The Register-Guard, by Chelsea Gorrow

It's 1:30 a.m. on a Saturday at the Fiji fraternity house near the University of Oregon. A noise complaint from the neighbors has summoned Eugene and UO police to a loud party in the 600 block of East 16th Avenue. Officers arrive on bicycles and in patrol cars; they're working the Party Patrol. Eugene police Lt. Doug Mozan is leading a team of six Eugene police officers and one University of Oregon police officer on Party Patrol shift, from Friday night, Nov. 18, into early Saturday, Nov. 19. The enforcement action is focused in the area around the UO campus. For almost 20 years, the patrol has dealt with illegal party-related activities, trying to resolve issues before they get out of hand. "Our goal is real simple: to prevent sexual assaults, to prevent alcohol overdoses, to prevent riots and to educate the kids about keeping themselves and their belongings safe," Mozan said.   

The Gazette, by Katie Lear

Over 1,400 first year students will be receiving uplifting post cards this exam season from alumni who once lived in the same rooms as them. A campaign run by the Western Alumni Association and named  Kind Mail, asked alumni to send a postcard to their old residence room for the frosh currently living there. "The point of this is just to have a bit of kindness reach the students in the rooms," Kind Mail's project manager, Meghan Cocurullo said. "I think it's a great opportunity for alumni to reconnect with Western," she said. "We're seeing a lot of alumni connect back who may not have been in-volved with any of our events or programs, so if this is a meaningful en-gagement piece for them, it's a big win for us." She further explained that the goal was to get 200 pieces of mail, but the campaign received over 1,400 submissions across various graduating years and faculties. 

CharlotteAgenda, by Andrew Dunn

The University City area of Charlotte has 73,000 work-ers and more than 160,000 residents. It has a major university and a major hospital. What it doesn't have right now, even area boosters will admit, is a funky energy and social cachet. But there's now a major initi-ative in the works to change that. University City Part-ners unveiled this week a plan that would give this part of a Charlotte a true "downtown" and a new 'college Main Street" and hope-fully lure the type of businesses that give cities their vibrancy. The spark-pulg is the light rail train extension, which will ferry passengers to and from Uptown along a line that will run along North Tryon Street straight through the University area onto UNC Charlotte's campus. The train is expected to roll in fall 2017 and will hopefully draw more and more interest from developers, young professionals and companies.    

The Hoya, by Hannah Urtz

The Washington, D.C. Zoning Commission unanimously approved Georgetown University's 20-year campus plan in a hearing Dec. 1, ending a four-yearlong process led by the Georgetown Community Partnership. The 20-year plan, which prioritizes student housing renova-tions, outlines future academic spaces and plans revital-ized on-campus student life, spans from Jan. 2017 through 2036, making it the longest standing campus plan in Georgetown's history. This emphasis on improving on-campus residence halls also aligns with the interests of the Georgetown neighborhood community. According to GUSA Deputy Chief of Staff for Master Planning and Community Engage-ment Zac Schroepfer, neighbors would like to see a more distinct separation between the campus and the Georgetown neighborhood. "One of the main goals is to have less students out in the neighborhood and have campus be more of a central hub of living space." 

TERP, by Charlie Wright

Imagine nor being able to help your children with their homework or speak up as a parent-teacher conference, and learning only scraps of an unfamiliar language from what your kids pick up at school. This is the plight of many Hispanic families in the D.C. area, and the Univer-sity of Maryland has developed a solution. After officials at nearby Hollywood Elementary School contacted UMD's Office of Community Engagement, Associate Professor Ana Patricia Rodriguez created a new Spanish language course this fall that sends undergraduates there to teach English to Spanish-speaking parents. The Washingtom region's Hispanic population numbers 906,000, and more than half of this group is foreign-born, according to a Pew Research Center re-port. "The idea was to develop classes for professional uses, and we thought that Spanish for educators would be a good idea," says Rodriguez. 

CBC News, by Mark Gollom

Queen's University students who attended a controver-sial costume party last weekend could be punished for violating the school's code of conduct, a set of rules implemented by many universities that includes off-campus, non-academic behavior. But Timothy Boyle, a Calgary-based lawyer who has represented the students involved in university disciplinary cases, said many schools may be extending their authority too far. Danile Woolf, principal and vice chancellor of Queen's University said the university is investigating the off-campus party. "We do have a student code of conduct which was revised last year," Woolf said. The code can apply to non-academic misconduct that occurs on or off university property. For example, a student can be considered in breach of the code if his or her conduct "has a real and substantial connection to the legitimate interests of the university, which include, but are not limited to, its reputation or goodwill in the community."

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