Five students are charged with battery after beating a boy, 14, on a school bus 'because he wore a Trump 2020 hat’

Five students have been been charged on Friday after a shocking video emerged of a Florida boy being attacked on a school bus, allegedly because he'd previously worn a hat supporting President Donald Trump.

The news comes three weeks after the initial attack on November 21 that sent the 14-year-old boy, identified as Tyler, to the hospital with head contusions.

The Hamilton County Sheriff's Office said the students involved have been charged with first-degree misdemeanor battery after discussing the charges with the State Attorney's Office.

The Florida State Attorney's Office recommended that the incident does not meet the criteria for a hate crime.

Superintendent Rex L. Mitchell shared a press release on Friday addressing the incident.

Mitchell says the school district has investigated the incident, disciplined the students involved in the altercation and turned information over to the Sheriff's office for criminal action.

Although social media was set ablaze at the implication that the beating happened because Tyler wore a MAGA hat, Mitchell contends that is not the case. 

'It is implied in the post that the altercation occurred because one of the students involved was wearing a political hat showing support for President Trump. There was no evidence found during the investigation that indicated the student was wearing of such apparel on a prior occasion motivated the incident,' the statement reads.

'The incident began with a verbal altercation between two students that escalated when additional students became involved.'

The school district reviewed the bus video to not only view the altercation, but the event leading up to the event and the subsequent conclusion.

Mitchell said: 'We absolutely do not condone the use of physical force between students. This was a very unfortunate incident completely unrelated to any political statements or agendas.'

A woman by the name of Melissa Griffin organized a GoFundMe on Friday for her son, Tyler.

She says Tyler is emotionally distraught as he reels from the incident and 'he is crying most days.'

Following the November incident, Griffin says they no longer feel safe sending Tyler back to the high school and are considering other options, including homeschooling or moving to a different county. 

The money donated to the GoFundMe will go towards purchasing 'a good laptop computer and other supplies needed to be successful in a home school environment,' for Griffin's two sons.  So far, the GoFundMe has raised around $2,600 of the $4,000 goal. 

The video first emerged on Thursday after the boy's family retained attorney Foye B. Walker for possible legal action.

The attorney, Walker, verified in a tweet that the incident occurred on a school bus in Hamilton County, and that he was representing the family. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com.

The boy's mother explained on Twitter that she believed the attackers were motivated by a Trump 2020 campaign hat that her son had previously worn to school.

She said that the boy stopped wearing the hat due to harassment, but that the bullying continued.

'To be clear, my son bought his Trump 2020 hat with his own money at the flea market a few weeks ago,' his mother, a Trump supporter who tweets under the handle @AmericanDiaries, wrote.

'He was proud to wear it. He wore it to School, but due to immediate bullying he put it away & didn't wear it to school again, sadly the damage was already done & [he] was now a target,' she said.

'From that point on he was steadily getting messed with. He was getting hit, tripped & verbally abused on the bus, but it all came to a head yesterday on his bus ride home,' she continued.

She said that when Tyler was examined after the school, nurses found older bruising along with the new injuries. 'He didn't tell us about the bullying, but they took it to a new level yesterday and we are just now learning what he was going through,' she said.

Video of the attack shows at least three females and two males raining blows down on Tyler's head as he tries to protect himself from the attack.

Tyler's mother says she believes the assault was racially motivated. Tyler is white, and the assailants appear to be black.

'Plain and simple this was a hate crime and attempted murder according to the state of Florida since it was over three kids that jumped him and these kids are older and larger,' the mother tweeted.

She said that she had contacted the police and the school district, and that the children involved had been suspended from school.  

SOURCE 

UPDATE: Five students have been charged with first-degree battery misdemeanor






New Research Shows Federal Student Aid Is Worse than We Thought

For years I have railed against the dysfunctional federal student loan program. The availability of cheap federal student loans has enabled universities to increase tuition fees aggressively, helping fund an unproductive academic arms race that, among other things, has led to sizable administrative bloat on most campuses.

The proportion of recent college graduates from the lowest quartile of the income distribution is lower than it was in 1970, suggesting that student loans have not been a successful vehicle for providing college access to those from low-income backgrounds—a primary program goal.

Default rates on student loans are high because standard commercial lending standards are ignored. Schools that encourage students to take out loans have no “skin in the game,” facing no financial consequences when their students disproportionately default on their obligations. In short, the student loan program is dysfunctional and in need of substantial modification—arguably elimination.

The New York Federal Reserve Bank has led the way in researching the loan programs, and a new study details that things are actually far worse than stated above.

Here are a few additional problems:

Thinking the federal government is going to forgive student loan debt, a majority of students are not reducing their loan balance—at all;

A very small portion (7 percent) of borrowers have huge debts (over $100,000), but owe over one-third of the $1.5 trillion in student loan debt outstanding;

College graduates in 2010 had repaid only 9 percent of their loan balances five years later;

College loan debt rose twice as fast as tuition fees from 2008 to 2018; much student borrowing appears not to meet direct instructional costs;

People living in high-income ZIP codes have accumulated far more debt than those living in lower-income areas, suggesting relatively affluent borrowers are disproportionate participants in the student loan program.

In prosperous, low-unemployment times, loan balances usually fall—they have fallen for other types of loans. However, balances for federal student loans have continued to grow, largely because borrowers have very little incentive to repay them.

A host of more accommodating repayment programs (e.g. tying repayment to income so that graduates with low earnings don’t have to pay much, and liberal “forbearance” and deferral policies that allow graduates to take “public service” jobs to stop paying after just ten years), have contributed to slow repayment.

So, perhaps, have the plans of major presidential contenders like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders to cancel all or a large part of student debt. Why be a sucker and repay your obligation when the government may agree to let you off from paying?

Slowness to repay is particularly high among recent borrowers—individuals graduating in the era of the socialist ascendency within the Democratic Party.

Indeed, since federally subsidized loans have lower interest rates than the private sector would charge, given the risks of lending to people with uncertain future earnings, there has always been some tendency to borrow more than is needed to finance college.

When I served on the Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education, I heard testimony from borrowers who used their student loans to engage in a variety of entrepreneurial ventures. The data suggest that this tendency is growing, as the ratio of loan balances to tuition fees has been rising. A former colleague of mine (unfortunately unpublished) claims her research shows student lending supports beer parties and other entertainments.

I interviewed a former student recently, a 2009 graduate of Ohio University. He informed me that 10 years after graduation he still has $70,000 in student loan debt. Despite his growing success in business, he is not paying off his loans. Why? The business he started is expanding and his ownership interest is increasing, leading him to accrue more debt. Why repay student loans when there are few inducements to do so and interest rates on them are below those on private-sector loans?

The most striking new revelation from the New York Federal Reserve Bank study is how much the student loan program appears to be an entitlement for presumably relatively affluent individuals (assuming borrowers in high-income areas themselves are typical of their neighborhoods). I have often wondered why we give loans of, say $200,000 to students attending Duke Law School who will probably be making very substantial ($150,000 or more) salaries shortly after graduation.

It is one thing to support the poor kid borrowing $25,000 to earn a bachelor’s degree from a regional state university to get a $40,000 job. It is another thing to finance tomorrow’s plutocrats, some who have borrowed $150,000 or more and are already making $200,000 or more a year, but who are not paying down their loan balances when they could easily afford to do so.

What is the solution to this mess?

In a perfect world, we would take a new approach to financing college. We would completely phase out the federal student loan programs while sharply reforming and curtailing Pell Grants as well. We would see a private lending market blossom with more sane and realistic lending policies. Profit-maximizing private lenders would vary interest rates charged to borrowers with perceived risks, and some borrowers with poor repayment prospects might be denied loans, reducing loan defaults.

We would no doubt see new private initiatives like income-share agreements grow exponentially in popularity, perhaps after some clarifying legislation confirming their contract enforceability. Four senators (Republicans Todd Young and Marco Rubio, Democrats Mark Warner and Chris Coons) have introduced such legislation. The elimination of federal student loans likely would lead in the short run to some enrollment decline (and some possible school closings). I would view that as a plus given the large number of underemployed recent college graduates.

It seems unlikely that the political composition of the executive and legislative branches of the government will change enough in the next few years to allow radical change.

An alternative second-best strategy would be to downsize federal financial assistance programs, for example, getting rid of PLUS loans whereby parents borrow to support their children’s education, end student tuition tax credits (lowering taxes to parents of students attending college), and put more stringent limits on the number of years and the amounts one can borrow. For example, a lifetime limit of six years borrowing and a maximum amount of $75,000 might be established.

Also, put in some minimal academic standards for continual loan eligibility. Students with less than a 2.0 (“C”) average after one year’s attendance, for example, might be barred from borrowing, or allowed to borrow for one more semester contingent on improved grades.

Finally, make colleges become at least limited co-signers on loans—require them to have some skin in the game. Perhaps make the school liable for the first $5,000 of a defaulted loan, plus 20 percent of the balance over $5,000.

Possibly excepting the “skin in the game” idea, there is little short-term prospect for any improvement in our dysfunctional federal program for financially assisting college students, but this latest research from the New York Fed makes it difficult for stand patters to ignore its many problems.

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The Continual Creep of Social Justice into Higher Education

Social justice activists say they want to bring about a golden age. The road to the golden city always requires more gold from our pockets to pay the activists’ salaries. Social justice activists always work to create more activists. Everything they do in higher education has an eye to the bottom line—seizing control of general education requirements, of departments, of administrative offices. They want to do well for themselves as they do what they think is good.

Duke University diverts tuition and tenure to steer jobs to social justice activists by forcing students to take a Cross Cultural Inquiry course, which “encourages critical and responsible attention to issues of identity, diversity, globalization, and power.” That means courses like Organizing for Equity, Activism and Social Change, and Sounding Latinx: Literature, Listening, and Ethnoracial Othering in the U.S. The CCI requirement doesn’t just steer jobs to activists. It also forces students to sign up for social justice propaganda.

Wake Forest University’s Residential Engagement Communities program tempts students with the Community Engagement Theme house, where “We function as a home away from home that builds community and works to broaden what we define as ‘community’ while engaging in talks about the intersections of social justice and community.” Social justice colonizes the dormitory.

Elon University’s Center for Race, Ethnicity & Diversity Education boasts about its Intergroup Dialogue, “an interactive co-curricular experience designed to increase students’ awareness about diversity and activism for social justice.” The “co-curriculum” at Elon means administrators training students to create “action plans” for more social justice at Elon.

University presidents sell social justice to the public as all-American niceness. The Federal Trade Commission should book ‘em for false advertising. At UNC-Charlotte, social justice means the Office of Identity, Equity, and Engagement in the Division of Student Affairs runs a “White Consciousness Conversation” about “how racism is perpetuated individually, culturally, and systemically.” Dig down into social justice on campus, and you’ll find the radical political agenda of identity politics, multiculturalism, and “safe spaces.”

“Social justice” in America in 2019 means the radical, secular theory that ordinary American life is so oppressive that we must dedicate ourselves to liberating others from that oppression. Oppression means unjust social relations, which perpetuate the unfair distribution of goods and burdens. The oppressed liberate themselves to redistribute all these goods by splitting into identity groups who will fight to revolutionize the country.

Those with “privilege” must reject their privilege by becoming the silent, deferential allies of the oppressed. Liberation comes first. Everything else comes second—liberty, the Constitution, the free market. You must dedicate every aspect of life to achieving social justice. Any opposition is immoral and must be crushed.

Social justice education applies social justice theory to our schools. In higher education this means overhauling the university to support social justice and its aims. The words vary—diversity, inclusion, equity, multiculturalism, sustainability, civic engagement—but the goal is the same. Regulations, classwork, extra-curriculars, dorm life, hiring, publications for tenure—social justice educators yoke every part of campus life to social justice. They degrade education’s search for truth into the pursuit of power.

Social justice educators have captured the university by playing hardball administrative politics. This is a national movement. Social justice advocates campaign to create an environment where they can monopolize higher education administration and the professoriate for themselves.

First, the social justice cadres warp university and department mission statements to trumpet dedication to social justice. UNC-Chapel Hill commits itself to diversity and inclusivity. Elon University’s School of Education declares that its mission “is to prepare educators who…[are] advocates for social justice.” Appalachian State University “prepares students to lead purposeful lives as engaged global citizens.” Once a university or a department officially dedicates itself to social justice, concrete programs follow. Appalachian State’s social justice mission justifies a host of concrete programs, among them Diversity and Inclusion at Appalachian State; Diversity Celebration; and the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Compliance. A social justice mission statement is a dragon’s tooth. Sow it in a campus and overnight there’s a host of new bureaucrats, armed with regulations.

Social justice advocates campaign to create an environment where they can monopolize higher education administration and the professoriate for themselves.

Next, the social justice cadres seize control of general education requirements. At Barton College, students must take a course in Intercultural Perspectives.

At East Carolina University, they force students to acquire Global and Domestic Diversity Competencies.

At Davidson College, students must pay for one course in Cultural Diversity and another in Justice, Equality and Community—courses like Art, Activism, and Environment; Latinx Sexual Dissidence and Guerilla Translation; Oppression & Education; and Theatre for Social Justice.

Dictating these education requirements makes sure that students are subjected to social justice propaganda—and guarantees that more and more social justice educators get tenure-track jobs to teach these courses.

There are also whole departments in Social Justice dedicated to vocational training in left-wing activism.

Elon University boasts a Poverty and Social Justice Minor, and UNC-Chapel Hill a Social and Economic Justice Minor. Experiential learning courses throughout the academy replace classroom study with work for outside organizations, vocational training for left-wing activism. At UNC-Chapel Hill, experiential learning means courses like Environmental Advocacy and Social and Economic Justice. Experiential learning gets called civic engagement, service learning, global learning—whatever the name, you get course credit to learn how to be an activist.

Outside the classroom, a host of higher education administrators impose social justice through the so-called “co-curriculum”—offices such as Student Life, Residential Life, First Year Experience, Service Learning, and Diversity. So at Appalachian State University, the Division of Student Affairs pays for the Intersect Social Justice Retreat, “designed to help educate participants about the concepts of social justice and leadership through exploration of their own stories, the stories of others, and issues of oppression and privilege.” At Duke, the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity funds the Cook Center Media Workshop, in which students “direct, edit and produce videos that highlight issues of social and economic inequality in North Carolina.”

Tomorrow, everyone who works for a university will be a social justice advocate. University job advertisements increasingly require commitment to social justice.

Davidson College’s advertisement for an Assistant Director for Civic Engagement declared that the job “focuses on the intersection of civic engagement and social justice issues.” UNC Greensboro wants an Assistant Professor of Program Evaluation “whose research agendas will have clear connections to equity, diversity, inclusion, social justice, or cultural responsiveness.” All jobs in higher education will be reserved for the small minority of the country that believes in social justice theory.

Social justice makes higher education half 1984 and half Tammany Hall, self-criticism sessions out of Mao’s China all mixed up with jobs for the boys.

The National Association of Scholars gives Americans a series of recommendations at the end of our report, Social Justice Education in America, about how to defend higher education from social justice advocates. The most important suggestion is to recognize that we face a nationwide movement to impose social justice orthodoxy and train social justice activists.

We also need to know that their tactics aim above all to secure stable careers for social justice advocates. Our own tactics have to aim at disrupting higher education’s ability to sustain social justice careers. Above all, state legislatures should use their powers to keep social justice advocates from securing safe careers in our public universities. We don’t need to remove every social justice advocate from higher education. We just need to shift incentives, so that the average would-be social justice advocate decides to pursue a different career. If we can manage that, half the battle is won.

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