Author: James A. Bacon
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What the School-Discipline Meltdown Looked like in Newport News
by James A. Bacon A special grand jury investigating a six-year-old’s shooting of a teacher at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News has released its report, and the findings are almost as horrifying as the shooting itself. The grand jury indicted Richneck’s assistant principal Ebony Parker on eight counts of child abuse. It is the…
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UVA Report Finds No Pay Inequity for Black, Hispanic Profs
by James A. Bacon The Racial Equity Task Force, a 2020 document that transformed governance at the University of Virginia, listed 12 top priorities for addressing the legacy of historical racism. One was to address “serious challenges to racial equity in staff hiring, wages, retention, promotion, and procurement” by auditing where policies and procedures might…
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Jewish Parents Decry Double Standards at UVA
by James A. Bacon A half year after Hamas terrorists assaulted Israel, hostility at the University of Virginia toward Israel and Jews is unrelenting, according to parents of Jewish students there. In collaboration with other parents, Julie Pearl complained in a letter Tuesday to Rector Robert Hardie that a “blatant double standard against Jewish students…
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Anarchy Visits Another School
by James A. Bacon Teachers don’t feel safe in Albemarle High School, reports The Daily Progress. Within one recent week, a student punched a teacher in the face so hard he (or she) required medical treatment, while another student issued threats against teachers and classmates via social media and email. The newspaper reports other incidents…
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UVA As a “Maze of Predatory Systems”
by James A. Bacon If you visit the latest exhibit at the University of Virginia’s Ruffin Gallery, “EscapeRoom,” it takes no more than five or ten seconds for the artists’ message to sink in — the amount of time it takes to read the signage at the entrance: The University of Virginia (UVA) is a…
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In Their Own Words: Jefferson, Whiteness, and Dicks in the Sky
Meet Marisa Williamson. The Harvard-educated assistant professor in the University of Virginia art department works in video, image-making, installation and performance art around themes of “history, race, feminism, and technology,” according to her UVA faculty page. Most recently, she co-curated the EscapeRoom exhibition at the Ruffin Gallery, which we highlight in a companion article.…
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Factoid of the Day: Nation’s Worst Mail Delivery
How bad is on-time mail delivery to Central Virginia? According to U.S. Post Office inspector general figures, it is the worst in the country. Postal service is so bad that a Richmond electoral official warned voters not to risk letting their ballots, in the words of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, “be swallowed by a dysfunctional Postal…
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VCU Wins Free Speech “Green Light” Rating
by James A. Bacon Congratulations to Virginia Commonwealth University for winning a “green light” rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) after making conscientious efforts to improve its formal free-speech policies. VCU is now one of five universities in Virginia and only 64 nationwide with the designation. Since 2018, VCU revised several…