Former Grad Student Sentenced For Poisoned Teabag

A former Princeton graduate student was sentenced last month to five years in prison after he was found guilty of lacing supermarket teabags with cyanide.

Federal Judge Maryanne Trump Barry recommended that Dragol-job Cetkovic, whom she said acted out of "the depths of despair," serve his sentence at a psychiatric prison.

Cetkovic, a native of Yugoslavia, was a graduate student in Princeton's physics department before 1983, when the university declared him a persona non gratafor repeatedly teasing a female student,The Associated Pressreported.

After Cetkovic poisoned the teabag in February, he allegedly called the supermarket to warn them of the cyanide, The Associated Pressreported. The 32-year-old Cetkovic said in his trial that he wanted officials to test the cyanide to determine whether the amount he used was enough to kill.

If the dose was lethal, Cetkovic said, he would use it to commit suicide.

"I shall never forgive myself for it. I did not hold anything in my mind to harm anybody. I was very troubled," he said.

Professors described the former student as a brilliant scientist with extraordinary natural gifts. UMASS

Pay Raises Cut for Top Administrators

The Chairman of the University of Massachusetts Board of Trustees announced this week that pay raises for two top university administrators would be cut down in the wake of criticism by Chairman of the Board of Regents of Higher Learning, L. Edward Lashman.

The original August agreement gave UMass President David Knapp a $20,000 pay raise and Chancellor of the UMass Amherst campus Joseph Duffey a $15,000 raise.

But after sharp protest from Lashman, who is Harvard's senior planning counselor, Chairman of the UMass Board of Trustees Andrew Knowles announced a new agreement that will give the two educators raises of $12,000 and $9000 respectively.

Lashman, who oversees projects for the Kennedy School, said he protested the proposed raises because they were not "what was appropriate."

"The Board of Regents had a private company look at a salaries for educators at public universities, and the Board issued special salary guidelines based on this report," Lashman said.

"It said that the Board of Trustees could approve salaries within these limits, but then we learned they had given increases beyond the guidelines," Lashman said.