Early Tuesday morning, the Ocoee Whitewater Center in Polk County caught fire and was destroyed, according to a Facebook post by The Cherokee National Forest. Although the building is a “complete loss,” no one was injured in the fire, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
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A professor at Coastal Carolina University was canceled after he emailed his department questioning their reaction to a perceived racial bias incident that proved to be baseless.
“Free speech and basic civility are disappearing,” the theater professor Steven Earnest told Campus Reform. “So, I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I still am.”
On Sept. 16, a non-White visiting artist working with non-White theatre students at the South Carolina university wrote a list of names on the board so that the students could connect as a group.
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Two public universities responded very differently to recent allegations of unconstitutional “compelled speech.”
Rutgers University’s law school apparently told its student government to ditch a requirement that student organizations host events on critical race theory to be eligible for funding.
The University of Oklahoma, on the other hand, refused to stop requiring faculty and staff, including some graduate students, to complete a diversity training that requires them to say things they don’t necessarily believe.
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A newly released survey of students at over 500 colleges and universities who belong to Greek-letter fraternities and sororities found that the majority of students don’t feel comfortable publicly disagreeing with their professors on a controversial topic.
“Students who aren’t able to freely express ideas among professors or peers are unlikely to realize the full measure of what higher education has to offer,” Nathan Harden, editor of RealClearEducation, said. “Students are equally underserved by campuses where they don’t feel that their student organizations are treated equally or welcomed on campus. Fostering an environment where students are free to explore a diversity of ideas is one of the chief goals of the university – and this includes the right to form voluntary associations based on shared interests or beliefs.”
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The University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) initially expelled a student for content on her personal social media accounts. Officials claimed that the nuclear pharmacy student, Kimberly Diei (’23), used speech that violated the university’s conduct policies, though Diei has claimed they never informed her of which specific policies she’d violated. Neither of her profiles or any of her content identified Diei as a UT student or mentioned the school in any capacity. Only after Diei obtained legal help did the university reverse her expulsion.
Diei was investigated by the school’s Professional Conduct Committee on two separate occasions based on anonymous complaints. The first investigation occurred during Diei’s first month on campus in September 2019 regarding her Instagram and Twitter accounts in general. Following its review, the committee required Diei to write an apology letter. About a year later, Diei came under investigation again and was expelled for posting several explicit tweets referencing pop culture.
Diei was investigated by the school’s Professional Conduct Committee on two separate occasions, instigated by anonymous complaints from other program students. The first investigation occurred during Diei’s first month on campus, September 2019, regarding her Instagram and Twitter accounts in general; the committee required her to write an apology letter. About a year later, Diei came under investigation again and was expelled for posting several explicit tweets referencing pop culture.
More than a dozen people have been arrested for looting or planning on looting California homes that have been vacated by those fleeing wildfires, according to a Sunday report.
A total of 13 people have been apprehended as Californians continue to report looting cases, Sheriff Jim Hart told the Associated Press. Thousands have fled their homes in anticipation of wildfires spreading from south San Francisco, AP reported.
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A fire early Saturday destroyed the rooftop and most of the interior of a Catholic church in California that was undergoing renovation to mark its upcoming 250th anniversary celebration.
Fire alarms at the San Gabriel Mission rang around 4 a.m. When firefighters arrived, they saw smoke rising from the wooden rooftop in one corner of the historic structure, San Gabriel Fire Capt. Paul Negrete said.
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The professor who resigned in 2019 after telling a local news outlet, “I am Antifa” just got a sizeable payout from the college that let him go.
As Campus Reform reported in August, Kirkwood Community College professor Jeff Klinzman posted on his personal social media messages in support of the far-left extremist group Antifa, which President Donald Trump was considering at the time labeling a domestic terror organization. When a local television station contacted Klinzman, he replied, “I affirm I am Antifa,” unleashing nationwide backlash eventually leading to the college making the “decision to remove” him from the classroom.
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The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a group dedicated to standing up for free-speech rights on U.S. college and university campuses, this week released its annual report chastising the Top 10 schools where it says those rights are most infringed.
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According to a new report published by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), 49 out of 53 of the top universities surveyed don’t provide students with basic due process protections.
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A nonpartisan free speech group alleged that a Pennsylvania university engaged in viewpoint discrimination when it denied status to a conservative student group.
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