Category Archive

The top ten most-read posts of the week just ended:

1. Sex Tourist Professor Scrubs His Site

My tour through the sex tourism website of CSU Northridge professor Kenneth Ng, as cited in my most recent Huffington Post piece.

2. 28-Year-Old Congressional Candidate Krystal Ball Fights Back

A young candidate refuses to apologize for photos that caused a scandal.

3. Reports: Rutgers Student Killed Himself After Roommate Videotaped Him In Gay Encounter

My first and most widely read post on the Tyler Clementi tragedy.

4. Yale Frat Apologizes For Rape Chant

Yale’s DKE fraternity was caught on video chanting “No means yes! Yes means anal!” (See also my coverage of another similar incident.)

5. Georgia Regents Ban Undocumented Students From Selective Colleges

The state became the third in the nation to bar “illegal” immigrants from some of its state universities.

6. University of California Budget Director Floats Possibility of System’s Largest Ever Fee Hike

A UC official says a fee hike on the table at next month’s meeting could be even bigger than last year’s shocking increase.

7. Another Shutdown at the University of Puerto Rico?

UPR students shut down ten campuses for two months this spring. Now they’re mobilizing against a new tuition hike.

8. The Question for Activists Is Always How to Use Available Tools Effectively

A friend offers an excellent, practical rebuttal to Malcolm Gladwell’s piece on social media.

9. October 7 National Day of Action Map

Everyone’s still curious about what went down. See also follow-up posts here and here.

10. On the “Why Can’t Whites Have a White Student Union” Question

A perennial favorite.

The student government of the University of Iowa is holding an on-campus tailgating party before today’s Iowa-Michigan game, and drinks will be served.

In recent years, American campuses have mostly dealt with problem drinking through prohibition — banning alcohol entirely, and imposing heavy penalties on violators. But the Iowans are taking a different tack, supporting responsible drinking by bringing it out into the open.

Today’s party will be held at the university union. Students 21 and over will be able to purchase up to two beers, and the game — which is taking place on the road — will be broadcast on a big screen television.

Students in two divisions of the flagship Rio Pedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico have voted to stage strikes next week that could lead to a new round of shutdowns at UPR.

This spring students shut down ten of UPR’s eleven campuses in a two-month action that won major victories against planned budget cuts and tuition hikes. But now the university is looking to implement an $800 tuition increase, to take effect in January, and students are fighting back. At meetings held earlier this week, Humanities students voted to strike on October 19 while Education students pledged to follow on October 21.

Initial plans call for each strike to last for just one day.

I haven’t seen any coverage of the new planned actions in the English-language media — the links above are to Google translations of articles written in Spanish. If you have updates or other links, please share in comments.

Yale’s DKE fraternity has apologized for a Wednesday evening incident in which frat members and pledges roamed the campus chanting “no means yes, yes means anal.”

Video of the chant was posted online hours after it occurred, and the act was denounced by campus groups ranging from the women’s center to other fraternities.

Wednesday’s chants were the latest in a string of misogynist pranks by Yale fraternities — in January 2008 twelve Zeta Psi pledges gathered in front of the campus women’s center chanting “dick! dick! dick!” while holding up a sign that read “We Love Yale Sluts.” Fraternity members were found not guilty of campus charges of harassment for that incident.

My Twitter feed has been buzzing this week with rumors that the University of California Regents may consider a fee hike of as much as 20 percent at their November meeting. No formal announcement of such a proposal has yet been made, but the story does have some meat to it.

As Tess Townsend of the Bay Citizen reports, the 20 percent figure had its origins in a weekend meeting of the University of California Students Association board of directors, where UC Budget Director Patrick Lenz told UCSA that fee hikes on the table in November could “range anywhere from zero to 20 percent.” Asked by Townsend whether he stood by that figure, he said he was “trying to give a very broad picture,” and that he didn’t expect such a hike to be proposed. He did not, however, rule it out.

With mandatory system-wide fees now standing at $10,302 a year, a 20 percent increase would translate into a bump of $2,060. It’s important to recognize, however, that as recently as two years ago, annual fees stood at about $7000 — as a dollar figure, that increase would actually be larger than 32 percent hike that roiled the University a year ago, making it the biggest fee increase in the history of the UC system.

The UC Regents’ November meeting will take place on November 16-18 at UC San Francisco’s Mission Bay campus.