Newsmakers

LAIRD HAYES ’71, above, made the biggest call of his career when — acting as side judge during Super Bowl XLVI — he ruled that Giants receiver Mario Manningham completed a catch late in the fourth quarter. Hayes, a retired instructor and college coach, has officiated three Super Bowls in an NFL career that spans 17 seasons. Another alum also had an impact on the game: College-scouting director MARC ROSS ’95 had drafted Manningham and other New York standouts. … LIA ROMEO ’03’s new play, Hungry, a comedy that deals with a high-school girl’s struggles with body issues and boy problems, premiered March 3 at Uni­corn Theatre in Kansas City, Mo., and runs through March 18. … LESLEY M. WHEELER *94, an English professor at Washington and Lee University, won an outstanding faculty award for 2012 from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia — that state’s highest teaching award for faculty at public and private colleges and universities. Wheeler is a poet and scholar of 20th- and 21st-century poetry. ... VIVASVAN SONI ’91, an associate professor of English at Northwestern University, received the Modern Language Associ­a­tion of America’s prize for a first book for Mourning Happiness: Narrative and the Politics of Modernity. ... JAMES McCARTHY *77 was named the ninth president of Suffolk University in Boston. A sociologist, he was the pro­vost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Baruch College in New York. ... Trophy, a novel by MICHAEL GRIFFITH ’87, made Kirkus Reviews’ list of 2011’s Best Fiction. (Also making the list was The Marriage Plot by professor JEFFREY EUGENIDES.) The Honored Dead: A Story of Friendship, Murder, and the Search for Truth in the Arab World by JOSEPH BRAUDE *98 made the Best Non­fiction list. On Kirkus’ list of the Best Indie books was the novel The House That War Minister Built by ANDREW IMBRIE DAYTON ’72 and Elahe Talieh Dayton.