I know how you expect that sentence to end. We have covered endless stories of Christian schools abusing teachers or students due to their perceived lack of faith or morals. However on this occasion, the line ends something like this: “Student Class President Comes Out As Atheist And Christian College By Supporing Him.” That’s right, when Eric Fromm, 21, announced in an article that he is an atheist, he said the school and fellow students at Northwest Christian University went out of their way to assure him that he was valued and appreciated as part of their community. It is a good thing. A happy story. Such places do exist where religious people are both tolerant and pluralistic.
Continue reading “Student Class President Comes Out As Atheist And His Christian College Responds By . . .”
Category: Academia
We have previously discussed the inspiring story of Malala Yousafzai, who has captivated the world in her struggle after being shot in the head by Muslim extremists for her advocacy of female education. It is a story that appears destined to be read around the world but not in Pakistan where various organizations have banned it from private schools. One educator objected that she referred to the Prophet Muhammad without using the abbreviation PBUH — “peace be upon him.” For that, she is viewed as a dangerous heretic not a heroine.
Continue reading “PBUH or Perish: Educators in Pakistan Ban Malala Yousafzai’s Book As Anti-Islamic”
We have previously seen employees give up their jobs over the purely coincidental use of the number “666” on standard employment forms. Now a Kentucky teenager Codie Thacker has withdrawn from a regional cross country race because she was randomly generated a bib number of “666.” It raises the question again whether companies or schools or events should accommodate such objections.
Christina and Christopher Gring insist that they were just trying to stop the bullying of their young son when they went onto the bus. They clearly made a mistake, particularly when they allegedly started screaming at terrified students and using profanities. However, they were then arrested for conduct that at one time would have resulted in a meeting with the principal and clear guidelines on staying away from the bus in the future.
I have previously written about the increasing monitoring and discipline of teachers for conduct in their private lives. In San Diego, three high school coaches and a volunteer teacher were suspended for wearing costumes with black face at a Halloween party. They were not doing a minstrel show but were going as the Jamaican bobsled team featured in “Cool Runnings.” The party was at the San Diego State University.
The Virginia Supreme Court waited for Halloween to release a truly scary ruling where it overturned a jury verdict to families of the victims of the 2007 shooting massacre at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. We have previously discussed the absurd state cap on such verdicts which led to the reduction of the award to $100,000 for each family — an insulting amount of reduced damages that eliminated the deterrent impact of such legal judgments. Now the Virginia Supreme Court has gone further and wiped out the remaining award on the ground that Virginia Tech had no duty to warn the students despite national condemnation of the university for gross negligence before and during the shooting spree by student gunman Seung-Hui Cho.
Continue reading “Virginia Supreme Court Reverses Award Against Virginia Tech From 2007 Shootings”
Law professors at Cleveland-Marshall are alleging Dean Craig Boise has crossed the line from the merely sarcastic to the outright satanic in issuing $666 raises to professors who were members of a labor bargaining unit. While others received raises of $5,000 or $3,000, the six professors who were union organizers received the increases that reflected the “sign of the beast.”
You have never really heard Dueling Banjos until you have heard them on Tesla coils.
You may recall John Pike, a 40-year-old former officer with University of California-Davis, who became infamous due to the videotape below in which he calmly sprayed kneeling students with pepper spray during a Nov. 2011 protest. He was fired for his conduct by the university. However, he has now been awarded $38,059 in workers’ compensation for depression and anxiety in dealing with the controversy.
LawDragon has released the results of its increasingly popular survey of the top lawyers in America. I was fortunate to again make the list this year.
Continue reading “LawDragon Selects Top 500 Lawyers”
There are times when our discussion of recent stories touching on the law and policy can hit too close to home. This is one such tragic circumstance. George Washington biomedical engineering student Rahul Gupta (left), has been charged with the killing of a Georgetown University law student, Mark Edward Waugh. Both men came from McLean, where I live, and attended one of the two high schools here, Langley. Gupta’s defense will be made more difficult by incriminating statements made upon his first encounter with police.
Continue reading “GW Student Arrested In Stabbing Death Of Georgetown Law Student”
Contractor Rufus McDonald, 52, is upset. He found historic papers of Harvard’s first black graduate, Richard T. Greener, in the attic of an abandoned home. He immediately offered to sell the papers to Harvard but was disappointed by the offer made by the school. Faced with what he describes as an insulting offer for such invaluable papers, McDonald announced that he would burn them unless people gave him more money.
It appears that the school officials at Bonners Ferry High School have learned to appreciate the concept of collective population punishment. After a series of faux bomb threats scrawled in the boy’s bathroom, school officials have placed large areas under continual surveillance and reportedly withheld food from all boys to try to prompt them to turn in the culprits.
We have often discussed the increasing use of zero tolerance policies that allow administrators and teachers to shed any obligation for judgment or discretion. This is no more obvious than the bizarre case of Erin Cox. Cox did what most people would consider the responsible thing when called by a friend who was concerned that she had too much to drink: she agreed to serve as her designated driver. That act resulted in her discipline by North Andover High School, which is defending its decision to punish her as a technical violation of its alcohol policy.
This is amazing. In Montana, scientists have discovered a mosquito that is still carrying blood from animals in the Eocene — that is some 46 million years ago. Of course, creationists would point out that scientists are again some 46 million years off since the Earth is only a few thousand years old.
Continue reading “Scientists Find Rare Mosquito Containing Blood From Eocene Period”