The Citadel Fought the Admission of Women. Now a Female Cadet Will Lead the Corps.

When Sarah Zorn applied for admission to the Citadel four years ago, she had not heard the story of Shannon Faulkner, the first woman to gain full admission to the famed Southern military college.

Ms. Zorn did not know about the two-and-a-half-year legal battle that had forced the college to accept her, or the death threats, or the sexist epithets spray-painted on her parents’ house, or the federal marshals who escorted Ms. Faulkner to campus on her first day as a cadet in 1995, or that she had dropped out a week later.

She knows now. But the 21-year-old college junior believes that the 175-year-old South Carolina institution that once fought admitting women as if they were an invading army has made its peace with the idea.

…On Friday afternoon, Ms. Zorn, in a dress uniform and a black shako, officially took over the post during the Citadel’s pomp-laden graduation parade, known as the Long Gray Line. As the college’s 2,400 undergraduates stood at attention, she received, with great formality, a gilt-handled sword from her predecessor, Dillon Graham.

The Citadel Fought the Admission of Women. Now a Female Cadet Will Lead the Corps. – The New York Times

hmmm

Colorado State investigates why Native American students on admissions tour were reported to police

That two young Native American men could be pulled from a tour for police questioning on the basis of a call from one woman who didn’t report that they had done anything remotely illegal.

…Students join admissions tours late all the time. Some students are chatty with others on the tour and others aren’t. But these behaviors are all pretty standard for teenagers and not seen as cause for calling the police.

….The student tour guide posted a letter to the Native American students’ mother in which she said that their behavior was not the least bit threatening or out of the ordinary. “I cannot believe someone on my tour interpreted what your sons ‘did’ (nothing) as suspicious. When they joined my tour, minutes after I left, I was just pleased that they were able to find us. When they didn’t introduce themselves, I responded in the way that I have to countless other teenagers who don’t feel comfortable speaking in front of a group of 20 strangers — with a self-deprecating joke,” wrote the tour guide.

“I can’t explain fully the actions of the other mother. I have no idea what she was feeling because she didn’t tell me. But I know racism lives and breathes on my campus and in our country. I know that I am so saddened by how your sons were treated because I want everyone on my tour to feel like they’ve stepped into their new home. I am angry that they had to feel unwelcome because of actions I knew nothing about.”

Colorado State investigates why Native American students on admissions tour were reported to police

Blatant and gross misuse of police resources. The woman should face charges. If CSU hasn’t banned her from campus they should face charges for encouraging terrorism, intimidation, and hate crimes.

CSU’s offer of paying expenses incurred and a VIP tour is a joke. If they actually cared and wanted to make up for this hateful behavior they themselves facilitated they would offer free tuition for both boys, for four years. Anything short of free tuition and banning the offending ‘mother’ is tacit support of her calling 911 in the first place.

Before you say, isn’t banning the woman from campus and wanting her to face criminal charges is harsh, realize that her actions did not give the boys the benefit of the doubt and it was her intention to have them removed from campus and face charges. Since the parameters were already set by her actions, there is no valid reason for her not to be judged and treated by those exact parameters. She should be required to experience the same consequences she selected for others.

If the mother faces no consequences then it is tacit sanctioning of her thinking and her actions. Consequences that involve police action, criminal prosecution, and permanent banning from CSU’s campus is required. anything less is a spit in the face of both justice and law and order.

Colorado State University: 911 audio released after parent called cops on Native American brothers because they made her ‘nervous’

Colorado State University: 911 audio released after parent called cops on Native American brothers because they made her ‘nervous’ – CNN

The mother who called the police should be banned from the college campus. she should also face charges for wasting police resources on her racism. If the school takes no action against her they are sanctioning this injustice.

If I were the parent of the two boys involved I’d sue Colorado State University and the responding police force all the way to the stone ages for enabling this backwards woman to use tax=payer funded resources to terrorize two innocent children.

Without severe consequences for actions like this there is no motivation for small minded individuals to stop being such outrageous and entitled assholes.

FCC Delays Are Keeping Broadband From Rural School Kids

Under the Trump administration, rural schools requesting funding for broadband expansion have faced record delays and denials, according to the non-profit EducationSuperHighway, which works to get schools connected to the internet. By their count, more than 60 eligible fiber projects have been unfairly denied since 2017, a rate that EducationSuperHighway CEO Evan Marwell says has spiked dramatically from years prior. Meanwhile, more than 30 schools have been waiting about a year for approval. On average, they currently wait 240 days for an answer. That’s despite state governments having put up $200 million in funds to supplement broadband expansion projects. “The table is set, and what we’ve run into is a bunch of red tape,” says Marwell.

…One of the overriding themes you’ve seen from the Trump FCC has been eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse above all else,” says Marwell. That was FCC chairman Ajit Pai’s justification for proposing new restrictions on the Lifeline program, which supplies internet service to poor families.

Now, USAC asks E-rate applicants detailed questions about the precise cost of each fiber construction project, the route the fiber would take to get to the school, and other specifics that the small schools asking for these funds have struggled to answer. Often, the problems preventing students from getting online prove to be blandly bureaucratic.

FCC Delays Are Keeping Broadband From Rural School Kids | WIRED

sighhh

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin apologizes for attempting to link teacher protests to child abuse

Bevin had come under scrutiny after he told a reporter children left at home could be susceptible to sexual assault or even be poisoned.

“I guarantee you somewhere in Kentucky today a child was sexually assaulted that was left at home because there was nobody there to watch them,” Bevin said Friday in a video tweeted by WDRB-TV reporter Marcus Green.

“I guarantee you somewhere today a child was physically harmed or ingested poison because they were home alone because a single parent didn’t have any money to take care of them. I’m offended by the idea that people so cavalierly and so flippantly disregarded what’s truly best for children.”

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin apologizes for comments linking teacher protests to child abuse – CBS News

Hateful douchebag asshole

Black Marjory Stoneman Douglas Students Say Police at School Make Them “Feel Like Prisoners”

As reported by the Miami Herald and documented in tweets from WLRN reporter Nadege C. Green, students held a press conference Wednesday to show a more diverse image of their high school, where black students make up 11 percent of the student body, according to the Herald. They wanted to address the predominately white image portrayed in the national media coverage following the February 14 mass shooting. Those students, including Mei-Ling Ho-Shing, a 17-year-old junior, spoke up about wanting to be represented in the national conversation around March For Our Lives, especially because gun violence impacts communities of color (and particularly, as per a 2015 Brookings Institute report, young black men.)

…“I know a lot of minorities are not joining us because they don’t see people like them talking about it,” Mei-Ling told Teen Vogue. The students she joined on Wednesday said they wholeheartedly support the movement and just want to be seen as a part of it.

…[Kai Koerber, a 17-year-old junior] said the heightened police presence at MSD that has come in response to the shootings is an alarming trend.

“It’s bad enough we have to return with clear backpacks,” he said at the press conference. “Should we also return with our hands up?”

For Kai, adding more police officers is far more concerning than reassuring. U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights data indicates that black students are disproportionately arrested at schools compared to their peers, as PBS reported. Kai told Teen Vogue that he has already been racially profiled at school by an officer.

https://twitter.com/ChaniceALee/status/979135379206037504

“If we are going to have more police officers at school, that only makes the problem worse,” he said. “We are trying heal from the tragedy we experienced, but we’re being made to feel like prisoners.”

Black Marjory Stoneman Douglas Students Say Police at School Make Them “Feel Like Prisoners” | Teen Vogue

sigh….

Trump judicial nominee refuses to say if landmark civil rights opinion was correctly decided

Wendy Vitter..who is the General Counsel of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans and is married to former Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter, who was implicated in the sex scandal concerning the so called “DC Madam” back in 2007… [Vitter]refused on Wednesday to say whether a landmark civil rights opinion was correctly decided, triggering outrage and renewed criticism of the President’s efforts to reshape the judiciary.

….Brown v. the Board of Education — a seminal opinion that held that state laws requiring separate but equal schools violated the Constitution.
“I don’t mean to be coy,” Vitter, who is up for a seat on the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, said at her confirmation hearing, “but I think I can get into a difficult, difficult area when I start commenting on Supreme Court decisions — which are correctly decided and which I may disagree with.”

Trump judicial nominee refuses to say if landmark civil rights opinion was correctly decided – CNNPolitics

…That fuck?!!

Purchase of Mount Ida is an insult to UMass Boston

[UMass Boston] …students — who make up the most diverse campus in New England — are getting another painful lesson about where they stand in the university pecking order. As low as it goes.

…The 72-acre Mount Ida campus will give UMass Amherst students a pastoral base of operations for internships and academic collaborations in Boston. Meanwhile, UMass Boston students have endured months of administrative turmoil and cold-hearted cost-cutting on a campus infamous for its crumbling infrastructure.

…And now Meehan, with customary rubber-stamped approval from the UMass board, is taking on debt at Mount Ida that is estimated to run from $55 million to $70 million.

……The memo states that the university will cut the funding for the centers and institutes that require the biggest subsidies. They include the William Monroe Trotter Institute for the Study of Black Culture, the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy, the Institute for New England Native American Studies, the Labor Resource Center, and the Center for Social Policy.

…Mills is closing the deficit by slicing away at programs that make up the heart and soul of UMass Boston. The cuts are not coming from the top. They are coming from the most vulnerable — children, women, veterans, and minorities.

…The cuts will reportedly save up to $1.5 million out of a $430 million operating budget. Meanwhile, there’s enough money in the overall system to take on debt-ridden Mount Ida and send its students to UMass Dartmouth at a reduced rate.

Purchase of Mount Ida is an insult to UMass Boston – The Boston Globe

Jeezus…

Black Stoneman Douglas Shooting Survivors: Minority Voices

“We are proud to say we are from Douglas, we are proud to say that those who are at the front are doing a great job, but we have so much to say too,” Mei-Ling Ho-Shing said.

A black male student gave a speech about police having PTSD and “mentally ill” police officers on campus that may racially profile students and treat them as “potential criminals.”

“It is estimated that one-in-three police officers suffer from untreated post-traumatic stress disorder,” student Kai Koerber said. “When mentally ill police officers are invited to safeguard a traumatized student body that becomes a recipe for disaster. Police need to stay on the perimeter of our schools. Those chosen to work at school should receive PTSD counseling and special diversity training,”

Black Stoneman Douglas Shooting Survivors: Minority Voices Not Valued As Much As White Students | Video | RealClearPolitics

hmmmm

Black Marjory Stoneman Douglas students feel overlooked

Black students gathered in Parkland Wednesday said they felt overlooked and underrepresented by both the media and their peers leading the charge for more gun control. And some of the solutions meant to keep them safer in the wake of a gunman slaughtering 17 of their classmates leave them feeling more afraid than before.

Kai Koerber, a 17-year-old Marjory Stoneman Douglas student, returned to school after the shooting to see his slain classmates’ empty desks turned into memorials — and a campus swarming with police officers. To him, extra cops around doesn’t mean more people to protect him; it means more chances to become a victim of police brutality.

…Kai worries that police will racially profile students and treat them as “potential criminals,” particularly students of color.

“It’s bad enough we have to return with clear backpacks,” he said. “Should we also return with our hands up?”

Black Marjory Stoneman Douglas students feel overlooked | Miami Herald

hmmmm

Black students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS want to be heard

“I would say that our voices were not intentionally excluded, but they were not intentionally included,” said Kai Koerber, a junior. “Now more than ever, it is time to represent the diversity of our school, and the diversity in the world.”

…About 11% of the high school’s 3,000 students are black, and some say their concerns about gun violence are not getting enough attention, WPEC reported.

“We are proud to say that we’re from Douglas,” student Mei-Ling Ho-Shing told reporters Wednesday, WPEC-TV reported.

“We are proud to say that those who are in the front are doing a great job, but we also have so much to say.”

…”The police are making their own rules and are turning our school into a police state,” he said. “Every day, students lose more and more freedoms at MSD. Students of color have become targets and white students have become suspects. …”

“Students of color, black and brown students, like myself have been racially profiled while we are on heightened alert, fearing the emergence of another Caucasian shooter,” [Junior, Kai] Koerber said.

“I would like to see us not only reclaim our school, but our right to privacy on campus. We do not welcome the militarization of MSD. It is terrible to see our school lose control over the protection of their students and their facilities.”

Black students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS want to be heard – CNN

Yup.

Last Stoneman Douglas shooting victim leaves hospital

Anthony was the last of 20 students who fled into a room and was trying to lock the door that day when he was shot, Carlos told “Good Morning America” in February. Anthony held his ground in the doorway, putting his body in between the bullets and his classmates, who all survived uninjured, Carlos said.

Last Stoneman Douglas shooting victim leaves hospital – ABC News

hmmm

Parkland Student David Hogg Says Black Classmates Weren’t Given a Voice by Media

Speaking at an Axios event Friday focused on the gun debate, Hogg was asked about where the news media tripped up in its coverage of the tragic shooting at his Parkland, Florida school that left 17 people dead.

“Not giving black students a voice,” Hogg responded, via Axios. “My school is about 25 percent black, but the way we’re covered doesn’t reflect that.”

Parkland Student David Hogg Says Black Classmates Weren’t Given a Voice by Media

hmmmm

What It’s Like to Be a Woman in the Academy – The Chronicle of Higher Education

I was 22, fresh from undergrad, and, as a child of the “girl power” 1990s, entirely unused to the idea that anyone would take me less seriously simply because I was not a man. I soon learned that being taken seriously depended on style and self-presentation as much as on intelligence and insight.

The male graduate students in my cohort displayed their academic seriousness with an ease that I found impossible to imitate. They knew how to dress for class (blazer, oxfords, a touch of tweed); how to speak forcefully in seminar, without making apologies or soliciting approval*; how to shake hands with male faculty members in a way that was both chummy and professional.

…”Women are welcome,” announced the male graduate student who directed the Hegel reading group, as if women needed his permission** to think dialectically.

…Anxious and confused about how to establish a suitable academic self, I spent my first few years of graduate school vacillating between girlishness and a kind of steely professionalism. I started wearing dresses, then chopped off all my hair. I spoke with ingratiating, self-effacing “uptalk” one day, and was entirely too strident the next.

As the years went by, and I advanced toward the Ph.D., the rules for women became more numerous, and the box for acceptable behavior grew smaller still. Do be an approachable teacher, but don’t be too friendly with your students, or they’ll take advantage of you. Don’t wear a dress to your MLA interview; you’ll be in a hotel room, possibly proximate to a bed, and men won’t be able to stop themselves from sexualizing you. At your job talk, be sure to say “thank you” after each question; men shouldn’t do this — they would appear obsequious — but women must (or so a female faculty member advised me). Be extremely careful when speaking about partners and families, or you might not get the job.

…Hierarchies — of gender, race, and class — are established and reinforced through hirings and firings, handshakes and outfits.

What It’s Like to Be a Woman in the Academy – The Chronicle of Higher Education

hmmmm

 

 

 

* – one be inclined to add, without fear of their confidence being interpreted as being over-the-top, bitchy, unfounded, or inappropriately aggressive, and giving rise to reactions like, “Who do he think he is?”

** – (or encouragement and support)

Parkland students return to school with clear backpacks, increased security

But these teenagers won’t be returning to a normal high school experience. Instead, they’ll be met with strict security measures which are intended to protect them from another mass shooting but have some students feeling as if they’ll be learning in a prison.

…MSD students will only be allowed to carry clear backpacks on campus and will be required to wear new student IDs at all times.

There will be an increased police presence on campus, as Gov. Rick Scott provides extra Florida Highway Patrol officers to beef up security and provide support to Broward County sheriff’s deputies. Students will have limited points of entry to the school.

…”We have no sense of normalcy anymore,” said [student, Isabelle] Robinson, 17.

…”It feels like being punished,” Robinson told CNN. “It feels like jail, being checked every time we go to school.”

…Many students, like Robinson, aren’t happy about the new security measures. She pointed out that the gunman, Nikolas Cruz, was not a student of Stoneman Douglas at the time of the shooting, so the new security measures that appear to target students are counterproductive.

“It’s like putting into place all these rules that wouldn’t have changed anything,” Robinson said.

…I understand why they are doing it, but if a person wants to bring a gun on campus, they just aren’t going to put it in their backpack.” [- Senior, Demitri Hoth]

…[Sophomore, Daniel] Bishop said he would support metal detectors but called the clear backpacks “an invasion of privacy.” He believes the increased security measures will make students “safer,” but that doesn’t mean they’ll be “safe.”

…The increased police presence has also given students of color at Stoneman Douglas a sense of unease, according to Kai Koerber, a junior. He said the school is being turned into “a police state.”

“Every day, students lose more and more freedoms at MSD,” Koerber said. “Students of color have become targets and white students have become suspects. We do not welcome the militarization of MSD. It is terrible to see our school lose control over the protection of their students and their families.”

Parkland students return to school with clear backpacks, increased security – CNN

Jeezus… The crass stupidity of good intentions not backed up by thinking things through….