A federal judge sentenced Thomas Newton, a resident of Mount Prospect, Ill., to six months of house arrest and five years of probation for verbally threatening a Dartmouth employee via telephone, according to an April 23 article in the Concord Monitor. The Hanover and New London police departments in New Hampshire helped the FBI with the investigation. According to a document issued by Newton's lawyer, the 59-year-old male made threats over the phone to a College employee who had been dating his wife. Newton is affected by post-traumatic stress disorder, a product of the time he spent in Vietnam serving the United States military. He pleaded guilty to the charges.
The Daily Pennsylvanian fired freshman Jamie France for plagiarizing her Friday column about student caffeine use from a Yahoo.com Food article that was published in March, according to IvyGate Blog. France's article, which listed students' 10 preferred sources of caffeine, provided nutritional information about many of the products, such as Starbucks coffee and Diet Coke, that were covered in the Yahoo article. She also listed several potential health benefits of caffeine that the Yahoo article described. According to The Daily Pennsylvanian, the newspaper ultimately fired France on the grounds that it does not tolerate plagiarism in any form.
The Department of Education is advocating for changes to the accreditation process, which would require colleges to assess their students' progress and publish the results, according to the Boston Globe. Last fall, the Commission on the Future of Higher Education found that colleges inadequately measure student growth. In April, the Department of Education began collaborating with accrediting agencies to create new rules which would mandate that colleges produce actual data that track student growth. Proponents of the change argue that it will make institutions more accountable, but opponents argue that it may cause colleges to focus on raising their ratings rather than on general education.
