Cop Killer Honored at New York College

New York City college students who share a community room named for an escaped cop killer called the fugitive their hero Tuesday as the school's officials demanded the removal of the honor. A handful of campus groups at the City College of New York commended the school for allowing them to work in the name of domestic "terrorist" Assata Shakur, now believed to be hiding in Cuba. "We know that many Black people that fought for better conditions in the 70's were framed," the groups said in a statement released to FOXNews.com. "We consider Assata Shakur to be one of the people who were wrongfully and purposefully framed for her activities. "And we consider her a hero and role model for standing up for our people and putting her life on the line." [Students as judge and jury of events they know little about. No intellectual standards there!]

The chancellor of City University of New York, meanwhile, demanded the "unauthorized and inappropriate signage" be removed. "Only The Board of Trustees of The City University of New York may designate or name College and University facilities," Goldstein wrote to City College President Gregory H. Williams.

The Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur Community Center on the third floor of CCNY's North Academic Center was named in 1989 for Shakur, convicted in the 1973 murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster, and Morales, a former member of FALN, which is a Puerto Rican liberation group that claimed responsibility for a rash of bombings in New York in the mid-1970s.

"The president and the chancellor are in full agreement, the sign - which actually was put up by students - in no way reflects the college's or the university's support for the individuals who are named," said Mary Lou Edmondson, spokeswoman for the college, adding, it "is unauthorized and inappropriate and steps will be taken to take it down."

The center is shared by the Student Liberation Action Movement and Students for Educational Rights - groups with approximately 45 members total, Edmondson said. The United Federation of Students, Union de Jovenes Dominicanos, The Messenger, The Pre-University Program, CCNY Coalition Against the War and CUNY for All! are also listed as sharing the space, according to a sign on the door emblazoned with a painted fist. A "Morales/Shakur Information Table" outside the office had literature on everything from a campaign to give used books to prisoners to a Philadelphia rally to free convicted murderer Mumia Abu-Jamal.

A student in the Morales/Shakur office, who declined to be interviewed, gave FOXNews.com the joint statement on the naming of the center. "We would like to close by saying that the American people have a right and a duty to find out the facts about this situation for themselves before they judge it," the student statement said. "And Assata, we love you."

In 2005, the FBI named Shakur, whose real name is Joanne Deborah Chesimard, to its list of most wanted domestic terrorists, placing a $1 million bounty on her head. In 1977, Shakur was convicted of Foerster's murder during a routine traffic stop. Shakur had been a member of the Black Liberation Army and was wanted in connection with several felonies, including bank robbery, the FBI said. She skipped out on the life sentence, escaping from prison in Clinton, N.J., on Nov. 2, 1979. She's now believed to be living in Cuba.

A City College student wrote a letter to the Daily News about the naming of the community center, prompting the paper to report Monday that police groups have been angered the school allowed the room to be named for a convicted cop killer. "We use tax dollars to support an institution that indemnifies a cold-blooded terrorist?" Dave Jones, president of the New Jersey State Troopers Fraternal Association, told the Daily News. "She's a cowardly, cold-blooded convicted murderer who's part of a murdering sect," he told the newspaper. "She's no different from those people who flew those planes into those towers and destroyed all those innocent lives."

On her Web site, http://www.assatashakur.org/, Shakur says she is innocent. "I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the U.S. government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one," she said. Shakur, who is the godmother of slain hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur, has been heralded as a hero among the hip-hop community and political activist groups and reviled as a villain by police organizations.

Source





PRIVATIZING A SCOTTISH SCHOOL

Parents in a remote Scottish village are so infuriated by a decision to close their primary school that they have raised more than 1 million pounds to buy it. In an unprecedented initiative, parents in Roybridge, Inverness-shire, have been offered a bank loan and a five-figure private donation to ensure that the small school, which has served their community since Victorian times, remains open.

The crumbling schoolhouse and three leaking huts of Roybridge Primary School, nestling in a beautiful Highland glen with views of the Nevis mountain range, seem an unlikely battleground for the future of rural education. But if the parents are successful, they could set a new pattern for the provision of mainstream education in Britain's rural communities, where an increasing number of schools are being closed or amalgamated in an attempt to cut costs.

On Thursday the local council will decide whether to support the Roybridge parents, who have drawn up a detailed business plan in an attempt to save their school from closure and have raised 9,000 pounds to pay for surveyors' appraisals and architects' plans. After years of allowing the school to fall into disrepair, the Highland council has announced plans to close it and to amalgamate it with a neighbouring village. Although the school that the 30 children would be sent to is only three miles away, the Roybridge parents refuse to accept the plan and say that they are fighting on behalf of rural communities across Britain. They say that the small class sizes at Roybridge offer a uniquely intimate style of education and that without the school the village, which has fewer than 500 residents, would gradually die.

Under the parents' scheme they would pay to replace the school's dilapidated buildings and place it in a charitable trust. The council would then pay a yearly lease for the school, allowing it to remain in mainstream education and the loan to be paid off. The estimated 1.04 million building costs include 651,000 for new classrooms, 90,000 for an all-weather football pitch and 35,000 for car parking. A loan from Bank of Scotland, at 1.75 percentage points above base rate, would cover most of the costs, with the shortfall met by a 50,000 gift from a local landlord.

If the council approves the arrangement it would be the first time that parents have successfully intervened to buy out a primary school. Peter Rose, 56, who has two girls at the school and moved to Roybridge from Lancashire last year, is one of many outsiders who was attracted to the village because of the reputation of its school. He said: "We have to carry a torch here. If we are successful it could give hope to other communities. If we don't get young families to live in Roybridge, then it is going to become a stopping-off point for retired people and little else." His wife Hazel, 35, said that the intimacy of learning at Roybridge was found in few other schools in Britain. She said: "Our children love it. They go for river walks to collect pebbles for class projects or to the wildlife garden they've made in the middle of the village." Catherine MacKinnon, 40, who was a pupil at the school 30 years ago and is leading the project, said: "Politicians talk a lot about regenerating rural areas but a community needs a school at its heart."

Unlike many declining rural communities, Roybridge, a former crofting village, appears to have a bright future. The school is one of the reasons why the population has grown steadily over the past 15 years. Seven new children have joined the school in the past 18 months; a further three are expected next month.

Alan Smithers, Professor of Education at Buckingham University, said that the scheme was similar to others that rely on private finance to build and maintain new schools, but that in this case the private contractor would be unable to interfere with the running of the school. He said: "I have heard of parents trying to buy independent schools before but nothing like this. There is clearly a lot to recommend this idea."

Source






Australia's academic women less likely to breed

Given the characteristic academic love of authoritarian government, perhaps it's a good thing. The less that mentality is reproduced the better

Some of Australia's best and brightest women are the most reluctant to breed, with female academics far more likely to be single and childless than their male peers. The reason, it seems, is that women are less able to combine the demands of academia with parenthood.

Research shows that 70 per cent of the female academics and other staff in one NSW study have children, compared with 83per cent of the men. Eighty per cent of male academics have spouses, compared with just 63.5per cent of female academics. Also, 90 per cent of the spouses of female academics worked full-time, compared with just 57 per cent of the spouses of male academics, whose wives tended to work part-time, or not at all.

Professor Hilary Winchester, pro-vice chancellor at the University of South Australia, said: "For women to be successful, they were less able to maintain a partnered relationship than men. The comments you get from women are, 'I just couldn't fit it all in."' Professor Winchester gave evidence to the House of Representatives standing committee into the work-family balance, chaired by Liberal MP Bronwyn Bishop, which tabled its report last week.

Liberal MPs are leading the charge for better childcare arrangements, with Mrs Bishop describing the current system as a "mishmash" and backbencher Jackie Kelly saying childcare is a "shambles". Mrs Bishop's report recommended full tax deductibility for childcare fees, including nanny wages. Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Melbourne University Belinda Probert has researched women at the professorial level, "and what it showed up was that academic women are particularly likely to be not partnered". "That is a very high rate of marriage breakdown," she said. "Women have primary responsibility for children. Men tend to have wives that work part-time. Women have partners who have full-time (work), and are quite likely not to have partners. "We found women had given up because they had teenagers who were home alone, smoking dope, or children who needed help with homework. They say, 'I'll give up doing research', and that (research) is the key to promotion."

ANU demographer Peter McDonald said educated women "always have had fewer children". "They have a lower marriage rate," he said. "There's a tendency for men to marry down, of course, to marry someone not quite as intelligent as them, but it's also that educated women may focus more on a career for longer."

Elizabeth Watkin, a leading academic trying to "have it all", is a senior lecturer in microbiology at Curtin University and a mother of 12-year-old twin girls, Mahsa and Kimia. "It's extremely difficult," she admitted. "My husband pulls his weight, which is important, but I do feel I've been held back," she said. "I haven't been published as much as I might have been. But I want to spend time with my children."

The evidence regarding academia is troubling because Australian universities have some of the most generous maternity leave entitlements in the world -- up to 36 weeks, paid. Carolyn Alport of the National Tertiary Education Union said the entitlement, won during collective bargaining in 2003, was important. She said: "A big demographic blip is about to hit universities, with senior people getting towards retirement, and we want to be ready to meet the needs of the younger generation." Dr Watkin said tax deductibility and on-site childcare would be helpful. She agrees that women at the level of senior lecturer and above "either just aren't there, or often don't have children, and perhaps that's because they are older, and there wasn't that choice, previously. You did one, or the other".

Source

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

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"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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