Lincoln University's recent decision to require students to undergo a physical examination before graduation has upset some students, the Lincolnian reports. If a student's body mass index surpasses 30, he or she must complete a physical education class in order to graduate.

Opponents of the requirement say the university is discriminating against obese people, the report says. Others are concerned that their time at Lincoln could drag on longer than normal because of the new class requirement.

"What's the point of this?" one freshman asks the Lincolnian. "Some students on campus are just confused why a certain BMI has to be a requirement. Are there not a sufficient amount of prerequisites to complete prior to graduating from college?"

James DeBoy, the chair of Lincoln's Department of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, tells the Chronicle of Higher Education that the point of the new policy is to keep students healthy.

"There's an obesity epidemic," DeBoy says. "The data are clear that many young people are on this very, very dangerous collision course with heart disease, diabetes, and stroke—health problems that are particularly bothersome for the African-American community." Lincoln, in Chester County near Philadelphia, is one of the nation's oldest historically black universities.

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Somewhere in Oxford, Miss., University of Mississippi administrators and athletics department staffers are wringing their hands.

A Ku Klux Klan group is planning a protest Saturday morning before the Ole Miss Rebels' big football game against Louisiana State University, the Daily Mississippian reports. The Mississippi White Knights hope their rally will force University of Mississippi Chancellor Dan Jones to reconsider banning the school band's playing of "From Dixie With Love." Jones asked the band to stop playing the song after members of the Ole Miss Stadium crowd were heard chanting "The South will rise again" as the song finished, according to the Associated Press.

The White Knights say the protest will be peaceful and brief.

"We'll be there with robes on, it will probably just be a silent protest," KKK member Shane Tate tells the Daily Mississippian. "We don't believe in hurting anybody, and we're not going to come up there with guns and ammo, but we will defend ourselves if we have to."

The university seems chiefly concerned with safety during the protest, which is slated to last about an hour.

"I think the biggest problem could possibly come from other people, not the protesters," Ole Miss Police Chief Calvin Sellers tells the Daily Mississippian. "I think that other people will be upset with their point of view and try to out-shout them. Let them come and have their speech and then be on their way.

"While we don't agree with their point of view, they do have the right of free speech. We're just going to make sure that no one gets hurt. We don't want people fighting and throwing stuff."

What the Daily Mississippian report doesn't mention is the effect the protest could have on sports recruits. Ole Miss is hosting LSU in a game that is sure to draw a huge audience, both live and on television.

"Ole Miss Coach Houston Nutt must be so excited about this weekend," Yahoo sports writer Dan Wetzel wrote on Twitter. "Nothing helps recruiting like an old-fashioned Klan rally."

We've all heard horror stories chronicling the personal financial stress that comes with a prolonged economic downturn. Now, University of Arizona researchers found that the economic downturn has even impacted students' social and physical well-being, the Daily Wildcat reports.

The study, conducted by the University of Arizona School of Family and Consumer Sciences, surveyed more than 2,000 freshmen during the 2008 spring semester. The researchers reconnected with 748 of the originally surveyed students—then sophomores—this spring. The students showed a 60 percent increase in credit card debt and an 86 percent increase in student loans between their first and second years, the report says.

They were two of the three candidates to become president of the University of Missouri system back in 2007. When the top choice rejected the offer, Gary Forsee beat out former congressman Kenny Hulshof for the job.

But now, Forsee may be helping Hulshof join the University of Missouri anyway, the Associated Press reports. Hulshof, who served six terms in Congress and lost the 2008 gubernatorial race, met privately with Forsee at least three times in recent months, but neither will talk about the meetings.

"I meet with lots of people on lots of different topics," Forsee tells the AP.

A professor involved in one of the meetings tells the AP that Hulshof wants to create a statewide competitiveness council that would focus on economic development. But beyond that, no one seems to know what Forsee and Hulshof discussed.

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It's getting pretty hairy out in the Golden State as the state's university system considers a major fee increase for students.

A committee on the University of California Regents approved a 32 percent jump in fees yesterday, and the full regents are expected to approve the plan today, the Los Angeles Times reports. The increase of more than $3,500 would make the cost of tuition three times what it was 10 years ago, the report says.

After employees at a Russell Athletic plant in Honduras unionized, the sports apparel company shut the plant down, putting 1,200 Hondurans out of work. The chain of events sparked protests on college campuses across the country, where students demanded that Russell rehire the workers.

Yesterday, Russell agreed to bring the Honduran employees back, the New York Times reports. Protesters had persuaded more than 90 universities to "sever or suspend" licensing agreements with Russell, the report says. The students also picketed the NBA finals, distributed fliers inside Sports Authority and Dick's Sporting Goods stores, and even showed up at Warren Buffett's house, the Times reports.

Russell's decision to bring back the workers after the protests signaled a huge victory for the campaign, which was spearheaded by United Students Against Sweatshops.

"It's a very important breakthrough," Mel Tenen, who oversees licensing agreements for the University of Miami, the first school to sever ties with Russell, tells the Times. "It's not often that a major licensee will take such a necessary and drastic step to correct the injustices that affected its workers. This paves the way for us to seriously consider reopening our agreement with Russell."

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The Boston College student newspaper on Monday published the first of three stories in a series on homophobia at the Roman Catholic school in Chestnut Hill, Mass.

The Heights News Editor Matthew DeLuca's first story chronicles the struggle of several gay and lesbian students at BC. The students identify a "closeted" mentality on campus, saying that many gay, or potentially gay, students keep their personal lives—read: sexual orientation—secret out of fear of retribution.

A controversial advertisement that ran in the Northern Kentucky University student newspaper drew criticism from readers and an inquiry from a local news station, prompting the Northerner to pull the ad from its pages. The ad had been placed by Resistance Records, a music company that supports white supremacy.

The Northerner ran an apology last week for publishing the advertisement twice. Several concerned readers had complained to the student paper. The editor said the decision to pull the ad came after researching Resistance Records, a company associated with the National Alliance, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.

"While it is not illegal to run ads of this nature, we at the Northerner see it as an ethical issue," Northerner Editor in Chief Tim Owens writes in the published apology. "We do not wish to be in business with groups or organizations that promote any form of racism, sexism, ageism, or any other form of discrimination. While issues of this nature are dependent on who runs the Northerner each semester, it was my decision that the paper—for this semester—will not advertise with this business or other businesses like it.

"Please know that we did not intend to offend anyone, and will pay closer attention to the ads we run in the future."

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Don't expect to read any reports about Sarah Palin's visit to the College of the Ozarks in Missouri. The former governor of Alaska's agreement with the school stipulates that no media members are allowed to cover her December 2 speech, the Springfield, Mo., News-Leader reports.

Elizabeth Andrews, public relations director for the college, tells the News-Leader that the agreement was mutual. There may be a few members of the Fourth Estate in attendance, however: Members of the media could cover the event if they acquired free tickets to the speech in October, when they were made available on a first-come-first-served basis. No video or audio recordings will be made by an independent news organization, the report says.

Palin will be signing copies of her new book, Going Rogue, at the Borders store in Springfield before her speech. Maybe the media can catch her there.

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Somewhere in TV land, Frasier and Niles Crane are extremely disappointed that they missed the boat on squash scholarships—especially when they're being offered at a brand-name school.

To attract talent through a different channel, George Washington University has started offering scholarships to squash players, the Washington Post reports. The 188-year-old university is the first school in the country to offer scholarships for squash, a game similar to racquetball.

"These are also students that happen to be outstanding academically, and it's the kind of students we want to attract to GW," Bob Chernak, the school's senior vice president of student and academic support services, tells the Post. "It's not rocket science why we're giving support."

Both men's and women's programs are offering scholarships. The sport has grown over the past few years, but many schools just have club teams, which means the teams receive very little help—if any—from the school.

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The University of Maryland Board of Regents rejected a proposal that would require all films shown on campus to have "educational content," the Student Press Law Center reports.

The rule, proposed by a Maryland state senator, came in response to the planned showing of a pornographic film on the College Park, Md., campus, the report says. (Students showed parts of the video despite the outcry and spoke about freedom of speech at the same event.) The policy proposal sparked a fierce debate on campus over the freedom of speech and the First Amendment. Opponents of the screening idea applauded the regents' decision.

"The students couldn't be happier," Sarah Elfreth, appointed student member of the University System of Maryland Board of Regents, tells the SPLC. "We really feel like this is a victory for free speech . . . . What the board said is that we're going to follow the laws of the land."

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Three months ago, a column published by the student newspaper at Fairfield University more than ruffled some feathers. Now, because of the controversy surrounding the "He Said" column about one-night stands, the university may stop funding the Mirror .

The Mirror faces harassment charges before the Fairfield University Student Conduct Board, the Boston Herald reports. Fairfield University's dean of students, Thomas Pellegrino, told the Mirror staff that it had violated the ethical and procedural guidelines of the newspaper's funding agreement with the school, the report says.

Attacking student media is all the rage these days—at least it seems that way. Northwestern University's student journalists are the most recent characters in a legal fight.

Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism has a reputation as one of the top J-schools in the world. Its students receive a ton of training in investigative reporting and produce plenty of solid work, including a recent discovery that calls into question the guilt of a convicted murderer. But Illinois prosecutors think the student journalists may have gone too far in their investigation, and the Medill students are suddenly in the legal spotlight. Cook County prosecutors have asked to see all investigative materials, E-mails, course outlines, syllabi, training materials, and grades, the New York Times reports. The prosecutors argue that the school "conducted a private criminal investigation by using students in a journalism class." And because the students didn't produce a single article from their findings, the prosecution says that they are not journalists and cannot protect their work, the report says.

This all started after Medill's Innocence Project uncovered evidence that suggested that a convicted murderer was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned, the Times report says. The director of the Innocence Project, Prof. David Protess, tells the Times that he will not hand over any of the investigation's materials.

That's not the only case that has carried student journalists into the spotlight. We've chronicled several other recent instances where student journalists have come under fire, from James Madison University and the University of Pittsburgh to Northern Illinois University and Butler University.

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Syracuse University will no longer purchase Kindles for its students. That decision came after complaints from advocates for the blind poured in, the Daily Orange reports. The advocates claimed that the Amazon E-readers are inaccessible to blind students.

The Kindle is equipped with a text-to-speech feature that allows the user to convert the desired reading text into spoken words—which can be picked up with headphones—but in order to use that function, the user has to be able to navigate through the Kindle's settings to get there, the report says. Syracuse, which had orchestrated a partnership with Amazon to provide the E-readers, had purchased several Kindles and made them available in two campus libraries.

Amazon is in the process of creating a more accessible Kindle for the blind, the report says.

The University of Wisconsin will also stop buying Kindles for the same reason as Syracuse, according to a release from the National Federation of the Blind.

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A student newspaper is sitting in the national spotlight after calling for a praised police chief's resignation.

The Northern Star, the Monday-through-Friday campus newspaper at Northern Illinois University, published a scathing editorial demanding the removal of Donald Grady, the head of the university's Department of Public Safety. The editorial accused Grady of berating Justin Weaver, Northern Star's editor in chief, and said Grady's relations with area enforcement agencies had soured.

Because of the accusations, the university created a four-person panel to investigate the police chief. Grady was placed on paid leave on October 9, and the school recently extended his leave. The panel expects to make a decision regarding Grady's future by Thanksgiving.

Grady gained national recognition in February 2008 when he was seen sprinting to the scene of a campus shooting at Northern Illinois. Though Grady and his officers didn't arrive in time to stop the shooter, they did receive praise for their bravery during the incident, the Associated Press reports.

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