Flo Jonic

If you have an old prom dress hanging in your closet you might want to put it to good use.

A coalition of Blackstone Valley nonprofits is teaming up to provide prom dresses to needy girls.  It’s called the “Say Yes to the Dress” drive and its aim is to make low income teens feel like princesses on prom night. Drive organizer Linda Impagliazzo says they’re looking for donations of at least 200 clean, lightly used evening gowns.

The humble list is the focus of a new exhibit at the Rhode Island School of Design Art Museum.  The lists provide added insight into the artists who kept them.

The RISD Museum has on display a collection of 80 lists, most of them written by artists.  The collection is on loan from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art.  The most prominent artist featured is Pablo Picasso. A yellowed four-by six-inch piece of paper contains his recommendations of artists for a 1913 exhibition.

The family of a missing Brown University student has told police they fear he’s killed himself.  Providence Police searched portions of Narragansett Bay and the Seekonk River in hopes of finding the body of 22-year-old Sunil Tripathi, a Brown University philosophy student who vanished March 16th.  Providence Police Sgt. Carl Weston says the student’s family fears he killed himself.

Rhode Island’s unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest level in more than four years. The latest data from the state Labor Department indicates people may be finding work outside of the state.

Rhode Island cities and towns would have access to low-interest loans for road and bridge repairs under a bill unveiled Thursday by House Speaker Gordon Fox and state Treasurer Gina Raimondo.   It’s being sold as a way to jump start the state’s sluggish construction trade.

A chain of Rhode Island restaurants has instituted a new policy aimed at cracking down on the passers of counterfeit bills.

Two Providence lawmakers are throwing their support behind a bill that would upgrade in-state college tuition for undocumented students from a state policy to a state law. It’s a bill that’s been introduced before.

Two years ago the Board of Governors for Higher Education signed off on a policy that provides in-state tuition for undocumented students who have attended a Rhode Island high school for at least three years. State Senator Juan Pichardo of Providence says it’s time to upgrade that policy to a state law.

Internships are generally unpaid. But they will pay off handsomely under a new program announced Tuesday by the Rhode Island Student Loan Authority.  Starting May 1st the Authority, known as RISLA, will forgive $2,000 of a student’s loan if he or she completes an internship worth three credit hours. It will be forgiven upon graduation. 

RISLA director Charles Kelley says the idea is to stem the brain drain, the practice of promising young college students leaving the state for lack of work.

NECAP, the standardized test that’s become a requirement for high school graduation in Rhode Island, may be harder than most people think. A majority of adults who took a portion of the math test last weekend failed to make the grade.

The results of a mock standardized test given to politicians and community leaders will be released Tuesday afternoon.  The math test was administered Saturday by a student group which opposes the test known as NECAP or the New England Common Assessment Program.

The chairwoman of the state Board of Education is blasting the adult test takers for participating in what she calls a “publicity stunt.”  Eva Marie Mancuso says if the adults had a hard time with it it’s because they weren’t prepared, as students are.