You’re blindfolded.

There are screams from behind the doors and walls.

Closer, four men speak behind you.

They tell you they think you’re a spy.

“I’m not a spy,” you protest.

There is no bed in your cell, no pillow, only blankets on the floor.

The men’s voices tell you if you don’t confess, you could stay there for 20 years. They could even arrange the death penalty.

That is the scenario Roxana Saberi had her audience imagine yesterday.

In 2009, the veteran journalist was imprisoned in Iran for more than three months on charges of espionage for the United States. At the Mary Riepma Ross Center, she talked about her experience, what she learned and what others can learn about Iran, human rights, courage and the country’s inhabitants.

Her talk was just one program organized by the human rights and humanitarian affairs program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which has been reinvigorated by a gift from the Forsythe family.

“Basically the goal of the overall program is to examine issues of human rights from an interdisciplinary perspective,” said Brian Lepard, a law professor and co-director of the program. Saberi’s talk fit right into that goal.

“She has firsthand experience with human rights violations,” Lepard said. “But more importantly, through that experience, she learned how important advocacy is.”

The discussion of Iran comes as the Middle East region is continually embroiled in unprecedented unrest and civil protest.

“In every way, it really seems like great timing,” said Ari Kohen, professor of political science and Lepard’s co-director. “(But) I think it’d be an interesting talk at any time.”

The experience of others was the theme of Saberi’s talk.

“There are so many stories about individuals in Iran that we haven’t heard,” Saberi said in an interview before her talk.

Media coverage often focuses on Iran’s troubled relations with much of the world, which Saberi said are valid concerns, but the ordeals of the people on the ground – people like her cell mates, whose names are unknown to the outside world – aren’t heard.

“But they are people pursuing basic freedom,” Saberi said. “And they pay a great price for it. We need to speak out for those who can’t speak out.”

Saberi’s story started long before her arrest. She grew up in Fargo, N.D., with her Iranian father and Japanese mother. When she was young, Saberi found herself winning pageants, first Miss Fargo, then Miss North Dakota and then as a frontrunner for Miss America.

Her money went to her master’s degree, a program that sent her reporting in Washington, D.C., then to another master’s at Cambridge.

“During this whole time, I became more and more interested in my father’s home country, Iran,” Saberi said.

It wasn’t long before she took her reporting gig across the world. There she found an odd mix, with people hospitable and welcoming toward her, then bussed to government-sanctioned protests against the United States. Many of them didn’t take such protests seriously; some even smiled and laughed for pictures, their posters reading “Down with America.”

Saberi discovered much about her new home, especially as she worked on a book. It was a society much like any other. Hosts insisted she eat still more food. Girls in school had high hopes for their future. Wealth ranged from outright poverty to luxurious prosperity.

But other things reminded her that Iran was not North Dakota. Conversion from Islam to another religion is punishable by death. Parties with men and women dancing together, with the women letting their hair down, are illegal. A woman’s testimony in court is worth half that of a man’s.

Even Iran isn’t immune to change, however. A majority of college entrants are women, Saberi said. Women are firefighters, and just formed a national soccer team, though only other women are allowed to watch the athletes, who play in full hijab.

Then Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became Iran’s notoriously defiant president, and the country swerved toward the traditional hardliners. Free expression began to lose ground.

“But then I thought, maybe this is a blessing in disguise,” Saberi said.

Those thoughts were cut short one January morning, when four plainly dressed men barged into Saberi’s apartment and took her to Evin Prison, Iran’s most infamous prison. Held there are Iran’s political prisoners, journalists, activists and advocates. It is also where a Canadian journalist had mysteriously died.

“So when I was taken there by these men, I was terrified,” Saberi said.

Once she got there, it was quiet. The hall was bare. Behind the doors were other women, other prisoners.

“I was not physically tortured, but that does happen there,” Saberi said.

She eventually confessed to trumped-up crimes supported by fake evidence, with her release as the bait.

But then she met her cell mates, her “angels of Evin,” as she said.

These other women were prisoners of conscience, leaders of banned movements or religions, who refused to lie for the prize of escape. They were calm, had a sense of humor and controlled what they could: their attitude.

“This is a lesson they taught me,” Saberi said.

She recanted her confession. It was still used against her in court, and she was sentenced to eight years.

“Actually, I laughed,” Saberi said in the interview, “because I realized what a joke this whole thing was.”

By this time her story had spread around the world. Heads of state from the United States and Japan called for her release.

Her sentence was eventually overturned. It was this way that Saberi learned the power of others speaking out for those who can’t. But one emotion tempered her release: sadness.

“These people deserve freedom, too,” she said of her cell mates. Saberi couldn’t even tell an imprisoned humanitarian’s story to the international media, because Michael Jackson died. Those women are still there. So is a young blogger, who’s been sentenced to almost 20 years, and an attorney who found herself imprisoned with her defendants.

“Why should we care about the suffering of others?” Saberi asked her audience.

She gave the Daily Nebraskan the answer beforehand: “we’re all connected,” she said.

“Suffering, when it happens, spreads easily,” she told the dozens of people before her.

The stories of that suffering need to be told by others.

Saberi ended with a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Every year, people consume 16 terawatts of energy a year around the world. One terawatt is one trillion watts. An average American household goes through 11,000 kilowatts of this energy by itself.

“Carbon Nation,” shown Thursday at Ragtag Cinema, is a film addressing energy waste and encourages audience members to examine whether their lifestyles are sustainable.

City of Columbia Sustainability Manager Barbara Buffaloe, along with other environmentally-concerned colleagues, presented the movie, which was followed by a panel of academic leaders and students.

Buffaloe has been devoted to reducing the community’s carbon footprint and wanted to use this film to bring the issue of sustainability to light in Columbia.

The film, directed by Peter Byck, was a portrayal of the status of the climate, what society is doing to help it and what the world needs to do to make the environment a cleaner place.

The film emphasized the effects of America’s reliance on foreign oil and dwindling fossil fuels.

“When I lived in Florida, I would say drill, drill, drill,” Sabot6 Inc. CEO Daniel Nolan said. “If oil’s the problem, then maybe it’s not the answer. We have to release ourselves from the tether of oil.”

The film outlined several alternative fuel sources that could help the process of sustainability, including wind power, biofuel, geothermal fuel (heating water for energy), electric transportation and algae fuel.

Cliff Etheredge, partner at Peal Wind LLC in Roscoe, Texas, runs the largest wind farm in the world and was interviewed for the film. Local landowners benefit from the wind turbines by being paid for the electricity produced by the turbines on their land, he said.

The film also described environmental effects that are rooted in American society, like cars and houses.

In the film, Kristina Kershner described her organization, Architecture 2030, which encourages politicians and powerful leaders to employ sustainable building practices.

The film explained that sustainability within the house can trickle down to cracks in windows and poor insulation—families can lose hundreds of dollars a year from these unnoticeable damages.

The film also described how being sustainable can bridge socioeconomic borders, since it is a universal problem.

The subsequent panel discussion included Buffaloe, MU bioprocessing engineer Dave Brune, MU biological engineer Steve Borgelt, MU environmental economist Laura McCann and Sustain Mizzou President Tina Casagrand.

“The film highlights the possibilities for win-win technologies,” McCann said. “I liked how they brought in people who aren’t just the stigmatized hippy environmentalist.”

Borgelt said several of his fellow colleagues are teaching or planning on teaching courses on environmental issues. He said it is good for students, as future leaders, to learn about powering America in ways like this.

“In Columbia, the issue is that we need the demand for energy change,” Buffaloe said. “What we’re interested in is how to let the audience know how much they really need it.”

Pastor Terry Jones is a misguided bigot.

The part-time preacher and part-time used furniture salesman has done his damndest to earn that title, using his role as the leader of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., to create more controversy than any poorly funded, 50-member hate group — that’s the Southern Poverty Law Center’s designation, not mine — deserves.

The trouble began last year, when Jones and his followers planned to burn copies of the Quran on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Jones’ intentions were widely publicized and sparked international outrage, which eventually led to the cancellation of the event dubbed “International Burn a Quran Day” by Jones.

Jones apparently could not help himself, however, and decided to preside over a “trial” on March 20 in which the Quran was convicted and executed — by burning, of course.

This time, the outrage was real as well. Protests erupted in Afghanistan and Pakistan, resulting in the deaths of at least 20 people.

American politicians and religious leaders scrambled to repudiate the actions of both Jones and the violent protestors, and some went so far as to place the blame for the deaths on Jones himself.

Jones’ credentials as a poorly informed polemicist were well-established prior to his Quran burning. He first came to nationwide prominence by placing a sign on the church’s lawn that read “Islam is the Devil.” To top it off, Dove World Outreach participated in a joint protest last year with the ultimate provocateurs at the Westboro Baptist Church, who are known for their inflammatory signs and staging of protests at U.S. soldiers’ funerals.

That being said, Jones is not a murderer. Shifting the responsibility for these deaths to anyone other than those who committed the murders is irresponsible because it disallows us from examining this issue in its entirety.

It’s an inescapable fact that the violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan was perpetrated by radical Muslims. Unfortunately, the assurance this type of response would result probably empowered Jones, who uses the violence committed by Muslims as a justification for his hateful proselytizing.

Violent reprisals following perceived slights are not a new phenomenon for radical Muslims, and it would be unwise to write off these actions as the expected response to any affront. So then, who is to blame?

Appropriately enough, the LSU Muslim Student Association held a seminar Wednesday entitled “Islam: Should We Be Afraid?” The featured lecturer was Omar Suleiman, an Islamic religious leader in New Orleans.

Suleiman spent a large portion of his time dispelling negative stereotypes of Muslim Americans and emphasizing their integration and positive influence on American society, but also addressed the Quran burning controversy. He echoed the criticism of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has been skewered for stoking the flames of violent protest for imploring the international community to punish Jones on March 24. Jones’ actions were largely unknown in the Arab world this time, as the American media had largely ignored him to prevent violence from occurring.

Karzai and Jones both acted irresponsibly, but it is folly to pin the blame for the violence on either of them. Though radicals no doubt represent a small portion of Muslims throughout the world, they are unequivocally responsible for these violent protests, with many using the uninformed bigotry of Jones to exercise some violent bigotry of their own.

Unfortunately, the responsibility for marginalizing these voices of violence and extremism falls upon moderate American Muslims like Suleiman. The only real option American Muslims have is to lead by example and heed Suleiman’s advice when the next Terry Jones comes prodding: ignore him.

With the highest public debt per capita in the nation, Connecticut’s bleak fiscal outlook is causing the legislature to grasp for tax policies that require out-of-state online retailers to collect sales tax on transactions with Connecticut residents. The tax scheme, which potentially affects dozens of online retailers, is better known as the “Amazon tax” after its largest target, Amazon.com. The Amazon tax is blatantly unconstitutional and is bad news for Connecticut’s online shoppers, especially students, causing Amazon to decrease its ties with Connecticut contractors.

The Amazon tax is pushed under the premise that it will “close a loophole” in Connecticut’s tax collection, making it easier for the state to collect sales taxes on online transactions it claims to be entitled to. This argument isn’t new to the internet age; it has been argued for decades against mail-order companies who operate out-of-state, but advertise and distribute catalogues to in-state residents. The reason why mail-order companies don’t collect sales tax is because forcing them to do so has been decided by the Supreme Court to be unconstitutional in Quill Corp. v. North Dakota. The ruling is intelligible: interstate commerce is a federal matter, not a state matter.

Amazon and other internet retailers like it are the quintessential mail-order companies of our age, and the Constitution equally protects Amazon as it protects traditional mail-order companies. If Connecticut wants to collect taxes from Amazon, it should focus on making its business climate one that attracts Amazon to move in-state.

Proponents of the tax will argue that Amazon’s in-state affiliate advertisers, who put Amazon links on their websites in exchange for a fee, create an adequate in-state presence to justify a tax. But these advertisers aren’t Amazon employees and aren’t participants in Amazon’s sales transactions. These advertisers are the equivalent of a newspaper putting an advertisement for a mail-order company in their publication.

Furthermore, if Connecticut enacts this tax, Amazon has threatened to remove these advertisers to prevent having to collect a tax, while detracting from many Connecticut incomes. Therefore, Connecticut won’t be able to collect any sales tax from Amazon, while also losing out on income taxes. So, regardless of the Constitutional arguments, it is still clear that this would lead to negative results for the state.

Suzanne Staubach, manager of the UConn Co-op argues in her testimony to the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee that because Amazon doesn’t collect taxes on transactions, the Co-op suffers. Thus, requiring Amazon to collect taxes equalizes the competition. This argument is flawed for several reasons.

First off, many items purchased on Amazon are not a transaction with Amazon, but rather transactions with individuals who are selling their new or used merchandise on Amazon’s platform. These individuals likely have no authority to collect taxes anywhere, much less in Connecticut. As of 2010, these third-party transactions account for 31 percent of Amazon’s sales.

Secondly, as of January, Amazon’s ebook sales have outpaced their hardcovers sales by three to one. Amazon’s ebooks have even surpassed their paperback sales with 115 ebooks sold for everyone paperback sold. If the Co-op wants to complain about not being able to compete, it isn’t because of a 6 percent sales tax, but rather because customers are discovering an alternative to paper books.

Lastly, the greatest reason why the Co-op’s criticism is misguided is because the Co-op doesn’t collect any sales tax on books purchased by students for classes, which presumably make up the majority of its sales. This is because Connecticut has a tax provision that excludes all books purchased for college classes from sales tax. Under an Amazon tax students would still be eligible for tax-exempt books from Amazon, but the state’s tax policy makes it easier and more convenient to receive this tax exemption from college bookstores than from online retailers and smaller in-state book retailers. So, ironically, it is actually the Co-op that has “loopholes” working in its favor.

The justifications for the so-called “Amazon tax” are wrong on both constitutional and policy grounds. While blatantly unconstitutional, the tax is also bad for consumers, especially students, who have less disposable income and are more likely than older generations to shop online. Imposing the tax will cause Amazon to remove ties with in-state services, hurting in-state contractor’s incomes and the income taxes the state earns.

Relegated primarily to elementary school playgrounds, taunting, name-calling, and insult-lobbing have made their way into the houses of Congress, according to a study released by Stanford and Harvard professors.

Assistant Professor Justin R. Grimmer of Stanford and University Professor Gary King of Harvard found that 27 percent of congressional press releases that their team analyzed consisted of “partisan taunts.”

In fact, while on the job, not only do members of Congress insult each other, but they sometimes make it their primary goal, King said.

The methodology used could eventually reveal who in Congress are the biggest taunters.

This finding was couched in an eight-page paper published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February.

The research focused on finding a way to have computers classify data in order to discover “insightful conceptualizations.”

“We are really lame at zooming out and making sense of the whole corpus of information, at the same time,” King said.

The study started by analyzing press releases from Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, a Democrat from New Jersey who famously called Republicans “chicken hawks” in a floor speech in the Senate.

The study took these releases for an initial test of the methodology, which involves creating clusters of similar data.

After also analyzing a State of the Union address from President Bush and a series of Reuters articles, the team took 64,033 press releases from 2005 to 2007 to estimate the presence of taunting.

From those releases, Grimmer and King found not only that 27 percent of releases are taunts, but that taunting increases when a senator faces less competition in his or her state.

The study began more than three years ago, when it was initiated by King and a group of graduate students.

The goal of the study was to develop a way to understand large quantities of information.

Now, King hopes to be able to determine whether Democrats or Republicans are responsible for the majority of political put-downs and whether taunts tend to be employed by particular congressmen over others.

Still, King didn’t hold congressmen solely responsible for the taunting, saying that they seem to be responding to incentives and doing the exact things that get them reelected.

“The whole point of democracy is to represent, and if they want to do so by taunting each other, they will keep doing just that,” King said.

April is National Minority Health month, a good time to become aware of racial and ethnic health risks.

Data from the Department of Health and Human Services show that racial and ethnic minorities are less likely to get the preventive care they need to stay healthy and more likely to suffer from serious illnesses.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health, as of 2005:

African American: African American men were 1.3 times as likely to have new cases of lung and prostate cancer, compared to non-Hispanic white men. At the same time, African American women were 10 percent less likely to have been diagnosed with breast cancer.  However, they were 34 percent more likely to die from breast cancer, compared to non-Hispanic white women.

Hispanic: Mexican American adults were two times more likely than non-Hispanic white adults to have been diagnosed with diabetes. Hispanic males have almost three times the AIDS rate as non-Hispanic white males, and Hispanic females have almost 5 times the AIDS rate as non-Hispanic white females.

Asian/Pacific Islander: Both Asian/Pacific Islander men and women have three times the incidence of liver and Inflamatory Bowel Disease as the non-Hispanic white population.  Asian/Pacific Islander men are twice as likely to die from stomach cancer, compared to the non-Hispanic white population, and Asian/Pacific Islander women are 2.6 times as likely to die from the same disease.
Students who take responsibility for their health during their college years will put themselves in a good position to avoid falling into statistical traps.

The Ohio State football team has completed eight practices this spring and coach Jim Tressel said the coaching staff is pleased with the team’s effort so far.

Tressel and senior center Mike Brewster spoke to the media today during a Big Ten Leaders division teleconference. He said the eight practices have been solid and there has been a lot of competition throughout the spring at multiple positions.

Tressel addressed the progression of quarterback Terrelle Pryor and his participation in spring practice following foot surgery to repair torn ligaments in his left foot.

“He’ll be back running around at the first of May and he can kind of stand still throwing the ball,” Tressel said.

He said Pryor’s development as a quarterback should help him get drafted at the same position in the NFL Draft, disagreeing with ESPN’s Mel Kiper, who said he thinks Pryor will be an NFL tight end.

Tressel also spoke about the quarterback battle and said there is no pecking order for who will start for the Buckeyes in the first five games. Tressel said he wishes someone would jump out and take the job.

“I kind of vacillate each day,” Tressel said of the choices at quarterback.

“No matter who is in, it’s not really affecting our play,” Brewster said.

Junior linebacker Jonathan Newsome was expected to play a part in the Buckeye defense this season, however, Tressel said Newsome has been in his doghouse throughout the spring.

“I don’t expect him to be in it long, but sometimes we have to do what we think will help a young person learn,” Tressel said.

Brewster said this was one of the best springs he has been a part of at OSU and the team is staying focused on spring ball and not paying attention to outside distractions.

He has been working on making himself more of a complete player and has also been helping the younger guys on the team.

“It’s been great to get back on the field and get the feeling back,” Brewster said.

Tressel joins suspended players Pryor, Dan Herron, DeVier Posey, Mike Adams and Solomon Thomas for the first five games of the upcoming season.

As Taylor Martinez walked off the Hawks Championship Center practice field last Friday following a brief session with reporters, a young boy approached him and had something he needed to say.

“Hey buddy,” he offered timidly. Martinez turned to look at the smiling kid.

“How are you?”

Then the boy said his peace.

“You need to step it up, or else you out.”

Martinez chuckled and grinned. “Oh really?”

A year ago, the average Husker fan had heard the name Taylor Martinez but had yet to see him play a single snap. He gave them a sampling of his abilities in the Red-White Spring Game, throwing for 79 yards and two scores and rushing for 60. Suddenly Zac Lee’s job wasn’t as safe as expected.

Today Martinez’s anonymity is gone. Everyone knows who he is. Everyone — no matter the age group — has an opinion on him.

His first season as Nebraska’s starting signal-caller started off far better than anyone could’ve expected. By the end of the year, he’d gone from savior to scapegoat.

“The quarterback is always going to be the biggest name in Nebraska,” Martinez said. “At first a lot of fans started liking me, and later on in the season I had some hate. I don’t really care.”

This spring, he’s starting over. Martinez is running in a new offense led by a new offensive coordinator. He says he’s almost fully healed from the ankle and turf toe injuries that derailed his redshirt freshman season, although they’ve occasionally kept him off the practice field this spring.

How is he different today than he was a year ago?

“I actually know what plays to run this time and know where to go with the ball,” Martinez said. “As a person? I’m just being more confident in myself.”

His teammates say he’s a new man in the huddle, a more vocal presence who doesn’t get down on himself when he makes mistakes and tries to encourage others more. He’s trying to turn into the leader everyone expected him to quickly become last season.

“That’s something you’ve never seen from him,” senior receiver Brandon Kinnie said. “That’s good from a quarterback standpoint. You’ve got to be vocal — you’ve got the ball in your hands every play. It’s giving us confidence as well.”

Despite his calm and quiet demeanor, Martinez can admit today he wasn’t exactly brimming with that confidence when he first took the field against Western Kentucky last September.

He wasn’t fully comfortable with taking over a senior-heavy offense and replacing Lee as a leader. And the 10 other guys in his huddle weren’t the only people he felt he had to impress.

“In the beginning I felt a lot of pressure from the Nebraska fans as a freshman quarterback, since that’s never happened in Nebraska history,” he said. “I felt like there was a lot of pressure on me.”

A couple hours later, he was a veritable superstar. His 421 rushing yards through the first three games of his career put Martinez on the national radar. His play made admirers write songs, print T-shirts and produce SportsCenter pieces.

Martinez said he didn’t pay attention to the hype. He doesn’t read newspapers or care what the media says about him, good or bad, and said he didn’t know he was a rising Heisman Trophy candidate until a teammate told him so.

“But it was pretty cool,” he said.

Then came the Texas loss. A week later, he produced arguably the best game of his career against Oklahoma State. Then the Missouri game and the thigh injury. He sat out a game and a half and didn’t shine in his next one against Kansas.

And then the roller coaster careened off the tracks against Texas A&M. Most point to the first-quarter play in which center Mike Caputo accidentally stepped on his right ankle as the play that did him in. When he looks back on it, Martinez disagrees.

“The very play before that, that’s when I got turf toe,” he said. “Then the next play, that’s when they stepped on my ankle. I was screwed. I didn’t think I was going back in after that play.

“I thought I was done after my ankle injury, but then something inside me … I just knew I had to go out there for my team and try to help them win.”

We still don’t know exactly what else happened that night other than that Bo Pelini had a confrontation with his star passer on the sidelines. Rumors started to swirl. Some began to question his future in the program.

When asked this spring to reflect his whirlwind first year as Nebraska’s quarterback, Martinez’s answers are at times curt and simple like they were all last fall.

Ask him about all those injuries, however, and you’ll get him talking.

“It was very hard,” Martinez said. “Some people don’t know how much behind-the-scenes stuff went on with my ankle and how much treatment I had to do.

“It’s kind of hard with other fans saying I didn’t try so hard on the field and stuff like that. I just kept reinjuring and reinjuring it.”

It showed in his play during Nebraska’s Big 12 Championship game loss to Oklahoma and its stunning Holiday Bowl performance. Those made the offseason even tougher, but Martinez said they’ve shaped the Huskers’ mentality this spring.

“I think everybody is taking it as a lot of motivation to get better,” he said. “Hopefully we do better this year, and hopefully we win a Big Ten title and a national championship.”

Martinez and his father Casey formally killed the rampant transfer rumors with a statement to the media in January. NU sophomore lineman Brent Qvale said he and his teammates didn’t question that their quarterback would be back.

“There’s been all those rumors of him leaving and all that, but that’s not Taylor,” Qvale said. “He’s been battling the whole time. He’s stepping up, and I can’t wait for fall.”

How far his team can go this fall will likely once again depend on how far Martinez can take Nebraska’s offense.

He likes that offensive coordinator Tim Beck’s revamped system will let him audible between passes and run plays based on coverages he can now read. He says he’s calling audibles on nearly every play in scrimmages this spring, he said, and catches the Huskers’ vaunted defense off-guard “all the time.”

Beck has said Martinez is becoming a more confident leader and is impressing with his work ethic and attitude. His teammates see it, too.

“Taylor’s shown a big improvement by paying attention to detail and not just locking in on any one guy,” NU tight end Ben Cotton said. “He’s reading the defense and getting guys the ball.”

Martinez may be a different passer, person and leader this season in his second year at the helm, but Kinnie insists in many ways he’s still the same old Taylor Martinez to his coaches and teammates.

“He’s never changed,” Kinnie said. “From every song that was written about him, every publicity he was getting, he’s never said ‘I’m this’ or ‘I’m that.’ He’s the same person all the time.

“But this year it’s a change: ‘I want to be a better person and a better leader and role model,’ instead of just being … arrogant, or whatever you want to call it. It’s a big change, and we’re excited to see it.”

On Monday, Vice President Joe Biden announced a national sexual assault awareness campaign that will be introduced in K-12 schools and colleges — but some say that the Penn State community has been implementing similar measures for years.

The national campaign aims to educate students on how to prevent and report sexual assault, file sexual assault complaints, assist victims, and pursue disciplinary action against students accused of sexual assault, according to a Department of Education press release.

Also spearheaded by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the campaign will support Title IX — the federal law that prohibits sexual discrimination, violence, and harassment in schools. The campaign will send letters to schools and universities outlining their obligations to educate students on sexual assault under Title IX, according to the press release.

Nationwide, at least one in four college women will be sexually assaulted during her academic career, according to 2010 statistics from the New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault. At least 80 percent of all sexual assaults are committed by an acquaintance of the victim, according to the same statistics.

Locally, two female students have reported being sexually assaulted — one off-campus and one in an on-campus residence hall — in the past week and a half, according to police reports. In 2009, police received 16 reports of forcible sex offenses on- and off-campus, according to statistics provided by Penn State under the Clery Act.

Director of the Center for Women Students at Penn State Peggy Lorah said sexual assault is an ongoing problem, so the vice president’s announcement was a step in the right direction.

“I think Joe Biden is just continuing a lifetime of advocating for women who have been victims of violence,” Lorah said. “Here at Penn State, it’s something students deal with often … Every year there are students who are victims of sexual assault and don’t come forward. It’s a problem on any campus.”

To Karin Foley, chair of Penn State’s Commission for Women, educational measures are an “important piece of any program.” Still, Foley said she doesn’t think that alone would prevent sexual assault altogether.

Penn State currently offers several programs aimed at curbing sexual assault — including the 865-WALK security escort service, self-defense classes, counseling services and others — university spokeswoman Jill Shockey said.

Even with these in place, Shockey said it’s still important that all students look out for one another.

“Of course sexual assault is not just a crime against women. There are male victims as well,” Shockey said. “Men and women both need to be aware of the risks and look out for each other.”

The Department of Education proposed an amendment last Thursday to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act that would grant states the flexibility, when deemed necessary, to divulge private student records to ensure taxpayer funds are being invested in effective programs.

By making data more readily available to research groups, the writers of the Notice of Proposed Rule Making claim the amendment would facilitate states’ abilities “to evaluate education programs, build upon what works and discard what does not, increase accountability and transparency and contribute to a culture of innovation and continuous improvement in education,” according to the summary posted on the government website.

NPRM deals with discrete issues about student IDs and directory information. Institutions of higher education can adopt information policies claiming what information they will treat as directory and publish as well as who will receive the information, said Steven Winnick, a partner at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough practicing in education law and policy.

Under FERPA, directory information including name, address, phone number and so forth can be published without student consent. At the University, however, a student may choose to restrict the release of his directory information at any time, Assoc. University Registrar Jonathan Helm said. If a student wishes to be withheld from the printed directory, the student must notify UREG within 10 class days after the initial day of class for a fall semester.

“It is important to remember that this restriction only applies to the release of directory information,” Helm said. “It does not impact the release of educational record information based on other exceptions to obtaining the prior written consent of a student within FERPA. Examples of these exceptions to prior written consent include releases to school officials with legitimate educational interest and releases to accrediting organizations.”

Students are reminded annually of their rights under FERPA by email, the Student Financial Services informational brochure on fee payment and registration, and the Undergraduate and Graduate Records, he said. In addition, the University shares information about privacy with students and parents at orientation each summer.

Winnick said “directory information is not threatening because it is not that intrusive or does not threaten your privacy rights.”

Policy disputes nevertheless have arisen as NPRM seeks to strike a balance between bettering public education institutions and maintaining student privacy. Critics are denouncing the proposed rules as flagrant breaches of student rights and have expressed concerns about how much data will be collected, the organizations which will have access to that data and the purposes and extents to which the data will be used.

“Students are usually very trusting of institutions to govern very private and potentially embarrassing information,” said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. “If you fail calculus three times, it would be a reasonable assumption that it would be between you, the college registrar and the university. You certainly don’t expect it to end up in the student newspaper. That happens to be because federal law mandates it to be that way.”

Nassirian said the current political climate and nature of modern political reform has driven coalitions of foundations and state officials to latch onto the notion that the only thing that will drive collegiate registrars toward better accountability is for states to collect personal information about students and store them in huge databases.

“We don’t contest the right of states to make better public policy and demand data,” Nassirian said. “What we are contesting is how that is happening and the total disregard for private rights.”

The Department of Education is soliciting opinions about this issue and will accept comments pertaining to the proposed rules through May 23. After comments are reviewed, the department aims to publish a final rule by the end of the year.