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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (March 3, 1997)
Scanned and Delivered INSTEAD OF AMERICAN EXPRESS CARDS, STUDENTS AT Old Dominion U., Va., shouldn’t leave home with out their student IDs. In January, two experimental bar-code scanners that monitor stu dent attendance were installed in one of the campus’ large lecture halls. Students are now required to slide their student ID through the scanner when entering and exiting the room. Right now, the new system affects only those students taking introductory science, psychology and education classes in the lec ture hall. Although 11 classes are held in the 400-seat lecture hall, only seven classes will be using the scanner. However, Wayne Edwards, general manager of aux iliary services, says if the pilot test ing this semester goes well, the program will expand to other lec ture halls on campus. Getting carded. Ralph Stevens, associate profes sor of biology, came up with the idea as a way to cut down on absen teeism. “The goal is to build responsibility,” he says. “It’s not to force kids to go to class — it’s to show them there are consequences for not going.” So far, students haven’t wel comed the idea of being corralled into the classroom. “I’m offended by the idea of being a number,” says sophomore Jennifer Baise Fischer. “I don’t like the idea of electronic tracking. It makes me feel like I’m in a concen tration camp.” Other technical difficulties both er students like senior Julie Flavell. “I think it's a pain in the ass to actu ally have to worry about having my ID card ever)' day.” Faculty support of the scan ner is iffy, as well. “I’ll support it as long as it doesn’t get in the way and become too cumber some getting students in and out ot the classroom,” says Robert Ake, associate professor of chemistry. Despite student disapproval, Stevens hopes the new system will reduce the 30 percent absenteeism he faces daily in his classes. “Students are going to spend hours and hours trying to get around this system,” he says. “They should simply spend this time studying.” By Angelique Lopez, Old Dominion U., Va. / Photo by Will Bassett, ODU Gordon, P.I. SITTING IN SMOKE-FILLED ROOMS, WALKING THE streets, paying off informants — that’s how we picture private investigators. But after Eastern Kentucky U. sophomore Kevin Gordon got his P.I. license, he decided a jacket and baseball cap worked better than a fedora and trench coat. “Private investigators just need to find the facts,” Gordon says. Gordon’s transformation into a private dick occurred after he spent a summer investigating insurance claims. By the time fall rolled around, he was hooked. “In the state of Kentucky', you only nave to be , 18 to get a ^ P.I. license,” B he says. J Once certi / fied, Gordon placed an ad in ms campus news paper for his gumshoe services. His price is $5 per hour ... plus expenses, of course. On one case, Gordon recov ered stereos stolen from dorm rooms (he found them at a pawn shop). He’s also run two surveil lances (or students who suspected their boyfriends were cheating. “But 1 don't do that for people 1 know,” he says. “It can get messy.” Gordon says most of his cases involve someone trying to find a long-lost schoolmate or friend. He says the Internet is the best resource for these cases. “If you have a name, you can get any information.” But not all of his clients are strangers. A year ago Gordon told his mom to put a red bow on a jar of change and leave it in their house. When his parents were robbed recently, Gordon found a local bank teller who remembered a jar with a bow. Police watched the bank surveillance tapes, iden tified the suspects and recovered the stolen property. Gordon says the world of private investigators is not as glamorous as it is on television and in movies, but he enjoys searching for facts and solving cases. And even what Gordon calls the most boring part of the job — surveillance — can have its moments. Case in point: Remember the students’ boyfriends? They were cheating. By Oanetta Barker, Eastern Kentucky U. / Photo by Donald Knight, Eastern Kentucky U. The P.I.: He sits, he waits, he watches. Dead in the Dumps Burial at sea used to be a practice of the Mafia and the U.S. Navy, but now it appears that a university might have gotten into the act. UCLA's School of Medicine is being sued for the improper disposal of up to 18,000 bodies donated for educational purposes. A class-action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of the relatives of the donors charging UCLA with fraud, negligence and breach of contract. The lawsuit alleges that the bodies were incinerated with medical waste, including animal remains, scalpels, needles, blood samples and aborted fetuses. The ashes, some not fully cre mated and still identifiable as human tissue, were packaged in trash bags and placed in a dumpster to be picked up by city garbage trucks. Court docu ments state: “Bags... were left to sit and collect for years, until finally they were taken to the Santa Monica Bay to be dumped.” The allegations first came to light in 1993 when a funeral-at-sea contractor for UCLA found medical waste in a con tainer of human remains. Since the 1993 scandal, UCLA has shut down its on-campus crematori um and claims to have stopped mix ing remains with medical waste. Still, Mike Arias, the litigating attorney in the case, estimates that his firm receives about one phone call a day from concerned family members. “We do have a model program here,” says Linda King, UCLA’s direc tor of Health Sciences Communica tions. Although the university has not formally responded to the charges, the school released a statement ensuring donors that their bodies will be treated with “dignity and compassion.” The lawsuit alleges that UCLA has broken such promises before. By Hannah Miller, UCLA • In January, the NCAA passed leg islation which allows student-athletes to hold part-time jobs. Athletes will be allowed to earn the difference between the amount of their scholarships and the cost of attending their school. The average difference is $2,000. • In a case filed by three U. of Wis consin, Madison, law students, a fed eral judge deemed mandatory segre gated student fees unconstitutional. As a result, UW students no longer have to contribute student fees to fund campus organizations they don’t sup port. A refund plan is being devised. • The American Academy for Liber al Education, a group of scholars who advocate teaching Western culture without all the political correctness, granted its first accreditation to the U. of Dallas. Rhodes College, Tenn., and St. Thomas Aquinas College, N.Y., will be reviewed for full accreditation this month. The group is still investigating Michigan State U.'s James Madison College for accreditation. • The National Association of Col lege Stores (NACS) is investigating instances of price discrimination by some publishers. So far, NACS has found that many midsize and smaller publishers practice “dual pricing” — where college stores pay 20 percent more for books than regular book sellers. The NACS says it’s considering filing a lawsuit claiming this policy violates federal antitrust laws. • UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute reports that more college freshmen than ever before say they selected their school for financial reasons. According to the Institute’s annual freshman survey, 33.1 percent of the 1996 freshmen listed financial assistance as a “very important” fac tor in choosing a college. • According to an Institute of International Education study, the number of American students study ing abroad rose 10.6 percent to 84,403 in 1994-95, continuing a 10-year upward trend. By contrast, foreign enrollment in U.S. schools rose less than 1 percent in the past two years. • Trial Lawyers for Public Justice is suing the NCAA, charging that freshman-eligibility requirements discriminate against black athletes. The group has asked the court to bar the NCAA from using the minimum standardized test score cutoffs. Lawyers argue that the cutoffs aren’t based on valid research and don’t accurately reflect educational poten tial, especially of students who are black or from socioeconomic back grounds that left them unprepared for college. • Cissy Stehl is offering a $75,000 reward to find out who killed her son execution-style 12 years ago. Richard Barron Bryan, a football player at the U. of Alabama, was shot, bound and thrown into the Tombigbee River in 1984. No one was arrested for the crime.
