Quote:Paramedic Denies Role in Deadly Texas Blast
By JACK HEALY
Published: May 11, 2013

WEST, Texas — A volunteer paramedic who became a public face of mourning after last month’s deadly blast at a fertilizer plant in this Central Texas town denied having any involvement in the explosion, his lawyer said on Saturday.

The medic, Bryce A. Reed, 31, was arrested on Friday on charges he possessed components of a pipe bomb. Hours later, the authorities in Texas said they were opening a criminal investigation into the explosion, which killed 14, injured 200 and ravaged dozens of buildings.

Law enforcement authorities have not identified Mr. Reed as a suspect in the blast, nor have they indicated any link between his arrest and the April 17 explosion. But on Saturday, as people here continued clearing away debris and patching their homes back together, new questions arose about the grief-stricken emergency medical technician who stepped into the media glare after the explosion.

His lawyer, Jonathan Sibley, said that Mr. Reed wanted to address any speculation.

“Mr. Reed had no involvement whatsoever in the explosion,” Mr. Sibley said in a statement. “Mr. Reed was one of the first responders and lost friends, family and neighbors in that disaster. Mr. Reed is heartbroken for the friends he lost, and remains resolute in his desire to assist in the rebuilding of his community.”

Mr. Sibley said Mr. Reed would plead not guilty to the bomb-possession charge at a court hearing on Wednesday.

Mr. Reed’s stepfather, Gary Nelson, told The Dallas Morning News there was “not a chance” Mr. Reed could be connected to the explosion, and neighbors and local officials said they hoped and prayed that was the case.

“I feel very confident that one has nothing to do with the other,” said Tommy Muska, West’s mayor.

Still, people who knew Mr. Reed said his own portrayals of himself sometimes seemed at odds with reality. At a public memorial service on April 25, he offered a eulogy for a first responder named Cyrus Reed, referring to the two men as brothers as he described their tight friendship. One online obituary even listed Bryce Reed as a survivor of Cyrus Reed.

But Cyrus Reed’s father, Mark, said that the two men were not related, and that his family had not met Bryce Reed until after the blast.

“He’s represented himself as a longtime friend and all that,” Mark Reed said in a telephone interview. “Unfortunately, that’s just not the case.”

For weeks after the explosion, Bryce Reed gave frequent interviews about how he had run toward the fireball to rescue survivors, and he spoke extensively about the grief of losing friends. He was identified as a paramedic in reports as recently as May 6, but the authorities said that Mr. Reed had in fact been “let go” from the West E.M.S. on April 19, two days after the blast.

He is still listed as an active paramedic in state databases, though state health officials say his arrest prompted them to open an investigation. Dr. George Smith, the head of West’s E.M.S. unit, declined to explain why Mr. Reed had been dismissed.

“It’s tough because most of my guys did truly great work,” Dr. Smith said. “And so did he. He’s an excellent paramedic.”

Mr. Reed’s father-in-law, Max Tooker, said that agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives came to his home on Friday to interview Mr. Reed’s wife, Brittany. Mr. Tooker said that Ms. Reed was not connected “in any way, shape or form” to her husband’s legal troubles, and that she was now staying with relatives in Waco.

“She didn’t know anything,” Mr. Tooker said. “She had no inclination, no clue that anything was coming down at all.”

Neighbors said Mr. Reed spoke of traveling through Dubai and Europe or working at the Pentagon, and once mentioned that he was a SWAT officer in Waco. On his LinkedIn résumé, he said he had received a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Excelsior College, but Mike Lesczinski, a college spokesman, said Mr. Reed had never been a student there.

His résumé also lists him as the president and chief executive of the Silentium Group and the director of operations of Bare Fruit Ministries, two organizations that appear to consist almost solely of Mr. Reed or his wife, and whose phone numbers led to Mr. Reed’s voice mail.

Crystal LeDane, who lives three homes down from Mr. Reed’s red-brick duplex, described him as a good neighbor whose stories about himself occasionally perplexed her. Now, she said, she was left with even more questions. “None of it adds up,” she said.

Quote:Education

Excelsior College
BSN, Nursing
2008 – 2010

University of Phoenix
MBA, Masters in Business Administration
2008 – 2010

The Lighthouse Institute
Bachelors of Arts, Christian Study
2008 – 2009
Pastoral Education

Phoenix State Uinversity
Bachelors of Science, Business/EP
2007 – 2009
Activities and Societies: AAEP

Childrens Medical Center Dallas
Pediatric and Neonatal Critical Care
Activities and Societies: PNCCEMCTP

The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas
Advanced Field Critical Care
Activities and Societies: Essentials of long and short term care associated with high-risk/long transportation of critically ill individuals.

USBCWD
NA, Response/Identification/Containment
US Biological and Chemical Weapons Depot, Ft. McClellan, Alabama.
Activities and Societies: Assess, Identify, and mitigate the harm of agents introduced.

University of Maryland Baltimore County
CCEMT-P

Quote:The Crucifixion of Jason Richwine
By Michelle Malkin - May 10, 2013

How low will supporters of the Gang of Eight immigration bill go to get their way? This low: They've shamelessly branded an accomplished Ivy League-trained quantitative analyst a "racist" and will stop at nothing to destroy his career as they pave their legislative path to another massive illegal alien benefits bonanza.

Jason Richwine works for the conservative Heritage Foundation. He's a Harvard University Ph.D. who co-authored a study that pegs the cost of the Ted Kennedy Memorial Open Borders Act 2.0 legislation at $6.3 trillion. Lead author Robert Rector is a senior research fellow at Heritage, a former United States Office of Personnel Management analyst and the intellectual godfather of welfare reform. He holds a master's degree in political science from Johns Hopkins University.

Both Democrats and Republicans leaped to discredit the 102-page report without bothering to read it. The Washington Post falsely claimed the study did not take into account increased revenues from amnestied illegal alien workers. It did. Haley Barbour immediately proclaimed that the Heritage assessment of government costs incurred by amnestied illegal aliens was "not serious."

They want to talk gravitas? Let's talk gravitas. Blowhard Barbour is a career politician and paid lobbyist for the government of Mexico who has carried water for open borders since the Bush years. Richwine received his doctorate in public policy in 2009 from Harvard University's prestigious Kennedy School of Government. He holds bachelor's degrees in mathematics and political science from American University. Before joining Heritage in 2010, he worked at the American Enterprise Institute on a dissertation fellowship.

Richwine's 166-page dissertation, "IQ and Immigration Policy," is now being used to smear him -- and, by extension, all of Heritage's scholarship -- as "racist." While the punditocracy and political establishment sanctimoniously call for "honest discussions" on race, they rush to crush bona fide, dispassionate academic inquiries into the controversial subjects of intelligence, racial and ethnic differences, and domestic policy.

Richwine's entire thesis is now online [below]. Part One reviews the science of IQ. Part Two delves into empirical research comparing IQs of the native-born American population with that of immigrant groups, with the Hispanic population broken out. Richwine explores the causes of an immigrant IQ deficit that appears to persist among Hispanic immigrants to the U.S. through several generations.

The thesis analyzes social policy consequences of these findings and uses a model of the labor market "to show how immigrant IQ affects the economic surplus accruing to natives and the wage impact on low-skill natives."

The smug dismissal of Richwine's credentials and scholarship is to be expected by liberal hacks and clown operatives. But a reckless and cowardly pileup of knee-jerk dilettantes on the right -- including former McCain campaign co-chair Ana Navarro and conservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin -- have joined the character assassins of the Soros-sphere, MSNBC and Mother Jones in deeming Richwine a "racist." The drooling attack dogs of the far-left blog Daily Kos have now launched a pressure campaign against the JFK School demanding to know "why the school awarded Richwine a Ph.D. and what they plan to do in the future to prevent it from happening again."

No researcher or academic institution is safe if this smear campaign succeeds. Richwine's dissertation committee at Harvard included George Borjas, Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy. The Cuban-born scholar received his Ph.D. in economics from Columbia. He is an award-winning labor economist, a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research and the author of countless books, including a widely used labor economics textbook now in its sixth edition.

Richard J. Zeckhauser, the Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Political Economy at JFK, also signed off on Richwine's dissertation. Zeckhauser earned a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard. He belongs to the Econometric Society, the American Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine (National Academy of Sciences).

The final member of Richwine's "racist" thesis committee is Christopher Jencks, the Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy at Harvard's JFK School. He is a renowned left-wing academic who has taught at Harvard, Northwestern, the University of Chicago and the University of California, Santa Barbara. He edited the liberal New Republic magazine in the 1960s and has written several scholarly books tackling poverty, economic inequality, affirmative action, welfare reform and, yes, racial differences ("The Black-White Test Score Gap").

The willingness of Republican Gang of 8'ers to allow a young conservative researcher and married father of two to be strung up by the p.c. lynch mob for the crime of unflinching social science research is chilling, sickening and suicidal.

These are serious people doing serious work. The crucifiers of Jason Richwine pretend to defend sound science. But if it is now inherently racist to study racial and ethnic differences among demographic groups, then it's time to shut down every social sciences department in the country.

Quote:Environmentalist Professors Engage In Book Burning
by Jennifer Kabbany - Associate Editor on May 7, 2013

They say a picture is worth 1,000 words, and such is certainly the case coming out of [regionally accredited] San Jose State University, where two environmentalist professors took a match to an anti-global warming book – plus a photo of their little exercise – leaving an image that clearly illustrates the state of science-based academic freedom on college campuses nationwide.

The image appeared on the university’s official Department of Meteorology and Climate Science webpage, no less.

The academics who took flame to page are Dr. Alison Bridger, chairwoman of the university’s meteorology department, as well as Assistant Professor Craig Clements. The offending book? The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.

The educators wrote in a cutline under their picture that they’re testing the flammability of the book.

After a screenshot of the image recently made it onto the popular “wattsupwiththat” global warming and climate change website under the headline “San Jose State University Meteorology decides burning books they don’t agree with is better than reading them,” the picture and post were removed from the university’s website.

Anthony Watts, who posted the image on wattsupwiththat, made sure to save screenshots, and rightly noted:

“From the Fahrenheit 451 department comes this indictment of California’s higher education’s “tolerance” for opposing views. When I first got the tip on this, I thought to myself “nobody can be this stupid to photograph themselves doing this” but, here they are, right from the San Jose State University Meteorology Department web page …”

The offending book, with a tagline “climate change is natural, cars are innocent,” was published in August and is heralded by the nonprofit Heartland Institute, which sent the professors a copy of it in April, according to the professors’ cutline under their photo.

So what got these scientists all riled up?

Information on the Heartland’s website describes why some in the academe may take offense to the book:


If you accept the dogma of Climatism, greenhouse gases from industry are causing catastrophic global warming. Melting ice caps, rising oceans, stronger hurricanes and storms, droughts and floods, species extinction, polar bear starvation, heat waves, disease, ocean acidification, and air pollution are all a result of man-made climate change, according to experts. As a result, we must curb our evil carbon-emitting ways. The proposed remedies by Climatists are many and cover all parts of our society:

… If you’re an educator, teach your students that “if you change light bulbs, you can save polar bears.” Wind and solar are good, while coal and oil are bad. Teach them that we’re running out of natural resources, overpopulating the Earth, and must change our ways if we’re to save the planet.

If you’re a college science Ph.D. candidate, better choose the road of Climatism. Acceptance of the theory of man-made global warming means research contracts, peer acceptance, tenure, wealth and fame. The alternative road of climate skepticism offers only ridicule, poverty, and failure. …

In effect, the book spells out the state of climate studies in higher education, and clearly these two [regionally accredited] San Jose State University professors don’t appreciate its message.

The real tragedy here is, instead of giving the book a well-meaning read, they dismiss it out of hand. Instead of offering students two sides of the story, they only give them one.

It’s not a stretch to assume that other academics the Heartland Institute sent the book to undertook similar measures (e.g. the trash can). You can bet it wasn’t donated to the campus library.

This should be taken seriously, folks, because students who study climate data under devout Global Warmers are ultimately the scientists who come up with data that influences the media and Congress to create onerous business regulations that ultimately hurt your pocketbook and the nation’s economy.

Quote:Liberty Univ. Offers Scholarship to Eagle Scout Facing Gun Charges
Todd Starnes | May 02, 2013

A North Carolina Eagle Scout who was expelled and arrested for accidentally leaving a shotgun in his pickup truck in the school parking lot has been offered a scholarship to attend Liberty University.

Cole Withrow was just a few weeks from graduating with honors from Princeton High School when he was arrested on Monday and slapped with a felony weapons charge. Withrow had been skeet shooting with friends a day before and had only noticed he had left his shotgun in his truck as he reached to grab his book bag.

When he realized his mistake, he went to the front office and called his mother. An administrator overheard the conversation and called police.

Withrow’s story has generated national attention. Hundreds of people have joined a Facebook community to show their support. And many local parents are upset over what many believe is a case of a young man getting severely punished for trying to do the right thing.

“You teach your kids if you’re in trouble or if you see you’ve done something wrong, go ahead and admit it,” family friend Kimberly Boykin said. “Be a man and it’ll be fixed. In this case, that’s what he did and he’s being punished for it. That’s not the lesson we need to teach our kids.”

Jerry Falwell, Jr., the chancellor of Liberty University, had been traveling through North Carolina and saw a local television news account of Withrow’s ordeal. He also noticed that the 18-year-old was wearing a “Liberty University” t-shirt.

Falwell told Fox News that he made a few calls and discovered that Withrow’s sister is a Liberty graduate.

“I was really impressed with what a meek and humble Christian kid he is,” Falwell said. “I thought he would be a perfect fit at Liberty.”

So the chancellor made the 18-year-old an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“I told him that we would give him whatever scholarships he needed to attend Liberty University,” he said.

Falwell said the university is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure the teenager gets a college education.

“The anti-gun zealots seem to be vilifying him for making an honest mistake,” he told Fox News. “We want to reward him for trying to do the right thing.”

And that means even helping the young man finish his last few weeks of high school. Falwell said they offered to let him finish his high school work through their online academy.

Liberty University, located in Lynchburg, Va., is the world’s largest Christian university with nearly 100,000 students. The chancellor said he’s been flooded with messages of support for Withrow from the Liberty community.

“It’s something our whole university feels good about,” he said.

For now Withrow, who had a spotless record, faces a precarious future. It’s unclear at this point how the pending criminal charges will be worked out.

Falwell called the boy’s predicament “disturbing and unsettling.”

“When you see a basketball player who is glorified for announcing that he’s gay and then you see an honest young man like Cole arrested and treated like a criminal for making an honest mistake – you wonder what’s happening to our country,” he said. “The culture seems to be completely disconnected from our roots – our Christian heritage and our Constitution. I hope the American people wake up before it’s too late.”

Quote:Speculation over Callis’ political aspirations begins as 2014 Congressional race nears

April 25, 2013 11:53 AM
By Bethany Krajelis

Madison County Chief Judge Ann Callis’ name has been mentioned as a potential candidate for Illinois’ 13th Congressional District.

Callis did not return messages seeking comment, but others have taken to the World Wide Web to speculate that she might throw her name in the running for the seat that Republican Rodney Davis currently holds.

The Champaign County Democrats’ website described Callis and George Gollin, a professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign, as “candidates mentioned for Representative in Congress (13th District)” in a post about a dinner the group is hosting on Sunday in Champaign.

“The focus of the evening will be meeting and hearing from Democrats who are considering seeking our nomination for statewide and federal offices,” the post states.

Al Klein, chairman of the Champaign County Democrats, said in an email that Gollin will speak at this weekend’s event and that Callis “will be in attendance.”

Pointing to an Illinois Judges Association document on “ethical considerations surrounding judicial political activity,” Klein said sitting judges can attend political gatherings and “engage in political activities on behalf of measures to improve the law, legal system or administrative of justice.”

His careful response is likely the result of the fact that if Callis announces herself as a candidate for Congress, she would at some point have to step down as a judge, a position she has held since 1995 and was retained to in the 2012 election.

Canon 7 of the Illinois Judicial Code of Conduct states “a judge shall resign from a judicial office upon becoming a candidate for a non-judicial office either in a primary or in a general election.”

Besides the Champaign County Democrats website, recent posts on a political blog and an area man’s Facebook page suggest Callis might run for Congress.

The political blog – PoliticsToday – earlier this month had a post about the upcoming race for the 13th District and opined that among other potential candidates, “the top recruit for the Democrats may very well be Madison County Circuit Court Chief Judge Ann Callis, who was wooed during inauguration weekend.”

Noting that “none of these candidates have announced,” the blog post lists the following as other potential candidates: David Gill, a doctor was has previously run for office; Champaign Mayor Don Gerard and Brendan McGinty, a former member of the Champaign County Board.

Also this month, Craig Walker, a Champaign County resident and vice president at IFS Securities, put this post on his Facebook page:

“Lunch with Ann Collis [sic] a potential D candidate for Congress in 2014. She is a Chief Judge, passionate about the issues, and seems to have what it takes to win. Time to gear up for 14!”

Walker’s April 17 post, which appears to have since been taken down, tagged Andy Quarnstrom, the recently elected Champaign Township Supervisor, and Patricia Avery, the executive director of the Champaign-Urbana Area Project, at Big Grove Tavern.

The upcoming race for the 13th District isn’t the first time that Callis’ name has been floated as a potential candidate for office outside the judiciary.

In 2011, there was speculation that she might run for the 12th Congressional District.

The chairman of the local Democratic Party put out a statement on Callis’ behalf back then, explaining that after receiving strong encouragement and seriously considering it, she decided not to run for Congress.

And earlier this year, a few local attorneys told The Record that Callis would be a solid candidate to fill the soon-to-be vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois.

Callis in January declined to comment as to whether she had any interest in applying for the federal judgeship.

Quote:Spring Dinner April 28, 2013


Join us Sunday, April 28, 2013, for our Spring Dinner at the I-Hotel Convention Center, 1900 S First St., Champaign. The social hour begins at 5 pm; dinner is at 6 pm; our program begins at 7 pm.

The focus of the evening will be meeting and hearing from Democrats who are considering seeking our nomination for statewide and federal offices. Our own State Senator Mike Frerichs is considering a campaign for State Treasurer of Illinois. Candidates Mentioned for Representative in Congress (13th District) include George Gollin from Champaign County. And everyone expects U.S. Senator Dick Durbin to be at the head of our federal ticket; Bart Ellefritz will bring a message from the Senator.

These potential candidates have been invited to appear or send a representative to our dinner. Watch this space (and join our e-list) to keep up with the latest information.

Individual Dinner tickets at the door are $65, but PAY NOW AND SAVE $5! Use the Dinner Reservation Form (pdf) to purchase tickets or contribute to our GOTV effort.

Quote:Should You Get a Ph.D.?
Only if you're crazy or crazy about your subject.
BY DANIEL DREZNER | APRIL 15, 2013

Dear potential Ph.D. students in international studies,

Congratulations on getting accepted into our prestigious/competitive/up-and-coming doctoral degree program! We hope that you will consider our program seriously, and look at the attached ample/competitive/look-we-are-at-least-paying-your-tuition funding package. Unfortunately, due to the enhanced power that accrues to recipients of Outstanding Achievement in International Studies (OAIS) Weblogging Awards, we are required under International Studies Association rules to permit the following message from some Foreign Policy blogger. Feel free to disregard the advice below, and please, please, please accept our offer of admission!

For you, the possible entrants into Ph.D. programs in international studies, it is the best of times and the worst of times. Obviously, it's the best of times because some program somewhere accepted you, and hey, that's great. It's not easy to get into a doctoral program, but if someone accepted you, and offered you money no less, well, take a moment to savor it. You're going to get paid to get a Ph.D.! You'll get to tramp around some geographical area of interest, learn a new language or master econometrics. You'll get to do this without acquiring the obscene debt loads of law, medical, or business school graduates! It can't get better than that, right?

Well, now we arrive at the worst of times. I write to you as a full professor at a great school. I have moderate teaching obligations, a healthy research account, thoughtful students, and interesting and fun projects. In theory all you need to achieve this is drive, intelligence, and that pesky Ph.D. In practice, the odds are a hell of a lot longer than that.

Here's the truth about getting a Ph.D., in the plainest possible terms:

It takes a long time, and there's a decent chance you won't even finish. The numbers aren't pretty. If you're getting a Ph.D. in the social sciences, there's only a 41 percent chance you will finish in seven years. For political science, there's only a 44 percent chance you will finish after 10 years. Ten years! The reasons for this are variegated and mildly depressing. I've been on enough Ph.D. admissions committees to know that the correlation between the quality of an application and performance in the program are not all that strong. The Ph.D. can be a soul-crushing experience, draining a person of all the passion they felt about a topic and replacing it with fury at something called "methods." If you finish, great. If you don't, well, the waters of bitterness can run very deep

The socialization pressures are immense. Why do you want to get a Ph.D.? On second thought, it doesn't really matter. By the time you are a few years into your program, you'll have forgotten why you started and instead you'll be brainwashed into the belief that the only thing to do with a Ph.D. is to become a tenure-track professor. The socialization that takes place in a Ph.D. program is both totalizing and powerful. I've known people who got great private-sector jobs out of grad school, jobs that paid four times the salary of a typical academic position, and yet feel like they've let everyone down. That's pretty f***ed up. It also leads to the next reason:

The job market is brutal. The academic job market has been abysmal for as long as I can remember, but things have only gotten worse recently. Just click here and make sure that there are no children in the room, because the numbers are so horrific they should be rated NC-17. If you're not going to a top 20 school in your field, well, those numbers are even worse.

Now, to be sure, one advantage of the international studies disciplines is that they're not the humanities. There are government, NGO, and private sector jobs available. That's the good news. The bad news is that these sectors are going to get squeezed as well. The defense sequester is going to hit both Pentagon and private contractor hiring hard. And the push for austerity will inevitably impact the civilian side of this equation as well. The Coburn amendment to the latest appropriations bill, which proposed eliminating National Science Foundation funding for political science, might well be the canary in the coal mine for all of international studies. Opponents of the amendment succeeded in watering it down before it was passed in March, but the amendment still limits federal funding to projects that "promote national security or the economic interests of the United States." Political science is likely just the harbinger of other cuts to the rest of the social sciences.

Long-term trends do not bode well for the modern university. You might think that the hiring drought in the academy is just a temporary lull. And that might be true. But go read Nathan Harden's essay on the future of the university in The American Interest. It's likely an exaggeration, but there is certainly some truth in his Schumpeterian assertion that "the Internet is a great destroyer of any traditional business that relies on the sale of information." The great hope for universities to bolster sagging graduate programs is to encourage more foreign students -- but now even the Chinese influx of cash cows full-tuition-paying students has slowed down. So academia, that bastion of stability, might suddenly find itself on shakier ground at exactly the moment you arrive on the scene.

Foreign governments might spy on you. For reals.

If you're a little distressed now, well, you should be. Does this mean you shouldn't get a Ph.D.? Well, if you really do want to get a job either teaching or practicing something to do with international affairs, then getting a Ph.D. is the absolute worst choice you can make -- until you consider the alternatives. Other professional degrees cost much more upfront and it's not like the job prospects for those degrees are any better. According to Beltway insiders, a Ph.D. gives you an advantage working for the government or for think tanks, and it's certainly true that the credential still counts for something.

There's one last criterion to determine whether you should enroll in that Ph.D. program, and it might be a little cornball, but it's nevertheless valid: love. You can grind out a professional degree -- an MA, JD, or MBA -- with discipline and intelligence. Not so with a Ph.D. There are hard-headed reasons that point toward getting a Ph.D., but they're meaningless unless you care deeply about your subject matter. Without love for your subject, you will never finish your doctorate, never tolerate the criticism you'll receive during the writing process, never tolerate the penury while your peers move on in life. If you don't love what you study, the burnout will be painful... and inevitable.

I wish you the very best of luck in making your decision about pursuing a doctorate. The process can be rewarding for the mentally tough and soul-crushing for everyone else. And to paraphrase The Princess Bride, anyone who tells you that it will get easier for Ph.D.s in the future is selling you something.

Quote:CBS News senior correspondent John Miller said there is “an individual in custody,” a Saudi national who was near the scene of the blast.

Quote:There is no suspect in custody, authorities say, but some people are being questioned, including some with injuries who were taken to Boston hospitals. One of those, a person in whom there is some interest, is a young person who was here on a student visa," NBC reports.

Quote:Authorities ID suspect as Saudi national in marathon bombings, under guard at Boston hospital
Last Updated: 6:35 PM, April 15, 2013
Posted: 4:28 PM, April 15, 2013

Investigators have a suspect — a Saudi Arabian national — in the horrific Boston Marathon bombings, The Post has learned.

Law enforcement sources said the 20-year-old suspect was under guard at an undisclosed Boston hospital.

Fox News reported that the suspect suffered severe burns.

It was not immediately clear why the man was hospitalized and whether he was injured in the attack or in his apprehension.

The man was caught less than two hours after the 2:50 p.m. bombing on the finish line of the race, in the heart of Boston.

In addition, Boston police have surveillance video of someone bringing multiple backpacks to the blast site, according to CBS News.

Police also confirmed that there was a third explosion, at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. It was not immediately clear how much damage was done or whether it was related to the bombings at the marathon finish line.

The library bombing occurred about 4:30 p.m. and more than a mile from the marathon.

A law enforcement source confirmed to The Post that 12 people were killed and nearly 50 were injured in today's blast.

John Bear Wrote:After writing favorably about WISR for 30+ years, and being regularly asked, I agreed last week to join their Board of Directors. Earlier this year, they surveyed all their PhD students to see whether they would prefer the WISR Ph.D., or a DETC-accredited D.Ed. or D.Psy. The vote was 26 to 0 in favor of the Ph.D.

Quote:John Bear, PhD is WISR’s newest Board member. He is widely regarded as one of the foremost experts on nontraditional higher education and distance learning. He is an actively involved critic of diploma mills, and a supporter, and co-founder, of many legitimate and solid nontraditional programs of higher learning. He received his BA in Psychology (1959) and his M.J. in Journalism (1960) from the University of California at Berkeley; his PhD in Communications (1966) is from Michigan State. He is the author of 35 books with major publishers—on higher education, computers, travel, US history, cooking, publishing and consumerism. He is especially well known in the higher education community for his numerous guides to nontraditional higher education and distance learning. He was the Head of New Business Development or the Financial Times division of Pearson PLC, which is the world’s largest educational publisher. Years ago, he was a tenured Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Iowa and head of the Senior Honors Program there.

Quote:Taking on Accreditors and Faculty
April 11, 2013
By Ry Rivard

Florida lawmakers advanced a bill this week intended to upend the American college accreditation system.

The measure would allow Florida officials to accredit individual courses on their own -- including classes offered by unaccredited for-profit providers.

“We’re saying the monopoly of the accrediting system is not designed for the world of MOOCs or other individual courses,” said Republican State Senator Jeff Brandes, the bill’s sponsor. MOOCs are massive open online courses, the generally free online classes offered by a handful of groups, including some of the most elite universities in the world and for-profit companies.

The Florida plan is similar to a high-profile California bill. Both would force public colleges and universities under some circumstances to award credit for work done by students in online programs unaffiliated with their colleges.

With less than a month left in the Florida legislative session, the bill’s fate is unclear. But its critics and supporters both take the effort seriously even though the bill has remained below the radar nationally compared to the California plan, even within higher education circles in Florida.

Tom Auxter, the president of the 7,000-member United Faculty of Florida, was on his way to Tallahassee on Wednesday to lobby against the bill, which is known as the Florida Accredited Courses and Tests Initiative, or FACTs.

“What we’re trying to do is mobilize faculty to contact their legislators to say just how bad this is,” Auxter said.

The bill is part of a national effort to use technology to change higher ed.

“Now you see the nation being squeezed by California and now in Florida,” Dean Florez, a former California state senator who leads the Twenty Million Minds Foundation and generally supports the bills in both states.

Brandes won approval for the bill from the Senate’s powerful rules committee on Tuesday morning, clearing a major hurdle that allows the bill to be considered by the full Senate.

The bill does two main things.

First, it would create “Florida-accredited courses.” According to the bill, anyone – “any individual, institution, entity or organization,” it says – could create a course and seek “Florida-accredited” status. The vagueness of the language worries faculty unions and other state lawmakers, including a Republican senator who warned during the committee meeting Tuesday that Florida was inviting "scam artists."

During testimony to the rules committee Tuesday and in an interview Wednesday, Brandes made clear his bill is intended to shake up the way things are done in higher ed. He said the current accrediting model, which looks at a whole institution, fails to look at the rigor of individual courses. He said this means a college might be good over all, but a course wouldn’t be.

Under his plan, the head of the state’s public school system and the chancellor of the university system would together certify which courses among those not offered by accredited institutions deserve to be “Florida-accredited.” (Currently, all public higher ed institutions in Florida are accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges.)

Auxter called that plan dangerous and prone to political influence.

“It takes away decision making on the curriculum from faculties, universities and colleges and it gives it to officials in Tallahassee,” Auxter said. “Then all lobbyists have to do is argue with two officials, who are both political appointees, that their vendor contract to produce a high-quality – so-called – online course should be adopted."

The second major part of the bill is a new regime of statewide tests for K-12 and undergraduate college students to get credit for certain general education requirements based on their knowledge rather than for taking any specific course. The tests would be similar to Advanced Placement, ​International Baccalaureate and College Level Examination Program, or CLEP, exams. These for-credit exams would be tailored to Florida but designed and administered by contractors. ​Many colleges and universities will award credit or waive some requirements for students with certain scores on the AP or other exams, but these decisions have historically been made by colleges, and some institutions opt not to award such credit.

Florida International University Provost Douglas Wartzok said both key parts of the bill are “certainly concerning” because they take the university out of the picture: faculty would not offer the instruction, faculty would not design the tests and faculty would not administer the test.

“This approach takes it one more step away from the individual universities’ overview and allows commercial organizations to do the evaluations,” Wartzok said.

Florez criticized academic resistance.

“I think every professor in the nation starts with, ‘I think online education is going to ruin higher education,’ " he said. "What I think every professor is saying is, ‘Online learning is going to significantly disrupt the way I’ve been doing things.'"

Bob Schaeffer, spokesman for the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, which criticizes standardized tests, said the legislation was troubling. “It is designed so that the test is the curriculum, so that students will gain credit if they pass the test, even if they don’t do anything else and that certainly will encourage test prep and not deeper learning,” he said.

Even though Brandes is pushing tests that would grant students credit for doing well, Brandes said "for the most part" students should still take some kind of course -- whether it be traditional courses or MOOCs -- in order to learn.

“What we’re saying here is students have to pass an exam at the end, so they have to pass to attain the knowledge,” he said. The arguments against it would be there’s something magical about how you attain that knowledge. For the most part, the knowledge is the commodity. So what we’re saying is, ‘How are we going to get this commodity into your head?’ ”

Brandes -- using a comparison attributed to Stanford University President John Hennessy -- said technology is a tsunami and it’s up to education policy makers to sink or swim.

Auxter said this line of thinking spells the end of higher ed as it’s known. He said college professors would soon begin to teach to tests, a criticism leveled frequently now at K-12 teachers.

“Would you like to have university courses taught like that? Would you like to have colleges taught like that?” Auxter said. "Well, notice what’s in this bill.”

While the bill has fallen off some Florida higher ed officials' radar, Brandes said it is alive and he plans to amend the legislation into a House bill that is in the Senate and then send the amended version back to the House. Both Florida chambers have Republican majorities. Florida Gov. Rick Scott is also a Republican who has challenged public universities to offer low-cost alternatives to traditional programs.

Senator Bill Montford, a Democrat, voted for the bill during the rules committee meeting this week despite some outstanding questions.

“We’ve had terrible experience with good ideas before,” he said during the meeting. “I want some assurance that the Department of Education and the school districts will have the ability to make the decisions that we will not subject our children to less than the very best in those courses and instruction.”

Quote:Lone Star College stabbing suspect charged with aggravated assault
by Michelle Homer / KHOU.com
Posted on April 9, 2013 at 11:33 AM
Updated today at 9:24 PM

HARRIS COUNTY, Texas— Twelve people were rushed to area hospitals after an attack on the campus of [regionally accredited] Lone Star College Cy-Fair in northwest Harris County. Two other people were treated for minor wounds at the scene in the 9900 block of Barker Cypress.

Witnesses said a suspect ran down a hallway randomly stabbing students in the Health and Science Center.

"Male on the loose, stabbing people," was the call the sheriff's department received at 11:12 a.m. Tuesday.

Melody Vinton was leaving her chemistry class when the attacker ran past her. She saw him stabbing people, one after another, always aiming for the neck or face.

"I turned around and there was just blood. Just blood dripping down the stairs, all over the floor, all over everyone’s towels on their necks, just a lot of blood," Vinton said. "There’s no humanity in that. Just to see another human being do that was more traumatic than anything."

Vinton and other students in the science building rushed to help the victims until emergency crews arrived.

"They had a girl and she still had a blade sticking out of her cheek," said Michael Chalfan, another witness. "It was a box cutter to be exact, it was an X-acto knife."

More victims were reportedly stabbed in the technology building.

A male suspect was tackled on the campus and taken into custody.

He has been identified as 20-year-old Dylan Quick.

"Students and faculty were actively responding to subdue this individual," said Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia. "So we're proud of those folks."

Chalfan said Quick was running toward him when he was taken down.

"He had a sinister look on his face, kind of like a smile and a satisfaction grin after doing it," Chalfan said.

A former student said he was in the same holding room with Quick after he was arrested for trespassing. He said he asked Quick what he was doing and the suspect replied, "I was going on a killing spree until my blade broke."

Quick is a student at [regionally accredited] Lone Star College Cy-Fair. He was charged with three counts of aggravated assault Tuesday night. Bond was set at $100,000 for each count.

Six victims were taken to Memorial Hermann Texas Trauma Institute — four by Life Flight helicopters and two by ambulance. Two of them were in critical condition and three were in good condition, at last check. One patient was discharged after treatment.

North Cypress Medical Center confirms that they received six patients, but all were treated and released.

Several parents rushed to the campus after hearing about the stabbings.

"Basically, I’m frantic. I’m scared out of my mind," said one mother whose daughter was locked in a classroom. "Even though she’s 21, she’s still my baby. As soon as she gets out, I’m going to give her a hug and kiss."

Another mother named Janice was relieved to hear from her son.

"They won’t allow them out of the classroom and they’ve assured them that no one can get into the classroom without a key," she said. "They are just sitting and waiting while the police collect the evidence and try to calm everyone else in the classroom."

"He was praying and he knew that the Lord was protecting him," said the student’s father.

Lone Star officials said the campus was immediately placed on lockdown and students were alerted by text message within minutes after the stabbings began.

"Seek shelter now. If away, stay away," the text said.

Loud speaker announcements were also used to warn everyone inside campus buildings.

Five children were inside a day care in the science building when the stabbings happened.

"As the incident occurred, the doors were locked and the lights were turned off. Children were kept calm and were under the protection of the caretakers," according to a statement from YMCA Director of Communications Taryn Baranowski . "All the kids are safe and have since been picked up by parents."

Lone Star students and employees were later allowed to leave the campus, which will remain closed for the rest of the day. Vehicles were searched at all of the exits.

The following Cy-Fair ISD schools were placed on lockdown as a precaution: Birkes; Holmsley; Rennell; Fiest; Postma; Jowell; Copeland; Aragon; and The Berry Center.

Quote:Witness: Suspect in Lone Star College stabbing was 'on a killing spree'
by Courtney Zubowski / KHOU.com & KHOU.com staff
Posted on April 9, 2013 at 5:09 PM
Updated today at 6:00 PM

HOUSTON – The Lone Star College student who allegedly stabbed 14 people Tuesday was on a "killing spree" until his knife broke, according to a witness who said he spoke with him in a holding cell.

Dylan Quick, 20, was tackled by students and taken into custody shortly after the victims were stabbed on the Cy-Fair campus. He had not been charged at last check.

Quick was well-known on campus because he often carried a sock monkey puppet. Michael Chalfan said Quick would ask the puppet questions, then answer them. Chalfan said other students made fun of Quick and said he looked like the comedian Carrot Top.

Just last week, Quick was featured in a student spotlight blog about how far he had come and "the battles he fought and won."

The KHOU 11 News I-Team dug up the blog called, "I came, I saw, I conquered."

The article about Quick, 20, said he was born deaf and received a cochlear implant at seven years old. The implant was visible as he was escorted into the Harris County Jail Tuesday afternoon.

Quick had a long association with Lone Star College and enrolled in the school libraries teen activities when he was 12, according to the blog. Quick’s mom enrolled him in the program to help him learn English. Quick was shy at first and didn’t’ want to participate, but eventually turned into a studious reader.

The blog reveals Quick had decided to pursue a career in accounting and would be transferring to the [regionally accredited] University of Houston if he received his associate degree from [regionally accredited] Lone Star College Cy-Fair.

He has a love for math and a love for reading with more than 1,000 books in his collection.

Quick planned to build and host an online international book club in the future, the blogger wrote.

Quick’s future now has taken a much different direction.

Quote:Ron Paul
April 8, 2013

Homeschooling: The Future of Liberty

A common feature of authoritarian regimes is the criminalization of alternatives to government-controlled education. Dictators recognize the danger that free thought poses to their rule, and few things promote the thinking of “unapproved” thoughts like an education controlled by parents instead of the state. That is why the National Socialist (Nazi) government of Germany outlawed homeschooling in 1938.

Sadly, these Nazi-era restrictions on parental rights remain the law in Germany, leaving parents who wish greater control over their children’s education without options. That is why in 2006 Uwe and Hannalore Romeike, a German couple who wanted to homeschool their three children for religious reasons, sought asylum in the United States. Immigration judge Lawrence Burman upheld their application for asylum, recognizing that the freedom of parents to homeschool was a “basic human right.”

Unfortunately, the current US administration does not see it that way, and has announced that it is appealing Judge Burman's decision. If the administration is successful, the Romeikes could be sent back to Germany where they will be forced to send their children to schools whose teaching violates their religious beliefs. If they refuse, they face huge fines, jail time, or even the loss of custody of their children!

The Administration’s appeal claims that the federal government has the constitutional authority to ban homeschooling in all fifty states. The truth is, the Constitution gives the federal government no power to control any aspect of education. Furthermore, parents who, like the Romeikes, have a religious motivation for homeschooling should be protected by the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.

The federal government’s hostility to homeschooling is shared by officials at all levels of government. Despite the movement’s success in legalizing homeschooling in every state, many families are still subjected to harassment by local officials. The harassment ranges from “home visits" by child protective agencies to criminal prosecution for violating truancy laws.

Every American who values liberty should support the homeschoolers’ cause. If the government can usurp parental authority over something as fundamental as the education of their children, there is almost no area of parenthood off limits to government interference.

Homeschooling has proven to be an effective means of education. We are all familiar with the remarkable academic achievements, including in national spelling bees and other competitions, by homeshcooled children. In addition, homeschooled students generally fare better than their public school educated peers on all measures of academic performance.

It makes sense that children do better when their education is controlled by those who know their unique needs best, rather than by a federal bureaucrat. A strong homeschooling movement may also improve other forms of education. If competition improves goods and services in other areas of life, why wouldn't competition improve education? A large and growing homeschooling movement could inspire public and private schools to innovate and improve.

When the government interferes with a parent's ability to choose the type of education that is best for their child, it is acting immorally and in manner inconsistent with a free society. A government that infringes on the rights of homeschooling will eventually infringe on the rights of all parents. Homeschooled children are more likely to embrace the philosophy of freedom, and to join the efforts to restore liberty. In fact, I would not be surprised if the future leaders of the liberty movement where homeschooled.

I believe so strongly in the homeschooling movement that I have just announced my own curriculum for homeschooling families. Please visit this revolutionary new project at http://www.ronpaulcurriculum.com.

Quote:The person asking the question should first prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the boss's degree is fake. If s/he doesn't know how, that s/he needs to find an expert, like me (and, incidentally, I'd happily do it for free, just to help out). Once it is proved, positively, that the boss's degree is fake, then someone (not necessarily the employee who asked the question here) needs to report it to Human Resources, with a copy to the head of the company). The reason that perhaps the employee who has discovered it, and who asked the question, here, should not do the reporting is because no matter how in-the-right s/he may be, there can sometimes be weird and unexpected consequences later on. HR people are just people; and if the HR person is young, and wasn't raised right, and didn't grasp the message of the ethics courses s/he took in college, s/he (the HR person) may have the "don't be a snitch" mentality and may somehow hold that against the employee who rats-out the fake-degree-holding boss.

That's part of the reason why I, as part of what my consulting firm does, am happy to do the reporting for the employee, on my consulting firm's letterhead, out in the open, honestly and honorably, where I can stand behind what I write because as an activist I have the courage to so do. So if the person who asked the question, here -- the one who has the fake-degree-holding boss -- would like to contact me, I will be happy to help him/her completelly for free, and completely in confidence. I will first verify (in a manner far more comprehensive and accurate than s/he could likely do) that the boss's degree is, in fact, "fake." If it is, then I will then report him to both the company's president, and the HR department, on my letterhead, with a copy to the fake-degree-holding boss. Said boss would never, then, know which, if any, of his employees "ratted him out," as I'm sure he'd see it.

I've done this many times. I've stopped political candidates from obtaining office. I've stopped elected candidates from continuing in office. I've helped to shut down degree/diploma mills, and put their owners/operators in prison. And I've helped to put in prison those who've obtained fake degrees, then sworn they were real on applications for public office or state-issued professional licensure. I'm not afraid to do it. It's an honorable and important thing to do. I do it all the time, and I do it well.

And if the boss in this scenario really has a "fake" degree, then I'll be only too happy to do it to him. For free. In fact, whenever I do this sort of thing, I always do it for free... as part of my activism.

Quote:Professor Makes Students “Stomp on Jesus”
Todd Starnes
Mar 22, 2013

A [regionally accredited] Florida Atlantic University student said he was suspended from class after he refused a professor’s directive to stomp on a piece of paper with the word “Jesus” written on it.

“I’m not going to be sitting in a class having my religious rights desecrated,” student Ryan Rotela told television station WPEC. “I truly see this as I’m being punished.”

Rotela, who is a devout Mormon, said the instructor in his Intercultural Communications class told the students to write the name “Jesus” on a sheet of paper. Then, they were told to put the paper on the floor.

“He had us all stand up and he said ‘Stomp on it,’” Rotela said. “I picked up the paper from the floor and put it right back on the table.

The young college student told the instructor, Deandre Poole, that the assignment was insulting and offensive.

“I said to the professor, ‘With all due respect to your authority as a professor, I do not believe what you told us to do was appropriate,’” Rotela said. ‘I believe it was unprofessional and I was deeply offended by what you told me to do.’”

Rotela took his concerns to Poole’s supervisor – where he was promptly suspended from the class.

Poole did not return calls seeking comment. According to his university profile, he has a PhD from Howard University and is authoring a book titled, “Obamamania: The Rise of a Mythical Hero.”

A university spokesperson told they could not comment about Rotela’s case due to student privacy laws.

However, the university is defending the instructor’s assignment to stomp on the name of Jesus.

“As with any academic lesson, the exercise was meant to encourage students to view issues from many perspectives, in direct relation with the course objectives,” said Noemi Marin, the university’s director of the school of communication and multimedia studies.

“While at times the topics discussed may be sensitive, a university environment is a venue for such dialogue and debate,” Marin added.

The lesson on bashing the name of Christ is included in a textbook titled, “Intercultural Communication: A Contextual Approach, 5th Edition.”

Fox News obtained a synopsis of the lesson that got Rotela in trouble.

“Have the students write the name JESUS in big letters on a piece of paper,” the lesson reads. “Ask the students to stand up and put the paper on the floor in front of them with the name facing up. Ask the students to think about it for a moment. After a brief period of silence instruct them to step on the paper. Most will hesitate. Ask why they can’t step on the paper. Discuss the importance of symbols in culture.”

Paul Kengor, the executive director of the Center for Vision and Values at Grove City College, told Fox News he’s not surprised by the classroom lesson.

“These are the new secular disciples of ‘diversity’ and ‘tolerance’ – empty buzzwords that make liberals and progressives feel good while they often refuse to tolerate and sometimes even assault traditional Christian and conservative beliefs,” Kengor said.

Kengor said classes like the one at Florida Atlantic University demonstrate the contempt many public institutions hold for people of faith.

“It also reflects the rising confidence and aggression of the new secularists and atheists, especially at our sick and surreal modern universities,” he said.

The university did not explain why students were only instructed to write the name of Jesus – and not the name of Mohammed or another religious figure.

“Gee, I wonder if the instructor would dare do this with the name of Mohammed,” Kengor wondered.

Rotela said the idea of stomping on the name of Jesus was beyond his comprehension.

“Any time you stomp on something it shows you believe that it has no value,” he told the television station. “If you were to stomp on the word Jesus – it says the word has no value.”

Quote:WE'VE FOUND THE GOD PARTICLE
Mar. 14, 2013, 8:33 AM

GENEVA (AP) — The search is all but over for a subatomic particle that is a crucial building block of the universe.

Physicists announced Thursday they believe they have discovered the subatomic particle predicted nearly a half-century ago, which will go a long way toward explaining what gives electrons and all matter in the universe size and shape.

The elusive particle, called a Higgs boson, was predicted in 1964 to help fill in our understanding of the creation of the universe, which many theorize occurred in a massive explosion known as the Big Bang. The particle was named for Peter Higgs, one of the physicists who proposed its existence, but it later became popularly known as the "God particle."

The discovery would be a strong contender for the Nobel Prize. Last July, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, announced finding a particle they described as Higgs-like, but they stopped short of saying conclusively that it was the same particle or was some version of it.

Scientists have now finished going through the entire set of data.

"The preliminary results with the full 2012 data set are magnificent and to me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson, though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is," said Joe Incandela, a physicist who heads one of the two main teams at CERN, each involving several thousand scientists.

Whether or not it is a Higgs boson is demonstrated by how it interacts with other particles and its quantum properties, CERN said in the statement. After checking, scientists said the data "strongly indicates that it is a Higgs boson."

The results were announced in a statement by the Geneva-based CERN and released at a physics conference in the Italian Alps.

CERN's atom smasher, the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider that lies beneath the Swiss-French border, has been creating high-energy collisions of protons to investigate how the universe came to be the way it is.

The particle's existence helps confirm the theory that objects gain their size and shape when particles interact in an energy field with a key particle, the Higgs boson. The more they attract, so the theory goes, the bigger their mass will be.

Quote:March 11th, 2013
World Education University aims to create an ‘army of humanitarians’
By Sarah Langmead, Assistant Editor, @eCN_Sarah


Long before Scott Hines dreamed up the World Education University, he was a young foster kid growing up in Western Colorado who believed that college was out of his reach. That all changed when he was accepted into the Air Force Academy.

“I was very lucky I got in,” he said. “It’s a completely free, high-caliber education. You pay back your education through service to your country. It set me on a whole other path.”

Hines earned a bachelor’s degree and two master’s degrees while serving more than 10 years of active duty. Yet, as he continued to accumulate higher education honors, he never forgot where he came from.

“It has been a lifelong goal for me to pay it back and inspire other kids like me to reach for the stars,” he said.

In 2010, Hines was elected Mayor of Rancho Mirage, Calif., and he founded World Education University (WEU), a completely free online university where he serves as president and chief operating officer, alongside Curtis Pickering, who serves as CEO.

WEU is unlike most other online universities in that it focuses primarily on training its students to become “an army of humanitarians,” according to Hines.
“Right up front, we require [that students] agree to an ‘I will give back’ pledge,” he said. “It’s very short, simple, and broad, and says you’ll take this gift of free education and agree to do good work with it.”

Hines said that this “pay it forward” mission is ingrained into every course of study.

“We’re pragmatists,” he said. “We really believe that the vast majority [of students] will find a way to pass on the inspiration of WEU and make the people around them better as a result of becoming an educated person.”



WEU was in development for approximately two years before officially opening its virtual doors to students on Feb. 1. Currently, 20 courses are live—and Hines predicts that another 260 courses will be made live by the end of June. WEU has contracted with 130 course developers to write the courses that are taught mostly by adjunct professors, many of whom are “disenchanted with the state of higher education,” according to Hines.

“[Professors] find us—it has been a real phenomenon,” he said. “We have a job board posting that we do on our website, but it’s really through word of mouth and the handful of articles that have been written. Our secret sauce is this amazing mission of WEU—people are drawn to the transformative potential of what WEU can do for the world.”

Hines believes that in the future, traditional brick-and-mortar schools will become to higher education what boarding schools are to K-12 today. He said that many of the world’s most respected schools are elitist and unjustly pride themselves on their exclusivity. “It’s almost like it’s a badge of honor to report how many students you turn away,” he said. But are these universities ignoring perhaps the most obvious problem that comes along with rejecting thousands of students every year? Hines thinks so.

“They’re really not interested in democratizing education,” he said. “Less than 5 percent of the world’s population attends college—[we need to] open up education to the people who most need it in the world. Technology, for the first time in the world’s history, has allowed us to do that. I really stand up and defend the fact that online education is a tool that makes a difference in the vast majority of people’s lives.”

The university is run primarily through revenue from advertisers and through several restricted, proprietary business contracts. Outside of offering various bachelor’s and master’s degree programs, WEU has developed a sexual harassment certificate that covers 95 percent of the information in most companies’ policy manuals. Through these contracts, a company’s employees can take a comprehensive, non-credit online course to gain sexual harassment training certification.

Hines said these contracts are a win-win for both employers and employees. So far, he has observed that many employees come to WEU to take the sexual harassment course and decide to stay and pursue a free higher-ed degree.

WEU is aggressively pursuing regional and national accreditation but is already legally authorized to award degrees. Hines said that a team of Ph.D.s examine WEU’s courses before they go live to ensure proper rigor and credit-worthiness. Students are permitted to complete courses at their own pace, and even finish college degrees that they started at other universities.

WEU primarily promotes andragogy, or learning strategies focused on adults as opposed to more traditional pedagogical tactics, because 60 percent of its student body is older than 30.

“The students are our clients, and our second priority is employers,” said Hines. WEU works closely with career professionals to prepare students for the modern workforce.

Hines said WEU believes the best way to assess students’ concerns and promote successful learning outcomes is to remain in constant communication with them.

“We will be rolling out, by the end of March, a full suite of interactive communications software to be embedded in the systems,” he said. Promoting communication between students is also imperative.

“Peer-to-peer learning is very important,” he said. “This is often a difficult [concept] for higher ed to understand. In our model of supportive independent study, faculty becomes facilitators.”

Quote:Yale hosts workshop teaching sensitivity to bestiality
By Katherine Timpf, on Mar 05, 2013

On Saturday afternoon, [regionally accredited] Yale hosted a “sensitivity training” in which students were asked to consider topics such as bestiality, incest, and accepting money for sex.

During the workshop, entitled, "Sex: Am I Normal," students anonymously asked and answered questions about sex using their cell phones, and viewed the responses in real time in the form of bar charts.

The session was hosted by “sexologist” Dr. Jill McDevitt, who owns a sex store called Feminique in West Chester, Pa.

Survey responses revealed that nine percent of attendees had been paid for sex, 3 percent had engaged in bestiality, and 52 percent had participated in "consensual pain" during sex, according to an article published in the Yale Daily News on Monday.

Event director Giuliana Berry ’14 told Campus Reform in an interview on Monday that the workshop was brought to campus to teach students not to automatically judge people who may have engaged in these sorts of activities, but rather to respond with “understanding” and “compassion.”

"People do engage in some of these activities that we believe only for example perverts engage in,” she said. “What the goal is is to increase compassion for people who may engage in activities that are not what you would personally consider normal.”

McDevitt referred to the range of activities discussed in the workshop as “sexual diversity.”

“It tries to get people to be more sensitive … to sexual diversity,” McDevitt told Campus Reform in an interview on Monday. “We’re not all heterosexual, able-bodied folks who have standard missionary sex.”

Several students submitted discussion topics about having incestuous sexual fantasies. Attendee Alex Saeedy '15, told the News that he at first found this surprising, but then "thought it might be more of a psychological thing we all might have.

"I think that's what the point of the workshop was — to bring up things we thought we so taboo and desire or urges we criticize are just regular parts of sexual psychology," he said.

During the workshop, McDevitt taught the approximately 40 students that just because people think something is deviant does not mean that it is bad.

“It’s sensitivity training,” McDevitt told Campus Reform. “Don't judge other people, because we all have something we are embarrassed about.”

The event was part of Yale’s Sex Weekend, which ran from Feb. 28 through March 3. Sponsors included Yale Women's Center, Undergraduate Organizations Committee, the Sexual Harassment and Assault Response Education Center at Yale, and SeLF: The Sexual Literacy Forum.

Quote:Pro-Life Student Sanctioned at DePaul University for Exposing Vandals


by Dr. Susan Berry 2 Mar 2013

The head of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) at [regionally accredited] DePaul University is facing expulsion after he released the names of vandals who destroyed a pro-life flag display.

Kristopher Del Campo, the chairman of the conservative student organization, has been sanctioned by the university after having being charged for violating DePaul’s Code of Student Responsibility and found guilty on two counts: Disorderly, Violent, Intimidating, or Dangerous Behavior to Self or Others, and Judicial Process Compliance.

To mark the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in January, Del Campo, a 23-year old psychology major, and other students were granted permission from the university to build a pro-life display that featured 500 flags. However, vandals destroyed the display and stuffed some of the flags into trash cans.

A university investigation released the names of 13 students who admitted to the vandalism following identification by security cameras. Del Campo then listed the names of the vandals on the YAF website, an action that led to the posting of negative comments directed at the vandals. As a result, the university held Del Campo responsible for the comments, claiming he placed these students “at substantial risk of physical harm.”

“Instead of supporting a student whose free speech rights were violated, DePaul University bullied Kristopher Del Campo for daring to expose the 13 vandals,” said Ron Robinson, YAF’s Foundation President. “They put him through a Soviet-style show trial.”

According to YAF, Del Campo was not permitted counsel at the university tribunal that convicted him.

Other free speech groups have lent support to Del Campo.

“The 13 DePaul students named in the public safety report admitted not only to vandalizing YAF’s display but also planning to do so,” wrote Pete Bonilla, of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, in a letter to DePaul’s president. “Students who purposefully vandalize the works of other students should not expect to be shielded from the public consequences of their actions.”

Del Campo, who is about to graduate, has been told by the DePaul Dean of Students that he could be expelled.

“It is unfortunate that this incident is part of your educational career,” wrote Dean Art Murin [sic, Munin]. “Any further infractions of the Code of Student Responsibility during your probationary period may result in additional disciplinary action including removal from the university.”

Del Campo has said that, even though he was warned by [Munin] not to fight the university, he plans to do so.

“This is wrong,” Del Campo told Fox News. “This university has a problem with free speech rights and this time they met a challenger who is not backing down.”

Quote:College's $99 online courses could signal shift in cost trend
Thursday, February 21, 2013
BY PATRICIA ALEX

It's a bargain: $99 to earn three credits at a state university.

Thomas Edison State College announced Wednesday that it is partnering with an online provider to offer access to six free college courses that, for the cost of a $99 test, can each translate into credit toward an undergraduate degree.

The initiative is unique — the college, based in Trenton, is the first in the state and one of the first in the nation to allow degree-seeking students to capitalize on the growth in so-called massive open online courses.

The move may also signal the beginning of a shift that could help to reverse a decade of hyper-inflation in college costs.

"Potentially, this could mean significant savings for students," said Devon Ritter, special project administrator at the Saylor Foundation, the non-profit group that developed the courses that Thomas Edison will offer. "We still need more institutional buy-in [from schools], but this is a start."

Online education has been around for more than a decade and has long held out the promise of providing broad access at low cost. But many schools have been slow to embrace it and, for the most part, students get no discount for online credits.

The explosive growth last year of massive open online courses — many of which are taken by people who already have bachelor's degrees — has spurred a debate in higher education as to how the model could be used by those seeking undergraduate degrees.

"It was really students starting the conversation of what can I get for these courses," said Cathy Sandeen, vice president for education attainment and innovation at the American Council on Education.

The council is in the midst of a yearlong study – funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – of the courses and is reviewing those offered by two of the largest providers, Coursera and Udacity. The council has approved five of the courses for credit – students take a proctored exam at the end — but it remains up to schools to decide whether to accept those credits.

The initiative at Thomas Edison is one of very few that will offer a truly low-cost online alternative, said Marc Singer, vice provost at the school's assessment center. Saylor also is offering courses through Excelsior College in New York, a private school that, like Thomas Edison, caters to adult learners.

The College Board's College Level Examination Program, or CLEP, allows students to gain college credits for the $80 cost of taking a test, but it is not tied to specific coursework and the credits are not always accepted by colleges and universities.

The programs at Excelsior and Thomas Edison are novel in that they are tied to a degree track, Singer said. Both schools have catered to adult learners and were more agile than some traditional schools in embracing the online courses, he said.

"We didn't have to turn the ship around. This is already in our wheelhouse," Singer said.

He said the Saylor courses more closely resemble college courses, unlike the popular lectures presented by some other open online providers.

The end-of-course tests for college credits are designed by Thomas Edison and those credits are also accepted by other state colleges, including Ramapo, Montclair State and William Paterson universities, Singer said. Rutgers does not accept the Thomas Edison assessment or the CLEP test, he said.

The regular per credit cost at Thomas Edison is $164 and other state schools charge more than twice that. The cost ranges from $370 at Montclair to $411 at Ramapo – or more than $1,200 for one course, so the savings in using Thomas Edison's $99 course could be substantial.

The fist six Saylor courses offered for credit at the school are Introduction to Comparative Politics; World History in the Early Modern and Modern Eras (1600-Present); Management Information Systems; Negotiations and Conflict Management; Introduction to Mechanical Engineering; and Thermodynamics.

Quote:Teacher Tells Students to Call 9-11 Hijackers “Freedom Fighters”
Todd Starnes
Feb 27, 2013

An Advanced Placement World Geography teacher at a Texas high school who encouraged students to dress in Islamic clothing also instructed them to refer to the 9-11 hijackers not as terrorists – but as “freedom fighters,” according to students who were in the class.

Students at Lumberton High School were also told to stop referring to the Holocaust as Genocide – instead they were told to use the term “ethnic cleansing.”

John Valastro, the superintendent of the Lumberton Independent School District, tells me that the teacher did absolutely nothing wrong.

“What is more dangerous – fear and ignorance or education and understanding,” he asked. “From our standpoint, we are here to educate the kids.

Valastro said the teacher involved is a 32-year veteran who was simply following state teaching guidelines.

“I don’t think my freshman-level teacher was trying to politicize radical Islam or anything like that,” he said. “I don’t think our teacher has...to my knowledge ever converted a single student to Islam.”

The Islamic lessons in the small public high school generated national attention after a photograph of four female students wearing burqas surfaced on Facebook.

April LeBlanc’s 15-year-old daughter was one of the students in the photograph. She told me that many parents in the district feel betrayed by school officials.

“My biggest thing is not the burqa,” she said. “That was the key to opening up the rest. It’s scary how far they dove into the Islamic faith. It’s scary what they taught my daughter. Who’s in charge of this? How did our superintendent let this slip through the cracks?”

LeBlanc said the students were told that they could no longer use the terms suicide bomber or terrorist. Instead, they were instructed to use the words “freedom fighters.”

“This teacher taught her that a freedom fighter is when they give their life for the Holy War – and that they’re going to go to heaven,” she said. “They were saturating these kids in Islam and my daughter is an American Christian child.”

Madelyn LeBlanc told me that it was clear her teacher was very uncomfortable lecturing the students.

“I do have a lot of sympathy for her,” the 15-year-old said. “At the very beginning she said she didn’t want to teach it but it was in the curriculum.”

Her mother added that it was her impression that the teacher did not agree with the quote about calling the terrorists freedom fighters and laced her lecture with sarcasm.

During a lesson on Judaism, LeBlanc said the teacher told the class, “Students, I’m supposed to be politically correct and tell you that the Holocaust was not Genocide. It was an ethnic cleansing.”

LeBlanc said her daughter kept detailed notes of every classroom lecture and as she read the transcripts she became disturbed.

“Really,” she asked. “They can’t call the Holocaust Genocide? I was more upset with that than the lessons on Islam. It made me sick.”

And then came the comparison between the 9-11 hijackers and the freedom fighters.

Madelyn said a young man sitting beside her was stunned.

“He was shocked that we had to call them that,” she told Fox News. “He laughed and asked the teacher, ‘Is that a joke? Are you serious? Why do we have to call them that? That makes it sound okay (what they did) And it’s not.’”

Madelyn said the teacher didn’t know how to respond.

“She said it was something we have to learn for the end of the year testing,” she said. “I’m sure it was very difficult for her to do.”

Madelyn said the lesson about freedom fighters made her feel “terrible.”

“That made it sound like what they were doing was okay,” she said.

The superintendent also defended the lesson on freedom fighters.

“The whole idea behind this particular lesson – do you call yourself a freedom fighter or Islamic jihadist – or whatever it is you want to be called – you’ve got to put things in perspective,” the superintendent said. “We’re trying to teach the kids to discern for themselves that one thing can be called many different things.”

Valastro said it’s important for students to understand context.

“We might see it as terrorism, but from the Islamic side they might call it jihadist or freedom fighter,” he said.

The superintendent said he was not aware of the specific comments made about the 9-11 hijackers – but conceded there was only one side to the attack.

“I do agree it was a terrorist attack,” he said. “But in several classes across this country, you’re going to have a make-up of students from all over the world in your class. We teach it as an act of terrorism – whereas they are teaching it to their kids as a revolutionary event.”

LeBlanc said she was especially bothered by the lack of emphasis on other religions. She said there were hardly any lessons on Judaism and none on Christianity.

“I wondered how it was okay for them to go so in-depth into a religion from the other side of the world but it was not okay for them to be like that with Christianity,” she said.

“I try to stay open-minded,” she said. “I don’t want my daughter to be ignorant about the world. My kids watch the news with us. We make them aware. I don’t even mind the high school teaching these things.”

But, she added, there was no balance.

“They can talk about how important Mecca is – but why aren’t they talking about how important Christianity was to the founding of the nation,” she asked.

LeBlanc and other parents said they feel betrayed.

“We trusted these people,” she said of the school system. “It scares me. I feel like our school is being infiltrated. How can this not be a sign? We’re talking about Lumberton, Texas. We’re talking about a small town with Christian churches on every street corner. Right in our small school this is going on.”

Quote:11 Concordia students sue over accreditation
By Ellen Jean Hirst
Tribune reporter
7:35 a.m. CST, February 28, 2013

Eleven students who will graduate in May 2013 from [regionally accredited] Concordia University Chicago’s school counseling master’s program filed a lawsuit against the university in Cook County Circuit Court on Wednesday for what they say is consumer fraud.

The individuals claim that the university had promised them upon admission that they would graduate from a school accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Education Programs – an important distinction, they said.

But in an e-mail correspondence between the students and the private Lutheran liberal arts university located in River Forest, the lawsuit states that the university told the students it had decided to no longer be accredited by the organization.

The students are asking that the university be required to reimburse their tuition costs as well as damages for the devalued degree.

In the lawsuit, the students claim that while their master’s degree incurred an above-average cost – they said they spent more than $20,000 each –the “coveted prize” of the valuable accreditation the university boasted would have made the price worth it.

Through recruiters, online and packet information, the students said they had been assured that they would graduate from an accredited university, an important step for someone hoping to become a licensed professional counselor, they said.

The accrediting organization states on its website: “Not (attending an accredited institution) can have significant and unfortunate implications for your future ability to obtain licensure as a professional counselor or your ability to continue on for further graduate-level education.”

Calls and emails to the university were not returned Wednesday night.