Wheel! Of! Fortune! Comes! To! Princeton!

"Should I buy a vowel?" "Can I have an 'r,' please?" "May I take the flowered vase for $300?"

Princeton students will be pursuing answers to these less-than-scholarly questions this spring when they represent their school on the syndicated game show "Wheel of Fortune" during its "college week" in early May.

"Fortune" producers will bring a mock-up of the set to Princeton during the week of March 27, when 200 Tiger fortune hunters will vie for a chance to make a pilgrimage to the Los Angeles studio. Host Pat Sajak and cult-figure hostess Vanna White will not make a trip to the New Jersey campus, however.

Harv Selby, who is in charge of recruiting on the Ivy League campus, told The Daily Princetonian that the ideal contestant was someone with "game-playing ability, a sense of humor, and a feel for the wheel."

The selected contestants will pay their own flight to the show's Los Angeles studios, but stand to win great prizes--Sajak and White have given away over $250,000 in the last five "college week" shows, Selby told The Princetonian.

The show's producers have chosen four schools for the week: the University of California at Berkeley, Georgia Tech, the University of Hawaii, and Princeton.

Apparently these four were not the first choice schools, however. Nancy Jones, "Fortune" producer, said the game show had designs on Harvard.

"We wanted to come to Harvard very much. We were sort of stonewalled in our efforts," Jones said. Fortune makes a policy of gaining the permission of college officials before beginning the contestant search. Jones said Harvard would not grant this permission. CORNELL

Let It Slush

There's not much to celebrate in Ithaca, N.Y., during the winter. Except slush.

So to compete with Dartmouth's snowbound Winter Carnival, Cornell this month celebrated the late-season delights of the winter in its annual "Slush Festival."

"We're here to celebrate what Ithaca has plenty of--and that's bad weather," event organizer George Preston told The Cornell Daily Sun.

Activities in the day-long tribute to upstate New York weather included a noontime parade of snow plows and Polar Bear Club members who jumped into slush-filled tubs.

Cleverly paraphrasing the Immortal Bard's writings, Big Red actors carried signs that read, "Friends, Romans, lend me your earmuffs."

Scholarly pursuits did not end there, but the historical society hosted a variety of panel discussions, on topics like "The Folklore of Slush," and "Slush and Technology."

Fate would not let these cheery celebrants revel in the melting mush of snow, however, as the festival encountered more seasonably sunny weather. GEORGIA

Georgia Prez Walks

Following in Herschel Walker's footsteps, the president of the University of Georgia has fueled a controversy by deciding to leave the school before his term has expired.

Fred C. Davidson, who has presided over the Athens, Ga., campus for the past 19 years, resigned last Thursday after blasting the university's the wake of a scandal over the preferential academic treatment for student athletes.

Davidson's resignation, effective July 1, comes a month after a federal court in Atlanta awarded former Georgia instructor Jan Kemp $2.57 million in damages in her suit against two university officials. Kemp had charged that she was fired for speaking out against preferential treatment of student athletes in Georgia's remedial Developmental Studies Program.

Davidson, who favors the remedial program, came under increasing criticism after the verdict in the Kemp case. When the regents put his contract renewal on hold, the president resigned because of what he termed "a personal and professional insult."

But Regents Chairman Arthur Gignilliat Jr. said that during Davison's tenure "there have been abuses that could affect the accreditation of the institution."

Kemp said Davidson's resignation was "the best birthday present I've ever had."

"I hope they'll put someone in who will rule with integrity, who will restore the constitutional rights of faculty, and who will put an end to the exploitation of athletes," she said.

Georgia football Coach Vince Dooley said he was "shocked and saddened" by Davidson's resignation. SUNY OSWEGO

What About Room Service?

The "Gold Coast" hotels on Mount Auburn Street were long ago converted into student dormitories. But at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Oswego, they're doing the opposite.

At the upstate campus, a prominent dormitory building will begin to be converted into a Best Western Hotel and conference center as early as this April.

The conversion of 73 year-old Sheldon Hall--which was recently recognized by the National Register of Historical Places as a significant building--had been postponed during the fall of 1984 due to a controversial bidding procedure as well as "just a lot of unnecessary red tape," President Virginia Radley told The Oswegonian, the campus newspaper.

Unused since the fall of 1983 because of an overabundance of building space, Sheldon Hall had been financially burdensome to the college, costing an estimated $75,000 annually in heating bills.

University officials at the upstate campus will begin the scheduled 10-month conversion which will produce a hotel and conference center with 122 rooms and six to eight suites. Tentative plans also include installing a cocktail lounge, a banquet room and an indoor swimming pool.

However, William King, a developer and lifetime Oswego resident who lives opposite Sheldon Hall, believes there are better uses for the building, such as apartments for older or married students. "I don't believe the administration served the best interests of the college or the community," he said.