Here we have a student denied a degree in her field of studies and her teaching credentials because of a photo on MySpace.

Take a look at the photo.

Seems pretty tame to me – especially given that the young woman in question was at least 25 at the time, and the mother of two.

LetÂ’s look at the story.

A 27-year-old Millersville University graduate filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against the college for denying her an education degree and teaching certificate after a controversial Internet photograph surfaced last year shortly before graduation.

The picture shows Stacy Snyder of Strasburg wearing a pirate hat while drinking from a plastic "Mr. Goodbar" cup. The photograph taken during a 2005 Halloween party was posted on Snyder's MySpace Web page with the caption "Drunken Pirate."

"The day before graduation, the college confronted me about the picture," Snyder said Thursday. "I was told I wouldn't be receiving my education degree or teaching certificate because the photo was 'unprofessional.' "

Snyder said she apologized for the photograph, but Jane S. Bray, dean of the School of Education, and Provost Vilas A. Prabhu refused to issue the bachelor of science degree in education and teaching certificate Snyder earned.

Instead, the college issued Snyder a bachelor of arts degree in English.

Snyder is asking for the modest sum of $75,000 and the awarding of her proper degree and teaching credentials. That seems pretty reasonable to me – I mean there are some serious freedom of speech issues here that apply, since Millersville University is a public entity and they are punishing her for engaging in legal and, one could argue, constitutionally protected activities.

And I’ll say it flat out – if Stacy Snyder is held to have engaged in unprofessional conduct that merits her being barred from the classroom, I’m not sure that any teacher who blogs – or drinks – can stand up to scrutiny. And given that I have already beaten off one attempt to suppress my First Amendment rights and interfere with my employment by a gang of illiberal Democrat thugs who don’t like my politics, I find this case to be particularly troubling.

H/T FIREÂ’s Torch

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Posted by: Greg at 09:43 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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School administrators have a problem when it comes to criminal conduct by students. They can be by-the-book and support the most severe possible charges against a kid who has broken the law. Or they can call it a school disciplinary matter and never call the cops. Or, as a middle ground, they can arrange with the cops for many offenses to be treated in a less serious manner that results in a ticket rather than an arrest.

Kenneth Trump, a national authority on school safety who testified before Congress on Monday, says the underreporting of disciplinary incidents in area schools is part of "a historical culture of downplay, deny, deflect and defend when it comes to publicly acknowledging and reporting school crimes." It's driven, experts say, by an overarching concern among school principals to protect their image and that of their school.

"If you're the administrator and you report what happened, you may get blamed," said Jean O'Neil, director of research and evaluation at the National Crime Prevention Council in Washington. "If you're the administrator and you don't report what happened, you may get blamed."

And more to the point, that blame does not just come from the general public. A lot of disciplinary decisions get questioned by vocal parents, whose first phone call is to the Superintendent. When it involves an arrest, you can bet that call is going to be made. Assuming, of course, that the parent doesn't call the press and start to cry racism. It is often easier to give the kids a break on lesser offenses and treat them as mere disciplinary matters -- which will have the double impact of keeping the crime statistics down

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What next – a memorial to Cho at Virginia Tech?

The father of a University of Oklahoma student who died after a homemade explosive he was carrying detonated near a packed football stadium said the placement of a memorial to the young man on campus wasn't his idea.

A football fan attending OU's Red-White game on April 7 spotted a stone paver outside the student union with Joel Henry Hinrichs III's name on it.

"I was just kind of horrified," Jenny Clemons told The Oklahoman. "I don't think he has any business being out here."

The school's student affairs division arranged to have the stone placed, an OU alumni affairs employee said. Families pay for such memorials, which cost about $150, officials said, but Hinrichs' father told the newspaper the school offered to place the stone and never billed him.

Hinrichs, an engineering student, died Oct. 1, 2005, when his bomb went off as he sat on a campus bench not far from Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, where a night game was being played.

The FBI investigated whether the 21-year-old Colorado Springs, Colo., resident tried or intended to enter the stadium but reported finding no conclusive evidence.

Joel Hinrichs Jr., the student's father, said OU's dean of students, Clarke Stroud, offered to have the stone placed. In an e-mail, the father told The Oklahoman the dean "very kindly understood that Joel's act was one of loneliness, not of aggression, and offered to have the stone placed in the memorial courtyard; he also indicated that the wife of the university president might select a tree to be placed on campus, also in Joel III's memory."

Even if we presume (just for a minute) that Hinrichs didn’t intend to detonate the bomb at the game, the mere fact that he made it and detonated it in a public place is sufficient to make the memorial inappropriate and unseemly – and the appropriation of public funds for that purpose outrageous.

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For the second time this month, an attempt by liberal student governments to punish conservative speech they disliked has been beaten back – this time at the University of Rhode Island. Or has it been?

College Republicans at the University of Rhode Island won't have to apologize for sponsoring a satirical scholarship for white, heterosexual men.

Instead, URI's student Senate says it will ask the Republican group to write letters to the 40 people who applied explaining that the scholarship was fake and that a newspaper advertisement for it was intended purely as satire.

Applicants were asked to write about what it means to be a "white, heterosexual American male" and to describe any adversity they had dealt with and overcome.

A student Senate committee had demanded an apology and threatened to cut off funding and other perks. But the entire Senate instead decided to ask the group to send clarification letters to the applicants.

Frankly, I find even that much of a sanction unacceptable, but acknowledging in writing what has always been acknowledged (that the scholarship was an act of satire) is not worth fighting.

Unfortunately, there does appear to be another element that is more disturbing.

The senate also added an amendment requiring the College Republicans to notify the governing body about its activities and events. The bill only allows the senate to act as an adviser.

LaRocca originally opposed the bill when it was written in the committee, but changed her views after the amendments. "I still have my concerns that this may not happen the way we want it to, but I am going to try to look on the bright side and work on it in the best way that I can," she said.

Another amendment stated, "If the URI College Republicans fail to follow through with the actions outlined in this bill to the satisfaction of the senate, then their recognition status shall be revoked for one year."

Cavanaugh said not to worry about the College Republicans. "I guarantee that they are going to follow through with this," he said.

So the threat of derecognition remains over the head of the College Republicans because they engaged in a constitutionally protected activity. As such, I donÂ’t know that we can really say that freedom won.

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Do your homework, go to jail – if it troubles your teacher.

High school senior Allen Lee sat down with his creative writing class on Monday and penned an essay that so disturbed his teacher, school administrators and police that he was charged with disorderly conduct.

"I understand what happened recently at Virginia Tech," said the teen's father, Albert Lee, referring to last week's massacre of 32 students by gunman Seung-Hui Cho. "I understand the situation."

But he added: "I don't see how somebody can get charged by writing in their homework. The teacher asked them to express themselves, and he followed instructions."

Allen Lee, an 18-year-old straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with disorderly conduct for an essay police described as violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location.

So let’s see – writing an essay assigned by a teacher has gotten this boy arrested and sent to a different school, despite the fact that he made no threats towards anyone. Why? An over-reaction to the Hokie Horror.

I’m curious. Are we going to start arresting Hollywood types – directors, producers, screenwriters, actors – for their creation of “violently disturbing” movies and television shows?

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As I reported yesterday -- a school burns down, and the biggest concern of the state of Texas is -- making sure the kids retake the TAKS test since the answer sheets from the original administration were destroyed in the fire.

State education officials have approved a plan to let high school students whose TAKS tests burned up in a deliberately set fire to retake the exams, possibly as early as next week, officials said.

The test results were destroyed when the fire heavily damaged Needville High School early Monday in rural Fort Bend County. The tests were administered last week.

"Once we determine a date when they are actually going to conduct the testing, then we will ship those materials out to them," Texas Education Agency spokeswoman Suzanne Marchman said Tuesday.

Marchman said the tests could be sent to Needville at the end of this week so that ninth-, 10th-, and 11th-grade students could take the state-mandated exams sometime next week.

The Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills is an annual statewide standardized test used to measure student and school performance.

Classes for high schoolers will resume Monday with students going to school on a staggered schedule, said Needville Independent School District Superintendent Curtis Rhodes.

"With the classroom space that is available, we will just kind of double up and share the classrooms," Rhodes said.

Only 19 instructional days remain in the school year.

Like they don't have better things to do with those last four weeks of school.

Shameful -- just shameful!

Posted by: Greg at 10:41 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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A headline from today's Houston Chronicle.

Arson Hits Needville high School; TAKS Tests Destroyed

Excuse me? The first concern is the destruction of the testing material from last week? What about the impact on hundreds of students and the community as a whole.

Oh, maybe this explains the focus of the headline.

[School Board President Jim] Kocian said TAKS tests were in the building, but he did not think the destruction of the tests was the reason behind the fire. "Even if the TAKS tests are destroyed, they have to retake them. So they don't accomplish anything by that," he said.

Yeah, neve mind those science labs and administrative offices -- the kids need to retake those tests so that they can be "assessed". Never mind that there might be things that need a little bit of a higher priority right now.

Then again, is there a glimmer of hope for common sense here?.

No decision has been made about the TAKS tests taken last week by high school students. The answer sheets were still in the office, waiting to be sent Monday to TEA offices in Austin for scoring. Passage of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge Skills test is required for graduation.

Texas Education Commissioner Shirley J. Neeley, who was traveling Monday, will talk with Rhodes by telephone and probably decide today what to do about the TAKS test, said agency spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson.

Culbertson said experts at the state agency don't recall a whole district's test papers being lost in a fire before. "We have had boxes of tests come up missing, and there was one time when a box fell off an airplane," she said.

Here's hoping that Neeley exercises a little prudence and common sense and simply waives the requirement this year -- if she is able to do so under state law.

Because state testing should be the lowest priority for Needville ISD right about now.

Posted by: Greg at 10:22 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Some folks -- especially academics -- just have to be the center of attention.

Sheriff's investigators arrested and charged a Calhoun Community College instructor with making a terrorist threat against herself following the Virginia Tech massacre.

Limestone County Sheriff Mike Blakely said Penelope Blankenship, 43, of Decatur was arrested Friday on the felony charge and released on $5,000 bond.

Calhoun officials said Blankenship, a criminal justice and psychology instructor, has been placed on administrative leave.

She's accused of leaving threatening voice mail messages against herself. The messages made reference to Monday's Virginia Tech massacre, saying "you next," according to a campus police report.

Campus police also received a threatening phone call in connection with the same incident.

The caller was initially identified as a former student of Blankenship's, but further investigation indicated that the calls came from Blankenship herself, through Calhoun's switchboard to campus security and to her own voice mail, investigators said.

How can a woman who would appear to be so smart be so dumb?

H/T Michelle Malkin

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From the minute that the Texas State University for Negroes was established as a Jim Crow institution to prevent the desegregation of the state's white colleges and universities, it has been a failure. It took only a few years for the United States Supreme Court to declare it was a sub-standard institution that was unequal by any measure. Through decades of scandal and mismanagement at Texas Southern University, however, the black community has embraced this remnant of Jim Crow, a shining example of the inherent inequality of "separate but equal", which is little more than a four year community college with a graduate program and a law school.

The governor and legislature are looking for a fix for the school -- something I believe to be impossible, given the track record of "fixes" over the last decade. TSU is simply unable to stand as an independent institution.

But that does not keep certain black leaders from insisting that it must.

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee vowed Saturday to stop Gov. Rick Perry's attempt to place Texas Southern University under conservatorship in the wake of the latest financial problems at the 11,000-student institution.

Jackson Lee said she wants the U.S. Department of Education to intervene, alleging that conservatorship would be a strict violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, imposing "undue burdens on black students."

The governor announced plans April 13 to appoint a conservator to control spending.

The individual selected would also have the ability to fire and hire any employee, and to change the administrative structure at the nation's second-largest historically black university.

Conservatorship has never occurred at any Texas university or college.

Sylvia Brooks, president of the Houston Area Urban League, said state funding to compensate for the university's "decades of neglect" and a "great board" would be able to solve the current financial problems.

But the problem is that TSU has had a "great board" in the past, made up of respected alumni and state African-American leaders. The last time a great president was brought in to make sure that the university was well-managed, she ripped off TSU so bad that she and a number of aides were indicted for their actions.

And then there is this propaganda piece.

Texas Southern continues its proud tradition of welcoming students the Texas public schools have failed. And while these nontraditional students tend not to graduate within the traditional four or even six years, there is a strong indication they eventually do graduate, have increased earning capacity and contribute largely to the Texas economy.

Texas Southern University is often compared with Prairie View A&M. Both are historically black universities. Prairie View's success is often attributed to being part of the Texas A&M system. Largely overlooked, Prairie View is not an open admissions university; it has specific academic criteria for the admission of students that closes its doors to the Cliffords and Thomases and Bettys.

TSU has always been here for Texas. We must ensure that it remains a viable institution so that it will continue to be.

And therein lies the biggest problem with TSU -- it has NO STANDARDS for admission! And while that may have been a great thing in the days before the state of Texas had a large system of community colleges, it does not make sense today and cannot be defended. the former president of TSU and local community leader who wrote this piece cannot even be troubled to cite statistics on graduation rates becauee they know TSU is a failure in that regard, too.

Community pride and an indefensible mission are not reason to keep the school open as an independent institution. And the difficulties TSU has had for decades places "undue burdens on black students" every bit as much as the conservatorship plan does.

There exist three options for dealing with TSU if conservatorship is not an option.

1) Close TSU. It is a failed experiment in racial segregation and standardless academics that wastes the money of the people of Texas. Or in the alternative, divest the state of TSU and let it become a private school that supports itself without the flood of public money that is going down a rathole.

2) Do nothing. Just continue to send the money down the rathole.

3) Merge TSU into the University of Houston system. Given that TSU is only a few blocks away from the main campus of the University of Houston, it seems to me that this is a viable Now this could take two forms -- either full incorporation of TSU into UH, or maintaining TSU as a separate institution that continues to operate with its own lax academic standards. While I view the latter possibility as less desirable, it at least has the advantage of providing much stronger oversight for the school, providing it the strength of leadership the school so desperately needs.

TSU is a mess. Will black leaders actually lead in fixing the problem, or will they obstruct any possible solution because the school is a "black thing" -- despite the fact that its budget comes out of the pockets of every taxpayer in the state of Texas. Will they allow TSU to become the sort of institution it ought to be in the twenty-first century -- or insist that it remain what it has been, a sub-standard Jim Crow institution?

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If you are going to permit students to express themselves about sexuality in schools, can you punish a kid for "coming out" as being the wrong one?

Oakridge High School in Muskegon, Michigan, is one of many schools across the U.S. that took part in Wednesday's "National Day of Silence" -- an event promoted heavily by homosexual activist groups, which view it as a day to protest alleged discrimination faced by students who identify as "gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (GLBT)." At Oakridge High, duct tape was passed out for students to wear over their lips as a way to show solidarity with homosexual students who are purportedly suffering in silence.

John Gardner is pastor of Holton Family Life Worship Center in Holton, a community of approximately 2,500 about 17 miles northeast of Muskegon. Pastor Gardner says his 15-year-old son David, a student at Oakridge High, was suspended for a day by the school because he wrote with a black marker "I'm straight" on a piece of duct tape and attached it to his shirt. He explains that David donned the message to voice his objection to the school's participation in the Day of Silence.

"They asked him, at that point, to take it off," Gardner says, "and David [asked] why do the rest of the kids in the class get to wear theirs and I can't wear something about what I believe?" According to the pastor, the teacher then instructed David to remove the message or he would be "kicked out" of class. "And he said, 'Well then, you'll have to kick me out' -- and that's what they did," says David's father.

There is absolutely no way that any school official could possibly argue that the sticker in question created a material disruption or the threat of one. There was no denigration of anyone -- merely the assertion of the student's sexual orientation as a heterosexual. Given that the school was sponsoring speech about sexuality that day, there can be no denying that the school had opened up itself up as a forum for the topic -- and I somehow doubt that a kid who had written "I'm Gay" on the duct tape and worn it would have bee silenced and suspended.

Don't these people know about Tinker v. Des Moines?

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Posted by: Greg at 11:14 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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But only the ones who engage in speech that is "crazy".

It's probably more effective, though, to find and remove these potential killers — and try to deny them the most lethal hardware. That means we must detain them for their words and deny them guns.

As we see time and again, the right to bear arms and be crazy is a deadly combination.

And given the Left's willingness to classify opposition to certain political agenda's as a form of mental illness (ie "homophobia" -- the moral belief that there is something wrong with homosexual behavior, as was the clear and consistent Christian teaching ofevery Christian denomination until until only few years ago; or "Islamophobia" -- the opposition to jihadi terrorism), this is rather frightening. But then again, we've already seen where such detentions of the "mentally ill" because of their exercise of the right to freedom of speech -- it was a favorite tactic in the Soviet Union to crack down on dissent.

But given Cragg Hines' Froma Harrop's opposition to the Second Amendment, it isn't surprising to see him willing to abandon the First Amendment as well. She's just a little bit more honest about it than the average left-winger.

UPDATE: I was notified about the error in identifying the author of the piece earlier today, and fixed it as soon as I came home.

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This from an article about the consequences of the state of Texas appointing a conservator to begin fixing the problems at Texas Southern University -- which could include the loss of accreditation by the school for not having a multi-member board of directors.

Beyond degrading the value of degrees earned at TSU....

Given the reputation of this corrupt open-enrollment school -- which is little more than a four-year community college with a graduate program and a law school -- I don't think that the loss of accreditation could do much harm to the value of a TSU degree.

UPDATE: Well, at least the Houston Chronicle is willing to call for the state to do something about this pathetic institution. But in typical fashion, TSU regents are unwilling to act in the best interests of the school.

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After all, why should the Constitution get in the way of imposing political correctness and silencing conservatives who dissent from the liberal orthodoxy?

Displaying a dramatic disregard for students’ constitutional rights, a committee of the University of Rhode Island (URI) Student Senate voted on Monday to derecognize the College Republicans student group. For months, the Student Senate has demanded that the group publicly apologize for advertising a satirical $100 “scholarship” for white, heterosexual, American males. The College Republicans refused to apologize and contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help. FIRE is now calling upon URI President Robert Carothers, who has already informed the Senate that it could not compel student speech, to reverse the decision to derecognize the group.

“Neither the Student Senate nor anyone else at URI has the power to force the College Republicans to say things against their will,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “As bad as it may be to tell people what they cannot say, it is still worse to tell them what they must say. The Supreme Court has long recognized that compelled speech is not compatible with free societies. It is stunning that URI’s student government would show such contempt for fundamental rights, especially after URI’s own president explained it to them.”

The College Republicans student organization first advertised the satirical “White, Heterosexual, American Male” “scholarship” in November, 2006. The scholarship consisted of a nominal $100 to be awarded to someone fitting those criteria who submitted an application and an essay on the adversities he has faced. College Republicans President Ryan Bilodeau explained that the point was to use satire to protest scholarships awarded on the basis of race, gender, or nationality. Over 40 URI students applied for the “scholarship,” many submitting equally satirical application essays.

In a meeting on February 19, the Student Senate’s Student Organizations Advisory and Review Committee (SOARC) prohibited the College Republicans from disbursing the money. The group agreed that it would not give out the $100, but SOARC decided that even advertising the satirical “scholarship” violated URI’s anti-discrimination bylaws and demanded that the group publish an apology in the campus newspaper. Unwilling to apologize, Bilodeau appealed SOARC’s decision. The Senate denied that appeal.

FIRE wrote to Senate President Neil Cavanaugh on March 13, stating that because the Student Senate derives its authority from a public university, it must comply with the First Amendment prohibition on compelled speech. The Student Senate, however, in a memo to the College Republicans on March 27, ruled again that the College Republicans must publish an apology and claimed authority to force them to do so. That sanction was later reduced to an “explanation” to be published in the campus newspaper and a mandatory apology to be sent to all of the students who applied for the scholarship.

The College Republicans agreed to publish an explanation of its intentions, but refused to write any apologies. FIRE wrote to URI President Robert Carothers the following day to urge him to intervene in the situation. FIRE wrote, “URI administrators have a legal duty to step in where the Student Senate has failed and to check its attempt to trample upon students’ most basic freedom of conscience.” And in a letter dated April 6, President Carothers did indeed instruct the Senate in no uncertain terms to drop its unconstitutional demand for an apology. Carothers wrote that the mandatory apology “does not meet constitutional standards as laid forth in the First Amendment and in subsequent court decisions interpreting the standard.”

But at a meeting on Monday night, SOARC nonetheless unanimously voted to ignore both its constitutional obligations and CarothersÂ’ directive and derecognize the College Republicans for refusing to issue an apology. SOARCÂ’s decision will be voted on by the entire Student Senate on Wednesday, April 25.

FIRE wrote another letter to Carothers yesterday calling upon him to immediately reverse SOARC’s decision to derecognize the group. FIRE wrote that “y fulfilling this responsibility as a public official, you can teach the Senate leadership that they must respect the rights of URI students and help to instill in them an understanding of the full repercussions for repeatedly and recklessly defying the Constitution.”

“URI’s student government thinks it is above the law—that it can take fees extracted from students by a state university and yet ignore the constitutional obligations that come with them. It is sadly mistaken,” Lukianoff said. “President Carothers must act now to stop this rogue organization from conducting these unlawful acts under the aegis of the university.”

FIRE is a nonprofit educational foundation that unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals from across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, due process, freedom of expression, academic freedom, and rights of conscience at our nationÂ’s colleges and universities. FIREÂ’s efforts to preserve liberty universities across America can be viewed at www.thefire.org.

It strikes me that only one course of action is open to President Carothers -- using his authority as the president of the University of Rhode Island to disband the Student SenateÂ’s Student Organizations Advisory and Review Committee and the entire Student Senate, replacing them with organizations that clearly and unambiguously are bound by the United States Constitution (which those two organizations legally are though they claim otherwise) and which accept the limitations that the Bill of Rights imposes upon them.

Posted by: Greg at 11:43 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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On the morning after the Columbine massacre, one of my 11th graders asked me what I would do if a gunman were to enter our school -- an especially pressing issue given that the classroom was on an inside corridor with no windows and only one door.

My response?

"I would put myself between you guys and the guy with the gun -- and pray that you would get out even if I didn't."

On Monday, Professor Liviu Librescu did exactly that for his students.

As Jews worldwide honored on Monday the memory of those who were murdered in the Holocaust, a 76-year-old survivor sacrificed his life to save his students in Monday's shooting at Virginia Tech College that left 33 dead and over two dozen wounded.

Professor Liviu Librescu, 76, threw himself in front of the shooter when the man attempted to enter his classroom. The Israeli mechanics and engineering lecturer was shot to death, "but all the students lived - because of him," Virginia Tech student Asael Arad - also an Israeli - told Army Radio.

Several of Librescu's other students sent e-mails to his wife, Marlena, telling of how he had blocked the gunman's way and saved their lives, said Librescu's son, Joe.

"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," Joe Librescu said in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv. "Students started opening windows and jumping out."

Librescu was respected in his field, his son said.

"His work was his life, in a sense," said Joe. "That was a good place for him to practice his research."

I honor the sacrifice and memory of Liviu Librescu, and hope that I will have the strength to emulate him if ever faced with his choice -- and pray I never have to do so.

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I spent my first couple of years of college in Lexington, VA, just up the road from Blacksburg. I've always had an affection for that school, as opposed to the snootier UVA. For that reason, today's horror cuts to the heart.

An outburst of gunfire at a Virginia Tech dormitory, followed two hours later by a ruthless string of attacks at a classroom building, killed 32 students, faculty and staff and wounded about 30 others yesterday in the deadliest shooting rampage in the nation's history.

The shooter, whose name was not released last night, carried two 9mm semiautomatic handguns and wore blue jeans, a blue jacket and a vest holding additional ammunition, law enforcement officials and witnesses said. Witnesses described the shooter as a young man of Asian descent -- a silent killer who was calm and showed no expression as he pursued and shot his victims. He killed himself as police closed in.

It will be interesting to learn why this evil happened, though it will not bring back the dead or heal the wounded and grieving.

But there is another point that has to be made.

Virginia Tech is a gun-free school. Students, employees, and visitors are not allowed to bring their guns to campus, even if they have a concealed carry permit and have met all of the stringent requirements to get one.

And so the law-abiding adults of Virginia Tech were disarmed by government policy.

As this murderer calmly executed his victims, not one had the means to actually engage in self-defense. As he massacred these innocents, not one of them could stop the evil-doer. All they could do was wait for help to arrive -- and die waiting.

Because you see, in the name of some sort of illusory security, these adult citizens were stripped of the essential liberty to defend one's own life -- while one man intent upon mayhem was unconcerned about the niceties of the campus gun ban.

Some will use this event to call for more gun control. That is not the solution. Rather, more guns in the hands of more trained and licensed individuals would have made Virginia Tech a safer place today -- and that is an equation that I would contend would be true at any college or university in the country.

Or in (almost) any workplace or any shopping mall.

Or any public place, for that matter.

How many more tragedies will it take, with disarmed citizens slaughtered like sheep, before America will wake up to the reality that more guns in more hands equals more safety?

Because, to use a trite cliche that happens to be true, when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns.

That is the lesson to draw from today's carnage.

UPDATE: Here's a thought from one of the disarmed concealed carry permit holders who attends Virginia Tech -- WRITTEN FOLLOWING LAST FALL'S INCIDENT.

Of all of the emotions and thoughts that were running through my head that morning, the most overwhelming one was of helplessness.

That feeling of helplessness has been difficult to reconcile because I knew I would have been safer with a proper means to defend myself.

I would also like to point out that when I mentioned to a professor that I would feel safer with my gun, this is what she said to me, “I would feel safer if you had your gun.”

The policy that forbids students who are legally licensed to carry in Virginia needs to be changed.

I am qualified and capable of carrying a concealed handgun and urge you to work with me to allow my most basic right of self-defense, and eliminate my entrusting my safety and the safety of my classmates to the government.

This incident makes it clear that it is time that Virginia Tech and the commonwealth of Virginia let me take responsibility for my safety.

Doesn't that argument look quite reasonable in light of the unfolding horror at Virginia Tech?

H/T Gates of Vienna, Combs Spouts Off

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Personally, having sat through her seminars as part of school in-service trainings, I would say yes.

According to Ruby K. Payne, a consultant to school systems locally and nationwide, teachers should know a few things about poor people.

The Texas-based author says in her book "A Framework for Understanding Poverty": Parents in poverty typically discipline children by beating or verbally chastising them; poor mothers may turn to sex for money and favors; poor students laugh when they get in trouble at school; and low-income parents tend to "beat around the bush" during parent-teacher conferences, instead of getting to the point.

In the past several years, at least five school systems in the Washington area have turned to Payne's lessons, books and workshops.

But many academics say her works are riddled with unverifiable assertions. At the American Educational Research Association's annual conference in Chicago last week, professors from the University of Texas at Austin delivered a report on Payne that argued that more than 600 of her descriptions of poverty in "Framework" cannot be proved true.

"She claims there is a single culture of poverty that people live in. It's an idea that's been discredited since at least the 1960s," said report co-author Randy Bomer.

My biggest criticism of her is that she is as much about instilling stereotypes as she is about tearing them down -- and many of those stereotypes are not healthy.

"She seems to be always stereotyping," Natialy Walker, Prince William's professional development supervisor, said during a staff meeting about Payne last month. "If only we could get away from all the labels and move beyond that."

I teach kids who are poor and minority -- nearly 70% of our kids are on free and reduced lunch, and we are only 12.5% white. And I've found that many of these stereotypes are false -- and get in the way of communicating with students and parents. This is especially true when we deal with Hispanic kids, because they often come from a very different culture from that upon which Payne bases her stereotypes.

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Incompetence run amok at the school justifies this action.

Gov. Rick Perry asked Texas Southern University's regents to resign Friday in favor of a single conservator with extraordinary powers to make changes at the financially troubled school.

The governor did not announce who the conservator would be, but campus leaders have heard the name of Kerney Laday, a TXU Corp. board member and retired Xerox Corp. executive.

Pending Senate confirmation, Laday, 65, would be placed in charge of the university's spending, with the ability to fire any employee, hire new people and change the administrative structure. The conservator would likely be in place for a year, said Krista Moody, a spokeswoman for the governor.

The proposed move comes after a series of financial missteps and a spending scandal that led to criminal charges against the university's former president, Priscilla Slade, and three aides.

The state Senate and House leadership first must appoint a committee to authorize Perry's recommendation of conservatorship. Confirmation of his choice would come later.

"Conservatorship will bring a strong leader to the forefront of the university to reinstate accountability, take immediate and decisive action to correct mismanagement, and make the fiscal decisions necessary to get TSU back on track," the governor said in a statement.

I still have a better idea -- merge the school with the well-run, academically strong University of Houston, which is a matter of blocks away. That will strengthen the school and provide it with a much more stable source of leadership and funding. Keep it as a separate entity in the UH system, at a bare minimum, but provide such a step will provide it with the sort of support the institution really needs -- and keep it from continuing to be little more than a community college with a law school and a graduate program.

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Now here's an education conundrum that I don't have an answer to.

Tatyana McFadden has spent the last two years fighting for inclusion. The 17-year-old Paralympic wheelchair racer wants a chance, she said, to compete like anybody else: alongside able-bodied teammates, with results that count for Atholton High School's track and field team.

And now, after so much work, she feels more ostracized than ever before.

What began as a disabled athlete's hopeful journey to break down barriers has evolved into an unsentimental debate about whether all barriers need to be broken down. McFadden considers her equal participation a civil right; many track athletes and coaches consider it an unnecessary threat to the integrity of their sport.

In March, McFadden filed a federal lawsuit demanding that the state of Maryland treat her the same as all athletes at the state track and field championships -- her second lawsuit in a year. In doing so, she has forced Maryland to consider how to best combine wheelchair races and runners, a dilemma that thousands of road races face each year. McFadden's court date has yet to be determined, but Maryland's track community already has rendered its verdict.

Teammates worry about safety while running on the track while McFadden is racing, reaching speeds up to 20 mph. Competitors think Atholton, a public school in Columbia, will dominate meets because of the points the high school junior would earn by racing in a wheelchair division that consists of only herself. On Internet message boards and in private conversations, runners pose various forms of the same question: For McFadden, who won two medals at the 2004 Paralympics in Athens and continues to travel the world to compete, is a spot on the high school track team worth this much tumult?

And to be honest, I don't have an answer to these questions -- and I'm glad I don't have to be the one to answer them. I'm throwing this one out for you folks to discuss -- what do you think?

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A literary legend passes.

Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.

Mr. Vonnegut suffered irreversible brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago, according to his wife, Jill Krementz.

Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and Â’70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States.

My personal favorite among the works of Kurt Vonnegut -- which I commend to you as my form of tribute to the great author -- is Harrison Bergeron.

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When I attended Washington and Lee, one of the best courses I took was "The Bible as English Literature". As a pretty lukewarm Christian (searching for faith, but bordering on agnosticism), I came to see the beauty of the Good Book -- and found my faith. But I came to understand that text in a different way as well, as a literary and historical document that may be read on many different levels. And quite honestly, I'd love to teach such a course on the high school level.

But I do not believe that the state of Texas should mandate that such a course should be offered by every school district as an elective.

STATE Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, has proposed a bill that would require all Texas public school districts to offer high school students an elective course in the history and literature of the Old and New Testaments. Chisum, who heads the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee, arguably the most powerful committee in either chamber, insists that the Bible would be used as "the basic textbook" for such courses, "not a worship document." The bill would require districts to make a Bible course available if at least 15 students signed up for it.

Terrific — on its face. The Bible has had a tremendous influence on Western civilization, and Texas students could benefit from studying its impact on all areas of American life, laws and culture. But given the record of most schools that already have such programs, the lack of resources available and the apparent motivation of the bill's author, the courses would wind up being oriented toward a particular branch of Christianity and therefore discriminatory, opening the way for court challenges.

The Chronicle then continues with a shameful attack on the religious beliefs of the bill's author -- but a cogent problem with the Bible-related courses taught in a handful of schools around the state. And it is those problems that lead me to object to this bill -- the lack of standards, materials, and safe-guards in place to keep these courses from becoming "religious education" classes.

But more important from my point of view is this -- the reality that many districts lack the resources to add this elective course, and too many of my colleagues around the state lack the training to teach this class as it should be taught -- an objective study of a beautiful text, not a devotional study of a work of faith. And as such, i think the bill must be defeated as well-intended but unwise.

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Good grief! The Supreme Court ruled in 1943 that a student cannot be required to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Why don't the folks at Lewisville High School know that, since it is covered in every every school law class?

A student who refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance has been given a two-day suspension from Lewisville High.

He says, saying the pledge violates his religious beliefs.

The school district says his behavior is a distraction to the rest of the classroom.

The problem is, his "distraction" was his refusal to say the words of the Pledge, nothing more. And since the kid is a Jehovah's Witness, just like the kids in the 193 case of West Virginia v. Barnette, there is not any basis for distinguishing between what this young man, Adrian Boykin, is doing today and what those students were doing 64 years ago.

"The only thing I pledge allegiance to is God, not a flag. It's cloth to me."

Boykin's family follows the teachings of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

They believe the pledge equates to worshiping an image or object above God.

"You're not supposed to put any idol before God," said Boykin's mother, Kolette.

Adrian Boykin says after several months in class, his teacher at Lewisville High finally noticed him not reciting the pledge.

The senior was sent to detention but refused to go, leading to a two-day suspension.

The district says a student has the right not to recite the pledge, but cannot cause distractions with their actions.

Now wait just a minute -- how can the district even begin to claim that there was a substantial disruption or distraction is it took the teacher several months to notice and take action against Adrian for not saying the Pledge. That is laughable on its face.

And as for his refusal to go to the detentions, the administration should have been backing him to the hilt, not suspending him. After all, the teacher's actions were no different than assigning him a detention because he is black. Surely the school would not allow suspend a student for refusing to accept sucha violation of fundamental rihts under the Constitution.

There is only one positive outcome I can see here -- we now know that young Mr. Boykin is likely to have a college fund large enough to attend the school of his choice. Unfortunately, it seems likely that the taxpayers, and not the teacher and administrators who displayed such utter incompetence concluded.

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I love "To Kill A Mockingbird" -- despite the fact that I had never read the book before I found myself expected to teach it when I began teaching. Yet having read it many times since, and having taught it nearly a dozen times (when you include summer school sessions), I really do believe it is a book that every adult ought to read -- both from the point of view of its moral message AND due to the fact it is a great read. So when I hear folks criticize the book for its flaws and question whether it should be read, I bristle just a bit.

If there's one book you should read before you die, it's To Kill a Mockingbird. That's not my opinion. Apparently I was sick back in ninth grade when every other American kid read Harper Lee's novel of racism, moral courage and coming of age in 1930s Alabama. I read it for the first time only this week and have my misgivings.

But according to the Guardian newspaper's Web site, a 2006 poll of librarians — British librarians — put To Kill a Mockingbird atop the list of books every adult should read before they shuffle off. Ahead of the Bible. Ahead of Huckleberry Finn and Pride and Prejudice and even Harry "the Franchise" Potter.

According to a 1989 study in this country, 69 percent of public schools, 67 percent of Catholic schools and 47 percent of other private schools teach the book, most often in the ninth grade. And it's still assigned regularly, three Houston-area educators say.

For many young people, To Kill a Mockingbird, more than 45 years after its publication, looms like that first tattoo as a milestone on the road to adulthood. It has become, as Slate's Stephen Metcalf writes,"an inescapable fact of America's civic religion."

So what's its appeal? Why a fixture on school reading lists? And what's its status in the canon of American literature? Is it really a book for grown-ups?

As I've said, I think it is a great book -- but that doesn't mean that TKAM is a perfect book. There are obvious flaws in Harper Lee's classic, some of which are mentioned later in the article.

In a New Yorker review of Charles J. Shields' new biography of Harper Lee, Thomas Mallon savages Mockingbird for its moral simplicity and implausible characters. He calls Atticus Finch a "plaster saint" with a way "of making forbearance itself insufferable."

Mallon calls Scout "a kind of highly constructed doll, feisty and cute on every subject from algebra to grown-ups," her voice a "forced mixture" of the child and the adult.

He wraps things up by describing the novel as "a kind of moral Ritalin, an ungainsayable endorser of the obvious." The movie, he writes, is "rather better."

This smackdown prompted Stephen Metcalf, Slate's critic at large, to read the book for the first time and weigh in with a qualified endorsement. He likes Scout, calling her a clever child whose "cleverness nonetheless never interferes with her innocence, and whose innocence is finally a near-flawless arbiter of right and wrong."

He acknowledges that Lee mixes child and adult perspectives but praises the book's voice as being "almost always fetching, often vivid, and the small-town manners it captures are keenly observed." He particularly admires how the book evokes and critiques Southern white-class snobbery.

I find myself leaning a little Mallon's way. I don't find either Atticus or Scout particularly plausible. The black characters are long-suffering and large-hearted in a way that, today, comes across as condescending. Scout too often sounds like no child I ever met — too smart, too spunky.

Of course, I lean towards Metcalf. I like to point out to folks that there is a reason that Scout sounds like a mixture of child and adult -- the Scout that narrates the story is not a little girl, but is instead an adult woman approaching thirty, telling a story about her childhood. Indeed, the voice we hear is that of Miss Jean Louise Finch (or maybe Mrs. Charles Baker Harris -- my kids one year debated whether or not she ended up married to Dill) telling a childhood story. And like most of us telling such stories in our adulthood, we make ourselves both a little bit more innocent and a little more wise than we probably were -- it is human nature. And while Atticus comes across as a "plaster saint", isn't that how we saw our parents when we were young? It is therefore reasonable for Harper Lee, through her narrator, to try to capture that child-like view of Atticus.

And then there was that criticism of the presentation of the black characters. let's be honest -- in 1930s Alabama, that was precisely the face that black community showed to whites, even those who showed them sympathy. After all, this was a society where the Klan still held the reins of power -- Kluxer Hugo Black was a US Senator from Alabama when the story begins, and by the time the story ends he would have been nominated as a Supreme Court Justice by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. If you were black, you needed to hide that seething anger and discontent, and so Scout would likely never have seen it, even from Calpurnia.

Of course, my favorite point to make with my students is that TKAM is an example of one story framing another. After all, the adult Jean Louis Finch begins the book by telling us it is the story of how her brother Jem broke his arm! Well over 200 pages later, we finally find out how the arm was broken -- but only after learning about life in her small Alabama town, Boo Radley, and the horrible miscarriage of justice that is the Tom Robinson trial.

And perhaps the best thing about the story is that it does leave you wanting to know more about some of the characters. My favorite "untold story"? What experience did Atticus have (presumably during WWI) that led the "One Shot" Finch to permanently put down his rifle until the day he needed to kill a rabid dog? I've often hoped that Harper Lee has written that story, and that it awaits posthumous publication on a dusty bookshelf in her home.

Is To Kill A Mockingbird Shakespeare? No, it isn't -- and does not pretend to be. Still, I believe it to be an important book that ought to be read.

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They were ready to give us a $2000 raise last session -- and promised to revisit the issue this session. Why is there now no money for it in 2007, despite the huge state budget surplus? And why is a $800 (or $500) raise a budget buster this time around -- even as Texas teachers lag $4000 behind the national average in teacher pay?

Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Florence Shapiro said Tuesday a combination of an across-the-board teacher salary increase and incentive pay should be considered in the state budget.

"I think there's still room ... to look at both of them. I think they both need to be in the bill. I don't think there should be one or the other," said Shapiro, R-Plano. "As a pragmatist, I recognize that we need to review both and have some very serious conversations when it comes time."

Shapiro last week had suggested there might not be money for both after the House in its two-year state spending plan took $583 million from incentive-pay programs to fund an $800 across-the-board teacher pay raise. A strong incentive-pay advocate, Shapiro said then she'd fight for it and noted lawmakers approved a $2,000 across-the-board teacher raise last year.

This week, Shapiro and other Senate budget-writers put a smaller, across-the-board pay raise of about $500 on their unfunded "wish list." It would cost $300 million.

The Senate Finance Committee next week is scheduled to recommend a proposed budget to the Senate. After a vote, legislative negotiators will work out differences between the House and Senate proposals.

Shapiro said putting the raise on the "wish list" keeps it alive for negotiations.

We teachers keep being told we are important -- why don't you pay us like we are? And as far as merit pay goes, we are willing to give it a shot -- but only after you bring teacher pay in general up to national standards.

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At least for the moment, as a judge rules that schools can't censor student speech merely because they are uncomfortable with its content.

A school district violated a fourth-grader's constitutional rights to free speech and equal protection by refusing to allow her to distribute "personal statement" fliers carrying a religious message, a federal judge has ruled.

The Liverpool Central School District in upstate New York based its restrictions on "fear or apprehension of disturbance, which is not enough to overcome the right to freedom of expression," Chief U.S. District Judge Norman Mordue wrote in a 46-page decision Friday.

"School officials had no right to silence Michaela's personal Christian testimony," attorney Mat Staver said Monday.

Staver is executive director of Liberty Counsel, the Orlando, Fla.-based conservative legal group that represented Michaela Bloodgood and her mother, Nicole.

Liverpool school district lawyer Frank Miller said the school district was studying the decision and "reviewing its options."

According to the family's 2004 lawsuit, Nicole Bloodgood tried three times to get permission for Michaela to pass out the homemade fliers to other students at Nate Perry Elementary School. The flier, about the size of a greeting card, started out: "Hi! My name is Michaela and I would like to tell you about my life and how Jesus Christ gave me a new one."

Bloodgood's requests to school officials said that her daughter, now a sixth-grader, would hand them out only during "non-instructional time," such as on the bus, before school, lunch, recess and after school.

The lawsuit noted that Michaela had received literature from other students at school, including materials for a YMCA basketball camp, a Syracuse Children's Theater promotion and Camp Fire USA's summer camps.

Clearly, the problem was the content of the speech.

And interestingly enough, this case shows that there is still serious division among the appellate circuits on how much freedom students have to speak in a school setting. Some circuits, notably the Ninth, have been willing to allow schools to ban Christian religious speech simply because it might make religious and sexual minorities feel uncomfortable. This issue will, sooner or later, need to be resolved by the Supreme Court.

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This story from England is pretty scary -- if the radical wing of Islam can get a historical fact as well-documented as the Holocaust excluded from the curriculum because they are offended by the notion that there is something wrong with murdering innocent Jewish men, women and children, then there is somethign truly wrong.

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Government backed study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades - where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem - because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.

The findings have prompted claims that some schools are using history 'as a vehicle for promoting political correctness'.

The study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, looked into 'emotive and controversial' history teaching in primary and secondary schools.

It found some teachers are dropping courses covering the Holocaust at the earliest opportunity over fears Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic and anti-Israel reactions in class.

The researchers gave the example of a secondary school in an unnamed northern city, which dropped the Holocaust as a subject for GCSE coursework.

The report said teachers feared confronting 'anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils'.

It added: "In another department, the Holocaust was taught despite anti-Semitic sentiment among some pupils.

"But the same department deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades at Key Stage 3 (11- to 14-year-olds) because their balanced treatment of the topic would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques."

I'm terribly sorry, but you can take whatever immoral and hate-filled teachings about the Holocaust that are being spewed in your mosque and shove them up your collective arses -- the reality is that the Holocaust is well-documented and undeniable, just like the Turkish genocide against the Armenians. And as for the Crusades, they are simply one part of a larger clash of cultures that were taking place over hundreds of years -- beginning with the Muslim aggression against and conquest of Christian areas of the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe beginning within the lifetime of Mohammad himself.

Oh, and by the way -- I suspect the school that was challenged by Christian parents had presented a view that was overly sympathetic to the Palestinians rather than a balanced view of the conflict in the Middle East (considering recent events in british academia with regard to anti-Semitic boycotts of Israeli students and scholars). But even so, I have a problem with those who insist that history conform to their religious views -- and would make run out of my classroom any parent who attempted to impose their religious viewpoint of history on me and my students.

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