The Bellingham Herald

• Washington universities take stock of budget cuts
  State budget cuts to Western Washington University total about $44 million, not including federal stimulus dollars of $8.8 million. Tuition is expected to go up 14 percent in each of the next two years or about $600 next year.
  The state will pay about 43 percent of the Western's operations during the next school year, university President Bruce Shepard told The Bellingham Herald.
  "The state is becoming a minority shareholder in the university," he said, adding that a decade ago the state covered 70 percent of Western's operations. "That means we're going from being a public university to a publicly assisted university."

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• Softball lands two Vikings on Academic All-Star team
  Two Western Washington University players, Kelsey Anderson and Morgan Parkerson, have been named to the Great Northwest Athletic Conference academic softball team announced Tuesday, April 28.
  It is the second straight year that Parkerson has been honored. She is a physical education major, maintaining a 3.27 (4.0 scale) grade point average.
  Anderson, who is taking a program in pre-medicine, has a 3.46 GPA.