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Earlier this fall, Tennessee State University became the first public university to block students’ access to the gossip website Juicy Campus.
Now comes word that Juicy Campus has reached out to the Tennessee chapter of the ACLU for assistance in bringing a lawsuit against TSU. The headline of this article notwithstanding, it does not appear that JC has yet filed suit. But we’re following this story, and we’ll pass on more news as we get it.
In other Juicy Campus news, the student government of Western Illinois University has passed a resolution calling on WIU’s administration to enact its own JC ban, with student government president Robert Dulski organizing for statewide action at a meeting of Illinois state student governments in February.
Meanwhile, in Ohio, Miami University’s panhellenic organization asked the state attorney general to take action against JC, while the Miami student newspaper editorialized against such a move.
Take a look at College Freedom, a blog from John K. Wilson, the author of Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and its Enemies and The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education.
A new survey of nearly four hundred private colleges and universities showed that more than two thirds were “greatly concerned” about enrollment figures for next fall, the New York Times reports.
Across the country, most private institutions are seeing declines in applications relative to last year, though final figures are not yet available. Experts attribute the drop-off to the current financial crisis, among other factors.
Elite privates seem to be immune to the application decline, though they are seeing more requests for financial aid. Administrators at large, mid-ranked schools say they can weather a dip by admitting a slightly higher percentage of applicants.
Even a small decline in enrollment can have a major effect on a college dependent on tuition for its funding, however. At Beloit College in Wisconsin, which has a student body of 1,300 and brings in three-quarters of its revenue from tuition, a decline in the entering class of just 36 students led administrators to announce that they would be reducing about forty staff positions.
On Saturday I linked to an essay on the New School occupation that had been written by an anarchist student who participated in the takeover. This morning I see that there’s a post up at the New School In Exile blog taking issue with some of that student’s claims, particularly regarding the role of the Radical Student Union in the sit-in. Go read ’em both.
The morning also brings a piece on the demonstration from Inside Higher Education, as well as a shorter piece from the Chronicle of Higher Education blog.
The Recording Industry Association of America has announced that it is abandoning its legal strategy of bringing large-scale lawsuits against students and others who download music from the internet.
The RIAA has been bringing such suits for more than five years, often targeting students who used college networks for file-sharing. According to one expert quoted in the Chronicle article, such suits sometimes forced students to drop out of college.
Steven L. Worona, the director of policy and networking programs at the education-policy group Educause, said the move demonstrated that the RIAA understands that “their sue-the-customer, scorched-earth business model has not worked.”
studentactivism.net 
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