I'm not in the habit of reading the student newspaper, but a few days ago I was killing some time in the campus coffee shop and so I picked up a copy. It was pretty much the usual, lots of articles on movies and music, and numerous editing errors. One column in particular caught my eye, since it mentioned plagiarism, and that is a concern of mine. I wasn't aware of the specific case, but I was struck by the author's comment that students don't get riled up by important issues (such as the student association misusing funds -- this is off topic, but is this a constant problem or what? I remember this happening when I was an undergraduate too. Why do so many bad apples get involved? Is it because others are so apathetic?). However, apparently, students were concerned with the plagiarism article -- in the sense that they were angry the columnist had written about cheating by an athlete. Ah, the joys of Division I!

This made me curious, so I checked the Internet, and sure enough, the paper has a (decent) website. I went back to the archived issue with the original article. I also reviewed the subsequent issues, but could not find any letters from students who were upset by the coverage. Maybe the negative comments were verbal? Frankly, I did not find many letters on any subject, so I guess apathy lives, which I suppose was the point of the column from last week.

Just noticed this site, Carnival of Education.