Entries for May 2008

Just as some schools are trying to de-emphasize the importance of standardized test scores, Ohio University is phasing out its math placement exams and instead using ACT and SAT scores to determine students' level of math ability, the Post reports.

Students with a 16 or below on the math portion of their ACT or a 380 or below on the SAT will be assigned to remedial math courses; those with at least a 30 on the ACT or a 680 on the SAT may skip the regular freshman math classes and take more advanced courses.

Students who bombed the ACT or SAT need not feel "trapped," though; they'll still have the option of taking the school's placement exams online

Officials from the University of Nebraska-Kearney closed down campus on Friday after high winds and a series of tornadoes damaged the roofs of several school buildings Thursday night. The same storm also knocked a train off the tracks and downed power lines all over the city, and—combined with damage in Aurora, 60 miles away—has prompted Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman to declare a state of emergency.

School officials are using Friday to begin to clean up and assess the damage, asking nonessential personnel to stay home for the entire weekend. During the storm, students on campus for the summer semester gathered in the basement of a dorm, where no one was injured.

Mississippi State, Virginia Wesleyan, DePauw, and Purdue will no longer sell yearbooks starting next year, the Daily Mississippian writes. Students and advisers cite budget cuts and declining demand as key factors in the yearbooks' demise, with networking sites like Facebook and MySpace taking a good chunk of the blame. At DePauw, the Mirage sold 371 books for its 2,300-person campus this year; At Mississippi State, only about 300 yearbooks were ordered for the school's 17,000 students.

In the midst of an East Coast tour to protest the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, four Harvard students were arrested and charged with criminal trespassing yesterday after refusing to leave a recruiting station in Portland, Maine, the Harvard Crimson reports.

As part of the "Right to Serve" protest, Jacob Reitan, who has already been arrested 11 times for protesting on various gay and lesbian causes, attempted to enlist as an openly gay male recruit. When the military recruiter at the Maine site refused, citing the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, Reitan and 19 other activists staged a sit-in of sorts, eventually leading to the arrest of the four students.

By now, everyone and his mom know that Sen. Barack Obama subbed for an ailing Ted Kennedy and spoke at Wesleyan's commencement this past weekend. The speech itself was typical graduation fodder delivered with typical Obama élan. But the frenzy that descended upon the tiny 2,700-student Connecticut school kept university officials extraordinarily busy in the 2½ days they had to plan Obama's surprise visit.

According to media relations director David Pesci, the school received 157 requests for press credentials (typical number: 15 to 20) within the first six hours after the Obama announcement was made Thursday—one from as far away as Japan.

Meanwhile, two months of planning—such as making a very open football field secure enough for a presidential candidate and setting up a live television feed in a forum with no electricity—was squeezed into a handful of days. One reporter even predicted up to 70,000 people attending an event that normally accommodates 8,000. Luckily, only 20,000 or so showed up.

But the lost sleep of university officials most likely didn't register with euphoric graduates and guests, who were treated to the only commencement speech in the country by a presidential candidate (as far as I can tell). Although some could have done without any allusions to Obama's potential future ("As president, I intend to..."), students mostly went gaga over his message of public service. "At a time of war, we need you to work for peace. At a time of inequality, we need you to work for opportunity. At a time of so much cynicism and so much doubt, we need you to make us believe again," he said. "I hope you'll remember, during those times of doubt and frustration, that there is nothing naive about your impulse to change the world."

If self-promoting professors have always left a foul taste in your mouth, head over to the University of Utah, where faculty and administrators have approved a policy that would prohibit professors from receiving royalties from books they assigned in class, the Daily Utah Chronicle writes. The proposal, which is pending approval by the Board of Regents, would still allow teachers to assign any text they want, but royalties from their own books must be donated to charity or another organization.

Critics say the policy could "[sow] the seeds of mistrust" between students and professors, and those on both sides of the debate point out that the practical impact of the ban is minimal: One professor (who supports the policy) makes 7.5 percent in royalties on the $21.95 paperback edition of his book—a whopping $1.65 per copy.

"The royalties most of us receive on our books are so small that the policy will make little practical difference one way or the other," the English professor said. But, he adds, "professors do have a lot of power over their students, so any policy that assures students that they are not merely a marketing category is valuable."

Just as Stanford's upperclassmen thought they would be permanently done with wait lists, an influx of housing applications has left a record 122 juniors and seniors without assigned housing next year, the Stanford Daily reports. The shortage was in part caused by an increase in upperclassmen housing applications, along with an unexpected number of freshmen attending the school next year.

Wake Forest University announced today that it will make standardized tests optional for applicants of its 2009 class—making it one of the most selective schools (30th in U.S. News's ranking of national universities) to reject the prominence of test scores in admissions.

The move comes at a time when more institutions nationwide are becoming concerned about the legitimacy of using test performance as an indicator of potential student success. A number of schools have already dropped the test-score requirement, but most of those institutions are small liberal arts colleges, like Smith College, which announced its new admissions policy two weeks ago.

Wake Forest's policy change was prompted by the school's initiative to diversify its student population, and admissions officials say they will now place more emphasis on personal interviews, academics, and extracurricular activities.

A Tom Friedman pie-in-the-face update: One of the Brown University students who hurled green whipped cream at the New York Times columnist last month has been suspended for the fall semester, the Brown Daily Herald reports.

According to the student, the university found her actions to be in violation of its standards of student conduct, which say that protest is not acceptable "when it obstructs the basic exchange of ideas" and which prohibit "directly or indirectly preventing a speaker from speaking—even for a brief period of time—(and) seizing control of a public forum for one's own purposes."

If you ever wondered why Paper Trail is filled with so many stories of students doing dumb things, take a gander at this University of Missouri survey (.pdf) that reports 34 percent of men and 24 percent of women who imbibed on their 21st birthdays drank 21 alcoholic drinks or more .

While this study starts to explain a lot of stupid behavior, my gut feeling leads me to believe that these numbers are incredibly high and that a certain amount of self-selection and exaggeration was involved.

My doubts:

1. The school that was surveyed, the University of Missouri, has "large Greek and athletic systems, midwestern location, and predominantly non-Hispanic white students" who are "associated with heavy drinking rates," which the researchers admit is very likely not representative of the country as a whole.

2. This is a self-reported survey, so let's not forgot how it was really cool to brag how much you drank in college to all your friends—and similarly to a defenseless researcher.

3. Can the average person even remember what happened after the 15th drink?

4. According to this blood alcohol concentration chart, if a 140-pound woman drank 10 drinks, her BAC would be .32, a potentially lethal number (for reference, you are legally intoxicated in most states at .08 BAC). Now imagine 24 percent of birthday drinking women drinking 21 and more. Wouldn't there be a crazy epidemic of alcohol poisoning on college campuses?

I don't think many people dispute that drinking is a huge problem on college campuses, but the jury's still out on the exact extent. And if you do plan to binge drink, my colleague Nancy Shute has some advice.

While giving a speech Monday about changing the world, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was the victim of an attempted egging at Corvinus University in Budapest, Hungary, the Associated Press reports. The assailant, wearing a "Microsoft corruption" shirt, demanded that the company return money it allegedly had stolen from the Hungarian people and then calmly threw three eggs at Ballmer.

A slow news day equals a look into UWIRE's top 100 student journalists. Finalists were nominated by basically anyone and chosen by the UWIRE staff. A handful of these people—some with particularly good PR departments—will be familiar to regular Paper Trail readers (all 20 of you?), while everyone else is likely to have written the stories that I've cribbed from.

Notable names in the Paper Trail universe:

• David Studinski from the Ball State Daily News and Adam Goldenberg from the Harvard Crimson. Both these young men have excellent self-promotion skills, landing themselves spots on the highly unscientific "Columnist of the Year" ballot two years in a row.

• Then there's David Spett, the Northwestern University student who questioned the Medill School of Journalism dean's use of anonymous sources in a school magazine, stirring up a world of trouble for the man in charge.

Now I'll just keep an eye on the 97 others....

Brandeis University President Jehuda Reinharz has announced plans to ban the sale of bottled water on campus in response to student environmental concerns, the Justice writes. Although details were scant, the president told the paper via E-mail that he is working with the campus operations officer and Aramark, the school's food distributor, to create a long-term plan for implementation.

Candlelight vigils at Yale, Harvard, the University of Washington, the University of Illinois, and the University of Florida have been held in honor of those killed in last week's earthquake in China. Students from Indiana University have raised thousands of dollars to donate to the Red Cross or school rebuilding programs in China. Students at Harvard raised more than $30,000, while Yale and Florida collected around $10,000 at each school.

Middletown, Conn., police arrested five Wesleyan University students from an end-of-year party early Friday while using Tasers, dogs, and pepper spray to control the 200- to 300-person crowd, the Wesleyan Argus reports.

Since the crackdown—which sent two students to the hospital, one with multiple dog bites—a wave of outrage has been directed at law enforcement officials. Students filed at least 60 citizen complaints and gathered Friday afternoon to discuss what they called excessive police force. About 300 students attended the forum, and at least one suggested the need for a class-action suit.

Police and student accounts of the incident vary wildly. Police say students were partying in the street, blocking traffic, dancing, and drinking alcohol, and as more officers arrived, the party devolved into students chanting and yelling obscenities, with some throwing beer bottles and firecrackers at officers. Police also say students were given 40 minutes to disperse before police took nonlethal measures to control the situation. "It appears that the officers followed rules and regulations; they handled themselves with great restraint," said Middletown Police Sgt. Scott Aresco.

Students paint a very different picture, saying they were just "hanging out" and that police did not warn students to quiet down or go home before attacking without provocation. "They came out ready to beat the crap out of us," Wesleyan senior Erik Rosenberg said.

University president Michael Roth visited the hospitalized students on Friday and even blogged about the incident. Meanwhile, student bloggers have reported on the miniprotests that have cropped up since Friday and have encouraged their peers to write to the school, the police chief, Connecticut governor Jodi Rell, and/or the local congressional representative about their experiences.