Free Republic

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit on behalf of two University of Wisconsin-Madison employees who were denied insurance coverage for gender reassignment surgery. The Wisconsin Group Insurance Board had allowed for the coverage back in July based on a provision in the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare), but (reluctantly) agreed to eliminate it at the behest of the state Department of Justice beginning on February 1.

Thousands of students marched in Chilean cities on Tuesday to demand improvements to the nation's higher education system, as lawmakers prepared to debate planned reforms. Student protesters argue that attempts by center-left President Michelle Bachelet to improve quality and access to higher education have been insufficient. Reforms by her government to date do not provide enough Chileans with free university education, they say. They also complain that the government did not seek their advice when drafting legislation. "I don't know if the government is playing stupid. You can't legislate without listening to the social movements," Daniel Andrade, head of the...

Cassandra Hsiao and her family may not speak English in a typical way, but the high school senior's talent with words has caught the attention of all the Ivy League colleges. Last week, Hsiao, a first generation immigrant from Malaysia who lives in Walnut, California, received the exciting news that she had been accepted to not just one, but all eight Ivy League schools -- a feat few have achieved. "It was incredible," she told ABC News. "I wasn’t home at the time, but I was Facetiming my parents and there were tears on both sides of the screen." Hsiao,...

Drexel University Professor George Ciccariello-Maher has recently come under fire for tweets and comments promoting violence and fatality towards white people. Many Americans have expressed their discontentment with Ciccariello-Maher’s remarks, especially on Christmas Eve when he tweeted, “All I Want For Christmas is White Genocide.” The professor later deleted the tweet, claiming it to be a joke, but a plethora of Americans were not amused. Following the backlash, Ciccariello-Maher stated that “white is not a race.”

A university will be hosting a "Masculinity Confession Booth" along with a number of other workshops and screenings to combat "hypermasculinity." "We have all reinforced hypermasculinity one way or another regardless of our gender!!" explains the University of Regina event description. "Come and share your sins so we can begin to discuss how to identify and change our ways !!!" [Snip] The Masculinity Confession Booth will be making its debut Monday, but is also listed on the schedule for Tuesday through Thursday - days on which students can also attend a "Healthy Relationships and Healthy Masculinity Workshop." Yet another event...

University of Arizona wants to ‘maximize free speech in the classroom’ The correct way to tell a classmate he said something offensive is to say “ouch,” and his correct response, “oops.” The University of Arizona’s College of Humanities is offering such “suggestions” to faculty in a new 20-page handbook titled Diversity and Inclusiveness in the Classroom, credited to Vice Provost for Inclusive Excellence Jesús Treviño.

A University of Arizona classroom dialogue guide encourages professors to use the “Oops/ouch method,” where students who are offended in class say “ouch” and the offender responds with “oops.” The guide, published by the Office for Diversity and Inclusive Excellence, provides outlines for how to encourage discussion about diversity in the classroom, explaining that “diversity poses both challenges and opportunities for a college campus.”

Macomb Community College enforces a speech code that would warrant a “yellow light” rating for being unreasonably restrictive of students' free expression rights in the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s “Spotlight” database of schools. MCC escaped the label only because FIRE, the civil liberties organization that litigates for campus First Amendment rights nationally, only includes four-year institutions in its database. But when Michigan Capitol Confidential asked the organization about the speech codes of several Michigan community colleges, it decided to take a look. FIRE’s “Spotlight” database ranks how four-year institutions treat students’ rights to free speech and expression. Schools...

Seizing on growing concerns over college affordability, California lawmakers are poised to propose what would be the most generous college aid plan in the nation, covering not just tuition but also living expenses that have led to spiraling student debt. “Lower-income students … are able to many times, through our great programs in California, get help to pay for tuition. But they’re still graduating with a tremendous amount of debt,” said Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento), who is spearheading the plan. “The cost of living, the books, the transportation — that’s [what] we really need to tackle.” Under the new plan,...

The University of Michigan announced last week a course designed to teach students to fight back against so-called fake news. The course, titled “Fake News, Lies, and Propaganda: How to Sort Fact from Fiction,” will be taught in fall 2017 as a project of U-M's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, and the U-M Library. The term “fake news” has appeared as a fluid label since the presidential election by both left-leaning media outlets and President Donald Trump. “The University of Michigan Library, which has a long record of improving the way students go about finding, evaluating and using...

The University of Central Florida announced Monday that it plans to build a state-of-the-art athletics complex with an actual “lazy river” at a cost of well over $20 million. Apart from the “lazy river” surrounded by palm trees, the $25 million facility will feature a $1 million sports-nutrition center, a cabana area, and even a miniature golf course, all intended to create a “place for athletes to relax, recover, and get to know each other,” according to Director of Athletics Danny White.

Hundreds of students rioted at Middlebury College in Vermont this week, preventing a respected libertarian scholar from speaking and leaving one female professor in a neck brace. Charles Murray was invited by the American Enterprise Institute Club on campus to discuss his book, “Coming Apart,” which chronicles the struggles facing the white working class in the United States. However, a mob first protested and later assaulted both Murray and Professor Allison Stanger.

Report finds widespread misuse of state resources and other improprietiesA Fresno State University employee was paid an estimated $22,000 for time he was playing online games and watching YouTube videos at work, according to a state auditor's report released Thursday. The case was one of 10 highlighted in the report on investigations into improper activities by state employees during the second half of last year. The state employees, who were investigated after whistleblower tips, cost the state nearly $40,000 through misuse of state resources, improper payments and other issues, according to the report. The report also identified instances where state...

When President Obama came into the White House eight years ago, he promised a "New Era of Responsibility." It didn't work out that way, particularly for student loans, leaving President Trump with a huge mess to clean up. In fact, when it comes to borrowing for college, students are being utterly irresponsible. A recent survey by LendEDU of 500 current college students found that 49.8% of them think that the federal government will forgive their loans after they graduate.

Three of Michigan’s top public universities have what they call “Bias Response Teams,” which means around 121,000 college students in the state are subject to what often can be an arbitrary review of free speech by school administrators. That’s the conclusion of a recent survey by the civil liberties group Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, commonly called “FIRE.” Universities implement bias reporting systems so students, faculty, or staff can anonymously report conduct or speech that’s considered offensive or concerning but not necessarily a violation of school policy or the law. For instance, “microaggressions,” which refers to intentional or unintentional...

A faculty member at California State University, Fullerton has been suspended after striking a College Republicans member during a campus protest earlier this month. The altercation occurred Feb. 8 as pro-Palestine students and counter-protesters marched peacefully through campus. Anthropology part-time lecturer Eric Canin reportedly approached the group of counter-protesters — many of them being CSUF College Republicans members — and tried to rip a sign out of a student’s hand. Mr. Canin was accused of then striking another student who tried to step between them. The group’s president, Chris Boyle, said he witnessed the hit and proceeded to restrain Mr....

The chief writing instructor at the University of Washington, Tacoma, is trying to dismantle the rules of grammar because he believes they are racist—and the college has given its endorsement to his campaign. Posters that appeared this week in the college’s writing center are part of a new effort to teach students that the conventional rules on how to structure sentences and form ideas in written language are perpetuating inequality and “white supremacy.” “Racism is the normal condition of things. Racism is pervasive. It is in the systems, structures, rules, languages, expectations and guidelines that make up our classes, school,...

White Power Donald Trump Rap Song Has Nation Outraged At New Racist Administration! **warning language**

"I am not sympathetic to the white voters who make over $50,000 a year and said that, 'We are going to vote for Trump.' Those people I am not sympathetic to, and I do not believe that you have to open your heart to them," he said. "If you are a person of color in this room, if you are a woman in this room, you do not have to open your heart to them."

The Writing Center at the University of Washington is telling students that expecting Americans to use proper grammar perpetuates racism. A press release put out by the University of Washington’s Writing Center argues that “there is no inherent ‘standard’ of English,” and that pressure to conform to proper American grammar standards perpetuate systems of racism. “Linguistic and writing research has shown clearly for many decades that there is no inherent ‘standard’ of English,” claims the writing center’s statement. “Language is constantly changing. These two facts make it very difficult to justify placing people in hierarchies or restricting opportunities and privileges because of...