PLUS: PLUS: College hookups not as ‘normal’ as thought; saving lives on Google; yearbooks vanishing
College Ministries Get Real — Pizza parties and film fests are still cool ways to reach non-believers, but college outreach programs are increasingly prone to doing good work than having more fun. Campus ministries are taking on serious issues — feeding the hungry, helping the homeless and tackling human trafficking, to name a few — to reach potential new members. Apparently, college youth really do want to know you are Christian by your love. And, by tackling real-world problems, groups can counter the presumption that all evangelicals really care about is persecuting homosexuals and voting Republican. “One way for evangelicals to counter these negative stereotypes and put themselves in a position to talk about Jesus is to engage in meaningful social justice work that even non-evangelicals can appreciate,” says John Turner, a University of Alabama professor who wrote Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ. “There is a danger of losing sight of evangelistic goals. But not taking these steps presents an even greater danger to those same goals.” (Christianity Today)
Can’t Work the DVR? Ask Grandpa — While most folks think that technology is a bastion of the young, that’s rapidly changing. According to a recent report from The Nielsen Company, The average senior citizen — people 65 or older — spend about 145 minutes on the Internet any given week, far more than the 89 minutes the average 12- to 17-year old spent online. Adults ages 25-64 watched a lot more programming on DVRs as well, though 12- to 24-year-olds watched more content on their cell phones than older folks. (New York Times)
Take Your Children to School Day — For years, many American children have gotten an unofficial day off from school in order to tag along to work with Mom or Dad. But those working holidays may be dwindling. Officials from some school districts, fretting over their students’ test scores and and under increasing pressure to raise performance, asked parents to skip “Take Our Sons and Daughters to Work” day April 22 and instead take their kids to school—just like they do for the other 180-some-odd days of the typical school year. Officials from one district in Phoenix even wrote a note home to parents, telling them that even missing one day of school might hurt their academic achievement. Many districts say that fewer children missed school this year. It’ll be months before we know how many children participated in the day for 2010, but the Take Your Sons and Daughters to Work Foundation says that “attendance” has held steady since 2005, with about 18 million children participating every year. (Associated Press)
Yearbooks Vanishing from Colleges — The University of Virginia recently announced that, for the first time since 1887, it will not publish a college yearbook. And it’s not the only one: Purdue, Mississippi State and Old Dominion have all discontinued their yearbooks recently — the books casualties of changing times and the bottom line. Yearbooks can cost up to $100,000 to print, and with students now spending less time on campus and sharing more memories online via Facebook and such, the hallowed annual has fallen out of favor. While 1,000 college and universities still print yearbooks, that’s down from the 2,400 that did so about 15 years ago. “You have campuses now where students are less connected to the campus itself, and are not participating in the traditional types of activities,” says Logan Aimone, executive director for the Associated Collegiate Press. “People are getting more accustomed to instant documentation, but what they’re losing is permanent documentation.” (Associated Press)
College Hookups Not as ‘Normal’ as Thought — While some worry that youth in college are growing more promiscuous and prone to fall into one-night hookups, new research suggests that many college-age students give their sexuality considerably more thought. While researchers from Duke University found that about a third of the college’s freshmen and seniors had “hooked up” with someone else, only half of these relationships culminated in oral sex or intercourse. And 60 percent of freshmen reported they’d never had sex. “People have been speculating that the hookup was becoming the dominant relationship. We don’t think it is,” says sociologist S. Philip Morgan, co-author of the research. He added that he was “amazed at how similar we found college life to be like what I remember it being like. A lot of this hooking up is what we used to call ‘making out.’ ” (USA Today)
Ain’t No Mountain High Enough — Jordan Romero is only 13, but he has his sights set high. Like, Mount Everest high. Romero hopes to become the youngest person to climb the world’s tallest peak this spring — another step on his quest to scale the highest mountains on all seven continents. The teen got the climbing bug when he was just 9 years old, when he saw a school mural featuring all seven peaks. “I told my dad about it and he didn’t say no,” he says. “He just explained the difficulties and what I’d have to do. We started training right away.” He climbed Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro at age 10 and scaled three more since then — all with his father and his father’s girlfriend. The expedition to Everest will cost $150,000. And some experts worry that Romero could suffer long-term side-effects from the strenuous, oxygen-starved climb. “We’re in a day and age where parents are pushing kids to extremes so much,” says Gordon Janow, a Seattle-based mountaineer. “It’s very hard to disentangle the parent from the kid these days. But with mountaineering, the kid can’t just go through the motions. They have to do a lot of physical training and really want it.” (Associated Press)
Not Clowning Around — Ronald McDonald, the floppy-shoed, red-haired spokesman for the McDonald’s fast food franchise, has come under attack from the advocacy group Corporate Accountability International for causing childhood obesity. “For nearly 50 years, no one has been better at hooking kids on unhealthy food, spurring an epidemic of diet-related disease,” reads Corporate Accountability’s Web site, retireronald.com. “Ronald deserves a break, and so do we!” McDonald’s says their corporate clown isn’t going anywhere. (ABC News)
Saving Lives, One Google at a Time — Internet titan Google has tweaked its search results in an effort to prevent suicides. Now, when users type in phrases such as “I want to die” or “ways to commit suicide,” a number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255) tops the results. John Draper, the Lifeline’s project director, says Google’s new positioning has increased traffic to the line by 10 percent. “This is an extra 700 people that we could attribute at least in part to what Google is doing,” says Draper. (ABC News)
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