College Shorts Grade Scandal, Sex Column, and Enrollment

Author: Andrea Gissing

Gardner-Webb U. Rocked by Grade Scandal

Gardner-Webb University, a small Baptist school in North Carolina, has been shaken by a cheating scandal involving the school's president and trustees that has resulted in protests and faculty resignations.
President Christopher White admitted that he wrote a memo two years ago ordering that the Grade Point Average (GPA) of a star basketball player be calculated without an F he received for cheating, without which the player would have been ineligible to play in Gardner-Webb's National Christian College Athletic Association championship 2000-01 season.
After a meeting on Sept. 27, the university's trustees supported White's presidency and demoted some administrators who criticized the president's actions. This resulted in the resignation of three faculty members and since Wednesday students have protested White's presidency and the trustees' actions.
Opponents say that the adjustment of the GPA and the trustees' failure to punish the president violates the spirit of Gardner-Webb's honor code. Protesters emphasize that White's actions go against the Christian ethics upon which the school is based.
White is an ordained Baptist minister who has been president of Gardner-Webb for over 16 years.
Trustees chairman Thomas Hardain noted that the F still remains on the student's transcript. The failing grade omitted from the GPA was received for cheating in a religion class.

Source: CNN.com

Sex Column Draws Attention to U. Kansas

University of Kansas's The University Daily Kansan's weekly sex column has drawn attention from media groups such as Playboy.com and The New York Times.
The column started in the fall of 2001 after sex columnist Meghan Bainum '03 completed a journalism class project on fetishes and turn-ons. Bainum said it took her an entire semester to convince the editors of the paper to let her have the column.
Media attention on the sex column and columnist grew last semester after both the Kansas bureau of the Associated Press and the Chronicle of Higher Education wrote articles on the subject. Last month, many publications have done stories on Bainum, including Fox News, "Inside Edition", Esquire magazine, Mexican and Spanish radio stations and student papers nationwide.
"Inside Edition" story coordinator Alanna Stack said the idea for a segment on sex columns, which includes an interview with Bainum filmed at the University of Kansas, came from the growing trend towards more open discussions of sexuality, especially in a college setting. "Obviously college has always been a very sexual place," said Stack, "but what's interesting here [with the sex columnists] is that it's basically a university sponsored discussion."
Bainum, who will fly to Chicago later this month to do a shoot for Playboy.com, hopes to keep working as a sex writer after graduating in December, though she is open to anything that would let her be "experimental."

Source: U-Wire

Tighter Controls Shrink Enrollment

Figures released by the University of Oregon's Office of Admissions show that new restrictions placed on student visas might be responsible for declining enrollment rate of international students at the university.
Since the discovery that one of the Sept. 11 hijackers used a student visa to enter the United States, international students have been placed under increased observance by U.S. governmental organizations. International students applying for student visas are now being tracked by the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), a Web-based program expected to be fully operational by Jan. 30.
SEVIS allows academic institutions to share information about international students with the State Department and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Academic institutions are required to connect to the database by Jan. 30 or they will be unable to admit foreign students.
Until the Jan. 30 completion date, temporary measures being used by embassies and consulates abroad to monitor international students include the Interim Student Exchange Authentication System (ISEAS), a Web-based system that requires universities in the states to enter immigration data about the students so that they can be tracked. However, because schools were not given prior knowledge of the logistics behind using ISEAS, some of the University of Oregon's returning international students had difficulty obtaining visas or re-entry into the United States.
While not all international students experience difficulties obtaining student visas, increased restrictions may discourage international students from applying to the university, said one admissions officer.

Source: U-Wire