University of Illinois students complain about defective condoms By Jenna Linder University of Illinois at Champaign- Urbana CHAMPAIGN, 111. - Since the Uni versity of Illinois' McKinley Health Center made a brand switch from Sheik to Premium Blue condoms, some students have disapproved - so much so that they're returning their latex along with complaint forms. A brown box with greasy edges and several bags of defective condoms sits behind a clerk who helps student visi tors. Employees collect the condoms before reporting them to the center's pharmacy. They get the latex from students who have tested its durabil ity and found it unsatisfactory. One student employee said the center gave a student a pack of condoms that had been split down the middle. Dis gusted, the student handed the pack age back. Employees say they want the cen ter to offer better condoms. They say they try to eliminate as many bad condoms as possible, but fear a few bad ones slip by them. A student em ployee said she's even afraid to use the condoms and warns her friends against using them, too. Gina Garcia, head of clerks at the McKinley Resource Center, acknowl edges that there have been several stu dent complaints. They have less to do with broken condoms than with lubri cation smeared on the outside of pack ages, she said. The pharmacy keeps track of the complaints and sends the condoms back to their manufacturer. The center switched from Sheik to Premium Blue condoms last spring to save money. As long as the Food and Drug Administration approve a brand, it is considered for distribution. Will iam Mosher, a supervisor at the center's pharmacy, said he picks the cheapest brand. He said he chose Pre mium Blue condoms because they were $55 per 1,000, compared to $BO per 1,000 condoms manufactured by Sheik. Mosher said health officials would see if the company could produce a better product. If not, he said the cen ter would consider changing condom brands again. Man Confesses To CU Student's Murder By Christine Tatum CPS Police suspect the killer of Uni versity of Colorado student Susannah Chase is still on the loose, even though they say a man in Tacoma, Wash., has confessed to the Kelly Ray Thompson, 30, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a first-de gree murder charge in connection with the stabbing death of 41-year old Cathy Jean Jacks-Webb of Tacoma. However, he reportedly told investigators he is responsible for killings in California, Colorado and Texas Chase's among them. Police decline to say how many. A Washington sheriff's deputy ar rested Thompson earlier this week after stopping him for erratic driv ing and finding him with blood splattered on his clothes. The deputy reported that Thompson confessed to killing Jacks-Webb and her boy friend. But when authorities went to Jacks-Webb's home, they found her lying dead on the kitchen floor, and her boyfriend still alive. The boy friend told police he heard nothing after falling asleep earlier that night. Thompson later told investigators he had slipped medications into the d's beer REE! lassifieds for Behrend students, faculty, and staff. behrcoll4@aol.com Education department spots errors on Penn's crime report By Christine Tatum CPS The U.S. Department of Education has scolded the University of Penn sylvania for omitting some incidents from its annual crime report. The department's criticism comes at a time when universities nationwide have been sluggish to comply with the Campus Security Act of 1990, which requires schools that receive federal student aid to publish yearly crime reports. The department reviewed Penn's reports for 1994, 1995 and 1996 after The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that the school omitted crimes on streets and sidewalks surrounding the campus from its 1995 statistics. The department agreed with school officials' assertion that streets and sidewalks bordering campus are city property, and therefore not necessar ily the university's responsibility. That finding is significant because it helps clarify what territory constitutes a campus, said university spokesman Ken Wilde. "Interpreting the law is very diffi cult for urban campuses that have city streets running right down the middle of them," he said. "Schools without traditional boundaries are struggling Diploma Mills By Sunni DeNicola CPS Thanks to the Internet, college stu dents can access library' holdings, com municate with professors, research papers, and participate in group dis cussions all without leaving their room. In fact, many now earn degrees without ever setting foot on a college campus Earning a degree from home has particular appeal for non-traditional students whodo not want to leave jobs or uproot families in order to attend a particular school. It is also valuable for those who want to stay current in their The inconsistencies of Thompson's story caused investiga tors to dismiss some of his other claims, but prompted two detectives from Boulder to travel to Washing ton to question him. "It does not appear he was Susannah's murderer because it does not appear he was in Boulder at the time of the homicide," said Leslie Aaholm, a spokeswoman for the city of Boulder. "His story just didn't work." The last time anyone saw 23-year old Chase alive, she was walking home by herself around 1:30 a.m. on Dec. 21. Police say the junior Amer ican studies major had had a couple of beers, gotten into an argument with her boyfriend and decided to leave him and another man sitting in a pizza parlor not far away from her off-campus apartment. By the time they found her two hours later, police said Chase had been beaten so badly they couldn't tell if she was a man or a woman. She died two days later. Aaholm said investigators are still on the Colorado case and are ac tively pursuing other leads. A $20,000 reward is offered for infor mation leading to an arrest and con viction of Chase's killer, she said. National Campus News Thursday, February 19,1998 - The Behrend College Collegian - Page 7 to make sense of it all." But, in many cases, they're also eager to find ways around reporting information that could harm their pris tine and public images, said Myra Kodner, a spokeswoman for Security On Campus, a watchdog agency that monitors campus crime. "This is about getting schools whether they're in rural or urban set tings the education they need to live up to the law," she said. "And this is about them coming to terms with the fact that they have to report infor mation that isn't always happy news." Despite its alliance with the univer sity on one issue, the department did chastise the school for failing to in clude several incidents that happened at its hospital and also an alleged rape that happened in a campus dormitory in 1994. The department also noted that Penn failed to cite eight arrests for alcohol violations in 1996 and failed to report any crimes stemming from bias or hate during the same three years. Wilde said the university didn't re port bias or hate crimes because there haven't been any. He added that the school is working to correct all other problems the department identified. "The university isn't trying to hide field, but do not live near a university. With advancements in technology, distance learning has lept way beyond the old correspondence school days that strictly focused on snail mail methods to certify trades like plumb ing and carpentry. Now there are video conferencing, television courses, and, of course, the "virtual classroom" where classes are held on the Web chat-room style. But riding on the tails of this dis tance learning boom are the "diploma mills." Diploma mills are schools that sound legit, even prestigious, but they lack proper accreditation. Although most claim accreditation from some official-sounding agency, they neglect to mention that the agency is not rec ognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Often it is not until a stu dent tries to enroll at another institu tion, or apply to graduate school, that he finds out his degree is nontransfer able. Emir A. Mohammed, now a gradu ate student at the University of Strathclyde in Canada, almost made that mistake. "The school I dealt with told me that I could work on my mas ters and Ph.D. while still doing my bachelor's degree, and entirely at a distance. And, of course, being com pletely oblivious of issues like accredi tation, I almost jumped into this seem ingly flexible and incredible offer." Mohammed says that he later stumbled across that school's name in a distance education chat group. "I was informed that it was an unaccredited degree mill and it was best to avoid to them." "The mistake most people make is they ask an online university 'Are you accredited?' They say, 'We are accred ited by the World Association of Uni versities and Colleges.' Well there's no such accreditation," says Vicky Phillips, director of Lifelong Learning, an online counseling center for dis tance learners and co-author of the soon-to-be released book, "Best Dis tance Learning Graduate Schools." [Although WAUC is an accrediting agency based in Las Vegas, it is not sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Education.] "There are scores of unrecognized accreditation agencies. Often they (the diploma mills) create a fake accredit ing agency, so when asked, they can say, 'Yes, we are accredited.' They can't be prosecuted because they are telling them the truth, they are accred ited. Consumers get burned because they don't realize these accreditations mean nothing." Phillips says it is important for stu dents to know how to protect them selves. "If they want a degree, there are only two kinds of recognized ac- anything at all," Wilde said. "We want people to know what's happening and where it's happening on campus. If we didn't, we certainly wouldn't be publishing crime statistics on a weekly basis. We're certainly not re quired by law to do that." Finally, the department found that Penn's practice of putting crime re ports on the school's web site does not meet the law's requirement that all current and prospective students and employees be informed. "Each of the aforementioned methods relies on the initiative of the student in obtaining a copy of the report; none constitutes a direct and active distribution to each individual," the department wrote in a letter to the university. Penn has 30 days to comply with the department's findings. The department tries to investigate schools where allegations of noncom pliance with the law surface, depart ment officials said. The department has reviewed crime-reporting proce dures at Miami University in Ohio, Moorhead State University in Minne sota and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and is currently reviewing records at Clemson University in South Caro lina, department officials said. creditation and they are not equal. They need to ask if it [the school] is accredited and who it's accredited by; and they need to understand what that kind of accreditation means for them." Phillips says the first type is regional accreditation. There are six regional associations: Middle States, New En gland, North Central, Northwest, Southern, and Western Associations of Colleges and Schools. "Regional accreditation is key," agrees Dr. Timothy Mott, Dean of the Undergraduate Center for Distance Learning at Union Institute in Cincin nati. "(Diploma mills) baffle you with names that imply accreditation and acceptability. They actually send state licensing certificates along in the mail; but being state licensed and being re gionally accredited are two different things. Call that association, or call the state higher education board if you aren't sure. If you are interested in graduate school, call potential gradu ate institutions and make sure they will accept the degree." The second nationally recognized accreditation is DETC (Distance Edu cation and Training Council). But Phillips says DETC accreditation is still not recognized by regionally ac credited institutions which is im portant should you want to continue your studies elsewhere. "The agency started out to accredit correspondence programs and has historically been more vocational in nature," says Phillips. "In the last decade they've gotten more involved in the degree business." Phillips says that she's heard of many a student who earned an associ ate degree in a DETC-approved school and then decided to go on for a bach elors degree. "They have a transcript sent there [to the new school], and the school says they can't accept it because it's not regionally accredited. So the student goes 'What??? They won't accept $6,000 worth of credits?'" Phillips says part of the problem is that people don't know how to judge the information they see on the Internet. "They do a search ... and see a college listed there and they assume that they must be safe since they were listed by Yahoo, but because informa tion is not filtered, it sets people up." In addition, Phillips say, diploma mills tend to be more savvy about ad vertising to students. "Some of the vir tual campuses look better than the real ones. Their catalogues look better ... they put a gold seal on the cover, a photo of an ivy-covered building that doesn't exist. They think about the image that they are selling, where the average university doesn't give it that much thought." Campus news briefs by College Press Service Stanford students win bias suit STANFORD, Calif. - Four former Stanford University students have won a $300,000 settlement from a couple who refused to let them rent a house because they were Asian. An U.S. District Court judge approved the settlement, one of the largest stem ming from allegations of housing dis crimination. Property owners Jack and Beverly Hybl, who have since sold the rental house, also have agreed to receive training in fair housing laws. The students alleged that Beverly Hybl took them on a tour of the house, and commented that she had "good, white American appli cants," who also were hoping to rent it. The students claimed Beverly Hybl eventually chased them from the house yelling "We white people need to stick together," and "Go back to your country." A woman in the house at the time of the tour later told attor neys Hybl apologized that she had subjected her to the heated exchange but also added: "They're ruining our country." The students, who found out about the Hybls' property from the university's Community Housing Of fice, pushed school officials to drop the family's properties from school listings. Six months after the 1996 incident, the university did just that. Proposal to lower drinking age denied FT. COLLINS, Colo. - So close, and yet so far away. Eighteen-year olds in Colorado hoping to drink beer legally will have to wait a while longer. By a tight vote of 5-7, the State Veterans and Military Affairs Com mittee on Feb. 5 quashed a proposed bill that would have lowered the drinking age for 3.2 beer from 21 to 18. If the bill had been approved, the state would have forfeited $2O mil lion in federal highway funding. To offset the loss, the bill's sponsor, state Rep. Ron Tupa, proposed that 18- to 21-year-olds be required to purchase an annual drinking permit for $lOO. State employment, residency or en rollment in a state school also would have been required for people to be eligible for the permit. "Personally, I feel that when you are 18, you are a legal adult and should be able to do whatever you want," Tupa told the "Rocky Mountain Collegian" of Colorado State University. Number Of Black Students Denied NCAA Eligibilty Increases By Christine Tatum CPS Black students and low-income stu dents are having a tougher time meet ing eligibility requirements to com pete in college sports than other ath letes, a recent study conducted by the National Collegiate Athletic Associa tion has found. The study provides a first look at the effect of Proposition 16, a set of controversial eligibility standards the NCAA approved six years ago in re sponse to complaints that many ath letes were not prepared for college level studies. The stiffer standards went into effect during the 1996-97 school year. With the tougher standards, the number of black students denied eli gibility rose from 16.3 percent in 1995-96 to 26.9 percent in 1996-97. During that same period, the number of ineligible student-athletes from families earning less than $30,000 annually rose from 14.7 percent to 22.2 percent. And for the second straight year, the percentage of black students from low-income families who failed to meet the standards was the highest of all categories; the num ber rose from 21 percent in 1995-96 to 34.7 percent in 1996-97. "We all knew this was going to hap pen," Dale Clayton, president of the Black Coaches Association told the Chronicle of Higher Education. "His tory has shown that African-Ameri can students don't test well. Individu- Student Convicted of Sending Threatening E-mail SANTA ANA, Calif. - A federal jury convicted a former University of California at Irvine student of a civil rights violation for sending threaten ing e-mail to 59 Asian students. The Feb. 10 conviction is the first for hate mail sent through cyberspace and now serves as legal precedent that sets standards for conduct on the Internet, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gennaco told Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service. "It's drawing a line in cyberspace and saying if you cross that line and threaten people with their lives that a jury of your peers is not going to tolerate it," he said. Richard Machado, 21, testified that he sent the threatening e-mail in 1996 as a joke and never meant to hurt anyone. How ever, he admitted under cross-exami nation that he blamed his own poor grades on Asian students, who he said had raised the grading curve. Machado is scheduled for sentencing in coming weeks. University's admissions guidelines spark debate ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Being an athlete or member of an underrepresented minority group could get students into the University of Michigan faster than if they made a perfect score on the SAT. The school's recently revised evaluations of prospective students come at a time when it's faced with two lawsuits challenging its use of race in the ad missions process. University officials say the changes are "simpler, less complex" versions of old guidelines, but critics say they're more proof that race is still a very large factor in the university's admissions. "It's impor tant for everyone to realize that no one is guaranteed admission because of a particular score," said university spokeswoman Lisa Baker. "While test scores tell us something about an ap plicant, they don't present a complete picture. The (grade-point average) is truly the most important factor." Stu dents are admitted on a point system and can get as many as 110 points for academic factors - for example, a per fect 4.0 GPA is worth 80 points - and 40 points for non-academic ones. Non-academic factors increase a student's chance of admission. Stu dents who earn perfect scores on the SAT or ACT would get 12 points, but athletes or minorities get 20 points. als from low-income families don't test well. And many times, these in dividuals are one and the same." The new standards require high school students to complete 13 cote classes, including four in English; earn at least a 2.5 grade-point aver age; and score at least 820 on the SAT or 68 on the ACT. (However, students can still get eligibility with a 2.0 GPA if they exceed minimum scores on one of the standardized tests.) In light of the recent study's results, NCAA officials are meeting this week to discuss the possibility of adjusting the standards, said Wally Renfro, a spokesman for the association. Ad justing the standards does not neces sarily mean lowering them, he quickly added. "These requirements were put in place by (educators) who wanted to ensure the preparedness of their ath letes for life after sports," he said. "They wanted to make sure athletes weren't graduating without knowing how to perform at the college level." While the NCAA is concerned about the hurdles keeping some stu dents from competition, it is pleased with higher graduation rates among athletes, Renfro said. He reported that in 1984 athletes graduated at a rate of 52 percent, compared to 53 percent of non-athletes. But in 1990, athletes finished school at a rate of 58 percent, surpassing the rest of the student population, which finished at a rate of 56 percent.
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