Southwest Virginia Blogs

A colleague came across this story in last Tuesday's Hattiesburg American.

It's a pretty straightforward piece on objections from the president of the University of Southern Mississippi to a sex column in the school's newspaper. The president, Shelby Thames, has conceded that the First Amendment protects the paper from censorship but that didn't stop him from condemning the "Pillow Talk" column.

I haven't seen a sex column in the Collegiate Times, though I'd say this "He Said, She Said" column in Tech's student newspaper would probably draw Thames' ire.

What do you think? Where should the line be drawn when it comes to freedom of speech and columns or articles that some people find offensive?

So apparently I'm not the only one who found it intriguing that a Virginia Tech student used the William Morva case to argue in the pages of the Roanoke Times that he should be able to carry a gun on campus. (See blog item from Aug. 31.)

In Tuesday's paper, Larry Hincker (Tech's associate vice president for university relations) and Harry F. Hambrick Jr. (a Roanoke resident) both wrote that they were surprised about the comments of Bradford Wiles, a graduate student at Tech.

They each argued that guns do not belong in the classroom, and Hambrick wrote that he was glad that his daughter (a college student herself) attended a school where carrying concealed weapons is prohibited.

The quote that stood out for me most was Hambrick's: "The Morva incident was handled admirably by law enforcement. In response to Wile's (sic) implied question: Yes, I do expect you to rely, as everyone else does, on trained law enforcement rather than on yourself, with a gun."

For another view, do read the comment we received from a reader who says he is a retired police officer and SWAT trooper. (It's at the end of my first blog item.)

A graduate student at Virginia Tech wrote an eye-raising commentary in this morning's Roanoke Times. In his piece, Bradford B. Wiles writes that he would have felt safer during last week's evacuation of Squires Student Center if he would have had his handgun at the ready.

Wiles argues that the events of Aug. 21 reinforce his views that he should be able to carry his weapon on Virginia Tech's campus. Students, staff and professors at Tech are not allowed to carry guns on campus, even if they are licensed to do so by the state. And the Virginia House of Delegates defeated a measure earlier this year that would prohibit universities from banning weapons on campus. When that happened, we had another commentator (a Tech professor) write about how he felt about students who pack heat on campus.

One of the things I found most interesting about Wiles' op-ed was that he quoted a professor who said she would have felt safer if he would have had his gun on him last Monday. I'm curious whether that professor still holds that opinion or if she only said it in the moment. The comment got me wondering about how people generally feel about being in places where people can carry guns.

At the risk of being accused of being a member of the liberal media, I'll put it out there that I don't particularly feel safe knowing that people can carry guns around me -- even if those people have licenses to do so.

Turns out, I'm in the majority. With a quick Google search, I was able to find this 2001 article by professors at the Harvard School of Public Health. The conclusion of the study is summed up here: "Americans feel less safe rather than more safe as more people in their community begin to carry guns. By margins of at least nine to one, Americans do not believe that 'regular' citizens should be allowed to bring their guns into restaurants, college campuses, sports stadiums, bars, hospitals, or government buildings."

Yesterday as part of our coverage on William Morva's escape, his suspected murder of a security guard and police officer and his eventual capture, I wrote a story on the Virginia Tech Facebook groups and other online chatter about the crazy last couple of days in Blacksburg.

In addition to the 17 groups I wrote about, another one popped up that brought together a "Snakes on a Plane" reference with the Morva case: "I'm Tired of This Mother#@&$in' Killer on This Mother#@&#ing Campus."

On a much more serious note, one student also posted a Facebook group honoring Eric Sutphin and Derrick McFarland, the two slain men. The description of the latter group reads: "This group is dedicated to the service and sacrifice of Eric Sutphin and Derrick McFarland to help protect us here at Virginia Tech. They will be missed."

As with most newspaper stories about the Web, we ended up taking out a lot of the profanity that is so rampant online. I wonder if sometimes that doesn't drain some of the color and strong feelings that people have about such emotional issues as an inmate on the loose with two dead and a campus of 25,000 students in lockdown mode. But I'm not sure how we could have handled it differently, given the paper's guidelines about using expletives.

Anyway, I wanted to include links to some of the other sites that I was tooling around on for my reporting yesterday, even though they didn't all make a mention in the paper:

Several colleges in the area open their dorm doors to students moving in this week. For upperclassmen, the fall move-in ritual has become a necessary annoyance. But for incoming freshmen, move-in day is (understandably) a big deal -- capital B, capital D. So for those new to the process, here are a few tips that might help you survive the day without collapsing from exhaustion or murdering your family:

• For families traveling some distance to get to campus, it's a good idea to come in the night before and stay in a local hotel. Driving long stretches early in the morning before doing the heavy lifting of moving is not a pleasant experience.
• For that long drive, you might want to consider renting a larger car so that everyone will be comfortable, especially since you have to fit all the stuff you're bringing to campus in the car, too.
• If you have the space, bring a dolly with you. It will help with heavy or bulky, hard-to-carry items.
• Bring water and snacks to keep you going. Hungry and thirsty people are not happy movers.
• Take note of the weather on the day of your move-in. It might be humid and hot. It might be thunderstorming. Dress accordingly.
• Don't be macho or stubborn about bringing in all your stuff all by yourself. Most colleges hire current students to spend the day helping families cart their things from car to dorm room. Use them. That's what they are there for. And you and your family might make a new friend in the process.

College students spend their summers doing a variety of things these days: working; doing internships for credit, for money or for free; and traveling. A growing number of young people also set out to do community service during their summer breaks.

A variation on that theme is how two Virginia Tech engineering students spent their summer.

Starting in Florence, Ore., the two Pi Kappa Phis joined 13 fraternity brothers from across the nation on a cross-country cycling journey. The team of young men had been chosen for the Journey of Hope's Trans America team for their leadership proclivities and their commitment to community service. Journey of Hope is a project of Push America.

"We didn't start out as cyclists," said John Caldwell, an electrical engineering major at Tech from Highlands Ranch, Colo. "I just wanted to do something different this summer."

High school students and their parents often use their summer vacations to fan out to the country's colleges in preparation of the college application process. I recently wrote about college tours and the effect of having current college students lead them.

It was a fun story to write, partly because I got to tag along on two campus tours. The tour guides themselves were very hospitable, but the most entertaining part was overheaing snippets of conversation between parents and students. One father cracked a corny joke about one of the resident hall names at Radford University, and his teenage daughter was mortified. Her mouth dropped open and she said, "Daaad!" How nice to know that things don't change that much, I thought as I chuckled to myself. (I was just the kind of teenager who was stricken with embarrassment whenever my parents opened their mouths. Sorry, mom and dad.)

The experience also brought back memories of when I went on campus tours as a high school student. I will never forget when my mom told me that she had reservations about me going to Stanford because she thought our tour guide there was a snob. She preferred me to go to UC Berkeley instead because of the nice, down-to-earth guide we had there. I, of course, did what she didn't want me to do and went to Stanford. She and I haven't regretted that decisions once since. But it does go to show how much of an impact the tour guides -- and especially their demeanor -- have on the college decision process.

Anybody else out there have interesting campus tour stories to share? Did you ever have a bad tour guide?

It's that time of year when soon-to-be college students find out who their freshman roommate(s) will be. As noted in a recent Roanoke Times story, students these days don't have to wait to get on campus to learn more about their future roomies.

With Facebook, MySpace and a quick Google search, a curious student can peer at the digital identity of the person who will be sharing their space for the first nine months of college. But college administrators caution that students keep an open mind when viewing the digital footprints of others: "We are actually going to tell them they need to contact their roommate before they use Facebook," Cathy Goldsborough, assistant director of housing at JMU, told Maithili Chitnavis. Goldsborough wants incoming JMU students to understand that someone's online personality may not be the one that comes out in person.

On a related note, the New York Times ran a quick note about college roommates in their most recent edition of Education Life. The paper included a short excerpt from a roommate questionnaire that some colleges use to match rooming pairs. (You have to scroll down a bit to get underneath the "Cribs" heading.)

If you've recently been checking out your future roommate online, let us know what you think about what you've found.

While I was vegging out in front of the television last night, I saw one of the first back-to-school ads directed at college students and their parents. Sponsored by Target, the ad featured several types of college students, all with cutesy, scientific-sounding monikers: Perpetuous Tardius, Laundrius Rookius, Hyperus Organizationus, Electronici Addicti, Creaturus Comfortus and Noodleus Rex. Target says it has just the products each of the "species" needs.

When I went to the Target Web site to see what the new products are this year, I found much more than just the things the company wants to sell. The marketing wizards at Target came up with a fun quiz for students to take to figure out what species they are and a list of tips for parents sending their children off to school. Of course, these time-wasting (but possibly useful) extras include suggestions to buy this thingamabob or that doohickey, especially in the parents' tip section. But generally, the information is pretty helpful.

Which leads me to a random listing of things all students should have to survive the first year (and beyond) of college. This list is by no means complete (or in any particular order) and only represents the things I can remember from my college days, oh so long ago.

--Shower shoes (you never know what's at the bottom of the dorm shower)
--Extra-long sheets (every college tells its incoming students to buy them, and every year someone forgets)
--Earplugs and eye masks (if you're a light sleeper, these will come in handy)
--Headphones (chances are, your roommate won't like all of your music, no matter how much you do)
--Camera (you'll want to take plenty of pictures your first year)
--Photographs of home, family and friends (these will come in handy, especially when you're homesick)
--Stackable plastic crates (desk drawers, dressers and closets might not be big enough for all your stuff)
--Mini-fridge (you might want to wait until you get to school to go in with your roommate for one of these)
--Shower caddy (you'd be surprised by how many people get their toothbrushes stolen; this keeps all your stuff in one portable place so you can take it back to your room if there is a dorm thief)
--Dry erase board (to write notes on your door to your friends)
--Microwave (good, especially for popcorn lovers)
--Hot pot (great if you have a need for hot ramen when the dining hall is closed)
--Corkboard (to put up your pictures or calendar)
--Wall hangings (to make your room more homey; bare walls are depressing)
--First-aid kit (just in case you get hurt -- for any reason)
--External hard drive (to store all your music and to back up your system)
--Laundry bag or basket (ask mom or dad now how to do laundry)
--Under the bed storage containers (use all the space you have to store away seasonal clothing if you're in a place with all four seasons)
--Closet space-savers (dorm closets rarely are as large as you were used to at home)

Please write in and add to the list.

Maybe it's the heat of the last few days or maybe it's the relative slowness of covering colleges when most students aren't around, but I'm really feeling the summer doldrums.

Students and professors and administrators out there: Are you suffering from the summer blues as well?

In my fit of summer stagnation, I have been searching around for stories about higher education to inspire me. Here are a couple I've found of interest:

--College students are seeking housing options with a religious focus. This story from the Milwaukee Journel Sentinel looks at one new religious residence hall at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

--A transgendered professor of neurobiology at Stanford University is speaking out for female scientists. Ben Barres, who was once known as Barbara Barres, wrote an article in the July 12 issue of Nature criticizing what he terms the "Larry Summers hypothesis" of why more women aren't in scientific fields. The article is subscription-only, but Barres commentary sparked others to write about the issue, including this piece in Science Daily.

--A new study from the American Council on Education came out recently that showed that more than 50 percent of college students have at least one credit card billed directly to them. Of those, a quarter pay tuition with the cards. You can read a summary of the findings in an Associated Press story printed in the Houston Chronicle.

--The Commission on the Future of Higher Education issued its second draft report. I blogged a little bit about the first report on July 3.

Anybody out there want to put a pitch forward of some other good, recent higher education stories? Maybe it will keep my mind from melting.

A few days ago, some of us at the paper were discussing the various technologies that college students use now, inside and outside the classroom. I tossed out the whole gaming phenomenon. One of my colleagues said that college students have been whiling away their time with controllers permanently embedded in their hands -- or with joysticks before that -- for years now and that it's not a new story.

Now, I certainly remember some of my friends who spent days on end trying to beat games, with little thought to food or drink or sleep. But I wonder if it's happening even more now, especially since more students have access to more bandwidth and can play games on the Internet without having to own an Xbox or Playstation.

Side note: A high school I reported on in Northern Jersey recently started a gaming club, as a way to engage students (mostly boys) who spent lots of time alone playing games. In its first meetings last year, it had about 80 people attending.

Anyway, in searching around for an answer to my question, I came across a report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project from 2003. It notes that 70 percent of college students reported playing video, computer or online games at least once in a while. The most quoted part of the study was that games actually enhance social life in college rather than detract from it. It also found that more women play online and computer games than men.

Unfortunately, the study didn't provide comparisons with the past. So my question wasn't exactly answered. But I wonder if anyone out there has any words of wisdom on this topic. Are more college students playing online, computer and video games now?

One of the college students who writes for The Roanoke Times' weekly CRAM section recently looked into college student couples planning their weddings while still in school. Sarah Violette used her parents as an example of a couple that wed at 19 and talked about how their wedding took place between the end of her dad's associate's degree and beginning of his bachelor studies. It's a good slice of life story.

It got me thinking about what it's like to be a married student. With so many students spending time in college socializing with friends, is it harder to be married in that environment?

In looking around for more information on this topic, I came across this Xanga group and an interesting study on married students.

A 2003 article in the Journal of College Student Development found that married students have a harder time adjusting to college than do their unmarried classmates. That adjustment was not affected if a student was married to another student. Married students also experience more stress on their marriage. The report encouraged college counselors to be aware of these problems so as to help students with issues specific to their marital status.

One of the most surprising things I read: The report notes that about 7 percent of undergraduate students are married. (Using 2004 Census figures, that would mean about 121,700 college students nationwide are married.) That seems much higher than I thought it would be.

So, for all you married students out there, what do you think? Do you feel that you have adjusted well to the college environment? Do you seek out other married (or maybe engaged) couples to hang out with? Any administrators or faculty members want to share what they have seen of married students on their campuses?

I've been paying a lot of attention to the reports about the "boy crisis" in education lately. Whether it was a January Newsweek cover story or countless newspaper accounts of gaps in scores between girls and boys in primary and secondary school or the op-eds sounding the bells and asking whether focusing on girls' education has hurt American boys.

Full disclosure here: When I was at the Herald News in West Paterson, N.J., I did my own story about test scores of boys and girls. But the analysis we used was crude, and most people with experience in hard data that I spoke to said the boy-girl gaps are not as large as those between whites and blacks or Hispanics. (Fortunately, I can't find the link to that -- insert sarcasm here -- wonderful piece of prose.)

Anyway, the New York Times just did two pieces on this issue in the college context. One ran on Sunday and the other today. (Registration may be required to read these.)

I'm glad to see Tamar Lewin noted that "the gender gap is smaller than the gap between whites and blacks or Hispanics" in earning bachelor's degrees. But does her article end up just glossing over that point to the hot topic of the day? Is there a way to talk about these issues without making it seem that there is a crisis? Better yet, why aren't we discussing the big giraffe in the room of the racial/ethnic and class achievement gaps?

More intriguing than Lewin's first-day story was Bill Pennington's piece on football programs that are enticing young men to come to predominantly female colleges -- or at least places where the population skews female. (One of the featured colleges was Shenandoah University in Winchester.) I found it interesting how little academics was discussed in the story.

Posted in Student life | Comments Off