__Dean of admissions says section weighed like an SAT II__

Two years after the creation of a writing section of the SAT, the College said that it considers it similar to the SAT II subject tests.

p. “The new writing portion is more like the old SAT subject test in writing,” Dean of Admissions Henry Broaddus said.

p. As such, the writing portion is taken into consideration in much the same way as subject tests.

p. “[The SAT II tests] are not required of applicants, but we take notice of them if they are submitted,” Broaddus added.

p. Beginning March 12, 2005, the College Board modified the SAT reasoning test by adding a new writing portion. The new version features an essay and more multiple-choice questions, adding an hour in total to the exam. According to the College Board, the new writing portion measures a student’s ability to clearly express ideas and to utilize appropriate word choice and sentence structure.

p. The College says that it continues to take a holistic approach when considering applicants.

p. “[The College is] keenly interested in a student’s voice, sense of self, thought process and point of view,” Broaddus said.

p. The essay on the SAT, unlike a personal essay, does not aptly measure any of these desired components. Instead, it tests one’s ability to form and present a coherent, grammatically correct essay.

p. “[Although] that’s useful information for an admission office to have, it’s no empirical substitute for what are subjective matters,” Broaddus said.

p. For similar reasons, the undergraduate writing requirement is no longer awarded based on SAT scores. Sharon Zuber, director of the Writing Resources Center, said that after the remodeling of the SAT several years ago, the College stopped using SAT scores to give writing credit or exemption.

As President of the Virginia Association of Campus Law Enforcement and Chief of Police at the College, Don Challis is working to address national campus safety issues and answer the questions that have arisen in light of the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech.

p. The shootings, the deadliest in American history, prompted universities across the country to examine their policies and practices regarding safety and security.

p. In Virginia, where as many as 500,000 students, faculty, staff and visitors populate college campuses every day, the ability to respond quickly and effectively to emergencies remains a foremost concern of campus law enforcement across the state.
“We need to examine what was done right and what was done wrong in handling the incident and train our officers in disaster planning from the perspective of what happens on a college campus,” Challis said.

p. Challis, who is originally from Iowa and now lives in James City County with his wife and two daughters, has worked at the College for four years. Previously, he was an officer at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.

p. As a student at the University of Iowa, Challis worked as a security officer to help pay for his tuition. It was not long before he applied for a job as a police officer and was soon promoted to sergeant.

p. He says he enjoys working with the “unique, driven and smart” student body at the College and coming to work on the historic campus every day, where his duties as an officer are for the most part the same as those of local police.

p. In July, Challis was the main speaker at a meeting of the Virginia Tech Review Panel, organized by Gov. Tim Kaine to investigate the shootings and what can be done to make campuses safer.

p. The panel included former Virginia State Police Superintendent Col. Gerald Massengill, former U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, an FBI agent and a child psychiatrist. Also on the panel were those with knowledge relating to the shootings, the medical history of the perpetrator, Seung-Hui Cho, and the school’s response.

p. “There is always the concern that if something had been done differently, less bodies would be dead,” Challis said.

p. Although many have criticized the school for not closing down or going into lockdown mode immediately after the first shooting, Challis said that Tech handled the situation well and that lockdowns are impractical because most college campuses extend over hundreds of acres of land and include dozens of buildings.
In the Virginia Tech massacre, campus police responded to the first shooting within eight minutes and officers from the Blacksburg Police and Virginia State Police were at the scene when the second shooting took place in Norris Hall.

p. “We’re sitting here four months after the fact. Tech had to make these decisions in a matter of minutes. It is difficult to apply what is needed now relative to what was needed in April. What they did instinctively we now have to do routinely,” Challis said, referring to emergency notification and crime prevention.

p. “In any incident we have to anticipate if something is attached to it. There have been murders on college campuses before, but I don’t know of any where two hours later the problem resurfaces like it did at Tech,” he said.

p. Challis said that one thing schools across the country can learn from Tech is the importance of communication between students and the administration.

p. “Something like this could happen on any college campus,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of crime or criminal mischief at William and Mary, but we need to be forward-thinking nonetheless.”

__Educational Policy Committee recommends small increase__

The Educational Policy Committee has recommended a small increase in the number of credits that ROTC cadets receive from their courses.

p. The EPC, a faculty group that examines the number of credits a course is worth, suggested that the faculty assembly increase the number of credits that count toward a cadet’s graduation from six to eight, and increase the number of credits cadets receive from all standard military science courses from 11 to 12.

p. These credit changes, which the faculty will vote on this fall, are drastically lower than those proposed by the unanimous student assembly vote on the issue.

p. The Senate requested a full credit change – cadets would earn three credits a semester, and all would count toward graduation.
“The changes proposed by this committee are quite insignificant and will make very little difference in the lives of cadets. It is a far stretch from what the student senate voted unanimously on,” ROTC cadet Matt Pinsker ’09 said.

p. ROTC cadets at other schools are taking action to increase the number of credits awarded for courses, but most of the publicity on the issue is directed at the College.

p. “We are leading the fight for fair credit for ROTC cadets, and many students, teachers, veterans and politicians across the nation are watching to see how the situation works out here,” Pinsker said.

p. ROTC courses cover a range of topics from the military’s role in American society to map reading and land navigation, which involves analytical thinking, math and memorization. These courses, focused on leadership, also teach the cadets about the intricacies of what it would take to lead soldiers into battle. There is also a rigorous physical fitness commitment – sessions take place three times a week at 6 a.m.. They do not spend their time exclusively marching or firing guns; instead, the courses encompass a holistic combination of academic and physical challenge. Pinsker, a government and pre-medicine major, believes that ROTC courses are the most difficult he has taken at the College.

__Sowder replaces former voter-registrar Andrews, who often denied student applicants__

p. New Registrar Winifred Sowder has high hopes for repairing the relationship between the voter registrar’s office and the College. On July 1, Sowder replaced the previous registrar Dave Andrews whose tenure in the position was soured by his adversarial stance against the student body.

p. “My office door is always open. It’s important to me that we have a good relationship,” Sowder said. “We’re here to serve the people.”

p. She is also pleased to see students want to take an active part in local politics. In the past, students complained of disenfranchisement in Williamsburg elections. According to the April 27 issue of The Flat Hat, Andrews frequently changed policies, added a questionnaire to the requirement forms, allegedly used unfair or illegal practices in keeping students from voting and on one occasion lost the registration forms of at least 17 students. Eventually, Andrews was named in a lawsuit regarding his repeated refusal to consider College students permanent residents.

p. Sowder’s appointment is seem by some as a chance to improve the situation. Students will now be allowed to vote so long as they are a U.S. citizen and have proof of residence within the city of Williamsburg.

p. “I don’t worry about minutiae; I don’t want to scrutinize students,” Sowder said, concerning the prerequisites for voting.
Voting registration requirements for students will no longer be any different than those applied to other residents of Williamsburg.

p. Despite her open-door policy and willingness to allow students to register, Sowder made explicit her feeling that students should be careful when considering whether or not to vote in Williamsburg. He went into detail regarding how becoming a registered resident of Williamsburg may affect a student’s parents’ house and car insurance, as well as a student’s classification as a dependent on parents’ income taxes.

p. “The most important consideration,” Sowder said, “is the potential for out-of-state students to lose scholarship money from their home states.”

p. According to Sowder, a student from Delaware who attempted to register called back, “frantic” that he was at risk of losing a scholarship from his home state. Sowder was able to withdraw the individual’s forms before they were processed. She made it clear that these concerns should not discourage students from voting in Williamsburg.

p. Leaders within the Young Democrats club are happy with the new registrar.

p. “I’ve been working with her all summer. She’s already been taking registrations and processing them; she’s really nice,” Zach Pilchen ’09 said.

p. Pilchen went on to dismiss the chances of students losing local scholarships, dependent status or the changing of insurance rates as “highly unlikely.”

p. The Young Democrats and College Republicans are launching registration drives that are to take place over the course of the next week.

__Democracy conference to convene in Williamsburg, scheduled to host sessions at William and Mary Hall__

p. The World Forum on the Future of Democracy will take place in Williamsburg Sept. 16 to 18 and will include a day session at William & Mary Hall.

p. The forum will be held at the Colonial Williamsburg Conference Center.

p. “The World Forum on the Future of Democracy is the culminating event of the year-long International Conference Series on the Foundations and Future of Democracy,” according to the website for the series and the forum.

p. Former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton and former U.K. Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair are the Honorary Chairs of the Democracy Conference Series.
There is a possibility that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates ’65 will attend the event, according to Charles Center Director Joel Schwartz.

p. The Sept. 17 session at William & Mary Hall is called “The Future of Democracy: Why Does It Matter?” and will be hosted by Jim Lehrer, executive editor and news anchor for the PBS show The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

p. Panelists for the first Jim Lehrer session, “Developing a Structure for Deliberative Democracy – The Framers’ Debate,” include two Pulitzer Prize authors, History Professors Gordon Wood from Brown University and Joseph Ellis ‘65 from Mount Holyoke College. Hunter R. Rawlings III, President Emeritus of Cornell University, will also sit on the panel.

p. Lehrer is also moderating a session called “Has America Kept The Founders’ Faith? Is It Working?” This session’s panelists are the Honorable Thomas Foley, 57th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, former U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr, New York Times columnist David Brooks, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Goldman Sachs, Robert Hormat and Joan Brown Campbell, the department of religion director at Chautauqua Institution.

p. In the afternoon, the moderator will switch to Walter Isaacson, President and CEO of the Aspen Institute. His session, “Are America’s Founding Principles Relevant in a Global Age?” will host panelists such as Steven Heintz, President of Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Kumi Naidoo, secretary general and CEO of CIVICUS and Choi Young-Jin, for the Republic of Korea to the United Nations.
The luncheon speaker and the public session speaker are still to be announced.

p. Mitchell Reiss, the College’s vice provost for international affairs, will be a panelist for a session Sept. 18 entitled “Terrorism and Security.”

p. Reiss was the dean of the Reves Center for International Studies at the College before becoming director of policy planning in the State Department under former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Reiss was also the envoy to Northern Ireland.

p. “His academic expertise, actually, is North Korea … He happens to be at [the College] now, but he’s … very logical for the panel,” Schwartz said.

p. The Jamestown 400th Commemoration Commission, a federal commission funded by Congress, is in charge of the forum; they were in charge of the format and the invitations.

p. The College did not organize the forum, but Schwartz was asked to coordinate the involvement of students and faculty in the event.

p. Students, faculty and staff may obtain tickets for the Jim Lehrer session at William & Mary Hall at the University Center Information Desk between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. both today and tomorrow.

After months of braving strong Martian dust storms, two of NASA’s rovers, Opportunity and Spirit, are ready to continue research.

p. Dust storms that began in late July blocked most of the sunlight that the rovers use to create electrical energy. This forced NASA to halt their research in order to ensure that the instruments did not fail.

p. The Opportunity is scheduled to explore the Victoria Crater, an impact crater that offers a window into the subsurface geology of Mars and could make the journey as early as today.

p. “Opportunity might be ready for that first “toe dip” into the crater as early as next week,” John Callas, project manager for the Mars Rover Mission, said in an interview with Space.com.
Victoria Crater is just one of many research sites for the Opportunity during its 43-month trek across the Meridiani Planum, a plain on Mars that may hold evidence supporting the belief that Mars once had surface water.

p. The interest in exploring Victoria Crater stems from a layer of exposed bedrock within the crater that could provide clues as to the interaction between the surface and the atmosphere on Mars millions of years ago.

p. In preparation for the voyage into the crater, Opportunity must have its instruments checked because of the dust storms. One of the most important instruments, a mast-mounted mirror, must be inspected thoroughly because data sent back to Earth suggested that it may not be working properly.

p. According to Space.com, the mast-mounted mirror reflects infrared light into the rover’s Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-TES), which is used to determine which rocks occupy the Martian surface.

p. The Opportunity, which is formally named Mars Exploration Rover-B (MER-B), is currently in its fourth year of Martian roving and has thus far uncovered evidence of ancient Martian water and conducted a study of a Martian meteorite.

p. Thanks to the detailed geologic survey that the Opportunity conducted on Meridiani Planum, scientists have been able to make a hypothesis that links current hematite existence on Mars to past water presence. Hematite forms on Earth in hot springs or still standing bodies of water. Because of this, scientists believe there may once have been standing water on Mars.

p. At optimal conditions, the rovers can generate around 700 watts/hour of energy a day. If the rovers get less than 150 watts/hour of energy, they begin to use their batteries. These batteries can be drained quickly in the very cold climate of Mars.

p. Once the batteries are drained, the instruments and electrical systems will fail, causing the rover to lose the ability to perform tasks such as conducting research and communicating with Earth.
Opportunity received only 128 watts/hour of energy July 18, its lowest reading ever. NASA responded by only allowing the rover to communicate with Earth once every three days.

p. Fortunately, the dust storms have ceased and it appears that the rovers remain unscathed. They are ready to continue searching for clues to Mars’ past, inching us one step closer to determining whether life does, or ever did exist, on Mars.