Entries for February 2010

It's getting ugly in Athens.

Ohio University's Scripps College of Communication officials defended their decision in front of a packed house on Friday to deny a popular journalism professor tenure, the Ohio University student newspaper, the Post, reports. The three-hour tenure appeal was heated, with a standing-room-only crowd of students and faculty attending the hearing. The disagreements eventually led to a shouting match. Bill Reader, who started teaching at Ohio in 2002, was the first Ohio journalism professor in 14 years to have tenure rejected.

Reader alleges professional jealousy and personal disagreements led to his rejection. But the administrators behind the rejection say Reader was a noncollegial bully and incapable of working with others, according to the Post. The argument has consumed the journalism school, which is one of the top schools in the nation.

"I would not have [shown this support] for any other journalism professor," Alex Levin tells the Post. "This is not right; it's going to be a travesty for the journalism school. This is a failure to future journalism students."

The support from students and faculty was a stark contrast to the picture painted by school officials.

"Three of my female faculty members were afraid," College of Communication Director Tom Hodson said. "Three of my faculty felt threatened by this man."

After the fireworks and drama from the hearing, an ad hoc faculty senate tenure committee has two weeks to write a formal recommendation letter to award or deny Reader tenure, the report says. Then Ohio University President Roderick McDavis has 30 days to make a final decision.

Searching for a college? Get our complete rankings of America's Best Colleges.

It's a good thing an Art Institute of Philadelphia student's carbon-monoxide detector worked on Monday. Who knows what would have happened if the gas hadn't been discovered quickly in the Avenue of the Arts building in Center City Philadelphia that houses 552 Art Institute students and two restaurants? 

Philadelphia firefighters responded to the alarm at 4:20 a.m. on Monday, evacuating the estimated 250 students in the building. Three students were taken to the hospital but were in stable condition. Meanwhile, many students were still in pajamas and did not have adequate footwear during the evacuation. 

Authorities have expanded their search for Iowa State University senior Jonathan Lacina, who was last seen on January 22. The city of Ames, Iowa, is using its parks and recreation department to help the search for Lacina, the Iowa State Daily reports.

Lacina is a graphic design major at Iowa State. He was last seen leaving a friend's house at 9:30 p.m. on January 22.

Police say there is no reason to suspect foul play. ISU President Gregory Geoffroy said the school and the community are doing everything they can to find Lacina.

"As the search for our missing student, Jonathan Lacina, enters a third day, I ask that all students, faculty and staff be attentive to the extensive activities that are taking place on campus and in surrounding areas of Ames," Geoffroy says in a statement released by the school. "If you see something unusual or suspicious, or find articles of clothing or personal items, don't disturb them and immediately call ISU Police at 515-294-4428 or Ames Police at 515-239-5133."

Searching for a college? Get our complete rankings of America's Best Colleges.

Ask anyone who knows anything about college basketball how much rankings­—especially in early February—matter, and you'll hear the same thing: Not at all. Rankings mean nothing. The NCAA Tournament Selection Committee doesn't consider either the Associated Press Top 25 or the ESPN/USA Today coaches' poll when putting together the 65-team field that competes for a national championship in March.

But try telling that to Cornell University, whose basketball team is ranked for the first time since the 1950–1951 basketball season. Sure, the players don't think anything of it—"It wasn't too much of a big shock ... but we weren't really expecting it," Ryan Wittman, who was interviewed by Paper Trail last March, tells the Cornell Daily Sun—but for an Ivy League school, it's always exciting to be ranked in something other than academics. The last time Cornell's men's hoops team was ranked was Jan. 3, 1951, thanks to a nine-game winning streak.

"It's nice to be recognized, but at the same time, it doesn't move us any closer to our goal of winning the Ivy League championship," Wittman tells the Cornell Daily Sun. "If anything, it makes it tougher."

While the ranking of Ivy League teams has been rare in recent years, it hasn't exactly been out of the question. Princeton climbed as high as No. 8 in the AP Top 25 in 1998. Paper Trail actually saw that Princeton team lose, 63 to 56, to Michigan State in the second round of the NCAA Tournament that year.

Searching for a college? Get our complete rankings of America's Best Colleges.

A controversial group at the University of Oregon has been feeling the heat from the Associated Students of the University of Oregon Senate and the university community for a while. There have been protests and ASUO Senate hearings trying to figure out the best way to handle the presence of the group—the Pacifica Forum—on campus. Last week, there was a new twist to the plot. 

The Pacifica Forum, a group led by Orval Etter, a retired University of Oregon professor, is a discussion group based in Eugene that meets on Oregon's campus but is not affiliated with the school. (School policy allows retired professors to rent space on campus to hold events.) The forum was recently identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Etter describes the group as a discussion-oriented organization designed to "generate intellectual dialogue about controversial racial topics." Yet the ASUO Senate has been arguing the merits of asking Pacifica to stop meeting on the school's campus for the same reasons the SPLC called the forum a hate group: Many of the group's regular members allegedly espouse anti-Semitic ideas. The group has also invited Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazi groups to campus. 

The university's student government has found one sticking point—freedom of speech—in the debate over whether it should ask Pacifica to meet elsewhere. On Wednesday, the ASUO Senate voted against a resolution that would demand that the forum leave campus, the Oregon Daily Emerald reports. The resolution was voted down 11 to 7, with one senator abstaining. A raucous crowd of more than 100 students and community members watched the debate. 

Many students and community members are opposed to the group meeting on campus for safety reasons. "I am a student who likes to pull all-nighters in the library," student Kierra Fantroy-Harrison, who testified on the resolution's behalf, said at the meeting. "But I don't feel like I can be safe doing that." 

Others are wary of the appropriateness of the state's flagship university allowing the forum on campus. 

"I do understand that banning someone from meeting on the campus would infringe on free speech. I just find it hard to believe the administrations think allowing such groups to operate on campus is appropriate," German Prof. Jeffrey Librett told the Daily Emerald in 2009. "I am not terribly worried about the group being dangerous, but it certainly is not a good thing to have them meeting" on campus. 

Nonetheless, for now, the ASUO Senate won't be asking the forum to go. And the contentious debate will rage on.

"I voted 'yes' last week [on whether or not to vote on the resolution] and had a very emotional moment," one student senator said at the meeting. But "I realized my conscience would not let me vote against free speech."