Student Affairs

As teachers fuss over lesson plans and college freshmen fret over meeting their roommates, K-12 and university administrators are preparing to deal with another, less familiar back-to-school worry: swine flu. Though local public school systems and universities survived last spring's initial spread of the H1N1 virus with few interruptions, fears that a mutated flu could strike with renewed vigor have them formulating plans to deal with outbreaks....

A Virginia Tech advisory committee has recommended that the university cut funding to all campus media unless the student newspaper bans anonymous comments on its Web site. The University Commission on Student Affairs, which is mostly made up of students, decided that the way the newspaper monitors online comments is irresponsible, lacks accountability, victimizes students and misrepresents the university, according to minutes of its meetings. The commission has asked administrators to withhold an annual $70,000 contribution to the student newspaper's parent organization, the Educational Media Company at Virginia Tech, which oversees all campus media, including the newspaper, radio station, television station, yearbook and literary magazine.

Though students say they've been horrified by several racial incidents at Western Maryland College this semester, they say the incidents provide an opportunity to challenge the anger that has been simmering below the surface at the usually placid campus."

ST. MARY'S CITY -- On an unseasonably warm afternoon last week, a flock of giggling St. Mary's College students joined ducks for a dip in a pond. Chatter among those heading to class concerned exams and weekend plans. Traffic stopped to let pedestrians and bicyclists cross Route 5, the main road that bisects the small campus.Earlier in the week, a Guatemalan court had convicted three men of raping and robbing a group of St. Mary's students on a study trip there in January of last year, handing down 28-year sentences.

Officials at the University of Maryland have pledged to spend an additional $5 million on student mental health services at the state's flagship College Park campus over the next 10 years, the largest investment in counseling services there in decades. The decision was made this week following years of stagnant investments in psychiatric services at the university's counseling and health centers, despite large spikes in student demand. It comes on the heels of a murder-suicide involving a mentally ill student just off campus in February, which shined a spotlight on the imbalance between counseling services and demand.

Though students say they've been horrified by several racial incidents at Western Maryland College this semester, they say the incidents provide an opportunity to challenge the anger that has been simmering below the surface at the usually placid campus."

As college students buckle down to research papers and problem sets, another subject - health-insurance plans - deserves study as well. Full-time college students frequently are covered under a parent's policy or university-offered plan. As a result, just 20 percent of full-time students ages 19 to 23 go uninsured, while 40 percent of non-students and part-time students lack coverage, according to a study this year by the Commonwealth Fund. Even so, experts say that students' insurance often is inadequate, for several reasons: Services are not within network.

After the unfortunate murder suicide at the University of Maryland College Park by a graduate student who used a handgun to commit his crimes, The Sun wrote an editorial urging college campuses to educate their students about the signs of mental illness in their fellow students ("Campus nightmare," Feb. 14). In fact, you wanted this type of education to be a part of college orientation programs. Well intentioned though this editorial was, it didn't offer one sure and certain method to prevent the kind of disaster that occurred at College Park.

Dr. Roland T. Smoot, the first African-American faculty member and assistant dean at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, died of apparent heart arrhythmia Wednesday in the hospital's emergency room. He was 78. Dr. Smoot, who retired in 2004, was on his way to the hospital from his Ashburton home for a heart test when he was stricken on the Baltimore Metro. "He was a quiet, gentle, committed and determined person who reminded me, in his own way, of Rosa Parks," said Dr. Levi Watkins, a Johns Hopkins surgeon and close friend who was a patient of Dr. Smoot's.

Vernissia Tam gulped down half a glass of champagne at noon Friday and prepared to scream. She was about to find out what kind of doctor she would become, and where she would train. "No peeking," a Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine official told the Class of 2013. "The diplomas aren't printed yet. " After a countdown from 10 that took all of three seconds, Tam and her classmates broke the seals on letters revealing their fates, jumping into one another's arms for an embrace and congratulations.