The Eagle, by Ellie Hartleb

President Sylvia Burwell isn't one to sit around. She will spend the summer listening widely and deeply, espe-cially on issues of diversity and inclusion, before she presents her priorities in a report to the Board of Trustees in the fall. Exactly one month before Burwell took office, students found bananas with racial mes-sages on them hanging from nooses across campus. Burwell said the incident dominated her first Board of Trustees meeting, where she heard perspectives from student leaders. As President Bill Clinton's deputy chief of staff in the late 1990s, Burwell managed One America in the 21st Century: The President's Initiative on Race. "The biggest part of the summer is engaging and listening and learning across the campus and across the community, both inside and out, to make sure that I'm understanding the priorities of the institution," Burwell said. 

NationTalk, by Staff Writers

Criminology students at KPU and some of those incar-cerated in Harrison Mills are taking part in an "outside-the-box" prison exchange program. The program brings 13 "outside" stu dents from KPU inside the prison to study together with 13 incarcerated "inside" students. The inside students are formally admitted into the uni-versity and the credits they earn through the course can be applied towards the completion of a credential upon release from incar-ceration. "Giving inside students credit puts them on more equal footing with their outside counterparts and imbues the program with a particularly powerful impact," said Dr. Wade Deisman, arts faculty associate dean at KPU. "Against the prison setting as the backdrop, issues of crime and social justice take on a whole new gravity and meaning," he says. The program is modeled on the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program at Temple University. 

What if instead of a monthly student loan program, you could put that money toward mortgage payments? It's an idea that council member Corey O'Connor wants the state to explore and adopt. A program to do away with at least a portion of student loans for homebuyers could encourage college graduates to stay in Pittsburgh, O'Connor said. He plans to introduce a will of council that encourages state officials "to develop and administer a program wherein the Commonwealth repays a portion" of a person's student loan debt when financing a home through the "Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency and commits to live there for a set amount of time." O'Connor said he and his staffers were talking about ways to lessen the burden of student loans when they learned about the Maryland SmartBuy program. Other states like Ohio and New York have similar programs, per the WSJ. 

Syracuse University graduate Alex Lynch raised $94,000 for off-campus surveillance cameras to be installed in a neighborhood surrounding the school. Lynch lived in the University Hill neighborhood of Syracuse, known for its large population of SU students, when he attended the school. He graduated in 2016 from The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. The surveillance en-hancements were part of his Capstone project. In a study conducted by Lynch in 2015, 84 percent of SU students reported feeling safe walking on campus at night while only 18 percent reported feeling safe walking off campus at night. $54,000 was raised by students groups while $40,000 was raised by University Hill landlords, according to Syracuse.com. Before cameras can be installed, Lynch has to get approval from district council. 

UmassAmherst, by Staff Writers

UMass Amherst and the Town showcased their efforts to create a stronger university-town relationship during presentations at the 2017 ITGA Conference in Eugene, Oregon. Wendy Jones Boisseau, a partner in Jones Properties; Eric Beal, neighborhood liaison, external relations; Lt. Damian DeWolf, Umass Amherst Police Dept.;  Sally Linowski, associate dean of students; and officer Bill Laramee, community liaison, Amherst Police Dept., presented details of a first-ever collaboration of town and campus police, landlords, town inspectors and university officials using approaches based on Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) to deal with large, off-campus parties that have defied traditional prevention efforts. The team discussed the application of CPTED in current projects and how conference participants might use these strategies to address large-scale parties.     

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