Between the Lines

Former President Bill Clinton’s administration has left an impressive paper trail.
Early last week a number of news sources reported that the archives of the Bill Clinton Presidential Library will contain 40 million e-mails. How many of these were sent by the man himself? Almost two.
The first of the pair doesn’t actually count because it was a test run. The second went to Ohio Senator John Glenn when he ventured back into space in 1998.
And if that isn’t bad enough, Skip Rutherford, president of the Clinton Presidential Foundation, alerted reporters of a developing trend — George W. Bush doesn’t send e-mails, either.
What is going on here?
This may be gibberish to parents and grandparents everywhere, but it’s impossible to graduate college in 2004 with out sending e-mails. It’s been proven.
Every year the National Survey of Student Engagement publishes a report evaluating student life throughout the country. Each year the NSSE tests survey items for future use. Last year, the students who took the online version of the survey were asked to answer test questions about information technology.
Seventy-six percent of the surveyed college seniors say they’ve frequently used e-mail to communicate with their professors. Sixty-eight percent say they’ve used e-mail to clarify assignments.
E-mail isn’t the only staple of college technology, either. Eighty percent of all the surveyed students say their professors often required the use of the Internet, computer conferencing, or other information technology. With a reported 82 percent of students using the Internet to obtain resources, it’s a wonder that campuses still have libraries at all.
However, every rose has its thorn and the Internet is no exception. Eighty percent of all students said they’ve seen their peers copy and paste information from the internet for papers and reports without citing the source. Over 34 percent of education majors reported their peers frequently copied and pasted from the Web without attribution, as did approximately 24 percent of arts and humanities, engineering, physical science and social science majors.
Besides the fact that the Internet makes plagiarism all the more convenient, the Web is wrought with misinformation, broken links and general information that can’t replace primary research or the archives of a local library. Internet chats can’t convey emotion and e-mails can’t give you hugs.
In the end, no one commands world domination better than a man who sends two e-mails in eight years.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Feb 6 2004. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry