Morality of Solution Manuals For College Homework

I recently got into a discussion with a former professor about the morality of providing college students with a solution manual to problems in a textbook. I’ve taken several of my emails and re-written them here, polished up a tad bit.

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Background Knowledge: Many college courses use textbooks to help provide reading material, as well as assign homework from. Many of these textbooks have a companion solution manual, published by the same publisher. Most professors attempt to tightly control access to these solution manuals.

The Question: Is providing students with a solution manual morally wrong?

I submit that the point of taking a college class is to learn useful knowledge and skills.

I submit that students are taking the class of their own free will, and in fact paying to take it.

I submit that if a student fails to learn material, the only being harmed is that student. (No one else!)

If a student was taking classes just for themselves, there would be no need for anything other than learning. No need to exams; No need to prove knowledge to anyone. However, this is rarely the case. Most commonly, students take college courses in order to get a degree (and therefore a more profitable job). Since Purdue (or whatever university is in question) grants this degree on the assumption that students are really learning the knowledge that is taught, Purdue is putting their name on the line to say that X student does know X knowledge. Therefore I'll concede that X knowledge needs to be tested in some way. Hence we have exams.

I therefore submit that the purpose of exams is to test knowledge, while the purpose of homework is only to help students learn.

This affects our current topic (a solution manual to homework problems in the textbook). If the sole purpose of homework is to help students learn, then testing and proving knowledge should be no part of it (That should only come into play during exams). It doesn't matter if a student knows the material during or after homework. From this it follows that homework should not only not be graded, it should be optional. In a perfect world, homework would be optional completely, and if turned in would be checked to provide feedback to students; it would not be graded though. This would allow students the opportunity to learn, without punishing them for not learning fast enough.

We don't live in a perfect world though, and there is also the consideration of how to we keep students involved. Many professors feel the need to force students to be involved. Hence homework is graded (and attendance is recorded). While I disagree with both of those, it's just the world we live in. We can mitigate them though, by making homework (and attendance) worth very little. And by dropping stupid homework policies like keeping track of how students complete homework. This brings us to the solution manual.

With students that use a solution manual, there are three possible situations (One might argue that 2 and 3are the same, but I'll address each separately for the sake of logical completeness).

1. Students attempt homework problems before looking at the solution manual, using it to check answers and help with areas they still don't understand
2. Students copy word for word from the manual without first attempting the assignment, but still pick up a lot of the knowledge just through memorization and repetition.
3. Students copy word for word from the manual without first attempting the assignment, and learn nothing.

Lets examining all three of these possible scenarios.

In scenario 1, students are learning the material without copying. I've found that most professors don't object to this, but also don't believe that it ever happens (assuming instead that students will always take the easy way, and that any other assumption is just nativity). Regardless of the frequency though, if no one objects, then it's not a problem.

In scenario 2, students are copying, but still learning. I've found that this scenario too is assumed to be highly unlikely by most people. And unlike scenarios 1, I'll concede that it probably is. However, again regardless of the frequency, if the student is still learning, then it's not a problem.

Finally, we have scenario 3 (The only area where there seems to be actual disagreement). These are the students who will look at the solution manual, copy word for word, and not learn anything. These students are the reason that professors for the most part try their hardest to remove solution manuals from general availability. But here is the thing. There's nothing wrong with students doing this, and here's why.

If you look at my assertions 3 and 4 together, I submit that students who are learning for themselves are responsible only to themselves. Responsibility to Purdue only comes into play when Purdue is putting it's name on the line to vouch for a student. Since exams cover the testing and validation of knowledge, Purdue is covered. Therefore until a student takes an exam (during homework, for example), they are responsible solely to themselves, not to Purdue (and not to professors). If a student doesn't want to learn, then a student doesn't have to learn. It follows that if a student doesn't want to complete homework assignments or do complete them in a way that doesn't help learning, then they don't have to, and professors shouldn't be attempting to force them. It is the professors' job to teach students who are willing to learn, not to control students who are unwilling to learn.

This covers all three possible situations that arise from students having a solution manual. If none of them are objectionable, then having a solution manual isn't objectionable. Additionally, another reason that banning solution manuals is silly is that going to office hours has the exact same result. Solutions are provided. And nearly every college course has office hours.

How O'Charley's "Screwed" Us

My brother Alex is attending my alma mater (crazy to say that word now), Purdue, next year. He (or more accurately my parents), got some good news in the mail today. They are giving him the Presidential Scholarship, which is quite a bit of money that we won't have to pay, for all four years. So to celebrate, we took him out to O'Charleys.

It's one of his favorite restaurants, and probably favorite sit down one here in town. Only when we got there, we found a surprise. Upon ordering soup and getting it, my brother took a few bites and then saw, sitting in the soup, a giant iron screw. Pictures below:





The pictures are kind of blurry, but it was most certainly a screw, and a large one at that. This was on top of them having to try three times to get my hamburger right, twice to get my dad's drink correct, and one time just forgetting my own drink. Not the best service in the world.

The manager did apologize quite effusively, and comped our entire dinner drinks and the soup.
 

8 Done, 1 To Go

I took my last exam for the semester this morning, and am finally finished. Hoping for 4 As and a B this semester, but we'll see what happens. I'm taking the rest of the day off; might go see The Avengers tonight. Been packing for a while now, cleaning up my room and throwing away quite a bit of built up junk.

I still have no idea what I'm doing this summer. ODOT hasn't gotten back to me, and according to what they told me, that means I'm not being hired by them. J&S hasn't gotten back to me, but I was told that I'd be informed either way. I'm going to call again on Monday morning to get a hold of my contact personally, and if he still doesn't know, I might just take the other offer that I have, which is with a startup web company.

I've been sick for the past week, but yesterday I was finally on the upswing and last night I slept well for the first time since last weekend, so I think I'm mostly over it.

It's strange, knowing that if I wasn't taking extra semester, I'd be graduating college. I'm not sure I'm ready yet for that, so I'm glad that I've got one more. Goal now is to get through this summer, make some money to help pay for next semester, and then get done.
 

Does ITaP Even Train LAs Anymore?

I had an interesting experience today while working trying to work on my final project for my surveying class. I'm using AutoCAD to create it, and it's a program which needs the mouse wheel for fine control zooming. I logged into a lab computer, and the mouse wheel was scrapped. You've probably seen similar mice, where you'll turn the wheel slowly and nothing will happen. A very quick turn will sometimes make contact, but it's very difficult to control.

I told the LA about it, because LAs can put in trouble reports and get new equipment sent out to labs. Her initial reaction was a laugh and say okay, when I told her. Seeing that I wasn't walking away, she sort of gave me a dirty look and said that she didn't have any, and would have to have someone else come bring it out, implying it would be a huge hassle. I didn't take the bait, and just nodded and say okay, and kept looking at her.

She grimaced, got up, and reluctantly followed me to the computer in question. I picked up the mouse, and slowly rolled it for a good 10 seconds. Nothing happened on the screen. She took it, and rolled it really quickly. Several times. Nothing happened. She rolled it again more quickly and harder, and it jerk zoomed in 2 or 3 levels. She then set it down and said, okay, anything else?

I'm like, not really, how long will it take a new one to get here? She says, nothing's wrong with it, it moved. I picked it up again and moved it for another 5 or 6 seconds with nothing happening. Finally she sighed and said okay and went and put in a trouble report.

Well to you anonymous lab assistant, ma'am, you need to get a new job because you don't know a thing computers, or customer service.
 

Ups and Downs

In the true form of Karma, last week and this are polar opposites. Last week was an easy cruise. Not a single homework assignment due the entire week, no exams, no quizzes. Nothing.

This week however, I have a grand total of: 2 quizzes, 4 midterm exams, and several homework assignments. So far I've taken one of the quizzes and two of the midterms, and I'm feeling pretty good about them. The first midterm was in psychology, and was pretty easy even without much studying. The second, which I just took, was in surveying. Not much more difficult, and it certainly took a lot less time. It was just several problems to solve, and we knew ahead of time what kinds of problems we'd be tested over, so it was easy to study for it.

I did have some pretty great news this week as well. Very last minute, I heard that Janssen and Spaans was looking for an intern for this summer, in their Indianapolis office. I sent my resume over last Friday, and they want me to come down tomorrow morning for an interview! Instead of leaving here at 6am, I'm just going to drive down to Indy this afternoon and spend the night with the parents, who live only 20 minutes away from the Janssen and Spaans office.

Additionally, the Oregon Dept of Transportation called me and asked if I was still interested in a traffic internship with them this summer, and we set up a phone interview for later this April. Two in just a week! I'm not sure which I'd really like best, because living at home would save a lot of money, but living in Oregon would be a cool experience; getting out of the midwest for the first time in my life. We'll see what the offers are, pay, hours, etc.

Later today I have a midterm in soils, which is going to be difficult. It really doesn't matter however, because it's one of two midterms, and the lowest is thrown out. I got a decent grade on the first exam, so even if I utterly fail this one, I still have a decent grade. I've studied for it, but I'm not freakin' out about it.

Then I've gotta call Enterprise around 3, after bowling gets out, and get my car for the day. Turns out they charge by the day, and a full size is only 10 bucks more than a compact. Might as well go full and drive down to Indy more comfortably. Then back here tomorrow afternoon, and another midterm exam on Friday, to finish up the week.

Two more weeks after, and finals, and this semester is done!
 

2011 Recap

With just over 6 hours left of 2011, I thought I'd go back and look at the year we have just finished. A year comprised of many ups and downs, both globally and locally, but one in which we've hopefully ended up better than we started.

Internationally, 2011 was a year of great change, possibly the greatest since the early 90s and the fall of the USSR. The "Arab Spring" as people called it, started in Tunisia and spread across north Africa and the middle east, rocking entrenched dictatorships. Along with Tunisia, Egypt and Libya were successful in overthrowing their dictators. With mostly peaceful protests in Egypt, and 6 months of full on civil war in Libya. And the fighting is still going on in other places, like Syria and Yemen. Will the new order be more friendly to the US? Only time will tell. I can only hope that the pro-democracy movements don't get hijacked by the Islamism sharia law supporters.

On the other side of the world, the pacific and eastern Asia saw extreme natural disasters. Flooding in Thailand, earthquakes in Japan. The death toll was large, and the secondary effects (such as rising prices for tech produced in Asia) still hasn't fully fallen out.

Closer to home, politics began heating up. In response to the tea party movement (the far right), a new movement has arisen. The Occupy movement. Occupy Wallstreet is where is started, but the protests spread across the country, targeting wealthy corporations. Granted, the movement doesn't seem to have much in the way of demands other than, we're unhappy that you have so much money and we don't.

Additionally, Washington politics grew more strained as the year went on. In the 2010 midterm elections, the GOP took control of the House and nearly the Senate. Since then we seem to have jumped from crisis to crisis, including several near government shut downs, and each party tries to blame it on the other in preparation for the larger 2012 presidential election. Overall the Democrats have won though, with Obama's ratings going up significantly, at least in the second half of the year.

The GOP primary race also got kicked off, with a string of widely followed televised debates. Mitt Romney, the assumed forerunner, maintained a steady support in the mid 20s, while others rose and fell. Pawlenty and Bachmann in early summer, Rick Perry in August, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and now there are even a few stirrings for Rick Santorum. Throughout, Gary Johnson was left out of nearly all debates and polls, and finally gave up and switched over to the Libertarian Party. Ron Paul of course was around the entire time, support steadily growing, but still too small to matter.

In a much less depressing area, tech progressed hugely in 2011. The iPad 2 was released early in the year, and the first Android tablets as well. Near summer Android finally had a decent on in the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, but with no marketing and a string of legal attacks by Apple, it never took off. Amazon went a different route, with a more inexpensive tablet, the Kindle Fire. It didn't seek to compete with the iPad, and has done quite well. Finally more recently, things like the Asus Transformer Prime bring the best of tablets and laptops together. Terribly expensive though, I doubt the price will let it be a huge hit.

Smart phones saw little significant change over the year. Lots of refinement, of course. Faster processors, more memory, better screens. Android 4.0 and iOS 5 can out, bringing improvements to the software side as well. No major breakthroughs though. Even the new iPhone was just an incremental upgrade. Windows Phone 7 did get some nifty improvements, and while nearly everyone who uses it enjoys it, it's got so little market share that expanding in the face of iOS and Android will be almost impossible. Nokia near the end of 2011 finally began releasing WP7 phones though, so 2012 will be the last chance Microsoft's platform has.

Down then to the personal level. Both Spring and Fall semesters were good for me academically. No grades under a B, in fact. I also replaced the F and D+ I'd gotten during the terrible fall of '10 with and A and A, pushing the overall GPA up quite a bit. Non-academically I had a good pretty decent year, though it certainly was better during summer and fall. I stayed at Purdue over the summer, working for ITaP, and teaching myself several web design languages on the side. I'm also dating someone at the moment, which is quite unusual for me, so wish me luck.

This post has gotten quite a bit longer than I originally was anticipating, so I think I'll wrap it up. I hope you all had a good year, and I'm looking forward to 2012. Happy new years!
 

The Home Stretch

I always enjoy these last 3 weeks after thanksgiving break. One regular week, then dead week, and finally finals. Normally labs are canceled or easy, and homework is not as intense. Instead we've just got to study study study. Finals can make or break one's grade, and by the second half of dead week, the prepping gets intense. Still, on average, these 3 weeks have a more relaxed mindset than the weeks immediately before break.

Additionally this is coming off a pretty good end to break, for two reasons. The first is that I bought a TV! A 32" Coby. It's only 720p, I'd have preferred 1080p, but it's not a big deal. It's 60hz instead of the new 120 or 240, but that I'm actually a fan of. I don't like the higher refresh rates, movies look ... weird, I guess. Hard to describe unless you watch one yourself. Hyperreal? And the TV was only $230 from Fry's Electronics. Ironically, it wasn't Black Friday OR Cyber Monday, it was on Saturday during Fry's' after thanksgiving sale.

Second and even better thing is that I had a hot date last night. Hot and nerdy. 8) We grabbed food and then watched Lord of the Rings. Yep, you read right. It, was, epic.

This next week looks to be pretty nice. I'm in between jobs at the moment, hopefully starting a new job at 10 bucks an hour, working for a CIVL professor. But until I start, I've got so much time. Plus lab for soils this week is going to have no take home work. It'll give me time to catch up on some shows. South Park is done for the season (Thanksgiving episode was amazing, go watch it), but Supernatural is still going, as is Walking Dead and Boardwalk Empire. I'll leave you with a taste of Walking Dead, a cool video about the special effects.


 

Exams, Exams, and More Exams

Exams and more exams. Tomorrow morning I've got my second DiffyQ exam, and I really have to slam it hard. I've studied quite a bit, so I'm feeling okay, but I felt great about the first one and got a 60%. So we'll see. Then Wednesday evening I have my second Soils exam. I'm feeling better about it, but still not Great. I've got tomorrow night to study though.

After Wednesday, it'll be pretty smooth sailing. I'll need to study a little for a thermo exam next week, but besides that it's pretty much done until Thanksgiving break. After Thanksgiving, we've got 2 weeks and then finals. This semester is basically gone already.
 

RAWR

I'm working on a project for DiffyQ right now, that's included in this homework this week. During the class, we have 3 such projects. They consist of opening Matlab and writing programs to solve differential equations. Sounds fine.

The problem is that we haven't done anything with Matlab in 3 years, back in FYE. And this isn't basic Matlab, it's pretty complex stuff. That too would be fine, if they taught us how to do it. But, they don't. At all. It's not even mentioned once in class.

On the website with the assignments, there are a few tutorials. The problem is that they deal with different types of problems that what we have to do. Office hours are the only solution. But, my teacher has two office hours each week. One is in the middle of the day when I'm in class, and the second is from 6-7 pm at night, when I'm at work, which doesn't really help. Damn you School of Mathmatics of Purdue!
 

Well Shit ....

I got my grade back today for my 3rd exam. Soil mechanics, or in more colorful terms, geotechnical engineering. I got a 68%, which is a D. A high D, but a D nonetheless. The problem with this exam is that I didn't blow off studying. I studied for quite a while, I made up a cheat sheet. And even more frustrating, is that I knew how to do everything. 4 sections, 3 main problems and 1 misc section. I knew all 3 of the big parts, but knew I'd miss a few on the misc true/false questions, and I did.

The big point loss came though, from running out of time. 10 minutes more and that grade would have been an 88 easily, but I ran out of time and didn't finish the last problem. I also realized with 30 seconds left that I made a mistake in the beginning of said last problem. I went back and fixed it, and wrote out what I should have done. I didn't have time to redo all the calculations though, and I wrote that. I got zero partial credit. I find that harsh, but not unfair.

This is really sort of a blow to me, because the past few weeks have been really difficult. I went home for fall break to recharge and came back in a good mood, ready to take on the rest of the semester. And then this happens. And it happens on an exam where there was really nothing I could have done better in preparation. It's the kind of thing that makes me question whether I have what it takes to be an engineer, because this isn't supposed to be on of the hardre classes.

I walked out of class after looking at the graded exam, which was passed back at the beginning. I walked around for a while outside, and then came here. Frankly I want to curl up into a ball and sleep, because sleeping I get to start over with a new life, however temporary the dreams are. But I can't.

So I came to a computer lab, pulled out some engineering paper, and started working ahead on thermo homework. I've got a thermo exam next week, which is going to be rough. I got a 97% on the last one though, my only decent test score this semester. My plan then, is to focus my efforts for the rest of today on thermo. I'm going to study this entire weekend for this exam, and hopefully blow it's head off, because I need to reassure myself that I can.

And if I do fail this next exam, even after these weekend of extra studying and in a class I'm good at ... then I'll reassess whether this is the career choice I really want to be in, and if a change might be necessary.
 

I Call Shenanigans

Just to give you a fair warning, this is going to be a post in which I'm bitching about how something is unfair. In my defense, I think it really IS unfair. However, if you don't care, then move along.

I got my math exam back today. I was expecting a pretty good grade; there were 8 problems, and I figured I'd gotten 7 of them right, and a good bit of the last. I think it's pretty clear from the title that a good grade is not what I received.

Lets look at the one that I figured I didn't get completely. It was a substitution problem, and I knew I didn't have it all done. But I got the first part of it. And that was validated, because the grade wrote "close" by the part I had. Then gave me a 0/3. Nothing, at all, for being close. This is coming after the professor said that she was making it not multiple choice, so that she could give partial credit.

So yes, 0/3. And that leads to the other big problem, which is that the problems were all out of 2 or 3 points, so even if I did something tiny wrong at the end, I'd lose either 33 or 66% of that problem. Number 1, I went through all 8 steps correctly, on the 9th and final step, I forgot a t. Clearly correct in each step above. Because of the error in the last line, I got a 50% on that problem. Next one, there were 6 parts. Find 3 points, and then classify. I found all 3, classified one correctly, and flipped the other two classifications when I wrote them down. From my markings on the graph, it's easy to tell I understood but wrote them down wrong. Even so, and taking away full credit for both ones I flipped, I got 4 of the 6 parts right, so should get 2/3 points, right? Nope, I got 1 point, because each of the parts I got wrong was half a point, and they both rounded up. One problem seven, there were 5 answers to classify true or false, I got 4 of the 5 right. But it was only worth 2 points, so I got 50% on that one. And with the last problem, it was a story problem. I detailed out the drawing, translated it into an equation, a correct one. There was one step at the end which she didn't specify that was needed, which was to replace W with Winitial - 3 gal/min. I Put in W instead of 50 gal, (as it was on the in class review) because I knew it would change. But, she wanted that extra step. And so by not doing that last step, after doing everything correctly, I got a 50% on that one.

All the problems added together were 20 points. Had they each been worth 5 times more, 100 points, and I could lose points percentage wize, I'd have given myself an 80. Because we could only lose points in chucks of 5%, I got a 12/20, or a 60%. I call shenanigans, and I'm considering dropping the class. Right now it will be an incomplete (equivalent to a widthdraw), which won't impact my GPA. I can try to take it again next semester, or possibly over the summer online. This isn't material I will be using for my career, so I couldn't care less if I understand it, I just need the grade. The problem is that even with understanding it, this professor is going to fail me.
 

Been A Long Two Weeks

I'm half done with the first round of midterms this semester. Or done with round one, for the classes that have more than a single midterm. Thermo was last week, and I got a 96% (high was 97). Math was today, and of the 8 problems, I completed solved 7, and half solved the last, so an A is probable.

Tonight are info sessions for companies that are attending the career fair, and tomorrow is the fair itself. We've got over 50 companies this year, which is a small increase from last year. Nothing big, but it's still better than decreasing. Maybe someday we'll get back to the 140 rage we had before the economy crashed in 2008. The career fair ends at 3:30 in the afternoon, but I've got class from 2:30 to 4:30, so I'll be leaving then. Then possibly an interview the day after in the morning. Which means that in 48 hours, the busiest two weeks of the semester will finally be over.

In other news, two great things happened yesterday. One, I watched the season premiere of Boardwalk Empire, which was pretty interesting. Quite a few changes, so I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next. Two, (and even better), I saw that Interstella 5555 has been remastered in HD and is coming out in BluRay. Woo hooo!!

For those poor souls among you who aren't familiar with Interstella 5555, it's basically a CD-long music video turned into a movie, with plot. It's awesome. Here's a taste. But you have to imagine it in HD, as it will be on Oct 4th.


 

One Less Squirrel

I was in a hurry to get to work today; running a couple minutes behind. My bicycle, while the greatest invention since the wheel itself, doesn't move me instantaneously. It still takes a few minutes to get across campus. I was riding pretty fast, and while passing through the engineering mall, I ran over a squirrel.

In my defense, it ran across the sidewalk, I went sideways towards the direction it was coming from, to clear it. It then reversed and went backwards ... right under my rear wheel. I looked back and saw it lying on it's back twitching wildly, and now I am feeling sad for it, yet also thinking, what a dumb squirrel. If you are going to run in front of a bike, at least don't change direction halfway through. Maybe I'm doing the squirrel population a favor, cleaning out it's gene pool.

Though that could be a bad thing for humanity. 200 years from now: Planet of the Squirrels. "That blew it up! Damn, dirty squirrels! They blew it up and then buried it to save for winter.

What have I done!
 

Data Table Finished

Well, finally finished with the data table entirely. For now at least. It's been added to the projects section of my website, complete with description and even links to test pages for different aspects.

Project Hub

Next week I'm going to be looking into user accounts and how that works, and I might eventually use the data table as a base to build onto with user accounts letting users not only add themselves, but also go back in and edit themselves as well. Well see how that goes next week.

I've also gotten my backups up to date, the last I'd made before the site went offline last weekend was from early May, so it's good to know that I'm protected if it happens again.
 

Well Crap ...

So interesting story, my Purdue website is gone. All I get upon trying to access is a 404 error. Interesting enough, it's not just my website / www folder. It's my entire friggin' H drive. It's just not accessible.

I'm on hold with Customer Service, so we'll see if we can't fix it. The problem is what while I back up every time I update the website, everything I've been working on recently with the datatable hasn't affected the website, and I haven't ever had an outage now in 2 years, so I didn't get around to making my own backup. Purdue should have backups, but we'll have to wait and see.
 

Ramen Noodles

Have you ever seen someone eating Ramen Noodles and thought to yourself, damn, that looks tasty! Wish I knew how to make them. *sad face*

Well now you can! With 1 easy payment of 2 and a half minutes of your time! Just click on the button below to get started, watch to the end, and you will be making Ramen Noodles in no time!



I made this video for my CE 399 final video project. Yes the beginning is a weird grayscale, but it's not before I uploaded to youtube, so it's their problem, not mine.

EDIT (4-26-11):
The videos were graded half by instructor and half by peers, and the video that was graded the best in each section won a small prize. Those winners were announced today and ours won! I am now the proud owner of a very nice thermos with Purdue University emblazoned on the side.
 

5 Common Design Creativity Blockages, and How To Fix

I was working on homework for Intro to Systems Design today. It's what I like to call an administrator course, one which looks good on paper and makes the administration feel happy, without really being useful to students. The first question on the homework really demonstrates that. It goes:

Discuss 5 common blockages to design creativity and what steps can be taken to reduce their effect.

I'd like to share my first answer, which I was convinced not to actually submit by the fact that my grade is hovering between two letters at the moment:

Political Opposition: Fix the ballets and elect someone who will support your project.

Lack of Sleep: Coffee and Red Bull.

Environmental Concerns: Burn down the entire forest ... then there's nothing left to be concerned about.

Outdated Regulations: Talk to the county regulator, and if he doesn't prove cooperative, see above "Political Opposition", above.

US Patent Law: Bomb the US Patent Office, while simultaneously hacking their data center.
 

Purdue, Purdue, What Are You?

Purdue, Purdue, what are you?
Your buildings made of brick.

Your towers tall, with many a hall,
students watch time tick.

From clocktower high, it soars to the sky,
surveying all it sees.

Akin to those, whom Johnson drags to new lows,
they pass the rest with ease.

Purdue, Purdue, what are you?
the students in your care?

Some study hard, some play the bard,
and those who drink aren't rare.

Then are some, when called they come,
to save us from the horde.

The zombies foul, who scream and howl,
vanquished by nerf and sword.

Purdue, Purdue, what are you?
cradle of quarterbacks?

And astronauts, plus new robots,
you don't cater to the quacks.

But for the brains, it pours, it rains,
Nobel prizes you acquire.

You bring them in, gold medals pin,
to greatness, you aspire.

Purdue, Purdue, what are you?
Shiny gold and black.

Our greatest years, we'll remember with tears,
we'd never give them back.

Never done, but always fun,
You give us our degree.

Costs work and sweat, it's a sure bet
the best things in life aren't free.
 

Positive Experience

People hear stories all the time about Police running rampant, going into homes illegally, shooting dogs, etc. We never hear about all the good things they door, the day to day activities. I had a very positive encounter with the Purdue Police Department(PUPD) today, and I'd just like to give them a shout-out:

I ride a bicycle to and from campus, because it makes the 10 minute walks into a 2 minute ride, and gives me more time before I have to leave. Purdue provides bike racks quite plentifully, and on Saturday around 1pm, I returned to my dorm from work, and locked my bike to one. Later than night, I noticed that someone (presumably tired of looking for an empty spot), had instead locked their bike directly to mine. I didn't do anything, and left it until today, figuring the person would leave sometime. This evening though, I had to leave for work again, and it was still there. I called the PUPD and explained, and the dispatched an officer to my dorm. Within 15 minutes, he was there. After I showed him the bikes, he got out the metal cutters and removed the lock which the unknown person had used, thereby freeing my bicycle. He spent 30 seconds afterwards taking down my name and phone number, and then I was free to leave with my bike.

No problems, no issues, just the bike lock resolved quickly and politely. Thank you PUPD!