WESTCHESTER, N.Y. — October has been a bad month for college towns. On Oct. 2, a raid by New Haven , Conn., police to break up a party by Yale University students led to claims of police brutality and excessive force. One week later, a party by Penn State University students turned violent when a fight between two women spilled out onto the streets of State College, leaving two students with stab wounds. Last week, Pace University football player Danroy “DJ” Henry was shot and killed by police outside a popular eatery frequented by students from the nearby Pace campus. What they have in common is alcohol — a common component in encounters between police and college students that can fuel tensions. “Obviously you’re going to have some standard issues,” said Eugene O’Donnell, professor of law and police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice . “You’re going to have issues about later-night activity. You’re going to have alcohol-related issues.” The violence outside Finnegan’s Grill in Thornwood, N.Y., came after a celebration of the school’s homecoming game, attended by about 150 people including students and members of the football team. The crowd spilled into the parking lot after 1 a.m. after a fight inside the bar. On Friday, a law enforcement source told The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News that Henry had a blood-alcohol level of 0.13%, exceeding the legal limit of 0.08%. It was hardly the first run-in between police and Pace students. In November 2000, several students were among eight men who trashed a campus townhouse in retaliation for an earlier fight at a local bar. And on April 25, 2008, a 21-year-old student was charged with assaulting his ex-girlfriend in her dorm room during a drunken rampage. “Pace is like a little city unto itself, and they do require police resources,” said Mount Pleasant (N.Y.) Police Chief Louis Alagno. “We’re called there mostly for things such as motor vehicle accidents and aided cases, but we also respond for criminal incidents. There are burglaries, larcenies and the occasional sex crime or assault. It does require police resources.” You don’t have to tell police in New Rochelle, N.Y., a city with three colleges — College of New Rochelle, Iona College and Monroe College. “We’ll have pockets of disturbances,” said New Rochelle police Capt. Robert Gazzola, head of the department’s police services division. “I don’t think there’s any lasting animosity between the police department, the Iona College students, the Monroe College students. A lot of it is isolated incidents that perk up and we have to respond.” The city, plagued for years by rowdy behavior in local bars tackled the problem years ago by passing a stricter “cabaret law” that allowed police to go after and target troublesome bars. Police in Mount Pleasant and Pleasantville, where most Pace watering holes are located, have enforced underage drinking laws for years — a common tactic in college towns. But the bar at the center of a fatal shooting had no recent history of problems involving students, according to state and local law enforcement. Finnegan’s seemed an unlikely place for a violent encounter between police and celebrating college students last weekend. Pace students interviewed by The Journal News said they generally had not had negative encounters with local police. Some went so far as to say they were shocked to hear of the violence outside Finnegan’s last weekend. “I wouldn’t say they’re aggressive, they’re just doing their job,” said student John Tripodi. “I guess what they did (outside Finnegan’s) was a little excessive, but if I was him I don’t know what I would have done.” But Megan Murphy, a freshman accounting major at the Mount Pleasant college, called the police account of the shooting “ridiculous.” “It’s all too iffy right now. I’m not sure,” Murphy said. “I wasn’t there so I can’t say what exactly happened. (Henry) probably just panicked.”

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — When bad weather hits this winter, students in a rural western Ohio school district will hit their home computers as part of an experiment. With the Ohio Department of Education looking on, the Mississinawa Valley Schools in Darke County will try to replace days off for snow and other inclement weather with online learning. Department officials say the test could help the state determine the future of calamity days. School districts are allowed to declare only three this year, down from the previous five. Schools that go over must make up the days on scheduled days off or at the end of the school year. Mississinawa Superintendent Lisa Wendel told The Columbus Dispatch the experience in online education will help students in college, where those classes are more common. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Three beers, a can of Red Bull and a large espresso: no big deal, many college students might say. Three beers, a can of Red Bull and a large espresso times three or four, and they still might tell you they’re not intoxicated. Therein lies the danger of caffeinated alcoholic beverages, whose popularity has grown in recent years among college-aged drinkers, drawing the attention of concerned health officials, politicians and college administrators. Experts say that even one is a recipe for disaster, and so do officials at Ramapo College : they banned alcoholic energy drinks on campus this month. Peter Mercer, president of the New Jersey college, said students referred to the above concoction when describing the effects of drinks such as Four Loko, which is particularly popular around the campus. Four Loko is one of a few flashy, canned drinks that take the mixing out of the equation, making it that much easier for students to get dangerously intoxicated, faster. Mercer said concerned students told him the inexpensive 23-ounce, 12% alcohol energy drinks were “all of a sudden very popular,” and Four Loko was involved in a couple of incidents of excessive drinking. Since the start of fall semester, 23 people have been hospitalized with alcohol intoxication. ON THE WEB: Why do students take so long to grow up? MORE FROM INSIDE HIGHER ED: Are prescription drugs “cheating”? Mercer called Four Loko a “cynical product” whose only purpose is to get the drinker intoxicated quickly. Others agree: Glen L. Sherman, co-chair of the Alcohol and Other Drug Knowledge Community for NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, said the drinks are dangerous because of their apparent targeting of underage student consumers and their high alcohol content — drinking one can of Four Loko is the approximate equivalent of drinking four beers, according to an informational page NASPA recently posted on its website. “These beverages are of great concern to us,” Sherman wrote in an e-mail. “Each campus must decide what specific steps make sense to best educate students about and try to protect them from these risks, and to encourage students to make good decisions when they are confronted by them.” Ramapo’s ban is part of a “multi-pronged approach” addressing excessive alcohol consumption, Mercer said. Other measures the college has taken include increasing after-hours security measures in residence halls, tightening visitor policies and holding student focus groups. Those additional steps may be crucial for the ban to have even a shot at success. Kathleen E. Miller, a research scientist at the Research Institute on Addictions at the State University of New York at Buffalo, has studied college students’ use of energy drinks, both with and without alcohol. She said that if the college can’t ban drinks like Red Bull and vodka from local bars, it won’t be able to stop consumption of caffeinated alcoholic beverages. But the college can send a signal. “A college ban will make people take a second look and maybe they’ll be more aware of what they’re drinking,” Miller said. “It’s inherently potentially dangerous to mix caffeine and alcohol because you’re sending your body mixed signals.” The caffeine stimulates the system while the alcohol depresses it, making students feel less drunk than they actually are. Through her research, Miller found that students who consume energy drinks with or without alcohol are more likely to engage in risky behavior like drug use, smoking or binge drinking. That doesn’t necessarily mean the energy drinks cause the behavior, but there is a correlation. Energy drink consumption “isn’t necessarily a gateway behavior, but it is what you might call a red-flag behavior,” she said. In a June 2008 study published in the Journal of American College Health, Miller found that 26% of surveyed public university undergraduates reported consuming energy drinks mixed with alcohol in the past month, while about half said they’d done so more than once. Efforts at Ramapo have curbed and will continue to curb consumption of alcoholic energy drinks, Mercer said, but “it’s unrealistic to assume that it’ll be totally eliminated.” That’s not stopping him from trying, though: At the next meeting of the New Jersey Presidents’ Council, Mercer plans to make his case to other college and university presidents. “The risk for their students is just as high as the risk for mine,” he said. “I’ll tell them what I’ve done and hope that they may want to follow suit.” States such as New Jersey and New Mexico are considering banning the drinks entirely. The drinks are also on the federal government’s radar. Last November, the Food and Drug Administration threatened to ban the drinks if manufacturers could not prove they were safe for consumption. No regulations have been issued yet, but an FDA press officer, Michael L. Herndon, told Inside Higher Ed on Friday that the agency has received 19 responses from 27 manufacturers and distributors, and plans to evaluate those submissions and other scientific evidence “as soon as possible in order to determine whether caffeine can be safely and lawfully added to alcoholic beverages.” Herndon said the decision is a high priority but “could take some time.” But Mercer doesn’t need FDA regulations to deem the drinks unsafe, especially when it comes to students. “I don’t accept that it’s a rite of passage to collegiate life that people put themselves at risk,” he said. “I can’t accept that.”

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — National leaders of a fraternity accused of directing Yale University pledges to chant obscenities against women as they marched through campus have scheduled a meeting with the Ivy League school’s chapter. Delta Kappa Epsilon International Fraternity says its director will visit New Haven this weekend to discuss the incident, which it condemned as “deeply offensive.” It also ordered the Yale chapter to stop pledge activities. Some students and the Yale Women’s Center board complained after pledges were videotaped last week, chanting about necrophilia and a specific sexual act. Michael Jones, a Yale senior who also is a New Haven alderman, said the DKE fraternity has apologized. Local DKE leaders referred calls to national headquarters. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

%content% Education Dept. sees 11% spike in civil rights complaints

NEW YORK (AP) — Investors fled for-profit college stocks on Thursday after the sector’s bellwether predicted a 40-percent drop in student enrollment next quarter and withdrew its forecast for next year. The news chilled an industry facing increased government scrutiny over concerns about soaring student loan defaults. Enrollments at for-profit schools surged during the recession. Big advertising budgets drew students trying to bolster their resumes as a hedge against high unemployment. But critics claim the schools are not helping students find better jobs and say enrollment counselors sign up many students who are unprepared for higher education. When they drop out, they are still stuck paying back their student loans. CLOSER LOOK: For-profit colleges under fire over value, accreditation Apollo Group Inc ., which runs the University of Phoenix , attributes its expected enrollment decline to changing practices aimed at satisfying new government regulations. Apollo will no longer pay its counselors bonuses based on how many students they enroll. It also will provide new students with a free three-week trial program to see if they are ready for school, weeding out those at risk of leaving school before earning degrees. Meanwhile, the industry is facing a proposed new rule from the Department of Education that could limit schools’ access to federal financial aid — the bulk of their revenue — if graduates’ debt levels are too high or too few students repay loans. And, many schools are close to maxing out how much revenue they can receive from federal financial aid resources. Federal regulations cap that amount at 90%. The industry averages 83%, largely because they focus on recruiting lower-income students who qualify for federal Pell Grants . “Now, they have to slow down enrollment and be less active in targeting these students. They have to go back to the more traditional students who are working adults,” said Matt Snowling, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets. In afternoon trading, shares of Apollo tumbled $12.64, or 26%, to $36.86. The rest of the sector followed suit. Education Management Corp. shares lost $2.70, or 20%, to $10.57. DeVry Inc . fell $8.67, or 17%, to $41.90; Corinthian Colleges Inc . decreased $1.16, or 19%, to $4.86; ITT Educational Services Inc. dropped $10.58, or 16%, to $55.34; Career Education fell $3.29, or 16%, to $16.898; Strayer Education Inc. declined $21.21, or 14%, to $135.84. Shares of newspaper publisher Washington Post Co., which owns the Kaplan school chain, slumped $34.61, or 8.1%, to $394. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

WASHINGTON — Could the nation’s best-known and most controversial education reformer be headed to New Jersey ? Michelle Rhee , who recently resigned as schools chancellor in Washington, D.C ., is being talked up as a potential candidate for New Jersey education commissioner or Newark school superintendent after she leaves her current job on Oct. 31. Gov. Chris Christie is her fan and Newark Mayor Cory Booker is her friend. Both have top education jobs to fill. Right now, the official word is that Rhee isn’t in the running for either job. “We don’t have any comment except to say that the governor admires what Michelle Rhee accomplished in the D.C. schools and wishes her well,” Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak said in an e-mail. And Booker spokeswoman Anne Torres said in e-mail that “at this moment in time, there are no plans to talk to Ms. Rhee about the position.” Christie fired his education commissioner, Bret Schundler , in August after the state failed to win a $400 million competitive grant from the Obama administration. Clifford Janey, Newark’s superintendent, was told shortly after the Schundler dismissal that his contact wouldn’t be renewed. In 2007, Janey was fired as the Washington, D.C. schools chancellor and was replaced by Rhee. The Newark job pays $280,000 a year and the statewide commissioner position about half that. Newark’s schools will receive $100 million in Facebook stock over the next five years from the social networking site’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg , making New Jersey’s biggest school district the center of education reform efforts. Rhee didn’t return telephone messages left with her aides Wednesday and Thursday. She told ABC’s Good Morning America she’s looking to remain in K-12 education but wants to move closer to her fiance, Kevin Johnson , the mayor of Sacramento , and a former player with the Phoenix Suns basketball team. But the Garden State could still be on her mind, according to one of her acquaintances, Derrell Bradford, executive director of a Newark school-choice group called Excellent Education for Everyone. Before she announced her resignation Wednesday, Rhee e-mailed Bradford several times to learn about Newark’s schools and the reforms underway there, but Bradford said she never directly expressed an interest in working there. Newark and Washington are both overwhelmingly minority school districts with high levels of per-pupil spending — over $20,000 a year in Newark — and substandard student achievement, Bradford said. Turning Newark around is the type of challenge Rhee would love, he said. “The stuff she is about is the core of the education reform agenda,” he said. “People make the mistake of believing that education reform is something you can hatch and implement in the classroom. It is really about political and social change.” In Washington, Rhee toughened teacher evaluations, closed badly performing schools and linked teacher pay to student achievement. She stressed scores on standardized tests, which rose for the first two years of her tenure. Elementary school math and reading scores dipped this year, though middle-school and high-school scores continued improving. Rhee, 40, was admired by Washington’s white residents for her aggressive reforms, but her critics, including many of the city’s black residents, derided her as arrogant and uncompromising. She is lionized in Waiting for ‘Superman,’ a documentary about American schools. In her most controversial statement, she told a business magazine that some of the 266 teachers she fired last fall either had sex with children or hit them. She later said only one of the teachers had been accused of sexual misconduct. Joseph Del Grosso, president of the 5,500-member Newark Teachers Union, said what he’s read about Rhee worries him. The next superintendent should seek to work with union members, not antagonize them, he said, and would “not use the whip but use logic and temperance to figure out solutions.” “People want to be involved. People don’t want to be dictated to,” Del Grosso said. “The dictatorial superintendent hardly ever lasts.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Cheryl Hines spent her summer at school. Make that several schools. But the star of HBO ‘s Curb Your Enthusiasm wasn’t sitting at a desk. Instead, she was cleaning up run-down schools. The project became School Pride , a seven-episode series that premieres tonight at 8 ET/PT on NBC . Think Extreme Makeover: Home Edition for schools. But don’t expect to see much of Hines, who is School Pride ‘s executive producer, in front of the camera. She will “pop up here and there to try and guide people who might be inspired by the show,” she says. The gig is different. “When I go to work as an actress, I show up in an air-conditioned, nice place and somebody gets me coffee, and they do my hair and do my makeup until somebody tells me to go to the next air-conditioned room. On this project, I might have a toilet-bowl brush in my hand. I might be painting a classroom. At the end of the day, I just feel dirty and good.” A feeling she might not have if it weren’t for daughter Catherine Rose, 6, who started first grade this year. “Before I had my daughter, I really didn’t think about schools at all,” Hines says. “When she started school, it made me think about other parents and children, and made me feel like it does take a village. The idea of a child going to a school where the lights don’t work, where the toilets don’t flush, it makes me sad. “I know that it’s not because parents don’t care. … Most of the time the resources aren’t there. What I’ve learned and what I’m still learning is how to connect all the resources to the right people.” School Pride began with a “cold call” a few years ago to the principal of a school in Compton, Calif., where she volunteered. “I said, ‘I was wondering if your school needs any help,’ ” Hines says. “I thought I could donate some soccer balls and jump ropes. So she said, ‘Why don’t you come over and I’ll show you around.’ ” What she saw was “a bigger project than jump ropes and soccer balls. The school hadn’t been painted in 28 years.” The playground couldn’t be used because the sand was infested with bugs. After renovations were completed, the series idea sprouted. “I was just in a camera truck crying,” says Hines, who is calling from the site of her last school “reveal.” “I’ve cried a lot of tears of joy in the past five months.” This summer included the end of her nearly eight-year marriage to Paul Young (father to Catherine Rose), so the project’s timing “has been helpful,” Hines says. “My ex-husband is truly a good friend of mine. I still talk to him every day. He was part of the inspiration for this show.” Despite going through an amicable divorce, “it’s hard to go from being married to not being married,” Hines says. “Paul and I have so much respect for each other that it’s been difficult, but positive. We really do care about each other, and we’re going to be great parents to her.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is calling on Congress to make permanent a $2,500 college tuition tax credit that’s set to expire at the end of the year. The American Opportunity Tax Credit was included in the $814 billion economic stimulus bill Obama signed last year. He had proposed making the tax credit permanent in his 2011 budget proposal, but Congress has not acted on his request. YOUR MONEY: Some tax benefits for college expire at end of 2010 COSTS: Student loan program changes affect rates, repayment Obama appeared in the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday with three families who have taken advantage of the tax credit. Obama says the credit is worth $10,000 over four years and will help families invest in their children’s future. A Treasury Department analysis says 12.5 million people used the credit last year, for an average of about $1,700. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Graduate schools are seeing steady growth as both recent college graduates and people already in the workforce seek to boost their job prospects in a still-dragging economy. “We see an increase in graduate school applications and enrollments whenever the economy really turns south,” says Nathan Bell, director of research and policy analysis for the Council of Graduate Schools. In its report last month, it said the number of applications to U.S. graduate schools grew 8.3% from 2008 to 2009. The council has tracked grad school enrollments annually since 1986 and surveyed 699 schools in 2009. Total enrollments increased 4.7% in 2009, compared to 3% the previous year. Last year more students than ever took the GRE, the exam required for many graduate programs, and this year may set record highs again, says David Payne, vice president of Educational Testing Service , the non-profit that develops, administers, and scores the GRE. Concern about the job market — and wanting to put off paying back student loans — were major factors for University of California-Davis senior Daniel Yeshiwas, who says he changed his plans to work for a few years before attending graduate school. He plans to apply for fall 2011. “I don’t really know exactly what I want to do yet, but going to graduate school, it’s still moving me towards a career, and it’s something to further put off that question of what I’m gonna do for the rest of my life,” says Yeshiwas. Danielle McManus, a pre-professional and pre-graduate program advisor at the UC-Davis, says reasoning like Yeshiwas’ is not uncommon; she adds that many students apply to grad school as a backup plan, in case they can’t find a job. “Graduate school seems better than the specter of aimless unemployment. If these students do manage to find a job, however, they might prefer to start making money right away,” she says. In just the past two years, “students have become so hyper-focused on career opportunities that these programs can provide for them,” says Rob Franek, publisher of The Princeton Review test prep and research company. “They are thinking about the value of professional experience through a recession lens.” The Princeton Review’s new guidebooks, The Best 172 Law Schools , The Best 300 Business Schools , and The Best 168 Medical Schools , can help students evaluate whether a graduate program’s value is worth the investment, says Franek; a “career prospects” rating, is included in both the law and business school guides. That rating combines several employment statistics, such as how many students are employed upon graduation, average starting salaries, career services offered, and the number of students employed a year after graduation. Advice for those considering grad school: •Leave at least six weeks to study before any qualifying exams like the GRE or the LSAT, says The Princeton Review’s Rob Franek, and consider different schools’ admissions criteria, (includeded in the company’s guides). •Trying to decide which program to pursue? “Think about which classes you’ve done best in and what you are most interested in, particularly because graduate school is so targeted and so specific,” says UC-Davis adviser Danielle McManus. She also recommends that students ask professors for advice. •Get free practice GRE questions through the ETS website; many MBA programs now accept the GRE, not just the GMAT, says ETS’ David Payne. “With employers, the undergraduate degree is becoming pretty much a required certificate or credential for entry level positions. To advance, a masters degree is becoming more the preferred,” he adds. “Best Career Prospects” Law schools 1. University of Pennsylvania 2. Northwestern University 3. New York University 4. Vanderbilt University 5. Harvard University 6. University of Chicago 7. University of Virginia 8. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 9. Boston College 10. Boston University Business Schools 1. Harvard University 2. Stanford University 3. Northwestern University 4. Georgetown University 5. University of Pennsylvania 6. University of Virginia 7. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 8. Duke University 9. University of California-Berkeley 10. Carnegie Mellon University Source: The Princeton Review’s Best 172 Law Schools and Best 300 Business Schools 2011 Editions (Based on institutional data on graduates’ employment and average starting salaries, and student survey data on how much practical experience and career services support their law and b-schools offered.) More details on the rankings at The Princeton Review .