ACUHO-I News Blog

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is allowing students to keep cats in designated residence halls, reports the Boston Globe. The cats must be neutered, have all necessary shots, and are not allowed to roam outside the building.

What do you think of this plan? Pets in the halls makes some housing professionals — particularly those in facilities — blanch at the prospect, and that’s understandable. (Cats can make scratch-posts of bed legs and fur coats out of carpets.) But the appeal to students and live-in professionals is also understandable.

Have no idea why the headline is near-nonsense? Check out this, then this.

Check out Central China Normal University, in Wuhan in Hubei province.

Student Maciej Murakowski published an appallingly offensive web page of “jokes”–mostly about sex and at the expense of women–which offended and frightened some of his peers at the University of Delaware. He was suspended in the tension-threaded days after 32 people were killed at Virginia Tech, on April 19, 2007. The brother of a female student reported to campus police that his sister who lived in the same residence hall as Murakowski, had found his web page and was frightened.

Her fear doesn’t seem unfounded: Murakowski writes about an affection for black gloves, and a fantasy about choking someone while wearing them. He makes some pretty odd similes, saying gloves “make me feel menacing,” like OJ Simpson, not “the spindly pale virgin” he declares himself to be. Also on the page were meticulous instructions on how to skin a cat and jokes about rape, kidnapping and torture. (Sounds like a total laff fest, right?)

Murakowski and his lawyer, David Finger, sought damages. The original intent of the lawsuit was reinstatement, but the plodding pace of the legal system and time solved that problem: His one semester suspension expired and he completed his engineering degree. The university required he get a letter from a mental health professional certifying he was not a threat to himself or others before he returned to class, which he did. However, Murakowski was also told not to visit his residence hall during the suspension, but he did twice. He was also already on disciplinary probation at the time of the suspension, for a copyright violation. These things mitigated Judge Mary Pat Thynge’s judgment that his suspension was inappropriate and the web page was protected speech–albeit the kind of protected speech that isn’t attractive or substantial to most people, but protected all the same. Thynge found the university was justified for suspending Murakowski for his other transgressions. Thus, Murakowski was only awarded $10. (Most of which will probably go to his lawyer.)

As you can see on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s news blog, the case makes it hard for higher education officials to know how to differentiate between a justified suspension–because of a student’s seeming capacity for acts that harm himself or others–and an unnecessary intrusion into free speech. What do you make of it?

September is National Campus Safety Month! You’ve been counting the days, and now it’s here!

Okay, maybe you’re not quite that enthused about Campus Safety Month, but we have not encountered an ACUHO-I member who hasn’t given campus safety itself a lot of thought throughout the year, not just in the ninth month.

First, here’s a fine website for information: National Campus Safety Awareness Month.

Secondly, we’ve devoted much of the Talking Stick’s September+October issue to safety, in all its guises: mental health, cleaning products that are safe for students and those doing the cleaning; disaster preparedness and more. Check it out online and let us know what you think.

For some reason, there’s been a lot in the news about get-out-the-vote campaigns on college campuses lately. I wonder why?

This morning, what caught my eye was Warning for College Student Voters at Inside HigherEd. Montgomery County, the place Virginia Tech calls home, issued a press release intended to educate college students on the possible complications of registering to vote in their college town rather than their hometown. According to the release, voter registration can affect insurance coverage (if held through parents who live in one’s hometown), scholarship eligibility, and one’s dependent status on taxes.

Critics, however, say the press release was unreasonably grim, and that based on their survey of insurance companies and other sources, no one has ever lost a scholarship, insurance or not been able to be claimed as a dependent on a parent’s taxes because of registering to vote at college. Montgomery County officials say they were just trying to be thorough. A slightly less dramatically worded release was issued two days later.

Meanwhile, get-out-the-vote efforts continue to happen on other campuses. Springfield College, in Springfield MA, is taking a different tack, encouraging students to register when they move in, giving them Rock the Vote t-shirts, and hosting a series of voter education forums.

Campus Compact, an organization promoting civic involvement and volunteership among college students, has created iVote, with lots of great tools for those wishing to get students involved: a voter registration tool and the campus vote map, where students can find others at their school who share their views. Paul Loeb, ACUHO-I conference speaker and author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While and Soul of a Citizen (both popular among ACUHO-I members according to our bookstore sales) is working with Campus Compact, helping to raise funds for their work.

It’s been a scholarly topic since 400 BC, with commentary from Martin Luther, Mark Twain, and Vince Lombardi. No, not the nature of good v/s evil or the appropriate use of seersucker. It’s hazing.

A report published in March 2008 by the National Center for Hazing Research and Prevention concluded that 55 percent of students involved in clubs, teams, and organizations experience hazing, many of them (47 percent) experience hazing before coming to college, 9 out of 10 are unable to identify activities as hazing that clearly are, 95 percent of all hazing experiences go unreported, and generally students perceive positive rather than negative outcomes associated with hazing.

These stats certainly imply student affairs professionals have their work cut-out for them in eradicating hazing.  Given the odds above, there is a good chance that many of your residents are on the receiving or giving end of hazing activities and some may even be related to your hall councils, internal honorary organizations, or even taking place as part of your training programs (behind closed doors gone-bad anyone?).

September 22-26, 2008 is National Hazing Prevention Week and a perfect opportunity to bring these harmful issues to light.  Be sure to review the recommendations from the research report on effective elements of a hazing prevention and education strategy and take a moment to reach out to other campus departments to start or be included in a comprehensive dialogue.

For a glimpse into the minds of the pro-hazer, check out the “fan” submissions to stophazing.org for insight that makes you uncomfortable.

Full disclosure: the author of this post has consulted on high-risk college drinking for the parent company of www.hazingprevention.org before it became an independent non-profit.  He has also ignorantly participated in and been a victim of hazing as an undergraduate.

In 2007, the People’s Burn Foundation of Indiana and Campus Firewatch surveyed college students to see what they knew, and didn’t, about fire safety. They were disappointed, but not surprised, when the results showed most students don’t know much about the topic.

Using these lackluster responses, the People’s Burn Foundation of Indiana, assisted by Campus Firewatch, developed “To Hell and Back: College Fire Survival,” a video on fire safety education. The video has been distributed to every institution of higher education and fire department in the United States. To Hell and Back describes a fictional, but realistic scenario: during a party at an off-campus house, a fire begins. Many fire fatalities on or near campus involve alcohol; 80 percent take place off-campus. Also on the video is the story of two survivors of the Seton Hall University fire.

As a companion to the video, igot2kno.org was developed. Students can access the site to learn fire prevention tips and what to do if they do experience a fire. A release from Campus Firewatch describes the site as “training in a box” that an administrator can use for student education. The site features more videos, one featuring Manoj, a student who was badly burned when a fire engulfed his apartment building a month before his graduation. Tests on the website can be used to quiz visitors on their knowledge.

The materials are cost-free because they were developed with a Department of Homeland Security Fire Prevention and Safety grant.

Of course, the more ways you convey your message, the more likely it is to be heard and understood. William Woods University with the cooperation of the local fire department, will set a furnished mock residence hall room on fire to show how quickly a fire can spread.

No matter what prevention and education efforts you take, there will be more eyes watching. The recently-signed Higher Education Act will require a great deal of reporting from colleges and universities on fire-prevention measures and the number of fires on campus.

Whether it is Talking Stick articles or conference presentations, ACUHO-I members know that bed bugs are a major topic of conversation and concern. It’s also one that the ACUHO-I central office fairly regularly gets phone calls about from the “mainstream” press. Recently we’ve seen stories in the USA Today newspaper, as well as the Chronicle of Higher Education.

This morning, the bed bugs hit the big time with an appearance on The Today Show.  Host Matt Lauer introduced a video — complete with the scary violin music from Psycho — on the subject. The video featured, along with concerned students, the University of Florida’s Wayne Walker who discussed treatment and preventative measures campuses can take. Lauer than interviewed Richard Cooper, co-author of Bed Bug Handbook (a popular choice at this year’s annual conference bookstore) who offered some good advice and touted Web site resources as well.

Sure, there are parts of the presentation that make the bed bugs sound like something from a 1950s science fiction movie, but hopefully what people will take away from this is that campuses have identified a potential issue and are prepared to address if, indeed, the bed bugs do begin to bite.

There’s a lot of garbage being thrown around at a political convention. No, really. Actual garbage. Fortunately, as The Chronicle of Higher Education reports, more than 450 students, faculty, and staff from Colorado State University have volunteered to help sort mountains of garbage; separating plastic from paper and the compostables from the recyclables.

It’s commitment like this that help CSU get named as one of the country’s “greenest” campuses by Newsweek magazine. And, perhaps, some aspiring political science major will be able to add this experience to his or her resume as an introduction to the dirty business of politics.

With the Olympics complete, all eyes are now turning to the politics game. As the political conventions are in full-swing in the United States, the interest will only rise and college campuses can become active sites of debate and campaigning.

How important a role will college students play in the upcoming presidential election? A study by the Center for Information and Research Civic Learning and Education (CIRCLE) explains that 79 percent of the youth in the 2008 Super Tuesday primaries on February 5 had attended college. It also noted that one in four eligible young voters with college experience voted on that day, compared to only one in 14 eligible individuals with no college experience. Fortunately, there are a number of initiatives working to engage students to be productive partners in the process.

The National Campus Voter Registration Project is making news with its Your Vote Your Voice program. The informative Web site offers practical and applicable information regarding election laws and policies as well as guidelines on how to organize campus voter registration drives.

The Campus Compact Web site has details on its Campus Vote Initiative, designed to encourage higher institutions to educate and empower students to stay engaged throughout  the election. Author Paul Loeb — who many of you may remember from his presentation at the 2007 ACUHO-I Annual Conference & Exposition in Seattle — has also taken on the cause of engaging students in the electoral process and has created his own starter’s guide to organizing a non-partisan voter registration drive.

And, as a bona fide Generation Xer, I would be completely remiss if I didn’t include Rock the Vote.

Finally, NASPA has made a number of voting resources available on its Web site including details about discovering whether or not your campus is in compliance with the 1998 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, in which it was mandated all colleges and universities participating in federal student aid programs must make a good-faith effort to distribute voter registration forms to students.

Will it be a hot campaign season on your campus? Do you have plans and programs in mind for voter registration? Share your thoughts and check back as we highlight some stand-out programs we’ve heard of.