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My professional perspective includes continuing to serve students classified as first-generation. I currently work in this capacity with secondary students under TRiO Upward Bound, but my desire is to return to the post-secondary level to serve college students in TRiO Student Support Services.

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Option 2- Association of American Universities (AAU)

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Option 2- Association of American Universities (AAU)

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While exploring the AAU's website, I discovered legal and ethical topics facing American Universities today. A few topics trending among universities include campus safety, immigration, and federal policies that could potentially affect students entering college in the near future.

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Option 2- American Council on Education (ACE)

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Option 2- American Council on Education (ACE)

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Exploring this website presented me with a broader range of information across all levels of Education.

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Option 3- The Chronicle of Higher Education (Article 1)

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Option 3- The Chronicle of Higher Education (Article 1)

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Smith College has hired an outside investigator to look into a recent incident in which a college employee called the police on a black student eating lunch on campus, Kathleen McCartney, the college's president, said in a letter to the community Thursday.

The college hired the Sanghavi Law Office to conduct the investigation, and released a redacted transcript of the original call to police on Friday. The employee who placed the call has been put on leave, the institution said.

The incident is similar to one that occured at Yale in May, in which a white student called the police on a black graduate student napping in a dorm common room.

On Tuesday, Oumou Kanoute, a rising sophomore at Smith, was approached by a campus police officer while eating in a campus common room.

Kanoute is working as a teaching assistant and residential adviser on campus this summer. After seeing her relaxing on a couch in the common room, a college employee had called police to report someone who seemed "out of place," according to the transcript.

" I did nothing wrong, I wasn't making any noise or bothering anyone," Kanoute wrote in a Facebook post late Tuesday. "All I did was be black. It's outrageous that some people question my being at Smith College, and my existence overall as a women of color." Kanoute also shared videos of her interaction with the police officer who approached her.

Public outrage was swift and furious. At the time of this article's publication, Kanoute's post had been shared 2,700 times and had collected more than 1,000 comments.

'This Painful Incident'

In the letter to Smith students, staff, and faculty, McCartney apologized to Kanoute, whom she did not name, and outlined steps the college was taking in anti-bias efforts.

" This painful incident reminds us of the ongoing legacy of racism and bias in which people of color are targeted while simply going about the business of their daily lives," the letter said.

This fall every Smith faculty and staff member will attend anti-bias training, McCartney said in the letter, and the college's Office of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity will hold workshops for faculty and staff on identity and inclusion. Smith has also set up a webpage with statements about the incident and an FAQ.

This isn't the first time that Smith has dealt with charges of racism. In 2016, two letters leaked to students sparked protests and accusations of racism from the campus community. The letters, one written by adjunct faculty in the college's School for Social Work and another written by a professor in the school, accused college administrators of admitting students not equipped to perform academically.

"Why do you, as administrators, continue to offer differential outcomes to students of color, in spite of overwhelming data that demonstrates that many of our students, including white-identified students, cannot offer clients a social work intervention that is based upon competence, skills and ethics," Dennis Miehls, who was a professor and department chair in the school, in one of the letters.

Kanoute, the student approached by police, expressed intense frustration that whoever called the police didn't simply approach her.

"If whoever saw me had a concern about me being there, they could have asked me," Kanoute said in an interview excerpted on Twitter. "I speak four languages. I'm sure I could speak one of the languages they spoke."
Follow Claire Hansen on Twitter at @clairechansen, or email her at claire.hansen@chronicle.com.

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After Racial Profiling of a Student, Smith College Hires an Investigator to Review What Happened

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Smith College has hired an outside investigator to look into a recent incident in which a college employee called the police on a black student eating lunch on campus, Kathleen McCartney, the college's president, said in a letter to the community Thursday.

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Option 3- The Chronicle of Higher Education (Article 2)

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Option 3- The Chronicle of Higher Education (Article 2)

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Abby Drey, Centre Daily Times, AP Images

In April, three prominent college presidents sat before an audience in Chicago of dozens of campus officials. They were there to talk about their experiences as leaders during one of the most tragic campus crises imaginable: when a student dies at a fraternity party.

For Eric Barron of Pennsylvania State University, it was Tim Piazza, who died after becoming intoxicated and falling down stairs in a fraternity house in February 2017. For F. King Alexander of Louisiana State, it was Maxwell Gruver, who died at a hospital following an initiation ritual in September. And for John Thrasher of Florida State, it was Andrew Coffey, a fraternity pledge found unresponsive the morning after a party in November.

The trio was pleased to see in attendance so many administrators who felt strongly about making Greek life safer. But none of the three really wanted to be there. Alexander put it this way: "Eric and John and I have kind of become experts in something we never wanted to become an expert in."

"You don't just go to the football game and then come back and hope he's OK."

The three men are among a small, but growing, cohort of college presidents who say they are tired of worrying every weekend that a student is going to die at a fraternity event. Led by Barron of Penn State, they are trying to spur a national charge against the bad behavior that has become synonymous with such organizations.

Conversations around reforming fraternities and sororities tend to be cyclical. A tragedy happens, and campus leaders condemn the incident and demand change. A task force might come together and make recommendations. Then other issues command the institution's attention. The commitment wavers. The discussion dies down.

Barron and his colleagues stress that this time will be different. But will it?

Since Tim Piazza died at Penn State's Beta Theta Pi house - when members of the fraternity failed to call 911 for nearly 12 hours, despite his worsening condition - Barron has become the chief spokesman for changing the status quo. If the organizations didn't clean up their act, he said last year, "We will see many empty houses and then the end of Greek life at Penn State."

But Barron also knew that he wanted to take his crusade beyond Penn State, to establish a new normal in Greek life. In his view, that means campus administrators taking a more active role in getting the chapters back to their foundational values of leadership and service. It means scaling back the self-governance model that the organizations have long treasured.

It also means creating a "national scorecard" that would make data on fraternity and sorority performance and misconduct publicly available.

To start, Barron proposed the national conference. Amid the most recent wave of high-profile hazing incidents, plenty of presidents were making changes in fraternities and sororities on their own. Why not come together, he thought, and exchange ideas?

That's how Barron, Alexander, and Thrasher came to share the Chicago stage in April, at an event sponsored jointly by Penn State, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, and the University of Iowa. They then got the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities involved, requesting to speak at a June meeting; Barron and Alexander led the discussion. The APLU has asked the three of them to do so again, at the group's annual meeting in November.

"Do I want to do it? No," Alexander said. But he feels like he has little choice. His colleagues need help.

The presidents face an uphill battle. They'll need to work with national fraternity and sorority organizations, and with the alumni who remain closely involved with their individual chapters and often balk at sweeping changes. They'll need to work with lawmakers to pass stronger anti-hazing statutes. Perhaps most importantly, they'll have to get students on board.
Deeper Conversation
A year ago, Barron was sitting in a meeting of Big Ten conference presidents, still reeling from Piazza's death. At one point, he spoke up. I want to have a deeper conversation about the future of Greek life. Does anyone else want in?

Several people did, including Ronnie Green, chancellor of Nebraska at Lincoln, and Bruce Harreld, president of Iowa. The two universities began working with Penn State to organize a conference under the Big Ten's banner.

As that event was coming together in the fall, another student died at a fraternity party. Then another. Then another.

By the time the APLU's annual meeting rolled around, in November, outrage over the turmoil at fraternities was reaching a fever pitch. Coffey, the Florida State student, had died less than two weeks earlier. And Matthew Ellis, a Texas State University fraternity pledge, died as the association was meeting.

While at the APLU conference, Barron approached Thrasher, of Florida State. The two men are friends; Thrasher was a Republican state lawmaker during Barron's tenure as Florida State's president, from 2010 to 2014.

Thrasher had just suspended all Greek life at Florida State, and he was getting resistance. Why are you punishing everyone for the actions of a few? When Barron suggested working together on a national effort, Thrasher was all ears. The student deaths, he said, "turned some lightbulbs on in everybody's minds about, what are we doing in this area? And are we doing enough?"

Alexander, too, was trying to figure out what to do about LSU's fraternities. He had suspended Greek activities right after Gruver's death, in September, then gradually loosened the restrictions. By October, fraternities could have alcohol at parties again, under the condition that they followed new rules around security and checking IDs.

That privilege lasted one weekend. Too many fraternities, Alexander said, were not taking the rules seriously. He reinstated the alcohol ban until January.

Alexander can rattle off a half-dozen recent fraternity incidents off the top of his head: a racist video at Syracuse University; alcohol-related hospitalizations and sexual-assault reports at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor; a crashing wave of hazing allegations at Ohio State University. He wishes he couldn't.

In February, Alexander got a call from Barron, who told the LSU president about what he and Thrasher had been discussing and said he "thought we'd have the most influence." A plan was set: The three men would speak together on a panel at the conference in April that Penn State, Nebraska, and Iowa had been organizing.

The event brought together presidents, provosts, and student-affairs administrators from 31 colleges. They envisioned what a national scorecard of fraternity and sorority conduct might look like, and who would benefit.

Parents and students could make informed decisions about which chapters to join. Administrators could spot trends within particular fraternities and sororities. (Some institutions, including Penn State, Florida State, and LSU, are already publishing campus-specific scorecards.)

"SAE had problems all across the nation," said Barron, referring to Sigma Alpha Epsilon. "But individual presidents didn't know that individual SAE chapters didn't have the leadership nationally that they needed."

The group also talked about what fraternities are supposed to stand for. They talked about new-member recruitment; in sororities, it's largely standardized, but fraternities' methods are all over the place. "We found out," said Green, of Nebraska, "that many of the institutions that were in that workshop were having parallel conversations."

It became clear that day, Barron said, that college leaders are desperately looking for guidance. "I think there's been a sense," he said, "that every university is on their own in dealing with this."

These presidents have come to the table with vastly different personal opinions of the Greek system. Barron has openly speculated about whether fraternities and sororities should continue to exist. Last year, in an open letter to Penn State's Greek community, he wrote: "Is there any hope?"

Green was part of Greek life as an undergraduate, as were all four of his children, and he sits on the national board of his fraternity, Alpha Gamma Rho. He has framed his efforts on the campus - designed to improve the relationship between the university and its Greek organizations - around the concept of "Greek vitality," which he characterizes as a "fresh start." He sees a clear future for the system, yet acknowledges that there's work to do.

But the presidents have united around what they have in common: They all believe that fraternities and sororities have value, and can continue to have value if improvements are made.

Officials also want to help end the stigma around reforming Greek life. Presidents who call for change are often painted as anti-Greek and draw the ire of angry students and alumni.

It's harder to make that argument, Alexander said, if you frame the changes this way: Look, LSU is doing this. Michigan is doing this. Why shouldn't we?
Bully Pulpit
So far, Barron said, there's been a broad consensus and head-nodding among his colleagues. It helps that the institutions leading the charge are major public universities with strong Greek cultures.

"The bully pulpit is kind of working in this regard," Thrasher said. He, Barron, and Alexander are in regular contact, as are their student-affairs teams.

At the April conference, campus officials came up with a handful of recommendations, which Barron and Alexander took to the June APLU meeting for further discussion. They include a resource database for sharing strategies and highlighting which approaches are supported by evidence and data. Plans for a national scorecard, another recommendation, are underway.

At first, Penn State will house the scorecard, hiring more staff to start compiling the data. The hope, Barron said, is that a "national entity" will eventually assume responsibility for maintaining the scorecard. One possibility, Alexander said, is Naspa: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education.

Damon Sims, vice president for student affairs at Penn State, said he hasn't seen anything like this effort in his three decades in academe. "What may be most pleasing," he said, "is the attention this is getting from presidents."

When it comes to fraternities and sororities, though, there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen, from Greek lobbying groups and national organizations to alumni and student leaders. Presidents can't do much on their own.

In fact, they shouldn't, said Gentry McCreary, a consultant with the Ncherm Group, which advises colleges on risk management. If attempts to carry out new policies are top-down, McCreary said, "that is a recipe for failure."

The presidents also need to be sure they're promoting best practices in this national effort, McCreary said. Several colleges have required fraternities and sororities to move the new-member recruitment process from the fall semester to the spring, he said, despite the fact that there's no research showing that it makes Greek life any safer.

"There's been a sense that every university is on their own in dealing with this."

Both the North American Interfraternity Conference and the National Panhellenic Conference said the presidents hadn't yet reached out to them. A spokesman for the sorority group said the conference was supportive of their efforts and open to collaborating.

A spokeswoman for the interfraternity conference said the organization would like to see presidents "broaden their focus" and compile data for all stiudent organizations, not just the Greek system. The group is already working with some campuses to improve safety in Greek life as part of a pilot program, she said.

Thrasher said representatives from the national Sigma Phi Epsilon organization visited Florida State this summer. "We've had some good responses" from the individual fraternities, he said. "Some maybe could do a little bit better."

Barron has butted heads with Penn State's Greek student leaders in the past, but he said he's improved those relationships. Several students were on LSU's Greek-life task force, Alexander said, and his own daughter held a leadership role in her sorority last year.

At Florida State, Thrasher said, Greek leaders came to a recent Board of Trustees meeting and made presentations in favor of a fee increase for Greek members, which will help the university carry out its new chapter-monitoring policies.

These presidents have resolve, but in talking to them, you sense notes of frustration. "I don't like to be sitting on a panel talking to other presidents about what we've done because I still can't prevent it from happening," Alexander said of fraternity injuries and deaths.

"We just can make sure that we're educating them and providing the resources necessary to help them - helping them make the right decision when one of their brothers passes out on the floor," he continued. "You don't just go to the football game and then come back and hope he's OK."

Barron knows how hard it is to translate policies into tangible cultural change. Beta Theta Pi had supposedly been a model fraternity at Penn State, in many respects, and had pledged to keep its house alcohol-free. Yet Tim Piazza died there.

And there's the fact that these conversations tend to ebb and flow. Thrasher put it frankly: "Presidents come and go." So do students.

Florida State has increased its staffing devoted to fraternity and sorority work, and Thrasher and Amy Hecht, student affairs vice president, talk weekly about Greek life. The university has devoted $1 million to carry out the policy changes, including restrictions on how alcohol can be served at parties. But once things are going well, it's easy to breathe out a sigh of relief and move on to other priorities.

"The next president that comes here, when I leave," Thrasher said, "one of the first things I'll tell that president is, Please don't let this die." Implied in his comment is another plea: Please don't let another student die.
Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.
Correction (8/3/2018, 10:51 a.m.): This article originally misstated the name of the national fraternity on whose board Chancellor Green serves. It is Alpha Gamma Rho, not Alpha Phi Alpha. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.

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Their Students Died at Frat Parties. Now These Presidents Are Trying to Make Sure That Never Happens Again.

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In April, three prominent college presidents sat before an audience in Chicago of dozens of campus officials. They were there to talk about their experiences as leaders during one of the most tragic campus crises imaginable: when a student dies at a fraternity party.

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No doubt higher education is in need of reform, but not at the expense of people who need access to post-secondary education the most. As mentioned in previous slides, I work with first-generation students mostly classified as low-income. These students are unable to purse education past a high school diploma without federal assistance and government funded programs like TRIO.

The intent of the Higher Education Act of 1965 was to provide college access to all (Capt,2013). While both Republican and Democratic parties work to find a reasonable solution, it is my hope they keep low-income, especially those classified as first-generation at the forefront of their minds. Potentially cutting federal student aid to address a growing student loan crisis can prohibit students, like those I serve, from having a decent quality of life. It is no secret that education is one way out of poverty. If we want future generations to qualify for jobs that require education past a high school diploma then we must work to keep higher education accessible to all.

Capt, R. L.(2013). Analysis of the higher education act: Reauthorizations: Financial aid policy influencing college access and choice. Administrative Issues Journal: Education, Practice, and Research, 3(2).

doi: 10.5929/2013.3.2.4

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Capt, R. L.(2013). Analysis of the higher education act: Reauthorizations: Financial aid policy influencing college access and choice. Administrative Issues Journal: Education, Practice, and Research, 3(2).

doi: 10.5929/2013.3.2.4

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Higher Education Act (HEA)

This topic stood out and is important to me the most because it directly affects the student population I serve. Many first-generation college students come from socioeconomic backgrounds that can prevent them from accessing higher education. A primary concern of theirs is how to pay for college. TRiO programs like Upward Bound and Student Support Services are programs that assist students in seeking out resources that allievate barriers to education.

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Higher Education Act

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Editor's note: This story led off this week's Higher Education newsletter, which is delivered free to subscribers' inboxes every Thursday with trends and top stories about education innovation. Subscribe today!
House Democrats unveiled the Aim Higher Act this week, which they say would give students the opportunity to go to college debt free without compromising the quality of their education. The proposed bill is a direct response to the Promoting Real Opportunity, Success, and Prosperity through Education Reform (PROSPER) Act, which House Republicans introduced in December.

Aim Higher, just like Prosper, would be a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act - the federal law that controls much of federal spending and lending for postsecondary education. It has not been reauthorized since 2008. Since then, student debt has grown, and 2016 presidential contenders Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton made "free college" part of their campaign platforms.

The Aim Higher bill's debt-free provision focuses on students who want to attend community college. Aim Higher would, the bill states, "provide states with grant aid to leverage reforms and reward states that make tuition at state colleges and universities more affordable. In return, states promise to maintain their investment in higher education, including their investment in state four-year institutions, and make an associate's degree at the state's public two-year colleges free for every student."

The bill summary goes on to say, "Additionally, the bill also provides grant aid directly to low-income students who transfer from a community college to a Minority-Serving Institution (MSI) for the remainder of their degree."

Here are a few more changes Aim Higher would make.
Related: If this bill passes, college affordability would go from bad to worse, experts say

Eliminate origination fees for federal loans: Now, each time students borrow they may pay up to 4.264 percent of their loan amount in origination fees.

Give undocumented students who are eligible for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival access to federal aid: DACA status protects people who came to the United States as children from being deported. Currently, some states offer DACA recipients in-state tuition and some don't.

Increase Pell Grant aid: These grants are for low-income students. For the 2018-2019 school year, Pell recipients can receive up to $6,095. Aim Higher proposes increasing the maximum award amount by $500 each award year and "permanently indexes the Pell award to inflation."

Preserve the Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) Grant: Aspiring teachers can receive up to $4,000 through this grant.

Change the 90-10 rule: The rule prevents for-profit colleges from receiving more than 90 percent of revenue through federal financial aid. Aim Higher would instead prevent colleges from receiving more than 85 percent of revenue from federal aid.

The Prosper act also proposes eliminating origination fees and increasing money for Pell students. It does not mention allowing students with DACA status to receive federal aid, and it would eliminate the TEACH grant. Also, Prosper would eliminated the 90-10 rule, thus allowing colleges to receive up to 100 percent of their revenue from the government and none from students, which some higher education experts say would be a win for for-profit schools.

Both bills propose streamlining the process for completing FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

The American Association of State Colleges and Universities, the Center for Responsible Lending and Young Invincibles (which advocates for economic opportunity for young adults) all say this bill provides a practical solution to the student debt crisis and would increase access to college for low-income students.

But Aim Higher has yet to address one giant question: How much will this plan cost the government?

It has not yet been assessed by the Congressional Budget Office.

"There are many things that are very expensive in it: the [free] two-year community college and the increase in Pell grants," said the Democrats' ranking member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Bobby Scott (D-Va.). But there are also "significant savings in it because we cut out a lot of fraud and abuse."

This story about the Higher Education Act was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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With the 'Aim Higher Act,' Democrats want states to make community college free

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Editor's note: This story led off this week's Higher Education newsletter, which is delivered free to subscribers' inboxes every Thursday with trends and top stories about education innovation. Subscribe today! House Democrats unveiled the Aim Higher Act this week, which they say would give students the opportunity to go to college debt free without compromising the quality of their education.