Category Archives: Campus Life

AP: College-Town Record Stores Shuttering

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) — You need a college, of course, but that’s not the only ingredient in a good college town. You need quirky bookstores. Coffee shops — preferably not all chains. A diner. An artsy cinema. A dive bar.

There’s one other thing you need, and it’s getting harder to find: a local record store. The kind of place with poster-covered walls, tattoo-covered customers, and an indie-rock aficionado at the cash register, somebody in a retro T-shirt who helps you navigate the store’s eclectic inventory.

A few years ago on just one block of Chapel Hill’s Franklin Street, the main drag in what’s been called America’s ideal college town, four or five such places catered both to locals and University of North Carolina students.

But with the demise of Schoolkids Records, the last one is gone. Schoolkids had planned to gut it out through March, but couldn’t even make through its final week and shut down Saturday. It’s just the latest victim in an industry hit by rising college-town rents, big-box retailers, high CD prices, and — most importantly — a new generation of college students for whom music has become an entirely online, intangible hobby they often don’t have to pay for.

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The Chronicle Wired Campus: 3 of the Funniest E-Mail Messages From Students to Professors — and What They Say About Technology

Students these days seem to have no problem dashing out informal e-mail messages to their professors with gripes—er, feedback—or excuses. In The Chronicle’s forums, professors have been posting some of the rudest, most obnoxious, and least grammatical messages from students.

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The New York Times: In an Era of School Shootings, a New Drill

Teachers and students at South Brunswick High in Monmouth Junction, N.J., hiding in locked classrooms with the lights off during a recent emergency drill.

MONMOUTH JUNCTION, N.J. — Tim Matheney stalked the silent hallways of South Brunswick High School one recent Wednesday at 1:07 p.m., peering into dark, seemingly empty classrooms and jotting down room numbers whenever he heard giggles behind locked doors. Students were supposed to remain silent and out of sight.

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The Norman Transcript: OU faculty: No guns in class

NORMAN, Okla. —

University of Oklahoma faculty spoke out this week against a state bill that would allow people to carry concealed weapons on college campuses.

The OU Faculty Senate passed a resolution against the bill early this week, despite being off for spring break.

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Group wants guns at colleges
Green Bay dealer, students lobby for concealed-carry laws across country

If Green Bay gun dealer Eric Thompson had his way, college students would carry more than just books.

In his vision, the next college shooter is thwarted by a student armed with one of Thompson’s guns – averting a massacre, saving lives.

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Houston Chronicle: New class of campus police is bigger and better-armed

University police departments are bigger and more likely to arm their officers than a decade ago, according to a recent study by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

In Texas, law enforcement departments on college campuses seem to be ahead of this trend, with nearly 94 percent of surveyed universities arming their police and just as many employing sworn officers.

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The Arizona Republic: State universities to arm police with assault rifles

Police departments at Arizona’s three universities plan to arm their officers with military-style assault rifles within the next year, officials said Tuesday.

The new rifles would give campus police officers long-range shooting capabilities, allowing them to hit targets at the end of long hallways or atop tall buildings, officials said.

Arizona State University will be the first of the three schools to use the weapons. Officers there will be trained to use the rifles in the next few months, said ASU police spokesman Cmdr. Jim Hardina.

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