Tag: COLLEGE
Freshman dies after ‘initiation’ party where students bobbed for apples in urine
Students bobbed for apples in a mixture of booze and urine as part of a drink-fuelled initiation ceremony where a British student died, an inquest heard.
First-year economics student Ed Farmer, 20, died after being found slumped in a corridor not breathing at the end of a student society’s night out in Newcastle in 2016.
Although he was rushed to the hospital, he died the next day with his parents at his bedside.
During the initiation, freshmen had their heads shaved by older students and drank vodka from a pig’s head after visiting bars in the city center.
The inquest previously heard that 100 treble vodkas were consumed by the 40-strong group in just seven minutes at one of the stops on the undergraduate bar crawl.
CCTV footage shown to the inquest showed Ed being carried by two friends in a Metro station at one point in the evening because he was too drunk to walk.
He was later discovered not breathing at around 4 a.m. by the chairman of the Agricultural Society, James Carr, and driven to the hospital.
The court was told that if Ed had been taken to hospital sooner, he may have been saved.
Newcastle University had banned boozy initiations, leading to one student suggesting that others should deny knowledge of the ceremony in which Ed died.
Jonathan Hedley told the inquest he sent a WhatsApp message to other students as a “joke” telling them to pretend to not know anything about the event.
He said the message – which was sent before he realized how serious the situation was – read: “The three D’s boys, deny, deny, deny”.
The secret ceremony began with an invitation being sent to first-years for the bar crawl telling them to bring $39, lubrication, swimming goggles, a Kinder egg candy and a train ticket.
Society chairman James Carr admitted that the first-years drank more on the night with the second- and third-years “egging them on.”
Feds say they’ll forgive your student loan, but almost no one actually benefits
Student loan forgiveness promises fall far short due to red tape, fine print and bad advice. One program denied debt relief to 99 percent of borrowers.
The Department of Education recently released a status report on its Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, and the results are eye-popping. The program promises loan cancellations for borrowers who commit to 10 years of public service, and the first group of borrowers is finally eligible. According to the status report, however, almost no one is getting relief: Of the 32,601 applications received by the end of June, only 96 borrowers have actually had their debt cancelled. Ninety-nine percent of the applications that have been processed were denied.
As lawmakers explore new solutions to our nation’s student debt crisis and college affordability woes, PSLF should serve as a cautionary tale. The program’s outcomes are distressing, but they are not entirely shocking. At first glance, PSLF sounds simple and generous. But it was packed full of red tape and fine print that made it nearly impossible for borrowers to navigate — red tape that was compounded by inexcusably poor advice from student loan servicers. For instance, many borrowers were unintentionally enrolled in the wrong repayment plan while completing their years of public service, rendering them ineligible for PSLF.
Solutions to student debt don’t come cheap
To develop policies that are likely to gain bipartisan support, legislators look for “sensible solutions” with modest price tags. But this creates tension when it comes to finding meaningful answers that speak to their constituents’ concerns over the high price of college and rising student debt. With 44 million student loan borrowers and more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt, those solutions don’t come cheap.
There is no amount of magic math that allows legislators to concoct generous benefits for students and other borrowers at little to no cost. But there is math that can take a program aimed at providing a generous benefit, load it up with eligibility requirements, conditions and other fine print, and greatly minimize the program’s cost. The result is government programs that sound great at bill signing ceremonies and in policymakers’ news releases, but provide very little value to Americans when implemented.
Article via: Feds say they’ll forgive your student loan, but almost no one actually benefits
FORMER UNIVERSITY OF HARTFORD STUDENT ACCUSED OF HARASSING BLACK ROOMMATE WILL NOT FACE HATE CRIME CHARGES
In a Facebook Live video, Jazzy Rowe alleged that Brianna Brochure had smeared bodily fluid on her belongings and stuck her roommate’s toothbrush ‘‘where the sun doesn’t shine” in addition to spitting in her coconut oil. Rowe, in turn became extremely ill from the disturbing actions.
With the help of the NAACP, the student had brought charges against Brochu as she felt that the girl’s disgusting acts were racially motivated. They protested and requested that the girl be charged with felony hate crime, however, despite all of the evidence against her including a Facebook status in which Brochu admits to the aforementioned acts and referred to Rowe as a “Jamaican Barbie”, she won’t face a hate crime charge at all.
She plead “not guilty” to charges of breach of peace and criminal mischief yesterday and prosecutors decided not to bring any new charges against her.
The president of the NAACP expressed his disappointment with the outcome yesterday. “We are very very disappointed with the prosectors … not pressing this case hard enough,” NAACP President Scot X. Esdaile said. “They are not making this an urgent matter from where we sit.” He added, “We expect [the prosecutors] to fight on behalf of the people of our community. This is a hate crime. Let’s stop playing games. Let’s stop pushing this away.”
On the other hand, Bruchu’s lawyer Tom Stevens commented that he didn’t agree that the incident was racially motivated and chopped it up to the girls just not liking each other. “I think that when it’s all said and done, what you’re going to see is that there was nothing racist that motivated this,” he said. “These were two students who were placed together … who didn’t like each other … and it escalated.”
Prosecutors are still investigating and the case will follow through until January 29th.
Student in pancake-eating contest died of asphyxia
The New Jersey college student who fatally choked during a pancake-eating contest died of asphyxia, the New York City chief medical examiner’s office ruled.
Caitlin Nelson, the 20-year-old daughter of a Port Authority cop who lost his life on 9/11, was participating in the charity contest at her school, Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., on March 30 when she choked after eating several pancakes and collapsed.
She was rushed to a local hospital in critical condition, and was transferred to Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, where she died Sunday. The medical examiner’s office said the official cause of death was “asyphyxia due to obstruction of airway by bolus of food.”
Nelson was a junior at Sacred Heart, where she majored in social work and served as the vice president of community service at the school’s Kappa Delta sorority.
Her dad, James Nelson, died while evacuating people from one of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001.
“Like her father, right up until the end she was giving of herself, and proof of that is her organs are all being donated,” Robert Egbert, a spokesman for the Port Authority Police Benevolent Association, told The Post earlier this week.
via: http://nypost.com/2017/04/06/student-in-pancake-eating-contest-died-of-asphyxia/