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Reborn Students for a Democratic Society looks back on its first three years.
Lawsuit claims PA University turned blind eye to vice president who preyed on students.
Stanford students rally against sweatshops.
North Carolina student body president offers tips on dressing for success.
Florida dean suspended for stealing grad student’s bike.
Management students at Northwestern do student government consulting for course credit.
Venezuelans are voting on term-limits today, in a referendum that president Hugo Chavez hopes will clear the way for him to remain in office indefinitely.
Students handed Chavez a defeat on this issue in December 2007, but he’s cracked down on their organizing efforts in recent months, and polls show the Chavez forces leading by a slim margin this time around.
Update: No. No, they won’t thwart him again.
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The Chronicle of Higher Education made four three major errors in a single sentence on Friday, mangling issues of technology, due process, and sexual ethics in an online story about a student at Calvin College.
Here’s the original lead to the article, posted on their blog…
A Calvin College student has been suspended for one year over a lewd Facebook message he allegedly sent to an ex-girlfriend.
And here’s what’s wrong with it…
1. The student, Tony Harris, wasn’t suspended, he was expelled. The university called it a suspension, but according to the Grand Rapids Press he will have to re-apply after the year is up. If you’re barred from campus and told you have to apply for re-admission, you haven’t been suspended. You’ve been kicked out.
1. The problem with the Facebook posting wasn’t that it was “lewd,” but that it was found to be harassing. The policy Harris was charged under prohibits “communication that degrades or harasses individuals or groups.” Harris was accused of harassing his ex by posting a derogatory sexual message about her, not of posting something lewd.
2. He wasn’t expelled because of the Facebook incident. He was given probation over it, and told to post an apology on his Facebook page. He was expelled for refusing to apologize, and he says he refused to apologize because he wasn’t the one who put up the post.
3. The post in question was a Facebook status update, not a message to the other student.
Why does any of this matter? Because these aren’t random errors. They’re symptomatic of larger weaknesses in writing about student disciplinary matters, sexual ethics, and new technology, failings that are commonplace not just at the Chronicle, but elsewhere as well.
If you’re going to write a story like this, the details matter. The details are all that matters.
There’s a huge difference between being suspended for sending someone a smutty email and being expelled for contesting a disciplinary finding that you harassed someone in a semi-public forum. If you neglect those distinctions, you’re not getting the story. The Chronicle didn’t get this story.
Update: As reader JRH notes, Harris’s status amounts to a suspension rather than an expulsion under the terms of the Calvin College student handbook. Studentactivism.net regrets the error.
The administration of Georgia Southern University has blocked a student group from inviting sixties radical and education reformer William Ayers to campus.
Ayers, a leader of the Weather Underground, became notorious during last year’s presidential campaign because of his connections to Barack Obama. He was invited to GSU by that campus’s Multicultural Advisory Council, a student group.
Though Ayers had spoken at GSU before without incident, his invitation drew criticism and protest this time, and the university claimed the controversy would raise security costs for the speech to $13,000. They cited these costs in vetoing the event.
The administration of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln rescinded a speaking invitation to Ayers last fall in the face of criticism by donors and political leaders. Ayers was forced to cancel a speech at the University of Toronto last month when he was denied entry into Canada by border officials.
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