This day, May 6, 2008, I spot a front page headline in my local New Jersey paper, The Trenton Times that reads: Ewing H.S vote is void a second time. I had previously commented on my hometown high school’s senior class elections in a prior post, so I read on.
Seven students, one black and Hispanic, […]
This day, April 29, 2008, I spot a front page headline in my local New Jersey paper, The Trenton Times that reads: Students kept off ballot: District to explore race factor while rescheduling vote. Our local races for school board took place last week, so I thought this was an aftermath.
I was wrong: It […]
On April 17, I checked my inbox and found a message from a reader who had read the previous day’s column on the JP Morgan/Chase decision to discontinue lending to schools with historically low repayment rates.
I had pointed out that Chase’s spokesperson refused to list the affected schools, but that borrowers deserved to know. I […]
On April 16, JP Morgan/Chase Manhattan, the bank that recently worked with the Fed to acquire the former Bear Stearns investment bank, announced that they will not be making student loans to entering or continuing students enrolled at schools that have a poor repayment rate. Yet their spokesperson refused to mention the schools that would […]
While I went out on a long limb to suggest that Rudy Giuliani may be the best running mate for Republican presidential candidate John McCain, I am at a loss to guess who would run with whom on the Democratic ticket. The highly competitive race between Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Barack Obama has […]
I am not on the inside of any presidential campaign, but I consider myself to be a good student of politics. And as a writer, I have the luxury of going against the grain on campaigns and issues. I am also not a Republican — so I don’t expect the leaders of the Grand Old […]
The media has passed enough judgment on former New York governor Elliott Spitzer and I agree with the pundits on all sides; there’s no possible defense for his extracurricular behavior and he is not above the law.
But these past events show that we must consider the behavior that we expect from our elected officials in […]
When I became a writer, I started and then I stopped working a story on bullying. I felt that readers would not be sympathetic with a male main character who was the butt of abuse, practical jokes and malicious innuendos. After reading about a college site called JuicyCampus and taking a look at comments on […]
Shortly after I heard about President Bush’s proposal for Pell Grants for low-income children to attend parochial schools, I finished reading More than a Dream: The Christo Rey Story, a inspirational book about the founding of the first Christo Rey Jesuit high school in Chicago’s Pilsen/Little Village neighborhood.
More than a Dream is a history of […]
In 1980, the Reagan Revolution meant not only a reconsideration of sex education, but also a reconsideration of the theory of evolution. Back then, the alternative theory was called creationism or scientific creationism; today it’s called intelligent design. I am no scientist, but I have issues with teaching intelligent design as science.
Intelligent design revolves around […]