Keeping communal areas clean in any large organization is an ongoing task. High traffic areas such as the water cooler, kitchen and coffee making facilities attract dirt like no other. With them being in constant use during the day, it’s difficult to maintain a hygiene standard.

Even in the cleanest of environments, bacteria propagates at an alarming rate. As soon as one area is cleaned, the bacteria begins multiplying again, and will keep going until the next clean. In this kind of situation the risk of cross-contamination is rife.

When it comes to providing safe, hygienic water in high traffic areas, a water cooler or drinking fountain is the ideal solution. There is only one contact point, the tap, which is separate from the outlet. There’s no need to touch anything else. The water flows, the drinkers hover, it’s the best clean solution.

Some water systems are completely contactless, using sensors to detect if someone is near and opening the tap when they detect movement. These are the ultimate in hygienic water distribution as there is no reason for anyone to come into contact with it.

Other systems are self-cleaning, often with the option of having UV purification built into the unit. The UV light purifies the water before dispensing it. These kinds of systems are proven to eliminate up to 99.99 percent of all waterborne bacteria including E Coli, Legionella, Salmonella, Hepatitis, Poliovirus and Cryptosporidium. This treatment leaves the water perfectly safe to drink, and doesn’t remove any of the beneficial minerals that are naturally found in water. UV purification has been scientifically proven to be the most effective way of killing bacteria without adding chemicals or removing beneficial minerals.

Water coolers are synonymous with office environments, having spawned their own mini-legend in corporate culture. New, hygienic, water dispensing units ensure the reputation of the water cooler stays a positive one. That all mention of them focus on gossip, or brainstorming ideas and not Legionella or Listeria. There’s no reason to let Listeria, cause hysteria with a drinking fountain.

Filtered water is often arguably nicer to taste, and better for us. The United States, for the most part, has some of the cleanest drinking water in the world. Standards are high, as are expectations. That said, there are still a lot of impurities in tap water that are filtered out from a fountain.

The benefits of drinking more water are many. Doctors across the world try to get everyone drinking more clean water. Having clean water readily available is a human right, and one that benefits everyone. The more we drink the more productive we are. Dehydrated people work less, and can concentrate less, so having a water cooler around give people more than just somewhere to meet.

Every time someone forgoes a sugary drink for a glass or cup of water, is a little less rot to their teeth, or a little less sugar in their diet. That can only be a good thing. We are constantly bombarded with health messages telling us to cut down our sugar and fat intake. Using the water cooler instead of the vending machine is the simplest way of doing it.

There is more to further education than just university, and there is more to choosing a college than league tables. While the performance of a Minneapolis technical school is important, it isn’t the only measure of your suitability for it. There is much more you need to bear in mind before selecting a college to attend.

It’s a big decision, one that will affect the next two or three years of your life. Depending on your circumstances, it might go on to influence the rest of your working life. Education is only the beginning of any career, but a decent education can open doors. It can provide opportunities you might not be able to exploit without it, and for that alone is worth doing.

The first thing you need to bear in mind when selecting a technical school is its accreditation. The myriad of different technologies, and technical careers available all have their own demands. To make a good choice you need to make sure the college is properly accredited with the relevant body for it to be worth anything.

Agencies who accredit or license a technical college are there to make sure the education is of a sufficiently high standard, and offers good value for money. They don’t give their approval lightly, so finding one with that approval should be a good measure of their quality.

Once you have a shortlist, you need to consider the entrance requirements. Some technical colleges require high school diplomas while others favor practical skills. Check out your selected school, and course, and make sure you can apply. It will save wasted time and dashed hopes doing this now, so get it out of the way first. There is plenty of bad news in the news these days but along with the bad, there is also good news.

Technical college admission information will be available on the school’s website, or through their brochure. Each course should have the requirements clearly listed, If you’re in any doubt, call the admissions department to discuss it. They should be able to advise you fully on what you can and cannot do.

Once you have selected the school and satisfied the admissions criteria you’re almost there. The other thing to do is to go and visit. We can make anything look fantastic on paper, or the internet. Nothing substitutes gut feel and firsthand experience.

Visit the technical college, wander round, look at the facilities, have lunch with current students and generally take it all in. If you can, check out classes, labs, workshops or wherever it is you’ll be spending the next couple of years. Then visit the career center. Once you finish your course, it would be nice to have a job to go to. A good career advisor will have options, even in a difficult economy.

Even if the college looks ideal on paper, it takes firsthand experience to see if it’s for you. It involve traveling, but it will be worth every minute. Think of it like a car, you wouldn’t buy one without inspecting it and having a test drive would you?

Premiering in December’s GQ magazine, the “2010 Rock Stars of Science” campaign pairs musicians such as Blondie‘s Debbie Harry, Poison’s Bret Michaels and Timbaland, with scientists, including Nobel Prize winners.

“All these people are doing great things,” says Harry, who took part in the campaign amid preparations for overseas shows. “We have to get the word out.”

Rock stars are household names, but ResearchAmerica! polls suggest half the public can’t name a living scientist. A 2005 National Academies of Science report complained parents aren’t turning their kids on to science anymore.

“I think being a scientist is like being a fighter pilot, it’s just as cool,” says Columbia University professor of surgery Mehmet Oz, best known as the host of the syndicated Dr. Oz Show. Oz appears with Timbaland and astronaut Bernard Harris in the campaign. “The juxtaposition of scientists with rock stars might jolt people a little, and open some minds,” Oz says.

Scientists paired with rock ‘n’ rollers in the ads include Nobel Prize winner Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco, and cancer researcher Craig Thompson, chief of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. “Scientists are really invisible to people now,” Thompson says. “We actually need to get rid of Marcus Welby and show scientists are real people, and just as much a part of our lives as rock stars.”

Past years’ Rock Stars of Science messages, sponsored by the Geoffrey Beene Foundation, have paired scientists such as National Institutes of Health chief Francis Collins, an amateur guitarist, with Aerosmith‘s Joe Perry, who actually played together.

“I’m willing to pick up a guitar and get on stage with Joe Perry, if that’s what it takes,” Collins told fellow scientists recently.

‘Rock Stars of Science’ pairs rockers, Nobel winners to entice kids

Article By: Minneapolis technical school

Most of us know the importance of a proper education. It teaches us the basics of life. It gives us the tools to begin independent and fruitful lives out in the world. It isn’t the only education we need, in fact, it’s only the beginning. Life is education, as is work, play and everything we do. We can take lessons from every aspect of our lives. In an increasingly advanced world, some kind of technical education is essential.

Consider your parents, or maybe grandparents. Ask them about the internet, computers, mobile phones and other advances of the last twenty years. Chances are that they will know little about them unless they have adapted. It’s essential to keep up to date with changes in technology as it’s now so prevalent in our lives.

Some kind of technical school or technical college should be compulsory for everyone. Things like the internet, computing, mobile technology, computerized homes and cars are the future. We have to either keep up, or fall behind. It seems a bit unfair that parts of society are excluded from these new life-changing innovations because of a lack of education.

Technical schools shouldn’t be viewed as somewhere geeks go to play. Somewhere that is purely for the technically oriented person. They should be viewed as a gateway to technology. Where anyone can go to learn about new things, get to grips with the internet, computers or technology.

It isn’t just the older generations, or those out of touch with technology that would benefit from technical schools. In our increasingly digital economy, technical skills are essential to progress in many jobs right now. Computers and technological industries are overtaking manufacturing and grass-roots industries in the amount they contribute to our economy.

To maintain this growth, and to keep ahead of everyone else in the world, we need technical education to keep improving. We need to equip our society with the tools they need to go out there and contribute to our country. That means everything from founding social networks, to keeping the internet working. The digital economy is so broad that everyone can contribute if they have the right technical education.

You don’t have to be a scientist, or geek to benefit from vocational training. Anyone can learn some aspect of a technical subject, it doesn’t have to be to such a degree that you need to start wearing a lab coat. Even knowing what the internet is and how it works will give you a significant advantage in the future.

Technical schools have an important part to play in the future of our society. They can prepare our country to continue leading the world in technical design and innovation. This is the digital age, and we need people who can work wonders with technology in order for us to be able to bend it to our will. Technical education is the only way we’re going to stay at the forefront, nothing else will do.

In return, the teacher was kicked out of Howell High School in Michigan for a day — suspended without pay for violating the student’s free speech rights.

The incident has sparked intense debate in Howell, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) northwest of Detroit, over defending civil rights without trampling the U.S. constitution’s right to free speech. It’s gained far wider attention since a local newspaper released video of a 14-year-old gay student from another city defending McDowell at a Howell school board meeting.

On Oct. 20, McDowell told a student in his classroom to remove a belt buckle with the Confederate flag, the symbol of the southern confederacy that seceded from the United States over slavery, kicking off the Civil War in the 1860s.

She complied, but it prompted a question from a boy about how the flag differs from the rainbow flag, a symbol of pride for the gay community.

“I explained the difference between the flags, and he said, ‘I don’t accept gays,’” said McDowell, 42, who was wearing a shirt with an anti-gay bullying message.

McDowell said he told the student he couldn’t say that in class.

“And he said, ‘Why? I don’t accept gays. It’s against my religion.’ I reiterated that it’s not appropriate to say something like that in class,” McDowell said Monday.

McDowell said he sent the boy out of the room for a one-day class suspension. Another boy asked if he also could leave because he also didn’t accept gays.

“The classroom discussion was heading in a direction I didn’t want it to head,” McDowell said.

McDowell soon received a reprimand letter from the district that said his actions violated the students’ free speech rights as well as school policy. It also said he “purposefully initiated a controversial issue” by wearing the T-shirt featuring the anti-gay bullying message.

“I thought it was a really great, teachable moment,” McDowell said of his decision to remove the student from class.

Graeme Taylor is among those who agree. The 14-year-old, who does not go to Howell schools, says he is gay and attended a recent school board meeting to praise a teacher who “finally stood up and said something.”

“I’ve been in classrooms where children have said the worst things,” the boy told the board. “The kinds of things that drove me to a suicide attempt when I was 9 years old.”

Video of Graeme’s comments had been viewed on YouTube more than 13,000 times as of Monday evening, when Howell schools held a community diversity forum that district spokeswoman Kim Root said was meant to be a step forward.

“We can learn some things from this episode,” she said, adding the district hoped to receive recommendations from the public to improve “the tolerance of the district and enhance diversity efforts we already have in place.”

Jay Kaplan, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) Legal Project, credits McDowell for trying to create a “welcoming environment for all students.” But Kaplan said the “teachable moment” would have come if the students stayed in the classroom.

“We believe, based on those statements — as offensive and upsetting as they were — they were protected speech,” Kaplan said. “The only way we’re going to create a better environment in schools is to start talking about this.”

Kaplan said Howell schools have expressed interest in accepting the ACLU‘s offer to provide in-person training to students, faculty and staff. He said such training could provide a better understanding of what can be said and done.

McDowell has filed a complaint against the district over the discipline he received, but said Monday he primarily wants to “force the school to look at itself.”

“I want to force adults to look at what situation we’ve created,” he said. “I would really like us to be more aggressive in our policing of harassing and bullying.”

Michigan teacher suspended over anti-gay punishment

The American Civil Liberties Union believes the lawsuit is the first in the country over a school’s ban on the bracelets, which are designed to raise breast-cancer awareness among young people. The rubber jewelry has become wildly popular among students, prompting bans across the country.

School officials in Easton argue that the slogan is distracting and demeaning, and that some staff feel it trivializes a serious illness.

The district banned the bracelets in October, a month into the school year and after students had been wearing them without serious incident, the ACLU said.

The two girls had their parents’ permission to wear the bracelets but soon found themselves in the principal’s office at Easton Area Middle School, the lawsuit states. They were also banned from school dances for a month.

Amy Martinez said her daughter Kayla’s suspension seems unduly harsh, given that the 12-year-old had agreed to wear the bracelet inside out, with only a breast cancer-awareness website address showing. That, too, was deemed inappropriate under the school dress code, she said.

“I don’t believe that vulgarity, obscenity, profanity or nudity (in the school code) apply to the word ‘boobies’ or ‘breast,’” said Martinez, an accountant whose late aunt suffered from breast cancer.

“There were teachers that had ‘breast cancer awareness’ T-shirts on” in October, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, she said.

The ACLU calls the bracelets perhaps silly and irreverent, but not lewd or indecent.

“The First Amendment does not allow schools to censor students’ speech merely because some students and teachers are offended by the non-vulgar educational message, and silencing the speakers because other students may react inappropriately would amount to a constitutionally impermissible heckler’s veto,” the ACLU said in the suit.

“Seeing a bracelet with ‘I Love Boobies!’ on it is a conversation starter that leads to discussion and awareness of issues affecting young people,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit was filed Monday in federal court in Philadelphia on behalf of Martinez and Jennifer Hawk, the mother of an eighth-grader. The two girls are friends, Martinez said. Kayla Martinez continues to wear the bracelet to school under her sleeve, her mother said.

The suit asks the district to end the ban, allow the girls to attend all school functions and expunge their disciplinary records.

Easton’s superintendent did not immediately return a call for comment.

In discussions between the two sides before the lawsuit was filed, district officials complained the bracelets made some people uncomfortable and had prompted some boys to make inappropriate comments, the suit said.

“I don’t know … why the educators are not equipped to deal with distractions. Why do they have to ban, ban, ban?” Martinez said.

Schools from Florida to California have banned the bracelets.

The rubber jewelry is sold by the Carlsbad, Calif.-based nonprofit Keep A Breast Foundation to raise awareness and funds for breast cancer organizations.

Moms sue Pa. school over ‘boobies’-bracelet ban

Thirty presidents received more than $1 million in pay and benefits in 2008, according to an analysis of federal tax forms by The Chronicle of Higher Education. More than 1 in 5 chief executives at the 448 institutions surveyed topped $600,000.

Most of the pay packages were negotiated before the full force of the recession. But even if the numbers dip slightly in next year’s survey, executive pay is expected to keep climbing over the long term as colleges compete for top talent. And schools are rewarding executives while raising tuition, exposing themselves to criticism.

At large research universities, the median pay was $760,774; it was $387,923 at liberal arts colleges and $352,257 at undergraduate and graduate colleges and universities.

The highest paid executive in the Chronicle survey was Bernard Lander, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi and sociologist who founded Touro College in New York in 1970. He died in February at 94.

Lander received a compensation package of nearly $4.8 million. In a statement, the college said $4.2 million of that was retroactive pay and benefits awarded after an outside consultant determined Lander had been “severely underpaid.”

Several deals reported the Chronicle survey, which covers the most recent available data, included deferred compensation or other unusual circumstances. Comparisons to past years aren’t possible because of changes in how data is reported to the Internal Revenue Service. Colleges were asked to report salaries by calendar year instead of fiscal year as in the past, so most dollar amounts overlap with what was reported the previous year.

Another change: Perks including first-class air travel, country club dues and housing are now included in reported pay.

In 2007-2008, 23 presidents received more than $1 million. As recently as 2004, no college president had broken the seven-figure threshold.

While some presidents on the latest list lead ultra-selective schools such as Columbia, Yale and Penn, executives from schools such as the University of Tulsa and Chapman University in Orange, Calif., are on it, too.

Not all the most elite schools are represented, either. The presidents of Harvard, Princeton and Johns Hopkins all were paid in the $800,000s.

“Value is in the eyes of the beholder,” said Jeffrey Selingo, editor of the Chronicle. “Some boards think these presidents, even at small institutions, are worth it. On the flip side, the prestige of serving at other institutions is enough of a paycheck for some.”

Still, numbers in the tax forms don’t always tell the whole story.

Chapman University President James Doti’s $1.25 million compensation includes two “golden handcuff” deferred compensation deals worth almost $665,000, spokeswoman Mary Platt said. She said the board did not want to lose Doti, who since taking the job in 1991 has raised the school’s profile and overseen expansive building projects.

He and other college presidents have donated a portion of the earnings back to the college. Doti gave a $1 million gift for an endowed chair in economics.

David Warren, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, said in a statement that salaries reflect supply and demand, and that presidents’ jobs have become more demanding. Presidential salaries make up a very small percentage of campus budgets and have virtually no impact on tuition increases, Warren said.

Still, public confidence in higher education erodes when tuition and presidential pay are both rising, said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

“People see higher education as another institution that takes care of the people at the top first,” he said.

According to the College Board, average tuition and fees at private colleges and universities have risen almost 35% in the past decade, to $27,290. Many students, though, pay much less because of grants and tax benefits. The average net price at private schools was $11,320 this fall, less than what students paid on average a decade ago.

Public college presidents generally earn less than their private counterparts. Only one public university president topped $1 million in 2008-09 —Ohio State University president Gordon Gee brought in $1.5 million.

Then there are for-profit colleges, which are under fire for their heavy reliance on federal student aid money and high student loan default rates. Strayer Education Inc. paid chairman and CEO Robert Silberman $41.9 million last year, according to a Bloomberg report last week.

Survey: More college presidents make millions

The economic downturn also may have accelerated a trend in which students increasingly travel to less traditional destinations, says the report, based on a survey of about 3,000 colleges by the Institute of International Education, a New York-based non-profit organization.

Europe still attracted the largest share of U.S. students — more than 140,000 — but enrollments dropped 4%. They rose in Africa (16%), Asia (2%) and South America (13%). That growth was fueled in part “by new and sometimes more affordable” programs in developing countries, the report says.

“The economic situation around the world, not just the U.S., is clearly having an impact,” says Peggy Blumenthal, executive vice president of the institute. Although the 2008-09 figures are the latest available, there are signs that the most recent year has begun to see an uptick in U.S. students going abroad.

For those who didn’t go abroad, money wasn’t the sole factor. Mexico‘s H1N1 virus outbreak probably contributed to a 26.3% decline in the number of U.S. students studying there, the report says. Also, many colleges pulled programs there based on State Department advisories about drug-related violence along the border, Blumenthal says.

Family finances and campus budgets were top concerns.

“I heard stories about parents losing their jobs and students who would really like to go, but could not afford it,” says Howard Davison, a program coordinator for at Central Penn College in Summerdale, Pa., who canceled a 2008 student trip to Ireland.

State Department Assistant Secretary Ann Stock said study abroad is an important part of making U.S. students more world-conscious. “In a globalized economy, this just makes sense for our young people and our country,” Stock said of student travel to more diverse locations.

Among the highlights of the institute’s “Open Doors” report:

•260,327 U.S. students earned credit for study abroad in 2008-09, the latest year for which comprehensive data are available. That’s more than double the number from a decade ago but down 0.8% from the previous year.

• In a “snapshot” survey last month of 238 colleges, 55% reported an increase in the numbers of students going abroad last fall, a sign that the 2008-09 decline could be a short-term blip.

•A similar slowdown occurred among foreign students enrolling in U.S. institutions last year. Enrollments increased 3%, to 690,923, and pumped about $20 billion into the U.S. economy, according to Commerce Department estimates. However, the growth was driven primarily by a 29.9% surge among Chinese students; more than half of countries that send large numbers of students to the USA showed decreases.

Some, such as Davison, say they are hopeful that things are turning around. He took nine students abroad last year, and returns today from seven weeks in Croatia with 17 students. They “have had their horizons not only expanded, but exploded,” he says. “Students come back from this program with a new confidence.”

College study abroad suffers its first decline

At the request of the university’s Muslim Students’ Association, George Washington began offering a once-weekly, female-only swim hour in March. But it only recently turned into an online debate over issues of religious and sexual discrimination and — though not always explicitly — racism, spurred by an article in the student newspaper, The GW Hatchet.

The Lerner Health and Wellness Center pool closes to men for one of the 20 hours it’s open each week, with a tarp blocking the view through the glass door and a female lifeguard on duty. The university declined to comment for this article beyond a two-sentence statement that said its officials are reviewing the closure while they establish a formal recreational swim policy.

A few highlights from Internet comments on The Washington Post‘s and TBD’s recent coverage of the swim hour: “Should a minuscule minority force the overwhelming majority [to] abide by their rules or should it be the other way around?” “Western society should not accommodate to Islam on this point; it is Islam that should change.” And in rebuttal: “Come on, folks. An hour a week — what’s the big deal?” “It’s not an unreasonable request. ‘Women’ is like half the population.”

Many comments not quoted here could easily be considered racially offensive.

Despite the naysayers, Sisters’ Splash, as it’s called, is not the only special accommodation that a college has made for Muslim students. George Washington already has foot baths for pre-prayer rituals, and a handful of other institutions — including the University of Michigan-Dearborn and George Mason University — have them as well. In 2008, at the request of female Muslim students, Harvard University ran a one-semester pilot program that reserved six hours a week for female students only at one of its lesser-used gyms, though the program was discontinued after that semester. There’s also Gamma Gamma Chi Sorority Inc., an Islamic-based sorority that has five regional chapters, though not all are active.

Shelley Mountjoy, a doctoral student at George Mason who briefly attended George Washington as an undergraduate, doesn’t much care what goes on at private colleges. But she takes issue with the foot baths at George Mason and with other religious accommodations at public universities. She is afraid that policies like the female-only swim hour will have a domino effect and spread to other colleges. “I don’t want my tuition dollars paying to accommodate somebody’s religion,” she said. “It’s not the entire campus’s religion. We don’t all have to subscribe to Islamic law.”

Because George Washington is a private university, there are no constitutional issues with the swim hour, said Ayesha N. Khan, legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Should a similar program start up at a public university, the presence of church-state issues would depend on the many facts of the situation, such as whether access is religion-specific, Khan said.

Mountjoy, who serves on the boards of Atheist Alliance International and the national Secular Student Alliance, is also the founder and president of the Secular Student Alliance chapter at George Mason. She said that although some criticism of the swim hour and other services might stem from a bias against Muslim people, she takes issue with any type of religious accommodation. “I actually think that it’s in everybody’s best interest to keep religion out of our public schools,” she said. “I would react the same if this was a Christian-only swimming hour.”

Students say the criticism is mostly coming from off-campus. Shaeera Tariq, a sophomore at George Washington and vice president of the Muslim Students’ Association, helped initiate the swim hour. She said nobody really knew about it until the Hatchet article came out — and as it happens, she is a reporter at the paper and she pitched the article to her editor. “It definitely sparked a lot of debate amongst people, but it seems to me there is a definite positive sentiment on campus and people are in favor of it,” she said. “We’re not closing down the mall or something for an hour. We’re just closing down a pool that wasn’t used very often in the first place.”

John L. Esposito, an Islamic studies professor and founding director of Georgetown University‘s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, said many of the negative reactions undoubtedly stem from an “Islamophobia.”

“It’s very clear that there’s a good chance many of them have a real problem accepting Muslims or Islam, and we’ve got to deal with that. In a pluralistic society, that form of bigotry and racism — we’ve dealt with it before and we’ve got to deal with it now,” Esposito said, referring to civil rights struggles. “It seems to me this is a perfectly understandable thing that we should be doing. All of these members of the community pay tuition and so faculty and administrators have to always be open to responding to and accommodating the needs of people.”

Esposito cited numerous other ways institutions serve different groups: parking for people with disabilities, campus chapels for various religions, and excusing attendance for students celebrating religious holidays other than the traditionally recognized Christmas or Easter. “If there’s a segment of the community that can benefit from an accommodation, you make it when you can,” he said. “The fact is, they have rights and you have to accept it.”

Zahin Hasan, president of the Muslim Students’ Association, said the number of women — Muslim and non-Muslim — who attend the swim hour varies. But the point is that the college is serving more students, better. “What I can’t understand is how utilizing an underused service, such as a gym pool, is a bad thing,” Hasan said in an e-mail. “Very few people know about the pool, and even fewer use it. The benefits of Sisters’ Splash far outweigh the few inconveniences it may present.” But, he added, a “great majority” of George Washington students have shown support for the swim hour.

According to a 2005 Gallup report, gender inequality is one of American women’s top concerns about “the Muslim or Islamic world.” (Notably, many Muslim women perceive the promiscuity, pornography and public indecency portrayed in Hollywood images as mistreatment of women in the Western world, the report says.) It’s an issue that is mentioned frequently in online comments about the swim hour. One person wrote, “If Muslim women are too modest to wear ordinary swimsuits when they swim, then maybe they should stop swimming and go see a psychiatrist. Teaching sexual repression is wrong; making women feel that they are bad and wicked merely for having female bodies is wrong.” Another wrote, “If because of religious convictions they chose not to exercise that freedom, the rest of society should not validate it by accommodating it.”

But the swim hour’s proponents — and there seem to be many — point out that about half of the student population can participate. And accusations of racism are not difficult to come by. “We’ve seen a number of these kinds of programs around the country. I think it goes way beyond Muslim women; I think there are enough women who would be more comfortable swimming in a same-sex environment that it would be of interest to women of all faiths in America,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “There is a cottage industry of Muslim-bashers that look for any opportunity to marginalize American Muslims or to demonize Islam, and any denomination of Islam in our society is going to be targeted by these people.”

There is more to the issue than religion, though. Erin E. Buzuvis, an associate professor of law at Western New England College and co-founder and contributor to The Title IX Blog, said it’s unclear whether barring men from the pool constitutes a violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the law requiring gender equity in educational programs at federally funded schools and colleges. Men can still swim 95% of the time, so they’re not completely excluded. And if the program’s purpose is to accommodate a religious group, rather than women in general, that could work in the university’s favor.

“The university might have a plausible defense that while this would technically be a form of gender discrimination, that they’re doing it to accommodate a student’s religion,” Buzuvis said. “If that weren’t an issue, I would say a female-only swim hour would be highly questionable under Title IX.”

Muslim students’ female-only swim at GWU makes waves

Hearst Magazines chairwoman Cathie Black will become the first female chancellor of the city’s 1.1 million-student school system, replacing Joel I. Klein, who has served as chancellor since 2002. Klein is leaving to become an executive vice president at News Corp.

Bloomberg praised Black, a Chicago native who spent eight years at USA Today as president, publisher, board member and Gannett Co. executive vice president, as a “world-class manager.” The billionaire mayor, who often eschews traditional resumes for government posts, said Black’s business skills make her an ideal leader of educators and students.

“She understands that we have to make sure that our kids have the skill sets to partake in the great American dream,” Bloomberg said. “In the end, I picked somebody who I have confidence is the right person for this job at this time.”

The appointment will require a waiver from the state Department of Education because Black is not a certified teacher. The mayor said Klein will stay on until the end of the year.

Black attended parochial schools in Chicago and sent her own children to private boarding schools in Connecticut.

She has been on Fortune magazine’s “50 Most Powerful Women in Business” list and is the author of a book called “Basic Black: The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life).” She will be the first woman to lead the New York City school system.

At Hearst, she oversees titles including Esquire; Good Housekeeping; O, the Oprah magazine and Popular Mechanics.

Black’s appointment reflects Bloomberg’s view that success in business translates to similar achievements in public service.

“There is no one who knows more about the skills our children will need to succeed in the 21st century economy,” Bloomberg said at a City Hall news conference with Klein and Black.

Before Klein joined the Bloomberg administration, he was with media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG. Previously, he was an assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration. He headed the U.S. Justice Department‘s antitrust division for nearly four years, where his work included launching the case to break up Microsoft Corp.

Unlike Black, Klein grew up in New York City and attended public schools.

As chancellor, he often clashed with unions and with parent groups that complained of being denied a role in running the schools.

“Many parents will be glad to see Joel Klein leave as chancellor, who had no respect for their views or priorities,” said Leonie Haimson, who leads a parent advocacy group called Class Size Matters.

Ernest Logan, the president of the union that represents New York City principals, said Klein “had a rocky road” as chancellor but learned on the job.

Logan said he knows little about Black. “I’m now going to read her book,” he said.

Teachers union head Michael Mulgrew said: “I look forward to working with Ms. Black. As a teacher, I will help in any way I can to improve the education for the children of New York.”

Black told reporters she has had “limited exposure to unions” in her previous jobs.

Klein was appointed chancellor after Bloomberg won control of the school system and disbanded the Board of Education. Bloomberg and Klein have touted the progress that students have made under their watch, but the state Education Department said last summer that rising scores on standardized tests had been overstated because the tests had become too easy.

Black will likely serve no longer than the three years remaining in Bloomberg’s term.

“She’s had a career, so maybe she can have the ability to devote the next three years to public service,” Bloomberg said.

Publishing exec named new NYC schools chancellor