This month, colleges across Colorado have wrapped up classes for the 2015-2016 school year, including Colorado Mesa University, one of my many almae matres (don’t ask). And judging by the posts recently shared on the Colorado Mesa University Confessions Facebook page, the experience has been an up-and-down affair. Especially for…
We’re guessing that Pueblo County officials weren’t terribly amused by a segment last night in The Nightly Show, the Larry Wilmore-hosted Daily Show spin-off on Comedy Central. That’s because they were portrayed as both incredibly stoned and hopelessly incompetent. The bit, on view below, is part of a new feature on the…
Last week, as we reported, CSU encouraged students not to take part in BARE, formerly known as the Undie Run, which was scheduled for Friday night, May 6. So, too, did the organizer of the previous two runs. In the end, however, plenty of folks ignored this call. About 3,000…
Today, BARE, formerly known as the Undie Run, is scheduled to take place on the Colorado State University campus. However, the university is students not to take part in the festivities, which is described as both a pre-finals stress reducer and fun way to donate clothing to charities — and…
In 2014, the U.S. Department of Education ordered institutions not to discriminate against transgendered students and staff members. However, schools were allowed to request an exemption from that ban, typically for religious reasons. Now, the Education Department has released the names of schools that asked to continue policies the feds…
Tim Gianulis has been inviting kids with special needs into his art classes since he started teaching 25 years ago at Godsman Elementary School in Denver, bringing students from the special-education classroom across the hall into his own room to give their teacher a planning break. Over the years, as…
We wouldn’t advise messing with Grace Davis. Sixteen-year-old Davis recently helped organize a protest at Ponderosa High School, which she attends, and afterward, her claim of being bullied by two members of the Douglas County School Board — board president Meghann Silverthorn and director Judy Reynolds — has led to an…
Editor’s note: Last week, we reported about the resignation of newly appointed Denver school board member MiDian Holmes after revelations surfaced about a past child-abuse conviction. The following report about a meeting last night to deal with the vacancy was written by former Westword reporter Melanie Asmar and appears courtesy of Chalkbeat…
Denver Public Schools is in damage control mode in the wake of revelations that newly appointed board member MiDian Holmes has a past conviction for child abuse. Making the case even more interesting are reports that board members knew about this aspect of Holmes’s past before appointing her. DPS certainly seems…
Last year, as we’ve reported, a sexting scandal at Canon City High School was deemed so serious that a football game was cancelled out of fear that there wouldn’t have been enough uninvolved players to field a full squad — and the school’s administration floated threats of felony allegations against…
April is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month — and that’s no joke. According to the Colorado Department of Transportation, there were more than 15,300 distracted driving crashes in the state last year — a number that has grown by 16 percent in the last four years. And 69 people were killed…
Students in Delta County high schools and middle schools will get some new reading material on April 1., including the Satanic Coloring Book. And that’s no joke: The Western Colorado Atheists and Freethinkers are working with the Freedom From Religion Foundation to provide the kids with everything from guides to…
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…
