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Tag: iab-education

  • Inflation is doing a crab walk and Fed officials fear its pinch | CNN Business

    Inflation is doing a crab walk and Fed officials fear its pinch | CNN Business

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    A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    The possibility of a 2023 market rally ground to a halt last week amid an onslaught of unfortunate inflation and economic data that spooked investors and increased the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will continue its economically painful rate hikes campaign for longer than Wall Street hoped.

    All major indexes notched their largest weekly losses of 2023 on Friday. The S&P 500 fell by 2.7%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank 3%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 3.3%.

    What’s happening: It appears that after months of steady decline, the pace of inflation is going sideways. January’s Personal Consumption Expenditures price index – the Fed’s favored inflation gauge – came in hotter than expected on Friday.

    Prices rose a whopping 5.4% in January from a year earlier, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis reported. In December, prices rose 5.3% annually.

    In January alone, prices were up 0.6% from the prior month, a higher monthly gain from December’s increase of 0.2%.

    This inflationary crab walk is almost certainly causing Fed officials to rethink their policy.

    A paper presented Friday at the Booth School of Business Monetary Policy Forum in New York argued that disinflation will likely be slower and more painful than markets anticipate.

    “Significant disinflations induced by monetary policy tightening are associated with recessions,” said the paper. “An ‘immaculate disinflation’ would be unprecedented.” (Immaculate, in this instance, refers to the possibility of inflation falling quickly to the Fed’s 2% goal without any serious economic damage).

    Several Fed presidents, governors and top economists were on hand at the Booth School forum to discuss the paper and monetary policy on Friday. The majority of those speaking expressed deep concern about the stubbornness of inflation and general market reaction.

    Inflation won’t quit: Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said that while price growth has moderated from its recent high, the overall pace of inflation remains too high and could be more persistent than her colleagues currently anticipate.

    “I anticipate further rate increases to reach a sufficiently restrictive level, then holding there for some, perhaps extended, time,” echoed Boston Fed President Susan Collins at the conference.

    Collins referred to inflation as “recalcitrant,” a loaded million-dollar word that means uncooperative, or defiant to authority.

    Fed Governor Philip Jefferson struck a more befuddled stance on Friday, observing that inflation continues to baffle economists. “The inflationary forces impinging on the US economy at present represent a complex mixture of temporary and more long-lasting elements that defy simple, parsimonious explanation,” he said. Parsimonious being another million-dollar word for frugal.

    Economists stressed that more pain lies ahead. “It’s important that markets understand that ‘no landing’ is not an option,” said Peter Hooper, vice chair of research at Deutsche Bank, an author of the report.

    While recent data has signaled that the US economy remains strong, “by the time we get to the middle of this year we expect to see some bad news coming and the sooner the markets get that message the more helpful it will be to the Fed,” he said.

    The final word: Former Bank of England Governor Lord Mervyn King summed up what many were thinking on Friday: Given the complexity of the current monetary situation, he said, “I wouldn’t want to give advice to any central banks about what we should do.”

    Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York have issued a dire warning: If President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan doesn’t come to fruition, the US could face another credit crisis.

    Some background: The Covid-19 crisis triggered a sudden shift in student loan policy and a new openness to forgiveness. In March 2020, Congress passed the CARES Act, which automatically paused required payments on all federally held student loans.

    That forbearance has since been extended eight times and is set to end as late as August, 40 months after it began.

    The Biden Administration had announced an unprecedented debt cancellation proposal which would provide relief to more than 40 million borrowers. An analysis by the New York Fed found that roughly $441 billion of federal student loans are eligible for forgiveness under the proposal, canceling about 30% of all outstanding federal student loan debt.

    That forgiveness proposal is now on hold after an injunction by the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals. On Tuesday, The Supreme Court of the United States will hear the case with its decision expected by June 2023.

    What’s on the line: If the Biden Administration’s forgiveness plan survives the court challenge, it will mark the largest mass discharge of consumer debt in modern history, according to the New York Fed. About 40% of those with federal student loan debt would have a zero balance; even more would have a much smaller monthly payment.

    But, “if payments resume without debt relief, we expect both student loan default and delinquencies to rise and potentially surpass pre-pandemic levels,” warned Fed researchers.

    “We note a stark increase in new credit card and auto loan delinquency for borrowers with eligible student loans over the past few quarters, growing at a faster pace than those without student loans and those with ineligible loans,” they wrote.

    Those missed payments suggest that some federal student loan borrowers are having trouble meeting their monthly debt obligations. “We expect these delinquency patterns to worsen if federal student loan payments resume without relief,” said the report.

    The data “may be suggestive of problems to come, a sign of economic distress that may appear particularly concerning when the burden of student loan payments resumes.”

    Future concerns: If student loan borrowers expect future debt cancellation, they may borrow even more, said researchers, which would increase debt balances even more sharply. “Absent direct policies to address this growing burden, taxpayers may be again called to for relief in the future,” they concluded.

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  • Lo Jelks, Atlanta’s first Black TV reporter, has died | CNN

    Lo Jelks, Atlanta’s first Black TV reporter, has died | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Lorenzo “Lo” Jelks, Atlanta’s first Black television news reporter, has died at 83, according to the Atlanta Press Club and CNN affiliate WSB.

    After graduating from Clark College (now known as Clark Atlanta University), Jelks was hired in 1967 by WSB-TV, where he stayed for nearly a decade, according to the Atlanta Press Club.

    “Once (WSB) took that opportunity of going with someone green like me, someone who had never been inside a television station, I think perhaps that helped with the other stations,” Jelks told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in an interview last year.

    After leaving WSB-TV, he created an AM radio station highlighting historically Black colleges and universities, and helped run a newspaper serving a group of local HBCUs, according to the Atlanta Press Club.

    “He really shined the light on the importance of education and I think in many ways changed the landscape of race relations in Atlanta and certainly in Georgia by his reporting,” Jocelyn Dorsey, former WSB director of editorials and public affairs, said in a tribute video for Jelks posted by the Atlanta Press Club.

    In 2022, Jelks was inducted into the Atlanta Press Club Hall of Fame.

    “The Atlanta Press Club is deeply saddened by the passing of Lorenzo ‘Lo’ Jelks,” the organization said in a statement after his death. “His legacy will live on with the 2023 Lorenzo ‘Lo’ Jelks Communications and Marketing Internship sponsored by the Georgia Power Foundation.”

    Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp also paid tribute to Jelks on Saturday.

    “As someone who made history for our state, he paved the way for other African Americans in media during a pivotal time,” Kemp said in a statement posted on Twitter.

    “As we pray for his loved ones, we’re also remembering his valued contributions,” the governor added.

    CNN reached out to Jelks’ family Saturday but did not receive a response.

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  • Student attacks school employee after Nintendo Switch taken away | CNN

    Student attacks school employee after Nintendo Switch taken away | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A Florida high school student has been arrested after a video showed him attacking a school employee after she took away his Nintendo Switch device, according to the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office.

    The Matanzas High School student has been charged with felony aggravated battery with bodily harm, the sheriff’s office said in a news release.

    The 17-year-old was taken into custody after the February 21 incident in Palm Coast and taken to the Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Facility. He was then turned over to the state Department of Juvenile Justice, according to the news release.

    According to an arrest report, the teen stated he was upset because the employee had taken his Nintendo Switch device away and that he would “beat her up” every time she took away his game.

    Surveillance video shows the student, who the sheriff’s office says is about 6 feet, 6 inches tall and about 270 lbs, running towards the employee and knocking her to the ground.

    The employee appears motionless as the student punches and kicks her several times before onlookers pulled him away from her.

    The employee was taken to an area hospital for treatment.

    “The actions of this student are absolutely horrendous and completely uncalled for,” Sheriff Rick Staly said in the release. “We hope the victim will be able to recover, both mentally and physically, from this incident. Thankfully, students and staff members came to the victim’s aid before the [school resource deputies] could arrive. Our schools should be a safe place – for both employees and students.”

    The arrest report said the teen was “becoming violent” while speaking to them after the incident and had to be taken to another location.

    “Creating a safe learning and working environment on our campuses is critical. Violence is never an appropriate reaction,” Flagler Coundy Schools Superintendent Cathy Mittelstadt said in the sheriff’s office’s media release,

    Flagler County Schools on Saturday said that out of respect for their employee’s privacy, it would not comment on her medical condition at this time.

    CNN left a phone message with the family of the student but has not heard back.

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  • Incumbent Lightfoot fights to make runoff in Chicago mayoral primary | CNN Politics

    Incumbent Lightfoot fights to make runoff in Chicago mayoral primary | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is fighting for her political survival, seeking to finish in the top two in Tuesday’s crowded primary and advance to an April runoff in her quest for a second term.

    Lightfoot, the first Black woman and first out gay person to serve as mayor of a city often pilloried by conservatives in national debates over violence and gun control, rose to prominence as a pugnacious reformer promising a break from the corruption and clubby governance that had long marked Chicago politics.

    But years of contentious brawls over policing, teacher pay and Covid-19 public safety policies, as well as mounting complaints about long waits in Chicago’s public transit system, have left Lightfoot vulnerable, raising the prospect of the Second City ousting its Democratic mayor in the first round of voting.

    Voters on Tuesday will sort through the nine-candidate field – including eight Democrats and one independent. No candidate is expected to top 50% of the vote, which would mean the top two finishers will advance to an April 4 runoff.

    Campaigns and Chicago political observers describe the contest as wide open, with four candidates emerging at the top: Lightfoot; progressive US Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García; Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson; and Paul Vallas, a law-and-order candidate and a onetime head of schools in Chicago, Philadelphia and New Orleans.

    If the outcome is close, it could take days to determine the top two finishers, as mail-in votes postmarked by election day get delivered.

    Powerful interests with which Lightfoot has at times brawled are split among her major challengers. Conservatives and the police have aligned behind one rival. Teachers have backed another. And many progressives are backing a third major contender.

    Above all else, concerns about crime and public safety have rattled Chicago. Violence in the city spiked in 2020 and 2021. And though shootings and murders have decreased since then, other crimes – including theft, car-jacking, robberies and burglaries – have increased since last year, according to the Chicago Police Department’s 2022 year-end report.

    Lightfoot and her rivals have placed the issue at the forefront of their campaigns.

    “We absolutely need to hire more officers,” Lightfoot said at a WTTW mayoral forum earlier this month. “This is one of the toughest times in the country to recruit, and mayors all over the country are experiencing the difficulty.”

    Chicago’s municipal elections are nonpartisan, which means all voters – Democrats, Republicans and independents – can participate. However, Chicago is an overwhelmingly blue city, and all the major contenders say they are Democrats.

    Vallas, however, has attracted support from conservatives, and has described the Democratic Party as moving away from him in recent years on certain issues. Lightfoot, in an email to supporters, said Vallas “has so strongly aligned himself with Republican views that he can’t even be considered a moderate Democrat.”

    Vallas, who unsuccessfully ran for Illinois governor as a Democrat in 2002 and was the losing Democratic lieutenant governor nominee in 2014, was endorsed by the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, the same organization that hosted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in nearby Elmhurst earlier this week.

    “I have talked about the need to take our city back from the criminals that are preying on our residents and preying on our businesses,” Vallas told CNN in an interview.

    Johnson, meanwhile, has floated the idea in the past of diverting some funds from the police budget to alternate sources, saying he wants to “invest in people.”

    He has the backing of the Chicago Teachers Union, a powerful organization that has repeatedly clashed with Lightfoot – including over teachers’ pay and class sizes in 2019 that led to an 11-day strike and then last year as Lightfoot pushed teachers to return to classrooms at a time of rising Covid-19 cases.

    “The reason we don’t have enough police officers is because we are asking them to be social workers, therapists and marriage counselors,” Johnson said at the WTTW forum. “I’m actually investing in actually having social workers, therapists to show up on the front line, to actually free up law enforcement to deal with the more severe crime that happens in the city of Chicago.”

    García – a former Cook County commissioner who in 2015 forced then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel into a runoff – has sounded similar themes.

    “Hiring more civilians to free up more police officers with their guns and badges to walk the walk, to talk to people, rebuild trust is the most important. The other important element is investing in communities and investing in violence prevention programs,” he told CNN.

    Vallas, whose message has revolved around a tough-on-crime message, said Chicago needs more police on “L” station platforms and on trains as part of a push to place more officers on local beats.

    He said combating violent crime is the “first, second and third priority” of his campaign.

    “Everything becomes undermined if you can’t provide public security,” Vallas told CNN.

    Lightfoot in recent days has lambasted Vallas after he told a crowd that his “whole campaign is about taking back our city, pure and simple.”

    The mayor told reporters that Vallas was “blowing the ultimate dog whistle.”

    “Take our city back, meaning what? To what time? And take our city back from whom?” she said.

    When pressed by CNN, Vallas said he was referring to criminals in his remark that Lightfoot has criticized.

    “I have talked about the need to take our city back from the criminals that are preying on our residents and preying on our businesses,” he said.

    For her part, Lightfoot has touted Chicago’s lawsuit against an Indiana gun store – part of an effort to demonstrate that the influx of firearms into the city isn’t a result of Chicago’s gun policies, but rather neighboring states with more lax laws.

    She has also touted her administration’s efforts to hire nearly 1,000 additional police officers, put privatized, unarmed security on public transit and create teams and task forces focused on car-jacking, halting the flow of guns into the city and more.

    The Chicago Tribune, the city’s largest newspaper, has endorsed Vallas. The newspaper’s editorial board credited Lightfoot’s financial management of the city and her navigation of the Covid-19 pandemic and said it hopes the mayor will advance to face Vallas one-on-one in the runoff.

    “Vallas has the ear of rank-and-file police officers on the street. We will expect him to use that trust to improve police conduct and the abysmal clearance rate for violent offenses,” the editorial board said.

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  • No. 2 at USDA, who led efforts to remedy historical racial discrimination, set to leave department | CNN Politics

    No. 2 at USDA, who led efforts to remedy historical racial discrimination, set to leave department | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Jewel Bronaugh, the No. 2 person at the US Department of Agriculture and the first Black woman in the position, will leave the department on Tuesday after a two-year tenure in which she led agency efforts to diversify its workforce and provide relief to farmers of color who say they have been discriminated against over the years.

    Bronaugh announced last month that she was leaving the agency in order to spend more time with her family. Xochitl Torres Small, the under secretary for rural development, has been nominated to succeed her.

    Along with helping steer a department that boasts 29 agencies and more than 100,000 employees across the country, Bronaugh has played a central role in the USDA’s efforts to remedy decades-long discrimination that has impacted farmers and ranchers of color. Most notably, she has co-chaired an independent commission that has examined the USDA’s policies and programs for factors that have contributed to historic discrimination against farmers of color and identify disparities, inequity and discrimination across the agency.

    “I understood as a Black woman, coming into the role as deputy secretary, the weight that went with that. The responsibility that went with that. The people who for years have not been able to get resources from USDA. The history that that has had on farmers and landowners and people who live in rural communities, I knew that I had a responsibility,” Bronaugh explained in an interview with CNN.

    “I knew coming in that there was a lot of work to be done and I was going to have to be real to that commitment, not only to everyone that USDA serves but specifically as a voice for people who have felt like they had not had a voice that represented in their interactions with the USDA. It was my responsibility to carry that.”

    Born and raised in Petersburg, Virginia, by educators, Bronaugh at first had aspirations to become an educator herself and earned a bachelor’s degree in education from James Madison University.

    But after earning a master’s degree and doctorate in vocational education from Virginia Tech, she stepped into agriculture when she took a job as a 4-H extension specialist at Virginia State University, a historically Black college and university. She also became dean of the College of Agriculture at Virginia State University and was executive director of the university’s Center for Agriculture Research, Engagement and Outreach.

    In May 2018, she was appointed commissioner of the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and made history as the first Black woman in the position. She was confirmed to her current role in May 2021.

    At USDA, Bronaugh led international agricultural trade missions in the United Kingdom and countries in East Africa to help US farm businesses and organizations strengthen export and trade relationships.

    She also helped create a chief diversity and inclusion office within the Office of the Secretary and has focused on diversifying USDA’s workforce, which has seen a slight uptick in the number of employees of color over the course of her tenure. According to USDA data, 73% of USDA employees are White, 28% are employees of color and 11% are Black. Forty-five percent of USDA employees are women.

    Her very presence atop the department has been inspiring for current and former Black USDA employees, including Shirley Sherrod, who was the USDA’s director of rural development in Georgia before being pushed out under controversial circumstances in 2010.

    “The fact that she is the first Black woman to hold the position means a lot to us. It gives us hope for the future,” Sherrod, who is also a member of the Equity Commission, told CNN. “When you look at the US Department of Agriculture and you look at all of the actions we have suffered as Black people trying to get the programs that should have been available to everyone, to access them and feel that they were being implemented fairly – to actually have someone in the second position … really helping to oversee that and have a voice in places we don’t normally get a chance to be in, just to me meant a lot.”

    As Bronaugh prepares to leave the agency, one of her final orders of business will be to release the Equity Commission’s interim report on its findings on Tuesday, which she hopes will provide a blueprint for acting on the inequities she has tried to address during her time at USDA. She said there is no time frame on when the agency will begin implementing the recommendations but she is hopeful it will happen immediately. If confirmed by the Senate, Small would be tasked with presenting the commission’s final recommendations to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack later this year.

    “Being able to get the Equity Commission to a set of interim recommendations has been huge for me,” Bronaugh said. “That is going to give us an opportunity to look at, you know, where we have discretion, where we have authority and where we have resources to immediately start to address some of the historical inequity issues here are USDA.”

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  • Florida bill would give DeSantis more power over state universities and ban gender studies | CNN Politics

    Florida bill would give DeSantis more power over state universities and ban gender studies | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A new bill overhauling Florida universities to match Gov. Ron DeSantis’ vision for higher education would shift power at state schools into the hands of the Republican leader’s political appointees and ban gender studies as a field of study.

    The legislation, filed this week, would also require that general education courses at state colleges and universities “promote the values necessary to preserve the constitutional republic” and cannot define American history “as contrary to the creation of a new nation based on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.” It would prohibit general courses “with a curriculum based on unproven, theoretical or exploratory content.”

    The bill makes good on DeSantis’ pledge to ban colleges and universities from any expenditures on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs. In a news conference earlier this month, DeSantis, who is weighing a 2024 presidential bid, said such programs create an “ideological filter,” and his office described them as “discriminatory.”

    DEI programs are intended to promote multiculturalism and to encourage students of all races and backgrounds to feel comfortable in a campus setting, especially those from traditionally underrepresented communities. The state’s flagship school, the University of Florida, has a “chief diversity officer,” a “Center for Inclusion and Multicultural Engagement” and an “Office for Accessibility and Gender Equity.”

    The bill would put all hiring decisions in the hands of each universities’ board of trustees, a body selected entirely by the governor and his appointees, with input from the school’s president. A board of trustee member could also call for the review of any faculty member’s tenure.

    DeSantis has seen his standing among conservatives soar nationwide following his public stances on hot-button cultural and education issues.

    The Republican governor has also installed a controversial new board at the New College of Florida, a public liberal arts college, with a mandate to remake the school into his conservative vision for higher education.

    Presidents of Florida’s two-year community colleges last month committed to not teach critical race theory in a vacuum and to “not fund or support any institutional practice, policy, or academic requirement that compels belief in critical race theory or related concepts such as intersectionality, or the idea that systems of oppression should be the primary lens through which teaching and learning are analyzed and/or improved upon.”

    The state’s education department characterized the move as a rejection of “‘woke’ diversity, equity and inclusion [and] critical race theory ideologies.”

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  • Vanderbilt University apologizes for using ChatGPT to write mass-shooting email | CNN Business

    Vanderbilt University apologizes for using ChatGPT to write mass-shooting email | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Vanderbilt University’s Peabody School has apologized to students for using artificial intelligence to write an email about a mass shooting at another university, saying the distribution of the note did not follow the school’s usual processes.

    Last Friday, the Tennessee-based school emailed its student body to address the tragedy at Michigan State that killed three students and injured five more people: “The recent Michigan shootings are a tragic reminder of the importance of taking care of each other, particularly in the context of creating inclusive environments,” reads the letter in part, as first reported by the Vanderbilt Hustler, a student newspaper.

    At the end of the school’s email was a surprising line: “Paraphrase from OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI language model, personal communication, February 15, 2023,” read a parenthetical in smaller font.

    Following an outcry from students about the use of AI to write a letter about community during human tragedy, the associate dean of Peabody sent an apology note the next day. Nicole Joseph, one of the three signatories of the original letter, called using ChatGPT “poor judgment,” according to the Vanderbilt Hustler.

    On Tuesday, Vanderbilt said Joseph and assistant dean Hasina Mohyuddin, another signer of the email, have stepped back from their responsibilities while the school conducts a complete review.

    “The development and distribution of the initial email did not follow Peabody’s normal processes providing for multiple layers of review before being sent. The university’s administrators, including myself, were unaware of the email before it was sent,” according to a statement Tuesday to CNN from Camilla P. Benbow, the Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education and Human Development.

    Since it was made available in late November, ChatGPT has been used to generate original essays, stories and song lyrics in response to user prompts. It has drafted research paper abstracts that fooled some scientists. Some CEOs have even used it to write emails or do accounting work.

    While it has gained traction among users, it has also raised some concerns, including about inaccuracies, its potential to perpetuate biases and spread misinformation, and the ability to help students cheat.

    Vanderbilt’s letter also included reference to “recent Michigan shootings,” though only one occurred.

    “As dean of the college, I remain personally saddened by the loss of life and injuries at Michigan State, which I know have affected members of our own community,” Benbow said. “I am also deeply troubled that a communication from my administration so missed the crucial need for personal connection and empathy during a time of tragedy.”

    Rachael Perrotta, editor in chief of the Vanderbilt student newspaper, said that students told her “they are outraged about this situation and confused as to what prompted administrators to turn to ChatGPT to write their message about the Michigan State shooting.”

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  • 2 personal stories shed light on the unforeseen consequences of Brown v. Board of Education | CNN Politics

    2 personal stories shed light on the unforeseen consequences of Brown v. Board of Education | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Everett R. Berryman Jr. was 11 years old when the Supreme Court handed down the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which made racial segregation in public schools illegal.

    But supervisors in Prince Edward County, Virginia, where Berryman was attending public school, had no intention of complying. Five years later, in 1959, as Berryman was looking ahead to attending 7th grade, the county shuttered all public schools and opened a private school – for White children only. It would take five years, an intervention by the Department of Justice and another Supreme Court order, before integrated public schooling in Prince Edward County proceeded.

    Around the same time, in North Carolina, Dr. E.B. Palmer was working as the executive secretary of state for the North Carolina Teachers Association, advocating for Black teachers after Brown was decided.

    “When the school system said ‘separate but equal,’ that was fine,” Palmer recalled to CNN. “But when we moved a little further, they tried to say, ‘We don’t want Black teachers teaching White students.’”

    Nearly 40,000 teaching positions held by Black teachers in 17 southern and border states would be lost in the ensuring years, according to Samuel B. Ethridge, a National Education Association official who was a leader in the movement to integrate teacher organizations during the civil rights movement.

    Today, Brown v. Board of Education is remembered as a watershed moment in the history of America’s civil rights progress and the fight against systemic racism. But the ruling also had the unintended effect of leaving behind thousands of Black students and educators whose fates were not considered when America moved to reshape its education system.

    Berryman and Palmer shared their stories with CNN as part of the “History Refocused” series, which explores surprising and personal stories from America’s past that may bring new understanding of today’s conflicts.

    The Supreme Court officially struck down the legal basis for segregated classrooms in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, but a second, follow-up ruling a year later outlined the process for implementing school desegregation. In “Brown II,” the Supreme Court ordered district courts to enforce desegregation “with all deliberate speed,” reasoning that such language would provide local authorities with time to adjust to the new law of the land.

    Instead, those opposed to desegregation exploited the terms, including officials in Prince Edward County, who figured that by starving the local public school system of funding, they could do an end-run around the high court’s order by opening a private – and all-White – school.

    “Even in cases where White children or White families rather could not afford to attend the school, they even charged as little as a dollar to allow White students to attend school,” Dawn Williams, dean of Howard University’s School of Education, told CNN. “Now, for the Black community – something totally different for the Black community. There were no forms of public schooling.”

    To combat the lack of educational opportunities, members of the Black community in the area created a grassroots community center, which also served as a makeshift school, but it was not the real thing.

    Two years into the lockout, the Berryman family looked for other ways to keep their children in school. They tried to enroll their children in the neighboring county of Appomattox, Virginia, only to find out that they had to live in the county and present a valid address to do so. The next step was to move in with a family friend.

    At that point, Berryman was a 14-year-old who stood 6-foot-2 but was still in 7th grade, when he should have been in the 9th grade had he not missed out on years of public schooling.

    “I was the tallest guy in the whole school,” he recalled.

    Eventually, the Supreme Court had to become involved again. In 1964, it ruled that the time for desegregating schools “with all deliberate speed” had passed and that there was no justification for “denying these Prince Edward County school children their constitutional rights to an education equal to that afforded by the public schools in the other parts of Virginia.”

    Berryman and his family returned to Prince Edward County when the public schools reopened, and he remembered feeling “happy to be back home.” But there were constant reminders of the toll taken on the Black community.

    “We ran across students – all students were with us that hadn’t been in school for going on five years. And some of the students here began school at 10 years old. … And on the upper end, we had guys and girls graduating high school at 21 and 22 years old,” Berryman said. “So we had – it was like a kaleidoscope of pupils every which way in this grand scheme of school opening again.”

    Brown was intended to protect education opportunities for students. It didn’t say anything about teachers whose jobs would be soon jeopardized by school integration, when Black students often moved to White facilities that had superior conditions.

    In the wake of Brown, various tactics were used across the nation to undercut Black teachers and educators, from outright dismissals or demotions to forcing teachers to teach unfamiliar subjects or grades – making it easier to fire them based on poor performance.

    In Alabama, tenure rules were rewritten in several counties and teachers believed they were dismissed because of their participation in the civil rights movement, the NEA found in a 1965 report. North Carolina and South Carolina repealed their teachers’ continuing contract laws.

    “I had to spend day and night traveling all over the state following behind complaints of Black teachers being dismissed where schools were being desegregated,” recalled Palmer, the former official with the North Carolina Teachers Association.

    Ethridge, writing in the Negro Educational Review in 1979, found that by the mid-1970s, 39,386 teaching positions had been lost by Black teachers as a result of desegregation in 17 states, mostly in the South. In the 1970-71 school year alone, the cumulative loss in income to the Black community in those states totaled $240,564,911, the NAACP found.

    “The cumulative amount is staggering to the imagination,” Ethridge wrote in his research, noting that even as the Black student population grew in those years, the number of Black teachers decreased in those states.

    The Black teaching force has never recovered from the tremendous losses. In the 2017-18 school year, even though Whites accounted for less than half of the students in public schools – the result of a steady increase in diversity over the last 30 years – White teachers made up 79% of the workforce, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, down from 87% three decades earlier. The percentage of public school Black teachers – 7% in 2017-18 – decreased one percentage point over that same time period.

    “Sadly, the reasons for this disparity go far back, and a key impetus happened just as the nation attempted to fix our public education system,” Williams said.

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  • How an old debate previews Biden’s new strategy for winning senior voters | CNN Politics

    How an old debate previews Biden’s new strategy for winning senior voters | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    In pressing Republicans on Social Security and Medicare, President Joe Biden is reprising one of the most dramatic moments of his long career.

    During the 2012 vice-presidential debate, Biden engaged in a nearly 11-minute exchange with GOP nominee Paul Ryan over Republican plans to reconfigure the two massive programs for the elderly, several of which Ryan had authored himself.

    Biden and many Democrats felt he had won the argument on stage. Yet on Election Day, Ryan and GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney routed Biden and President Barack Obama among White seniors, and beat them soundly among seniors overall, exit polls found.

    That outcome underscores the obstacles facing Biden now as he tries to recapture older voters by portraying Republicans as threats to the two towers of America’s safety net for the elderly. While polls consistently show that voters trust Democrats more than Republicans to safeguard the programs, GOP presidential nominees have carried all seniors in every presidential election back to 2004 and have reached at least 58% support among White seniors in each of the past four contests, exit polls have found. Democrats have likewise consistently struggled among those nearing retirement, older working adults aged 45-64.

    Those results suggest that for most older voters, affinity for the GOP messages on other issues – particularly its resistance, in the Donald Trump era, to cultural and racial change – has outweighed their views about Social Security and Medicare. Those grooves are now cut so deeply, over so many elections, that Biden may struggle to change them much no matter how hard he rails against a range of GOP proposals that could retrench or restructure the programs.

    Biden’s charge that Republicans are threatening the two giant entitlement programs for the elderly – which triggered his striking back and forth exchanges with GOP legislators during the State of the Union – fits squarely in his broader political positioning as he turns toward his expected reelection campaign.

    As I’ve written, the 80-year-old Biden, at his core, “remains something like a pre-1970s Democrat, who is most comfortable with a party focused less on cultural crusades than on delivering kitchen-table benefits to people who work with their hands.” As president he’s expressed that inclination primarily through what he calls his “blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America” – the planks in his economic plans, such as generous incentives to revive domestic manufacturing, aimed at creating more opportunity for workers without a college degree. Politically, Biden’s staunch defense of Social Security and Medicare, programs critical to the economic security of financially vulnerable retirees, represents a logical bookend to that emphasis.

    “We all know that whose side you are on is a critical debate point for every election and this debate over Social Security and Medicare really helps crystallize whose side Biden is on versus whose side Republicans are on in a very effective way for him,” said Democratic pollster Matt Hogan, who helped conduct an extensive series of bipartisan polls during the 2022 campaign measuring attitudes among seniors for the AARP, the giant lobby for the elderly.

    From Franklin Roosevelt through Hubert Humphrey and Tip O’Neill, generations of Democrats have framed themselves as the defenders of the social safety net for seniors against Republicans who they say would unravel it. Biden showed how comfortable he was stepping into those shoes during his 2012 vice-presidential debate with Ryan, then a young representative from Wisconsin who Romney had selected as his running mate.

    Nearly 30 years Biden’s junior, Ryan was an unflinching advocate of restructuring Social Security and Medicare to reduce costs over time. In particular, Ryan was the principal supporter of a conservative plan to convert Medicare, the giant federal health insurance program for the elderly, into a system called “premium support.” Under that proposal, Medicare would be transformed from its current structure, in which the government directly pays doctors and hospitals who provide care for beneficiaries, into a voucher (or “premium support”) system, in which the government would provide recipients a fixed sum to purchase private insurance. Ryan had also drafted proposals to partially privatize Social Security by allowing workers to divert part of their payroll taxes into private investment accounts, a change that would have reduced the tax dollars flowing into the system and eventually required substantial cuts in guaranteed benefits.

    For nearly 11 minutes during the debate in October 2012, moderator Martha Raddatz of ABC skillfully guided Biden and Ryan through a heated, but civil and substantive, discussion of Social Security and Medicare’s future. Ryan insisted that changes were needed to preserve the programs’ long-term viability and that current seniors and those near retirement would not see their benefits reduced.

    Biden appealed openly to the Democrats’ historic image as the programs’ protectors and condemned Ryan and the GOP for wanting to partially privatize them. At one point in the debate, Biden declared: “we will be no part of a [Medicare] voucher program or the privatization of Social Security.” A few moments later, he insisted: “These guys haven’t been big on Medicare from the beginning. And they’ve always been about Social Security as little as you can do. Look, folks, use your common sense. Who do you trust on this?”

    At the time, Democrats felt Biden had at least held his own, restoring the party’s momentum after Obama’s surprisingly listless performance eight days earlier in his first debate against Romney. And Democrats through the rest of the campaign railed against the Republican ticket as a threat to Social Security and Medicare.

    But on election day, those arguments did not translate into gains for Obama and Biden among seniors or the older working adults (aged 45-64) nearing retirement. As Hogan noted, the newly passed Affordable Care Act, which generated some of its funding through savings in Medicare, was extremely unpopular at the time among older voters. Obama and Biden not only lost seniors and the older working age adults, but actually ran slightly more poorly among both groups in 2012 than they did in 2008.

    In fact, no Democratic presidential nominee since Al Gore in 2000 has carried most seniors in a presidential campaign; Obama in 2008 was the only one since Gore to carry most of the older working age adults. Among older Whites, the Democratic deficit is even more pronounced: the Republican presidential nominee has carried around three-fifths of both White seniors and those nearing retirement in each of the past four elections. Biden in 2020 slightly improved on Hillary Clinton’s anemic 2016 performance with both groups, but still lost to Trump by 15 percentage points among White seniors and by 23 points among the Whites nearing retirement, according to the exit polls conducted by Edison Research for a consortium of media organizations including CNN. Biden performed especially poorly among older Whites without a college degree – an economically stressed group heavily reliant on the federal retirement programs.

    Estimates by Catalist, a Democratic targeting firm, and the Pew Research Center likewise found that Trump in both 2016 and 2020 beat his Democratic opponents among both seniors and the older working adults. Like the exit polls, the Catalist data show the Republican nominees carrying about three-fifths of White seniors and older working adults in each of the past three presidential elections.

    The story is similar in congressional contests. In House elections, the exit polls found Republicans winning all seniors and older working adults comfortably in the 2014 and 2022 midterm campaigns and narrowly carrying them even in 2018 when Democrats romped overall. In all three of those midterm congressional elections, Republicans carried about three-fifths of the near retirement White adults, while they also reached that elevated threshold among White seniors in both the 2014 and 2022 campaigns.

    Republicans have maintained these advantages with older voters despite polls showing that most Americans trust Democrats more than the GOP to protect Social Security and Medicare, and that most Americans, especially seniors, oppose the intermittently surfacing GOP proposals to partially privatize both programs.

    Politically, “Democrats have used Social Security and Medicare really a lot over the past two or three decades, maybe four decades,” said Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic group. “The payoff has been a lot less than Democrats have generally thought it would be.”

    Could this time be different for Biden and the Democrats? Congressional Republicans have certainly provided plenty of evidence for his claim that they still hope to restructure the programs. The proposed 2023 budget by the Republican Study Committee, the members of which include about three-fourths of House Republicans, reprises the ideas of converting Medicare into a premium support system and establishing private investment accounts under Social Security, while also raising the retirement age for both programs and reducing Social Security benefits over time. And although Florida Sen. Rick Scott renounced the idea late last week, his “Rescue America” agenda did include a proposal to require Congress to reauthorize all federal programs, including Social Security and Medicare, every five years.

    These ideas have precipitated an unusual degree of open Republican dissension. Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell repeatedly, and unreservedly, denounced the Scott plan until the Florida senator backed off. Trump recently released a video in which he declared the GOP should not cut “a single penny” of Social Security or Medicare benefits – which put him directly at odds with the three-fourths of House Republicans in the Republican Study Committee. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, bending more toward Trump’s position, seems unlikely to incorporate into the GOP budget plans the RSC’s most sweeping changes in Social Security and Medicare.

    Kessler believes Biden may succeed where other Democrats have failed at hurting the GOP with the issue, and he argued that the conspicuous Republican infighting demonstrates they share that concern. “We are watching a high-profile battle that I’ve never really seen before on these issues in the Republican Party,” Kessler said. “And part of it is clearly they think it’s a problem when they didn’t years ago. If they think it’s a problem, maybe it’s a problem.”

    Stuart Stevens, who served as Romney’s chief strategist in the 2012 campaign but has since become a fierce critic of the Trump-era GOP, also believes the party could face more risk over its entitlement agenda than it did back then. The reason is that he thinks the idea of sunsetting Social Security and Medicare every five years, even if Scott is trying to jettison it, may prove more immediately tangible and understandable to voters than Ryan’s complex ideas of partially privatizing both programs.

    “The question I always ask myself in campaigns is ‘are you talking about something the other side doesn’t want to talk about?’” Stevens said. “That’s probably a good sign that they are losing on the issue.”

    Whether Biden proves more effective than other recent Democrats at attracting older voters around Social Security and Medicare will likely pivot on whether seniors believe the GOP genuinely would cut the programs if given the power to do so, argued Robert Blendon, a professor emeritus at the Harvard School of Public Health, who specializes in public attitudes about the social safety net. “If the senior community actually believes that it’s being threatened it really would affect their votes,” he predicted. But, he added, “as long as they are not threatened, the other values of seniors on top issues more and more correspond with Republicans.”

    There’s no doubt about the second half of that equation. Polling has consistently found that older Whites, in particular, are more receptive than their younger counterparts to hardline Trump-era GOP messages around crime, immigration and the broader currents of racial and cultural change: for instance, about half of Whites older than 50 agree that discrimination against Whites is now as big a problem as bias against minorities, a far higher percentage than among younger Whites, according to a new national survey by the Public Religion Research Institute. Older Whites are also more likely than younger generations to lack a college degree or to identify as Christians, attributes that generally predict sympathy for GOP cultural and racial arguments.

    Through the 21st century, those cultural and racial attitudes among older White voters have consistently trumped any concerns they may hold about the Republican commitment to Social Security and Medicare. Despite Biden’s impassioned articulation of the case against the GOP, that didn’t change even in 2012 when Republicans placed on their national ticket a vice presidential nominee who directly embodied the GOP aspirations to reconfigure and retrench those programs.

    Even small changes in seniors’ preferences could have a big impact in closely balanced states with a large retiree population like Arizona and Pennsylvania. But the entrenched GOP advantage among older voters over the past two decades suggests Biden’s hopes in 2024 may pivot less on improving with the “gray” than maximizing his vote among the “brown”: the diverse, younger generations that recoil from the same Republican messages on culture and race that electrify so many older Whites.

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  • London is handing out free meals for all primary school children | CNN Business

    London is handing out free meals for all primary school children | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    London’s mayor has announced an emergency program to provide free meals for all children attending state primary schools in the capital, adding to a string of fresh evidence that Brits are struggling to afford necessities.

    “The cost-of-living crisis means families and children across our city are in desperate need of additional support,” Sadiq Khan, who himself received free school meals as a child, said in a statement Monday.

    The £130 million ($156 million) program will run for the academic year starting in September and save families around £440 ($529) per child. It will also help reduce the “stigma that can be associated with being singled out as low income,” the statement added.

    It is expected to help around 270,000 pupils who, according to estimates by researchers for the city government, would benefit from free school meals but are not currently eligible under national criteria, which are broadly based on household income. On this basis, a quarter of all London pupils, including those in high school, qualify for free school meals, according to official data.

    This number tallies with an estimate by the Child Poverty Action Group that about 210,000 children living in poverty in London don’t qualify for free school meals because the eligibility criteria are “so restrictive.”

    There was further evidence Monday that more and more Brits are struggling to afford food and electricity as inflation, which is near its highest level in four decades, erodes wages and welfare payments.

    A survey of 85 food banks by the Independent Food Aid Network, an advocacy group, found that 89% saw demand increase in December and January, compared with the same period 12 months ago.

    More than 80% of food banks reported a significant number of people needing help for the first time, as well as an increase in the number of people needing ongoing support rather than occasional food parcels. Just over a third of organizations said they had served staff working for the National Health Service (NHS), which has been hit with successive strikes since December over pay and working conditions.

    “Our fastest-growing client group are working people on low wages who cannot make ends meet,” said Su Parrish from The Easter Team, a food bank in Crawley, south of London.

    Parrish added that the food bank had provided a “record” number of Christmas parcels and modified their usual contents as “clients told us they wouldn’t be able to afford to put ovens on, even on Christmas Day.”

    A survey of more than 2,700 UK adults, published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Monday, found that 51% were worried about keeping warm in their homes this winter.

    Some 60% of respondents, who were polled between January 25 and February 5, said they were using less gas or electricity at home to cope with the increased cost of food, fuel and energy bills.

    “We hear horror stories of people living in cold flats keeping their entire energy budget for keeping the fridge going,” said Andi Hofbauer of St Aidan’s FoodShare in Leeds.

    Also on Monday, a separate ONS survey of nearly 18,500 UK adults between September and January found that 34% of those aged 25 to 34 years reported borrowing more money or using more credit than usual compared with a year ago.

    And over half of adults living in rented accommodation said they would be unable to afford an unexpected, but necessary, expense of £850 ($1,000).

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  • 3 Michigan State University students remain in critical condition after shooting | CNN

    3 Michigan State University students remain in critical condition after shooting | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Three students wounded in a deadly shooting last week at Michigan State University remain in critical condition Sunday, according to university police.

    The university community was paralyzed by the mass shooting that left three students dead and five others injured. One of the wounded students who was previously listed in critical condition was in serious condition Sunday and the fifth person was in fair condition, university police said in a tweet.

    Classes are expected to resume Monday, one week after a 43-year-old gunman opened fire on two parts of the campus, but no classes will be held in the rooms where students were shot and killed or wounded, said MSU Interim Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Thomas Jeitschko.

    Those two parts of the campus will remain closed at least through the remainder of the semester, Jeitschko said at a news conference Sunday.

    “We have decided that we will return to campus, both in terms of the classroom setting as well as the regular work, come tomorrow,” Jeitschko said. “I’d like to emphasize that no one thinks that we’re coming back to a normal week. In fact, this semester is not going to be normal.”

    Around 300 scheduled classes have been moved to other spaces across the university, according to Jeitschko, including areas formerly used to host lunches and seminars.

    It’s still unclear why the gunman – a man with no known ties to MSU – targeted the university. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said, and had a note that threatened other shootings hundreds of miles away in New Jersey.

    Funerals for two of the victims, Brian Fraser and Alexandria Verner, were held Saturday, and the funeral for the third, Arielle Anderson, will be in a few days, MSU interim President Teresa Woodruff said.

    “We continue as a community to hold the families in our hearts as they remember and celebrate their loved ones lost and grieve that loss,” Woodruff said.

    “We’re grateful to our faculty, staff, and academic staff and our support staff, as well as our students, for their grace and dignity in this last week,” she said.

    University officials said they hope students will be able to manage their return to school with the support of the staff and the community.

    Coming back together “is something that will help us,” Jeitschko said. “We’re a community that was shaped around the interest of discovery and learning, and it is as a community we will heal.”

    For employees and faculty, the university has an employee assistance program, and for students, there are counseling and psychiatric services.

    Advisers will make allowances “for extenuating circumstances” where students are not able to make it to class and faculty can work with their department chairs or school directors, as well as their deans, Jeitschko said.

    The university has arranged to cover funeral costs for those killed and will also pay the hospital bills for the injured students, Woodruff said. A fund has so far raised more than $250,000, with around 2,000 students making donations over just a few days.

    The fund will be used to support the “continuing needs of the individuals most critically impacted,” Woodruff said, and will also go toward counseling for students, faculty and staff, and “campus safety enhancements.”

    “We all share in grief and loss and we know that we must replace the chaos of last Monday with the possibility for change in our world, through compassion for all, collaboration and educational continuity,” Woodruff said.

    Michigan State University has almost 50,000 students and 15,000 faculty and staff, Woodruff said. “We’re a community that is strong. Not as a reaction but as a statement of purpose and principle.”

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  • English professor in Florida says university is reviewing his employment following complaint over racial justice unit | CNN

    English professor in Florida says university is reviewing his employment following complaint over racial justice unit | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    An English professor at Florida’s Palm Beach Atlantic University says his job is under review after his employer told him they received a complaint that he is “indoctrinating” students.

    “The racial justice unit is what got me in hot water,” Sam Joeckel told CNN.

    Joeckel said he has been teaching a unit on racial justice in classes for many years without complaints until his provost and dean said Wednesday they needed to talk to him “privately” at the end of a class.

    The two told him his contract renewal for next year would be on hold as they investigated the materials used in the racial justice unit, he said.

    Joeckel was given a letter from the university, which he shared with CNN, informing him a decision about his employment would be made by March 15.

    “The told me they had concerns that I was indoctrinating students. That was the exact word they used: indoctrinating,” Joeckel said. “I had no idea this was coming.”

    Joeckel said his conversation with his employers indicated the investigation was prompted by a complaint from a parent.

    Palm Beach Atlantic University did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNN Saturday. A university spokesperson on Friday told CNN affiliate WPBF, “I’m advised we can not comment on a personnel matter.”

    PBA is a private Christian university and its employee handbook says, “Discontinuance of employment may occur at any time, without cause, at the discretion of PBA.” The institution does not offer tenure, the review process for employment decisions regarding senior faculty that is meant to safeguard academic freedom.

    A number of students came to Joeckel’s defense online. Lauren Carleton, who graduated in May, told CNN she had taken two of Joeckel’s classes and didn’t feel she was being pressured to think a certain way.

    “He is open-minded, and never wants to push his agenda on students; he pushes students to be critical thinkers and open-minded. That was my experience,” she said.

    The review of Joeckel’s employment comes as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has proposed plans to defund all diversity, equity and inclusion programs at state colleges and universities in Florida. And his administration rejected a proposed Advanced Placement African American studies course in high schools.

    DeSantis was at the PBA campus Wednesday for a news conference on a separate matter.

    While most of the governor’s recent education decisions may not directly affect PBA, Joeckel believes they are still setting a tone for the state.

    “Of course I can’t say with certainty the connection, but things like this do not happen in a vacuum. What happened to me is definitely influenced by a toxic political culture, and it’s my opinion that the university is playing a role,” Joeckel said.

    “We do not like to talk about racism,” he added. “We do not like to have uncomfortable conversations.”

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  • Students denounce bullying in New Jersey school district where teenager died by suicide | CNN

    Students denounce bullying in New Jersey school district where teenager died by suicide | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    At the first school board meeting in Bayville, New Jersey, since a 14-year-old student died by suicide days after being attacked by four classmates, administrators heard powerful commentary from current and former students who said they’ve been bullied without recourse from school district officials.

    Several current and former students approached the microphone at a Central Regional School Board of Education meeting Thursday, sharing their struggles with bullying at Central Regional High School in Berkeley Township.

    Some said they had experienced thoughts of suicide.

    “We’re scared to walk in the hallway,” one freshman told the school board. Another student said she has been called names she can’t repeat out loud.

    One student said she returns home from school feeling threatened.

    “My name is Danielle. I am also so many other names that people have called me over the years and you guys have done nothing,” that student said.

    Adriana Kuch, 14, was found dead in her Bayville home February 3, her father told CNN. Two days before her death, a TikTok video showed the freshman student being assaulted in a school hallway by a group of teenagers, prosecutors say. Michael Kuch believes his daughter died late at night on February 2, shortly after she sent her last text message at 10:46 p.m., he said.

    In the wake of Kuch’s death, four students at the high school were charged in connection with the attack, Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley D. Billhimer said in a statement to CNN. The former superintendent of the school district, Triantafillos Parlapanides, resigned from his post Saturday, effective immediately, the district said in a statement on its website.

    The incident has sparked outrage among students and parents who say it reflects a culture of bullying in the district. The community is calling on school district officials to improve how it handles allegations of bullying.

    One student’s allegations of bullying at the high school were detailed in a lawsuit filed in October, CNN previously reported. The lawsuit claims a different 14-year-old girl was physically assaulted by two teenagers, one of whom had allegedly sent her threatening text messages in December 2021.

    The school district said in a statement days after Kuch’s death that it is “evaluating all current and past allegations of bullying” and will “undergo an independent assessment of the District’s anti-bullying policies and ensure every necessary safeguard is in place to protect our students and staff.”

    The attack on Adriana Kuch, who was walking with her boyfriend in the hallway at the time, was recorded on video and posted later that same day on social media platforms, including TikTok, which prompted a slew of hateful comments and online bullying that Michael Kuch said drove his daughter to take her own life.

    The video, obtained and reviewed by CNN, shows the freshman student being hit in the face with a water bottle several times. The footage shows Adriana was punched, kicked and her hair was pulled. Kuch says his daughter suffered bruising and blacked out for a short time as a result of the attack.

    Kuch has accused the school district of mishandling the attack. He says police should have been notified immediately and that his daughter should have been taken to the hospital.

    “I want this to stop happening to other kids,” Kuch previously told CNN. “This isn’t just my daughter. A lot of kids are facing this at school.”

    Hundreds of people were in attendance Thursday, including family members and parents, when School Board of Education President Denise Pavone-Wilson started the meeting, saying she wanted to begin the process of healing at school.

    The school board president said the board offered their “most sincere deepest sympathies to the family of our student, Adriana Kuch.”

    During the meeting, one student said their classmates have tried to “jump” them because of their sexual orientation and that photographs taken of them in school have been posted on social media.

    This student said they were suicidal and self-harmed in the past because of “things that happened to me in this school.”

    Kuch was remembered warmly by another student who described her as a “very sweet and kind girl” who helped her on her first day of school when she didn’t know anyone yet.

    Parents and family members also shared their emotional testimony at the meeting.

    One parent said food had been thrown at her daughter in a school cafeteria. Another woman, who said her niece was severely bullied at a high school in the district, asked why a student had to die by suicide for “us to hit rock bottom.”

    “It should have never gone there,” that woman said. “Rock bottom should have been the first time a student was bullied, and it should have been taken care of from that point on.”

    When Pavone-Wilson told attendees at the meeting that faculty and staff always had the “best interest of the students and their education at the forefront,” one person in the audience yelled out “not true” and applause followed.

    Then, amid jeering from the crowd, the board moved to officially appoint Dr. Douglas Corbett as the district’s acting superintendent following Parlapanides’s resignation. Some members of the audience shouted “resign” and “leave” as the motion to appoint Corbett passed.

    Shortly before the meeting began, Corbett said the circumstances of Kuch’s death “were disturbing and we share in the community’s shock.”

    New school district leadership is looking into a handful of initiatives, including retaining an outside party to examine the district’s policies and response to crises and creating a focus group of teachers and parents to handle the issues, according to Corbett.

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  • Biden administration releases data breaking down student loan relief applications by congressional district | CNN Politics

    Biden administration releases data breaking down student loan relief applications by congressional district | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Department of Education released a breakdown of federal student loan forgiveness applications by congressional district on Friday, providing a new window into the demographics of borrowers seeking relief across both Republican and Democratic-represented districts.

    The new data is being released as the fate of President Joe Biden’s debt relief plan remains in limbo, with the US Supreme Court set to soon hear cases challenging its legality later this month. The initiative would offer up to $20,000 of individual debt forgiveness to millions of low- and middle-income borrowers, but ongoing legal challenges have meant that no one has received relief – including millions of borrowers whose applications have already been approved.

    The White House says the plan is vital in order to provide targeted debt relief to certain federal student-loan borrowers affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. But many Republicans say that the relief will make inflation worse and argue it’s unfair to individuals who didn’t take out student loans or have already paid them off. They’ve also criticized the administration’s legal justification for issuing the relief through executive authority.

    The Department of Education received about 26 million applications for debt relief by the time a federal district court judge blocked the program in November. More than 16 million of those borrowers’ applications were fully approved and more than 40 million borrowers would qualify for the program, according to the administration.

    “Across the country, in every congressional district there is a strong desire for the Biden-Harris Administration’s one-time debt relief program,” a Department of Education official said about the new data. “In every single congressional district, at least half of eligible borrowers either applied or were deemed auto-eligible for debt relief, and that was only in the one month that the application was available before the program got blocked because of lawsuits.”

    In every congressional district, the official said, at least 30% of eligible borrowers were approved to have their debt discharged before the program was blocked. Some 81% of all applications for relief came from the bottom 80% of congressional districts when broken down by average income, the official added.

    A new Politico analysis of additional zip code data from the department obtained though a public records request also shows that borrowers living in lower-income areas applied for relief at a higher rate compared to those who live in wealthier neighborhoods, and most applications came from places where the per-capita income is under $35,000. Non-White majority zip codes accounted for more forgiveness applications per capita than majority-White zip codes.

    Friday’s data build on earlier numbers released by the Department of Education which showed a state-by-state breakdown of student loan forgiveness applications, which were published shortly after independent auditors questioned the estimated cost of the program.

    The the latest release coincides with the Supreme Court planning to hear two cases pertaining to Biden’s student loan forgiveness program later this month, including one from several Republican-led states.

    Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina say that the Department of Education did not have the legal authority to issue such a cancellation. They argue that it violates the separation of powers and that Biden is using the pandemic as a pretext to mask his true goal of fulfilling a campaign promise to erase student-loan debt.

    They put forward several theories that they say allow them to get into court to challenge a program they argue unlawfully invokes Covid “to assert power beyond anything Congress could have conceived.”

    Another case being heard by the high court this month was brought by two individual borrowers – Myra Brown and Alexander Taylor – who are not qualified for full debt relief forgiveness and who say they were denied an opportunity to comment on Education Secretary Miguel Cardona’s decision to provide targeted student loan debt relief to some.

    Earlier this month, 126 House Republicans – led by Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx of North Carolina and South Carolina Rep. Jeff Duncan – filed an amicus brief opposing the debt forgiveness effort.

    According to the White House data, in Foxx’s district, approximately 61% of borrowers, some 46,300 people, applied or were automatically eligible for relief. In Duncan’s district, about 59% of borrowers, 51,400 people, applied or were automatically eligible for relief.

    A number of members in Republican leadership, including Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Majority Whip Tom Emmer, Conference Chair Elise Stefanik and Policy Committee Chair Gary Palmer also signed onto the brief.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy did not sign onto the brief, but he has been critical of the president’s plan.

    McCarthy’s home state of California, the most populous state in the nation, has 2.3 million people who have applied or were automatically eligible for relief – the most out of any state. Approximately 60% of borrowers in the speaker’s district applied or were automatically eligible for relief, with 31,600 borrowers already fully approved for relief out of 49,800 who have applied or were automatically eligible.

    Representatives for Foxx, Duncan, Scalise, Emmer, Stefanik, Palmer and McCarthy did not respond to CNN’s request for comment on the new data.

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  • Michigan State to ease back into classes and athletics as students and staff continue to grapple with horror of mass shooting | CNN

    Michigan State to ease back into classes and athletics as students and staff continue to grapple with horror of mass shooting | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    After the Michigan State University community was paralyzed by a horrific mass shooting that killed three students, injured five others and halted campus activity, the school will begin to resume athletic and academic life, as many are still struggling to make sense of the tragedy.

    Athletic events, some of which were postponed or canceled due to the shooting, are scheduled to resume this weekend and classes will recommence Monday, university officials announced.

    “Athletics can be a rallying point for a community in need of healing, a fact many of our student-athletes have mentioned to me,” MSU Vice President and Director of Athletics Alan Haller said in a statement Thursday. “The opportunity to represent our entire community has never felt greater.”

    Student athletes may opt out of participating, Haller said, explaining, “there are some who aren’t ready to return to athletic events. Those feelings are incredibly valid.”

    All classes were canceled through Sunday and other activities suspended for at least two days after a 43-year-old gunman opened fire Monday evening on two parts of the campus. As they fled the deadly rampage, students leapt from smashed windows and ran to dorms as others sheltered in place for hours. Some students found themselves reliving a familiar nightmare, as they had survived another mass shooting just over a year ago.

    The five injured students are “showing signs of improvement,” MSU interim President Teresa Woodruff said Thursday. One has been moved from critical to stable condition and the others remain in critical condition, Board of Trustees chair Rema Vassar said.

    Berkey Hall, where Arielle Anderson and Alexandria Verner were killed, will remain closed for the rest of the semester, Woodruff said. The nearby student union, where Brian Fraser was killed, is also closed, she said, noting its reopening is still being evaluated.

    But even as the campus transitions back to normal operations, community members like professor Marco Díaz-Muñoz are still working through the pain and shock of Monday night’s tragedy.

    Díaz-Muñoz doesn’t want to return to Berkey Hall, where the gunman entered through the back door of his classroom and began firing at his Cuban literature students, injuring several and killing Anderson and Verner, he told CNN’s Miguel Marquez.

    “It was like seeing something not human standing there,” he said, describing the masked gunman. After the shooter left the classroom, Díaz-Muñoz threw himself against one of the doors to block him from possibly reentering.

    Some students were able to escape through the windows as others stayed behind to help the injured, using their hands to clamp down on the wounds, he said. “I’ve never seen so much blood.”

    Two girls, who he later learned were Anderson and Verner, seemed to be in the worst condition and were “lying there in these pools of blood,” the professor said. He believes most or all of the injured students were in his classroom.

    “I feel like I want to not remember these scenes and not have to go teach that class,” he said. “But there is another part of me that feels a great need, a strong need to see my students again … to see that they are alive, I need to see their faces.”

    He is trying to write his students a letter, but is struggling with what to say.

    The gunman, Anthony Dwayne McRae, was found by police about 4 miles from campus later Monday night after a tipster recognized his photo in the news and alerted authorities, according to authorities.

    As police approached him, McRae shot and killed himself, said Michigan State Police Lt. Rene Gonzalez.

    On his body and in his backpack, investigators found two legally purchased but unregistered 9mm handguns, several loaded magazines and dozens of loose rounds of ammunition, authorities said.

    “He did purchase the gun legally. He was allowed to purchase the gun. There was nothing in place to prohibit him from purchasing a firearm,” MSU police interim Deputy Chief Chris Rozman said Thursday.

    McRae was arrested in 2019 and charged with the felony of carrying a concealed weapon without a permit, and later pleaded guilty to a lower misdemeanor charge of possession of a loaded firearm as part of a plea deal, court records show.

    But the lesser charge, negotiated down by a prosecutor, did not prohibit him from purchasing firearms in the future, Lansing Police Chief Ellery Sosebee said Thursday.

    Investigators also found a note on McRae that listed other potential attack targets, MSU police confirmed. Two schools in New Jersey’s Ewing Township were on the list, police there have said, adding that there is no threat to the schools.

    Other possible targets detailed in the note included a warehouse, an employment agency, a discount store, a church and a fast food restaurant, law enforcement officials who have access to the note told CNN.

    “We found that he had had contact with some of those places,” Gonzalez said Thursday. He confirmed McRae had once worked at the warehouse, belonging to the Meijer supermarket chain.

    “In a couple of other businesses, it appears that he’d had some issues with the employees there, where he was asked to leave,” Gonzalez said. It looked like McRae’s possible motive was that “he just felt slighted, and that’s kind of what the note indicated,” he said.

    The businesses listed have been notified by law enforcement and told that the gunman is dead, law enforcement officials said.

    Students Alexandria Verner, Arielle Anderson and Brian Fraser were killed in Monday's shooting.

    The three students killed, two of whom are from the same Michigan hometown, included an aspiring doctor, a beloved fraternity president and a biology student from a close-knit town.

    Fraser, 20, was the president of the Michigan Beta Chapter of Phi Delta Theta, the fraternity said in a statement.

    “As the leader of his chapter, Brian was a great friend to his Phi Delt brothers, the Greek community at Michigan State, and those he interacted with on campus,” the statement said.

    The fraternity and his parents have created a memorial scholarship in Fraser’s honor, in the hopes that recipients “will embody Brian’s charismatic, contagious smile and caring, loyal energy,” Phi Delta Theta announced.

    Fraser, a sophomore, and Anderson, a junior, were both from the Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe, Michigan.

    Anderson, 19, was a “remarkable student” studying to become a doctor, her aunt Chandra Davis said in an Instagram post.

    “She was working diligently to graduate from Michigan State University early to achieve her goals as quickly as possible,” the family said in a statement. “As an Angel here on Earth, Arielle was sweet and loving with an infectious smile that was very contagious. We are absolutely devastated by this heinous act of violence upon her and many other innocent victims.”

    Verner, 20, was a junior at the university studying biology, according to The State News.

    “Her kindness was on display every single second you were around her,” family friend Billy Shellenbarger told CNN. He has known Alexandria, or Alex, as he called her, since she was in kindergarten.

    In her hometown of Clawson, Michigan, Verner was a student leader and fantastic three-sport athlete in volleyball, basketball and softball, said Shellenbarger, who is the Clawson Public Schools Superintendent.

    “To lose her on this planet, let alone our small community, it’s tough,” he said. “And it’s going to take a while to recover, but to have known her for the duration of time that we all have, once again, is a gift to all of us.”

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  • Video: Has Elon Musk ruined Twitter and why EV trucks are getting bigger on CNN Nightcap | CNN Business

    Video: Has Elon Musk ruined Twitter and why EV trucks are getting bigger on CNN Nightcap | CNN Business

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    How is Musk doing at Twitter? Why are EVs getting bigger? And why so many meetings?!

    In this week’s “Nightcap,” The New York Times reporter Mike Isaac evaluates Elon Musk’s first 100 days at Twitter. Curbed writer Alissa Walker explains the issue with EVs getting bigger. And UNC Charlotte professor Steven Rogelberg explains to CNN’s Jon Sarlin how to combat the trend of too many meetings. To get the day’s business headlines sent directly to your inbox, sign up for the Nightcap newsletter.

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  • Another education fight over DEI emerges, this time at a conservative campus in Texas | CNN

    Another education fight over DEI emerges, this time at a conservative campus in Texas | CNN

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    Lubbock, Texas
    CNN
     — 

    One of the largest universities in Texas is now reviewing its hiring procedures after one department closely scrutinized candidates over their knowledge of diversity, equity and inclusion, more commonly known as DEI.

    “We could see that this could be viewed as possibly exclusionary,” Texas Tech President Lawrence Schovanec said in an interview with CNN. “And so we wanted to step back and review the whole process.”

    The biology department at Texas Tech University – set in deeply conservative West Texas – asked faculty candidates in 2021 to submit statements on their commitment to DEI. Some candidates received negative notes if their answers were deemed insufficient, such as not knowing the difference between “equality” and “equity.”

    The process, which came to light earlier this month, prompted swift conservative backlash against the storied institution, with critics decrying such DEI screenings as litmus tests that discriminate based on ideology. The term DEI has become the latest target among conservative politicians in the recent era of racial reckoning, echoing the heated debates over critical race theory in schools.

    DEI programs have become commonplace in the worlds of business, government, and education to promote multiculturalism and to encourage success for people of all races and backgrounds. But they’ve also become a focal point of those who describe them as another example of extreme political correctness.

    In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said earlier this month he intends to ban state universities from spending money on DEI initiatives. “We want education, not indoctrination,” he said at an event in Jacksonville.

    And in Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott this month issued a memo to state agencies and universities asserting that using DEI as a screening tool is illegal. “When a state agency adjusts its employment practices based on factors other than merit, it is not following the law. Rebranding this employment discrimination as ‘DEI’ does not make the practice any less illegal,” the memo said.

    Schovanec said the school’s lawyers insist the biology department’s actions were not illegal, but the university is ending efforts that use DEI as a screening tool for faculty while it undergoes a review of its hiring practices campuswide.

    A group called the National Association of Scholars first uncovered the situation at Texas Tech by obtaining DEI-specific notes and documents from the biology department’s hiring process through open records requests. The group published the roughly 100 documents online, along with an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, called “How ‘Diversity’ Policing Fails Science.”

    The DEI portion was just one component of screening candidates in the biology department, according to the university. Each applicant was asked to submit a curriculum vitae, three representative publications, separate statements of research and teaching interests, three potential referees, and “a diversity statement that addresses any past contributions to diversity, equity, and inclusion and outlines plans and actions for advancing DEI” at Texas Tech. Finalists were also interviewed by a DEI committee.

    According to the documents, candidates were flagged for being “reluctant” to answer questions about DEI or not having a “good grasp” of the concept. Under the “weaknesses” for one candidate, it was noted the candidate repeatedly used the pronoun “he” when talking about professors. The same candidate was “red-flagged” and hiring committee members wrote they had “reservations about sending him into a large, diverse undergrad classroom with his current understanding and strategies.”

    Another candidate’s weakness was listed as: “Mentioned that DEI is not an issue because he respects his students and treats them equally.”

    While the names of the candidates in the documents were redacted, Texas Tech University confirmed to CNN that some of the candidates featured in the documents were hired and not all of the positions have been filled yet.

    Steve Balch is a former Texas Tech professor and founder of the National Association of Scholars, which has done considerable research on DEI efforts in universities to illustrate what it sees as an impediment to academic freedom.

    “My quarrel isn’t with people who think diversity, equity and inclusion are good things,” he told CNN. “My argument and the argument of the NAS is turning them into dogma and then using them to vet faculty members, graduate students, undergraduate students – creating aversive environment in which you feel you have to swear fealty to a particular creed. I think that’s wrong.”

    The issue at Texas Tech also came up in a state Senate hearing on February 8. Sen. Joan Huffman questioned Texas Tech’s chancellor Tedd Mitchell, saying she was “concerned and confused” over the incident.

    “I do not believe in litmus tests of any type,” Mitchell said. “It’s no more appropriate to ask somebody about their position on DEI than it is to ask them if they’re a Christian or a Muslim. When we find out something like that has occurred, we stop it.”

    Schovanec recognizes that Tech is in conservative part of a conservative state with many key conservative stakeholders, donors, and legislators involved in school funding.

    “We have to be pragmatic in acknowledging issues that are being raised,” he said. “Our legislators are responding to their constituents. And in this country right now, education has many challenges.”

    He stressed the importance of diversity at the school, which has its own DEI division. According to Texas Tech, 46% of this year’s incoming class are students of color, and 30% of faculty are faculty of color.

    “So we’re totally committed to a diverse campus community, but those hiring practices could present the perception that certain candidates would be excluded based on their ideological views, as opposed to the real excellence related to that discipline and the ability to address the priorities of our mission here,” he said.

    Schovanec said the school needs more diverse faculty, and he acknowledged that some prospective candidates might see the school’s recent move to end DEI screenings and question Tech’s commitment to diversity.

    “Faculty and students have to judge us by our actions. Do we support them? Do we create an environment here where they feel they belong and this is a place where they can thrive? That’s a much bigger issue than certain elements of a hiring process,” he said “But that is a challenge that we have.”

    Paulette Granberry Russell, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, said the political firestorm over the incident at Texas Tech is simply an “attempt to fuel the base” among those who don’t agree with longstanding efforts to increase diversity.

    She’s concerned that DEI will follow the same path as critical race theory, or CRT, and become a term that’s twisted and misrepresented for political purposes.

    “It’s demonizing efforts, not only within higher education, but I think within this country to create a more equitable, just United States,” she said. “On some levels it’s misappropriating the work that is being done and using it as a basis for saying we’re discriminating against others.”

    Granberry Russell said she wants people to understand the nuance of DEI and that it’s designed to increase opportunities for people who have been historically marginalized or not well represented in higher education or the workforce.

    “My hope would be that as we begin to think more broadly about inclusion, that people will better understand this is not a situation where some are intending to take access away, but to expand access,” she said.

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  • She was ‘everything you’d want your daughter or friend to be.’ Here’s what we know about the Michigan State University shooting victims | CNN

    She was ‘everything you’d want your daughter or friend to be.’ Here’s what we know about the Michigan State University shooting victims | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Alexandria Verner was kind, positive and “everything you’d want your daughter or friend to be,” a family friend said.

    “Her kindness was on display every single second you were around her,” Clawson Public Schools Superintendent Billy Shellenbarger told CNN. He is friends with the Verner family and has known Alexandria, or Alex, as he called her, since she was in kindergarten.

    Verner was one of three Michigan State University students killed in a mass shooting on campus Monday night, university police said Tuesday.

    The Michigan State University Department of Police and Public Safety identified the three students killed Monday night as junior Arielle Anderson, sophomore Brian Fraser and Verner, who was also a junior.

    Anderson and Fraser hailed from the same town of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, leaving their hometown with a double loss.

    Five other students remain in the hospital in critical condition, the release said.

    “We cannot begin to fathom the immeasurable amount of pain that our campus community is feeling,” the police release said.

    These are the stories of the victims.

    Verner touched a lot of people in the town of Clawson, Michigan, Shellenbarger said, which he described as a small, 2-mile by 2-mile community.

    “To lose her on this planet, let alone our small community, it’s tough,” he said. “And it’s going to take a while to recover, but to have known her for the duration of time that we all have, once again, is a gift to all of us,” he said.

    Verner’s family is “being about as strong as a human being can be in the face of this tragedy,” Shellenbarger said, adding that he spoke with them Tuesday.

    Shellenbarger was the principal at Clawson High School while Verner was a student there. She graduated in 2020.

    Verner was a fantastic three-sport athlete in volleyball, basketball and softball, as well as an excellent student who was active in many leadership groups at the school, Shellenbarger said.

    Shellenbarger sent a letter to families on Tuesday informing the community of her death and offering resources for students.

    “Alex was and is incredibly loved by everyone. She was a tremendous student, athlete, leader and exemplified kindness every day of her life!” he wrote in the letter. “Her parents, Ted and Nancy, and sister Charlotte and brother TJ are equally grieving but are certainly already feeling the uplifting support of this tremendous community.”

    “If you knew her, you loved her and we will forever remember the lasting impact she has had on all of us,” he wrote.

    Brian Fraser

    Fraser served as the president of the Michigan Beta Chapter of Phi Delta Theta, the fraternity said in a statement.

    He was a leader and a great friend to his brothers, the Greek community and the people he interacted with on campus, the fraternity said.

    “Phi Delta Theta sends its deepest condolences to the Fraser family, the Michigan Beta Chapter, and all those who loved Brian as they mourn their loss,” the statement reads.

    Fraser was a sophomore who hailed from Grosse Pointe, which is in the Detroit area, university police said.

    He graduated in 2021 from Grosse Pointe South High School, according to district superintendent Jon Dean.

    Arielle Anderson

    Anderson, a junior at Michigan State, was also from Grosse Point, university police said.

    She graduated in 2021 from Grosse Pointe North High School, according to Dean.

    “How is it possible that this happened in the first place, an act of senseless violence that has no place in our society and in particular no place in school?” Dean said. “But then, it touched our community not once, but twice.”

    Four of the five injured students from the shooting required surgery and some immediate intervention, Dr. Denny Martin, Interim President and Chief Medical Officer at Sparrow Hospital, said Tuesday.

    “Without going into the specifics of their injuries, I will say that it took a team of numerous anesthesiologist(s), trauma surgeons, general surgeons, cardiothoracic surgery and a neurosurgery team to handle the full extent of the injuries,” he told CNN’s Kate Bolduan.

    One student who was injured “did not require immediate surgical intervention” and they were taken directly to the ICU, he said.

    Martin said it’s too early to give a long-term prognosis on their conditions.

    “They’re all under the care of trauma and critical care teams here,” Martin said. “Some are more critical than others, but again, it’s quite early…in their recovery from this event.”

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  • High school students responsible for racist video no longer enrolled at school | CNN

    High school students responsible for racist video no longer enrolled at school | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The students responsible for a racist video – which surfaced on social media earlier this month showing one girl spray painting another girl’s face black while making racist comments – are no longer enrolled at the high school, according to a statement from the school.

    “The young women who (sic) responsible for this situation have been identified and they are no longer members of this school community,” Saint Hubert Catholic High School For Girls wrote in a statement published Saturday. The decision was made following an investigation into the incident, according to the statement.

    In the video, a girl is seen spray painting the face of another girl black as she says, “You’re a Black girl! You know your roots! It’s February! You’re nothing but a slave … and after this, she’s doing my laundry.” People in the video can be heard laughing as this occurs. One person is seen filming the incident on her phone. The girl who had her face painted black says, “I’m Black and I’m proud.”

    A Black parent whose daughter attends the Catholic school in Philadelphia told CNN the video was sent directly to his daughter and niece, along with other Black students.

    When asked about whether the video was initially sent to Black students at the school, Kenneth Gavin, chief communications officer for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, told CNN, “At this time it is unknown as to the exact distribution. My understanding is that it was posted and shared on social media.”

    The video was taken outside of school and after school hours, a statement provided to CNN by the archdiocese said.

    The school denounced the behavior in the video as “repugnant,” writing that the Anti-Defamation League would offer anti-bias workshops at the school on February 20.

    Faculty and students returned to Saint Hubert Catholic High School on Monday, the school wrote in its statement, adding there would be a “visible and active police presence around the campus perimeter.”

    The school wrote it would be addressing all students to outline its plan for “safety and healing moving forward.”

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  • Mass shooting at Michigan State University leaves 3 dead and 5 injured | CNN

    Mass shooting at Michigan State University leaves 3 dead and 5 injured | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A mass shooting at Michigan State University left three people dead and five others injured Monday evening, triggering an hourslong manhunt and shelter-in-place orders before the suspect died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.

    The gunman opened fire at two campus locations, turning the sprawling university where over 19,000 students live into a crime scene and forcing terrified students to hide as hundreds of officers in tactical gear swarmed the school – something that has become a familiar occurrence for many US communities.

    It’s unclear what motivated the killings at MSU.

    The gunman was a 43-year-old man who was not affiliated with the university, Interim Deputy Chief Chris Rozman said. “We have no idea why he came to campus to do this tonight,” he added.

    “I can’t even begin to imagine what that motive would be,” Rozman said. “That will obviously be part of our investigation. I know that that is going to be a question that lingers on everybody’s mind.”

    There have been more mass shootings in the US than there have been days so far this year. The attack at MSU marked the 67th mass shooting in 2023, according to data from the non-profit group Gun Violence Archive. Both CNN and GVA define a mass shooting as a shooting that injured or killed four or more people, not including the shooter.

    The first report of shots fired came at 8:18 p.m. ET from Berkey Hall, an academic building on the northern end of campus. Officers responded to the building within minutes and found several shooting victims, including two who died, Rozman said.

    Immediately after, another shooting was reported nearby at the Michigan State University Union Building, where the third fatality was reported, he said.

    At least five people were taken to a hospital, all of them in critical condition, according to Rozman. Police have not disclosed whether the victims included students or released information on their age range.

    Hours after the first gunshots rang out, the suspect “was contacted by law enforcement off campus” and “it does appear that that suspect has died from a self inflicted gunshot wound,” Rozman reported.

    But the hours of uncertainty that came before police found the suspect fueled chaos across campus, with police saying they got numerous erroneous 911 calls reporting gunshots heard and shootings across different locations on campus.

    Police work the scene where a man suspected of a shooting on the Michigan State University campus February 14, 2023, in Lansing.

    Authorities called the ordeal “horrific” as students hid and officers fanned out across campus.

    Though officials said there is no longer a threat to the campus, the university will move into emergency operations for the next two days, during which time students will experience a continued police presence as investigators probe multiple scenes.

    All classes, athletics and campus-related activities at MSU are canceled for 48 hours, campus police said, adding, “Please DO NOT come to campus tomorrow.”

    “We want to wrap our warm arms around every family that is touched by this tragedy and give them the peace that passeth understanding in moments like this… we will change over time,” MSU’s interim president Teresa Woodruff said in an overnight news conference. “We cannot allow this to continue to happen again.”

    The attack at MSU – which came one day before the five-year anniversary of a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida – resulted in the closure of all East Lansing Public Schools Tuesday.

    “Tonight has been horrific. It’s been horrific for all of the students here and around the region. Schools have been closed. This has affected our whole region, our whole community. It’s affected families, everyone across our community,” Lansing Mayor Andy Schor said.

    The campus community will need time to heal, officials said.

    “This truly has been a nightmare that we are living tonight,” Rozman said. “We are relieved to no longer have an active threat on campus, while we realize that there is so much healing that will need to take place after this,” he added.

    The mass shooting made for a terrifying experience for students as the suspect remained at large and officers in tactical gear streamed through the campus.

    “One of the things I’m most proud of is on a campus this size how quickly every student staff faculty member immediately took action. They sheltered in place and they did so for hours,” Woodruff said.

    MSU student Chris Trush told CNN he saw people running out of the Union building – a congregation spot for students on campus – shortly before an emergency alert went out to students informing them of the shooting on campus.

    Trush said he was watching TV just after 8 p.m. in his apartment when he saw police cars and ambulances speeding down Grand River Avenue. He then saw people running out of the Union building.

    “That’s when I knew something’s really up,” he said.

    Trush said he saw dozens of officers begin to swarm the area with long rifles, and realized a shooting had taken place.

    “I’m obviously not going to go outside for the next couple of days,” he said.

    As shelter-in-place orders were in effect Monday evening, another student, Gabe Treutel, said he and his dorm mates hunkered down and turned to a local police scanner for information.

    Treutel said he and his friends ultimately began barricading their door, just in case a shooter tried to get inside.

    Another MSU student, Nithya Charles, told CNN she was sheltering within a lounge area at Campbell Hall on the north side of campus with about 30 other people.

    “We’re not learning very much,” Charles told CNN’s Erin Burnett earlier in the night, saying she did not hear any gunshots herself, but that some of her co-workers heard shots.

    MSU Vice President for Public Safety and Chief of Police Marlon Lynch said responding to the shooting was a “monumental task” due in part to the size of the campus.

    “We have 400 buildings on campus and over 5,300 acres and part of the process of the response that we had is that we were able to divide and organize to be methodical in the search process and obtain evidence and share as it comes through. But with a university our size and the areas that we are responsible for, that becomes a task,” Lynch said.

    The two buildings at the center of Monday evening’s shootings are accessible to the general public during business hours, police said in an early morning news conference Tuesday.

    Police said it’s unknown how long the suspect was on campus before opening fire.

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