Thumbs up/Thumbs down

Tuesday, May 19, 1998

Thumbs up/Thumbs down

Professorial preferences

Thumbs down to professors who assign books they wrote but which
have no relevance to the classes they teach. At the University of
Pittsburgh, a professor had assigned extra credit to students who
purchased her book, which had no relevance to the course material.
In this incident, no punishment was placed upon the professor, but
the dean of academic affairs merely made the excuse that she is a
new professor and is still learning. Professors must realize the
implications of essentially making it an option to pay for a grade
– "You buy my book, I’ll give you some extra points which will in
turn raise your grade." This is a severe violation of academic
integrity and students need to start holding professors accountable
for their actions.

Foresight for web copyright

Thumbs down to UCLA for not registering or copyrighting its name
on the Internet. Because of this, UCLA now is wrongfully forcing a
different user to stop using UCLA.com as its site name. The
address, UCLA.com, could have been bought by UCLA (the university),
but because they didn’t, UCLA (Users, Computers, Logins &
Applications) registered with the name and the site. The university
should have secured this space beforehand, instead of crying once
it was too late.

State follows good example

Thumbs up to the state of Colorado for following California’s
lead pertaining to their new "zero tolerance" campaign. In
Colorado, it is now official that if you are under 21, have any
alcohol and are caught driving, your driver’s license may be taken
away. The blood and breath alcohol limit for people under 21 is now
.02, which is equivalent to about one drink.

This has been law in California for some time now, but it’s
encouraging to hear when other states promote legislation dealing
with safety issues.

Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down represents a majority opinion of the Daily
Bruin Editorial Board. Please send comments to
[email protected].