You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2009.
The Peoria, Arizona Unified School District will let gay eighth grader Chris Quintanilla wear a “Rainbows Are Gay” wristband to school.
As we reported last month, Quintanilla’s principal instructed him to remove the wristband when he saw him wearing it in a school hallway.
The wristband ban was apparently part of a larger pattern of behavior on the principal’s part. According to Quintanilla’s mother Natali, when she expressed concern that her son was being harassed at school for being gay, the principal told her that he wouldn’t be a target “if he didn’t put it out there the way he does.”
But the ACLU is now claiming victory, saying that the district “has assured the American Civil Liberties Union that it will no longer prevent [Quintanilla] from wearing [the] wristband at school.”
The district, for its part, says the whole thing was just a big misunderstanding. Why it took them more than a month to clear it up remains unclear.
San Jose State University had to turn away more than four thousand qualified applicants this spring. So now, in an effort to make more room for newcomers next year, it’s looking to cull its returning roster.
Fifteen percent of SJSU’s ten thousand seniors have held senior status for at least three years, and three hundred of them have accumulated 150 credits or more. Thirty-five of those have been undergrads at the school for a decade or longer, and two have been there for fifteen years — each of them earning more than 360 credits.
A bachelor of arts degree at SJSU requires only 120.
There’s not much SJSU can do to force these students to graduate, though it does intend to give them a nudge. Students with 120% or more of the credits they need to graduate will be required to sit for a session of “intrusive advising” with a dean, in which they will be shown — and urged to do — what it takes to finish and leave.
Other colleges are taking different approaches to the problem. California State East Bay is cutting off financial aid for third-year seniors. Baylor University charges full-time tuition to all students, and UNC hikes tuition once you hit 140 total credits.
Kevin Bondelli of the Young Democrats is exploring what he calls the Progressive Youth Movement in what he says “will most likely be a large series” of blogposts “entitled ‘Lessons from Sociopolitical Movements.'” It’s an exciting project, and I’m looking forward to seeing where he takes it.
I do, though, have some questions.
I’ll be writing more about the specifics soon, but I’ve got some big plans for Twitter-based activist projects in the works.
If you’re on Twitter, consider following our feed. If you’re not on Twitter yet, you should sign up — amazing people are doing amazing stuff over there.
Last month I wrote about a DA threatening high school students with child porn prosecutions for taking photos of themselves on their cell phones.
Now comes word of another prosecutor abusing his authority in a teen “sexting” case, this time harassing a high school administrator.
The story starts in March 2008: Ting-Yi Oei, an assistant principal in Virginia, is investigating sexting at his school. He confiscates an underwear snap from a student’s cellphone. He can’t identify the person in the photo, so he reports to his principal and closes the investigation.
When he suspends that student for an unrelated offense a couple of weeks later, the student’s mother calls the cops.
Prosecutors investigate, charge him with failure to report child abuse. That charge isn’t going anywhere, because he made a full report to his principal. So they charge him with child pornography. They delay informing him of the charges so they can have him arrested at school on his first day back after summer vacation.
The media run stories, with his photo, saying he’s been arrested for child porn. He’s placed on leave. Television news crews stalk him. Prosecutors press him to resign. He racks up a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in legal bills.
Finally, three weeks ago — even months after his arrest, and nearly a year after Oei first talked to the cops — a judge throws the charges out, finding Oei has broken no laws.
studentactivism.net 
Recent Comments