Canadian students chastised for

Facebook bullying

University of Manitoba students received punishment for creating a Facebook group that was set up to mock a fellow student’s dating failures. University officials would not comment on the nature of the discipline due to privacy issues, but they said they are taking the matter seriously.

The Edmonton Sun reported that Facebook responded to the incident by also promising to take the issue very seriously.

“Facebook does not condone cyber-bullying on the site and will disable accounts that are found to be intimidating others in any way,” a Facebook spokesperson wrote in an e-mail to The Canadian Press.

The punishment raises issues about whether cyber-bullying can and should be policed by university officials, especially when comments were made from students’ personal computers on a Web site unaffiliated with the University of Manitoba.

Turkish schools oppose Muslim headscarf

Turkish education officials united last week to oppose legislation that would allow Muslim head coverings on college campuses. The officials for these state universities maintain that their colleges are secular institutions and should remain free of religious influences.

The government, who would have to amend the constitution to affect the change, argued that the scarf issue is more about human rights than religion.

Turkey’s Council of Higher Education, created in the 1980s after a coup in government, was adamant that easing the ban would weaken strictly secular campuses with Islamic influences.

To double-dip or not to double-dip

Researchers at Clemson University in South Carolina recently quantified what various friends, relatives and colleagues have been warning you about for years: double- dipping is bad.

According to a report in The Associated Press, Clemson professor Paul Dawson equated double-dipping to kissing everybody at the party.

“If you’re double-dipping, you’re putting some of your bacteria in that dip,” he said.

Precisely how much bacteria is transferred depends on how much double-dipping occurs. Double-dipping anywhere from three to six times puts around 10,000 bacteria from your mouth into the sauce.

[Reach columnist Andrew Doughman at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]