Some consider it the academic equivalent of performance-enhancing sports steroids; to others, it’s just a mental booster on par with a large jolt of caffeine. Adderall, legally prescribed for patients with attention deficit disorders, is more commonly found on college campuses not with prescription holders, but with an increasing number of healthy students who use the medicine as a “study drug” to boost focus and energy while studying.

Many students are fully aware that using another person’s prescription is a crime, but apart from that, abusing cognitive stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin carries little negative stigma because of their FDA approval and their widespread presence on campus. These qualities, in turn, make obtaining the drugs a simple task and make enforcing their abuse extremely difficult.

At Stanford U., rising rates of Adderall abuse are beginning to raise troubling questions: what makes a student likely to use study drugs, and could it be considered cheating when used as an academic enhancer?

A Growing Concern

Surveys on study drugs in college have failed to come to a consensus about an average rate of use, with results running the gamut from two percent to 34 percent of students having ever used cognitive stimulants without a prescription. While inconclusive, the results have certainly been considered at Stanford.

A U. Kentucky study of 1600 students found that more than A-students aiming for A-plusses, most of the users were C-students avoiding Ds, said law Prof. Hank Greely. To him, that means that an academically driven school like Stanford might be less likely to have as many users.

“To get here, you have to be smart, but you also have to have your act together,” Greely said. “It’s not to say there isn’t anyone here like that, but it’s a consideration.”

“We don’t necessarily have a very good handle on use at Stanford,” said Ralph Castro, director of the Substance Abuse Prevention program at Vaden Health Center.

In 2008, Vaden’s general health survey included a question on study drugs: “Have you ever used a stimulant medication to enhance academic performance?” According to Castro, only about two or three percent of responses said yes, but he said the return was lower than the accurate count.

“Some students also use drugs like Adderall just to get high, so they may not have answered,” he said. “I think the number we got was a little small, but I also don’t think it’s as rampant as some people fear. It’s not 20 percent, like some surveys are reporting.”

Greely, who specializes in the ethics of enhancements, has attracted widespread attention for his published journal articles and other interviews in which he defends prescribed use of cognitive enhancers against negative social stigma.

“There’s nothing inherently wrong with cognitive enhancement through drugs or other methods,” he said. “I’m a teacher; my job is cognitive enhancement. Caffeine is a cognitive enhancement. I don’t think there’s anything special about enhancing with drugs that makes it morally different.”

Greely does concede, however, that the same flexibility cannot apply to illegal use of Adderall by students without prescriptions. But, he said, despite the illegal nature of Adderall abuse, rates have been growing quickly because of high availability on American campuses — where, he says, prescriptions of Adderall are eight or nine times as common as prescriptions of Ritalin, and much more widely available than other, perhaps safer, mental stimulants.

He pointed out that in the U. Kentucky study, use was incredibly widespread: four percent had a prescription, and 34 percent had used it. In juniors and seniors, the use rate was over half; in fraternity and sorority members, over 70 percent of surveyed students said they’d ever used Adderall.

“I don’t think anyone is going out and meeting dealers in dark corners,” Greely said. “It’s being used because there are so many pills on campus legally.”

Student Perspectives

(All student names have been changed to grant anonymity for a legally sensitive subject.)

“It is about the pressure,” said Jason, a Stanford junior Earth Systems major, who uses Adderall on a regular basis. “It’s about catching up with other students. I don’t feel like I can study as much as other Stanford students do.”

Jason said he uses about three or four times a quarter — usually to finish schoolwork in one block and to prepare for midterms and finals.

“I’m sure to leave two weeks between each time I use it because I know it can be addictive,” he said. “I know I’m walking a thin line because I see the very real possibility that I can only do work while using it.”

Jason, who has been using Adderall without a prescription since junior year of high school, used to find it at high school for five dollars a pill. Now, he says, his younger sister has a prescription, and he takes part of her dosage.

“When I’m planning to take Adderall, I schedule it,” he said. “I’ll wait for a Sunday when I’m free from obligations, and set aside 12 hours and take 30 milligrams.”

When he’s taking it, he said, he makes “tons of lists” and spends the first couple hours orienting himself, then focuses for hours on a specific project or task, although he can sometimes “get sidetracked.”

“Mostly, it makes you love the work — the feeling of accomplishment is incredible,” he said, and he considers it an important part of his study schedule. “I don’t think I’d be where I am without it,” he added.

For Jessica, a Stanford sophomore English major, Adderall was something she and her friends experimented with in high school, “mostly for the fun of doing something against the rules, rather than for studying. But [at Stanford], I know a bunch of people who take it mostly to stay up all night.”

Since coming to Stanford, Jessica has only used Adderall once, during last quarter’s finals, but the experience was “not a positive thing.”

“I had already been up for a long time, and I took one in the morning to stay awake,” she said. “I stayed up, but I was already stressed and it backfired.”

For her, the physical side effects outweighed any kind of academic help the drug gave her.

“I was expecting brilliance, and instead, I wrote the worst paper I’ve written in a long time,” she said. “I got work done, sure, but it was at the expense of feeling good.”

While many of the students who use Adderall do so to increase focus and attention for academic purposes, the drug’s chemical similarities to speed and other amphetamines have also led to some students using it for recreational use.

“A friend of mine from [Arizona State U.] brought some to a party on campus, and we crushed it and snorted some,” said Peter, a Stanford senior English major. “It was an immediate high — like I could do anything or go on a crazy adventure.”

For Peter, who has only used Adderall for recreational purposes, the stigma against using it for academic purposes is low — and he claims use is “pretty common.”

“Of the fifty or so guys in my [fraternity] house, I’d say the number of users is under 10,” he said. “It’s a pretty common college thing, especially at somewhere like Stanford where we have a lot of work to do and the mentality is pretty easygoing about doing drugs in general.”

Health Considerations

“Study drugs are very powerful stimulants, Adderall especially,” Castro said. “It’s an amphetamine mix, which works similarly to cocaine and affects the midbrain like other methamphetamines. It has the potential to be highly addictive over a period of time.”

Although Greely said users should consider the risks involved with Adderall, he didn’t consider the overall problems to be a complete deterrent.

“One of the problems is, we have very little research about either the effectiveness or the safety of Adderall in a healthy population,” Greely said. “But it doesn’t appear to be enormously risky, and it doesn’t appear to be enormously helpful, either. It’s sort of like mega-caffeine, as far as I can tell, not having used it myself.”

Jason noted feeling significant side effects while on Adderall, such as cold extremities, loss of appetite and a skewed sense of time. He was aware of the risk of physical addiction and tried to space out use to avoid dependence, but he noted that he “could see becoming psychologically dependent” — a worry that Castro also echoed.

“Once you get used to [study drugs] aiding you in school, you’re more likely to want to use it again, regardless of physical dependence,” Castro said.

Is It Cheating?

Aside from the illegal nature of using another’s prescription, academic use of Adderall on school assignments begs the question of academic violation within University rules. Although Stanford has no specific rules regarding cognitive enhancement drugs, Castro believes that the future of study drug abuse enforcement may lie with Judicial Affairs on campus.

“The way I’ve been framing this is: is it ethical for someone to take a stimulant that gives them an edge over others doing the same assignment?” he said.

“I think, yes, Judicial Affairs would look at this as cheating, just as in sports,” Castro added, saying that it might be even more probable in disciplines that emphasize quantity-based work.

Greely, however, disagrees, saying that without a specific rule regarding study drug use, the University cannot try to enforce abuse as an academic violation.

“It’s only cheating if it’s against the rules,” he said. “I wouldn’t read the Fundamental Standard to make it clear that [using Adderall] is cheating any more than drinking a double espresso is cheating.”

He added that if the University wanted to consider study drug use as cheating, they first need a clear and effective rule, which would be challenging to devise due to the difficulty of enforcement.

“What are you going to do — make everyone pee in a cup before every organic chemistry test?” he said. “How do you tell if someone’s roommate gave them Adderall when they were studying?”

For students, even those who find the drug to be extremely helpful in academics, few considered the idea that study drugs could be considered cheating.

“Taking Adderall lets me put in the work that I would do anyway, just in a shorter amount of time,” Jason said. “It’s not making me smarter.”

While the potential future for the drug in academic violations, as well as its effects and repercussions, remain uncertain, students are clear-headed about how they perceive their own use.

“You’re not suddenly Superman when you’re using Adderall,” Jessica said. “You can just stare at a computer screen longer.”

In the digital world, today’s hottest innovation can be obsolete tomorrow. But some inventions endure and are built upon and improved for so many years they’re hard to live without. Two of those inventions, created at Stanford U., are FM synthesis and fluorescence-activated cell sorting.

Can you hear me now?

John Chowning, professor emeritus of fine arts and music, came up with the idea for the FM synthesizer in 1967.

“I kind of stumbled on it,” he recalled.

At the time, Chowning was experimenting with localization — how to make computerized sounds seem to come from different places in a room. To create the illusion of a sound coming from somewhere other than directly from a speaker, he had to understand how we perceive sounds at a distance, which depends on the structure of the sound and how it reverberates off walls. And with the relatively low processing power of computers at the time, it was no easy task.

“I began searching for this sort of complexity,” Chowning said, by examining a sound’s pitch. Increasing vibrato — the oscillation between two pitches, like the wobbly sound of a violin note — can change the actual note you hear.

But Chowning’s computer was no violin. In the 1960s, PCs weren’t capable of more than simple “beeps.”

“Imagine how the sound of that is simply a tone sound,” he said. “So I simply modulate that sound with another wave that is sinusoidal [similar to a sine wave] in shape.”

By combining multiple tones with different frequencies, Chowning could create unique sounds.

“So that, basically, is frequency modulation, and I was experimenting with the computer to generate signals that had some internal liveliness that helped me localize” the sounds, Chowning said.

Chowning noticed that as he increased the vibrato’s rate and depth, he no longer heard just a change in instantaneous pitch, but a complex timbre, much like the sound of a musical instrument.

“I knew enough about the world at that time to realize that was unexpected — to get such complex timbres by other means demanded lots and lots of oscillators or waveforms and filters — lots of gear,” Chowning said.

He followed with some “semi-rigorous experiments.” Not only did it become a useful experimental tool — “it generated lively signals, lively sounds,” Chowning said. “But then I realized a few years later that it was probably useful to the electronic music instrument world.”

Chowning signed the patent for FM synthesis over to the University, and Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing (OTL) marketed the idea to a number of organ companies that already made basic electronic instruments. After being turned down several times, the OTL “finally found one who understood what I was doing,” Chowning said.

And in 1983, the 61-note Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer was born.

“One of the great advantages of FM over competing technologies . . . was that it demanded relatively little processing — it was a simple formula that demanded little memory,” Chowning said.

Less memory meant smaller hardware. The DX-7 was no bigger than its descendents that are sold today. And regardless of whether or not one is a musician, FM synthesis matters to everyone who owns a cell phone.

“Probably its biggest application ever was ringtones, believe it or not,” Chowning said.

Getting to the FACS

Genetics professor Len Herzenberg “used to complain that he couldn’t look down a microscope; he didn’t like counting things in the microscope, it was frustrating to him,” said his wife and lifelong lab partner, Lee Herzenberg.

His solution, which built on older, less efficient machines, was the fluorescence-activated cell sorter (FACS), invented in the 1960s. It started out as an instrument used to measure atomic fallout by judging the size of atmospheric particles collected after bomb tests. Herzenberg changed it into a machine now present in almost every modern hospital and microbiology lab.

“As most good inventions are like, he didn’t have to invent the wheel to make an automobile,” Lee Herzenberg said. “But he took a wheel that was known to work on a cart, and [he] improved it to work in an automobile.”

Building on the Los Alamos machine and other technologies, Herzenberg created the FACS.

Rather than picking through Petri dishes for the products of chemical reactions, “we were trying to get subsets, subpopulations of these cells and understand them,” Lee said.

After all, “you can’t study it if you can’t isolate it and recombine it with things,” she added.

Fluorescence is one way to identify and separate the cells into different batches. In the original FACS, a black light hides particular wavelengths of visible light so that only a handful of wavelengths chosen by the researcher shine through. The light excites a particular molecule, marking the outside of a cell and making it glow another color.

More advanced versions of the machine, used today, shine lasers.

“What FACS does is it has cells run in single-file in a stream and it shines laser light,” — which is high energy, but emits a narrow set of wavelengths — “and if they have a fluorescent molecule that can absorb where the laser is lighting it, they absorb and emit then at whatever their characteristic color is,” she said.

After they’re hit with the light, a detector, which is often covered by a filter to allow in only the desired wavelengths, checks each cell’s color. Then, they are separated based on how they glow. And all that happens over the space of about three inches, from where the cell passes the detector to where it comes out of the nozzle.

State of the art sorters can handle many different types of cells at once.

“These days, [there are] up to seven lasers and 20 filtered detectors, and then we have electronics that orchestrate everything,” Lee said. “We may look at a million cells in a minute or so.”

The most popular proteins to “tag” cells with are antibodies.

“The reason we use antibodies to tag things is they have microscopic eyes. They can detect shapes of things sort of like a blind man recognizing somebody’s face by detecting the configuration or the shape of it,” she said.

When the antibody recognizes a shape that it’s looking for, “it’s like a lock in a key, it finds a shape that matches it, they stick together very tightly,” she added.

Antibodies made by the body, combined with human cells, allow FACS to recognize, among other things, HIV infection and B-cell leukemia, because different combinations of antibodies attach to cells in different conditions — and all of them look different to the machine’s eye.

“Technology can in turn grow the field by making it possible to see these things and therefore opening up new questions to be answered,” Lee said. “So it’s kind of a spiral, if you like.”

The “Free Tibet” bumper stickers may have faded since the 1990s, but for Samdhong Rinpoche, Buddhist scholar and Tibet’s prime minister-in-exile, the issue remains as clear as ever.

He and Rebiya Kadeer, leader of the Uighur minority movement in China, spoke at Stanford U. on Friday about the problems their societies face under Chinese sovereignty.

Clayborne Carson, history professor and director of Stanford’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, joined the panel to discuss his own experiences in China and the promise that nonviolent protest holds for the future.

Wearing traditional dress, the prime minister and Kadeer received standing ovations as they entered the auditorium. Both in exile, both attempting to gain their peoples’ freedom from Chinese sovereignty, they described the oppression of two ancient societies.

“The Tibetans remain in exile, and inside Tibet, the people have undergone a great deal of misery and torture,” said the prime minister, 70, in halting English. “We are not seeking separation. We are not seeking independence. We are just seeking autonomy within the PRC [People’s Republic of China].”

The current Samdhong Rinpoche — a Tibetan title meaning “precious jewel — was recognized at age 5 as the reincarnation of the fourth Rinpoche. He became prime minister of the India-based Tibetan government-in-exile in 2001 after the Dalai Lama decided that Tibetans should elect their own prime minister.

Beginning his talk with his explanation of the past 1,500 years of Tibetan history, the prime minister said the Chinese government continues to limit Tibet’s native culture and commit human rights violations in the area.

Kadeer, also a refugee from the Chinese government, took advantage of the panel to describe the oppression of the Uighurs, a largely Muslim ethnic group in northwestern China.

For the past 60 years, Kadeer said, China has imposed a campaign of forced assimilation and harsh repression against the Uighurs.

“Uighurs were repeatedly promised that they would enjoy self-rule,” Kadeer said through a translator. “However, under 61 years of communist China occupation, the Uighur people never enjoyed any kind of human rights or democracy. In fact, they have not enjoyed a single moment of peace under Chinese rule.”

Furthermore, since September 11, 2001, China has increased the imprisonment and execution of many Uighur intellectuals, according to Kadeer.

“Using the label of ‘terrorist’ since 9/11, the Chinese government was able to murder hundreds, if not thousands, of Uighurs,” Kadeer said. “They arrest them, imprison them and torture them to death, but so far, the Chinese government has not been able to provide any evidence of such Uighur terrorism. They only use it as a lame excuse.”

Not all in the audience agreed with the speakers’ take on China. During the question and answer session, a man who introduced himself as a Chinese doctoral student in history spoke out against what he saw as the bias permeating the panel.

“Partial truth is not truth,” he said. “Demonizing the Chinese government won’t help the situation.”

The prime minister responded: “The violent people, particularly the PRC authorities who are willfully violating human rights and inflicting a great deal of violence to the people are a kind of teacher in disguise, to teach us the importance of nonviolence.”

Tenzin Seldon, whose parents are Tibetan refugees and who works as the regional coordinator for Students for a Free Tibet, organized Friday’s panel. Seldon’s Gmail account was hacked from China this winter.

Before the talk, Seldon discussed what she saw as its value.

“It’s not a topic that’s widely discussed in our curriculum,” she said. “Many students view Tibet through the Dalai Lama. That’s one human being. How could he possibly represent the lives of all Tibetans?”

“So many people know so little about my country and my people,” she added.

It was 1:30 a.m. and Stanford U. freshman Lucy Richards was stuck on the last problem of her Statics problem set, which was due in several hours. From her laptop, the bright blue motto of Piazzza.com seemed to address her directly — “Stuck? Need help? Just Ask.”

Piazzza — yes, with three z’s — is an online platform that claims to provide “high-quality answers for when you’re stuck” by creating a place for students and teachers to share their questions and answers. And it’s available 24-7.

“It is not always easy to meet people in a large lecture format,” said Peter Pham, a Piazzza user and team member. “Piazzza makes it easy to get help at those desperate times when the deadline for an assignment is hours away even if you don’t know anyone.”

Pooja Nath, the founder and CEO of Piazzza and a student at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, created Piazzza with exactly this problem in mind. Nath studied computer science at the competitive Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, where she was always one of the rare handful of female students in classes dominated by men. Nath recalled being too intimidated to ask her peers for help and wishing there were some online forum where she could go to discuss homework problems.

Enter Piazzza.

Piazzza enables students to anonymously ask questions when they may not know anyone else in their classes, or otherwise may be too embarrassed to seek help by e-mailing a teaching assistant (TA) or going to office hours. Piazzza is currently being tested in Richards’ course.

“At least in computer science classes it is very difficult to complete problem sets on your own,” said Ravi Sankar, a computer science major and member of the 12-person Piazzza team. “Working with others is crucial, and Piazzza makes this collaboration easier.”

To use Piazzza, students simply log onto the website www.Piazzza.com, and the classes that use Piazzza automatically appear after an initial registration. Students can then post new questions, browse their classmates’ questions and contribute answers, with answers to questions provided students separated from those provided by professors or TAs.

“My only qualm is the one I reserve for all Internet communities,” Richards said. “The easier they are to use, the less motivation we have to actually meet face-to-face. I think there’s value in that which can never be replaced by an online forum, no matter how efficiently it provides you with the information you need.”

Nonetheless, Richards said that Piazzza has been a valuable resource.

“The extremely intuitive, easy and functional interface, and the fact that everyone really uses it can get you answers quickly and makes it actually very useful,” she said.

Another concern is cheating, but Prof. Paul Mitiguy said that hasn’t been an issue.

“We want people to work together — it’s not cheating,” he said. “When midterms and finals come around, if a student has not been doing his or her own work on the problem sets and [is] just copying, he will fail.”

Compared to trying to find answers through general Internet searches, Piazzza helps students get answers on conceptual and technical questions that apply specifically to their class.

And according to Mitiguy, Piazzza has helped both his students and the teaching staff. Mitiguy and his staff are committed to being available to students, as reflected by the roughly 26 hours of office hours they hold every week.

On top of this, Mitiguy said that he and his TAs stay in the Design School’s Pederson Hall answering student questions late into the night and, sometimes, early morning.

But with 130 students, answering every question at all times just isn’t feasible.

“We still can’t do as much as we would like,” Mitiguy said.

Here is where Piazzza has helped.

“Piazzza not only helps us reduce our workload, it also helps us see what problems students are struggling with and what needs to be addressed,” said Tarrence Fong, a TA and a first-year mechanical engineering graduate student.

According to Sankar, Piazzza aims to expand into 30 Stanford classes next fall.

“Hopefully once students have Piazzza offered in one of their classes, they will push for all their classes to be involved,” he said.

Pataskala, Ohio, native Will O’Brien has two families; he is the newest addition to the Ohio State baseball team and is one of Nancy and Bill O’Brien’s four children.

The OSU baseball team recently adopted O’Brien with the help of the Friends of Jaclyn Foundation, a non-profit organization that seeks to improve the lives of children with pediatric brain tumors.

O’Brien was born with cancerous brain tumors and his mother said he simply was not supposed to live this long.

“When other mothers were buying clothes for their babies a year ahead of time, I couldn’t do that,” Nancy said.

The O’Brien family applied for Will to be adopted through the program, but never imagined he would be matched with OSU.

“We were really thrilled,” Nancy said.

OSU alum Michael Hunter was the liaison with Friends of Jaclyn who worked to pair O’Brien with the baseball team.

He went to the baseball team with the idea of adopting one of the kids in the program, and the team got right on board.

Pitching Coach Greg Cypret thought it was a great idea and the captains were really looking forward to it, Hunter said.

Getting O’Brien involved took longer than Hunter would have liked due to a lengthy process in the athletic department compliance office, but O’Brien was approved in mid-April.

O’Brien receives team e-mails, phone calls and updates. He is also on the field prior to home games, gets to go into the locker room and is often in the center of the team huddle.

He was shy and reserved in the beginning, co-captain Zach Hurley said.

“We took a team photo with him in the middle and the smile on his face was unbelievable, it was just priceless,” Hurley said.

It didn’t take O’Brien long to warm-up to the team. When offering some encouragement before the game, he said only one word: win.

“It was always fun to see the spark in his eye when he got really excited supporting the team,” co-captain Cory Kovanda said.

Kovanda is O’Brien’s favorite player.

O’Brien has been passionate about baseball since a young age, but has been passionate about the Buckeyes since birth.

Nancy recalled moments when Will was an infant, in the beginning of what would become a rollercoaster ride of events, she said.

In May 1992, at 10 months old, O’Brien underwent his first surgery to remove tumors. Because O’Brien was so young, doctors used fiber optic chemotherapy after the surgery and treated an infection in his head for seven weeks.

O’Brien underwent his second surgery in October of that year and received a bone marrow transplant in December.

He endured his third surgery in October 1993.

“That’s all we were willing to do then because he was just two and had spent his whole life treating the disease, so we kind of thought we’d be lucky enough to stay well,” Nancy said.

O’Brien was well for three years until his luck ran out. He had his fourth surgery and began his first rounds of radiation.

The radiation caused O’Brien to lose his hearing. He now has bilateral hearing aids.

Along the road, his growth began to diminish and his developmental delays were more apparent, Nancy said.

But he never let his disability slow him down.

O’Brien began playing soccer when he was 5 years old, after his mom had to petition to be allowed to play in a baseball cap.

He was the only child on the field who was losing his hair.

O’Brien was healthy until he was 14.

The O’Brien family turned to Gamma Knife, a non-invasive surgery for brain tumors.

After failed attempts with this new method, O’Brien underwent his fifth and final surgery in September 2005.

“I remember so clearly the doctor and nurse practitioner coming in with very sad faces and telling us the pathology from the last surgery was still live tumor and there was really nothing more they could offer us,” Nancy said.

The O’Brien family was fine with that.

In 2006, O’Brien entered Watkins Memorial High School with more optimism than fear.

He earned straight A’s his freshman year and played cymbals in the marching band.

Intervention specialist Jim White, has been working with O’Brien for four years. He is very active and involved at school, White said.

In May 2008, at the end O’Brien’s sophomore year of high school, he suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed on the right side of his body and in a wheelchair for nine months.

“That was the most devastating physically,” Nancy said.

Never once has he complained or asked why it had to be him, White said.

“He would also say ‘God has a plan for me,’” White said.

With the assistance of an orthopedic that keeps his foot in position, O’Brien has since regained his strength to walk on his own and has roughly 60 percent of his dominant side back.

He continued to excel in school and began to play the bass drum in the marching band.

“I like learning and making new friends,” O’Brien said.

O’Brien’s favorite sports are baseball and hockey, but he truly loves Disney World, which the O’Brien’s try to visit at least once a year.

“When we were little I used to go to New Jersey,” O’Brien said.

His favorite trip was traveling to 12 theme parks in 12 months.

Today O’Brien is very active, but suffers from mild to severe seizures as a result of his medications.

But high school has thrown O’Brien an unexpected curveball.

He has met the requirements to graduate, but as a student in the special education program, O’Brien will continue his education at the high school level until he is 23.

The Southwest Licking School District does not allow social graduations.

The stage was set for another battle, this time the opponent wasn’t cancer.

O’Brien’s friends and classmates organized a petition that circulated the school in support of his social graduation.

O’Brien’s fate hung in the balance for weeks as his family petitioned the school board.
In the end the school board voted in favor of his graduation.

“We won that battle and they’re going to write a new policy so that it is never an issue again,” Nancy said.

O’Brien agreed that this is his biggest accomplishment thus far.

Today, O’Brien is a graduate of Watkins Memorial High School and the O’Brien family is planning a big graduation party on June 5 to celebrate all of his accomplishments.

O’Brien has shared this experience with his brother Isaac.

“Isaac is such a good soul,” Nancy said. “He treats Will like his brother; he doesn’t treat him like he’s fragile.”

Isaac, who is only 14, often takes the role of the big brother.

“I have to help out wherever I can,” Isaac said.

But Isaac is reminded that he’s the baby of the family and said, “Will wants to show me around next year.”

For once, Isaac isn’t the one protecting Will, Will is going to be looking out for Isaac.

“I could tell that Isaac was always out there making sure Will was safe,” Hurley said. “I could tell there was a strong bond between the two of them.”

This summer the two travel to Akron, Ohio, for Camp Quality, a camp for children with cancer and their siblings. This summer marks the 11th year the two have gone together.

O’Brien has two older sisters, Katie, 23, and Hannah, 21.

“Katie is the typical oldest child,” Nancy said. “She mothers everybody.”

Katie is a self-imposed caregiver to Will, and Hannah takes everything in stride and adds some much needed comic relief, Nancy said.

As if his devoted parents and protective siblings weren’t enough, O’Brien now has 40 more family members cheering him on.

Facebook, the social networking site created by Mark Zuckerberg out of his Harvard dorm room — in case anybody was unaware of what Facebook was — has recently been in the spotlight for its privacy standards, or accused lack thereof.

The website, which generates 570 billion page views a month (yes, billion with a ‘b’), in order to fix this problem and combat all the negative PR it’s received lately, Facebook has recently stated that it is going to streamline its privacy settings and basically make them more user-friendly.

Now at face value this problem doesn’t seem very significant, other than the fact that the negative publicity isn’t good for the company’s image (although, with 570 Billion page views a month I don’t see the site losing its popularity any time soon); people make a fuss, the company comes out and makes minor cosmetic changes, criticism is quelled end of story.

But, being a college student and part of the majority demographic of Facebook users, I’ve never heard anybody complain about the privacy policy of the site; not a friend, classmate, roommate or anybody. So far it’s only been in the media and, subsequently, older generations of users.

What I think this issue of privacy highlights is the generation gap of technology users. We current college kids, or so-called “Generation Y-ers”, have grown up with computers and the internet for a majority of our lives.

As a result it seems we are much more comfortable with the technology, which would explain the lack of complaints on this privacy issue from our age group.

This is in opposition to our parent’s age group, which remembers a much larger span of their lives without broadband connections.

But in an era when you don’t have to worry only about your physical possessions being stolen, but also your intangible assets such as your identity, is comfort with relaxed privacy settings dangerous?

Personally, and I’m sure a majority of my contemporaries would agree, I don’t see too much of a threat as long as you’re responsible about what you post om Facebook.

Obviously you shouldn’t put your social security number on there (I have yet to ever see anybody do that). Maybe it would be wise to not disclose your year of birth, physical address, and to monitor what pictures you post or get tagged in. If you put even this much effort forth, I don’t see how anything could really come back to hurt you.

Recently, however, a pretty iffy IM conversation was released from when Zuckerberg was only 19 and still living in his dorm. He was discussing his early site with a friend and the exchange went as follows:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 e-mails, pictures, addresses, SNS

(Friend’s Name): What? How’d you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don’t know why.
Zuck: They “trust me”
Zuck: Dumb (f#&%$)

While these messages don’t look too great for Facebook or Zuckerberg’s image, they could have easily been taken out of context. Also, it doesn’t change the fact that unless you personally post information you shouldn’t, there isn’t really much incriminating evidence on the website.

Lastly, I think it’s interesting to view the idea from Facebook’s perspective. People generally tend to think, because they use the site, they are its customers. This is not entirely accurate.

As long as Facebook is supported by advertising, and now also supported by developers with the introduction of social gaming, these advertisers and developers are Facebook’s true customers. And if these are its customers, what is the company selling? Facebook uses its knowledge of our interests and basic demographics to tailor advertising, social games and programs to us. So in a sense, it’s selling us.

On Monday May 3, members of Michigan’s House of Representatives met in the Great Lakes rooms of the University Center to discus higher education funding.

Representatives from the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Higher Education heard testimony from the Presidents of Michigan Technological University, Lake Superior State University, Western Michigan University and NMU.

NMU President Les Wong was the first to give his presentation.

“We are facing incredible challenges and each of us has a perspective and an investment in the answer,” Wong said.

Wong went on to describe the ways in which NMU has coped with budget cuts, and how the University is implementing plans to cut costs further.

“We are consistently among the most efficient campuses on a host of performance measures. We have retrofitted buildings rather than build new. We have incorporated state-of-the-art energy strategies to maximize energy savings… Students and employees are altering their behavior to be more green,” he said.

Nearly 83% of NMU students receive some sort of financial aid, and because of cuts in state funding students are being challenged to come up with more tuition money out of pocket, Wong said.

“We remain accessible and affordable to our students. We remain the second-most affordable tuition of the public 15 and despite our location, we are the largest campus in the U.P.,” Wong said.

Keeping college affordable and accessible is important for improvement in Michigan’s economy, said Representative Joan Bauer, the chairwoman of the higher education subcommittee.

“Continued cuts will only hurt the quality of higher education. All 15 public universities are doing good work, and we will guarantee, based on need, that students will receive help,” Bauer said.

One of the solutions Bauer has suggested would be a raise in sales tax, pending a vote from the public. The state is facing a significant budget deficit, and there aren’t many other options to increase revenue, she said.

“I’m doing all I can not to reduce funding (for universities). Students and families need to let their voices be heard by the people who vote on these budgets,” Bauer said.

Representative Steve Lindberg was also invited to the subcommittee meeting because of his ties to NMU, and his representation of the Upper Peninsula’s 109th district in the state house of representatives. The house appropriations subcommittee on higher education has been holding their meetings at universities around the state to give committee members a chance to see what different universities are doing in regards to budget cuts.

High school graduates can no longer get a job that can sustain a family without attending some form of college, Lindberg said.

“Each university has a separate mission. If we’re going to compete, we have to have an educated workforce in Michigan, Lindberg said.

Things like NMU’s TLC laptop initiative, the Superior Edge program, and the Student Leader Fellowship program set NMU apart from other schools in Michigan, he said.

“NMU does a lot of things right. It provides a good environment for young people,” Lindberg said.

MIT professor of mechanical engineering Alexander H. Slocum was recently appointed by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu to join a group of five scientists whose primary purpose is to devise alternative strategies to help slow the BP oil spill.

Chu announced the appointment on May 14, and the group of scientists convened for a preliminary meeting at the BP command center in Houston shortly thereafter.

Slocum is joining Jonathan I. Katz, a physics professor from Washington University; Richard L. Garwin, a JASON think tank member, physicist, and co-designer of the first hydrogen bomb; George Cooper, a civil engineering professor from the University of California at Berkeley; and Tom Hunter, a nuclear engineering and security researcher from Sandia Laboratories, in order to help formulate plans to address the environmental crisis.

Slocum, reached by email, declined to comment.

In a speech delivered Wednesday, President Obama announced that he had appointed Senator Bob Graham of Florida and former EPA Administrator Bill Reilly to lead the “National Commission on the BP oil spill in the Gulf.”

“Very soon I’ll appoint five other distinguished Americans, including leaders in science and engineering, to join them,” he said.

The new commission, which will hold public hearings, will work alongside other reviews, including an independent examination by the National Academy of Engineers.

Slocum was also among the group of scientists to present their research as part of a laboratory tour when Obama visited MIT last fall.