Free Republic

Princeton University in New Jersey will forbid students from leaving the school’s host county once the new semester starts due to rising COVID-19 concerns. Barring “extraordinary circumstances,” students can’t venture beyond Mercer County and Plainsboro Township beginning on Jan. 8 through at least Feb. 15.

WITH THE QUICKENING CASCADE of political, social, and natural crises in our country, the faith in progress—the belief that good will and steady work leads to a better world—is a difficult faith to maintain. There have been times when the arc of history seemed to bend toward justice. But lately it’s snapped back the other way. It’s as if we’ve heaved a great boulder toward the mountain top, and we’re now watching it, slack-jawed and wide-eyed, as it careens back to the ground below. It feels that there is something absurd, in fact literally Sisyphean, to our predicament. .... You...

Instead of learning about the world and how to contribute to it, Parker's students will now learn about themselves and how to become 'agents of change.'Last week, fifth-grade teacher Amy Parker took the pages of the education site Chalkbeat to celebrate New York City’s initiative to promote “culturally responsive education” in its public schools. Parker introduces her essay by lamenting that “School taught me to hide who I was and what I valued” because it didn’t assign books with characters who had gay parents. But, at the same time, Parker also complains that she “was overly represented in the books...

A deranged Missouri man threatened to kill students at a high school “in the name of Kyle Rittenhouse,” police said. Mitchell Lovelace, 27, posted on Snapchat Saturday that he planned to shoot up Festus High School in honor of the Illinois teen, according to charging documents cited by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Rittenhouse, 18, was acquitted of all charges last month in the shootings that killed two men and wounded a third during unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August 2020.

CASTLE ROCK, Colo. — The Douglas County School Board is set to vote on Tuesday to overturn the district's mask policy for students in schools. Currently, masks are required at schools because of a mandate put in place by the previous school board before the election in November. Now with four new board members decidedly focused on parental choice, the mask mandate will likely be replaced. "The Board recommends, regardless of vaccination status, personal and parent choice with respect to whether or not children should wear face coverings while at school," the resolution reads. It goes on to say that...

Following research about college students from before COVID-19 with a survey at the pandemic's Year I mark, an international team of scientists detected no improvement in the students' mental well-being even after the introduction of vaccines and the easing of social distancing methods, let alone a return to campuses in many instances. In fact, the researchers in spring 2021 found marked declines in both physical and emotional health—students sustained a 35% decline in their number of daily steps and a 36% increase in the number at risk of clinical depression, or roughly half of the total students surveyed. The scientists,...

President Joe Biden and media figures are not the only persons who are “angry” after a jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse on all charges. Despite a jury with the same racial makeup convicting the defendants in Georgia in the Arbery case, many have denounced the entire legal system as racist. It does that matter that there was evidence supporting Rittenhouse’s claim of self-defense that was largely missing from prior coverage of the case. Now students and groups at Arizona State University are planning a rally and demanding that Rittenhouse be expelled. With leaders like President Biden calling Rittenhouse a “white supremacist”...

Students at the University of Florida believed the name “Black Friday” should be changed until they learned that it has nothing to do with race. Referencing a November 18 opinion article in the Chicago Tribune called “Talk of the County: Black Friday should be renamed so it is not ‘discriminating and profiling against black people,’” Campus Reform reporter Ophelie Jacobson asked students at the schools Gainesville campus if they supported changing the name of Black Friday — the day after Thanksgiving on which millions of Americans storm retail shops to get holiday deals for gifts and other items.

A California elementary teacher has come under fire for saying students in a conservative club at the local high school could “jump off a bridge” after a student was filmed waving a “f–k Biden” flag on school grounds. Kristin Usilton, who works for the Paso Robles Joint Unified School District, made the comments in a video she posted on her Instagram account after seeing footage of a student waving the anti-Biden flag on Veterans Day, the Paso Robles Express reports. “The Paso Robles Conservative club for the high school, you can go jump off a bridge,” she said. “I’m going...

Four students who were disciplined after a "joke" petition looking to restart slavery was shared on social media are suing the Kansas City school district for civil rights violations. The lawsuit, filed Friday, stated the students from Park Hill South High School said the posting in September began as a joke between a biracial student and a black student. The biracial student was expelled and three other students who commented on the petition were suspended for 180 days, according to the Associated Press. All of the students are in the ninth grade and members of the school's football team. The...

WASHINGTON (TND) — A surgeon said he was fired after speaking up against a Minnesota school district’s new mask mandate for students, suggesting at a public school board meeting that families should make the decision whether to mask their children. “Who does God put in charge of these kids? Their parents,” Dr. Jeffrey Horak said at a Fergus Falls school-board meeting on Oct. 11. “God gave each one of these kids to their parents and they speak for them. They may be wrong, they may be dumb, they may be perfect in their decisions. But it’s still their responsibility. It’s...

Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin demanded that Loudoun County Superintendent Scott Ziegler and the school board resign following a bombshell email this week that showed the board was made aware on May 28 that a female student reported she had been sexually assaulted by a male student in a girl's bathroom. The email was sent to school board members about a month before Ziegler said at a board meeting that he had no record of assaults in the school district's bathrooms. Youngkin told Fox News on Saturday that the email, which was first reported by WTOP, "simply confirms what we...

Conservatives at Washington & Lee University supporting the conservative gubernatorial candidate were told to cease using campaign materials on campus. Both students and FIRE characterized the directive on students' freedom of expression. Administrators at Washington and Lee University told conservative students to cease campaigning for Glenn Youngkin, the Republican nominee for Virginia governor. The university's College Republicans displayed materials supporting Youngkin during a September 12 activities fair, but were told by Director of Student Activities Kelsey Goodwin that they had to remove the materials due to the school’s tax-exempt status. Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reported the incident on...

The Biden administration’s failure to successfully fight the coronavirus and the ensuing supply chain crisis has trickled down to school cafeterias, as food workers struggle to get meals for students on the table. In Oakland County, Michigan, Sara Simmerman, a food and nutrition supervisor, said the district is still getting Little Caesars pizzas for its 8,600 students, but the rest of the supplies it needs are stalled. A satellite kitchen got only 35 of 400 cases of food it had ordered at one point. A few days later, 700 cases arrived on one day. “You never know what you’re going...

Forcing children who are not at risk for serious illness to receive a vaccine of marginal benefit undermines confidence in legitimate vaccine programs.California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate for schoolchildren age 12 and older — and other similar mandates popping up around the country — raises the question: For a patient population that predominately suffers only mild to no symptoms, is it ethical to coerce them to receive a vaccine that provides little benefit and causes rare but significant side effects?Why COVID-19 and Polio Aren’t The SameDuring the early 1950s, my parents waited and hoped that polio, an incurable,...

"If you are found on university property or in any university building you may be cited or arrested for trespassing and face further disciplinary action."Colorado State University trespassed and threatened to arrest unvaccinated students after learning they failed to submit proof of COVID-19 vaccination, a requirement for students to attend in-person learning.In an email sent to unvaccinated students obtained by Turning Point USA, CSU alleged that unvaccinated students pose a threat to the safety and well-being of the University community."I am writing to you on behalf of Student Conduct Services at the Student Resolution Center because information provided to our...

CALGARY: Mount Royal University (“MRU”) has backed down following a legal warning from the Justice Centre, after initially requiring exclusively online students to disclose their vaccination status or face potential deregistration from their classes. On September 20, 2021, MRU sent an email to a student who attends all his classes online, warning that if he failed to declare his vaccination status by September 21 at 4 p.m., he “may be deregistered from your courses.” The Justice Centre was contacted by other students who received similar emails. On September 22, 2021, the student received a further email from MRU stating that...

A school bus driver was fatally stabbed in front of students after picking them up from a Washington state elementary school Friday afternoon, authorities said. The alleged killer, who is now in custody, got on the bus near Longfellow Elementary in the city of Pasco around 3 p.m. and launched the knife attack as multiple children watched in horror, according to police. The victim lost control of the vehicle and crashed it near the school building, police said. The unidentified driver was pronounced dead a hospital. No children were physically injured in the attack or crash. The suspect’s name has...

Survey ranks the 10 best and worst schools for free speech in 2021, according to students Sixty-six percent of college students think shouting down a speaker they disagree with is acceptable to shut down their talk, and another 23 percent believe violence can be used to cancel a speech, according to a wide-scale survey released this week. The 2021 College Free Speech Rankings, a follow-up on the first survey in 2020, asked over 37,000 students at 159 top-ranked U.S. colleges and universities to share their views about free speech on campus. Published by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education,...

There is no doubt that free-market enthusiasts—armed with a love of competition and individual liberty—have a successful track record of leading on traditionally progressive issues. When it became clear that the criminal justice system was in desperate need of reform, it was Republicans who led the way in dismantling the prison pipeline. Now, as the country looks towards the broken American education system, it’s once again capitalists who are looking to restore equity by introducing competition. COVID-19 brought to light our broken public education system. Bureaucrats were in control of classrooms, students’ individual needs were going unmet, and families—minorities and...