The above the fold front-page feature should be enough to take the air out of you:
"Baker signs long-awaited Airbnb bill, opening new era for industry" by Matt Stout Globe Staff December 28, 2018
Governor Charlie Baker on Friday signed first-of-its-kind legislation to tax and regulate the short-term housing rental market in Massachusetts, capping years of debate over how to navigate an industry that has exploded through companies like Airbnb.
Yup, you get $omething going and they gotta get their cut!
The new rules will take effect July 1 and could transform a market that spans the state, from Cape Cod summer homes to Boston apartment buildings to Western Massachusetts vacation retreats.
Or RUIN IT!
The bill requires every rental host to register with the state, mandates they carry insurance, and opens the potential for local taxes on top of a new state levy. A chief negotiator for the House said the goal is to register every short-term rental in the state by September, and local officials, including in Boston, say the new law will help buttress their own efforts to regulate the booming market, but before Baker’s ink could dry, the law drew a sharp rebuke from Airbnb, which called it “flawed” and unnecessarily complex. Advocates who have closely followed the process — including Airbnb’s decision to sue in federal court to overturn Boston’s municipal regulations — warn a lawsuit against the state could also follow.
I sure as hell hope $o.
“Our administration has long supported leveling the playing field for short-term rental operators who use their properties as de facto hotels,” Baker said in a statement Friday after signing the bill. “I appreciate the Legislature’s work to reach a compromise on this bill that adopts our proposal to avoid placing undue burdens on occasional renters.”
No, what they are doing is titling it back towards the "hospitality" indu$try and the real estate developers, for that is where campaign cash comes from.
The law followed a twisting, yearslong path through Beacon Hill, where as recently as this month its prospects for passing appeared unclear.
But somehow they got it done lackey-split, huh?
During a period when the Looti$lature wasn't even in session!
House and Senate lawmakers in July passed a similar bill, but Baker blocked it, saying the rules were onerous for people who rent their homes only a few nights a year.
Faced with a ticking clock — the new legislative session begins Jan. 2 — lawmakers emerged on Dec. 20 with a compromise plan, and pushed it to Baker’s desk through sparsely attended informal sessions.
Gee, they can get thing$ done when they really want to, huh?
Only problem is, I don't want them doing anything!
This thing should have been suffocated in its crib!
Beyond requiring all hosts to register and carry insurance, it also subjects short-term rentals to the same 5.7 percent state levy now paid by hotels — but exempts people who rent their homes 14 or fewer nights a year. Officials have estimated that tax could raise at least $25 million annually.
They budgeted $60 million from pot and are going to receive a pittance of it because the CCC drags its heels on licensing, and that's what it is all about, the licen$e -- in the Land of the Free and $tate of Ma$$achu$etts!!
It also would allow cities and towns to impose their own taxes of up to 6 percent, except in Boston, where it would be 6.5 percent, with occasional hosts also exempted.
Additional taxes would be levied on hosts who own multiple units, and an extra fee would also fall on units in Boston, Cambridge, and a handful of other cities that support the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, but only after bonds are paid off on the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center in South Boston.
Got all that?
Btw, the extra fee comes after money has been spent to pay off the inve$tors who bought bonds!
Some cities, including New York and San Francisco, have used short-term rental registries to rein in the industry, but this law makes Massachusetts the first state to require all hosts to register. That, more than the taxes, has been the focus of debate in recent months.
All about the $$$$$$$$$ in Ma$$achu$etts!
Hotel industry groups and housing advocates pushed for a comprehensive registry that would allow people to see whether their neighbors were renting a house or apartment short-term. Cambridge and Boston, meanwhile, have passed regulatory regimes of their own but say a statewide registry would aid enforcement, which in Cambridge has been hampered by hosts not signing up.
Then the bill is no $urpri$e then, and they used to call that under the table.
The new law will list the community and street name on the registry, but not specific addresses. Cities and towns, though, could choose to publish full addresses.
Yeah, why worry about your privacy or hackers and such?
“This is a tremendous victory for municipal leaders,” said Paul Sacco, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Lodging Association. “By adopting a more level playing field between short-term rentals and traditional lodgers, lawmakers made great strides toward a more fair and sensible system.”
PFFFFFT!
Think bed and breakfasts going against hotels and inns!
Airbnb, however, has pushed back on the measure, saying the registry could put hosts’ privacy at risk. Andrew Kalloch, the company’s head of public policy for Massachusetts, also criticized its tax structure as overly complicated and “layered,” and warned it could hinder the platform’s ability to accurately collect the levies.
Welcome to Ma$$achu$etts!!
Why don't you just drive on through?
“Massachusetts has chosen a pathway here that nobody else in the country has chosen,” Kalloch said Friday. “Sometimes first in the nation is bad because it means . . . what you have chosen to pass is a flawed measure.”
You have to forgive them. It is the greed that blinds them.
Kalloch said he couldn’t say whether the company would challenge the law in court, as it has done for Boston’s new rules, which are slated to go in effect Jan. 1. Airbnb is claiming that Boston’s regulations requiring online rental platforms to police their listings and share user information with the city violate state and federal laws, but others say it’s possible, if not likely, that the new law draws litigation.
You are in Ma$$achu$etts now, $eat of the Re$i$tance like 250 years ago!
“I think it’s just a matter of time,” said Ford Cavallari, chairman of the Alliance of Downtown Civic Organizations, which supports the measure.
Requiring all hosts to register, Cavallari said, “is the light of transparency. I think Airbnb is going to have a better business because of it.”
Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu said the state’s decision to create a registry should bolster the city’s own plans to “ensure compliance.”
OMFG!
Sorry, no room to rent here even if you are Jesus himself -- and you can thank the $tate of Ma$$achu$etts for that!
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They want their nose in everything, but first we flip the page to see the story at the top of page A2 and the beginning of my Saturday Metro section:
"Cabinet heads, Baker’s top aides getting 5.5 percent pay raise" by Matt Stout Globe Staff December 28, 2018
Governor Charlie Baker is giving an array of top deputies, from members of his Cabinet to dozens of department heads, a 5.5 percent pay raise in the new year, a first for many since Baker took office four years ago.
Well, at lea$t you know where the taxes on the room are going.
Baker’s nine Cabinet secretaries will see their salaries rise from $161,500, the same salary several started at when appointed in 2015, to $170,400 a year. Most members of Baker’s direct staff — 66 in total — will also receive the same 5.5 percent increase, according to a Baker spokesman, because they have not gotten the same “merit” pay raises that other executive branch managers have gotten over the past four years.
Another 39 agency heads will also receive a raise within the executive branch‘s sprawling bureaucracy, which includes dozens of departments and divisions overseeing everything from energy resources to elder affairs to public safety, but commissioner salaries aren’t uniform, meaning the exact increase each official receives will vary. For example, Christopher Harding, the state’s revenue commissioner, currently makes $158,000, and will get an $8,690 pay bump. Monica Bharel, the commissioner for the Department of Public Health, has a $140,000 salary and will make $7,700 more next year, and Ronald Amidon, the fish and game commissioner, will get $6,985 added to his current $127,000 salary.
The Globe reported on the pocket-$tuffing over at the DoR, but Baker got mad and they haven't mentioned it since.
Ronald J. Arigo, Baker’s chief human resources officer, said agency heads or commissioners hired after Jan. 2, 2018, will not be eligible for a raise, nor are any acting, interim or so-called 120-day appointees.
The news comes as an array of Beacon Hill officials prepare to take home bigger paychecks.....
They are already looking for ways to go around the voter-mandated tax cut, and don't worry about those unemployment benefits, either. By the time they get around to fixing the error in the legislation, the disagreement will be over.
That was the rea$on for the in$ertion of the error, wa$n't it?
If only we could recall the bastards (Globe wasn't against it in Wisconsin, but you aren't supposed to see the naked hypocrisy). He should have recused himself rather than force the citizens to go through a recall election (why does he look high?), but skipping the hearing will surely lead to a loss at the polls as it all falls apart.
Related:
"Governor Charlie Baker quietly slipped away Wednesday to Arizona to attend an annual gathering of the Republican Governors Association, weeks after it poured millions of dollars into his successful reelection bid. Baker will return Friday from the two-day meeting in Scottsdale, according to his office. The Swampscott Republican, who has otherwise shunned national GOP politics, has regularly attended the partisan organization’s confabs since his election in 2014, sometimes with little public notice. Jim Conroy, a Baker campaign adviser, said the governor is expected to speak at the event, and is also sitting on a selection committee for the RGA’s new executive director. The committee is expected to interview candidates at the conference, he said. After Baker departed Wednesday morning, his aides did not announce his attendance at the event. His office did not release a schedule for his travel, but signaled he was traveling when it identified Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito as “acting governor” in a public itinerary it distributed for her just after 8 a.m. The lieutenant governor serves in an acting capacity whenever the governor is out of state. The RGA spent heavily in Baker’s bid for a second term, dropping $6.6 million into a local super PAC to fund a series of TV ads touting his work in the corner office. The association spent more than $11 million on his behalf in 2014, when he won his first term over then-Democratic nominee Martha Coakley."
Are you sure he didn't steal it like in North Carolina?
Despite getting “900 more legal votes,’’ over the Democrat, he is being refused a seat by the incoming Democratic leadership because of so-called ballot harvesting that won them the House.
That could start a revolt (or not) after the Democrats did a Russia in Alabama, even if no one gives a hoot?
Speaking of stealing things.
Yeah, some problems take years to fix before they disappear from sight.
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Speaking of getting fucked:
"The rector of a Brighton seminary who has been on sabbatical during an investigation of alleged misconduct there will be returned to his home diocese in Worcester, according to an announcement Friday by church officials......"
Related:
"It was apparently an open secret for some that ‘‘Uncle Ted’’ slept with adult seminarians......"
I no longer hear the Church, and think it should be totally and entirely dissolved.
It's a centuries-old clique of child pedophiles for God's sake!
At least Spacey has seen the light, 'eh?
"Kevin Spacey is trying to avoid showing up for his arraignment in Nantucket assault case" by Matt Rocheleau Globe Staff December 28, 2018
Actor Kevin Spacey is seeking permission to avoid appearing at his upcoming arraignment on a felony charge that he sexually assaulted an 18-year-old man at a Nantucket bar in 2016.
Defendants are required to appear for court arraignments unless their appearance is waived by a judge, according to Massachusetts court officials.
Spacey’s attorneys have filed a motion asking to excuse his presence at the hearing scheduled for 11 a.m. on Jan. 7 in Nantucket District Court.
He's not going to face the music?
Court officials did not immediately provide a copy of that filing Friday, but they did provide the Globe with a copy of prosecutors’ response opposing that motion and asking the judge in the case to deny it.
Spacey, 59, faces a felony count of indecent assault and battery, which carries penalties of up to five years in prison or up to 2½ years in jail or a house of correction and a requirement to register as a sex offender, according to court documents.
Spacey faces numerous other criminal investigations into sexual assault accusations, which began surfacing in the fall of 2017 and prompted his removal from the TV show “House of Cards.” His role in a Ridley Scott film was also cut.
The Nantucket case first came to light in November 2017 when former Boston news anchor Heather Unruh publicly accused Spacey of groping her then-18-year-old son at the Club Car bar on the island.
On Monday, the Globe first reported Spacey was facing charges. Shortly after that, Spacey broke his year-plus Twitter silence Monday by sending out a bizarre, cryptic video in which he seemed to be portraying Frank Underwood, his character from “House of Cards.”
An insanity defense in the offing?
Why he can't appear?
Thinks he IS Frank Underwood, huh?
Spacey and his lawyers have not spoken publicly about the case since the criminal charge was filed, but an audio recording of a court hearing held earlier this month provides some insight into how the attorneys plan to defend him.
Is there any defense for what he has done?
Also at that Dec. 20 hearing, the attorneys tried to rush Spacey’s arraignment, asking that it be held that day, but court officials told them no judge was available.
During a subsequent exchange with the clerk as they discussed picking an arraignment date, one of Spacey’s attorneys, Los Angeles-based lawyer Alan Jackson said of Spacey: “He’s available anytime.”
So his attorney lied, huh?
--more--"
There is that grin again!
There once was a man from Nantucket.....
I can't remember the rest.
"Commission reverses course on recommended penalties for impaired drivers" by Naomi Martin Globe Staff December 29, 2018
Suspected stoned drivers should not be penalized for refusing to answer police questions, a state panel said Friday, in revisiting its earlier decision.
Last week, the commission on impaired driving said that drivers suspected of being high should face an automatic six-month license suspension for refusing police demands for a saliva test, blood test, or 12-step “drug recognition expert,” or DRE, assessment that includes a urine test, but on Friday, the commission decided that pressuring drivers to answer police questions as part of the DRE evaluation would violate drivers’ constitutional rights to not incriminate themselves. The panel said police could examine a driver for physical signs of drug use — such as reddened eyes — but not interview suspects without first advising them of their so-called Miranda rights.
You are already paranoid so who is going to refuse police?
I'm wondering when the pi$$ te$ts to get your license are coming.
“You can’t have a situation where you have the right to remain silent, however we’re going to punish you if you don’t talk,” said attorney Peter Elikann, representing the Massachusetts Bar Association. “That’s just not going to fly.”
That tweak was among a slew of recommendations the commission voted to provide to lawmakers for the legislative session that starts in January. As five recreational pot stores have opened since November and more are coming, officials have struggled to address a potential rise in stoned drivers without an accurate test that can detect marijuana impairment. Saliva, blood, and urine tests only show past marijuana use, possibly from weeks earlier, not current impairment.
To combat a widely-held belief that people drive better when they’re high, the commission voted to include its consensus, based on scientific research, that THC, marijuana’s main psychoactive compound, impairs key driving skills, such as cognitive attention, motor function, reaction time, tracking, decision-making, impulse control, and memory. Impairment is worsened when marijuana is mixed with alcohol.
Where is that "widely-held belief" held, and by who?
Smells like more pre$$ weed to me!
Among other recommendations the commission passed:
■ Hospitals and other blood-drawing labs should be required to comply with search warrants to draw a suspected impaired driver’s blood. They should be compensated for their work and protected from legal liability.
■ All Massachusetts police officers should complete a specialized 16-hour impaired driving enforcement course.
■ Massachusetts should more than double its number of highly trained DRE officers at departments around the state, from 150 now to more than 351 in the near future.
■ Marijuana tax revenue should fund police training.
I'm regretting my vote for recreational marijuana as this joint burns down.
It was without a doubt the single worst vote I ever cast, and will vote for a repeal if it makes the ballot.
■ Massachusetts should implement electronic search warrants so that law enforcement can quickly obtain blood or saliva tests before a possible drug has left a suspect’s system.
Just in case you have cotton mouth.
■ The state should add a module to its required driver’s education course that covers impairment by marijuana.
Commission members debated whether lawmakers should make saliva tests that detect marijuana use automatically accepted as court evidence the way breathalyzers are. They ultimately decided against that, as those tests only show past use, not current impairment. The test results could still be used against a defendant in court, but prosecutors would have to show their validity first through an expert witness.
The commission should “leave it as a case-by-case basis until we’re at the point where we have a breathalyzer-like tool,” said attorney John Scheft, an appointee of Attorney General Maura Healey.
Now blow!
See result: Thousands convicted of OUI could seek new trials under tentative deal on breathalyzers
Smoking pot must have made them forget the flawed breath tests!
Walpole Police Chief John Carmichael said the blood, saliva, or urine tests would only come as a result of other signs a driver is impaired. “Nobody’s going to be taken out of the car [for] using marijuana two weeks ago,” Carmichael said.
But they will get you out of the car anyway and then ride shotgun with you to monitor how high you get.
--more--"
Even the legal marijuana was a money grab in an attempt to sniff you out!
Related:
"Slick roads caused scores of crashes in Central Massachusetts and parts of New Hampshire on Friday, complicating both the morning and evening commutes in some areas, officials said. Remarkably, none of those crashes resulted in serious injuries, but the chaos gripped local residents who took to social media to document the morning mayhem. Precipitation had ended, but ice was still possible as temperatures hovered around freezing in communities like Colrain and Townsend. In New Hampshire, 88 crashes or vehicles off the road had been reported on state highways as of around noon, according to the state Office of Highway Safety....."
We are going to be worse than Utah, and please don't drink and drive.
"State GOP committee member calls party ‘all but irrelevant’ in Mass." by Matt Murphy State House News Service December 28, 2018
One member of the Republican state committee penned a blistering post-Christmas indictment of party leadership in Massachusetts this week, calling for his fellow party leaders to “face the bitter truth” that the state GOP has become “all but irrelevant.”
Steve Aylward, of Watertown, wrote a lengthy e-mail to his fellow committee members lamenting how far party enrollment has fallen and how the party, apart from winning the governor’s office, has not made gains on Beacon Hill since 2010.
And the governor is basically a moderate Democrat!
“We will stay irrelevant until such time if any that we as a State Committee choose to stop listening to those who are in this thing for their own personal gain, and instead start listening to those who are in it for unselfish reasons,” Aylward wrote.
Good luck with that one in Ma$$achu$etts!
The letter comes as state Republican chairwoman Kirsten Hughes is preparing to step down after six years leading the party, and as treasurer Brent Andersen and state representatives Peter Durant and Jim Lyons are locked in a race to replace her.
See: State GOP leader Hughes to step aside
Related: Outgoing state GOP chair lands $75,000 contract with sheriff
She was one of the last ones to be in it for unselfish reasons and not personal gain!
Aylward challenged Hughes for the party chairmanship in 2017, but lost with 30 votes of the 76 cast. He is a conservative activist who partnered with Representative Geoff Diehl in 2014 to repeal a law tying the gas tax to inflation. In an interview, Aylward said he is supporting Lyons for party chair.
Lyons got into the contest last week after Diehl, a darling of the conservative grass roots, opted against running for party chair following his unsuccessful challenge of US Senator Elizabeth Warren this fall.
That was a surprise.
“We have good representation with Jim,” Aylward said, referring to the anti-establishment wing of the party. Aylward did not directly blame Hughes for what he considers to be the weakness of the Republican Party in Massachusetts, writing that the chairperson in “recent cases” has just been a “front person, put there to carry the water.”
“I lay the blame across the entire spectrum of our leadership,” he said.
Aylward said that for too long Republican Party leaders have blamed the climate in Massachusetts for electoral losses, overlooking successes like Scott Brown’s US Senate win in 2010 or the gas tax ballot campaign that he helped run.
That is because of the Ma$$achu$etts myth -- propagated by the Bo$ton Globe -- of a deep blue, altruistic, liberal sanctuary and haven when it is really nothing but a band of money-grabbing looters that $ee only green!
He faulted party leaders for doing a poor job recruiting candidates at the local level, for failing to engage with Republican town committees on a regional basis, and for not being more aggressive about seeking to register voters or have “visibility” in minority communities.
He also said that party enrollment had fallen to “less than 10 percent” and that the base was “disheartened and demoralized.”
Maybe I should reregister -- and maybe run for office!
“I could go on and on about our failings, why we lose and how our leadership maintains control in spite of those habitual losses. But while we fiddle, the country burns,” Aylward wrote.
Republican Party enrollment was actually 10.3 percent this past general election, according to the secretary of state’s office.
Look at the Globe finally nitpick details.
Where you been?
Aylward, however, said he is not a pessimist.
He said he believes it is entirely possible to turn Massachusetts from a “blue state” to a purple one. He also said he is supporting Lyons for party chair because he believes that Lyons understands the importance of engaging with the grass roots of the party without the party turning its back on what has worked for the moderate and popular Governor Charlie Baker.
Why not turn our back on Baker?
He's turned his on us!
Aylward has opposed Baker’s political agenda in the past. “I know there a lot of people in the party who are maybe disappointed in Baker, but he’s the governor and I think Jim showed us you can be for the grass roots while still supporting the governor,” he said, referring to Lyons.
Or you can be grass root and NOT support the RINO governor.
In his e-mail, Aylward didn’t lobby on Lyons’s behalf or even mention the three men running to succeed Hughes as party chair. Instead, he advocated for an approach that would “strike a blow against all of the crazy left-wingers who want nothing more than to destroy the country we love.”
We don't have those here. We just have looters.
“To crawl out of this darkness, we must always act with the awareness that we are in a war for our beliefs and our country,” he wrote. “Let’s stand by our President, and not be a slave to political correctness. And let’s listen to our constituents and our conscience instead of failed leaders.”
With that I agree, and always will be.
--more--"
With no oxygen, it's impossible to get a spark:
"Woman survives knife attack by date, who dies after police use Taser" by Travis Andersen and Jackson Cote Globe Staff | Globe Correspondent December 28, 2018
COHASSET — It started like countless other dates: on Tinder, the popular dating app. That’s how Erich Stelzer, a 25-year-old Cohasset resident, is said to have connected last week with a 24-year-old woman.
I see. The tasering of a Jewish man is front page news!
It ended Thursday night, law enforcement officials say, when police officers were called to Stelzer’s house around 10 p.m. and found him repeatedly stabbing the young woman.
Was he on any SSRIs?
Officers used tasers as part of their efforts to subdue Stelzer, who was then treated by EMTs but became unresponsive on the way to the hospital, where he was later pronounced dead, according to a statement Friday by Norfolk District Attorney William W. Morrissey’s office. The hospital was not identified.
Attempts to reach Stelzer’s family for comment weren’t successful Friday, but his father, Harry Stelzer, posted a photo of his smiling son as an infant to Facebook and said he was overcome with grief. “My Son. Killed by Cops. Here comes the cover up,” he wrote.
I'm sorry someone died, but I had nothing to do with it.
Some people's deaths are more important than others, I guess.
Cohasset Police Chief William P. Quigley referred all questions to the Norfolk district attorney’s office.
In its statement, Morrissey’s office said that when officers responded to a report of a disturbance at 13 Church St., where Stelzer was living, they saw him “actively assaulting a 24-year-old woman with weapons including a knife. . . . In an effort to rescue the victim and disarm Stelzer, Cohasset police officers used tasers to subdue Stelzer.”
Prosecutors said the woman “was able to escape from Stelzer and was taken to a local hospital for treatment.”
The woman’s condition wasn’t immediately available, and officials did not disclose her name.
She a Jew, too?
An official with knowledge of the case said Stelzer and the woman met last week on Tinder, a dating app used by millions of people nationwide. Representatives for Tinder couldn’t be reached for comment.
Harry Stelzer wrote on Facebook that he learned of his son’s death the night before.
“There was a [violent] confrontation at his house last nite,” the elder Stelzer wrote. “Police came and tased him 4 times. 4 times. He died on the way to the hospital. 25 years old. He was my life. This is not over. Let me bury my dead and then the show begins. Rest In Peace my son. Love you for ever. I am hurting.”
Last January, a bearded, burly Erich Stelzer posted to his Facebook page a photo of himself in workout clothes. A few months later, he posted a message quoting from Aaron Lewis’s song “Country Boy.”
There was no visible police presence Friday evening at the duplex-style home where the alleged attack occurred. No one answered the door. Electric holiday candles in the window were dark.
Mary Burnieika, 48, who lives two doors down from Stelzer’s home, said she did not know him or his mother well.
“I’m just sad that whatever happened happened,” she said. “It’s just awful.”
Dan Tarpey, 63, who lives in the neighborhood, said it was a “huge surprise to look out last night and see the emergency lights.”
Although Tarpey did not know Stelzer, he said he passes by the Church Street home every day when walking his dog.
“It’s a very quiet neighborhood,” he said.....
Except for the screaming.
--more--"
He is fortunate this isn't Georgia.
UPDATE: Family sought help for man tasered by police while he allegedly stabbed woman
The irony is he was killed by police who were most likely trained in Israel.
Notice how the stabbing is alleged (probably because of the religious persuasion of the perp). I thought you were supposed to believe the woman.
Speaking of quiet neighborhoods:
"‘Better dead than coed’: Deerfield Academy confronts its male-only past" by Kay Lazar Globe Staff December 28, 2018
DEERFIELD — The slick, student-produced video could be a recruitment tool: a sun-washed campus, nestled in rich Western Massachusetts farmland, featuring students dancing, singing, and living a seemingly idyllic life.
“There is so much to learn here,” says a young man in a green Deerfield Academy cap, looking into the camera. “I’d send my son here for sure.”
Then he pauses, and looks down. “I’d have to think about sending my daughter here, but I’d definitely send my son.”
Another young man states matter-of-factly: “It’s a pretty toxic place for girls.”
Thirty years after boys chanted “better dead than coed” in protest of the school’s decision to admit girls, one of the nation’s oldest and most elite boarding schools remains a place where female students have a sense this is not their Deerfield.
I know someone who works there, and they say it is a great place!
It’s a place, students say, where boys get away with breaking rules that girls can’t. Where girls have been shunned from prime seating at hockey games, and where a letter of apology was punishment enough for groping a girl.
I was going to say maybe they are gay, but the groping disproved that theory.
So female equality is about hockey seats, huh?
Many of these issues are laid bare in a federal sexual discrimination lawsuit, in which a popular former teacher said young women faced unequal treatment in disciplinary hearings and when they filed sexual harassment and misconduct complaints. The ex-teacher, Sonja O’Donnell, alleged she faced administrators’ wrath for years for standing up to the school’s unwritten rule that “boys will be boys.”
Oh!
Separately, a 2015 graduate told the Globe she is still stunned that a male student who groped her several times in class was only made to apologize in a letter.
“Deerfield had many great professors and I learned a lot,” said the woman, now a senior at an Ivy League college. “But the culture is really backwards.”
The elite don't live in the same world as we do.
Though the student body is split nearly equally along gender lines, inequity is spread across campus and woven into the way of life, according to 17 current and former students, most of whom asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal from Deerfield and classmates.
Then they are getting a good ejewkhazion in regard to the world that awaits their leadership and management skills.
Until recently, girls were not welcome in the sought-after upper bleachers at hockey games, long a males-only seating area, and hadn’t been considered for the coveted position of Captain Deerfield, the school’s mascot.
I am glad you girls got your priorities in order.
I suppose wealth isn't really a concern, huh?
Students and alumni are still chafing over a message earlier this year from Deerfield’s top administrator to “Deerfield girls,” with the subject line of “self worth.” It suggested female students more “carefully consider [their] clothing choices” after visitors to campus were shocked by some girls’ short skirts and high-heeled boots.
The girls are dressing like women of ill repute?
“I wish there was more of an acknowledgment that being a girl at Deerfield is tough,” said one 2017 graduate.
It's not easy being green, either.
The 300-acre campus of red brick buildings and rolling fields, book-ended by a tiny village of 18th-century houses along Old Main Street, seems a quaint outpost. Or as some students describe it, a bubble separated from the outside world.
It's an elite school!
Leaders of the 220-year-old academy say they are trying to shed the vestiges of an all-boys school and deny the allegations in the lawsuit. Drawing on its $590 million endowment, Deerfield hired an inclusion officer and has ramped up antibias initiatives to tackle these issues.
In a statement to the Globe, Deerfield denied O’Donnell’s allegations and said its actions against her — including cutting her pay, barring her from serving as an advocate in student discipline hearings, and not renewing her contract — were “entirely legitimate.” It called discrimination and retaliation “antithetical to who we are and what we teach.”
So she was a troublemaker?
In legal filings, Deerfield said O’Donnell engaged in “multiple incidents of unprofessional and inappropriate conduct,” including aggressively criticizing colleagues and violating school rules in student disciplinary hearings.
A federal court judge ordered portions of the lawsuit, filed last year in US District Court in Springfield, unsealed in the spring, and word of the legal action trickled out until it was featured last month on the front page of the student newspaper, The Deerfield Scroll.
“It’s a big step forward for Deerfield to have this in the open and set a precedent of being transparent,” said senior Joshua Fang, a co-editor-in-chief who wrote the story. “We can’t shy away from uncomfortable conversations if we want to make our school better.”
O’Donnell, an English teacher at Deerfield for 18 years until administrators opted not to renew her contract this year, said the school offers students incredible educational opportunities. She and her husband, Michael O’Donnell, a Deerfield teacher who resigned in August because he said the situation had become untenable, sent their son there and he graduated in May.
“I love Deerfield,” Sonja O’Donnell said. “I have never stopped believing in the potential for that community.”
And she wanted to stay!
I think we just found the motivation for the lawsuit!
On campus, pictures of Abraham Lincoln and other historic figures line the reception area of the administration building. Two statues, a confident “Deerfield Boy,” books casually slung under an arm, and a “Deerfield Girl,” clutching her books at her chest, still stand in the library.
They need to start reevaluating those guys for racism, sexism, and any other moral, legal, or ethical transgression at any point in their entire lives, and if they are found to have transgressed beyond the bounds of contemporary proprieties their pictures should be removed and their names banished for eternity.
In a 2009 survey, conducted by a consortium of private schools, nearly 90 percent of Deerfield’s 12th-grade girls said boys enjoyed more influence than girls at the school. Some students say things haven’t changed much in the nine years since.
One frustration repeatedly shared by current and former Deerfield students is disparity in discipline.
One 2016 graduate said she and three friends witnessed from her dorm window two drunken, rowdy male classmates, out after curfew, trashing a tent used for graduation luncheons. She said they saw two school administrators march the young men to the campus health center for drug and alcohol testing, but two days later, the boys strode up to accept their diplomas, she said, despite a rule that forbids senior scofflaws from closing ceremonies if they break school rules within 16 days of graduation.
Busybodies that have to ruin the fun, huh?
Shortly after that, an anonymous flier plastered around campus urged young women to stand up against a litany of inequities.
“Rich white boys drank, puked, and broke school property, with video evidence, but were allowed to walk two days ago at graduation,” the flier said.
It described a “cycle of white male power” at Deerfield, unequal punishments for male and female students, and the silencing of female students and teachers who object.
The 2016 flier concluded, “Would you send your daughter to Deerfield?”
That spurred Alexander Guo in his 2017 class video to ask classmates a similar question — one that prompted hesitant answers.
Guo, now a student at MIT, said school administrators tried to confront the concerns, organizing gatherings and classes to combat discrimination.
“I think the school tried to make it more inclusive,” Guo said, “but I guess many felt that didn’t change the fundamental culture of the school.”
Deerfield said it has taken robust steps to tackle these issues, including housing ninth-graders exclusively in a village of dorms to foster healthier male and female friendships from the get-go.
The kids are at least 18 years old, and if that's true, then elementary and secondary schools have failed tremendously in their function of social interaction.
It also said it has added extensive gender sensitivity training and reviewed the selection process for student leadership and faculty positions, with an eye toward gender balance.
“These efforts — and our ability to learn from events like [the 2016 flier and 2017 video] — have allowed us to quicken the pace of positive change at the school,” Deerfield’s statement to the Globe said, but quickening the pace isn’t enough, some students said. A 2017 alum recently wrote a searing letter to school administrators about a male classmate who posted sexually crude, aggressive statements about other female classmates on social media in 2016. She said the young man then sexually assaulted her at a prominent East Coast college in April. She blamed Deerfield’s “toxic” culture and previous hands-off treatment of the young man as directly contributing to her assault.
Why did Bill Clinton just come to mind?
He didn't go to DA, did he?
In her lawsuit, O’Donnell alleges Deerfield has been dismissive of many sexually charged complaints. She lists several between 2011 and 2016 — the details redacted, under court order — in which boys accused of sexual assaults, stalking, bullying, or harassment were allowed to retain leadership positions on campus and escaped punishment, or were quietly issued letters of reprimand.
The secret courts enabled them to flip the script, and it's a good thing there was no sexual predation by professors on campus, 'eh?
Should have gone to Northfield Mount Hermon instead.
That is where they groom leaders.
One young woman who reported a 2015 sexual assault to the school was told by an administrator that the outcome — no discipline for the boy — was based on “the very difficult choice” between “a boy’s future and her feelings,” according to O’Donnell’s suit.
“I believe a lot of the culture at Deerfield is connected to the way these cases are adjudicated,” O’Donnell told the Globe.
Deerfield’s reckoning has come later than others. As a wave of boys-only prep schools started opening their doors to girls in the 1970s, Deerfield’s trustees twice voted to stand firm, but in the fall of 1989, faced with a declining pool of applicants, Deerfield acquiesced.
It's ALWAYS ABOUT THE FUCKING $$$$$$$$$!!!!!!!!!!
Today, Deerfield enrolls about 650 students in grades 9 through 12. Its $590 million endowment is the fourth largest among more than 300 US and foreign schools tracked by Boarding School Review, a clearinghouse for boarding schools.
With tuition and fees about $60,000 a year, Deerfield draws from a largely affluent applicant pool. Fewer than one out of every five applicants is accepted, according to the school’s website.
Even with the declining pool?
Polished, but pleasant, students may be the images highlighted in Deerfield class videos going forward. After the 2017 video featured several boys and girls voicing hesitation about sending their daughters there, the producer for 2018 said she was told by administrators to keep things upbeat.
“They said remember to make this positive,” said Maya Rajan. “Your [class] wants to go out on a good note.”
