College Students

It could have ended badly. Last Saturday, as many as 10,000 people listened while blogger Frank James MacArthur broadcast his stand-off with the Baltimore City Police Department live via Internet radio. The BPD had been trying for more than a week to issue a warrant written in June after Mr. MacArthur allegedly failed to appear at a probation violation hearing related to a 2009 weapons charge. According to his blog, he spent the days leading up to the confrontation on the run, writing, broadcasting, and trying to ensure he could surrender without being harmed.

All eyes are on Jamal Fenwick when he walks into a fencing competition. The lingering stares he receives when he's at elite tournaments and Junior Olympic qualifiers are nothing new, and it really doesn't bother him at this point. As one of few African-American fencers, Fenwick understands people just aren't used to seeing a minority competing in the predominantly white sport. "There's not a lot of black fencers," Fenwick said. "When I walk into a tournament, everybody does kind of [turn]

Based on estimates by the Federal Reserve, for the first time in U.S. history, student-loan debt ($867 billion) has surpassed credit card debt ($704 billion). These debt levels have real implications for productivity and lifetime earnings for this current generation of graduates. Much has been written about college students dealing with rising tuition, but there's been much less examination of how substantial student-loan debt, coupled with a slumping economy, affects new graduates. According to a June report by Drexel University's Center for Labor Markets and Policy, even as the overall job market has rebounded in the last two years, employment prospects for college graduates have declined.

St. John's College student Eric Fricke attended an ice cream social in September held by the Caritas Society, a group founded at the Annapolis college more than 40 years ago that assists students with financial hardships. At the time, Fricke attended solely for the free ice cream; he couldn't have imagined the group helping him through hardship. But then the junior from Arizona said he had a series of "unfortunate economic times," stemming in part from his family's inability to sell their home.

Until a few weeks ago, University of Maryland junior Tali Alter was registered to vote in her home state of Illinois. But the 21-year-old psychology major was eager to cast a ballot in this state in favor of same-sex marriage and in-state tuition for some illegal immigrants. With a few keystrokes and a click of a mouse, Alter registered to vote online through a newly created university website. "It took me less than a minute to fill out," said Alter, a member of the College Park campus' student government.

Anne Arundel Community College is offering course credit for those who have accumulated years of skills in a particular field outside the classroom. The program, called the Prior Learning Assessment, is designed for former college students who have been in the workforce for many years and are headed back to school to gain more college experience or update skills for current jobs, school officials said. The school will hold information sessions Oct. 13 and Nov. 10, and recently began registration for its winter term.

Like most students gathered at the Johns Hopkins University on Wednesday to share tacos and watch the first presidential debate of the general election, senior Nicholas DePaul walked into the room as a supporter of President Barack Obama. But 30 minutes into the debate - as Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney hashed through their plans to reduce spiraling budget deficits - DePaul seemed deflated by the president's performance selling his economic vision to the country. "I'm afraid to say Romney is probably winning with the public because people react more to emotion in these kinds of things," said DePaul, a Californian who is studying political and environmental science and who spent much of the debate monitoring a political fact-check website on his laptop.

The riots this past weekend in Towson should not be a surprise, and the disturbance was not an isolated incident. The weekends in downtown Towson have been a time bomb waiting to explode. The colleges in the Towson area continue to grow with inadequate housing, thus nearly every apartment and condo complex in Towson has college students living in it. Add to this, the daily influx of teens coming in from Baltimore City to hang out at the Towson Town Center, and you get more confrontations and an increase in crime.

The U.S. Department of Education awarded more than $12.2 million in grants to Maryland's four historically black colleges and universities last week, with much of the money earmarked for programs aimed at boosting the proportion of entering freshmen who go on to graduate. Closing the gap between retention and graduation rates at the state's HCBUs and its traditionally white institutions has long been a goal of educators who realize the importance of making higher education more widely accessible.

Burck Smith is so far making good on his vision for revamping the way people pay for and complete college courses. His startup company, Straighterline, enables students to pay $99 a month for introductory college courses — and potentially save tens of thousands of dollars in the process. In November, Smith will embark on another disruptive tack in online higher education. His Baltimore company will allow college professors to pitch their own courses through Straighterline, and even set their own prices above a minimum threshold.