NEWS

Ok.. so the summer hiatus is quickly wrapping up… time to get back in action and bring you all the latest and greatest of everything on the internet. Yep, I said it. EVERYTHING. Let’s face it.. the internet isn’t all that interesting anyway. Stay tuned for more goodness..

UPDATE: 12:31pm EST
Larry Wallington, 48 has been identified as the slain victim and Nathaniel Brown, 51, has been identified as the suspect in the shootin. Nathaniel Brown also died from a self-inflicted gun shot wound. The incident occured within a maintenance building on campus. Henry Butler, 60, was also shot but is in stable condition at a local hospital.

Nathaniel Brown was apparently angry about a poor job review although details may still emerge as to his motivation for the attack. He was a probational employee for the last couple of months.

We’ll continue to update information as we receive it.

Original Post: 

Looks like there has been another shooting incident on a campus this year. I haven’t been keeping an official count but this seems like the 3rd or maybe 4th shooting on campus this year. This one, similar the Alabama shooting, did not involve students. One person was killed and two were taken to a local hospital. One person is in critical condition. We’re hoping for a those injured to pull through.

This incident seems to have shed some light on the Ohio State university practice of emailing students alerts when there is a campuswide emergency. Some are questioning the effectiveness of the email system. According to Leslie Tripp from CNN, of the 50,000 students at Ohio State, only 2,600 are signed up to receive the emails. Other schools have SMS programs in place but even those have been in question. Basically, it boils down to people choice to opt into the information, and some school seem to be crying wolf by emailing every infraction that occurs.

I’m wondering if Facebook could step in and make a difference here. Afterall, Facebook was originally a college-only portal. Perhaps members of university networks could receive important updates automatically. It might help spread information more virally than a simple SMS or email. Thoughts?

Update

Whooooooaaa! This bitch is crazy! New York Times is reporting that Amy Bishop shot and killed her brother 1986. Yeah. You read that correctly. She got into an argument with her brother in Braintree, south of Boston and “accidentally” shot him. Right. Accidentally. This woman is the epitome of unstable. What happened to background checks?

This story came out of nowhere.. and at first, the details were skimpy at best. University of Alabama Neurobiologist, Amy Bishop, apparently opened fire on several other professors during a faculty meeting. Three professors died immediately and three others were wounded and taken to local hospitals. The shooting took place at the Shelby Center around 4 PM and no students were injured or involved. The professors killed were G. K. Podila, the department’s chairman; Maria Ragland Davis; and Adriel D. Johnson Sr. Two more biology professors, Luis Rogelio Cruz-Vera and Joseph G. Leahy, and a TA,  Stephanie Monticciolo, are at a local Huntsville Hospital. Amy Bishop was apprehended outside the center without incident, but police said they have not recovered a weapon.

As of this morning, Professor Bishop has one count of murder with more expected. She could face the death penalty if convicted. Her husband is also being questioned as a person of interest but not as a suspect. The two had invented some sort of mobile petri as part of a university start up program. However, Professor Bishop had found out recently that she was not going to receive tenure.

This is definitely a rather bizarre shooting. This woman, afterall, is a Harvard PhD and a well liked professor. Here’s her Rate My Professor page. Combine that with the recent funding she received it’s kinda hard to believe she’s acted in this way. I’m sure a lot of additional information will come out as the investigation continues.

Now this story could go one of two ways. The first would involve some sort of forced lesbian orgy in cheerleading outfits. The second would be something banal like withholding food from pledges or paddling them too hard. Crap. It’s the second.

Six members of Sigma Gamma Rho were arrested for apparently beating the shit out of pledges so badly that one had to seek medical attention at Robert Wood Johnson medical center. Some of the pledges were paddled over 200 times and *gulp* denied food. They probably needed to lose a few pounds anyway. Wait, what?

Somehow this sounds more like a gang initiation than a sorority pledge class. What happened to  frolicking tickle fights in underwear and practicing “making out” with eachother (cause that’s what girls do when we’re not around – don’t ruin it). Grabbed this story from Zlata Thoughts. Knowing Zlata, this story could be completely made up but she does have list of the girls arrested. Friends of yours?

Well it’s finally here… and since you were probably passed out/hung over from all the back-to-school parties, you probably missed the announcement. Good thing I’m hear to tell you what everyone else already knows. Apple has announced it’s tablet PC – the iPad. I followed the announcement pretty closely through sites like CNET, Gizmodo and Engadget. All had relatively complete coverage on the product and it’s features. I have to say the design left me yawning and although there were some interesting features I didn’t think it would have, it left out a few other key items that would make it a really useful tool. What most peaked my interest was that Steve Jobs announced that textbook manufacturers were on board to supply their books via Apples new service, iBooks (essentially iTunes for books).

The iPad will be available April & have textbooks!

Textbooks have always been a bit of a sore spot for me. They are REDICULOUSLY expensive. It’s consumer price gouging at its worst (I’m surprised the FTC hasn’t actually cracked down). Lowly, poor college students across the country are forced to shell out hundreds of dollars for the latest, greatest editions. Only the latest and “greatest” edition amounts to a three word change in the 8th paragraph of some obscure passage on page 392. Next year they will change 2 words on the 9th paragraph of the same obscure passage and viola.. you can’t sell your book back anymore because it’s “obsolete”. Bastards.

Enter the iPad. With a low entry cost… only $499 for the base model. A school could easily require students to have one (rolled into tuition costs - Wisconsin was handing out Kindles on a test basis but canceled the program). The real question is, what would the cost of a textbook be when purchased through iBooks? 60% of current retail? 80%? I was kinda surprised to see that book prices on Amazon were exactly the same as their corresponding paperback. Meaning that buying books for the Kindle was actually more expensive than buying the paperback. An annoying little item that preventing me from buying the Kindle.

I still suspect we’ll see several campuses this fall.. maybe even as early as this summer… beta testing textbook delivery via the iPad. Thoughts on pricing or whether you’d use the iPad to study for finals?

UPDATE: State Police in Virginia have confirmed the remains through dental records.

In what is a very unfortunate turn of events in the case of Missing Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington, skeletal remains were found on a farm about 10 miles from the Metallica concert where she went missing in October. Virginia state police were confident the remains belonged to Morgan. The remains were found Tuesday morning by a farmer surveying wind damage from last week’s storms. He called 911 as soon as he saw what appeared to be a human skull. Morgan’s parents were summoned to identify the remains. A full story can be found on CNN.

Morgan Harrington disappeared October 17th, 2009

Our hearts and prayers go out to the Harrington Family (Dan and Gil Harrington), Morgan’s friends and the Virginia Tech campus. We hope that this latest tragic turn sheds some light on what happened to Morgan and helps track down whoever may have been responsible. More information about Morgan and her family’s struggle can be found on their web site.

Chris “I’m gonna whip your ass, girl” Brown is on a tear. Look out.. you may be next. He’s a little upset that a Walmart Store in Connecticut didn’t stock his latest craptastic album. The big box insult has apparently pushed him over the edge. He spoutted off on a curse-laced twitter fenzy before ultimately deleting his entire account. I fucking hate fucking assholes that swear on web sites. Dicks.

Hey, Chris.. this is America, baby. Nobody owes you nothing (yeah, it’s a double negative.. that’s my ghetto swagger.. what?).

Look out lady.. he'll straight up murder your ass.

We’re talking about Walmart here. Walmart doesn’t sell Maxim because they consider it pornography. You think they’re gonna put a woman beating rap artist CD for sale? Come on.

(picture above is from People of Walmart web site… totally awesome)

The University of Michigan seems to be facing what may be the most historic set of budget cuts from next year’s Michigan state appropriations. University President Mary Sue Coleman prepped faculty and students in a Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs’ meeting. This crisis seems to  be hot on the heels of an identical situation in the California University system that led to 30%+ tuition increases. President Coleman, however, seemed to be concentrating on the cuts that would need to be made and didn’t mention anything related to tuition increases.

The impact of the state’s historic contributions to the University of Michigan’s success cannot be overstated, and we believe that the state’s continued investment in our success is central to our collective future. – Mary Sue Coleman

The University of Michigan operates off of $330 million in state funding. Coleman stated, “aggressive policy and organizational changes will be required” and outlined $22 million that has already been cut from the 2010 budget.

Have you been impacted by school cuts yet?

Students voluntarily evacuated the Kerr Building at UC Santa Cruz campus this afternoon, effectively avoiding immediate arrest. However, it seems that students involved may still face criminal prosecution or student sanctions. There’s a great video on CNN which we’ve embedded below. Shows the magnitude of the protests..

What’s pretty apparent is that this whole mess isn’t over. As the video suggests, protests will now move to the state capital. As we’ve stated all along, we fully support these moves. The California collegiate system really needs some help.. actually, we’re all a little surprised to not hear Obama chime in on the issue. Where you at guy?

As protests continue through this weekend, reports are coming in that police may intervene at UC Santa Cruz where students have been holed up in the administrative builder, Kerr Hall, since Thursday. Although not entirely a surprise, we sure hope things remain relatively peaceful and noone gets hurt. Police intervention will certainly mean arrests and forcible removal from the building. Negotiations appear to be going through graduate student Don Kingsbury.

At Berkley, where students were occupying Wheeler Hall, students were arrested and cited with tresspassing. They were not taken to jail per an agreement with student leaders. This is obviously a pretty good compromise but it seems like UC Santa Cruz students are taking a little harder line insisting on amnesty for protesting students and a set of other demands relating to current cuts and recently fired custodial workers. We’ll continue to monitor the situation and alert you to any updates.