Editor Kaleigh Roubichaud attended a fashion event put on by the Student Apparel and Textile Design Association (SADA). The designs were all made by students, and were based on different periods of art.

I used to think feminists were crazy, man hating and bra burning women. Until I took a women’s studies class as an elective last summer, I didn’t truly understand what feminism was or what feminists are fighting for.

April — Sexual Assault Awareness month — ended yesterday, and feminist groups were all over trying to spread the word. E5m, a student theater troupe at MSU, put on a performance to showcase the kinds of problems college-aged women, and even men, face with this.

In an attempt to explore what some feminist groups on campus were doing, I spoke with some people to see what they think the flaws for women in society are.

We all love MSU. We love the campus, we love our friends and classmates, we love the Red Cedar River, we even love the Wells Hall preacher and blizzards in March. But what would it be like if we were students somewhere else? What if we went to a school with only a fraction of the students we have here? What if we went to a school in the south, on the east coast or in the west? What if we went to a private or a religious school?

MSU has over 36,000 undergraduate students, it is located East Lansing, Mich. and it is public and secular.

Tulane University has about 5,500 undergraduate students, it is located in New Orleans, La. and it is private and secular.

Brigham Young University has about 30,000 undergrads, it is located in Provo, Utah, and it is private and religious, owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

What would it be like to go to one of these schools? And in comparison, what does it mean to be a Spartan?

Tulane University

Marisa Muniak is a 20-year-old junior at Tulane University who is studying cellular biology. She calls New Orleans “the greatest college town ever” and says she absolutely loves her school, but she isn’t from the city, or from Louisiana, or even from the South – in fact, she was born and raised in Michigan. She attended Boyne City High School, where she graduated in 2007. So why Tulane?

“I had visited New Orleans before and loved the city,” Muniak said. “I grew up in a small little boring city, so actually seeing a huge city with lots of life, it was amazing. And they also had the program I wanted…it was meant to be.”

Tulane is a private school with about 1,500 incoming freshman each year. With about 5,500 undergraduates total, the student to faculty ratio is eight to one, and the average class size is 22 students. There are about 75 majors available and on-campus students live in one of eight residence halls. Tuition along with mandatory fees, such as for the student health and recreation centers, comes to about $42,000 for an academic year.

In her third year now, Muniak lives off-campus after spending her two required years in the dorms. Unlike many students here at MSU who live in housing that is essentially exclusive to students, Muniak and her roommate live in an area where they are the only Tulane students, although their neighbors are Tulane professors. She added that the rest of the people living around them are non-student New Orleans residents.

“But we’re like a five, seven minute walk from campus,” Muniak said. “I’m sure if you were just like one or two blocks off campus there would be a lot more students.”

A five or seven minute walk? To a Tulane student, that might be a long way away, but to an MSU student, it’s probably shorter than a walk between buildings on campus. Five to seven minutes would get you from some of the closest East Lansing apartments to about the Union. So what’s it like going to such a small school?

“I can walk around campus and even though I may not know somebody’s name, or even what year they are or major or anything, it’s still a familiar face,” Muniak said. “And all the workers on campus, they’re all so sweet.”

Muniak said that attitude is part of the southern culture.

“What they say about southern hospitality, it totally exists,” she said. “It’s so different, we make jokes all the time on campus because a lot of us are from the Midwest or the East, we’re always joking about like, ‘Oh, in the North people don’t hold doors open for us.’”

Going to a college that was built in a pre-existing city instead of one that essentially created its own city like MSU has also had an effect on Muniak’s experience. She said she loves the fact that when she’s in New Orleans, not everybody is a student – in fact, most people aren’t. She frequents jazz clubs and other venues for local music, loves southern cooking (red beans and rice is her favorite dish) and has adjusted to a whole new way of life.

“We’re all on New Orleans time down here – things will happen when they happen, and it doesn’t, no worries,” Muniak said. “It’s definitely become something I love.”

She added that college culture is a lot different than at a big state school – freshman usually only go to one or two football games at Tulane before they give up on the team. “Anything [athletic] we do, we’re horrible,” Muniak said. But there are some things that are somewhat universal.

“There’s definitely plenty of partying,” she said. “There’s huge Greek life here. One side of campus – there’s plenty of houses along there and a lot people go to those.”

From nightlife to housing, Muniak’s experience gives an idea of what it’s like to live and study at a relatively small private school located in a big city.

“It’s been a lot of hard work as far as academics, but the environment that I’m in has really made it worth it,” Muniak said. “Knowing I’m going to have a hard exam on Friday but then Saturday I can go and listen to this world-renowned jazz musician – something to look forward to at the end of the road – has been great.”

Brigham Young University

Sabrina Smith is one of the very few African American students on her campus in Provo, Utah. In the fall of 2009, BYU had 29,587 undergraduates. Smith, an elementary music education sophomore and Florida native was one of only 165 African Americans – that’s about 0.5 percent. In comparison, about eight percent of MSU undergraduates in fall of 2009 were African American.

“Utah itself isn’t as diverse as where I’m from,” Smith said. “It’s primarily Caucasian people here…I wish that there was more diversity, but I think that every year it gets a little bit better.”

Smith may be a minority in racial terms, but in another way she is part of the most significant majority population on campus. Like 98.7 percent of students at BYU, Smith is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, also known as the Mormon church.

BYU was founded by Brigham Young himself in 1875, when Young was the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. According to BYU’s website, Young told the principal of the school at the time, “Brother Maeser, I want you to remember that you ought not to teach even the alphabet or the multiplication tables without the Spirit of God.”

BYU takes that instruction to heart. Religion is incorporated into every aspect of student life, from academics to housing to behavioral guidelines. Fourteen religion credits are required to graduate, which Smith says means students are taking a religion class almost every semester. In addition, religion is a common theme throughout other classes as well.

“Every class is supposed to incorporate the gospel as far as the curriculum allows it to,” Smith said. “So in pretty much any class they can bring up a scripture and associate it with whatever we’re talking about, and in most syllabi you get there will be at least one quote from the scriptures.”

Smith was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (she calls herself LDS), so she said the environment at BYU wasn’t a big change for her. One of the 439 non-LDS students enrolled in the fall of 2009 might have found it hard to adjust to not being able to drink coffee, tea or alcohol or conforming to strict dress and grooming standards. All behavioral standards are explained in BYU’s Honor Code, which requires students to “seek to demonstrate in daily living on and off campus those moral virtues encompassed in the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

This means no alcohol, no sex, no profanity, no beards for the men and no sleeveless shirts for the women, among other things.

“All lot of it has to do with dressing, grooming, which is like how you’re obviously dressing your body and also your hair,” Smith said. “Boys have to keep their hairstyle pretty short, it has to be above their ears and no one, girl or boy can have any kind of drastic hair color or style, and dress is supposed to be modest. On-campus and off-campus you’re not supposed to be using profanity, you’re not supposed to be watching anything that is in appropriate. Basically you’re just saying with the Honor Code that you’re going to uphold the gospel of the church.”

All off-campus housing must be approved by the university as meeting certain living standards and visiting hours are from 9 a.m. to 12 a.m.. No members of the opposite sex are allowed in bedrooms, and no members of the opposite sex are allowed to use bathroom facilities “unless emergency or civility dictates otherwise,” according to the Honor Code. All students must be in good Honor Code standing in order to receive a diploma.

The Honor Code may seem restricting to an outsider, but Smith said following it isn’t that different from simply following the rules of the LDS religion in daily life.

“It’s supposed to be what you’re living your life as anyways if you’re LDS,” Smith said. “And the people I know who aren’t LDS that go to BYU say that it isn’t really that big of an adjustment, because before they came to the school they knew what they were getting into.”

Even with strict behavioral guidelines, Smith said there is a lot that BYU students can do to have fun. Popular activities include going to the dollar theater, the bowling alley or attending one of the frequent university-organized activities.

“There is a lot of partying at BYU, but it’s different,” Smith said. “There isn’t any alcohol, but there isn’t any smoking, so in that respect it’s different. But there are a lot of dance parties and that kind of thing in Provo. There’s a lot of dancing.”

In addition, many male and female students actually do live together –  because they are married. Smith said it is very common for undergraduate students to marry at a young age, something she found very odd when she moved from Florida to Utah.

“Most students I know of get married by the time they graduate BYU, and that’s pretty standard,” Smith said. “There are lots of people in my classes who are engaged or married and I’m only a sophomore, so they’re about my same age, about 19 or 20.”

In spite of the cultural adjustment, Smith said she has enjoyed her time at BYU so far.

“I’m in the music program, so I really like the music aspect,” Smith said. “There are so many classes on music you can take, and they’re all very interesting. I also like that in any class you can have a gospel-centered discussion and that’s open. In some universities you can’t really bring up religion that much, and at BYU it’s very open.”

Michigan State University

We all know the basics about MSU. Over 47,000 students, non-religious, public. Great athletic programs, hundreds of possible majors and even more student organizations. The majority of us are from Michigan, so we grew up cheering on the Spartans in football and basketball, maybe even visiting friends or siblings on campus. We know what life is like here – what to expect from our classes, what clubs and organizations are most popular, what students tend to do on the weekends. But what does MSU look like to someone who didn’t grow up around this environment?

Rosie Williamson, a 20-year-old arts and humanities sophomore from New Jersey said she toured over 20 colleges, including Ohio State University, Indiana, Illinois and Pennsylvania State University before deciding on MSU. She chose MSU for several reasons, including the respected Spartan Marching Band in which she plays the trumpet, the location and the campus itself.

“It’s just one of the prettiest campuses I’ve ever visited,” Williamson said. “It’s so lush green, and the fact that we get all the seasons – I know everyone hates the snow, but I love the snow.”

The East Coast-native said that moving to the Midwest was definitely an adjustment.

“New Jersey and New York are very fast-paced and really loud and kind of have jagged edges everywhere, and the Midwest doesn’t,” Williamson said. “Even the major cities like Chicago, it’s got the charm of New York City, but it’s slower and nicer and cleaner.”

Gabe Santi, director of communications in the MSU Office of Admissions, and a graduate from the MSU School of Journalism, also emphasized the attitude of MSU students, faculty and staff as one of the best things about the university.

“One hundred and fifty years ago to go to college you had to be rich, you had to be white, you had to be male,” Santi said. “And Michigan State being the nation’s pioneer land-grant institution kind of changed that a little…Down-to-earth, hardworking, real, authentic, tangible – those are the words that come to mind when people talk about Michigan State and there’s a reason for that and it’s certainly because of the history of this place, but it’s also a testament to the current student body – people get that Spartan tradition. We use the word Spartan family a lot. It’s a large institution, but when you get right down to it, it’s a pretty close-knit place.”

Williamson agreed that in spite of MSU’s large size, the university has a small-town feel to it, which was another of the factors that attracted her to the university, in addition to the fact that MSU is a Big Ten school.

“I absolutely love the athletics at this school,” Williamson said. “I love the spirit that this school has for all the athletics, whether or not people attend. At least people are watching it and talking about it – I think that’s really great.”

Santi added that it is the Spartan spirit that tends to bond people together, whether it is current students, professors or alumni.

“Once you’re on campus and you interact this place a little, you start to bleed green,” Santi said. “It’s going to be with you for the rest of your life. You’re going to see people throughout the country, throughout the world and you’re going to have that instant bond…I think there is something a little indescribable that’s part of this place, that’s kind of just woven into the fabric of its founding.”

“Where U at?” Social media wise, probably wasting time on Twitter, if you’re not a Luddite. But there’s another U on Twitter these days and it’s good ole’ MSU, your friendly university.

The MSU Union has a very large Twitter presence (photo credit: Emily Lawler).

MSU has 119 recognized Twitter feeds belonging to colleges, student groups, schools, buildings and other entities. In theory, each feed is “specialized” — relating to a specific interest of a specific campus demographic. But it turns out that the less specific Twitter feeds may be the most successful.

According to Rachael Zylstra, an electronic media communications specialist with University Relations, there are two official campus-wide Twitter feeds run by University Relations: michiganstateu and MSUnews. The rest fall into “niche” categories that appeal to people of different majors, interests and locations.

But it turns out that some of those niches are more specialized than others.

“Have you seen the renovation at Brody yet? Check it out on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsv03LU4vdk Really cool stuff!”

You’d expect that tweet to come from a Brody resident, or maybe a residence hall’s Twitter feed. But that tweet was from the MSUUnion, and so are a whole lot of other ones.

When compared with the 16 Twitter accounts representing either colleges or buildings at MSU and all the ReTweets or @ messages in the month of March, the Union was at the center of all the activity. The most other feeds mentioned it, and it mentioned the most other feeds.

This represents how the 16 colleges and buildings on campus have connected through @ messages and ReTweets on Twitter. Bigger nodes indicate more connectivity, and bigger lines indicate more tweets between specific actors (graphic credit: Zachary P. Neal).

“I’m a little amazed by the diagram,” said Kat Cooper, who runs the Union feed singlehandedly.

Cooper works for Auxiliary Resources, a Department of the Division of Residential and Hospitality Services. When the feed started a year and a half ago, she said she wanted it to be a virtual place to get information.

“A student union is really the living room of a campus,” said Cooper. “It’s where you get info and go to events and communicate with other students. Our mission with a twitter feed is to create that sense as well.”

Being a generalist has served the Union well. It boasts 1,686 followers, more than either of the official general MSU Twitter feeds or any specialist college.

“I knew that we were among one of the more popular feeds aside from athletics, but I guess the connectivity I was unaware of,” said Cooper.

But in the world of Twitter as with business, networks are key. According to those who study networks, MSUUnion isn’t just popular. It holds a lot of power.

Imagine you’re a dude with a bunch of dude friends and one cousin that’s a Victoria’s Secret model.

That’s what Ron Burt, a business professor at University of Chicago, termed an “open triangle” relationship; you know your dude friend and you know your cousin, but they don’t know each other. That puts you in a position of being able to demand free drinks at your buddy’s parties or his physics notes from last semester in exchange for introducing him to your cousin.

It’s not that the Union is in the market for free drinks, but it has become a central actor in the whole MSU Twitter scene, giving it a lot of social capital. Since the Union interacts with the Breslin Center, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and Olin and none of those interact with each other, you want the Union as your friend. That way you can be virtually “introduced” to all of those other feeds through ReTweets and @ messages.

Graphic credit: Brianna Ritivoy

But for some university entities, Twitter is less of a networking tool than a Public Relations (PR) mechanism. Wharton Center, for instance, has incorporated their Twitter account into their main website and also had it broadcast to two electronic billboards.

“It’s certainly become a very valuable resource to communicate with patrons but also a good way to spread our name across the country,” said Victor Hamburger, director of marketing at Wharton Center.

But he says there’s a lot of value in the personal connection with patrons messaging the center as well. According to Stanford Sociologist Mark Granovetter, that’s the best kind of connections to have: a mix of strong (personal messages) and weak (everybody on the highway sees Tweets on a billboard).

Communication Arts & Sciences (CAS) is at the center of a “twitter triangle” between the Union, Physical Plant and College of Social Science, and all four entities are strongly connected.

The reason CAS is central in the “strong” Twitter actors may be its combined use of Twitter as a tool for personal connection and PR. According to the college’s Communications Manager, Kirsten Khire, the college has made strong connections with individual students and alumni via Twitter. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have another purpose.

“I see value in the Public Relations sense, because we’re obviously having great conversations with our target audience on all kinds of topics,” said Khire.

The Communication Arts & Sciences Twitter feed is essentially playing both specialist and generalist in trying to find, @ message and link to the broadest variety of things that are of interest to its target audience of its students and alumni.

“There’s still some criteria there,” said Khire. She said the feed mainly ReTweets things “related to our college or related to our audiences.”

Some feeds are expanding into contests and questions that make interaction with users a stronger prospect. And according to Khire, Twitter isn’t in anybody’s job description. University entities usually have Twitter accounts because somebody took it upon themselves.

“It [Twitter] is important, especially with the college demographic,” said Zylstra of university Twitter feeds. And she’s part of a four-person social media team with University Relations — Twitter is in her job description.

Like anything, the more time a person puts into Twitter, the more they get out of it. Excepting star power (this means you, MSU_Basketball), the more a person generates content and @ messages and ReTweets, the more followers they have. And the more followers, the more “open triangles” and important connections.

So next time you’re messing around on Twitter during class, remember that the connections you’re making —  weak and strong –might be important. They may lead to a job. And directly or indirectly, Twitter can lead to jobs or connections you’ve never had. Maybe it’s time to re-think whether or not social networking is “wasting time.”

There is one group of people on MSU’s campus it’s ok to hate. Students stare them down and parents curse them. These enforcers of MSU’s perplexing parking spaces are easy to spot in their silver “parking services” trucks, yet what service they offer is not as easy to comprehend.

Silver parking trucks make students cringe (photo credit: Emily Lawler).

Almost every student can tell you their own horror story about how they have been wrongly fined by the overzealous citation police.  It seems as if all students have to deal with them, constantly looking over their shoulder, in fear that while unloading their car a ticket will be planted on their windshield.

It is an understatement to say that MSU’s campus is not car friendly. Every year MSU cuts back on the number open spaces.  It’s not only students, my parents have received multiple tickets and my friends fear to visit me because they know that on top of beer money they have to save for the fines they will inevitably incur.  My car has not been spared. I won’t say that none of the tickets I have received since August have all been wrongfully given, but I believe that at least one of them was unfair.

I was making some mac and cheese at my apartment off-campus when I got a call from my girlfriend asking me to come get her after she’d fallen off her bike.  Abandoning my lunch, I drove to where she said she was waiting for me.  As I pulled up I was shocked to see an ambulance and a police car.  She had gotten her foot stuck in her bike spokes and nose-dived into the pavement. I took her to Olin to get some x-rays.

As I pulled into Olin I saw the meters but decided I had to get her and her swollen foot in before I could worry about the meter.  I carried her in, got her to a room and went to feed the meter my hard-earned dollars. It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes, but already there was a telltale white ticket stuck to my windshield.

I took my ticket out from under the wiper and put all of the change I had in the meter to avoid getting another.  I was happy to find out that my girlfriend would not need a cast but the ticket in my pocket and my empty stomach made me a little nauseous.

The ticket had upset me but I was sure that I could appeal it. I explained what had happened in the online form, and was shocked when I got an email back saying that my appeal had been denied. I called the Parking Services at the MSU Police Department to no avail. I wanted to speak to an appeal officer but she said that it was not allowed to and that the next step would be to ask to have the East Lansing 54b court hear my case.

I decided to suck it up and pay the fine, making me feel even more like I had been taken advantage of.

I tell that story to friends of mine and we are often able to share in our harrowing stories of parking tickets.  Some of those friends who run deliveries have told me that when dropping off an order they are supposed to get fifteen minutes to make their delivery, but they often receive tickets anyways.  They do not always get the paper ticket, only a letter in the mail informing them their payment is late.

As much as I get frustrated with the parking services I know that parking tickets are a necessary evil in every city.  On a campus where there are so many people and so few parking spaces it is important to keep people from abusing the system, but there needs to be more compassion.  I am proud to be a Spartan, and it seems to be in my blood that when ever I see the tiny silver trucks with a yellow light on top I get the urge to flip things over.

As a kid, collections consisted of shiny pennies and nickels found in couch cushions and a piece of sparkling quartz lying beside the driveway. However for some students at MSU, collecting is not child’s play.

(Photo credit: Shuyi Meng)

The Student Book Collecting Competition held its thirteenth annual collectors event on Tuesday, April 6. Four finalists received the opportunity to display their collections and the chance to earn prize money from $100 to $500.

Lia Greenwell, a creative writing junior, entered a collection of poetry, saying it was well worth the extra time.

“I figured that if I spent ten hours on [the collection], it would be just like working ten extra hours,” Greenwell said. She placed second and was awarded $250, along with a gift certificate to the Curious Book Shoppe in downtown East Lansing. Greenwell said that if she placed second or higher, she would definitely be adding to her collection.

For first place winner and American studies graduate student Amanda Sikarskie, the $500 prize will allow her to add to her Gwen Frostic collection. Her now-husband had been the first to suggest the author/poet to her.

“He suggested that I might like the artist, and I said, ‘Hey look, things to buy,’” Sikarskie said, as she explained the excitement of discovering something new.

The prize money isn’t the only thing that drives these students to collect. Rikki Reynolds, a Residential College of Arts and Humanities junior, buys her books like pieces of artwork.

She first began buying books because she liked the cover art, and slowly, she began to notice a pattern. Now, her collection centers around covers that display avant-garde and abstract pictures and words.

Describing the style of her favorite cover artist Roy Kahlman, Reynolds said, “In the fifties and sixties, he made art out of words.”

For Greenwell, her poetry collection started with required books for classes and books she checked out from the library. As she checked out and rechecked out, she decided that she needed copies of her own.

Here favorite buys came from used book sales. “I like having things that other people have had before,” Greenwell said.

With the four tables looking polished and organized, the finalists mingled excitedly while waiting for the results. Peter Burg, the Head of Special Collections, stood proudly on the side. Burg has organized the all of the past thirteen Collectors’ Competitions.

“It’s a lot of work, but once you see everything that’s here, it’s worth while,” Burg said.

Launched on March 25, the Lansing Recycled Art Exhibit and Fashion Show reemerged for its second year to prove that one man’s trash really can be another man’s treasure. Or his shirt.

Ashlae Belisle models a white dress made of recycled plastic carrying bags.

Organized by the Arts Council of Greater Lansing, the Go Green Initiative and Linking Lansing & U, the exhibit and fashion show are part of a collaborative effort to raise awareness about environmental issues through the creation of reused, reclaimed or recycled materials.

Through inspirational works of recyclable art, Lansing hopes to encourage citizens to take advantage of their local recycling programs.

Opening day was marked with a recyclable fabric fashion show and an award ceremony for the eight featured artists. One fashion show participant, apparel and textile design (ATD) senior Sarah Bach, submitted her work for the second year.

“For one of my classes, we did a sustainable design, and in another we did a recycled neck design,” Bach said. “One of our teachers suggested we enter the fashion show and keep them on display.”

While Bach’s designs are not currently in the exhibit, three other ATD students have their pieces on display. The garments incorporate anything from used T-shirts and sweaters, to plastic bags and shower curtains.

Soon to graduate, this is Bach’s last year in East Lansing. However, she anticipates the exhibit to come back.

“It seems like the program will probably be back next year. With the increasing awareness of environmental issues, this kind of thing is really popular,” Bach said.

Prizes were awarded to the top three artists and honorable mentions were also given. In first place, Russell Bauer was awarded a $300 prize for “Fodder,” a 12-foot peacock made from trash and wheat grass.

Katie Woods models a red and black recycled wool sweater dress.

Originally constructed for the Grand Rapids Art Prize festival, the arts council requested that Bauer’s bird be submitted to the spring exhibit.

“I use recycled goods a lot,” said Bauer. “They’re more affordable and I like free materials.”

Despite the bird’s great detail and size, Bauer said he and his partner, Janel Shultz – an honorable mention winner – were able to put it together in about three days.

“They were long days, but once we had our materials, we were able to get it done in a few days,” Bauer said.

To see Bauer’s piece as well as other participants’, visit the main lobby in Lansing City Hall. The exhibit continues through April 15 and is open to the public Monday – Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Students use their laptops in class (photo credit: Brett Ekblad.)

Clacking keys, scrolling party pictures and alluring wireless Internet on the laptop of the person in front of you quickly draws attention away from the professor and his oh-so-interesting explanation of igneous rock. In a class of hundreds of students, Facebook stalking will go completely unnoticed. And when the people around you start flicking through pictures of their weekends and trips to Europe, the small voice of one’s subconscious asks, “When will you ever need to know the life cycle of a rock?”

Laptops are becoming a constant presence in college classrooms, but are they becoming a distraction that hinders learning in a college course? Educators from MSU and beyond have a variety of opinions about whether laptops are learning tools or simply their competition.

In the digital age, students must know how to use the technology around them. Assistant statistics professor Jennifer Kaplan feels that laptops have much to offer a college classroom.

“Honestly, I could do a whole lot more with class if students were required to bring laptops,” Kaplan said. With advancing technology, class time would be much better spent using the statistic software available.

By using these resources, Kaplan explained that students would be able to have a more hands-on experience.

Elementary education teacher Jane Cagwin explained that the upbringing of children affects how they learn. Children are receiving less verbal stimulation while developing, requiring a more sensory learning experience in later years.

“Smartboards and other touch screen devices bring in the sense of touch when learning,” Cagwin said. “The more sensory systems engaged when information is taught, the more likely the students will retain the information.”

Laptops in the classroom engage students’ sense of touch and sight, making it easier to retain and understand the information being taught for sensory students.

The presence of laptops can also better classroom communication, leading to better understanding.

One professor at the University of Michigan found a unique use for instant messaging. Kaplan explained that this professor opened a chat room between the students and the teaching assistant. This allowed students to type questions to the TA during the lecture, in order to clarify confusing concepts.

Despite the convenience that laptops provide, they can also create many problems. Some students cannot resist the temptation of the Internet. They attempt to take part in multiple activities such as checking Facebook and answering emails while listening to the lecture.

“We as adults think that we are doing more when we multitask,” Cagwin said. However, she explains that the human brain focuses best on one topic at a time.

“Less focused attention leads to less information stored in our long term memory,” Cagwin said.

Senior education major Melissa Byl said multitasking is harmful in a classroom.

“As a teacher, allowing multitasking is ‘asking for it,’” Byl said, explaining that the “it” means “not being able to focus on the task at hand.” Without one’s full attention on the lesson, a student cannot get the full potential out of the class.

On the other hand, public relations doctoral student Thomas Isaacs explained that regulating laptops only creates a student-vs-professor attitude.

Some classes are full of laptops, for note-taking or otherwise (photo credit: Abby Herber).

Isaacs encourages students who wish to surf the web during class to sit at the back of the class where no other students will be distracted. Isaacs explained that, although he has a large class, it is important to maintain a class discussion to keep students engaged.

However, Kaplan feels like laptops aren’t the root of the issue.

“The students who are paying attention to something else on a laptop wouldn’t be listening to me anyways,” Kaplan said.

Therefore, these professors must find other ways to encourage students to pay attention and use laptops for beneficial purposes only. As Kaplan walks up and down the center aisle of the class, she warns students that anyone caught on Facebook will be playfully ridiculed.

With the size and the variety of college courses, regulating laptop use is hard to do.

“For me, most of my classes are smaller, so it’s frowned upon,” studio art junior Stephanie Luscombe said.

Students must decide whether the money they are paying for the class is worth paying a little attention. So as your professor continues his monologue, which will win your attention: a rock or the photos of your friend’s boyfriend’s cousin cliff-diving off the coast of Mexico?

MSU has a lot of positive distinctions. It’s ranked 30^th among public universities on the America’s Best Colleges list issued by U.S. News & World Report in 2009. It won the 2008 Presidential Award for General Community Service. It’s a leader in study abroad programs and campus sustainability. And it’s ranked fourth in American universities for producing Peace Corps volunteers.

An alcohol bottle remains after a lawful student assembly (photo credit: Emily Lawler).

In 2009 however, MSU received the somewhat less encouraging recognition of being named a “Red Alert” school on a list issued by FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. According to FIRE’s Web site, schools on the list “have displayed a severe and ongoing disregard for the fundamental rights of their students or faculty members and are the ‘worst of the worst’ when it comes to liberty on campus.”

“I believe MSU does deserve this reputation and has a lot to improve upon in the area of free speech,” said Jordan Zammit, a political science freshman and the founder of MSU Sons of Liberty, a conservative organization he says advocates the freedoms and rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

FIRE’s mission statement says the organization’s purpose is “to defend and sustain individual rights at America’s colleges and universities.” They cite an incident involving ASMSU Associate Director Kara Spencer as the main reason for MSU place on the 2009 Red Alert list.

In September of 2008, Spencer sent out an email to 391 faculty members criticizing the proposed changes to fall semester and Fall Welcome. The international relations senior thought she was just doing her job as a member of student government. The MSU administration saw it differently – it charged her with violating an anti-spamming regulation and Spencer found herself facing possible suspension from the university.

“I wasn’t even using my MSU email. It was my private email and I emailed from home,” Spencer said. “The argument that the university made was that the email that I sent still had to travel through their network to reach faculty and staff, but that’s a pretty thin argument.”

She added that students often get emails from sites such as ANGEL that should theoretically violate the same regulation, which states that MSU has the ability to control bulk email. Bulk email is defined as “the transmission of an identical or substantially identical e-mail message within a 48-hour period from an internal user to more than 10 other internal users who have not elected to receive such e-mail.”

Both FIRE and Spencer considered the restriction on her emailing abilities a violation of freedom of speech. A public university’s prerogative to restrict first amendment rights of students has been debated in the courts over the years. In general, as a public institution, a university cannot make any rule restricting first amendment rights that is more strict than the government itself would be allowed to make.

According to MSU professor of law Kevin Saunders, the author of two books concerning first amendment rights, the government can limit those basic rights to some extent if the law or regulation is “content-neutral”, meaning it applies to all situations regardless of the type or source of the content.

A burned couch sits in the alley off of Collingwood, presumably after a student assembly turned unlawful (photo credit: Emily Lawler.)

“If they have to do with not the content of the speech, but how the speech is delivered [limitations are acceptable],” Saunders said. “The standard example of that is, no loudspeaker trucks in residential neighborhoods after say 10 o’clock at night – that has nothing to do with content, it’s just trying to keep neighborhoods quiet.”

Saunders said MSU’s bulk email regulations would probably be considered content-neutral and therefore valid in court. However, he added that this should only apply to people who send emails either using an MSU email address or a university ISP.

“If you’re home and your ISP is like Comcast and the university tries to discipline you for having sent emails, then that’s a concern,” Saunders said.

Since Spencer said she did email from her home with a private email address, she called the regulation under which disciplinary action was taken against her “absolutely unconstitutional” and added that although it has since been revised to be clearer, it is still flawed.

“I think there’s still a good argument to be made that the current policy is unconstitutional,” she said. “Trying to regulate how people have contact with one another is wrong.”

So is MSU generally respectful of students’ first amendment rights? Or does it deserve a place on the “Red Alert” list? There is no definitive answer to this question. Someone like Kara Spencer may say yes. The preacher who often stands outside of Wells Hall seems to be doing pretty well for himself – he might answer no.  Most students seem to get along just fine without ever noticing any restriction of their rights taking place. Communicative sciences and disorders sophomore Stephanie Dale said she has never seen evidence of MSU violating first amendment rights.

“Walking by Wells and seeing all those protests, I mean, they give them every right to say what they want and how they feel,” Dale said. “People post what they want, and we’ve got spray paint all over the place.”

Jordan Zammit has a different perspective. As the founder and president of Sons of Liberty, he said he ran into obstacles when trying to organize a recent speaking engagement. Controversial British politician Nick Griffin was scheduled to speak at MSU on February 18 about “how the fraud of man-made global warming is used by liberals to attack the sovereignty of nation-states,” according to a press release issued by Zammit. The event was cancelled because of circumstances unrelated to MSU, but Zammit said the university’s administration was not only unhelpful but obstructive during the planning process for the engagement.

“They purposefully tried to prevent my organization from hosting a prominent politician,” Zammit said. “They did this by not answering my phone calls and by not responding to my emails, by denying us free police protection even though protesters have a history of directing violence towards people at events, and by trying to get us to commit to paying for damage done to the room by violent protesters.”

Griffin has visited MSU once before in 2007, as a guest of MSU-YAF or Young Americans for Freedom, a group that was listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center but has not been active on campus recently. He had planned a speech about Islam as a threat to Western civilization, but was interrupted by enthusiastic protestors and forced to conduct a question and answer session instead.

Clearly, Griffin is a controversial figure. So is the MSU administration respecting first amendment rights by having allowed him to speak on campus at all as it did in 2007? Or is it, as Zammit states, ignoring those rights by making it difficult for him to appear here? There are two sides to this story, and neither is perfectly clear.

Criminal justice junior Kevin Fleury said he can understand both perspectives. He was a member of ASMSU when the Kara Spencer case took place and was a wary observer of MSU-YAF when it was still an active group on campus. Fleury said the charges against Spencer were a violation of her freedom of speech, but there he has seen other cases of MSU being extremely tolerant.

“Cedarfest specifically, when students are rioting and making fools of themselves and doing stupid things, I think that the police, which includes the university police…wait for as long as they can until intervening,” Fleury said. “And Young Americans for Freedom, which was essentially a hate group that was allowed to exist on campus, caused a lot of controversy, but I think the university didn’t want to censor the minority in that case.”

He added however, that he has seen members of faculty be unreceptive to the voices of students with legitimate concerns.

“I think that there are some administrators,” Fleury said, “that wake up and honestly think that they would have the best job in world if it weren’t for those darn students.”

As Fleury illustrates, both sides of the argument can be supported. For now, the university awaits its FIRE allegations to die out and Spencer’s continuing concerns to be addressed. Hopefully, the next time MSU earns a spot on a nationally recognized list, it will be as the best of the best rather than the worst of the worst.