Entries for November 2009

If you're a college football fan, you saw the ugliness on the field at the end of UCLA and USC's huge rivalry game on Saturday. USC won, 28-7, but a pair of controversial play calls—from both teams—led to a heated exchange at center field between the two teams.

But that's not even the biggest controversy at UCLA after this weekend. Alumni and students alike are wondering how their prized Bruin Bear was vandalized, the Daily Bruin reports. The statue, which is exactly what it sounds like (a gigantic bear on UCLA's campus), was splashed with red and yellow paint (Southern Cal's colors) late Tuesday or early Wednesday, the report says.

In years past, UCLA had a Bruin Bear Security Force, a gathering of people charged with protecting the statue before the big game against USC, the report says. Students would camp out near the statue and guard it. But this year, the event was merely "symbolic" and didn't include any security measures other than a tarp over the statue, the report says. According to one student government member, there wasn't enough interest in the traditional security force, so the event focused more on carnivallike events and less on protecting the statue. Because of the change, there were no witnesses to the vandalism.

"We are not trying to make excuses for what happened," Elaine Daneshrad, codirector of the security force, tells the Daily Bruin. "Our event just got caught in the middle of a prank. In retrospect, we just should have changed the name of the title of our event."

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Among other things, the Watergate scandal of the 1970s gave us a great naming convention for future scandals. Take "Climategate" at Penn State. That's what people are calling the controversy surrounding leaked E-mails among climate change researchers that climate change opponents say expose the researchers' falsification of data. One Penn State professor is involved in the scandal.

The Penn State administration plans to investigate Climategate and determine if it needs to take further action, the Daily Collegian reports. A little more than a week ago, E-mails exchanged among an English university's climate change researchers were illegally obtained from a server and posted online, the report says.

Climate change opponents say the E-mails indicate that climate change researchers—including Penn State Prof. Michael Mann—exaggerated or fabricated global warming data. And, according to the report, some E-mails indicate that the director of the research unit in question may have contacted researchers and asked them to "delete certain E-mails."

Penn State officials, who will not discuss the matter, are investigating the controversy. If anything requires further inspection, the school will handle it, a spokesman tells the Daily Collegian. A panel will read every E-mail leaked and determine if climate change critics have any ground for their accusations, the report says.

"I would be disappointed if the university wasn't doing all [it] can to get as much information as possible" about the controversy, Mann tells the Daily Collegian.

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Barack Obama knows a little bit about popular writings. On Thursday, his mother's scholarly work may get similar publicity to her son's.

Duke University Press is set to release the doctoral dissertation of Ann Dunham—the president's mother, who died 14 years ago—at the American Anthropological Association conference in Philadelphia. After unveiling Dunham's writings on life in Indonesia, the university press will hold a session devoted to Dunham's life and work, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports.

The dissertation, which will be published under the title Surviving Against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia, "still definitely has a lot of relevance," Laura Sell, a Duke University Press publicist, told the Duke Chronicle in May. "We sent it out to a lot of pretty high-powered reviewers, who all said it's a worthy work of scholarship and people can learn a lot from it."

Dunham received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Hawaii in 1992, but she had worked and studied in the field for more than a decade before that. You can read a fantastic and detailed profile of Dunham's life and influence on her son.

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The holidays are always a sticky issue with any college kid. When should breaks begin? How much time should they get off from school?

Well, at the University of Southern California, students are questioning the necessity of having class on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the Daily Trojan reports. The biggest quandary facing students and professors who have class on Wednesday is traveling on Thanksgiving eve. And while many professors simply cancel classes before the holiday, the university hasn't changed its policy on Wednesday classes.

"The question has certainly been raised," Gene Bickers, vice provost for undergraduate programs, tells the Daily Trojan. "But we're still trying to figure out if it is to the university's advantage if we have a short week before Thanksgiving."

One student says he had to take a Spanish quiz today, preventing him from leaving for home. The professor told students that there would not be a makeup.

"For people that need to travel and book airplanes, it's kind of a pain," the student says. "I think the university is absolutely ignoring the fact that people need to travel. One day is not enough time." 

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We chronicled much of the news coming out of Ann Arbor, Mich., earlier this year when the NCAA decided to investigate the University of Michigan's football program. Well, Michigan has company in the programs-under-fire category: the University of Kansas.

The university is conducting an internal investigation of Jayhawks Coach Mark Mangino for alleged mistreatment of his players. But Mangino is defending himself against a media barrage. Yesterday, the beleaguered coach pointed to his record on the Kansas sidelines as the main reason why he should stay on as coach regardless of the investigation and the result of Kansas's rivalry game against Missouri this weekend, the Kansas City Star reports.

"But if my tenure here is going to be based on one game," Mangino tells the Star, "then I think that would probably be a sad affair for all of us. I hate to think that one game would determine the future of us after eight years, a body of work over eight years."

Mangino is 50-46 at Kansas in what will be eight seasons after Saturday's game against the University of Missouri, the Jayhawks' bitter rival. He was named national coach of the year by several entities in 2007 after he guided Kansas to a 12-to-1 record and an Orange Bowl victory.

But his coaching style has been questioned by some former players, who've said they have been the object of slur-laden tirades from Mangino. The reports of verbal abuse and other misbehavior prompted the school's investigation. It doesn't help that Kansas has lost five consecutive games and is on the brink of its first losing season since 2004.

Mangino has denied any wrongdoing, and many have expressed their support for the 53-year-old coach.

"I have had overwhelming support from former players, fans, people that I've coached with and coached against and strangers," Mangino tells the Star. "There have been so many E-mails and phone calls and text messages in the last week to me, my family, my staff, my support staff. Many parents have contacted the office. My only regret is that right now I'm focused on Missouri, and I can't return all those messages, but I will eventually."

We'll keep an eye on the situation in Kansas as it unfolds. 

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At this point, it shouldn't surprise anyone when a university institutes a smoking ban. The University of Michigan recently laid out its plan to make its Ann Arbor, Mich., campus smoke free by 2011.

Add the University of Texas–Arlington to the list.

The Arlington branch campus of the University of Texas has banned all tobacco products on its campus effective Aug. 1, 2011, the Daily Texan reports. Administrators say that they wanted to give students time to prepare for the ban and that they will offer help to those who want to stop smoking.

"The use of tobacco is a serious issue that affects the health and well-being of our entire campus community," UT–Arlington President James Spaniolo writes in a message to the university community. "During the past two decades, we have experienced a sea change in attitudes, culture, policies, and laws related to tobacco use, both in the United States and around the world.

"Many of us remember a time when smoking was commonplace in offices, malls, airplanes, public buildings, sports arenas, and even hospitals. But times have changed, and it is time for UT–Arlington to take the next step forward in protecting the health of our campus community."

UT–Arlington's student newspaper, the Shorthorn, solicited comments from smokers at the school. The reaction was not positive.

"When I get a break in class, I go outside to smoke," one smoker tells the Shorthorn. "I will see other smokers from my class, and we start to bond. I will miss the break and the opportunity to reflect."

Nonetheless, the smokers seem to agree that students will conform to school's policy whether they like it or not.

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The University of Nebraska's Board of Regents took a stand on a controversial issue on Friday, voting down a resolution that would have restricted the amount of stem cell research done in university facilities. The resolution, which needed five votes from the board and only got four, would have followed former President George W. Bush's guidelines for researching stem cells, the Daily Nebraskan reports.

University of Nebraska's current policy follows state and federal law for the research, the report says. The current policy has the support of the school's president, who spoke against the new resolution before the regents voted last week. Student Regent Bradley Bohn tells the Daily Nebraskan that students at the Lincoln, Neb., school are "overwhelmingly in favor of continuing embryonic research."

Forgive us if we're all about college football today, but Northeastern University decided to discontinue its support of a football team, the Huntington News reports.

The Boston school's 74-year-old program hasn't had a winning season in six years, and a panel consisting of students, alumni, and administrators said that 74 seasons was enough. The team's operations have ceased, but players are allowed to keep their scholarships until they graduate.

How do you fix the image of arguably the most hated thing in college sports? Hire a PR guy with experience working for an unpopular entity. At least that's what the Bowl Championship Series did yesterday when it hired George W. Bush's former press secretary, Ari Fleischer.

Fleischer will try to help the BCS, which uses computer rankings to decide which college football teams play in the national championship game, in its fight against a new political action committee determined to end the BCS, Politico reports.

Students at the University of California–Berkeley continued the statewide protests of the University of California system's 32 percent tuition increase over the weekend.

Forty students occupied UC's Wheeler Hall on Friday, the Daily Californian reports. This came just one day after students at UCLA took over a building and barricaded themselves inside. There were similar protests at UC–Santa Cruz, too.

The Berkeley students stayed in Wheeler Hall for more than 12 hours, the report says. After speaking with administrators, student leaders, police, and faculty, the students agreed to end their protest. The 40 occupiers were arrested and cited for trespassing and then released. The Daily Californian said at least 36 of the 40 protesters were UC students.

"[Administrators] are not listening, and I feel like this was . . . a really desperate attempt to make them listen to us," one student tells the Daily Californian. "Even then, that didn't work."

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One of South African President Jacob Zuma's wives, Nompumelelo Ntuli Zuma, visited Howard University on Friday, speaking to students at the school's College of Arts and Sciences.

The Hilltop reports that after a ceremony hosted by the school, students from Howard's fine arts department and from a school group called Afro Blue performed for the South African president's wife.

"I want to be a way to affirm Howard University's commitment to the people of South Africa and an opportunity to create new ways to build on that relationship," Assistant Director of the South African Archival and Research project Charles Denton Johnson tells the Hilltop.

"It was really exciting and really powerful," one student says, "especially to think that she's someone's Michelle Obama."

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We talked all about Rhodes scholarships this morning here at U.S. News, from how to become a scholar to who this year's recipients were. We even mentioned Truman State University, whose Andrew McCall became the first Bulldog to receive a Rhodes scholarship.

[Slide Show: Famous Rhodes Scholars]

But one of the biggest stories from this weekend's Rhodes scholarship announcement comes from Chapel Hill, N.C., where a boyfriend and girlfriend—both UNC seniors—won two of the 32 scholarships given to American students. The two made it through the process without talking too much about the scholarships with one another, but they were excited when they realized that they'd both been selected, the Daily Tar Heel reports.

Henry Spelman, a Pennsylvania native and classics major at UNC, and Libby Longino, a Texan who majors in public policy and English, will study at Oxford University in the fall. The couple hit it off while doing research abroad in Turkey, so it's fitting that they'll continue their education together overseas next year.

"I could barely hope it would turn out this way," Longino tells the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Longino will study forced migration at Oxford. Spelman will pursue a master's in Greek and Latin.

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Lincoln University's recent decision to require students to undergo a physical examination before graduation has upset some students, the Lincolnian reports. If a student's body mass index surpasses 30, he or she must complete a physical education class in order to graduate.

Opponents of the requirement say the university is discriminating against obese people, the report says. Others are concerned that their time at Lincoln could drag on longer than normal because of the new class requirement.

Somewhere in Oxford, Miss., University of Mississippi administrators and athletics department staffers are wringing their hands.

A Ku Klux Klan group is planning a protest Saturday morning before the Ole Miss Rebels' big football game against Louisiana State University, the Daily Mississippian reports. The Mississippi White Knights hope their rally will force University of Mississippi Chancellor Dan Jones to reconsider banning the school band's playing of "From Dixie With Love." Jones asked the band to stop playing the song after members of the Ole Miss Stadium crowd were heard chanting "The South will rise again" as the song finished, according to the Associated Press.

We've all heard horror stories chronicling the personal financial stress that comes with a prolonged economic downturn. Now, University of Arizona researchers found that the economic downturn has even impacted students' social and physical well-being, the Daily Wildcat reports.

The study, conducted by the University of Arizona School of Family and Consumer Sciences, surveyed more than 2,000 freshmen during the 2008 spring semester. The researchers reconnected with 748 of the originally surveyed students—then sophomores—this spring. The students showed a 60 percent increase in credit card debt and an 86 percent increase in student loans between their first and second years, the report says.