The Observer, October 19, 2007
Volume XL, Issue 8
Outside the Circle
R txt msgs the best way 2 alert u?
After the Virginia Tech massacre, colleges realized that e-mail alone was inefficient in keeping students informed about emergencies on campus. The solution, regarded as rather obvious, was text messaging.
Several colleges were in the process of upgrading their systems to text messaging, or Short Messaging Services, at the time of the shootings, but hundreds of campuses have been updating since that time. But many are now questioning how many the text messages actually reach, and whether text messaging should be used in conjunction with other technology.
While most college students come to campus with their own cell phones, telecommunications companies require that their subscribers manually OK any mass alert service. Thus, in most cases, the primary obstacle to the text messages is the students themselves. "We're still in the advertising phase, encouraging people to sign up," said Gerald W. Schoenle Jr., the chief of police at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Students at the university must sign up online in order to receive text alerts. At a campus of 28,000, only 5000 have signed up so far.
S. Daniel Carter, the senior vice president of Security on Campus, a nonprofit group that monitors campus safety issues, said campuses should make text messages part of an integrated, multi-channel approach.
"Having any one stream to connect with people is risky for a whole variety of reasons," said Natasha Rabe, the chief business officer of NTI Group, whose Connect-ED service for higher education counts nearly 200 clients. "If there's a problem with that particular way of reaching somebody, you're stuck."
Between a rock and a high place
The most challenging aspect of being an RA is trying to gain residents' trust while simultaneously enforcing rules that are all too often broken.
Traditionally, underage drinking, noise violations, and visitation rules fall into the rules most often broken. Drugs, too, pose a difficult case for RAs, who are required by many campuses to call the police if they smell marijuana or believe students to be using it.
At the University of Maryland at College Park, student pressures have recently called for a revision of student policy over marijuana infractions. Student Government and the Residence Hall Association want penalties for dorm drug use to be reduced to minor violations.
The school, however, has not consented to any major changes, but has left the door open for some discretion in determining punishments. For possession in small amounts, the traditional punishment is removal from housing for one year. But students could appeal the severity of the case. Now, punishments reserved for appeals have been shifted to initial decisions, such as removal from housing for a semester or a slap on the wrist.
Students who oppose the university's policy tend to compare marijuana to alcohol, pointing out that underage drinking is also illegal but that the consequences for each can be vastly different.
"Alcohol...is an ever-present issue. However, our RAs are instructed to 'pour out' alcohol into the nearest receptacle if found in possession of it on campus, regardless of their age," said Anastacia Cosner, the president of Students for Sensible Drug Policy on campus, in an e-mail. "If they suspect marijuana use, police are called immediately, opening the floodgates for a slew of overly harsh and long-reaching sanctions."
How to deal...with life
A growing number of Harvard Law Students and professors hope to turn the intricacies of the game of poker into a learning tool.
Dubbed the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society, the club is part training camp for card sharks, part educational outreach project, and was founded by Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson, who also founded the school's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
Already chapters have sprung up at Yale, Brown, and Stanford. The society's main purpose is to teach cognitive skills, probability ,and risk assessment to its students. The program may also be set up as an after-school program at high schools to tie some of the club's lessons into the curriculum of daily courses.
"That's very analogous to life," said Andrew Woods, a law student who is executive director and one of the founders of the group. "You never know what somebody's actually thinking...until they show you."
The University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt, the author of Freakonomics, has already embarked on a project to track the hands, play by play, of thousands of online games in an attempt to formulate a definitive analysis.
A major goal for Nesson is to hold seminars and conferences on the topic to bring together scholars from various disciplines as well as expert poker players to study the dynamics of the game and apply its principles to other areas. In November, the organization will explore the intersection of poker and education in a conference that will feature the poker historian Jim McManus and the poker superstar Mike Sexton.
No more Mr. Saggypants
The University of West Alabama recently made the controversial decision to institute a dress code for students. The code, however, is a set of guidelines that delineates what students cannot wear to class and events and when they should dress formally.
University of West Alabama president Richard Holland said that students were wearing caps and cut-off T-shirts to performances by the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. The career center complained that students who attended interviews at the campus career fair were dressed improperly, and cafeteria workers complained that athletes were wearing cleats in the dining halls.
"I don't think they knew how to dress, really," Holland said. "We're not trying to be punitive at all; we're trying to give them guidance."
If students are found dressed improperly, they will more likely hear from a professor after class than be publicly humiliated. If problems continue, students will be sent to a committee of faculty and students.
"Some students have not been using their common sense, obviously, so [the administration] just felt like it was time to reinforce it," said Donmonique Gracie, vice president of the student government. She said there was an initial protest, but no official objections have been raised with the student government.
