Transparency News, 3/25/2022
Friday
March 25, 2022
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state & local news stories
An Eastern Virginia Medical School student has settled a lawsuit that alleged school officials violated his First Amendment rights. Edward Si said EVMS officials refused to overturn a Student Government Association decision denying his request to set up a chapter of a national group that supports single-payer health care. EVMS spokesman Vincent Rhodes said the school denies that characterization of what happened. Si’s lawsuit said the SGA refused to recognize his group and so let it use school facilities for meetings and events, saying it “does not want to create clubs based on opinions, political or otherwise, and the mission and goals of your club do not describe what we believe to be necessary or sustainable for a club.” The lawsuit said EVMS officials rebuffed six separate requests for help from Si and the free speech group, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, that worked with him in his bid to set up an EVMS chapter of the Students for a National Health Program.
The Virginian-Pilot
Back in October 2021, an alleged multi-assailant sexual assault took place on the Minnie Howard campus and at the time Alexandria City Public Schools did not notify parents. After the incident came to light last week via National Review, a conservative editorial magazine, ACPS parents have criticized the district for handling the situation in a manner that left them in the dark. Most recently, the City of Alexandria released a statement on March 18 in response to swelling public interest in the case, saying that the city “is aware of the incident, that it was adjudicated in Court, and that the defendant was acquitted.” The statement went on to say that details regarding incidents involving juveniles “must remain confidential and cannot be shared” pursuant to Virginia State Law Section 16.1 – 301. The section in question details the confidentiality of juvenile law enforcement records and disclosures to the school principal and related persons. Specifically, section A states that “such records with respect to such juvenile shall not be open to public inspection nor their contents disclosed to the public unless a juvenile 14 years of age or older is charged with a violent felony.” But section B states that, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the chief of police or sheriff of a jurisdiction or his designee may disclose, for the protection of the juvenile, his fellow students and school personnel, to the school principal that a juvenile is a suspect in or has been charged with a violent felony.”
Alexandria Times
stories of national interest
A Detroit judge is accused of abusing her contempt of court powers, not properly recording court hearings, improperly recording others and publishing them online, and interfering in the work and livelihood of a process server for the court, according to a public complaint issued Wednesday by the Judicial Tenure Commission. The complaint released Wednesday is the second time since 2020 that Judge Kahlilia Davis of Detroit's 36th District Court has been accused by the state's watchdog agency for judges. While the commission's March 2020 complaint focused on charges that Davis held court proceedings without the hearings properly on record, Wednesday's seven-count alleges a broader range of misconduct. The report runs 59 pages.
Governing
editorials & columns
Circling the wagons is one of the oldest defensive tactics in existence. It originally referred to Americans moving west in the 1800s who would position their wagons in a circle for protection. It means “to gather a group of people together in order to protect them from being attacked,” according to Merriam-Webster. For those unfamiliar with events of the past week, on March 18, the conservative publication National Review broke a story, based on emails and text exchanges obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, proving that ACPS Superintendent Dr. Gregory Hutchings, Ed.D., the School Board, Wilson and City Council failed to notify parents that an alleged sexual assault took place at the Minnie Howard campus of Alexandria City High School on Oct. 6, 2021. Hutchings’ response was not to apologize for ACPS’ lack of transparency, order a review of his system’s communications protocols or detail how he plans to enhance school security. Instead, he doubled down on the defensive posture by telling the elected School Board – his bosses – that they are discouraged from speaking to the media without approval from the school public information officer. ACPS does many wonderful things. Unfortunately, this pattern of obfuscation, censorship by PIO and defensiveness tarnishes those achievements. Parents want their children to be safe in school, and they deserve to be told when that’s not the case.
Alexandria Times
Freedom of speech does not include a right to shout down others so they cannot be heard. Two recent incidents at law schools where protesting students sought to keep invited speakers from addressing their audiences are deeply troubling. In both cases, those defending the disruptive students have said their actions came under the constitutional protection of freedom of speech. That is wrong in terms of both the law and appropriate campus policy. It is profoundly disturbing that some students assert a right to determine what messages are acceptable on a campus and try to deprive others within the community of their right to invite or listen to speakers of their choice. College campuses should be a place where all ideas and views can be expressed. A primary goal of higher education is to empower students to critically analyze ideas across a broad spectrum of disciplines. The strengths and weaknesses of ideas are determined not by conformity to any preexisting orthodoxy, but through the process of rational argument and evidence-based reasoning. This is how better ideas gain more legitimacy and worse ideas are exposed and rebutted. It is especially problematic when the students attempting to silence other viewpoints are lawyers in training.
Erwin Chemerinsky and Howard Gillman, The Washington Post
