Roundup: Halloween stupidity, Taser news
Problems with (toy) weapons: The Chronicle reported that Wittenberg University students were sent text messages about an “armed suspect” on their campus last night. Turns out they were armed with airsoft guns, probably as part of a costume, and then five suspects were arrested, according to the local paper, the Springfield News-Sun. They also reported that students thought the response was good:
Wittenberg student Alex Wendt, 19, signed up for the alert system, saying it was a good idea and that police response Tuesday night was fast.
“I was kind of shocked to say the least,” Wendt said about the text message.
There are occasions that I worry about if a response is too speedy, and this is one of them. I understand the need to be vigilant, and I think the police’s response was quick, but when do we risk jumping the gun (excuse the punnery) on incidents? Especially on the eve of Halloween, a pretty well known “Mischief Night,” a lot of incidents could be seen as emergencies that end up being stupid kids, and not worth the expense of sending these messages. Imagine the paranoia and ridiculousness of a theoretical costumed individual causing
In the less-higher ed world of elementary school, The New York Times reports that students aren’t allowed to bring in toy weapons of any kind, with a lot of disgusting “times have changed” quotes to back up freaked-out administrators. Are we serious here? Projectiles have always been an issue for Halloween. Look at this quote:
?When you consider all the horrific things that have happened in recent years, including 9/11, I can?t blame any school for wanting to steer away from anything that might promote violence,? Ms. Nielson said.
Really? Invoking the name of Sept. 11 to justify this is preposterous. A 7-year-old with a pretend laser blaster is not going to promote violence. I think parent Laura Santoro pretty much sums up my thoughts about this. ?I mean, come on, the whole thing is getting really sad.?
Mr. “Don’t Tase Me Bro” is on probation: I must have missed all the legal proceedings, but Andrew “The Andrew Meyer” Meyer agreed with the University of Florida to 18 months of probation, making a donation to the American Cancer Society and performing community service, according to reports from The Gainesville Sun. He’s also out of school until January on a voluntary leave of absence. On a slightly humorous note, The New York Times’ The Lede blog suggests to turn the whole thing into a Halloween costume:
You?ll need four things: hair gel for a shocking hairdo, a makeshift taser prop, a black magic marker and a white T-shirt. You know what to write on it.
Bigger news though: Meyer has apologized ? and how! ? about his actions in last month’s Taser incident. On the legal case’s website, there are four (!) letters: addressed to the university, the University Police Department, university president Bernie Machen and a general release for the public. In them, he addresses his wrongs in acting the way he did, and I think does a nice job apologizing for the leave of absence a few officers got. Of course, his public statement sounds completely contrived and politicized. Here are the clich?d last two paragraphs:
The polarized environment in this country that underlies my concerns still exists. The United States has been divided. The country has been split into “left vs. right,” “red state vs. blue state,” [Ed., not Red vs Blue?] “Republicans vs. Democrats.” All of this is false division. We are one people, and once people can forget their differences, we can all start to focus on the issues that truly matter.
Thank you all, and God Bless America.
[sig]
Andrew Meyer
There are some words to be said about how terrible an idea it is to forget differences, but I’m not going there today. On the university side, their Ad Hoc Committee on a Civil, Safe and Open Environment has promised to continue looking into the laws that exist and the use of force, “particularly regarding tasers [sic].” What’s impressive about this is if it all goes according to plan, they’ll have a draft (or, less optimistically, an update) for Machen by the end of this year. Most committees I’ve noticed end up floundering in the discussion process for the better part of an academic year, but here we have a clear work plan and maybe some real results will develop. Well, at least the process is open.
Oh yeah, those administrator searches
Things have been relatively quiet on the search front in the past couple of weeks. We got our presidential search committee in the beginning of the month, including an “excited” student representative, senior Monica Marcenko, who’s (in her own words) “always looking for feedback and input.” In the interest of student involvement and information freedom, go ahead and give her a buzz. The committee met before break, but it very well may have been overshadowed by that guy who visited the same week.
They posted the ad copy today for the presidential search (it’s going to be in the Chronicle of Higher Education!) and it’s a doozy. We’re looking for “a dynamic, visionary leader to serve as [our] eighth president.” I haven’t seen the Chronicle to see the ad running in the paper, but I suppose it’ll look similar to the other wall-of-type ads like this sweet one for Cal Lutheran.
It makes a reference to an under construction position profile and says we will conclude the capital campaign successfully next year (they must know something the rest of us don’t). We also encourage “[m]embers of underrepresented groups” to apply, which would be good ? a minority president might raise our student numbers north of 10 percent. It’d also continue the tradition of firsts Peggy started by being the first woman president of the college.
Something tells me access to this search will be limited at best for us; with the candidate review starting the day after the last day of classes (good timing since we publish our last issue of the semester Dec. 13), coverage will be online for us over the break if we get anything at all. (That’s what I want to worry about over winter break.)
In other search news, there is no new search news? Nothing from the music dean search, even though we still don’t have a student representative on that search committee, and since the Park dean search is being delayed, we only have to focus on three major searches right now. Oh, nothing more from H&S after the committee announcement. (There’s also that AES director search, and the Park School’s Center for Independent Media search, et cetera et cetera… but let’s keep this simple.)
Semi-related to the president search and our capital campaign comes this post from the Chronicle: The president at Furman University in South Carolina is donating $1 million to their $400 million fundraising campaign, Because Furman Matters. President David E. Shi (also a 1973 graduate of the university) pledged it at their announcement last Friday, and so far they’ve raised more than half their goal. I’ll have more at some point about all the fundraising craziness in the coming weeks, since Munzer has already started that one.
Halloween = longest holiday of the year?
Halloween used to just be the day we college students got to dress slutty and get away with it.
Sure, that still happens, don’t get me wrong. But the newest Halloween trend for college students I’ve seen isn’t the slut-ification of every costume imaginable. It’s the excessiveness of the holiday; because it falls on a Wednesday this year, it seems like no one really knows when to celebrate it. Do we celebrate it the weekend before? The weekend after? The day of?
The answer, my friends, is all of the above. There have been Halloween parties every night since last Thursday, and I guarantee slutty costume-goers will be out in force next weekend as well. Honestly, it’s pretty stressful - I’ve got a full week of costumes to plan out. And they all have to be original; I can’t wear a brown jacket like my roommate and pretend to be a “potato.”
It’s not just me: I just overheard a friend of mine expressing her own disbelief at how much we’ve managed to string out this happy little holiday.
“It’s amazing to think that Halloween is on Wednesday, and we’ve already dressed up twice,” she said.
I just can’t wait until Halloween falls on a Friday or Saturday night, so we can just have one day of drunken, costumed revelry, and then party in normal clothes from then on. It gets kind of old asking people what they’re dressed up as, only to have them tell you, “What, you can’t tell? I’m a slutty pumpkin!”
I actually made that up. I didn’t meet any slutty pumpkins this weekend. But I just might next weekend, because it’s still Halloween season in Ithaca - at least for the foreseeable future.
Ithaca is newsworthy?
When I first arrived in rainy, cold (it’s raining and cold right now) Ithaca three and a half years ago, it seemed like there was never any news here. We were just that hippie city surrounded by ten square miles or so of reality, or whatever that stupid bumper sticker says. Ithacans kept to themselves and their drum circles and solar panels, and everything was fine. Deader than Jerry Garcia for those of us practicing journalism, though.
But our city and college have been awash in interesting, newsworthy stuff lately. First, the Dalai Lama rolled through. As always, he’s a big deal. Sandra Day O’Connor and Stephen Colbert are in town this week, too. One had a profound effect on many of the most important legal decisions that now affect our society on every level. The other’s running for president. I consider just these three visits, collectively, to be evidence that our little city is, however transiently, a Big Deal.
And it keeps getting better, at least for the news monkeys/junkies creeping on this blog: this week, the national media picked up on our city for two very different reasons. The New York Times ran an article today about racial tensions simmering in the bitter, socio-ethnic brew that is the Ithaca City School District. I personally think we did a better job almost three weeks ago, but hey, who’s counting?
Then there’s the article in the latest issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education about our school’s plan to construct two LEED-certified green buildings at the doorstep of our campus. We also did a better job on this story almost a month ago, but again, it’s nice to have the coverage, MSM.
So here’s to hoping there’ll be more news in Ithaca. It’ll certainly make my job a little more interesting.
College students are poor and getting poorer
Big news today coming from higher education ? apparently college costs are rising at more than double the amount of inflation. I’m not exactly surprised; increases at Ithaca College over the past five years have been near or over 5 percent, and last year’s $1,838 tuition increase closed in on 7%.
What might be more shocking ? okay, it’s not, but humor me here ? is that student aid hasn’t risen to meet this challenge. The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting (behind their pay wall, sorry) that we’re now taking out more private loans, up to 25 percent from 6 percent in 1997, and that federal aid covers less than half of aid. The report also states that public and in-state costs are soaring faster than private costs, so if you’re going to Ithaca from New Jersey, I guess you’re not making out so badly. There are many who think the rise in private loans is questionable at best. Here’s a great line from a former Clinton education adviser:
“I hate to even call it ‘financial aid.’ We don’t call a loan to buy a car ‘financial aid,’” said Mr. Shireman, who was a senior education-policy adviser in the Clinton administration. “They have a much heavier drag on a college graduate just entering the work force.”
The Chronicle also has a huge (pay-wall locked again, sorry) tuition database that makes comparison between other schools easy (in turn making our reporting easier when the college drops its new tuition numbers in the spring). Ithaca doesn’t look too bad in it, near the top of the pack but far enough away: top 30s in most categories for New York in the past year.
I think Ithaca’s spot in the tuition rankings is safe for the administration, but I don’t understand why we get U.S. News awards for our undergrad “value.” We’re still in the top 200 in the country for tuition this year, and while it’s lower than other big-name schools (we’re slightly ahead of Julliard in costs), it’s problematic.
Ithaca’s walking a dangerous line. We don’t provide enough liberal arts training to be a top-tier institution, and we’re not (nor should we be) specific enough to cater the way niche schools do
This is just me speculating, but once we go over $30K in tuition ? which will almost certainly happen for the 2008-09 year ? and well over 40 grand in costs, I think students are going to look for those bigger value schools. When a student can get a more specialized education at an arts and design school, or Julliard, they stop looking at the unique blend of education we serve here. The only way Ithaca can stay ahead ? without simply slowing the pace of its increases ? to provide the right kind of financial incentives for students to choose to come to South Hill.
As for me, I’m just glad I didn’t go to the most expensive private four-year in the nation for the past three years like a certain twin I know:
Things a college president should never do: This.
Here’s a disclaimer, before I tear into the latest news out of the world of college social networking: I post stupid pictures on Facebook, and I write dumb, possibly offensive captions for them. But I’m an undergraduate, not a college president.
In the latest Facebook photo scandal, it wasn’t a student who was punished for uploading a photo of underage drinking, or something banally college like that. Oh no, it’s far more surreal than that.
After a recent vacation to Mexico, Salisbury University President Janet Dudley-Eshbach uploaded a picture of herself from the trip pretending to hit a Mexican man who was embracing her daughter. Worse, Dudley-Eshbach, a professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies, captioned the photo:
?I had to beat off Mexicans because they were constantly flirting with my daughter.?
I’m going to speak right to you, Janet: didn’t you hear the alarm klaxons screaming in your ears as you typed that doozy of a sentence? Did it ever occur to you that posting a racially insensitive caption like this, as a college president - even in a theoretically private photo album - might be a Bad Idea?
The album apparently wasn’t so private, and reporters at WBOC, a local TV station, found the pictures last week and started asking questions. Although she promptly removed the photos, they had already posted a number of them to their web site, including another photo in the album of a male tapir’s genitalia with a caption about its considerable girth. Now, I’m all for commenting on the penis size of exotic animals, but again, I’M NOT A COLLEGE PRESIDENT.
She’s in hot water for it now, but apparently she’s learned her lesson:
“I’m 54 years old, and here I thought I was trying to be up with the latest technology. I guess a little bit of knowledge could be a dangerous thing.”
So, in conclusion: lady, keep your weirdo tapir obsessions and passive-aggressive racism away from the public eye. It’s really not that hard. I’m sure you’re not really a bad person, but sometimes you have to find out the hard way that as a top administrator, you shouldn’t post incriminating pictures of yourself on Facebook/label them inappropriately. Actually, you probably shouldn’t even have an account, because then things like this wouldn’t happen.
So here’s my challenge to you, faithful readers: $5 - no, make it $10 - to the first IC student to find an incriminating picture of one of our administrators on Facebook. Seriously, I’m good for the money.
(Much love to College Ave Tipster MattyQ for the link.)
Live in your parents’ house, or Teach for America?
It’s that time of year again, when terrified college graduates-to-be start deciding what the hell they’re going to do with themselves when things like real life, debts, obligations, car payments, marriage and eventually death come flying at them. There are a couple of options we’re all mulling over:
Get A Real Job: Not the most attractive destination, but the default option.
Go To Grad School: So you can get a better-paying Real Job in a few years, and mess around in the world of academia until then.
Look For Work, Live in Parents’ Basement: There’s no shame in this … oh wait, yes there is. Go get a job like all the other kids, young man!
Travel The World: Use up your savings your parent’s money before you default on your loans and go to debtor’s prison. A popular, but stupid option.
and finally…
Teach For America: Sure, it’s competitive, and only 17% of applicants get in, but don’t you want to change the world? Or at least, a classroom?
In the past few years, TFA has become an increasingly popular option for college grads. Now I’m mulling over it as well. (Don’t tell anyone, but one of the locations where you can teach is in HAWAII) If you’re also considering the program, check out these often-critical but ultimately supportive articles about TFA.
Slate Magazine’s Great Expectations:
The essential message of the story:
For generations, the people who went into teaching compared unflatteringly with those who went into business, law, and medicine. TFA is helping correct that disparity.
The New York Times’ Why Teach For America:
The essential message of the story:
Seventeen years after its inception, Teach for America has become the gold standard of public service, proof that teaching in public schools can be prestigious, even glamorous. Teach for America seeks to rebrand public service more than four decades after the first group of college graduates rose up to meet John F. Kennedy?s challenge to serve their country via the Peace Corps.
Capital Campaign Envy
When it comes to capital campaigns - a lovely euphemism that disguises institutional panhandling so well - Cornell University is Ithaca College’s giant white elephant in the room.
Sure, it’s not fair to compare CU and IC. One is a monolithic research institution, the hottest school in the Ivy League, and a powerhouse of student - and alumni - money with 20,638 current students. South Hill’s little college that could, in contrast, is a private liberal arts school, 6,498 strong, famed for fit students, a pretty big football game - for D3 - and lots of heady nugs pot smokers.
Normally no one would compare totally different schools, but because the two are barely miles apart, I think I’m allowed a little geographic leeway.
So when it comes time to juxtapose the fundraising efforts of Ithaca’s two ivory towers, you can pretty much already tell whose capital campaign is bigger.
Yup, you were right. Cornell is whupping ass. The Ithaca Journal reported Friday that after a “bonanza of $71.5 million” in gifts, Cornell has passed $1 billion, and is now sprinting toward its overall goal of **drumroll, please** $4 BILLION DOLLARS!
Now, back to South Hill, where the largest comprehensive campaign ever organized at Ithaca is slowly creeping to its pittance of a goal. Almost to $115 million, guys! $112 million is a lot, right? Don’t quit now! So what’s my favorite part of IC’s innovative fundraising technique? President Peggy Williams asking students for money!
“If students wanted to give $10 or $25 to the campaign, it would be a very good way to start to acknowledge how these improvements come to be.”
There’s been only one response to this statement that I’ve ever heard: you mean you charge me more than $40,000 a year to go here, and now you want my beer money too??!?
So what’s my point in making all these biased, ineffective comparisons? Hear me out, Office of Institutional Advancement: instead of Ithaca recruiting its own alumni - except Bob Iger, he’s kind of a big deal, keep squeezing him - we need to start recruiting the trust fund babies over at Cornell.
The Law: 1 Facebook Creeps: 0
In the latest blow to the sex lives of convicted sexual predators: Looking to get your game on harass small children once again using social networks? Not so fast, says NY state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. He’s gotten Facebook to agree to a new list of safety guidelines to protect against “sexual predators” and “obscene content” on the site. This attempted cleansing of sexual predators already happened on MySpace last year, after a Wired magazine article revealed that a ton of sexual predators (duh!) use the site.
According to the article, if someone complains about site content, Facebook will review the claim and then make a decision to remove the profile, picture, video, group, posting, etc. I don’t know how that’s different from the present - they already remove things they don’t like anyway.
Atkind will not pass Go, will not collect $200: The Journal is reporting today that Alexander Atkind, the Cornell student who pleaded guilty to a felony charge of abusing his roommate’s dog, Princess, will spend six months in jail for that crime. In his court-ordered Christmas stocking, he also gets: five years probation and another six months in jail for possessing magic mushrooms! There’s a lesson here, kids, and it involves not abusing animals (especially named Princess), not having drugs, and not getting caught.
And Now For Something Completely Different: A bunch of Australian newspapers - and now the Freakonomics blog - have linked to a picture of a spinning dancer, which purportedly spins a different way depending on which hemisphere of your brain you use more. Check out the comments on Freakonomics for an interesting look at which way people of different professions saw the dancer spinning. Counter-clockwise, and you’re a boring, logical right-brainer. Clockwise, and you’re a crazy, radical, creative type without a job. Or so the logic goes.
Me personally: I got it to spin both ways, which either means I was too tired to see straight, I’m actually lying to sound cooler, or I’m part Jedi master. I prefer the latter. Enjoy.
A tip: if you have any trouble getting her to spin right round, just focus on her foot and vibe out, man. Chill, bro. Then open your eyes, and she’ll be spinning the right way, I swear.
Some quick bits
I’ve been AWOL for a while, so I’ve missed any chance I had of talking about the Dalai Lama’s talk Wednesday. I’ll sum it up succinctly ? it was a real learning experience for me, and I’m definitely glad I went. If you haven’t already, check out Tricia’s article and the video we have up from his talk at the State Theater.
Not to continue on this Dalai thing, but he’s due to get a Congressional Gold Medal at the U.S. Capitol, which I’ve hear is a pretty big deal (”[Congress'] highest expression of national appreciation”). Unfortunately, China’s pissed. The NYT hedline of the AP story says China’s “warning” against it, the BBC says they’re “condeming” it, and CNN’s AP hed says they are “protesting” it. Very interesting: The BBC says this is “the first time a sitting president will appear in public” with the Dalai Lama.
I could understand China’s stance if this Dalai Lama hadn’t spent so much time in the West. The fact that he’s so well known outside of China and Tibet undermines their idea of this being the “internal affairs of China,” as Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said. But now I’m stepping on The Spectrum’s toes.
The other thing I was going to talk about before I get back to the books (and then a few days unplugged) is our local racism issue that’s going on. The Ithaca Journal published an article today about differing accounts of an Oct. 10 meeting that discussed the matters of punishment related to two students (one black, one white) at Ithaca High School. ISH principal said it wasn’t true that a white student admitted to different treatment at that meeting. I don’t think The Ithacan had anybody there to report, so at this point it appears to be a he-said she-said, of course with one party being the leader of IHS.
The Journal also has an editorial telling us what we pretty much already know: the Ithaca City School District has to get back to learning, and everybody needs to help. It reminds those who are protesting that their views have been heard, and we need to let the process work. Maybe I’m a little skeptical of the process, and though the Journal advocates for the Community Dispute Resolution Center to step in, I’m not sure what can be truly done in the meantime for the Board besides acquiesce to some of their critics. Truce isn’t the right word here.
Hopefully fellow blogger Aaron Munzer can step in with some of his own commentary on this subject. He’s been following this topic a little more closely than I have, so he can probably lay it out a bit better than I can.
Back to the books, and I’ll catch you on the other side of fall break.
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