Day and night the locals chatter. They counsel and console, bicker and rant. Their questions are endless. Though often hopeful, they never stop pounding the drums of worry. This is College Confidential, a vast virtual realm where visitors can find the best and worst of human nature. Here, in moderated discussion forums, people help strangers. They…

This article describes how professors became magnets for crackpots bearing pet theories and searching for validation. Scott A. Hughes, an associate professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, received a 22-page, single-spaced screed this May just begging for a place in the crackpot file. The subject line read, in part,…

Few academic debates are as contentious as those surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls. These fragments of some 800 ancient documents include portions of all but one book of the Hebrew Bible. The first ones were discovered in 1947 by shepherds in caves on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, and are believed to be the oldest surviving Judaic…

To get money flowing from alumni, colleges try to keep them feeling plugged in to their alma mater--even if the "plug" becomes wireless. Bucknell University rolled out a new service this month that pushes cell phone text messages to its 47,000 alumni. So far only a few dozen alumni have signed up for the service. If the service, which is…

Many professors, staff members, and even administrators see campus computers and e-mail accounts as their own private property--a type of employment benefit provided with no constraints on use. The fact is, universities "assign" computer equipment to personnel as tools to help them perform their jobs more effectively and efficiently, in the same…

An excerpt from a round-table discussion with students of several colleges in Florida on whether to support electronic media integration to their learning and campus experiences is presented. Mirella Avesani, one of the four student participants claims that it is important to have open access to computers and related software to complement class…

The autumn conference of the Vermont Council on the Humanities focused on discussions about Allan Bloom's book, "The Closing of the American Mind," and his call for Americans to return to fundamental questions of the nature of man and society. The Council also runs book discussion groups in local libraries. (MLW)

Faculty members spent their time reading, thinking, and talking about American values at the Wye Faculty Seminar on the Maryland Eastern Shore. The seminar draws academics from small liberal-arts colleges and representives from business, government, and the media to exchange ideas on American social and political values. (MLW)

The College of Wooster (Ohio) has instituted a required one-semester freshman seminar, designed to teach students critical writing and thinking skills, and focusing on racism and sexism in U.S. society. Critics see the seminar as a left-wing attempt to ensure "political correctness." (DB)