Inside Two CU Boulder Students’ Struggle With Heroin Addiction

Editor’s note: The author is a junior at the University of Colorado Boulder and the multimedia managing editor at the CU Independent. The names of the subjects in this story have been changed to protect their identities. Loose, blood-red vomit poured from Demetri’s mouth, his half-digested noodles swimming down the…

Make Your Mark Might Solve DPS’s Teacher Diversity Problem

The fifth-graders in Michael Diaz-Rivera’s classroom are anxious for summer. The boys in the front fidget under rows of fluorescent lights, and a few students have their heads on their desks. But everyone perks up when the 31-year-old teacher clears his throat and begins class. “As you can see, today…

Johnstown High School Reopens After Trump Piñata Fiasco: “No Credible Threat”

Roosevelt High School in Johnstown will be open for classes today, May 9, following yesterday’s closure. In an announcement from the Weld RE-5J School District, Dr. Martin Foster, the district’s superintendent, writes that local police say a possible threat over a Roosevelt Spanish teacher’s use of a President Donald Trump piñata has been discredited. Apparently, the whole thing was fueled by rumor.

Why DPS Sent Warning About Netflix Suicide Show 13 Reasons Why

Denver Public Schools has sent a letter to parents about 13 Reasons Why, a Netflix series about a high school student who leaves behind audio recordings that explain her reasons for committing suicide. The district’s decision was based in part on a subject of the show’s final tape, a school counselor who essentially brushes off the student’s revelation that she’s been raped. Shortly thereafter, the student takes her own life.

The Return of Ward Churchill to CU Boulder

On Saturday, April 29, former professor Ward Churchill will return to the University of Colorado Boulder, the institution that fired him ten years earlier in what the author of a report that blasted CU’s actions calls “the most notorious academic freedom controversy in a generation.”

Why Cherry Creek School Board Voted to Change Start Times

Last night, March 13, the Cherry Creek School District voted unanimously to move start times later for middle- and high-school students and earlier for children in elementary schools. The change has broad but not universal support from older students and their folks. However, a group of elementary-school parents were unhappy enough with them to have started a change.org petition that rejected alterations for their kids with extreme prejudice.

Denver Coalition Develops Curriculum to Address Teen Domestic Violence

How serious is dating violence for high-school students? According to the Denver-based National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, nearly 1.5 million high-school students in the United States are physically abused by dating partners every year. It isn’t too surprising, then, that 57 percent of teenagers report knowing somebody who has been…

Activist: In Trump Age, Verbal Racism Aimed at Denver Kids of Color Is Rising

Donald Trump certainly didn’t invent racism. But since Trump’s election this past November, verbally racist attacks hurled at Denver kids of color are on the rise, sources tell Westword. Even before this week’s release of executive orders calling for tougher immigration enforcement, local children of Latino or African descent riding on buses, gathering in public spaces or even playing against white opponents in school-sanctioned sporting events were hearing hateful comments about deportation and more whether they’re U.S. citizens or not. Such remarks, from young and old alike, may have been whispered in the past, but now, they’re increasingly being announced loud and proud, as if the speakers feel empowered by the assumption that the nation’s president feels the same way they do.

Academic Evidence That Colorado Sucks at Romance

In the period leading up to Valentine’s Day, the Internet spits out list after list about the most romantic places across the country. But “Is Virginia for Lovers? Geographic Variation in Adult Attachment Orientation” stands out from the pack.

Hidden Figures Speaks to Denver’s STEM-Focused Girls

In a dimly lit theater at the Alamo Drafthouse in Littleton, 75 girls in elementary through high school are chit-chatting, placing their food orders with theater waiters, and patiently awaiting the start of the film. Directed by Theodore Melfi, Hidden Figures tells the true but seldom-heard story of three African-American…

Cops: Milo Yiannopoulos Neo-Nazi E-Mail Threat Was an Inside Job

Police at the University of Colorado Boulder continue to look into reports about an e-mail sent to ticket holders for a Wednesday night address by alt-right shit-stirrer Milo Yiannopoulos threatening that “the identifies of attendees will be released to the public on a list of known Neo-Nazi sympathizers.” But while the inquiry is ongoing, investigators have already concluded that the e-mail wasn’t sent out as a result of an online hack. Rather, they believe that the culprit was one of the attendees.

Scared Denver Kids’ Letters to Donald Trump

“Dear Trump. I feel sad because you are saying you want to send the Mexicans back. I am Mexican. Plz don’t send my family back. I am really mad. Plz think before you say. I was really scared about what you said on the TV.” So reads a letter to…