Badger Blog Alliance

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Saturday, August 23, 2008

A Town Ripped Apart

Cross-posted at THEB.

A break from the usual political discussion.

ESPN’s Elizabeth Merrill contributes this article to the network’s outstanding Outside The Lines feature, this time spotlighting a small town in western New York ripped apart over a hazing incident on a school athletic bus which involved the sexual assault of two boys while the baseball team’s coaches did nothing to prevent the assault.

Now, three varsity players and the coaches are facing criminal charges in the sexual assault of two JV players in what may have been an annual occurrence: the hazing of younger players.

The town is divided, with many supporting the team’s coaches. But law enforcement maintains, after conducting 30 interviews of players, that this has been going on for years under the watch of the team’s coaches.

Read the whole thing. It’s worth the time.

The players who committed the assault should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And yes, whether or not the two adults knew what was happening — and I maintain they had to know — it’s their job to know. They also should be prosecuted as well as lose their jobs. If a sexual assault took place in a classroom, wouldn’t we expect the teacher assigned to that classroom be held accountable? Of course we would. Why is this case any different?

The two adults at least failed to prevent a crime from occurring when they were responsible and in charge of a bus full of high school athletes. At worst, they facilitated the commission of a felony if they were aware of what was taking place and did nothing to prevent it from happening.

The lives of the two victims will never be the same.

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Saturday, October 20, 2007

About Time!

The AP via Yahoo News:


Students in America's schools are groped. They're raped. They're pursued, seduced and think they're in love.

An Associated Press investigation found more than 2,500 cases over five years in which educators were punished for actions from bizarre to sadistic.

AP: Sexual misconduct plagues US schools ( By MARTHA IRVINE and ROBERT TANNER, AP National Writers)
500 cases per year! However, what do we hear more about? Yeap, clerical sexual misconduct, I wonder how many instances of clerical sexual misconduct with minors occurs? I bet even at its height it did not come to 500 per year.

Do not get me wrong I am not trying to excuse it or equivocate but its about time sexual misconduct in our school system be more thoroughly exposed. Up here the story we are hearing a fair amount about is a teacher from Hortonville who is being tried for sexually abusing girls in school.

I wonder if the schools will get sued? The article I refer to above starts off describing the case of one teacher who shuffled from school to school and over his career had six accusations of sexual misconduct lodged against him.

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Tuesday, September 18, 2007

The School Money Vote

See who truly cares about the kids, and who wants to be WEAC toadies. Roll Call's here, total was 70-27. More than enough to override a veto if the Senate ever takes action.

Good to see that grand Progressive Humanitarian Mark Pocan of Madison voted No. Pity he can't blame John Gard on this one.

(He's got to miss no longer having that excuse...)

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Wednesday, August 08, 2007

50 Rules Kids Won't Learn In School

Cross-posted at THEB.

Michelle Malkin on Charlie Sykes’s new book, 50 Rules Kids Won’t Learn In School: Real-World Antidotes to Feel-Good Education.

Sykes has long been one of my favorite chroniclers of our dumbed-down education
and the corrupting effects of the self-esteem movement. I just received his new
book, set for release on August 21, titled “50 Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School:
Real-World Antidotes to Feel-Good Education.” Witty, acerbic, reality-grounded.
It’s a great purchase for college-bound friends/family or parents with
school-age kids.
Here’s the website for the book itself.

One thing’s for sure: it’s on my reading list.

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Monday, July 02, 2007

Fewer Schools Named For Presidents

Cross-posted at THEB.

Not just presidents, but also other famous figures in U.S. history.

Idiot, PC leftists are firmly in control of naming new elementary schools, middle schools, junior high skrewls and high skrewls. That means they will be named after objects in nature or locations, rather than, say, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson or Martin Luther King.

Wisconsin public schools are apparently more likely to be named after objects in nature or locations these days than presidents, founding fathers or other people, according to a report released Monday that laments the trend as contrary to schools’ civic mission.

From 1980 to 1999, only 3.1% of new schools in Wisconsin were named after presidents, compared with 16.7% constructed before 1950, according to the report by the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute, which analyzed data from a January 2000 facilities survey conducted by the state. Overall, naming schools after people dropped to 25.4% in the 1980s and ’90s from 52.9% in Wisconsin prior to the 1950s.

The political bias was never more evident that in New Berlin, as demonstrated in the battle to name a new school for the late former President Ronald Reagan.

Oconomowoc businessman Steve Ziegler certainly thought that was the case after his $60,000 offer to three school districts in 2004 to rename schools after former President Ronald Reagan was at one point referred to as “tainted money.”

“It actually turned into something I had no idea I was getting into, which was a political fight,” said Ziegler, who as president and CEO of InPro Corp. has made contributions to several schools in return for naming rights to their facilities. “People thought I was doing it to get a Republican name on a school, and it wasn’t that at all. I just thought he was a great man and a great president.”

Think about that. A bunch of lefties still so filled with hatred for a truly great American president simply over their hatred and intolerance for his political beliefs and policies.

The dogma of political correctness has so overtaken academie in America that even truly great Americans cannot achieve consensus on having their names placed on schools. The demonization of our nation’s Founding Fathers as being a bunch of evil, white men who owned slaves and were racists, sexists, bigots and homophobes, were responsible for the spread of disease, the rape and destruction of the environment and genocide against peace-loving Native Americans — by the way, I am a Native American, I was born in America, that makes me a Native American — has continued unabated, to the point that a bunch of pinhead pseudo-intellectuals don’t want their names on schools and in some cases have actively campaigned to have their names removed from existing schools.

In Milwaukee the names of city founders Solomon Juneau and George Walker, baseball Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson and inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison no longer are on schools, those schools having been closed. While President Reagan’s name is on an MPS college preparatory school, it wasn’t without a fight over his politics. MPS once had a high school named after Abraham Lincoln, but that school was closed almost 30 years ago, and currently the Great Emancipator’s name is not on any MPS school.

In Racine, two of the three high schools were named after city fathers William Horlick and Jerome I. Case, and the third was named because of its proximity to a nearby park. The only middle school named after a president is named after the late President William McKinley. Others are named after local figures, including city founder Gilbert Knapp. You can see a list of Racine Unified schools here.

Both of Kenosha’s large public high schools were named after local educators, Mary D. Bradford and George Nelson Tremper. Kenosha Unified has schools named after Lincoln and McKinley, Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt, as well as local historical figures. You can see their list of schools here.

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