Students

FREDERICK -- Five years ago, this 50-acre campus of red brick, white columns and leafy quadrangles was the very picture of timeless collegiate charm - and in real danger of extinction. Hood College, a private all-women's school founded in 1893, had suffered years of plummeting enrollment. Whole dormitory floors lay vacant. The college's endowment was bleeding millions of dollars annually. This week, Hood welcomed its largest freshman class in decades to a lively campus abuzz with students.

When lawmakers added a pair of vaccinations two years ago to the list of those schoolchildren are required to get, they thought there would be plenty of time for everyone to get their proper shots. But when a deadline passed last week, 12,000 students without proof of the hepatitis B and chickenpox vaccines were excluded from school - despite a three-month extension and two-week grace period. Officials were left scrambling to get the students into compliance, while scratching their heads to figure out what went wrong.

Backing away from her insistence that students pass four state tests to graduate, Maryland schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick said yesterday that those who repeatedly fail the exams should be allowed to do a senior project instead. Grasmick made the proposal as state officials acknowledged that at least 2,000 to 3,000 students in the Class of 2009 are in jeopardy of not getting a diploma because of their poor performance on the state's High School Assessments. "It is our belief that we should have an alternative for our students," Grasmick told the state school board at its meeting yesterday.

Colleges and state legislatures across the country have been grappling with a problem that's not going away: the soaring price of textbooks. Last year, 21 states, including Maryland, considered legislation or policies to rein in book costs, according to the National Association of College Stores. And at least in Maryland, the issue will be coming up again this year. Two years ago, the Maryland legislature asked the university system to come up with a consortium through which public institutions, on a voluntary basis, could use their buying power to get lower prices on books.

Don Herbert, who died last week from cancer, was better known to generations as Mr. Wizard. The irony in the name is that he was nothing like a wizard. He did not stand apart from us as a purveyor of secret magic, a power over which he alone had command, inspiring awe. Instead, in two popular TV shows spanning nearly half a century, Mr. Wizard brought science to all of us. Lacking the flash and dazzle of today's children's programming, Mr. Wizard would present an interesting situation and provide room for us to think along as he guided us to an understanding of the world we live in. His demonstrations grabbed our attention, but he always left us appreciating the universe as a well-organized place.

Eleven students were arrested and five police officers received minor injuries because of a brawl that broke out on the last day of classes at Meade High School, Anne Arundel County police said yesterday. A large group of students was gathered in the school gym about 9:40 a.m. yesterday when several students started arguing over a cell phone, police said in a statement. As the teens got into fighting stances, a circle quickly formed around them. Police called to the school who tried to separate the students were attacked.

Of all the photos to emerge from Virginia Tech last week, one is particularly telling. A student is standing on a sidewalk, and at her feet lie a mesh laundry bag and a tote bag, a well-loved stuffed bear peeking out from its strap handles. The photo caption says she is waiting for a ride home, but if a bag of laundry and a stuffed animal don't say "college student going home," I don't know what does. A steady stream of students left campus last week in search of the comfort and safety of home.

Leah Waller was named Baltimore's Teacher of the Year yesterday, and she quickly turned the experience into an arithmetic lesson for the first-graders in her class at Maree Garnett Farring Elementary School. Moments after receiving a bouquet of roses from city school officials, Waller asked her students whether it weighed at least a pound. Their response was a unanimous "yes." Waller, 31, learned about the award when city schools interim CEO Charlene Cooper Boston made a surprise visit to her classroom.

Maryland schools chief Nancy S. Grasmick is expected to propose delaying required high school exit exams for students in special education and those whose first language is not English. In a memorandum to local school officials, Grasmick said she would make the proposal at a state school board meeting this morning during a discussion of the high school tests that, under current rules, are to be required as a condition of graduation beginning in 2009. The proposal is the first time that the state appears to be backing away from the high-stakes test in the face of increasing criticism of the High School Assessments.

NORTHAMPTON, Mass. -- For a college classroom, this is a remarkable moment. With five students speaking to their peers, there is not a single "whatever," no "you knows." This is a "like"-free zone, with only two tiny "I means" in total.But then, they're being graded. After that's done, the discussion starts to sound a bit more typical."Isn't it, like," one student asks, "you know, sort of, redundant?"It is this dialect that makes administrators like Smith College president Ruth Simmons wrinkle their noses in distaste: "It's minimalist, it's reductionist, it's repetitive, it's imprecise, it's inarticulate, it's vernacular," she says, then adds: "It drives me crazy."

This is for all JV football players: Your game today has been canceled. JV cheerleading practice has also been canceled. "That was actually a short poem - you could type that up and call it 'Football Announcement,' " said Terence Winch as he listened to a voice come over the loudspeaker during his talk on poetry at Centennial High School on Wednesday. Winch - a writer and poet who is also well-known to fans from his days as the button accordionist of Irish folk band Celtic Thunder - wasn't joking.

Close to 100 middle-schoolers from Howard and Frederick counties gathered at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel recently for the 10th annual Space Academy, which employees at the facility hope will encourage the students to pursue a career in space exploration, math and science. The event, which is sponsored by the laboratory and the Science Channel, gives students a behind-the-scenes look at real space missions. It also allows the students to meet people responsible for some of NASA's projects.

Candy, costumed witches and goblins, and even the word Halloween have been missing from many of the Howard County schools' celebrations this past week. The goons, goblins, witches and devils that have long been associated with Halloween celebrations are slowly becoming less commonplace. Instead, schools are following the suggestions of central office administrators and more kids are coming to school in doctor's scrubs and tool belts for career days or dressed as popular storybook characters.

"It hurts me so bad, these young men killing each other," Gail Gainer, concerned and vigilant citizen of northwest Baltimore, said in this space a couple of weeks ago, after her son narrowly escaped a late-night street shooting. "What in the world is wrong with these guys? Why do they want to keep killing each other?" Those were expressions of frustration, to be sure, because Ms. Gainer knows the answers to Baltimore's toughest and most enduring questions. She knows why it keeps happening because she's lived within earshot of the violence for years, and she's seen many young men come and go, caught in the cycle of drugs and trouble.

No one at the Johns Hopkins University's Center for Talented Youth was quite sure what to expect this week when they sat down in a stuffy conference room to host the center's first-ever online kids' "Webinar," on the H1N1 flu pandemic, dubbed Swine Online '09. As it turned out, 55 youngsters logged on from around the country - one as young as 8. And by instant message and telephone, they lobbed 115 questions at two Hopkins epidemiologists. "We were blown away," said a center spokesman, Charles Beckman.

Any visitor to the empty halls and classrooms of New Town Elementary on Tuesday morning didn't have to spend long wondering where everyone had gone. Screams emanated from the gym at the Owings Mills school, where a roiling sea of purple - dotted with cameras galore and some "Wacco for Flacco" signs - eagerly awaited Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco. "You guys are louder than 70,000," Flacco told the crowd of about 750 cheering kids. The quarterback visited New Town, as well as the Chatsworth School in Reisterstown, as a prize for children who won a local CBS radio contest, "Bring Joe Flacco to Your School."

COLLEGE PARK - -Forget the poor economy: Yesterday was a day for start-up dreaming at the University of Maryland. More than 500 people turned up for the university's ninth annual technology start-up boot camp. It was a full day of speakers and sessions dedicated to helping the university grow as a regional powerhouse for innovation and business incubation. The audience was dotted with graduate and undergraduate students, venture capitalists and local entrepreneurs. and faculty members, some of whom are involved in their own start-up businesses.

Phillip Charles McCaffrey, a longtime Loyola University professor of English and poet whose academic interests included medieval and 17th-century English literature, died of pneumonia Oct. 16 at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The Original Northwood resident was 63. Dr. McCaffrey, the son of a career Coast Guard officer and homemaker, was born in Mobile, Ala., and raised in Beverly, Mass.; Los Angeles; and Michigan. After graduating from Our Lady of Good Counsel High School in Wheaton, he earned a bachelor's degree in 1968 from Fordham University.

Today, with the Maryland Board of Regents discussing a first-in-the-nation policy regulating entertainment events on its 13 campuses, we are proud to say that students have stood up and said: "No policy." As the student representative on the Board of Regents and the student body president of the University System of Maryland's flagship university in College Park, we don't support porn. Rather, we support the right of students and student groups to host entertainment events on their campuses without the fear of censorship by a university administrator or a state politician.

Morgan State University may have won a Pyrrhic victory in its dispute with the University of Maryland University College over a graduate program to train doctoral candidates in community college administration. The school had wanted the Maryland Higher Education Commission to block a planned online community college administration program at UMUC on the grounds it would duplicate Morgan's own up-and-running program in the same specialty. This week the commissioners sided with Morgan, at least to the extent of barring UMUC from offering its course to students in Maryland, setting a worrisome precedent for how the state will handle a longstanding anti-segregation measure in the digital age. Since UMUC is mostly an online institution, and the vast majority of its students already live outside the state (many are military and government personnel stationed abroad)