On campus, Oct. 18
1. While many college students returned home for fall break to see family, sleep in their own beds and eat home-cooked meals, the members of Bucknell University’s Tau Kappa Epsilon (TKE) fraternity ran an 182-mile race. The Ronald Reagan Run — created by the local TKE Beta Mu chapter to raise money for the Alzheimer’s Association — started on Oct. 8 in Bucknell’s town of Lewisburg, Pa., and ended Oct 11 on the White House lawn. It consisted of 18 teams with approximately three to six member each, with each team responsible for running a 10-mile leg. “Fraternities in general kind of get a bad rap. I mean, everyone’s seen the stories, and so anything that we can do to show that there are positives to Greek life,” says Evan Miu, a 21-year-old Bucknell senior and this year’s relay co-chair.
2. A new student group at Arizona State University wants the right to carry guns and other weapons on campus. Students for Self-Defense at ASU has created a petition to get rid of the ban on weapons on school grounds, specifically firearms, knives longer than 5 inches and mace, which are currently prohibited by the school. “The incidents involving firearms on campus demonstrate the truth that gun-free zones have been ineffective in keeping guns off campuses,” says Jacob Pritchett, the director of outreach for the group. “Every place where this has occurred so far has been a place where there shouldn’t have been a gun and yet there was.” ASU spokesman Jerry Gonzalez declined to go into detail about what the university thinks of the new group and whether ASU has any plans to alter its weapons policy.
3. A survey released Tuesday suggests that campuses nationwide might be unprepared to deal with an active shooter. The Margolis Healy survey of 513 campus officials and senior leadership revealed that 25.4% of respondents said they have never conducted any type of active shooter drill on campus. Their top reason? “Budget constraints.” The survey revealed disconnects between the highest levels of campus leadership and campus safety officers on the ground. Seventy percent of campus safety officials believed they needed more staff, compared to 40% of the campus leadership. Campus leadership also believed that their campus safety officers monitored social media more than they actually did.
4. The United States Census Bureau has been tracking information about degree attainment since 1940, but for the first time in almost 75 years, the results look different. Data now indicates women are more likely than men to hold a bachelor’s degree, according to a report from the U.S. Census Bureau. Even as recently as 2005, the percentage of men 25 and over who held bachelor’s degrees was 28.5%; for their female counterparts, it was 26%. In 2014, that changed: 30.2% of women held bachelor’s degrees while 29.9% of men did. Another interesting find? Also as of 2014, the states where women were more likely than men to hold bachelor’s degrees were all along the East Coast or Midwest.
5. Majoring in business is a great way to gain a wide range of skills that can lead to employment in several fields. While the degree can obviously lead to several lucrative career options, you can make yourself a more competitive job applicant by earning that degree from a top business school. According to College Factual, the top business schools in the U.S. for the 2015-16 academic year are:
- University of Pennsylvania
- University of California-Berkeley
- University of Southern California
- Bentley University
- Bryant University