Round-Up: You think you’re all big and bad?
Got told: The University of Wisconsin was quickly becoming the darling of the pro-piracy anti-RIAA crowd, since they were one of the few brave souls to ignore those pre-litigation letters. A U.S. district court judge decided earlier this week they must turn over the names. But because university refused to give the letters during the “pre-” part, any settlement made with the RIAA will not received the substantial discount (just the arm! you can keep the leg!) that those who got the letters on time had.
The eigth word? WQRI, the student radio station of Roger Williams University, fired two of their DJ for repeating the Offensive Phrase of 2007, “nappy-headed hos,” on the airwaves repeatedly. Dana Peloso and Jon Porter, the Imus’d DJs, are claiming their show was part of a political take-down in collaboration wit the administration. Peloso is the president of College Republicans on campus, who just happen to have Jason Mattera coming to speak. The CR at RWU have grabbed the media spotlight before with the “Whites Only” scholarship a few years back. The station’s manager, Mike Martelli, held a vote (at a staff meeting neither Peloso or Porter attended) and it was unanimously decided that the phrase would not be used multiple times on the air, thanks to the FCC license review WQRI is under. Martelli, apparently a former College Republican himself, wrote a response to the IHE story. (Scroll to the bottom. Uh, “free speach?” Dude: spellcheck.) It sounds more like a pissing match between DJs who think they’re above Martelli and a station manager who feels slighted than an actual attempt to silence speech. But I’m a little concerned that there was no dissent from the other student DJs about the phrase and this pervasive idea that radio has to be “a non-offensive product.” Just sayin’.
Where’s IvyGate when you need it? Director of the FBI Robert Mueller got heckled during his speech at Harvard last week, the Harvard Crimson dutifully reported. Also dutifully reported: two of their own editors were the hecklers. Michael A. Gould-Wartofsky and J. Claire Provost (those names exude Haaarvard) were chanting things like ?We will never forget the role of the FBI in McCarthyism!? and “Stop the unconstitutional repression of the environment!” (Most likely followed by snickering.) The term editor is misleading ? anyone from a writer to a photographer to graphics designer is an editor ? but it didn’t stop Romenesko and The New Editor working up a small lather over it.
Starting fresh: Here’s something you don’t see every 100 years: the newest university in the Georgia system started last year with 116 students and expects a whopping 3,000 to enroll this fall. Georgia Gwinnett College (”The campus of tomorrow” with a Web site from 15 years ago) expects to have 15,000 students by 2012, but for now they’re more concerned with making sure high school students in Gwinnet County even know they exist. Don’t worry, they’ve got plenty of hats, key chains and coffee mugs already made. But this is kind of a neat idea; the students get to make their own traditions, start their own student government, choose their own mascot. Hey, I hear one might be looking for a job.
How (not) to succeed without even going to college
If this was a LiveJournal, I would have to put that emoticon of some confused, floating kittie, ’cause I don’t know how to really feel about it. Marilee Jones, the dean of admissions at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and someone very vocal about the reform of the admissions game, was very publicly outed as being a fraud. Jones had essentially lied about her three degrees from three different colleges. The only university she had attended was Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the ’70s but did not graduate.
Marilee Jones in happier times. This profile of her is still up on MIT’s admissions page.
Now, clearly this is a big deal in academia. Misrepresentation of the highest order (read: flat-out fraud), followed by the wringing of hands, gnashing of teeth, harumphing over how something like this happened and how FERPA has screwed hiring managers over.
The bitter irony here, of course, is that even though no college could vouch for her, her employer consistantly rewarded her for the apparently excellent job she did. And even more irony: she was actually good at her job, good enough to land nice profile pieces in the New York Times (and picked up on the wire by The Tech, MIT’s newspaper) and opinion pieces in USA Today, good enough to have a Amazon rank of #369 for her book quelling the fears of anxious high school seniors, Less Stress, More Success: A New Approach to Guiding Your Teen Through College Admissions and Beyond.
This, of course, is causing more harumphing on the comments of InsideHigherEd. While (everyone is quick to admit that) she should have been fired for her tardy-but-honest disclosure, what does it say about this job, and the entire industry, if the person is more impressive than her credentials but still does the job (presumably) better than someone with more, real degrees?
Jones is refusing to do interviews during what is obviously a very stressful and personally devastating time for her.? Her career ? regardless her intelligence, her wide respectability in the field, well-selling book, her crusade of common sense and striking reform in a field marred by overzealous elites manipulating the system to reap the rewards of a broken system in one of the worst-kept secrets of what’s wrong with universities today.
But all things considered, she did blatently lie not only to her employer but the entire world and profited both in wages and book sales and discredits the entire sanctity of the admission system that condemns r?sum? fluffing and cover letter plagarism. As David Null, retired professor and Amazon.com book reviewer pithily says: “No wonder Jones recommends not stressing out about being admitted to college. Follow her example and just lie about it.” The stain of this may be big, but is it worth her very public termination and crucifcation? For my general feeling, I say:
The shadows of April 16
Virginia Tech students mourn the victims at a candlelight vigil.
The New York Times reported earlier this week about the quickly convened Senate hearing about the state of services for students’ mental health. Russ Federman, the director of counseling and psychological services at the University of Virginia, brought in a recent study that found that 94 percent of all college students feel overwhelmed. Not surprising but sad nonetheless.
But 50 percent of students also reported that they became “so depressed that it was difficult to function” at some point in the year. The study, the American College Health Association’s National College Health Assessment, also shows that of that 50 percent, 10 percent of females and 8 percent of males felt this way 9 or more times. That’s out of a sampling of 94,806 college students nationwide.
That’s scary.
I actually took this year’s survey just yesterday through our health center (mainly for a shot at the $100 bucks prize), and I couldn’t help but think, “Wow, I wonder how many people answer that question like that?” And now in the long shadow of the Virginia Tech massacre, college campuses are going to be paying close attention to this. In a live chat with Katherine Newman on the Chronicle’s Web site, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University speculates:
My guess is that universities will become more proactive in reaching out to parents and risk that liability because it is far less damaging and easier to explain than the reticent response. But that’s sheer speculation on my part. It does seem to me that anyone who has been declared a danger to others has to be excluded immediately.
Newman also was one of the authors of Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings. Obviously, no one would accuse Newman of exploiting these tragedies with her book, but plenty of profiteers have come out of the wood works, accused of prices gouging and selling outdated technology to college administrators scared of their own April 16.
The Chronicle has another really interesting article [sub req'd] of the rejection of the flood of media on Blacksburg. (Officials had already banned reporters from academic buildings as the students go back to class.) Obviously the irony is not missed, but after seeing Dateline interns trolling for interview prospects on Facebook walls, I’m inclined to agree: “Media Stay Away.”
“Tragedy … of monumental proportions”
By now the news of shootings at Virginia Tech have echoed around the world. Campus Byline has a solid round-up of the latest. Due to the heavy traffic, VT’s student newspaper The Collegiate Times is down and their publishing group has the latest at their site.
The Washington Post is putting the deathtoll at 32. The Virginian-Pilot’s HamptonRoads.tv covers (a little too upbeatly, if you ask me) the shooting with cell phone video
The immensity of this tragedy is unfathomable. My sister attended the University of Texas as they reopened the Tower ? it had long been closed since the then-unfathomable shooting there ??and the emotions that just resurfaced from those who had survived it were immense.
What we find now, thanks to our digital connectedness, is a bizarre reality where this happened in breakneck speed and with a unnerving sense of perspective. Like this Washington Post Radio clip where Professor Robert Denton said as soon as heard about it, they ran to their computers and hit refresh on CNN.com. Facebook groups ? some interesting reactions already here reported here ? and messages on the VT Network wall are already decrying actions, cracking jokes and trying to help find survivors. Wikipedians are arguing the minutiae of what to call the shooting (is it a massacre? can we trust Fox News?), like a giant newsroom filled with trusted editors and pranking and giggling high schools. More will be coming about this and the aftermath.
Feed for College Ave.