With more and more students attending college every year, and with students’ central place in our national media, it’s no wonder that stories about colleges and college students surface all the time. Across the country and abroad, colleges, students and faculty have been making headlines – good and bad. Tragedy struck and controversies were sparked, new discoveries were made and old topics came back into the spotlight – here are the top 10 college-related news stories of 2010.
1. Tyler Clementi’s suicide: Rutgers University
The nation was rocked to the core with the biggest college-related story this year: Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old Rutgers University freshman, jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 22, 2010, several days after a streaming Internet broadcast showed him engaging in “sexual encounters” with another man. The video, posted by Clementi’s roommate, Dhraun Ravi, and Rutgers freshman Molly Wei, is assumed to be the trigger for Clementi’s decision to take his own life (but, as with many suicide cases, no one can really prove why he did what he did).
Olivia Prentzel, Campus Correspondent for HC Rutgers, said, “This unfortunate event was definitely a shock to all of the students; in a school so accepting of so much diversity, I certainly never thought something like this would happen. It definitely evoked more unity among the students- we need to accept each other.”
The gay community was especially outraged, using Clementi’s story to launch several campaigns and calls to action to end hate crimes and bullying of gay youth. Regardless of whether Ravi’s motives for filming Clementi’s sexual encounters had anything to do with Clementi’s sexual orientation, the GLBTQ community has attempted to bring awareness to gay youth suicides in response.
Clementi is missed by those closest to him and those who never knew him. The Facebook page with nearly 250,000 fans, “In Honor of Tyler Clementi” (one of several memorial pages dedicated to him) shows just how many that really is – with posts of love and heartache being added by strangers and friends every day.
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2. The F**k List: Duke University
By the time Karen Owen’s “F**k List” went viral by the end of the first week in October, millions had seen it and everyone was reposting it.
Owen’s list, a fake “senior thesis project” of all the guys she had sex with at Duke (all of them baseball or lacrosse players), has sparked uproar – from the 13 athletes ranked on the list (and their coaches and parents), Duke University officials, Duke students, and even feminists (arguing everything from the F**k List being empowering to women to the double-standard Owen is experiencing because if this was a guy’s list – would there be quite the same reaction?).
Created as a joke to show friends (but making the mistake of sending copies to them – one of these friends passed it on, and it snowballed to viral status), Owen’s gag PowerPoint was never meant to be released. Now that it has, however, Owen has taken a lot of criticism and has expressed remorse. “I regret it with all my heart. I would never intentionally hurt the people that are mentioned on that,” Owen told Jezebel.
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3. Wave of student suicides: Cornell University
In a span of six months all during the ’09-’10 academic year, Cornell had six reported suicides. Most notably, in the beginning of this year (Feb. – March), the school saw three consecutive suicides in a span of two weeks, and two of them were only a day apart.
Sophomore engineering student William Sinclair, freshman Bradley Ginsburg and junior engineering student Matthew Zika all were found after each apparently jumped from the bridge covering a gorge on the Cornell campus. Ginsburg was found on Feb. 17 of this year. Sinclair was found on March 11, then the very next day Zika jumped (presumably) to his death.
“I go to Cornell so I heard a lot about this,” said one anonymous Cornell female. “The incident changed the school a lot – we had fences built up around bridges, thwarting the gorgeous views and student satisfaction and depression prevention were big issues.”
Cornell was riddled with shock as this wave of deaths struck the heart of every student and faculty member. Following these, Cornell encouraged awareness regarding suicide and mental health, with the help of ads, student groups, and on-campus counseling. The bridges, culprits of suicide-assistance, got a facelift: 50-foot fences blocking the possibility of jumping or falling, sparking a debate on campus over whether it was worth it, and effective, to compromise the bridges’ beauty to discourage students from jumping.
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4. Three faculty members killed by professor: University of Alabama-Huntsville
At UAH, the campus lost four faculty members this year: a biology professor that was denied tenure, and the three other faculty members he murdered.
Gopi K. Podila, the chairman of the Department of Biological Sciences, and faculty members Maria Ragland Davis and Adriel Johnson all lost their lives on Feb. 12 when professor Amy Bishop opened fire. Three other faculty members were wounded.
Controversy arose when it was discovered that Bishop had shot and killed her brother when she was 20 – in 1986. The police reports were missing, but Bishop was never charged with any crime and the shooting was allegedly an accident. But, this led people to question the university’s discretion in hiring professors with questionable backgrounds.
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5. Ex-Dean charged with embezzlement, using students as servants: St. John’s University
Cecelia Chang, the former dean of the Institute for Asian Studies at St. John’s University, was charged with multiple crimes this year. First, it was discovered that she had embezzled more than $1 million from the university. Then, students came forward and it was found that she had forced several of her scholarship students to “work” for her – resulting in charges of forced labor (layman’s term: slavery).
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6. Mascot replacement (and controversy): University of Mississippi
This year Ole Miss finalized the change in mascots – from the controversial “Colonel Reb” to the new “Rebel Black Bear.” The Colonel was seen as controversial because of the slavery implications inherent in having a white plantation owner as the mascot at a southern school. While the new mascot won 62% of the votes and therefore became the new mascot for the school, “Rebel Black Bear” is far from being a well-loved tradition at UMiss. Only time will tell if he will be embraced fully by the university community.
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7. 3 athletes shot (nonfatal): University of Southern Mississippi
Martez Smith, Tim Green and Deddrick Jones, all USM football players, were non-fatally wounded in a shooting by Travis “Taurus” Brown, 29.
Smith was paralyzed from the waist down when his spinal cord was severed by a bullet. Green and Jones will recover fully from their injuries. The players were shot when leaving a nightclub early on Sunday, Nov. 14 after celebrating a victory over Central Florida.
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8. Arts professor gets camera implanted in head: New York University
A New York University arts professor, Wafaa Bilal, had a digital camera, titled “The 3rd I” implanted in the back of his head, for an art exhibit at the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art. He will wear the implant for one year.
The camera will take a photo every minute, capturing his everyday activities. There is some controversy in the mix, however, with privacy issues of people he may interact with – since the photos will be sent to the museum without exception immediately after capture.
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9. “Breaking New Ground: Presenting the George W. Bush Presidential Center”: Southern Methodist University
A show at the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University displays the handgun taken from Saddam Hussein and the loudspeaker used to address rescue workers on 9/11. The exhibit is designed to provide a preview for what will eventually be part of the Bush presidential library center at SMU.
Anti-war people (and those who are just anti-Bush) protested the center and the exhibit, saying the exhibit is not (and should not) be representative of SMU or show support of Bush’s presidency and the war many felt was unjustified.
While thousands are in support of the center, many also protest the ideals the center represents – concerned about the message it sends to others about SMU.
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10. INTERNATIONAL COLLEGE NEWS: British students protest tuition hikes
British university students have erupted in anger, protesting the passage by Parliament that the cap on subsidized university fees will jump from $4,800 to $14,500 (3,000 pounds to 9,000 pounds) a year, allowing colleges to triple the tuition if they desire.
The protests sparked by the government’s decision started out as nonviolent – stand-ins, peaceful marches, etc. In several instances, however, the protests got out of hand, resulting in mass arrests, fires and vandalism, injuries (of protestors and officers), and even Prince Charles and his wife Camilla’s car was attacked.
The students are still upset. Hoping for a middle ground and to have their voice (and outrage) heard, the protests are expected to continue. When they stop and nothing changes, however, students in Great Britain will be expecting higher tuition in response to huge cuts in public spending by the government.
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