Sunday, May 27, 2018



Indiana shooting stopped by brave teacher

New details have emerged about how a heroic science teacher wrestled a student gunman to the ground and was shot three times after the youngster returned to his classroom from a bathroom break wielding two handguns.

Jason Seaman, 30, was shot three times as he brought the gunman to the ground in his classroom at Noblesville West Middle School on Friday shortly after 9am.

A 13-year-old girl was also shot and was taken to hospital in a critical condition afterwards.

The shooter was arrested shortly afterward Seaman tackled him and he remains in police custody.

The teacher's family have since revealed that he has undergone surgery and is doing 'well'.

The teenage girl's condition is not known and she has not been identified. 

As shots rang out in the school, terrified students hid in closets and sent petrified emails to their parents telling them that they loved them.

Once the suspect was brought into custody, the children were evacuated onto school buses to be taken to the Noblesville West High School where they will be reunited with parents.

There are 1300 students in the school, according to local media, and around 70 teachers. A school resource officer was there but it is not clear where he or she was stationed.

SOURCE 





School Can Force Students to Share Bathrooms With Transgender Students, Federal Court Rules

A Pennsylvania student said Thursday that her school opening its locker rooms, showers, and restrooms to students of the opposite sex is unfair and wrong.

“There are good ways to make room for everyone, without letting a boy into the girls’ locker rooms, shower areas, or restrooms,” said Alexis Lightcap, a senior at Boyertown Area Senior High School in Boyertown, Pennsylvania, who is also in a lawsuit against Boyertown Area School District, at a press conference.

“That is why I joined this lawsuit, so no other girl has to go through what I went through. It is common sense that boys shouldn’t be in girls’ locker rooms, restrooms, and shower areas. Every student matters and schools should put our privacy, safety, and dignity first.”

Lightcap was joined at the press conference with two of her attorneys, Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom’s legal counsel Christiana Holcomb and Independence Law Center chief counsel Randall Wenger, who argued the lawsuit.

On Thursday, three judges on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia heard oral arguments over the lawsuit, Doe v. Boyertown Area School District.

Judges Theodore McKee, Patty Shwartz, and Richard Lowell Nygaard ruled 3-0 against student privacy, Holcomb said. “We are currently evaluating our options, [but] it is very likely that we will seek en banc review with the 3rd Circuit to ask a full panel of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals to consider the issue of student privacy.”

En banc review would allow more judges to weigh in on the lawsuit rather than just the panel of three.

Students and parents appealed the lawsuit to the 3rd Circuit in September of last year, according to Alliance Defending Freedom.

The school opened its restroom and locker room facilities during the 2016-17 school year to students of the opposite sex without warning, Holcomb said.

“Without notice to parents or to students, Boyertown High School ignored its duties to respect the privacy, the safety, and the dignity of Alexis and her fellow students,” Holcomb said during the press conference, adding:

To her shock, she was told, due to a new and unannounced school policy, she would be sharing the restroom, locker rooms, and shower changing facilities with boys. Today, we asked the court to protect Alexis’ right to privacy, safety, and dignity in her own school.

“The Supreme Court has already spoken that the real differences between men and women means that privacy must be protected in the areas that it matters most, in locker rooms, restrooms, and shower changing facilities,” Holcomb said. “Today’s decision is out of step with the long-standing protection for privacy and we will continue to advocate for these young students.”

Aidan deStefano, a transgender student who graduated last year from Boyertown Area High School, said, according to Metro Weekly, “Reversing the practices that have allowed me and other trans kids to thrive at school would have been devastating. I’m glad other transgender students will know the experience of being treated like any other student.”

Lightcap said she was startled when she went into the bathroom one day and saw a man in the women’s room. “One day when I was in school, I walked into the bathroom and immediately when you walk in the bathroom, there is actually a mirror there, and I saw a reflection of a man. My body went into immediate shock,” Lightcap said in a video released by Alliance Defending Freedom. “I immediately ran out and I went to the administration at the school to report what I had seen in the bathrooms.”

Lightcap communicated the concern to her grade level principal but was ignored, Holcomb said in the video.

“After Alexis encountered that guy in the girl’s bathroom, she turned and ran out of the restroom and we actually have video footage of her fleeing the restroom in fear,” Holcomb said, adding:

She went to her grade level principal … and Alexis told Dr. Foley what had happened to her, how scared she was, how concerned she was, but Dr. Foley didn’t seem to care, he didn’t listen, he didn’t fix it, he basically told her, ‘This is the new school policy and this is the way things will be.’

“My voice didn’t matter, I knew that,” Lightcap said in the video. “I wish that the school had protected my privacy somehow, because it felt like a specific group of people were protected, while the greater population was not.”

The Daily Signal requested comment from Foley and the Boyertown Area School District but did not receive a response by publication deadline.

Ryan T. Anderson, author of “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment” and a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in an email that the Boyertown policy is wrong.

“Schools should protect the bodily privacy of their students,” Anderson said. “The reason we have separate bathrooms and locker rooms for boys and girls is not because of ‘gender identity’ but because of the bodily differences between males and females.”

SOURCE 






Professor Tried to Boost Female Students’ Grades Based Only on Their Gender

Thankfully, the plan didn't work.

A STEM professor at the University of Akron in Ohio was trying to boost his female students’ grades — just because those students are women.

On Monday, the professor, Liping Liu, sent an email to students letting them know that three groups of students may see their grades raised a “level or two,” according to a screenshot of the email that was posted on Reddit.

The screenshot has since been removed because it contained recipients’ email addresses, however, a redacted copy of it was provided by a student to Campus Reform. It stated:

    The following categories of students may see their grades raised one level or two:

    1) Female students (it is a national movement to encourage female students to go to information sciences)

    2) Students who had earned scores in exams (especially final exams) demonstrating a higher performance than their calculated ones

    3) Students who attended class but missed reporting attendance (as long as I can tell)

Liu told The College Fix that he was well aware that his attempt to raise women’s grades could be “questionable,” but that he decided he wanted to “test the water” anyway and see if the grade raises might “attract female students into future classes.”

In a win for sanity, however, the plan didn’t work. The Fix reports that an administrator contacted the publication to say that Liu’s idea was “unacceptable,” and that no one’s grades would be raised.

This was obviously the right choice. Although Liu told The Fix that the “one or two female students” in his class are “not doing well” — and that they would likely need to “repeat the courses or leave the program” without the extra grade help — it’s still an overall good thing for women that Liu won’t be able to enact this plan.   

The goal of feminism, after all, is for women and men to be treated equally — and this policy works in the opposite direction. It spreads the message that women are not as capable as men, that they need extra help to be able to do the same things that men can do. It doesn’t make women look stronger, it makes them look weaker. If I were one of these students, I would actually be offended at this kind of patronizing plan. I understand that it must be difficult to fail a class, but I would absolutely never feel right about passing a class solely because of my gender. I’d rather work twice as hard the second time around and pass on merit alone — just like everyone else had to do.

What’s more, if Liu’s idea became a popular trend, it could make it even harder for women to actually get hired for STEM jobs. Think about it: If employers knew that women routinely got higher grades just because they were women, they might start to assume that any woman with a STEM degree may not have actually deserved that degree. Passing a class is great, but the entire purpose of school is to prepare you for the workforce — and Liu’s idea could make it even tougher for women to make that ultimate goal a reality.

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