Briefly: Education: Work Remains to Ensure Equality in Grandes Écoles

By Admin | Published: December 20, 2010

Work remains to ensure equality in grandes ?coles

Related

Despite their reputation as the elite of the elite, the grandes ?coles of France have an important role in ensuring that the republic’s commitment to equal educational opportunity becomes a reality. That is the message of a new report issued Thursday by the Conf?rence des Grandes ?coles, an umbrella group representing many of the country’s extremely selective professional and technical schools.

The report suggests that while great improvements have been made in outreach, there is still considerable effort needed if the grandes ?coles are to keep the promise they made last February, under considerable pressure from the government, to take 30 percent of incoming students from among the poorer social classes by 2012. (Instead of American-style affirmative action, French efforts rely on the assumption that economically disadvantaged students are also more likely to be ethnically diverse.)

“The French Republic was founded on education, that is to say, the hope that a working man’s son, who has the capacity, should one day be able to enter the best schools,” said Val?rie P?cresse, the higher education minister.

Historically, admission to the grandes ?coles has been by competitive examination after a gruelling series of preparatory classes. Most of these classes have already reached the target of 30 percent, while in the past three years the intake for the engineering schools has gone from 16 percent poorer students to 25 percent, and business and management schools have reached an average of 23.2 percent. — D.D. GUTTENPLAN

Columbia to offer master’s in history at Paris campus

Columbia University in New York has announced the creation of a new master’s degree in history and literature to be offered at Reid Hall, Columbia’s campus in Paris, starting next autumn.

The degree will be taught with cooperation from l’?cole des Hautes ?tudes en Sciences Sociales and l’?cole Normale Sup?rieure, allowing students to take graduate courses at the two schools.

The program, officially announced this month, will set out to train students in historical approaches to the study of literature and in the interpretation of historical texts. Courses, which will be taught in English and French, will include a large amount of French history and literature as well as giving students the option of selecting a research topic from a wide range of languages and historical periods. — FRASER COHEN

Briefly: Education: Work Remains to Ensure Equality in Grandes Écoles

Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 137 Comments

Malaysia Tries to Lure World-Class Institutes

By Admin | Published: December 20, 2010

NUSAJAYA, MALAYSIA — At the southern tip of the Malaysian peninsula, just across a strait from Singapore and in the middle of a new metropolis rising from the flat, green landscape, workers are constructing what officials hope will be a hub for higher education.

Related

The project, EduCity@Iskandar, is part of the Iskandar Malaysia development zone, a large government undertaking announced in 2006 to increase investment in the country. The entire development zone is scheduled to be completed in 2025 and will include a large manufacturing area, new financial and civic districts, a medical village, amusement parks and residential housing.

EduCity is spread over 123 hectares, or 305 acres. It will be the base for at least seven institutions of higher learning. The purpose of EduCity is to offer world-class universities. The plan includes a sports complex with a stadium, as well as an international students village that will offer housing to 4,000 students. The entire development zone covers about 222,000 hectares.

For now, the new education hub is modest, with only a few buildings almost finished for the University of Newcastle Medicine Malaysia. But several other institutions have committed to opening campuses, and Iskandar Investment, the government-controlled developer of the whole Iskandar project, is seeking more international universities.

Khairil Anwar Ahmad, the chief executive of Education@Iskandar, which is part of Iskandar Investment, said he planned to soon announce the signing of a deal with a “prominent U.K. university for an engineering school.”

He said Iskandar Investment has also recently signed a memorandum of understanding with an American film school with a view toward setting up a partnership with a local private university and is also in negotiation with an Australian hospitality school. “Hopefully a deal should be announced next year,” Mr. Khairil said this month while showing foreign journalists around the construction sites.

The projects already scheduled include the University of Newcastle Medicine Malaysia, to be completed next September; a campus for the Netherlands Maritime Institute of Technology, set to open in 2012; and a campus for the Management Development Institute of Singapore, which will open in 2013.

The Malaysian government started the Iskandar development with the hope of attracting 335 billion ringgit, or $106 billion, of investment to the area over two decades. Once completed, the project could be three times the size of Singapore.

N. Parameswaran, chief executive of Iskandar Investment Singapore, which seeks support from local investors, said investments in the Iskandar Malaysia zone have reached 63.77 billion ringgit. Mr. Khairil estimated that 500 million ringgit of these investments were for EduCity.

Mr. Khairil said the universities setting up a campus there would act as “feeders” into the various businesses being developed in Iskandar Malaysia. For example, students who graduate from the film school could find work in the nearby Pinewood Iskandar Malaysia Studio, scheduled to open by early 2013. Some students from the hospitality school could find jobs in the hotels planned in the area of the Legoland Malaysia Theme Park, expected to open next September.

The medical facilities at the Newcastle University campus are nearly complete, and the university plans to start moving in next May, the provost, Professor Reg Jordan, said in an e-mail.

NUMed Malaysia recruited over 40 students in September, adding to its existing student body of 24 from its first enrollment in 2009. The current students will complete their first two years’ of the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery programs in Newcastle, England, but will move to Malaysia to complete the remaining three years. Newcastle has plans to expand its annual intake to 1,000 students by 2017, Mr. Jordan said.

Meanwhile, the Netherlands Maritime Institute of Technology, which will offer degrees in marine transport, shipping, seafaring, maritime and logistics management, will be able to serve 2,500 students a year.

Other international schools considering opening in Iskandar include Raffles Education, a large private education group with schools around the Asia-Pacific region that is conducting a feasibility study with a view to offer undergraduate programs in business, technology, arts and design, health science, education, and social science specializations.

“If Raffles comes in, they will take the largest plot in EduCity — 65 acres,” Mr. Khairil said.

In addition, Marlborough College Malaysia, an international boarding school with ties to the school in Britain of the same name, will also be opened in Iskandar Malaysia by 2012. It will be in a location not far from EduCity.

“We had originally planned for EduCity to host 12,000 students when it’s completed,” Mr. Khairil said. “But judging by the response, I think we will end up with 16,000 students.”

Malaysia Tries to Lure World-Class Institutes

Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 118 Comments

Serious Mental Health Needs Seen Growing at Colleges

By Admin | Published: December 20, 2010

STONY BROOK, N.Y. — Rushing a student to a psychiatric emergency room is never routine, but when Stony Brook University logged three trips in three days, it did not surprise Jenny Hwang, the director of counseling.

Enlarge This Image

Kathy Kmonicek for The New York Times

FULL APPOINTMENT BOOKS The counseling staff of 29 includes psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and social workers. Michael Bombardier, a psychologist, spoke recently with Danielle Jamison, a sophomore.

Enlarge This Image

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

BALANCING ACT Demand for counseling at the Student Health Center at Stony Brook University has increased â?? 1,311 students began treatment in the past academic year, 21 percent more than a year earlier. But the budget has been cut.

It was deep into the fall semester, a time of mounting stress with finals looming and the holiday break not far off, an anxiety all its own.

On a Thursday afternoon, a freshman who had been scraping bottom academically posted thoughts about suicide on Facebook. If I were gone, he wrote, would anybody notice? An alarmed student told staff members in the dorm, who called Dr. Hwang after hours, who contacted the campus police. Officers escorted the student to the county psychiatric hospital.

There were two more runs over that weekend, including one late Saturday night when a student grew concerned that a friend with a prescription for Xanax, the anti-anxiety drug, had swallowed a fistful.

On Sunday, a supervisor of residence halls, Gina Vanacore, sent a BlackBerry update to Dr. Hwang, who has championed programs to train students and staff members to intervene to prevent suicide.

“If you weren’t so good at getting this bystander stuff out there,” Ms. Vanacore wrote in mock exasperation, “we could sleep on the weekends.”

Stony Brook is typical of American colleges and universities these days, where national surveys show that nearly half of the students who visit counseling centers are coping with serious mental illness, more than double the rate a decade ago. More students take psychiatric medication, and there are more emergencies requiring immediate action.

“It’s so different from how people might stereotype the concept of college counseling, or back in the ’70s students coming in with existential crises: who am I?” said Dr. Hwang, whose staff of 29 includes psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and social workers. “Now they’re bringing in life stories involving extensive trauma, a history of serious mental illness, eating disorders, self-injury, alcohol and other drug use.”

Experts say the trend is partly linked to effective psychotropic drugs (Wellbutrin for depression, Adderall for attention disorder, Abilify for bipolar disorder) that have allowed students to attend college who otherwise might not have functioned in a campus setting.

There is also greater awareness of traumas scarcely recognized a generation ago and a willingness to seek help for those problems, including bulimia, self-cutting and childhood sexual abuse.

The need to help this troubled population has forced campus mental health centers — whose staffs, on average, have not grown in proportion to student enrollment in 15 years — to take extraordinary measures to make do. Some have hospital-style triage units to rank the acuity of students who cross their thresholds. Others have waiting lists for treatment — sometimes weeks long — and limit the number of therapy sessions.

Some centers have time only to “treat students for a crisis, bandaging them up and sending them out,” said Denise Hayes, the president of the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors and the director of counseling at the Claremont Colleges in California.

“It’s very stressful for the counselors,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like why you got into college counseling.”

A recent survey by the American College Counseling Association found that a majority of students seek help for normal post-adolescent trouble like romantic heartbreak and identity crises. But 44 percent in counseling have severe psychological disorders, up from 16 percent in 2000, and 24 percent are on psychiatric medication, up from 17 percent a decade ago.

The most common disorders today: depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, alcohol abuse, attention disorders, self-injury and eating disorders.

Stony Brook, an academically demanding branch of the State University of New York (its admission rate is 40 percent), faces the mental health challenges typical of a big public university. It has 9,500 resident students and 15,000 who commute from off-campus. The highly diverse student body includes many who are the first in their families to attend college and carry intense pressure to succeed, often in engineering or the sciences. A Black Women and Trauma therapy group last semester included participants from Africa, suffering post-traumatic stress disorder from violence in their youth.

Stony Brook has seen a sharp increase in demand for counseling — 1,311 students began treatment during the past academic year, a rise of 21 percent from a year earlier. At the same time, budget pressures from New York State have forced a 15 percent cut in mental health services over three years.

Dr. Hwang, a clinical psychologist who became director in July 2009, has dealt with the squeeze by limiting counseling sessions to 10 per student and referring some, especially those needing long-term treatment for eating disorders or schizophrenia, to off-campus providers.

But she has resisted the pressure to offer only referrals. By managing counselors’ workloads, the center can accept as many as 60 new clients a week in peak demand between October and the winter break.

“By this point in the semester to not lose hope or get jaded about the work, it can be a challenge,” Dr. Hwang said. “By the end of the day, I go home so adrenalized that even though I’m exhausted it will take me hours to fall asleep.”

For relief, she plays with her 2-year-old daughter, and she has taken up the guitar again.

Shifting to Triage

Near the student union in the heart of campus, the Student Health Center building dates from the days when a serious undergraduate health problem was mononucleosis. But the hiring of Judy Esposito, a social worker with experience counseling Sept. 11 widows, to start a triage unit three years ago was a sign of the new reality in student mental health.

Serious Mental Health Needs Seen Growing at Colleges

Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 103 Comments

Academics Making Forays Into Stand-Up Comedy

By Admin | Published: December 20, 2010

LONDON — Three professors walk into a pub.

Related

That’s not the setup for a joke, but an average evening out for Steve Cross, a former geneticist who is completely serious in his crusade to find new ways for academics to interact with the public.

Dr. Cross is behind Bright Club, “the thinking person’s variety night,” which each month puts university lecturers in front of a stand-up comedy audience.

“One thing universities are really good at is talking to people under 18, who are trying to decide where to go and what to study,” he said. “And of course we don’t have any trouble reaching people enrolled at university. But we haven’t really found a way to get people between the ages of 20 and 50 into the conversation.”

As University College London’s first-ever public engagement coordinator, Dr. Cross said he “talked to theater directors, museum curators, someone who runs science events — the idea was to find a way to get real researchers, talking about real research, in front of a different kind of audience than you’d get in a classroom.”

“Eventually we hit on the idea of stand-up comedy,” he said. Lest he appear frivolous, Dr. Cross hastened to point out: “There is serious psychology and neuroscience behind this.”

But if the atmosphere last week at the Wilmington Arms, an independent-music pub in a formerly industrial neighborhood, was any indication, science and laughter mix quite well. The Wilmington’s low-ceilinged black-wallpapered room was packed to hear the latest findings on this month’s theme — “Happiness” — from the fields of medicine, behavioral psychology, market research, economics and cognitive neuroscience.

After giving the crowd a chance to order beer, Dr. Cross introduced David Morgan, a 20-something professional comedian whose pompadour and big glasses gave him an intellectual air, and who acted as master of ceremonies, telling a few jokes to warm up the room: “I just saw a poll asking people what makes them happy. My favorite answer? Vengeance!”

Kathryn Waddington, a former nurse who lectures in City University of London’s Department of Applied Psychosocial Sciences, introduced her work on the role of gossip in hospitals with a PowerPoint presentation, about incontinence supplies, using words that cannot be repeated in a family newspaper. She was followed by Katherine Woolf, a researcher at the U.C.L. medical school, and Professor Ian Roberts, of the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who showed how our addiction to fossil fuels is slowly turning us into dinosaurs — at which point the audience, whistling and stomping their feet in appreciation, were made to sing along to a heavy-metal version of “Jingle Bells.”

What prompts tenured academics to risk their dignity in a setting so far removed from the safety of the classroom? “You can’t really let yourself go in a lecture,” said Dr. Roberts, who was recruited for Bright Club after the organizers saw a YouTube video from his tour promoting “The Energy Glut,” a book about the politics of obesity. “I’m always looking for ways of communicating what I do in a way that excites people.”

The first Bright Club evening was in May 2009. But in Britain the combination of science and spectacle has very deep roots.

“In the 19th century, the scientific lectures at the Royal Institution were so popular they had to make Albemarle Street the first one-way street in the world because of all the carriage traffic,” said Simon Singh, best-selling author of “Big Bang,” “Fermat’s Last Theorem” and other works of popular science. “You would often see Charles Dickens or members of the royal family in the front row,” he added.

In 2002, Dr. Singh, who emigrated to England from the Punjab as a child, and has a Ph.D. in particle physics from Cambridge University, teamed with Richard Wiseman, a psychologist and professional magician to present Theatre of Science at the Edinburgh Festival. Billed as “a heady mixture of probability theory, psychology and comedy” the show had successful runs in London and New York.

“I started giving talks in schools,” Dr. Singh said during an interview. “Teenagers are a very demanding audience. You have to persuade them that pulsars or cosmology is interesting.”

Concerned that British teenagers were abandoning science, Dr. Singh and Dr. Wiseman decided that scientists needed to make more of an effort to convey the excitement of their work to the general public. Pointing out that the physicist Stephen Hawking regularly fills 1,000-seat theaters, Dr. Singh challenged his colleagues to “move science out of the lecture hall and into cafes and pubs.”

More recently Dr. Singh has teamed up with the comedian Robin Ince. Last year, Mr. Ince followed his Edinburgh one-man show, “Carl Sagan Is My God, Oh And Richard Feynman Too,” with two appearances at Bright Club. His “Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People,” a science variety format that includes turns by Dr. Singh, the biologist Richard Dawkins and the physicist Brian Cox, sold out a London theater for five nights last year.

“To have an audience of 3,000 people in a week and to be able to tell them something about the evolution of the universe is great,” Dr. Singh said.

For most Bright Club performers, though, even pub-size audiences can be daunting. Professor Sophie Scott’s stand-up debut inspired “sheer panic,” she said.

“It’s like going into an exam. You’re not allowed any books or notes,” said Ms. Scott, who studies “the neural basis of vocal communication” at U.C.L.

Yet her seemingly polished performance last week vindicated Dr. Cross’s advice to all novices: “Make sure you know your first line, because you’ll forget everything else. People will laugh, and then everything will come rushing back.”

In a star turn interrupted by frequent, raucous laughter from the audience, Dr. Scott ranged from brain chemistry to the social life of bonobo apes to the neuropsychology of disgust. “Would you wear Hitler’s jumper?” she asked, by way of illustrating how neutral, inanimate objects can be contaminated by association with their owners.

After asking the audience to imagine what it would be like to be a bonobo, spend their days having sex or tickling one another, she described the effect of laughter on the brain: “I’m not saying that laughter is like rough sex. I’m saying that it’s a little bit like rough sex.”

The Bright Club, financed by U.C.L., the United Kingdom Research Council and the Wellcome Trust, is taking its act to the 600-seat Bloomsbury Theatre in February. The theme will be “Life” and Dr. Cross, who was persuaded on stage at the Wellington Arms to sing a surprisingly convincing Elvis Presley version of “Silent Night,” has already been booked for a return engagement.

Academics Making Forays Into Stand-Up Comedy

Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

News Analysis: Immigration Vote Leaves Obama’s Policy in Disarray

By Admin | Published: December 19, 2010

The vote by the Senate on Saturday to block a bill to grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant students was a painful setback to an emerging movement of immigrants and also appeared to leave the immigration policy of the Obama administration, which has supported the bill and the movement, in disarray.

Enlarge This Image

Drew Angerer/The New York Times

Supporters of the â??Dream Actâ? measure consoled each other Saturday after senators blocked it.

Multimedia


Interactive Graphic

How the Senate Voted

Related

Blogs

The Caucus

The latest on President Obama, the new Congress and other news from Washington and around the nation. Join the
discussion.

The bill, known as the Dream Act, gained 55 votes in favor with 41 against, a tally short of the 60 votes needed to bring it to the floor for debate. Five Democrats broke ranks to vote against the bill, while only three Republicans voted for it. The defeat in the Senate came after the House of Representatives passed the bill last week.

The result, although not unexpected, was still a rebuff to President Obama by newly empowered Republicans in Congress on an issue he has called one of his priorities. Supporters believed that the bill — tailored to benefit only immigrants who were brought here illegally when they were children and hoped to attend college or enlist in the military — was the easiest piece to pass out of a larger overhaul of immigration laws that Mr. Obama supports.

His administration has pursued a two-sided policy, coupling tough enforcement — producing a record number of about 390,000 deportations this year — with an effort to pass the overhaul, which would open a path to legal status for an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants. Now, with less hope for any legalization measures once Republicans take over the House in January, the administration is left with just the stick.

Part of the administration’s strategy has been to ramp up border and workplace enforcement to attract Republican votes for the overhaul. The vote on Saturday made it clear that strategy has not succeeded so far.

Mr. Obama will now face growing pressure from immigrant and Latino groups to temper the crackdown and perhaps find ways to use executive powers to bring some illegal immigrants out of the shadows. Latino voters turned out in strength for the Democrats in the midterm elections, arguably saving their majority in the Senate.

The Republicans in the new Congress are especially keen on tough enforcement. The presumed incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on immigration is Representative Steve King of Iowa, a vigorous opponent of legalization measures, which he rejects as amnesty for lawbreakers. Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, who will be chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is also an outspoken and well-versed opponent of such proposals.

Groups favoring reduced immigration cheered Saturday’s vote as a watershed victory marking the end of a period when they have been on the defensive. Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, which lobbied hard against the bill, said the new Congress “has the strongest pro-enforcement membership” in at least 15 years.

“Now, we look forward to moving aggressively to offense,” Mr. Beck said.

During the last year, administration officials considered proposals to allow immigration authorities to use administrative powers to halt deportations of illegal immigrants who might have been eligible for legal status under the student bill. They also sought ways to ease deportations for other illegal immigrants with no criminal record.

Republican lawmakers criticized those proposals as “backdoor amnesty” and pledged to stop the administration from carrying them out.

The administration’s efforts to manage its policy dilemma played out this week. Speaking on Friday before the vote, John Morton, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agency would continue the brisk pace of deportations, focusing on immigrants convicted of crimes. On the same day, the agency released from detention an 18-year-old Guatemalan student from Ohio, Bernard Pastor, granting him a one-year reprieve from deportation to continue his education.

Despite the defeat, Democrats who supported the bill said they would continue to push for it. “As long as these young people are determined to be part of this great nation, I am determined to fight for them to call America home,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the bill’s main champion.

Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, another sponsor, said Latinos would remember in the elections in 2012 how senators had voted.

“This is a vote that will not soon be forgotten by a community that is growing not just in size, but also in power and political awareness,” Mr. Menendez said.

Yet much pressure on the administration may come from immigrant organizations. Despite their illegal status, several hundred immigrant students watched the vote in the Senate gallery. Afterward, they held a somber prayer vigil in the basement of the Capitol, but moved on to a news conference that turned into a pep rally.

“They did not defeat us, they ignited our fire,” said Alina Cortes, a 19-year-old Mexican-born immigrant from Texas who lacks legal status. A self-described conservative Republican, she campaigned for the student bill, saying she hoped to join the Marine Corps.

The movement has been driven by thousands of students who “came out” to reveal that they did not have legal status, and to recount their academic achievements and the barriers they faced. Now that their status is public, they have nowhere to hide. Meanwhile, an estimated 65,000 illegal immigrants are graduating from high school each year.

“We have woken up,” said Carlos Saavedra, national coordinator of the United We Dream Network, a student group. “We are going to go around the country letting everybody know who stands with us and who stood against us.”

News Analysis: Immigration Vote Leaves Obama’s Policy in Disarray

Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

On Religion: A Catholic School Meets a Challenge

By Admin | Published: December 18, 2010

When Eric Ostrow was hired last year to teach drama at Xavier High School in Manhattan, as a newcomer he chose two impeccably innocuous shows for student productions. The first was a comedy, “Epic Proportions,” and then came the musical “Grease,” with its script scrubbed of profanity and one character’s unwed pregnancy papered over in euphemisms.

Enlarge This Image

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

Xavier’s production of â??The Laramie Project,â? about the murder of a gay student, had the administration’s support.

Then, late last spring, Mr. Ostrow presented school administrators with his wish list for year two. It was to stage “The Laramie Project,” Moises Kaufman’s play about the murder of a gay college student, Matthew Shepard. And if Mr. Ostrow thought he might be shocking his bosses with the proposal, then he was soon shocked in return.

Not only did Xavier’s president and headmaster approve the plan for “Laramie,” they informed Mr. Ostrow that he was not exactly breaking new ground. Xavier had performed “Laramie” in the 2002-3 school year, standing by the production even amid some eye-rolling and grumbling among faculty members and parents and a smattering of picketing from fundamentalist Christians.

Last weekend, Mr. Ostrow’s cast performed the play three times to a total of 470 theatergoers. English and religion teachers gave their students extra credit to see “Laramie” and write responses. Parents who had initially quailed about their children being in the show gave standing ovations. Spectators bought hundreds of “Erase Hate” wristbands to benefit the Matthew Shepard Foundation.

Nothing happened, which is a way of saying that everything happened. To use a Sherlock Holmes aphorism, this was the case of the dog that did not bark. The deep significance of Xavier’s production of “Laramie” — of a Catholic school doing a play with an H.I.V.-positive, bar-going gay man as the object of the audience’s empathy — is that it stirred about as much controversy as, say, “Our Town.”

“I’m thrilled we did it,” Jack Raslowsky, Xavier’s president, said in an interview this week. “It’s one of those plays that has the potential to be a springboard to discussion. If you do ‘The Mousetrap’ or ‘Brigadoon,’ you’re not going to be discussing issues of good and evil.”

Such a discussion, said Mr. Raslowsky and Michael LiVigni, the headmaster, fits firmly in the Catholic theological tradition, with its emphases on social justice and human dignity.

“When I saw the play,” Mr. LiVigni said, “what struck me most was the scene of Matthew’s funeral when you have picketers with the sign ‘God Hates You.’ But why would God hate what he created? That’s what I want our boys to understand.”

The Xavier production serves as a kind of marker for all that has and has not changed in the dozen years since Mr. Shepard’s murder. With Congressional efforts to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and a federal court case in California framing same-sex marriage as a civil right, society is moving toward fuller acceptance, if not yet complete equality, for gay citizens.

Yet in the months after Xavier began work on “Laramie,” a series of young gay teenagers across the country committed suicide to escape harassment, and a gay man and two teenagers in the Bronx were held, beaten and tortured in an incident widely likened to the Shepard killing.

The Roman Catholic Church, especially in the United States, has dealt with its own complicated duality on gay issues. On the inclusive side, a 1997 letter by American bishops entitled “Always Our Children” said that homosexuality could not be “considered sinful” and that homosexuals should not be pushed into therapy to try to change them. While calling on homosexuals to remain chaste, the letter maintained, “God does not love someone any less simply because he or she is homosexual.”

On the other flank, however, a 1986 letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, prepared when Pope Benedict was its leader, described homosexuality as a “more or less strong tendency toward an intrinsic moral evil.” And over the years, America’s bishops have formally campaigned against both same-sex marriage and civil unions.

“The debate within the church is whether to view innate attraction to the same sex as a deformity of human nature or as an alternative form of human sexual nature,” said Prof. Lisa Sowle Cahill, a professor of Christian ethics at Boston College. “Statistics show that younger religious people, including Catholics, are more accepting of gay people who are their peers. Nonetheless, in the culture you still see a lot of homophobia and hostility.”

What that means for students like Xavier’s can be distilled to a single, fashionable phrase of derision: “That’s so gay.” Adam Salazar, a 17-year-old senior from Brooklyn, knew it well; he used it often. “If someone was a loser, if someone was weird,” he recalled, “that was the word you used.”

Until reading the script of “Laramie” for his audition, though, Adam had never even heard of Matthew Shepard. He was in kindergarten, after all, the year of the murder. As he was cast last spring and rehearsed all this fall, he kept learning why the Shepard story still mattered.

“I was talking about what the new school play is,” he recalled of a conversation with classmates. “And I said, it’s about this homosexual kid who gets killed. And as soon as I said, ‘homosexual,’ their faces go pale.” He paused. “Just today, I heard a kid call another kid the f-word” — faggot — “because he didn’t give him a high-five.”

Marc Rugani, a religion teacher at Xavier, began discussing the play in his classes weeks before the performances. Initially, he felt the students were reticent “to breach this taboo topic.” After the show, that reluctance has given way to a “better understanding of the magnitude of hate.”

Angel Vicisio, a cast member, put it this way: “I’ve learned we are the generation that has a chance to change this.”

One production, of course, remains one production. Of the 100 licensed student productions of “Laramie” last year, only six or seven took place at religious schools of any faith. As for the tally of student productions of “Grease,” how high can you count?

E-mail: sgf1@columbia.edu

On Religion: A Catholic School Meets a Challenge

Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 26 Comments

Unease Grows About Future of Financing for Pell Grants

By Admin | Published: December 18, 2010

With the lame-duck Congress winding down and a $5.7 billion gap in financing looming for next year’s Pell grants — and a further $8 billion gap for the following year — there is growing uncertainty about the future of the grants, the nation’s most significant financial-aid program for college students.

After months of wrangling, Congress grappled Friday with stopgap financing to keep the government in business after the budget expires this weekend. But the temporary measures, probably extending to mid-February, will most likely continue the current budget without providing extra Pell money.

Earlier this year, Congress passed legislation that provided an extra $36 billion over 10 years to the Pell grant program and increased the maximum grant to $5,550, up from $4,050 five years ago. But with a new Congress arriving in January and determined to cut spending, it is unclear whether that expansion is sustainable.

If Congress does not cover the gap in financing, millions of students could see their Pell grants reduced by more than 15 percent, with the maximum grant shrinking by about $845.

Financial aid officers are starting to worry about a program that is supposed to provide more than $30 billion next year to college students.

“Our students count on that money, and we don’t have the resources to try to make that up,” said Alice Murphey, director of financial-aid management at the City University of New York. “There’s always been a lot of support in Washington for Pell, and enough people on our side. This is the first time it’s ever looked like there wouldn’t eventually be a solution.”

Most students and parents are unaware of the uncertainty regarding the grants, Ms. Murphey said, but if they were cut, the reaction would be intense.

“I think there would be a huge rebellion,” she said.

Bigger Pell grants have been a priority of the Obama administration, part of its commitment to expanding access to college and building a better-educated work force. But with the recession sending more students back to school, the number of unemployed and low-income students eligible for Pell grants has grown rapidly — and with it, the gap in financing.

“Next year, there will be 8.7 million Pell recipients, and the cost of the program will be about $34 billion,” said Terry Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education, who is lobbying for full financing for Pell grants. “It’s more than doubled in five years. Congress has two choices now: they can add $5.7 billion more and keep the maximum award, or they cannot provide it and let the Pell for next year fall.”

Rich Williams, the higher-education associate for U.S. Public Interest Research Group, said extending the current budget into next year without fully financing the Pell program would be “the worst possible scenario” in avoiding major disruptions in financial aid.

“Congress promised students and families a $5,550 maximum Pell grant next year,” Mr. Williams said, “but if it isn’t funded by the end of this year, given the political situation, it’s going to be much, much harder. Next year the discussion in D.C .will be about reducing overall funding levels.”

Unease Grows About Future of Financing for Pell Grants

Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

The Choice: How Important Is the College You Choose?

By Admin | Published: December 17, 2010

%content%
The Choice: How Important Is the College You Choose?

Posted in News | 6 Comments

Dream Act Headed for Senate Vote

By Admin | Published: December 17, 2010

Latino leaders have turned up the pressure on senators facing a vote on Saturday on a bill that would grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant students, saying support of the measure will be used as a litmus test by Latino voters in the 2012 elections.

Blogs

The Caucus

The latest on President Obama, the new Congress and other news from Washington and around the nation. Join the
discussion.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, scheduled the vote on the student measure, which is known as the Dream Act late on Thursday. The Senate will vote on a version of the bill that passed the House of Representatives on Dec. 8.

The bill gained some momentum after passing the House by 20 votes, including eight Republicans, a wider margin than its supporters had expected. But on Friday the Senate count appeared to be short of the 60 votes Democrats need to bring the bill to the floor for debate. Its sponsors, including Senator Reid and Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, the second highest Democratic leader, acknowledged they faced an uphill climb.

Latino advocates have been in high gear all week.

“This will be a watershed vote that Latinos will not forget,” Janet Murgu?a, president of the National Council of La Raza, one of the largest national Hispanic organizations, said on a conference call with reporters Friday. “There is nowhere left to hide, in the minds of Latino voters.”

“There will be members who choose to stand for innocent children and members who do not,” she said, using some of the stark terms Latino leaders have adopted in the debate. “This vote will be an indication of who stands for our families and our communities.”

Latinos, the largest and fastest-growing minority in the United States, registered more than one million voters in the past two election cycles. Democratic lawmakers, including Senator Reid and Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, have said their party was able to keep its Senate majority in November in large part due to the Latino vote. Latino voters played a big part in both senators’ wins too.

The immigrant student measure has awakened powerful passions and led to national mobilizations on both sides of the debate. Republican opponents said the measure would encourage a new wave of illegal immigration, and they called for a more secure southwestern border before they would consider it. Groups opposing the measure have deluged senate offices with faxes and calls.

In this round of the fight, the supporters, led by illegal immigrant students, most of them Latinos, have been more visible than in previous debate over illegal immigration. This week immigrant students, including many without legal status, lobbied in Senate offices in Washington. They sang Christmas carols with lyrics that called on senators to support the bill, donated blood and held military drills in cold weather outside the Capitol to show their interest in enlisting in the armed forces.

Univision and other Latino television networks have actively advocated for the student measure. In Dallas, a Latino Christian radio station, KTNO, held daily call-in sessions with students who might qualify for legalization under the bill. Catholic, Jewish and evangelical Christian clergy gathered on Capitol Hill this week to pray for passage of the bill.

Latino evangelical pastors, who are politically conservative on social issues, joined the campaign to pressure Republicans.

“Republican conservatives have a chance to demonstrate they truly embrace the party of Lincoln,” Reverend Samuel Rodriguez, the president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said on a conference call Thursday. “To continue to punish these children is nothing less than anti-Christian, anti-Hispanic and anti-American.”

Latino and immigrant advocates have focused their efforts on a short list of Republicans who were leaning against the immigration measure, including some who had supported it in the past, are leaving the Senate, or who serve in states with many Latino voters. Several of those Republicans face strong opposition from Republican voters in their states to measures that could be seen as rewarding immigrants who broke the law to remain in this country.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, was one target of the advocates’ campaign, with student protesters holding a two-week hunger strike at one of her Texas offices. Senator Hutchison said on Friday that she will not vote for the bill.

“While she is sympathetic with their situation, she will not support the DREAM Act legislation brought before the Senate because it expands the scope of the bill beyond the intended individuals who were brought here as children and grew up and were educated in the United States,” a statement from her office said.

Dream Act Headed for Senate Vote

Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

The Learning Network: Student Crossword | 2010 in Review

By Admin | Published: December 17, 2010

%content%
The Learning Network: Student Crossword | 2010 in Review

Posted in News | Leave a comment