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  • Lack of Diversity in Simulation Technology: An Educational Simulation in Healthcare

    Lack of Diversity in Simulation Technology: An Educational Simulation in Healthcare

    From the Westchester Medical Center (R.L.C.), New York Medical College, Valhalla; Eastern Kentucky University (K.D.P.), Richmond, KY; and Department of Behavioral Science (T.D.S.), University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington, KY.

    Correspondence to: Rosemarie L. Conigliaro, MD, Section Chief, General Internal Medicine, Westchester Medical Center, Professor of Clinical Medicine, New York Medical College, 100 Woods Rd, Taylor Pavilion, Suite D342, Valhalla, NY 10595 (e-mail: Rconigli2@nymc.edu).

    The authors declare no conflict of interest.

    The original preparation of this manuscript took place while all authors were affiliated with the University of Kentucky College of Medicine.

    This content was originally published here.

  • College Board AP African American Studies Clash Brings Organization Under New Scrutiny | Teen Vogue

    College Board AP African American Studies Clash Brings Organization Under New Scrutiny | Teen Vogue

    Audre Lorde, Kimberlé Crenshaw, bell hooks. If you were to name the most influential Black writers of all time, these names would certainly make the list. And yet, as of a February 1 announcement from the College Board, these three writers, along with a number of others, are not specifically included in the new advanced placement (AP) African American studies curriculum. 

    In a recent interview with The New Yorker, renowned writer and University of Los Angeles professor Robin D. G. Kelley, whose work was also excluded from the College Board’s curriculum, defined Black studies as an examination of “Black lives: the structures that produce premature death, that make us vulnerable; the ideologies that both invent Blackness and render Black people less than human; and, perhaps most important, the struggle to secure a different future.” 

    The new changes — to a curriculum meant to educate young people on the history and ongoing struggle for Black freedom — have inspired vigorous backlash from educators and a renewed look at the College Board’s controversial history. For example, the organization’s marquee test was designed by Carl Campbell Brigham, whose 1923 book A Study of American Intelligence argued that testing showed the intellectual superiority of “the Nordic race group” and that “American intelligence is declining, and will proceed with an accelerating rate as the racial admixture becomes more and more extensive.” Not long after this book was published, the College Board asked Brigham to begin developing the SAT, and the first test was administered in 1926. 

    Brigham was an “open white supremacist who wanted to prove the superiority of white men over everybody else,” Jesse Hagopian, a campaign organizer at the Zinn Education Project focused on Black history, tells Teen Vogue.

    In a remarkable February 11 statement, the College Board acknowledged “mistakes in the rollout” of the AP African American studies course that “are being exploited.” The organization praised “the long work of scholars who have built this field,” said the framework it released is “only the outline of the course,” and that individual AP teachers are allowed to choose which works they want to include in their syllabi. 

    The Board also said that contemporary events like “the Black Lives Matter movement, reparations, and mass incarceration” were never included in the official curriculum. Instead, the organization said, they were considered “optional topics” in the pilot version of the program that launched in 2022, and that students are free to choose “contemporary issues and debates” as subjects in the research project that occupies three weeks of the course.

    In its February 11 statement, the College Board condemned how Florida officials framed their disagreements about the course. “While it has been claimed that the College Board was in frequent dialogue with Florida about the content of AP African American studies, this is a false and politically motivated charge.” 

    The organization also said that it had “no negotiations about the content of this course with Florida or any other state, nor did we receive any requests, suggestions, or feedback.” According to the statement, the Florida Department of Education did not offer substantive criticisms of the course, instead asking “vague, uninformed questions like, ‘What does the word “intersectionality” mean?’ and ‘Does the course promote Black Panther thinking?’”

    Florida is a major user of the College Board’s marquee exams and programs: the SAT, ACT, and advanced placement courses. In 2020, the state had the highest rate of AP participation in the country, and still requires its state university system colleges to use the SAT or ACT, despite a growing national test-optional movement. During the first year of the pandemic, Florida, unlike other states, refused to waive the SAT or ACT requirement. 

    “Florida’s state scholarship, Bright Future, requires the SAT or ACT and has even increased the score requirements during the pandemic,” Jennifer Jessie, a tutor for the SAT, ACT, and advanced placement courses who lives in Virginia, tells Teen Vogue via email. “The College Board has long put the interest of Black students behind the interest of [revenue].”

    The debate over this curriculum is the College Board’s most recent controversy, but it is far from its first. Advanced placement exams have had vocal critics for years, as many argue that the exams are prohibitively expensive and not an adequate measure of learning. The organization also drew significant criticism for how it handled online exams during the beginning of the pandemic, with at-home tests proving to be a challenge for those without reliable internet access and some students having to take exams during religious holidays. These challenges came at the expense of low-income and minority students. 

    Many students have insisted that the structure of an AP class, particularly its emphasis on testing and the multiple-choice format of the exams, can be a hindrance to the learning process, particularly for neurodivergent students. Hagopian, who used to teach AP United States history, agreed with this sentiment. “My critique of the College Board comes not just from an academic inquiry standpoint but also from my experience as a teacher who was being asked to teach to a test rather than teach to my students,” he explains. “It really kills a lot of the joy in the classroom when students are constantly asking, ‘Is that on the test?’ rather than, ‘How can I apply these lessons of history to help create a better society today?’ Those are the questions I want students to ask, and the College Board curriculum has never been organized around that idea.”

    Teen Vogue has reached out to the College Board for comment.

    This content was originally published here.

  • The University of South Florida’s Diversity Cult | City Journal

    The University of South Florida’s Diversity Cult | City Journal

    The University of South Florida has adopted a radical “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) program that claims America is a force for “white supremacy,” encourages students to attend racially segregated counseling programs to address their “privilege” and “oppression,” and promotes a variety of left-wing causes, including “reparations,” “defund the police,” and “prison abolition.”

    I have obtained a trove of public documents exposing the university’s DEI programming, much of which, according to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, the university tried to delete from its website following Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s recent request for information on DEI in the state’s public universities.

    Taken together, these materials paint a troubling picture. USF’s sprawling diversity bureaucracy has turned left-wing racialism into a new orthodoxy and implemented an administrative policy of racial preferences and discrimination. It divides individuals into categories of oppressor and oppressed, presents “anti-racism” as the solution, and proposes “racial identity development”—which, in practice, resembles a form of cult programming—as the necessary method of atonement.

    The first step in this programming is the condemnation of American society. Following the 2020 death of George Floyd, nearly every appendage of USF condemned the United States as fundamentally racist. Then-president Steven Currall published a statement denouncing the “systemic racism that continues to plague our nation.” The English department attacked the United States for “centuries of normalized violence, structural oppression, and dehumanizing rhetorics that target Black, Brown, and Indigenous people.” The School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies blasted America for its “institutionalized, structural racism and white supremacy.” The anthropology department assailed its own discipline for being “rooted in racism.” The department of sociology pronounced on the “interlocking systems of oppression found throughout the institutions of our country.” Literacy studies, women’s and gender studies, engineering, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health, and other departments released similar statements.

    Then the university’s DEI administrators offered the solution: racial reeducation.

    In the aftermath of the ensuing George Floyd riots, the USF Counseling Center offered racially segregated counseling sessions for “Black & African American,” “People of Color,” and “White” students, providing a “healing space for POC to discuss unique impacts of systemic racism” and a “connecting space for allies to share experiences and identify ways to take action against racism.” The goal of these psychological conditioning sessions, according to organizers, was to address “COVID-19, xenophobia, killings of unarmed Black people, systemic racism, privilege, oppression, and institutional challenges.” In this kind of programming, individuals are subordinated to racial categories; ideology serves as a substitute for psychological health.

    Meantime, the university’s DEI officers reinforced the narrative and offered a battery of resources for racial reconditioning. The Office of Multicultural Affairs published an official guidebook, “Anti-Racist Resources: The Unlearning of Racism and White Supremacy,” that promoted psychological approaches to “white identity development.” The premise of these programs is simple: whites suffer from “white privilege,” “white guilt,” and “white fragility.” And the solution is clear: whites must atone for their oppression through the process of “racial identity development” and “becoming an active anti-racist.”

    According to one of these programs, called “Scaffolding Anti-Racist Resources,” whites must first admit their complicity in racism, which includes “being confronted with active racism of real-world experiences that highlight their whiteness.” Whites will then enter the process of “disintegration,” experiencing “white guilt” and thinking, “I feel bad for being white.” Next, after their racial identity is broken down, they will enter a phase of “reintegration,” thinking, “it’s not my fault I’m white” and beginning to engage in left-wing political activism.

    Finally, as whites move through the stages of “pseudo-independence” and “immersion,” they will begin to “work against systems of oppression” and “use [their] privilege to support anti-racist work.” At the end of the program, their psychology should conform entirely to political ideology. As the final step, whites must answer various loyalty tests. “Does your solidarity last longer than a news cycle?” the training asks. “Does your solidarity make you lose sleep at night? Does your solidarity put you in danger? Does your solidarity cost you relationships?”

    The endpoint of USF’s DEI programming is left-wing political activism. As part of the university’s official “anti-racist” guidebook, diversity officials included materials promoting “reparations,” “defund the police,” and “prison abolition.” One resource, “97 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice,” instructs whites to “join a local ‘white space,’” “donate to [their] local BLM chapter,” “participate in reparations,” and “decolonize [their] bookshelf.” Another, “For Our White Friends Desiring to Be Allies,” demands that whites “stop talking about colorblindness” and stop oppressing those “who do not believe in a white, capitalist Jesus.”

    Taken as a whole, USF’s DEI initiatives resemble practices of cult initiation. The path of “racial identity development” does not take as its endpoint individual psychological health but the submersion of the individual into political ideology. Whites are designated an oppressor class, born with racial guilt that can only be expiated through elaborate rituals and commitments to left-wing activism, to the point that they are alienated from previous relationships and feel compelled to “change the way [they] vote,” “denounce [President Trump],” and “change how [they] read [their] Bible.”

    At a more practical level, the implementation of DEI ideology at USF has already resulted in a system of widespread racial preferences and discrimination. The university openly promotes racial quotas in hiring and requires potential faculty to submit “diversity statements”—best understood as loyalty oaths to left-wing racialism—to be considered for employment. The university’s Office of Supplier Diversity administers a system of racial and sexual preferences in contracting, instructing its “Diversity Champions” to hire vendors and suppliers based on identity, rather than on purely economic concerns. The university also promotes a range of racially segregated scholarships that explicitly exclude white students—the only racial group that receives such treatment.

    These “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs are a farce. In practice, they promote ideological conformity, racial and sexual discrimination, and the exclusion of any group that finds itself on the wrong side of the identity hierarchy. Governor DeSantis, who recently pledged to defund DEI programs in Florida’s public universities, should not hesitate in demolishing these offices, terminating the employment of their commissars, and restoring colorblind equality, individual merit, and scholarly excellence as the guiding principles of the academy.

    Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Sign up for his newsletter here.

    Photo: csfotoimages/iStock

    This content was originally published here.

  • Proteomic and interatomic insights into the molecular basis of cell functional diversity

    Proteomic and interatomic insights into the molecular basis of cell functional diversity

    The ability of living systems to adapt to changing conditions originates from their capacity to change their molecular constitution. This is achieved by multiple mechanisms that modulate the quantitative composition and the diversity of the molecular inventory. Molecular diversification is particularly pronounced on the proteome level, at which multiple proteoforms derived from the same gene can in turn combinatorially form different protein complexes, thus expanding the repertoire of functional modules in the cell. The study of molecular and modular diversity and their involvement in responses to changing conditions has only recently become possible through the development of new ‘omics’-based screening technologies. This Review explores our current knowledge of the mechanisms regulating functional diversification along the axis of gene expression, with a focus on the proteome and interactome. We explore the interdependence between different molecular levels and how this contributes to functional diversity. Finally, we highlight several recent techniques for studying molecular diversity, with specific focus on mass spectrometry-based analysis of the proteome and its organization into functional modules, and examine future directions for this rapidly growing field. Cells maximize the repertoire of functions produced from their genome through introducing diversity at each stage of the gene expression process, including at the post-translational level. New advances in proteomics and interactomics have begun to shed light on the extent to which diversity is introduced on the proteome level and by the organization of proteins into modular interaction networks.

    This content was originally published here.

  • Florida Straight Up Lied About AP African-American Studies Course, College Board Says

    Florida Straight Up Lied About AP African-American Studies Course, College Board Says

    The organization that sets Advanced Placement curricula came out swinging at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, saying in a statement published Saturday that the state’s Department of Education “slandered” its AP African-American Studies course, and accusing the DeSantis administration of lying about its communications with the College Board. 

    The College Board also disputed that it had diluted the course and made contemporary topics like Black Lives Matter and reparations optional only after the Florida governor said the class would be banned from being taught in Florida schools. 

    The DeSantis administration had rejected the course as part of a crusade against what it’s called “woke” education, then celebrated the College Board’s revised curriculum released earlier this month. But the College Board alleged in its statement that DeSantis—who is rumored to be considering a presidential bid in 2024—always intended to shut down the course for political reasons. 

    The College Board statement says that the conversation over the AP African-American Studies curriculum “has moved from healthy debate to misinformation,” and that the organization needed “to clear the air and set the record straight.”

    “We deeply regret not immediately denouncing the Florida Department of Education’s slander, magnified by the DeSantis administration’s subsequent comments, that African American Studies ‘lacks educational value,’” said the statement, which is only attributed to the College Board. “Our failure to raise our voice betrayed Black scholars everywhere and those who have long toiled to build this remarkable field.”

    The College Board’s statement came after the Florida Department of Education released a letter last week detailing communications with the College Board regarding the content of the course going back to January 2022. 

    The Florida Department of Education said in the letter that it was in frequent contact with the College Board regarding the course. But the College Board contradicted that on Saturday, saying that phone calls attempting to engage with Florida on its concerns “were absent of substance” and rather focused on “vague, uninformed questions” such as: “Does the course promote Black Panther thinking?” 

    “While it has been claimed that the College Board was in frequent dialogue with Florida about the content of AP African American Studies, this is a false and politically motivated charge,” the College Board said. “We had no negotiations about the content of this course with Florida or any other state, nor did we receive any requests, suggestions, or feedback.”

    DeSantis announced earlier this year, before the changes, that Florida would reject the AP African-American Studies class, because it was allegedly furthering a “political agenda.” 

    “We believe in teaching kids facts and how to think, but we don’t believe they should have an agenda imposed on them when you try to use Black history to shoehorn in queer theory, you are clearly trying to use that for political purposes,” DeSantis said in January. 

    The dispute over the AP African-American History course is just the latest in DeSantis’s attempt to restore what he’s described as a more traditional K-12 and higher education, and which critics have described as more like an attempt at conservative indoctrination. Under DeSantis, Florida has passed laws banning public schools from teaching what it’s branded “critical race theory,” as well as the discussion of sex and gender in elementary schools. 

    DeSantis also appointed six right-wing activists to the board of New College of Florida, a public liberal arts school, in an attempt to make the college into what his chief of staff has called the “Hillsdale of the South,” a reference to the arch-conservative private college in Michigan. The trustees fired the college’s president and named as its interim president former DeSantis education chief Richard Corcoran, a Republican former state House speaker who once described education as “100 percent ideological” and a “sword” to wage war for conservative values. 

    The College Board claimed that it repeatedly pushed the state Department of Education to detail specific feedback and concerns with the course, to no avail. “We have made the mistake of treating FDOE with the courtesy we always accord to an education agency, but they have instead exploited this courtesy for their political agenda,” the group wrote. “After each written or verbal exchange with them, as a matter of professional protocol, we politely thanked them for their feedback and contributions, although they had given none.”

    The College Board also said that the agency leaked the letter to the media—it was first reported by the Tucker Carlson-founded conservative news site The Daily Caller—to “claim credit” for changes to the course and the removal of terms such as “systemic marginalization” and “intersectionality,” as part of an effort to “engineer a political win” for DeSantis.

    “This is not true,” the College Board said. “The notion that we needed Florida to enlighten us that these terms are politicized in several states is ridiculous.”

    The Florida Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment from VICE News.

    Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here. 

    This content was originally published here.

  • Mississippi State College Softball Player Brylie St. Clair is Making Fans Go Nuts

    Mississippi State College Softball Player Brylie St. Clair is Making Fans Go Nuts

    Mississippi State college softball player Brylie St. Clair has fans going nuts because of how incredibly gorgeous she is

    This content was originally published here.

  • TRAGIC: 31-Year-Old Former College Tennis Star Dies Suddenly

    TRAGIC: 31-Year-Old Former College Tennis Star Dies Suddenly

    Another young person has passed away unexpectedly, continuing a disturbing trend globally. Reports have confirmed that former University of Georgia star tennis player Lilly Kimbell died Sunday at the age of 31.

    Her sister Samantha Giles revealed via Facebook that Kimbell suffered a massive heart attack emanating from a kidney issue.

    The cause of Kimbell’s kidney issue is unknown at this time. An official cause of death has not been determined either.

    Giles went on to a poignant tribute to Lilly’s life:

    I’ve looked up to you my whole life. You were so talented and loved by so many. When people asked me who my favorite tennis player was my answer was always you. I was so proud of you and your accomplishments

    Besides what you did on the court I looked up to you as a person. You had this ability to make everyone smile. Whenever we walked into the room you would be surrounded by people laughing and smiling.

    I’m still trying to process why God had this happen to you at 31 years old. I shouldn’t had to say goodbye to my sister at 22 years old. I love you so much Lilly. I know you’re looking down at us watching over. I promise we will try to be better people in your honor.

    The Clayton News-Daily has more:

    “We were stunned and heartbroken to learn of Lilly passing away,” said Georgia head coach Jeff Wallace. “I will always remember how she helped create a culture of excellence with her attitude and work ethic. Lilly was a fantastic teammate and was always smiling and laughing during practice and matches. She ranks as one of the most successful doubles players in Georgia tennis history. During the spring of her sophomore year, she went undefeated in doubles with Maho (Kowase), and their 22-match winning streak is still a school record. Our thoughts and prayers go out to her family.”

    A native of New Braunfels, Texas and member of the 2011-2014 tennis squads, Kimbell registered 197 combined wins – 109 doubles and 88 singles. Kimbell was a part of the 2014 SEC Tournament Championship team that finished 24-5, as well as the 2013 squad that went 24-4 and claimed the SEC Championship. She was a part of four teams that advanced to the NCAA Quarterfinals. Kimbell was named to the SEC All-Tournament team in 2012 and 2014. As a senior, Kimbell went 30-8 in singles and was tabbed the ITA Regional Most improved Senior of the Year. As a freshman, Kimbell won the 2011 ITA Southeast Regional Doubles Championship with Chelsey Gullickson.

    She holds the record for most consecutive doubles wins in a season – 22 with Kowase in 2012, ranks fourth in career doubles victories with a 109-31 record and ranks seventh in doubles wins in a season with a 32-5 record in 2012.

    Kimbell earned a bachelor’s degree in Human Development and Family Science in 2014 and a masters in Sport Management in 2016, while working for the athletic department. Following her Bulldogs career, Kimbell served as an assistant tennis coach at Eastern Illinois, as well as, St. Mary’s in San Antonio. She also worked for the Addison Group, Supreme Lending and Paycom – all headquartered in the Dallas area.

    The post TRAGIC: 31-Year-Old Former College Tennis Star Dies Suddenly appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

    This content was originally published here.

  • What it’s Like When Ron DeSantis Takes Over Your College

    What it’s Like When Ron DeSantis Takes Over Your College

    Ron DeSantis has made a tiny liberal arts college the latest target of his public education culture war. And the students on campus say they feel like they’ve been turned into guinea pigs in a right-wing social experiment.

    The Florida Republican governor’s aggressive move to fundamentally change the character of New College, a tiny public liberal arts school with fewer than 700 students in Sarasota, is his latest plan to dramatically remake Florida’s educational system in his image and build his right-wing bona fides ahead of a likely presidential run. In a few short weeks he’s appointed a hard-right board of trustees who promptly fired the school president and are promising wholesale changes to remake the college in their image. And it’s left the school’s tight-knit community shaken to its core.

    “This last month has felt a little dystopian. These people like DeSantis and the people he’s appointed, they clearly don’t know what New College is, but they’re trying to control what we’re learning and who we are,” Madison Markham, a fourth year sociology major, told VICE News.

    Students on campus see DeSantis’ aggressive efforts as part of a wider program of right-wing educational indoctrination—an effort that could go national if he becomes president.

    Students on campus say they feel like they’ve been turned into guinea pigs in a right-wing social experiment.

    “New College is unique in terms of how quickly and aggressively and brazenly things are moving. But this is very much a part of a broader push against educational freedom,” said Alex Obraud, a third-year anthropology major. “This school is a test case of how far you can take censorship and push politics in public schools.”

    Students have mobilized in protest. They held a rally last week that drew hundreds to speak out against DeSantis’ efforts, and a fundraiser to “Save New College and Educational Freedom” had raised nearly $100,000 on GoFundMe as of Tuesday. The organizers say the money will be used to “help our coalition build capacity and infrastructure to organize and fight back against this partisan attack on New College and educational freedom across America.”

    But a harsh reality is already setting in. At a board meeting last week, members of DeSantis’ newly minted right-wing school board sat patiently as students, parents, and community members raged against their plans—before moving right along with their plot.

    Right-wing education activist Christopher Rufo, the board’s most controversial new appointee, repeatedly grinned and chuckled during the meeting’s public comment period. When one member of the audience yelled “Your opinion don’t matter” at Rufo as the new trustee proposed closing the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion office and firing all of its employees, Rufo had a cold retort: “It does matter, actually, unfortunately for you.”

    The board quickly proved Rufo right. They moved swiftly to fire New College President Patricia Okker, a leader widely beloved by students, in what she described in a final teary speech as a “hostile takeover”—and signaled their intention to replace her with a longtime Republican lawmaker. They made clear they’d soon do away with the school’s DEI office while hinting at significant changes to come with the school’s curriculum.

    The battle over New College is just the latest salvo in DeSantis’ educational culture war—one that’s made him a hero on the right and is fueling his chances at the Republican nomination in 2024.

    Kacie Bates was one of the many students who couldn’t get a spot in the actual meeting room for the board hearing. They’d been at a student rally they helped organize to protest the board’s actions, a protest that drew hundreds. Since the board had set up the hearing room to limit public attendance, they retreated to their dorm afterwards with friends to watch the livestream. They’d known what was on the agenda, but that didn’t make it any less painful to witness Okker’s removal.

    “We just cried. We just cried during the speech, for her ending remarks as the president,” Bates told VICE News. “It just broke our hearts.”

    Students hold signs during a Defend New College protest in Sarasota, Florida, US, on Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023. (Photo by Octavio Jones / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

    Students hold signs during a Defend New College protest in Sarasota, Florida, US, on Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023. (Photo by Octavio Jones / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

    The battle over New College is just the latest salvo in DeSantis’ educational culture war—one that’s made him a hero on the right and is fueling his chances at the Republican nomination in 2024. DeSantis championed last year’s deeply controversial “don’t say gay” law, which puts severe restrictions on discussion of LGBTQ issues and gender identity in Florida classrooms, and recently pushed through his “Stop WOKE” law, which restricts how teachers can discuss race and diversity.

    That law has led some school districts to close their libraries until all their books can be vetted to make sure they’re in compliance and avoid felony charges. Just last week, after DeSantis said he’d block a new Advanced Placement course on African American studies because it was too leftist, the College Board announced it would drop some topics and scholars to avoid his ire.

    There are commonalities to these efforts. A claim that the educational system is biased against conservatives and white people and teachers are pushing extreme leftist agendas, and a move to end this supposed left-wing indoctrination by legislating a system of right-wing indoctrination under the guise of fairness and impartiality that at best glosses over or leaves out unflattering parts of American history and minorities’ experiences and at worst actively whitewashes things to paint the U.S. in a more flattering light.

    DeSantis and his allies have specifically singled out diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and the once-obscure “critical race theory,” which isn’t actually taught in K-12 schools, but which Rufo has played a key role in turning into a catch-all label for teaching history critical of America. 

    And New College is an easy punching bag, with DeSantis blaming the school’s long-running financial struggles on its hippie culture.

    “We are going to eliminate all DEI and CRT bureaucracies in the state of Florida…it really serves as an ideological filter, a political filter,” DeSantis said at a press conference alongside Rufo just hours before the trustee meeting. “New College has really embraced that, and that’s part of the reason I think it hasn’t been successful.” 

    DeSantis and his allies have been explicit about what they want to do with New College, which has long been a bastion for LGBTQ students and offered a less structured learning experience, and as such is an easy school for him to caricature.

    The school has always leaned left, embraced the weird and quirky, and proudly touted its motto of “educating free thinkers, risk takers and trailblazers.” Three quarters of students identified as liberal or very liberal, with just 3 percent saying they were conservative in a 2019 survey; When a speaker at the rally mentioned that the school was full of hippies, students cheered.

    And the school’s academics operate differently than many colleges and universities. Students receive qualitative written “narrative evaluations” of their work instead of grades. In between semesters, students have a month to work on independent study projects where they’re encouraged to follow their academic whims.

    The school board members DeSantis put in charge of New College are a cadre of deeply conservative education activists.

    While the governor and his new trustees have railed against so-called indoctrination of students and insist they just want a school open to students of all viewpoints, the example they’re aiming for is far from a neutral campus. DeSantis’ chief of staff and his education secretary both said that they hoped to transform the school into a “Hillsdale of the South,” referencing the conservative, Christian private college in Michigan that is a feeder school for right-wing politics and has close ties to both DeSantis and Trump.

    The school board members DeSantis put in charge of New College are a cadre of deeply conservative education activists. Rufo, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, was a key player in making critical race theory a right-wing bogeyman, and has now pivoted to decrying what he calls “gender, grooming and trans ideology in schools.” Another DeSantis appointee is Eddie Speir, the founder of a Christian high school in Bradenton, who has publicly floated the idea of firing every single professor at the college. (Professors at New College and leaders in the United Florida Faculty union, which represents New College faculty, told VICE News they believe such a move would be a blatantly illegal violation of the faculty’s collective bargaining agreement.) 

    They’re joined by Matthew Spalding, a dean at Hillsdale College, and Charles Kesler, a professor at Claremont McKenna College and senior fellow at the hard-right Claremont Institute. Spalding and Kesler were both deeply involved in then-President Trump’s “1776 Commission,” whose report sought to frame America in the best light possible by whitewashing the sins of the past.

    The school’s new interim president will be former Republican state House Speaker Richard Corcoran, who more recently served as DeSantis’ education commissioner. 

    Corcoran told a Hillsdale National Leadership Seminar last summer that education was “100% ideological.” 

    “Education is our sword. That’s our weapon. Our weapon is education,” he declared.

    Rufo has also used martial terms to describe their efforts. “We are now over the walls and ready to transform higher education from within,” he said shortly after being appointed to the board of directors. “Under the leadership of Gov. DeSantis, our all-star board will demonstrate that the public universities, which have been corrupted by woke nihilism, can be recaptured, restructured, and reformed.”

    “Education is our sword. That’s our weapon. Our weapon is education.”

    In his constant search for new targets in the culture war that fuels his support with his base, DeSantis has a bully’s knack for finding easy targets—marginalized communities, fringe lefties who make for easy straw men. He’s always looking for new libs to own, and a campus with a large LGBTQ population and a shoes-optional attitude is perfect for his goals. And the attacks on the New College have hit the campus’s LGBTQ students the hardest.

    Bates, who identifies as queer, said that they had felt much more at home at New College after transferring in from another liberal arts school, where they said they felt they “couldn’t really truly be my authentic self.” 

    It was “terrifying,” Bates said, when they found out who DeSantis had appointed to the board.

    Sam Sharf, a second-year sociology major and organizer for the New College campus group Students for Educational Freedom, began transitioning at the end of high school. She says New College gave her opportunities she wouldn’t have had elsewhere in Florida. 

    “[If] I went to another state school, especially early on in my transition when I was 18…it would have been a lot more hostile and would have been way harder to develop as a person when you’re being judged for your decisions and life,” Sharf said. “There aren’t many colleges around the country, probably not in the world, that offer that same social support to LGBT students.”

    In his constant search for new targets in the culture war that fuels his support with his base, DeSantis has a bully’s knack for finding easy targets—marginalized communities, fringe lefties who make for easy straw men.

    And while DeSantis argued his intervention will help current and future students academically, multiple students said the stress of what they felt was an assault on their community had made it hard to stay focused on academics.

    Bates, who’s studying chemistry, said they’d enthusiastically begun their midwinter independent study project looking at how different dyes affected solar panel absorption, but that the chaos swirling around the school had proven a depressing distraction.

    “Because of that news, I was not really able to put my whole heart into my [Independent Study Project] project, which was very disappointing,” they said. “When I was in the lab I would be able to work on my projects but once I got out of the lab and sat down, it was just really hard to take care of myself or focus on anything other than what was happening. I’ve just been emotionally exhausted. It’s a very frustrating and scary situation that is completely out of my control.”

    New College theater and dance professor Diego Villada said that he’d had to cancel a final dress rehearsal for a show that was opening just days later “because the students were distraught” after the board meeting.

    A view of the campus of New College of Florida in Sarasota, Fla. on Thursday, January 19, 2023. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced the appointment of six conservatives the schools board of trustees on Jan. 6. (Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

    New College of Florida’s campus in Sarasota, Fla. on Thursday, January 19, 2023. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced the appointment of six conservatives the schools board of trustees on Jan. 6. (Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

    The college does face its challenges. It has a long history of financial struggles—part of the reason it went from being a private college to part of Florida’s public university system in the first place—and is often an afterthought for those focused on Florida’s higher education system. It has suffered from decades of neglect and occasional hostility from Florida’s legislature, which has been in unified GOP hands since the mid-1990s.

    New College’s physical infrastructure isn’t in great shape—one former student association president recently wrote that their first impression of the college upon arrival was that it “was in desperate need of a pressure wash,” and multiple students complained that student housing and facilities were in disrepair.

    “The school is deeply underfunded and it’s lacking resources,” Sharf told VICE News. “The dorms are old and falling apart… These are problems that New College students have been talking about forever.”

    A 2019 study the school commissioned under its last president found that many students complained the school didn’t do enough to prepare them for life after college, and suggested more emphasis on education that could be put towards potential career interests—something DeSantis has encouraged.

    Enrollment has dipped in recent years, something DeSantis and his allies have pounced on as proof that the school is failing. He’s promised $15 million to improve the school next year, with $10 million a year after that. But it’s not like the school is an educational backwater.

    New College ranks fifth in the nation on U.S. News’ list of the top public liberal arts schools, right behind the four U.S. military academies.

    Nearly three dozen students have been awarded the prestigious Fulbright scholarship in just the past five years, a significant number given the school enrolls fewer than 700 students and that only 2,000 Fulbright scholarships are awarded to U.S. students in an average year. All students have to complete a thesis project to graduate, a rigorous step not required at many colleges and universities. 

    New College ranks fifth in the nation on U.S. News’ list of the top public liberal arts schools, right behind the four U.S. military academies. Overall, U.S. News ranks New College 76th among liberal arts colleges nationally. Hillsdale, the conservative Christian school that DeSantis’ chief of staff says is the model New College should strive for, isn’t that far ahead, at number 48.

    And unlike most colleges on that list, New College is actually affordable: It costs Floridian students less than $7,000 a year, and is one of the only liberal arts colleges in the nation with in-state tuition.

    While DeSantis and his allies have routinely painted New College as a bastion of woke leftist indoctrination lacking in academic rigor, students say nothing could be further from the truth.

    Markham, a fourth-year sociology major, said they’d been assigned to read as much Adam Smith as they had Karl Marx.

    “If there’s indoctrination going on, I can tell you it’s being very well-hidden in any of the classes.”

    Joshua Epstein, a quantitative economics major, told VICE News that he’d actually become “far more conservative” in his first year at New College, due to what he’d learned in his economics classes. He said he had “never read a page of Marx”—but had been influenced by studying libertarian economist Milton Friedman.

    “If there’s indoctrination going on, I can tell you it’s being very well-hidden in any of the classes,” Epstein said. “My two main career aspirations are corporate lawyer and investment banker. So the idea that I am, by any standard, woke, is a joke.”

    Antonia Ginsberg-Klemmt, a fifth-year student, said that she’s “never ever felt pressured to do anything or feel anything, or think anything. I love that because it’s a very free place for you to be yourself.”

    Most of the students VICE News talked to said they planned to stick it out at New College through graduation, but many had friends who were discussing transferring out. And they mourned that future generations wouldn’t have the chance at the same experience they’d had before DeSantis turned his gaze on the school.

    “I just feel absolutely devastated for future students, because they won’t have the same access to such a beautiful community as we did,” said Bates.

    This content was originally published here.

  • College Basketball Star Says His ‘Balls Exploded’ Suddenly

    College Basketball Star Says His ‘Balls Exploded’ Suddenly

    A Clemson college basketball player shared some gruesome details regarding his recent unexpectant injury.

    Clemson basketball player Brevin Galloway took to Instagram and shared that his ‘balls and nut sack exploded.’

    According to Galloway, the injury occurred shortly after he took a nap.

    “So this morning, I went to lift. I came back, I took a nap. I woke up from my nap, my balls and my nut sack were exploded,” Galloway said.

    After the injury, Galloway immediately received surgery to reduce the size of his testicles.

    “Now I go to the doctor, I have surgery 3 hours later, and my balls are reduced to the normal size,” he continued.

    Galloway would go on to make light of the situation and stated, “I don’t know what happened to my balls… I guess they were trying to be like basketballs, but we made it.”

    “Now I’m going to be spoiled for the next 48 hours. And I will be back in a youth form shortly. Go Tigers. I love Clemson,” he concluded.

    Watch Galloway explain his injury here:

    INJURY NEWS

    Brevin Galloway – OUT

    Diagnosis: Exploded balls. @roundballpod pic.twitter.com/Ca4RwW1oYl

    — Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) January 27, 2023

    Clemson University initially stated Galloway’s injury was just an abdominal issue.

    Per the Post and Courier, Clemson University in 2021 “required proof of vaccination for students and staff who want to be exempt from wearing masks, weekly testing and mandatory quarantine that has been the resting state of campus life for a year now.”

    Previously, rap star Nicki Minaj shared that her cousin in Trinidad won’t get the Covid-19 vaccine because his friend’s testicles became swollen after taking it.

    LOOK:

    My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it & became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding. So just pray on it & make sure you’re comfortable with ur decision, not bullied

    — Nicki Minaj (@NICKIMINAJ) September 13, 2021

    Minaj’s tweet even caught the attention of the White House.

    The Nicki Minaj-swollen testicles-vaccine saga continues — here’s what White House press sec Jen Psaki has to say pic.twitter.com/YEQ0ez2thY

    — NowThis (@nowthisnews) September 18, 2021

    The post College Basketball Star Says His ‘Balls Exploded’ Suddenly appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

    This content was originally published here.

  • College students could start using their dining dollars for DoorDash meals thanks to this startup

    A Phood user navigates the app on a smartphone
    Students who use Phood can check their balance via the startup’s app

    Phood

    • Phood allows students to order DoorDash using their university dining dollars.
    • The startup already works with colleges including the University of Texas at Austin.
    • Founder Alex Parmley turned Phood into a payments business after a stint focused on delivery.

    College students often have hundreds or thousands of dining dollars to spend as part of their meal plans each school year. But where they can spend those dollars is limited to cafeterias or on-campus convenience stores.

    Phood is trying to change that.

    The startup works with university campuses to let students spend their dining dollars on off-campus food purchases such as delivery through DoorDash, founder Alex Parmley told Insider. 

    Phood works with five universities, including the University of Texas at Austin and The Ohio State University. It’s also planning a launch on the State University of New York campuses in the coming months. 

    Parmley said that he sees opportunities to open up college students’ dining dollars to lots of off-campus services and retailers.

    “We’re connecting their campus card to every merchant in the world to make it acceptable,” he said. 

    Phood CEO and co-founder Alex Parmley poses at a white desk with a gray wall behind him wearing a pullover jacket.
    Phood CEO and co-founder Alex Parmley

    Phood

    Phood started as a food-delivery company but pivoted to payments

    Parmley founded Phood in 2018. At first, the New York-based startup provided food delivery itself, using a team of couriers to send dining-hall food to students’ dorm rooms and apartments.

    But demand for on-campus food delivery dried up in 2020 as COVID spread, classes went online, and students left university campuses to go home, Parmley said. 

    On top of that, food delivery is a “capital-draining” business, he said. Phood filled a niche, but it was nowhere near the size of larger players. “I kept getting the question, ‘How do you beat DoorDash? How do you beat Uber Eats?’” Parmley told Insider.

    Demand for food delivery to homes grew quickly during the pandemic, but even well-funded companies have struggled to make it profitable. 

    Eventually, Parmley found an answer: Work with other delivery services instead of trying to beat them.

    The company now connects students’ dining accounts to the Discover Global Network, which allows them to use their dining dollars like a regular debit card outside of their university.

    “I realized that the money was in the payments,” he added.

    In October, Phood earned $1 million in funding from 43North, a Buffalo, New York-based startup accelerator, using its new approach.

    Phood sees itself as ‘training wheels for financial literacy,’ Parmley said

    Students at universities that work with Phood can get a digital card that they keep in a virtual wallet. They can then use that card to make purchases online or in-person. 

    Besides using dollars they get through their meal plans, students and their families can also top up their balance with cash. That means anyone who wants to give a student money can deposit it for use through their Phood card, Parmley said.

    The system allows students to decide how they want to spend their food dollars, Parmley said.

    Parmley pitches potential university partners by highlighting how much students spend on food off-campus. “We’re just like, ‘Do you want at least 2% of this? Because it’s better than the zero you’re getting right now,’” he said.

    For the universities, Parmley said, a Phood account with parental dollars flowing in represents an opportunity to grow profit. The universities that Phood works with receive part of the profit generated from each purchase.

    Phood costs nothing to university dining services and students that use it. Instead, the company generates income from the service providers it works with as well as Discover, Parmley said in a presentation for 43North.

    Over the next year, Parmley said he wants to sign more partners to Phood. Despite the company’s name, Parmley said he doesn’t want to limit Phood to food delivery: non-food options like ride sharing services are on his list of potential partners, he told Insider.

    “We see this as training wheels for financial literacy and spending and allocating that capital in the right places,” he said.

    Read the original article on Business Insider

    This content was originally published here.

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