Being rowdy and impulsive is a time-honored tradition among college students. Documenting that behavior online is a recent phenomenon that still vexes administrators. When social-networking sites first became popular, many colleges and universities watched them closely. Since then, a consensus has emerged that institutions should not actively…

Since 1970, officers on the Seattle campus have regularly patrolled the hallways of dormitories of the University of Washington. It is a community-policing strategy, a low-key way to engage students. However, the practice might cease this fall. In June, the state's Court of Appeals ruled that students have the same right to privacy in dormitory…

In this article, the author hopes that educators can begin a long-overdue public discussion about how they encourage and defend their students' civil liberties--while doing a lot more to enhance their safety. To start, they need to confront the problem that nearly all their students, like their children, believe that "ratting out" a friend or…

Gregory A. Love, then a student at Morehouse College, in Atlanta, was beaten in 2002 with a baseball bat by a fellow student in a dormitory shower after Love made what his attacker perceived as a homosexual advance. The attacker was later convicted of aggravated assault and battery. Love sued Morehouse, arguing that the institution was liable for…

When a student at Carnegie Mellon University became concerned about perceived grading bias in 2005, he proposed an amendment to the university's student-rights policy. Drawn from David Horowitz's "academic bill of rights," the proposal included assertion of a student's right to have his or her "work evaluated based on the stated…

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was the principal campus radical organization of the 1960s. When SDS first took form in 1960-62 under the leadership of Al Haber and Tom Hayden, it was a small organization of a few hundred members. By the time the author joined the Reed College chapter as a freshman in 1968, SDS had grown into a very large…

College campuses provide lots of institutions that look like those one finds in a democratic society--newspapers, government, courts--but ultimately the campus versions are not the same. When anybody sign up for college, he/she is volunteering (and paying) to be part of a particular community with particular rules. This article discusses the…

Discusses how, as a national advocacy group files the first of what it says will be many lawsuits over campus speech codes, colleges say their policies are being distorted beyond recognition. (EV)

Discusses how Columbia University is rethinking its judicial code after being embarrassed over criticism led by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a civil liberties group with a flair for public relations. (EV)

Discusses how two students at Governors State University say a college dean interfered with their handling of the student newspaper; the college says it was only trying to guide inexperienced journalists. A lawsuit will test how much oversight administrators can assert. (EV)

Explores whether plagiarism-detection services such as Turnitin.com, which keeps copies of submitted papers in a database, are trampling students' rights for the sake of academic integrity. (EV)

Discusses how guidelines for classroom discussion, popular in women's studies and sociology, have set off campus controversies over freedom of speech. (EV)

The Department of Education has ruled that a federal privacy-protection law gives college students the right to see their admissions files, based on a Harvard University graduate's request. The ruling could help shed light on how institutions select students and on the validity of racial discrimination charges in other institutions. (MSE)

Gay and lesbian professors have become increasingly visible on Catholic campuses, speaking out on issues like domestic-partnership benefits and recognition of gay-students groups. One of the efforts they put in includes the Conference at Santa Clara University, a public gathering of gays and lesbian professors from Catholic colleges.

College students who say they have learning disabilities sometimes encounter skepticism. Although requests for extra testing time, adjusted academic requirements, or exemptions are often granted, there is debate in the academic community over the need. The numbers of students claiming such disabilities have increased substantially in recent years.…