Commencement Speakers 2010: Barack Obama, Glenn Beck Hit Campuses
Commencement season is arriving, and that means all the top schools are engaging in bouts of competitive name dropping. Commencement speakers tend to be a highly anticipated announcement among the nation's top schools, seeing who can secure the big brand names like "Clinton" or "Immelt." Speaker selection can often cause a bit of student unrest (see: Syracuse protests over this year's selection, JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon), and, at times, nationwide controversy (see: protests at Notre Dame over President Barack Obama's speech last year). More and more, commencement addresses ...
Rate My Professors: Student Evaluations and Modern Course Selection
It's about that time of year when college students browse class listings and pick courses for the fall semester. As a senior, I won't miss the process. Between securing classes that start safely after 10 a.m., deciding which electives to take (pottery? basketweaving?), and getting a spot in fast-filling required courses, it's no easy task. On top of it all, there's a quest to find the best professors: the ones that make accounting or organic chemistry exciting; the ones that hold enlightening discussions; the ones that accommodate napping. Enter Rate My Professors, where students post ...
Christopher Hitchens Turns Down the Heat at Notre Dame
When one of the world's best-known atheists comes to a stalwart Christian institution such as Notre Dame, where some 80 percent of students self-identify as Catholic, one invariably expects a shout down. After all, Christopher Hitchens is the guy who called organized religion "violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism and bigotry." On Wednesday, Hitchens joined conservative Roman Catholic author and thinker Dinesh D'Souza in a two-hour debate before a largely student audience at the university named for the Virgin Mary. The result, according to some students: a civilized ...
Vancouver 2010: Training to Viewing, the Olympics Continue to Go Flat
It seems like just yesterday they were upon us, but already the Olympics have passed us by. I'm sad to see them go, mainly because this means an end to a pleasurable form of procrastination. But I was also struck by how the lines between competing countries have become much less clearly defined. No longer is a German entrant in figure skating necessarily German-born (Exhibit A), or the Swiss entrant in snowboarding a native of Switzerland (Exhibit B). Or take Yina Moe-Lange, an alpine skier who was born in Japan, trains in the United States, and represented Denmark this year. This trend ...
After Anti-Gay Cartoon, How Will Notre Dame Respond to Outcry?
SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- The University of Notre Dame's student newspaper made national headlines when it printed an anti-gay comic strip on Jan. 13. The backlash was vocal, intense and deserved -- the comic depicted one character asking another how to turn a "fruit" into a "vegetable." The response: "a baseball bat." On campus, the response has also been adamant -- in support of the LGBT members of Notre Dame's student body, faculty and staff. And as a result of the incident, a group of students and faculty has launched several new initiatives. The burgeoning movement on this Catholic campus ...
Gender-Neutral Housing Debate: Not on My Campus
Recently, my colleague and fellow Crammer Willy Hameline raised a few interesting points about the interesting trend on campuses around the country to adopt gender-neutral housing, allowing members of opposite genders to room together. Willy wrote that some 30 colleges across the country offer gender-neutral housing, and concluded that there's continued progress in the evolution of dormitory life, leading him to state that "there was a day when it was unthinkable to have mixed dorms." I'm here to report that such a day has not yet passed for many schools, including my own. The University of ...
The Young and The Jobless: Unemployment Woes Continue Among Youths
With the new year upon us, a fresh batch of college students who have just finished their studies will enter the work force. They arrive at a time when they have significantly lower chances of finding employment than their older counterparts had, and when the outlook for the coming months is extremely bleak. In November (the most recent data available from the Labor Department), the total unemployment rate for all 20- to 24-year-olds rose to 16 percent, almost double that of everyone older than them. The jobless rate for those 25 and up inched up to 8.5 percent. The national unemployment rate ...
Adderall Still an Appealing --Though Risky -- Solution for Students During Finals
The end-of-the-semester crunch is here. Ask any college student to describe his or her life right now and the word "stress" is likely to come up. Students have a variety of strategies for dealing with the added pressures of final exams. A stressful situation at the end of last semester led a friend of mine to give a certain blue pill a try. He found out he had a 10-page paper due the next day in one of his courses, an assignment he had completely forgotten about. Someone offered him Adderall, a stimulant used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, saying it would help him stay up ...
Five Things Amanda Knox Should Have Known Before Arriving in Italy
(Update, 6:45pm EST -- Amanda Knox was convicted late Friday in the throat-slashing murder of her former roommate in Perugia, Italy. Her parents and lawyers say they'll appeal, and we've not likely seen the end of this case yet.) Amanda Knox's parents and lawyers say prosecutors' claims are preposterous and imaginative. Cast as the "Devil with an Angel Face" from America, Knox has been tabloid fodder for the Italian press throughout the drawn-out trial, mostly depicted in a very unflattering way. Contrast that with her depiction in American media: a damsel in distress, facing an inhumane ...
China and Elsewhere, Obama Finds a Receptive Audience in Youth
Back in June, when President Obama visited Egypt, the event with the biggest buzz was his speech to Muslim youth in a Cairo University auditorium. On Monday, visiting China, he met with some 400 students in Shanghai, albeit for a less-hyped town hall style-event, but nonetheless, one with a significant political punch. Reaching out to the world's young people has become a cornerstone of the Obama administration's efforts abroad. Not that his predecessors haven't also courted youth. Both presidents Bush and Clinton made it a point to speak with students while abroad. But Obama has made his ...
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