Notes in the Margins: Adjuncts, presents and U of M transparency

Advocates of Adjunct Union at East-West U. Score a Big Win Adjunct faculty members seeking to unionize at East-West University have been granted considerable job protections as part of the settlement of unfair-labor-practice charges filed on behalf of several whose contracts were not renewed. (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Holiday Presents Least Appreciated By College Students The holidays are a time for charity and selflessness. And perhaps nothing is more charitable than giving to a college student. But just like the Salvation Army, college students maintain a list of preferred giving policies. This year, you might wish to consult the following college gift "don'ts" before you wrap up a return trip to the mall. (Huffington Post)

Text From Millions of Digitized Books Reveals Our ‘Cultural Genome’ The English language is going through a period of enormous growth. Humanity is forgetting its past faster than ever. And fame is increasingly short-lived. These are some of the findings of a paper published in Science on Thursday by a Harvard-based team of researchers who investigated a database of 5.2 million books as a digital “fossil record” of human culture. The team culled that record from 15 million books digitized by Google and its university partners. (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Blog Satirizes Law-School Life, but Syracuse U. Officials Aren’t Laughing The law school has threatened “harassment” charges against a student who is allegedly a writer for an anonymous The-Onion-style blog. (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Last call for transparency Throughout the semester, University officials have failed over and over to communicate plenty of issues with the clarity and transparency becoming of a public institution. “Troubled Waters” was only the start. (Minnesota Daily)

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