When litigation magnet JuicyCampus.com launched at the beginning of the year, no sex life of a member of a college student body was safe. And thanks to defamation laws that hold web publishers free from responsibility for the comments posted by other people, it flourished. Sure, Google got scared people would think it was profiting, or helping founder Matt Ivester profit, from scandalous tales and ended up pulling it advertising relationship with the site. But that doesn't mean JuicyCampus has disappeared. In fact, it's expanding. CONTINUED »
Like any do-gooding multi-hundred-millionaire movie star, Hancock's Will Smith is involved in the philanthropy scene. He's also, as prying eyes have woefully pointed out, been involving himself with the Tom Cruise scene, which means of course that he's basically a raving Scientologist trying to hold in his inner homo, because that's what the cult is about, right? Back in 2004, Smith donated $20k to something called "HOPE: The Hollywood Education and Literacy Program," which is the church's "literary program," where children get homeschooled and, we're guessing, brainwashed in their formative years. Now, he and Jada have been plugging a way at their New Village Academy, a private school they're funding that will open in December, which got the LAT treatment over the weekend. Naturally, the first word out of the school's mouth is that it is not a Scientology facility. (Even Will and Jada still insist they aren't of the church.) But a certain anti-Scientology crusader is casting his eye of suspicion on this educational institution, mostly because of a … goat. CONTINUED »
Bill Cosby has made a career out of delivering commencement addresses, usually picking up an honorary degree whenever he stops by a campus. At Stanford's commencement on Sunday, though, it was Oprah fulfilling the celebrity duty, delivering words of wisdom, hope, and virtue. "I like money," she told the nearly 5,000 graduates staring up at her. "It's good for buying things. What you want is money with meaning. Meaning is what brings real richness to your life." Easy for a billionaire to say, sure.
But all was not lost. Though she "really wanted to give you cars, but I just couldn't pull that off," Oprah handed out something she's most famous for: books. Each graduate got a copy of Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth and Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind, both books about states of mind. Which is perfect for new graduates, whose current state of mind is how they're going to pay off six-figures in loans. Enjoy your summer reading! CONTINUED »
This just in: Giving children laptops to learn is bad for them. [Slate]
On Sunday, singer M.I.A. picked up a cool $100,000 from MTV when she performed at a party following their Movie Awards.
What's she going to do with it? Build two schools – which cost $52k each – in Liberia. Beat that, Madge. [Starpulse]
Today, as many of you know, marks the twelfth annual Day of Silence, which aims to combat homophobia in schools and commemorate those who have lost their lives to anti-gay violence.
A reported 6,500 schools are participating in this year’s festivities, which also honors slain 15-year Lawrence King, so you can be sure the event’s big news. And Michigan’s local CBS affiliate fumbled in their coverage, says gay activist Sean Kosofsky.
To deal with obnoxious students who text message during his class, Syracuse University prof Laurence Thomas has a strict policy: If he catches a student doing it, he will end the class immediately and walk out. He's been making good on his playbook, staging brazen walk outs on his own course after catching students SMSing.
Naturally, parents and students aren't digging his policy, complaining about the $30k they spend to be consumers of education, and how Thomas has a duty to pay up. The scandal has even reached the student newspaper! (Where we used to work!)
To Thomas, it's a matter of respect; students need to show some.
So when he caught a student in the front row of a large lecture hall sending a "where r u?" last week, he up and left, and then sent students, the chancellor, and his dean an email about the incident, where he noted the offending student is Cuban and that last year, two Latino students started a game of tic-tac-toe during his class.
You see, white students are also mischievous, but to Thomas, who is black, minority students should have a better understanding of respect. Even if their cell phones are 3G and tricked out with 5 megapixel cams.
After a three-year reign, New York University is no longer the No. 1 dream school for college-bound kids. Harvard, Princeton and Stanford are all ahead of it. Even Columbia dropped two spots. New York is over. [NYP]
What does Section 494 of the College Education and Affordability Act contain? Probably four people know, 'cause that thing is like 747 pages long. (Actually, it is 747 pages long.) But tucked in there is a provision – some might call it an earmark – from the RIAA and MPAA that would require any university receiving federal funding to install filters deterring copyright infringement on college campuses. The American Council on Education sent its own letters to Congress, arguing Sec. 494 would require undue financial burden on institutions of higher learning that are busy either giving tuition away for free or pinging students with erroneous fees like "science laboratory use fee" when they're art majors. [THR Esq.]
"Teen admits sex with teacher 1 or 2 times." Awesome? Maybe not. We hear those "1 or 2 times" just happened to coincide with the student's worst grades of the entire semester. And we heard it from our cousin's best friend, who swears someone in her younger brother's gym class knows someone who recognizes the kid from study hall. So there. [CNN]
Did you know med school is totally overrated? After all, everyone "in the know" sees PhD's are yours for the asking. Just think! While those suckers are shelling out a couple hundred grand, memorizing a bunch of boring medical jargon and spending a couple years working crazy 100+ hour shifts under the tutelage of "trained medical professionals," you could get the exact same degree delivered without even getting up from your couch!
Order a PhD.
Your new Diploma! No examinations! No classes! No textbooks! Call to register and receive your qualifications within days! 24 hours a day 7 days a week!
On another note, we think we've finally figured out what to give our Jewish mother for the holidays this year.
Sixty-one small relatively obscure American liberal arts colleges have reportedly opted out of U.S. News & World Review's annual rankings of higher education, in what Bloomberg News is calling "the biggest protest yet."
Although, top-ranked schools (like Williams, Amherst and Swarthmore) have expressed "concern[s] about the survey's fairness," those concerns seem to be largely outweighed by the satisfaction of being rated the highest.
Meanwhile, those (safety!) schools joining the rebellion against U.S. News stand by their decision to boycott the "reputational survey," explaining that they'd simply prefer to "sit around in patchouli oil-stained bohemian clothes, sipping green tea and eating organic ramen noodles out of dye-free handcrafted porcelain bowls while listening to Rufus Wainwright on their iPods or writing touchy-feely essays about 'The Feminist Mystique' instead."
Last week, a substitute teacher in a Wisconsin school district was fired for allegedly initiating a sexual relationship with her daughter's 13 year-old boyfriend.
And, while the teacher's name has not yet been released (due to the pending police investigation) it's safe to assume that she, like her predecessors Debra Lafave and Amber Jennings, is both deeply disturbed and outrageously hot.
Although no pictures of the offending woman are currently available, we do have an exclusive video dramatization of the local Wisconsin police department responsible for the woman's apprehension and subsequent arrest.
The highly educational footage, after the jump.
First they agree to restrict access to certain sites just to do business in China, and now Google is getting all up in our ability to cheat on college term papers? So much for that "don't be evil" mantra. Beginning next month, the search giant will stop accepting advertisements from essay-writing services (or, as they're more realistically known, essay-downloading services). Naturally, your college professor – the asshole who signed up for Plagiarism.org when it was in beta – is pleased by the news. And so is the nerd down the hall, whose thesis writing fee just tripled.
In today's newest Times exposée, we learn that Ivy League rejects from coast to coast are being forced to focus their sights on (gasp!) second-tier colleges. And, once they get over their initial horror/humiliation of being waitlisted at Brown, the underachieving pre-frosh are actually kinda psyched about settling for their safeties!
Turns out their name-dropping parents aren't quite as good at coping, though.
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