Laura Dewar was hesitant to mention to her colleagues that she would be attending a Rolling Stones concert. The new chair of the music department thought she might come off as a bit too "pop" for a department that specializes in electro-acoustic and jazz.

It's the type of scenario that can keep university administrators awake at night: hundreds of students fall ill from a highly contagious viral infection, forcing classes to be cancelled and disrupting most campus activities. Mount Allison University experienced just such a crisis this fall, stemming from an outbreak of the Norwalk virus.

To be "contrary" can connote a certain willful or perverse stubbornness. And indeed, contrariness for its own sake can be tiresome, even futile.

At McGill University, Kentucky bluegrass is replaced with a community garden. At Carleton University, hungry university students drop by the G-spot for a vegan meal.

No matter how many years have passed, the faint recollection of one's first undergraduate term paper often dredges up a memory of undiminished pain: the bibliography. To a sleep-deprived student at three in the morning, the rules of citation can appear arbitrary and diabolical, as though designed to turn an enlightening education into an impossibly rigorous boot camp.

"Writing should be a part of all [university] courses, because in the real world we all write," asserts Toby Fulwiler. "And good writing can be a whole lot of things - like a passive [voice], evasive memo terminating someone's job" - if that's what is called for.

When Tony Leroux was a teenager, a Université de Montréal professor conducted a research project on noise in the factory where his father worked. Since his father had developed a form of occupational deafness, Tony was interested in audiologist Raymond Hétu's work.