It's the White House, kids.
Remember back in the day when there was all that talk of bedroom police due to the abortion debate and the alleged influence of right-wing Republican fundamentalists?
Who would have ever thought it would be the alleged privacy-protecting lascivious liberals that would become the Peeping Toms?
"Calif. law would require defining consensual sex; Colleges wrestle with issue of what constitutes rape" by Julie Watson | Associated Press August 11, 2014
SAN DIEGO — College students have heard a similar refrain for years in campaigns to stop sexual assault: No means no.
Now, as universities around the country are facing pressure over the handling of rape allegations and adopt policies to define consensual sex, California is poised to take it a step further. Lawmakers are considering what would be the first-in-the-nation measure requiring all colleges in the state that receive public funds to set a standard for when ‘‘yes means yes.’’
Defining consensual sex is a growing trend among universities in an effort to do more to protect victims....
See: UMass Rape Suit
I expect a ton more of them. College endowments have deep pockets.
Legislation passed by California’s Senate in May and coming before the Assembly this month would require all schools that receive public funds for student financial assistance to set an ‘‘affirmative consent standard’’ that could be used in investigating and adjudicating assault allegations. That would be defined as ‘‘an affirmative, unambiguous, and conscious decision’’ by each party to engage in sexual activity.
Silence or lack of resistance does not constitute consent. The legislation says it is also not consent if the person is drunk, drugged, unconscious, or asleep.
Lawmakers say consent can be nonverbal, and universities with similar policies have outlined examples as maybe a nod of the head or moving in closer to the person.
It's looking like a -- pardon the pun -- slippery slope already.
Several state legislatures, including Maryland, Texas, and Connecticut, introduced bills in the past year to push colleges to do more after a White House task force reported that 1 in 5 female college students is a victim of sexual assault. The Education Department also took the unprecedented step of releasing the names of schools facing federal investigation for the way they handle sexual abuse allegations.
See: The Bolger in Obama's Pants
I'm already feeling uncomfortable.
But no state legislation has gone as far as California’s bill in requiring a consent standard.
Critics say the state is overstepping its bounds. The Los Angeles Times in an editorial after the bill passed the state Senate, 27-4, wrote that it raises questions as to whether it is reasonable or enforceable. The legislation is based on the White House task force’s recommendations.
Having to submit to this rapist of an administration forcing itself on people.
‘‘It seems extremely difficult and extraordinarily intrusive to micromanage sex so closely as to tell young people what steps they must take in the privacy of their own dorm rooms,’’ the newspaper said.
Yeah. I'm wondering and waiting for the outrage on then "left."
Some fear that navigating the murky waters of consent spells trouble for universities.
‘‘Frequently these cases involve two individuals, both of whom maybe were under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and it can be very tricky to ascertain whether consent was obtained,’’ said Ada Meloy, general counsel of the American Council on Education, which represents college presidents.
She said schools need to guarantee a safe environment for students, while law enforcement is best suited for handling more serious sexual assault cases.
John F. Banzhaf III, a George Washington University’s Law School professor, believes having university disciplinary panels interpret vague cues and body language will open the door for more lawsuits.
Yup.
At least the lawyers will be $ati$fied with the performance.
The legal definition of rape in most states means the perpetrator used force or the threat of force against the victim, but the California legislation could set the stage in which both parties could accuse each other of sexual assault, he said.
‘‘This bill would very, very radically change the definition of rape,’’ he said.
If I didn't know better I would say this another attempt by government to get us at each other's throats and focused on sex, sex, sex. But this lying, looting government that loves us would never do that.
Meghan Warner, a 20-year-old University of California at Berkeley student, said that’s a good thing. She said she was sexually assaulted during her freshman year by two men at a fraternity but did not report it because she believed ‘‘that unless it was a stranger at night with a weapon who attacked you when you were walking home, that it wasn’t rape. It’s just a crappy thing that happened.’’ She now runs campus workshops to teach students what constitutes consent.
‘‘Most students don’t know what consent is,’’ she said. ‘‘I’ve asked at the workshops how many people think if a girl is blacked out drunk that it’s OK to have sex with her. The amount of people who raised their hands was just startling.’’
Defining consent may be easy to do on paper, said Laura Nguyen, a 21-year-old San Diego State University senior, but ‘‘we’re talking about college students out at night and the reality is there’s not just ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ There is a lot of in between. I really think it depends on the situation.’’
The legislation initially stated that ‘‘if there is confusion as to whether a person has consented or continues to consent to sexual activity, it is essential that the participants stop the activity until the confusion can be clearly resolved.’’
In the heat of the moment with mind clouded by Molly?
After some interpreted that as asking people to stop after each kiss to get a verbal agreement before going to the next level, the bill was amended to say consent must be ‘‘ongoing’’ and ‘‘can be revoked at any time.’’
‘‘California needs to provide our students with education, resources, consistent policies and justice so that the system is not stacked against survivors,’’ state Senator Kevin de Leon, a Los Angeles Democrat, said in promoting the bill.
Tell that to the UMass or Duke lacrosse kids.
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Related: On campus, a fresh urgency to probe sexual assaults
Sorry I couldn't get it up for you, readers.
Must have been the lack of a good lunch:
"At lunch, home-packed may not mean healthy" by Beth Teitell | Globe Staff August 11, 2014
As a gym teacher and wellness educator, Sharon Foster certainly knows it is important to feed her two children a healthy lunch. Even so, the Sudbury mother often sends her 10-year-old to school with chocolatey Nutella on white bread in her pink lunch box.
“I feel like I’m giving her a Reese’s Peanut Butter sandwich,” she said.
But when Foster packs a turkey sandwich, or chicken-and-rice soup, she knows it will boomerang, nibbled at most. And in the game of lunch brinkmanship, Foster usually blinks first, packing what Hannah will eat. “I want her to have some fuel,” Foster said.
The nutritional shortcomings of school lunches have been a matter of national debate for decades — but the focus has been on what schools serve, not on what moms and dads pack in the lunch bags.
Because honestly, it is none of their business what the parent makes for a private lunch.
Where is the left-liberal outrage at this tyranny? Now the GOVERNMENT wants to LOOK in that LUNCH SACK? Talk about CONDITIONING the KIDS for a TOTAL SURVEILLANCE TYRANNY! Wow!
Now Tufts University researchers have looked inside all those bags — and discovered that none of the lunches met all five National School Lunch Program standards, which emphasize fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low- or nonfat dairy, and only 27 percent of the lunches met at least three of the goals.
What standards would those be?
“We were surprised,” said Kristie Hubbard, a research associate at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. “It’s fairly well known that children don’t consume enough fruits and vegetables, but we were surprised by the volume of sugary drinks and packaged foods. Only five percent of lunches contained a serving of vegetables.”
I'm not surprised at all. Haven't you watched television advertisements?
The findings take on extra importance when one considers that more than 40 percent of school kids bring lunch.
Related: Early Lunch
Think I'll skip it.
When researchers asked more than 600 third- and fourth-graders at 12 undisclosed public schools in eastern Massachusetts to empty their lunch boxes, packaged foods and sugary drinks dominated — potato chips, fruit drinks, cookies.
“Gummy fruit [snacks] were very common,” Hubbard said.
Nearly one in four lunches lacked an entree, such as a sandwich or leftovers, and instead were made up of packaged snacks and desserts, according to the study, which was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
The few studies that do exist on packed lunches, the Tufts researchers noted, found that children who bring lunch generally eat fewer fruits and vegetables — and more calories — than those who participate in the National School Lunch Program.
With the first day of school arriving all too soon, many parents are not looking forward to the challenge of packing a lunch that is healthy, enticing, and reasonably priced — day after day after day.
Oh man! You parents don't care about your kids, that is what my agenda-pushing piece of government mouthpiece is shoveling at us.
Fiona Healy, a math coach in Cambridge, says she can make a respectable lunch at the beginning of the week, “but come Wednesday, things start to fall apart.”
Her 8-year-old daughter, Brenna Walsh, will eat fresh deli turkey, most of the time, but that requires a frequency of grocery shopping that the working mother cannot maintain, and her daughter does not like much else that’s healthy. Many days, Brenna eats the pretzels and cookies her mom packs as a treat and ignores the meal.
“The strawberries come back in their neat little container,” Healy said. When she asks what happened, their conversation will be familiar to many parents.
Brenna: “I didn’t have time.”
Mom: “But you had time to eat that bag of pretzels and cookies.”
What a horrible and negligent parent!
It is the rare parent who does not care about nutrition, but vitamins and nutrients are often only one of a parent’s many goals, said sociologist Dina Rose, the author of “It’s Not About the Broccoli: Three Habits to Teach Your Kids for a Lifetime of Healthy Eating.”
But what, and why are so many experts that the Globe turns to hawking $elf-$erving (pun intended) books?!!?
“They don’t want their kids to be hungry,” she said. “Or they don’t want to have conflict, or they want them to be happy, or they’ve got 12 other kids, and other things going on in the morning.”
12 other kids? Nothing like a big plate of HYPERBOLE to PUSH THAT AGENDA, 'eh?
There are many ways to go wrong with lunch, Rose says, but one of the insidious is what she calls the “at least” strategy.
“Parents make the ‘at least’ compromise,” she said. “ ‘At least’ chocolate milk has calcium. ‘At least’ chicken nuggets have protein. If you think of the cumulative effect of the ‘at least’ mindset, we’re teaching our kids the exact opposite habits we want them to have. We’re dumbing down their diets, and more importantly, we’re pushing their taste buds towards junk and away from healthy foods.”
This GUILT TRIP by GOVERNMENT is OFFENSIVE!
The Tufts study showing the shortcomings of home-packed lunches comes in the wake of controversial mandated changes to food served in school cafeterias. Starting in 2012, public schools were required to serve more fruits and vegetables, and less salt and sugar, in compliance with the United States Department of Agriculture’s new standards.
But the new requirements — passed after a compromise on potatoes that didn’t restrict how often they could be served — remain a matter of contention. In January, the General Accountabilty Office reported that kids were so unhappy with all that nutrition that they were buying fewer meals at school.
“Nationwide, student participation in the National School Lunch Program declined by 1.2 million students [or 3.7 percent] from school year 2010-2011 through school year 2012-2013,” the GAO report noted. “State and local officials reported that the changes to lunch content and nutrition requirements, as well as other factors, influenced student participation.
Keep the drop in meals served in mind as we go forward.
But the GAO study was hardly the last word. In May, Michelle Obama went after members of the House of Representatives whom, she says, are trying to undo some of the healthier changes. “They want to make it optional, not mandatory, for schools to serve fruits and vegetables to our kids,” she wrote a New York Times op-ed.
See: Food Fight
By the end of it, both are filthy in a perfect analogy.
In July, the journal “Childhood Obesity” reported that despite initial complaints, public school kids seem to be accepting healthier public school meals.
Just don't count the cash register.
Related: Globe Serving Students Shit
I thought I recognized the smell of propaganda.
As the public debate continues, so do the private ones.
A recent Sunday afternoon found two friendly combatants, Erin Martinez of Allston, and her 7-year-old daughter, cruising the back-to-school aisles at Target.
It's a total war paper right down to the terminology.
“She’s a vegetarian,” Martinez said, gesturing to Devi, who was sitting in the cart amid notebooks and other supplies. “So I’ll pack her rice and beans.”
But often Devi ignores her mother’s complete protein in favor of a hamburger bun her school is serving (along with a burger, which she skips).
“It’s a waste of food,” Martinez said, projecting herself unhappily ahead to this year’s lunch issues.
Devi felt no such stress. “I like bread,” she said, smiling sweetly.
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I know I'm wa$ting $omething every morning.
"Donors boost Mass. public colleges; Fund-raising in state’s systems brings steady flow" by Matt Rocheleau | Globe Correspondent August 11, 2014
Massachusetts’ public universities, long overshadowed by their private peers when it comes to fund-raising, are increasingly hitting pay dirt.
Buoyed by a concerted effort by top administrators, the five-campus UMass system and the nine-campus state university network nearly doubled their annual private fund-raising totals over the past decade, allowing them to shore up their endowments as the state’s financial support for higher education has trended downward.
Recent generous gifts illustrate the campuses’ success in reaching donors. In just the past four months, UMass Amherst received gifts of $10.3 million and $10 million; Bridgewater State announced a record $3 million gift; and UMass Boston received a $1 million donation.
While such grand gifts receive most of the attention, it is the steady accumulation of more modest donations that is driving the bulk of the fund-raising.
“The numbers are better than they’ve ever been,” said Robert L. Caret, president of the UMass system, which is in the midst of its first systemwide capital campaign, seeking to raise about $1 billion over the next several years....
Although Massachusetts has increased funding for state higher education over the past several years, the level of support is still significantly down from the early 2000s.
That fiscal landscape has made it more important than ever for public institutions here and around the country to focus on raising private money, experts said....
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Also see: Department of Education: Unaccompanied Illegal Immigrant Minors ‘Entitled to’ Public Education
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
Boston schools vow more healthful meals
I'm going to skip it. Sorry.
