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Bucknell University’s administration has denied a conservative student group permission to hold an affirmative action bake sale.
Such sales, in which cupcakes and cookies are offered at full price to white male students and cheaper for women and students of color, have become a common attention-grabbing tactic for right-wing campus groups in recent years. Clashes with administrators over the sales have been common too, with sponsors claiming that they’re protected speech and universities noting that they’re — by design — a discriminatory practice.
Wikipedia has a pretty extensive article on affirmative action bake sales, including mention of a nice move by the Graduate and Professional Students of Color student organization at the University of Illinois, which responded to one such sale by holding a white privilege popcorn giveaway in which white white men were given a full bag of popcorn, while women and people of color got a mostly-empty bag.
Late last Saturday night, at about 3 am, there was a shootout at a Georgia college student’s apartment.
Charles Bailey, who was present but apparently not one of the shooters, says that two masked men burst into a party, intent on robbery and rape, and that one of the partygoers fought them off with a gun he had in his backpack. By the end of the altercation, one of the outsiders, a man named Calvin Lavant, was dead and one of the women at the party had been shot several times.
Although the incident did not take place on campus property, supporters of campus concealed carry legislation are trumpeting it as evidence of the effectiveness of armed self-defense among students.
Others aren’t convinced. A lot of Pandagon commenters, for instance, think the story doesn’t quite make sense.
Was this a massacre averted? Maybe. A drug deal gone wrong? Perhaps. Could be either, could be something else. But I have a hunch we’re all going to be hearing more about this story.
8 am Thursday update: Pandagon has been down since last night, so that link above doesn’t work.
8:30 am update: Police have arrested a man named Jamal Hill who is suspected of being the other perpetrator of the home invasion. An article on that arrest identifies Charles Bailey as living in the apartment.
A yearlong drug investigation at the University of Illinois culminated in more than two dozen arrests last week.
But all the cops found was six ounces of pot and some Xanax.
The UI campus police launched “Operation Thunder Strike” last fall, and the force decided to make “a little bit of a splash” before the end of the semester, according to Lt. Roy Acree. They obtained search warrants and arrest warrants for seventeen people, and swept in on three fraternity houses and several apartments starting last Tuesday.
They made twenty-five arrests, twenty-one of UI students, but Acree said the total haul was “180 grams of cannabis, numerous pieces of drug paraphernalia, cocaine residue, and some Xanax pills.” Cops also confiscated two vehicles, three television sets, two computers, and about three thousand dollars in cash.
Spring classes end tomorrow at UI, and final exams start this Friday.
(The Chronicle of Higher Education swallowed the campus cops’ line on this bust, by the way, but the comment thread on their story is turning into a real doozy.)
The mayor of Providence, Rhode Island is looking to close a $17 million budget deficit on the backs of the city’s college students.
Mayor David Cicilline is proposing a new tax of $300 per year on all undergraduate and graduate students in the city’s four private universities. The flat tax, which he’s calling a “student municipal impact fee,” would — if he gets his way — be paid as part of students’ tuition bills.
Story via the usually-excellent blog The Kept Up Academic Librarian, which unfortunately gave it the pointlessly anti-student headline “You Attend College Here So You May As Well Pay Taxes.”
A second Binghamton Student Association representative who used racist slurs against an SA vice president last week has lost his position as a result.
As I reported last Saturday, representative Mike Lombardi resigned from the SA days after telling vice president for finance Alice Liou to “go eat a dog,” while Ehlad Bar-Shai, who had taunted Liou for having “squinty eyes” prior the Lombardi incident, was elected chair of the SA’s Student Assembly in a close vote.
News of Bar-Shai’s comments spread widely on campus after his election, however, and a protest rally was held last weekend calling for him to be removed from office.
Last night, at the final Assembly meeting of the year, Bar-Shai asked to make a formal apology, but a motion to reconsider his election was introduced before he was able to do so.
Bar-Shai argued that the motion to reconsider was out of order, but was turned aside. When the Assembly approved the motion Bar-Shai and several supporters withdrew from the meeting, causing it to lose quorum.
But the Assembly was eventually able to re-establish quorum, a new election was held, and incumbent Assembly chair Josh Berk, who had lost to Bar-Shai at the previous meeting, was re-elected by a vote of 15-4.
studentactivism.net 
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