UO E-clips, Oct. 10

Knowledgeable cops would benefit campus (Daily Emerald): It is no secret that the University of Oregon suffers from a lack of funding. Any student who has attended more than a year is aware that tuition is constantly rising. The problem of funding is not limited to the cost of attendance, however. As the Emerald reported this week, the University pays only four Eugene Police Department officers to patrol the University and can not afford to pay for more. There are many reasons for the lack of police presence, but it is clear that one officer per 5,000 students is simply not enough coverage. While it is difficult to imagine any Virginia Tech-style tragedies on a campus where the dining halls serve cage-free eggs and students walking past the EMU are greeted with free hugs, the fact is that the University could be left ill-prepared to deal with such emergencies. A larger police presence would probably not prevent such emergencies; however, in such a case, it would be essential to have officers who know their way around the campus grounds and the buildings. Imagine trying to respond to an emergency in a confusing building such as Gerlinger Hall if you were unfamiliar with the building.

Online program helps eliminate plagiarism (Daily Emerald): Students may want to think twice before buying an essay off theInternet or copying and pasting information from Web sites. That's because University professors now have the chance to use an online plagiarism detection program. A new feature now available on Blackboard allows University professors to compare students' papers to Internet content and past students' work. If the work is suspected of plagiarism, the professor may decide an appropriate solution to the problem. The service, called SafeAssign, compares assignments submitted by students to four databases made up of content from the Internet, publications, past University students' papers and essays submitted by students at other colleges, said John Morrison, director of user communities for Blackboard Beyond.

Green chemistry joins college curriculum (Associated Press): Terry Collins sounds like the world's most dour pessimist. The Carnegie Mellon University chemistry professor paints a bleak picture of the Earth's future, a planet damaged by global warming and ravaged by toxins, with a population sickened by poisonous chemicals. "We are practicing time-limited technologies that cause all sorts of environmental damage, and are damaging to the species, to our very civilization," said Collins, director of Carnegie Mellon's Institute for Green Oxidation Chemistry in Pittsburgh. ... Other colleges, including Carnegie Mellon and the University of Oregon, have been teaching green chemistry for years. Students who have been brought up in an age of unprecedented environmental awareness are eager to embrace green chemistry.