Tyson was one of four people charged with second-degree trespassing after they interrupted the board’s meeting, locked arms and sang songs.

Rev. William Barber, president of the state chapter of the NAACP, Nancy Petty, a pastor at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh and Mary Debbin Williams, a Wake County parent staged what Barber called a “non-violent conscientious objection,” disrupting the meeting for about an hour to draw attention to a move by the board they believe will serve to re-segregate Wake County schools.

College professor Tyson is protesting the school board’s decision to go back to a community schooling model.  According to wral professor Tyson have the following words of wisdom regarding the matter:

“If the anti-diversity coalition of the school board thinks I’m a pain in the neck wait ‘till they meet my mama who taught fourth grade for 40 years and knows what to do with people who don’t do their homework,”

(Daily 49er) In the past week, psychology professor Kevin MacDonald had his class interrupted by an organization claiming his views and recent involvement in political organization the American Third Option party are seen as racist and anti-Semitic.

MacDonald, a tenured professor at Cal State Long Beach, has been making headlines on the matter since he was investigated by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2006. The SPLC tracks hate crimes and groups across America.

“I’m used to being harassed,” MacDonald said. “I expect to be harassed because people on the left don’t like what I think. So what? We should be allowed to teach.”

Senior English major Doug Kauffman was one of the students who led the demonstration in MacDonald’s class last Tuesday.

“We planned this [demonstration] at least a month in advance; the goal would be to have every student just get up and walk out,” Kauffman said.

Marylou Cabral, a senior art education major and participant in the demonstration, commented on the student’s reactions.

“Many seemed appalled, and I think a few even left,” Cabral said. “Our goal is to let students know about [MacDonald’s] involvement in Freedom 14 and other neo-Nazi groups. We feel that the students need to know what they’re getting into.”

Both Kauffman and Cabral are students at CSULB and members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a Marxist and Leninist organization that advocates revolutionary change and progressive reform.

MacDonald is a member and listed as a director of the American Third Option party, or A3P. The A3P — whose slogan is “Liberty. Sovereignty. Identity.” — is said to be rooted in white nationalism. The A3P is currently on the list of non-qualified political parties but is intending to qualify as a ballot-accessible party by June.

“Any third party is a long shot,” MacDonald said. “My view is not so much that it would get people elected, but to raise consciousness on issues like immigration that should be discussed honestly.”

Several faculty members at CSULB are involved in politics and have no guilt about showing their political radicalism, MacDonald said.

“If you look at professors, they are far to the left of the average voter; they are far to the left of people who are similarly educated but go into different fields,” MacDonald said. “All the surveys show that they’re way to the left of just about any identifiable group that you can imagine, and so that’s an important historical question that has to be discussed.”

The Department of Psychology issued a statement on its Web page in 2008, saying that they “respect and defend his right to express his views, but we affirm that they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the Department of Psychology at California State University, Long Beach.”

The department has since disassociated itself from MacDonald and his writings and is not alone, as other departments, including anthropology and history, have done so as well.

In 2008, the Academic Senate approved a written document disassociating itself. The document stated: “While the Academic Senate defends Dr. Kevin MacDonald’s academic freedom and freedom of speech, as it does for all faculty, it firmly and unequivocally condemns and disassociates itself from the anti-Semitic and white ethnocentric views he has expressed.”

Some called on the university to do the same.

In an April 11, 2008, e-mail sent to the Daily 49er, CSULB President F. King Alexander wrote that “despite the fact that I personally disagree and even find deplorable some beliefs and opinions expressed by a few individuals on our campus, particularly those ideas are hurtful of certain groups, I believe as Thomas Jefferson stated that ‘errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.’”

Alexander further explained that the university is a forum itself, “Universities should also be firmly committed, even at times when it is against popular opinion, to freedom of thought, and when we act to restrict opinions from the far right or the far left, then it will not be long before we can no longer call ourselves a university.”

And in his most recent statement to the Daily 49er, on June 20, 2008, Alexander said that “[MacDonald's] views and opinions in no way represent the views of this university in any aspect whatsoever.”

The thesis of MacDonald’s books and papers claims that conflicts in society are based in ethnic interests and activism.

“The idea is that the construction of culture has been influenced by ethnic activism,” MacDonald said. “And I of course focus on Jewish groups. Jews tend to be elite; they tend to be involved in intellectual movements.”

After becoming A3P director, MacDonald resurfaced as the subject of several articles by OC Weekly’s Ask a Mexican columnist Gustavo Arellano, who discussed MacDonald’s views and gathered reactions from students and members of the Associated Students Inc.

The articles led to a one-hour radio program on KPFK last Thursday, during which Arellano spoke of MacDonald’s work that claims that “Jews are undermining western civilization” and the A3P’s “primary plank is to deport all non-whites and that homosexuality should be suppressed.”

MacDonald responded to Arellano in his own blog Friday morning saying:

“Arellano begins by baldly asserting that A3P and I advocate deportation of all non-whites, including African-Americans and every other group, legal or illegal, no matter how long they or their ancestors have been here.

“Not only that, he claims that A3P advocates suppression of all LBGT’s (lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender, for those not in the loop of leftist acronyms). (For the record, my position is that gays and other sexual minorities have ethnic interests just like everyone else). For these supposed crimes, he advocates that I be fired from my academic position.”

Arellano also spoke by phone to ASI President Chris Chavez and former ASI presidential candidate Raul Preciado during the program, discussing what action CSULB is taking regarding MacDonald.

“This has been a perennial thorn in the side of the university,” Chavez said. “This has been an issue, but primarily a faculty issue.”

Chavez went on to discuss the difficulty of firing a tenured professor. However, his move to the directorship of the A3P may have “upped the ante,” Chavez said. “Now you’re going from belief to action.”

While no plan is in motion at this time, the message from ASI was made clear.

“We want to let him know that we don’t want people who are spreading his views on campus,” Preciado said.

The placement of MacDonald to his new position also works into the goals of the PSL to remove MacDonald from campus.

“We’re going to re-start a petitioning campaign to get him off campus. One of the key elements will be this recent development,” Kauffman said. “One petition to support his dismissal and one to support the nonparticipation in his class; we would like to get students groups and faulty to pressure him to leave campus. This is going to take a strong effort to remove him from class.”

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An Associated Press review of admissions data submitted to the NCAA by most of the 120 schools in college football’s top tier shows that athletes enjoy strikingly better odds of having admission requirements bent on their behalf.

The notion that college athletes’ talents give them a leg up in the admissions game isn’t a surprise. But in what NCAA officials called the most extensive review to date, the AP found the practice is widespread and can be found in every major conference.

The review identified at least 27 schools where athletes were at least 10 times more likely to benefit from special admission programs than students in the general population.

That group includes 2009 Bowl Championship Series teams Oregon, Georgia Tech and Alabama, which is playing Texas for the national title Jan. 7.

At Alabama, 19 football players got in as part of a special admissions program from 2004 to 2006, the most recent years available in the NCAA report. The school tightened its standards for “special admits” in both 2004 and 2007, but from 2004 through 2006, Crimson Tide athletes were still more than 43 more likely to benefit from such exemptions.

Alabama coach Nick Saban offered no apologies.

“Some people have ability and they have work ethic and really never get an opportunity,” he said. “I am really pleased and happy with the job that we do and how we manage our students here, and the responsibility and accountability they have toward academics and the success that they’ve had in academics.”

The NCAA defines special admissions programs as those designed for students who don’t meet “standard or normal entrance requirements.” The NCAA says such exceptions are fine as long as schools offer the same opportunities to everyone from dancers, French horn players and underrepresented minorities as they do to fleet-footed wide receivers and 300-pound offensive linemen.

Texas was one of seven schools that reported no use of special admissions, instead describing “holistic” standards that consider each applicant individually rather than relying on minimum test scores and grade-point averages.

But the school also acknowledged in its NCAA report that athletic recruits overall are less prepared. At Texas, the average SAT score for a freshman football player from 2003 to 2005 was 945 — or 320 points lower than the typical first-year student’s score on the entrance exam.

School officials did not make coach Mack Brown or athletic director DeLoss Dodds available to comment.

In all, 77 of the 92 Football Bowl Subdivision schools that provided information to the AP reported using special admissions waivers to land athletes and other students with particular talents. The AP spent three months obtaining and reviewing the reports through state public records laws.

Ten schools did not respond to the AP’s request and 18 other schools, including Notre Dame, Pittsburgh and Southern California, declined to release their reports. The reports do not identify specific students who benefited from admissions waivers, but they are identified by sport in many cases.

The NCAA sets minimum eligibility standards to compete once a student is in college, but leaves admissions decisions to individual schools and does not compare “special admits” across schools.

Kevin Lennon, NCAA vice president for academic and membership affairs, noted that NCAA schools face penalties, including losing scholarships, if athletes’ graduation rates are too low or if they fail to show adequate progress toward a degree.

“While it’s an institution’s decision on who they bring in, we’re most interested in what they do once they get there,” he said. “And if they’re not successful, there are consequences.”

At California, one of the country’s most selective public universities, Golden Bear football players were 43 times more likely to gain special admissions than non-athletes from 2002-04.

“It doesn’t matter to us if that student is a junior Olympian in taekwondo or the best oboe player in the United States or someone who can really run fast and jump high,” said Walter Robinson, admissions director at Cal. “We still look at that student with the same consideration: can that student be successful at Berkeley if admitted?”

While schools can tout the high graduation rates of athletes, they are not required to track the academic performance of special admits — and few do.

The AP review also found wide variance in how schools compile admissions data for NCAA review.

The NCAA asks schools to provide the annual percentages of special admits for all freshmen and all freshmen student-athletes on scholarship as well as a breakdown by individual sports.

But some schools only supply raw numbers, not percentages. Other schools, such as Florida, say they don’t track special admissions outside athletics.

And several schools report no special admissions but describe in great detail remedial efforts and other programs that adhere to the NCAA’s definition of special admissions.

Gerald Gurney, incoming president of the National Association of Academic Advisers for Athletics, favors a return by the NCAA to the minimum test score requirement abandoned several years ago. He said the NCAA’s “virtually open admissions standards” threaten academic integrity.

“Special admissions, in and of itself, isn’t something to be ashamed of. It does add value to a university,” said Gurney, senior associate athletic director for academics and student life at Oklahoma. “However, when you have students who need such a great deal of remediation, it jeopardizes the very essence of the university.”

Six schools besides Texas reported no use of special admissions on campus: Air Force, Connecticut, Kansas State, Purdue, Tennessee and Virginia.

The AP review also identified eight schools where athletes were no more likely than other students to get a break with special admissions: Arizona State, Arkansas State, Boise State, Iowa, Kent State, Mississippi State, New Mexico and West Virginia.

At South Carolina, All-American linebacker Eric Norwood recently graduated early with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice.

Norwood was twice denied admission to South Carolina before being accepted as a special admit. The school softened special admission standards in 2007 after coach Steve Spurrier threatened to quit when two recruits who met NCAA eligibility requirements were turned down.

“When I got here I applied myself,” Norwood said. “I had great support from the academic staff, great support from the football staff. And my teammates, they held me accountable.”

South Carolina athletic director Eric Hyman dismissed critics who call special admissions simply a way to land athletes.

“It’s also a way to get better artists, better musicians,” he said. “It’s not all athletes. If you graduate, if your people are successful, there’s going to be more flexibility. And that’s what we’ve done.”

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The protesters, who occupied the building since Monday, had said they would leave Friday night.
But early Friday, police entered the building and arrested 65 people, including about 24 who were not students, said UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof. The protesters face misdemeanor trespassing charges.
Another person was arrested outside and faces a charge of inciting.

Police decided to take action after protesters began breaking into locked classrooms and publicizing an all-night hip-hop party Friday.
“A peaceful protest is one thing, but it was becoming something altogether different,” Mogulof said. “The red line for us is when these actions begin to interfere with the rights of other students.”
No major damage was reported at Wheeler Hall. Classes were scheduled to be held there Friday.
Student protesters said they were caught off-guard by the raid and complained the police had not warned them.
“Police burst in while people were sleeping and immediately started locking doors and arresting people,” Elias Martinez, an undergraduate political science major, said in a statement. “There had been cops in here all week, they were acting like it was OK. We had no idea.”
On Thursday at San Francisco State University, police arrested a dozen people who had barricaded themselves inside a classroom building to protest budget cuts and fee hikes.
The two incidents are the latest in a series of demonstrations in which students have taken over buildings at California State University and University of California campuses to protest campus cuts and rising fees

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Aaron Raz Link

(Theindependent) Hastings College Alliance will host a screening and discussion of “What Becomes You,” a documentary film by Hastings College professors David Lovekin, professor of philosophy and chair of the department; and Jim Fritzler, professor of theatre arts, at 7 p.m. Thursday in the French Memorial Chapel. Refreshments will be served. The event is free and open to the public.

The film follows Hilda Raz, a well-known poet, feminist scholar and editor of the “Prairie Schooner,” and her daughter-turned-son, Aaron Raz Link, as they discuss their experience of Aaron’s transgender process and the memoir they wrote about it.

The event is scheduled in recognition of national Transgender Awareness Week, which started Sunday and runs through Friday.

The Hastings College Alliance teaches and promotes safety, dignity, respect and acceptance for students of all sexual orientations, gender identities and gender expressions and strives to create a welcoming and supportive atmosphere for all, whether gay, lesbian, straight, bisexual, transgender or questioning.

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Audio coverage on the NPR page.

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According to Pollster.com, a Web site containing information related to various polls across the nation, the most recent Gallup poll places Obama’s approval rating at 53 percent nationally. This is a 14 percent slide from their first post-inauguration poll, which showed a 67 percent approval rating. Pre-inauguration polls showed approval ratings as high as 83 percent two weeks before taking office.

David Jackson, an associate political science professor at the University, said sliding approval ratings of presidents upon taking office is typical, and to be expected.

“It’s really easy for people to support the president right after getting elected,” he said. “As the president takes office and begins sending proposals to Congress and actually passing legislation, every time [the president] takes a specific position, no matter even if it is really popular, there is a percentage who don’t agree with it.”

While specific reasons for increased national disapproval will likely remain scattered, senior political science major Nathan MacGregor believes that in general, it is due to frustrations over the time and difficulties that arise in enacting promised legislations.

“Everybody wanted change, that’s why we voted for him, and I think most people expected it to be a dramatic change that was going to happen over-night,” he said. “It hasn’t even been quite a year yet since Obama took office and with all the turmoil left to him by the previous administration, it’s been kind of hard for him to turn things around all of a sudden … I’m not expecting immediate change, I’m expecting progressive change.”

A survey administered to 100 University students, meant to measure their attitudes on Obama’s performance and directions, showed a higher propensity to mark his performance as “Average”, receiving 50 percent of responses. Of the outliers to this response, 30 percent graded his performance more positively as either having performed “Very Well” or “Excellent,” compared with 20 percent judging the president more negatively, describing his performance as either “Not Well” or “Poor”.

This higher percentage of positive responses as opposed to negative in the fringe population, suggest a general trend of approval at the University. The majority of students also responded positively with respect to the president’s attunement to issues important to college students as a whole, with 60 percent answering either “Fairly Well” or “Very Well.”

The survey additionally showed more students believed Obama’s greatest accomplishment relevant to them is passing the economic stimulus/recovery act, receiving 40 percent of the vote. Second was his leading the charge for health care reform with 24 percent, and increased federal government tuition assistance was the most commonly reported issue students would like to see the president address while in office to assist them, again followed closely by healthcare reform.

“The economy needs to go up,” MacGregor said. “Students need more money for education and schools need to stop taking so much money from the students because they are not getting enough help from the government.”

However, not all students feel Obama has truly accomplished anything – 8 percent responded the President has accomplished “Nothing” and the economic stimulus/recovery act, according to sophomore Tom Cunningham, has not benefited all students.

“[The stimulus] hasn’t really affected me,” he said, “and if it has, I haven’t seen it.”
Cunningham said he is opposed to most of Obama’s economic policies, believing his spending to be too liberal.
“I find it ironic that he did an interview and he said that we can’t keep spending because it will ruin our economy and our confidence,” he said, “People have been saying that for a year and a half. Get with the program.”

The opinions of the college student demographic could carry significant weight in presidential affairs and future campaign strategies, research suggests.

According to estimates posted on Civicyouth.org by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), the 2008 election rendered the highest participation rate of the 18-29-year-old demographic since 1972. Participation among young voters that year increased for the third consecutive election, narrowly surpassing a fluke spike of participation in 1992 when levels for this demographic reached 52 percent. The rate in 2008 was somewhere between 52 percent and 53 percent compared to 55.4 percent in 1972. Young voters tended to favor Obama 2:1 in that election, making them a significant player in the president’s electing force.

Jackson, MacGregor and Cunningham all cited increased political intertwinement with pop-culture as a likely culprit for increased voting numbers among the nation’s youth.

“I would say it’s probably due to more advertising about campaigns and elections,” MacGregor said, “Even things like MTV, to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are getting the youth more involved in politics through making it more entertaining.”

Whether youth’s current political enthusiasm will continue is hard to say. Jackson said that while presidential elections are effectively drawing in young voters, mid-term elections have not been so fortunate. This is curious, he said, because the smaller midterm elections are those in which an individual’s vote has a more significant impact due to a reduced total voter population.

MacGregor expressed hope for his group’s continued involvement, but admitted this is likely to be largely dependent on which issues are at the forefront at the time and the degree to which they pertain to said demographic.

Survey Stated:
1. How well has Obama performed his duties as President of the United States?
Excellent – 4 %
Very Good – 26 %
Average – 50 %
Not Well – 14 %
Poor – 6 %

2. What has been the biggest accomplishment President Obama has achieved that will affect students the most?
Passing the stimulus/economic recovery bill – 40 %
Leading the charge for universal health care – 24 %
Pulling troops out of Iraq/Initiative to end war in Iraq – 16 %
Other – 24 % (Isolated mentions, insults toward president, other fruitless responses)

3. How in touch do you feel Obama is with issues important to college students?
Very Well – 20 %
Fairly Well – 50 %
Not Well – 32 %
Very Poor – 8 %

4. How much have you kept up with news coverage on the president/politics since last year’s elections?
More than last year – 28 %
About the same – 52 %
Less than last year – 20 %

5. What piece of legislation/law would you like to see passed under Obama to specifically help students?
Increased gov tuition assistance – 36%
Health care reform – 28%
Education reform (generally) – 12%
Other (wide range of single or double mention) -24%

*Total students surveyed: 100. Question five surveyed 50 students. Only half of the students surveyed provided responses.

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The study found that university students in coed housing are 2.5 times more likely to binge drink every week, and that they are also likely to have more sexual partners, and use pornography more.

Some 90 percent of U.S. college dorms are now coed, and the study conducted on 500 students from five college campuses showed that 42 percent of students in coed housing reported binge drinking on a weekly basis, and 18 percent of students in gender-specific housing reported binge drinking weekly.

While that doesn’t put coed housing on par with fraternity and sorority houses, the researchers note that binge drinking isn’t exclusively a ‘Greek problem’.

‘In a time when college administrators and counsellors pay a lot of attention to alcohol-related problems on their campuses, this is a call to more fully examine the influence of housing environment on student behaviour,’ Live Science quoted Jason Carroll, a study co-author and professor of family life at Brigham Young University, as saying.

College housing offices generally assume students prefer coed housing and give them the option to ‘opt out’ if single-gender housing is available. Very few exercise that option.

‘Most of the students who live in gender-specific housing did not request to be there; they were placed there by the university,’ said Brian Willoughby, lead author of the study.

A wealth of information on the study participants allowed the researchers to examine other factors that could predict binge drinking.

Their statistical analysis took into account the effects of age, gender, religiosity, personality and relationship status.

‘When we first identified these differences with binge drinking, we felt certain that they would be explained by selection effects,’ Willoughby said.

‘But as we examined the data further we found that the differences remained,’ he added.

The findings are detailed in the Journal of American College Health.

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For much of October, researchers recruited female Duke students to take part in a “sexually explicit” study on Tupperware-style parties in which sex toys, not kitchenware, are the draw.

The ads, which were posted around campus and on a research study Web site, sought female students at least 18 years old to “view sex toys and engage in sexually explicit conversation with other female Duke students.”

Participants will be asked to complete online questionnaires about their sexual attitudes and behaviors and visit the lab for a “one-hour party” with seven or eight women. Not only will the students be asked to complete a second questionnaire a couple of months later, they will receive a gift bag and be given the opportunity to purchase items at a significantly reduced rate, according to the ad.

Father Joe Vetter, director of the Duke Catholic Center, was so troubled by the ads that he contacted researchers at Duke student health services and Dan Ariely, the professor of behavioral economics at the Duke business school and senior fellow at the Duke Kenan Institute for Ethics involved in the study.

“My understanding is there is a concern on campus about promiscuity,” Vetter said.

In recent years, some university health centers have touted sex toys as alternatives to risky sexual behavior and serial promiscuity. The study, Vetter said, was designed by health care workers to see whether such approaches work.

“I’m concerned about promiscuity also,” Vetter said. “And to be honest, I don’t have the solution. … My concern is these students are in this developmental phase, and I don’t think it’s a good developmental practice to just tell somebody to just sit around and masturbate. I don’t think that promotes relationships.”

Vetter hopes to take up the topic on Sunday with students. He wrote for the Sunday bulletin: “Can We Talk About Sex in Church?”

Efforts to reach Ariely and others in charge of the research project were unsuccessful Thursday. The ad no longer appears on the Web site, Duke officials say, because the study is filled.

Michael Schoenfeld, Duke’s vice president for public affairs, said that all kinds of research are important on university campuses and that the sex toy party project went through a peer review process before any students were sought.

“Not all research will make people comfortable,” Schoenfeld said.

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UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof told KGO-TV late Friday afternoon more than 40 people, at least some of them students, had been arrested and the protest appeared to be coming to a “safe end.”

Demonstrators had occupied Wheeler Hall on Friday morning to protest a 32 percent increase in student fees and job and program cuts. Campus police had said earlier in the day the demonstrators were barricaded behind fire doors on the second floor.

A group of students also rallied outside the building.

The occupiers were demanding laid-off custodial workers be rehired and amnesty for anyone arrested in the protest.

——

Information from: KGO-TV

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — Students barricaded themselves inside buildings on University of California campuses to protest a 32 percent increase in student fees and budget cuts that have led to slashed programs and lost jobs.

Demonstrators at UC Berkeley occupied Wheeler Hall on Friday and hung a sign from a window that read “32 Percent Hike, 900 layoffs,” with the word “Class” crossed out in red. A group of students also rallied outside the building.

Campus police said they had arrested three of the demonstrators inside.

Police would not say how many protesters remained in the building. University police Lt. Alex Yao said demonstrators were barricaded behind fire doors on the second floor, but police had control of the rest of the building.

The Daily Californian student newspaper said it received a text message from a protester in the building who put the number still inside at 60 undergraduates and graduate students.

The occupiers were demanding the university rehire laid-off custodial workers and give amnesty to anyone arrested in the protest.

At UC Santa Cruz, Provost David Kliger said a group of students was blocking exits at Kerr Hall, which houses science departments and administrative offices.

Kliger said he would not consider the students’ demands until they cleared the obstructions.

About 30 to 50 protesters staged a takeover of Campbell Hall at UCLA on Thursday, as regents met across campus to approve the fee hike. More than 50 students were arrested during protests at UC Davis.

Regents say they had to raise fees because the cash-strapped state government can’t meet the university’s funding needs.

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