Entries for May 2009

It's been a fun two years, but it's now time for me to leave Paper Trail and U.S. News. I'll honestly miss reading and writing about the dumb (and impressive) things college kids do, but at the very least, I got to cover this:

Thanks, everyone, for reading.

Wesleyan University went into lockdown today after a shooting at a student bookstore yesterday afternoon left a 21-year-old junior dead, the Associated Press reports. Police believe the attack was not random and had at first told the student body that it was an isolated incident. Two hours later, however, officials warned students to seek shelter and said new evidence suggested the gunman was still armed and dangerous.

Since then the school's end-of-the-year concert has been canceled, students have mostly huddled in their dorms, almost all university buildings have been locked, and the local synagogue—which police fear may also be a target—was shut down.

According to the police, the victim, Johanna Justin-Jinich, had filed a harassment complaint in July 2007 against Stephen Morgan, the man police are pursuing. The two were enrolled an the same six-week program at New York University then. According to Justin-Jinich's complaint, Morgan had called her repeatedly and sent her insulting E-mails.

University of Missouri's School of Journalism will require incoming freshmean to have an iPod Touch or an iPhone, the Missourian reports. The devices are being pushed as a learning device to encourage students to rewatch lectures. "Lectures are the worst possible learning format," said an associate dean at the journalism school. "There's been some research done that shows if a student can hear that lecture a second time, they retain three times as much of that lecture."

Students who have no desire to buy an iPod Touch ($229) or an iPhone ($199) will not actually be penalized for not having one, and school officials say the devices are listed as "required" only to make the purchase of one more eligible for financial aid. Students will also be able to view lectures on their computers.

Tech geeks are buzzing about Amazon's new Kindle DX, a wide-format electronic book reader that will launch this summer. But colleges and universities also have a newfound stake in its future, as Amazon works to bring content from publishers who control around 60 percent of the textbook market to the E-reader, Inside Higher Ed reports.

According to Amazon officials, the new Kindle will offer textbooks from three major publishers, Cengage Learning, Pearson, and Wiley, this summer. E-textbooks are not necessarily new, but these partnerships might be game-changing in the latent E-textbook market.

Amazon will run pilot programs at six institutions—Arizona State, Case Western Reserve, Pace University, Princeton, Reed College, and the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. School officials hope the Kindle, which will cost $489, might eventually defray textbook costs and also reduce the amount of paper (in textbooks or printed course packs) used per student.

The University of Colorado-Boulder next summer is eliminating its course repetition program, which allowed students to retake courses and retain just the second grade, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports.

The program allows students to retake a course in which they have performed poorly—D+ or lower for undergraduates, C+ or lower for graduate students—and replace the first grade with the second. Undergraduates are eligible to retake 10 credit hours, or two-and-a-half full courses, and graduate students may retake one course. There is no tuition credit, and if the new grade is worse than the old, it goes on the transcript anyway.

Thousands have used the program to retake classes, especially in math and science. Next year, students will still be able to retake classes, but both grades will count toward the grade-point average.

A Jay-Z concert hosted by the University of Arizona student government lost the organization more than $900,000, the Daily Wildcat reports. The concert cost $1.4 million (with $750,000 going to Jay-Z), but the student government collected just $500,000 through ticket sales and merchandising. The organization had hoped to sell 30,000 tickets but instead sold 6,100. (About 5,000 more were given away in newspaper, radio, and student government promotions.) Student leaders partly blamed the sour economy for the slow sales.

In order to offset the loss, ASUA must empty out the entire $350,000 from its emergency reserve fund. This still leaves the student government with $567,000 to cover, which it will accomplish via an agreement with the U of A Bookstore. ASUA will pay the bookstore back in increments over the next five years.