Hate Speech: Soldier sues Army saying atheisim led to threats

The New York Times (4-26-08) - FORT RILEY, Kan. — When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending.

But minutes into the talk, the officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a sworn statement. “People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!” Major Welborn said, according to the statement.

Major Welborn told the soldiers he might bar them from re-enlistment and bring charges against them, according to the statement.

Last month, Specialist Hall and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group, filed suit in federal court in Kansas, alleging that Specialist Hall’s right to be free from state endorsement of religion under the First Amendment had been violated and that he had faced retaliation for his views. In November, he was sent home early from Iraq because of threats from fellow soldiers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/us/26atheist.html?ex=1366948800&en=c4cf98ce0e7fa739&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Post Hires Attorney to fight OU on Public Records

The Post has retained legal counsel to pressure Ohio University to release documents used to create dean evaluations before the provost releases her official evaluations on May 20.

Last year, The Post requested faculty surveys used to create dean evaluations on April 3 and received the documents April 17. This year, The Post requested those surveys Feb. 7. They were submitted by faculty on March 21, but OU has maintained it will not release the records until May 20, when the provost is due to complete her evaluation of the deans.

“They’ve been created at a public university, they’re being stored in a public building in a public office,” said Post Editor Rick Rouan. “We think that’s unacceptable [to not get them until May 20]. We think that’s a violation of the Ohio Revised Code and we thought it necessary to pursue stronger action.”

Faculty evaluate their deans annually. Faculty surveys go to committees in each college that compile the data into a report for the provost, and the provost issues a draft report that she sends back to the evaluation committees. After the committees look over the report, it goes back to the provost and she issues a final evaluation, which also takes into account the dean’s self evaluation.

Administrators asked The Post to refrain from covering the evaluations or requesting documents until after the provost issues her final reports.

The Office of Institutional Research compiled the faculty evaluations and sent them to college committees, and the committees sent reports to the provost’s office by April 18.

Joseph A. Tomain, an attorney with Cincinnati-based Frost, Brown, Todd LLC. will represent The Post without charge.
http://www.thepost.ohiou.edu/Articles/News/2008/04/25/24100/

Want to limit negative publicity? Stop creating a paper trail.

Students voted to express their displeasure of how the university was being run a year ago. The event was a major embarrassment to the university administration. Since then, the university board of trustees has changed the methodology it uses to evaluate the president - limiting what is actually made public. Similar changes are also at the heart of a public records dispute between the OU Post and the university administration over faculty evaluations of administrators - what information will be made public or should be made public? And what rights do journalists have to inspect these records? This posting is made to offer some context to the debate and show how it is just one chapter in a long running battle over secrecy between the press and the administration.



http://www.thepost.ohiou.edu/Articles/News/2007/05/18/20135/

The university trustees have since changed how the president is evaluated: http://athensmidday.blogspot.com/2008/02/new-evaluation-policy-for-ou-president.html

Divorce You Tube Style

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/style/18divorce.html?ex=1366257600&en=48b74d9f06a61cbd&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

When the Ex Blogs, the Dirtiest Laundry Is Aired

What are the libel/legal implications of broadcasting your dissatisfaction with your marriage on the Internet?

The New York Times - (4-19-08) - This week, the potential of the Internet to expose and disgrace when marriages fall apart came into stark relief as Tricia Walsh Smith, who is being divorced by Philip Smith, a theater executive, put a video on YouTube announcing that they never had sex, and yet she found him hoarding Viagra, pornography and condoms.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Smith’s lawyer, David Aronson, called the video “appalling” and said: “Mr. Smith is a very private person. This is obviously embarrassing.”

But in an era when more than one in 10 adult Internet users in the United States have blogs, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, many people are using the Web to tell their side of a marital saga. Despite the legal end of a marriage, the confessions can stretch toward eternity in a steady stream of enraged or despondent postings.

Dispatch Editor Explains Skybus Silence

The Columbus Dispatch put a reporter on one of Skybus' last flights, knowing the airline planned to shut down stranding passengers when it arrived in Florida. The reporter got the story, but passengers had to scramble to find a way back to Ohio since Skybus was no longer flying. In two separate posts, Dispatch Editor Ben Marrison defends why the newspaper made this decision. He says it was to protect a confidential source. But the matter has caused an outcry from both readers and former Skybus passengers who complained they were deceived. What do you think ? Was this story handled correctly?

Ben Marrison's view:
http://blog.dispatch.com/blog-36/

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/insight/stories/2008/04/13/Ben13.ART_ART_04-13-08_G1_IA9T45L.html?sid=101

Original story:
http://dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/04/05/travelers.ART_ART_04-05-08_A1_S89RB9M.html?sid=101

Posts by readers:

http://oshaughnessy.typepad.com/256/2008/04/calling-bullshi.html

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/business/stories/2008/04/04/skyreax.html

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/business/stories/2008/04/04/skybust.html

Curtain Goes Up On Banned High School Play

War and Censorship at Wilton High
Uploaded by Scarce

FAIRFIELD, Conn., June 6 — Three months after their principal canceled a school production they had prepared on the war in Iraq, a group of Wilton High School students staged a dramatic reading of the play Wednesday night to a packed house at a nearby theater.The play, which had been assigned as part of an advanced drama class, had been conceived as a series of monologues. Students helped their teacher, Bonnie Dickinson, assemble materials from film, books, blogs and other sources in an effort to portray the views of actual soldiers and others on the conflict in their own words. By tackling a topical play, Ms. Dickinson said she had hoped to deliver a more worthwhile experience for her students than usual high school fare like “Grease.”

But the production ran into trouble in Wilton, a town of about 18,000 about an hour’s drive from Manhattan, when the principal canceled the production in March, weeks before it was to be staged on school grounds.

Among the reasons for the cancellation, the principal, Timothy H. Canty, cited his concern that the production might be seen as biased against the war and might ruffle feelings in the community, which had lost one recent graduate to the war. He also said he did not think there was enough classroom and rehearsal time to ensure “a legitimate instructional experience.”

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05E0D71530F937A15750C0A9619C8B63&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/nyregion/07play.html?ex=1339041600&en=705302ced3a7c870&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink