_______ National Campus News —h si Fraternities work by Daryl Lang and Erin R. Wengerd Knight-Ridder Tribune April 3, 2000 Students at Bloomsburg University said farewell last week to three of their own who died in a March 19 frater nity fire. Tim Knisely and Shawn Kauffman know all too well that a similar tragedy could happen at Penn State. That’s why the two Centre Region code inspectors spend much of their time visiting fraternity houses in State College, looking for fire haz ards and writing detailed lists of all violations at every house in the hope of getting the problems corrected. And that’s why several of Penn State's fraternities are now working together to increase awareness about fire risks. It’s an uphill battle Penn State has 52 fraternity houses, more than any other university in the country, and each of them is found guilty of at least a few fire code vio lations when the inspectors visit. “It seems like we can’t get into these houses enough,” said Knisely, a senior fire and housing inspector with the Centre Region Code Admin istration. Local officials are looking for the best ways to prevent fires like the one a week ago at Bloomsburg. It was the second fatal fire in six years at a Bloomsburg fraternity. National Fire Protection Associa tion figures show that in a typical year, there will be 1,800 fires in dorms, fra ternities and sororities nationwide, resulting in at least one death. The last fatal fire at a Penn State frater nity was in February 1966, when a house mother died at Sigma Nu fra- ternity. But there are a few minor fires each year. Kauffman, an assistant chief for the Alpha Fire Company, was one of the firefighters who responded to ti March 8 blaze at Chi Phi, a 68-year old wood-frame structure on Hamilton Avenue. Scholarly website promises more depth, accountability by John J. Goldman Los Angeles Times April 2, 2000 NEW YORK Six prestigious in ternational universities and cultural in stitutions were to announce Monday that they have formed a company to sell knowledge and education on die Internet, a move that could be a model for courting lifelong learners. The partnership among Columbia University, London School of Eco nomics and Political Science, the Brit ish Library, Cambridge University Press, Smithsonian Institution and New York Public Library will bring expertise and a vast amount of infor- mation to its Fathom Web site. Operations are set to begin later this The site will seek to address one of the most serious weaknesses of the Internet, its founders say: the reliability of information on the Web. All of Fathom's original content will be authenticated and its standards of editorial integrity monitored by the company’s academic council, a panel of senior professors and curators from the participating institutions. “It is our ambition to be identified as the place to go if you want to have authoritative information on topics across the board,” said George Rupp, Columbia’s president “You have a whole range of useful information that would be calibrated by our best schol ars." Much of the information Fathom will provide has never been available outside the participating institutions. "’ Columbia University will contrib ute major selections from its oral-his tory project, one of the largest archives in the world. Tbped interviews range from a dis- ’ - 1 \V' KJli U:>ii w Wright, and Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus who describes his conver sations with President Eisenhower The fire, later determined to be caused by electrical wiring, was un dercontrol before it spread beyond one bedroom. All the students had left for spring break and no one was injured. The house had 72 code violations when it was inspected in February 1999 ranging from inoperable emergency lights to doors incorrectly propped open but all of those prob lems had been fixed when the house was checked in December, Kauffman said. Still, he adds, it’s common for small violations to crop up again once the inspectors leave. "There may have been new viola tions." Kauffman said. "The cause of the fire may have been a violation." Fraternity life sometimes with dozens of students sharing a house and acting as hosts huge parties tends to be rough on fire safety systems. A review' of inspection records shows it is typical for a house to rack up dozens of violations, even if most of them are small and easily repaired. A February 1999 inspection of Beta Sigma Beta, 255 E. Fairmount Ave., found 71 violations. They included five instances of toasters being used in bedrooms, several fire doors being propped open, garbage cluttering hall ways, and duct tape covering the horn of an alarm. After failing to fix all the problems, the fraternity was hit with three citations totaling $7OO. At Delta Tau Delta, where sprinklers were installed after a fire in the early 1980 s. violations were noted in the 1999 inspections for plants, wind chimes, and fuzzy dice hanging from the sprinkler heads. One of the fraternities with the best records, Delta Theta Sigma, 101 N. Patterson St., had only seven viola tions recorded in April 1999. But they included a propane tank being stored on a porch and a lawn mower being stored in the attic. Many of the problems can be cor rected the same day as the inspection. But they tend to return just its easily. Fraternity brothers who smoke will often remove the batteries of the during the 1957 Little Rock, Ark., school desegregation crisis. In a unique and moving memoir, psychoanalyst Muriel Gardiner recol lects seeing Nazi soldiers marching into Vienna in the 19305. The New York Public Library will give the site 54.000 photographs marking the historical, cultural, and ar chitectural development of New York Citv. Among offerings from the London School of Economics will be a lecture by Professor Danny Quah on the “weightless economy,” the shift from “It is our ambition to be identified as the place to go if you want to have authori tative information on topics across the board. You have a whole range of useful information that would be calibrated by our best scholars. ” a world of manufacturing to a world of weightless services. The British Library will have mul timedia presentations bringing to life treasured objects such as the Magna Carta and the Lindisfame Gospels, priceless seventh-century illuminated manuscripts taken to London by Henry VIII. The Smithsonian’s Na tional Museum of Natural History will survey North America’s endangered mammals. Many of the seminars, lectures, da tabases, performances, and publica tions offered by Fathom will be free. But charges will occur as users move deeper into the content. The decision by Columbia to seek other elite partners to form a for-profit company came, officials say, after considerable research, development, and soul-searching. What officials at the university’s upper Manhattan cam " ) nor - > vns dilute f mass education for a degree on the Internet. Columbia already had a strong digi- to increase awareness of fire risks smoke alarm in their room if it's sen sitive, said Brian Brassell. president of Tau Kappa Epsilon. Actions like that are dangerous, said David Felice, chief fire inspector for the Centre Region Cotie Administra- “These are set up to save their lives," Felice said. "It almost seems suicidal that they tamper with the fire alarm systems In the early 1 9905, it wasn't uncom mon to find 250 violations per frater nity house, Knisely said. Now, 30 or 40 violations per house are average. Houses with the most violations may have 60 or 70. “When I started in 1996, most of the time, a code officer wasn’t welcome in the house.” said Knisely, who spends more than half his lime on the job dealing with fraternity house in spections. Things have improved since then, he said. Most fraternities are willing to cooperate with the code oil ice, though ongoing maintenance at the houses is still a concern “We get good cooperation while we’re there, but there's not always someone there who takes charge,” Knisely said. Although some houses have a fire marshal whose primary job is safety issues, others just hav e a house man ager, who deals with even thing from clogged sinks to fire protection. Knisely said the Code Administra tion is researching holding inspections more frequently For now . the inspec tion cycle runs every two years. Dur- ing that time, inspectors sometimes visit houses six or seven times to check on the progress of fixing the situations which led to any violations. Some problems, especially those requiring new doors to be mounted in the house, take a lone time to com- plete or cost a lot of money, inspec tors say. Regular fire inspections have helped at least one fraternity avoid a close call. In files with the inspection records, Knisely keeps two sets of Polaroid tal base to build upon. The university’s innovative Center for New Media Teaching and Learning developed highly original digital tools to aid in struction on campus. At the same time, Columbia was seeking to capitalize on the $2 billion n-year U.S. mai l-el fordr-tance learn ing projected to im >u m S 6 billion by 2003. "This is a vc!\ big badness. We really are aimed at the w, » Idwide mar ket, which we think ultimately may be bigger outside the United States,” said Ann Kirsehner, president and -George Rupp, president, Columbia University cording Michael Crow, Columbia’s executive vice provost, she was hired to help provide a bal ance between entrepreneurial drive and academic vision and the sanctity of the authentication process.” In addition to offering original con tent and context. Fathom hopes to make money through referral Ices steering site useis to courses offered by other academic institutions missions on tile sales of textbooks, pe riodicals, documents, and a wide va riety of learning tools. Another po tential source of revenue is sponsor ships for special forums on the Web site. “Fathom is far more than another distance-learning site,” Kirschnersaid. “We are creating a vibrant Main Street for knowledge rind edu'/aiinn. We in tend to go beyond the current limits of information sites scattered across the Web and also go beyond online ’• • - u '-‘ ' U ' 1 <• M•" lectual incubators. . . . The test will be to what degree knowledge capital can raise financial capuai." 1 ••" photographs. The first pictures show the inside of an attic at Pi Lambda Phi taken Jan. 14, 1994. A wooden lad der provided the only access to a loft a fraternity member was using as a bedroom, complete with carpet, a mattress, and clothes scattered about. That week, the fire inspectors ordered him out of the attic. chief executive of Fathom. “Our goal is to make Fathom the place you think of when you think you've got to learn something.” Kirschner has a doctorate degree in Fnelish literature mu uu led nevv- media activities for the National Foot ball League. Ac- com- The second set of photographs shows the same attic, blackened and gutted as the result of a fire. The date on those pictures is Jan. 29, 1994. “That person would have been dead if he was up there,” Knisely said. “There was no way out.” Fire officials point out that a build ing with a sprinkler system is gener ally safer than one without. Residen tial sprinklers are heat-activated and typically spray enough water to keep a fire from spreading once it starts, Kauffman said. Although legislation is in the works at both the state and national levels to provide money for sprinkler systems, only nine Penn State fraternities less than 20 percent have installed them. “It’s something everyone would want to have,” said Mike Barrett, vice president of Chi Phi. “It’s just not feasible economically.” But more of the chapters are taking proactive fire safety measures, like hiring a contrac tor to do a pre-inspection of the house before the code officers come. The contractors point out what needs to be fixed so that fraternity members can start to work on it. “We encourage our chapters to do that every semester, even when there’s not a code inspection,” said Jay Sletson, executive director of the Fra ternity Purchasing Association. Forty-nine fraternities belong to the FPA, a corporation that facilitates work between contractors and frater nities, as well as saving the chapters money on various building materials. 'A lot of the contractors work with us because we guarantee to pay one week after we get the invoice,” Sletson said, adding that FPA also has good Court rules public u collect student fees by Jan Crawford Greenburg Chicago Tribune March 23, 2000 WASHINGTON In order to en courage the “free and open ex change of ideas,” the Supreme Court Wednesday, March 23, said public universities can collect man datory student fees to fund a vari ety of campus groups from Am nesty International to the Pro-Lite League even if some students object to the organizations. In a unanimous decision, the court ruled against a group of con servative students from the Univer sity of Wisconsin at Madison, who had sued to stop their activity fees from going to organizations they found objectionable. They main tained that forcing them to support the groups violated their constitu tional rights. But the court, in an opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy, said an important purpose of any university is to "facilitate a wide range of speech.” The justices concluded that the university was entitled to collect the mandatory student fees, just as it has during its 151-year his tory, as long as it doled them out neutrally, without discriminating against groups based on their view points. “The university may determine that its mission is well served if stu dents have the means to engage in dynamic discussions of philosophi cal, religious, scientific, social, and political subjects in their extracur ricular campus life outside the lec ture hall,” the court said. “If the university reaches this conclusion, it is entitled to impose a mandatory fee to sustain an open dialogue to these ends.” The objecting students can’t com plain about those fees, the court said, as long as the school does not “prefer some viewpoints to others.” Wednesday’s decision reversed a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago. Civil rights groups hailed the rul ing as a significant free speech de- iorncy for the Lambda Legal De fense & Education Fund, which filed a brief in the case, called the ruling a "great victory” for students relations with the alumni who, in many cases, own the homes. Some fraternity members, like Aca cia President John Zieglerewengerd, are hoping to spread the salety mes sage to their brothers. Along with the Masons of Pennsylvania and the In terfraternity Council. Ziegler s trater nity is organizing a student lire salety program next month. "I want to spread awareness among the fraternities and the general pub lic,” he said. 3 killed in fire at Bloomsburg frat house by Michelle M. Martinez Knight-Ridder Tribune March 20,2000 BLOOMSBURG, Pa. (KRT) A fire destroyed a fraternity house near Bloomsburg University early Sunday morning, March 19, killing three people who officials say they believe were stu dents. As of late Sunday, the Columbia County coroner had not identified the bodies recovered from the Tau Kappa Epsilon (TKE) house on East Fourth Street in this cast-central Pennsylvania college town. The coroner is waiting for dental records, officials said. “They're relatively sure that they know” die identities, Sgt. Leo Sokoloski Students from Bloomsburg University console each other at the scene of an off-campus fraternity house fire Monday, March 21, 2000. ... niversifies may in the minority. Harlow and other civil rights lawyers said a contrary result, al lowing students to opt out of fund ing organizations they oppose, would have dealt a devastating blow to minority groups, such as lesbians and gays. And on liberal campuses, tliev noted, conservative oruani/.tlinns, tm, could have been shut out "If the uuivei site had iost thu case, it would have meant the abil- ity to lot m student groups on cam pus would have depended on ma jority approval,” said Matt Coles, director of the Lesbian and Gay Rights Project for the American Civil Liberties Union. "You could create a group and be part of the ongoing debate on university cam puses if the majority approved, but not otherwise.” Wisconsin Atty. Gen. James Doyle, whose office defended the university’s fee structure, said the ruling was a "total victory for the Ist .Amendment." because it allows student-, to "haw the opportunity to hear from many diflercm view points and to be able to express the views that they hold important." In the opinion. Kennedy ac knowledged that "it is all but inevi table” that collecting mandatory student fees will result in subsidies to groups that "some students find objectionable and offensive to their personal beliefs.” A university could, if it chose, allow students to opt out of funding those gioups. the court said, but the Constitution did not require it But the court acknowledged what the university had asserted from the beginning: requiring colleges to al low students to opt out "could be so disruptive and expensive that the program to support extracurricular speech would be ineffective.” In reaching its decision, the court had to grapple with two different view's of the 1 st Amendment, which protects a person's right to speak freely, as well as his right not to speak. For example, a state can’t force tiiat teachers and lawyeis, who must pay mandatory dues to unions and bar associations, can object to then fees gomg tow aid political e\- The program, scheduled tor 8 p.m., April 3. in the Sparks Building, will include a presentation from Bonnie Woodruff, whose son died in a 19% lire at the Uni\ersity of North Caro lina at Chapel Hill, education is a particular challenge, fire investigators say, because of the constant turnover as students move on. "I'Acrs semester there’s a new group of pledges that conic in. and wc have to start o\er with each one," Knisely said. aren’t going to release those names.” Six males were in the home at the time of the fire, Bloomsburg Police Chief Larry Smith said March 19 at a news conference at the university. Sunday’s was the second major fra ternity-house blaze at the 7,500-student University in almost ft vc and a half years. In 1994, a morning fire at the Beta Sigma Delta house killed five students, prompting Bloomsburg town and uni versity officials to form a taskjof<:eto draft safety for stu dents living off campus. TKE is an 18-member fraternity. The TKE house had had 12 code violations when the Bloomsburg Code Enforce ment Office inspected it in October of 1999. However, all violations had been despite objections pression that falls outside the groups’ mission. The students had urged the court to approach the case in a similar way, since they, too, are being re quired to pay lees which subsidize speech they find objectionable. But the court said those decisions e "neither applicable nor work- ih:<- in tiie context of extracurricu- lai .-.unlonl speech at a university,” Lncciv because of the "important and ■ nbsiuniin! purposes of the uni , co-ii which seeks to facilitate a w ide range ol speech. is or is not germane to the ideas to be pursued in an institution of higher learning,” the court said. Instead, to protect students’ First Amendment rights, the universities must ensure that funding decisions are made on a neutral basis, regard less ofthe group’s viewpoint. It re ferred, to a 19‘J5 case, in which it held a .undent newspaper at the University of Virginia could not be deoh ' K.udia a because of its reli- uiou- •• iew points. The school must :11. ! :1 1 !;:i -.tei she bunds neutrally, the >ll ri -aid then in. couit b.nmd "symmetry” in that holding and in its decision in the Wisconsin case, it said. “When a university requires its students to pay fees to support the extracurricular speech of other stu dents, all in the interest of open dis cussion, it may not prefer some viewpoints to others,” the court just ice David Souter, joined by iustices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens, did not agree with the court's rationale. Though agreeing with the outcome, the con curring justices said they believed the university was entitled to col lect the fees, just as it is able to make other funding decisions, such as selecting classes and inviting speakers. But, still, the unanimity of the outcome was unusual from a court that generally is closely divided and often thought to be conservative. In ruling for the university, it sided w oh traditional liberal orcaniza- n : suggesting that, as the Al'LU'.s Coles said, “We have a consensus across ideological and political lines about what the First Amendment protects." It is not for the court to say what
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