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JCOM Department hires new head BY ASHLYN TUCKER staff writer
Ted Pease, head of the department of journalism and communication, will retire at the end of the spring 2013 semester and assume a part-�time profes-� sor role. Thomas Terry, an associ-� ate professor and former chair of the department of mass communication at Idaho State University will be filling Pease’s position beginning this fall.
Pease joined the depart-� ment as department head in 1994 and has held the position since with a gap from 2005 to 2008. “Now that I have been around longer than some of my students have been alive, it’s time for me to do something else,� he said. When asked what he liked about his job, Pease said there are both pros and cons to being a man-� ager. “All the crap lands here, but being an administrator
THOMAS TERRY
is really a creative activity,� he said. “You can make stuff happen and get things done.� Pease said his position has taught him to work on
the time schedule of aca-� demia and take a long view on tasks to be done. “There is a certain cycle of how things get done in academia that is on its own timeframe and has no rela-� tionship to normal, natural reality,� he said. “I have had to marshal my impatience.� Throughout his time as department head, Pease said he has seen the department grow from 150 students to about 300 students. Some years under his leadership, the num-�
TED PEASE
bers reached into the upper 400s. Pease is very proud of the students and alumni of the journalism department and said the department
definitely gets noticed for all that they do. The pro-� gram is known throughout Utah as the place to go to get a communications degree. “We don’t have as much money as BYU,� Pease said. “We are not as big as the U and we are out here in the boonies, but we still make the best professional com-� municators in the state of Utah.� Pease said he plans to
See JCOM, Page 3
Students nationwide scramble to make college work BY ERIC ADLER AND MARA ROSE WILLIAMS The Kansas City Star (MCT)
In its idealized conception, college is an ivory tower where students through quiet contem-� plation or raucous self-�discovery ready themselves for “the real world.� But as college student Korchi Yang can attest, and as 2 million college applicants awaiting their financial aid packages may soon discover, being a hardworking student these days means precisely that. Work. Not just the on-�campus work-� study variety. This is real-�world work: 20 or 30 hours a week or more. One out of every five college students works full time, 35-�plus hours a week, all year long, accord-� ing to the most recently released census figures. With college bills at record highs, students say it’s not a choice. It’s a must. Average student debt now sits at $26,600. The cost to attend a pub-� lic four-�year college, with room and board, on average: $17,860 per year. Private: $40,000. After subtracting grants and scholarships, tuition paid by students at public universities
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS SENIOR COLLEEN MONAGHAN tends a bar at The Wheel near campus in Larence, Kan., as a way to help pay her college expenses. She says working nights sometimes leaves her with only four hours sleep. Jill Toyoshiba photo, MCT
jumped 8.3 percent last year, the biggest increase on record, accord-� ing to a report released last week by the State Higher Education Executive Officers association.
College bills have become so onerous for some, in fact, that last month The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on a brisk market for students selling parts
of their physical selves: plasma, sperm, eggs, their bodies for medi-� cal clinical studies. “It’s fast, easy money,� said Nikki Hill, a 25-�year-�old, full-�
time online student at Missouri Southern State University who previously attended the University of Kansas. While at KU, Hill said, she sold plasma twice a week while also working at a coffee shop to pay her bills. “College is expensive. I was making $60 a week donating my plasma,� said Hill, who said she earned thousands of dollars over three years this way. “All my friends were doing it, too. I used to round everyone up and drive them all with me to the plasma center.� For the majority of students who don’t go to such lengths, how-� ever, the daily working world has become the prime option. For years, studies have found that holding a job for 10 to 15 hours a week during college can actually help students perform better in the classroom. But stu-� dents today are going far beyond that limit, experts say. Too many hours has a price all its own. “The toll it takes on students is pretty significant,� said Josh Gunn, president-�elect of the American College Counseling Association and director of counseling and psychological
See JOBS, Page 2
Congress takes a pass, so far, on college sports scandals BY RENEE SCHOOF AND DAN KANE
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT) WASHINGTON — Several groups have been tapping on the door of Congress lately with a request for oversight into the often opaque, big-�money world of college sports. But the door seems shut tight. There’s been no shortage of front-�page scandals involving blue-�chip collegiate athletic programs, from the Penn State child sex abuse tragedy to the University of Miami booster-�gate episode, where an avid fan lav-�
ished players with cash, women and other benefits. But it’s a 16-�year academic fraud case at the University of North Carolina that has crystal-� lized concerns that a federal academic records privacy law has been used by schools as a tool to keep certain records from the public that critics believe should be kept open. “There is not a culture of trans-� parency,� said James Sears Bryant, an attorney who was involved in a campus privacy issue related to sexual assault complaints at Oklahoma State University Sometimes the law, the Family
Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, known as FERPA, has been used to keep even police and state officials in the dark. At Oklahoma State, Bryant said school officials mistakenly told reporters that the law prevented them from reporting sexual assault complaints to the police. FERPA was intended to protect student privacy, primarily grades. But educational institutions have used it to keep other kinds of records secret — including disciplinary actions after sexual assault reports, parking tickets that would show what kind of cars student-�athletes are driving, and
other non-�educational informa-� tion. North Carolina, one of the top public universities in the country that also boasts one of the pre-� mier college basketball programs, was the scene of one of the worst-� ever academic scandals at an American university. The school, known as a “public Ivy,� quietly placed hundreds of students — many of them athletes — in lecture-�style classes in the African studies department, which never met, and which only required of them a term paper at the end, which likely wasn’t read. The fraud began to unravel in
August 2011, when McClatchy Newspapers’ The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C., obtained the transcript of a foot-� ball star showing a B-�plus in an upper-�level class before he had even begun his first full semester as a freshman. Since then, university officials have acknowledged that there have been more than 200 bogus classes in the department. A recent independent investigation found that the more than 450 unauthorized grade changes in the classes were spread among
See SCANDAL, Page 3
New details show Florida student was likely planning campus massacre BY DENISE-MARIE ORDWAY AND STEPHEN HUDAK Orlando Sentinel (MCT)
ORLANDO, Fla. — James Oliver Seevakumaran had about 1,000 rounds of ammunition, an assault rifle, a semi-�automatic pistol and four homemade bombs when he threatened his roommate and killed himself in a dorm room Monday morn-� ing at the University of Central Florida. He also had a check list of things to do that ended with these words: ‘good luck + give
them hell.� As UCF police on Tuesday unveiled more details of Seevakumaran’s behavior, it became clear that he was capa-� ble, and likely planning, a mas-� sacre on campus. Seevakumaran had received two packages on March 12 that contained gun-�related items and a training video on how to use a laser sight, UCF Police Chief Richard Beary said at a news conference. Beary said Seevakumaran had not picked up the packages yet from the university mail depart-� ment. But he had apparently
accomplished some of the items on his check list, including the pulling of a fire alarm. Seevakumaran, 30, pulled the alarm in the Tower 1 student housing complex at about 12:20 a.m. — an action that prompted an evacuation of the buildings’ 500 residents. Police think pull-� ing the alarm was intended to draw students into the open, where they would be vulnerable to an attack. But that was thwarted after one of his roommates called 911. In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, Arabo Babakhani, Seevakumaran’s
roommate since fall 2012, described a frightening scene in his third-�floor dorm room that morning. Babakhani, a 24-�year-�old engi-� neering major, said he was in his bedroom in Apartment 308 when he heard the fire alarm go off. He assumed one of his room-� mates had burned something in the kitchen. But he opened his bedroom door to find Seevakumaran pointing a rifle at him. Babakhani said he quick-� ly slammed the door in Seevakumaran’s face and dialed 911. All the while, Babakhani
said, Seevakumaran “didn’t say a single word.� Then, Babakhani said, he heard “pops,� which he assumes were gunshots. Police said Tuesday that only one shot was fired — when Seevakumaran put a bullet in his head. Babakhani described Seevakumaran as “extremely sol-� itary,� avoiding human contact, particularly eye contact. Seevakumaran’s family released a statement Tuesday describing him as “a loner� who did not have a history of vio-�
See SHOOTING, Page 3