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What’s in a name? For Franklin College, it’s a time-honored place among Indiana’s institutions of higher learning – an identity college officials believe is threatened by Franklin University, an Ohio-based school opening a satellite campus in a northeast Indianapolis office park.
The 175-year-old Franklin College has filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging trademark infringement.
Jay Moseley, president of the college, said Franklin University’s “aggressive advertising plan … is causing substantial confusion” with the Indiana school.
College officials will have a tough time arguing their case. The Ohio institution has been named Franklin University since 1933 and its clock tower logo, while similar to Franklin College’s logo, probably resembles that of dozens of U.S. colleges and universities.
Moreover, confusion among higher education institutions is not a new phenomenon. Consider Fort Wayne-based Indiana Institute of Technology, which wisely counters confusion with ITT Technical Institutes by using the more distinctive moniker of Indiana Tech.
Then there’s Indiana University of Pennsylvania, which surely has endured mix-ups with a larger institution in Bloomington. There’s a St. Francis University in Loretto, Pa., – not to be confused with the University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne. There are three St. Mary’s Colleges, plus a St. Mary of the Woods College and two St. Mary’s Universities.
In other words, Franklin College might want to give up on the lawsuit and focus on distinguishing its liberal arts programs from Franklin University’s business classes for adult students.
Last week’s Associated Press story about the national debt has some staggering numbers that can be difficult to put into perspective. Surely, the national debt of $11.5 trillion is a number few Americans can really grasp.
It’s somewhat easier to get a handle on $37,000 – the share of debt that falls on each American.
Just like the deficit fights of decades past, politicians continue to argue over good debt and bad debt, the need to have debt for war, the debt as a percentage of the gross national product, whether the debt contributes to inflation.
But here’s the number the nation should pay attention to as a reason to begin living within its means: $452 billion. That is the annual interest on the national debt, the fourth-largest government expenditure – after Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security and defense – in the budget. That is money that could be remaining in the pockets of Americans.
As if Americans didn’t have enough reasons to worry about identity theft, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed an algorithm to predict Social Security numbers based on an individual’s date and place of birth. Many people may know that the first three numbers of a Social Security number are based on the state where first registered; Indiana’s numbers are 303 through 317.
The researchers were most accurate for people from smaller states and those born since 1988, when numbers started being issued at birth.
The algorithm is hardly perfect.
The researchers could determine all nine of the Social Security digits only for 5 percent of Delaware residents born in 1996, and then the researchers took up to 10 attempts each.
Still, the study should serve as further warning of the hazards of using Social Security numbers for identification.
