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Abuse is a very serious subject to think about. Approximately 15% of american adults are willing to admit that they have been the victim of some sort of physical abuse, according to the Harris Poll that was taken in 2006. The numbers are quickly rising, as children are much more likely to be the victim of abuse. There are an average of 3 million reports of child abuse each year, while an estimate of about 6 million children are involved in some sort of abuse according to The Child Help Foundation. This is why it is very important to file charges against abusive caregivers.

The first thing to do if you suspect that someone you care about is being abused, make sure that person is safely removed from the situation. After you know your loved one is safe, notify the authorities. It is important to have a documented account of what has been happening in order for the proper actions to be taken, and to make sure that the incident does not happen again. The police will be able to document incidents, take photos, and extend their efforts to ensure everyone’s safety.

Take pictures of injuries that are the result of abuse. If you have noticeable injury that can be documented by photography or x-rays, these are important to have so you can prove that damage has taken place. These images can also speak about the severity of the abuse so that you do not have to go on a one on one battle against an aggressor.

Make sure to contact a Minneapolis personal injury attorney for more information on what to do next. A lawyer can help you through the court process. They may also have further instructions on where you can go to talk to someone about emotional damages, or to find shelter from the abuse. You do not have to fight against abuse on your own.

Be prepared to talk to a lot of people when you file an abuse report. This is a very serious crime, and there will be a lot of people involved in making sure that everything is taken care of. Make sure you have someone who supports you and your efforts to fight against the abuse. Having someone who is there for you can keep you safe, help you relax, make sure that the aggressor does not try to manipulate you to drop the charge, and be a shoulder to cry on when you need it.

I have started getting emails from parents who are disappointed that their teenagers financial aid packages are so meager. I wanted to share one story today from a mom, whose daughter is a stellar student and who was hoping for the University of Delawares top scholarship.

Congratulations on having such a bright daughter! Unfortunately, being a stellar student isnt going to guarantee that your daughter will have a shot at a universitys top award.

When I looked at the University of Delawares website it mentioned that only 10 to 12 students receive its Distinguished Scholars award, which provides a full ride. University of Delaware has more than 3,900 freshman and while the vast majority wouldnt realistically have a chance at getting a full-ride, this award has to be extremely competitive.

One of the hazards of applying to an out-of-state public university is that the costs will typically be far higher than if a student remained in her home state. Here is the cost of tuition from the University of Delaware for residents versus nonresidents that I pulled from the College Board.

University of Delaware

Across the country, nonresident tuition is typically two to three times what residents pay. Here is an even more extreme example from the University of California, Berkeley. The UC campuses are the most expensive schools in the nation for students who arent California residents.

University of California, Berkeley

State universities are more eager than ever to attract smart outsiders to their campuses because the schools need the money. As support from state governments has dwindled over the years, public universities are trying to entice more nonresidents to their campuses.

The schools chief goal is to attract smart, affluent students who can afford to pay far more for their education than residents. So its not unusual that a state school would offer a scholarship to an extremely bright student like this moms daughter, but even with the scholarship the price will be stiff.

I have a chapter in the upcoming second edition of my book, The College Solution, devoted to out-of-state universities and Im sharing with you a partial list of flagships that includes their percentage of nonresidents. I bet you will be surprised at the percentages.

Percentage of Outsiders Attending State Flagships

As for the moms question, I dont think it would hurt to contact the school again. I think the mom actually the daughter should call the admission office, not the financial aid department. The admission office would be in charge of  selecting candidates for the top award. Good luck!

Outside the only nightly young-adult shelter in the U-District, dozens of people wait — hoping to be taken off the waiting list and given shelter for the night. With the expansion of the shelter, they might not have to hope.

The young-adult shelter Rising Out of the Shadows (ROOTS), located under University Temple United Methodist Church on Northeast 43rd Street, was granted a $500,000 grant this month by the Raynier Institution & Foundation, which will allow the shelter to rebuild and expand its space to accommodate more guests each night.

Brad Trenary, board member of the Raynier Institution & Foundation, said ROOTS makes an important contribution to the Seattle community.

“We are thrilled with what ROOTS does,” Trenary said. “We think ROOTS is one of the greatest gifts to homeless young adults in Seattle.”

About 600 homeless people ages 18 to 25 live in the Seattle area, ROOTS Executive Director Kristine Cunningham said, and this past year ROOTS turned away 2,103 visits due to lack of space.

“We’d be at least a step closer,” Cunningham said about the expansion. “It’s a drop in the bucket, but it’s a good drop in the bucket. It’s moving in the right direction.”

The expansion allows ROOTS to house 45 homeless young adults instead of the previous 27. Currently, if over 27 guests sign up for the shelter, a random selection determines who gets turned away for the night. The construction, which is scheduled to begin in August and last three months, will take place during the day and will not significantly affect ROOTS’ overnight shelter.

While the grant was not enough to buy a new building, Cunningham said the current location near the UW is ideal because most of ROOTS’ volunteers are UW students.

UW senior Amanda Mendoza, a volunteer at ROOTS, said the shelter has been turning down a lot more people over the summer. It’s the regulars, though, who benefit from the ROOTS community the most, she said.

“I’ve made a lot of connections with guests I see every week,” Mendoza said. “When they have something good [happen] in their lives, they can’t wait to share it with us. … We’d know what’s going on. We’d be a substitute for a family member who hasn’t been around.”

Ben Wolzfelt, age 25, is currently homeless and seeks shelter daily at ROOTS. He was placed on the waiting list one night and said the experience was scary because he didn’t know what he was going to do for that night if he didn’t get in.

“I think it’s a wonderful thing,” Wolzfelt said about the expansion. “Especially in this area, it will get a lot more people off the waiting list [and to] just do what they need to [do] to get back on their feet.”

Wolzfelt recently lost his job and said that, like many of the homeless young adults he sees at ROOTS, his situation is a temporary setback.

“You do hear a lot at night … about plans for the future,” Wolzfelt said of the conversations the guests engage in at the shelter. “They’re normally striving towards something.”

Cunningham said many of the homeless youth who seek shelter at ROOTS don’t mind the rules and order that come with the shelter and have ambitions about their futures.

“Just having a predictable place to be safe for one night helps them put the wind in their sails,” Cunningham said. “These are folks that just need a really solid foundation to jump off from.”

With the expansion, the hygiene center will also have four bathrooms instead of three, which Cunningham said is a critical aspect of what the homeless youth need in a shelter.

She added that, while the shelter will not change significantly in appearance, the remodeling will allow the shelter to function more efficiently because of the more open space and improved hygiene center.

“The walls don’t really change that much, but the improvements will be vast as far as how the shelter feels and how it operates,” Cunningham said.

The overnight guests receive accommodations such as toiletries, nursing facilities, underwear and laundry services.

“We are kind of taking it on faith [that we can] grow our income to accommodate the extra people,” Cunningham said.

Cunningham calls ROOTS a community crucial for those who are homeless and don’t have the support they need — a community those who are turned away miss out on.

“They don’t have that circle of support,” Cunningham said. “We’re that circle for these guys. We’re it. That’s a part of how poverty and oppression work. Until the community claims them, that cycle perpetuates.”

The authors of Humanitarian Negotiations Revealed: The MSF Experience recount their experiences with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). In particular they focus on some of the practical and frequently difficult experience of having to work with unfriendly governments or warring factions. While Doctors Without Borders is committed to providing medical assistance to all individuals civilian and combatant alike, they must be wary of being used for political purposes.

The following excerpt is from the chapter, Afghanistan: Regaining Leverage, by Xavier Crombe (with Michiel Hofman) describing MSFs return to the country. In this passage Crombe describes MSFs dealings with opposition groups, including the Taliban:

Full compliance with MSF’s “no weapon” policy was to be the starting point for the medical programmes. They were launched officially in Kabul in October, but remained effectively on hold in Lashkar Gah until January 2010. The teams were on the wards, but had to wait for drug supplies to arrive as their transport by truck from Kabul to Helmand depended on obtaining permission from the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan (IEA), the most influential armed opposition group, also known as “Quetta Shura”. This was in essence a sovereignty issue, as most districts in the southern provinces, and consequently road traffic, were under effective control of this group.

Since MSF’s return to Afghanistan, there had been several setbacks in engaging the Taliban leadership. Getting approval for the Kabul project had been relatively straightforward as MSF’s initial opposition contacts judged the selected hospital located in a Pashtun area to be easily accessible by their constituency, and planned surgical activities opened up the prospect of treatment for their wounded combatants. But the scant interest and commitment they had shown from the outset regarding MSF’s intended projects in the southern provinces, including Helmand, known to be the heartland of the IEA, had cast doubts over the breadth of their connections.

Hence, in the spring of 2009, MSF set about establishing different contacts with the opposition, this time relying on its own network of former Afghan staff and, by the summer, had been able to initiate communication with known IEA members. Right from their first discussions, these new interlocutors made clear to MSF that its earlier contacts were not legitimate representatives of their group. Their connections lay instead with the Haqqani Network, whose influence extended over Kabul and Afghanistan’s southeast, as well as the Waziristan region in Pakistan. The IEA was rooted in the south but was also influential in the rising insurgencies in the west and north. The two groups were partner organisations, but they had distinct constituencies and interests. From then on, the two channels should be engaged separately for negotiation, depending on the area at stake.

While MSF had been successful in expanding its network, time had nonetheless been lost in identifying the right contacts to secure guarantees in Helmand. Moreover, soon after a first and promising encounter, the organisation was informed that the IEA council had rejected its two projects, on the grounds that working in MOPH facilities displayed unacceptable support for the Karzai government, derisively referred to as the “Labour Department” of the American forces. This decision effectively prohibited the safe transport of drugs by road from Kabul to Helmand.

It took six more months to resolve the issue. MSF defended its operational choice as a necessary first step to import drugs and insisted that, with its teams already on the ground and drugs waiting in Kabul, it was too late to cut the project short. Assessments for future projects, MSF argued, would consider areas suggested by the IEA. The agency also stressed it had received assurances from foreign and Afghan forces that they would not interfere in the hospitals. On the part of the IEA, security considerations were inseparable from issues of legitimacy and the authorisation for the transport of drugs MSF was asking for was used as a bargaining chip to extract further guarantees and concessions from the organisation. Airing their distrust of the MOPH doctors in Lashkar Gah and of US respect for the Geneva Conventions, the opposition demanded that MSF give a commitment in writing stating that it had control over the hospital staff and provide an official MoU with the US military to prove their compliance with humanitarian law. MSF was careful not to commit itself regarding the behaviour of the international forces, stressing instead its ability to hold them to account through the media.

In January 2010, the IEA eventually gave permission for the drugs to be transported to Helmand. Wishing to be recognised as an able and legitimate government in the regions where they were gradually gaining control, the opposition leadership was seemingly more interested in medical aid as a tool to win “hearts and minds” than as an actual asset for their combatants. When MSF asked if the IEA had suggestions for future projects, one representative answered: “The biggest needs are with civilians, especially maternity care; we can take care of our fighters”.

ARE COLLEGE STUDENTS LEARNING? Jonathan Zimmerman of New York University writes in the L.A. Times: Heres the big open secret in American higher education: Most institutions have no meaningful way to measure the quality of their instruction. And the president didnt ask us to develop one, either. Instead, he suggested that the federal government tie student aid to colleges success in reducing tuition and in helping students move forward. In a follow-up speech at the University of Michigan on Friday, he called for a college score card that would rank institutions according to cost, graduation rates and future earnings.

Yesterday I described how you can use College Results Online to help you generate a promising list of college. If you missed it, here it is:

Heres another idea:  Head to The Center for College Affordability and Productivity, which is the think tank that generates Forbes magazines annual college rankings.

On the centers site you can find the schools that Forbes thinks are the best, as well as other lists that are broken down by region, type of schools and more. Forbes ranks 650 colleges and universities.

The Forbes rankings measure these five areas:

•   Student satisfaction (A big factor is RateMyProfessor.com evaluations.)
•   Post-graduate success (Graduates salaries compiled by PayScale.com.
•    Student debt (How much students owe upon graduation.)
•    Four-year grad rate (Most students dont graduate in four years.)
•    Student competitive awards (Includes Rhodes, Fulbright, Watson and more.)

Here is where you can find an exhaustive explanation of the methodology.

What I like about the magazines rankings is it can help you uncover colleges that you didnt know exist. When you look at the master list, lots of prestige schools rise to the top, but so do little-known institutions that do extremely well. In contrast, some hot brand names like Cornell, USC,  Penn, NYU and Washington University in St. Louis dont fare nearly as well as youd expect if you believe that the rankings over at US News are gospel. (Please dont!)

Schools that fared better in the Forbes rankings than some of those heavy hitters included such institutions as:

• Centre College (KY)
• St. Michael’s College (VT)
• Transylvania University (KY)
• St. Norbert College (WI)
• Westmont College (CA)
• University of Redlands (CA)
• St. Olaf College (MN)
• Hobart and William Smith Colleges (NY)
• University of Minnesota at Morris

By the way, the University of Minnesota at Morris is a public liberal arts college which gives in-state tuition ($12,o91) to all students! The school in Morris edged out the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Here are all the ways the Forbes slices and dices the master list. This is a screen shot so you will have to go to the site to access these lists.

The lists that I particularly like are the ones broken down by region because most students do not stray outside their region. Im using the Midwest list as example because these schools are often a better value than those on the coasts. Also, there isnt as much competition to get into wonderful schools in the Midwest because few families outside the region even know about them! Its the same story in the South.

I bet it didnt take you long to stop recognizing the Midwestern schools on this list. And thats why I shared it. There are amazing schools in this country that just need discovering. What you should resist doing is believing the No. 1 is better than No. 19 and No. 25 has to be than No. 50. Just use these lists as idea generators!

If youre a real numbers person, you might also want to check out the centers component rankings list, where you can tease out such things as the schools where the students are happiest with the teaching, earn the highest salaries upon graduation and more.