News Briefs

UMNews

Live Burn demonstration to kick off Fire Safety Month

The Department of Residence Halls and the Department of Environmental Health and Safety will be sponsoring a Live Burn Demonstration on the University Center Green this Thursday, Sept. 7, from noon to 2 p.m. The demonstration will kick off the university’s Fire Safety Month and is intended to inform the university community on the dangers of fire. Live Burn is designed to provide a visual demonstration of how quickly a fire can spread in two mock dorm rooms as well as to highlight the importance of evacuating during a fire alarm and not tampering with smoke detectors, fire sprinklers and similar equipment. The Coral Gables Fire Department will also be present to oversee the burn.

ElseWhere

Baylor U. Facebook users react to new features

By Brad Briggs

(U-WIRE) WACO, Texas – Facebook users logged on to find some surprising changes Tuesday.

The new homepage has a feature called News Feed, which allows users to view the updated activity of their friends.

After logging in, users are directed to the new homepage for their profile where they can see new photos, wall messages, status updates and groups joined.

Another new feature is called Mini-Feed, which updates the user on all of the recent activities of an individual user.

Facebook users at Baylor University are not warming up to the change.

“It’s becoming too stalker-ish,” junior Ashley Bristow said. “It makes me uncomfortable to see all of this information about my friends and to know that they can see all of the same stuff about me.”

While the initial negative reactions of some people may just be due to change, others — including senior Zach Nader — have gone so far as to send e-mails to Facebook voicing their anger or even asking to be removed from the service.

A reply from the Web site states, “We think that once you become familiar with the new layout and features, you will find these changes just as useful as past improvements such as photos, groups and the wall.”

The e-mail also mentions that it is not possible to turn off the Mini Feed feature, but users can hide individual stories that appear on the feed about them.

Tuesday, an online petition was created to encourage the owners of Facebook to either drop the News Feed and Mini Feed features, or to remove themselves from other’s feeds.

ETC.

This Friday, University Village will open for students in buildings 3, 4, and 7. Check in for those students will begin that day at noon and extend through the weekend. The living quarters will be finished, however, the University Village parking garage will still be under construction. An express shuttle will run 24/7 between Stanford Circle and University Village until completion of the garage, and students can park their cars in the Ponce Garage.