Heard on the Hill, Late Night Edition: “James Naismith” to speak at KU; KU law school praised for reporting accurate salary data; other events are scheduled for tonight, too

Your Late Night in the Phog edition of news, notes and links from around Kansas University.

• Tonight marks the return of KU basketball at Late Night in the Phog, and not a moment too soon for most KU football fans I know. With that in mind, I’m sure I can tie basketball into all these news tidbits for you.

We’ll start with an easy one. William Worley, a specialist in Kansas and Missouri history at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, will be portraying James Naismith at 6:45 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 6, in the Kansas Union ballroom in an event called “An Evening With Dr. James Naismith.”

Becky Schulte, university archivist, will give remarks, as will Naismith’s granddaughter, Hellen Naismith Carpenter.

• This is getting tougher. … We all hope the basketball team stays out of legal trouble this year. But if they don’t, they’ll probably need some lawyers.

KU happens to be, among other things, in the business of training lawyers …

OK, so this one might not have anything to do with basketball at all.

I did, however, come across this blog posting that deals with law schools posting misleading unemployment data.

It calls out KU as a school that’s doing well for not misrepresenting the data. Nearly 70 law schools report salary figures taken from fewer than half of their graduates, this person found out.

Additionally, the posting talks a lot about the gap schools see in response rates taken against the number of students who provide salary data.

“In response to the law school’s survey (calls, emails, letters), the graduate says, ‘Yes, employed in a private firm,’ but then fails to answer the ‘How much do you earn?’ question,” wrote Brian Tamanaha, a professor at Washington University’s law school in St. Louis, in the blog post.

He goes on to suggest that this is partially because students are embarrassed to report low salaries, but also that law schools aren’t aggressive enough in finding out that information when students leave it off, because it hurts their salary data.

KU got props from the author for having its reported salary medians match closely with a Forbes database done by Payscale, which has employment data from self-provided information from people looking to compare earnings to similarly-situated people.

However, the bad news is the commonality shared among KU and other law schools that reported salaries that matched the salary data closely was that the medians “were not extravagant,” Tamanaha said, typically between $50,000 and $70,000.

Interesting stuff, but you try tying that back to basketball somehow.

• There are few events bold enough to compete against Late Night in the Phog (which starts at 6:30 p.m. in Allen Fieldhouse), but I’ll go ahead and share one of them with you.

Here’s its Facebook page.

“A Musical Evening with Randy Klein & Friends,” will feature Klein, who is a pianist, along with a violinist, vocalist, trombonist and guitarist.

It’s scheduled from 7 to 10 tonight at the Hall Center for the Humanities, 900 Sunnyside Ave.

If you’ve got another campus event going on tonight, feel free to leave it in the comments below. Surely there are a few non-basketball fans in this town, right?

• Jon King, a local attorney and KU law alumnus, may not be on the KU basketball team, but he did complete the Ironman triathlon in Hawaii. And, under the new guidelines established yesterday, that gets you a mention in Heard on the Hill. So, rock on, Jon.

• Do you think if I asked Bob Davis, he might record a good “SWISH!” that I could send to everyone who sent me a tip for Heard on the Hill at ahyland@ljworld.com? I’m thinking he just might …