Quick Takes

Matteo Fontana, the former general manager for financial-partner services in Education Department's student-aid office, pleaded guilty to conflict-of-interest and false-statement charges over his ownership of stock in a loan company, The Wall Street Journal reported. Fontana held as many as 10,500 shares of Education Lending Group Inc. when he joined the Education Department in 2002, prosecutors said. The holdings became public when Andrew Cuomo, New York State's attorney general, started investigating conflicts of interest between the lending industry and colleges.

The University of Mississippi has altered its fight song to discourage a chant of "the South will rise again," based on the old version. With many fans continuing that chant -- which many find offensive -- Chancellor Dan Jones said Monday that either the chant stops, or he'll bar the song from being played at football games, the Associated Press reported. "The University of Mississippi is a warm and welcoming place. So many have worked hard to make sure our image moves forward, and we don't want anything to hurt that," Jones said in a speech.

About 2,700 teaching and research assistants walked off the job Monday at McMaster University, in Ontario, The Canadian Press reported. Negotiations have resumed on a new contract.

The fight over academic boycotts of Israel -- which has been centered in Britain -- has shifted to Norway, The Jerusalem Post reported. The board of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology will consider a boycott proposal this month, at the request of professors. Israeli academic leaders are organizing a campaign against the plan.

The cities (and colleges campuses) we see in the movies are not always what they claim to be -- and that doesn't go over well with students at Johns Hopkins University. The Social Network is currently being filmed at Hopkins, which is in effect playing the part of Harvard, which doesn't permit commercial films to be shot on its campus. The fee the university is receiving isn't enough to justify pretending to be Harvard, students told The Baltimore Sun. They fear Hopkins looks like a safety school. "The general consensus is, a lot of kids are not pleased," one student told the Sun. "It's obvious they [the filmmakers] could get Hopkins and not get Harvard."