You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Youth’ category.
The parents of two Washington State cheerleaders are suing their daughters’ high school for suspending them from the squad after nude photographs of the students began to circulate in the school. The students say that the two photos were distributed inadvertently.
The families charge that school officials allowed staffers to view the photos unnecessarily and that the school should have promptly reported the incident to police as a possible child pornography case.
The lawsuit also contends that the two girls were inappropriately targeted for punishment. It notes that students who may have received or forwarded the photographs, including members of the school’s football team, were not disciplined.
A school official is quoted as saying that “when you sign up to be a cheerleader — or for any student activity — you agree to certain codes of behavior.” “We consider them student leaders,” she continued, “and we want them to be role models.”
I’d want to know more about this particular case before coming to any real conclusions about it, but it does seem to me that distributing a naked picture of a fellow student without permission is a far more serious offense than taking a picture of yourself naked. That fact leaves me sympathetic to the plaintiffs in this suit, and inclined to believe that they’re raising important questions about school policy.
Update: Having done a brief search for additional reporting on this lawsuit, I have to add that I find media outlets’ eagerness to augment their coverage of this story with photographs of cheerleaders — from this high school, in uniform, with their faces blurred out — frankly repulsive.
Black on Campus has a pair of new posts up on the issue of alcohol consumption on campus, and they’re both well worth reading.
First, there’s a quick overview of the situation, and an endorsement of lowering the drinking age back to 18. Dr. Mance argues that “the current prohibition policy for drinkers under the age of 21 encourages an illicit alcohol culture, and one that is characterized by the same excesses and extremes (and denial) that accompany any illicit activity.” (Mance also links to Choose Responsibility, a drinking-age reform group that arose out of college administrators’ frustration with the status quo.)
The second post explores the fact that drinking rates are lower among black college students than among white students, and lower still among students at historically black colleges and universities. The post concludes with a provocative quote from a black student leader on the relationship between binge drinking and bias crime.
Ken Blackwell, a candidate for chairman of the Republican National Committee, is calling for the RNC to devote “unprecedented” financial resources to the College Republicans “to build vibrant College Republican chapters on every major university campus in the nation.”
The president of Carnegie Mellon’s College Republican chapter is telling him not to bother.
Throwing money at the College Republicans “will do nothing to win over young voters,” says Aaron Marks, and it may actually make things worse.
Until the GOP starts conducting more thoughtful outreach efforts, running younger candidates, and letting go of demographically toxic positions such as opposition to gay marriage, he says, it will never win the youth vote.
Alexandros Grigoropoulos, the fifteen-year-old whose death at the hands of police has sparked four days of student and youth rioting across the country of Greece, is being buried today. Protests are continuing.
The two police officers who were involved in the Grigoropoulos shooting have been indicted, one of them for murder.
Greek schools are closed today in an expression of mourning for Grigoropoulos. Children, parents, and teachers held a peaceful demonstration in Athens this morning to protest his death.
Government forces have still not entered the nation’s campuses, which have been off-limits to the police and army since the fall of the Greek junta in the 1970s, and which have as a result been used as staging areas for protesters and rioters.
The tag “griots” is being used to identify material pertaining to the ongoing Greek crisis on Twitter, Flickr, and various blogs.
Josh Marshall on what counts as “young” in TV news.
studentactivism.net 
Recent Comments