On Campus

What students are talking about today (Sept. 20 edition)

Flying futons, Carly Rae Jepsen & where students want to work

The futon: more dangerous than it appears (d3b...*/Flickr)

1. We knew futons were bad for your back, but apparently they can be even more dangerous than that. A New York City college student was walking to class when he was hit by a flying futon mattress that fell 30 floors from an apartment building. It rendered him briefly unconscious and injured his neck. Worst of all, the poor schmuck says he can’t afford both tuition and medical bills.

2. Yesterday, we learned that 42 per cent of 20- to 29-year-old Canadians live with their parents—higher than ever. Today, the Edmonton Journal points out that booming Alberta is bucking the trend. In Lloydminster, just 20 per cent live at home. In Fort McMurray, it’s 22 per cent. Compare that to economically-depressed Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. and Cornerbrook, N.L., where the number of 20-somethings at home is—yikes—52 per cent.

3. Universum asked 7,234 Canadian post-secondary students where they want to work after graduation. In the top 100 list, Apple is #1 (duh), Google is #2 (obviously), the Government of Canada is #3 (not surprising if you know anything about their pensions), #4 is the Bank of Canada, #5 is Microsoft and #6 is Royal Bank. My benevolent employer, Rogers, is a respectable #40.

4. @Queen’sUProblems, a very unofficial Twitter feed, has reached an impressive 3,700 followers. The founders tell The Journal how taken aback they were by its overnight success and how the university insisted they make clear that it’s not an official source. One recent Tweet: “Student side football tickets sold out. Wasted money on Tricolour facepaint. #QueensUProblems”

5. Wilfrid Laurier University announced today that it has suspended its varsity baseball team for a minimum of four games due to hazing that violated the university’s Code of Conduct.

6. Across the Muslim world, college students are protesting against ‘Innocence of Muslims,’ that cheesy American home movie that insulted the Prophet Muhammad. In Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, about 50 students from a university in Makassar burned tires and forced a McDonald’s to close. Seems fair: you insult our prophet, we stop eating Big Mac’s.

7. Another student has reported a sexual assault at York University. It’s the fifth such report in less than a month. Meanwhile, the University of Waterloo is warning students that a woman attacked Monday was sexually assaulted by two men. The suspects in that case are a white man, 19, five-foot six with a heavy build and a non-white man, 19, six feet with black hair and slender build.

8. For the past three days, Kate Lunau has been making fellow Maclean’s employees jealous as she tours NASA’s Johnson Space Center with astronaut Chris Hadfield, soon to be the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station. Check out her behind-the-scenes photos of everything from the Saturn V rocket, to space spinach, to one scary-looking toilet right here.

9. The University of Windsor wants to turn a section of Sunset Avenue that runs through campus into a pedestrian esplanade. Ryerson University in Toronto has done the same with Gould Street and while some drivers were enraged, the closure has made the campus a much nicer place to be.

10. The New York Times was expecting bigger things from Carly Rae Jepsen’s follow-up to Call Me Maybe (for some reason). Here’s an excerpt: “On “Kiss” Ms. Jepsen is a pop star without an agenda or a mission, just a mandate. She’s not a smoldering ember like Britney Spears, not a muscled emblem of dignity and outrage like Pink… Jepsen is a singer with a huge hit, and a huger burden of responsibility.” Yep. I can’t think of any huger burden of responsibility than that. Can you?

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