Virginia Tech Students Make April 16 Documents Accessible
Posted on November 18, 2008
Under News, The Daily Prereq | By Mike Dang
The whole truth, and nothing but the truth. This is what compelled Virginia Tech engineering student Justin Harrison to scan and post online thousands of documents relating to the April 16, 2007 campus shooting that resulted in the deaths of 32 students and teachers, reports The Richmond Times-Dispatch. Harrison got access to the boxes of documents in October after making two requests to VT officials. He and 10 volunteers put in countless hours to scan the documents and upload them to laptops.
“I want to see the full truth. I want to see the full information,” Harrison said. “It won’t be done for me until I get all the information up there so people can see with their own eyes what happened.”
The documents include police reports and letters from VT President Charles Steger, and can be found on the student-created site The Prevail Archive.
(Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education)
Sorority Girls + Lauren Conrad = Love
Posted on November 17, 2008
Under Culture, Style U | By Nikki Martinez
Sorority girls take a lot of flak. They’re labeled superficial, spoiled and vain (and that’s being nice). Lauren Conrad is hoping to add one more label to the sorority girls’ repertoire: hers. New York Magazine’s The Cut reports that LC made the last stop on her national college tour in Boston last weekend. Three hundred people showed up to a fashion show that featured 10 lucky sorority girls from Northeastern University.
The models competed with hordes of other sorors for the honor to strut down the runway in a jersey dress from Conrad’s line of well, jersey dresses. Attendees also got a lesson in recession finances. Says one loyal Hills fan: “A cotton dress for $200 is overpriced, just because of the name that’s on it? Come on. But, I mean, I would totally buy it, just because it’s a Lauren Conrad dress, I totally would.” We learned a lesson too: stereotypes exist for a reason.
mtvU Honors Cutting-Edge College Music
Posted on November 14, 2008
Under News, The Daily Prereq | By Jessica Dye
Vampire Weekend. Asher Roth. Santogold. The Cool Kids. Lykke Li. What kind of event brings out such cool-power on a Thursday night? Why, the 2008 mtvU Woodie Awards, of course! MTV’s all-things-college channel honored the best college bands, performers, and music innovators last night at the Roseland Ballroom in NYC. No one invited us, but hey–there’s always next year to remedy your mistakes, MTV! No one got naked or said anything weird, but the performances sounded pretty stellar. A quick list of big winners:
- Paramore was voted as college students’ favorite act of the year. (5.2 million of ya’ll voted it that way, so it must be true.)
- The Bride Wore Black, whose members include two NYU students and two students from Long Island’s Five Towns College, took home the Woodie for Best Music on Campus.
- 92 WICB (that’s 91.7 FM on your dials), Ithaca College’s radio station, beat out some stiff competition to win the Woodie for Best College Radio Station.
You can catch the Woodies on mtvU on November 19, and MTV and MTV2 will both air half-hour “Best of” segments starting the 22nd.
(Photo by Dese’Rae L. Stage, via Sterogum)
ESPN Nixes College Stereotypes Ad Campaign
Posted on November 14, 2008
Under News, Off The Bench | By Nikki Martinez
Someone took the cry “Fightin’ Irish” a little too literally. ESPN canceled a TV ad campaign after the casting call for stereotypical college students leaked. The idea behind the ad was a college basketball call center where students from big sports schools would call people and promote college basketball. Oh but not just any co-eds. Anomaly, the agency that produces ESPN ads, had specific kinds of actors in mind. A few particularly crude memo excerpts:
[ TENNESSEE ]FEMALE. Tennessee is orange crazy… The tattoo on her lower back is Pantone 3 for that Tennessee orange…A slutty girl who would hang out at the cowgirl hall of fame.
[ NOTRE DAME ]
MALE He’s an ASIAN kid who is in to all things Notre Dame, ridiculously so. Oh, and he’s always fighting.
[ MEMPHIS ]
MALE. What can we say about Memphis? He’s a southern BLACK kid, really culinary and polite. He’s artistic, and draws comic books really well.
We’re mostly amused that these casting agents think that only the most obnoxious college stereotypes will appeal to fans. If they did just a little leg work they’d know what viewers want is the truth! Curious what other “defining characteristics” they were looking for? The entire memo after the jump.
Read more
Augsberg Student Attacked on Election Night
Posted on November 14, 2008
Under News, The Daily Prereq | By Mike Dang
A few weeks ago, we had this post about a 20-year-old McCain volunteer who faked a story about being attacked by an Obama supporter. Now, the Star Tribune reports that a similar attack happened to a freshman student at Minnesota-based Augsberg College, but this time, the police say it could be real. Freshman Annie Grossmann, a Sarah Palin supporter from Alaska, was allegedly beaten by four black women on election night after they saw her wearing a McCain/Palin presidential campaign button.
“One approached me and got in my face and called me racist because I had the pin on. That really ticked me off, but I kind of left it alone because she was so much bigger than I am,” said Grossmann. She is 5 feet 2 and weighs 120 pounds, and played boys high school hockey in Alaska. “The girls in the background were just a little bigger than me. They were mocking me from the sidelines.
Grossman was punched, which caused the back of her head to hit a brick wall. The attackers left, and Grossmann returned to her room with a concussion. She decided not to get medical treatment and didn’t report the attack to campus security until the next day. It turns out, Grossmann has been booed in the past at an icebreaker on campus when she identified herself as a Republican. The hockey girl also had a “PETA person” removed from her room because he was upset that Grossman had a photo of herself posing with a black bear she had shot. Politics aside, can we just leave the bears alone?
Dartmouth Kid Takes Over County Treasury
Posted on November 13, 2008
Under News, The Daily Prereq | By Jessica Gross
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your new Grafton County, N.H., treasurer: Dartmouth junior Vanessa Sievers!
Yup, that’s right — treasurer-to-be Sievers is still in college. And, according to the incumbent, Carol Elliott, she’s a “teenybopper.”
The part-time job, which involves keeping track of investments and payroll, pays $6,408 a year. Not bad. So how’d Sievers do it? It’s all about social media: she posted an ad on Facebook for $51. Looks like Elliott should’ve learned about the Internets.
(Photo credit: The New York Times)
Scary Tweets Coming In from VA Tech
Posted on November 13, 2008
Under News, The Daily Prereq | By Jessica Dye
It’s great to keep in touch with college kids across the country–through their blogs, web sites, Facebook day-after pics, Twitters, etc. But sometimes we get wind of stuff that NO ONE ever wanted to hear…not again. The Twitter blogs of Prereq friends bbeaton and VTHokie are reporting that Pritchard Hall on the Virginia Tech campus has been sealed off by police, who are investigating reports of several gunshots heard earlier today (around 1 p.m.). No reports of casualties yet, but students just received a phone alert from school officials. We’re all keeping our fingers crossed that the new safety measures implemented after the terrible events of 2007 have kept every Hokie out of harm’s way.
UPDATE: The Virginia Tech web site is reporting: “Police now believe that sounds from Pritchard were NOT gunfire. Investigation still ongoing.” We are keeping all our fingers crossed nevertheless! (Makes it kind of hard to type…)
Cheaters Never Win…
Posted on November 13, 2008
Under News, The Daily Prereq | By Jessica Dye
When Texas A&M International University guest prof Loye Young said he would “promptly and publicly fail and humiliate anyone caught lying, cheating, or stealing” in his management information systems class…well, he wasn’t bluffing. So how’d Young get fired, while the accused cheaters’ F’s are put on hold?
According to Inside Higher Ed, Young posted the names of six students he suspected of plagiarizing on his blog, as a kind of heads-on-the-bridge warning to anyone else who thought they could out-Google their prof. The school found out and quickly fired Young, claiming that his post was in violation of FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), which prohibits the release of student records without the student’s permission. Meanwhile, the six students are currently under investigation, and the grades Young handed out are temporarily on hold until school officials try to figure out what really happened. Is Young just a misunderstood maverick? Or did he cross the line with the whole public humiliation thing? Let the very special Law & Order: Honor Code Investigators episode begin!
Georgia Schools Cut It Out
Posted on November 11, 2008
Under News, The Daily Prereq | By Jessica Dye
If you think cutting that third latte out of your daily routine is a drag, the state of Georgia’s recession-related budget woes have your semi-caffeinated self beat. They’re not the only ones, though–California and New York public universities, as well as a slew of private institutions, are slashing expenses to shore up their endowments for hard times ahead. Via Bloomberg, check out these cost-cutting measures Peach State schools are trying to shave $136 million off their beleaguered budget:
- The University of Georgia libraries are canceling subscriptions to at least 660 academic publications to save $1.66 million a year. Forty-seven TAs will also lose their jobs.
- Some UGA professors will no longer be giving hand-outs printed on paper, because trees are expensive (see also: the crumbling newspaper industry).
- The UGA campus study hall, usually open 24 hours a day, will now close at 2 a.m. to save staff and utility costs.
- Georgia Tech was forced to cut its landscaping budget by $50,000. A hiring freeze has been placed on non-tenured professor positions, and 15 custodial staffers lost their jobs.
- Sadly, the Georgia Tech history club has been forced to stop ordering pizza for its bimonthly meetings, in order to free up money for museum visits.
- UGA’s College of Environmental and Agricultural Sciences will not be able to hire an entomologist to study bug-related issues with Georgia’s peanut crops.
That’s right, no peanut doctors! These are tough times, indeed.
UA Cartoon Uses the N-Word, and the Campus Isn’t Happy
Posted on November 11, 2008
Under News, The Daily Prereq | By Jessica Gross
College campuses usually get rowdy around election day. But the University of Arizona took it to another level. The Daily Wildcat published a cartoon about campaign canvassing that uses the “N” word. Though the cartoonist, Keith Knight, defended the piece (”Is it offensive? Yes. Is it sad? Sure. But that’s the reality of the United States and this very unique election”), students, community members, and even the paper’s editor — who “never approved” the cartoon — were outraged.
The upside: UA students used the cartoon as a jumping-off point to run a student/community forum on race relations.
Individuals at the forum discussed possible actions against the Daily Wildcat, including boycotting the publication and the businesses that sponsor the publication. They also discussed potential programs that can be established for freshmen and sophomores who live in residence halls, and encouraged people to write to the Daily Wildcat to express their expectations.
The programs for students are probably more promising than making sure the Daily Wildcat is punished. But, hey — it’s a start.
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