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deprogramUSA — Academic Bill of Rights-837
Published: 2005-04-27 18:16:07 +0000 UTC; Views: 296; Favourites: 0; Downloads: 24
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This is from the Senate at my ( Blade-Angel ) college:"If all goes as planned in the Florida House and Senate, your (teacher's) freedom as an academic expert in your (teacher's) field ends July 1, 2005. I'm (Author) writing to imform you (teachers) of a current bill circulating in the FLorida House and to offer a plan of action, which I hope you'll join me on implementing. The Academic Bill of Rights-Bill 837, brainchild of David Horowitz and sponsored by the Heritage Foundation (A right-wing neo-conservative Christian organization), under the guise of protecting academic freedom, is headed at sonic speed into our classrooms. If this bill passes, and it is expected to pass unless we do something to prevent it, Florida will find it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain quality professors. This bill gives students the right to sue their instructors if they aren't happy with what they are taught or the grade they receive. Of course, timing couldn't be worse, as all of us are mired in paper and racing toward the end of the semester. However, please take a peek at this website [link] . If this bill succeeds, none of us will have time to teach or publish-we'll be calling lawyers to make sure we didn't offend anyone with a controversial "idea" in class. The UFF (A teacher's union in Florida, small but effective) website will very shortly house several documents explaining its implications, and I have preovided several links below. Because the bill is fast-tracked in Florida (vote tentatively scheduled for end of April) and because it has traction and is expected to pass the House, members of the UCF (University of Central Florida) community are urgently needed to help thwart it in the Senate. UFF president Tom Auxter and UFF-USF Chapter President Roy Weatherford testified against the bill, presenting the UFF faculty position at the Florida House of Representatives Education Council Workshop. However, this bill is so sweeping and its ramifications so threatening to the values of intellectual inquiry and to our own work in the classroom that we must all work together to defeat it. This is a moment for union and non-union campus citizens to work side by side and fight for what we hold dear; I invite all of us to begin talking and working together.
The plan of attack i two-fold:
1. informing regional senators in person of our position. At the state leve, UFF recommends that we begin with Senators, since it appears to be moving rapidly through the House and our best chance of defeating it appears to be the Senate. Ten statewide UFF has ientified seven Senators in our region for UCF faculty and 'admins' to contact. These seven Senators need to be visited by a team of concerned faculty/citizens urging them not to support the bill. Your colleagues listed below have "adopted" the Senators listed and seek 2-3 other colleagues to join them on a house call to their Senators' regional offices. This action does not require UFF membership or particular experience-you simply have to care about academic freedom. this action need not be confrontational or highly rhetorical-we need simply to present our best selves to persuade Florida legislators to tend to their jobs and let us do what we have trained all of our lives to do. the team leaders are listed below. If you are willing to join a team already workiong with a particular Senator, please contact the UCF team leader directly.
2. Letter-writing campaign. For those who won't be visiting a Senator, we need a letter-writing, email, and phone campaign to the Senate offices explaining to them why this bill is ruinous for education. All of us need to pull together for the casue of academic freedom over the next few weeks. If any of you want to draft and circulate petitions in your department or unit and then send them along to these Senators, that would be helpful too. To this end, please visit the links below and the UFF-UCF website for sample letters, important phone numbers, talking points, and editorial essays from around the country. Go to [link] and click on Academic Freedom Bill 837. As we face the possibility of the end of academic freedom in Florida, I hope that faculty and administrators will join in a campaign of words and actions to ensure the defeat of this bill. Thanks so much for your time and support.
In solidarity,
Dawn Trouard
Chapter President, UFF-UCF"
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Comments: 5
"This bill gives students the right to sue their instructors if they aren't happy with what they are taught or the grade they receive."
what says that students actually will want to do that? Most students who are in college (no i dont know this for a fact, i'm a freshman in HS, but im assuming) actually want to learn because they know what they do here will only help them in the future, and won't want to focus their school year on a prosecution. Also, i dont think many kids that age are really stocked up on that much money to pay for an attourney.
but of course, im just assuming my statement. and btw: whats the update?
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The lack of editing in this, plus the "neo-conservative" comment really make me think about the intelligence of the person who wrote this. If they didn't put any thought into the grammar or inflammatory remarks that could be viewed as nothing but name-calling in hopes to sway the audience because the writer is afraid her facts won't shine through (or she has no facts), then how can I be sure she put any thought into why she's mad about the bill?
I'm not saying it sounds like a good bill, I'm just saying that I question the validity of it.
It also seems a little odd to me that crazy funadmentalist Christians would be concerned with suing teachers. I mean, there are plenty of organizations like the ACLU (that despite being founded by conservatives has been viewed as highly liberal) that would step in if a real case needing lawyers occured.
This comment is also rather odd: "...and it is expected to pass unless we do something to prevent it..." The idea that a bill that is poorly written and would do negative things towards ALL parties and ALL walks of life would be "expected to pass" unless prevented by some outside party is rather ridiculous. A lot of people thought a draft bill would passed, but when a Democratic senator tried to send one in, it was shot down.
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Why don't the students just give themselves an "A" on the first day and save themselves tuition and lawyers fees? Plus, they'll remember everything they've learned.
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Well, the point I'm TRYING to get to here is the fact that (As if Florida's education system isn't bad enough anyway) there will be no teacher in the state unless they have been allowed by the government to teach, which means freedom of speech goes right out the window, along with freedom of religion, adn the right to think how we want. It's going to get pretty ugly if nothing's done, so...ya know what, do whatever the hell you want to, I'm tired of trying to get people to pay attention to the system and how things are going.
The thing is, if we don't do something about how they're limiting us as a people, there will be nothing we can do to stop the system from gaining control of our entire lives. Why do you think that the whole war in Iraq is going on? We could have handled that with ease...you know, send in a few covert ops units, drop Ossama where he stood...but no, we had to send our whole damned army over there to liberate the country. Why? To distract us from what's happening right in our own backyards!
Now, praytell, where do you stand?
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don't get too worked up about things. you'll find that most people can't think far past their own selfish existances, but there are others who are better able to see the whole picture. welcome to political activism
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