SPORTS Feeling millennial The men's and women's basketball teams put up an impressive string of victories during The CHRONICLE winter break. See SPORTSWRAP ••'••il-'^il-'Hf'.i'nml 1W Investor donates Family law expert named dean to Pratt facilities A 20-year Duke veteran, Katharine Bartlett will take the helm of the law school By JAIME LEVY The Chronicle •Tlie University recently announced a $5 As each of the University's million gift from hedge fluid manager branches begins its strategic planning initiative, the School of Jeffrey Vinik. The engineering school will Law has just been given a chief use the money to accommodate new faculty. strategist. After a 10-month national By GREG PESSIN search, insider Katharine Bavtlett The Chronicle was appointed in December to be Jeffrey Vinik, engineering '81, and his wife the law school's 12th dean. Penny gave the Pratt School of Engineering its Bartlett, the A. Kenneth Pye second multi-million dollar gift in three months, professor of law and an expert in President Nan Keohane announced Dec. 16. family and gender law, has taught The $5 million donation will help renovate cur­ at Duke since 1979. rent space and create new facilities for the 20 new "Kate brings wonderful acade­ faculty hires planned by Pratt Dean Kristina mic and leadership credentials Johnson and facilitated by Edmund Pratt's $35 and a lot of experience with the million naming gift in October 1999. law school to the position," said "As an alumnus who knows about investments Provost Peter Lange, who an­ and cares about Duke, Jeff saw the needs here nounced the search committee's clearly and wanted to make a difference—and his choice. "In the end, when making RICHARD RUBIN/THE CttflON!C_E gift surely will do that," Keohane said yesterday. "It the comparative judgment with KATHARINE BARTLETT plans to i fund-raising tradition established by her will also continue the momentum established by the available outside candidates predecessor and to concentrate on crafting the school's strategic plan, Ed Pratt's generous gift, and help the Pratt School we concluded we would get the edness would be an asset in her employees," Gann said. "In other of Engineering reach new levels of excellence." best leadership for the law school new position. "[Bartlett] cares words, she will be a very strong After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Duke, in this critical period of strategic about lawyers-and the profession; academic leader, but she also has Vinik went to Harvard Business School and then planning and progress." she will represent the law school the personal touch to work well began working at Fidelity Investments. He man­ Upon formal approval by the well with outside constituents. [She with everyone." aged the nation's largest mutual fund—Fidelity • Board of Trustees in February, is] a superb scholar..., a fine Although Bartlett stressed that Magellan—for four years and helped it grow from Bartlett will succeed Pamela Gann, teacher, a very good colleague who strategic planning in the law school $20 billion to more than $50 billion. He now runs who left this summer to become gets along well with faculty, a very would have to be collectively done, Vinik Asset Management, a hedge fund he found- president of Claremont McKenna good leader who directs and gets she did pinpoint a few priorities. See GIFT on page 27 *> College in California. things done and she will be very "There is fairly widespread ac- Gann said Bartlett's well-round- good on the inside with staff and See BARTLETT on page 26 *• Duke enters new millennium without dreaded Y2K snags By GREG PESSIN campus UNIX systems and forced the The Chronicle University to fire up its emergency Sipping coffee and Coke, eating generators. brownies and watching CNN, 10 ad­ After command center officials ministrators spent a woefully sober checked all power supplies and other turn-of-the-millennium in the Tel-Com vital systems, including the acpub building, monitoring campus comput­ system, they decided the campus had ers for Y2K-related glitches. temporarily averted the problem and After none appeared, most of the of­ they turned their attention toward ficials left around 1 a.m., and the Y2K bugs that could appear in the next command center closed without inci­ few months. dent around 2:30 a.m. Jan. 1, 2000. About 10 minor computer glitches The University and Health System appeared throughout the Duke Uni­ spent a combined $75 million replacing versity Health System, David Kirby, outdated computer systems and anoth­ manager of Medical Center Systems er $19 million fixing other machines. Programming, said in a statement. He So far, only a few minor bugs have could not be reached for additional cropped up in individual departments' comment. systems, and these problems were Since the new millennium rang in fixed shortly thereafter. with little more than a few sparks and "It was kind of anticlimactic," infor­ surprises, computer commentators mation technology consultant Neal and political pundits have debated Paris said of the command center whether the Y2K bug was all hype and mood. "If there had been problems in hubbub or a true threat averted by other parts of the world, there would concentrated effort. JASON WAGNER/THE CHRONICLE have been a sense that it was coming And ever since the bug came to closer and closer and then arrived." light, the University has maintained GRAND MCOPENING Office of Information Technology the middle ground, spending conserva­ McDonald's owner-operator Ric Richards speaks at the restaurant's debut Tuesday. With standard administrators were most concerned tively and hiring few consultants. last food tare, but the restaurant is decidedly Duke themed. See story, page 8. about the campus losing power, which "I've always thought it was over- could have resulted in lost data on See Y2K on page 23 *• REMEMBER: Go TO YOUR MONDAY CLASSES TODAY TO MAKE UP TIME YOU'LL MISS DURING MLK DAY. THE CHRONICLE • PAGE 2 WORLD & NATIONAL WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 12, 2000 NEWSFILE FROM WIRE REPORTS Britain finds Pinochet unfit for trial Clinton proposes aid Tobacco company package for Colombia allegedly targets kids The Clinton adminis­ Anti-tobacco advocates Following Tuesday's ruling, the former dictator may be returned to Chile tration proposed a $1.6 accused Brown & By WARREN HOGE by continuing the present extradi­ was writing to various rights billion plan • to help Williamson Tobacco N.Y. Times News Service tion proceedings." groups that have been party to the Colombia attack the mul­ Corp. of violating an LONDON — Britain said Tues­ Pinochet has been under house case and countries like France, Bel­ tiplying producers of co­ agreement to stop adver­ day night that new medical tests arrest in England for nearly 15 gium and Switzerland that have caine and heroin. It tising to children even as showed that Gen. Augusto Pinochet months awaiting the outcome of made extradition requests of their would make Colombia the company announced was unfit to stand trial in Spain complicated legal and judicial own and was asking for replies the third largest recipi­ a series of public forums and that it was now inclined to moves surrounding the request to within a week. ent of U.S. foreign aid. to promote "open dia­ abandon the case against him, al­ send him to Madrid to face 35 The next formal hearing in the Space station faces logue" about tobacco. lowing him to return home to Chile. charges of torture and conspiracy drawn out case had been scheduled more delays INS officials wiil not Home Secretary Jack Straw re­ to torture stemming from the days for the end of March, but it is based The long-delayed In­ send Cuban boy back leased the results of a Jan. 5 ex­ of his strongman rule in Chile. on an appeal of the extradition ternational Space Sta­ With the Friday dead­ amination of the 84-year-old for­ Straw, who has the right to end order that would become irrelevant tion has been postponed line nearing for a deal mer Chilean dictator by four the extradition proceedings on if Straw takes the likely step of in­ once again due to flaws returning six-year-old British specialists and said he compassionate grounds of age and tervening before then. in a booster rocket, Elian Gonzalez to his fa­ was "minded... to take the view health, did not make it clear how The medical report and Straw's while Russia's Mir space ther in Cuba, U.S. immi­ that no purpose would be served soon he might act. But he said he See PINOCHET on page 2! • station may get a new gration officials said lease on life, space offi­ Tuesday they do not plan cials said Tuesday. to return him by force. Merger sparks race for a faster Internet Ropes were cut hours Post office will raise before A&M disaster mail rates in 2001 By SETH SCHIESEL tensive cable television systems to deliver torrents of In a routine procedure, The U.S. Postal Service N.Y. Times News Service digital data. four stabilizing ropes will raise mail rates by For most Americans, linking to cyberspace from Time Warner's systems reach only about a fifth of were cut on the stack of one cent next year and home is akin to trying to eat a vat of thick, rich soup the nation's homes—roughly 22 million households— Texas A&M bonfire logs expects to raise the cost with a straw. With their $165 billion merger deal, but Monday's deal may well set off a chain reaction just hours before they col­ of mailing magazines America Online and Time Warner intend to start among local phone companies, long-distance giants, lapsed and killed 12, a re­ and catalogs significant­ handing out ladles.