Tag: student

It started off as a ‘60s-era protest against the Vietnam War, but over the past five decades, the Mifflin Street Block Party has evolved into something radically different — trading politics for drunken camaraderie. This year marks 50 years since the initial protest, which in 1969 brought hundreds of UW-Madison students to the 400 and 500 blocks of West Mifflin Street and resulted in a three-day riot during which police used tear gas and night sticks to try to break up the crowd and protesters hurled bottles and rocks at police. Instead the Madison Police and Fire departments closely monitor apartments and the thousands of partiers on the block to curtail the booze fest that’s become a tradition. At Saturday’s rendition of the party, about 7,000 students and other partiers gathered — a small number compared to previous years. Saturday’s temperatures were chilly, reaching just 45, with intermittent snow flurries paired with a winter storm warning from the National Weather Service. Koval, who has routinely lamented the annual event, calling it a “thorn (in) my side,” said the poor weather kept away the crowds. The first Mifflin Street Block Party was held May 3, 1969, despite the city’s denial of a street-use permit. Over the next three days, as police tried to break up the party, dozens of people were arrested — including former Mayor and then-Ald. Paul Soglin — and even more were injured. Now, the Mifflin party — held each year two weekends before graduation and known for massive crowds of drunken students — is seen more as a rite of passage for many UW-Madison students.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Offering an upbeat assessment of the headline-grabbing college-admissions scandal, Betsy DeVos said on Thursday that bribing colleges gave students “a really neat opportunity” to learn math. The Secretary of Education suggested that, rather than keeping children in the dark about the bribes that enable their college acceptances, “Parents should sit around the kitchen table with their kids and work on some fun math problems together.” “Let’s say it’ll cost Amber seventy-five thousand dollars to get into Stanford, and it’ll cost her twin brother Dylan seventy-five thousand to get into Georgetown,” she said. “How much money total will their parents have to wire?” “Or let’s say Jenna has a 470 verbal score, but she needs a 730 to get into Yale,” DeVos said. “How much will she have to pay to get her score changed?” DeVos said that, as regrettable as the criminal charges against the parents in the bribery scandal were, the arrests themselves provided a teachable moment. “Lori Loughlin posted a million dollars in bail, and Felicity Huffman posted two hundred fifty thousand,” she said. “How much bail did Lori and Felicity post?”

My community never got the help it needed to actually heal. But even now, our community is still experiencing the aftershocks of the attack. Over the course of just one week in March, two more MSD students died, this time by suicide, adding to the horror of this senseless and preventable tragedy. In the days immediately following the Parkland shooting, before the families of the victims had processed the magnitude of their loss, a cadre of vocal students, fueled by the news media frenzy, focused on political action. Read more commentary: Flashback: Here's what it was like to watch my friends die in Room 1216 I moved my kids from Florida to New Zealand, only to need to explain mass shootings anyway While the sense of political urgency from students was understandable and in some ways admirable, it came at the cost of a focus on the health and healing — for the families of the victims, students, teachers and the community at large. Mismanaged media frenzy The lack of focus was recently highlighted by MSD teacher Kimberly Krawczyk, who bravely spoke out about the failure of the school district to address the trauma experienced by students and teachers. The SSI found that only one-third of attackers had ever received a mental health evaluation, and fewer than one-fifth had been diagnosed with a mental health or behavior disorder. As shocking as it may sound, as a group, school shooters are similar in this way to suicide victims. Solutions to the suicide epidemic The Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center has recommended a proactive approach to school safety called the Threat Assessment Model, which uses a team of mental health, law enforcement and education professionals to help identify troubled young people. My good friend and collaborator, Dr. Kelly Posner Gerstenhaber and her colleagues at Columbia University, developed the Columbia Protocol, a suicide-prevention tool with six simple questions to help determine whether a person is at risk for suicide.

Nearly 200 students, community members, and political activists flocked to Low Steps Friday morning as part of a global movement to call for urgent political action on climate change. “We want our leaders to be taking action: leaders within a college setting, within a governmental setting, within a national setting. We want all of our leaders to have the power to enact this change,” Hollard said at the event. “This is a moment of great peril, but it is also a moment of great promise,” Inslee said. Bastida Patrick advocated for the Green New Deal, a set of proposed economic programs that aim to address climate change and inequality, and highlighted the role of indigenous peoples and youth in the fight against climate change. “The climate catastrophe is our present, but we cannot let it be our future,” Bastida Patrick said. “Climate change impacts marginalized communities and communities of color the most, which is why we need the Green New Deal, because it addresses both climate change and social justice.” Other outside speakers included two students from Manhattan Country School, a private K-8 school, many of whose students participated in the climate strike. “Even though they’re not old enough to vote, they still have a lot at stake for them, and they really realized that,” Grattan said. “They were really excited about participating today, so we as a school decided we wanted to facilitate that for the students who wanted to take part.” Staff writer Teddy Ajluni can be contacted at teddy.ajluni@columbiaspectator.com. Follow Spectator on Twitter @ColumbiaSpec.

For three months, students have been ditching class every Friday to protest. And while some European politicians have welcomed the students’ enthusiasm, others have been suspicious about what forces are causing this sudden mass mobilisation. “Hybrid warfare from Russia can be felt every day in every European country,” she added. But why would both Angela Merkel and Joke Schauvliege make the exact same accusation and then walk it back? But the accusations of Russian manipulation have continued. Climate change protests: definitely yes. “To shift, to reshuffle climate change movements is one of the key Russian priorities, to explain that ‘more gas is fine, coal is bad, but Russian gas is good, Russian gas is reliable”. If that’s the case, they should share specifically what they know that is causing them to make these accusations. Russia has shown itself happy to amplify the views of dissenters from Western governments, whether they are from the right or the left. There are no large climate change protests planned in Russia today.

LITTLE ROCK, AR (KAIT) - Students from all over Arkansas were at the Arkansas State Capitol to learn about the political process. Vice President of Speech Language from Jonesboro Shelly Keller said they were at the State Capitol Tuesday for the Arkansas Speech Language Association Student Advocacy Day with students from Arkansas State University, University of Arkansas, and Harding University to introduce them to advocacy groups. “It’s extremely important for students to be here today so they can see when they get into the workforce what it’s going to take to help advocate for the students, patients, and the children that they treat on a daily basis," Keller said, “And so to be able to be here talk to representatives, see the process is one step closer to really understanding how we can be an active change, how we can help processes along," Collins said. "So that more people can receive services, as well that the quality of our services is up to par with what they need.” They met with lobbyists and some representatives to understand how bills get passed and how committees work to learn the legislative process and how it impacts their future career.

- Students and parents in Holliston say a speech given Friday by school shooting survivor and activist David Hogg was too political for a school setting. The speech entitled, "Engage in the Change: Our Generation Must Own Democracy," was expected to be an apolitical discussion, focusing on youth engagement. But 16-year-old sophomore Daniel Biundo, who was sitting with his classmates in the auditorium, told Boston 25 News Monday the second half of the speech took a turn. "It was billed as kind of a speech on civic engagement and trying to get the youth active," Biundo said. Biundo presented a petition signed by dozens of people to school administrators requesting a conservative speaker come to the school to allow students to hear both sides of the gun debate. Biundo said. "Apparently, toward the end of [Hogg’s] presentation, he kind of veered off into his other focus, which had more of a political tone to it, as has been told to me, despite assurances otherwise," Jackson said by phone Monday. Jackson said Hogg has a connection to a Holliston family and a group of students invited him to the school. Parents also expressed outrage on Facebook about what some said was a lack of sufficient notice about a controversial speech. "If this is a controversial speaker and he's coming to Holliston and he's going to give a speech, there should be a considerable notice," Biundo said.

Two Hartwick College students are exploring the New York political arena through internships for state senators. The interns were assigned to senators with consideration of the policy areas they were most interested in; Nolan chose agriculture for its economic importance upstate and said he was pleased to be working with Metzger, who was named chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee in December. He added that he also supported the abortion-rights protections passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday, a measure that replaces a 1970 state abortion law passed three years before the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling legalized abortion nationwide. “Having a younger sister who I'm very close with, that was very important for me, to make sure she has a say in what happens in her own body,” Nolan said. The student interns are taking on a five-day work week that includes research for bills, note-taking, and sitting in on legislative sessions. The program will culminate in a mock legislative session, during which students will be assigned parties and discuss an original bill crafted during the internship, the students said. “I love the energy down here. It's really exciting, especially on session days, it feels like there's an electricity in the air,” Malone said, adding that the amount of discussion a given bill goes through on the floor is one aspect of the process he's found interesting. “I think this has already made me more mature,” he said.

MONROVIA – Professor Alaric Tokpa, a prominent former student leader has condemned the suspension of student political activities on the campuses of the University of Liberia. Report by Alaskai Moore Johnson, alaskai.johnson@frontpageafricaonline.com Responding to request by journalists to comment on the recent ban on student political activities at the university, Prof. Tokpa, who is also former head of the Political Science Department at the University of Liberia, said that the interference of University authorities with the legitimate and constitutional rights of students to associate, speak freely, and take actions in their own interest and the interest of the larger Liberian society, is a trait of dangerous dictatorship. In that way, the government is able to brutalize and destroy individuals without hindrance or any difficulty,” he stated. According to him, this is exactly what the dictatorship did to the Liberian student community in the 1980s. He asserted that no student leadership or community is able to successfully lead negative campaign against a government that is doing the right thing; adding: “The present challenge therefore before the George Weah government is to stop searching for imaginary enemies everywhere and focus on doing the right thing.” Prof. Tokpa, who in the 1980s when former Samuel K. Doe ruled by military degree had him and others thrown in prison at the famous Belleh Yallah, deep in the Lofa Forest, therefore called on all well-meaning Liberians in and out of government as well as at home and abroad to advise the government to halt the interference with the legitimate and constitutional rights of the student community; as the suppression of legal forms of struggle usually provokes illegal forms of struggle. Incidentally, the present Liberian government is not sophisticated enough to deal with underground struggles.” Serving then as General Secretary of the Liberia National Student Union (LINSU), Prof. Tokpa was one of six student leaders in Liberia that were sentenced to the firing squad in January 1982 for protesting the ban on student political activities by the military dictatorship. To date, he remains one of the most consistent progressive leaders in Liberia who is highly admired and consulted by youth and student leaders UL Ban on Student Politic On Friday, January 11, the University of Liberia’s authority placed a ban on all student political activities on all the campuses of the University. According to the University’s release, no student political group shall assemble or hold meetings or engage in any political-related activities on any University of Liberia campuses during this period of suspension. During the course of the rally, the students themselves pushed them out and later the government brought in heavily armed police officers who were not allowed on campus,” he further stated. According to him, the UL ban violates the political rights of the over 19,000 students on the campuses of the University.