Vanessa Miller

During the first Herky on Parade in 2004, Archie wasn’t yet born. For the second in 2014, he was just a toddler — but still has some memories. And for the third iteration, Archie grabbed a paint brush.

Back in mid-March — more than a month before the Iowa Legislature passed a bill imposing on Iowa’s public universities sweeping diversity, equity, and inclusion restrictions that go beyond directives from their governing Board of Regents — Republican lawmakers sought a DEI update from the campuses.

Far from this week’s dramatic scenes of baton-wielding police clad in riot gear and bulletproof vests clashing with pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses coast to coast — a diverse combination of Iowa City students and residents on Friday mingled peacefully on the University of Iowa Pentacrest lawn.

Using military-style code words like Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, and Foxtrot for team names -- each group was assigned one yellow bin of drills and screws, along with a list of locations and instructions, aimed at executing the group’s larger mission: to distribute and install 100 6-foot-tall Herky statues across nearly as many locations in a 10-mile radius under the cover of night.

The 20th anniversary of Herky on Parade features 100 statues, including a handful grouped into a “G.O.A.T series” – like one in a “22” jersey named “From the Logo Herky” and another wearing Rudis shoes labeled “Yoda.”

A former faculty adviser and a former coach for the embattled Iowa State University crew club — which three years ago came under scrutiny after two students drowned during a club activity — are “immune from personal liability” and have been dropped from a lawsuit scheduled for trial next week.

Seven years after a Cedar Rapids-based contractor first started feuding with the University of Iowa over its work on the towering Stead Family Children’s Hospital, Iowa’s high court has weighed in and sided with the university on part of its appeal — reversing an order to pay Modern Piping another $12.8 million.

In response to 10 directives the Board of Regents handed down in the fall to curtail diversity, equity, and inclusion spending and programming across its public universities, presidents of all three campuses on Thursday shared significant changes underway – including the permanent closure of Iowa State University’s Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion office.

With questions about tenure, its value, and its threats still top of mind for some Republican lawmakers, the number of tenured and tenure-track faculty on Iowa’s regent campuses is continuing a generational slide to its lowest in recent history.

Iowa’s Board of Regents is not ready to include in its automatic-admission scoring system a relatively new “Classic Learning Test” gaining traction nationally and especially in conservative-leaning states as an alternative to the traditional ACT and SAT tests.

A growing percent of students across Iowa’s public universities feel comfortable expressing their opinions on and off campus, in and out of class, and even on social media — according to a second free speech survey Iowa’s Board of Regents administered earlier this year, just over two years after ordering its first following a string of campus incidents that drew intense criticism from Republican lawmakers.

A critical audit of the University of Northern Iowa’s Office of Compliance and Equity Management – responsible for making sure UNI offers equal education opportunities and complies with state and federal laws like Title IX and affirmative action – uncovered shortcomings that could “expose the university to unacceptable risks” and “result in serious consequences.”

Among $2-plus billion in upcoming University of Iowa Health Care construction -- including a $1 billion, 842,000-square-foot inpatient tower near Kinnick Stadium -- is an expanded burn treatment center, now facing a 10-percent budget hike due to the “challenging and complex nature” of hospital renovation work.

Because Spencer Lee’s 57 kilos bracket is one of five Olympic weights not yet qualified for the Olympics, his U.S. trials win Saturday isn’t an automatic ticket to the Summer Games. He still has to qualify the United States at that weight in Istanbul, Turkey on May 9-12 by placing among the top three at the World Olympic Games Qualifier.

Six years since leaders of Iowa State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine warned lawmakers “we won’t get accredited again” without building — or at least making progress toward — a new stand-alone Veterinary Diagnostic Lab, the state and university have collaborated to do just that.