Looking for love? Take it from those who know best: college sex columnists.

UWIRE asked an illustrious group to sound off on what mere mortals should do and not do on Valentine’s Day in order to score at the end of the night.

General Tips

DO These Things: Sex columnists’ tips for a successful Valentine’s Day
DO — discuss your sexual fantasies. Chances are you’re both feeling lovey-dovey, which also means you’re more apt to be open with one another. Use this time to discuss a fantasy you’ve kept to yourself. Maybe you can finally get her to dress up like your teacher and discipline you? Or vice-versa? Read more.

DON’T Do These Things: Sex columnists’ tips for avoiding Valentine’s Day pitfalls
DON’T — use this holiday as a way to pressure your significant other into trying something new in the bedroom. On a holiday that is all about love and romance, asking to knock on the backdoor for the first time might not go over so well. Read more.

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Read more tips from the columnists

Advice to get laid on Valentine’s Day
For the love of lube, don’t give me chocolate. If I want candy, I’m sure there will be Valentine’s sweets a-plenty all up in my face at work and in my classes; I’ll find some, don’t worry. Read more.

Get a late-night reward for your Valentine’s Day gift
Consult your loved one’s friends before buying them a gift. Girls gab, a lot, so they know what the other one dislikes, loves and has to have. And sharing clothes means her friends know her sizes, i.e., you can avoid the possible minefield of buying her large sized lingerie when she needs a medium. Read more.

Don’t expect, make a grand gesture on Valentine’s Day
Though this is one of the big holidays that screams go big or go home, don’t expect your guy to show up with a diamond necklace. It’s college. Most people barely bring in enough money to enjoy a few beers on the weekend. Whatever your lover concocts – they made the effort, and that really is what should count. Read more.

Tips to spice up Valentine’s Day
Everyone talks about what to do on Valentine’s Day for newly happy couples, but what about those couples who have been together for so long that Valentine’s Day is getting kind of boring. Want to spice it up? Read more.

Tips to survive Valentine’s Day unscathed
I am not a hopeless romantic so I always greet the Valentine’s holiday with a tinge of cynicism. So the following are a few do’s and don’ts for those of us that are single or attached to make it through the day unscathed. Read more.

Don’t push sex boundaries only because of St. Valentine
On a holiday that is all about love and romance, asking to knock on the backdoor for the first time might not go over so well…and you don’t want this holiday to turn into a horror story that gets passed around to all of her friends! Read more.

How to become the ultimate stud on Valentine’s Day
One tip: Take your date somewhere unique, like a place with stellar food, exotic decor and ultimate class. Trust me, the next morning, she’ll be recounting every single detail of her night to all her friends, and you want to make sure you give her a good story to share, thus making you the ultimate stud in the eyes of her and all her girlfriends. Read more.

Be careful with lingerie on Valentine’s Day
Keep in mind that if you expect her to wear lingerie for you (because it’s really not a gift for her as much as it is for you), be prepared to wear some of your own… fair is fair after all. Read more.

New Education Privacy Rules Threaten Public Accountability for Universities

By Student Press Law Center, Special to The Minaret

New education privacy regulations slipping into effect at the eleventh hour of the Bush administration will make it much more difficult for journalists and parents to investigate the performance of schools and colleges, according to the Student Press Law Center, the nation’s leading authority on the legal rights of student journalists.

The U.S. Department of Education has just enacted significant changes to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), also known as the Buckley Amendment, a 1974 statute intended to penalize schools that fail to adopt and enforce policies to safeguard the confidentiality of student education records. The changes are set to take effect January 8, 12 days before the end of the Bush administration.

The new rules would greatly expand the definition of what qualifies as a confidential “education record” to include even records with all names, Social Security numbers and other individually identifying information blacked out (”redacted”). This change will frustrate the ability of parents and journalists to use state open-records laws to obtain basic statistical information about school safety, discipline, academic performance and other essential matters, said attorney Frank D. LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center.

“By its own admission, the DOE made no attempt to strike a balance between legitimate privacy interests and the public’s right to hold schools accountable. The DOE simply said that accountability doesn’t matter and that its only concern is secrecy,” LoMonte said. “DOE’s interpretation flies in the face of every court ruling to interpret FERPA, and it goes well beyond what Congress intended in enacting the law.”

The Student Press Law Center (SPLC) is a Washington, D.C.-area nonprofit whose mission is to advocate for free-press rights for high school and college journalists nationwide. The Center provides legal information and referral assistance at no charge to students and the educators who work with them.

Historically, schools and colleges have been instructed under FERPA to redact the names, Social Security numbers and other identifying information from student records before releasing them in compliance with an open-records request. But under the new DOE rule, schools and colleges are directed to withhold documents even if all identifying information is removed, if the school believes that the requester knows, or can figure out, the students to whom a document pertains.

As an example of how it intends the rule to work, the DOE stated that the rules will prevent a school even from confirming whether it had disciplined any student for bringing a gun onto campus, because the identity of the gun-wielding student probably would be known to people within the school.

“The public has a right to know essential safety information such as what steps administrators take when they catch a student carrying a gun into a high school. There is no legitimate ‘privacy’ interest in committing a felony on school grounds, and the Department’s insistence on protecting the ‘privacy’ of a would-be school shooter over the safety interests of the public shows just how arbitrary and irrational these rules are,” LoMonte said.

The DOE circulated a draft of its new FERPA rules on March 24. The SPLC joined other open-government advocates in urging the Department to refrain from expanding the scope of FERPA, noting that FERPA already is being widely abused to withhold non-confidential documents, including audit reports and jail logs, from public scrutiny. DOE refused to make any reforms to the draft rules, and reissued them in final form in the December 9, 2008, edition of the Federal Register.

“DOE’s rules respond to a ‘problem’ that just isn’t there. Not a single person came forward with evidence that any student’s legitimate privacy interests have ever been compromised by an open-records request for statistical information,” LoMonte said. “On the other hand, DOE is well aware that schools are routinely misapplying FERPA to deny requests for documents that cannot rationally be considered private ‘education records.’”

Just last month, the DOE itself issued a ruling that the University of Virginia had misapplied FERPA in requiring victims of sexual assaults to sign confidentiality agreements under which the victims agreed — under threat of discipline — that they could not discuss the outcome of disciplinary proceedings against their attackers with anyone, to protect the privacy of the rapists.

The SPLC and its volunteer attorneys successfully sued the Department of Education in 1991 on behalf of journalists at the University of Tennessee and Colorado State University, to overturn the DOE’s irrational interpretation that FERPA prevented colleges from releasing campus police reports to the media. In response, Congress amended FERPA to clarify that the DOE’s interpretation was wrong and that police reports are public records.

The Dec. 9 Federal Register posting is viewable at http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2008/pdf/E8-28864.pdf.

For more information on the SPLC, go to www.splc.org.

“Gross” messaging increases handwashing, fights Norovirus at colleges

It takes “gross” messaging to get undergraduate students to wash their hands more frequently after going to the bathroom, Denver researchers find.

In fall quarter 2007, researchers posted messages in the bathrooms of two University of Denver undergraduate residence halls. The messages said things like, “Poo on you, wash your hands” or “You just peed, wash your hands,” and contained vivid graphics and photos.

The messages resulted in increased handwashing among females by 26 percent and among males by 8 percent, according to associate professor Renée Botta.

“Fear of spreading germs or getting sick by not washing didn’t mean much to students,” says Botta, the lead author of the study and an associate professor in the Department of Mass Communications and Journalism Studies. “What got their attention was the knowledge that they might be walking around with “gross things” on their hands if they didn’t wash.”

Observations in two control dorms over the same four-week period showed handwashing decreased 2 percentage points among females and 21.5 percentage points among males.

“We tried gross messages, germ messages and you’ll-get-sick messages. And the only ones that stuck was gross,” says Assistant Director of Health Promotions Katie Dunker, one of a team of five who conducted the pilot study. “We found that the ‘gross factor’ is what works, and we were able to increase hand washing behavior by a lot.”

The findings are generating interest. Universities including UC Santa Barbara, Wyoming, Colorado State and CU–Colorado Springs want to borrow DU’s techniques in hopes of improving student handwashing behavior on their campuses.

“The relevance of the message is really, really important,” she says. “You can threaten that they’ll get the flu or promise a flu-free winter, but if they don’t really care about that, your message is going to fall flat,” Botta says.

What was clear, she adds, was that the grossness campaign brought positive results not only in the study but also in a campus emergency that broke out last April. A week before the study was to be expanded to the entire University, a Norovirus outbreak made 63 students ill over a four-day period. Handwashing was identified as an important way to prevent the disease from spreading.

The study appears in the October edition of the Journal of Communication in Healthcare.

When washing hands with soap and water:

• Wet your hands with clean running water and apply soap. Use warm water if it is available.
• Rub hands together to make a lather and scrub all surfaces.
• Continue rubbing hands for 20 seconds. Need a timer? Imagine singing “Happy Birthday” twice through to a friend!
• Rinse hands well under running water
• Dry your hands using a paper towel or air dryer. If possible, use your paper towel to turn off the faucet

  Tips from the Center for Disease Control

Night of Naughtiness: The Good, Bad and Ugly of Halloween

See below for this year’s top costumes

By Joanna Scholtz

One night every year entire neighborhoods are taken over by dinosaurs, witches and super heroes.

For an elementary student, Halloween is one of the greatest holidays of the year, but for but for college students, October 31 involves lot more partying, dangerous fun and some very risque wardrobes.

“People always get out of hand on Halloween,” says UT junior Ellanna Schreep who once witnessed a pirate and a cow get into a heated argument. “Half the fun is seeing crazy guys do stupid things in funny costumes.”

Not only is this spooky night a time to drink, but the correct attire is imperative.

“It’s a great way to express yourself and show off your humor,” said Tim Russell, a UT sophomore. “Guys always want to have the most original costume.”

Russell plans to be Elf for Halloween because he knew that it would get a lot more attention than being the attractive Captain Jack Sparrow.

For some women, sex sells with naughty nurses and lusty librarians. The essential theme is costumes that start with the words “sexy,,” “slutty” or “naughty.”

Some men go shirtless or have sexy costumes of their own.

UT sophomore Liz Shamy says Halloween is about freedom.

“I personally don’t dress slutty,” she said, “but you want to impress other girls and show off to guys. It’s the one night of the year you can.”

Even classic high school movies of this generation such as, “Mean Girls”, have been caught mocking how girls dress for the occasion: “Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it,” said Lindsay Lohan’s character.

Even though it might be fun and games to drink and dress up, the truth is the combination of the two can also be dangerous.

According to statistics on forbes.com the popularity of Halloween for adults has been increasing every year along with its fatalities. In a stretch of three days in the year 2007, Halloween alone resulted in 239 deaths, 129 of which were alcohol related.

Part of the issue could be students take the drinking to a whole different level because it is a holiday.

“Aside from St. Patrick’s day, it’s the only holiday college students really get, so I guess people go all out,” says Schreep.

Though the intentions of some young women on Halloween are to get a little romantic attention, it can be detrimental to a woman’s reputation or safety.

“You want to be careful of how far you take it,” Shamy said, “because even though you want to be noticed, you don’t want it to be for the wrong reasons.”

Lyndsay Magid, a junior, said her roommate once walked all the way from Dale Mabry back to campus alone on Halloween dressed as “Poc-a-hotass,” a take-off on Pocahontas.

“It’s dangerous enough to walk back to UT from that distance,” said Magid. “It’s another thing to walk back alone without decent clothes.”

Some Halloween party-goers put themselves in dangerous situations without realizing it because they are intoxicated.

A way for women—and all revelers–to stay safe would be to bring an extra pair of clothes, charge their cell phones before going out and always stay with their friends in big groups of people.

“Halloween is a great time of year for college students,” Magrid said, “but everyone needs to be conscious that things can go wrong too.”

According to one Halloween Web site, there are a number of hot costumes this year for both sexes (scroll down and click more):

Research Roundup: Tony Stark and Harry Potter Beware

By Jake LaBombarbe (UWIRE)

Many colleges are known for the contributions to health and science. This year, it seems that research teams are spending as much time on making science fiction into reality as they are making breakthroughs in health. Schools such as Harvard, U. Texas, and U. Kansas have remained grounded with stem cells, HIV, and birth control for men. The researchers at schools including U. Utah and UC Berkeley are working on a functional ‘Iron Man’ and a ‘Cloak of Invisibility.’ Regardless of the scope of the research, these scientists all have the same goal: a better tomorrow. Here are top research stories from UWIRE affiliates.

Invisibility cloak moves from fantasy to potential reality at UC Berkeley

Whispers of a potential invisibility cloak are floating among the labs of University of California Berkeley researchers, and contrary to notions of fact and fantasy, these are not the ravings of mad scientists. Scientists have already engineered remarkable composite materials known as “metamaterials” capable of reversing the natural direction of visible and near-infrared light.
Full Story from The Daily Californian

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U. Utah researchers develop Iron Man-like suit

When “Iron Man” comic book hero Tony Stark was kidnapped by terrorists and forced to build a weapon of mass destruction, he instead created a mechanical suit that gave him incomparable strength and the ability to fly.

Now University of Utah researchers have built a suit that will protect soldiers in combat by giving them increased strength and endurance.
Full Story from The Daily Utah Chronicle

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U. Illinois scientist creates first mixed-reality state

University of Illinois physicists have blurred the lines of reality by creating the first mixed-reality state, which could give rise to a range of applications, including the control of cancer cells.

Full Story from The Daily Illini

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Harvard, Columbia researchers make stem cell breakthrough

Scientists from Harvard and Columbia created the first patient-specific stem cell line from humans afflicted with a genetic disease, a key step in the push to create therapies for a wide variety of illnesses by replacing diseased tissue with tissue generated by stem cells.
Ful Story from the Harvard Crimson

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U. Texas researchers discover weakness in HIV virus that may enable vaccine

Researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston have discovered a quirk in the constantly evolving HIV virus that they say will help them to develop an effective vaccine for the prevention of the virus in the next 10 years.
Full Story from the Daily Texan

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U. Kansas researchers working on birth control for men

Right here at the University of Kansas, researchers are working to provide another option when it comes to contraceptives. Listen up, fellas. This one’s for you.
Full Story from the University Daily Kansan

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Iowa State involved in most powerful supercomputing project in the world

Iowa State University researchers are participating in a project that will culminate in one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.
Full Story from Iowa State Daily