Dream Classroom

As a teacher, what is your primary concern for ensuring that your classroom is a place where all types of children can learn? What do you need to do to ensure this? Post your response to the discussion board.

There are many learning disorders out there: ADD, ADHD, Autism, full-blown mental retardation, Asberger's Syndrome, and other emotional and behavioral disorders. Einstein was said to have autism. The over-diagnosis of ADHD is attributable directly to the strict hierarchies of classrooms. Rarely does any form of democracy pop up during High School classes, and with so much curriculum, we teachers need to stuff the student's brains with hour long lectures every day, for three months, mostly about basic instructions, what other choice do we have, but to Ben Stein lecture at them? We “Teach Others” so we're retaining 90% of our experience, as the Learning Pyramid points out, plus getting paid, becoming better public speakers, gaining a receptive audience, in a position of authority, maybe even a career, increasing our value, giving back to the greater good while the students barely can stay awake, falling asleep at their desk, drooling all over their outdated 12^th Edition McGraw-Hill textbook hand-me-downs. If they're able to stay awake, then only 5% of that lecture will be learned through observing others, through osmosis. So perhaps that's why some of the students can't sit still in their seats. The human condition yearns for the polite and pleasant decorum of remaining seated and silent at behest mein Fuhrer to be smashed into oblivion. That's not ADHD. That's the pangs of freedom.

Gifted and Talented can be considered a learning disorder as well, for the same reasons listed above. The students who are smart enough to figure out all of the problems we put in front of them, can become bored, feel unchallenged and discouraged, as well as question authority. Teachers are required to teach to the middle of a classroom. We do not want to dumb the material down, which is condescending, but also, we shouldn't complicate our subjects with too much of the field's jargon, or their own form of legalese, even if speaking the rich language of Calculus is exactly what the doctor calls for what ails little Johnny or Sally.

WEB DuBois spoke highly about elevating a “talented tenth”, the intelligent children, the top 10%, in order to raise up Black people as a whole. That same philosophy transcends race. The Prussian-Industrial-Education-Complex can benefit greatly by elevating their best and brightest, harnessing creativity, focusing their imaginations towards positive constructive tangible forms. Those with the most talent, or potential, those with high I.Q.s, or other intelligences, Gardner points out 8 other intelligences, and physical motor skills takes genius, too... I recall coming across a study, but logic had preceded the study beforehand, but it still served as a reinforcer... but the study said the energetic, athletic, the doers, they are smart. They have neurotransmitters firing in more efficient ways. Exercising in the morning is a great way to wake up. One is more focused right after a workout, a run, a basketball scrimmage, etc. So America is slipping compared to world standards in the basic subjects, Math, Science, Social Studies, Art, English, and that goes for electives too. Just in general, a society should want to improve from one generation to the next, and we're the Information Generation, and the Internet will always be with us, as long as Nuclear Winter never descends upon us, then it's smoothing cruising from here on to Red River Gorge.

Because we're all the same, yet we're all different, my number one focus is to make sure everybody feels included, and welcome. Some folks can be stubborn, but since I genuinely care about others, I hope those sentiments can transcend the most bullheaded into being more expressive. The Reggio Emilia approach says that we're all endowed with over 100 languages in each one of us, and our goal as educators, is to find those different methods of communication, and to facilitate that growth. We all need to be included. The days of the one-room schoolhouse should come back. Older children felt a sense of obligation to helping out the younger students, and those more competent would help out the less competent, which would help out those who truly have ADHD, and other disorders, which not only hinders their learning, but it also makes their basic living functions more difficult too. We all should be included. Maslow's Hierarchy gave a good overview of what we all need in order to be self-actualized, and for real learning to occur.

While I love the dream of the one-room schoolhouse, I also wonder if a two-tiered system would be better for GT. The Gifted and Talented would, theoretically, strive and thrive better around other gifted and talented folks such as themselves. Instead of organizing a school based on ages, we should organize according to ability. To not educate our best and brightest, to marginalize them and to cap their creativity, we aren't just hindering their own precious development—socially, physically, spiritually, politically, economically—but we're also destroying society and civilization as we know it.

I would also have many different methods for students to learn. This is my dream classroom of course, but a classroom where one can get the one-on-one help they need, the hands-on experiences, audio or visual learning, or through dialogue, there's plenty of money for supplies, good programs, etc. Khan's Academy opens up all teachers to become administrators to over 30 subjects. All you need to do is track your student's progress. Students are motivated by you caring about them. One could just get the students a learning style quiz online, and then have a tailor-made IEP written out specifically just for them, based upon which styles of learning works best for them.

Xxxxxxxx

Develop a chart of comparative characteristics for special needs children. Include at least 5 characteristics for each of the categories listed below. You can use your text, the KRS Special Education Guidelines or any other relavant source to complete the chart. You do not have to cite your sources for this assignment. Post your completed chart on the Discussion Board for this week. Gifted Mental Retardation Learning Disabilities Emotional/Behavioral Disorders Autism/Asperger’s Syndrome Isolated Hardest to Handle Small or Large Extreme Introvert Awkward Has Unique Interests Is capable of few if any functions Anything that Obstructs Learning Extreme Extrovert Anti-Social Poor social skills Deserves fair treatment Bill Burr is scatterbrained Anorexia Quirks Has great potential Anybody can grow Not physical disability. Cutting Autism effects males more than females Needs to be with other Gifteds Ease all burdens; make functioning easier Digital Divide PTSD Albert Einstein   Communication Disorders ADHD Deaf & Hearning Impaired Blind & Visually Impaired Other Health Impairments Tourette Syndrome Might be fake Physical Disorder Guide dog Impoverished Close talker Allow cell phones, laptops, etc. Sign Language Home School Not Fed or Watered Loud talker Doodle Picassos All non-deaf must Sign Language too Braille Not Belonging To A Group Soft talker Freedom of movement Technological advances Technological advances No Self-Confidence Foreign language Decision Making 100 languages, Reggio Emilia Auditory learning Lack of Security

2

The Mediocrity of the Leviathan

Johnathan Masters

Dr. Sam Mister

Vouchers

June 17, 2014

The Mediocrity of the Leviathan

In Kentucky, there's no possible way for any charter school to form. Ever. Kentucky even lost out on millions of dollars with Obama's “Race To The Top” initiatives because there wasn't even the legal framework necessary in place for the creation of a charter school. The bureaucracy is blocking free money from coming into Kentucky, and it's usually the bureaucratic administration who soaks up the necessary quality teacher funds at schools. Vouchers are better than Charter schools anyways. Charter schools are financed by the State, which competes with other public schools, for financing. Instead, the State could just pass out Vouchers, and give us, we the people, the power, and let us choose between any accredited school available—public or private, Muslim or Catholic.

Vouchers would give power directly to the student, and that's where the power should have been the whole time. In college, some of us have federal college student loans, but those loans go through the education institutions themselves first. So the school will get our “voucher”, so to speak, and they get their money first, their tuition, and whatever other technology or parking or other fees to pad the bill, they get their fees first, from our purse, from our bank accounts, and then eventually, usually a month after your first classes have started, a residual check is cut, which is necessary for housing, electricity, Internet, gas, etc. While college loans aren't the same as public school vouchers, universal principles, such as basic supply and demand, macroeconomics, the allure of the freedom of choice, can emerge, since it's similar. The College loan system, financed through the federal government, can be made better if the money was given directly to the students, and they used their money in their school of choice. This would give the students, aka the customers, the power, which is where the power should be. This would make education directly attached to the respectability and quality of education from the school itself, and the magic hand of the free market would insure accountability across the globe.

The Voucher movement is how college loans should be. By placing the money directly in the student's hands, we give them the option to choose whichever school they want to attend. This forces the schools to have quality programs, to make sure learning is fun and exciting. Some say the money for vouchers should go into low-income schools, or for charter schools themselves. I disagree. Give the money directly to the people, and let them decide where to spend their education vouchers, at accredited institutions. The accreditation needs to be top notch.

Some say that parents won't make the effort to compare and contrast the different schools. This is also lies. “Chumacero Gomez and Paredes (2011) consider a refined measure of distance home-school, to estimate trade-offs between distance, price, and quality. Based on revealed (and not declared) preferences, both papers find a relevant effect of school quality on parent's decisions.” (Chumacero 2012). Poor minority students are just as capable as anybody else, and in fact, when given the chance, they are willing to bridge the gap, and walk the extra mile, literally walk an extra mile, or 2 or 3, in order to go the school they want to go to. “Clearly, the students are willing to travel long distances to assist to elite schools, confirming the results of Chumacero, Gomez and Paredes (2011) which show that, on average, despite having a school available at less than 500 meters from their households, students travel an average of 3 kilometers to assist to the school of their choice.” (Chumacero 2012).

I guess I'm a libertarian when it comes to this issue. “Libertarians like charter schools because of their variety but, in all likelihood, are dissatisfied that they don't go far enough in supporting parent choice. In fact, many Libertarians think charters prevent education in the United States from evolving into a full voucher system.” (Raymond 2014). It just makes logical sense: money spent on charter schools takes away from Voucher coffers.

Barbourville, Kentucky schools receive $8,362 per pupil, while richer schools, such as Anchorage schools, in Jefferson County, per student spending was at $19,927 levels (Cheves 2014). While the disparity was supposed to have been made illegal with the 1990 KERA reform, the SEEK formula was put in place to make sure state funds were distributed equitably, between rich and poor alike, but evidently, some schools in Kentucky are getting twice the greenbacks as the rest. But even if we took the poorest school in Kentucky, we can learn from it as an example. $8,362 is how much the poorest student in Barbourville, Kentucky receives from the state, through their public school services. $8,362 is roughly the price of a Sudbury Valley Democratic education: $8,400, according to Sudbury Valley's official website: http://www.sudval.com/03_admi_01.html. Sudbury Valley is a postmodern altruistic utopian educational delight, where democracy and dignity of one's own sovereign autonomy are held in high esteem. The 2010 and 2009 average spending for Kentucky students were a bit higher than impoverished Barbourville schools, being $8,948 and $8,756, respectively (Mann 2012).

$8700... $8900... this is plenty of money for a Sudbury Valley Democratic education—$8,400—with several hundred dollars left over. So the funding for Kentucky's poorest can give us the best that alternative education has to offer. Since schools are ran as totalitarian as the State, there's no doubt that Kentucky students would flock to true blue democratic educational institutions, that actually taught useful, fun, engaging, entertaining, knowledge, as well as teaching them how to treat each other better. But that's the reason charter schools, and vouchers for that matter, are banned in Kentucky. Totalitarian structures loves their monopoly because things are easier for them, to make autocratic decisions as a dictator, instead of using tedious democratic structures. If charter schools or vouchers were offered, Kentucky schools would see a mass exodus of biblical proportions. A product is so much easier to sell when it's compulsory, mandatory, by law, by threat of fines and jail time for truancy... Huckleberry Finn was truant, and he's the emblematic of the American character, being the star in the great American novel.

If vouchers were being passed out to Kentucky students, if Kentucky students had the option of going to a different—democratic—school, where they had a greater voice, and they were able to study whatever they wanted to study, AND it was cheaper, there's no doubt in my mind which school I would send my child to... or at least push them towards, since ultimately, it's them whose got to go through the programs, and be satisfied with the finish project, so it's the students themselves who makes the final decision.

Several of Kentucky's failing schools have been selected to massively change their ways, to radically change how they are organized, which is Frankfort's way of testing out “charter” schools, without actually calling the “magnet” schools, or innovative and experimental schools that. Louisville schools is holding a competition where one gets to design the entire framework of 3 failing schools, with the decision to come out in the Fall of this year.

Unfortunately, in Kentucky, there is no way for any charter schools to be established, and vouchers aren't being passed out anytime soon. The only way for a Sudbury Valley Democratic education is through private means, which means our own money, with a organization that has it's own teachers, curriculum, charter, customs, etc. sometimes with a religious bent. Which is fine, anybody can establish their own private business up however they want to set it up, but there's less consistency, and also, private school's tuition makes it out-of-bounds for most folks, especially in Kentucky.

Since charter schools are all over the place with regulations, curriculum, dress code, policies, etc. it's difficult to ascertain if ALL charter schools are better than public schools. I'm sure there's many that aren't. But the competition created by having a few charter schools on the margins... even Frankfort is dabbling in their own forms of “charter schools”, so the policy has already been changed. But to never confront or offer any new ideas, we might as well be a dinosaur on board the Titantic defending the Leviathan with our swords and pens until the bitter Dark Ages reemerge... when giving money directly to the consumers, not the producers, is clearly the best approach! I would rather be given cash for a gift, because then I can use that cash, and get myself whatever I want. By taking a gift, I'm already indebted, at the very least, to be somewhat happy that I received a gift, and to say “thanks”, and then pretend like I like it, even if I don't, since it wasn't really anything I needed or wanted anyways. That's a Kentucky education. A crappy gift of smothering creative-killing relationship-destroying oppression. A gift I'd rather regift, or better yet, throw away, in order to keep the fascism at bay, to prevent it from penetrating other innocent virgin souls.

“No thanks Grandpa, I already have a raggedly old flannel jacket, but nice try anyways.” Instead of Grandpa wasting his time and money, Grandpa would have done himself and me better had he just given me the money to buy a jacket, or went out shopping for a jacket with me. The latter would have offered ample time for grown male bonding. I would have fared far better had I choose my own path, instead of being coerced into theirs.

Bill Hicks declared that if you think you're free just because you live in America, walk around without any money, and see how free you are. Freedom isn't free. It costs at least a buck o'five if not more. To enjoy freedom, one must have life, and just maintaining life has high costs: food, shelter (60%), electricity, gasoline, car insurance, etc., so therefore, logically, one must conclude that since life costs money, then freedom costs money too. In fact, Freedom equals money for Life plus money for Freedom, so therefore, Freedom is more expensive than Life. A May 20, 2014 article declares that “More than 3,400 apply for school vouchers”, speaking about Wisconsin's voucher program. They have a cap of 1,000 vouchers for private and religious school students. http://www.channel3000.com/education/more-than-3400-apply-for-wisconsin-vouchers/26075480. It's no surprise that Vouchers are popular. Like with Obamacare in Kentucky, sometimes ain't nobody speaking the truth, on either side, and then all of a sudden, the truth done popped itself up, and stood itself up proudly, and displayed itself to both freedom-loving and working class peoples all over the world. It's free money. Yeah yeah yeah.. it's taxes, I know, we all pay for that, but we're all paying for school taxes anyways, and actually, those putting their children in private schools are paying taxes for everybody's

Bibliography

Cheves, John. 2014, January 4. “Tale of two Kentucky schools: Barvbourville gets $8,362 per student; Anchorage gets $19,927”. http://www.kentucky.com/2014/01/04/3018252/tale-of-two-kentucky-schools-barbourville.html

Chumacero, Romulo A. 2012, December 1. Vouchers, choice, and public policy: An overview*

Estudios de Economia. Vol. 39 – No. 2. Pg. 115-122.

Mann, David A. 2012, July 27. “Kentucky ranks 38^th in per-pupil spending; Indiana ranks 31st”.

http://www.bizjournals.com/louisville/print-edition/2012/07/27/kentucky-ranks-38th-in-per-pupil.html?page=all

Raymond, Margaret E. 2014, February 1. “To no avail. A critical look at the charter school debate.” Phi Delta Kappan. Vol. 95. Issue 5. pg. 8-12. 5p. 3 Color Photographs.

Seneca High School Field Journal

Johnathan Masters
Professor Terri Schoone

Homework

April 25, 2013

Field Journal

I did my observation hours for my Multimedia Class (Technology) at Seneca High School, with Mrs. Eseray, a really cool Chemistry High School teacher, and Mr. Ruggles, a student teacher, who was also a cool teacher, April 8, 10, and 12, 2013 as part of my class requirements for Spalding University. Seneca High School is one of the 10 failing schools that caused Terry Holliday to declare that Louisville is committing academic genocide. Seneca High School has a 40% dropout rate.

According to Merriam Webster, Technology is a) the practical application of knowledge, and; b) a capability given by the practical application of knowledge. When the first caveman used a sharpen rock to create an arrowhead, and killed their first deer, that was a major technological breakthrough. When fire was created, and the wheel, these were technological breakthroughs. So when folks act as though they have never used Technology, and dream about the “good ole days”, there wasn't a single good ole day that they had where no Technology was used.

In the morning, over the loud booming speakers, the whole school was lectured by a firm woman's voice about the importance of personal responsibility, for about 10 minutes. There was a Hallwall Restriction going on, since the students were coming back from break. During a Hallwall Restriction, any student who is out in the halls, needs to be escorted by a faculty member. Most of the time I was sitting in class, I was thinking how ineffective lecturing was. It trains the young minds to be passive obedient sheep. There was one moment when there was a fire in the classroom, intentionally started by the Science teacher, to demonstrate the effects of Sulfuric Acid on sugar and magnesium potassium, and smoke filled the whole room. It was not life threatening, but it was annoying, and the students who were sitting in their chairs paid no mind to the smoke, and kept on doing their work. Only the ones standing opened the door and the window, but they did not leave the classroom, and everybody just tolerated it. It was resolved that the next time the demonstration was conducted, less sugar and magnesium potassium should be used, so there's less smoke.

But how obedient the students were. In the Land of the Free? Obedience is the problem with society. When you are blindly obedient to authority, you do not consider the morality or the ethics of your behavior. You just blindly follow whatever order you are given. You sacrifice your self-worth and dignity, and give up the one most valuable and cherished gift of all: freedom. By being obedient to authority, blindly, you lose your sense of right and wrong, your humanity, and your soul. We see the long-term disastrous effects of blind obedience to authority with the Stanford Prison Experiments, and the Milford Obedience experiments, the ones conducted in the 1970s, and the repeat of the experiment in the 2000s on the Discovery channel. With the repeat of the experiment, we see how Americans are actually MORE obedient today, than when they found out how obedient they were 40 years ago. These experiments show how the Oppressors become sadistic control freaks, using whatever method and technique to force the Oppressed into Submission. With the Milgram Experiments, Americans are willing to shock somebody to death just because a man in a white lab coat tells them to continue on with the experiment. That's all the push Americans need to hurt others. Howard Zinn said that obedience is how the worst atrocities in human history occur: war, genocide, and slavery.

Isaac Asimov said that all education is self-education. I learn very little in my American educational courses, especially considering how much I am paying for my post-secondary school education ($60,000 in debt). I listen to what they tell me, I do the work they tell me, I study the words and ideas they tell me, and if I am already interested in the material, most of what I had known from previous courses are forgotten the day after my last course. I am so worried about the knowledge I have gained from my “schooling”, that I have been frantically purchasing many Kentucky history and civic books from Amazon.com, and have been vorocious devouring them, so I will actually have something to offer the students when I begin teaching.

The bottom 3 teaching tactics for the best retention rates, according the Learning Pyramid, by created by National Training Laboratories in Bethel, Maine, are Dialogue (50% retention rate), Experience (75% retention rate), and Teaching Others (90%). Since Lecturing only has a 5% retention rate, it's clear that we need to change from predominantly Lecturing to Dialoguing, Experiencing, and Teaching Others. Dialogue is easy to bring about. Just let the students be themselves. Stop silencing them at every hushed comment, or gasp, or cough. We are social beings, and to stifle that part of ourselves is to ignore Piaget, and every sociologist, and social psychologist whose ever lived. In Sugata Mitra's revolutionary discovery with his “Hole in the Wall” experiment, we find out that education is a self-organizing and self-emerging phenomenon. All it takes for education to happen is people, even poor children in a foreign country, and a single computer, posted up, vertically, in a wall. Since we know this is how learning happens, then clearly computers should be given to every student, everywhere, and they should have access to it all of the time. Every child in America should be born with a computer or laptop given to them, if we want them to bridge the digital divide, and for the them to grow up computer literate, considering how essential Internet is in today's postmodern world. Computers should be given to all students, and they should be able to interact and explore as they see fit, with themselves developing their own curriculum with teachers as guides, to point them in the right direction, to push them to achieve their goals, and dreams, to reach for the stars...

Einstein said education is experience, and that everything else, was just information. So what exactly is experience? Experience is doing the thing, and there's lots of ways of doing things. There's making, baking, creating, constructing, running, typing, talking, fighting, loving, and dancing. Just passively sitting in your chairs, listening to somebody else teach (whose actually getting the real education, since they retain 90% of their lecture), as if information can just be soaked into one's brain through osmosis, and usually bad teacher's have that boring Ferris Bueller's Ben Stein voice, which just drones on and on. Charlie Brown knows what I'm talking about.

There's many ways we can teach each other. Well, first of all, we're teachers. At least, that's the goal. We should have that intrinsic desire to teach others anyways. That should not be hard to tap into, especially in Graduate School. Giving speeches to each other, Dialogue with each other, getting into Quality Circles, forming our own Quality Circles, are several tactics which can be used where we teach each other. We could also work on democratic consensus, actually getting to participate in our own curriculum, choosing to do our own activities, ones we are interested in.

In terms of technology, there was many applications of technology. It's a Science class, so at it's very core, it's about the Socratic Method: study, hypothesis, observation, experiment, and conclusion with tools, aka technology. The students had plenty of materials to work with. There were many meter sticks, beakers, graduated cylinders, Red Dragon books, Charlie Manson Helter Skelter books, lots of books, lots of sciency supplies which I did not note, laptop, computer, sinks, running water, lots of drawer space, and shelves, for many different assorted scientific tools. There were microscopes, bunson burners, butane gas, overhead projector, a white screen for the overhead projector, and Power Point and Youtube were both used. They did not have a Smart Board.

The first day, students were supposed to do blood splatters, to see how blood drops from being dropped from high above splatters differently. The students had to bring in their own supplies for making blood, which they did not, so only the few folks who did bring in supplies, did the experiment. It took the other students several days to bring in their own supplies.

Mr. Ruggles mostly taught the three classes, with Mrs. Esarey scaffolding Mr. Ruggles with her expertize. Mr. Ruggles used a question and answer game for tickets into a motivational device to determine which few students would be allowed to witness a few demonstrations he was wanting to conduct. The top 10 students who had the most tickets got to watch his cool science experiment up close. This was an effective use of the social power that teachers inevitably have in their classrooms, which he enhanced his social power by doing some cool science stuff as motivation techniques, and did it exceptionally well. He also watched The Silence of the Lambs, which showed some CSI techniques of trying to find a serial killer, and helped with their Core. We also got to see how fragile a person's skull is, when we were shown a youtube video of a man who had tried to jump off of a ledge, and then split his face in two, and was still living!

One student bragged that he was going to drop out soon. Another kid slept through the whole class. Everybody else were alert, and stayed on task, as the teachers wanted them to do.

Reflection Paper for Educational Psychology

 I understand many of the experiences in “Decolonizing the Classroom”, an article by Wayne Au, because I've had many of the same experiences. Not so much being a Chinese student at a 50/50 Black/White school, but because most of my educators have been monologists, just talking to themselves, with little interaction with the students, nor facilitating dialogue, or creating new friendships. Vygostsky's sociocultural theory points to the schema we carry as individuals, and how through social interactions, we form those schema, those prisms of subjective perspectives, based primarily on our social circles. "You'll never fly as high as Eagles if you're hanging out with a bunch of Turkeys." ~Liz Jones

Garfield High School was considered a “Black school”, similar to how Central High School and Iroquois High School are considered Black schools in Louisville. Wayne Au was a Chinese man going to a 50/50 White to Black ratio student body at Garfield High School, with a few Latinos and Chinese peppered here and there. Garfield High School, located in Seattle's historically African-American neighborhood, which was the Central District. Mr. Anderson, a World History “educator”, called the Lychee Fruit differently than Wayne Au did, and instead of Mr. Anderson recognizing his culture and heritage as he had lived it, instead he berated him in class, and told the class that Wayne Au was wrong for pronouncing the name of the Lychee Fruit differently than himself. So Mr. Anderson, the fake World History teacher, was a monologist, with a huge ego. Only his opinion mattered, and it was incorrect. Wayne Au's personal experience was valid, just on those grounds: they were his experience. So since Mr. Anderson only considered his own opinions valid, he invalidated real opinions, and imposed a Eurocentric colonizer's prescription onto his oppressed students. By having an engaged, and active, and lively class, this creates the conditions for real discussion, and by having a multicultural education, this allows the students to have a more truthful, more useful, more important education, and by seeing what one can gain from a real education, the students will, hopefully, resist any other educators who tries to talk AT them, instead of talking WITH them.

Compare Mr. Anderson to Mr. Davis, who taught “Language Arts 10b” and a “Social Studies elective”, where the counselor would give resistance to any student who wanted to take the class, since it was know that those class names were really a Harlem Renaissance class, and African Studies. So the class was a “secret” class, and Professor Bruce Tyler taught Black History at University of Louisville, and he said that he had to teach it, since nobody else at the University wanted to. I guess folks would rather not tell the horrific treatment, the racial totalitarian dictatorship, Black folks have received throughout the vast majority of American history.

To break the spell of the disease of whiteness, white folks need to figure out, and talk about who they actually are. Where they came from, what's their genetic make-up, and if they don't know, then to figure out, how come ? For some reason, many of my German cousins dropped the rich, accomplished, smart German culture, in exchange for an inbred, redneck, racist, backwards, white supremacist culture of ignorance. It makes no sense to me. Germans have accomplished many great feats, in engineering, science, politics, architecture, and in many words we use, such as Hamburger, Frankfurter, and Fahrenheit. It doesn't make sense to me why anybody would drop the one rich culture for the culture that is completely void of meaning anything else, except white supremacy. My cousin, Robert Dearing, told me that he'd kill himself if he was Black, and at the same time, he couldn't see, that we both were sitting on the back of the mechanical tobacco setter, that we literally were the slaves. No wonder racism pervaded that culture. As long as the white child slaves felt like they were better than Black folks, then they wouldn't rebel. They were happy House Negroes, and why rebel, when the Massah treats us to very nice here... Prejudice is taught. Kids only hate naps, not other folks who look different than them. The norm is to be different.

By knowing how prevalent homophobia is in our culture, when a student tells another that they're “gay”, then something major will have to happen in order to combat the homophobia that may arise from such an incident. The playground taunt of being “gay” doesn't necessarily mean that the other person is being a homosexual, but that they are not cool, or are lame, or are not macho. So homophobia is so ingrained in our culture, that “gay” has been made to mean a blanket insult for any and all behavior the hater doesn't approve of. This isn't just one student saying it, but lots of students saying it, and it needs to be quashed.

The different between Mr. Anderson and Mr. Davis, is that Mr. Davis had a real education. In Mr. Davis's class, critical thinking was utilized, and relationships among the other students were linked together, through dialogue. Mr. Anderson's class wasn't real, and was destructive. It insulted the author as a young person, and it was teaching the white kids information that was not correct. “The Gods Must Be Crazy” is Mr. Anderson's idea of African culture. In the movie, a Coke bottle transforms the simple and primitive African culture into something more sophisticated. By not showing anything else about Africa, the impression is left that Africa has lots of primitive tribes there, but no civilizations, and cultures. Mr. Anderson forced them to read a lot of the textbook, so comprehension and memorization skills were utilized, but not critical analysis. Over 1/3 of college students are not learning critical thinking skills. This is because, in my many years of education, I've never been expected to analyze or interpret much of anything.

I would make sure that multicultural education was an approach I would do in my classroom. By combining as many sub-groups into my timeline of American history as possible (such as African-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Irish-Americans, Queers, Jewish folks, Native Americans, etc.), to make sure that all the student's are represented, and to bring about a fuller, more comprehensive view of American history. I would also teach multicultural education by having a revolutionary humanist set-up, where democratic values are utilized, feedback and risk-taking (“Can I hear from somebody who hasn't spoken before?”) are encouraged, and dialogue, and relationships are valued. I would lecture some, but hopefully, I'd be able to get them to read, and study the material themselves, and pull the information out of them. I'd be a referee for dialogue, a chair for democracy, where we have a positive, encouraging environment, to read, to study, to engage, and to dialogue intelligently. By encouraging relationships, new friendships are created, such as having the cool kids work with the nerd kids, and to forge ahead with one of the few instances of when they will actually get to experience democracy in America. By having this education, they will be more aware of oppressive conditions, and if they are in doubt by being isolated, their friend's perspectives will help them to understand what they are looking at. A multicultural perspective is more truthful. A multicultural approach to education confronts racism, and white supremacy, and represents an anti-racist struggle, and had the young person understood what a real education looks like, where their dignity was respected, then they wouldn't accept a bigoted colonization of the classroom from any future educators. 

Direct Democracy at University of Louisville, Feb 19, 2012

China v. Kentucky: Whose Got More Democracy?

 In totality, while China has not experienced much democracy, they have had lots of democratic rumblings.

Bolivia's Dirt

In order to make sure history doesn't repeat itself, Bolivia should compare the Movement Towards Socialism's (MAS) popular 2005 Electoral Revolution, and subsequent 2006 Agrarian Reform, to Bolivia's earlier popular 1952 Revolution, and subsequent 1953 Agrarian Reform. Three major issues that Bolivia had to face, which led to the 1953 Agrarian Reform failing, were: 1) Bolivia's long history of violence; 2) interference from the United States, and; 3) a corrupt leader, who eventually betrayed the 1952 Revolution. The problems of the failed 1953 Agrarian Reform are instructive for President Evo Morales Ayma to avoid today, if he wants a successful legacy.

The 1% in Bolivia, in 2006, owned 2/3 of the country's farm land...

The State of Black Amerika

The three most important post-Civil Rights, material-based issues for African-Americans in America are: 1) Poverty; 2) Jobs/Income, and; 3) Housing, and there are many policy options to address these institutionalized racial disparities.

The best example of the failure of a capitalist society's failure...

Afghanistan, The Slayer of Empires

 It's difficult to not think about America, a large country with many states inside of it, when reading about the Soviet Union's War in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union's War in Afghanistan wasn't just a “Vietnam”, in terms of them losing a War, but a few years after withdrawing their troops from their quagmire, their entire country collapsed, internally, from economic problems, and by 1991, the Soviet Union had completely dissolved. The historical parallel between the United States and the Soviet Union is too glaring not to be noticed. The Soviet Union was a large country with many states inside of it. The Soviet Union was the United States of the Eastern Hemisphere. The SU is the US of the East. Or they were. Until they got stuck in the “Afghan Trap”, as Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Advisor, bragged that the Soviet Union had got stuck in¹.

Since the Soviet Empire died in Afghanistan, after a 9 year war, having America in the exact same war, in the same place, for two years longer only seems as if the US is just begging for the same conclusion as the “Evil Empire”, to fall into the same Afghan Trap. Afghanistan is a bear trap for America. Bin Laden was happy when the US invaded Afghanistan. That was his dream. Afghanistan is where Empires go to die. It's a tar pit for Superpowers. The point of learning history is to avoid repeating the mistakes, not to walk into the exact same faraway mine fields, wearing the same boots. While reading Afghanistan: A Russian Soldier's Story, I see how the media lies to the Russian people, and how soldiers go crazy, and nobody seems to notice or understand or care, and think about how similar the Russian soldiers, and the Mujaheddin, are to American soldiers. They are us, and we are them. We all are one. And yet our governments have us kill each other, over lies.

Eventually the press in the Soviet Union called the War in Afghanistan a mistake, by 1992, when Afghanistan: A Russian Soldier's Story was published. The War was called a mistake after the Soviet press had reported that “At the request of the Afghan people, in order to bring comradely help to our Great Neighbor, Soviet troops entered Afghanistan, our newspapers said, and they printed pictures of smiling Soviet soldiers surrounded by laughing Afghan children.”² The lies about WMDs being in Iraq are well known, but even the War in Afghanistan was shoved down our throats immediately after 9-11 on deceitful grounds. We were told that the War in Afghanistan was being waged in order to get Bin Laden, whose is now sleeping with the fishes, and we still haven't withdrawn. There's not a shred of evidence that says Bin Laden had anything to do with 9-11. Also, 17 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, which means we invaded the wrong country. The US goes after the Taliban since they had harbored terrorists, so therefore they were terrorists (didn't we harbor the 9/11 terrorists, while they slept, ate, trained how to fly airplanes,etc.?). However, with US casualties in Iraq totaling over 1.4 million Iraqi civilians, it's hard to say that the US are not terrorizing civilian populations³. And compare 1.4 million dead Iraqi civilians to the 3,000 New York civilians that died on 9/11, and it's easy to tell who the larger terrorist is. The US is 466 times worse than Al-Qaeda, in terms of being a terrorist by civilian body count. Afghanistan has had such a civilian bloodbath, there hasn't been any efforts at documenting the dead⁴, so the damage the America has done to Afghanistan is unimaginable.

The media in the Soviet Union were showing their troops planting trees and building schools during the Afghanistan War, and our media here isn't showing the blood and gore of the Afghanistan War, nor are they showing the coffins of American soldiers coming back home, draped with the American flag. In the US and in SU, both of our media lied/lies to us, we the people. When I see the photos of the young men in the back of Afghanistan: A Russian Soldier's Story, who were blown up by mines, or had other atrocities happen to them, within hours of the photo being taken, I am affected. I see a young man, who is usually in some goofy, or insecure pose, and seemed to have no idea that death was so near. The images of the Vietnam War are directly responsible for rousing the American consciousness into a frenzy, and pinnacled into the 60s. Donald Rumsfeld had some snide remark about how the images of war usually dampens the mood for the war, which is completely true. Both the US government and media today, like the Soviet Union government and media in the 1980s, understand the power of propaganda, and will continue to spare us the public of the bloody and gory truth about Afghanistan. When I see the images of young Soviet soldiers, I see my cousin, and my friend, and myself, and I'm inundated with the horror that is War. The horror of the Afghanistan War has made it to where now Vladislav Tamarov doesn't believe words. “Afghanistan taught me to believe actions, not words”. Vladislav seems to have experienced Oliver Stone's Apocalypse Now.

Vladislav Tamarov understands that war is hell, and he understands that hell can turn inwards onto the self. When Vladislav first came home, he said that was the first time he actually had some peace, and wasn't worried about being blown up by a mine. Because before, Death was all around him, the whole time, and since you can't get away from death, then “you just try to encounter it as seldom as possible”⁵. Vladislav was a minesweeper, and playing minesweeper on the games that come bundled in accessories in Microsoft Operating System, I see how random, and dangerous, being a minesweeper is. The game is totally based on luck, and with as many of Vladislav's friend's who were blown up, real life was comparable dangerous and random, so for the soldiers to have mental issues after that traumatic of an event seems evident.

“By 1989, the total number of Vietnam veterans who had died in violent accidents or by suicide after the war exceeded the total number of American soldiers who died during the war.”⁶ So this means that the inner turmoil lead the Vietnam veteran to kill themselves, or to be involved in some violent episode, and that led to their last breath, moreso than the Vietnam War actually did. And whereas the US had Veteran hospitals for the shell shocked afflicted to attend, the Soviet soldiers didn't have any comparable for them, so that would make it worse. Young men were being dropped into a region they knew nothing about, and learned that those who “kill first survive”⁷, there's little wonder they were left in a mental mess. The reports about the US soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan are showing the same dismal numbers. The returning soldiers have high suicide rates, insomnia, panic attacks, anger issues, depression, nightmares, shell shock (aka post traumatic stress disorder), and feeling afraid. “Very often I feel terror. I'm afraid to go in the forest by myself. I'm afraid of the bright moon, of dark bushes, of silence. I'm afraid to be alone. I'm afraid when someone is standing behind me. I'm afraid of hitting a person because I know that I could lose control and start to kill him.”⁸ Vladislav needs sleeping pills in order to help him sleep.⁹

There were three types of Mujahadeen soldiers: 1) The Mercenary; 2) The Patriot, and; 3) The Conscripted.¹⁰ The Mercenary is similar to the American soldier because they are paid for their services. While Patriotism accounts for some of the reasons why an American soldier wants to fight, which is also true of the Mujahadeen, most Americans fight for the economic benefit: the lack of jobs, the promise of college, the promise of a structured path to success, etc., which is the same of most of the Mujahadeen. The 3^rd group of Mujahadeen were men who were forced to join a military outfit, at the threat of a gunpoint, which reminds me of how KONY2012 depicted the dictator Kony in Uganda, but not really a comparison for American soldiers today, unless the deeply impoverished can make a claim that either they sign up for the military, or they die. Even then, it's not the same as being forced to serve in the military at gunpoint. So while they aren't completely the same, both Americans and the Soviet Union and the Mujahadeen have their Mercenaries and their Patriots. We are all the same.

The SU in the 1980s was the US (of today) of the East. Since we see similarities in land mass, government structure, imperialist ambitions, a bloody hatred of the Afghanistan people, how the media lies, the mental trauma that have damaged the psychology of young men, and how varied the make-up of the soldier's ranks were, in both in the Soviet Union of the 1980s, and the United States of today, the similarities are resounding. It's only a matter of time before America goes bankrupt, again, for the same reasons the Soviet Union did, and Kentucky will have to fortify her borders to protect herself from invasion from the seven adjacent, and newly independent, States, who completely surround her.

1Noam Chomsky. The United States Is a Leading Terrorist State Monthly Review. Nov 2001. Vol 53, Issue 6. Accessed April 12, 2012, http://monthlyreview.org/2001/11/01/the-united-states-is-a-leading-terrorist-state.

2Vladislav Tamarov, Afghanistan: A Russian Soldier's Story (Berkeley: Ten Speed 2001), 112.

3 Just Foreign Policy, Accessed April 12, 2012, http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq.

4 James Denselow. The Unknown Afghan Body Count, guardian.co.uk, July 4, 2010. Accessed April 12, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/04/afghanistan-body-count-civilian-deaths.

5Tamarov, Afghanistan, 4.

6Tamarov, Afghanistan, 136.

7Tamarov, Afghanistan, 2.

8Tamarov, Afghanistan, 154.

9Tamarov, Afghanistan, 60.

10Tamarov, Afghanistan, 116.

The 2012 UofL SGA Prez Election

The 2012 SGA Presidential Election

The Court Cases of the SGA during the elections for SGA happened on February 28, 2012, 4 days after the elections ended, and the numbers were generated, and figured out by Dean of Students Mike Martis. The students played Supreme Court in the Allen Courtroom at the U of L Law School building. The Allen Courtroom is an impressive place for Mock Court, with a Jury Box, and comfortable seating for at least a hundred, and it was the stage for the SGA election courtroom drama. Just like the big boys! Just like Bush v. Gore! Or Corrupt and Partisan Redistricting in Kentucky... ah we're just legislators... let the courts figure it out!

With the portraits of John Marshall, John Jay, and George Robertson hanging on the backdrop, Chief Justice Brandon McReynolds presided the court, along with 5 Associate Justices, with 1 absent, thus giving them the 6 justices they needed, in order to constitute a quorum for the Supreme Court per the 1977 U of L Constitution. 5 of U of L's Supreme Court are white males, and 1 blonde white female, and zero non-whites. The Supreme Court, with several veterans, after the legislature rewrote the rules for the Constitution this year, had to reclarify their roles, and wanted to either remain relevant, or wanted to set a precedent, which they did. Max Morley was grilled with questions from the 6 white Supreme Court justices, for nearly an hour, about seemingly irrelevant infractions, turning a finance report a day late, in order to get some invoice from some vendor for some $20 thing they spent it on, to make sure it was complete. “Are you sure you didn't just make it up?” asked one Associate Justice, when asking where the numbers on the report came from. I think $100 is the limit you're allowed to spend on a U of L SGA election, though that flies in the face of Citizens United … and that makes me wonder, who has more jurisdiction over the election processes at U of L? The U of L Supreme Court, or the US Supreme Court? With the Occupy movement, and with Taylor v. Beckham (1900) not clarifying who actually owns the office and the buildings in the public domain... the representatives, or the students ? … I'm still left wondering, who controls the Quad? SGA doesn't even control the Quad.

So yeah, I got questions with the legitimacy of the whole thing, but it all seemed professional, and legit, and then one side cheered, and the other side didn't object, and that's all she wrote. Both student lawyers were well spoken, but one of them seemed to know the process of the court better, and spoke loud and clear, and seemed to know his stuff well, or was better prepared. The other one wasn't as loud, and he dropped two of the cases, which were just as frivolous as the case that had won. The case against Osiah Graham seemed to have more teeth than the Finance Report case, since he had used some public email distribution system, and a complaint was filed (by who? Somebody from CardVision... but who? Justin Brandt? Austin Schwenker? Carrie Mattingly? Sirena Wurth? Some random student? That wasn't clear).

SGA has an internal communication system where they send each other updates, and orders, and proposed legislation, and the like, but they also have a public information system, where you can sign on with your U of L ID. This is called SharePoint. There probably isn't too many folks following SGA, which is why SharePoint usually doesn't have the latest SGA meeting, or election results. The election results were given to those who needed to know about it, SGA, the Cardinal, and nobody else. Messaging on the election results were governed with totalitarian precision. Since the general student body isn't the actual happenings at SGA (because isn't it better to just make the decisions FOR the student... who actually wants to get the whole study body involved? If they knew what these young adults were doing with their money, they might not like... then again, they may love it... but they'll never know, and neither with the students, and the Cardinal won't tell anybody, because they are pro-administration and has nobody picking up their papers, since print doesn't matter, and neither do any of their irrelevant stories).

The Supreme Court would exit the court, and deliberate, and without telling the public what their decision was, carry on with the next case, because he didn't want it to turn into a “who's winning?” type thing, like a baseball game. Instead, they were going to hear each of the 4 lawsuits put forth by Justin Brandt's CardVision and Max Morley's CardUnite one by one, deliberate in between each, and go on with the night in that manner. After 2 cases, Max Morley gave the cue to end the flogging, probably due to confidence in the cases put forth, or maybe disillusionment with the court, and his lawyer dropped the last cases. So CardVision had two charges put on them, and it was up to the Supreme Court to decide who, if anybody, was going to be docked votes. Another interesting thing they did, was that opened the results while they were deliberating for the last time, and this opens a floodgate of possible vote tampering, had CardVision won by enough votes, and were docked to a point to where they were not the winners. But since the CardVision slate hadn't generated enough votes, they lost by 300 or so, and they were docked 100 or so votes, so the vote dock didn't change the outcome of the election, everybody seemed to accept the Supreme Court's role in the election arbitration, with no contestation, that I know, from Max Morley, or the rest of the CardUnion slate, which anyone had a right to contest, at least 6 hours after the decision was made, and I'm unaware of anything being filed since then.

Everybody on the CardUnite slate were hit for the 6.5% vote dock, including those running for Senate. This left me wondering what the advantage of being on a slate is, if you're the Senator. The Top 4 I particularly paid close attention to, but the Senators were too many, and I ended up voting for one person I knew, and another person who asked me to vote for them, and with her being the only person to solicit my vote, I agreed. This same woman, right before I walked by, asked a waddling, overly bloated man, who looked like a student, if he was going to vote for the SGA elections, and he said, in a real dickish way, “Absolutely not!” Then as he was wandering away, looked back, and smiled, and said, “But you have a nice day anyways!” as if a sprinkle of sugar could numb the sour. But in a way, he captured the general sentiment of the student body, because 90% of them didn't even bother to vote, which is worse than Kentucky's turnout (28%), and America's (45%), so that bodes miserable for the future of democracy, and it gives no government in the State democratic legitimacy, as if that was necessary for the lure of power.

It seems like a lot of rigamarole because there was really only two groups of folks running, with nobody else interested in the SGA, except those who were already in it, and the flyers and literature and campaigning was minimal. The campaign, besides the debate, which didn't exactly have fireworks, was boring, since Travis Gault dropped out, and there was very little active, real, on the ground, campaigning, and engaging the students in their Causes. In fact, I hope they all work together, because there aren't enough active students who are participating in their government. Right now, there is a position open for an Associate Justice to the Supreme Court.

Overall, the only problem I have with the whole process is how they decides the case as the same time as they opened up the results, which could be used to screw one candidate over the other, and instead of the process working that way, what should happen, next year, or any other time it happens, is they should come back out, give the verdict, and then open the results, which are in a marked envelope from the Dean's Office. This way, by having the verdict read outloud before the election results are opened, this insures that a corrupt Supreme Court won't get their person elected over one who was the actual will of the people... or at least the majority of the 10% of the Student Body who voted... I also think that Max Morley should have pressed his last two cases, because that could have allowed the Court to dole out punishments to everybody, and set many precedents, so everybody will always remember what the McReynold's Court did here and now, and there and later, since it will carry over to the next year. I also think that the vote docking tactic is a uniquely U of L SGA thing. I've never heard of it used anywhere, local, state, or federal. By the drama generated by the Supreme Court SGA Election finale, at the Allen Court, in the Law School Building, it's clear that one precedent that will be followed is that filing lawsuits to the Supreme Court is going to be a staple of U of L SGA Presidential elections from here on out... because of the “Morley Decision”.

Trita Parsi, On US-Iran Relations

Johnathan Masters

POLS 370

April 8, 2012

Trita Parsi, On US-Iran Relations

Professor Trita Parsi, a Professor who wrote A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama Diplomacy With Iran, gave a talk/book tour at the University of Louisville on March 26, 2012, nearly two weeks ago. Trita Parsi did an extension research project where he interviewed many of the players in the US/Iran power struggle, including high ranking officials from Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Brazil, the US and Iran. Professor Parsi discovers the realpolitik calculations between the US and Iran, and sees how there was a chance at some sort of deal or agreement, but due to domestic...

UofL Rally 4 Trayvon Martin, March 27, 2012

2011/2012 UofL SGA Says FUCK Gay Students, FUCK the Bill of Rights, FUCK Lowering Our Tuition, and FUCK UofL Students

UofL SGA Kills Gay Marriage; Gault Leads The Charge

How come SGA and Greek Life got tickets to the Bluegrass War, UofL versus UK, in New Orleans, when most people were denied? Frizzell blames the NCAA. I'm skeptical.

Another question: Why doesn't UofL's Constitution have a Bill of Rights? WTF is up with that? Do Students have any rights? Is the role of our SGA to conceal our rights, and to deny them openly? If so, what was the point of Nathan Hale dying? The members of SGA and Dean Mike Martis (and Brandon McReynolds reluctantly) sounded sincere in the State of the College Address video, when they stated, “Your Voice, Your SGA”. Could my so-called representatives have been lying through their fucking teeth?

SGA, because it is Student Government, is used for Experimentation, to practice for the real world, to try things you normally wouldn't try at the national level. Also, “liberal” college students are supposed to be at The Height of their Idealism, as Hannity unequivocally alleges. Winston Churchill said that all people under 30, if they aren't a liberal, have no heart. This is as far Left humans go, when they are in college, and if this SGA can't see past their meager $600,000 budget, and their privileged white prententious snobby uppity upbring, whose never had to work a real day's work in their goddamned lives, if these rich kids are what the future of Kentucky has got in store for it, well then, expect business as usual from these heartless Conservatives. Expect more corporate sellouts; expect Labor Unions to be demolished, and Healthcare will declared be illegal, the Wars of Empire will never cease, and we'll always have Poor people, and Gay people will have to live in shame, in perpetuity, in underground communes, knowing that they are marked “illegal”, and if a private owner of a business asks somebody to leave because they are gay, then they have to leave. It's the Law. Kentucky passed it in 2004. California just made it illegal again. No gay person anywhere is allowed to get married, and show affection publicly, to have a public ceremony, to show the world who they love, and want to be with for the rest of their lives.

Fuck homophobes. Fuck anybody that would discriminate against somebody just because of their sexual orientation, and fuck those people who support them. I am sick and tired of homophobic discrimination. If you discriminate against gay people, FUCK YOU!. We don't need more hateful fascist asshole bastards out here in this world. So fuck racists, fuck sexists, fuck anti-semitics, and fuck homophobes. The world has too much hate in it already. The world need more love. The world needs more gay people. Their egalitarian relationships give heterosexuals an example of a equal and fair partnership which to live by.

And seriously, who in today's world, seriously gives a fuck what in the fuck two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedroom? Who does? Well, evidently, Travis Gault does. He took a strong stance today against Gay Rights, and killed the Legalization of Gay Rights. Here in Kentucky, in 2004, the State got it's “I hate Gay People” Amendment passed, which is consistent with Travis Gault's authentic personal convictions (which is everything for him, nothing for anybody else), and with UofL's SGA's policy for 2011/2012. California can't seem to get this issue right, and there appears no hope anywhere. In the State of Kentucky, if the owner of a restaurant asks somebody to leave because they are gay, then they have to leave. Travis Gault obviously isn't perturbed by gay folks getting discriminated against, so that's why Travis Gault pulled out all of the stops. And it's ironic that Travis Gault would take such a strong stance against Gay Marriage, since he is gay himself, and has used that fact to get more votes.

Travis Gault showed his anti-gay marriage sentiments tonight, on April 3, 2012, when he took a strong principled stance against the Resolution to Legalize Gay Marriage. Travis Gault was loud and proud about not representing Gay people anywhere. Travis Gault also admitted that he was tired, and didn't want to work on anything anymore, since it's the end of the year; also because he's an old man. Travis Gault works behind the scenes, sending emails to other Senators, discussing strategies and tactics, and he had been working overtime, and he organized the SGA, beforehand, to kill Legalization of Gay Marriage, and the Resolution to Stop Tuition Hikes, and the Student Bill of Rights, all of which were placed at the end of the agenda, with The Legalization of Gay Marriage being strategically placed at the very end of the SGA meeting, after all other arguments were exhausted on other matters, and the Senators were tired, and wanted to go home. They also shot down Skylar Graudick's Transparency Resolution, because they are filthy corrupt Machiavellian, backstabbing...

The Links to all 3 of the Resolutions I authored (which is more than most Senators, who get paid, wrote) are here: #1: http://occupyuofl.blogspot.com/2012/04/act-making-restricting-college-tuition.html #2: http://occupyuofl.blogspot.com/2012/04/uofl-students-bill-of-rights-52.html #3: http://occupyuofl.blogspot.com/2012/04/20112012-sga-resolution-to-legalize-gay.html

They even voted to leave the meeting by 9:20pm, again, in the middle of Senator Skylar Graudick's pitch for his Resolution for Transparency, but then again, it's no surprise that backwards, corrupt, and backdoor-dealing privileged white Republican-wannabes, would be against Transparency. UofL's SGA doesn't want UofL's Student Body to know of a single thing that is decided in that room! The whole thing is a secret. That's why sometimes they move the meetings to other locations at the spur of the moment, or make sure the Law School Building's doors are locked, so nobody can get in, unless they know somebody already on the inside, or if they wait for somebody to walk out, and slip in. The Minutes of the Meeting are supposed to be available to the public, or at least to UofL students, which would be easy if they posted on their website. Instead of doing that, they use “SharePoint”, which only UofL students can access, and it's not user friendly. Checking SharePoint early April 4, 2012, I see that none of the December 2011, or February 2012, or March 2012 minutes have been posted, so that's months of SGA secrecy. I believe in Transparency because if you're not corrupt and dishonest, why do you have to hide? Here's a screenshot of the missing SGA minutes: http://occupyuofl.blogspot.com/2012/04/months-of-missing-sga-minutes.html.

At last night's SGA meeting, on April 3, 2012, Travis Gault organized his cadre of Senator bitches in order to sabotage all 3 of the Resolutions that I was proposing, which he succeeded in doing. Travis Gault, the “elected” “Graduate” President/SGA Senator, whose been a student at UofL for 15 years+, and counting, which is longer than President Ramses, and most Professors and Staff and Faculty, led the charge to make sure that: 1) Tuition will be jacked up this June, 6%, the maximum amount, in order to fuck the average student out of $500, and to give President Ramses another $10 million dollars into his $800 million dollars+ or - $100 million dollars University coffers; 2) the average student at UofL has no Cardinal Freedoms or Rights, not even ones already guaranteed in Kentucky's and America's Constitution, and; 3) to Stop Gay Marriage from Being Legalized. He knows how to abuse his privileges, and make up parliamentary tactics in order to Kill a Bill Indefinitely, but yet he hasn't figured out how to find a job. Travis Gault is the same person who has abused the Bill of Rights-less 35 year old Constitution for UofL's White Student Union (SGA) numerous times, when he's using the Supreme Court as a club in order manhandle Kurtis Frizzell, whose been SUED over a dozen times by Travis Gault. And YEAH, I said SUED! These Lord of the Flies young adults actually hold a tribunal, sit on their Supreme Court thrones, and administer justice for all those complaints who come their way, which can be brought forth by any Student of UofL. Travis Gault is acting this way because he's losing relevancy, and because he's a crybaby sore loser. Travis Gault lost the 2010/2011 Presidential election to Kurtis Frizzell, and still hasn't gotten over it.

For Travis Gault to stop the Legalization of Gay Marriage is more appalling because he's openly homosexual, or so he says. Perhaps he's got a Girlfriend. I don't know. I do know that Indefinitely killing the Resolution to Legalize Gay Marriage prevents this Bill from ever coming up again, in these Chambers, with the same Senators. So Travis Gault's attack on Gay Rights has set the Gay Rights movement, at least on UofL's campus, back Centuries. Never again can the Resolution to Legalize Gay Marriage be introduced into the SGA holy chambers.

Another reason this sucks is because I have been consistently, and loyally, the only student, out of the 20,000+ at UofL, who even gives a fuck what the SGA is working on. I'm a Politcal Science Major, and so having an interest in government is only natural. I'm the only student who cares enough to see what they are doing, and I have lots of good ideas. So since the overwhelming majority of them haven't started a dialogue with me, or even tried to, this is why I firmly believe that they, 98% of them, do not represent UofL's 20,000+ Student Body. A good idea is a good idea, and it shouldn't matter who introduced the Idea. In the Battle of Ideas, the best ones should prevail, always. Travis Gault's 15 years has taught him how to, not better represent the students, but instead, to maneuver through the system, making up Robert's Rules of Order when it suits his interests (he called off the Roll Call motion, because he knew that if you make the Senators account for their decisions, they might change their minds), like a Parliamentary Nazi, and because it seems like he has some inkling of a clue of the terms that are used in meetings, the rest of SGA goes along with it, because of their inexperience. It's like Travis Gault is SGA's cranky, elder Grandpa; the Senators don't really like him, but they do respect him for what he seems to know.

Travis Gault did mention one excuse. He said it was badly written. That's a lie. But if Travis Gault's genuinely supports Gay Marriage, then he'd rewrite the Resolution, with better language, and reintroduce it, and pass it. But he won't do it. He won't do it because he doesn't represent the Rights of Gay people, or anybody for that matter, since any injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. The First Resolution, entitled “A Resolution to Stop Tuition Hikes” begins with; “Whereas the Senators of UofL's SGA (2011/2012) empathize with working students, who need to save every nickel and dime they can, for books, rent, internet, car insurance, diapers, etc, in these difficult economic times, to make ends meet.” That's a nice sentence. And it sharply divides the Senators, from those who understand working, and those whose had a cupcake existence, with their Mommy and Daddy handing them everything on a silver platter, desperately to make sure their spoiled elitest snotty children still like their lame selves. SGA also forces it's Senators to wear dress clothes. So if your a Senator who just got off of work, and you come in Flannel and Jeans, they will not take you serious. They hate working class people. They don't associate with them. They are stuck up and pretentious, and they think they are better than everybody. If you don't believe me, try to find ONE so-called “representative” to complain to, and see how they react. Or better yet, write a Letter to the Editor about something serious, and see if they care. The University's Administration has got both of those groups paid off. Again, the Cardinal boycotted UofL's SGA, which has gone on for years, with the Student Body being none the wiser. There lack of actual news content is the reason why nobody picks the paper up, if they ever wise up to that fact.

I wasn't even given the chance to speak or defend the “Resolution to Stop Tuition Hikes”. Nobody was. The Parliamentarian read the title of the Bill, and immediately, SGA voted to Kill the Bill Indefinitely. This was Travis Gault, saying loud and clear that he could give a fuck less if the Board of Trustees, or Council for Public Education, voted in favor of a Tuition Hike. This Resolution would have prevented the SGA President from voting in favor of a Tuition Hike when the Board of Trustees votes on it, in June 2012. If you are favor of a tuition hike, then you should be impeached out of office because you have no authority to say that you represent the Student Body, since you don't, at all. Mexico and Cuba has free college; meanwhile, Kentucky's students are getting raped by 400% increase in tuition fees, since 2005, when tuition was only $2,000 (now it's $9,000). 400%!!! And what has UofL done to stop that inevitable raping, by the Board of Trustees, coming up in June? I mean this warranted ZERO discussion, and this Bill was immediately sent to the Gas Chambers at Auschwitz. Travis Gault pretends to care for the Student Body, but he could give a fuck less. Because of Travis Gault, the Act to Stop Tuition Hikes up for a vote. They didn't even consider it. It wasn't even read outloud. Why would you vote against something you didn't know? When SGA was voting against “The Resolution to Stop Tuition Hikes”, they were gleeful, and they were laughing, like how privileged white people are. 2011/2012's SGA were like a pack of carnivorous wolves circling a lamb they are about to devour; like how gleeful the Manson Family after they murdered Sharon Tate.

SGA is filled with a bunch of privileged kids, whose never had to work a day in their lives. What do they give a fuck if tuition is jacked up another $500? What's $500 of rich Mommy and Daddy's money? $500 to me is motha fucken rent. It's kind of bullshit that they didn't hear me out. I've got college loans over $40,000; is this what I paid for? Is this some real world experience? What would you do if the person who stopped your Act to Legalize Gay marriage was gay? Does that leave anybody else's head scratching? Plus it's clear why SGA could give a fuck less about Tuition. They're rich kids, yeah, but they are also structurally tied to the tuition increase. When the Tuition increases, then the Student Fee is to take a piece of that increase. SGA doesn't give a fuck about Tuition because when Tuition is jammed down our throats, they get paid.

Skylar Graudick called a Division, and a Roll Call. A Roll Call is when everybody who voted, puts their name into the public record of their vote. While the Roll Call was going on, tediously, Travis Gault interrupted with a motion. He was argued down. Many of UofL's SGA Senators were laughing sinisterly, the ones who were going to vote for Tuition Hikes, like sadistic psychopaths, like people who can't empathize with other people.

3 of next year's Top 4 are current Senators, were present. Austin Schwenker and Sirena Wurth abstained from voting, which I appreciated. Carrie Mattingly, however, after hesitating for a moment, reverified her previous position to vote down Gay Marriage. Carrie Mattingly condescending acted like only she could talk to the administration, since she's a “qualified professional”, during this year's debates. If one of the “Top 4”, the Vanguard Group of students who controls UofL's SGA, is already in bed with the Administration, can we students even pretend that they represent us? Carrie Mattingly's strong stance in favor of Tuition Hikes, and against Gay Marriage is foreshadowing how SGA 2012/2013 is going to represent UofL's Student Body next year.

Having a Roll Call vote is smart in order to ensure accurate votes. As the Roll Call went along, it seemed like more and more folks were abstaining, and it looked as if the tide could have been turning, in my favor, when the faux “pro-gay rights” Travis Gault jumped in. Travis Gault asserted that a Roll Call can't be called if it's used to slow the process down. He's right about that, partially. It's actually more complicated than that; Roll Calls are routine in many government bodies; also, the spirit of Robert's Rules of Order is not upheld in the SGA Chambers. Travis Gault also asserted that if you are a proxy, then you probably don't want to have your name attached to your vote. That's such bullshit! This motha fucka is so corrupt. All votes should have all names of the representatives on it, with who voted for it, and who voted against it. All Senators should be held to account for all of their votes.

When the Senate went through their motions, and immediately killed the bill, Skylar had patted my shoulder to indicate to me that the fight was over, and that I had lost. I sat down, immediately.

Robert's Rules of Order warns of dilatory Roll Call votes. Here's the pertinent rules of Roll Call, on page 405:

“Taking a vote by roll call has the effect of placing on the record how each member or, sometimes each delegation, votes;” … “it is usually confined to REPRESENTATIVE bodies, where the proceedings are published, since it enables constituents to know how their representatives voted on certain measures. It should not be used in a mass meeting or in any assembly whose members are not responsible to a constituency.”

“In a representative body, if there is no legal or constitutional provision specifying the size of the minority that can order a roll-call vote, the body should adopt a rule fixing the size of such a minority—for example, one fifth of those present, as in Congress, or some other portion of those present that is less than a majority. In the absence of such a special rule, a majority vote is required to order the taking of a vote by roll call—in which case a motion to do so is likely to be useless, since its purpose is to force the majority to go on record. In local societies having a large membership but relatively small attendance at meetings, a motion to take a vote by roll call is generally dilatory.”

Carrying over to Page 406, we see a tactic that Skylar Graudick could have used, and it would have been “in order”:

“It is in order, as one of the Motions Relating to Methods of Voting, however, to move “that a signed ballot be taken by tellers;” and if such a vote is ordered, the voter writes “yes” or “no” on the ballot and signs it. The votes can be recorded in the minutes just as a roll call would be, but the names of all members need not be called. A roll-call vote cannot be ordered in committee of the whole.”

Right before the first page of Robert's Rules of Order, on page XLVII, the Principles Underlying Parliamentary Law are set forth, which provide a mental framework for how government meetings are supposed to work. The very first sentences says: “The rules of parliamentary law found in this book will, on analysis, be seen to be constructed upon a careful balance of the rights of persons or subgroups within an organization's or an assembly's total membership. That is, these rules are based on a regard for the rights: 1) of the majority; 2) of the minority, especially a strong minority—greater than one third; 3) of individual members; 4) of absentees, and; 5) of all these together.” Later on, down the same page, it states that “Each individual or subgroup has the right to make the maximum effort to have his, her, or its position declared the will of the assembly to the extent that can be tolerated in the interests of the entire body.” So basically, the way a government meeting is supposed to be run, is that the minority gets their say, and the majority gets their way. UofL's SGA meetings have not adhered to this basic Principle Underlying Parliamentary Law. So while it's impressive that Travis Gault faintly remembered knew something from page 405, he can't call himself an Parliamentarian expert until he has at least read the Introduction of Robert's Rules of Order, and understands that thoroughly. Since the minority gets their say, and the majority get their way, that means I should have gotten my say. One Resolution was murdered with no words of defense. The Student Bill of Rights was a cumbersome document that I wasn't ready to present yet, so I passed on it, and then the Resolution to Legalize Gay Marriage, I was cut off before I could call for one of the Senators to call a Motion, which Skylar Graudick could have done, but Travis Gault beat him to the punch. Considering how corrupt and dishonest and unethical Travis Gault is, there's little doubt that Travis Gault installed himself as President of the Graduate Council, again, for the 1 millionth year in the row.

Since the February and March minutes haven't been posted, I'm not too confident that last night's minutes will be posted. If they do post the minutes, I'm curious to see how close the minutes come to the actual conversation. I doubt the minutes will accurately reflect reality, since the Court Reporter was actually arguing with me, instead of recording, which was Out of Order. Skylar Graudick sponsored all 3 of the Resolutions, since he believed that anybody ought to at least be able to introduce Resolutions, and because he agreed with them, asked me if I was going to drop the Bill of Rights, and I said that I did, since I had no confidence that SGA represents me, which after they had aborted “The Resolution to Stop Tuition Hikes”, I didn't. 

Then the Parliamentarian read the title of the “Resolution to Legalize Gay Marriage”, and I walked out into the middle of the floor. Skylar also walked out. I was waiting for the Parliamentarian to recognize me. He seemed busy on his computer, probably hesitating because he didn't want me to have the microphone. I waited until he was ready, and he nodded, and so I began:

“Who in the Fuck gives a Fuck, what two people do in the privacy of their own bedrooms?”

A lovely Black Senator in the front row interrupted me and said something about being nicer, and folks would take me more serious. I ignored her and continued, softer:

“But seriously, who in the fuck gives a fuck what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedrooms?” One woman in the back, the woman who Chairs the Appropriation Committee, raised her hand. I'm not sure if she was identifying herself as a person who didn't like gay people, or if she was wanting to call some procedural thing.

“Do you care?”, I asked a female Senator in the front row. She looked away.

The Blonde Court Reporter, who sits in the Front of the Room, next to President Frizzell, says something like, “Don't cuss in here.”

I respond: “Well, that's free speech. Oh wait, that's right, you all don't have the Bill of Rights [referencing the necessity of Student Bill of Rights Resolution], and you want to talk about credentials![referencing to the lack of credentials I had, which stopped me from being appointed Associate Justice, which Max Morley promised me he'd do, if he was elected President] None of y'all have credentials.”

“Who cares?”, I said, with my hand raised, to encourage anybody else to raise their hands, and to identify themselves. I turned around and looked at President Frizzell. He was looking all around. I was about to ask Travis, but he instead interrupted, Out of Order, but he doesn't care, he just blurts anything out whenever it suits his interests. I should have hurried up and finished what I was going to say, “It's 2012, it's time to take a stand, pass this Resolution.” but I never got that chance, because of Travis Gault. I waited nearly 2 hours to get my chance to speak, and they didn't even give me one second for the first Resolution, and silenced me after me getting to say 2 of the 3 sentences I had prepared. Travis Gault called for a motion to kill the bill indefinitely, with no discussion at all. Seriously, if I had introduced a Resolution to Genocide the Jews, I could expect me to be interrupted, and silenced, and to have the bill killed immediately, and forever. But I didn't introduce no such Evil. Instead, I introduced Goodness, and Love, and Equality, and Fairness, and for Gay Men, like Travis Gault, and Woman to get married, but Travis Gault killed it.

The Dean of Students of UofL, Mike Martis, was there to see the whole boring show, including my 1 minute interlude. Mike Martis and I have got some history. Last year, on November 28, 2011, during a torrential downpour, I set up a Tent on the Quad of UofL. Mike Martis came into the Tent, with his muddy shoes, and he pretended like he was listening to what I was saying. I was open, and free with information, but I fear that he mistake my niceness for weakness. I was very much pissed that he ordered the Tent shutdown. He said he'd allow it for a day, but by Midnight it was coming down. And by Midnight, Physical Plant, and the Campus Police, tag teamed the Tent, and ransacked it, and stole it. Mike's always pretending. He pretended when he was following the Student Walkout Protest last year. Mike said he was doing it for our protection. Mike also attended the Rally for Higher Education, again, for “our protection”. Mike also babysits SGA, and is always there, watching them, making sure they don't stray from their submissive role. Mike Martis is also involved with the Voting of SGA, with his easy-as-hell to use Diebold-like Internet voting machine (of which is required for real SGA students, but not the Graduate students... it's odd how no Graduates voted for the current Graduate Council... weird...), but it's just him. All of the students vote, and he's in his office. He sees the results. He prints the results up. And we're expected to believe that everything went off without a hitch. Maybe there's something there, maybe not. A little transparency of the Dean of Student's office wouldn't hurt either. In fact, it was because of that November tent ransacking, where the idea of getting a student Bill of Rights came from. I started to wonder, who here at UofL actually protects me and my freedoms? Occupy Louisville still has Tents there. How come they got Free Speech, and I don't? I didn't realize that when I stepped onto UofL's campus, that I stepped out of America. Martis's secret police (Physical Plant) have fucked with me before, and so Martis might try to make some hay outta this. I don't see how he could. Max Morley's cursed many times, and saying fuck isn't a crime. I'm pretty sure there's an Amendment in the real Constitution, America's, not the one the children play with, who probably only 4 of them whose actually read the damn thing.

Overall, there's a lot going on. UofL's SGA, the Administration, the Cardinal, and the Student Body (90% of the Student Body did not vote for the current SGA; also, not one single graduate student voted for the Graduate Council, which has Travis Gault as the elected “President”) are all independent and autonomous factions, and none dare enter into each other's spheres. SGA is filled to the brim with rich kids. All they know is a privileged existence. Nobody goes to the meetings because they are corrupt as shit. Nobody goes to the meetings because they already know that their voice is not represented.

One ironic thing: had “E-board” (which is the committee that kills bills and ideas and dreams), approved me as Associate Justice, then I would be Constitutionally mandated to keep my opinions about anything SGA related to myself, or I'd be kicked out. Had SGA known that, I think they would have reconsidered putting me there. Then they would have had some power over me. So SGA may be assholes, but they aren't smart about it. They're stupid assholes. They just wanted to vote down anything I had proposed, no matter how perfect and dreamlike my Resolutions were written. Travis Gault and Friends would have killed Martin Luther King Jr.'s Civil Rights Bill, too, indefinitely, with no discussion, and SGA would have been delighted with itself all the same. They would have told King to not be so loud and demanding. So I'm relieved that I wasn't chosen for Associate Justice, because then I would have been muzzled, and I plan on sticking around for awhile.

Overall, what the individual average person should get out of this, is that no matter how nice Travis Gault may seem, do not trust him. He's an evil heartless fascist. Travis Gault does not represent Gay people, or Graduate students, or anybody, except himself and maybe his entourage. Unless it's a choice between him and his entourage, then of course, Travis Gault will always pick Travis Gault. Maybe he read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and so that's where his megalomania comes from, since the main character was John Galt. It's shameful not only because of the backdoor, behind the scenes, backstabbing, and secretive ways of Travis Gault, but also because Travis Gault's bloodlust was so powerfully strong, that he was willing to vote against his own interests. Travis Gault is the Larry Craig of the University of Louisville. Larry "Wide Stance" Craig supported the "Federal Marriage Amendment" in 2006, and then ironically, later he was caught by Federal agents trying to illicit gay sex in a bathroom. Here's a Bill Maher clip on the Craig scandal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdfGqCCH4VU. The public official Larry Craig makes the man Larry Craig live a closeted lifestyle, and the same is true of Travis Gault.

Does everything SGA does have to have Travis Gault's name on it? I wouldn't mind witnessing a lively and vibrant discussion amongst SGA's 38 members, during one of their meetings. The Insiding Out of Travis Gault goes to prove that if you go into politics without a moral core, then you're virtually guaranteed to become corrupted. Travis Gault is just an empty shell of his possible “good” former self. Heartless fascists generally don't like me, and are nervous around me, not because of anything a pacifist committed to non-violence would do, but because they know that I can see right through them; I can see right through their facade, through their fake human-looking shell, through their wickedness, through their fascist heartlessness, their uncaring, unfeeling empty cavity, like rot in a hollowed out wooden tree. April 16, 2012 is the last meeting for SGA.

Last night was one big fucking gigantic waste of time.

Also, not surprisingly, the Cardinal, the “student” newspaper, wasn't in attendance.