A sobering reminder of how much still needs to change on campus

In the wake of the Supreme Court's Wal-mart decision, I found this a sad reminder of how far young women still must travel for true respect:

The recent “She Roars” conference at Princeton celebrated 42 years of coeducation and featured such powerhouse alumnae as Justice Sonia Sotomayor, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, and Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp. When I entered Princeton in 1973, the university had been coed for four years. Now, it was hosting a celebration of women’s empowerment, unveiling a landmark study on undergraduate women’s leadership.

On the conference’s opening night, a female a cappella group, the Princeton Tigerlilies, gave a concert. The girls sang prettily, dressed in short black frocks and high pumps.

Then the group’s all male a cappella counterpart, the Nassoons, performed. For the song “ShamaLama,” they serenaded one of the Tigerlilies onstage, with choreography: In rhythm, they pantomimed unzipping their flies, and bluntly thrust their pelvises forward at the lone young woman on stage. Sixteen guys, one girl. The guys smirked, the girl smiled meekly.

I am an ex-director of a collegiate a cappella group. As are my husband and both of our sons. We’re steeped in the traditions and humor. But this was worse than tacky. Women around me were agape with disbelief.

Should we have been surprised, with Yale being sued for its frat boys chanting “No means yes,” and headlines on alleged sexually predatory behavior dominating the news (think Dominique Strauss-Kahn)? Despite decades of women’s “empowerment,” male sexual prerogative is alive and well in our society, and among these Princeton undergrads.

My She Roars schedule showed no events addressing this kind of hostile environment or date rape – and only a glancing reference to sexual assault in the “Undergraduate Women and Leadership” report.

I began feeling angry. Because of the way my own life had changed at Princeton during freshman year. On a rainy night, whose events I’d suppressed for years until hearing a report about date rape on NPR brought it back.

Following a big exam, my resident advisor (RA) treated his rugby friends and me to a beer at a neighborhood roadhouse. After we returned to the dorm and said our goodnights, there was a knock at my door. The rugby team captain asked if he could sleep on my roommate’s vacant bed, since it would be such a rainy walk up campus.

I still don’t know why I let him in. I was not drunk; I remember every minute of the next hour. I said no, he said yes. I struggled; he was the rugby player. When he had finished raping me, he went back to his dorm in the rain. I remember him calling the next day to “see how I was.” I remember hearing people laughing in the background.

He was the friend of my RA, someone I respected. It didn’t make sense. I told no one. I stayed in my nightgown the whole next day.

For years I thought that by letting the guy in, I was somehow complicit in the crime.

I wonder about the climate for Princeton women now, where girls smile prettily while sixteen men pantomime what is essentially gang rape in front of an audience of middle-aged women, many of them moms.

Sexual conquest for a nineteen-year-old man is one step on the ladder to success. Not so for the nineteen-year-old girl who did not consent.

Read the whole thing.

We live in a culture that celebrates "winning" and taking advantage of others to further our own wants, that glorifies a definition of individualism that includes no concept of civic virtue, respect for others, or community-mindedness. When anyone is taught that they should be able to do whatever they want to others, exploitation develops.

We still have a long way to go.

And those of us with teenagers just felt the nausea rise

Tuition keeps on out-stripping inflation.

Why has college tuition been rising so high and fast? Will college costs ever drop back to more affordable levels?

Those questions have been frustrating parents and students for years. A new report provides some surprising answers that will, unfortunately, probably only frustrate and anger them even more. At public colleges, tuition has generally been driven up by rising spending on administrators, student support services, and the need to make up for reductions in government subsidies, according to a report issued by the Delta Cost Project, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.

In some cases, such as at community colleges (which educate about half of the nation's college students), tuition has risen while spending on classroom instruction has actually fallen. At public colleges especially, the current economic troubles will likely only accelerate the trend of rising prices and classroom cutbacks, says Jane Wellman, the author of the report. After analyzing income and spending statistics that nearly 2,000 colleges reported to the federal government, Wellman concludes: "Students are paying more and, arguably, getting less in the classroom." (Watch video)

Among the more surprising findings:

--The main reason tuition has been rising faster than college costs is that colleges had to make up for reductions in the per-student subsidy state taxpayers sent colleges. In 2006, the last year for which Wellman had data, state taxpayers sent $7,078 per student to the big public research universities. That's $1,270 less (after accounting for inflation) than they sent in 2002.

--Public universities have been reining in overall spending per student in recent years. Flagship public universities' spending per student has risen from about $12,400 in 1995 to $13,800 in 2006 after accounting for inflation. But since 2002, spending at public colleges has generally not exceeded inflation.

--Increases in spending were driven mostly by higher administration, maintenance, and student services costs. Public universities spent almost $4,000 per student per year on administration, support, and maintenance in 2006, up more than 13 percent, in real terms over 1995. And they spent another $1,200 a year on services such as counseling, which was up 23 percent. Meanwhile, they spent about $8,700 a year on classroom instruction for each student, up about 9 percent.

--Big private universities, powered by tuition and endowment increases, have increased spending dramatically while public schools have languished. Total educational spending per student at private research universities has jumped by almost 10 percent since 2002 to more than $33,000. During that same period, public university total spending was comparatively flat and totaled less than $14,000 a year.

That growing gap between rich schools and poor schools worries observers like Wellman. The cost of attending a public university, even after subtracting out aid and inflation, rose more than 15 percent in the last five years, according to the College Board. But almost all of the recent price increases at public universities are "backfilling for cuts in state funds," Wellman says.

Some college presidents say the report shows they haven't been raising prices irresponsibly.

"Virginia Tech" explained David Hodge, president of Miami University of Ohio. "Everybody expects us to do a lot more security. Students are coming with more physical disabilities and emotional needs. There are greater expectations for career services," he says. And that kind of administrative and support spending "is a really good investment. It helps the students."

In addition, public schools tend to serve many low-income students and minority students who need more remedial classes and extra counseling services than better-prepared students who attend elite private universities, says F. King Alexander, president of California State University--Long Beach.

One of the reasons that Duke University costs about $51,000 a year is that the elite schools are in a bidding war for top faculty and better services for students, says college spokesman Michael Schoenfeld. In addition, competition for the best students forces schools to offer bigger and bigger scholarships, which means few students actually pay the full sticker price, he notes. Duke's record-breaking flood of applications for the next academic year shows there's still plenty of demand for what private universities offer, he says.

But as more and more states facing budget crises consider further subsidy cuts and tuition hikes for public schools, parents and students are increasingly objecting to price increases for any reason. "Enough is enough," says James Boyle, president of the College Parents of America. A tsunami of applications at lower cost schools such as the California State University campuses shows that students and parents are voting with their feet. "The changing market for higher ed will cause colleges to hold down their expenses and state legislators to increase their subsidies," Boyle predicts.

I personally think Boyke is kidding himself. We haven't seen tuition hold steady in the last thrirty years, regardless of the economic exigencies.

So if tuition increases cause colleges to increase scholarships, why do they continue in this vicious cycle?

I also know that a lot of it has to do with all the amenities colleges feel they have to offer to today's students, most of whom have never shared anything much less a room, in their brief little lives. My own beloved alma mater now has a top of the line set of athletic facilities, a huge, shiny student union building, and a fabulous new basketball arena. When I attended TU, we had to go downtown to the Convention Center for basketball games, and the student union building had a bookstore the size of my current bedroom, just about. I'm not jealous -- good for them!-- but you know that tuition has had to rise to allow this kind of slew of building projects. And I just don't think a working class kid today would be able to afford it, which is a real shame.

Hook 'em... Horns.

Gives me hope for the state, after all.

AUSTIN, Texas - Facing a free-speech uproar, the University of Texas backed down Thursday from punishing two students who refused to remove political signs from their dormitory window.

Connor Kincaid and his cousin and roommate, Blake Kincaid, said they were barred from registering for spring classes after refusing Wednesday to take down their signs supporting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

"Effective immediately, I am suspending the prohibition on signs in individual students' residence hall room windows and any sanctions related to its enforcement," UT President Bill Powers said in a written statement.

Powers said he had formed a committee to study the policy and make recommendations. In the meantime, he said, school policy now "expressly allows the display of signs and posters in students' residence hall room windows."

The Kincaid cousins were told during an administrative hearing Wednesday to take down their signs supporting Obama.

"This is an important free speech issue," said Connor Kincaid, a 20-year-old junior who claimed during the hearing that he saw a sign supporting Republican candidate John McCain in the window of another dorm.

The university says the dispute had nothing to do with either candidate. UT has had a policy for more than 10 years forbidding the posting of signs in dorm windows in order to control the look of the campus and avoid the appearance that the university is supporting any candidate, said Jeff Graves, an associate vice president for UT legal affairs.

The crackdown sparked an outcry among students, and university Democrats and Republicans worked together to fight rules they said were unconstitutional. They had encouraged students across campus to put signs in their dorm windows as a form of protest.

Graves said he wasn't aware of a prior case of a student facing an administrative hearing over the policy.

"It's never been an issue," he said. "Obviously this is a hot political issue, and it got pushed this time."

UT officials believe the policy was constitutional as written but thought it made sense to allow signs to be posted inside the windows of individual living quarters, Graves said.

And I am NOT going to discuss football with anyone right now, except to say: WHY ISN'T TULSA RANKED?????????

Texas. Tchah.

I'm pretty sure my parents would not have gone for this

Some colleges are giving students in dorms the right to live with anyone they want as a roomie-- even someone of the opposite sex:

Erik Youngdahl and Michelle Garcia share a dorm room at Connecticut's Wesleyan University. But they say there's no funny business going on. Really. They mean it.

They have set up their beds side-by-side like Lucy and Ricky in "I Love Lucy," and avert their eyes when one of them is changing clothes.

"People are shocked to hear that it's happening and even that it's possible," said Youngdahl, a 20-year-old sophomore. But "once you actually live in it, it doesn't actually turn into a big deal."

In the prim 1950s, college dorms were off-limits to members of the opposite sex. Then came the 1970s, when male and female students started crossing paths in coed dormitories. Now, to the astonishment of some Baby Boomer parents, a growing number of colleges are going even further: coed rooms.

At least two dozen schools, including Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania, Oberlin College, Clark University and the California Institute of Technology, allow some or all students to share a room with anyone they choose — including someone of the opposite sex. This spring, as students sign up for next year's room, more schools are following suit, including Stanford University.

As shocking as it sounds to some parents, some students and schools say it's not about sex.

Instead, they say the demand is mostly from heterosexual students who want to live with close friends who happen to be of the opposite sex. Some gay students who feel more comfortable rooming with someone of the opposite sex are also taking advantage of the option.

"It ultimately comes down to finding someone that you feel is compatible with you," said Jeffrey Chang, a junior at Clark in Worcester, Mass., who co-founded the National Student Genderblind Campaign, a group that is pushing for gender-neutral housing. "Students aren't doing this to make a point. They're not doing this to upset their parents. It's really for practical reasons."

Couples do sometimes room together, an arrangement known at some schools as "roomcest." Brown explicitly discourages couples from living together on campus, be they gay or straight. But the University of California, Riverside has never had a problem with a roommate couple breaking up midyear, said James C. Smith, assistant director for residence life.

Most schools introduced the couples option in the past three or four years. So far, relatively few students are taking part. At the University of Pennsylvania, which began offering coed rooms in 2005, about 120 out of 10,400 students took advantage of the option this year.

At UC Riverside, which has approximately 6,000 students in campus housing, about 50 have roommates of the opposite sex. The school has had the option since 2005.

Garcia and Youngdahl live in a house for students with an interest in Russian studies. They said they were already friendly, and didn't think they would be compatible with some of the other people in the house.

"I had just roomed with a boy. I was under the impression at the time that girls were a little bit neater and more quiet," Youngdahl said. "As it turns out, I don't see much of a difference from one sex to the other."

Garcia, 19, admitted: "I'm incredibly messy."

Parents aren't necessarily thrilled with boy-girl housing.

Debbie Feldman's 20-year-old daughter, Samantha, is a sophomore at Oberlin in Ohio and plans to room with her platonic friend Grey Caspro, a straight guy, next year. Feldman said she was shocked when her daughter told her.

"When you have a male and female sharing such close quarters, I think it's somewhat delusional to think there won't be sexual tension," the 52-year-old Feldman said. "Maybe this generation feels more comfortable walking around in their underwear. I'm not sure that's a good thing."

Still, Feldman said her daughter is partly in college to learn life lessons, and it's her decision. Samantha said she assured her mom she thinks of Caspro as a brother.

"I'm really close to him, and I consider him one of my really good friends," she said. "I really trust him. That trust makes it work."

Well, the changing clothes thing actually might work. I had a roommate one year from Indonesia, which is a very conservative country, and she always changed her clothes in the closet, and I tried to be sensitive about such things beyond my normal modesty. The last two years I was at school, the university built its first "co-ed" dorm, although there were separate floors for girls and separate floors for guys. I lived in one of the girls' dorms. Males were not allowed in our dorm rooms after midnight on weekdays and after 2 am on weekends. Not that that stopped anyone if they were sneaky. And I think that term "roomcest" is hysterically funny.

I certainly have had many male friends throughout my life, having been quite the "tomboy" and I can assure that there was not sexually tension present with most of them. So I think it is completely possible to care for someone as a human being and not have issues of sex enter into the relationship. I don't know how I'd feel about my daughter having a male roommate in college. It would depend upon the boy. But after having good roomies and bad roomies myself, I can tell you that you can have problems with anyone.