Juicy Gossip Dot Com is now blocked on the campus of Tennessee State University and at Hampton University in Virginia, according to the Chronicle of Higher Ed. Anonymous posters at the slander site are also being sued by a student at the University of Delaware.

Juicy Gossip showed up on radar about a years ago. The site allows anonymous posting by pretty much anyone on pretty much anything.

Students at the schools and personnel at Juicy Gossip have complained that free speech is being restricted by the blockages and compared the actions of the universities to Chinese government censorship. Of course, free speech is not the idea that anyone has the right to say anything. Free speech has limitations when it begins to trample on the rights of other people; and speech is only protected by the First Amendment when it is in the public interest.

It will be interesting to see if more schools block the site.


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Oral Roberts University is laying off about 100 employees, or 10% of its staff, according to an Associated Press report.

The layoffs come after the university signed off on a $450,000 separation agreement with the former president, Richard Roberts, who stepped down last year after allegations that he misspent school funds. Richard Roberts is the son of the school's founder, Oral Roberts.

According to the AP story, ORU's budget for this fiscal year is about $92 million, and the school is more than $17 million in debt.


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Safety on campus has changed a lot since the tragedy at Virginia Tech back in April of 2007. Many schools, Va Tech among them, have implemented emergency alert systems that include sending text messages students.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported today that the text-message alert system at Virginia Tech partly failed during a false alarm recently.

A report of what sounded like gunshots prompted Virginia Tech to use its text-message emergency-alert system last week for the first time, but the system failed to deliver all of the messages.

About 30,000 people have signed up to get the emergency text messages on the Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va. Lawrence G. Hincker, associate vice president for university relations at Virginia Tech, said in an interview with The Chronicle that "The system froze up. We're very disappointed, and I am not happy in the slightest at this level of service."

Tech uses a company called 3n to manage the alert system and the Chronicle could not reach 3n for comment.


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That's right. There is now a gay fraternity on the campus of the University of Texas, according to The Dallas Morning News.

According to the paper, Delta Lambda Phi, a nationally recognized gay fraternity, was inducted at UT earlier this year. Evidently a lot of fraternities exclude gays from membership - at least according to Delta Lambda Phi campus president Russell van Kraayenburg.

"Everyone's been so supportive on campus," van Kraayenburg said. "There's not been a single person I've talked to who's been against the idea or even questioned the idea."


Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Gregg Mack

In a local election in Grafton County, N.H. the county's long time treasurer (a Republican) has been unseated by a 20-year-old junior who attends Dartmouth (which is located in the county), according to The Boston Globe.

The Dartmouth student, Vanessa Sievers, beat incumbent Carol Elliott by about 600 votes in a 42,000 vote race. That's around 1.5%. Sievers is a native of Montana. Elliott says she won because "brainwashed college kids" from Dartmouth and from nearby Plymouth State University turned out to vote her.

Elliott is unhappy. The Chronicle of Higher Ed calls Elliott's statements "sour grapes" in its blog...


Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Denis Jr. Tangney

Having a $37 billion endowment evidently isn't all it's cracked up to be. According to Reuters Harvard President Drew Faust is saying that "the school is looking at ways to cut spending and will review compensation costs, which account for nearly half of the budget."

Why? Recession...

In the words of Reuters, "...the economic slowdown has reached America's richest university."

Harvard is also reconsidering some of its expansion plans. The school is concerned that federal grants may dry up and the falling stock market will shrink its massive endowment.

So far financial aid programs at the school have not been affected.


Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Image# 6154143