Monthly Archives: June 2017

June 26, 2017, Alex Nitzberg, Leave a comment

Combining identity politics, social justice doctrine and the concept of safe-spaces, Hampshire College allows students to self-segregate by living in Identity-Based Housing. The colleges website explains:

Residence Life and Housing facilitates the continuation of many identity-based housing communities started by students. These residential spaces give support to members of our community with social identities that have been historically marginalized in this country, and strive to counter systemic oppression. This arises from our commitment to fostering diverse, socially just, and inclusive communities.

We recognize that our societythrough its laws, institutional structures, and customshas privileged some social groups while systematically disadvantaging and disenfranchising others. Even as we struggle to end these practices, we recognize that day-to-day life for members of these disadvantaged groups can be hurtful and exhausting.

The websites explanation of identity-based housing also states:

Identity-based housing is an institutional structure designed to assist members of historically oppressed groups in supporting each other. It helps to create an added level of psychological comfort and safety for those who choose to live in those spaces, often providing the foundation for those students to be able to engage fully in the greater community.

Creating these safe spaces, in collaboration with centers on campus, will benefit the entire community. We must have the full engagement of all our community members, especially those whose experiences, ideas, and perspectives are different from those of the Colleges mainstream population. It is through these means that we, as a full community, are most likely to challenge assumptions, craft new solutions to problems, and perform to our highest ability.

The Permanent Identity-Based Mods listed include: LGBTQQIAAP, Queer, Women of Color, Students of Color and Asian Heritage.

Pan-Afrikan Diaspora, Trans Stability Mod and QPOC are designated as Not-Yet-Permanent Identity-Based Mods. Marginalized Gender Identities is categorized as On Hiatus for 2017-2018.

Under the guidelines for developing an identity-based mod, the second guideline explains: The group must be unified by a social identity (such as race, culture, gender, or sexual orientation). The third guideline says, The unifying social identity must currently experience or has historically experienced oppression within or outside the Hampshire community.

Hampshire College also offers Intentional Housing Communities which it explains, are living spaces in which the residents have chosen to come together around a particular area of interest that will contribute to and cultivate the campuss culture of learning. Some of those listed on the website include the Hampshire Basketball Mod, the Kosher Mod, the STEM Mod, the Mindfulness Mod, the Greenhouse Mod and the Middle Eastern Immersion Mod.

The intentional housing community called the Gender Justice Mod (formerly Womens Empowerment Mod), contains the following deluge of leftist lingo within part of its description: We understand our struggle against cissexist heteropatriarchy as part of a broader struggle against all systems of domination, includingbut not limited towhite supremacy, capitalism, imperialism, and ableism.

In 2015 AIA Executive Director Mal Kline documented some of the courses offered at Hampshire College.

Some of the upcoming Fall 2017 course offerings listed under the subject Critical Social Inquiry include:

White Supremacy and Appropriate Whiteness in the Age of Trump

Critical Ethnic Studies: From Settler Colonialism to Trumpism

Border Matters: Mexico and the United States

Feminist, Queer, and Trans Theories of Race

Feminisms Sciences

Autonomism, and Labor: Business Ethics for Radicals

Black Girlhood Studies

Queer Feelings: The Emotional and Affective Life of Gender, Sexuality, and Race

A course titled, A Philosophy of Tattoos and Tattoo Art is listed under the subject of Cognitive Science.

Hampshire Colleges course descriptions are available here.

Alex Nitzberg is a freelance conservative journalist and commentator and the host of The Alex Nitzberg Show podcast. Follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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Hampshire College: Identity-Based Housing - Accuracy in Academia

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. The Lighthouse Christian Academy promises to provide an exemplary education, a caring atmosphere and service to God, but says in its admissions brochure that it reserves the right to deny admission to LGBT students because the Bible deems their lifestyle sinful.

As the Trump administration seeks to expand school choice nationwide, the academy was thrust into the national spotlight last month as part of a heated debate over whether schools that receive money from taxpayer-funded vouchers can discriminate against certain groups of students, such as LGBT children or students with disabilities.

Lighthouse officials say theyve never turned anyone away based on sexual orientation. But at a congressional hearing, Senate Democrats cited it as an example of a school that discriminates against LGBT students. A Lighthouse brochure says the Bible does not allow homosexual, bisexual or any form of sexual immorality and if a students home life violates biblical rules, the school can deny them admission or expel them.

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Pressed on the issue, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, an ardent supporter of school choice, told the Senate committee that discrimination is wrong, but that it was up to Congress and the courts, not her department, to intervene.

Founded in the early 1990s by a tight-knit group of families who wanted an affordable Christian education for their children, the academy is now an academically successful K-12 school serving 300 children in the Bloomington area. About half receive vouchers to help pay an annual tuition that ranges from $4,500 to $6,000 depending on a students grade.

This year, Lighthouse received over $665,000 in state funds to enroll 152 students.

DeVos and the Trump administration are strong proponents of giving states a greater role in education. Earlier this year, the administration rescinded former President Barack Obamas guidance that instructed to schools to let students use school restrooms in accordance with the gender they identify with, not their sex at birth. The move sparked criticism from the civil rights community.

The administration is looking at taxpayer-funded vouchers as a way to expand school choice nationwide, but it has not yet come out with a specific plan on how to do it.

Indiana is one of 30 states that use public money for school choice programs, including vouchers, educational savings accounts and tax-credit scholarships. The District of Columbia has the countrys only federally funded voucher program. All told, some 450,000 students participate nationally.

In a study last year, Indiana University professor Suzanne Eckes found that none of the states with voucher programs prohibits discrimination against LGBT students.

Lighthouse defends its right to educate children according to its values, saying that Christians are state taxpayers, too, and should be allowed to fund institutions of their choice with their money.

Parents are free to choose which school best comports with their religious convictions, Brian Bailey, an attorney who is serving as the schools spokesman, said in a statement. For a real choice and thus real liberty to exist, the government may not impose its own orthodoxy and homogenize all schools to conform to politically correct attitudes and ideologies.

Former Lighthouse student Mary Wegener, 24, says some of her classmates at the school were gay and received love and care. Bailey confirmed that the school did admit some students who were tempted by same-sex intimacy, saying we teach our students to flee these sins.

Wegener sees both sides of the story, but says a religious school cannot function contrary to its core beliefs.

If they (Lighthouse) are going to be a Christian school, they cant conform to everything else, because then that would be a private school that knocked out the Christian name.

Carissa Dollar, 46, of Indianapolis, who has a transgender daughter, is unconvinced.

I have a problem with public funds going to a private institution who then make decisions that would be discriminatory to any group, Dollar said. Its wrong if an LGBT student, or even if someone in their family identifies on the LGBT spectrum, could be denied admission to the school.

Dick Komer, senior attorney with Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, said that federal law has protections against discrimination on the basis of race, national identity, sex and religion, but they do not extend to LGBT individuals.

If the people who are grilling DeVos believe that sex includes sexual orientation and gender identity, then they should propose amendments to the statues that they have written and given her to enforce, Komer said. The Congress is supposed to write the law, the agency is supposed to administer what Congress has given them. And Congress hasnt given it to them.

Eckes, the Indiana University professor, said states must create protections to ensure that any benefit they create is available to all. She said that decades ago some private schools used their own interpretation of the Bible to exclude African-American students and federal protections were necessary to stop those practices.

If you accept public money in the form of a voucher then you shouldnt be able to discriminate whether its based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability or sexual orientation, Eckes said. If you agree to take that public money, then there are certain rules that you need to follow.

Lindsey Burke, director of education policy studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, disagrees.

Racism was based on identity and skin color and had no reasonable basis, Burke said. This is about whether a student, a family is going to live out their communal beliefs of the school that they have chosen to attend. These are intentional communities that are built upon a moral code that they have decided on.

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Lily Eskelsen Garca, president of the National Education Association, the countrys largest teachers union, said the Trump administrations attempt to fund private schools takes away money from public schools, where discrimination is not allowed.

Every child, every blessed child has the legal, civil and the human right to attend their public school, but no one can say that about a private school, Eskelsen Garcia said. Why would you get public dollars to a school that discriminates against students?

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Indiana Christian school at center of LGBT voucher debate ... - goskagit.com

The family of Philando Castile, who was shot and killed by officer Jeronimo Yanez of Minnesota's St. Anthony Police Department, has reached a nearly $3 million settlement with the city of St. Anthony Village, according to a statement from both parties.

The settlement follows the acquittal of Yanez on June 16 of second-degree manslaughter and two counts of intentional discharge of a firearm that endangers safety.

Castile was killed July 6, 2016, during a traffic stop, and his death, as well as the acquittal of Yanez, have drawn protests across the country.

The settlement over his death is the second major settlement to be awarded to police shooting victims' families in recent days.

The family of Michael Brown, a black teenager who was fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, settled its lawsuit against Ferguson for $1.5 million on June 23.

"Under the terms of the settlement, Valerie Castile, as trustee, will receive a payment in the amount of $2.995 million," the statement says. "The settlement will be paid through the city's coverage with the League of Minnesota Cities Insurance Trust."

The statement notes that no taxpayer money from St. Anthony Village will be used to fund the settlement and that the family intends to "deal with their loss through the important work of the Philando Castile Relief Foundation," a nonprofit created to help victims of gun violence.

New dashcam video, which was released last week, reopened old wounds for those who were outraged by his death.

Yanez, who is Latino, encountered Castile, 32, while investigating a broken taillight on his vehicle.

Diamond Reynolds, Castile's girlfriend, was in the car with him at the time of the shooting, along with her 4-year-old daughter.

Reynolds live-streamed the aftermath of the shooting on Facebook Live, helping make it a national news story.

The dashcam video shows Yanez saying, "OK. Don't reach for it," referring to a firearm Castile reported that he had.

"Don't pull it out," Yanez says, repeatedly, as he appears to draw his own weapon.

He fires multiple rounds into the car, and Reynolds can be heard screaming in the car.

The joint statement attempts to address the communal rift opened by Castile's shooting death and says that the city is working to "rebuild trust" between the police and those they serve.

"The important work of healing our community continues. The city of St. Anthony Village reaffirms its commitment to transforming its police department in partnership with the United States Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services," the statement says. "Through the Collaborative Reform Initiative, the city and residents are working to improve trust between the police department and the communities it serves."

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Family of Philando Castile reaches $3M settlement in police shooting case - ABC News