Student Governance and Campus Administration

  On the heels of a housing crunch that left University of Maryland students camping on lawns in protest of their lack of on campus housing, Trinity College has announced that about half of the class of 2009 will not be offered on-campus housing due to an oversized class of 2010. 4/24/07  Read More from Trinity College

  Bently College is taking a different approach to protecting their students from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). While many colleges forward letters warning against illegal downloads, Bently offers the file-sharing program Napster to its students; the college paid the first year’s subscription fee, which was then taken over by student government in the form of a student activity fee. Washington University has a similar approach, offering the program Cdigix to its students. Coverage comes from Boston University. 4/3/07 

  Tragedy struck the campus of Northern Illinois University yesterday when former-student Stephen Kazmierczak opened fire on a geology class, killing five people before taking his own life. Witnesses said Kazmierczak, dressed in black and wearing a stocking cap, emerged from a side door on the stage of the lecture hall and opened fire just as class was about to end. Kazmierczak was carrying three handguns and a shotgun, all of which he purchased legally from a store in Champaign-Urbana. The shooting at NIU marks the third in a series of campus shootings, and bears frightening resemblan

Spiderman (or was it Superman?) had a wise older father figure who said (in a delicately drawn cartoon talk-bubble), “With great power comes great responsibility.” Thus we introduce Facebook, or rather, the topic of Facebook profiles. Now the Undergraduate Government of Boston College is playing that wise old Uncle Ben (or, whatever his name was), sponsoring a panel to inform students on the implications of Facebook’s recent changes. The panel was subtitled Anyone Can See that Picture, Sucka! (Ok, it wasn’t. But that’s what we’re calling our panel.) 12/4/01

  Students at Loyola University are embroiled in a debate over the role of their United Student Government. Fifty-five faculty and staff of the Jesuit university were denied funding for their trip to protest the notorious School of the Americas, whose graduates are responsible for the rape, torture, and murder of many Central and South American people—including a number of Jesuit priests. Members of the USG washed their hands, claiming that the protest did not concern all members of the community, and therefore didn't warrant funds. 11/15/06

  Students at the University of Alabama will be able to use the web-based plagiarism program, turnitin.com, to prevent plagiarism on campus and to better understand what plagiarism really is.  Students will be able to use a professor-issued password to run their papers through the site to see if they are enterprisingly borrowing too much wording. The program should help students to understand plagiarism, which can be confusing for many. 1/29/07 Read More from the University of Alabama

  The Digital Freedom Campaign (DFC), an organization that consists if 150 bands and thousands of consumers, asked the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to educate students on illegal file sharing rather than launching lawsuits. The DFC stated that students lacked information on how to legally obtain digital media. The DFC isn’t the only one with critiques of the RIAA’s latest legal sweep. The University of Wisconsin Madison is refusing to pass along the RIAA’s legal letters to students whose IP addresses the RIAA believes to be illegally downloading music. The Universit

  The Phi Kappa Psi fraternity at SUNY’s Binghamton University had to postpone their event, a boxcar race featuring homemade cars that would have raised money for a scholarship for Binghamton High School graduates. The fraternity says the fees to hold events on campus—which can be more than $2,000—are too expensive for some student groups, especially those wanting to raise money for a charity. 5/1/07  Read More from Binghamton University