Northwestern University

Northwestern University has ended the school's storied organ and church music degree programs, citing the lack of enrollment and need to focus music department resources elsewhere. The organ program at Northwestern dates to the 1890s, and over the decades its graduates have held major music posts at churches and academic departments across the country.

Northwestern University's business school placed first for the second consecutive year in a new survey by Business Week magazine. In its Oct. 29 issue, the magazine said Northwestern's J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management in Evanston, Ill., received the highest rating from the 6,000 business school graduates and 322 corporate recruiters surveyed.

Northwestern University's J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management has the country's best MBA program, beating out such powerhouses as Harvard and Wharton, a Business Week magazine survey says. The survey in the Nov. 28 issue also said that among other surprises, the graduate business schools of Cornell and Dartmouth made its top five, while Stanford and the University of Chicago, usually near the top of other rankings, finished lower.

A Cook County, Ill., Circuit Court judge granted approval Tuesday to a request from Northwestern University attorneys to preserve pathology samples from the body of Rashidi Wheeler. Attorneys Eric F. Quandt and Julian Solotorovsky filed an emergency motion Monday to secure Wheeler's blood, fluid and tissue samples, asserting that his use of dietary supplements containing ephedrine have been associated with various adverse health effects, including cardiac arrest and stroke.

The attorneys representing Linda Will, Rashidi Wheeler's mother, will conduct a conference call today to determine whether they should name Northwestern football Coach Randy Walker and Athletic Director Rick Taylor in a lawsuit to be filed Friday. Jim Montgomery, the Chicago-based partner of Los Angeles attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr., said Tuesday that the suit claiming negligence would name Northwestern University and members of the training staff who attended the Aug. 3 conditioning drill.

A judge in Illinois Monday severed the involvement of a company that makes ephedra products in the wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Rashidi Wheeler's family against Northwestern University, a move that would keep the possible trial in Chicago and override a previous federal order to move the case to court proceedings in New Jersey.

A Northwestern University doctor acknowledged burning records of a physical he gave Rashidi Wheeler three weeks before the football player died during a 2001 training drill. Dr. Mark Gardner testified for nearly 6 1/2 hours Thursday in a lawsuit that Wheeler's parents filed against the university. Only lawyers for Wheeler's family were able to question Gardner before the deposition ended for the day. He is expected to continue questioning at a later date.

In what a Cook County judge said was "a wild, wild overreaction," Northwestern University officials secretly dispatched armed undercover police to witnesses' depositions in the wrongful death lawsuit of football player Rashidi Wheeler. Circuit Court Judge Kathy Flanagan on Tuesday ordered the school to keep officers away from future depositions, saying she was "absolutely appalled" by the university's actions.

Linda Will, the mother of the late Northwestern University football player Rashidi Wheeler, has reunited for a second time with Chicago-based attorneys Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. and James Montgomery, less than two weeks after she fired the high-profile legal team from her wrongful-death lawsuit against the university. A secretary in Montgomery's office said Thursday that the attorney had only a two-sentence reaction to the development: "Yes, she has returned. No further comment."

The attorney serving as co-counselor in the Rashidi Wheeler wrongful death lawsuit against Northwestern University said Thursday he's convinced the case will proceed to trial without a settlement. Tom Demetrio, the Chicago-based attorney representing Wheeler's father, George Wheeler Jr. of Northridge, said that belief likely was a motivating factor behind the decision of Wheeler's mother, Linda Will, to change legal teams Wednesday. Rashidi Wheeler of Ontario and La Verne Damien High died Aug.