Category Archives: Campus Life

The Arizona Republic: Point-counterpoint on guns in schools legislation
Legislators square off on measure to allow guns on Arizona campuses

Guns in schools. The words alone stoke emotion, conjuring images from a string of recent school shootings, including the most recent on Valentine’s Day that left six students dead – including the assailant – at Northern Illinois University.

Follow

The Arizona Republic: Guns-on-campus bill advances in Senate

Legislation that would allow people to carry guns on Arizona community-college or public-university campuses advanced Monday, 11 days after a gunman killed five people and himself in an Illinois university lecture hall.

Follow

Inside Higher Ed: What Makes a College ‘Military Friendly’?

More and more colleges are seeking to enroll members of the military (and, increasingly, their spouses), viewing service members as an attractive pool of students who are eager to learn and able to pay, with significant financial support from the federal government.

Follow

Arizona Daily Star: Bill: Guns the cure for school shootings
Unarmed students, teachers ‘sitting ducks,’ legislator says

PHOENIX — Sen. Karen Johnson said she believes the tragedy last week at Northern Illinois University would have been avoided, or at least would have been less tragic, if faculty members and students had been armed.

Follow

Los Angeles Times: Where religion, ideology and the Web cross

The College of William & Mary’s president, Gene R. Nichol, quits — the latest incident in a string of campus disputes.

WASHINGTON — The College of William & Mary, the nation’s second oldest, lost its president last week after a culture-war clash that began when he ordered the removal of an 18-inch brass cross from the altar of the historic Wren Chapel.

His decision, an act of legal principle to some and a blunder of liberal activism to others, touched off a revolt among conservative bloggers and alumni of the state-supported school in Williamsburg, Va., and led to his resignation Tuesday.

Follow

The Arizona Republic: Guns in schools considered
State to debate bill that would OK firearms on campus

A day after a gunman killed five people and then himself on an Illinois college campus, Arizona lawmakers were preparing to debate whether those with proper permits should be allowed to carry their guns onto school grounds.

Senate Bill 1214, which a legislative committee will consider Monday, would exempt concealed-carry permit holders from a state law that bars individuals from bringing deadly weapons onto campuses of private or public K-12 schools, colleges or universities in Arizona

Follow

The Guardian: Call for more holistic approach to HE

Universities will be urged to nourish students’ souls as well as their minds and wallets at the Guardian Higher Education summit in London next week.

Today’s students are as interested in their own personal development as they are in learning about their subject or getting a well-paid job, university and student leaders will say. chairwoman They will argue that students are disillusioned with the consumerist society they have grown up in and want learning environments that emphasise sustainability and value human interaction.

Follow

Inside Higher Ed: Gossip and Slander at a Campus Near You

In the annals of online discourse, “did you hear about [student]’s nose job?” isn’t among the best of what the Internet has to offer. It also isn’t the worst. An anonymous Web site that’s caught the attention — and provoked the ire — of students across the country has already unleashed comments like that one, and much worse, in carefree, unregulated and sometimes vicious discussion threads that have raised privacy concerns and condemnations on several campuses.

On JuicyCampus.com, anyone can post to campus-specific boards with the guarantee that their identities will be protected and their messages left uncensored. At some colleges, the site has caught on — particularly among campus Greeks. The result is often a barrage of shout-outs, accusations, open threads (“Hottest Frat Boy!?!!”) and often, personal attacks, assertions about women’s sexual history and even death threats. In the site’s FAQ, the creators note: “Facts can be untrue. Opinions can be stupid, or ignorant, or mean-spirited, but they can’t be untrue. And we believe everyone is entitled to their opinion.”

Follow

TomDispatch.Com: Seven Steps to a Homeland Security Campus

Repress U
How to Build a Homeland Security Campus in Seven Steps
By Michael Gould-Wartofsky

Free speech zones. Taser guns. Hidden cameras. Data mining. A new security curriculum. Private security contractors… Welcome to the new homeland security campus

From Harvard to UCLA, the ivory tower is fast becoming the latest watchtower in Fortress America. The terror warriors, having turned their attention to “violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism” — as it was recently dubbed in a House of Representatives bill of the same name — have set out to reconquer that traditional hotbed of radicalization, the university.

Building a homeland-security campus and bringing the university to heel is a seven-step mission:

1. Target dissidents: As the warfare state has triggered dissent, the campus has increasingly become a target gallery — with student protesters in the crosshairs. The government’s number one target? Peace and justice organizations.

Follow

Inside Higher Ed: The Sociology of ‘Hooking Up’

Many researchers rely on college undergraduates as subjects for studies of human behavior. For Kathleen A. Bogle, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at LaSalle University who trained her scholarly lens on the students themselves, focusing on that cross-section was part of the design.

When people talk about “hooking up,” they’re referring to a subculture with a complex set of rules and expectations. Not surprisingly, most of what they know about student “hookup” culture comes from alarmist news reports of “risky sex” and the American Pie movies, not serious scholarship. In her new book, Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus (New York University Press, 2008), Bogle wields the tools of the sociologist, employing in-depth interviews with students and graduates from two unnamed universities — one a large East Coast public university, the other a smaller Roman Catholic institution in the Northeast — and placing the culture of hooking up in a historical context. She answered questions via e-mail, shedding light on what she calls the “center of college social life.”

Follow