Chattanooga Group Will Spend $9.2M on Electric Vehicle Charging Pilot Program

Chattanooga is planning to spend $9.2 million, including $4.5 million from a federal grant, to create what it calls a testbed for electric vehicle charging.

The remaining $4.7 million will be paid for by a combination of the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, the city of Chattanooga, private industry and the EPB energy company.

The pilot program is intended to create a “networked system that will enable electric vehicle drivers to more readily locate charging stations.”

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University of Tennessee Chattanooga ‘Race Discussion Guide’ Singles Out White People

A “Race Discussion Guide” issued by the University of Tennessee Chattanooga (UTC) emphasizes its focus on the role and reality of White people. The Office of Equity and Inclusion created the guide with the purpose of helping UTC students, faculty, and staff navigate conversations on race.

In the 7 pages of information offered, the guide exclusively referenced White people no less than 17 times. Many of those references were linked to assumptions about White people or relationships with White people. Nowhere in the guide does it mention any other group of people by their skin color, such as Black individuals.

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University of Tennessee Chattanooga Hosts ‘White Allies and Accountability’ Lecture

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) is kicking off their spring semester focus on social justice with a discussion of white allyship and accountability. The virtual session, titled, “Moving Forward Together: White Allies and Accountability,” is part of Moving Our Campus (MOC) Forward, a series of events and talks focused on equity and inclusion. Facilitators mentioned that this first session falls within the overarching theme for their 2020-2021 schedule: dismantling racism.

The event host, Dr. Beth Douthirt-Cohen, is a facilitator at the Social Justice Training Institute (SJTI) and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Executive Director at Frederick Community College.

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University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Assistant Football Coach Fired for Tweet Criticizing Stacey Abrams

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s (UTC) assistant football coach, Chris Malone, was fired for a tweet criticizing Democratic activist Stacey Abrams. Due to her voting rights organizations and work mobilizing voters, Abrams was given much of the credit for the projected wins of Georgia’s two Democratic Senate candidates during the runoff elections this week. 

The tweet was published just before midnight on Tuesday. Malone’s Twitter account has since been deactivated.

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Letter to the Editor: An Open Letter to Senator Gardenhire

  Dear Senator Gardenhire, My name is Alexander Ioannidis and I am a rising senior studying Economics at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. I am a lifelong resident of Chattanooga and currently reside in East Brainerd. I have been following the debate over the proposed school-choice legislation very closely, and my emotions have been continuously fluctuating. There are times when it looks like this bill is bound to pass, and there are times when it looks certain to fail. I know that people from both sides of the aisle are trying to lobby for your vote, I know that you had several concerns about the bill, and I would be a fool to think that you were not conflicted about it. With this being said, I cannot tell you how grateful I was when I saw that you voted along with your fellow Hamilton County colleague Senator Watson to send it out of the finance committee and advance it to the Senate floor. I was even more grateful today when I saw that after the urging of President Trump, the Senate coalesced around it and passed the bill. While I could not be more thrilled that it passed, I hope and…

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Community Oversight Now Tries to Frighten Athletes Away from Tennessee

Members of the group Community Oversight Now say they have an unorthodox way to keep state legislators from tinkering with Tennessee’s community oversight boards. Those boards, of course, exist, to monitor police. Members of the Tennessee General Assembly want to place guardrails on those boards, which some people say have too much authority and might exist to retaliate against police. Community Oversight Now, not surprisingly, is suiting up for battle. The group’s strategy — discourage as many talented high school athletes as possible from eventually playing sports at Tennessee’s colleges and universities. This, according to a press release members of the organization released Tuesday on their Facebook page. The campaign will target the top-ranked football and basketball high school athletes in the classes of 2020 and 2021. This includes the top 300 football players and top 100 basketball players in the country that rank in recruitment sites such as ESPN 300 and Rivals.com. They also include first and second team all-state athletes in Tennessee and other Mid-South states, the press release said. “The withdrawal of support means we are making a vigorous effort to steer these athletes away from Tennessee institutions and to accept athletic scholarships elsewhere,” according to the press…

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