I’m walking through an otherwise empty FedExForum Thursday when one of the uniformed ushers asks, “Do you do elbows?”

I don’t, but it’s a good bet that at least one of the roughly 150 medical students in the UT College of Medicine class of 2005 does “do elbows.”

The graduating class met in the FedExForum’s club level last week for Match Day, the fingernail-biting, nausea-inducing event when medical students all over the country learn which hospital will hire them as residents. For months before the Match, students explore hospital programs, interview with them, and then rank their top choices. Students can include as many programs as they want, but it costs $30 for each additional program over 15 that they put on their list.

Similarly, hospitals rank the students they want and the National Resident Matching Program uses a complex algorithm to match students with programs.

At the FedExForum, with the darkened arena looming behind them, the students are nervous, but the mood seems jovial. As Dr. Pat Wall, the associate dean of admissions and student affairs, comes to the microphone, students yell out, “Freebird!”

“You may have heard that the match went great. 2005 is the best match I can remember,” he says. “That means you had a great dean’s letter. … No, the truth of the matter is you did well, your strategy was great, and you didn’t pick your nose during your interviews.”

A few moments later, he looks at his watch. It’s noon, 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, the national moment of truth.

Envelopes are given out. Immediately, a male voice yells, “I got Boston! Whoo!”

The next few moments are bedlam. Envelopes are ripping, people are laughing, crying, jumping up and down. Most of the medical students are on cell phones.

“I couldn’t concentrate on what they were saying this morning [at a financial aid seminar],” says Megan Danekas. She and her husband, fellow medical student Michael Danekas, are both headed to the University of North Carolina. “We had a good feeling about it, but you never know,” says Michael.

The whole room is a chorus of “I’m going to … I’m going to …” One guy grabs the mic and asks for everybody’s attention. “Anybody going to Kentucky, please report to John-Paul.”

Those medical students who don’t match — none of their choices picked them — learn of their misfortune early and have to participate in a nationwide scramble, trying to find a program somewhere in the country that still has positions open and will take them.

“We sit down with them Monday afternoon and talk about their strategy for the scramble,” says Wall. “They get a book of unfilled positions, and on Tuesday, they start calling hospitals.”

Natasha Tejwani, who will be working at the Jacobi Medical Center in New York, got a call from the hospital shortly after opening her envelope.

“They called to ask if I had any questions,” she says. Like many of the future residents, she is relieved.

“My life isn’t in limbo anymore. I know where I’m going,” she says. “People seem happy or still shell-shocked. It’s the culmination of everything. We’re physicians now. We have jobs … for most of us, for the first time in four years.”

The STATE Supreme Court stepped away from the public’s right to know when it withdrew a section of court amendments that expanded the state definition of open records. The court had ruled in January that records are open to the public except in limited circumstances.

The guidelines, the first for judges across the state, would have kept records from being removed from court files, court orders, and opinions. Settlement agreements would also have become public record. At the time of the adoption, Chief Justice Frank Drowota said the rule was designed to promote openness in cases involving the administration and operation of government. Had the guidelines been accepted, records would have been deemed closed only if they posed an adverse effect on public health, public safety, or the operation of government. The guidelines had to be accepted and voted into law by the state legislature.

Under Pressure: Before that body had a chance to vote, court spokesperson Sue Allison said the guidelines were withdrawn for further review after justices became aware of legislators’ opposition to some aspects of the guidelines.

While Allison provided no additional information regarding the disputed issues, public information advocate Frank Gibson said the issues involved the media and insurance companies. “The [Tennessee] Bar Association’s principal complaint was that the rule would allow reporters to get information from records not filed in court. There was also opposition from insurance companies that felt that having this information opened would discourage people from settling lawsuits,” he said.

Gibson heads the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, a nonprofit educational and research group. “In the ocean, [the open-records guideline] is just one ripple,” he said. “But the trend had been in the past to close, close, close, and now we have the opportunity to take something usually closed and open it. The significance of it is that it reverses the trend.”

Open Sesame: There are currently more than 230 public-record exceptions in Tennessee, including juvenile court and student records. “I think that each [exception] should be reviewed to see if they should be confidential because some were put in for very narrow reasons,” said Gibson. For example, a legislator proposed to close 911 tapes to the public after an acquaintance was embarrassed by tapes of domestic abuse against his wife.

“The public needs to understand that the Supreme Court was trying to do the right thing with the new guidelines,” said Gibson. “They were not talking about special interests for the media but about benefits to the public. The decision would have been beneficial to them.”

1. The Air Force, which has threatened to move the
Memphis Belle to a museum in Ohio, says the famed B-17 can
stay here if the city promises it can draw 300,000 visitors annually.
That’s half the annual attendance of Graceland —
which will be a pretty tall order, we’re afraid.

2. President Bush visits Memphis for a “Conversation about
Social Security” in the Cannon Performing Arts Center — an
appropriate location for such a stage-managed performance.
A woman who politely disputes one of the president’s facts is escorted out
by security. So, it’s okay to have a “conversation” with W — as long as
you just shut up and agree with him?

3. An armed robber holds up a Collierville Walgreen’s and tells
the clerk all he wants is the prescription painkiller
Oxycontin. Boy, that stuff must really work.

4. Deputy jailers are indicted for allegedly
smuggling drugs into the jail. And one of those drugs is, yep,
Oxycontin. You just know other pharmaceutical companies are
thinking, “How can we create a similar demand for
our products?”

5. The Tennessee Department of Transportation
wants to set a 55 mph speed limit for trucks throughout
Shelby County to reduce air pollution. No word yet on what
they plan to do about all those pesky Vespas.

After his forum on Social Security at the Cannon Center last Friday, President Bush signed this admission ticket for an admirer. Question: Which end is up?

Plante: How It Looks