Imagine The Diner on North Campus transformed into a nightclub: dimmed lights, Lady Gaga blasting through the speakers instead of smooth jazz or Motown, tables and pushed to the perimeter to make room for thralls of students bumpin’ and gridin’, and alcohol — lots of it.

What if students could shake their groove thangs at the dining halls?

Although the possibility of The Diner having a secret identity as a bar under the cover of night may seem like a stretch, that’s exactly what one Philadelphia charter school was doing with their cafeteria.

Turns out, the Harambee Institute of Science and Technology Charter School transformed into Club Damani once students and administrators vacated the property.

The school district is leading an ongoing investigation into whether the school itself or the landlord was responsible for its nighttime transformation. An open letter on the school’s website calls the night club incident a “misrepresentation” of the charter school’s merits:

This creates a very one-sided and unbalanced view of what charter schools represent. This “negative imaging” can be an extremely dangerous weapon because it creates a perception of what is going on, regardless of how accurate it is. Perceptions then becomes people’s reality and the media are extremely crafty at exploiting that fact.

While the investigation by the school district is ongoing, we have just one thing to say to the Harambee Institute of Science and Technology: Just dance / it’s gonna be ok / da-doo-doo-doom / Just dance!

Although a university researcher sorted through the ten million rankings on RateMyProfessor.com to establish the most popular teachers, not a single Terp professor made the grade.

The top honor goes to James Madison University’s Kimberly DuVall-Early, who serves as an unofficial psychotherapist and life coach to her students who call her “Professor D”.

DuVall-Early teaches Life-span Human Development to about 100 Dukes every semester. She plays indie-rock music as they file in the lecture hall to soothe them and leads the class in stretches halfway through, not to mention deep breathing exercises before each exam.

She peppers her courses with life advice, like “If you don’t like your life, change it,” or “We think, in our society, that we’re supposed to do two or three things at a time. If you’re washing the dishes, just wash the dishes, and focus on that. Go on the quad and just watch the squirrels. It’s relaxing.”

Professor D also advises about 500 students each semester, but they’re not the only ones who seek her counseling: the line of students crawls out the door each time she holds office hours, and some, like 2009 graduate Chris Antzoulis, see her once a week every week during their college careers.

Antzoulis initially visited her when he had trouble adjusting to freshman year and kept coming back.

“You just felt comfortable around her, like she actually cared,” he told the Washington Post’s Daniel de Vise. “Which is rare.”

Some of her assignments have changed her students’ lives, like the lifeline flowchart intended to show each person’s past, present and possible futures.

“It makes them think about what they have done, what they are doing now, and what they want to do,” DuVall-Early told de Vise. “And there’s a finite time they have on this Earth.”

Other local professors in the ranks include Daryao Khatri, a physics professor at the University of the District of Columbia, at No. 3 and Jim Thomas, a philosophy professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, at No. 6.

The site also features a Top 25 hottest college professors list, but judging by No. 1, Brigham Young University’s Paul Evans, it seems that category is a whole lot less scientific.

It seems like James Franco may just not be ready to give up university life as the Spiderman stud seeks a master’s degree at none other than, yes, Yale.

Though these days you can see him acting on ABC’s soap opera, General Hospital, his head is not as hollow as you would think (I mean, c’mon, a soap opera?). Franco could be one of the most educated actors in Hollywood. He has an undergraduate degree from UCLA, an MFA from Colombia and studied film at NYU.
Though, he has been accepted to Yale, Franco has not officially accepted, the Yale Daily News reports.
“He loves Yale and it is more than likely his first choice,” manager Miles Levy told the Daily News.
His manager also told the Daily News that Franco would be attending more than one university. But, our advice, Franco, is not to overschedule. Us college students would know, otherwise you end up like this:

Franco takin a cat nap during class.

Quick Hits:
>> McDonald’s opened Hamburger University in Shanghai. The classes won’t be Flipping Burgers101 or French Frying203, but will train students in general manager skills.

>> Maryland lost 14,000 jobs last month, its biggest loss in 14 years.

>>Controversy continues over how much Sarah Palin will be paid to speak at a black tie event at Cal State Stanislaus.

In response to an anti-feminist column in American University’s student newspaper, The Eagle, someone vandalized newspaper stands yesterday.

In his March 28 column March 28 column, titled, “Dealing with AU’s anti-sex brigade,” Alex Knepper wrote that “the goal of contemporary feminism and Gay Party activism is not to explain sex, but to abolish its passion.” He calls feminists “a sniveling bunch of emotional cripples.”

And he even goes so far as to drop this gem of knowledge:

“Feminism envisions a bedroom scene in which two amorphous, gender-neutral blobs ask each other “Is this OK with you?” before daring to move their lips any lower on the other’s body.”

And somehow he transitions all of this in to what he believes is the non-existence of date rape (yes, we went from “Gay Party Activists” and feminists to bedroom exploits to his views on date rape.)

“Let’s get this straight: any woman who heads to an EI party as an anonymous onlooker, drinks five cups of the jungle juice, and walks back to a boy’s room with him is indicating that she wants sex, OK? To cry “date rape” after you sober up the next morning and regret the incident is the equivalent of pulling a gun to someone’s head and then later claiming that you didn’t ever actually intend to pull the trigger.”

In response to the article, according to the Washington City Paper, an unknown person trashed several newsstands, strewing newspapers around and posted signs reading “NO ROOM FOR RAPE APOLOGISTS.”

A few thousand were thrown in front of The Eagle newsroom.

In response, Knepper, who is gay, said:

“I’m also very concerned with the highly fragile view of women that this promotes: I can’t say something that offends them without stirring them to vandalism? Carmen Rios states that my column can act as a ‘trigger’ for survivors. Does anyone treat men with kid gloves like this?”

The Eagle staff plan to hold an open forum discussion about the article and the following vandalism incident.

Last year, it was porn. This year, it’s chickens***.

During the 2009 legislative session, State Sen. Andy Harris (R-Baltimore and Harford) threatened to defund this university if the pornographic film Pirates II was shown on campus. This year, both the House and Senate appropriations committees have threatened to take hundreds of thousands of dollars from the law clinic. Why? The Washington Post explains:

Apparently, it’s the law clinic’s pro bono work for an environmental group that is suing an Eastern Shore chicken farmer and the poultry giant Perdue Farms.

In that lawsuit, filed this month, the Assateague Coastal Trust alleges that polluted runoff from the farm, where the Hudson family raises chickens for Perdue, was fouling the Pocomoke River. Waste from the farm could flow to the Chesapeake Bay, carrying bacteria and fuel for oxygen-sucking algae blooms, the suit says.

A few weeks later, legislators proposed taking away hundreds of thousands of dollars from the law school’s budget unless the clinic spelled out exactly whom it has represented and how much it has spent on each client.

Like last year, students and professors are (rightly) complaining that the legislators are attacking their academic freedom.

Quick Hits

• Census cash can a powerful motivator: Rural state lawmakers want Maryland to count inmates as where they’re in prison, not where they live normally, according to Maryland Reporter.
• In the latest edition of “Things could be way worse than they are at UMCP,” we present: the elimination of degree programs! The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that dozens of doctoral and small bachelor’s programs have been cut nationwide during the recession.

In the last school year, this university gave away more than 80,000 condoms free to its students — 1,000 to 1,500 every week, in a dizzying variety of brands, colors and flavors.

At Georgetown University, students aren’t even allowed to buy one on campus.

“Just go to CVS,” the Washington Post reports Georgetown students being told. The Jesuit school is largely secular, but the Catholic Church’s birth control ban sends its students flocking half a mile to a 24-hour convenience store to ensure safe sex.

Some Georgetown students are now protesting their school’s traditionalism, saying condoms and birth control medication should be available on campus.

The student group H*yas for Choice — “the pro-choice, pro-reproductive justice group at Georgetown University,” which is not formally recognized by the university — has distributed some free condoms over the years, but is now taking its activity to another level.

Students chained themselves to a statue of the university’s founder and protested at the main entrance to campus over the weekend as prospective students and their families arrived for tours.

“Georgetown. Change. It’s not too late,” the students chanted, according to the Post.

In a letter to the students, the university’s vice president for student affairs reaffirmed the school’s commitment to religious restrictions on birth control.

Wrote Todd Olson:

“Georgetown’s policies and practices rest on the strong underpinning of Catholic social and moral teaching and its affirmation of the dignity of all persons from the beginning of life to its natural end. I recognize that these are complex questions and that there are divergent points of view on the issues that you raise; that is why our policies and practices encourage debate and conversation. Nonetheless, as a Catholic and Jesuit university our policies must reflect our identity and our values.”

No word on what Georgetown would make of the wares available at this university.

And to think, there is a college course in this world where the main objective is not to ace a research paper or a cumulative exam, but to watch all five seasons of The Wire – in class.

As fictional Maryland State Sen. Clay Davis (D-Baltimore City) would say: sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit.

That’s what the lucky students who enroll in media scholar Jason Mittell’s course at Middlebury College get to do week in and week out, and Slate magazine points out he’s not the only one to turn HBO’s critically acclaimed series about Baltimore city life into a three-credit offering.

Courses devoted to the revolutionary show, which peels back the layers of the city from the streets to the mayor’s office, have popped up at universities from Berkley to Duke and not just in film studies departments, but in the social sciences as well.

At Harvard, sociologist William Julius Wilson uses the series to illustrate the workings of poverty, class, the government and the justice system.

“Although The Wire is fiction, not a documentary, its depiction of [the] systemic urban inequality that constrains the lives of the urban poor is more poignant and compelling [than] that of any published study, including my own,” he wrote in an e-mail to Slate’s Drake Bennett.
“What I’m concentrating on is how this series so brilliantly illustrates theories and processes that social scientists have been writing about for years.”

Social anthropologist Anne-Maria Makhulu also delves into the poignant drama at Duke to bring the many problems of American urban life closer to home for her yuppie students, which she said affects them more than reading dry essays ever could.

Mittell engages the series critically by pointing out the various ways the show is shaped, such as, “among other things, it’s a show written by white men about mostly black characters and a show about the urban poor that aired on a premium cable channel”, Bennett writes.

But most courses are devoted to studying the rhetorical strategies and the protagonists of the series that creator David Simon (a university alumnus and former editor in chief of this fine newspaper) once compared to a Greek tragedy, where the institutions take the place of gods and toy with mortals.

So perhaps one day, Omar Little, Stringer Bell and Jimmy McNulty will join the canon of famous characters next to Holden Caulfield and Huckleberry Finn.

Also, this gives us an excuse to post these videos.

F***.

A speech by Ann Coulter, the outspoken conservative political pundit, at Ottowa University was cancelled yesterday after officials deemed conditions unsafe for the right-wing advocate.

Fervent protests at the university led organizers to decide the venue was “physically dangerous” for Coulter, who is known for her extreme comments some consider hate speech. Over 200 protesters showed up to the event. Some shouted “Ann go home!” at the back of the auditorium.

Coulter told Macleans that:

The police, “had been warning my bodyguard all day that they were putting up [messages] on Facebook: ‘Bring rocks, bring sticks, you gotta hurt Ann Coulter tonight, don’t let her speak.’ And the cops eventually said, we’ve got a bad feeling, this isn’t gonna happen. And they shut it down.”

Controversy already surrounded the event after University of Ottawa Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Francois Houle sent Coulter an e-mail last week informing her to educate herself on Canada’s free speech laws and advised her to “weigh [her] words with respect and civility in mind.” Coulter was scheduled to speak at three Canadian universities this week.

And according to Coulter? Well, she thinks the letter made her, yes, a victim of a “hate crime.”

“He described the law to me very carefully—any speech that incites hatred toward someone based on membership in an identifiable group can be criminally prosecuted. Well, before I even set foot in Canada, he had identified me as having criminal proclivities because I belong to an identifiable group: conservatives. Or it could be because I’m a Christian, I’m a Presbyterian. I’m a female conservative. If what Francois Houle did to me is not a hate crime, then nothing is.”

Coulter spoke at the University of Western Ontario Monday night. There she apparently said that Muslims should not fly in airplanes and instead take “flying carpets.” When one Muslim student asked how she should travel due to her lack of magical rug transportation, Coulter told her to “take a camel.”

And it’s no wonder Coulter thinks that, “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could have spoken tonight with less controversy.”

Many students are probably still in denial about the tests, papers and homework assignments that await you during your first days back from a relaxing week off school.

But what if instead of mid-term exams, the university had you take potentially lethal party drugs?

50 students at John Moores University in Liverpool will participate in a university experiment of mephedrone, a currently legal high unheard of until it exploded in popularity in the British club scene last year. With effects similar to those of cocaine or ecstasy, mephedrone, which goes by the street name of Miaow Miaow or M-Cat, has been linked to several deaths in the United Kingdom in recent weeks.

But despite public outcry, John Moores researchers insist they need to study the effects of the newly invented substance.

“During these tests, the university makes it clear they do not condone drug use,” said Dr Cathy Montgomery, the psychology lecturer behind the research. “Until now, most evidence comes from people anecdotally. We will be holding structured interviews with users, asking them how they feel at different time points. Students here at John Moores tell us they prefer mephedrone over the drugs they were using before.”

The volunteers will describe their mood as the drug takes hold and when they come down.

Meanwhile, British lawmakers are calling for a ban on the drug with increasing urgency.

A student from Ryerson University in Toronto is filing a lawsuit against the university for $10 million after he was almost expelled for starting a Facebook study group.

Chris Avenir, an engineering major, created a group for his chemistry class in 2008 in which students from the class posted solutions to the class’s homework. After being discovered by the professor, Avenir was almost expelled. In the end he just received a 0 for the homework portion of the class and had to attend academic integrity meetings.
Now, Avenir is claiming that the university does not allow students access to a lawyer at hearings for failing grades or possible expulsion.

Ryerson University in Toronto

None of the allegations have yet been proven true, but if they are, Ryerson is facing a possibly massive lawsuit from thousands of students. If the suit is certified, every student who has been tried by the misconduct tribunal since March 2003 could join the lawsuit.

Quick Hits:
>> A university grad student could be challenging House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer’s (D-Dist. 5) congressional seat.

>> And you thought Maryland was known for crabs, but it turns out that state officials are cracking down on oyster fisherman for overfishing in the Chesapeake Bay.

>>Montgomery College faces huge budget cuts.

>>And all you gamers out there can look forward to a new 3-D handheld game system being launched by Nintendo next year. Hopping on the coattails of the 3-D obsession sparked by movies like Avatar, Nintendo will release a “Nintendo 3DS” version of the popular “Nintendo DS” handheld console. The best part? It won’t even require special 3-D glasses.