| Blog and Media Roundup - Wednesday, February 7, 2018; News Roundup | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Feb 7 2018, 05:12 AM (118 Views) | |
| abb | Feb 7 2018, 05:12 AM Post #1 |
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http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2018/02/2018-icon-michael-gustafson 2018 Icon: Michael Gustafson By Staff Reports | 02/07/2018 Michael Gustafson, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, is an icon in the Pratt School of Engineering. Gustafson first came to Duke as an undergraduate, earning his bachelor of science in engineering in 1993. He stayed in Durham for his M.S. (’98) and Ph.D. (‘99). But even after earning three degrees from Duke, he couldn’t get away. Gustafson planted his roots in Durham and received his first appointment as a Duke faculty member in 2005. As an associate professor of the practice, one of his primary interests is undergraduate course development. The navy veteran is well-known among Pratt students for his passion for teaching first-years in Computational Methods in Engineering, and he’s taught more than 5,000 students during his time at Duke. In addition to his pedagogical presence on campus, Gustafson—affectionately called Dr. G—is also well-known by students in online meme groups. He’s been the subject of a handful of memes on the Duke Memes for Gothicc Teens page, and even contributed a few of his own. A t-shirt bearing a graphic of his face and the caption “started from the bottom floor of Teer” has also become popular in Pratt. The professor is popular for his commitment to his students, which was recognized by the University when he was given the the McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising in 2005. |
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| abb | Feb 7 2018, 05:19 AM Post #2 |
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http://www.detroitnews.com/story/sports/columnists/lynn-henning/2018/02/06/henning-death-penalty-msu-expert-predicts/110171938/ Henning: No ‘death penalty’ for MSU, expert predicts Lynn Henning, The Detroit News Published 10:00 p.m. ET Feb. 6, 2018 | Updated 4:23 a.m. ET Feb. 7, 2018 When questions were put to a man about Michigan State, and governance, Keith Molin’s response was rapid and comprehensive. How serious, he was asked, might be sanctions in the aftermath of Larry Nassar’s crimes? “I can give you a definitive answer to one of those questions,” Molin said this week during a nearly two-hour interview. “There will be no death penalty. First of all, the NCAA can only issue a death penalty if there’s a second major violation of rules and the university has already been punished for the first one. There has to be a repeat. And with respect to Michigan State, that’s out of the question, and even if it wasn’t, that’s not going to happen.” Before detailing one man’s expertise and experience, it should be noted Molin sees no job peril for MSU’s celebrity coaches, Tom Izzo and Mark Dantonio, neither of whom are complicit in the Nassar sex abuse case. The two coaches’ handling of past sex assault cases at MSU, which were questioned by an ESPN “Outside the Lines” report, are not, in Molin’s view, likely to create serious problems for either coach or sport. Rather, a lack of transparency, overall, most of it attached to the Nassar timeline, is perhaps MSU’s failing. More:MSU guard Walton’s accuser speaks up on 2010 pub fracas Molin’s credentials and past study of university athletics are why he was asked this week to speak about MSU’s headlines. He is a former senior associate athletic director at the University of Michigan. He later worked as an associate AD at the University of Pittsburgh. He is an Upper Peninsula native and longtime Republican operative who 40 years ago was state commerce director under then-Gov. William G. Milliken. Molin says another former governor, John Engler, who is now MSU’s interim president after the resignation of Lou Anna Simon, will need two years to wade a steam of political and legal entanglements and deal with MSU’s problematic Board of Trustees, all before a new president and AD are hired. By that time there should be resolution to MSU’s status with investigators from the NCAA and the federal government. “The NCAA — you have to treat the NCAA like the Keystone Kops,” Molin said of a body that announced two weeks ago it will be scanning MSU for possible violations. “They’re going to come in and get in the way, and they’ll find a manner, ultimately, to say there really are no serious violations. “One area, of course, in which the NCAA could act would be lack of institutional control. And a second pertains to the health, welfare and safety of students. But the NCAA really is not the entity to issue those penalties.” Molin agrees with those who say there could be a loss of federal funding when the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights investigates MSU for Title IX violations tied to misreporting of student complaints against Nassar. But that, Molin submits, could work to injure the very objective the OCR is supposed to uphold: equal rights, protection, and security for students. Other issues Molin personally knows many cast members at Michigan State, including since-departed athletic director Mark Hollis. He is versed in NCAA policy and procedures from his days in Ann Arbor and at Pitt. He understands the way in which MSU’s Board of Trustees functions — or rather, too often, fails to function. He knows the state capitol. He is what might be considered a Milliken Republican, progressive and bipartisan in a way politicians tended to be in Michigan decades ago, rather than a John Engler Republican of more rigid conservatism. Molin and Engler are friends who don’t always share views on political policy. He agrees with those who find “unsettling” MSU’s appointment of Engler, who during his years as governor was regarded as no great friend to education. He says the same word — “unsettling” — applies in the farming-out to attorney general Bill Schuette’s office an investigation into Nassar’s misdeeds and MSU’s role in Nassar’s abhorrent abuse of more than 200 women. Those acts, which victims confronted in searing fashion for a nation and a world to hear during courtroom testimony at Nassar’s sentencing hearing, have sent a doctor to prison for a lifetime. It is suggested inside legal circles that Michigan State ultimately will pay damages to survivors that could total hundreds of millions of dollars. “But other issues come into play,” Molin said. “There are broader consequences to consider.” Separate consequences already have been realized. They explain Simon’s resignation last month and Hollis’ retirement two days later. Reporting of incidents. Reporting of suspicions. Or failure to report. Or failure to act. Whatever the degree of responsibility or potential culpability, Simon and Hollis are gone. Izzo found himself two weeks ago clumsily trying to answer reporters’ questions that should have been steered away by firm “no comment” responses. But that is quite isolated from what took place with Nassar when records say 14 people were aware of his misdeeds and failed to properly report victims’ complaints, according to a Detroit News report. 010418-dy-MDvMSUmbkb0411 Mark Hollis’ celebrated creativity included getting football coach Mark Dantonio, above. Keith Molin said Michigan State’s AD position now “is tainted,” and predicts a permanent successor is two years away. (Photo: Dale G. Young / Detroit News) Where problems at Michigan State become further complicated, Molin acknowledged, is the historically nettlesome relationship between MSU’s trustees and MSU’s executives — and the question as to which people have been in charge. That must change, Molin said, with a new university president, and with a new AD. It is a question, he said, of whether Michigan State’s intellectual and academic culture, which includes sports, can separate itself from a Board of Trustees long perceived as being meddlesome and political. Michigan remains the only state whose top universities are overseen by boards popularly elected. Engler’s mission, Molin suggested, is to change that culture even before new leaders arrive in East Lansing, and even if it seems to his critics as if Engler is the last person who should be entrusted to changing a political landscape. A necessary question from those wedded to the Spartans’ sports fate is whether MSU is the job it was during Hollis’ heyday. Hollis was regarded as something of a creative genius who, among his talents, either helped get MSU’s prime-time coaches (Dantonio) or helped retain them (Izzo). No program in the country was producing simultaneous football and basketball glory for as many years as MSU has enjoyed during the Dantonio-Izzo era. A college athletic department, overall, tapped into the grandeur. Until, that is, Nassar’s horrors surfaced. Different job now “Before this happened, Mark Hollis’ job was perceived by the outside world as 24-carat, no question,” Molin said. “Today that job is tainted. It’s soiled. “What doesn’t change is that Michigan State remains a 24-carat institution of higher education and is the flagship of land-grant universities. There’s some litter on the deck that must be cleaned up, but it’s a 24-carat university with a 24-carat legacy, and it will be that again once the athletic directorship is restructured and redesigned. “But that’s going to depend on the route the president, the Board of Trustees, and the new athletic director together craft.” Michigan State has already said, in non-surprising news, that it will be looking nationally for a new AD and that no internal candidates will be considered. Who, precisely, the university can attract when so much commotion exists today, and when penalties or enormous settlements loom, is another question. “My guess is, the new and permanent AD at Michigan State will be someone who today is a senior assistant somewhere who’s ready to become an AD,” Molin said. “I don’t think it can happen for two years. “I will be surprised if it’s someone who has been an AD at Power Five (school) who would be leaving for MSU. Because it will be a different kind of AD’s job.” There must, Molin said, be less independence for MSU’s athletic director, less independence perhaps for Dantonio and Izzo, and more attachment to that academic/administrative level, all of which should operate at MSU with greater separation from the Board of Trustees’ influence. There is more potency to the Engler appointment than people commonly understand, Molin said. And that comes in the person of Carol Morey Viventi, a former Michigan Department of Civil Rights deputy director whom Engler appointed MSU vice president and special counsel. “That was a great move by John, naming Carol Viventi,” Molin said. “She is really good, objective, and you may find something (constructive) in that path.” Penn State is a two-tiered testament, Molin says, to MSU’s realities in 2018. The NCAA initially dropped a nuclear bomb on PSU because of Jerry Sandusky’s sexual abuse of boys. Heavy fines, probation, losses of scholarships — penalties rained that were destined to ravage the school for decades. The NCAA later eased up. Some sanctions were lifted. The NCAA isn’t interested in repeating at MSU a Penn State overreach, Molin insists. Penn State, meanwhile, got new leadership, as well as a new model for governing. The school’s football team is back. The university is flourishing. Another land-grant university, farther to the east, deals today with a doctor’s wider crimes. Healing survivors, to the extent possible, is one obligation, with some of that redress destined to come from litigation. Another step remains. Merging energies. Making an athletic department and a university, at-large, whole and united in ensuring there are no more Nassars, no more victims, no more courtroom words that break a wider world’s hearts. lynn.henning@detroitnews.com twitter.com/lynn_henning |
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| abb | Feb 7 2018, 05:20 AM Post #3 |
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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/456157/campus-kangaroo-courts-history Campus Kangaroo Courts: Blame Colleges, Not Just the Federal Government Schools were engaging in these practices long before anyone made them. By Naomi Schaefer Riley — February 7, 2018 Serving on a panel that hears Title IX sexual-assault complaints on college campuses sounds like a full-time job. According to a recent story in the Chronicle of Higher Education, at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater, students, faculty, and staff who volunteer “are trained in the Wisconsin system’s conduct code, which is written into state law. They also complete an annual course on sexual assault and sexual misconduct, developed by system lawyers. [They learn] about the definitions of sexual misconduct and related terms . . . the nuances of consent and on trauma-informed questioning.” If universities don’t train panelists according to rules set by the federal Department of Education, they could be accused of contributing to the very “hostile environment” they are meant to combat. At large schools with a lot of faculty and administrators it may be easier to spare someone to serve in such a role — the University of Virginia has 50 people who have been trained to do so. But at smaller schools, things are harder. Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Hampshire, and UMass Amherst band together and loan each other administrators to serve on such panels. According to the Chronicle, one college couldn’t find anyone to serve, so it had to get its librarian to oversee hearings. Schools may lament that this training is both time-consuming and costly, but they have only themselves to blame. Sure, the federal government imposes these requirements today, but it was colleges that started us down this road. Disciplinary panels — including ones that involved students — were set up in the ’60s and ’70s to adjudicate violations of schools’ honor codes, such as plagiarism. But as university faculty and administration began to see their role as more expansive, these panels experienced “mission creep” and started hearing cases of actual crimes. In 1980, University of Virginia assistant dean of students Edward Golden looked into how colleges were handling these matters. Among the 58 institutions he surveyed, 36 percent did not allow cross-examination, 55 percent did not guarantee an impartial judge or jury, 60 percent did not guarantee students the right to confront their accusers, and 91 percent did not make witnesses testify. In 1999, with their book Shadow University, Harvey Silverglate and Alan Kors documented how colleges across the country had created disciplinary systems that violated students’ due-process rights. Decades later, schools are paying lip service to the idea of neutrality. At the University of Virginia, for instance, panelists are trained in “how to determine credibility; how to evaluate evidence and weigh it in an impartial manner; how to conduct prompt, fair, impartial, and thorough investigations and hearings that ensure due process, protect community and individual safety, and promote accountability [and] confidentiality.” But this is absurd: We have an extensive legal system that is trained to deal with exactly such matters. There are police who are trained to “conduct prompt, fair, impartial, and thorough investigations,” judges who understand “how to evaluate evidence and weigh it in an impartial manner.” There are lawyers who spend years studying how to “promote accountability” and assure “confidentiality.” It is true that we do not give jurors in courtrooms “training” in these matters before deciding guilt or innocence, but the campus panelists are acting like judges, too, in these instances. The results of these training efforts have been predictable. As Stuart Taylor and K. C. Johnson, the authors of The Campus Rape Frenzy, wrote last year, “Since nothing in the experience of most academics prepares them to competently investigate an offense that’s a felony in all 50 states, it makes sense to train those who are assigned to investigate campus sexual-assault allegations. But the ideological regimes used on many campuses are designed more to stack the deck against accused students than to ensure a fair inquiry.” Indeed, the basic instructions we give to juries are superior to the “training” that is being offered to these students and professors. For instance, rather than being told that a suspect is innocent until proven guilty, some of these panelists are presented with documents suggesting the accused are probably guilty. Panelists at the University of Pennsylvania have been told that “false allegations of rape are not common” and that the false report rate is “between 2% and 10%.” And while jurors in state and federal courts are asked to use common sense and experience to determine a witness’s credibility, panelists for these campus courts are told that victims often change their stories from one day to the next or that victims may simply be unable to attempt to resist such an attack. Some administrators are finally seeing the folly in trying to teach 19-year-old drama majors and busy research faculty to properly adjudicate these cases. “If my full-time job is being a physics professor, understanding the nuances of sexual assault and the impact of sexual assault or what it’s like to be an accused person — that’s just not in your wheelhouse,” one administrator told the Chronicle. But even if they were offered a liability-free way to return such cases to the courts, Silverglate, a civil-rights attorney in Boston, doubts they would: “College administrators won’t use the real criminal-justice system because they cannot control it.” And, he notes, “the process would be fair and hence the desired result could not be guaranteed.” As long as administrators see themselves as social engineers with the potential to right the world’s wrongs, it’s hard to imagine they will voluntarily cede any power. — Naomi Schaefer Riley is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Be the Parent, Please: Stop Banning Seesaws and Start Banning Snapchat. |
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| abb | Feb 7 2018, 05:24 AM Post #4 |
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https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Voters-to-decide-on-recall-of-judge-in-Stanford-12556195.php Voters to decide on recall of judge in Stanford sexual assault case By Jenna Lyons Updated 4:13 pm, Tuesday, February 6, 2018 Aaron Persky could become the first California judge recalled from the bench in 87 years if Santa Clara County voters sign off on his removal in June. On Tuesday, the county’s Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the recall measure’s inclusion on the primary election ballot after critics of the judge — who oversaw a controversial sexual assault case involving a Stanford swimmer — were able to submit tens of thousands of signatures to the Registrar of Voters. A group of recall organizers, led by Stanford law Professor Michele Dauber, clapped and cheered after the vote to certify the ballot measure at the county’s San Jose headquarters. “We’re extremely happy that our petition drive has succeeded,” Dauber said. “It’s truly a historic day. It’s a historic day for women and for all survivors of sexual violence.” Persky came under scrutiny in June 2016 when he sentenced Brock Turner to six months in jail after after the former Stanford swimmer was found guilty of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman outside a campus fraternity party. Prosecutors had argued for six years in prison, but Turner was released after three months. The case received national attention following Persky’s ruling and the publication of a letter that was read in court by the assault survivor. Organizers with the recall effort submitted a petition for Persky’s recall along with 94,518 signatures, well above the 58,634-signature threshold. “The voters are speaking loud and clear,” Dauber said. “They wanted to see Judge Persky on the ballot, and they want to have the opportunity to hold him accountable for his pattern of bias in favor of athletes and privileged perpetrators of violence against women.” In the back of the board chambers, a group of volunteers led by retired Santa Clara Superior Court Judge LaDoris Cordell held signs that opposed the recall. “This is a threat to the independence of the judiciary,” Cordell said. “That means that if there are judges who want to do the right thing — and the right thing may mean being compassionate, being lenient when composing a sentence — they’re going to think twice about doing what they believe to be right and following the law because of fear.” As a result, Cordell said, minority defendants who make up the majority of the county’s criminal cases will be disproportionately affected, as judges could be wary of handing out sentences that appear soft on crime. Cordell noted that the six-month sentence Persky handed down to Turner came at the probation department’s recommendation. Judges tend to follow these guidelines, she added, though there is no requirement to do so. “I don’t believe any judge sitting on the Santa Clara County bench would have imposed a different sentence,” Cordell said. The unanimous vote Tuesday added an additional question to the ballot that allows county voters to choose Persky’s successor in the event he is recalled. Wednesday will mark the first day that candidates can officially file papers to run for Persky’s seat. Candidates must submit 6,002 signatures from the community or pay roughly $2,000 to be placed on the ballot, according to the registrar. Signatures are due Feb. 20, and the deadline for placing a notice of intent to run is March 2. Cindy Hendrickson, an assistant district attorney for the county, is the only person who has publicly announced an intention to run. Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JennaJourno |
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| abb | Feb 7 2018, 05:26 AM Post #5 |
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http://www.mlive.com/spartans/index.ssf/2018/02/new_michigan_state_ad_vows_acc.html New Michigan State AD vows accountability, says Nassar survivors top priority Updated Feb 6, 11:40 AM; Posted Feb 6, 11:41 AM By Kyle Austin kyleaustin2@mlive.com The first public statement from Michigan State's new interim athletic director doesn't mention football or basketball or winning championships or any of the typical talking points of a new athletic director. Instead, Bill Beekman says in an open letter released on Tuesday that supporting the victims of Larry Nassar is his top priority in his new role and that he plans to "build a culture of accountability" within Michigan State. "I am committed to making sure we are doing all we can to provide a healthy and safe environment for student athletes, coaches, and staff," Beekman said. Beekman said he was "moved" by the Izzone recently wearing teal shirts to support sexual assault victims, and said the department will support Nassar victims and provide them "with the help they deserve." "In the coming weeks, as President Engler has said, we will be moving swiftly to implement changes that will protect anyone affiliated with MSU from sexual assault, harassment, or bullying," Beekman said. Beekman was appointed as Michigan State's interim athletic director on Monday by interim president John Engler. He takes over for Mark Hollis, who announced his resignation on Jan. 26. Beekman takes over as Michigan State is dealing with a multiple-front sexual assault crisis. Multiple former Michigan State athletes have publicly accused Nassar, the former Michigan State doctor, of sexually abusing them at Michigan State. ADVERTISING In addition, the athletic department has been accused of mishandling sexual assault complaints made against football and basketball players in an ESPN article published last month. The NCAA has launched an investigation into Michigan State's athletic department, and the Michigan Attorney General has launched an investigation into the school's handling of the Nassar situation that is expected to extend into the athletic department. Beekman was previously a Michigan State Vice President and Secretary of the Board of Trustees. |
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| Quasimodo | Feb 7 2018, 10:21 AM Post #6 |
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And an icon for another reason, as well. |
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