that exposed a difference of opinion with ETH President Lino Guzzella – one that would soon serve as a catalyst for the affair.
Carollo handed the ombudsman a document with a written complaint against Togni and Wallny. She assumed that he would treat it confidentially – a fatal mistake, as it turned out. Van Gunsteren, the ombudsman, was himself a professor emeritus of chemistry, and he knew Togni from his time in the department. Toward the end of the meeting, he said that he would speak with Togni about the matter, but Carollo recalls asking him to refrain from doing so. Carollo says that van Gunsteren responded that he wouldn't allow anyone to tell him who he could and couldn't speak with, adding that he didn't take orders from anyone.
Act Two: An Ombudsman Tastes Blood
Wilfred van Gunsteren, born in 1947 in Wassenaar, The Netherlands, is a man who takes the office of ombudsman very seriously. Every year, he writes a detailed report on the work of the office of the ombudsman, a role which he shares with his colleague Maryvonne Landolt. He has the feeling that ETH President Guzzella doesn't read it. It angers him that the school administration does not recognize that the office of the ombudsman contributes to a better ETH by listening, acting as a liaison and mediating. Van Gunsteren has consistently swallowed his irritation.
But on the morning of February 14, 2017 – the day he later met with Carollo – he decided to change course.
Together with Landolt, van Gunsteren presented the 2016 annual report to ETH President Guzzella and the other top-ranking members of the school administration. Once again, it seemed Guzzella didn't really care about what they had to say. Van Gunsteren later complained about the president in a letter addressed to another member of the school administration: «Maryvonne and I found the reception (...) to be not particularly friendly. The president wanted to spend as little time as possible and not really listen to us, made no allowances to discuss in detail the problems that we had mentioned, and treated us like subordinates who could object to nothing that the boss says.»
In his presentation, van Gunsteren wanted to warn the school administration of the Carollo case, which had brought to light an important question to which ETH had no response: «What is to be done if a professor appears to be grossly lacking in management and supervision skills?»
This question exposes a fundamental problem in the supervision of doctoral candidates: There are few rules or quality standards. What is expected of a doctoral adviser? What criteria must be fulfilled and how is it possible to evaluate whether the supervision is good or bad? What if a doctoral student claims to have failed because they have been insufficiently supervised? How is this reviewed? At what point do we speak of a lack of supervising skill? ETH has no way of dealing with such questions.
Growth at ETH, from 2006 to 2017
Students+58%Doctoral students+47%Professorships+31%
Source: ETH Zürich; number of students and doctoral students, full-time professorships.
This problem has been exacerbated by the rapid growth at ETH in recent years, especially with respect to the student body and non-professorial teaching staff. The number of students rose from 2006 to 2017 by 58 percent from 13'007 to 20'607, and the number of doctoral candidates increased by 47 percent from 2792 to 4092. Meanwhile, the number of full-time positions for tenured professors rose during the same period of time from 312 to 408 (an increase of 31 percent).
This uneven growth has resulted in a progressively poorer ratio of advisers to candidates: In 2008, a professor at ETH in Zürich or the Ecole polytechnique fédérale in Lausanne still served as an adviser to an average of 34 Students and doctoral candidates, whereas in 2018 that number had risen to 39.8, according to ETH. Other elite universities that have better international rankings than ETH are proud of their adviser-to-doctoral-candidate ratio of roughly 20 students per professor.
A Document «That Would Stand Up in Court»
Despite an urgent need for action, on February 14, Guzzella refused to deal with the questions raised by van Gunsteren. The ETH president demanded that the ombudsman revise his presentation before revealing it to other high-ranking members of the school administration that same day – and he specifically admonished van Gunsteren not to cite the possibility of misconduct by professors in their interactions with doctoral students. For instance, Guzzella wanted the issue of «shouting at or willfully insulting staff members» to be removed from the presentation as an example of professorial misconduct. Guzzella has declined a request by Republik to comment on this incident or on his role in the Carollo case.
The meeting that morning once again revealed Guzzella's low opinion of the office of the ombudsman: He saw it as a necessary evil that caused more problems than it solved. In his eyes, scientific research is not a nine-to-five job, especially not in the upper echelons of academia, where ETH is a major player.
Indeed, if ETH intends to keep pace with American, British and Chinese universities, it will have to redouble its efforts. Just recently, Yale University outclassed ETH, forcing it off Times Higher Education magazine's annually published list of the world's top 10 universities. Scientific publications and Nobel prizes are the decisive criteria for a ranking, not the work-life-balance of the staff.
Guzzella smelled trouble if they launched an in-depth debate on the working conditions of doctoral students, despite the fact that these students – along with the ombudsman – wanted to address these issues. According to a study commissioned in 2017 by the association of non-professorial teaching staff, Aveth, the average workload of an ETH doctoral candidate is 50.5 hours a week. Another Aveth survey from 2018 revealed that 24 percent of respondents had experienced incidents of abuse of power, and specifically complained of countless overtime hours, high pressure and poor supervision.
On Feb. 14, 2017, van Gunsteren gave in to Guzzella's pressure and adapted his presentation to accommodate the president's requests. Van Gunsteren had decided to grin and bear it – but only one last time.
From then on, he would complain at every available opportunity that, in his words, Guzzella wanted to «sweep things under the carpet». In a long letter to a member of the school administration, he poured out his soul and wrote that he was dumbfounded by Guzzella's ignorance: «We didn't feel personally insulted by the president last Tuesday, merely treated somewhat disrespectfully. But the office of the ombudsman has been insulted», he wrote. In the same letter, van Gunsteren repeated his earlier warning: The Carollo case posed a serious threat to ETH's reputation because the university had no standardized procedures in the event that professors failed to conduct themselves properly. He went on to say that the case was likely to lead to a legal battle, hence the need to come up with a document that would «stand up in court».
This demand is symptomatic of the stage that the Carollo case had reached at this point. After ignoring every single rule in the book at the outset of the conflict between Marignano and Carollo, now they were concerned about the legality of their own actions.
On March 1, 2017, Carollo was summoned to a meeting with ETH Vice President Ulrich Weidmann, who had taken over the case for the school administration now that Rector Sarah Springman was leaving her position. Before the scandal erupted, Springman had been a friend of Carollo's and a weekly dinner guest at her house. But now the outgoing rector didn't want to have anything to do with an alleged academic bully, neither privately nor professionally. Carollo was told to come to the meeting with Weidmann accompanied by a «trusted individual», so she brought along a lawyer in the hope that she would finally have an opportunity to respond to concrete allegations. She was confident that she could refute many of the accusations and clear up any remaining misunderstandings.
But Weidmann didn't want to hear any explanations. He immediately launched into the topic of the conditions that Carollo would have to agree to if she were ever to hire doctoral candidates again. First, she would have to undergo coaching. Second, in the future each of her doctoral students would be assigned a second adviser.
But that was not the end of the meeting. Carollo was informed that her two remaining doctoral candidates had meanwhile said that they also wanted to leave her. Weidmann shared no reasons with Carollo, and it would not be until three months later that these two doctoral students provided their testimonials. They, too, ended up sharply criticizing Carollo. «In years under Prof. Carollo, I was repeatedly offended as a woman in front of my male colleagues», as it says in one of the documents. Adding: «I was told that if I had time to put on make-up then I should have produced more plots instead.»
As with Marignano, ETH disregarded its own rules once again and there were no attempts at mediation. Is it possible that ETH recommended to these students that they also leave their adviser? Neither the administrator in charge at the time, Vice President Ulrich Weidmann, nor Vice Rector Antonio Togni were willing to comment on this to Republik. But it is clear that the university's habit of ignoring its own rules had become increasingly systematic with Carollo's case.
A Chain Reaction
For the time being, Ombudsman van Gunsteren remained in the dark about the agreed coaching and co-supervision measures. Three weeks earlier, Weidmann had asked the ombudsman to provide an overview of the case. Van Gunsteren did so in writing and the ETH vice president responded: «The situation is so clear that it requires immediate action.»
But in response to van Gunsteren's request to keep him up to date on the matter, Weidmann merely responded that the process would be discussed among top-ranking school officials. Afterward, the ombudsman heard nothing more about the case.
The ombudsman decided to take matters into his own hands. He was unwilling to see the matter put to rest without visible consequences. His determination to see things through certainly appeared admirable, but it was actually cause for grave concern.
According to the basic ethical principles of the International Ombudsman Association, an ombudsman should always remain neutral and independent, and handle all matters confidentially and informally. They should take an impartial approach to contentious issues – and under no circumstances are they to conduct their own investigations.
And yet van Gunsteren, a man who has sworn to uphold ETH's ethical standards, would end up violating every basic principle in the Carollo case. He essentially morphed into the legal counsel for everyone interested in lodging a complaint against Carollo and began by helping Marignano collect testimonials from other disgruntled doctoral students. He even went one step further and summarized the charges from the testimonials under 14 points and sent the list to Carollo on March 6, 2017, with a request for her to comment on them. Afterward, he informed Weidmann of his approach.
Report as PDF
Weidmann responded tersely: «I'm extraordinarily unhappy with your uncoordinated actions. We have initiated diverse processes, some of which have already been implemented. What you have apparently undertaken is of little help here.» Weidmann sent a copy of his email to every top-ranking official at ETH. The message to van Gunsteren was patently clear: Leave it to us – the school administration will take care of it.
But van Gunsteren had no intention of withdrawing and, obviously unimpressed, wrote back to Weidmann: «I don't see any obstruction of the school administration's work on my part. Instead, I'm helping to identify possible grievances at ETH. So, I'm merely fulfilling my duty as an ombudsman.» He then referred to Article 15 of the organization's code of conduct, which states that an ombudsman is not subject to instructions and can demand information and the presentation of files from any department at ETH. This passage would come back to haunt top-ranking school officials. Indeed, van Gunsteren had tasted blood.
The second act had been launched.
This was a decisive moment. The school administration and office of the ombudsman were no longer working together. From that moment on, they would both insist that they alone had jurisdiction. This development in the Carollo case sparked a chain reaction that would soon lead to a state of chaos that far overshadowed the original conflict between a professor and her fired doctoral student. Yet despite their differences, they all seemed to agree Carollo must be guilty – and that her guilt didn't need to be investigated.
Carollo could only guess which former and current doctoral students and postdocs were behind the 14 allegations that she was expected to respond to. She feared she would get tangled up in contradictions as long as she was unaware of the exact wording of the allegations, so she decided to wait. Since Vice President Weidmann had scheduled another meeting for March 24, she thought that perhaps now she would finally have an opportunity to clarify her perspective on things.
As she took a seat across from him, Carollo brought up the summary compiled by the ombudsman, van Gunsteren, and pointed out that it contained several untenable allegations. Under point 12, there was even a quote that suggested scientific misconduct, the ultimate deadly sin among scientists. Someone had maintained that she had manipulated a chart to make the data look better. Carollo said she was certain that she had never done anything of the kind. She went on to explain that she could easily refute the allegation because she saved all of her data for precisely this reason – it was her insurance that no one would ever be able to accuse her of ever producing a scientific fabrication.
Carollo demanded that this allegation be investigated. She thought it could be a starting point to confirm her suspicion that a smear campaign had been launched against her, presumably initiated by the fired doctoral student, Elisabetta Marignano. But Weidmann dismissed the idea out of hand and assured the professor that the ombudsman had been acting alone and that his allegations, at least those related to scientific misconduct, were without relevance. And that was the end of the issue.
When Carollo realized that the school administration was also not interested in investigating the allegations, she responded to Ombudsman van Gunsteren's 14-point summary. Her response is 10 pages long and includes a list of all her doctoral students, many of whom have gone on to pursue highly successful careers after leaving ETH.
On April 13, 2017, she sent her statement to the ombudsman – and heard nothing more from him, which is not to say that nothing happened. It was not until half a year later that Carollo found out what the ombudsman had done with her statement.
But by then the whole institution had been engulfed in scandal.
Counterstatement by the ETH
The Republik article states: «An astronomy professor at Zürich's ETH university has been accused of harassing doctoral students for years. She's about to be fired, but the question of her purported guilt has never been clarified.» This is not true.
The truth is: The independent external investigator has conducted a thorough investigation to clarify the allegations made against the professor. In view of the professor's misconduct, ETH Zurich has initiated dismissal proceedings and has now submitted a formal request for dismissal to the ETH Board.
The Republik article states: «Nobody knows for sure because no one has mediated the conflict or investigated the allegations: neither the head of department, the office of the vice rector, the college administration nor the external administrative investigation. Professor Carollo's guilt appeared to be a foregone conclusion right from the start.» This is not true.
The truth is: The Vice Rector of Doctoral Studies, the Department Management, the Ombudsperson and the ETH Executive Board responded to the allegations by holding a number of discussions both with Professor Carollo and with those making the allegations. The independent external investigator then conducted an inquiry into the allegations made against Professor Carollo. The investigatory procedure was unbiased in reaching its conclusions.
The Republik article states: «Now, she is to be dismissed – without official prior warning – although there are no provisions for such action in the university's personnel statutes.» This is not true.
The truth is: In the spring/summer of 2017 the professor was given several verbal warnings and one written warning. Dismissal even without an official warning is possible under certain circumstances.
The Republik article states: «And the president – shocked by the revelations made by Republik – will call a press conference at short notice on Thursday, March 14, 2019, and apologize to all the doctoral students who have been treated without respect.» This is not true.
The truth is: The decision to arrange a press conference was made before the Republik's questions have been received.
The Republik article states: «In their search for damaging material, the two [Ombudsman and doctoral student] received support from the vice rector for doctoral studies, Antonio Togni, [...].» This is not true.
The truth is: Both the Ombudsperson and Vice Rector Togni reviewed the allegations in accordance with their areas of authority. They did not seek out material with a negative bias.
The Republik article states: «As with Marignano, ETH disregarded its own rules once again and there were no attempts at mediation. [...]» This is not true.
The truth is: ETH has observed its own rules. The entities involved have adhered to the applicable laws, ordinances and regulations.
Republik stands by its reporting.
The ETH Case: Coming Up in the Next Installment
Former ETH President Guzzella is determined to put an end to the Carollo affair as quickly as possible, but he sparks an internal power struggle at the university that soon reaches a new level of escalation: The allegations of harassment are leaked to the public. And on the international academic stage, Marcella Carollo will be largely portrayed as the sole guilty party. The allegations of harassment quickly become a smear campaign that threatens to put an end to her career.
Silvan Aeschlimann is an author and journalist who lives in Zürich and Barcelona. His novels «Glück ist teuer» (2017) and «Ungehört» (2013) deal with issues like the pressure to perform, economic growth and materialism.
Dominik Osswald studied geology, is an enthusiastic mountaineer and a freelance journalist. He reports for magazines and TV broadcasters on efforts to reform Switzerland's pension system and on the #MeToo debate, extreme mountaineering expeditions and climate change. He has worked for the Basler Zeitung, Tages-Anzeiger and the TV news programs «10 vor 10» and «Rundschau» for Swiss public broadcaster SRF.
Dennis Bühler is editor at Republik.
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01.07.2019 Article
Deputy Minority Leader Of Northern Youth Parliament Makes A Passionate Appeal To The Youth To End Vigilantism In The Country.
By Sarra Ayuba
As youth, we are pioneers to champion development for our motherland(Ghana), youth are the citizen who contribute for the retardation of a country's development. Let's not be seen as youth who would contribute to the retardation of our country's development but we should be seen as youth who would bring collective effort to ensure that the tenet of democracy, rule of law and principle of constitutionalism of the country are being upheld and embraced to ensure a fruitful economic movement in the country. That is why Northen Youth Parliament (N.Y.P) as a concern youth organisation found themselves in painstaking in other to ensure that the youth realise the role they have to play in their country's development, not withstanding the Northen Youth Parliament is embarking on a walk "Walk against political vigilantism" which will be able to help the organisation send a signal to the political parties, youth wings and the entire populace within the country. The youth have important role in the country development than to be served as political watch dogs, lets act as concerned youth activists to team up with N.Y.P to send a signal to the political party that we the youth would not be used as political hoodlum, hooligan, minx, knave, pixie and buffoons by our political leaders, but rather youth who possess sense of significance to innate development project for our motherland (Ghana) than to be political watch dogs. I hereby call on the youth activists within the country to help N.Y.P haul the message of vigilantism to our dear and concern citizen in the country. Our country Ghana needs a concern youth activists who would serve as biblical pilate to help wash away political vigilantism, and the youth wings should contain vibrant youth activist that will avail their working operation and commitment to uplift the flag of our country Ghana.
Vigilantism is not a profession that will help the youth to fix the broken for the betterment of our country but a platform that will soil the reputation of we the youth in the country, we are the youth who possesses undisputable knowledge and potentials that will help revamp the industries and factories within the country for the betterment of we the youth activists and all the populace as a whole. My fellow youth activists " Political Vigilantism" is a menace which is in to cripple our nation but before then the youth will show the country that we will not bow down to fear, w e will fight back and that we will proceed until vigilantism is a thing of the past. Lets wear off our party colours in order to team up with N.Y.P to send a signal to the politicians that the youth is far beyond as serving as political watch dogs (Vigilantise), I hereby again entreat the youth wings within the country that we should embrace democracy rule of law in order to uplift and strengthen the legal standard in our country (Ghana), not withstanding the youth should display their working operation and unflitching support at our country disposal in order to aid the betterment of Her citizen. N.Y.P is calling on the concern youth wings and the political parties to avail their unflitching support to endorse the walk "Against political vigilantism" which will be coming off 6th July 2019.
Peace is the key factor that contribute for a country development, and peace cannnot be externally imposed, it must come from within. We as a concern youth activists formss the back-bone of peace in the country. It wouldn't speak well of as a youth to deform peace in the country because peace is the back-bone that will help to fascilitate and uplift development in the country. I am personally entreating my youth colleagues that we should come all out to embrace the event "Walk political vigilantism" and N.Y.P to smoke the peace pipe in oder to wash away political vigilantism in our motherland (Ghana). Lets serve as concern citizen that will affect many populace positively, lets be citizen who will truly share our afflictions with our beloved people in the country and youth who will be able to right the wrong of our politicians who thinks the youth has no role to play for the country's development but then to serve as political watch dogs. Libeartion is what the people of our beloved country (Ghana) want, so this is a call which serves as a signal to we the youth that it is enkumbent on us to work hard to restore liberation and bring hope to the hopeless. I am again calling on the rulling president togetther with his cabinets and the vulnerable in the society and country at large to endorse the walk and help N.Y.P send a signal of political vigilantism to our dear people in our beloved country (Ghana). In conclusion, as youth we should fight back in order to strengthen the youth bodies and the enacted laws and rules governing our country for the peaceful moment of our country economy and development for beloved populace ,and I here by pledge my full suppoort to champion the event "Walk against Political Vigilantism" ,and not withstanding N.Y.P is calling on the concern youth activist to help the organisation embrace the walk and to help wash away political vigilantism in our dear country .May the almighty Allah shower his unrivaled blessing on our country(GHANA) ,and make the nation great and strong
Long Live Northen Youth Parliament (N.Y.P)
Long Live Northen Region
Long Live Ghana
Issued by; Mohammed Awal
(Deputy Minority Leader)
Disclaimer: "The views/contents expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author(s) and do not neccessarily reflect those of Modern Ghana. Modern Ghana will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article."


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TV Host reveals Amal Clooney is pregnant and expecting twins with George Clooney
Exciting!
By Practical Parenting
While Beyoncé and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley's pregnancies caused fans some excitement, it appears Hollywood can add another special arrival to the list after news broke of Amal Clooney's pregnancy.
On February 9, The Talk host Julie Chen said she confirmed with Clooney's husband, George, 55, in late January that he and Amal, 39, are expecting two bundles of joy, which are set to arrive June.
"Beyoncé is not the only superstar expecting twins," Chen, 47, said on the daytime program. "Congratulations are in order for George and Amal Clooney!"
The mother-to-be, a valued human-rights lawyer, and the Hollywood icon married in a star-studded wedding in Venice, Italy back in 2014. The pair first met through a mutual friend at a charity fundraiser in September 2013.
This article originally appeared on Who.
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Estate agent interview: Dordogne and Lot-et-Garonne
The property's impressive façade - Credit: Archant
Jane Fraser-Bryan of Guyenne Immobilier explains why this four-bedroom stone house in Eymet, on the market for €292,000, gets her vote
The spacious dining kitchen - Credit: Archant
Why does this property stand out for you?
This handsome house really does have it all: serious kerb appeal matched by an equally attractive interior, a much sought-after situation within walking distance of the amenities of a medieval Périgourdine village and, finally, a decent-sized garden – a third of an acre – which is a rare luxury with a village-centre property.
Why is it a great buy?
One of the bedrooms, with Juliet balcony overlooking the garden - Credit: Archant
The key is in its flexibility: it could be a permanent residence, a holiday home or even an income-generating holiday let. Its interiors are bathed in natural light all day long thanks to dual-aspect rooms with larger-than-average windows. There is an overriding feeling of harmony and balance in terms of internal proportions and overall layout, and the renovation work that has been undertaken is completely in keeping with the stylish, classical exterior, while still remaining faithful to the period.
What's the wow factor?
It's quite simply the quintessential French country house, built in locally cut stone with ornate double doors, painted window shutters and the archetypal French bicycle leaning casually against the old wall of the house, sprouting bright geraniums from its front and rear baskets. Originally the gate house to the next-door maison de maître, it simply oozes charm and character.
The large lawned garden and gravelled patio - Credit: Archant
Who would it suit?
It would suit almost anyone, particularly a family with children, being a safe and private haven within a few minutes' walk of excellent schools, crèches, a park, river, sports stadium and swimming pool. It would be equally wonderful for a couple of any age wanting a sociable village life and, as an income-generating property, the addition of a pool could bring in as much as a 10% return. What an investment!
What's the immediate location like?
The house is a stone's throw from the centre of the picturesque bastide town of Eymet in Dordogne with its stunning square, shops, cafés, restaurants and schools. The vibrant weekly markets, festivities and thriving expat community are all on the doorstep. The town not only welcomes foodies but also nature lovers and amateur historians alike – its gentle countryside makes for perfect walks and the varied heritage is fascinating.
Nestling in a crook of the River Dropt on a prehistoric site, Eymet was founded in 1270 by Alphonse de Poitiers and stands as a powerful testament to a turbulent past while, socially and economically, it looks resolutely ahead to the future.
What's the appeal of the area?
South-west France enjoys great weather yet still retains distinct seasons; there is gorgeous local food with everything from simple menus to Michelin-starred fayre and abundant – and great-value – wine. For those wanting a holiday, it is a dream. If you're contemplating moving permanently, there is also excellent schooling, a lack of traffic on the commute yet easy access to the UK and other countries in Europe, fantastic properties, a great community spirit... we could go on!
How easy is it to get to?
Bergerac airport is only 20 minutes' drive from the property, and the international airport at Bordeaux can be accessed within an hour and a half. www.guyenneimmobilier.co.uk


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Hyslip: Western wheat farmers expect an apology — and perhaps a tear — from Trudeau
Dec 16, 2017 • Last Updated December 16, 2017 • 3 minute read
Alberta farmers Jim Ness, left, Noel Hyslip and Rick Strankman were sent to jail for not obeying the rules of the Canadian What Board. Photo by DAVE CHAN /CALwp
By Noel Hyslip
When I watch the evening news, I can't help but notice that our prime minister sheds tears while making apologies for the poor leadership of previous politicians.
At the same time, he will sometimes offer large sums of cash as compensation for governments' wrongdoing.
I too am a victim of wrongful actions by past governments, as is every western farmer who suffered financial loss at the hands of the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly.
The CWB monopoly was created in September 1943 to hold down wheat prices during the Second World War. The war ended in 1945. The wheat board monopoly ended 67 years later, in 2012.
In 1947, Senator Walter Aseltine calculated that in the first 3½ years of CWB operations, western wheat growers suffered $535 million in lost income. The monopoly was supposed to end after the war, but Ottawa instead entered into wheat agreements with foreign buyers — often at bargain prices.
Prime Minister John Diefenbaker argued at one point that Ottawa's decision to make western farmers finance war reconstruction was ridiculous. He said that when aircraft and other war materials were sent to Britain, it was never the manufacturers that were expected to pay the cost.
"Why," he wanted to know, "were farmers being treated so differently and unfairly."
The CWB monopoly thus began to operate on five-year renewable parliamentary mandates. This was the practice right up until the 1960s, when the federal government quietly, and without any real debate, made the monopoly a permanent fixture. Western farmers thus laboured for many years under the auspices of this all-powerful entity.
After years of lobbying the government for reform, only to achieve complicated marketing options still through the single desk, in the spring of 1996, the decision was made by myself and several other Alberta farmers to export a 25-kilogram sack of barley and donate it to the Montana 4-H Club. It was intended as a demonstration to show the power the government held over farmers.
Upon our return to the Canadian border, we found a large increase in staff at the Canada Customs crossing, as well as several members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
After a few hours of peacefully processing our paperwork, we were charged with exporting grain without a Canadian Wheat Board permit, which carried a penalty of 45 days in jail, and we had our vehicles seized.
For six, long stress-filled years, we were hauled in and out of courtrooms only to find out that we were guilty. Even though we had all the time, effort and cost of producing that crop, it wasn't ours to even give away.
On Oct. 31, 2002, with the harvest unfinished and the crop still laying in the field, and with family, friends and hundreds of farmers looking on in disbelief, I, along with 12 others, turned ourselves into the Lethbridge courthouse, where we were put in handcuffs and leg chains, placed in the back of a van and hauled to the provincial correctional centre in Lethbridge. It is a process that haunts me to this day.
As a result of these events, which caused international embarrassment for Canada, after a change in government, the Canadian Wheat Board's single desk, wartime monopoly was brought to a close. It ended on Aug. 1, 2012.
I am writing because I'm wondering when and where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will draw the line on apologies, and on paying compensation for the hardship and oppression of Canadian citizens.
Perhaps, he will want to make his way to an Alberta farm meeting, apologize on behalf of the government, shed a tear, and settle up for the financial losses suffered by thousands of western grain growers.
Noel Hyslip farms 6,500 acres in the Vulcan area, producing wheat, barley, canola, peas and durum.


You've crunched the numbers, thought about your lifestyle and made the decision to buy a home. It can be a complicated, stressful process. But knowing what to expect can reduce some of that anxiety and help you confidently find your way to your new home.
To help, here's a step-by-step guide to the home-buying process. You could swap the order of a few early steps – you can get pre-approved before finding an agent, for example. But you don't want to find the perfect place first, only to have a better-prepared buyer swoop in and snag it.
So what is a good credit score? You can expect a good mortgage rate at anything above 720. Home buyers who pursue an FHA loan can usually secure a loan if their credit is 580 or over. FICO scores are available at www.myfico.com for a one-time or monthly fee. Once you know your score, you can find out what interest rate you will likely qualify for.
This person will be your lifeline through the process. Not so long ago, people didn't have much to go on when selecting an agent. A postcard in the mail or a name on a sign might have been all you had to consider if you didn't have a personal referral. But now it's a breeze to check reviews online. Go ahead and meet with a few agents and ask some questions. Your agent is your chief advocate, confidante and hand-holder in the process so you want to find a good fit.
It's a smart move to get pre-approved for a loan early in your home search. Zillow has an easy-to-use tool that lets you find a licensed lender in your area with a history of positive customer ratings, who can help you get pre-approved.
Pre-approval requires the lender to pull the credit information (see Step 1) and asses your financial situation. The lender will then give you a letter that states the amount they would be willing to lend you. If you get in a multiple-offer scenario, being pre-approved may give you an edge because the seller will have more confidence that you will be approved for a loan large enough to purchase their home.
Let the serious shopping begin! By now you've talked things over with your agent and you both know what you really want and need in a home. Armed with this, your price range and knowledge of the local area, look at listings online and with your agent, who will come up with properties for you to tour. Chances are you'll discover some new things to love or hate about homes and refine your search.
For most buyers, this is when the butterflies really show up. Once you've found a home you want your agent will work with you to craft an offer. Remember, the listing price is only a starting point. Your agent will understand the market and help guide you to make the most attractive offer, whether it's below, at or above listing price. Are there any contingencies to your offer? Will you require an inspection? These are all things your agent will help you with. Once you've submitted the offer you get to wait. It will seem interminable. You may get neither a simple yes or no but a counteroffer to consider. It can be something of a dance. If you get a solid "no," it's back to Step 5. If you get to a "yes," celebrate!
If your offer called for a home inspection, this is a big day. Sure, you get to have a home inspector look over the home to make sure there are no unseen defects you want to negotiate to have fixed. But more importantly, this is the most time you'll get to spend in your new home until closing. Go ahead and start measuring things and figuring out what goes where. This may be the last time you are inside the home until it is yours, several weeks from now.
If you already own a home, simply call your insurance agent and let them know you're buying a new home. They will handle writing a new policy. If you don't have an insurance agent, now's the time to find one because your lender will require homeowners insurance. Even if you don't have a mortgage, insurance is a critical part of protecting your investment. You'll also want to give utility companies your move-in date to establish service. There's nothing like moving into a cold, dark house because you didn't get an account with the power company!
This is the big day. You'll sign read and sign papers and then read and sign some more. Even though you're just sitting around a table, it can be exhausting. But it also means you're nearing the finish line.
Step 10: Get the keys and move in!
This is it. You did it. You are now a homeowner! Your sale contract will specify exactly how soon you get to move in. Sometimes it's by a certain time on the day you sign closing papers. Sometimes possession happens a few days after closing. Whenever it is, you've just ended the adventure of home buying and started the adventure of homeownership.