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(04/25/06 4:00am)
OUR GENERATION has unprecedented access to online information. We grew up ina time when the Internet seemed to get better every year, as dial-up e-mail providers gave way to broadband and the unlimited possibility of the World Wide Web. On a wired campus, it's easy to take this access for granted, to expect that our favorite websites will always be there. But corporate service providers are working to undermine the Internet as we know it, and the United States Congress is about to let them.
(04/19/06 4:00am)
LAST WEEK as the Living Wage Campaign rallied support for raising the wages of workers, a new group calling themselves the Market Wage Campaign boldly defended the University's right to pay poverty wages. Last Friday, the campaign sponsored a lecture with Economics Prof. Edwin Burton called "The Economics of the Living Wage." Burton argued that raising the minimum wage to $10.72 would actually increase poverty in Charlottesville by decreasing the number of opportunities for employment. According to Burton, every potential employee has a certain "skill level" depending on his or her abilities, and adopting the living wage would "eliminate the hiring of people who have skill levels below $10.72."
(04/11/06 4:00am)
THE BOARD of Visitors announced a new goal for the University at last week's meeting: one day, we will be ranked number 15 in the U.S. News & World Report. Such a ranking might enhance our image, but the Board should not value hollow prestige over accessibility and more accurate measures of quality education.
(03/28/06 5:00am)
WHEN YOUNG women plan their futures, they often expect that they can balance the career of their dreams with a satisfying family life. Yet despite the advances made by women in the workplace, the challenges faced by working mothers continue to put women in no-win situations where they must sacrifice their former career paths or lose time with their children.
(03/21/06 5:00am)
SOUTH Dakota is for real. It might seem like a far away state that has little relevance to University students, but the state's new law banning almost all abortions has serious implications for every young woman in the United States. The law allows for abortion when the mother's life is endangered, but prohibits all other abortions, even in cases of rape, incest and danger to the mother's health. The movement represented by South Dakota's new law has been eroding reproductive rights for decades, and the Supreme Court appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito should make us afraid for the future.
(03/16/06 5:00am)
EACH YEAR, the University's diversity pie includes a certain slice of admitted students who left their race blank on their applications. A recent study conducted by the Association of American Colleges and Universities with the James Irvine Foundation found what many students could have told you: The vast majority of those students actually identify as white.
(02/28/06 5:00am)
THE SEMESTER at Sea program might sound like every student's dream: Starting this summer, students can literally go on a cruise and receive academic credit for it, a concept that would no doubt make Thomas Jefferson proud.
(02/21/06 5:00am)
WHILE the Honor Committee is brainstorming new ways to influence the outcome of jury trials, a separate group, Students for the Preservation of Honor, has proposed yet another "consensus clause," a ballot measure that would severely limit the ability of the student body to change the honor system during elections. Students should vote against this measure to protect the democratic process, and supporters of the single sanction should make arguments instead of trying to change the rules in their favor.
(02/14/06 5:00am)
WELCOME to reality according to the Bush administration, where scientific evidence is irrelevant, intelligent design is just as legitimate as evolution and credentials don't matter if you have the right politics. The latest casualty of these unfortunate policies is George Deutsch, who learned the hard way that it's not cool to mess with NASA.
(02/07/06 5:00am)
STUDENT elections have a reputation for being largelyinconsequential to the student body. Voter turnout is notoriously pitiful, and each year's elected representatives seem to produce little more than lines on their own resumes.
(02/01/06 5:00am)
LAST WEEK, our fearless president stunned the nation when he offered to take unscripted questions from an audience of college students at Kansas State University in front of CNN cameras. The event proceeded pleasantly until Tiffany Cooper, a sophomore at Kansas State, stepped up to the microphone. She said, "Recently, $12.7 billion was cut from education. I was just wondering, how is that supposed to help our futures?"
(01/24/06 5:00am)
WHILE the Bush administration fights off charges of illegal wiretapping of citizens, a group called the Bruin Alumni Association has made headlines for offering to pay students at UCLA for audio recordings of professors suspected of holding radical left-wing views. Students can earn as much as $100 for spying on their professors and reporting back to the association, in what is either a sloppy academic freedom campaign or a brilliant scheme to secure the attention of students in lecture.
(11/15/05 5:00am)
ECHOLS scholars may not be responsible for all of our class selection problems, but when small classes fill up on the first day, the impact of the program becomes clear. Allowing Echols scholars to register before everyone else is not only unfair, it has a seriously detrimental impact on the educational experience of all non-Echols students.
(11/11/05 5:00am)
LIFE AT the University involves countless exorbitant fees, but perhaps no department has been so successful at screwing over students than Parking and Transportation. Between the excessive restrictions and the compulsive writing of citations, the University has managed to make driving on Grounds an experience straight out of hell.
(11/01/05 5:00am)
UNIVERSITIES have struggled to deal with offensive and discriminatory speech for decades, but new technology is creating new challenges as private comments become public on the World Wide Web. Recently, schools have attempted to deal with speech that occurs on the facebook, a Web site that places the social world of the University at students' fingertips.The most recent scandal occurred at Duquesne University, where a student was sanctioned for making a homophobic comment on an anti-gay facebook group. Confronted with a virtual representation of social divisions and prejudices within college communities, schools are right to be concerned when discriminatory comments appear on this site.But rather than punishing students for their views, universities should recognize the reality of prejudice and respond with productive dialogue.
(10/25/05 4:00am)
COLLEGE for profit -- what could possibly go wrong? In recent years, for-profit universities have sprung up across the nation and even on the Internet, adding the fun of profit to the joy of learning. Derided as "diploma mills," these universities are notorious for cutting corners and even resorting to fraud just to compete in a rapidly growing industry. Nonprofit universities are hesitant to accept transfer credit from these schools, but the U.S. Congress might soon force universities to stop discriminating between the University of Virginia and Bob's Diploma Shop.
(10/18/05 4:00am)
IN ADDITION to the blinding panic that comes with impending graduation, fourth years who hope to attend graduate school must add the Graduate Record Examination to their list of headaches. The GRE, in theory, helps schools to determine which students are best prepared for graduate school, but the unfortunate reality is that the GRE rewards expensive test preparation while it systematically disadvantages low-income students.
(10/11/05 4:00am)
THE IDEA of reading during the fall semester "Reading Holiday" is frequently scoffed at by students, who instead label the long weekend "Fall Break." Although most students can attest that very little reading gets accomplished, the extra day off is a welcome break before the impending stress of midterms. But while the University offers the day as an opportunity to rest and catch up, the sudden reduction in student services essentially tells students to get out of town.
(09/27/05 4:00am)
PROTESTORS, media and police will never agree on the numbers, but from the packed streets and the endless sea of signs, it was clear that Saturday's demonstration in Washington, D.C. represented a growing movement, one that drew Americans from all over the country in protest of the war. From the crowd, I saw a diverse group of citizens with a variety of signs and banners, but the protesters were united in opposition to our government's destructive actions abroad.
(09/20/05 4:00am)
AMERICAN college students must frequently contend with puritanical legislators who wish to control their behavior long past the point where such control is necessary or realistic. The ineffectiveness of state paternalism is perhaps most evident in our drinking laws, which subject the "underage" to three years of inconvenience when they engage in a social activity that is thoroughly ingrained in the college lifestyle. In Virginia, the anti-drinking authoritarianism extends to college newspapers, which are forbidden to run alcohol-related advertising due to a regulation enforced by the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.