Tuesday, October 11, 2022


Arizona families keep winning on school choice and more states need to follow our lead

Arizona families will now be able to freely choose any school of their choice and have state tax dollars follow their child to that school. Our new universal Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) law is in effect for all Arizona students after radical opponents of school choice failed to submit the minimum required signatures to put the law on hold and refer it to the 2024 ballot. This is the first legislation of its kind and is now the gold standard in the United States. Every state in the nation should also follow our lead in freeing students from undesirable educational settings.

After the Arizona legislature passed this legislation and when Governor Doug Ducey signed it into law on July 7, a union-backed organization (Save our Schools - SOS) immediately started organizing a campaign to gain enough signatures to refer it to the ballot. That would have temporarily denied school choice to thousands of Arizona students. Arizona provides for laws to be referred to the ballot before going into effect if enough valid signatures are gathered on legal petitions by opponents of those future statutes.

This group began their efforts by setting up tables around the state to attract individuals to sign their petitions. On Saturday, July 9, I first encountered a couple working for SOS. They misrepresented the petition by saying untrue things about ESAs, upsetting me. I would have been fine if they were gaining signatures from Arizona voters on the proper merits of the policies, but I was not going to stand for lies — especially since my family greatly benefited from this program over the past decade. In a respectful way, I verbally countered two of their volunteers for over an hour on their misrepresentation, and that is when I decided I wasn’t going to stand by and watch this happen to our state and to our families.

I went on the group’s social media accounts to find out where they were collecting signatures in my community and began countering them one after another. I would position myself nearby on public sidewalks in 110-degree heat, waiting for unsuspecting Arizonans to approach the SOS signature gatherers so that I could give them the truth before they signed. I quickly found that voters would look through the legislation, which was attached to the petitions, after hearing my arguments to find out for themselves what was inside this legislation.

SOS repeatedly lost support because they could not persuade reasonable people once the truth was exposed. After doing this for two weekends in a row, I realized I couldn't do this by myself and started to call people to help me. Four friends came out to help me the third weekend, which grew the following weekend to 61 friends, and then to 107, and more each week. We ended this little campaign with over 1,000 families helping statewide — a huge achievement and commitment for everyone involved.

Our children were flipped off, cursed at, and assaulted while we peacefully protested. The union-backed group tried to bully and intimidate our families in the hope that we would just go home. Instead, our peaceful band of parents prayed for them, ignored them, and pushed on with our mission. All of us were united to ensure every voter in Arizona fully understood the ramifications of what they were signing.

Thanks to our tireless efforts to educate voters and counter the lies of the anti-school choice movement this summer, SOS fell well short of the minimum requirement for petition signatures, which was around 120,000.

This organic movement started with a mom, a private citizen, and remained a grassroots, collective effort from start to finish. The union-backed group tried their best to paint a bad picture of us to the public, but these attempts flopped.

When you have hundreds of individual citizens standing up for their freedoms, it is impossible to blame one person. SOS should look in the mirror if they want someone to blame for the huge pushback they experienced. If they didn't lie to voters to gain their signatures, we might have never been motivated to counter them.

Parents want options for their children's education, and that is why ESAs have been popular among a lot of Arizona families for years. However, since the universal ESA application went online mid-August, more than 23,000 new students have applied for this new-and-improved scholarship, surpassing a lot of expectations - and it's still early on in the process. The unions behind SOS know that they are immediately losing control of thousands of Arizona families, and that is why they worked so hard to stop this legislation. Thankfully, they came up short with their referendum attempt.

Parents are the first and primary educators of their children, and they want to be able to have their children attend a school that allows them to thrive and become the people they were created to be. The world will be a better place when parents are freely directing their child’s education with no obstacles in their way. And now, in Arizona, that educational freedom is our way of life.

*******************************************************

Do Oxford students really need trigger warnings?

It is freshers’ week on campus [at Oxford]. Brand new students get to make friends, get drunk and find their way around university. The excitement culminates with freshers’ fair, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to find your tribe by joining everything from the paragliding club to the Mao appreciation society. Who cares if you never attend a single meeting? For one brief moment, you can flirt with the person you might become.

Freshers’ fairs offer new students a glimpse of the intellectual and political possibilities on offer at university. But sadly not at Oxford. This year, Oxford University’s freshers’ fair comes with a big fat trigger warning. Apologies. I should of course have prefaced that sizeist statement with ‘Trigger Warning: body shaming.’ And to be totally accurate, it is not one big fat trigger warning on the whole fair but a multitude of little warnings, one for each stall deemed to be promoting activities or ideas those in charge think new students might find distressing.

It is unlikely to be the bungee jumping club or the competitive vodka-drinking society that gets slapped with a trigger warning. It is not physical risks that students are being advised to avoid but emotional distress. The fashion for warnings has taken off following a row over the presence of an anti-abortion, pro-life group at last year’s fair.

Whatever your view on abortion, the application of a trigger warning suggests that the mere presence of pro-life campaigners is potentially so distressing that students should steer clear altogether. But what is the point of a university if not to confront difficult ideas? Presumably, medical students need to think about how they might counsel pregnant women; philosophy students may ponder the point at which human life begins and history students might look at how women’s rights have changed over time. Badging these topics as potentially distressing helps no one.

The focus on anti-abortion campaigners reveals the political motivation that lies behind trigger warnings. Whatever the rhetoric, they have nothing to do with protecting people suffering from trauma. Repeated studies have shown that trigger warnings are not only ineffective but may actually be counterproductive when it comes to helping psychologically vulnerable students. But they continue to be useful for activists who want to flag up people or ideas they consider politically dangerous. Trigger warnings highlight challenges to the current consensus on campus.

Spraying trigger warnings around universities like disinfectant has a devastating impact on free speech. Students learn that university is not a place for exploring ideas but a place to be protected from anything controversial. They learn that debate is not an exciting chance to hone your arguments or change your mind, but something best avoided for your own emotional safety.

With this in mind, Oxford’s freshers’ fair also has a ‘wellbeing zone’ where students who feel ‘uncomfortable’ can go to relax and chat with members of the ‘advice and wellbeing team’. Presumably there will be colouring books, bean bags, milk and cookies. This is not university but play school.

I have been writing about campus censorship for more than a decade. Back at the start, I was at pains to point out that few students arrived at university itching to no-platform controversial speakers or sign petitions to have books removed from the library. I argued it was activist academics and university administrators who taught students to see themselves as vulnerable and ideas as dangerous.

Things have changed since then. Often, it is the students’ unions, like the one at Oxford, that are now pushing for trigger warnings. The freshers’ fair organisers have justified their plans on social media, explaining that they are no longer able to ban societies outright because of freedom of speech legislation. We can only imagine their frustration. The trigger warnings, then, are a ‘mitigation’ put in place ‘to support the welfare of students’.

It is now students who want to stick red flags on ideas they find distasteful. This is peer-to-peer censorship by young adults firmly wedded to a perception of themselves as mentally and emotionally vulnerable and in need of psychological protection from dangerous ideas. The form-wielding bureaucrats and rainbow lanyard-clad lecturers can stand down. Their work is complete.

In truth, students’ unions have always attracted busybodies wanting to boss their fellows into organised activities and carefully-controlled fun. The difference is that today, their main concern safeguarding the fragile mental health of their peers and opposing political views they find distressing. We have to hope that Oxford’s latest intake will ignore the trigger warnings and turn the wellbeing zone into a space for ferocious debate.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/10/do-oxford-students-really-need-trigger-warnings/ ?

******************************************************

One of Australia's most prestigious universities to crack down on students who claim to be Aboriginal without ANY proof

About time. Malcolm Smith has a graphic commentary on the matter. I put up a similar gallery in 2020

One of Australia's most prestigious universities has been praised for a crackdown on students 'rorting the system' by falsely claiming they are Indigenous or Torres Strait Islander.

The University of Sydney has drafted a new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Status Policy which means undergraduates can no longer simply sign a statutory declaration to prove they have a First Nations background.

Instead, the university may force students to supply a 'letter of identity' from a local Aboriginal Land Council and complete the Commonwealth Government's three-part identity test.

Radio 2GB host Ben Fordham praised the university for introducing the measures and called on others to follow suit.

'Other organisations should introduce stronger checks too, because what we're seeing is wrong and it's fraudulent,' he said.

The changes come after lobbying from Aboriginal land councils which allege there has been a significant increase in people applying for the benefits.

The latest Census results released in June 2021 found a 25 per cent increase in Australians identifying as Indigenous.

Indigenous groups said the way the current system is being abused is 'embarrassing'. 'It's open fraud. We say to academic students: can they pass a paper without citing a verified source?' Aboriginal Land Council CEO Nathan Moran told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Michael Mansell, Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania chairman, said poor white people were falsely identifying as Indigenous in a move he called 'identity seeking'. "They don't attribute any value to their identity as a poor white person in Tasmania, so they are searching to attach themselves to something that has greater value and I think many of those people believe that's in being Aboriginal,' he said following the release of the Census results.

Fordham said students abusing the system for places in courses or more affordable degrees was 'wrong and fraudulent'. 'They are attending schools, they're getting jobs and taking away opportunities from people who grew up Indigenous,' the 2GB host said.

'People are falsely identifying as Indigenous when they're not - there are Indigenous voices calling out a fraud, and we should be listening to them.

'Sydney Uni should be congratulated and other organisations should be following suit. Because it's wrong and it's fraudulent. Some of the so-called First Nations people receiving benefits are as genuine as a three dollar note.'

A spokesperson for Sydney University said its review was not motivated by fraudulently claimed scholarships, but the institution wanted to ensure its program was 'in line with current community expectations'.

'[The review] was initiated in response to multiple expressions of community concern, particularly in relation to the use of statutory declarations, rather than any specific concerns about fraud,' they said.

'We are seeking feedback and further input from members of our own and the broader community, representative organisations and other universities on this culturally significant matter.'

The university has an enrolment of 0.9 per cent Aboriginal or Torres Straight Islander students, which is below the national sector average of 1.72 per cent.

Students however believe the change in policy could result in at-need Indigenous people missing out on places because of the red tape around new enrolment.

'This new policy is likely to disproportionately affect Indigenous people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds,' a group of Indigenous students opposing the change said in a statement.

'In some circumstances students may come from abusive families, have been in foster care or for other reasons not be able to get family documentation to undergo the process that has been proposed.'

***********************************

My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

*******************************

No comments: