{"id":1150,"date":"2017-11-03T13:23:40","date_gmt":"2017-11-03T13:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/?page_id=1150"},"modified":"2017-11-03T13:23:40","modified_gmt":"2017-11-03T13:23:40","slug":"october-2017","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/inthenews\/october-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"October 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

Catalonia plots digital government in exile in bid for independence<\/strong><\/a>
\nWired<\/em>
\nCatalan activists are preparing to create a digital government-in-exile if Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy follows through on his threat to suspend the region\u2019s autonomy in a bid to prevent it declaring independence.
\n\u201cIf the Spanish government does restrict Catalan autonomy \u2013 especially if it bans Catalan political parties \u2013 we will probably have a clandestine government,\u201d says Simona Levi, founder of digital rights non-profit platform Xnet. \u201cThe internet would be an important part of that.\u201d
\nAlthough details of the plan are unclear Thomas Harrington<\/strong><\/a>, professor of Hispanic studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, suggests \u201ca country in the east of Europe which had itself gone through the process of declaring its independence from the former Soviet Union not all that long ago,\u201d \u2013 believed to mean the Estonian government \u2013 might be Catalonia\u2019s blueprint\u2026<\/p>\n

Why do U.S. News rankings punish test-optional colleges?<\/strong><\/a> – By David Rosen<\/strong><\/a>
\nThe Washington Post<\/em>
\nEvery year around this time U.S. News & World Report<\/em> issues its ranked list of America\u2019s \u201cbest\u201d colleges. And every year an inevitable handwringing ensues \u2013 among academics, anyway \u2013 about what the rankings mean, and whether they\u2019re of any use at all. Pose this question to most professionals in higher education, and you\u2019ll likely get a resounding \u201cno.\u201d The flat numerical scores, which receive the most attention, say little about what makes any college or university good or bad. The rankings say less still about the alchemy that makes a school the right \u201cfit\u201d for any given student. On the other hand, many high school seniors (and their parents) take the rankings seriously \u2013 which means, in turn, that college admissions officers and marketers need to take them seriously as well. It\u2019s a good bet that Princeton\u2019s current No. 1 status will find its way into the university\u2019s advertising materials posthaste.
\nSo it goes every year. This time around, however, the questions about the U.S. News<\/em> lists have suddenly seemed more pressing and personal \u2013 because Trinity College, where I teach, has found itself demoted from 38th to 44th place among small colleges. When something bad like this happens, it makes sense to figure out what went wrong. In this case, the question of \u201cwhat went wrong\u201d is surprisingly fraught, and speaks to some deep divides in American education. \u2026 When Trinity\u2019s president and director of admissions made the decision to go test-optional, it was both a principled, ethical choice and a calculated roll of the dice. Knowing full well that U.S. News<\/em> would punish the college for its move, they reasoned that a more diverse student body would drive improvement in other criteria \u2013 like quality of student life and national reputation (and perhaps, down the line, alumni engagement)\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2018Read me!\u2019: Students race to craft forceful college essays as deadlines near<\/strong> <\/a>
\nThe Washington Post<\/em>
\nFind a telling anecdote about your 17 years on this planet. Examine your values, goals, achievements and perhaps even failures to gain insight into the essential you. Then weave it together in a punchy essay of 650 or fewer words that showcases your authentic teenage voice \u2014 not your mother\u2019s or father\u2019s \u2014 and helps you stand out among hordes of applicants to selective colleges. \u2026 Advice about essays abounds, some of it obvious: Show, don\u2019t tell. Don\u2019t rehash your r\u00e9sum\u00e9. Avoid cliches and pretentious words. Proofread. \u201cThat means actually having a living, breathing person \u2014 not just a spell-checker \u2014 actually read your essay,\u201d Wolfe said. But make sure that person doesn\u2019t cross the line between useful feedback and meddlesome revision, or worse. (Looking at you, moms and dads.)
\n\u201cIt\u2019s very obvious to us when an essay has been written by a 40-year-old and not a 17-year-old,\u201d said Angel B. P\u00e9rez<\/a><\/strong>, vice president of enrollment and student success at Trinity College. \u201cI\u2019m not looking for a Pulitzer Prize-winning piece. And I get pretty skeptical when I see it.\u201d
\nSome affluent parents buy help for their children from consultants who market their services through such brands as College Essay Guy, Essay Hell and Your Best College Essay\u2026<\/p>\n

West Hartford, Simsbury Looking At Changing School Start Times<\/strong><\/a>
\nHartford Courant<\/em>
\nAs committees in West Hartford and Simsbury begin evaluating the impacts of changing school start times, high school students in those districts said they think school should start later in the morning.
\nAnd according to Trinity College neuroscience professor who has advocated later school start times at the high school level for over five years, the science behind adolescent sleep schedules solidifies the argument.
\n\u201cThe science is overwhelming,\u201d Sarah Raskin<\/strong><\/a> said during a recent interview. \u201cIt\u2019s a question of finding a way to make the transition, because the change is clearly worth it.\u201d
\nRaskin said that sleep cycles are controlled by hormones and that starting during puberty, those hormones shift. Adolescents\u2019 brains, Raskin said, \u201care just not capable of falling asleep before 11 o\u2019clock at night.\u201d
\n\u201cSo if you\u2019re not falling asleep until 11 o\u2019clock at night and you\u2019re not ready to be awake until 8 in the morning, it becomes extremely difficult to be up at 5:30 or 6 at the bus stop and at school by 7 or 7:30 and ready to do calculus or physics or whatever else we expect them to do at 7:30 in the morning,\u201d Raskin said. \u201cSo what we\u2019re forcing our children to do is get into bed before they\u2019re ready, lay there wide awake staring at the ceiling until 11 or 11:30 at night and then we force them to get up right in the middle of one of their deepest sleep cycles.\u201d
\nThis, Raskin said, leads to sleep deprivation, which has been linked to increases in suicidal thoughts, increased risk-taking with alcohol and drug use, more tardiness, less academic performance in the classroom and standardized testing, increases in the number of motor vehicle accidents and sports injuries\u2026<\/p>\n

The Unsettling Sound Of Tritones, The Devil’s Interval<\/strong><\/a>
\nNPR Music
\nEveryone knows the sounds of Halloween: creaky floorboards, howling winds, the amplified sound of a beating heart. But back in the day, the devil was said to exist in a particular musical tone. For centuries, it was called the devil’s interval \u2014 or, in Latin, diabolus in musica. In music theory, it’s called the “tritone” because it’s made of three whole steps.
\n“The reason it’s unsettling is that it’s ambiguous, unresolved,” says Gerald Moshell<\/strong><\/a>, Professor of Music at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. “It wants to go somewhere. It wants to settle either here, or [there]. You don’t know where it’ll go, but it can’t stop where it is.”
\nThere used to be rules against writing music that contained this interval. Moshell says that during the Renaissance, all music had one purpose: to be beautiful and express the majesty of God. Anything otherwise was studiously avoided. But once music was no longer shackled to the church, it was free to express all kinds of tension. The devil’s interval was ideal for that.
\nFrom classical to jazz to rock and even Broadway musicals, the tritone conveys feelings ranging from forbidden love and longing to fear and defiance. Listen below to a selection of songs that contain this unsettling tritone and hear the radio version at the audio link above.<\/p>\n

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Catalonia plots digital government in exile in bid for independence Wired Catalan activists are preparing to create a digital government-in-exile if Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy follows through on his threat to suspend the region\u2019s autonomy in a bid to prevent it declaring independence. \u201cIf the Spanish government does restrict Catalan autonomy \u2013 especially if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1424,"featured_media":0,"parent":683,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1150"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1424"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1151,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1150\/revisions\/1151"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}