When universities are barred from using race-based affirmative action, what happens to campus diversity? Asks the Christian Science Monitor. That’s one key question the US Supreme Court may consider as it once again takes up the issue of affirmative action in higher education, in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin on Wednesday. Depending on how the high court rules, it could lead to public colleges and universities across the country dropping the consideration of race in admissions decisions. The last time the Supreme Court took up the issue, in the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger, it ruled that the University of Michigan Law School could use race as one factor in admissions. But the court also noted that with a variety of experiments under way to try to achieve diversity through alternative means, schools should periodically review whether consideration of race was still necessary for reaching a critical mass of minority students on campus…
…Read MorePodcast Series: Innovations in Education
Explore the full series of eCampus News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.
Supremes: Stop (texting) in the name of love
The U.S. Supreme Court had a message June 17 for workers with cell phones and other devices provided by their employers: Use your own cell phone if you’ve got something to text that you don’t want your boss to read.
In a case with direct implications for employees at public schools and colleges, the justices unanimously upheld a police department’s search of an officer’s personal, sometimes sexually explicit, messages on a government-owned pager, saying the search did not violate his constitutional rights.
The court did not lay down any broad rules about the privacy of workplace electronic communications in a world of rapidly changing technology. But the opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy did make clear that public-sector employers can monitor their employees’ communications on work-issued devices to make sure employees are following the rules.…Read More
Supreme Court hears text-messaging privacy case
In a case with implications for public schools and colleges, the U.S. Supreme Court appears likely to rule against public employees who claimed a local government violated their right to privacy by reading racy text messages they sent through their employers’ account.
Several justices said April 19 that the employer, the Ontario, Calif., police department, acted reasonably in monitoring the text messages in view of its written policy warning employees they have no guarantee of privacy in the use of office computer and electronics equipment.
Justice Stephen Breyer said he didn’t see “anything, quite honestly, unreasonable about that.”…Read More