Columns:: Around Academe

since 12/15/98

Columns::August 26, 2002

Around academe

The party’s (rankings) over?
The American Medical Association is urging Princeton Review Inc. to remove the top “party schools” ranking from its annual Best Colleges guide. Calling the list unscientific and misleading, AMA officials maintain the party-school rankings harm students and colleges by “legitimizing high-risk drinking.”
The guide’s editorial director says the categories--which also include “Lots of Beer,” “Lots of Hard Liquor” and “Stone-Cold Sober Schools”--are “qualitative and quantitative reviews of what students are saying…about academic life and social life on their campuses.”

Court favors free speech over thesis
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled the University of California at Santa Barbara did not violate the constitutional rights of a graduate student when it rejected his master’s thesis because a portion of it used profane language to criticize university officials.
The former student sued the university in June 2000, alleging that his free-speech rights had been violated because members of his thesis committee withdrew their approval of his paper based on the content of a caustic “disacknowledgments” section that was added without the committee’s knowledge after they approved the thesis. Although the student made revisions to the thesis, his committee refused to let the thesis be submitted to the library--a requirement for receiving a master’s degree. In its ruling, the three-judge panel said colleges have the right to require students to adhere to certain academic standards.

--Juliett Dinkins

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