What can be done about the persistent allegiance to alcohol that troubles too many campuses across the country, including Southern Methodist University? Holly Hacker reported in the Dallas Morning News that campus police "issued more than 230 violations related to alcohol and drugs between August and October 8, up from about 160 during that period last year." However, for those same weeks in 2005, the number was 300, but it's hard to glean much from these figures. After all, 2006, which would appear to be a moment of relative restraint, saw the first of three deaths among SMU students from substance abuse.

The news has not been good for schools in North Texas. According to one press report, seventy-six campuses in this part of the state have failed for the second year in a row or more to meet standards set by No Child Left Behind legislation. Still there are bright lights in spite of everything, and they emanate from individuals -- bold, imaginative, persistent and steady -- who have started programs drenched in clarity, unburdened by ambiguity and dazzling in their results. Here are a few of them.

Lee Fikes, no-nonsense president and CEO of Dallas' Leland Fikes Foundation, is alarmed by the loss of scientific integrity at all levels of American government. What passes for science, he is convinced, is too often really propaganda, signifying nothing but the views of the zealous or the cynical.

What do the people of Dallas expect in a mayor? The answer is not an administrator with a Jimmy Carter-like concentration on the details of government. We have a city manager for that and a good one in Mary Suhn. Ironically, since the powers of the mayor are weak, the force of that mayor's imagination must be especially strong. The great mayors of Dallas have been champions of great projects.