The veil has been lifted on one of the most popular KU-related "fake" Twitter accounts: The man behind the @FakeJeffWithey account has revealed himself in a column in today's University Daily Kansan.

His name is Ty Gardner, and he actually graduated from KU last spring. He talked with the Journal-World back in 2011 for a story about KU-related Twitter parody accounts, but he asked for his identity to remain secret. Since then, the PG-13-rated feed, which cast the 7-foot KU basketball player as some kind of raging party animal and made various KU basketball-related cracks, has exploded from about 1,800 followers to more than 32,000.

But now that Withey's KU career is finished, Gardner says he's hanging up the keys to the @FakeJeffWithey account. The Kansan even got a photo of him posing next to Real Jeff Withey on the Allen Fieldhouse floor. (Withey has said he's a fan.)

The front page of today's Daily Kansan, containing the big @FakeJeffWithey scoop. by Matt Erickson

I'm curious how the reveal might help or hurt Gardner's career prospects, or how much he cares. But in the Kansan column, he writes about how the fake account became a big part of his life and thanks everyone for playing along.

Perhaps you feel as though the end of @FakeJeffWithey will leave a void in your life, but now you've got a few extra seconds each day to send your KU news tips to merickson@ljworld.com, so no need to worry.

More LJWorld KU News Coverage

The University Daily Kansan published an interesting little math project today: How much tuition money are KU students throwing out the window if they skip class?

The newspaper crunched some numbers to figure out how much students are paying per individual lecture or class meeting, and therefore how high the "cost" is for skipping a day's worth of class at a time when higher education has never been more expensive.

A first-time freshman paying in-state tuition this year is throwing away about $18.30 if she skips a class that meets three times a week, the Kansan calculated, or about $27.40 if it's a class that meets twice a week. For out-of-state first-year freshmen this year, the cost is steeper: $47.60 per class session if it meets three times a week, or $71.40 if it meets twice a week.

(Those numbers have to be specified for first-time freshmen because of KU's Four-Year Tuition Compact, which locks students in at a steady tuition rate set before their freshman year. For, say, a senior, the cost per class would be a bit lower, because students who started at KU in fall 2009 when tuition was lower are still paying a lower rate now.)

Some KU schools, including business and journalism, charge higher tuition rates, making those courses more costly to skip.

And, of course, tuition is far from the only college expense. Students are also paying for room and board, fees, books and more.

You could probably have an interesting philosophical discussion about what students are really paying for when they pay tuition — are they paying for the time spent in class, or more for the knowledge and skills they gain from the whole experience, or really more for the credit they receive at the end, if they're a bit more cynical? But whatever the case, the math is interesting to think about.

You know, something that definitely doesn't cost you anything is sending your KU news tips to us. Send them to merickson@ljworld.com, but not during class. (Unless your instructor has assigned you to do so, in which case: Bravo, instructor!)

Fort Hays State University finds itself without a student newspaper today for the first time in more than a century.

The paper published its last print issue Thursday, as reported by the Hays Daily News, a university news release and the student paper itself, the University Leader.

The paper has run out of money, editor-in-chief Molly Walter says. Advertising has declined, the editor told the Hays Daily News, and the paper's funding from the Fort Hays student government was cut by $12,500 for this school year.

KU's student government threatened to cut its funding for the student paper, the University Daily Kansan, back in 2010. The Kansan cut its Friday print edition last semester, moving to four days per week.

Hannah Wise, the Kansan's current editor, told me when I checked in that things are going smoothly there right now, though. She said the Monday-through-Thursday model is working well, and there are no plans to cut down on publication days further.The Kansan staff is especially focusing on the paper's website and social-media efforts, though.

The Fort Hays release on the end of the University Leader says the university's president, Ed Hammond, declined a request to "bail out" the paper with funding that would keep it alive, and the university would work to plan a new multimedia news operation for students by the fall semester.

The University Leader's own story said "a few staff members" will keep publishing stories online.

I checked with the president of the Kansas Collegiate Media group for college publications, Mike Swan of Butler County Community College, and he said he wasn't aware of another Kansas college or university that had shut down its student paper in recent years.

He said the paper's demise would be a shame, as a student newspaper is a valuable watchdog for a university.

"Who else cares about Fort Hays State more than the student paper?" Swan said.

You don't have to worry about the print edition of Heard on the Hill closing down, because there isn't one. But that doesn't mean we aren't keeping an eye on things, with your help, as long as you keep your KU news tips coming to merickson@ljworld.com.

The University Daily Kansan has an interesting look today at how the rights granted to KU students by the university compare to those of students at other universities in the Midwest.

The newspaper compared KU's Code of Student Rights and Responsibilities to policies at Kansas State University, the University of Missouri, the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas. And according to a comparative chart (which didn't make it into the online version), KU appears to grant more rights to its students than any of the others.

Two notable rights KU students have that the others don't are freedom of expression in the classroom ("subject only to the responsibility of the instructor to maintain order") and a protection against receiving an academic punishment for committing a crime off campus.

Some other rights that KU grants that other universities don't: the right to challenge a grade, protection from censorship or unreasonable search and seizure in student housing, and the right to distribute written materials on campus without prior approval. (Edit: Things might be a bit more complicated. Check my comment below.)

That Code of Student Rights and Responsibilities dates to 1970, when the Student Senate wrote it up and the chancellor approved it. Only KU and Oklahoma have such a document devoted to the rights of students, among the universities the Kansan looked at.

You all, of course, have the right to ensure people know what's going on at KU by sending your KU news tips to merickson@ljworld.com.

As Finals Week dawns at KU this morning, the always-interesting KU History site lets us know what was going on at KU 71 years ago today, a few days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

On Dec. 10, 1941, the Daily Kansan published a blistering editorial taking the form of an open letter to the Japanese emperor, writing that the United States was sure to emerge victorious from the ensuing conflict. It included the great line "You can paste that in your hat, Mr. Hirohito."

The Kansan and other folks at KU did not even know yet that two of its alumni were among those who'd died in Hawaii on Dec. 7. They'd be the first of 276 KU alumni to give their lives during World War II.

The KU History piece also notes an interesting coincidence — on Dec. 7, the Kansan had published an op-ed from a faculty member (not something you'll see in the Kansan much these days) warning against U.S. involvement in the war. Of course, this was before news of the Pearl Harbor attack had reached campus. But it shows how quickly the attack changed sentiments on the hill and elsewhere.

Should you need a quick break this week, why not send a Heard on the Hill news tip to merickson@ljworld.com.