Oof.

November 25, 2008 in Students | by | 1 comment

He’s not done yet.

In a new blog entry, fired Florida adjunct Loye Young has made a “game theory” argument that even the threat of expulsion from college is “no deterrent at all” in cases of plagiarism, and that his policy of publicly shaming ostensible plagiarists is thus the only effective response to the problem.

His post takes eleven paragraphs to get where it’s going, but its premise can be summed up in a single sentence: If a student has no way of passing a course except through plagiarism, and if he or she cannot graduate without taking that specific course, then it’s in his or her interest to plagiarize, even in the face of harsh academic penalties.

That’s it. That’s the whole of his argument that “plagiarizing really does pay if the only penalties are altering the grade and/or expulsion.” There’s nothing else.

Do you think Young’s former superiors at Texas A&M International University are more pleased with themselves right now for getting him out of the classroom, or embarrassed that they put him there in the first place?

Protest at DuPage

November 25, 2008 in Administration, Campus Protests, Faculty | by | 1 comment

A hundred students and faculty sat in silence outside last Thursday’s meeting of the College of DuPage board of trustees — some with black tape covering their mouths — to protest the far-reaching changes in university governance the board has proposed. 

Glenn Hansen, president of the College of DuPage Faculty Association, said the proposals “usurp” the legitimate powers of other campus constituencies, and threaten the college’s accreditation.

Universities Block Juicy Campus

November 25, 2008 in Administration, Civil Liberties, Dorms | by | 2 comments

Tennessee State University has become the first public college in the United States to prevent students from accessing the anonymous gossip site JuicyCampus.com, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports.

TSU officials say this is the first time they have blocked access to any website from the campus network.

At least one private institution, Georgia’s Hampton University, has also blocked JuicyCampus. Both Hampton and TSU are historically black universities.

Trustees on a Rampage in Illinois

November 24, 2008 in Administration, Civil Liberties, Faculty, Litigation, Media, Student Government | by | 1 comment

The board of trustees of The College of DuPage, an Illinois Community College, have released a 230-point proposal for changes in college policy that students and faculty say violates established principles of university governance and academic freedom, and perhaps state and federal law as well.

The proposal, which the president of the DuPage faculty association calls “an attempt by the board to gain complete control over everything,” would give the board power to set specific policies on subjects ranging from curriculum to faculty salaries, grant them authority to veto speakers brought to campus, and place the student newspaper under the control of the college president. 

The board’s action casts an already troubled college into further disarray. In May the president of DuPage was abruptly removed from office for reasons that were never made public, and just last month the chair of the board of trustees brought a defamation suit against three former board members who had complained that he had groped them and made suggestive comments to them during their tenure on the board.

She Would Have Made It If It Wasn’t For Those Meddling Kids…

November 24, 2008 in Politics, Quotes, Student Power, Town and Gown, Voting Rights | by | Leave a comment

Carol Elliott, Treasurer of New Hampshire’s Grafton County, was defeated in a bid for re-election this month by a twenty-year-old Dartmouth undergrad. And she’s not happy about it.

Elliott, a Republican who lost by five hundred votes to Democrat Vanessa Sievers, a Dartmouth junior, told a local newspaper that “it was the brainwashed college kids that made the difference” in the election. “I’m concerned for the citizens of Grafton County,” she said. “You’ve got a teenybopper for a treasurer.”

Sievers, a history and geography major, has experience as a bookkeeper and had worked on various New Hampshire political campaigns before running for office herself.

Elliott said she’s considering a run for the NH state legislature, so that she can “change the law” that allows college students to run for public office.

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StudentActivism.net is the work of Angus Johnston, a historian and advocate of American student organizing.

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