The average college student’s attire is so typical — t-shirts, jeans, sweats emblazoned with a university’s logo — that it might as well be described as a uniform. But a host of historically black colleges and universities have taken a firm stance against sloppy style by imposing a campus dress code of their own.

But a ban on cross-dressing at Morehouse College in Atlanta ignored larger issues, The Chronicle of Higher Education reports: for the past few years, black colleges have been campaigning against sneakers, baggy pants and slovenly t-shirts in an effort to impress visitors and donors, as well as prepare their students for the real world.

At Morehouse, the handful of men wearing women’s clothes wasn’t what prompted the dress code, according to Robert Michael Franklin, the college’s president. Instead, he says, it was the image of a “thug culture” on campus that he felt was harming the reputation of Morehouse, which is among the most storied black colleges in the country.

“There was a negative impact on student learning, on faculty morale, and on alumni satisfaction with the college due to the perception of unbridled freedom of personal expression,” he says.

At Savannah State University, school rules dictate that female students can’t bare their midriffs or backs. And since 2007, students at Paul Quinn College in Dallas who don’t sport “business casual” clothing can either pay a $100 fine or join president Michael J. Sorrell on his early morning jog.

But at least students at those schools won’t face a public shaming for failing to dress the part: a Brazilian university recently expelled a female student for wearing a mini-dress to class, and added insult to injury after buying newspaper ads to proclaim her immorality.

As hundreds of students descended upon McKeldin Mall today in protest of the elimination of the assistant provost for equity and diversity’s office, two Texas community college students are protesting for their right to protest.

Tarrant County College District, located in Fort Worth, Texas, places tight restrictions where students can stage protests, but Clayton Smith and John Schwertz Jr., two students at the university, are challenging the rules on the grounds of the First Amendment. They have filed a federal lawsuit against the college in Dallas.

The two students plan to hold a local incarnation of a national protests against weapons-bans on college campuses, but the university’s rules would confine the students’ demonstration to limited area and prohibit them from wearing symbolic empty holsters.

“I can’t tell you how many ways I’ve seen my name spelled, or heard it pronounced,” says College Park District 1 Councilman Patrick Wojahn. (Say woe-yahn, not “woe-john,” “woe-yan” or “yo-hahn” — though all three were used at Tuesday’s City Council meeting.)

So he’s confident that he did in fact win re-election in Tuesday’s council race — even if the chart posted in City Hall Tuesday says the winner was not Wojahn but Wojhan.

Christine Nagle, the other District 1 winner, had it even worse off. At least Wojahn appeared on the city’s ballots; she was replaced by a Christine Nagel.

“I’m glad everyone found me,” she said in an interview yesterday. “They know. They’re going to fix it. It’s okay.”

Lest we be accused of only calling attention to the negative, The Diamondback would like to point out that city election officials did not misspell “Bleau,” “Afzali” or “Gomoljak” — even if some pronunciations remained amusing.

As students march on the Administration building to demand the reinstatement of Cordell Black, who for nearly twenty years has served as the Associate Provost of Equity and Diversity and was ousted last week just days after the university, with much fanfare, reiterated a commitment to multiculturalism at a diversity forum, they’re in good company: past the state line in the Washington D.C., nine protesters were arrested this morning for rallying against health care in the Senate building.

After refusing to leave the office of Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), the protesters were charged with unlawful entry and taken away in handcuffs. Expect to see more of this sort of thing as the day unfolds: today thousands of Americans will flood their congressional representatives with calls urging them to vote against healthcare reform. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is getting in on the action, Philip Rucker of The Washington Post reports:

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is leading the “Hands Off Our Health Care!” rally and has said she plans to lead protesters through congressional office buildings for a series of “House calls” orchestrated to intimidate members against voting for health-care reform.

Patients First activists from Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia are expected at the rally, and other activists across the country plan to visit their local congressional offices.

Quick hits:

• Dave Eggers and Valentino Achak Deng, the subject of his book What is the What will lecture in Tydings at 5:30 p.m., telling the story of how Deng fled civil war in Sudan and ended up in the United States.
• The Off-Campus Student Programming Board is hosting free laser tag near at South Chapel fields near the Armory this afternoon.

At a time when journalism schools everywhere are grappling with the existential crisis beating down on the news industry, Columbia University may have found the answer.

Forget about DePaul University’s seminar course on twittering, or the journalism classes on entrepreneurship that have rolled out at Arizona State, University of North Carolina, and here. At Columbia, students learn through rap. Check out this video:

Marcus Afzali's first order of business? Telling Jack Robson we can do this on computers now.

Last night, College Park’s District 4 elected Marcus Afzali, a 24-year-old graduate student, as one of its next two City Council members. Although Afzali has said in the past that he won’t be the token student voice on the council, he’s definitely going to inject some youthful perspective into city discussions.

Don’t you wonder where there are other young people who were elected into public office yesterday? Sure you do.

This perky high school student gets to be on her county's school board for the next four years.

• In one of the more astonishing table-turns of yesterday’s elections around the country, a high school student became a school superintendent’s boss … more or less. CantonRep.com reports that 18-year-old Kathryn Knowles won a seat in Stark County, Ohio, to truly become a senior in charge of her own destiny. She also voted for the first time — good for you! Also, do you think future elections in Stark County will provide candidates’ ages along with their names? We’ll see.
• The Star-Ledger reports that Gabe Plumer, a 21-year-old senior at Johns Hopkins University, won a township committee seat in Alexandria, N.J. Plumer, a Republican, will be commuting between Alexandria and Baltimore to finish up his degree.
• Incredibly, Plumer isn’t the youngest public official to win office in New Jersey yesterday. That title might belong to 20-year-old Mitch Remig of Ocean County, reports the Asbury Park Press. Remig, a part-time student and part-time cop, was one of a slew of Republicans elected to his local township council. How about Jersey electing two guys in their twenties? And both being G.O.P. candidates? What are they drinking in Jersey? Actually don’t answer that.
• On the flip side, SUNY Buffalo student and Republican Tristan Daedalus, 21, was whipped by a 62-year-old candidate by a roughly 3-to-1 margin in his city council vote in Syracuse, N.Y. His district includes a sizable chunk of Syracuse University. Either students didn’t vote or they didn’t vote Republican, it seems.

Since today’s roundup essentially is quick hits, let’s move on to things happening today at the university.

• As reported in today’s edition of The Diamondback, students and faculty are hosting a meeting to address concerns and rumors (still unconfirmed) that the university clandestinely eliminated the Office of Equity and Diversity. The meeting is in Nyumburu Cultural Center at 6 p.m.
• Student Entertainment Events and the Sophomore Class Council are sponsoring a viewing of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets at 7 p.m. in the Hoff Theater — always fun for the kids.
• The Latino Student Union and other organizations are hosting “Surviving Gang Land,” a lecture from an ex-gang member who changed his ways in Jimenez Hall at 7 p.m.
• The Office of Multi-ethnic Student Education presents “The American Indian: Past, present and future,” which features Chief Billy Redwing Tayac of the Piscataway Nation. He’ll be speaking at 3 p.m. in the Maryland Room in Marie Mount Hall.

Bet the fratboys would line up around the block if the nurse giving vaccines looked like this

Because of the typical college lifestyle — cramped and crowded living conditions, lack of sleep, poor diet and frequency of random hookups — students are among the highest risk groups for contracting the swine flu. They’re even more likely to die from it.

But the vast majority say they won’t be getting a vaccine this year, a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found: seven out of ten Americans aged 18 to 29 say they won’t heed physicians warnings to get immunized.

Could it be because of the sense of invincibility young people are said to feel? Perhaps, if you’re judging by the answers these douchey GW fratboys gave to the Washington Post.

“I don’t need it,” said Sal Marchesano, 21, a senior. “They would have to come here to give me the shot. No. They would have to come to my room. When I’m free.”

[Matt] Stratton, a junior who said he wants to be a doctor, lives by a classic collegiate dictum — carpe diem, or seize the day. “There are any number of things I do,” he said. “I cross the street when the light’s not green. We’re talking about going skydiving.”

Or maybe YouTube has something to do with it. A video featuring Washington Redskins cheerleader Desiree Jennings, who has suffered from a rare neurolgical disorder believed to have been triggered by the swine flu shot she received, has gone viral. Black activist Louis Farrakhan posted an ominous video warning the American people that the vaccine is part of a dastardly plot to gut the worlds population.

“The Earth can’t take 6.5 billion people,” Farrakhan said recently at an event in Memphis commemorating the 14th anniversary of the Million Man March in Washington.

“We just can’t feed that many. So what are you going to do? Kill as many as you can. We have to develop a science that kills them and makes it look as though they died from some disease.”

Either way, the young’s blasé outlook on the disease has experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scrambling to find a reason. The most typical response to their surveys? Young people think the media has overblown the crisis.

Our bad.

Today, dear readers, is the first Tuesday (after the first Monday) in November. That means it is election day. Sadly, this is one o those years that ends in an odd number, so there is much less excitement. But here in College Park, every city council seat is up for grabs. And there are other important races to watch in Virginia, upstate New York and New Jersey.

Of course, it was only last year that Barack Obama was elected president. Since then, he has done a lot on higher education issues. But now his proposal could get more controversial. Inside Higher Ed reports that a paper put out by the Center for American Progress – the think tank most closely associated with the Obama administration – is pushing for more regulation of institutions of higher education in a new white paper:

The document, “Putting the Customer First in College,” calls on the U.S. Education Department to create an Office of Consumer Protection in Higher Education that would (1) pressure colleges to produce significantly better data on how well they serve students, (2) develop a system for making that data available for students to use in choosing a college, and (3) direct students unhappy with their colleges’ educational practices to federal, state, or accrediting officials who can help them resolve their complaints. …

If that language sounds vaguely familiar, it should — it echoes ideas inherent in [ Bush-era Education Secretary] Margaret Spellings’ Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which similarly bemoaned the lack of available data to help families and parents decide which institutions would best suit and serve them. …

And also unsurprisingly, officials of several college associations dismissed the need for another federal initiative that would pump yet more data into the public domain and, potentially, add to the information demands on colleges and universities. A solution in search of a problem, several of them suggested.

“I don’t think the problem is a lack of information for students — there is probably too much out there for them to wade through as it is,” said Frank Balz, vice president for research and policy analysis at the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. “And it’s hard to see how adding a layer of bureaucracy will improve anything.”

In a more local bit of Washington news, a second Georgetown student was attacked and called an anti-gay slur, and for the second time, a vigil was organized on the campus. The number of students at the rally doubled from 50 to 100.

Quick Hits

• More than 58 colleges charge more than $50,000 a year, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
• Mayor Adrian Fenty and the D.C. City Council are in a squabble over the board of the  University of the District of Columbia, which will soon have 10 vacancies on a 15-person board, the Washington Post reports.
• Ole Miss may stop playing its fight song, unless fans cease chanting “The South Will Rise Again” after it, according to the Associated Press. For the record, the Civil War ended 144 years ago.
• Baltimore is the 9th-most toxic city in the United States, according to Forbes magazine.

What to do today

• VOTE.

Public universities are starting to look increasingly like their private counterparts. Tuition is rising, as is selectivity, and private donors are increasingly footing the bill. These trends have led to many state universities’ recent rise to prominence, but according some experts quoted in a New York Times report from last week, they also signal a shift away from these universities’ public missions. The experts worry that as public universities accept more elite upper middle class students, they’ll do so at the expense of taking on students from lower on the socioeconomic scale.

“You can’t justify that subsidy for wealthier students,” says David E. Shulenburger, vice president for academic affairs at the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities.

But something public universities can now justify: holistic applications. Another story in The New York Times explains that as public universities have become more selective, they have begun to look closer at admissions essays, teacher recommendations and extracurriculars — qualifications that were once the domain of private institutions.

To see a list, charting the privatization of public universities, read after the jump.

From The New York Times

(more…)

French politicians are joining university President Dan Mote in the category of people who think university ranking are bull-merde.

Institutions of higher education across the globe are ranked annually by China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University and read more or less the same with each new edition: Harvard, Stanford and Berkeley again took the gold, silver and bronze medals out of 100 competitors this year, with American universities dominating most of other spots as well. The highest-ranked French university was Université Pierre et Marie Curie, at No. 42.

Sacre bleu!

France’s legislators, upset by their universities’ poor showing, issued a report arguing that the Chinese researchers were clearly biased towards English-speaking universities. The methodology behind the rankings includes the number of alums who win Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals and the number of papers published in Nature and Science, both of which are published in English.

Why all the fuss? France’s reaction is proof of a growing global obsession with school rankings as higher education becomes an international enterprise – and rankings are fueling a host of administrative and financial decisions on behalf of universities looking to improve their scores, reports Aisha Labi of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Growth in the number of universities looking to set up international partnerships also fuels the rankings obsession. Most administrators want to be certain that they are forging links with institutions of equivalent heft.

International-rankings tables, which did not even exist a decade ago, are also increasingly used by the world’s roughly three million international students to decide where to study.

“Rankings have gone global at exactly the same time that universities are fighting over global students as a resource,” says Robert J. Coelen, vice president for international affairs at Leiden University and founder of a regularly held international symposium on rankings at Leiden.