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A student who prosecutors say hacked into his university’s computer network last fall, raising students’ grades and cutting their tuition charges, has been found guilty of five federal charges.
The government says that Marcus Barrington, then a student at Florida A&M University, conspired with a group of other students to alter fellow students’ grades and change residency records from out-of-state to in-state. The university is said to have lost more than $100,000 in out-of-state tuition revenue as a result.
Barrington’s two co-defendants, Lawrence Secrease and Christopher Jacquette, filed guilty pleas. Both testified against him in his trial, which ended Friday. The jury took just two hours to find Barrington guilty on all charges.
Barrington’s attorney made a statement after the verdict. “It’s sad to see these young people get in trouble especially on this kind of conduct,” he said. “In my day, it would have been a cheating incident and today it’s a federal crime. I just don’t understand what the difference is.”
Barrington faces a possible prison term of nearly thirty years when he is sentenced in June.
(via UWire)
Quick hit, via Inside Higher Ed:
“A new research study … has found that ending the [SAT] requirement would lead to demonstrable gains in the percentages of black and Latino students, and working class or economically disadvantaged students, who are admitted.”
Spanish police on Wednesday forcibly evicted a hundred Barcelona University students from a campus building they had been occupying for 118 days. The removal, and a student-police clash that followed, are said to have resulted in eighty injuries and the arrest of nineteen students.
The students were protesting the Barcelona Plan, a European Union initiative for the internationalization of higher education that they fear will lead to reduced funding and increased corporate influence over higher education.
Journalists demonstrated outside a regional government building on Friday, saying that police had beaten some thirty photographers covering the disturbances. A government investigation of the police violence has been launched.
One journalist at the Friday protest carried a sign that read “Police don’t beat on me, I’m working.”
A Vietnamese university has cancelled a 19% tuition hike in response to student protest.
Students arrived at Hong Bang University in Ho Chi Minh City on Wednesday morning to discover that their fees for the upcoming semester had been raised with no notice. Several hundred of them rallied all day in 95-degree heat at the university gates, snarling local traffic.
College officials met with student representatives at the end of the day, and emerged with an agreement to drop the tuition increase.
The increase was announced at a time of rising unemployment in Vietnam, as the worldwide economic crisis depresses the country’s exports.
France was hit by its second general strike of 2009 today, with millions of French workers leaving work and hundreds of thousands taking to the streets. Many schools and universities closed as teachers and professors joined the strike.
Thousands of students marched through Paris on Tuesday night in the latest protest against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s economic policies and proposed changes to the country’s university system. Bottles were thrown, property was damaged, and four students were arrested, but there were no reports of violence. French universities have been wracked by demonstrations and occupations in recent months.
As the weather grows warmer, French leaders are said to fear the possibility of a repeat of the massive student-worker protests that toppled the French government in May 1968.
Update: Here’s a background article on the current situation in France’s universities.
Late Update: Here’s a slideshow of today’s protests.
studentactivism.net 
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