8 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(10/01/14 2:34pm)
There are no secrets about the dangers of smoking cigarettes. Our generation has been educated about the harmful side effects of smoking since we were toddlers. Yet, according to the Center for Disease Control, each day 3,200 people under the age of 18 smoke their first cigarette.
Our generation should be the generation to end smoking, but we have not.
Why hasn’t Elon University kept up with the science on the harmful effects of cigarettes and banned smoking on campus altogether? What good comes from allowing students, faculty and staff to smoke?
Current Elon policy dictates that those who wish to smoke on campus must do so more than 30 feet away from any university building. This policy is not well enforced, for too often students, faculty and staff smoke within this 30-foot buffer zone. Moreover, 30 feet is not too far for harmful secondhand smoke to travel.
Elon is a private university, which means it has more freedom to dictate rules and regulations on policy. For example, guns are not allowed on our campus, but if you travel just an hour down the road to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, you will find students are allowed to carry guns on that state campus.
Since Elon has the jurisdiction to enforce stricter polices, I challenge the administration to ban smoking across the campus. No more 30 foot buffer rule, no more cigarette butts strewn about for Physical Plant to pick up, no more smoking at all. We have nothing to lose from this policy.
We are an institution of higher education. We are a university that offers a public health major. According to the department’s website, public health “prepares students with the knowledge and skills to address the public health challenges of the 21st century.” Smoking is a known public health hazard. The CDC states that smokers die ten years earlier than non-smokers on average, and smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the world. Why would we want our students to harm themselves on our campus?
Elon consistently seeks out the best faculty and students to further enhance the university. Elon’s tremendous growth is a result of risk taking, inventive thought and a gathering of great minds. Smoking is an old-school dirty habit that causes horrific illness and death. Smoking is not in line with Elon as a leader and an intellectual community.
Historically, North Carolina made much of its fortune on tobacco. Regulation on smoking is not an easy sell, but Elon now has a national student body. We were not started with money from a tobacco heir and are not beholden to tobacco interests.
Some people might claim banning smoking on campus would be a sort of Big Brother move or part of a nanny state. They claim this would prevent students, faculty and staff from participating in a legal activity on our campus.
But hold on – it is perfectly legal to carry a gun in North Carolina, yet you can’t carry on Elon’s campus. Is that a Big Brother type of policy too? Just like the ban on carrying weapons on campus keeps Elon’s students, faculty and staff safe, a smoking ban would protect the health and well-being of everyone on campus.
Secondhand smoke is a serious issue. It has been directly linked by the American Cancer Society to 3,400 deaths from lung-related illnesses in non-smokers, 42,000 deaths from heart-related illnesses from non-smokers as well as up to 300,000 lung infections in non-smokers each year. Breathing should not be a casualty on a college campus.
The data collected by a survey of Elon students suggests that the community would support a campus-wide ban on smoking. 578 students said they believed Elon should ban smoking. This was more than double the amount of students who said they did not believe Elon should institute a campus-wide smoking ban.
Our university has never shied away from making progressive change in order to secure a better future. A campus-wide ban on smoking would be another step in the right direction for Elon as the university continues to ascend the ranks of nationally recognized high education institutions.
(09/03/14 10:02pm)
Not only are students in high school dealing with acne, first crushes and relationships, as well as drastic changes to their bodies, they are also thrown into a new academic and social environment. In case that was not enough to deal with, during their senior year they have to decide where they want to spend the next four years of their lives studying.
As a current senior in college, I look back and realize I could have used a little more time to figure out what I wanted from my college experience. Although many students know, or think they know, what they want by the time their senior year of high school rolls around, I did not.
As a result of my indecisiveness during my senior year of high school, I ended up at a college that was not the right fit for me. Less than a year after that I transferred to Elon. I have no regrets about transferring but I wish I had gotten it right the first time.
A recent study by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found that one in three full-time college students will transfer before they graduate.
While there is nothing wrong with transferring those numbers indicate to me that many high school seniors, like myself, were not sure what they wanted at age 18. As a result, they had to endure the college application process all over again as college students.
To make matters worse, the American Educational Research Association found that transfer students, although they are becoming more common, are still at a strong disadvantage because of the complicated process of moving academic credits from one institution to another.
The study found only 58 percent of all transfer students have at least 90 percent of their transferred credits accepted by their new institution. These figures show transfer students are often put at a severe disadvantage when entering a new institution.
While college and universities across the country could make an effort to smooth out the credit transferring process for new students, the social struggles such as making new friends and fitting in with new roommates would still be present.
If the American high school process was restructured to act more like the European one, our students would be much better off. By and large, many students in Europe take a year or two off prior to entering a university of their choice.
During this time, they work, help their parents, pursue other interests or travel. Not only does this allow students time to do things many American students do not have the time for between high school and college but it also allows them the invaluable resource of time to think about their future.
In the United States, this would be known as a gap year but it is not common and often is frowned upon. When done correctly, students who take a year off prior to college have a better idea of what they want from their experience. This means that these students are less likely to transfer and more likely to have a focused experience in their first few years of college.
Encouraging American students to take a year off between high school and college is not going to be the answer to why so many students are transferring. There are many different ways to figure out how to get this number down.
Transferring is not a bad thing, but we need to start talking about why transferring is so common and what we as a collective whole can do to fix it.
(08/25/14 7:08pm)
Class of 2018, welcome to Elon University. You are joining a truly special community. I envy you, for you are just beginning your time here at Elon. As a transfer student, my only regret about coming to Elon is that I didn’t arrive here sooner.
(05/07/14 4:22pm)
As the semester winds down at Elon University, students know two things come with the end of the term — finals and course evaluations.
Professors both at Elon and at many other institutions across the country are evaluated by their students, and these evaluations provide professors with a deeper insight into how effective, or ineffective, they are at teaching their students. Additionally, the heads of each department can see which professors are doing well and which ones need improvement.
The university’s professors are put under the microscope, but Elon’s coaches are able to avoid the scrutiny their academic counterparts are frequently subject to. Seeing as coaches work with students just like professors do, it seems unfair that they are immune to any evaluation by their athletes at the end of their sport’s season.
Successful coaching is about more than just wins and losses for any team. Elon’s student athletes spend lengthy amounts of time at practice, in the weight room and in team meetings all while under the supervision of their coaches. Although coaches are under the supervision of athletic directors, Elon’s athletic administrators would greatly benefit from hearing feedback from the student athletes that work tirelessly to represent Elon on the playing field as well as in the classroom.
The need for coach evaluations is very real and would solve many problems some institutions have had with coaches in recent years. Too often we find various universities in the news for coaches acting unprofessionally toward their athletes.
In 2013, the head coach of Rutgers’ men’s basketball team Mike Rice was fired after the university found he had been bullying and abusing his athletes. For three years, Rice physically bullied his athletes by hitting them, throwing basketballs at them and pushing them in a violent manner during practice.
It took three years for the Rutgers athletic administrators to recognize Rice’s actions as being detrimental, while his athletes suffered mental and physical duress on his tenure. Had Rutgers implemented a system where athletes fill out an evaluation of their coach the issue would have been resolved much sooner.
On April 23, the head coach of Boston University’s women’s basketball team Kelly Greenberg was terminated after an investigation into her coaching style confirmed that she had been bullying her athletes. Her coaching tactics were so abusive that four players had quit the team in the past year alone. Although Greenberg is no longer the head coach of the program, it took far too long for BU to realize she was abusing her athletes.
In today’s society, coaches have more access to their athletes than ever before. Phone calls, text messages, emails and other forms of social media are all platforms that coaches can use to contact their athletes.
Although these new forms of communication can, in theory, improve the effectiveness of their coaching abilities, it can also overwhelm and smother athletes for they are constantly accessible to their coach. An intimidating text or condescending email from a coach can cause the same amount of mental stress as an in-person confrontation could.
Elon needs to realize that if they are going to have students evaluate their professors, students should also evaluate any staff member who has consistent contact with the student body. Not only would this allow the Elon staff to be more effective, but it would also protect students from staff members who are not conducting themselves in accordance with Elon’s standards.
Coaching student-athletes at any level is about more than just wins and losses. Coaches are shaping the minds and bodies of young men and women. Athletic departments need to recognize and listen to the needs of their athletes.
Between the NCAA and university policies, college athletes are controlled by very rigid rules and bylaws. Instead of viewing athletes as property of the university or of the NCAA, Elon should be among the first institutions in the country to have their student-athletes evaluate their coaches just as they evaluate their teachers. I guarantee the university would be surprised at what they would learn.
(03/10/14 11:37pm)
This past weekend, Elon University fell victim to widespread power outages. The power outages were due to winter storm Titan that struck Alamance County. These blackouts affected the majority of its on-campus (and later off-campus) housing neighborhoods. Many students across the Elon campus were thrown out of their usual day-to-day routine as a result of these outages. Despite being without power and heat, the strong community feel of the Elon campus made sure all students were taken care of during the storm.
(02/25/14 12:33am)
Since our country was founded in 1776, we have had 44 presidents. 43 have been white, one has been black and none have been women. Michele Bachmann recently said our country is not ready for a female president, especially not Hillary Clinton, because the voters elected an African-American president out of guilt and there is no guilt to elect a female president. She could not be more wrong.
(02/12/14 3:33am)
Since humans began to walk the Earth, we have been explorers by necessity and by choice. Something within ourselves drives us to seek out new places and opportunities. Without this drive to explore, our world would be a very different place today.
(01/10/14 6:48pm)
There are somewhere between four and six million closed-circuit security cameras in the United Kingdom. That’s roughly one camera for every 11 people living in the sovereign state. Meanwhile, in Israel, airport security relies heavily on racial profiling and intense personal scrutiny by highly trained security agents who have extensive military training.