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A high school student in Virginia’s Fairfax County has received a two-week suspension and a threat of expulsion … for taking her birth control pill at lunch.
Oakton High School considers bringing prescription drugs to school one of the most serious violations a student can commit — it brings a harsher punishment than use of heroin or LSD, and the same penalty as possession of a handgun on school property.
The student’s mother was aware of, and supportive of, her decision to go on the pill. Birth control pills are most effective if taken at the same time every day, and the student began taking them at lunch over the summer. Neither the student nor her mother was aware that the punishment for continuing to do so in the fall could be so severe.
The student faced a hearing before school officials on Thursday, and has yet to hear whether she will be expelled.
Thanks to Amplify Your Voice for the heads-up on this story.
August 5 update: Stephen Colbert ran a segment on the incident on Monday night’s Colbert Report.
The University of Maryland Diamondback has a strong editorial up this morning on the college’s porn film controversy. Excerpts:
This isn’t just about state legislators and free speech. University administrators’ decision-making process last week demonstrates how little regard they have for student input. […] Administrators might persuasively argue they won’t support hate-speech events that discriminate against a religious group or an ethnic group. In the same vein, they might have argued the canceled event would have degraded women.
But such a decision must be made in a public forum, with as wide a segment of stakeholders as can possibly be assembled. Deeming material inappropriate behind closed doors is the fast road toward truly unjust distributions of resources, and frankly, to discrimination. […]
It’s easy to devalue the precedent administrators have set in the context of a bunch of hormonal college students in a tizzy to see some skin. But what happens when federal funding for stem-cell research comes up? What happens when administrators decide whether a speaker on Israel or Palestine is engaging in hate speech? So grab your swords and muskets, mateys, because a decision this egregious can’t be quietly tolerated. It’s time to rock the boat.
The Student Power Party is still planning to hold a screening of the film and a free speech forum on campus tonight. No word yet on whether the administration will allow that event to take place.
First the distributors of the porn flick Pirates II grabbed the spotlight by offering their movie free of charge for screenings on college campuses.
Then Republicans in the Maryland state legislature grabbed the spotlight by threatening to cut government funding to any college that showed the movie.
Now candidates for the University of Maryland’s student government are grabbing the spotlight by screening the movie on campus in defiance of an administration veto.
The Student Power Party, a slate running in student government elections scheduled for this Tuesday and Wednesday, have announced that they will be running Pirates II in a lecture hall on Monday night — election eve. They’ll be holding a forum on free speech before the show.
More information on the SPP can be found here, here, and here. They’ve also got a Twitter account and a pretty good campaign ad.
Monday morning update: Here’s the latest on SPP’s plans for tonight, from the UM Diamondback.
So it turns out that the porn flick that state legislators managed to get banned from the University of Maryland College Park has been playing on college campuses across the country.
And it turns out that the reason it’s been playing on college campuses across the country is that the movie’s distributors have been giving it away to campus groups for free.
And it turns out that the reason they’ve been giving it away for free is that they’re trying to build some buzz around their product at a time when the porn industry is suffering huge losses.
Nice work, doofuses. You just gave a bunch of pornographers a bunch of free press, and the revenue that goes with it.
Sunday update: The Student Power Party, a slate of candidates in UMD’s upcoming student government elections, is planning to screen the film and host a free speech forum tomorrow night.
(This is part two of a four-part series. Part one is here and part three is here.)
On February 10, the New School In Exile threw down the gauntlet. Bob Kerrey would quit by April 1, or they would bring the New School’s operations to a halt. The ultimatum, delivered at a public meeting, was broadcast to the world by the New York Times and picked up by everyone from the Chronicle of Higher Education to Indymedia.
Some NSIE members were coy about whether the threat was meant to be taken at face value, but they left no doubt that they were serious about their goals. “The students, with the faculty’s backing, are trying to get Kerrey out of the school,” one said. “Setting a deadline raises the stakes.”
In the immediate aftermath of the February announcement, NSIE moved effectively to keep their momentum up. They held teach-ins on February 24 and March 4, and posted video from the first online. NSIE supported and publicized an NYU occupation that was modeled on the New School’s own.
But their energy seemed to falter in March. There were fewer events, and less follow-up. Posting on the NSIE website was infrequent, and that decline seemed to reflect a broader retreat in the group.
studentactivism.net 
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