Inebriated students will now have more difficulty sending inappropriate e-mails to faculty members, parents and former consorts, thanks to the new Google application "Mail Goggles," the Chronicle of Higher Education reported. The new product, to be used in conjunction with Google Mail, forces users to solve a few simple math problems during "dangerous hours" for alcohol consumption, the default setting for which is from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. If users are unable to solve the math problem, the program assumes the user is intoxicated and does not allow the message to be sent. "Mail Goggles" was named after the slang term "beer goggles," which refers to the tendency to consider prospective mates "inexplicably attractive" when inebriated, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported.
The constitutionality of a University of Texas at Austin policy that prohibits posting signs in dormitory windows has recently been contested. The issue was brought to the fore when two roommates at the school were barred from class registration after refusing to remove a sign endorsing Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama from their window, according to the Dallas Morning News. "We think it's an important free-speech issue, and we have the right to express our political opinion," Connor Kincaid, one of the students involved in the legal battle, told the Dallas Morning News. The campus' Democrat and Republican groups worked together to fight the policy, and on Thursday, the university president, William Powers, Jr., said he would immediately suspend the prohibition on signs in dorm room windows. The rule will be replaced with "an interim regulation that expressly allows the display of signs and posters in students' residence hall room windows," according to Inside Higher Ed.
Colleges across the nation are trying to create strategies to combat the effects of the economic recession currently plaguing the nation, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Emory University President Jim Wagner recently released an "open-letter" to his faculty and staff requesting suggestions for how to deal with the economic crisis. Emory's administrative budgets are not expected to increase for the 2010 fiscal year, he explained. The university hopes to continue to offer adequate and competitive faculty salaries, so all departments in the university need to think about areas in which they can cut costs to offset those expenditures in the next budget. "Now is the time to redouble our efforts to secure private funding for our future," Wagner said.
