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The day following the Virginia Tech massacre, students in a Midwestern state university were taking a class taught by the university president. Someone looked outside and saw a student walking on campus with a rifle. The president immediately deputized volunteers from class and sent them out to warn other classrooms to go into lockdown.

As it turned out, the student was actually armed with an umbrella.

The day following the Virginia Tech massacre, students in a Midwestern state university were taking a class taught by the university's president. Someone looked outside and saw a student walking on campus with a rifle. The president immediately deputized volunteers from the class and sent them out to warn other classrooms to go into lockdown.

As it turned out, the student was actually armed with an umbrella.

As a university president who happens to be a clinical social worker and has worked on college campuses for the past 25 years, I would like to share some thoughts with fellow presidents and campus administrators in light of the Virginia Tech University tragedy.

American Counseling Association, http://www.counseling.org/PressRoom/NewsReleases.aspx?AGuid=b8890bed-5842-4c52-8719-eeb4fcbbd562

American Psychiatric Association

Caring in Times of Disaster links, http://www.psych.org/disasterpsych

American School Counselor Association

Q: How did you react when Facebook opened membership to the world beyond students?

"I do not feel that Facebook made a wise decision when it began allowing college administrators (and future employers) onto the network. When you hear about employers using Facebook as a resource when they are considering someone for employment, it definitely has lost its appeal to me."

"My use of Facebook didn't change. But my appreciation for it did change, because I think it was a better thing when it was more exclusive."

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By any measure, the cost of financing a higher education has soared over the past two decades.

Not surprisingly, a new breed of direct-to-consumer lenders has evolved to help cover these costs, but most do anything but help. From lenders who promote "pioneering" benefits that have been around for years, to those who offer private loans in exchange for 4 percent of your future earnings, the industry is saturated with predatory lenders who are in the business of misinformation. Their weapons of choice: Catchy marketing and fine print.

In today's competitive higher education environment, a college or a university cannot be seen as just another good institution in a landscape filled with many other similar entities--some a little stronger, others a bit weaker. Today, as branding experts will tell us, it's all about differentiation. But at Ball State University, we think it goes much deeper than that for very compelling, even urgent reasons.

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