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An effigy of Barack Obama was found hanged from a tree on the campus of the University of Kentucky today. The effigy was discovered and reported by a faculty member early this morning, and an investigation by campus and local police is underway.
In a statement, UK president Lee Todd called the act “despicable.”
This is the second such incident to occur on a college campus this year. In late September, an effigy of Obama was hanged on the campus of George Fox University, a small Christian college in Oregon.
So last night, in the final question of the final debate, the presidential candidates finally got around to discussing education. A full debate transcript is available here, and I’ve cut-and-pasted the higher education portions of their answers behind the cut.
Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper has outed Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s chief speechwriter as a former “radical student activist.”
According to the Daily Mail’s report, speechwriter Kirsty McNeill, 28, was the president of the Oxford Student Union during her undergraduate days, “devoting herself to leading sit-ins and mass protests” against Tony Blair, Mr. Brown’s immediate predecessor as head of the Labor party.
She was, the paper said, a protest organizer for the “Campaign For Free Education – an alliance of hard-Left causes that united in opposition to tuition fees” at Britain’s universities.
Eighty activists marched on a Toronto courthouse Tuesday, urging prosecutors to drop charges against the fourteen people who were arrested in a March demonstration at the University of Toronto.
“We are rallying to show our support and to demand that the criminal charges be dropped, and the academic investigation against the students be dropped as well,” said Ahmina Hanif, a protest spokesperson.
The charges, which include forcible confinement mischief, stemmed from a March 20 demonstration against hikes in student fees.
Announcing himself as the Democratic nominee for President of the United States just now, Barack Obama declared that “the chance to get a college education should not be a privilege for the wealthy few, but the birthright of every American.”
From The New York Times comes word that small private colleges, anxious to increase enrollments and tuition revenue, are launching women’s wrestling teams to attract female students.
Women’s wrestling got a boost with the inclusion of the sport in the 2004 olympics, but today only five colleges in the United States field teams. Most of those teams are newly-formed, and three more will be starting up this fall.
Five thousand girls wrestled for high school teams in the US in 2006-07, and one college’s coach says her team brings in “20 to 25 extra students who normally wouldn’t have looked at Jamestown College” each year.
Once a thriving country, Zimbabwe has tumbled into political and economic crisis in the last several years. Every aspect of national life has been affected by the collapse, and Zimbabwe’s universities have been no exception.
Ceaser Sitiya, pictured at right, is the vice-chair of the Students’ Representative Assembly of the University of Zimbabwe. In the summer of 2007, Sitiya (some news sources spell his name “Caesar Sitiya”) was a leader in protests against conditions at the university. According to Amnesty International, Sitiya was pulled from classes on July 7 of that year, arrested, and held for more than two weeks. Amnesty reports that he was tortured, starved, and denied access to a lawyer during his time in custody.
Last week Sitiya was informed that he has been suspended from the university for a period of two years for his role in the protests. Even after he becomes eligibile for re-admission, he will be barred from participating in student union activities and from living in the university’s dorms.
Other Zimbabwean student leaders face similar punishment from the university’s disciplinary committee.
ZINASU, the Zimbabwean national student union, has a website here. Their report on the events of July 2007 can be found here.
Last week we reported about Anna Minkinow, a Tulane student who brought a complaint against a fellow student for raping her in a dorm and then mounted a campus protest when he was found guilty of sexual misconduct, but neither expelled nor suspended.
This afternoon an anonymous commenter passed along word that Minkinow has started a blog. Here’s how she describes her project:
MY NAME IS ANNA, AND, AS OF JULY 2007, I BECAME A SEXUAL ASSAULT SURVIVOR. AFTER MY ATTACKER BEAT THE UNIVERSITY JUDICIAL SYSTEM AND A WHIRLWIND OF AGONIES, POLITICS, AND LOSSES FOLLOWED, I BECAME A NEW TYPE OF SURVIVOR. THIS IS THE PROCESS BY WHICH I AM BECOMING A DIFFERENT TYPE OF SURVIVOR THAN I WAS FOR THE NINE MONTHS IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THE ATTACK. THESE THOUGHTS, ACTIVISM PROJECTS, AND MOLTEN ENERGIES ARE HOW I WILL ENSURE THAT THERE WILL BE AN UNPRECEDENTED CHANGE NONE CAN IGNORE.
We’ll be following Anna’s blog, and we thank the commenter for passing along the link.
There’s a new addition to the “Resources” section of our blogroll this morning — SAFER Campus.
SAFER Campus is a non-profit organization that supports student campaigns to improve sexual assault prevention and response on their campuses. Founded at Columbia University in 1999 and incorporated the following year, SAFER Campus provides organizing trainings, mentoring, and publications to student activists throughout the United States.
On top of everything else, they’ve got a great blog. Check ‘em out.
The Arizona State Senate has passed a bill requiring that textbook publishers inform professors about the cost and contents of new textbooks, so that profs can make informed choices when assigning books for classes.
The passage of the bill was the result of intensive lobbying by the Arizona Student Association, and its passage was hailed by student activists.
Ten states currently have similar legislation in effect. The Arizona bill was passed by large bipartisan majorities in both houses of the state legislature, and student leaders expect governor Janet Napolitano to sign it.
The United States Student Association writes with the following news:
On Thursday, the House passed the Veterans Educational Assistance Act by a vote of 256-166. The bill will provide benefits up to the level of tuition at the most expensive public in-state colleges and universities, a housing allowance based on the cost of living for the area, and a $1,000 a year textbook stipend. The bill would be paid for with a .5% tax increase on the wealthy (individuals making more than 500,000 a year or couples making more than $1M a year). To find out how your representative voted on the new G.I. bill find out here.
The Senate is expected to take up the bill next week as part of their War Supplemental. It has 57 co-sponsors in the Senate. A list of co-sponsors can be found here.
The President has indicated that he will veto any increased spending beyond his request for War Supplemental funding, stating that it is expensive and will make it harder to retain forces in time of war. However, it remains to be seen if he will carry out a veto on this bill which many veterans groups have been in support of.
We will keep you updated as Congress moves on the G.I. bill. If you have questions or would like to help take action contact the USSA office at (202) 640-6570 or at USSA@usstudents.org.
On the heels of the news that Tulane ignored allegations of druggings and possible sexual assaults at a frat party, another disturbing story.
Last July, Tulane student Anna Minkinow brought a complaint against a fellow student for raping her in a Tulane dorm. She chose to pursue the complaint through the university judicial system, which did not hold a hearing for nine months.
When the hearing was finally held in April of this year, Minkinow says, the panel behaved inappropriately and offensively. They found Minkinow’s attacker guilty of sexual misconduct, but rejected her request that he be expelled from the university. Instead they banned him from having contact with her, barred him from entering the dorms, and mandated that he seek counseling.
One day later, she says, he approached her at a campus event. He didn’t speak to her, but he stood in close proximity to her for fifteen minutes.
Not long after that incident Minkinow and a friend staged an impromptu campus protest in which they bound and gagged themselves to symbolize the silencing of rape victims. She has since met with the university’s vice president for student affairs to pursue measures to strengthen the campus’s code of student conduct.
One reform that Minkinow has not yet won support for is a minimum punishment for students found guilty of sexual offenses. Presently, the university provides minimum sentences for only three forms of misconduct: alcohol violation, drug violations and pulling a fire alarm.
Update: More on sexual assaults at Tulane here.
Late Update: We have learned that Minkinow has started a blog.
USA Today has a front-page story today questioning whether tuition increases lead to better education. The article cites a new study from the Delta Cost Project that found that tuition hikes were not correlated with increased spending on instruction.
Two hundred students at Mississippi’s Delta State University walked out of classes yesterday morning to rally against planned budget cuts at the state’s small public colleges. Among those protesting were DSU’s Statesman and “Fighting Okra“ mascots, both in full costume.
Mississippi’s public higher education trustees have announced plans to divert funding from several smaller institutions to the flagship University of Mississippi. Ole Miss will receive nearly $2 million in additional funding next year, while DSU stands to lose $175,000. “They are taking money away from a school that produces teachers and nurses,” undergraduate Samantha Styers said, “and giving it a school that produces lawyers and engineers.”
The incoming chair of the state’s College Board said the entire system is “grossly underfunded, and that’s making us have to make very painful choices.”
Nathan Duff, editor of DSU’s Daily Statesman and an organizer of the walkout, said that the protests were not over: “we’re going to keep the pressure on.”
The College Board is slated to consider tuition increases at its next meeting in May.
A new report in the Chronicle of Higher Education finds that the enrollment of poor students at America’s wealthiest colleges and universities is on the decline.
According to the Chronicle, just 13.1% of students at private colleges and universities with endowments of $500 million or more received Pell Grants in 2006-07, down from 14.3% two years earlier. At the wealthiest public institutions, enrollment of Pell Grant recipients fell from 19.6% to 18% in the same period.
Pell Grants are awarded to students with family incomes of less than $40,000.
Berea College in Kentucky had by far the highest Pell Grant enrollment of the schools studied, at 77.4%. The highest among public institutions, and the second highest overall, was UCLA, at 35.2%. Only six of the 114 colleges and universities studied saw an increase in Pell recipient enrollment between 2004 and 2006.
