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*UDGXDWLRQ >LSJVTLK ^OPSL HIYVHK SROLF\ UHYLVHG those students will still be required to meet the major’s graduation GPA requirement. Cheng said the policy was changed to 13 hours because the school has three-hour credit courses. She said certain majors might have requirements more stringent than the university. “What we were very clear on is that if the major has requirements, including GPA requirements for graduation, that are higher than the institution, they can set those,� Cheng said. “The forgiveness policy is only the university policy, but individual colleges can have policies with higher standards.� The policy can only be enacted if the student has received at least a 2.1 GPA for the last 60 completed hours of work at SIUC, Cheng said. “Sometimes students take upperlevel courses early in their sophomore

.$567(1 %85*67$+/(5 'DLO\ (J\SWLDQ A university policy designed to help students whose grade point average falls beneath the minimum graduation requirement will soon be revised. Students must have a 2.0 in order to graduate from SIUC. However, the forgiveness policy, which Provost John Nicklow said the university has had for decades, allows students with a GPA less than 2.0 to exclude up to 10 hours of non-major courses from their GPA exclusively for graduation calculation. The updated policy will allow up to 13 hours of coursework to be excluded from the final GPA calculation next year, and Chancellor Rita Cheng said students will be able to exclude major courses in which they received a D or an F. However, some majors require students to have a GPA higher than 2.0 to graduate. Cheng said

Please see FORGIVENESS | 3

NICOLE HESTER | DAILY EGYPTIAN

Josiah Owus-Danquah, a graduate student in civil engineering from Ghana, eats lunch Tuesday at the Baptist Student Center. Leah Bening, the center’s international coordinator, said other than giving free food to international students, the best thing they do is make them feel welcome. “We’re all human beings, and we find out how easy it is to care about each other,� she said.

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7$, &2; 'DLO\ (J\SWLDQ While SIU saw another enrollment decline this semester, community colleges in the area have seen an enrollment increase. Colleges such as John A. Logan College, Southeastern Illinois

College and Shawnee Community College saw more students in the classrooms this fall. Some college representatives attribute the spike to an influx of high school students who chose to attend community college. One reason Chancellor Rita Cheng said enrollment is down at SIU, though, is because community college enrollment has decreased over recent years and Illinois’ high school graduate population is down. Steve O’Keefe, director of community relations and marketing at John A. Logan College in Carterville, said the college’s enrollment increased from 6,257 to

6,400, which is a 2.29 percent increase. He said a major reason for the increase is because more high school graduates have enrolled at the college. While the high school graduates may have increased, though, the number of schools the students are coming from has decreased. O’Keefe said students have sent transcripts from 408 Illinois high schools this semester, which is down from last year’s 424. O’Keefe said he doesn’t have the exact number of students who transferred to the college from SIU this semester. “We always generate a large amount of students who transfer from SIU,� he

said. “I don’t think this year was vastly different from any other years. We don’t track that information.� Angela Wilson, marketing coordinator at Southeastern Illinois College in Harrisburg, said the college does not track transfer student information either, but its full-time enrollment is up 3.34 percent from last year as of Monday. Enrollment numbers were not available on the college’s website, and Wilson said she did not have them available for disclosure. Dee Blakely, dean of student services at Shawnee Community College in Ullin, said enrollment is up by 100

students, but the college’s transfer student enrollment is down this semester. “Our enrollment is up this year, but our numbers do show that our credit hours are down by 6 percent,� Blakely said. “We have more students this year, but they are taking fewer credit hours, and our online enrollment is up by 7.4 percent.� Blakely said she cannot confirm an exact transfer student enrollment percent decrease, but she believes many students have taken time off from their education to work. Please see COMMUNITY | 3

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MOLLY LACAMERA | DAILY EGYPTIAN SOURCE | UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY WEBSITES

0$77 '$5$< 'DLO\ (J\SWLDQ The chancellor says it’s a myth that SIU is unsafe. Chancellor Rita Cheng said in her State of the University Address Sept. 5 that crime rates at SIU are normal in comparison to other similarly sized universities. However, some universities in Illinois have higher crime rates in relation to different offenses.

Reports from SIU’s Department of Public Safety from 2008 to 2010 show 24 forcible sexual assaults, 23 cases of aggravated assault, 237 burglaries, 90 liquor law violations, 195 drug law violations, and one illegal weapons possession on campus. Some of these crime statistics are lower than reports at other state universities. From 2008 to 2010, Northern Illinois University reported a higher number of incidents in the aggravated assault, illegal weapon possession and liquor law violation categories. NIU reported the same number of forcible sexual assaults as SIUC and a lower number of drug law violations and burglaries. In the same years, the University

of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reported fewer aggravated assaults than SIUC by 11 incidents, but every other category was higher. Enrollment numbers at U of I and NIU in 2010 were 31,252 and 23,850, respectively. SIU’s fall 2010 enrollment was 20,350. Although there is no direct correlation between enrollment and crime rates, there can be more opportunities for crimes on a larger campus. While reports from U of I and NIU were similar to SIU, campuses including Western Illinois University and Eastern Illinois University had lower crime reports. Please see CRIME | 3

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