August 19, 2008

Psychological Research About Students Who Cheat Could Help Anti-Cheating Campaigns

Professors who use detection programs like Turnitin in the hope of dissuading students from cheating may be on the wrong track. New research by psychologists at Ohio State University at Newark focuses instead on profiling the students who are least likely to cheat, and the findings could help identify a target audience for anti-cheating campaigns, one of the researchers said in a news release from the university.

The research is based on two studies that together involved more than 450 undergraduates at the Newark campus. The studies found, not too surprisingly, that students who said they had not cheated in the past month or year and had no plans to cheat in the future also scored highest on tests measuring qualities like courage, empathy, and honesty. Non-cheaters were also less likely to believe that their peers had cheated, the studies found. By contrast, students who scored lower on measurements of courage, empathy, and honesty were more likely to report having cheated, and to believe that other students cheated more often than they themselves did, thus rationalizing their behavior.

Honest students “have a more positive view of others,” explained Sarah Staats, a professor of psychology and a co-author of the study, who presented the findings this past weekend at the annual conference of the American Psychological Association, in Boston. The findings, she said, have implications for identifying both “academic heroes” (non-cheaters) and effective target audiences for anti-cheating campaigns.

When researchers asked students if they planned to cheat in the future, 47 percent said they did not, while 24 percent agreed or strongly agreed that they would. Anti-cheating campaigns, said Ms. Staats, may be able to sway the undecided 29 percent through messages rooted in positive psychology. “Our results suggest that interventions may have a real opportunity to influence at least a quarter of the student population,” she said. —Paula Wasley

'The Chronicle' Teams Up With CBS News and UWire for Poll of Student Voters

Pundits are predicting that the under-30 crowd may be a key voting block in November’s presidential election, but what issues energize those young voters and which candidate do they prefer?

In an attempt to answer those questions, The Chronicle has teamed up with UWire, the college-newspaper wire service, and CBS News to conduct a poll of student voters in four battleground states this fall. The CBS News-UWIRE-Chronicle of Higher Education poll will be conducted in early October, and along with our partners, The Chronicle will publish the results later that month.

The poll is just part of The Chronicle‘s coverage of the election. Two Chronicle reporters, Kelly Field and Karin Fischer, will be covering the two party conventions for us in the coming weeks. You can follow their reports in our daily report as well as in the Campaign U. blog.

In September our politics editor, Sara Hebel, will be a panelist at the National Educational Policy Forum, sponsored by the University of Mississippi. The event is taking place the day before the first presidential debate, which will be held on the university’s Oxford campus. You can expect coverage from there as well. —Jeffrey Selingo

Drinking-Age Campaign Binges on Big Names, Big Media

A campaign to lower the legal drinking age to 18 has been joined by more than 100 college chiefs, including those of many well-known institutions. Dubbed the Amethyst Initiative, the effort is also generating a blitz of news-media coverage today.

John M. McCardell Jr., president emeritus of Middlebury College, is behind the campaign. As The Chronicle reported last year, Mr. McCardell founded Choose Responsibility, a nonprofit group that seeks to curb binge drinking by giving “drinking licenses” to 18- to 20-year-olds who have been educated about the downsides of alcohol.

The campaign began heating up in June, when Mr. McCardell spoke at a meeting of the Annapolis Group of liberal-arts colleges. Now presidents of major institutions such as the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland at College Park, and Ohio State University have signed a statement that seeks to “rethink the drinking age.” But not all college presidents are fans of the campaign, which also has a powerful opponent in Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The advocacy group says signatories “shirk responsibility to protect students from dangers of underage drinking.”

For those wondering about the initiative’s name, the ancient Greeks apparently believed that the purple gemstone amethyst warded off drunkenness and promoted moderation, according to the group’s Web site. —Paul Fain

August 18, 2008

As Storm Approaches, Florida Colleges Batten Down the Hatches

Tropical Storm Fay is expected to be “at or near hurricane strength” by the time it makes landfall early Tuesday, but it had not intensified as much as expected today, and the director of the National Hurricane Center told The Miami Herald that southern Florida may have “dodged a bullet” this time. Still, hurricane warnings were in effect for much of the state’s southwestern Gulf Coast, where landfall was most likely, and colleges and universities were taking the threat seriously.

Dozens of institutions in the region started closing down today, with plans to reopen on Wednesday. Fall-semester classes have not yet begun at most of the area’s colleges, but at many, dormitories had planned to open for new students and orientation activities were scheduled. Individual institutions’ Web sites were posting details of cancellations and schedule changes.

Among the institutions in the storm’s projected path that announced closures were Edison State College, Manatee Community College, Southwest Florida College, and Florida Gulf Coast University.

The University of South Florida also closed some regional centers in that area, but planned to keep its main campus, in Tampa, open, as an emergency team continued to monitor weather conditions. Florida State University also closed its regional and medical campuses in southern Florida, but not its main campus, in Tallahassee. The University of Florida, in Gainesville, moved residence-hall check-ins from Tuesday to Thursday, and was planning to make a decision by midday Tuesday on whether to close the campus.

Along Florida’s Atlantic Coast, which apparently will escape the brunt of the storm but still experience heavy winds and rain, many campuses also closed early today and planned to remain closed on Tuesday. Among them were Broward College, where classes started today, along with Miami Dade College, Florida International and Nova Southeastern Universities, and the University of Miami.

Late this afternoon, the center of the storm passed over Key West, where Florida Keys Community College had already taken the precaution of closing for two days. Updates on the storm’s location and intensity are available on the Web site of the National Hurricane Center. —Charles Huckabee

August 17, 2008

Suicidal Thoughts Are Common Among College Students, Study Suggests

A study of 26,000 students at 70 colleges and universities suggests that suicidal thoughts are not rare among that population, with more than half of the responders reporting they have thought about suicide and 15 percent reporting they have seriously considered ending their lives. More than 5 percent reported attempting suicide sometime in their lives.

The survey’s findings were reported today at the American Psychological Association’s convention in Boston, according to a news release from the association. The survey was conducted online in 2006 by the National Research Consortium of Counseling Centers in Higher Education.

David J. Drum, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, and his co-authors found that 6 percent of undergraduates reported contemplating suicide in the 12 months before the survey was taken, and 4 percent of graduate students reported contemplating it during the same period. More than half the students who experienced a recent suicidal crisis did not seek help or tell anyone about their suicidal thoughts.

Researchers said the current model for treating students at risk for suicide, which identifies students in crisis and helps them, is insufficient. Survey results showed that suicidal thoughts are recurring experiences akin to depression, substance abuse, and eating disorders, and researchers say a new model needs to identify people along the continuum of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. That would allow interventions at multiple points, including before and after a student has thoughts of suicide.

The problem is too big to be handled by college mental-health counselors alone, researchers said. They suggested administrators, advisers, faculty members, parents, student leaders, and counselors all take on responsibility for suicide prevention at their institutions. “This would reduce the percentage of students who engage in suicidal thinking, who contemplate how to make an attempt, and who continue to make attempts,” Mr. Drum said in the association’s release. —Kathryn Masterson

August 15, 2008

Missing Rice U. Student Is Found on Berkeley Campus

Berkeley, Calif. — A Rice University student who had been missing since December was found by the police on the University of California’s campus here on Wednesday, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

The student, Matthew J. Wilson, a 21-year-old junior majoring in computer science, disappeared from Houston eight months ago, after withdrawing $500 from an ATM. His disappearance made national news and prompted an extensive search.

Campus police officers here found Mr. Wilson alone in a Berkeley classroom with a laptop and immediately detained him on suspicion of theft, according to the Mercury News. The student had shaved his beard and cut his hair since December.

He told investigators that he “wanted to come West and disappear,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle. —Josh Keller

August 13, 2008

U. of Nebraska Dismisses 2 Wrestlers From Team for Alleged Porn Photos

Two top-ranked wrestlers at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln have been kicked off the team for allegedly posing nude in photographs and videos on a pornography Web site, the Associated Press reported.

The wrestlers are Paul Donahoe, a 2007 national champion and the 2008 Big 12 Conference champion in his weight class, and Kenny Jordan, who placed fourth in the Big 12 championship this year. They were declared ineligible to compete and dismissed from the team this week after athletics officials at the university determined that the two wrestlers had violated NCAA rules by posing nude and partially clothed in images featured on the Web site Fratmentv.com. The site, which caters to gay men, charges $24.99 for access to hundreds of images and videos, the AP reported.

NCAA regulations intended to safeguard the amateurism of college sports forbid athletes to accept money in exchange for the use of their images for commercial purposes. If the wrestlers want to compete for another institution, Nebraska officials told the AP, they would have to first seek reinstatement of their eligibility by the NCAA. —Libby Sander

August 12, 2008

Judge Rejects Christian Schools' Complaint of Bias in U. of California Decisions on Courses

A federal judge has ruled that the University of California did not discriminate against Christian high schools and their students in deciding that some of their courses failed to meet its academic requirements for college applicants.

A school in Southern California, an association of Christian schools, and several students had sued the university in 2005, arguing that its refusal to honor the courses had violated their rights to freedom of speech and religion. The judge in the case, S. James Otero of the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, rejected some of their arguments last March, when he ruled that the university’s policy for evaluating high-school courses was not unconstitutional on its face. But he allowed the plaintiffs to continue pressing claims that applications of the policy in decisions regarding specific courses had violated their rights.

In his latest ruling, issued Friday, Judge Otero rejected a number of the plaintiffs’ motions on procedural grounds, then evaluated the schools’ and the university’s arguments regarding decisions on five courses, in biology, English, government, history, and world religions. In each case, the judge found that the university’s decisions had been based on rational considerations and had showed no animus toward the plaintiffs.

In a written statement, Wyatt R. Hume, the university’s provost and executive vice president for academic and health affairs, praised the judge’s ruling. “As we have said all along,” he said, “the question the university addresses in reviewing courses is not whether they have religious content, but whether they provide adequate instruction in the subject matter.”

Robert Tyler, a lawyer representing the schools, told the Associated Press that he had already appealed Judge Otero’s latest decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. —Charles Huckabee

Alumnus Pleads Guilty to Terrorist Attack at Chapel Hill That Injured 9

Mohammed Taheri-Azar, a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who in 2006 drove an SUV into a crowd of students on the campus, pleaded guilty today to attempted first-degree murder, the Associated Press reported.

After the attack, Mr. Taheri-Azar, an Iranian-American, told investigators he had acted to “avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world.” He injured nine students but none seriously.

He was indicted on several counts of felonious assault and attempted murder, but the plea deal resulted in just two counts of attempted murder against him, according to the AP. He faces up to 40 years in prison for each count when he is sentenced this month. —Sara Lipka

August 11, 2008

U. of Virginia Study Touts Success of Social-Norms Marketing in Cutting Drinking

Exposing students at the University of Virginia to accurate information about campus drinking habits significantly reduced the negative consequences of alcohol consumption, according to a study just published in the Journal of American College Health.

In 1999 Virginia started a “social norms” marketing campaign to inform freshmen that, based on campus surveys, students drink less than their peers perceive that they do. The university used newspaper advertisements, posters, and Web pages to deliver messages about drinking norms.

Social-norms marketing as a viable technique to reduce drinking has been sharply controversial, with some studies supporting the concept and others debunking it.

According to a description of the new study, the campaign reduced the number of students injured in alcohol-related incidents; those who drove after drinking; and those who had unprotected sex. Furthermore, there was a sharp increase in the number of students who reported experiencing none of 10 alcohol-related consequences.

The authors of a report on the study were James Turner, executive director of student health at Virginia; Jennifer Bauerle, director of the National Social Norms Institute, at Virginia; and H. Wesley Perkins, a sociology professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. —Eric Hoover