Chicago board votes to close 50 schools

Wed, 22 May 2013 22:50:57 GMT

The Chicago Board of Education voted Wednesday to close 50 schools, a controversial move that drew sharp criticism from the city's teachers union.

The vote comes two months after officials announced plans to shutter the schools.

The closures "will consolidate underutilized schools and programs to provide students with the quality, 21st century education they need to succeed in the classroom," Chicago Public Schools said in a statement Wednesday.

The Chicago Teachers Union opposed the closures, which it said would disproportionately affect African-American students.

"Today is a day of mourning for the children of Chicago. Their education has been hijacked by an unrepresentative, unelected corporate school board, acting at the behest of a mayor who has no vision for improving the education of our children," said Karen Lewis, the union's president. "Closing schools is not an education plan. It is a scorched earth policy."

In a written statement, Lewis said district officials had manufactured "the underutilization crisis," and that shuttering the schools will not save a significant amount of money.

The union also had warned that the move would expose students to gang violence and turf wars, an apparent reference to neighborhood loyalties.

The union went on strike last year. The city's nearly 30,000 teachers walked out on September 10, objecting to a longer school day, evaluations tied to student performance and job losses from school closings.

With school districts across the country dealing with financial shortfalls and pressures to make reforms, the strike quickly gained national attention. It pitted the teachers union against Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who spoke in support of the school closings in March.

"This decision has been delayed for a decade, and it's our children and our city that have paid the price for inaction," he said. "Consolidating schools is the best way to make sure all of our city's students get the resources they need to succeed in the classroom."

CPS currently has 403,000 students, with seats for more than 511,000, and close to 140 of its 681 schools are more than half empty, according to the district.

Oklahoma teacher: 'We love these kids'

Wed, 22 May 2013 22:36:49 GMT

Second-grade teacher Tammy Glasgow walks around what's left of Briarwood Elementary, struggling to pick out of its wreckage the things that once made a school.

"This was the cafeteria."

"This is where my desk sat."

"This is my classroom door."

"That yellow wall that's standing, that's where we were," said Glasgow, pointing to a squat stack of cinder blocks.

She, like many teachers at Oklahoma City's Briarwood, helped keep students safe when a tornado tore through Monday, killing at least 24 people. Incredibly, given the state of the building, everyone at Briarwood survived.

Their actions no doubt saved lives.

Many have called the teachers -- some of whom literally shielded children with their bodies -- heroes.

But that's a word the teachers themselves don't use.

"It's just our job," Glasgow said Tuesday.

Right before the tornado hit, she hurried students into two bathrooms and a closet. There were about eights boys in the boys' bathroom, including Glasgow's son, and a dozen girls in the girls' bathroom.

She and other adults were with three children in the closet.

"Before I shut the doors, because both bathrooms had doors, I said, 'I'm going to shut these doors,' and I said, 'I love you.' The boys looked at me a little strange. (I) walked in the girls' (bathroom) and said, 'I love you' and they all said 'I love you' back.

"I just told them to pray, and then that's what we did the whole time in the closet, just prayed," said Glasgow.

The storm blasted through.

Stuff flew everywhere. A cinder block fell on her neck.

"I just kept saying to the little girl next to me -- 'It's almost over. It's almost over. It's almost over.' And it just wasn't over," she said.

Eventually though, rain started to fall and the sky lightened.

Glasgow heard voices and so she and others started opening doors and pulling kids out.

The children were remarkably calm.

When asked to explain why that was, Glasgow said she thought they felt safe.

"We did our best to take care of them and make them feel loved and secure. People talked about us being brave, but it's just our job. We love these kids like they're our own."

'It was a miracle'

While Glasgow was hunkered down in the closet, Waynel Mayes, a first-grade teacher, distracted her students with songs and games.

"I just got all the desks and I told the kids that we were going to play worms," she told CNN's Anderson Cooper.

"I told them to get underneath the desks, and I put them two by two, and I said, OK, we're going to play our musical instruments, and we're going to play worms, and we're going to play as loud as we can."

She didn't want the children to know what was going to happen.

She didn't want them to hear the roar of the storm.

"I told them to sing as loud as they could and if they got scared, they could scream," she said.

"But keep playing, keep playing, keep playing."

Afterward, Mayes was sitting outside on a curb with one of her students when his mom walked up. She was crying and hugged her son with her whole body, happy to finally have him in her arms.

Trenda Purcell had first gone to another place looking for him, but he wasn't there.

Relief flowed like tears.

"I'm doing great," Purcell told Cooper. "I am happy and pleased as punch with this lady right here because I think that she had an integral part in saving all the kids in her room. It was a miracle that kids walked out alive of that building."

Another grateful parent struggled to find the right words to thank his son's teacher at Briarwood, Julie Simon.

David Wheeler, the father of a third grader, was about 100 miles away when the tornado struck his son's school.

He drove as fast and he could, ran about a mile and hopped a ride on a couple of trucks.

"It was the worst day built in to one of the happiest moments of my life," he said about the moment he spotted his son.

"When I saw him running down the street with Ms. Simon, everything was OK for us at that moment."

Wheeler said there's no way to repay her for what she did.

Simon will forever be a part of their family.

"She is a hero," he said.

'His teacher saved his life'

Other teachers literally risked both life and limb, shielding students with their bodies.

Suzanne Haley was impaled by the leg of a desk protecting her children.

"We crowded the children under desks and me and a fellow teacher put ourselves in front of the desks that the children were under," she told CNN's Piers Morgan.

The roof and walls collapsed around them.

"Amazingly, by the grace of god, I kept it together," she said. "I couldn't go into hysterics in front of my children, in front of the other students. I had to be calm for them."

"It's nothing anybody wouldn't do," Haley said. "These children -- we see their smiles, their tears, every day, in and out, and we love them."

Another Briarwood teacher, Cindy Lowe, instructed students to move to an inner part of a room where there was a built-in bookcase as the tornado approached.

They crouched in the fetal position and used books to protect their heads, according to Lowe's husband.

Among the kids she was watching was their son.

"She sort of got over my son, got over the other children, just sort of was trying to shield anyone she could," Chad Lowe told CNN.

"A cinder block wall actually fell on her back, and she kind of lifted herself up," he said.

After the storm passed, another teacher came to help the kids get out from under the wall and help Cindy Lowe, too.

Lowe suffered a concussion and has a bad sprain on her ankle and lots of bruises, her husband said, but is expected to be OK.

Their son and the other children all survived.

"His teacher saved his life," a mother gushed to CNN affiliate KFOR. "I have no doubt that God and his teacher, I mean, they lifted a wall off of these kids."

Make $30 an hour, no bachelor's degree required

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:10:57 GMT

No college degree? No problem.

Become a Web developer.

The job is growing quickly, offers a median salary around $30 an hour, or $62,500 a year, and does not necessarily require a bachelor's degree.

That's because companies can't meet all the demand for workers. The job is still too new, and the labor pool is not quite large enough yet.

"There aren't enough bodies to fill all the seats," said Judi Wunderlich, co-founder of WunderLand, a Chicago recruiting firm specializing in digital, marketing and creative jobs.

Computer-related jobs are expected to grow by about 22 percent between 2010 and 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And for Web and mobile developers specifically, traditional college programs can hardly keep up. Even though many schools offer computer science courses, the field is changing so rapidly. The curriculum is rarely the same from year to year.

"If somebody wants to get into this job, it just doesn't make sense to get a college degree," Wunderlich said.

As of 2010, about 38 percent of Web developers had less than a four-year college degree, according to Census data. Instead, many workers in this field are self-trained.

Take for instance, Matt Kenefick. Growing up, he devoted himself to learning how to code. He viewed it mostly as a hobby and actually intended to become an architect. After just a few weeks in college though, architecture lost its appeal.

At 18, he dropped out and turned to coding as a full-time job. With little more than a high school diploma in hand, he started making around $65,000 a year.

Since then, he has worked for Percolate, Vimeo and other startups, and now, at age 25, he's earning more than six figures.

"Nobody really cares about your education in this field -- it's can you do it, or can you not?" he said. "Now, when I interview people and they list schooling on their resume, instead I ask, 'show me what you've done.'"

For beginners attracted to this field, some online programs like Codeacademy offer free training. Meanwhile, intensive training programs, which can cost several thousand dollars, are also popping up in major cities.

In Chicago, The Starter League offers a three-month class in web development for $8,000, and Mobile Makers offers an eight-week course in building iPhone and iPad apps for $7,000. General Assembly offers 12-week programs in various locations including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boston. That program costs $11,500.

You can also learn the old-fashioned way. Chris Lemke was driving trucks for a living, when he picked up two books on building mobile apps, back in December 2011.

"I liked math and decided to give it a whirl," he said. " A month or two later, I had a tipping calculator in the App Store."

About a year after tinkering on his own, the 29-year-old Lemke scored an apprenticeship with VOKAL Interactive, and is learning the rest on the job.

To say this occupation is attainable for anyone though is a bit of stretch. It still requires some math chops and long hours of practice.

"You have to be a self-starter to go along with this," Kenefick said. "In the beginning, it was literally all day and all night, day after day, I was practicing and building up my portfolio. I'm pretty sure it's more work than going to college."

Web developer is among CareerCast's list of "best jobs that don't require four-year degrees." Other jobs on the list include plumber, electrician, paralegal and industrial machine repairer.

Charge your phone in 20 seconds

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:41:36 GMT

A tiny device that can recharge cell phone batteries in as little as 30 seconds won 18-year-old Eesha Khare a major science award that will help fund her college education at Harvard University.

Khare traveled from her California home to Phoenix last week for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, where her invention was honored as one of two winners of Young Scientist Awards.

"I'm in a daze. I can't believe this happened," Khare, a senior at Lynbrook High School in Saratoga, told CNN affiliate KPIX 5.

Khare's device, a black, rectangular type of supercapacitor just over an inch long, can charge a cell phone battery in 20 to 30 seconds, she said.

"I developed a new supercapacitor, which is basically an energy storage device which can hold a lot of energy in a small amount of volume," she told KPIX 5. The technology may also be able to speed up charging of automobile batteries, she said.

A videotape of the award ceremony showed an ecstatic Khare trotting up to the stage when her name was announced in Phoenix, then standing with other winners as the audience at the fair applauded and confetti fell on them.

The award includes a $50,000 prize that will come in handy when Khare heads to Harvard in the fall, she told KPIX 5. With a laugh, she predicted that "I will be setting the world on fire."

In announcing the winners of what it billed as the "world's largest high school research competition," Intel cited Khare for recognizing "the crucial need for energy-efficient storage devices" as the world rapidly adopts portable electronics.

The other winner of a Young Scientist Award with Khare was Henry Lin of Shreveport, Louisiana, who received a $50,000 prize for "simulating thousands of clusters of galaxies" to allow scientists to "better understand the mysteries of astrophysics: dark matter, dark energy and the balance of heating and cooling in the universe's most massive objects," the Intel statement said.

The top prize at the fair went to 19-year-old Ionut Budisteanu of Romania, who used "artificial intelligence to create a viable model for a low-cost, self-driving car," according to an Intel statement. He received the Gordon E. Moore Award, named after the Intel co-founder, which includes a $75,000 prize.

According to Intel, more than 1,500 young scientists from around the world were chosen to compete in last week's fair.

High school prom, 50 years later

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:01:38 GMT

The class of 1963 crowded in a rectangle on the dance floor, the memories of high school fresh on their minds as the band played in a sea of pink and blue hues.

Aretha Franklin. Etta James. The Temptations. Just what you would expect to be playing at a 1960s prom. Yet the song that drew the most bodies to the dance floor was "The Wobble."

Until this hip-hop song emptied the chairs, it felt as if the auditorium had been transported back 50 years.

But it's 2013, and despite the full-court nostalgia for the 1960s, that decade was one of the most difficult times in Birmingham's history.

Societal tensions over race were so high in 1963 that the city canceled senior prom for five of the city's segregated high schools for blacks.

Today, a half century has passed since the seminal civil rights protests that changed Birmingham and plotted a path for the nation away from segregation and toward equal rights.

Just like that path, the healing process has been a long one.

The Historic 1963 Prom, held Friday and hosted by the city of Birmingham, closed one chapter for these Alabamans.

'A tension-filled city'

Growing up in Birmingham in the 1950s, Earnestine Thomas knew the rules of this segregated city. At a restaurant, she could pay in the front, but had to walk around the back to get her food from a cook. She could shop only in certain places; there were neighborhoods that she knew not to visit.

"As a child, I recognized that it was unfair, but didn't understand that there were laws propping (segregation) up," she said as she waited for a hair appointment before Friday's prom.

She treated herself to a hair styling before donning a lavender dress with a sequined jacket and matching shoes. Lavender was a fitting color, she said, not just because it is her favorite, but because it was the school color at Parker High School.

It was a day of celebration that she and her classmates were denied in 1963.

Segregation in Birmingham permeated everything, down to the Bibles that judges used to swear witnesses in -- there was one holy book for white witnesses and another for black witnesses.

Yet members of the class of 1963 recall having the same struggles as any other teenagers, then and today -- parents' rules, scrounging enough money for dates, finding reliable transportation.

As often is the case when people witness a historic period, many black high school students in Birmingham in 1963 did not recognize the moment that was upon them.

Years of advocacy by civil rights leaders had successfully chipped away at segregation, and students pushed the boundaries -- as much out of teenage rebellion as a sense of justice.

Cynthia May and her friends were the first ones to board the bus the day that the signs relegating blacks to the back of the bus were removed, around the summer of 1962.

The teens tested the new limits immediately by sitting in the front. But when whites began boarding the bus, they stood, rather than sit behind the black teens. The teens also noticed that white riders refused to sit next to black riders, so instead of sitting two to a seat, they spread out individually to occupy the seats, leaving other passengers no choice but to sit next to them. Again, the white riders chose to stand.

"It was a tension-filled city," May said.

It was against this backdrop that the seniors at the black high schools began preparing for graduation.

Each May, in Thomas' neighborhood, the graduating seniors would parade down the street. And in 1963, it would be her turn.

There was also prom, an American rite of passage.

Thomas can still picture her long dress, a blue and green neon attention-grabber that showed different colors in the light as she moved.

A neighbor had bought it for her in December.

"Even though it was a winter dress, I was going to wear it to the prom," Thomas said. "But in one fell swoop, that was wiped away."

Civil rights come to Birmingham

There is disagreement over why prom was canceled for those five black high schools in 1963.

The civil rights movement was in full swing that year, but the high school students, to an extent, were kept at a distance from it.

This would change on May 2, 1963, when hundreds of children, some as young as 6, left school to march in Birmingham in opposition to segregation.

Thousands of arrests were made at the so-called Children's March, and when the marches persisted for several days, authorities responded with fire hoses and dogs.

"This was a very controversial thing," said Glenn T. Eskew, a history professor at Georgia State University who has written a book about Birmingham during this period. "There were those who did not believe that schoolchildren should be engaging in civil rights protests. Not only was it dangerous, but they were youth and it was a very confrontational thing."

The images of children being hosed and intimidated by police dogs renewed a level of outrage at the national level that had been flagging.

"It changed the dynamic of the protest dramatically," Eskew said. "It encouraged other youth to participate on one hand, and on the other it ratcheted up the pressure on the forces of white supremacy."

Only a fraction of students from the black high schools participated. Many were told by their parents not to participate, for fear of losing a job or other retribution.

Thomas didn't march because her grandfather expressed concerns that he might be fired if someone saw her protesting.

But everyone would be affected by the protests, whether they marched or not.

Days after the marches, the school board announced that all end-of-the-year activities were canceled for the class of 1963. No prom, no graduation, no yearbook.

The stated reason for the cancellations was security concerns; that in such a tense racial atmosphere, a gathering such as a graduation ceremony or prom could become the target of an attack.

Yet many believe that the events were taken away as a punishment for their participation in the marches.

If the authorities were truly concerned about the safety of the black students, they would not have met them with fire hoses and snarling dogs, said Bishop Calvin Woods, director of the Birmingham chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

It was Woods, who was a father with children at the schools, who sued to have graduation reinstated.

A court eventually ordered graduation must go on, and it did, though delayed. But prom never happened.

Shirley Holmes Sims had her copper-colored dress ready to go when she left school to participate in the Children's March. And copper-colored shoes to match.

They would go unworn, and be lost decades later in a tornado.

"We marched down that street and we were singing 'We Shall Overcome,'" Sims said. "You think back to it today, and it was truly worth it."

Righting a wrong

Ethel Arms has a line she uses when the topic of high school rites of passage and prom comes up: "We didn't have a prom because of the civil rights movement."

It puts the memory of 1963 in perspective and justifies the sacrifice.

Yet it doesn't change the fact that inside, she has always lamented that she never had that night.

Sure, there were more important things going on in Birmingham at the time, but she was just a teenager and wanted those experiences.

This time, Arms was on the "prom committee" that organized Friday's event. The small group gathered in a hotel room before the dance, laughing and reminiscing about the prom they never had. There would be no prom king and queen elected this time, but the theme of the dance summed up what the night was all about: "Finally, the Prom We Never Had."

Sims ironed her purple and gold dress as the women placed corsages on their wrists and waited for the limousines that would take them to the prom.

Amid the celebratory atmosphere, there were moments of reflection, and thoughts of those classmates who had passed away.

In a way, this party was a celebration of what they had endured and survived over the last 50 years, Thomas said.

"As we get older, everything behind us looks greater," she said.

The prom committee held hands and said a prayer before walking out of the room. This would be their night.

The prom was especially meaningful for Ethel Arms, as she and her high school sweetheart, Eugene, had been negotiating with their parents for permission to attend the prom when it was canceled in 1963. They had been trying to figure out where to find transportation to the dance, and how to earn the money to rent formal wear or buy a dress.

They later married, and when it came time for their children to attend proms, the couple put extra effort into making them special nights.

It wasn't until Friday night, though, in Birmingham's Boutwell Auditorium, that Eugene Arms was finally able to take his own sweetheart to the prom.

"It's really a much more pleasant event because we can afford the attire, we have no problem getting back and forth," Eugene Arms said.

"It makes you appreciate everything when we were children," he continued. "The sacrifices people made."

Eugene Arms had attended rallies during the civil rights movement, but out of deference to his parents, he did not participate in the Children's March.

The students that did participate in the march faced dogs and water and arrests, he said.

"All we did was give up prom," he said.

Class of 2013 grads average $35,200 in total debt

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:35:20 GMT

The class of 2013 is in for a rude awakening this graduation season.

Between ballooning student loans, credit cards and money owed to family members, they are facing an average $35,200 in college-related debt, a Fidelity survey of 750 college graduates shows.

And for half of this year's graduates, the amount of debt they racked up while in school comes as a shock.

"We're tending to find people are still surprised at the level of debt they're graduating with, which suggests we still have a long way to go in terms of having conversations about planning for college, saving for college and figuring out the best place to go (to college)," said Keith Bernhardt, vice president of college planning at Fidelity Investments.

The bulk of the class of 2013's debt is in government loans, with graduates owing an average of $26,000. They also had an average of $19,000 in private loans, $18,000 in state loans, $13,000 in personal and family loans and $3,000 in credit card debt.

After realizing the extent of their debt, 39 percent said they would have done things differently -- like saving earlier, more thoroughly researching financial aid or looking for ways to save more and spend less while at school -- that's up from 25 percent in 2011.

A small group, or 12 percent of graduates, regretted their decisions entirely, saying their college education didn't justify the debt burden.

But now they're forced to face reality. Half of respondents said tackling their student debt is a financial priority, and half said it will take them more than nine years to become debt-free.

The majority, or 92 percent, say they will pay back their debt using income from their job, 25 percent said they will get help from their parents or family, 24 percent will use their savings and 21 percent will get a second job. About 7 percent of graduates don't plan on ever being able to entirely pay off their loans.

Others started taking action earlier to try to soften the blow. About 85 percent of college graduates contributed their own money toward college costs -- with 27 percent reporting that they contributed more than $10,000. And 57 percent said they chose their major specifically because they thought it would land them a higher-paying job.

Obama to new grads: 'No time for excuses'

Sun, 19 May 2013 10:30:08 GMT

Past, present and future came together on a thunderstorm-filled Sunday, as President Barack Obama received an honorary doctorate and gave the commencement speech at historically black, all-male Morehouse College, where the Rev. Martin Luther King and many other prominent African-Americans spent their formative years.

After opening with several one-liners, and more smiles than we've seen from him in the damage-control-filled recent weeks, Obama delivered a serious message to the class of 2013.

During a speech rife with both personal and historical references, the president invoked a past full of challenges, often resulting from racism, but noted that African-Americans need to break free from that past to succeed in a globally competitive economy.

"I understand that there's a common fraternity creed here at Morehouse: 'Excuses are tools of the incompetent, used to build bridges to nowhere and monuments of nothingness,'" Obama said.

"We've got no time for excuses -- not because the bitter legacies of slavery and segregation have vanished entirely; they have not. Not because racism and discrimination no longer exist; we know those are still out there. It's just that in today's hyperconnected, hypercompetitive world, with millions of young people from China and India and Brazil -- many of whom started with a whole lot less than all of you did -- all of them entering the global workforce alongside you, nobody is going to give you anything that you have not earned," he said.

"Nobody cares how tough your upbringing was. Nobody cares if you suffered some discrimination. And moreover, you have to remember that whatever you've gone through, it pales in comparison to the hardships previous generations endured -- and they overcame them. And if they overcame them, you can overcome them, too," he said.

Morehouse valedictorian Betsegaw Tadele praised Obama for setting a strong example.

"There is no impossible. There is no unbelievable. There is no unachievable, if you have the audacity to hope," Tadele said, paraphrasing the name of the president's 2006 book, "The Audacity of Hope."

Following Tadele -- whom Obama jokingly called "a skinny guy with a funny name" -- Obama reflected on how being an African-American has affected his personal journey.

"Whatever success I have achieved, whatever positions of leadership I've held, have depended less on Ivy League degrees or SAT scores or GPAs, and have instead been due to that sense of connection and empathy, the special obligation I felt, as a black man like you, to help those who need it most; people who didn't have the opportunities that I had -- because there, but for the grace of God, go I. I might have been in their shoes. I might have been in prison. I might have been unemployed. I might not have been able to support a family. And that motivates me," the president said.

The president's repeated mention of connection to the black community comes after blunt criticism from Morehouse alumnus Kevin Johnson, a pastor from Philadelphia, who criticized Obama in an April 14 editorial in the Philadelphia Tribune, calling him "a president for everyone, except black people."

Johnson gave a baccalaureate sermon on Saturday as part of Morehouse's graduation weekend.

The president's speech on Sunday was well-received, though the crowd had to brave some thunder and lightning and endure pouring rain.

One awkward silence came when Obama slightly deviated from his prepared remarks. He was expected to say, "Be the best husband to your wife, or boyfriend to your partner." However, instead, he said "Be the best husband to your wife, or your boyfriend, or your partner," eliciting some clearly confused responses from the crowd.

Later, he noted that Morehouse men can set examples for other groups that have been subjected to discrimination: Hispanics, gays and lesbians, Muslims, and women.

"It is not just the African-American community that needs you. The country needs you. The world needs you. As Morehouse men, many of you know what it's like to be an outsider; know what it's like to be marginalized; know what it's like to feel the sting of discrimination. And that's an experience that a lot of Americans share," he said.

Obama said his job, as president, is to advocate for policies that generate more opportunity for everyone, and he implored the Morehouse grads -- and all Americans -- to "advocate for an America where everyone has a fair shot in life."

"There are some things, as black men, we can only do for ourselves. There are some things, as Morehouse men, that you are obliged to do for those still left behind. As graduates -- as Morehouse men -- you now wield something even more powerful than the diploma you are about to collect. And that's the power of your example," he said.

Obama finished his speech with another message not just to the newly minted Morehouse grads, but to all Americans -- a message based on Martin Luther King's refusal to be afraid.

"That's what being an American is all about. Success may not come quickly or easily. But if you strive to do what's right; if you work harder and dream bigger; if you set an example in your own lives and do your part to help meet the challenges of our times, then I am confident that, together, we will continue the never-ending task of perfecting our union," he said.

And despite lots of big-picture talk about success and giving back, Obama made it clear that without appropriate focus on those closest to you, big-picture accomplishments mean little.

"Everything else is unfulfilled if we fail at family -- if we fail at that responsibility. I know that when I am on my deathbed someday, I will not be thinking about any particular legislation I passed. I will not be thinking about a policy I promoted. I will not be thinking about the speech I gave. I will not be speaking about the Nobel Prize I received. I will be thinking about that walk I took with my daughters. I'll be thinking about a lazy afternoon with my wife. I'll be thinking about sitting around the dinner table, and seeing them happy and healthy and knowing they were loved. And I'll be thinking about whether I did right by all of them."

Bernanke's advice for college grads

Sun, 19 May 2013 07:16:46 GMT

Don't try parsing these words for hints about monetary policy.

College graduates got some sage advice from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke at their commencement ceremony Saturday.

"During your working lives, you will have to reinvent yourselves many times," Bernanke told new graduates at Bard College at Simon's Rock, a prestigious "early college," where students start their studies after completing tenth or eleventh grade in high school.

The Fed chairman spoke of the remarkable improvement in living standards brought by technological change over the last three centuries and critiqued the current IT revolution. Will it -- or will it not -- lead to just as many impressive improvements?

Some economists, he said, believe the economic transformation of the last 50 years doesn't match that of the 50 years prior. Perhaps a slowdown in innovation means computers and IT "will not transform our lives as dramatically as previous revolutions have," Bernanke said, before turning to a more positive outlook.

He quoted the famous British economist John Maynard Keynes, who once remarked, "We are suffering just now from a bad attack of economic pessimism."

"Sound familiar?" Bernanke asked, nodding to current economic conditions.

"Humanity's capacity to innovate and the incentives to innovate are greater today than at any other time in history," he said.

The Fed chairman ended by stating the only economic certainty: "Change is the only constant."

Columbia to change whites-only fellowship

Thu, 16 May 2013 19:32:32 GMT

Columbia University is seeking to alter the 1920 charter of one of its graduate school fellowships which is still limited "to persons of the Caucasian race," though the fellowship has not been granted in years.

The Lydia C. Roberts Graduate Fellowship is, at least on paper, available to white students "of either sex, born in the state of Iowa," according to a Columbia University charter from 1920.

The university filed an affidavit in Manhattan Supreme Court last week to support a petition from JPMorgan Chase, the fellowship's designated trustee, to change the whites-only provision, according to Robert Hornsby, assistant vice president for media relations at Columbia.

Other restrictions for the fellowship stipulate that a recipient may not concentrate their studies in "law, medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, or theology." Recipients must also agree to return to Iowa for two years after completing their studies at Columbia.

The fellowship was established in 1920 by Lydia C. Roberts, an Iowa native, with a $500,000 donation to the university upon her death. However, the school stopped awarding the fellowship in 1997 for several reasons.

It's not clear when the university stopped adhering "to the race-related terms of the gift," Hornsby explained.

"The university administers gifts in accordance with applicable law and (anti-discrimination) policies, and it has long been the university's practice to disregard donor restrictions that violate either the law or our policies," he added.

Douglas Gross, an attorney in Des Moines, Iowa, received the fellowship in 1977 after a college professor recommended it to him.

Gross says he was an Iowan interested in pursuing higher education so he accepted, but probably would have rejected the fellowship had he known the provision existed.

Some student groups at other universities have established "whites-only" scholarships, including Boston University's College Republicans, which created the "Caucasian Achievement and Recognition" scholarship in 2006. It awarded $250 to students with at least a 3.2 GPA and who are at least "one quarter Caucasian."

However, a representative for College Republicans at Boston University says there are no longer any scholarships funded by the organization.

"Our club does not currently offer scholarships of any kind. Our club started from scratch this past fall as the previous College Republicans' student group was ultimately defunct," Mara Mellstrom told CNN.

Roger Williams University's College Republicans attempted to create a similar scholarship in 2004.

In 2003, Texas Tech University student Matt Coday created the United White Person's College Fund, a scholarship that looked to serve "as a source of financial assistance to students whom Coday feels have been discriminated against by organizations designed to give money to minorities," according to the Texas Tech newspaper University Daily. It's not clear if that fund still exists.

Students occupy college to keep tuition free

Wed, 15 May 2013 18:05:33 GMT

For more than a century, Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York provided free education to all admitted students. But the school isn't immune to the money crunch forcing tuition increases at colleges across the country.

In April, Cooper Union announced that it will start charging tuition for undergraduate students matriculating in fall 2014. Citing a $12 million annual budget deficit, the Cooper Union Board of Trustees will scale back the full scholarship it has traditionally awarded.

Students aren't happy about the administration's decision.

At least 50 of Cooper Union's nearly 1,000 students have been occupying President Jamshed Bharucha's office on the seventh floor of the school's Foundation Building. The students organized a sit-in to protest the decision to charge future undergraduate students half the cost of tuition, up to $19,000 a year.

Bharucha met with the students, who have occupied his office since Wednesday, though no resolution has been reached, according to Claire McCarthy, Cooper Union's director of public affairs.

Cooper Union has provided free education to its students since 1859. Various investments, such as real estate in the Chrysler Building and elsewhere in Manhattan, have provided the funding in the past. Those investments, however, have since fallen short of covering the school's long-term costs.

"The Board thoroughly analyzed a wide range of options, mindful of how the full tuition scholarships have been central to our identity," said an April 23 statement from the Board of Trustees. "In the final analysis, however, we found no viable solutions that would enable us to maintain the excellence of our programs without an alteration of our scholarship policy."

Although tuition increases won't affect current students, protesters say they're motivated by a lack of transparency in the administration and their hopes for future students. They insist that the change in cost undermines a tradition of meritocracy that sets Cooper Union apart from other private institutions.

Saar Shemesh, a 21-year-old transfer student, said from inside Bharucha's office, "The way I see it, these students that will be coming in 2014 ... they don't have a voice yet. They're still 16-year-olds in high school right now, and if we don't fight for them, nobody will. ... We're already here. We don't have to fight to be here, but we need to fight for the people that aren't here yet and that have dreamt of coming to this school for their entire lives, like we had."

While students initially entered the building to present a letter to the president citing a vote of "no confidence" on behalf of the School of Art, Bharucha exited the building before being confronted by the protesters. Upon arriving at the empty office, students changed course and organized a sit-in, stating that they would remain until receiving a response from the administration. The response they got was not what they were looking for: a threat of expulsion for all students involved in the protest. This threat is currently being reassessed.

"First and foremost, we want him to resign," Shemesh said of the issues with Bharucha and the administration. "We don't feel that he's fit to run the school. We want tuition to be revoked. We want more transparency with the Board of Trustees, potentially a new Board of Trustees. We want mostly transparency and fairness. We want representation of student voices in administrative policies and processes for decision-making. We want a more open institution."

Kerry Carnahan, a spokeswoman for the advocacy group Friends of Cooper Union, shared a statement announcing the group's solidarity with student protesters: "We have come to realize that the President and board have their own financial, ideological priorities that don't add up with what the majority of us understand Cooper Union to be -- ideas that don't align with the ideals the school was founded on."

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