Five years ago, after seeing several people share suicidal thoughts on social media, Drexel University student Gabby Frost established the Buddy Project, a peer support system that helps people make friends online. The nonprofit has since raised more than $40,000 to support mental health facilities across the United States and has paired more than 219,000 people.
Last week, a nonprofit organization challenging Harvard University’s admissions policies filed legal documents alleging that the institution intentionally discriminates against Asian-American applicants by limiting the number of Asian-American students who are admitted and holding them to a higher standard than students of other races. The lawsuit was initially filed in 2014 by Students for Fair Admissions, a nonprofit whose members include Asian-American students who were denied admission to Harvard. According to an analysis of more than 160,000 student records filed Friday, while Asian-American applicants have higher academic and extracurricular scores than any other racial group, Harvard’s admissions officers assign Asian-Americans the lowest score of any racial group on the personal rating, which includes a subjective assessment of character traits such as whether the student has a “positive personality.” On Friday, Harvard University defended its undergraduate admissions in an email to students, staff and alumni from university President Drew Gilpin Faust. Faust wrote, “In the weeks and months ahead, a lawsuit aimed to compromise Harvard’s ability to compose a diverse student body will move forward in the courts and in the media.” She said the plaintiffs “will seek to paint an unfamiliar and inaccurate image” of Harvard admissions. “These claims will rely on misleading, selectively presented data taken out of context.”
Angie Chuang, an associate professor of journalism at University of Colorado Boulder College of Media, Communication and Information wrote in the Washington Post about her experience designing and piloting one of the country’s first mandatory curriculums for first-year students on race and social identity, called American University Experience II. The course is meant to help students grasp – or, in many cases, have their first meaningful exposure to – issues of race, gender, sexuality and socioeconomic class, through the lens of the news media.
Two new reports released last week by the Education Trust, a nonprofit advocacy group, shine a light on states that have the biggest disparities in degree-attainment between white adults and black and Latino adults. The reports grade states on an A-to-F scale on both their current degree-attainment levels and on how that level has changed since 2000. The report also rates states – as average, above average, or below average – on how they’ve closed the gap between white and black or Latino attainment since 2000. The report on black adults notes that six states have extreme inequality in degree attainment compared with white adults. They are, in order from most unequal, Connecticut, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and New York. The six states with extreme gaps in attainment for Latino adults are led by California, with the most Latino adults and the largest gap, followed by Colorado, Nebraska, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Illinois.
More than 40 states have outlined goals for improving attainment rates in the past decade, often including specific goal rates for black and Latino residents. According to an article in The Atlantic, to reach those goals, lawmakers can make sure race factors centrally into policy conversations, which may look different for different states. For some, it could mean diverting more resources to campuses that primarily serve minority students. Colleges can also work to assist groups of people with very specific needs. Wayne State University in Detroit, for example, has just launched what it calls the “Warrior Way Back” program that forgives the debt of former students with an outstanding balance of less than $1,500 and no degree, and allows them to return to school.
A new study released on Tuesday by the American Council on Education used federal data to analyze students’ and parents’ income from a data set maintained by the Equality of Opportunity Project, a group of academics at different institutions who track inequality in America. The study found that minority-serving institutions can move their students up the economic ladder at a rate nearly double or triple that of predominantly white institutions, and often enroll students with the lowest family incomes, including first-generation students. The Chronicle spoke with the report’s lead author, Lorelle Espinosa, assistant vice president in ACE’s Center for Policy Research and Strategy, about the results.
Senate and House Democrats are accusing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos of exacerbating racial disparities in student debt by failing to help defrauded borrowers, enforce consumer protections and examine the root causes of debt inequity.
Nearly 15 percent of students that were offered admission to Harvard University this spring were African-American. But, according to recent federal data, just 8 percent of Harvard’s undergraduates are black and just over 9 percent of the incoming freshmen last year were black. The Boston Globe reports that Harvard faces stiff competition in attracting high performing black students, and that while the school may have a generous financial aid package and a brand that can open professional doors, these students are applying to multiple top-tier schools and getting offers from most of them.
The interim president, John M. Engler of Michigan State University is facing intensifying calls for his resignation amid outrage over comments he made about a victim of sexual abuse. Engler, a former Republican governor of the state, was appointed by the board of trustees after the university’s longtime president, Lou Anna Simon, resigned amid the sex-abuse scandal at the school. Last week, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported on an email exchange, released through a public-records request, between Engler and a university leader. The two discussed an accusation that Kaylee Lorincz, a gymnast and victim of Larry Nassar, had made at a board meeting, when she claimed that Engler had tried to pressure her into taking a cash payout. In the email exchange, Engler wrote that the victims were being manipulated by trial lawyers, and that, the first woman to publicly accuse Nassar, was likely to get a kickback from her attorney. There is a growing feeling that Michigan State and Engler squandered the chance for healing, and is botching its reputation rehab. Amid a flurry of calls for his resignation, Engler dug in on Friday, refusing to apologize to the abuse victim he had demeaned, and declining to respond directly to lawmakers and trustees who, in increasing numbers, say he must go.
Kathryn Novak, a student in Arizona student is suing the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity at the University of Central Florida and a number of its members, claiming that nude photos and videos taken of her in sexual acts were distributed electronically without her consent, including on a private Facebook page. Novak had been having a long-distance relationship with a Delta Sigma Phi member.
Through social media, two women are accusing Texas A&M University at College Station of failing to take their sexual abuse complaints seriously enough. The women say they were victimized by athletes at A&M, a swimmer and a football player, who were initially suspended but later allowed to rejoin their teams. Their public campaigns to bring attention to what they consider the university’s tepid response to sexual misconduct prompted more than a dozen other current and former A&M students to post similar accusations.
A new report by a national advisory panel concluded that years of efforts to prevent sexual harassment in science, engineering and medicine have failed, and universities need to make sweeping changes in the way they deal with the issue. “There is no evidence to suggest that current policies, procedures, and approaches have resulted in a significant reduction in sexual harassment,” said the report, issued by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, independent agencies that advise the government and the public.
The University of Chicago has dropped an admission requirement for students to submit either SAT or ACT test scores, becoming the most prestigious university to do so and joining hundreds of others in the test-optional movement. James G. Nondorf, dean of admissions and vice president of enrollment and student advancement, said that the university’s initiative, “levels the playing field” for first-generation and low-income students.”
Dozens of universities are banding together with a new reporting system to keep tabs on Greek organizations in hopes of curbing hazing, sexual assault and alcohol abuse. Schools including Penn State, Florida State and Louisiana State University, support the creation on a scorecard for fraternities and sororities to track outcomes like cumulative GPA, alcohol and hazing violations and chapter suspensions. The goal is to discern patterns, identify bad actors and provide leverage to hold national organizations to account.
The University of Washington will pay $127,000 in legal fees to lawyers for the university’s College Republicans to settle a free-speech lawsuit filed by the group. The College Republicans chapter sued after the university tried to charge a $17,000 security fee for the group to hold a campus rally in February with the right-wing group Patriot Prayer. A federal district-court judge blocked the fee, the rally took place as scheduled, protesters and counter-protesters clashed, and a number of people were arrested.