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(10/03/07 4:30am)
FULLERTON, Calif. – Following the cliff-hanger ending of the Xbox game “Halo 2,” “Halo 3” came out with a bang. \nTo celebrate the release of the end of the trilogy, California State University at Fullerton students fought each other in a bloody, brutal battle. \nThe tensions were high in the Halo 3 tournament at CSUF on Saturday, said Mike Martinez, a competitor in the tournament. The Video Game Design Club and Microsoft came together to create the event. \n“You do get competitive,” Martinez said. “I would hate to say I feel anger but it is an intense feeling.” \nThe tournament was filled with men and women alike, all there to experience the thrill of “capture the flag,” a multiplayer mode in “Halo 3.” \n“As a career I would like to work with a team of designers for video games,” said Jonah Montealegre, the secretary of the VGDC and one of the females participating. \nThe sounds of harsh language when a teammate died and applause when a flag was captured echoed across the hallway. \n“This game is a big deal for us as developers because it is entering (a) new stage of mainstream video game advertisement and it became a household name,” said Jason Jackson, a VGDC member. \nMicrosoft products were awarded during a raffle, including Microsoft Office Ultimate, Home and Student and Zoo Tycoon. \nThe tournament was split between two rooms in the Computer Science building with two screens in each room. The multi-player mode was four against four. \nStudents were split up into teams of red, blue, green, pink and yellow, with the pink and red teams dominating halfway through. The teams took turns resting and visiting each other across the rooms. \nThe numbers of bodies the teams piled up determined the winners or each match, Jackson said. \nThe pink and red teams went head-to-head. The pink team won quickly. In the final round, the four pink teammates had to fight each other in a bloodthirsty battle. \nThe big winner, Shotaro Smith, took home a copy of “Halo 3.” \n“I already have (the game), so I want to give this copy to a friend,” Smith said.
(10/02/07 2:19am)
IU faces off against Purdue on the field, in the pool and on the court several times a year. But starting this week, IU will face Purdue in another challenge – the 11th annual IU vs. Purdue University Blood Donor Challenge.\nParticipants will give blood at multiple events between now and Nov. 9. Donors must be at least 17 years old, weigh at least 110 pounds and be in good health, among other requirements.\nDonors will support their school’s team, and the school with the highest total tally will win. Donors will also receive an event T-shirt.\nIU has beaten Purdue in the Blood Donor Challenge the past two years. Last year, IU alumni, students and fans donated 4,700 units of blood.
(09/28/07 2:28am)
IOWA CITY, Iowa – A report issued this month by a task force that studies campus safety expressed concerns that colleges across the nation may be underreporting crimes on their campuses. \nThe special task force, the National Association of Attorneys General’s Task Force on School and Campus Safety, was established after the Virginia Tech shootings to make recommendations on how to better prevent and respond to violence in schools and on college campuses and included 27 state attorneys general. \nThe association’s report is the latest in a list of government reports that suggest some universities may not be in full compliance with college crime reporting policies such as the Clery Act. \nBut at least one university official stressed that underreporting is not the case at University of Iowa. \n“Other campuses may struggle to comply with the terms of the law, but that’s never been a problem on our campus,” said Tom Baker, University of Iowa associate dean of students.\nThe Clery Act, originally known as the Campus Security Act, is a piece of legislation passed in 1990 that orders colleges and universities to disclose information about campus crime and security policies to both the students and the federal government. It is named for Jeanne Clery, a Lehigh University freshman who was raped and murdered in her dorm room in 1986. \nThe report recommended that both the federal government and the states should have crime and violence reporting requirements for schools and colleges that promote accuracy, full disclosure and accountability. The report went on to say that methods to ensure compliance with reporting procedures should be strengthened. \nThe NAAG isn’t the only group to suggest that universities have not been in full compliance with legislation such as the Clery Act. In March 1997, the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report that found universities have faced difficulty reporting crime statistics to the federal government. \nThe report attributes this to a number of factors, such as confusion between state and federal definitions of crimes, misattributions of various crimes and the exclusion of crimes reported to campus authorities other than public safety officials. \nBut some experts believe there may be other causes for underreporting. \n“No institution wants to advertise their flaws, so certainly that has been a factor,” said S. Daniel Carter, senior vice president of Security on Campus Inc. “We’re starting to turn that around a little bit, but we’re certainly still going to have problems.” \nSecurity on Campus Inc., is a nonprofit organization founded in 1987 by Jeanne Clery’s parents, Connie and Howard Clery. The organization seeks to increase safety on college campuses through the continued implementation and enforcement of the Clery Act.
(09/27/07 3:49am)
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Reports of serious injury and death as a result of taking prescription drugs have more than doubled since 1998, a recent study found. \nThe study, published in the Sept. 10 edition of Archives of Internal Medicine, found that prescription drugs accounted for 89,842 cases of serious injuries in 2005 – 2.6 times the amount of cases reported in 1998. Fatalities increased 2.7-fold during that time. \n“We’re losing ground (on making drugs safe),” said Thomas Moore, senior scientist for the Institute for Safe Medication Practices and author of the study. “That ought to be a wake-up call that this is an important risk that we’re not doing enough with.” \nThe Food and Drug Administration defines a “serious adverse event” as an one that results in death, a birth defect, disability, hospitalization, is life-threatening or requires intervention to prevent harm. \nAdditionally, the study found that reports of serious adverse effects from prescription drugs rose four times faster than the total number of outpatient prescriptions during the eight-year study period. \nJunior Cheri Garlena said she has been taking a prescription drug regularly since second grade. She said she is surprised by the results of the study, but the benefits of her medication “definitely” outweigh the risks. \n“I know all the effects of my drug, so I’m not really worried about it,” Garlena said. \nEvan Pattishall, clinical director at University Health Services, wrote in an e-mail message that reactions to medications do occur with Penn State students and that UHS tries to limit prescribing unnecessary medications to keep reactions at bay. \n“We do see students with adverse drug reactions – thankfully, not frequently,” he wrote. “Our electronic health record also allows us to keep track of students who we have seen who have had a drug reaction, so that they do not receive the drug again.” \nMoore said he and the other authors of the study think “the FDA’s drug safety program needs more money, more staff, more legal authority and more independence” in order to ensure that drugs on the market are safe. \n“I believe we need to realize every drug has both risks and benefits, and we need to weigh both,” Moore said. \nIn response to the study, the director of the FDA’s Office of Surveillance and Epidemiology, Gerald Dal Pan, wrote in a press release that his office is taking the increasing number of reports of adverse effects seriously. \nHe wrote that the reasons for the increase are not completely known, but may partially be a result of more prescription drugs being used by more people. Dal Pan added that the increase could also be attributed to more drug information available on the Internet. \nThe FDA is working on an updated version of the current “adverse events” database to improve efficiency of detection and analysis, he wrote. \nTwenty percent of the 1,489 drugs surveyed accounted for 87 percent of the 467,809 total adverse events reported, the study found.
(09/27/07 3:48am)
PHILADELPHIA – It’s hardly news that college diplomas generate higher salaries than their high school counterparts. \nBut it turns out that they also generate more voters, non-smokers and community-service volunteers, according to a recent study. \nAccording to a College Board report titled “Education Pays: The Benefits of Higher Education for Individuals and Society,” college graduates are more likely to be healthy, to volunteer, to vote – and even to be more tolerant of different opinions. \nThe report found that in 2005, 61 percent of four-year-college graduates aged 25 to 34 exercised vigorously at least once a week, as opposed to 31 percent of high-school graduates. \n“It appears that education changes people’s attitudes and behaviors,” report co-author Sandy Baum said. “People are more likely to think about the future so that they are more willing to follow instructions of doctors, for example.” \nThe report, an updated sequel to the first edition published in 2004, shows how individuals and societies profit from higher education, in both monetary and non-monetary terms. \nIt also emphasizes the differences in access to and success in college across demographic groups, Baum said. \n“We thought that there is so much focus on the cost of higher education that it was important also to put a spotlight on the benefits of higher education – why it’s worth it both for individuals and governments to be financing higher education,” Baum said. \nBut not everyone is convinced that all of these benefits can be attributed to four years on campus. \nUniversity of Pennsylvania Dean of School of Social Policy and Practice Richard Gelles said a college degree is not the sole reason for these findings, but that other factors, such as family background, also come in to play. \n“A lot of the (report’s) outcomes are dependent on the background of the kinds of students who go to colleges,” Gelles said. “You have to take into consideration the socio-cultural differences between those who choose and can go to college versus those who choose not to or simply can’t afford to go.”
(09/25/07 1:18am)
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Purdue University said its test of an emergency messaging system was a success.\nPurdue sent text messages to nearly 10,000 students, faculty and staff Monday morning. Officials also sent out e-mails to more than 50,000 people.\nSchool officials said it took less than seven minutes to send out the test messages. Within 10 minutes, 865 people responded to the e-mails and more than 2,000 responded to text messages.\nOfficials now hope to look for any kinks in the system so they can be worked out.\nThe messages are part of an effort by Purdue and other schools to more quickly notify students and others in an emergency. The new system was prompted by the April shootings at Virginia Tech.\nIU President Michael McRobbie announced in a board of trustees meeting Friday that all eight IU campuses will have an emergency alert system in place by the end of the year. McRobbie said the University will be able to send emergency alerts by text message, phone and e-mail. The emergency system will alert IU students, faculty and staff about anything from weather to administrative news, he said.
(09/24/07 3:50am)
IU President Michael McRobbie announced Friday that all eight IU campuses will have an emergency alert system in place by the end of the year.\n“We will be able to send emergency alerts by text message, telephone and e-mail,” McRobbie said during his address to the IU board of trustees at their September meeting Friday. “This will provide a tool for alerting the IU community to anything from weather to other administrative news.”\nThe announcement comes after widespread criticism of administrators’ actions at Virginia Tech before and during the April 16 shootings that left 33 people dead. Critics said the Virginia Tech administration was slow to react and did not provide students, staff and faculty with adequate warning of an on-campus threat.\nIU students, staff and faculty will have the option to submit contact information like cell phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Administrators will be able to send alerts to individual campuses or to all eight at once.\nMcRobbie said he hopes to begin putting the system in place “very soon.”
(09/21/07 3:55am)
The IU board of trustees will hold its September business meeting Friday and plans to vote on several University remodeling projects.\nThe trustees are expected to approve construction on the Herman B Wells library. The roof will be replaced on the second, third and fourth floors as well as the top of the East and West towers. Plans for the project also include installation of a new lighting system on the second-floor roof and restoration of some of the tower structures’ limestone components. The project is estimated to cost $1,748,756, according to the September meeting agenda.\nThe trustees also plan to approve construction on the IU-South Bend campus, for a remodeling of the administration building.\nThey are also expected to approve 2008-2009 housing rates for IU-South Bend and IU-Southeast.\nThe IU board of trustees holds a business meeting about once a month, and this month’s meeting will be held at 10:30 a.m. Friday in the Indiana Memorial Union Frangipani room.
(09/19/07 4:07am)
LINCOLN, Neb. – The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has received a $271,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to become part of the National Digital Newspaper Program. \nThe program is a joint effort by the endowment and the Library of Congress, which are working with agencies in various states to archive digital versions of historical newspapers. \nTwo years ago, six states were chosen to pilot the program, and now Nebraska is one of three new states to join the endeavor. \nLee Bockhorn, the media representative for the endowment, said though only a few states are currently involved, the goal of the project is to have collections from all 50 states. \nUNL’s grant proposal was chosen in part because of a recommendation from a peer review panel consisting of humanities experts, as well as members of the National Council on the Humanities. The written summary of the panel’s evaluation stated that “panelists noted that Nebraska’s participation in the National Digital Newspaper Program would offer exciting new content to the repository of newspapers.” \n“We’re one of the first to be involved. It’s a real honor for us,” project director Katherine Walter said. “I thought it would be a really wonderful way to build on what we were doing with the Nebraska Newspaper Project.” \nThe Nebraska Newspaper Project has worked to transfer more than 350 million newspaper pages to microfilm. \n“We’ll be doing selection of the microfilm based on technical specifications and on importance of the titles historically,” Walter said. \nMicrofilm will be scanned and digitized by iArchive, a Utah company that has been involved in the work with the program in other states as well. \nThe Daily Nebraskan, the student newspaper at U. Nebraska, is preparing to digitize its archive in conjunction with the endowment effort. \nImages scanned by the company will allow users to search for keywords in any text on a page, including captions, headlines and advertisements, according to the iArchive Web site. \nWalter said the groups are working on a few different facets of the project – the redevelopment of the papers’ histories, selection of which microfilms to use, working with iArchive and working with the staff who will be compiling and cataloging the microfilms and files. \nShe said they will also be doing quality control on all images to make sure they meet Library of Congress specifications. \nThe project will have 100,000 Nebraska newspaper pages digitized and available for the public to view on the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America Web site at www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica by June 30, 2009.
(09/18/07 3:11am)
IU Police Department officers were sent to Lindley Hall, Room 023, in reference to an indecent exposure on Saturday.\nA University Information Technology Services consultant working in Lindley Hall said rooms were being checked when they noticed a white male subject fondling himself in front of one of the work stations, said IUPD Capt. Jerry Minger, reading from a police report.\nThe male subject got up and ran out of the room when the consultants approached him. The UITS consultant said they noticed the work station displaying a pornographic Internet site, Minger said. It appeared that the subject had been masturbating in front of the pornographic Web site, he said.\nMinger said the area was searched, but no one could be located.\nThe subject is described as a white male, about 5 feet 10 inches tall, with short blond hair. At the time, he was wearing a white and red shirt and blue jeans. In addition, the subject was carrying a white fleece sweater. \nThe case is still active and police are pursuing several leads. Minger said if anyone believes they know the identity of the person or has any other information, to contact IUPD, especially if anyone notices anyone acting suspicious in one of the computer clusters.
(09/14/07 4:07am)
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – The year was 1989, and “snitty” started off strong. The word popped up in the Los Angeles Times in January, then appeared in the March and August editions of People magazine.\nIt was one of hundreds of words being tracked by editors at Merriam-Webster who are always searching for new terms to enter into the Collegiate Dictionary.\nBut something went wrong. The editors, who were eager to define snitty as “disagreeably agitated,” no longer saw the word in national newspapers and magazines. Snitty fizzled. Although it was commonly used in conversation, Merriam-Webster’s editors could only find three examples of its use in print. They had no choice but to reject it.\nThey began noticing it again 2005, first in Entertainment Weekly and then in several newspapers. With about a dozen examples of snitty being published, the term is now a likely shoo-in for placement in next year’s Collegiate.\nWhen it comes to making it into Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, spoken word isn’t enough.\n“We need evidence that it’s being used in print,” said senior editor Jim Lowe, who is at a loss to explain snitty’s six-year publication gap.\nSnitty’s journey from popular use to the pages of the country’s largest selling dictionary goes to the heart of what Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate strives to be: an official collection of words and definitions that grows and changes with modern conversations.\n“It’s circular,” says Daniel Brandon, one of the 40 or so editors who read through hundreds of newspapers and magazines looking for “neologisms” – newly coined or created words. “People look to us to settle the argument over whether a word is really a word. But we look to them for how to enter it in the dictionary in the first place.”\nBrandon and his fellow new-word seekers work alone in cubicles filling the second floor of Merriam-Webster’s headquarters in Springfield. Other than an air conditioner’s hum, the clicking of computer keys and pages turning, the room is as silent as a library.\nThe editors spend hours reading everything from science and medical journals to entertainment and fashion magazines. They have no phones on their desks.\nNew-looking words are highlighted, and the passage in which they are discovered is typed onto an index card and entered into a computer database.\nAround this time each year, Lowe goes through a list of hundreds of the newly flagged words, and sees how many citations were made for each. If there were at least eight, the word becomes a strong contender to be passed on to John Morse, Merriam-Webster’s president and final arbiter on what word goes into the dictionary.\nThe list now on its way to Morse contains snitty and 76 other words, from “air-kiss” (exactly what you think it is), to “za” (shorthand for “pizza.”) \nAlong with an extensive vocabulary, the editors also need something a bit less tangible to hunt their quarry. And there isn’t even an English word for it: Sprachgefuhl.\n“It’s just a feeling for the language,” Lowe said, defining the German term. “It’s an intuitive sense of what is linguistically appropriate.”\nConsider “regift.”\nThe word wormed its way into American conversations in early 1995, after it was blurted by the character Elaine on an episode of TV’s “Seinfeld.” Because the word itself describes what it means, and with so many unwanted present recyclers finally getting a name for their actions, the word caught on easily.\nEditors didn’t flag it until more than six years later, when it appeared in an article in Glamour magazine.\n“We’re not trying to pick up on a word that just became popular and everyone starts speaking it,” said Joanne Despres, a senior editor. Once regift started gaining momentum in publications after 2001, Despres did some more checking and found that “regift” started appearing in newspapers almost immediately after it debuted on “Seinfeld.”\n“It may have been coined in a specific place, but it really took off,” Despres said.\nThe process for entering new words varies a bit among the Collegiate’s competitors – the American Heritage College Dictionary, the Oxford American Dictionary and Webster’s New World College Dictionary – but the overall concept is the same.\nNone of the dictionaries has published definitions of snitty or regift, but they compete by boasting frequent updates to make themselves appear current.\nAnd they each show off similar sounding claims on their covers: “America’s Best Selling Dictionary” (Merriam-Webster); “America’s Favorite Dictionary” (American Heritage); “The World’s Most Trusted Dictionaries” (Oxford); “We Define Your World” (Webster’s New World).\nJust because a word makes it into the dictionary, not everyone is convinced that it has enough staying power to stick around for four or five decades, the average amount of time between printings of the company’s massive unabridged dictionary.\n“Since every dictionary claims to be authoritative and up-to-date, they proudly add a sprinkling of new words and say they’re the best,” said Allan Metcalf, the executive secretary of the American Dialect Society. \n“But it’s impossible to know which of the new words are going to last. You can make predictions, but the only way you can be sure is to wait at least 40 years.”
(09/14/07 4:06am)
SOUTH BEND, Ind. – A man posted on the Internet a video showing how he sneaked into Notre Dame Stadium before the Georgia Tech game by posing as a Roman Catholic priest, prompting the university to re-emphasize its security procedures.\nThe six-minute video on YouTube showed the man posing by the team’s signature yellow sign reading “Play Like a Champion Today,” chatting with a television reporter and greeting the Fighting Irish as they ran onto the field to play Georgia Tech on Sept. 1. The video has since been removed.\nUniversity spokesman Dennis Brown said ushers made “an honest mistake” in failing to check the man for credentials, likely fooled by the camera crew that apparently followed him into the stadium.\n“A group like that would need to request a credential, a field pass,” Brown said. “(But) it looked professional enough that clearly the ushers at the gate were deceived and made a mistake.”\nBrown said that current security precautions, if followed, are enough to prevent such pranks from happening again.\n“We aren’t making any radical changes relative to stadium security at the gates,” he said. “As much as anything, we’ll just be emphasizing the procedures that we already have in place.”\nHe said the university knows the identity of the man because he wrote them seeking permission to use the video. Brown said the university responded that it couldn’t give an answer without seeing the video. Brown said the man didn’t contact the university again.\nBrown said the university does not plan to seek a criminal charge against the man, but is discussing what action to take.
(09/14/07 4:04am)
IU announced Thursday that Sarah Booher will be the first director for the Office \nof Scholarships. \nBooher, who earned a B.S. in communication arts and sciences, sociology and anthropology from DePauw University, has a master’s degree in higher education and student affairs from IU. She has 10 years of experience in higher education at IU, including student \nrecruitment responsibilities.\nThe new office falls under the administrative area of enrollment management and will serve as information center for IU academic scholarship initiatives available to high-achieving high school students, according to an IU press release.\n“Now, more than ever, Indiana University is reaching out to talented students across our state and indicating that, based upon their strong academic background, scholarship dollars are available,” said Roger Thompson, IU vice provost for enrollment management, in a \npress release. \nWhile the Office of Scholarships will focus on all scholarship-eligible students, the goal is to get information about new scholarships to high school students in the state of Indiana. \n“In demonstrating IU’s commitment to the state, our major goal this year will be to spread the message to potential students in Indiana and their high school counselors,” she said in a press release. “We want them to know that higher education at IU is within reach, and that we will reward hard work and academic achievement. We intend to recruit the best and brightest students to IU, and scholarships are a major part of that effort.”\nThompson said in the press release that he hopes IU will become more appealing as more families learn more about the scholarship program.
(09/14/07 12:45am)
The IU Police Department received a call in reference to two possible gunshots fired off around 4 a.m. Thursday. Two custodians called in after hearing a possible shot on the northwest side of the HPER building, near Woodlawn Field, said IUPD Sgt. Craig Munroe, reading from a police report. \nThe custodians, David Sparks and Karen Kurdzoilek, saw a white male suspect walk by after the gunshots, wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt. They asked him if he had been shooting off fireworks, but the suspect replied he hadn’t, but he had heard a similar noise as well. The suspect then left.\nFrom there, Munroe said the suspect walked to the gate at 10th Street and Fee lane to the limestone gazebo in the Arboretum, where he sat down. Sgt. James Snyder and Officer Joseph Amandola approached the suspect, who they identified as Christopher Conley. The officers then reported a strong odor of alcohol on his breath, Munroe said. \nLater, officers found a black Interarms ppk 380 semi-auto handgun located 60 feet east of the west gate of the Arboretum. The gun was found laying under a tree and fully loaded. An empty shell case was also found near the Woodlawn Field track, Munroe said.\nPolice believe the suspect fired the gun, then proceed to the arboretum and north to Fee Lane. The weapon was disposed during this time before the suspect was found at the gazebo, Munroe said. \nConley has been charged with preliminary charges of criminal recklessness of a firearm and public intoxication.
(09/13/07 2:45am)
BioCrossroads announced IU President Michael McRobbie as one of the newest members of its board of directors yesterday. McRobbie takes the place of former IU president Adam Herbert on the board of directors.\nThe company also announced Purdue President France Cordova as a new addition to the board. \nBioCrossroads, a privately funded organization devoted to developing Indiana’s life sciences initiative, provides money and support to life sciences businesses and research and has worked with both IU and Purdue in the past. \n“Our board meets about three times a year, so (McRobbie’s) will play mostly a leadership role,” said Lori LeRoy, PR and marketing director for BioCrossroads. \nIU partnered with BioCrossroads to help the University move laboratory discoveries to the marketplace more quickly, according to a May 30, 2006, press release. BioCrossroads helps IU identify the market potential of its many research projects, especially those in the IU School of Medicine.
(09/12/07 2:56pm)
DEKALB, Ill. – Statistics show that the number of fires on college campuses has risen dramatically over the last decade. \nData compiled by the National Fire Protection Association and reported by the Consumer Product Safety Commission estimated that 1,800 fires occurred on college campuses in 1998. \nIn a follow-up study in 2005, the National Fire Protection Association estimated nearly 3,300 fires on campus houses on causes of fires are unattended candles, cooking mishaps and overloading of electrical outlets, said Scott Mooberry, safety officer at Northern Illinois University Environmental Health. \nThere is no definitive explanation for the rise in campus area fires, Mooberry said. \n“There is no clear-cut answer, it could be a combination of things,” he said. When it comes to fires at Northern Illinois University, Mooberry said they are a rare occurrence. “I can’t remember the last time (there was a fire in a residence hall),” he said. \nThere are a number of regulations and guidelines in place to prevent fires from occurring on campus, Mooberry said. Smoking is prohibited in residence halls, and community advisers go through safety training, among a number of \nother things. \n“Take the time to be prepared by understanding the fire safety guidelines,” Mooberry said. \nFreshman Courtney Bell, a dorm resident, said she hasn’t been concerned about fires in her brief time on campus \nthus far. \n“They haven’t presented themselves as a problem yet,” Bell said. \nNevertheless, in the event of a fire, composure would be a key, she said. \n“(I would) try to get out, but not panic, not be shoving people out of windows,” Bell said.
(09/12/07 4:11am)
The IU Student Foundation is accepting applications beginning Oct. 1 for three scholarships, created in 2002 to honor victims of the Sept. 11 attacks who had ties to IU. These scholarships aim to honor the courage and commitment of all Americans in that time of turmoil, according to a press release. \nThe three 9/11 scholarships are valued at $1,500 each. Funds come from Little 500 race activities. The scholarships will be presented at a special awards ceremony during race week of the 2008 Little 500.\nStudents can apply for the scholarships starting Oct. 1. Applications are due March 7 and will be available at the Wilcox House, 1606 N. Fee Lane, and online at www.iusf.org.\nFor additional information about the scholarships, contact IUSF assistant director Matthew Ewing at mnewing@indiana.edu or 855-1937.
(09/11/07 4:49am)
ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Congress passed a bill last week that will increase financial aid for college students. \nThe legislation, which is awaiting President Bush’s signature, aims to overhaul federal student aid by cutting subsidies to student lenders by $20 billion and using that money to reduce costs for college students. About $11 billion of the $20 billion would go toward raising the maximum Pell grant from $4,310 to $5,400 over the next five years. President Bush has pledged to sign the bill. \nAs states across the country cut funding for higher education and colleges increase tuition, many people have expressed concern that college is becoming unaffordable. Supporters of the bill say it will reduce the burden of student loans on college graduates. \nThe Senate voted on and approved the bill Friday with a vote of 79-12. The House approved it later that day 292-97. While all Democrats voted in favor of the bill, Republicans were split. \nThe bill will also cut interest rates for need-based student loans from 6.8 to 3.4 percent. In addition, the bill will cap the monthly amount any borrower earning less than one and a half times the poverty line can repay to 15 percent of the borrower’s income. \nThe bill also guarantees that graduates that go into occupations described as “areas of national need” wouldn’t have to begin repaying those student loans for 10 years. Areas of national need include fields like emergency management, government, public safety and law enforcement. \nThis summer, Democrats in the House and the Senate introduced two different bills modifying financial aid in more extreme ways, but neither one passed. President Bush, along with other Republican leaders and student loan providers opposed the legislation. \nDemocrats in favor of the bill said it is important not only because it encourages higher education but also because it punishes the student loan industry for unethical practices. \nInvestigations by Congress and Andrew Cuomo, attorney general of New York, have uncovered that some loan companies have offered gifts, cash and vacations to college administrators so colleges would steer students toward certain\n loan companies. \nSen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said in a written statement that the bill is a victory for the state of Michigan. \n“Increasing access to higher education will help keep Michigan’s workforce competitive in the global market,” Stabenow said. “In today’s world, education policy is economic policy, and by making sure that more students can afford to go to college, we will help keep America on the cutting edge of innovation as we compete in a \nglobal economy.”
(09/10/07 2:59am)
CHICAGO - In the home of Norman Finkelstein’s youth, talk about a watchful God was not welcome.\nHis parents had been grabbed by the Nazis in Poland during the Holocaust and survived concentration camps, but all their relatives died. And so had Maryla and Zacharias Finkelstein’s belief in God.\nFinkelstein never was the observant Jew his parents were before the war, but he remained connected to the faith they’d lost. And when he saw what he considered some Jewish groups’ exploitation of the Holocaust for political and financial gain, he thought about his parents – and began calling those groups to task.\nOn Wednesday, Finkelstein resigned from his job as a political science professor at DePaul University, months after he was denied tenure at the school where his views and scholarship came under fire.\n“I felt that the memory of my late parents’ suffering was being cheapened by this industry that was reducing their suffering to the moral stature of a Monte Carlo casino,” said the Brooklyn-born Finkelstein.\nBy now, what he did is well known throughout academia and beyond – in large part because of who he took on.\nIn 2000, Finkelstein, a vocal critic of Israel, published “The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering .” Not surprisingly, the reaction to the book – in which he claimed Jews in Israel and the United States have used the Holocaust to, among other things, extort money from Germany – was both loud and angry.\nIt got louder when Finkelstein took on famed Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. After the publication of Dershowitz’s “The Case for Israel,” Finkelstein got busy on “Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History,” an attack both on Dershowitz’s book and an argument that Israel uses the outcry over perceived anti-Semitism as a weapon to stifle criticism.\nEven before the book was published, the two engaged in a bitter war of words – one that included the two men using words like “nut job” and “hoodlum” and “evil’ and “raving maniac” to describe each other. Dershowitz threatened to sue the publisher of the book, as well as urge DePaul not to grant Finkelstein tenure.\nIf it wasn’t surprising that someone as outspoken and opinionated as Dershowitz would engage in such a fight, Finkelstein’s own history was a prelude to this kind of battle as well.\n“I expected I would be a lawyer,” said Finkelstein, 53. “I had a reasonable talent in \nargumentation.”\nBut he saw the practice of law as more of a trade than intellectual discipline and decided to study political science. After receiving his undergraduate degree from Binghamton Collegein New York, he attended Princeton University, where he received his doctorate.\nLike many others in academia, Finkelstein took part-time teaching jobs to pay the bills, but struggled.\n“Most of my life I barely had an income,” he said of years spent teaching courses at various colleges in New York. “I was living on $15,000-$17,000 a year in New York most of my life.”\nThe jobs didn’t pay much, but Finkelstein, who had hoped to spend the bulk of his time doing scholarly research like so many other college professors, found that he liked to teach. By the time he came to DePaul six years ago – his first full-time job – he also knew that he loved teaching college kids.\n“Their ideals are high and they are also able to think through complicated problems about life and have not yet been jaded and haven’t become cynical about the real world, which usually happens when you begin to work,” he said.\nHis regard for the students was clear Wednesday when he heaped praise on them while reading a statement announcing his resignation. On the way to tell students he was leaving – knowing his views make it an almost certainty he will never teach college students again – Finkelstein was asked what he would do now.\nHe paused for a few seconds, before he said, almost in a whisper, “I like to teach.”
(09/10/07 2:54am)
A 19-year-old female international student reported to the IU Police Department that she was abducted and sexually assaulted around 1:30 p.m. Friday, according to an IUPD news release.\nShe told police that several males approached her from behind while she was walking in the area southeast of the tennis courts located at Jordan Avenue and Law Lane near the Student Recreational Sports Center. The suspects carried her to a small gray vehicle and drove to another location where the sexual assault occurred, according to the release. She said the suspects then drove her back to the location where the abduction occurred. \nAccording to the release, the woman told police she was struck in the face and said one of the suspects might have had a knife. She was not seriously injured, according to the police. IUPD is investigating the assault and is attempting to obtain additional information about and descriptions of the abductors.