Satanic clubs, whose members do not worship the devil, usually formed in response to presence of religious groups in schools
Community members in a Tennessee school district want to banish Satan from their children’s halls after the formation of a new club was announced.
The After School Satan Club (ASSC) wants to establish a branch in Chimneyrock elementary school in the Memphis-Shelby county schools (MSCS) district.
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The Giuliani defamation trial is one of the first tests of the many prongs pro-democracy groups are using in the courts to try to hold purveyors of election lies accountable.
Several lawsuits use anti-defamation laws in civil lawsuits against big names who joined with Trump to deny the results of the 2020 election, including Giuliani, Mike Lindell and Dinesh D’Souza.
Continue reading...Claudine Gay and presidents of UPenn and MIT faced backlash over responses on campus policy at congressional hearing
The Harvard Corporation, the highest governing body at the university, has backed the university’s president, Claudine Gay, to remain in post after calls for her removal following controversial testimony over antisemitism on campus.
Gay and the presidents of University of Pennsylvania and MIT faced backlash for their remarks at a congressional hearing into antisemitism on college campuses. Congresswoman Elise Stefanik demanded a “yes” or “no” response to her question of whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their university’s code of conduct. The presidents’ various responses were criticized for not being unequivocal enough in their condemnation of calls for genocide.
Continue reading...Academics at Columbia College in Chicago are in a fierce dispute over cuts to courses and poor working conditions
The longest strike of adjuncts in US labor history is still ongoing, with academics at Columbia College in Chicago remaining in a fierce dispute over cuts to college courses and a host of complaints over poor working conditions.
The fierce dispute began when Columbia College leadership suddenly announced plans to implement significant cuts to courses and course sections, and consolidating classes which have ballooned class sizes, citing a $20m budget shortfall.
Continue reading...Congressional testimony on campus policies by heads of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT draws criticism
The presidents of three of the nation’s top universities are facing intense backlash, including from the White House, after they appeared to evade questions during a congressional hearing about whether calls by students for the genocide of Jews would constitute harassment under the schools’ codes of conduct.
In a contentious, hours-long debate on Tuesday, the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) sought to address the steps they were taking to combat rising antisemitism on campus since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war. But it was their careful, indirect response to a question posed by the Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York that drew scathing criticism.
Continue reading...About 29,000 workers of the California Faculty Association are on strike as disparity between admin and professor pay increases
California State University faculty at four campuses went on strike on Monday to demand higher pay and expanded parental leave for thousands of workers at the largest public university system in the US.
The California Faculty Association, which represents 29,000 workers, is staging one-day work stoppages at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona; San Francisco State University; California State University, Los Angeles and California State University, Sacramento.
Continue reading...Joan Donovan says funding was cut off for criticizing Meta when university was receiving $500m from Mark Zuckerberg’s charity
One of the world’s leading experts on misinformation says she was fired by Harvard University for criticising Meta at a time that the school was being pledged $500m from Mark Zuckerberg’s charity.
Joan Donovan says her funding was cut off, she could not hire assistants and she was made the target of a smear campaign by Harvard employees. In a legal filing with the US education department and the Massachusetts attorney general first published by the Washington Post, she said her right to free speech had been abrogated.
Continue reading...Suit by several families and organizations seek to have law declared as violation of students’ and teachers’ free speech
Several families are suing to stop Iowa’s new law that bans books from school libraries, forbids teachers from raising LGBTQ+ issues and forces educators in some cases to out the gender identity of students to their parents.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa and Lambda announced the federal lawsuit on Tuesday, saying the law passed earlier this year by the Republican-led legislature and enacted this fall “seeks to silence LGBTQ+ students, erase any recognition of LGBTQ+ people from public schools, and bans books with sexual or LGBTQ+ content”.
Continue reading...Portland school district reaches agreement with teachers’ union allowing 45,000 students to resume classes
Oregon’s largest school district said late on Sunday it had reached a tentative agreement with its teachers’ union and roughly 45,000 students would be back in school on Monday after more than three weeks without classes.
The agreement must still be voted on by teachers who have been on the picket line since 1 November over issues of pay, class sizes and planning time. It must also be approved by the school board, but the union agreed that classes could resume while those votes go forward. Portland Public Schools students missed 11 days of school before the district began its weeklong Thanksgiving break.
Continue reading...Max Hightower stripped of role over policy that students must play characters aligning with gender identity assigned to them at birth
Weeks into his senior year of high school in Texas, Max Hightower earned the lead male role for his campus’s production of Oklahoma! the musical. But the trans teen’s principal has since stripped the teen of the part, citing a new policy requiring students to only portray characters who align with the gender identity assigned to them when they were born.
Hightower and his family are now appealing the administrator’s decision to the school board while the play is put on hold pending a review.
Continue reading...Consul Yuval Donio-Gideon objected to course at Bard College but president says institution ‘stood up for academic freedom’
An Israeli diplomat tried to persuade a leading New York college to cancel a course about the growing debate over whether the Jewish state practices a form of apartheid in the Palestine.
The Israeli consul for public diplomacy in New York, Yuval Donio-Gideon, took the highly unusual step of contacting Bard College earlier this year to object to the course, Apartheid in Israel-Palestine, on the grounds that it breached the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
Continue reading...Agricultural department says multiple states will be affected, forcing a brainstorm of backup plans
The tiny, half-pint cartons of milk served with millions of school lunches nationwide may soon be scarce in some cafeterias, with districts across the country scrambling to find alternatives.
The problem is not a shortage of milk itself, but the cardboard cartons used to package and serve it, according to dairy industry suppliers and state officials.
Continue reading...Public school principal reinstates 17-year-old’s leadership role and scholarship endorsement and requests leave for rest of school year
A Louisiana public school principal has apologized and requested leave for punishing a student and questioning her religious beliefs after he saw a video of her dancing at an off-campus party.
The 17-year-old student government president and scholarship candidate was videotaped dancing at an off-campus party following Walker High School’s 30 September homecoming festivities. A hired DJ took the video and posted it on social media. Three days later, Jason St Pierre, principal of the public high school near the state capital of Baton Rouge, told the student she would be removed from her position with the student government association and that he would no longer recommend her for college scholarships.
Continue reading...Kaylee Timonet was stripped of student government title and denied scholarship support after video surfaced of her at party
A high school senior in Louisiana was stripped of her student government president title and scholarship opportunities after a video circulating on social media showed the 17-year-old girl dancing with friends at a party last week.
Kaylee Timonet, a senior at Walker high school, was seen dancing at a private homecoming afterparty on 30 September, behind a friend who was twerking. Earlier this week, the school principal said he would revoke her leadership role and assistance in scholarship applications.
Continue reading...Darryl George, 17, of Texas has been serving an in-school suspension since 31 August for refusing to cut his dreadlocks
The family of a Black high school student in Texas who was suspended over his dreadlocks filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Saturday against the state’s governor and attorney general, alleging they failed to enforce a new law outlawing discrimination based on hairstyles.
Darryl George, 17, a junior at Barbers Hill high school in Mont Belvieu, has been serving an in-school suspension since 31 August. Officials with the Houston-area school say his dreadlocks fall below his eyebrows and ear lobes and violate the district’s dress code.
Continue reading...Diego Stolz died after being beaten by two middle school classmates at campus in southern California in 2019
The family of a 13-year-old boy who died after being beaten by two middle school classmates at their campus in southern California has secured a $27m settlement in what the plaintiffs’ attorneys are calling the largest bullying-related settlement in the history of US litigation.
Felipe and Juana Salcedo received the settlement from the Moreno Valley unified school district over the September 2019 death of Diego Stolz.
Continue reading...Tulane university researchers accused of ‘serious’ violations that breached international protocol over animal deaths
An animal rights group is demanding the firing of researchers at a Louisiana university who killed laboratory rats with scissors and a blunt blade – and used out-of-date anesthetics for pain relief.
The episodes are detailed in separate, self-reported notices of violation to the federal Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (Olaw), which were sent by Tulane University in New Orleans and obtained by the Stop Animal Exploitation Now advocacy group.
Continue reading...Advocates say proposals that cut debt to zero for some borrowers and reduce monthly interest payments are good news
Joe Biden’s new student-loan plan is an important and large step forward on student debt forgiveness in the US even after a previous debt reduction program was controversially struck down by the supreme court, advocates say.
When the justices ruled against Biden’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loans per borrower in June, 40 million debt-burdened Americans were left with questions – especially as monthly payments would resume in October after being paused for over three years because of the Covid pandemic.
Continue reading...Thomas Jefferson high school in Virginia is facing a legal challenge from a libertarian group over a policy that has boosted diversity
Students hoping to attend Thomas Jefferson high school for science and technology in Virginia, one of the most competitive magnet schools in the US, once took a rigorous standardized test for admission. They also had to pay a $100 fee to apply. Those requirements posed a barrier for many students, particularly those who lacked access to test preparation resources and low-income students whose families couldn’t afford the fee.
As racial justice protests flared across the US in 2020, the Fairfax county school board decided to abandon the test and application fee in response to criticism that the school did not enroll enough Black and Latino students. The board overhauled the school’s admissions program, adopting a race-neutral approach and instituting a holistic evaluation of students’ grades, problem-solving skills, and “experience factors”, such as free and reduced lunch eligibility and whether they were an English language learner. It also implemented a practice of guaranteeing seats for the top students at every middle school in the county.
Continue reading...Students trying to attend university in the US tell of their frustration after being rejected over the ‘immigrant intent’ test
Yalda Azamee blinked back tears as she stared down at the American consular officer.
“He did not even give me a chance to explain myself; he rejected me right away. He didn’t even look at my documents,” she said, rushing out of the US embassy building on to the streets of Islamabad to cry.
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