Author Archives: Xarissa Holdaway

Nebraska Chancellor’s YouTube Series Has Tips on Harlem Shake and Zombies

Ever wanted to see a university chancellor do the Harlem Shake? Then I’m afraid today isn’t your day. The University of Nebraska at Lincoln’s chancellor, Harvey Perlman, isn’t quite ready to try it:

 

 

He will, however, give YOLO a shot. (Spoiler alert: He’s not very good at it.)

 

According to the Lincoln Journal Star, campus officials haven’t quite admitted that the university-produced videos are part of a recruiting effort:

“Nothing sinister,” Perlman responded to an email query. “I am just trying to be helpful. Sharing my thoughts.”

UNL Admissions Director Amber Hunter tossed the ball back to Perlman, saying admissions wasn’t “specifically behind it.”

However, students who watch these videos and think that Nebraska sounds like a fun place with a fun chancellor can also take a virtual tour, learn about the campus ID-card benefits, or go straight to the university’s admissions page.

Assuming, of course, they get the joke about the mustache and the zombie apocalypse. (We freely admit that we didn’t.)

The campaign is making the rounds on social media to both acclaim and skepticism. Our favorite comes from a Reddit user, souperman, who says,

“I enjoy these videos, but I’m just waiting for him to end one by chuckling, and then suddenly staring at the camera and saying “Oh, and we’re cutting a couple more programs and raising tuition. Sooooorry.”

Filed under: Leadership, Students, Tweed, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Penn Admissions Officer Loses Job After Mocking Applicants on Facebook

5092887641_2aa9ed8bacIn case you needed more proof that Facebook postings do not count as “private” interactions, The Daily Pennsylvanian reports that the University of Pennsylvania recently fired Nadirah Farah Foley, an employee in its admissions office, after she shared—and mocked—excerpts of students’ application essays on her Facebook page.

According to the newspaper, Ms. Foley’s posts included quotations from essays as well as disdainful asides:

In one essay, a student had written about his “long and deep” connections to the University, citing the fact that he had been circumcised at Penn Hillel years ago.

“I look forward to engaging in the academic, social and Orthodox Jewish communities on campus,” the student wrote, according to Foley’s post.

“Stop the madness,” Foley said in response to the essay on Facebook.

In another excerpt, she quoted an essay in which an applicant had described the experience of overcoming his fear of using the bathroom outdoors while camping in the wilderness.

“Another gem,” Foley wrote of the student’s topic choice.

Surely it’s not uncommon for admissions officers, who may read thousands of such essays, to poke some gentle fun in the privacy of a cubicle or a bar booth. However, copies of Ms. Foley’s excerpts, along with her snide comments, made it as far as the College Confidential Web site, where students find and share information about institutions they may apply to.

“This loses my respect for UPenn and for the general admissions process SOOO much,” said a user quoted by the Pennsylvanian.

Shortly after copies of the posts were sent to the dean of admissions, Ms. Foley stopped working for the university, the newspaper reported, though neither she nor her supervisors have confirmed that the postings were the reason for her departure.

The university’s Office of the Provost said it was reviewing a proposed policy on the privacy of applicant data.

Filed under: Admissions, Students, Tweed, Facebook, social media

Oregon Chancellor’s Mansion Goes Empty

The future of a $1.3-million mansion owned by the Oregon University System is in question, as one of the stipulations of its ownership is that it be occupied by either the state higher-education chancellor or the University of Oregon’s president. Otherwise, according to the bequest of the merchant who left the mansion to the university in 1938, the property will revert to his heirs. As the state considers eliminating the position of chancellor, the house’s future may be on the line.


The state doesn’t really need the property — but it can’t sell it, either.

Read more at: www.registerguard.com

Louisiana Budget Causes Confusion for Colleges

Gov. Bobby Jindal has released a preliminary budget for 2014 that includes significant cuts for state hospitals and higher education. That is, depending whom you ask. Estimates of the cuts in higher education range from zero to more than $200-million. Critics also worry about the budget’s implications for tuition increases and unapproved sources of revenue, and whether changes in the apportioning of money will mean any cuts are larger than expected. Lawmakers are contesting $424-million in one-time money, which will be used for recurring expenses.

Governor Jindal, a Republican who has previously drawn fire for involvement in Louisiana State University system’s upper management, says the budget changes are intended to protect higher education without raising taxes.


Lawmakers and University administrators said they are unsure about what those numbers mean, particularly the increase in the statutory dedication fund. Senator Dan Claitor said the $200 million higher education cut looks bad, but it’s actually even larger than it seems.

Read more at: www.lsureveille.com

‘Racist Ragers’ and the Party Papers

The Kappa Sigma fraternity’s chapter at Duke University set off a flood of criticism last week for inviting students to a party titled “Asia Prime,” which featured conical hats, sumo loincloths, and an invitation written in a stereotypical accent. The fraternity changed the party’s name to “International Relations” when a backlash erupted. But the event went on as planned, and students gathered on Wednesday in protest:


The fraternity’s national office then suspended the chapter over the controversy.

The party joins a long tradition of ethnically themed Greek events widely viewed as offensive, such as a “fiesta” hosted by Penn State’s Chi Omega Nu Gamma that featured handmade “Will Mow Lawn for Weed + Beer” signs, a “Compton Cook-Out” at the University of California at San Diego, and a “Pilgrims and Indians” party at Duke. About the latter, one student wrote, “The only props missing from the party were smallpox-infected blankets.”

Universities are well aware of the problems that the parties, and the resulting backlash, can cause on their campuses and in the national fraternity and sorority organizations. Some, such as Southern Methodist University, have even provided handy guides for Greek advisers and chapter heads, in an attempt to head off criticism. If only those efforts weren’t as ham-fisted as the original events.

For an example, see Page 14 of this “Party Smart” guide, which says, “Offensive party themes are not an issue of political correctness; rather, they are evident [sic] of a larger social ill.” Here are a few other excerpts:

 

 

 

 

After studying those “helpful handouts,” we have several questions: How does one subscribe to The Party Papers? What are the cool fonts they used? What is the meaning of the sentence “How about doing a philanthropy?”

If nothing else, it should be proof that university intervention can be an effective tool against a fraternity’s misdeeds. Oh, wait.

Filed under: Greek Goons, Students, Tweed, Duke University

Tuition Increases, Then and Now

In 1978, Tufts University’s president, Jean Mayer, apologized for the “difficult burden” that a tuition increase of $350 would place on students and their families. In a letter sent to students’ parents almost exactly 35 years ago, Mr. Mayer explained that expenses were continuing to rise, and that “every possible avenue of restraining costs” had already been explored.

Any parent with a child in college now will probably find the letter, recently obtained by The Chronicle, strikingly familiar, as tuition continues to jump every year—often accompanied by very apologetic, very sincere letters from college presidents.

But how comparable are 1978 and today when it comes to cost? The Chronicle’s tuition & fees database shows that tuition at Tufts rose by about $1,360 from 2010 to 2011. Adjusting for inflation, the $350 increase in 1978 comes to a similar number, about $1,200. Not so different, then.

However, the total tuition price tells a different story: In 1978 a year’s worth of tuition cost a student about $15,524 in today’s dollars. In 2011, Tufts students paid $42,962.

Don’t forget that those numbers do not include living expenses. The letter doesn’t offer a total cost for room and board, but the 1978 increase was $165 for both, or $570 adjusted for inflation. In this respect, modern-day Tufts fares a little better. From 2010 to 2011, the reported room-and-board cost increased by only $244. A relief, no doubt, to all the parents who may soon be receiving letters of their own for the 2013-14 school year.

But Faith Michaels, the student who received the original letter and the third in a “four-generation Tufts family,” has no regrets. Her grandparents met on the campus, her mother went there, and her son graduated from Tufts two years ago. She says that she and other students protested the day that tuition topped $5,000. Compared to now, she says, “Those were the days!”

The full text reads as follows:

February 27, 1978

To the Parents of Undergraduate Students:

Last Saturday, February 25, the Board of Trustees of Tufts College approved the 1978-79 budget for the University. The final budget was developed only after prolonged and intensive review and adoption of every possible avenue of restraining costs without compromising the quality of our educational programs. Despite our best efforts, however, expenses continue to rise. I therefore must tell you, with very real regret, that Tufts is forced to increase its tuition fee by $350, to a total of $4,500, for 1978-79. Increases of $80 on board and $85 on room were also adopted.

As a parent of a son about to enter college, and of another in graduate school, I am very keenly aware, personally as well as in my capacity as President, that these additional costs place a difficult burden on our students and their families. While they are of the same order of magnitude as those imposed by other colleges and universities, I sincerely wish, however, that Tufts had been able to avoid them. You can be assured that we shall continue to try to offer to your daughters and sons the very best education possible.

Sincerely yours,

Jean Mayer
President

Filed under: Student Debt, Tuition, Tweed, Tufts University

Academics Memorialize Aaron Swartz With Open-Access Uploads

Scholars are posting their research online, free, using the hashtag #PDFTribute, to honor a man they feel was unjustly prosecuted and harassed for his avid support of open-access research.

At the time of his suicide last week, the hacker Aaron H. Swartz was facing the possibility of more than 30 years in jail for allegedly downloading nearly five million documents from the academic database JSTOR to a computer concealed in a closet at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In July 2011, the U.S. attorney in Massachusetts, Carmen M. Ortiz, filed an indictment that charged Mr. Swartz with wire fraud, computer fraud, and other computer-based crimes. The primary accusation was that he had intended to “distribut[e] a significant proportion of JSTOR’s archive through one or more file-sharing sites.”

The distribution part is key, as JSTOR had declined to press civil charges, and a criminal case would probably have rested on whether the prosecutor could prove that Mr. Swartz meant to make the files freely available, depriving JSTOR of the access fees it normally charges. Many observers felt that the indictment amounted to prosecutorial overreach.

Now some of those academics are carrying on a tiny part of Mr. Swartz’s open-access mission: making their own articles free to anyone on the Web. Some are being uploaded in Google Docs, some are hosted as PDFs on various domains, and all are being scraped with the same hashtag and collected on PDFTribute.net.

Others are choosing to “liberate” articles that are already in the public domain but not easily found outside the JSTOR database. Ars Technica reports that the “Aaron Swartz Memorial JSTOR Liberator” is a script that allows each user to download an article from the database and then upload it into a new archive that doesn’t charge for access. The creators call the script a “small act of digital civil disobedience,” one intended to keep the memory of Mr. Swartz’s work alive.

Filed under: Research, Aaron Swartz, Open Access, Publishing

College Holiday Greetings, From Bodypaint to Big Bands

In past years, The Chronicle has made a point of mocking highlighting the holiday video cards that universities send to their alumni, staff, and students. This year will be no different. If you have a video we haven’t seen yet, feel free to leave it in the comments.

Without further ado:
 
The Brass Band Edition

 
The Slightly Creepy Living Statues Edition

 

The Flash Mob [Because It's 2005, Apparently] Edition

 
The Pop-Up Book Edition

 
The Awkward Rapping Dean Edition

 
The “Science Is Cool!” Edition

 
The Super Annoying Yet Oddly Mesmerizing Cartoons With Helium Voices Edition

Filed under: Tweed, Holiday Greetings

Indiana Jones Mystery, Solved at U. of Chicago

We admit to being a little disappointed that the answer to last week’s riddle at the University of Chicago is so prosaic. Although we (and the dean of undergraduate outreach, Garrett Brinker) had hoped that a mysterious journal—looking just like one in Raiders of the Lost Ark and delivered to the university’s admissions office—might be the work of a dedicated applicant, it turns out that the story is much simpler.

A man named Paul Charfauros, who makes replicas of the Abner Ravenwood journal and sells them on eBay, attempted to send one to a customer. Then, when the envelope fell out of its outer packaging, a diligent Post Office employee made sure it reached the fictitious professor’s address on the replica.

All is not lost, however. Wired reports that the story of the journal has been so fascinating, and so popular, that the package will stay on the campus, just as Henry Walton Jones Jr. might have wanted.


“Somewhere between Guam and Italy the replica fell out of its original external package and was lost in Honolulu, Hawaii,” Garrett Brinker, director of undergraduate outreach for the University of Chicago, told Wired. “Then for some reason, with fake postage, no tracking, not even a zip code — it looks like the Postal Service had to manually write in a zip code on the package — somehow without all of that the package landed in our laps in Chicago, Illinois.”

Read more at: www.wired.com

U. of California Suspends Unpopular New Logo

It’s good news for 54,000 petition signers, as UC announced on Friday that it would stop using the monogram. The logo had riled up students, staff, and alumni, who found it juvenile, silly, and “corporate.”

Daniel M. Dooley,, senior VP for external relations said in a press release, “While I believe the design element in question would win wide acceptance over time, it also is important that we listen to and respect what has been a significant negative response by students, alumni and other members of our community.

Therefore, I have instructed the communications team to suspend further use of the monogram.”

Read more at: www.universityofcalifornia.edu