You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Politics’ category.
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.
British student activists are holding a “National Student Co-ordination” meeting today in London.
This winter saw a wave of university occupations sweep across the UK, most of them engaged with conditions in in Gaza. Today’s meeting is intended to co-ordinate that ongoing organizing as well as to “broaden out the movement to include other struggles and post-occupation activities.”
The NSC’s website/blog is here. There’s also a Facebook event page, and the blog of the student occupation at the London School of Economics has a feed for info from other UK student activist groups. Check back with all three sites for more news going forward.
The week since the New School occupation has seen a lot of action. There was a protest on Friday night, a roving anarchist happening on Sunday afternoon, an emergency campus assembly on Monday, a courtyard sit-in on Wednesday, and another major street protest on Thursday.
The protesters released a statement on Monday, by the way, and both the New School In Exile website and the occupiers’ blog have been active all week. (Both sites carry the text of a wide variety of statements on the occupation from bodies inside and outside the New School, along with their other coverage.)
And this afternoon some very interesting news came in via Twitter.
The New School provost has announced that all students suspended in last week’s occupation will be allowed “to complete their academic work this semester.” His statement calls this a “modification” of their suspensions, but unless there’s some hidden catch, it sounds very much as if their suspensions have in fact been lifted.
Disciplinary actions against the students are ongoing, and this announcement isn’t an amnesty, by any stretch. But given recent history of the New School’s attitudes toward the occupiers — president Bob Kerrey told the New York Post a week ago that he did not “consider them students” — this is a major shift.
Update: A kind reader has passed along the entire text of the announcement from the provost on the “modification” of the suspensions. (It’s the first comment on this post.) Thanks!
Students and faculty at the University of Texas at Austin are going to walk out of classes at 11:30 this morning and march to the Texas State Capitol in protest of a bill to allow guns on campus.
Today is the second anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre, in which a student shot and killed 32 people before committing suicide.
Under the terms of a bill under consideration in the state legislature, Texas residents with concealed-carry permits would be allowed to bring their weapons onto the campuses of the state’s public universities. The UT student government came out against the law in a lopsided vote earlier this semester.
(Via @thedailytexan on Twitter.)
Friday update: Two hundred students participated in the walkout and rally. The Daily Texan has the story.
Today would have been Hugh Thompson’s 66th birthday.
Hugh Thompson was a 24-year-old helicopter pilot in the US Army in March 1968 when he flew a mission over the town of My Lai in Vietnam.
Providing aerial support to American troops operating in My Lai, Thompson and his crew discovered evidence that US soldiers were massacring unarmed villagers, including children and the elderly. When Thompson spotted a group of eleven unarmed people — including several children — fleeing American soldiers, he landed his helicopter between them and the troops. As he got out of the helicopter, he ordered his gunner to shoot the American soldiers if the soldiers opened fire on the civilians.
Thompson was able to secure the evacuation of those eleven, and as he was flying back to base to report on what he had seen, his gunner spotted and rescued an eight-year-old boy from a drainage ditch in which as many as a hundred people — including his mother and his younger sister and brother — lay dead.
When Thompson returned to base, he was able to convince a high-ranking officer to order a cease fire.
studentactivism.net 
Recent Comments