College Campuses

On a crystalline October afternoon, the upper quad at Johns Hopkins University looks unusually desolate. At 4 p.m., a weary anthropology professor sorts his notes, ambles across the grass to a chemistry department lecture hall, takes his place beneath a post of the Periodic Chart and stares out at an eager audience of almost 200. Vintage tools of the Vietnam Generation - "teach-ins" and impromptu political forums inspired by the nightly news - are back....

Chara Bauer, 17, is never sure what to answer when someone asks what grade she's attending at school. "I usually ask them if they want to know about high school or college," she said. "Then I say that I'm a senior in high school, and I'm finishing up my sophomore year of college." The Baltimore resident is one of a small but growing number of high-school-age homeschoolers who are finding a second home on the campuses of community colleges across Maryland. They're completing high school courses such as chemistry and calculus that might be difficult to study at home.

Joe Owens' Chevrolet 4-by-4 pickup truck hadn't been parked in front of Western Maryland College's Rouzer Hall for more than a few seconds yesterday morning when the swarm descended. Students - about a dozen of them - grabbed the computer, duffel bags, milk crates of sneakers, a squirt gun and a full-sized ironing board belonging to his son, Eric, and hauled everything up 32 steps to Eric's new home, Room 412. In less than five minutes, Eric's belongings were all piled in the hallway outside his one-car-garage-size room, waiting for the 18-year-old to return with the key. Owens didn't need to lift a thing to help his son, a freshman, move in. He just sat in the driver's seat and marveled at the scene.

PHILADELPHIA -- College and university counselors say more and more students are seeking help for depression and suicidal inclinations, but they see no concurrent spike in the number of campus suicides. Studies have found that college students are less likely to commit suicide than other 18- to 22-year-olds. Peter Filicetti, director of counseling at La Salle University, said college counselors have noted a significant rise in students seeking help for depression and other psychopathological illnesses.

MOST PEOPLE assume that college campuses are safe havens for free speech and enlightened debate. In the case of student newspapers and publications, however, college administrators often try to control these publications to avoid controversy or articles putting the school in a bad light. In October 1998, student editors at Neumann College in suburban Philadelphia temporarily suspended publication of the school newspaper after school administrators demanded prior review in reaction to a controversial editorial cartoon.

COLLEGE PARK -- Matt Chiller had sent out the word to the University of Maryland, College Park to attend a meeting to help the presidential campaign of Al Gore. About 35,000 students are on this campus. Twenty are at the meeting. Chiller, a senior from Massachusetts who has been bitten hard by the political bug, is pleased. "These are the people you want," he says. "You get one or two people active out of this, they'll get you a ton of people." With eight days to go before Maryland's primary March 7, interest in the presidential nominating races has hardly risen to a fever pitch among the state's college students.

VIEWERS must tolerate endorsements like Corporation Big Bucks' player of the game if they want to enjoy college basketball on television. Logos clutter the arena floors and sidelines. Coaches wear the emblems of companies that contract with them. Advertisers hope this March Madness of Marketing reaches their targets -- consciously or subliminally. Commercialism is so firmly entrenched in collegiate sports it is not such a big deal that the University of Maryland, College Park has sold Philadelphia-based Comcast the naming rights to a planned $101 million basketball arena that will replace Cole Field House.

THIS AUTUMN, much of my time has been spent touring college campuses with my 17-year-old, a senior in high school who is helping his parents through this stressful ordeal by declaring:a) He doesn't know where he wants to go to college, and;b) He doesn't know what he wants to study.Since this places him in the same demographic as 90 percent of the high school seniors in the country, my wife and I are not too concerned.Instead, we spend our weekends dragging the boy to every college on the East Coast, hoping he might find a school he likes, one that measures up to his rigorous standards, which right now seem to center on which has the most vending machines in its dorms.

COLLEGE PARK -- The call to build a light rail line to link Washington suburbs and ease traffic in one of the nation's most congested regions has grown by one large and powerful voice.The University of Maryland has written to the governor and top local elected officials, urging them to give high priority to building a rail line that would run through the College Park campus to Bethesda in Montgomery County and New Carrollton in Prince George's County.The letter from Charles F. Sturtz, vice president for administrative affairs, was sent Sept.

HAGERSTOWN -- Gov. Parris N. Glendening sat as a jury of one yesterday as Washington County officials and the Hagerstown city government pleaded their cases in a dispute over the location of a new state university campus.Glendening came to hear their arguments and to see for himself two proposed sites for the long-sought Washington County campus of the University System of Maryland -- one along Interstate 70 and another in downtown Hagerstown. As the official who proposes the state budget, the ultimate choice will be his.The governor's decision could send a message about how aggressively he intends to pursue his Smart Growth policy of channeling state construction into downtown areas.