Report the facts and let the story develop

Odd take, dolphin.

One was apparently a Hispanic Supremacist.


Minneapolis police said they arrested a 23-year-old white man in Bloomington at 11:20 a.m. Tuesday. A second shooting suspect, a 32-year-old Hispanic man, was arrested in south Minneapolis at 12:05 p.m., police said on Twitter. The search for other suspects continues.

http://www.startribune.com/police-searc ... 353154811/

One was apparently a Hispanic Supremacist.


Minneapolis police said they arrested a 23-year-old white man in Bloomington at 11:20 a.m. Tuesday. A second shooting suspect, a 32-year-old Hispanic man, was arrested in south Minneapolis at 12:05 p.m., police said on Twitter. The search for other suspects continues.

http://www.startribune.com/police-searc ... 353154811/

Fucker was exercising his Hispanic privilege I guess.

Escalating Demands
The number and complexity of students' demands of administrations is going up -- and some of the items deal with issues typically left to faculty governance.


When black students at the University of Missouri at Columbia issued a list of demands in October, eight items were listed. The demands were far-reaching, including the ouster of the university system president (a protest goal that was achieved), the hiring of more black faculty members and significant expansion of efforts to promote an inclusive campus. When students at Amherst College staged a sit-in in November, they had [color=#FF0000]11 demands.[/color]

But the demand lists being discussed this week at Hamilton College and Emory University are longer, more detailed -- and in some cases deal directly with decisions typically made by faculty members. And while some of the demands deal with long-festering issues in higher education, others are coming as a surprise to many on campuses, even those sympathetic to the idea that black students face far too much hostility and ignorance at their colleges.

Consider, for example, Hamilton College, where administrators this week received a list of demands from The Movement, an anonymous group of black students and supporters. By the group's count, there are 39 demands, but given that many of those demands have multiple parts, some critics say the demands have gotten so detailed that they are becoming difficult to discuss, and that the number tops 80.

One demand concerns a statement on the college's diversity webpage that was not known previously to be controversial. From the demands: "We, the students of Hamilton College, demand the immediate removal of the repugnant phrase listed within the college’s diversity page stating: 'A student at Hamilton can be grungy, geeky, athletic, gay, black, white, fashionable, artsy, nerdy, preppy, conservative … it doesn't really matter. At Hamilton you can be yourself -- and be respected for who you are.' This distasteful assertion trivializes the identities and experiences of marginalized groups and will not be tolerated further."

Like the lists of demands at many colleges, the one at Hamilton calls for the hiring of many more minority faculty members. But the list also suggests actions against those nonminority professors currently employed. One of the demands: "We, the students of Hamilton College, demand that white faculty are discouraged from leading departments about demographics and societies colonized, massacred and enslaved." It is unclear which fields would be covered.

Hamilton administrators may have had good reason not to expect criticism on historic figures honored on the campus. The college is named for Alexander Hamilton, who was an abolitionist. But the demands include that the college remove the name of Elihu Root from various campus structures. Root was a member of the Class of 1864; he served in positions such as secretary of state and U.S. senator and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912 for his work promoting the idea of arbitration rather than war to resolve conflicts between nations.Because he held key positions at a time when the United States oversaw territories won in the Spanish-American War, the student demands say that Root's name has no place on campus "because of his historic role in colonization."

The college has not responded demand by demand, but has set up several campus discussions on issues of inclusiveness and diversity and has pledged to continue to encourage open discussions on these issues.

Emory on Wednesday did release a demand-by-demand response to 13 demands (many with subdemands), in many cases pledging to find ways to advance certain goals, but not necessarily agreeing to all of the numbers and timetables presented by students there.

Some of the demands deal with topics that Emory's response noted are supervised through the faculty governance process. (In these cases, Emory said it would encourage discussions, but didn't pledge to meet the demands in full.)

One such demand, for example, focused on student evaluations of faculty members. "We demand that the faculty evaluations that each student is required to complete for each of their professors include at least two open-ended questions such as: 'Has this professor made any microaggressions towards you on account of your race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, language and/or other identity?' and 'Do you think that this professor fits into the vision of Emory University being a community of care for individuals of all racial, gender, ability and class identities?' These questions on the faculty evaluations would help to ensure that there are repercussions or sanctions for racist actions performed by professors. We demand that these questions be added to the faculty evaluations by the end of this semester, fall 2015."
The demands that are coming out this week are being widely mocked in the conservative blogosphere.

Others, while opposing many of the specific demands, are offering some sympathy for the students. "Students have the right to raise whatever concerns or demands they wish," said Hank Reichman, chair of the American Association of University Professors Committee A on Academic Freedom, Tenure and Governance, via email. "Faculty and administrators should respond to these demands in a spirit of respectful engagement and with the goal of furthering the students' education. It would be foolish to demand of college-age students the sort of sophisticated understanding of academic freedom we would desire of faculty members and administrators."
At the same time, he said, the kinds of demands being made with regard to faculty members were in many cases ill-advised.
The demand at Hamilton to discourage white faculty members from chairing certain departments "would impose a prejudicial and possibly illegal racial restriction on the hiring of faculty," he said.

And the demand at Emory about faculty evaluations would require questions that are "far too subjective" and are "prejudicial," Reichman said. He added that "a better approach would be to permit students to file complaints about specific mistreatment, backed by evidence, and to handle those through mechanisms that guarantee any faculty member so charged with fair due process protections."

At both Hamilton and Emory (and many other campuses), there are demands about banning Yik Yak, the social media app that has become a place for many people to make racist and sexist comments, anonymously, about specific individuals. Many violent threats have also been made on Yik Yak -- and many administrators would love to see the service go away. However, most academic leaders have determined that it would be impossible to simply ban it.
The Hamilton students demand that Yik Yak be banned from the area, while the Emory students called for the university to use "geofencing" to block Yik Yak on campus. Emory said it would study the feasibility of the idea.

Hilary McQuaide, director of communications for Yik Yak, said colleges would fail in geofencing efforts. The concept is to block access -- and Yik Yak works with high schools to do this because the company doesn't want users under the age of 18. But McQuaide said that while colleges could block people from using institutions' wireless systems, they would be powerless when students used mobile phones with their own connections (which is of course the norm for students).
Tracy Mitrano, a consultant on technology and legal issues in higher education (and an Inside Higher Ed blogger), said she too doubts most colleges would truly be able to block Yik Yak beyond their own networks.

Mitrano said there may well be more important questions and better ways to consider the issue of Yik Yak's impact. Via email, she said that colleges should be talking about such issues as "how race is experienced and discussed on campus, what does free speech mean (and whether or not it matters on either a private or public campus), what does institutional policy on conduct mean, what choices might student make about their use of social media -- especially that which is anonymous -- to express their ideas, and how much ideas matter in the larger process of education. For me observing this entire set of events, taking the opportunity to use these challenging issues as fodder for the educational process appears to be an opportunity lost by reducing the complexity of it down to simple questions of 'to block or not to block' or to a zero-sum game of race versus speech."

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

What the fuck is a "microaggression?"

Resignation at Yale
Woman who sent controversial email about Halloween costumes -- and faced uproar over it -- decides to stop teaching at Yale University.

Erika Christakis, associate master of one of Yale University's residential colleges, has decided to stop teaching at the university, in part because of the continuing controversy over an email message she sent about Halloween costumes.

Some students have been pushing for her ouster from her position in the residential college and from teaching, but she is not leaving the position at the residential college. To some observers, however, it is more concerning that someone who was teaching at a college (off the tenure track) has felt compelled to stop doing so because of reactions to something she wrote.

Christakis, who did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed, wrote in an email to The Washington Post that “I have great respect and affection for my students, but I worry that the current climate at Yale is not, in my view, conducive to the civil dialogue and open inquiry required to solve our urgent societal problems.”

She became a source of controversy just before Halloween. At that time, Yale, like many colleges, was advising students on the types of costumes and parties that might offend others. Christakis sent out an email that said, in part: “Even if we could agree on how to avoid offense -- and I’ll note that no one around campus seems overly concerned about the offense taken by religiously conservative folks to skin-revealing costumes -- I wonder, and I am not trying to be provocative: Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious … a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?

“American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition. And the censure and prohibition come from above, not from yourselves! Are we all okay with this transfer of power? Have we lost faith in young people's capacity -- in your capacity -- to exercise self-censure, through social norming, and also in your capacity to ignore or reject things that trouble you?”

Many minority students immediately called for her ouster. Further, in an incident that attracted widespread attention, a student shouted repeated expletives at her husband, Nicholas Christakis, a professor at Yale and the master of the residential college where she works, when he tried to discuss the email and related issues.
Yale has taken no action against either Christakis, despite the demands that it do so, and officials have stated that they will not do so. But some professors believe that a more forceful defense of them should have been offered, and that people shouldn't stand by while she is called a racist. Last week dozens of faculty members issued an open letter expressing public support for Erika and Nicholas Christakis and calling for an end to personal attacks on them (regardless of what one thinks of the ideas she expressed in the email).

By most accounts Erika Christakis, an expert on early childhood, was an outstanding teacher, and students have in the past praised her courses. As word of her decision to stop teaching at Yale spread, she received support on social media from many, including people who have been critical of the recent student protest movement.
Douglas Stone, a professor of physics at Yale who organized last week's open letter, said via email that the resignation of Christakis from teaching was a cause for great concern. "This is a very disturbing development," he said. "Last year Erika Christakis's classes were shopped by over 300 students and many who wished to take them were turned away. She has received truly exceptional teaching evaluations. This year she planned to teach additional sections to handle the demand. The attacks she has received, not just on her ideas, but on her character and integrity, have led to the decision not to teach …. Those who mounted the campaign against her have significantly reduced educational choice for all Yale undergrads."

Stone added that there was "real reason" to worry about academic freedom at Yale. "Several undergraduates have told me in conversation or by email that they feel scared to express their honest opinions relating to current events that have raised racial issues because of the likely negative and aggressive response of peers," he said. "In some cases these were nonwhite students, who care deeply about racism and sexism, but nonetheless support the sentiments expressed in our letter of support for the Christakises. They have also claimed that their view is probably held by the majority of undergrads; even if that is not true (and I don't know how one can decide at the moment), it suggests that there are substantial barriers to free exchange of views on these issues at Yale in the current climate."
Among those expressing concern about the Christakis announcement was Corey Robin, a professor of political science at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Robin is a prominent voice of the academic left on Twitter.

He said that he wouldn't have been concerned if Christakis had quit or been removed from her position in a residential college, since that is primarily an administrative role.

More issues are raised, Robin wrote on Twitter, by someone in a teaching position who feels unable to teach because of political pressure over her ideas. "All the evidence suggests she is an excellent, popular teacher; the only reason she is stepping down is because of political views she has expressed in the public sphere," Robin wrote.

He added: "I am not a free speech absolutist; I think there are grounds, highly circumscribed and carefully drawn, when someone's speech may justify them being removed from a teaching position. I don't think Christakis's speech rises to that level. While I know full well that employment sanctions are used primarily against the left -- and refuse to join the equivalence brigade which thinks that right and left are equally penalized by these sanctions or that offensive speech from the right is the same as provocative speech from the left, and that you can't tell the difference between the two -- I also know that there is no way the left can escape unharmed from this kind of employment sanctions regime, that we will never be able to win free speech fights if we are perceived as defenders only of speech from our side."

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

What the fuck is a "microaggression?"

From the demands: "We, the students of Hamilton College, demand the immediate removal of the repugnant phrase listed within the college’s diversity page stating: 'A student at Hamilton can be grungy, geeky, athletic, gay, black, white, fashionable, artsy, nerdy, preppy, conservative … it doesn't really matter. At Hamilton you can be yourself -- and be respected for who you are.' This distasteful assertion trivializes the identities and experiences of marginalized groups and will not be tolerated further."

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

Click should not be facing criminal charges. What a fucking joke.

Click should not be facing criminal charges. What a fucking joke.

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

Oregon State University Will Force Incoming Students to Take 'Social Justice Training'
Students will learn to report bias incidents (like pro-Trump chalk messages).
Robby Soave|May. 4, 2016 5:30 pm

Critics of the current intellectual climate at university campuses believe classrooms are indoctrination camps where left-wing academics brainwash students into becoming social justice activists. They are mistaken. The most pernicious and questionably legal forms of indoctrination aren't happening in the classroom at all, and are primarily driven by administrators rather than professors.

Oregon State University provides a good example. The campus has plans to implement a new training program for incoming freshmen in the fall of 2016. Dr. Angela Batista, the campus's interim diversity officer, sent an email to students earlier this week asking them to review the proposed training program. This training is ideological by its very nature: students will complete on-line modules in "social justice learning," "diversity," and "inclusivity."

"This training initiative is intended to provide all students entering Oregon State University an orientation to concepts of diversity, inclusion and social justice and help empower all OSU students to contribute to an inclusive university community," according to the proposal.

The modules will brief students on the history of social justice activism at Oregon, stress the importance of diversity and inclusivity, and provide students with resources to "incorporate the pursuit of social justice within their university experiences." It will let them know about the Bias Response Team, which provides a website where students can report each other for perceived harassment.

The BRT's latest efforts make clear what kind of nonsense counts as a "bias incident." The team has been studiously investigated the appearance of chalk messages on campus. These messages targeted "Muslims and immigrant communities." It seems likely they were actually pro-Trump messages, since Batista also felt the need to reluctantly clarify that Oregon "does not oppose any particular political candidate." Nevertheless, students are encouraged to report chalk drawings that offend them to a variety of university bureaucrats, according to Batista's email.

Students who want to become social justice activists are welcome to do so—and should take advantage of the university's considerable resources geared toward such a life. If professors want to instill left-wing values in their students, they can: as long as they make reasonable accommodations for students to challenge them and engage in an exchange of ideas.

Indoctrination via non-classroom training module, on the other hand, is a much more worrisome system, because it's harder for students to challenge administrators than it is for them to challenge their professors. A student has no method of dissenting during an online training session on the necessity of complying with the university's diversity dictates. Indeed, students might reasonably fear that agreeing with the ideology of the trainers is a precondition of coming to campus.

Students are no longer merely required to grapple with leftist ideas in the classroom—they increasingly must live, sweat, and breathe "oppression studies." It is no wonder that so many of them have developed a healthy disrespect for the principles of the First Amendment. They are being trained—not taught, but trained—to think everything that offends them is a bias incident.

What that leads to is the opposite of inclusiveness and diversity.

This registered sex offender I regularly converse with on the internet just said something really stupid

Frats Chastised for Culturally Appropriating Sexual-Assault Awareness
Elizabeth Nolan Brown|May. 6, 2016 9:45 am

It's a complaint made again and again by those committed to decreasing sexual violence on campus: frat boys are terrible allies. No matter how woke the rest of the campus gets to affirmative consent and avoiding sexual harassment, fraternities continue to make light of or even promote rape with distasteful banners, bawdy skits, and alcohol-laden parties, say detractors. So it might be viewed as a step in the right direction to see the Northwestern University chapter of Theta Chi broadcast a different kind of public message loud and clear from its house walls: "Theta Chi stand against sexual assault."

And that wasn't the only message emblazoned on Northwestern University frat-houses in April, which the school had designated as Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Another banner proclaimed: "We support survivors." A third: "This is everyone's problem."

Yes! Men taking responsibility for their role in stopping rape. Men practicing good "bystander intervention," the new Obama-administration led buzzword for how everyone has a role to play in discouraging bad sexual behavior. Frat boys sending a strong, clear signal that they won't turn a blind eye to sexual violence any longer. Anti-rape advocates on campus must be thrilled, right?

Nope! "These banners publicly project an image of solidarity, and some chapters made signs and marched with Take Back the Night," notes student and Daily Northwestern columnist Jessica Schwalb. But "a congratulations is hardly in order," she continues. "Conversations about sexual assault within fraternities must continue beyond a single month of awareness or solitary presentation from Sexual Health and Assault Peer Educators or Men Against Rape and Sexual Assault."

But how can fraternities continue a conversation they're apparently not even allowed to enter in the first place?

"To display a banner (saying) that 'We support survivors' is really something you have to earn by actually walking the walk," said senior Erik Bakerr. "The idea of displaying a banner like that in front of a house where people have been assaulted before seems really in poor taste to me."

So... students want fraternities to change their culture, but any indications that they are changing their culture are off limits. Got it.

The Interfraternity Council Monday said that it would discourage members from hanging any more awareness banners, and apologized for how the campaign "may have been emotionally triggering for survivors." The Council also announced plans to create a four-year sexual assault education program for fraternity brothers, expanding on an existing program that gives each pledge class a one-time visit from the group Men Against Rape and Sexual Assault.

I don't think they really mean social justice when they say social justice.

It will let them know about the Bias Response Team, which provides a website where students can report each other for perceived harassment.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

What this is more than anything is customer service.

In the emotional hours after five police officers were shot and killed during a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas last month, Rohini Sethi vented on Facebook.

“Forget #BlackLivesMatter;” wrote Sethi, the vice president of the Student Government Association at the University of Houston. “More like AllLivesMatter.”

The post was deleted shortly afterward, but not before word spread through the campus of nearly 43,000 students.

Minority student organizations denounced the post as hateful and inflammatory — unbecoming of a student leader elected to represent the entire student body and who receives a stipend from student fees.

In the ensuing days, minority student organizations would call for her to resign or be ousted from office. A hashtag was born: #RemoveRohini.

“Her post and subsequent actions were very divisive,” student body President Shane A. Smith told The Washington Post. “It caused some in our student body to become very upset with her. They lost faith in her ability to represent them because they felt that she did not understand or respect the struggles in their lives.”

On Wednesday, in a crowded Student Government Association meeting, student leaders gave Smith temporary power to sanction Sethi. Smith complied with their request that he suspend her. Sethi also offered to take a three-day cultural sensitivity workshop, Smith said.

In later, public posts on Facebook, Sethi disagreed with the the SGA’s decision, saying she’d worked to address the criticism. In one post, she talked about the need for a greater dialogue about race and cultural sensitivity.

UH SGA has made its decision. I disagree with the sanctions taken against me by my SGA because I believe I have done a great deal to better understand the controversy I caused. I have also apologized for my words because no student should feel as though I do not have their best interests at heart. Even so, I will abide by the sanctions for as long as they are in place.

Her post has already sparked a larger discussion about cultural sensitivity and inclusion at the University of Houston, where 10 percent of the students are black, said Kadidja Koné, 19, a marketing major who is the president of the university’s black student union.

“I would never want her to have to experience the fear I have every day that my brother could die during a traffic stop, but it is something that as a representative of me that I expect her to understand,” Koné said. “For her to say on her social media ‘forget black lives matter,’ it’s almost as if to say if all of us were to die tomorrow, she wouldn’t care.”

Koné said minority organizations sought to meet with Sethi, but, afterward, still felt uncomfortable with her in a leadership position.

“As of today, African American students do not feel welcome, comfortable, represented, valued or even acknowledged at the University of Houston,” according to 100 Collegiate Men, an organization for black students. “Students at the University of Houston want to feel adequately represented. They do not feel that this is being accomplished as long as Rohini Sethi is in office.”

https://twitter.com/lowdownshane/status ... 4668959745



Sethi, who did not immediately return phone or Facebook messages from The Post, sought to mend tensions — and defend her actions — before she was sanctioned.

As student body vice president, I was elected to represent the voice of every single one of you. When I took this position, my intention was and still is to advocate for you and make you feel heard. I am a friend to some, a passing face for others but an advocate for all.

Thursday night as our nation recoiled in shock, I took to Facebook and shared in a way that was inappropriate given the context and my position. In that moment, I did not act as your vice president, I acted, in my own flawed way, as many do when presented with a tragedy from afar. My response has caused enormous pain for many members of our community, and I think it is high time that I clarify my statement.

Visually we are black, white, tan, and a hundred shades between but we are all human, thus I believe that all lives matter. Let’s all come together through conversations to reach unity. This is how we begin to set the standards for ourselves and our future, especially in times of adversity.

Our community is the most diverse in the nation, and we should cherish the lessons that it teaches us. I hope to embrace language that binds us together rather than language that singles some out. This is the perfect opportunity for us to rediscover each other, to learn about who we are, and what our experiences have been.