And where there’s scandal, there’s Taiwanese animation studio Next Media Animation, which always offers an entertaining slant on current events. Here’s NMA’s take on the Mike Rice firing:

According to Fox News, Rice is due a $100,000 bonus.

CBS Atlanta reports that a woman returned to her University of Georgia residence hall living quarters to find another woman sitting on her couch, using her laptop to mindlessly browse Facebook.

When the woman confronted her unwelcome Facebooker, she reportedly “stammered and apologized” before grabbing her things and scurrying off.

Later, it was determined that the woman had also peed on the couch that she was using to browse Facebook.

According to police, the intruder was an 18-year-old UGA student.

A college student stammering, in the wrong house, mindlessly clicking around Facebook and pissing on a couch? Wait a minute, that sounds familiar. Oh yeah, that basically describes every single night of a college freshman. Sounds like someone simply had too many jello shots and wandered into the wrong house.

Or, we have something much more sinister afoot. Police say the investigation is ongoing.

Philadelphia’s Drexel University knows that everyone needs a portable computing option when they’re studying on campus. But what about those students who don’t want to lug their personal computer around with them?

To help out students, Drexel has unveiled a MacBook vending machine on campus. It sits in the University’s Hagerty Library and allows students, faculty, and staff to “check out” a MacBook for free, for five hours at a time – as long as they sport the proper Drexel ID of course.

The vending machine is open 24/7 and is entirely self-service. It contains a maximum of 12 MacBooks.

Drexel says they’re “providing a solution to students who don’t want to carry a laptop while walking late at night from their dorm or off-campus housing to the library.”

If this vending machine proves to be a success, Drexel says they’ll possibly add others in other areas around campus. Apparently, they’re weighing iPad vending machines as well.

[Drexel News Blog]

Slashgear is reporting that Amazon has launched a $50 off promotion for its Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ tablets – but only for students. Anyone who is signed up with Amazon Student (using a .edu email address) for a discounted Amazon Prime membership has access to the deal. Both the Wi-Fi and 4G LTE versions of the Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ are eligible for the sale price, and the deal lasts throughout the month of January.

Amazon is encouraging Kindle owners to use their devices as learning tools. Amazon Student members can subscribe to Amazon Prime for $39 a year, which is slightly less than half the normal price. In addition, Amazon allows textbook rental through its Kindle tablets, and recently introduced the X-Ray feature for textbooks. X-Ray is an integrated glossary allows users to cross-reference words and passages throughout a book and on the web through Wikipedia and YouTube.

The Facebook Data Science team looked at anonymous posts and comments between parents and their children on the network and produced a pretty interesting report on how families interact on the site. Their first finding had to do with the age of the child as an indicator of how likely they were to be the one to initiate the friendship with their parents.

Spolier alert – kids in their early to mid twenties don’t really have the desire to be Facebook buddies with mom and dad.

From Facebook:

From ages 13-17, the child is more likely to send the initial friend request. Over 65% of friendships between 13-year-olds and their parents are initiated by the child. But the older the child is when the friendship is formed, the less likely the child is to be the one sending the friend request, with the likelihood bottoming out at 40% for children in their early to mid-twenties. Then the probability of the child initiating increases again, eventually reaching 50% by their mid-40s.

Here’s that data visualized:

Once they parent and child become friends, the child becomes more likely to initiate contact via posts or comments as they get older. At every age, daughters are much more likely to initiate contact than sons.

You can check out the full report here.

Jose Barrientos decided to make his low-level course more exciting by pulling an elaborate prank on his classmates. For months, Jose spoke in a “mexican” accent. He even gave all of his required speeches in said accent.

The only thing is that Jose doesn’t really have any such accent. What he does have is patience and dedication to the joke. Check out the prank (complete with the big reveal and reaction) below:

Microsoft is the latest company to adopt this student-friendly approach by making its Office 365 service dirt cheap. Office 365 is Microsoft’s new cloud-platform where users can edit Word, Excel and other Office software via Web browsers. The service normally costs $3 per month for students, but Microsoft is offering it at $1.67 per month ($80 over four years) to college students.

Beyond the cheap price, the service has some specific perks for students. Subscribers will get access to all the applications in the Office software suite including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access. A subscription lasts four years, but students can sign up for four more if their college journey takes that long.

The other perks include automatic saving to SkyDrive for all documents and an extra 20GB storage on said SkyDrive. Students will now be able to save up to 27GB worth of content across all of their projects. Skype is even getting in on the fun by offering 60 Skype world minutes a month to subscribers.

So, who’s eligible to take part in this deal? Unlike most student offers, full and part-time students can take advantage of the special pricing as long as they attend an “accredited institution.” Even better, faculty and staff at said institutions can also sign up for the service. It’s not known if faculty and staff are also held to the four year limit.

UPDATE: Microsoft just got back with us. A spokesperson said that all “eligible students, faculty or staff members can renew their 4-year subscription to Office 365 University once.” Guess that means professors can only get 8 years just like their students. Tenure doesn’t mean as much as it used to.

The list, which was released by the Princeton Review, gives you a breakdown of the top schools that are known for the wild and wooly ways. If your parental units are majorly concerned about what type of atmosphere you’re heading into this fall, perhaps you should keep this article away from their prying eyes, as it might expose your secret plans to consume copious amounts of alcohol in-between classes. And the last thing any of us at WebProNews want is to allow your classes to get in the way of your partying. Heaven forbid.

Below you can find 20 schools that party harder than anyone else out there, which, of course, is something to be proud of when shaping the minds of the younger generation. I know I sound like a cynical ass and a giant douche, but I tend to get a little fussy whenever someone says they’re attending a particular college so they can stay drunk the entire time.

Before you start bombarding me with expletive-laden hate mail, please note that my opinions are not based on the schools themselves. They can’t help it if their students are notorious partiers. However, high school graduates who make their decisions based solely on the establishment’s reputation are the ones I’m shaking my head at. Just to clarify.

Ohio University – Athens, Ohio
University of Georgia – Athens, Ga.
University of Mississippi – Oxford, Miss.
University of Iowa – Iowa City, Iowa
University of California Santa Barbara – Santa Barbara, Calif.
West Virginia University – Morgantown, W. Va.
Penn State University – University Park, Pa.
Florida State University – Tallahassee, Fla.
University of Florida – Gainesville, Fla.
University of Texas – Austin, Texas
University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign
Syracuse University – Syracuse, N.Y.
Louisiana State University – Baton Rouge, La.
University of Wisconsin-Madison – Madison, Wis.
DePauw University – Greencastle, Ind.
Indiana University – Bloomington, Ind.
Arizona State University – Tempe, Ariz.
University of Maryland – College Park, Md.
University of Vermont – Burlington, Vt.
University of South Carolina – Columbia, S.C.

Prepare to engage jealousy shields, as the preceding paragraph actually took place somewhere within the wilds of Toronto, Canada. Business Insider, by way of Reddit, posted the story earlier today, and I think they were as astounded by the embedded image as I am. Most people are forced to address their college tuition in small, monthly payments over an extended period of time. So when you’re pouring over your budget this weekend, think about this individual and the freedom he or she is experiencing as a result. Then, you know, cry yourself to sleep.

Sorry if this ruins your day. Seriously.

The fraternity was given three years probation. Additionally, SAE will have to participate in a series of educational programs as a result of their impossibly heinous behavior. No word yet if any lessons were learned in the process, though I suppose only time will tell if the frat will straighten up their act.

“Consistent with the specific behaviors involved and the OAC sanctioning guidelines, the OAC imposed a three-term probationary period and an extensive series of educational requirements on SAE,” Thompson wrote in her letter to the Dartmouth community. 27 people were originally fingered in the hazings, though these individual charges were later dropped.

Sigma Alpha Epsilon is apparently a pretty rowdy group, engaging in a number of peculiar hazing events aimed at fraternity pledges. Scenarios listed in Thompsons’s letter included forcing folks to swim in kiddie pools filled with food, take copious shots of saltwater or alcohol, and run through public areas while donning formal dresses. Although more disturbing behavior was reported by various sources — anyone interested in chowing down on a vomit omelete? — Dartmouth officials could not confirm the legitimacy of these horrifying allegations.

Despite the ruling, some people believe school officials aren’t taking the hazings seriously.

Andrew Lohse, a 22 year-old member of SEA, stated in an email, “The sanctions against SAE are a slap on the wrist and proof that the college just isn’t serious – and proof that these organizations can lie with impunity.” Other students have claimed that hazing is endemic of the Dartmouth experience.

Regardless of whether or not this sort of behavior is the norm, the end result is nothing short of horrifying. It’s a shame that people feel the need to treat others in this manner, particularly when everyone is simply attempting to better themselves. As you can see, those who have been following this story on Twitter are equally as disgusted.