The controversy that led a Denver tenth-grader to request her drawing of a police officer in a KKK hood pointing a gun at a child of color be removed last week from public display has raised several thorny but perennial questions: Should students be given full artistic freedom? Or are…
We seem to remember a saying that goes like this: Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. But apparently the folks at Denver Public Schools can’t. In February 2015, we reported about criticism of DPS for the lateness of a snow-day call — a delay that prompted…
Yesterday, we told you about controversy stirred by a painting of a KKK-hood-wearing cop pointing a gun at an African American child that had been displayed as part of a student art show at the Wellington Webb Municipal Office Building. After the National Latino Peace Officers Association branded the image “hate…
The image, part of a Denver Public Schools student art show displayed at the Wellington Webb Municipal Office Building in Denver, is obviously meant to provoke. After all, it features a police officer in a KKK hood holding a gun on an African American child in a white hoodie against…
A lawsuit brought by seven current and former teachers against Denver Public Schools will be taken up by the Colorado Supreme Court, the state’s highest court announced Monday. As reported in the April 2014 Westword cover story “Wrong Answers,” the teachers allege that DPS is misusing a part of the…
Colorado colleges often fail to score great grades on national surveys. Last year, just two Colorado institutions made the top thirty in an NPR roster of premier U.S. colleges. And in recent weeks, we noted that a ranking of America’s best public colleges featured just one Colorado school in the top…
In recent years, we’ve noted that Colorado colleges haven’t placed especially well in national rankings. In 2014, for example, Forbes listed only two Colorado colleges among the 100 best in the country: the Air Force Academy and Colorado College. Neither of these schools is included in a new report Buffalo Business First, a sister…
The ACLU of Colorado has filed a lawsuit against Adams State University on behalf of a former professor who started a website critical of hiring practices and was then banned from campus — and subsequently accused of posing a public safety risk by the university’s president. As we first reported last…
The tweet — in which a teacher is compared to a penis prior to the use of the hashtag #douchebag — seems like the kind of thing a pissed-off student might send. But it went out into cyberspace from the (now-deleted) Twitter account of a teachers union, the Douglas County…
In a part-timer economy, fast-food workers and janitors aren’t the only ones feeling the pinch. Skimpy wages, long hours and a lack of benefits can also be found in the white-collar sweat shops operated by the Colorado Community College System. Last night, a group of CCCS instructors gathered at the…
It’s not often that an academic study gets coverage on a website such as Bustle, whose main home page items at this writing includes “What Happens When You Use Tinder in the 1950s” and “How Different Does the ‘Fuller House’ Look?” But the site — like more expected sources, such as Inside…
We tend to think of snow days as being universally beloved by students of all ages. But that wasn’t the case for everyone impacted by the decision by the University of Colorado Boulder to close the campus yesterday. That’s because the closure took place during finals week — and students…
“Abortion, sex — these are all forbidden topics. The good news about this organization is that because these are forbidden topics, you don’t usually expect to have a pro and affirming religious voice, and that’s what we want to be,” says Reverend Valerie Jackson, the new president of the Colorado Religious…
Earlier this year, we interviewed Amy Hasinoff, a CU Denver communications professor and the author of Sexting Panic, a book highly critical of the way our society deals with the sexting phenomenon — often by criminalizing teens who take part in the activity. “One of the reasons we have such terrible…
It’s not uncommon for hundreds of Colorado College students to read or submit posts on Yik Yak during an average weeknight. The app, which allows users to post, or “yak,” anonymous text and picture messages that become visible to anyone with the Yik Yak app within a five-mile radius, is…
Among the arguments traditionally made by advocates of commuting by bicycle rather than car are the health benefits for the cyclists, who are pumping pedals rather than pressing them. But a study by Colorado State University researchers just published in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology reveals that this…
The rhetoric has been heating up — in fact, it’s just about gone nuclear — in the bizarre dispute between Adams State University officials and a former professor who’s been prohibited from setting foot on the Alamosa campus, under threat of arrest. Danny Ledonne claims that his banishment is in…
For more than a year, the Jefferson County School Board — and specifically a voting bloc consisting of members Julie Williams, Ken Witt and John Newkirk — have been a lightning rod for controversy The trio’s alleged efforts to turn Jeffco’s history curriculum in a more “patriotic” direction, coupled with…
It’s not personal. It’s just business. Last week’s post about Danny Ledonne, the former Adams State University film instructor who was abruptly banned from the Alamosa campus with little explanation shortly after he launched a website critical of the school’s administration and pay policies, has generated some interesting e-mails and…
Filmmaker Danny Ledonne says he had no reason to expect the chief of campus police at Adams State University to show up at his Alamosa home last week. He was even more surprised when the chief told him he was there to deliver by hand a letter from ASU president…
Some Lincoln High School students are pushing back against a plan by Denver Public Schools to open a middle school charter school at Lincoln, located in southwest Denver. A protest organized by the community group Padres y Jovenes Unidos is scheduled for 5 p.m. tonight in advance of a 6…
On Tuesday, Aurora Public Schools released “APS 2020: Shaping the Future,” a report that puts a positive spin on educational reform efforts in the district — and the timing certainly doesn’t seem to have been coincidental. The next day, the If Not Now Coalition, a group of seventeen organizations that…
