Following the monitoring of the Yale Muslim Students Association's website by the New York Police Department, Yale's students launched a one-day Facebook photo campaign designed to prompt the NYPD to explain why it initiated the surveillance, the Yale Alumni Magazine's blog reported on Wednesday. Yale students created a "Call the NYPD" Facebook page and posted 116 photos of students holding handwritten signs with statements ranging from, "I pray five times a day" to "I'm sexy and I know it," the blog reported. All are captioned, "Call the NYPD." The blog reported that the NYPD has been monitoring the websites and activities of Muslim student organizations at institutions throughout the Northeast. Yale President Richard Levin issued a written statement asserting that such targeted surveillance contradicts Yale's policy and attitude toward freedom and diversity, the blog reported.
Mount Holyoke College joins the ranks of a growing number of colleges and universities in the U.S. that are freezing or reducing tuition after its announcement that it will not raise tuition for the 2012-13 school year, Inside Higher Education reported on Thursday. Typically, tuition prices increase at least in proportion to inflation rates, and both public and private institutions have raised tuition costs by more than inflation in recent years, according to Inside Higher Ed. Mount Holyoke's board of trustees voted on Wednesday to freeze their costs in keeping with the college's desire to educate students regardless of financial capacity, Inside Higher Ed. Previous tuition freezes at institutions like Williams College and Princeton University, however, have failed to produce substantial long-term effects, according to Inside Higher Ed.
The March 1 "Day of Action" marked the start of another season of Occupy movements at colleges across the U.S., Inside Higher Education reported on Thursday. Despite the lull in public manifestations due to the actions of school administrations, school breaks, winter weather and other obstacles, the movement continues on various campuses, and some schools still operate Occupy encampments or maintain their organizations via phones and the Internet, Inside Higher Ed reported. The California branch of Occupy Education was the first to plan the Day of Action, and institutions across the nation followed suit, according to Inside Higher Ed. The Occupy movement expects to gain strength from some formerly inactive campuses, including schools in Washington D.C., though organizers face difficulties with cross-campus coordination, Inside Higher Ed reported.
