Tag: university

BREAKING NEWS: University of Mizzouri president Tim Wolfe resigning, Mizzou graduate student Johnathan Butler ends hunger strike

AUTHOR’S NOTE: In this blog post, “Mizzou” refers to the University of Missouri-Columbia, and “Mizzou System” refers to the entire University of Missouri System.

Tim Wolfe, the President of the University of Missouri System, is resigning amid a hunger strike by Mizzou graduate student Jonathan Butler, a strike by 32 members of the Mizzou football team, and a pervasive racist culture at Mizzou. Upon Wolfe’s resignation, Butler ended his hunger strike and has stated that Wolfe’s resignation should be the first step towards ending racism in the Mizzou System:

However, the president of the Mizzou System stepping down should be only the first step when it comes to ending the racist culture at Mizzou and in the Mizzou System.

Make no mistake about it, racism is a serious problem at Mizzou. The student body at the flagship Mizzou campus, located in Columbia, Missouri, is predominantly white, and black students have had to deal with racial slurs directed at them regularly. In one instance, someone drew a swastika, a symbol on the flag of Nazi Germany during Adolf Hitler’s fascist dictatorship, on a dormitory wall using human feces. That is just one of many racist incidents at Mizzou.

Just because Tim Wolfe stepped down doesn’t change the fact that racism is still a problem in the Mizzou System. The next Mizzou System president should take racism a lot more seriously and fight to make the Mizzou System campuses welcoming to all Mizzou System students and faculty.

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Former Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott now lobbying for pro-rape legislation in Congress

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This blog post contains extremely strong and profane language referring to sexual assault. Reader discretion is advised.

This is one of the most repulsive ideas I’ve ever heard of…a group of Republicans in Congress, including Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ), Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX), and Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), have proposed legislation that would prohibit colleges and universities from disciplining students who rape someone, unless law enforcement becomes involved in a rape case.

Guess who is lobbying for this ridiculous piece of legislation? Chester Trent Lott, Sr., the former Senate Majority Leader who is more commonly known as Trent Lott. You might remember Lott from his infamous remarks from 2002, in which he publicly defended segregationist Strom Thurmond’s third-party 1948 presidential campaign (Thurmond lost to President Harry Truman). Those remarks forced Trott to resign from the leadership of the Senate Republicans. Now, Lott is lobbying for pro-rape legislation that would make it much easier for college students to rape someone, which is a criminal act in every jurisdiction in this country, and not get caught.

While the proposed legislation is called the Safe Campus Act (SCA), this legislation would actually make college campuses far more dangerous for students. What this legislation would do is effectively force college and universities in this country to give a free pass to rapists if nobody reports the criminal act to law enforcement. Congressional Republicans and Trent Lott are supporting the idea of forcing institutions of higher education to cover up sexual assaults perpetrated by their students.

Anyone who supports this ridiculous legislation apparently believes that male college students have an unfettered right to fuck every woman they want to, even if the women don’t consent to the sexual acts. No person in this country has an unfettered right to perform sexual acts on someone else without their consent, in fact, it’s a crime to rape someone.

I’ve seen the Republican Party do incredibly asinine things in my lifetime, but this is the single most repulsive thing I’ve ever seen the Republicans do.

Does the Democratic establishment overemphasize student loan reform and college affordability?

Make no mistake about it, the growing student debt problem in this country is one of the most serious problems facing this country. However, I believe that heavily emphasizing student loan reform and other college affordability measures hurts Democrats electorally.

There are two reasons why I believe that making student loan reform and other college affordability measures a key part of a Democratic campaign’s message, as Hillary Clinton has done, runs the risk of being an electoral loser for Democrats. First, most Americans don’t really care about student debt, unless they’re directly impacted by it. Secondly, emphasizing college affordability as a key part of a campaign message only resonates with voters that are directly impacted by student debt (mostly younger voters who are either in college or recently graduated from college), in effect, leaving blue-collar voters, such as poor minorities and white working-class people, essentially abandoned by the political party that best represents their interests, which is the Democratic Party.

Would I suggest that Democratic candidates drop college affordability plans altogether? Absolutely not. Would I suggest that Democrats not talk about student loan reform and college affordability? Absolutely not. In fact, I believe that the student debt problem in this country needs to be seriously addressed, as Bernie Sanders has done with his plan to tax Wall Street speculation to pay for a plan for more affordable higher education in America. However, Democrats cannot afford to abandon poor and working-class voters by overemphasizing an issue that few people in this country seem to care about.

Scott Walker wants to cut funding to higher education in Wisconsin and give most of it to the owners of an NBA team

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This will probably be my final blog post on The Progressive Midwestern until early March, as I’ll be finishing a book that I’ve been writing.

On the same day that Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker announced that he intends to cut a whopping $300 million from the University of Wisconsin System (UW System), Wisconsin’s network of two-year and four-year public colleges and universities, Walker also announced that he wants to give most of that money to the owners of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks so that they can have a new arena built in the Milwaukee area:

This is a continuation of Walker’s massive expansion of the corporate welfare state in Wisconsin, in which corporations and other types of businesses get tax breaks and other government benefits, often at the expense of education, social services, and other government programs. Mark Lasry, one of the owners of the Milwaukee Bucks, probably could pay for a new arena by himself, as his net worth was listed at $1.7 billion last year, and Lasry isn’t the sole owner of the Bucks. Yet, the Bucks owners are whining about wanting Wisconsinites’ taxpayer money to be used to fund their new arena, and it looks like Walker is going to cut funding from higher education in Wisconsin and give it to the Bucks owners.

Scott Walker’s priorities are completely screwed up. What is even worse about this is that Walker wants to run for president so that he can hand out federal taxpayer money to corporations.