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College Students ‘in Tears’ Over a Banana Peel in a Tree – This Is the Ridiculous Reason Why

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By The Blaze. An off-campus Greek Life event held by leaders of Ole Miss last weekend was cancelled after many students became troubled by a banana peel, which was hanging from a campus tree. . .

Ole Miss Greek Life leaders cut their three-day leadership retreat to nearby Camp Hopewell short after black students discovered a banana peel dangling in a tree outside of one of the camp’s cabins.

The banana peel was later spotted by Alpha Kappa Alpha President, Makala McNeil, a leader from one of the campus’s historically black sororities.

The Daily Mississippian reported that McNeil had just left a group discussion about race relations when she spotted the banana peel in the tree. . .

In a letter obtained by The Daily Mississippian, Arndt was quoted as saying that “members of our community were hurt, frightened, and upset by what occurred.” (Read more from “College Students ‘in Tears’ Over a Banana Peel in a Tree – This Is the Ridiculous Reason Why” HERE)

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Ole Miss Greek Life Retreat Ends Abruptly With Bias Concerns

By The Daily Mississippian. This weekend, leaders from Ole Miss Greek life convened upon Camp Hopewell in Lafayette County for a three-day retreat designed to build leaders and bring campus closer together. The retreat was cut short Saturday night, however, after three black students found a banana peel in a tree in front of one of the camp’s cabins.

The students shared what they found with National Pan-Hellenic Council leaders, sparking a day’s worth of camp-wide conversation surrounding symbolism, intended or not. In the midst of the open and sometimes heated discussion, senior accounting major Ryan Swanson said he put the banana peel in the tree when he could not find a trashcan nearby. . .

“To be clear, many members of our community were hurt, frightened, and upset by what occurred at IMPACT … Because of the underlying reality many students of color endure on a daily basis, the conversation manifested into a larger conversation about race relations today at the University of Mississippi,” Arndt wrote in the letter acquired by The DM. . .

“It was so strange and surreal to see it there,” McNeil said. “We were all just sort of paranoid for a second.” (Read more from “Ole Miss Greek Life Retreat Ends Abruptly With Bias Concerns” HERE)

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University Student Investigated for Border Patrol Halloween Costume

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By Daily Wire. On Tuesday, in the middle of final exam week, a student from West Virginia University was sent an emailed letter from an assistant dean notifying him that he is “the subject of an investigation regarding alleged prohibited conduct.”

In the letter (attached below), Assistant Dean LiDell Evans informed Joseph Cortese, a fourth-year student, that he was required to attend a meeting on Friday concerning an investigation about a photo he posted on Instagram of himself dressed as a Border Patrol agent for Halloween.

“This letter serves to put you on notice that pursuant to section 9.2 of the Student Conduct Code and Discipline Procedure for the Main Campus of West Virginia University, you are the subject of an investigation regarding alleged prohibited conduct,” Evans wrote. . .

The photo, which Cortese agreed to share with The Daily Wire…, shows him handcuffing a female student who dressed up with him for Halloween. Cortese is wearing an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement black hat and a Border Patrol T-shirt, while the female is wearing what Cortese says is an alien costume with a piece of paper attached to her shirt that reads “illegal.” . . .

“The West Virginia University Office of Student Conduct received a complaint claiming the student was posting ‘vulgar hateful Instagrams’ but did not single out what was ‘vulgar’ or ‘hateful’ about them,” WVU said in a statement to The Daily Wire. “The Office followed standard procedure, including the timing, to follow up on the complaint and talk with the student. The Office tries to wrap up any matters before students leave campus at the end of each semester. No charges or disciplinary action was taken and the matter is now closed.” (Read more from “University Student Investigated for Border Patrol Halloween Costume” HERE)

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West Virginia U. Student Investigated for Wearing ‘Border Patrol’ Outfit

By The College Fix. . .The letter stated Cortese was to attend a meeting about the matter today (he did), but if he could not do so it was imperative he contact Evans’ office.

The penalty for non-compliance could have been his student account being put on “hold.” (Read more from “West Virginia U. Student Investigated for Wearing ‘Border Patrol’ Outfit” HERE)

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Watch: Students Offered $100 to Name Just One Time Conservatives Shut Down a Progressive Campus Speaker

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On Tuesday, Campus Reform’s Cabot Phillips spoke with students at the University of Georgia to see if any of them could name a single time conservatives “shut down a liberal speaker on campus” like progressives often shut down conservative speakers.

Phillips even sweetened the pot, offering a cool $100 to anyone who could provide a sufficient answer. . .

Later in the video, two students attempt to push back, arguing that progressive views are “more palatable” and “less hate-fueled.” Another student claimed that Phillips’ argument was a “red herring,” then backtracked, then couldn’t articulate why he disagreed with Phillips.

(Read more from “Watch: Students Offered $100 to Name Just One Time Conservatives Shut Down a Progressive Campus Speaker” HERE)

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These College Students Aren’t Voting. You Won’t Believe Why.

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By The Daily Wire. Democrats are relying on young voters to turn out in record numbers to preserve the so-called “blue wave” in November. But if college students in Virginia are any indication, getting kids to vote may be harder than it seems.

According to local news station WTOP, Fairfax County college students aren’t likely to return their absentee ballots because “a U.S. Postal Service stamp seems to be a foreign concept to them.” . . .

Apparently, members of a focus group convened in Fairfax County agreed. The college students who turned up to explain to Fairfax County officials why so few of their friends vote had a “spirited conversation” on the subject of finding, obtaining, and using stamps to send “snail mail.”

This is bad news for Democrats, who need the largely liberal college student demographic to vote in areas that aren’t “safe” blue zones. Either that, or they’ll have to start including self-addressed stamped envelopes in absentee voter packages. (Read more from “These College Students Aren’t Voting. You Won’t Believe Why.” HERE)

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Why College Students Don’t Vote Absentee? They Don’t Know Where to Buy a Postage Stamp

By WTOP. “Vote or die.” Unless, it’s too hard to find a stamp.

A Fairfax County focus group this summer found many college students who have gotten an absentee ballot simply fail to send it back because a U.S. Postal Service stamp seems to be a foreign concept to them.

“One thing that came up, which I had heard from my own kids but I thought they were just nerdy, was that the students will go through the process of applying for a mail-in absentee ballot, they will fill out the ballot, and then, they don’t know where to get stamps,” Lisa Connors with the Fairfax County Office of Public Affairs said.

“That seems to be like a hump that they can’t get across.”

The focus group included college interns from across numerous county departments. (Read more from “Why College Students Don’t Vote Absentee? They Don’t Know Where to Buy a Postage Stamp” HERE)

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After Agonizing Deaths, Parents Move to Toughen Hazing Laws

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Tim Piazza and Marquise Braham told their parents they just wanted to make some new friends by joining fraternities while away at college.

Neither got much of a chance: They died before their 20th birthdays, after brutal fraternity hazing rituals.

Now their parents are launching a nationwide anti-hazing campaign, and after too many similar deaths, national leaders of fraternities and sororities are joining them.

“I know it might seem strange to some people that families who lost their children to fraternity hazing are now working with fraternities and sororities to eradicate hazing,” Piazza’s father, Jim, said by phone Sunday from New York, where he, Braham’s father, and other parents were preparing for a series of Monday morning TV appearances to announce their campaign.

“But,” added Piazza, “we will do anything that we can to save a life and to prevent another shattered family.”

His 19-year-old son died an agonizing death last year after he was ordered to binge-drink 80-proof vodka until he became so intoxicated that he fell repeatedly, including down a flight of stairs, and was left to writhe in pain for hours before medical help was summoned.

More than two dozen members of Piazza’s Beta Theta Pi fraternity at Pennsylvania State University were arrested, but all felony charges, including manslaughter, were eventually dropped. Three people have since pleaded guilty to misdemeanors.

“Currently the system — and that’s the police, the district attorneys, the judges — they seem to view hazing as it’s kind of like kids’ stuff,” said Rich Braham, whose 18-year-old son committed suicide in 2014 after a brutal bout of hazing that he’d complained about to school officials.

These fathers say they were delighted when, after reaching out to the North American Interfraternity Conference, they found an ally in its president and CEO, Judson Horras, who also brought aboard his National Panhellenic Conference counterpart, Carole Jones.

Their organizations together represent nearly 100 fraternities and sororities nationwide.

One of the first orders of business for this new coalition, Horras says, is to press legislatures in all 50 states to toughen anti-hazing laws. They want lawmakers to make it a felony to force a student to consume alcohol during an initiation.

While some legislatures have been slow to toughen such laws in the past, Horras says he’s confident Greek organizations can sway them.

“Keep in mind fraternities and sororities have 9.1 million students and alumni as members,” Horras said. “That’s part of the network we’re building now to make this happen across North America.”

His organizing is also confronting the booze issue itself. By this time next year, he said, hard liquor of 15-proof or more will be banned from all IFC frat houses.

The new coalition also plans to have parents like Piazza and Braham speak to as many as 25,000 college students this academic year about the dangers of hazing, and to have members of Greek societies themselves speak to high school and middle school students.

“We realize that it takes many years to change a culture and we’re committed to the long haul,” said Piazza. “We’re not going away. We’ll be here next year, the year after, the year after that.” (Read more from “After Agonizing Deaths, Parents Move to Toughen Hazing Laws” HERE)

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University Studies Conjuring Demons, ‘Fairies’

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Researchers at the University of Exeter in the U.K. are studying the casting of spells from collections of literature from the 15th to 17th centuries to summon demons and “fairies” to uncover their secrets.

This period, starting in the late medieval times, saw the writing of many books giving instructions on how to perform sorcery and necromancy, and fairies played an important role.

Ph.D. candidate Samuel Gillis Hogan, 26, will begin trawling through ancient manuscripts in many of England’s libraries to find evidence and records of how people thought they could harness the power of “fairies” over the 300-year period, and what influence this had on people’s lives and culture. . .

“It shows much about beliefs at the time,” Hogan added. “By fully understanding these practices, we can often reconstruct how it was perfectly rational given contemporary beliefs. It’s easy to look down our noses at past or present cultures and dismiss them as ‘backwards’ or ‘primitive’, but intimately understanding these very different worldviews emphasizes that our own is simply one among many.”

Among the common theories about “fairies,” says Hogan, are that they were demoted angels, spirits of the dead, prehistoric human precursors and minor deities in pagan beliefs. He emphasizes that they were not always considered as virtuous, particularly as Puritanism grew after the Reformation in the 16th century. The spell books that will be studied to conjure fairies, demons and other spirits were used, he says, for both for noble and nefarious purposes. (Read more from “University Studies Conjuring Demons, ‘Fairies'” HERE)

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Black Student Suspended, Allegedly Told He ‘Looked Like Someone Who Might Commit Sexual Assault’

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An African-American graduate student at the University of Missouri was suspended after asking a white woman on a date. He had been previously accused of sexual misconduct, but was found not responsible. He claims an administrator told him during the first investigation that he “looked like someone who might commit sexual assault.” . . .

The student, identified in court documents as John Doe, was a doctoral candidate in Cultural Anthropology, and took dance fitness classes at the Student Recreation Center. During the 2015-2016 school year, John developed what he thought was a friendship with a female fitness class instructor (The Daily Wire is not naming her since it is not naming the accused student). John asked the instructor on a date in April 2016, and claims she said she was busy but discussed going out later that month. On April 18, she sent John a message asking him “to stop making romantic advances toward her,” according to his lawsuit. She did, however, indicate that she still wanted him to attend her dance classes and wanted their friendship to remain professional.

John apologized and said he would keep their relationship professional. That fall, he asked the instructor to recommend YouTube videos that could help him improve his dance technique. She suggested he take private lessons, but that she did not teach private lessons. For the next week, the instructor avoided John during her classes. . .

After this, Rec Center Associate Director Emily Bach McElwaine told Mizzou’s Title IX office that John had harassed and stalked four women who worked at the rec center, including the instructor. She apparently sent in allegations on behalf of three other women.

On October 20, the instructor was interviewed and said that John’s communications were “bizarre” and made her “uncomfortable.” On November 7, 2016, Title IX investigator Amber Lammers sent John a notice that he was being investigated for sexual harassment and stalking. John said during his interview with Lammers that he was concerned about the involvement of Salama Gallimore, who had, according to John, told him during a previous Title IX investigation that he “looked like someone who might commit sexual assault.” John was assured Gallimore would not be involved in this investigation. (Read more from “Black Student Suspended, Allegedly Told He ‘Looked Like Someone Who Might Commit Sexual Assault'” HERE)

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What College Students Say About Their Campuses When They’re Allowed to Be Honest

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As far back as 1965, George Harrison urged his listeners, “Think for yourself.” That was good, countercultural advice at the time, and it seems it still is. But the counterculture has since shifted right, especially on college campuses.

In the wake of the American Civil Liberties Union’s disappointing decision to embrace free speech relativism, I found myself in a room filled with free speech champions late last week. The Network of Enlightened Women, a national book club for conservative college women and recent graduates, had gathered in our nation’s capital for their annual conference.

Attendees heard about a broad array of issues, including: women’s rights overseas, human trafficking, paid family leave, where feminism went wrong, and #adulting. However, the gathering’s single most important message was on the importance of free speech, including a defense of independent thought and respectful dialogue across political divides. . .

In speaking to attendees, I met multiple women who had experienced such one-sided teaching on campuses across the country. Several told stories of watching their grades improve by parroting liberal pieties in final exam essays, rather than sharing their own beliefs, because such “wrong” answers lost points. Of course, being called out as “wrong” in front of a whole class is worse, and when Flanagan took questions, one student described being put on the spot by a professor who dismissed her as racist, simply because she is conservative. . .

While upperclassmen and recent graduates reported that it’s never been easy to be a campus conservative, only one student thought things had not noticeably deteriorated since Trump won the presidency. A Syracuse Law student recounted a professor’s turning class into a group therapy session the day after the 2016 election, so students could vent. An undergraduate from Temple University recalled fellow students literally rioting in Philadelphia that same day. (Read more from “What College Students Say About Their Campuses When They’re Allowed to Be Honest” HERE)

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Opinion: Today’s Campuses Are Worse Than Sodom and Gomorrah

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British philosopher G.K. Chesterton predicted in 1926 that the “next great heresy is going to be simply an attack on morality; and especially on sexual morality…. The madness of tomorrow is not in Moscow but much more in Manhattan.” Philosopher C.S. Lewis, the foundation for whose conversion to Christianity (from atheism) was born of reading Chesterton’s books, once observed, “Sex is not messed up because it was put in the closet; it was put in the closet because it was messed up.” And just recently, at an early April conference at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, University of Virginia (UVA) religious studies Professor Vigen Guroian complained of higher education’s hypocrisy. Pointing out that colleges do in fact act in loco parentis, heavily policing alcohol and drug use, he asks why they also don’t police promiscuity. The short answer: When a heresy holds sway it becomes orthodoxy, at least for a time — and you don’t question orthodoxy.

Yet forget about policing promiscuity. Today’s colleges actually encourage it to a point of almost making Sodom and Gomorrah look saintly. Consider that the Ivy League’s Yale University hosted rapper Elizabeth Eden Harris, who goes by the moniker “cupcakKe,” at its April Spring Fling celebration. One student commentator called her emanations “sins, not songs” and “musical porn, plain and simple,” as she “sings about violent sex, oral sex, and having genitalia ‘like I’m eight,’” reports an April 11 College Fix headline. The details are even worse, but I’ll spare you.

Two days earlier, the College Fix reported that the “University of Tennessee at Knoxville is hosting ‘Sex Week’ [April 6 through 12] at which students will learn about a wide variety of sexual practices and topics,” including a class “titled ‘Butt Stuff 2.0: The Pegging,’” which we’ll not describe here. The Fix also informs, “Other events during the week include an art exhibit titled ‘Send Nudes ;),’ a cabaret show, and a workshop about ‘Black Liberation through Sexual Pleasure.’… Workshops such as ‘Masturbation Nation,’ ‘Trans Convo Starter Pack,’ ‘Tinder and Tea,’ and the ‘Science of Abortion’ are also on the schedule.”

Far from the above being an outlier, university Sex Week events are common today. For example, Campus Reform reported four years ago that the “University of Chicago is kicking off Sex Week 2014 with a ‘Lascivious Ball’ in which students will not be required to wear clothing.” In 2015, the College Fix informed that “Harvard University will soon mark its annual ‘Sex Week’ observance, which this year features a workshop on how to navigate sex involving bondage and sadomasochism in the dorms — complete with whips and floggers.” And in March, the publication told us that the “annual ‘Sex Week’ at Northwestern University will feature a Chicago-based dominatrix named ‘Lady Sophia’ who will teach the students various BDSM practices.” (Read more from “Opinion: Today’s Campuses Are Worse Than Sodom and Gomorrah” HERE)

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Why Millions of College Kids Are Mentally Disabled

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“As many as one in four students at some elite U.S. colleges are now classified as disabled, largely because of mental-health issues such as depression or anxiety,” starts the Wall Street Journal’s recent report on the alarmingly high level of mental disorders and psychological problems currently plaguing America’s college students.

The Journal cites a few examples: California’s Pomona College has “22 percent of students … considered disabled this year, up from 5 percent in 2014.” At three Massachusetts colleges – Hampshire, Amherst and Smith – as well as Yeshiva University in New York, “one in five students are classified as disabled. At Oberlin College in Ohio, it’s one in four. At Marlboro College in Vermont, it’s one in three.” Think about that – one in every three students legally classified as “disabled.” (All it takes is a note from one’s doctor.)

Then there’s New York’s Vassar, Oregon’s Reed, Massachusetts’ Mount Holyoke and the University of Vermont, all with 16 percent of students psychologically disabled. At Haverford it’s 15 percent, Stanford 14 percent, Brown 12 percent, Yale 11 percent and Columbia 8 percent. . .

While a society like today’s America, which is increasingly divided, angry and morally rudderless, naturally gives rise to a multitude of factors that can and do contribute to psychological problems in college students, what is all but ignored in most reporting is the toxic nature of the college experience itself. . .

Do you suppose all this might promote “mental-health issues”? For countless young people, their college experience annihilates their innocence and sows within them tremendous inner conflict, anxiety, guilt and self-loathing. This conflict, in turn, is often breezily diagnosed as “depression” and masked with powerful and poorly understood psychiatric drugs with fearsome side effects. (Read more from “Why Millions of College Kids Are Mentally Disabled” HERE)

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