A settlement finalized Friday from a 2019 lawsuit resulted in the University of California agreeing to no longer consider SAT or ACT scores “when making admissions and scholarship decisions” reports Fox News.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of low-income students of color and students with disabilities. A settlement was reached earlier this month. Amanda Savage, an attorney representing the students said what was reached “ensures that the university will not revert to its planned use of the SAT and ACT – which its own regents have admitted are racist metrics.”
Under the reached agreement, SAT and ACT scores will not be considered for admission for all applicants between fall 2021 and spring 2025. “However, the scores that are submitted voluntarily can be used for course placement after a student is admitted” reports Fox News.
The UC Board of Regents voted last year to drop the SAT and ACT tests as admission requirements through 2024 and eliminate them for California residents after that. Incoming students this fall didn’t submit SAT or ACT scores.
However, regents had said applicants for fall 2021 and 2022 could submit the scores voluntarily. The new settlement will “provide certainty for students and their families, counselors, and high schools,” the school said.
College Board, which produced the SAT, rejected the notion that their standardized tests were inherently racist – though it did recognize inequities in the education system.
Another attorney for the students says because of the campuses significant growth of freshman applications from African American students “already show that students are no longer deterred from applying based on their inability to access standardized testing.”
College Event says “Terrorism” is what “Trumpism” is at its Core
An event hosted by Berea College in Kentucky called “White Citizenship as Terrorism: Make America Great Again, Again” argues that supporting President Trump is “terrorism” at its core.
The event, which is co-sponsored by the college’s Women’s and Gender Non-Conforming Center and the Law, Ethics and Society Group, takes place on March 17.
According to the Federalist, a flyer of the event states:
Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ appears to follow suit by offering a seemingly benign promise to return to America to a previously ‘great’ past. But the offer to ‘Make America Great Again, Again’ requires we refocus on how the last four years of daily tweets and administrative actions redefine whiteness. If terrorism is redefined as the use of violence and threats to create a state of fear toward particular communities and identities, then this is what ‘Trumpism’ is at its core.
The keynote address at the event will be given by Amy L. Brandzel, an assistant professor of women studies at the University of New Mexico, and the author of “Against Citizenship: The Violence of the Normative.”
In her book, Brandzel says citizenship is a “violent dehumanizing mechanism” and that, “citizenship requires anti-intersectionality, that is, strategies that deny the mutuality and contingency of race, class, gender, sexuality and nation…”
For the full report, click HERE.
After NY Passes Recreational Marijuana, Colleges Increasing ‘Higher’ Education Courses
Higher education is taking the term quite literally
Higher education is taking the term quite literally. Since the passage of recreational use of marijuana in New York, its colleges and universities are taking the opportunity to add “new courses about cannabis to the syllabus to prepare students for jobs in the budding industry” reports the New York Post.
The courses are “not just offering tokin’ lessons on the history of week, either.” The New York Post reports, “Online Excelsior College is marketing new master’s degree courses in marijuana leading to a graduate certificate in ‘Cannabis Control,’ as well as expanding undergraduate classes.”
Dean of Excelsior’s graduate program Scott Dolan says students will learn about the complexities that the marijuana industry will have to operate in, including complying with numerous government regulations. Dolan also suggests accountants, lawyers, health professionals and people in the insurance industry would benefit from taking the course which will cover “social equity, environmental sustainability, corporate responsibility and public finance.”
The New York Post writes:
Weed is also turning into fertile ground for New York’s public university systems, whose colleges offer degrees in agriculture and law, biology, medicine and business.
Currently, 10 different SUNY campuses offer courses tied to the marijuana and hemp industries. The number of cannabis courses, certificate and training programs and degrees offered to students will “absolutely” increase to match students with new jobs in the emerging marijuana industry, said SUNY Chancellor James Malatras.
“Our mission is to provide access to students to meet workforce demands,” Malatras said in a Sunday interview. “This is not a simple matter. This a seismic shift in the law,” added Malatras.
Source: NYPost.com
