Category Archives: Violence

@UBC time to lay down the mace in graduation and governance #ubcnews #ubc #bced #highered

*Apologies to the medievalists once again. Customized below is our semi-annual appeal to UBC managers to Lay Down the Mace:

As we count down to and roll through graduation, can we please remove the mace from convocation and governance at the University of British Columbia? The mace may have had its day in the first 100 years of this esteemed University but that day has gone.

The “ceremonial mace used at convocation ceremonies is out of step with contemporary values.” Dalhousie University now uses what it designed and calls the New Dawn Staff instead of a mace.

Indigenous peoples and advocates have said plenty about this already but the managers, well…

Currently, for instance, #UBC managers gleefully delight in the gravity and weight of their mace, entirely remiss that in addition to blunt power and violence, UBC’s mace signifies greed– the chainsaw and excavator– real estate development— digging for gold– as the University feverishly exploits its Endowment Lands (esp. Areas A, B, & D). Some traditions just aren’t worth maintaining…

Remember this bedlam in December, when a lawmaker grabbed the mace in Britain’s House of Commons? “When he hoisted it up, a clamor erupted: “Disgrace,” “Expel him,” “No!”

Oh, and at the Nexo Knights’ Graduation Day,

Jestro grabbed a sword, a mace, and a spear and began to juggle them… The unimpressed crowd started to boo… Sweat broke out on his forehead…. He let go of the mace, and it flew across the arena. The crowd gasped and ducked… Then … bam! It hit the power grid on the arena wall. The area lights flickered, then turned off. Soon the power outage surged throughout the city.

Meanwhile again in England, Bradford College faculty members called the admin’s decision to spend £24,000 on a new mace for graduation ceremonies a “crass bit of judgement.”

The days of the mace in Convocation and governance are of the past and that part of the past is no longer worth reenacting.

It’s difficult to know where this University now stands or what it stands for.

It is time to retire the mace, symbol of aggression, authority, and war. It’s time to march to graduation ceremonies in late May and November with open and empty hands as symbolic of peace and reconciliation of controversies and roles of the President’s Office.

UBC’s mace is a relic but a relic of what? The mace is symbolic speech but what is it saying about us now?

From ancient times, this club, this weapon of assault and offence, the mace was gradually adorned until the late twelfth century when it doubled as a symbol of civil office. Queen Elizabeth I granted her royal mace to Oxford in 1589. From military and civil power derives academic authority. The rest is history and it is not all good.

Stephen Heatley wields the mace at the 2018 convocation.

It is time to retire the macebearer, whose importance is inflated every year by the image’s presence on UBC’s graduation pages leading to Convocation. In pragmatic terms, if the mace falls into the hands of the wrong macebearer or manager at this point, someone’s liable to get clocked with it.

Is UBC’s mace still a respectable appendage to Convocation?

Remember, since that fateful November day in 1997, just five months into Martha Piper’s Presidency, when student activists put their bodies and minds on the line at the APEC protest, Tuum Est adorns both the can of mace sprayed in their eyes and the ceremonial mace that the President’s Office is eager to carry across campus every November and May.

Is it not time to retire the mace and mace bearer?

Rich Gibson: Robert Kerrey–Like Drowning Cats

Robert Kerrey–Like Drowning Cats
By Rich Gibson
Professor Emeritus
San
 Diego State University

Robert Kerrey is now appointed to be the top at a new US-sponsored university in Vietnam.

Former Senator Robert Kerrey admitted that as leader of a Navy Seal unit he participated in the murder of civilians in Vietnam. The Seal unit was part of an assassination squad, operating under the guidance of Operation Phoenix which, in the course of the war, killed more than 30,000 Vietnamese, using what its leader, William Colby, called a “scatter-gun approach,” in later congressional hearings. Villagers on the scene say Kerrey’s Seals not only shot more than 100 women and children with automatic fire, but slit the throats of five people, all considered less than human: Gooks, Slants, Slopes, Cong, Charlie, VC.

Kerrey’s admissions came in The New York Times Magazine, a story initially quashed by the television networks. Clearly indictable under existing war crime statutes, Kerrey participated in a cover-up of his unit’s killings for nearly three decades while he used his claims to valour to promote his political career.

Following The New York Times revelations, though, two interesting things happened, both relating to how history is constructed, not only as a vision of the past, but as a call to action in the future. In that context, Kerrey’s thinking about his experience in Vietnam, written not too long after he returned, is instructive.

As the Times article developed, Kerrey and his friends first began to commiserate with one another about the tough times they had, the strain on their consciences, the difficulty they had in living with dirty secrets, how their reputations of valour may be imperfect. Besides, what were we to do when everyone was an enemy? This experience traces the path of many convicted fascist war criminals in Germany who, exposed long after WWII closed, said the same thing.

Second, the debate shifted to who we shall call heroic. The mainstream outlook is now at least two-fold: perhaps nobody, or maybe people like Kerrey since war is hell. Three kinds of heroes are missed altogether.

Certainly those working-class US youth who found themselves enmeshed in a web that led directly to the front lines of battle in Vietnam, those of them who refused to go on burn-all kill-all missions, those who shot their own officers and blew them up in their tents, creating a new word in the lexicon, fragging; those who returned to the US, joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and, denouncing the war, threw their Medals of Honor back at Congress;  those young men and women, black and white, like Bill Marshall and Scott Camil, wounded and decorated heroes who rejected the war, are mostly unnoticed.

The working class anti-war movement is almost equally opaque, as if the resistance emanated from Harvard and Columbia, behind the cavalier lead of rich liberal children with bombs like Billy Ayers whose contempt for people sought to substitute explosives for a mass conscious movement.  In fact the blue-collar student movements at Wayne State in Detroit, San Francisco State, Kent State, and related schools seriously took up the issues of people who had a lot to lose, whose draft deferments were not coming from counsel with connected pals in the medical school, and who could wield real power by exerting their natural influence in their birth-class. Often under the leadership of Black and Latin youth, those people then led the mass sit-down strikes in auto in Detroit, and the community uprisings throughout the US, while the terrorists hid in million-dollar homes, returning to academic prominence after legal wrist slaps a few years later–now rich liberals without bombs.

Further outside the imperial gaze, even today, is the heroism of the Vietnamese, not only those who Kerrey and many other US officers caught up in the genocidal invasion sought to exterminate, but those who defeated the empire, politically, militarily, and morally, causing imperial troops to run away in their helicopters, pushing their allies off the struts as they ran. Despite every effort to reconstruct that piece of history, whether through relentless Hollywood endeavors to recapture the good old days of World War II, or the repositioning of responsibility to suggest that all US troops in Southeast Asia were war criminals, and hence none of them were, nothing ever will be the same.

At the end of the wars on Vietnam, when the US fled at the end of April, 1975, the US military was in utter collapse, the economy a shambles, the presidency upended by Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, and the campuses in full uproar. Reversing all of that has been a 40 year project, with some success, especially the project to eradicate the memory of the facts of the war itself.

There are no Vietnamese victors on Vietnam Wall, yet millions of them died–and changed the world.

However, for purposes of clarity, it is worthwhile to look back on what Robert Kerrey wrote after he returned from Vietnam, more than twelve years ago, perhaps when his recollections were sharper, less opportunistically censored by the polish of electoral success. This is what Nebraska’s Robert Kerrey said in the opening paragraph of an article titled, “On Remembering the Vietnam War:”

“Around the farm, there is an activity that no one likes to do. Yet it is sometimes necessary. When a cat gives birth to kittens that aren’t needed, the kittens must be destroyed. And there is a moment when you are holding the kitten under the water when you know that if you bring that kitten back above the water it will live, and if you don’t bring it back above in that instant the kitten will be dead. This, for me, is a perfect metaphor for those dreadful moments in war when you do not quite do what you previously thought you would do.”*

Such is the choice, drowning cats or universal solidarity against despotism–and the perversion of academic life.

*The Vietnam Reader, edited by Walter Capps, Routledge, New York (1990)  

#UBC time to lay down the mace in graduation and governance #ubc100 #ubcnews #ubc #bced #highered #caut_acppu

As we count down to May graduation, can we please remove the mace from convocation and governance at the University of British Columbia? The mace had its day in the first 100 years of this esteemed University but that day has gone.

Times have changed, business as usual has been called into question and the Board of Governors is currently operating under the pall of a No Confidence vote cast by faculty members.

The days of the mace in Convocation and governance are of the past and that part of the past is no longer worth reenacting.

It has been an emotional year for UBC. As we launched the celebration of our Centennial at UBC 100, our President resigned under a cloak of secrecy. As we began to party, we launched an investigation to discover the lengths to which a Chair of the Board of Governors and administrators might go to suppress academic freedom. As no accountability was forthcoming, a No Confidence vote was cast. As the BoG continued with business as usual, staff and students expressed serious concerns to triangulate those of faculty members.

It’s difficult to know where this University now stands or what it stands for.

It is time to retire the mace, symbol of aggression, authority, and war. It’s time to march to graduation ceremonies in late May with open and empty hands as symbolic of peace and reconciliation of controversies and roles of the President’s Office.

UBC’s mace is a relic but a relic of what? The mace is symbolic speech but what is it saying about us now?

From ancient times, this club, this weapon of assault and offence, the mace was gradually adorned until the late twelfth century when it doubled as a symbol of civil office. Queen Elizabeth I granted her royal mace to Oxford in 1589. From military and civil power derives academic authority. The rest is history and it is not all good.

Dr. Thomas Lemieux, School of Economics with UBC’s Mace at the May 2015 Convocation.

Dr. Thomas Lemieux, School of Economics, with UBC’s Mace at the May 2015 Convocation.

It is time to retire the macebearer, whose importance is inflated every year by the image’s presence on UBC’s graduation pages leading to Convocation. In pragmatic terms, if the mace falls into the hands of the wrong macebearer or manager at this point, someone’s liable to get clocked with it.

Is UBC’s mace still a respectable appendage to Convocation?

Remember, since that fateful November day in 1997, just five months into Martha Piper’s Presidency, when student activists put their bodies and minds on the line at the APEC protest, Tuum Est adorns both the can of mace sprayed in their eyes and the ceremonial mace that the President’s Office is eager to carry across campus every November and May.

Is it not time to retire the mace?

Show Your Care open letter to the people of Europe #peace #highered

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OPEN LETTER

To the people of Europe,

In the face of the migration crisis over the last few months, Europe’s people demonstrated that they do not stand for a culture of fear, but for a culture of care. This idea now has to turn into a promise.

Now, more then ever, it is time to reach out again – responding to Friday’s violence with full-hearted, unquestioning openness, rather than with angst, distrust and anger.

On Friday, November 13, 2015, Europe was under attack. But it was not Paris, Europe, or the “West” that was under attack. What was under attack, and is under attack now, after the tragedy of Paris, is the inspiring, deeply touching care that people throughout Europe showed over the last few months – despite the shrill voices of a few.

In the very beginning of what is called the refugee crisis, a current of care and love ignited all Europe – and showed that this “crisis” was a crisis of governments, not of the people. You acted, where state action failed, and reached out in an effort of care and solidarity — with no regard to where people came from, or who they were. What mattered was reaching out a helping hand, And reaching out you did. Europeans stood up, raising their voices for those who had no standing and no voice.

Many people died on November 13, and the world was full of tears. But if we are not careful, there will be more violence and more tears.   The people of Europe now stand at the precipice of a fundamental choice, a choice that will, without exaggeration, determine the fate of countless more lives.

We cannot respond to the terror of Paris with our own terror. We can not respond by putting up fences around Europe. We must not refuse to reach out to those who seek help, fleeing the same terror that swept over Paris. We can not give in to the fear that those who terrorize spread.

We are deeply concerned about how Europe and the world will react to this terror. Putting up fences, refusing helping hands, closing down where we need to be open, resorting to distrust where we should be faithful: This is what those who attacked us want. They did not attack Paris that night. They attacked what we stand for, what we belief with our whole heart: to be open to everyone, to help those who seek help, to be together in fraterinté .

But we are faithful: We saw how Europe can be. You proved to the world that Europe indeed can be a safe harbor in a stormy sea.  When we now are faced with the painful catastrophe that happened in Paris, we cannot destroy the faith that the world, and particularly those who seek our help put in us. We are entrusted with a great responsibility: to care. This is who we are, and need to be.

Going forward, we must work together on many fronts:

  • The media must not forget their responsibility for sobriety, avoiding reporting that fuels anger and xenophobia! And they must continue to report on the suffering of those who try to cross our borders, or who already live among us but without secure standing.
  • Our governments must not respond to violence with violence. Governments must not give in to the hatred and frustration that pain so easily justifies. We must not repeat the mistakes of our history that ignited the terror in the first place. We must not become a place known for its fences, surveillance and paranoia. Europe much be a place and symbol of openness and freedom.
  • And the people of Europe must remember their power and responsibility to become a model of civility for a new age. We must remember what was achieved in the response to the so-called migration crisis. We must remember that reaching out makes a difference – to individuals, and to the whole society we share

So, yes, we have faith: We believe that Europeans will hold high the ideals their societies are built upon.
We have faith that we will continue being touched by you.
As you will inspire us by your actions.
As you will continue to care.

Signed,

Sign the Open Letter

RCMP release sketch of suspect in UBC sexual assaults

CBC News, November 5, 2013– RCMP have released a composite sketch of the suspect in a string of sexual assaults at the University of British Columbia this year.

Sgt. Peter Thiessen says the suspect in question is a Caucasian male, with dark or olive skin, in his late 20s to early 30s. He is slim in build and measures between 5 foot 8 and 6 foot 2.

Thiessen is asking anybody who has information about the suspect to contact the RCMP’s tipline at 778-290-5291 or 1-877-543-4822.

Six sexual assaults have taken place on the UBC campus over the past several months. Police say they were likely committed by the same suspect.

The most recent assault, reported Oct. 27, involved a young woman walking home from Gage Hall on Student Union Boulevard shortly before 1:30 a.m. She noticed a shadow behind her and was grabbed from behind. When she flailed her arms, the suspect ran off, police had said.

The other five reported incidents occurred April 19, May 19, Sept. 28, Oct. 13 and Oct. 19.

View sketch: CBC News

UBC President Toope addresses sexual assaults at press conference #bced #ubc

Will McDonald, The Ubyssey, October 30, 2013– UBC president Stephen Toope addressed the recent sexual assaults at a press conference today.

Toope said UBC is doing all they can to keep students safe in the face of the environment of insecurity currently felt on campus.

“I have kids who live on campus and I am every bit as concerned about their safety as any parent. I can reassure parents across the world that we are doing everything in our power to ensure the safety of their children.”

Toope said the university has already increased both lighting and security patrols on campus, but questioned adding security cameras due to privacy concerns.

“That’s going to be a longer term discussion,” he said. “I certainly am reluctant to make a commitment at this point that the entire campus would be subject to surveillance.”

He said a working group has been formed to discuss issues such as the merits of adding cameras and the possibility of adding more lighting on campus.

“What I can tell you is that we are putting [in] the resources that are necessary to keep this campus as safe as we can. Frankly, we are not counting pennies right now.”

Toope also commended students who have banded together in organizations like Safewalk in the wake of the sexual assaults.

“This is a moment for community building. This is a moment to resist fear, to push back at a person who is making our community feel vulnerable,” he said.

Toope emphasized that the new security measures are a temporary response to the recent sexual assaults. He said the working group would look at longer-term security plans.

“This is one of the safest campuses in North America. There is not normally a climate of fear of or insecurity on the campus.”

Read More: The Ubyssey

Stephen J. Toope: Attacks at UBC’s Vancouver campus #ubc #bced

October 29, 2013

Dear members of UBC’s Vancouver campus community:

Today UBC joined the RCMP for a press conference that revealed new, disturbing information about the spate of sexual assaults on our Vancouver campus.

This is a time of stress for everyone in our community and I, like you, am extremely concerned by these developments.  I am grateful to the RCMP who have made this a top priority. Their investigation is critical to restoring the safety of our campus and UBC is working closely with them to solve this crime.  If you have information that could help the RCMP in their investigation, I urge you to contact them (1-800-222-TIPS).

We are working with our campus leaders – staff, faculty and students – to continue enhanced campus security and increase support for our campus community.  This is now our number one priority, and we are mobilizing all necessary resources to this end.

This latest news will no doubt be frightening to many of you, so if you feel you need to talk, please do not hesitate to make use of the UBC, AMS and RCMP counselling services listed on our new safety web site:http://www.ubc.ca/staysafe.

This new central web site will provide you with the latest information, safety tips and campus resources all in one hub.

In the days to come, until the alleged perpetrator is apprehended, I ask you to be extra vigilant. Make sure you have the information you need to stay safe.  The ultimate choice is yours, but the RCMP is advising you not to walk alone after dark.  Please look out for each other.

But above all, I believe this is not a time to give in to anxiety. This is a time to rally in support of one another, stand up against violence, and live out our commitment to a dynamic learning community free from fear.

Tell us what we can do better. Voice your concerns and take steps to make others feel safe during your daily activities.

We will get through this, together.

Stephen J. Toope
President and Vice-Chancellor

Protest violent police repression of striking Mexican teachers

LETTER FROM US section of the Trinational Coalition to Defend Public Education

Asking us to support Mexican teachers – send to Mexican officials

We stand in solidarity with the teachers of CNTE in Mexico who are calling upon the government for a genuine dialogue, that their demands be acknowledged and that violent repression not be used against the nationwide movement in defense of public education as it was today in Mexico City. The rights to assemble and express legitimate concerns are rights that are inalienable rights that are part of the civil and democratic freedoms for which humanity has fought and died for during the last two centuries. WHEREVER POSSIBLE, ORGANIZE DEMONSTRATIONS IN FRONT OF MEXICAN CONSULATES AND TAKE PHOTOS TO BE SENT TO THE SAME ADDRESSES AS THE COPIES OF PROTEST LETTERS. Even a photo of 5 people in front of a consulate is a tremendous morale booster for our brothers and sisters fighting against the destruction of teacher unions & public education!

Police end teachers protest in Mexico City
Police attack striking Mexico teachers

LETTERS TO THE GOVERNMENT CAN BE SENT TO:
LIC. ENRIQUE PEÑA NIETO
Presidente Constitucional de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos
enrique.penanieto@presidencia.gob.mx

LIC. OSORIO CHONG MIGUEL ANGEL
Secretario de Estado
secretario@segob.mx

LIC. CHUAYFFET CHEMOR EMILIO
Secretaria de Educación Pública
emilio.chuayffet@sep.gob.mxrasagas@live.com
Prof. Eligio Hernández de Oaxaca XXII: eligiogonzalez@hotmail.com

Below is a copy of the letter that the US section of the Trinational Coalition to Defend Public Education sent to the protesting teachers in Mexico. Use it as a template and send copies to:
seccionmexicana.coali@gmail.com
Maestra Graciela Rangel de Michoacán sección XVIII: rasagas@live.com
Prof. Eligio Hernández de Oaxaca XXII: eligiogonzalez@hotmail.com

MEXICO D.F., MEXICO September 13, 2013

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The Trinational Coalition to Defend Public Education-USA extends our support for your valiant and militant struggle to defend not just your rights as teachers and trade unionists, but the Mexican people’s right to a public education that is guaranteed in your federal constitution. We applaud your courageous resistance against implementation of the present changes in the constitution which would use standardized tests for teachers to be hired and to keep their jobs, standardized tests for students that will limit their future opportunities in life as well as reducing federal funding to state and local schools. These changes will have the worst impact on the poorest states and communities, especially those whose population mainly speak languages other than Spanish.

We face similar attacks in the United States of America under the guise of “reform”. Your struggle for educational and union justice is an inspiration to us about how teachers and communities can unite to defend public education. You have clarified for the world that the forces behind these so-called reforms are powerful corporate interest that intend to privatize public education.

YOUR STRUGGLE IS OUR STRUGGLE!

In solidarity,

Rosemary Lee, for Trinational Coalition to Defend Public Education-section USA

From Kindergarten Cop to The Garrison School and Society

In the midst of a debate and impending action on gun control in the US, sparked by the senseless killing of 20 children and 6 adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on 14 December, “hundreds of law enforcement personnel descended on Lone Star College-North Harris today.” Yet another campus shooting left four injured while two suspects were rushed from the campus in handcuffs.

In the meantime, as Emily Richmond reported in The Atlantic today, some states are forging ahead with plans to arm teachers. “Utah teachers are far from the only ones expressing increased interest in concealed weapons. There has also been a jump in inquiries at gun training clinics in Florida, according to the Palm Beach Post, even though the state bans nearly all weapons at public schools…. In Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, said she wouldn’t support allowing principals to carry weapons, as proposed by the state’s superintendent of public instruction. A bill to arm teachers in the Evergreen State faces an uphill battle as Democrats have the supermajority, Colorado Public Radio reports. But in Tennessee, where the Republicans control both houses of the state legislature, talk of arming teachers is more likely to gain momentum.”

This idea of gun-toting teachers has been gaining momentum, with the US National Rifle Association’s in your face ad released last week (Obama’s kids get armed guards, yours don’t), a month after gun expert and university professor John Lott said to Newsmax that gun-free zones in schools are “a magnet” for killers. Lott’s solution: arm teachers— “Simply telling them to behave passively turns out to be pretty bad advice . . . By far the safest course of action for people to take, when they are confronting a criminal, is to have a gun. This is particularly true for the people in our society who are the most vulnerable.”

What seems like an idea of fiction or Hollywood has some politicians pumped. For example, Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul commented on 17 January that “if my kids were at that school [Sandy Hook Elementary], I would have preferred that the teacher had concealed-carry and had a gun in her desk… Is it perfect? No. Would they always get the killer? No. Would an accident sometimes happen in a melee? Maybe… but nobody (at the Connecticut school) had any defense, and he just kept shooting until he was tired and he decided to shoot himself.”

Republican and ex-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, like other actors and directors, maintains a boundary between movies and life: “one has to keep (the two) separate,” he said. What he does in movies such as the Raw Deal is “entertainment and the other thing [Sandy Hook massacre] is a tragedy beyond belief. It’s really serious and it’s the real deal.” He is at least up for taking a look at “how we deal with mental illness, how we deal with gun laws, how we deal with parenting.”

Of course, if the Kindergarten Cop was filmed today, John Kimble, the undercover cop come teacher, would be packing heat. Unlike the 1990 version, he wouldn’t have to be rescued by a pet ferret and another teacher with a baseball bat. In fact, the old movie makes ya kinda wonder why he wasn’t packin a 45.

When John Dewey wrote his influential The School and Society in 1900, he anticipated arming teachers with new ideas. Silly. He should have known what the NRA was up to in his day. By the late 1910s, forty years into its existence, the NRA had “succeeded in making it possible for any group of ten persons to get free rifles from the Government and free ammunition. That has added, of course, a bit to our sense of security,” it was claiming. For Dewey, the school and society were interconnected, as he saw it: the “New Education” reflected “larger changes in society.” “Can we connect this ‘New Education’ with the general march of events?,” he asked (p. 4). Indeed, todays edition of the classic text will have to be retitled The Garrison School and Society. And that first chapter will have to be rewritten to reflect the times– nowadays, we “Arm Teachers with New Guns, Not New Ideas.”

Two in custody following LSC campus shooting

Kingwood Observer, Stefanie Thomas, January 22, 2013 — Hundreds of law enforcement personnel descended on Lone Star College-North Harris after reports of a shooting on campus just after 12:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Two suspects were led from the campus in handcuffs and at least three people were sent to area hospitals. There were no reports of any fatal injuries at this point.

The incident unfolded at the Lone Star College-North Harris Campus, 2700 W.W. Thorne Drive. The area was locked down until about 2 p.m. when Lone Star College officials released the following message via the college’s official Twitter account: “Shooting around 12:31 today at LSC-North Harris between two individuals, three shot. Danger has been mitigated. Situation under control.”

At 2:30 p.m., Lone Star College released this statement: “The LSC-North Harris campus has been evacuated and is now closed for the remainder of the day. Please continue to monitor the Lonestar.eduwebsite for additional information on campus operations.”

The first suspect was detained within minutes of law enforcement arrival. A couple hours later, a second suspect was detained in nearby brush and returned to the campus.

At nearby Aldine ISD campuses, plans were in place to safely get students home after the second suspect reportedly was captured, according to a district spokesperson.

“We have four campuses that are currently on lockdown,” said Aldine ISD spokesperson Mike Keeney. “Nimitz High School, Dunn Elementary, Nimitz 9th grade campus, and Parker Intermediate will be released at 3:30 p.m. After the buses have rolled, children who normally ride with their parents can pick up their students shortly after. Students who walk home will have to be picked up by their parents today.

Read More: Kingwood Observer and update

Beating of University of Maryland student by police probed by county prosecutors

Washington Post: Beating of University of Maryland student by police probed by county prosecutors

Prince George’s prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation of three county police officers who beat an unarmed University of Maryland student with their batons after a basketball game last month in an incident that was caught on video and surfaced publicly Monday, authorities said.

Student Accused by Professor of Being an FBI Informant Brought Gun to Class for Presentation

The Oregonian: Confrontation between student and professor at Portland State University raises questions about school security, guns on campus

One afternoon last November, a Portland State University economics student gave a class presentation on what he described as the U.S. military’s flawed reliance on one of its key combat rifles.

As a visual aid, Zachary Bucharest hauled out a duffel bag and withdrew the disassembled parts of a Colt AR-15, a semiautomatic version of the military M-16. For the next 15 or 20 minutes, he kept professor John Hall’s class engrossed as he lectured about the weapon’s inferiority to the foreign-made AK-47.

Humans vs. Zombies on at CU-Boulder, minus Nerf guns

The Daily Camera: Humans vs. Zombies on at CU-Boulder, minus Nerf guns

The University of Colorado’s version of the national campus craze, Humans vs. Zombies, is happening in full force, but without a main prop of the game — Nerf guns.

“The use of simulated weapons on campus violates regent policy,” said Molly Bosley, a spokeswoman for the CU Police Department. “Given the climate of what has happened in this country lately, we are taking precautions by banning the use of these simulated weapons on campus.”

Thirteen die in Azerbaijan university shooting

AFP: Thirteen die in Azerbaijan university shooting

BAKU (AFP) — A gunman shot 12 people dead on Thursday before killing himself at a university in the oil-rich Caspian state of Azerbaijan, officials said.

The massacre at the Azerbaijan State Oil Academy stunned the small mainly Muslim country, which has never before seen the kind of public shooting rampages that have plagued some Western countries in recent years.

Fire Va. Tech’s president, some shooting victims’ families say

Richmond Times-Dispatch: Fire Va. Tech’s president, some shooting victims’ families say

Virginia Tech’s leaders need to be held accountable for their actions during last year’s massacre, survivors and families told Gov. Timothy M. Kaine yesterday.

Some said that probably means Tech President Charles W. Steger should be fired.

In two days of meetings with the governor during the weekend, families said the pay increases and praise Tech officials received after the April 16, 2007, shootings in which 32 students and faculty members were killed has sent the wrong signal to Tech leaders and is stalling needed change. The gunman, student Seung-Hui Cho, killed himself.

Pensylvania: Student group pushes for right to carry concealed weapons on campus

The Philadelphia Inquirer: Student group pushes for right to carry concealed weapons on campus

Along with books, laptop and cell phone, there is something else that Jeremy Clark thinks is essential to bring to class: his gun.

The Villanova University law student said the sickening spate of campus shootings, from Virginia Tech to Northern Illinois University, left him feeling vulnerable without his Glock 9mm semiautomatic handgun.

Worried About Guns? Ban a Campus Musical

Inside Higher Ed: Worried About Guns? Ban a Campus Musical

After the Virginia Tech murders a year ago, Yale University banned the use of stage weapons in a student theatrical production — infuriating actors and educators who believed audience members could distinguish drama from real life. After a few days of ridicule, Yale backed down.

Is Your College Student Safe at School?

Readers Digest: Is Your College Student Safe at School?

Almost a year after the Virginia Tech shooting, colleges are getting smarter about campus risks. RD gives out grades and tells parents what to study up on.

New York: Time to arm BCC’s police

Press & Sun-Bulletin: Time to arm BCC’s police
Virginia Tech, other attacks spur need for more protection

Broome Community College President Laurence Spraggs has a serious and controversial decision to make, but it might not be so difficult now that the board of trustees has expressed support for arming the campus police officers.

Last defendant in murder-for-hire case sentenced

Virginia Pilot: Last defendant in murder-for-hire case sentenced

The last of the three men charged in a murder-for-hire plot against a Tidewater Community College professor last year admitted his role and was ordered to serve eight and a half years in prison on Wednesday.

The defendant, Jay Glosser, 54, a former associate professor of information systems technology at the Norfolk campus, will serve six months more than his co-defendants. He reached a plea agreement with prosecutors, in which he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, solicitation and conspiracy to commit extortion. He waived his pre-sentence report and was sentenced Wednesday to 35 years with all but eight and a half suspended.