News
Quick Takes: Judge Backs Catholic Group on Public Funds, Dispute on Iowa's Community College Budget, Burning Question on Nabokov, Twist in Immigration Debates, Students Survive Day Without Facebook
January 18, 2008
- A federal judge on Thursday issued a preliminary injunction blocking rules at the University of Wisconsin at Madison that bar the use of student funds to pay for prayer activities, the Associated Press reported. The ruling is the latest in a series of legal disputes over Wisconsin's rules on the use of student fees. A Roman Catholic group is suing the university, arguing that the rules violated its First Amendment rights.
- Iowa legislators are protesting Gov. Chet Culver's budget proposal for community colleges, which has a 2 percent increase but eliminates state support to help improve the pay of instructors, The Des Moines Register reported. Lawmakers are predicting the proposal, if enacted, would force colleges to adopt significant increases in tuition.
- The son of Vladimir Nabokov is weighing whether to carry out the late novelist's request that his final, unpublished work -- currently in a Swiss bank -- be destroyed. An article in Slate reviews the issues involved and how they relate to the question of who really owns literary work.
- In a twist on the debate over extending in-state tuition rates to undocumented students, a Colorado state senator is sponsoring legislation that would end the state's requirement that parents meet residency requirements. The Denver Post reports that in addition to creating difficulties for homeless and foster children, the parental residency requirement has rendered students born in the United States to parents present in the country illegally ineligible for in-state rates.
- Students at several universities in Georgia this week were unable to connect to Facebook for nearly a day, and the students survived, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. University officials, fearful of student anger, were quick to say that they had not blocked access and that they believed the problem was on Facebook's end. Access has been restored.
