The University of Florida is considering a proposal that would give incoming students the option of taking classes during the spring and summer terms only, bypassing the fall semester, to ease the strain on its crowded facilities. Though most on campus seem to be in favor of providing an opportunity for nontraditional scheduling, a state law must be altered for the university to move ahead with the plan. Joseph Glover, the university’s provost, pitched the idea at a Florida Board of Governors meeting last week; he described it as a productive, efficient way to admit more students to a university for which there is high-demand. “U.F. is a large institution and, basically, in the fall semester the Gainesville campus is full to capacity,” Glover said. “We do have extra capacity in spring, after winter graduation, and lots of capacity in the summer. So the thought came to us, what’s so sacred about fall-spring? What if we offered our students the ability to be spring-summer? We see more and more students who are opting for innovative programs. I think there would be a market for students who would be interested in doing this for a variety of reasons.” ON THE WEB: In the midnight hour MORE FROM INSIDE HIGHER ED: School’s (NOT) out for the summer The idea is still in its nascent stages, but Glover imagines that the university would give applicants the option of stating their preference for fall-spring only, spring-summer only, or either up front. Students in spring-summer format would not be blocked from taking fall classes altogether, just courses in residence. In other words, students on this alternative schedule could do things like study abroad or enroll in distance education courses. This limitation would apply for the entire time these student spend at the university — and thus differs significantly from the way many colleges admit some first-year students for the spring semester, but those students are from then on enrolled on a standard schedule. This year, the university has nearly 6,400 first-time freshmen, and Glover notes that the incoming class size has remained relatively static for the past three years. If the spring-summer option is offered, he said the university would expand its incoming class by about 250 students who would take advantage of it, while maintaining the average 6,400 students in the traditional fall-spring model. Glover added, however, that the university is considering yet another option: limiting the spring-summer scheduling option to incoming transfer students only. In either case, student leaders on campus seem to appreciate the administration’s move to give them more control over their own scheduling. “I think it’s a great initiative to maintain enrollment from our students in these semesters where there seems to be a drop,” wrote Virlany Taboada, senior and treasurer of the Student Government, in an e-mail. “I’ve been a student that has gone to school fall, spring, and summer for my four years here and I can definitely say that taking classes in the summer has helped not only my [grade point average] but it’s a more relaxed environment that I think has contributed to my academic success. My hope would be that by having students not take classes in the fall we’ll see an increase in grade point average and perhaps a decrease in stress and anxiety levels.” Faculty leaders are also open to the idea. “It’s an innovative idea,” said Mary Ann Ferguson, chair of the Faculty Senate and professor in the university’s College of Journalism and Communications. “I’m glad to see the university is trying to better utilize our resources. I have some concerns about how that it’ll work with programs where students take an intro class in the fall and a more advanced class in the spring. Otherwise, I don’t see any serious downsides. I’m sure we’ll work through those issues.” As most university faculty members are nine-month employees, some would have to be encouraged to teach summer classes to help boost offerings for these students. Still, they would be paid on a supplemental contract for their extra work. “I suppose if faculty felt pressure to teach during the summer, there would be issues,” Ferguson said. “But I haven’t heard any strong resistance. We’re always able to find those willing to teach during the summer.” In order for the university to make this offer, however, it will have to ask the state legislature to change a statute. Current state law bars public institutions from requiring students who bring in at least nine credits of college credit upon entry — such as those from Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate classes — to attend at least one summer term. At the University of Florida, “virtually all” freshmen bring at least nine credits with them. Without revoking this exemption, the university, technically, would not be able to require students who voluntarily select the spring-summer enrollment option to take summer courses. “We need to speed student progress toward graduation and maximize use of our facilities,” said Glover, who noted that officials from other state institutions at the board meeting noted their support for institutional control over their own summer term policies. “This change would enable us to create this program.” Kelly Layman, board spokeswoman, confirmed the board’s support of this push for legislative change. She said this, in addition to a rewording of board policy, would ensure that Florida students that have Bright Futures Scholarships — the state’s lottery-funded merit-based scholarship — would still receive funds if they took advantage of the spring-summer scheduling. Currently, those receiving these scholarships are not eligible for funds if they enroll in summer courses. “We need higher baccalaureate attainment in Florida,” Layman said. “If this helps increase that, then the Board of Governors is for it.”

IOWA CITY — The hour when Ariana Kramer will begin her college career is fast approaching — and her parents are in an office supply store, disagreeing about hanging files, of all things. “She’ll need them,” her mother says. “I don’t think so,” her dad counters. Ariana, meanwhile, walks dreamily through the store, offering no opinion on this particular decision. She is, in fact, confident that she will have what she needs when she starts her freshman year at the University of Iowa . FRESHMEN: Class of 2014 doesn’t know cursive, Clint Eastwood BY THANKSGIVING: Some first-year students want to call it quits NAVIGATING COLLEGE: Authors offer updated advice She has mom, the family organizer, with her, and dad, the calm encourager. And they have “the list,” which mom printed from one of those “what-you’ll-need-at-college” websites. New laptop. Check. Comforter with matching sheets. Check. Laundry detergent. Body wash. Antacid. Check. Check. Check. Mind you, Robin and Paul Kramer aren’t those crazy college parents — not like the mother who, as relayed by one dean of students at one California college, stayed in her daughter’s dorm room with her for four nights to help her adjust (until the daughter’s roommate complained). Nor have they ignored barricades intended to keep parents from trying to register for classes for their children, or crashed student-only orientation events, which officials at universities across the country say happens more and more. Still, even for average parents, the letting go is difficult — more so, they and many others say, than it was for parents of college-bound freshmen in decades past. Robin Kramer recalls how her own parents, who never attended college, dropped her off with a trunk full of belongings at Drake University , also in Iowa, in 1978. She set up her room and attended orientation without them there. “It’s just what you did then,” she says. It was much the same for Paul, whose father took him to the University of Wisconsin in 1977 and then went fishing. “It was a culture shock,” he says. “I wasn’t sure I was going to survive.” Perhaps that is part of what makes this “process of leaving,” as Robin calls it, more difficult. It is, all at once, overwhelming and exciting for everyone involved. But some say it’s often hardest for parents, who remember the days of college when there were fewer support systems in place for students. “I’m supposed to shed a few tears and then send her to the world, right?” the rational Robin tells her emotional self as she considers 18-year-old Ariana, the eldest of their two children. That remains to be seen. ‘Cut the cord!’ So how did we get here, anyway? It’s not that saying goodbye was easy for parents of past generations. But these days, moms and dads have gone from reading books that tell us how to raise The Happiest Baby on the Block to new handbooks such as The Happiest Kid on Campus: A Parent’s Guide to the Very Best College Experience (for You and Your Child) . YOU and your child? Linda Bips, a psychology professor who advises parents on letting go, used to carry scissors into workshops. “Cut the cord!” she would tell them. It evoked the chuckles she was looking for. “But I don’t do that anymore, because no one would listen anyway,” says Bips, a professor at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., and author of Parenting College Freshmen: Consulting For Adulthood . The process, she has learned, has to be gradual. Marshall Duke, a psychology professor at Emory University in Atlanta, has been giving those kinds of talks for three decades and also has noted more parents struggling. For one, they’re more connected than ever, by Facebook and text messages and, increasingly, online video chat. They’re also often paying huge sums of money on their children’s education. “So they think that gives them license to intervene as they would in other investments,” says Duke, who also encourages parents to take a step back, even when it goes against the fiber of their very being. He wants them, in effect, to let their children falter, to figure things out for themselves, to become adults. For Ariana Kramer, it means giving up the comfort of what she freely calls the “bubble” she grew up in, the quiet home and highly ranked schools in suburban Chicago where her main task in life was to study hard and get herself where she is today. In physical distance, it wasn’t so far from the working-class neighborhoods where her parents grew up. The Kramers both marvel at the freedom they had as kids, riding city buses as preteens and able to stay out with friends until the street lights came on. That was their signal that it was time to go home. They went to neighborhood schools. Their friends lived across the street. They walked home for lunch. “When we were growing up, there were no Amber Alerts,” says Paul, who is 50. After they finished college and married, the Kramers eventually moved to their current home. Paul worked his way into medical sales and Robin, who is 49, created an at-home job for herself by managing businesses of lawyers and other self-employed professionals. It became apparent how different their children’s lives would be when they found themselves arranging “play dates” and driving them from activity to activity. “You had to be so much more involved,” Robin says — partly because, like a lot of people, they had fewer children to focus on than the average family of generations past. Ariana worked in the summers, eventually becoming a counselor at a Wisconsin camp she attended for years. That helped her become more independent, she says. But even she’ll acknowledge that the thought of taking the train or bus into the city, as her parents did, is still daunting. Over this past summer, she took on household duties — doing laundry, loading the dishwasher, learning how to write a check — to help prepare her for that real world she’s anticipating. In August, she moved in to her dorm at Iowa on the first day possible, so she had extra time to get her bearings. “I like simple,” she says. “I need simple.” Times are a-changin’ By many estimations, the Kramers are a low-drama family. But even they are having their prickly moments when they arrive in Iowa City, and that’s to be expected in this time of heightened emotions, experts say. Ariana rolls her eyes, for instance, when her mom suggests that she put her class assignments in her BlackBerry calendar. “Mom, I’m not like you. You’re way, too, uh …” — Ariana pauses and chooses her words carefully when she remembers her words are being monitored by a reporter — “better organized than I am.” It’s all part of the subtle push and pull that has been happening all summer, her mother says. One minute it’s “I can do it myself!” The next, Ariana is asking, “Mom, can you help me with this?” Robin is having her own internal struggles, trying to step back but finding it a challenge. “Let’s be real. As a mom, sometimes it’s just easier to do it yourself,” she says, as she stands amid boxes and unpacked suitcases in the room Ariana will share with a roommate. It’s nothing fancy, your basic 1920s-era dorm room, upgraded with an air conditioner that is welcomed on a late summer day in muggy Iowa. “Thank God I have you guys. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to do this,” Ariana says, as her mother deals out tasks. Per Robin’s instructions, mother and daughter unpack her clothes first, as Paul sets up the clock radio, the portable telephone and the microwave. For him, the dorm room and this whole visit make him a bit wistful: “I wish it were me,” he says. That, too, is a normal parental response to this transition, says Bips, the Muhlenberg College psychologist who’s also a baby boomer and remembers “never trusting anyone over 30″ back in her own college days. “Life is more serious as you get older. There’s more loss. There’s more responsibility,” she says “So I would guess people in their 50s, who have to pay for college and worry about their jobs and the economy — yeah, wouldn’t it be nice to go back?” Some parents also feel nostalgic as the realization hits that their role — one of their main purposes in life — is changing, says Duke, the Emory psychologist: “If it’s a first child — my gosh, that’s a sobering signal about the progress of life.” Increasingly, colleges and universities have noted the support parents need in letting go, so much that they are starting to formalize the goodbye. At St. Olaf College in Minnesota, incoming freshmen are shown a video with their smiling, crying parents waving goodbye as one big group. First-year students at the University of Chicago, meanwhile, walk their parents to the university gate as bagpipes play in what some university staff call the “parting of the seas.” At Drexel University ‘s LeBow College of Business in Philadelphia, a goodbye reception includes an unofficial “crying room,” set up with tissues and a counselor. It’s kind of a gentle joke, but one that’s meant to send a message. “The idea was that we understand this is a major change for everybody,” says Ian Sladen, LeBow’s assistant dean of undergraduate programs. “It’s just as tough for parents — probably tougher, really.” But in the end, the message from universities and colleges is the same: Parents, please go home. At the University of Iowa, there is no formal goodbye ceremony. The university does, however, have an orientation and newsletter for parents and an advisory board, where any concerns are addressed. Meanwhile, Ariana also is taking a class called “The College Transition,” a relatively new course that helps freshmen ease into college life. “I clearly need a course like that to survive,” she says, her eyes widening for emphasis. Courses like these, often referred to as “University 101,” are becoming more common on college campuses. The aim is to turn out students who are independent and ready for the workplace — without their parents in tow. “It was almost a badge of honor 30 years ago when students couldn’t make it,” says Sladen at Drexel. “No one would be proud of that today.” And that should help put parents at ease, he says. ‘Make the most of it’ After nearly three days together in Iowa, the moment for Ariana to say goodbye to her parents and 16-year-old brother Chase finally arrives. Her parents get a little philosophical over sushi. “If they ask you ‘What’s the best time of your life?’ I think everybody will say college,” her dad says. “So make the most of it.” “Have fun,” her mom adds. “But don’t forget about the academics.” As her parents say goodbye, Ariana takes on the role of comforter. “I’ll call you,” she says as she hugs her mom, who begins to tear up. Ariana grabs dad and then her brother, who’s also starting to cry. She teases him: “If you break anything in my room, you’re in trouble.” They laugh. Chase, of anyone, has seemed the saddest about his sister leaving: “I think she’ll be OK as long as she copes with everything,” he had said the day before. “Oh, she will,” her mom assured him. “She’s a coper.” And it is true, Robin and Paul have faith in their daughter. “Basically, I think she’s very grounded and has a good head on her shoulders,” Robin says. She pauses. “But I’ll still be thinking, ‘Did she remember to do X, Y and Z?’” Ariana’s family departs, and the new freshman looks content, if not a little lost. She leaves her door open (that’s how you meet people, her resident adviser said). She looks around her room. “It’s weird,” she says. “What do I do now?” It won’t be long before she phones home. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Every year, the scene plays out in classrooms across the nation. A child clings to his mother, tears welling in his eyes as he pleads with her to stay a few moments longer. The first day of kindergarten is an exciting time for parents and children, but it can also be stressful, especially for kids who have never spent significant time away from Mom and Dad. The good news is that psychologists say separation anxiety is generally short-lived and there are time-tested methods to help reduce everyone’s tension. The root of the problem Experts say separation anxiety can be spurred by biology and environment. “What’s known about separation anxiety is there’s not really one single cause for it,” said Wendy Bravo, a marriage and family therapist based in Reno “If the child tends to be more anxious, you know, anxiety-prone, there are certain things in the environment that will trigger it.” In other words, there are certain children who simply are born anxious. “Different kids have different strengths and weaknesses,” said Kristen Davis-Coelho, a psychologist for Renown Behavioral Health in Reno. “Some are much more adventurous, really like new experiences, and other ones are a little more tentative. Sometimes it can surprise a parent.” Biology or not, family psychologist and syndicated columnist John Rosemond said he believes parents almost always play a significant role in the problem. “When you find a child of school age, kindergarten, first grade, it is almost always associated with parents and specifically a mother who has had difficulty separating from the child from day one,” he said. The good news? In most cases, separation anxiety is quickly reversible. Davis-Coelho said only about 5% of children suffer from separation anxiety disorder, a severe form that lasts longer than a few weeks. Advance planning Bravo said children who are prone to anxiety tend to do better when they know what to expect each day, so she suggests getting them settled into a predictable schedule early. “The child would have their time to eat, their time to go to sleep,” she said. “Maybe a couple of weeks before they start school, they can start a new routine that won’t change when school starts.” Davis-Coelho agreed that advance parental planning can make a big difference. She said parents can do other little things, too, like drive their child to school before classes even start. “Show them where you’re going to be dropping them off, where they’re going to get to play at recess,” she said. “Or pretending. Playing school. Actually getting the toys, having the kid be the teacher and the parent be the teacher. Playing school bus if they’re going to be riding the school bus, where they walk down to where their bus stop is and the parent pulls up in their car and pretends to be the school bus.” The goal, she said, is to make school feel familiar, so the transition is less difficult. Rosemond said his approach to treating separation anxiety is unorthodox because he actually recommends against prolonged conversations about a child’s issues. “Most professionals are going to tell parents to reassure the child and sit down and talk to the child,” he said. “I am absolutely convinced, and my experience confirms this, that the more you talk to the child about the problem, the worse it gets.” So, who’s right? Davis-Coelho said she believes different strategies work with different children. Ultimately, it’s up to parents to decide what approach is resonating with their child. Crying fits One thing everyone agrees on is that parents should nip meltdowns in the bud. That means the best thing a parent can do if their child is crying is leave. “The parents have got to say, ‘We’ve talked about this, and we’re not going to talk about it anymore. You’re going into class, and I’m leaving,’” Rosemond says. “It’s got to be very, very short and sweet.” Bravo and Davis-Coelho agree. “Keeping the amount of time that you let that go on to a minimum is important,” Davis-Coelho said. “The longer the child is feeling that level of panic and upset, the more the memory is getting burned into their head at how awful it is.” Planning an exit Although it’s difficult to leave a child in tears, Rosemond said parents need to be tough. “These parents have this anxiety that this reflects some deep-seated psychological issue that has to be resolved,” he said. “I say to parents, ‘No, there’s no deep-seated psychological issue here at all. It’s just that this child has never learned to comfortably separate from you because of your anxieties. You have to be the actor here. You have to suck it up. The minute the child sees that you have no anxieties whatsoever, the child’s going to be fine. Even if the child cries … it’s no problem. The schools are used to dealing with these things.’” Experts say that most anxious children will stop crying within 15 to 20 minutes of their parents’ departure, and they will then join the class. “Eventually, they’ll calm down,” Bravo said. “Some kids will be different than others if they have a different temperament. … The parent has to be really firm and just leave and let the teacher take care of it. Many times, just 10, 15 minutes later, they will go away and the child will slowly get used to the new environment.” The day after Often, the first day is the toughest, but Davis-Coelho said parents also can take steps to make the rest of the week go smoothly. “The first strategy you can use is developing what I call a special ritual in the morning between you and your child,” she said, “a particular way of saying goodbye. A phrase that you both repeat to each other about seeing each other later. A special handshake. Some sort of ritual in the morning. … Every morning you say goodbye in that particular way.” Pay attention Most children will have conquered their separation anxiety within a month, experts say. If the problem drags on, there might be a broader problem. “If it’s interfering with their functioning or with the family’s functioning, if it’s causing a lot of stress or interfering with them going to school, making friends, probably at that point therapy should be sought,” Davis-Coelho said. In the unlikely case that it comes to that, Bravo said parents should consider a family appointment because the child could be reacting to something unexpected. “Look at if there are any major changes going on in the family, for instance divorce, moving to a different neighborhood, different school, someone who died recently,” she said. “If the parents think that this is a problem, you know, the separation anxiety is becoming a problem, I would recommend they seek treatment that includes family therapy because many times the child is just reflecting something else that’s going on in the family.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Slow readers of the world, uuuuuuuu…niiiiite! At a time when people spend much of their time skimming websites, text messages and e-mails, an English professor at the University of New Hampshire is making the case for slowing down as a way to gain more meaning and pleasure out of the written word. Thomas Newkirk isn’t the first or most prominent proponent of the so-called “slow reading” movement, but he argues it’s becoming all the more important in a culture and educational system that often treats reading as fast food to be gobbled up as quickly as possible. “You see schools where reading is turned into a race, you see kids on the stopwatch to see how many words they can read in a minute,” he said. “That tells students a story about what reading is. It tells students to be fast is to be good.” Newkirk is encouraging schools from elementary through college to return to old strategies such as reading aloud and memorization as a way to help students truly “taste” the words. He uses those techniques in his own classroom, where students have told him that they’ve become so accustomed from flitting from page to page online that they have trouble concentrating while reading printed books. READING: Proficiency at 4th grade linked to nation’s success COLLEGE: One-third need remedial reading, math “One student told me even when he was reading a regular book, he’d come to a word and it would almost act like a hyper link. It would just send his mind off to some other thing,” Newkirk said. “I think they recognize they’re missing out on something.” The idea is not to read everything as slowly as possible, however. As with the slow food movement, the goal is a closer connection between readers and their information, said John Miedema, whose 2009 book “Slow Reading” explores the movement. “It’s not just about students reading as slowly as possible,” he said. “To me, slow reading is about bringing more of the person to bear on the book.” Miedema, a technology specialist at IBM in Ottawa, Ontario, said little formal research has been done on slow reading, other than studies on physical conditions such as dyslexia. But he said the movement is gaining ground: the 2004 book In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement is Changing the Cult of Speed sprang from author Carl Honore’s realization that his “rushaholism” had gotten out of hand when he considered buying a collection of “one-minute bedtime stories” for his children. In a 2007 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education , the executive humanities editor at Harvard University Press describes a worldwide reading crisis and calls for a “revolution in reading.” “Instead of rushing by works so fast that we don’t even muss up our hair, we should tarry, attend to the sensuousness of reading, allow ourselves to enter the experience of words,” Lindsay Waters wrote. Though slow, or close reading, always has been emphasized at the college-level in literary criticism and other areas, it’s also popping up in elementary schools, Miedema said. Mary Ellen Webb, a third-grade teacher at Mast Way Elementary School in Durham, N.H., has her students memorize poems upward of 40 lines long and then perform them for their peers and parents. She does it more for the sense of pride her students feel but said the technique does transfer to other kinds of reading — the children remember how re-reading and memorizing their poems helped them understand tricky text. “Memorization is one of those lost things, it hasn’t been the ‘in’ thing for a while,” she said. “There’s a big focus on fluency. Some people think because you can read quickly … that’s a judge of what a great reader they are. I think fluency is important, but I think we can err too much on that side.” It’s all about balance, said Patti Flynn, an assistant principal in Nashua, N.H., and mother of a 10-year-old girl. Her school has offered, and her daughter has participated in, numerous reading challenges that reward students for reaching certain milestones — a pizza party for a class that reads 100 books, for example. Though such contests may appear to emphasize speed rather than reading for pleasure or comprehension, they also are good incentives for children who weren’t motivated to read, she said. The challenges have encouraged parents to make reading a priority at home, Flynn said. “The goal shouldn’t be to be whipping through a certain number of pages, the goal should be to make sure kids are gaining some conceptual understanding,” she said. Her daughter, Lily, said she considers herself a “medium-speed” reader and had to increase her speed to finish about 10 books for her classroom’s 100-book challenge. But she said she enjoyed the process and feels like she understood and remembers what she read. “It was fun,” she said. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

BOSTON (AP) — They gather on statehouse steps with signs and bullhorns, risking arrest. They attend workshops on civil disobedience and personal storytelling, and they hold sit-ins and walk out of class in protest. They’re being warned that they could even lose their lives. Students fighting laws that target illegal immigrants are taking a page from the civil rights era, adopting tactics and gathering praise and momentum from the demonstrators who marched in the streets and sat at segregated lunch counters as they sought to turn the public tide against racial segregation. “Their struggle then is ours now,” said Deivid Ribeiro, 21, an illegal immigrant from Brazil and an aspiring physicist. “Like it was for them, this is about survival for us. We have no choice.” Undocumented students, many of whom consider themselves “culturally American” because they have lived in the U.S. most of their lives, don’t qualify for federal financial aid and can’t get in-state tuition rates in some places. They are drawing parallels between themselves and the 1950s segregation of black and Mexican-American students. “I think it’s genius,” said Amilcar Shabazz, chairman of the W.E.B. DuBois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts . “If you want to figure out how to get your story out and change the political mood in America, everybody knows the place to start your studies is the civil rights movement.” For two years, Renata Teodoro lived in fear of being deported to her native Brazil, like her mother, brother and sister. She reserved her social contact for close friends, was extra careful about signing her name anywhere, and fretted whenever anyone asked about her immigration status, because she been living illegally in the United States since she was 6. Yet on a recent afternoon, Teodoro gathered with other illegal immigrants outside the Massachusetts Statehouse with signs, fliers and a bullhorn — then marched the streets of Boston, putting herself in danger of arrest by going public but hoping her new openness would prompt action on the DREAM Act, a federal bill to allow people like her a pathway to citizenship via college enrollment or military service. “I don’t care. I can’t live like this anymore,” said Teodoro, 22, a leader of the Student Immigration Movement and a part-time student at UMass-Boston. “I’m not afraid, and I have to take a stand.” The shift has been building, said Tom Shields, a doctoral student at Brandeis University in Waltham who is studying the new student movement. “In recent months, there has been an interest in connecting the narrative of their struggle to the civil rights effort for education,” Shields said. The movement has gained attention of Congress. Sens. Dick Durbin , D-Ill., and Richard Lugar , R-Ind., sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano in April, asking her to halt deportations of immigrant students who could earn legal status under DREAM, which stands for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors act, and which they’re sponsoring. Last month, three illegal immigrant students demanding to meet with Arizona Sen. John McCain about DREAM were arrested and later detained for refusing to leave his Tucson office. High school and college students in Chicago and Denver walked out of class this year to protest Arizona’s tough new law requiring immigrants to carry registration papers. In December, immigrant students staged a “Trail of Dreams” march from Miami’s historic Freedom Tower to Washington, D.C., to raise support for DREAM. Similar student immigrant groups have sprung up at the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Houston . By attaching themselves to the civil rights movement, Shabazz said, the immigrant students can claim the moral high ground and underdog status of the debate. “The question now is … can they convince moderate, middle-of-the-road, independent voters to support them?” he said. The Rev. William Lawson, an 81-year-old civil rights leader and retired pastor of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston, called the student activists’ tactics courageous and said he’d like to meet them. But Lawson, who marched with Martin Luther King Jr ., cautioned student immigrant activists to prepare for peers getting arrested, deported or possibly killed. “You do have to expect consequences. Many civil rights activists faced injury, sometimes death,” said Lawson. “And I’m not sure how many of these (students) understand the fundamental philosophy of nonviolence.” Students have to keep in mind the audience they’re trying to win over, said Lonnie King, 73, a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the group responsible for sit-ins at segregated restaurants across the South in the 1960s. “They need to understand that the bulk of folks are in the middle,” King said. “They have to coach their message to make it broadly appealing.” In Massachusetts, hundreds of student activists have gone through training by Marshall Ganz, a public policy lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School and a former organizer with the late Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers movement. At special camps, students attend workshops on civil disobedience, storytelling and media outreach. Students who have attended the workshops even continue to use the well-known farm workers’ rallying clap at the end of organizing meetings. “They know that clap,” Ganz said, “because I taught them that clap. It’s all about the experience.” Teodoro said the training changed her life and showed her the cause was larger than herself. During the rally last week in Boston, she led a march from the Massachusetts Statehouse to Sen. Scott Brown’s office at the John F. Kennedy federal building, which also houses U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices. Along with Carlos Savio Oliveira, 22, of Falmouth, Mass., another illegal immigrant, the pair walked into the federal building to hand Brown’s staff 1,500 letters of support for the DREAM Act. Outside supporters wore T-shirts with the words “Brown is beautiful” — a pun referring to the Chicano movement chant and Brown’s well-publicized nude photo spread in Cosmopolitan magazine as a college student. Brown, whose office was previously the site of a sit-in by the same group, has not said whether he supports the bill. In September, Teodoro and a dozen other students also took a week-long trip from Boston to the South, with Shields driving. Along the way, they met with black former students who desegregated Clinton High School in Tennessee and Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. They visited civil rights museums and filmed the journey for a planned documentary. But the highlight was meeting Carlotta Walls LaNier , a member of the Little Rock Nine. Teodoro cornered LaNier at a book signing of her memoir, “A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School.” “I went up to her at the signing and told her my story and tried not to cry,” Teodoro said. “She listened. Then, she hugged me.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.