With PC Pro Schools college tuition stay low and affordable for everyone but with other college tuition fees being at a record high, dropping out during a course isn’t something to be done lightly. It will affect the rest of your life, and can drastically impact your earning potential for the future. Unless you’re financially independent or an entrepreneur with a winning invention, dropping out of college is never a good idea.

Money

The most common reason students drop out of college is money. College tuition isn’t cheap, and even if you have parents to help, living costs are rising all the time. There are financial aid schemes for students in trouble, but it isn’t always the answer.

Students should never just drop out without discussing the issue with their parents, or the college.

Paid Work

This reason is related to the first really. Many students need to take on a job as well as study to survive. Whether it’s to pay for college tuition, accommodation or the beer at weekends, it all takes a toll. Working 20 hours a week as well as full-time study wears you down and can break you.

It’s a significant contributor to dropouts throughout the country. Again, students shouldn’t drop out over work commitments without speaking to the PC Pro School Admin, or parents first. There are always answers to problems, and it isn’t always the most obvious one that’s best.

Unprepared

College isn’t something you just drop into on a whim. It takes work, interviews, preparation and a lot of paperwork to get into a good school. College tuition isn’t cheap, so provisions have to be made long in advance to cover fees and living costs for your time there.

Sometimes, students just aren’t prepared for living away from home, looking after themselves, the expense, or the workload of some courses. As a PC Pro School freshman, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with this new way of life and the new responsibilities you have inherited.

Homesickness

It was mentioned above, but homesickness is one of the biggest contributors to college dropouts in the country. It may sound silly, but many people have trouble adjusting to life outside their town, or home. College counselors across the country are dealing with these cases more and more.

It’s more than a simple missing mommy moment, it’s about the whole experience of being away from the safety of everything you have ever known. Some people embrace it, others can’t handle it.

Sickness or Injury

This is another significant factor in dropout numbers. Students who play sports, or undertake extreme activities stand a high risk of this. Sickness and injury can cause students to miss class time, and eventually drop out of it gets severe enough.

Many colleges like PC Pro Schools can make arrangements to accommodate sick students if they want to continue learning so it’s always worth talking to the school about it.

College tuition is a privilege and should be viewed as such. That means giving it your very best effort to get through it and survive. It isn’t all about the learning, the “college experience” is all about teaching you how to live and work with people, how to interact, and how to juggle competing priorities. All these are valuable lessons you’re going to need to learn at some point.

I’m glad I don’t have to go to college any more. The outlook for education and employment looks dismal for young people right now. With college tuition fees on the up, and prospects once graduated on the way down, it isn’t a good time to be young.

Our country prides itself on its educational standards. While we still have much work to do to include poorer students into the fold, we are making headway. Contrary to that are the colleges that charge a premium for education. They have effectively priced all but the wealthiest out of their college tuition unless they receive a scholarship or qualify for financial aid.

This is a list of the most expensive colleges in the country for the educational year 2010/11.

The most expensive college in the country is Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville New York. It charges a staggering $57,556 per year. College tuition makes up almost $44,000 of that, with fees and board making up the rest.

1. Next up is Columbia University, also in New York. They charge $54,385 per year. College tuition is $43,815 of that, while the remainder is board. While one of our premier universities, you really have to pay for that privilege. Half of all students here receive some kind of grant to pay for their education.
2. Bard College in New York is the third most expensive college in the country, coming a close second to Columbia. It charges $54,275 per year, $42,465 for college tuition and the rest on fees and board.This college allows eligible students to pay tuition at a rate comparable to a public university in their home states. This lowers the cost considerably. Over 65 percent of students receive financial aid here.
3. Wesleyan University in Connecticut is the first non-New York college in our list. It charges $53,976 per year. Of that, $42,384 is for college tuition and fees, the rest is room and board. It markets itself as meeting the financial needs of all students who enroll there. That’s bound to be a big bill considering how much they charge.
4. Vanderbilt University in Nashville is next on the list. It charges $53,660 per year, with $40,602 of that as tuition and fees, and the rest board. As this university specializes in engineering, lab fees, books and equipment add a further $2,000 to that bill.
5. The University of Chicago is on the list too. At $53,604 per year, it’s not far behind the others. Of that, $41,091 is for tuition and fees and the rest on board. This doesn’t factor in living off campus, as city rates are very high in the Windy City.
6. The Harvey Mudd College in California is number 7 in the list. At $53,588 per year, it’s around the same amount as the others. $40,390 of that is college tuition and fee, while the rest if board. The high cost means over 80 percent of students need financial aid to get through.

These are just seven examples of expensive college tuition. With Obama wanting to increase graduate levels by 2020, he needs to start by getting these institutions under control.

For schools that have younger pupils, specifically those below college age, controlling what they do while on school computers can be a bit of a headache. School management software was needed once computers began to make their way into the building, even more so when the internet arrived.

Some schools have addressed computer misuse with stringent acceptable use policies, active policing of computers and even classroom contracts. While these are very effective, they are also quite adversarial. They give the student something to fight against, a target for frustration or anger, and a rallying point behind which to gather support.

There is no doubt that whatever method of student management you choose, a robust set of acceptable use policies in important. Students need to know the rules before they are expected to abide by them. These are expected, and while they are a physical barrier to bad behavior, they are such a way of life now that they don’t generally cause many problems on their own. It’s only when they are used as a weapon that the problems begin.

Classroom contracts are something of a contentious issue. While a bond to good behavior is laudable, the potential sanctions for not keeping it defeat the object of education. With the popular penalties being loss of computer use, being withdrawn from class or after-school punishments, only one of them don’t affect the child’s education.

Taking a learning tool away from a child, or restricting their access to it defeats the object of them being in school. Penalties are necessary to ensure compliance, but there has to be a better way.

Active policing of computers is an absolute necessity, but the method in which this is done affects how much confrontation there is.

There is another way. A cheap, effective method of controlling computer use in school, without conflict. The answer lies in classroom management software. Companies like Eye4you offer software packages that offer tools to manage digital classrooms effectively.

Their HDGuard product protects the integrity of the computer itself. It protects from viruses, trojans, hacking, and general destructive behavior to the operating system. It does this by having a secure partition within which is built a school approved operating system. Every time the computer is rebooted, this partition overwrites whatever was on the system and returns it to new.

They also offer NetControl2, which is a robust classroom management software tool. It allows the teacher to control all class computers from their own machine. It allows for thumbnail views of each student computer and the ability to remotely monitor what’s going on with each. It provides a tool to remotely terminate applications, to send files to student computers, and to collaborate with them.

The main benefit of this software is its ability to control access to the internet. Internet access is where flashpoints usually arise. Having it controlled by software takes the focus of frustration from the teacher, to the school management software policies, avoiding confrontation.

Software doesn’t have all the answers, but used intelligently, they can reduce problems and enhance IT security in schools.

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

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

Officials are worried about the impact on food safety, because large-animal veterinarians serve as inspectors at ranches and slaughterhouses.

“They’re basically on the front line when it comes to maintaining a safe food supply, not only in the U.S., but in products we export. Vets diagnose diseases that can be transferred from animals to humans,” says David Kirkpatrick, spokesman for the American Veterinary Medical Association.

A recent survey by the association found that only 2% of veterinary school students in 2010 graduating classes said they plan to work mostly with large, non-pet animals. Another 7% studied a mixed curriculum that included all types of animals, but the majority of those respondents lean toward pet care.

“We have known for years anecdotally that vets were having a difficult time finding people to work at their practice or selling it when they retire,” Kirkpatrick said.

“But now we know how big the problem is and how that will magnify over the years,” he said.

From 1998 to 2009, the number of small animal vets climbed to 47,118 from 30,255, while the number of farm-animal vets dropped to 5,040 from 5,553. And the AVMA found that large-animal vets often earn a lower salary: an average of $57,745 compared with $64,744 for small-animal vets, according to a 2008 survey.

The large-animal vet world is graying — half of farm-animal vets are older than 50, and only 4.4% are younger than 30. About a third of veterinarians working at the federal level are eligible to retire in the next three years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

At least six rural counties in California have just one large-animal veterinarian.

Stuart Hall, 28, a veterinarian in Visalia, Calif., said a single call can tie him up for four hours — time in which he can’t respond to emergencies.

“My worry is always that a farmer is going to try to take care of something themselves,” he said.

Hall was born in rural England and educated in London before his interest in working with cows brought him to Tulare County, the nation’s largest dairy producer, five years ago. He and his wife have a blog detailing his life as a farm vet.

“I just really like cows. They’re big, old gentle things,” he says.

Hall likes working outdoors, the drives through the country and the impact his expertise can have on food operations, he says.

But for pre-vet student Justeen Borrecco the decision to pursue a career in pet medicine was easy. She has been shoved, bruised and knocked down by the sheep she feeds every day as a student worker at the on-campus farm at California State University, Fresno.

“This is why I want to work with dogs and kitties. I don’t want to deal with anything bigger than me,” the 19-year-old said.

On Thursday she pulled on her farm boots, picked up bundles of hay and maneuvered her 130-pound frame around to feed dozens of ewes and lambs.

“But it’s still good experience. Anything I learn or help with, like vaccines or bandaging, can apply to other animals,” Borrecco said. The sophomore from Hanford, Calif., said it’s important to get as much hands-on time with animals before applying to vet school.

Several schools and states have tried to lure students to large-animal veterinary medicine.

At the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine, applicants interested in becoming farm-animal vets have an admissions edge. The university has slowly boosted the number of students interested in large-animal medicine to 11 of 127, double the number from four years ago. The vet school has also reached out to high schools in rural areas.

More than a dozen states, from Washington to Georgia, offer some type of loan repayment program or other incentives if students pledge to work in a region in need of large-animal vets. Vet students typically finish school with about $134,000 in debt, according to the AVMA.

Iowa State’s VSMART program allows students focused on farm animals to reduce by a year the amount of time it takes to get a veterinary medicine degree — a big deal when you’re talking about spending upward of $32,000 a year, Kirkpatrick said.

Federal legislators have introduced several bills to help increase the number of farm animal vets, including the Veterinary Services Investment Act, which is aimed at recruitment, helping vets expand their practices and providing financial assistance for students. The bill passed the House in September and is awaiting approval in the Senate.

The students who have chosen to work with large animals are committed to their choice.

Elizabeth Adam, 26, of Santa Maria, Calif., earned a degree in English and business at Loyola Marymount University, and later worked as a consultant at a law firm — but really dreamed of being a farm doctor.

“I was making good money but was miserable,” she said.

Adam is now in her second year at Fresno State’s pre-vet program.

“This is for me,” she said. “The outdoors and the late night emergency calls and the country — I’m ready for all of that.”

Concern for food safety as vet students pick pets over farms

Q: What conclusions can we draw about students’ sex lives from these columns?

A: These are wonderful sociological treasures in defining this sexual generation. The quote I love most is, “We’re not Baby Boomers. We’re not part of Generation X. We’re generation sex.” They’re speaking to students in their own language. They cover every extreme possible but primarily grapple with how confusing the current social, sexual landscape is on campus. The general sentiment seems to be that all rules have been thrown out the window. Chivalry is gone, dating is pass?, gender roles reversed. There’s no blueprint for how students are supposed to act with each other. The columnists are asking, “Is this really good for us?”

Q: Extremes, huh? Do you believe everything you read?

A: I would truly say with full confidence that the columns are giving attention to issues students are engaged in. They’re compressing the campus culture into 600 to 800 words a week. They’re trying to be sarcastic to retain readers. There is an element of the exaggerated or sensational embedded in some of the pieces. But it’s coming from students themselves.

Q: Did you find censorship?

A: It’s unfortunately fairly common and still tends to happen behind closed doors. In most cases, students are realizing they can and do fight back. The censorship comes into play 99% of the time when a single outside reader, an alumni or parent or administrator, sees the word “sex” and simply reacts. They don’t take time to really read the pieces. In a lot of cases, they would find they’re on the columnists’ side.

Q: What would you say to parents who are surprised or concerned by what they read?

A: I’ve told parents there are three things all students tend to have in common: They complain about parking. They figure out how to coordinate sleep and school. And they have to make choices related to sex. Students, whether we want to admit it or not, are wrestling with these issues. We all have sex in common, even those who remain chaste. And the columns deal as much with the abstinence side of things. I’d much rather put my kid on a campus in which discussion about it is allowed openly among peers.

Q: What has changed since the first campus sex advice columns appeared a decade ago?

A: Sex columns are truly no longer thought of as novelty items. They’re in all 50 states, all across Canada and in parts of Asia. They continue to cause controversy. As for the columnists, a growing camp seems to be using pseudonyms. In my interviews with columnists, the first wave never expressed regret over the writing but at times had moments of regret that their names are so easily searchable — by graduate schools, by potential employers, even first dates. It’s not something they can escape.

Sex columns ‘revolutionize’ college media?

The agency is now warning schools about the mistake after a fourth-grader’s parent discovered the error in the Civil War chapter of Our Virginia: Past and Present. The parent, Carol Sheriff, is also a history professor at the College of William and Mary.

Sheriff says blacks occasionally took up arms to defend their masters, but it was illegal to use blacks as soldiers in the Confederacy until toward the war’s end. None of those companies saw action on the battlefront and most worked involuntarily as laborers

Our Virginia author Joy Masoff told The Washington Post that she found the passage on the Internet.

Virginia textbook includes Civil War error on blacks in Confederacy