COLLEGE SHORTS

Author: Katie Flagg

Bush proposes Perkins loan cut

Students may soon have to dig even deeper into their pockets for tuition payments if President Bush has his way. The president's new education budget proposal calls for the termination of the Perkins Loan Program to make up for funding shortages in other sectors. Each year, Colleges and Universities lend billions of dollars to students through this federally subsidized program to encourage the pursuit of higher education.
If the Bush administration's education budget is approved, both students and institutions will suffer without a strong federally subsidized loan program to alleviate rising tuition costs. As a comprise, the proposed budget offers an insubstantial increase - $100 per year for the next five years - in Pell Grants, but this increase will not offset the damage done by eliminating the Perkins Loan Program, which is regarded as both a cheap and cost-effective for schools and government administrators.

--- The Daily Vidette (Illinois State U.)


U.Va. adopts J-term schedule

The University of Virginia announced a new university-wide initiative to include a January Term in University curriculum. The initiative - sponsored by the Office of the Vice President and Provost - strives to provide U.Va. students with unique opportunities to take classes in an intensive, month-long format.
The University is currently accepting course proposals for January Term 2006. Two hundred sixty-four students and 21 members of the faculty participated in the pilot program earlier this year - a program that sent students abroad to Italy and Spain, to the field for anthropological research in New Mexico and to the classroom for courses on campus in Charlottesville. The response to this program was positive, and 100 percent of students who completed an online evaluation of January Term courses believed the University should continue to offer January-specific classes.

-- UVA Web site


UNC protests ban on gay books

University of North Carolina students recently protested an Alabama state legislature bill that would prohibit the use of state funds for purchasing literature associated in any way with homosexuality by reading texts that would be barred under the proposal outside the University's student union building.
The bill, authored by Alabama State Representative Gerald Allen, proposes a ban on state acquisition of any texts that acknowledge homosexuality or were written by gay authors. If passed, the bill would refuse students access to works by, among others, William Shakespeare, Plutarch and Oscar Wilde.
College and university students across the country have been mobilizing to speak out against Allen's bill amid concern that the legislation will thrive and spread to other states.
Aware of the protest in Chapel Hill, Allen defended his bill, asserting that he is primarily concerned with limiting state funds used to promote "unhealthy lifestyles" such as homosexuality.

- The Crimson White (U. Alabama)