Student Raises Grades, Slashes Tuition, Goes to Jail

March 31, 2009 in Administration, Finances, Police, Pranks, Students, Tuition and Fees | by | Leave a comment

A student who prosecutors say hacked into his university’s computer network last fall, raising students’ grades and cutting their tuition charges, has been found guilty of five federal charges.

The government says that Marcus Barrington, then a student at Florida A&M University, conspired with a group of other students to alter fellow students’ grades and change residency records from out-of-state to in-state. The university is said to have lost more than $100,000 in out-of-state tuition revenue as a result.

Barrington’s two co-defendants, Lawrence Secrease and Christopher Jacquette, filed guilty pleas. Both testified against him in his trial, which ended Friday. The jury took just two hours to find Barrington guilty on all charges.

Barrington’s attorney made a statement after the verdict. “It’s sad to see these young people get in trouble especially on this kind of conduct,” he said. “In my day, it would have been a cheating incident and today it’s a federal crime. I just don’t understand what the difference is.”

Barrington faces a possible prison term of nearly thirty years when he is sentenced in June. 

(via UWire)

New Link: National Coalition Against Censorship

March 31, 2009 in Campus Press, Civil Liberties, Media, Politics, Student Bashing, Student Power, Students, Youth | by | Leave a comment

Here’s another great resource — the National Coalition Against Censorship.

We’ve linked to their blog in our sidebar, but feel free to poke around their main site, too.They’ve got lots of stuff going on, including various projects run through their Youth Free Expression Network.

Bill Ayers Will Speak At Boston College Tonight … But He’ll Be In Chicago

March 30, 2009 in Administration, Civil Liberties, Politics, Students | by | Leave a comment

It was announced over the weekend that administrators at Boston College had vetoed a planned campus appearance by former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers. The student sponsors of the engagement, who included the BC chapter of the College Democrats, were said to be seeking an off-campus venue to move the speech to.

Now comes word that the event will take place on campus as originally planned, though without Ayers in attendance. Ayers will remain in Chicago, where he lives, and speak via satellite hookup to the audience at the college’s Devlin Hall.

His speech, at 6 o’clock this evening, will be open to BC students, faculty, and staff only.

Postscript: A separate Ayers speech in an educational venue has just been cancelled outright. He had been scheduled to give a talk at Naperville North High School in Illinois next week, but his invitation has been withdrawn. A statement from the school district’s superintendent cited “the level of emotion and outrage” that had greeted news of the speech as the reason for the cancellation.

Update: The BC administration nixed the video link, too. Here’s the chief of the campus police, Robert Morse: “It is canceled, there is no telecast. It’s virtually the same thing, it would be viewed by the community as the same thing.” The speech organizers held a forum on academic freedom instead.

Second Update: BC cancelled Ayers’ speech because of alleged links between the Weather Underground and the notorious 1970 murder of Boston police officer Walter Schroeder. But Schroeder was killed in the course of a bank robbery that was intended to fund the Black Panthers, not the Weather Underground, and there is apparently no evidence of any Weather connection to the crime.

Quote of the Day

March 30, 2009 in Campus Protests, History, Quotes, Race, Students | by | 2 comments

Bhumika Muchhala, a recent graduate who is now working full-time in USAS’s national office, says anti-sweatshop activism can be “cliquish.” She describes a close-knit, white hippie activist culture that is “not welcoming to people of color.” … Dave Thurston, a black USAS activist who attends CUNY’s Hunter College, agrees that the organization can be inhospitably white and middle-class, semi-indignantly citing the all-vegan food at conferences. “Oh my fucking word,” he sighs, “and twinkling!” (Twinkling is a hand gesture that comes from the Quakers, used to signify assent without disrupting the meeting or repeating what they’ve said; while many find it useful, it can feel alienating to outsiders, and is often cited as a symbol of the odd, cultish behavior of white activists.)

–Liza Featherstone, Students Against Sweatshops, 2001.

One Cost of Police in Schools

March 30, 2009 in Administration, Civil Liberties, High School, Police, Sexual Violence, Students, Youth | by | 1 comment

An Australian friend draws our attention to two stories that appeared in the Australian press last week:

The government of Western Australia is considering placing police officers in that state’s high schools, in response to a recent increase in assaults on teachers there…

…And an officer assigned to an “elite unit designed to be the public face of [the] police in high schools” in the state of New South Wales has been arrested on charges that he sexually assaulted a child.

This is just one incident, of course. But it does serve as a reminder that whatever the benefits to teachers and students of bringing police onto school grounds may be, the practice carries real costs as well.

(Thanks to lauredhel of Hoyden About Town for the tip.)

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StudentActivism.net is the work of Angus Johnston, a historian and advocate of American student organizing.

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