The lying Ward Churchill gets the ancient order of the boot

Statement to Faculty, Staff and Students from CU-Boulder Chancellor G.P. "Bud" Peterson:

A message to the faculty, staff and students of the University of Colorado at Boulder:

Earlier today, the University of Colorado Board of Regents, acting on the recommendation of University of Colorado President Hank Brown, voted to dismiss Professor Ward Churchill from the faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I want each of you to know that I have carefully reviewed the documentation and reports prepared by the various committees and by Professor Churchill, and I fully endorse this decision. It is my hope and expectation that this action will bring to close an unpleasant chapter in our history, and allow us to move forward to a future that more appropriately befits the many outstanding contributions the faculty, staff and students of the University of Colorado at Boulder makes to the state, the nation, and the world.

The University followed due process in the dismissal proceedings against Professor Churchill, according him all the rights and privileges due a full professor in such a case. I further believe the institution upheld the long tradition of academic freedom by standing firm on the issue of academic integrity. Finally, I want to reaffirm that the University’s decision was not based on Professor Churchill’s writings, politics or expressed personal views, but rather upon his scholarship and its quality. That scholarship was examined by three separate panels and more than 20 tenured faculty members who conducted a thorough review, and who found that it fell beneath the acceptable standards of our profession and the expectations of faculty here at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Academic freedom caries with it a high level of responsibility that we as an academic community cannot allow to be compromised. When these issues are raised, we have a responsibility – in fact, the obligation – to act accordingly.

Perhaps the most important lesson for our community in the painful ordeal surrounding Professor Churchill’s case is rooted in the values we must uphold and convey to our students. The young people who come to us are transformed by this institution, and they in turn, transform it with their energy, idealism and hard work. They deserve to be taught by faculty who embody high academic and personal standards. In a time such as ours, in which the very concept of “truth” is often bracketed by relativism, battered with cynicism and reduced by manipulation and “spin,” our students must know that when they enter our classrooms, they occupy sacred territory where truth is always pursued on a foundation of ethics, honor, and integrity.

We must now reaffirm our core values and not be deterred in our quest to provide the very best environment for our faculty, staff and students and to promote high ideals. Far from those who have said this case represents a “chilling” of academic freedom, I believe it forms an important annunciation of academic freedom, which time and practice have shown must be rooted in academic integrity to prevail.

So, as we continue our pursuit of excellence in research, scholarship and education, I believe we now do so with a stronger academic community, one ready to face a new and challenging time in American higher education. Our students are facing the challenges of a new century, a new global economy and a new era of global conflict and uncertainty. We have an important role to play in preparing them to enter that world, and in preparing that world to receive them. We must now return our full, undivided attention to that urgent cause, and I know we will.

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Louisiana governor vetoes school choice measure

This is the incompetent who could do nothing other than wring her hands during the "Katrina" disaster

Tax breaks for parents who pay private and parochial school tuition, for business utility costs and for the replacement of hurricane-damaged property were vetoed Friday by Gov. Kathleen Blanco, in a flurry of last-minute bill rejections. Those tax break bills were included in a batch of a dozen vetoed bills that Blanco's office said wrapped up the governor's actions on all measures passed by lawmakers in the regular legislative session that ended last month. Blanco then headed to Michigan for a meeting with the nation's governors.

The vetoes were Blanco's first of any tax break bills from the legislative session. Lawmakers approved a host of tax breaks big and small, and the governor agreed to many of them. The tax breaks she rejected Friday were overwhelmingly approved by lawmakers. In her veto message to the Senate about the private school tuition tax break, Blanco - an ardent supporter of public schools and opponent of voucher programs - said the bill by Sen. Rob Marionneaux could "subsidize private schools at the expense of public school children."

Marionneaux's bill would have allowed parents to take an income tax deduction for 50 percent of private and parochial school tuition and fee costs, up to a maximum $5,000 deduction, starting July 1, 2008. Supporters said the tax break would help parents who struggle to pay for private school tuition. They said in some areas the state's public schools performed so poorly that parents had little choice but to turn to private and parochial schools to educate their children.

The Rev. William Maestri, spokesman for the Archdiocese of New Orleans, said the archdiocese was disappointed with Blanco's actions. "This veto clearly indicates that Gov. Blanco is acting on behalf of teachers' unions and teachers' organizations rather than on behalf of parents and students," Maestri said in a statement.

Opponents called the bill a backdoor attempt to enact a voucher program statewide that would funnel state money away from public education to private schools. "I understand the sacrifice some parents make to send their children to private schools," Blanco wrote in her veto letter. "But, state government's primary responsibility is to maintain a public educational system."

More here





Oppressive use of police as a substitute for school discipline in Oregon

More hatred of kids. The police should never have been involved

The two boys tore down the hall of Patton Middle School after lunch, swatting the bottoms of girls as they ran -- what some kids later said was a common form of greeting. But bottom-slapping is against policy in McMinnville Public Schools. So a teacher's aide sent the gawky seventh-graders to the office, where the vice principal and a police officer stationed at the school soon interrogated them.

After hours of interviews with students the day of the February incident, the officer read the boys their Miranda rights and hauled them off in handcuffs to juvenile jail, where they spent the next five days. Now, Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison, both 13, face the prospect of 10 years in juvenile detention and a lifetime on the sex offender registry in a case that poses a fundamental question: When is horseplay a crime?

Bradley Berry, the McMinnville district attorney, said his office "aggressively" pursues sex crimes that involve children. "These cases are devastating to children," he said. "They are life-altering cases." Last year, in a previously undisclosed prosecution, he charged two other Patton Middle School boys with felony sex abuse for repeatedly slapping the bottom of a female student. Both pleaded guilty to harassment, which is a misdemeanor. Berry declined to discuss his cases against Mashburn and Cornelison.

The boys and their parents say Berry has gone far beyond what is necessary, criminalizing actions that they acknowledge were inappropriate. School district officials said Friday they had addressed the incident by suspending the students for five days.

The outlines of the case have been known. But confidential police reports and juvenile court records shed new light on the context of the boys' actions. The records show that other students, boys and girls, were slapping one another's bottoms. Two of the girls identified as victims have recanted, saying they felt pressured and gave false statements to interrogators. The documents also show that the boys face 10 misdemeanor charges -- five sex abuse counts, five harassment counts -- reduced from initial charges of felony sex abuse. The boys are scheduled to go on trial Aug. 20.

A leading expert called the case a "travesty of justice" that is part of a growing trend in which children as young as 8 are being labeled sexual predators in juvenile court, where documents and proceedings are often secret.

More here

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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