UofL Law Students protest Sen. Mitch McConnell's presence at their graduation

Mitch, "you do not speak for us!"

Some University of Louisville Law students were not pleased with Sen. Mitch McConnell and protested during graduation exercises.

This from the Hillbilly Report:


And this from the Kentucky Law Review:

Dear Sen. McConnell,

As a few of the members of the Brandeis School of Law Class of 2009, we welcome you to our commencement. We know you don’t get to Louisville often, and certainly it is quite a feather in the cap of our school to secure the speaking services of one of the most powerful political leaders in the country. We have spent the past three years discussing at length, among other things, the civil rights and liberties granted by our Constitution. It is on those subjects we feel secure in telling you that when you are speaking at our graduation, you do not speak for us.

There is a phrase we hear often in law school when a professor wants to move on from a classroom debate: “Reasonable people can disagree.” But the fact is, there are some things that are absolutely unreasonable. The idea that some of us can be fired from a job because of who they love? That is unreasonable. Tapping the phones of U.S. citizens without judicial oversight is unreasonable. That immigrants are demonized for our nation’s problems is unreasonable. Your position on such basic issues is unreasonable.

The fact that you have vehemently and repeatedly opposed equality in any way shape or form for many of our citizens is unacceptable in this nation. It has nothing to do with partisanship, and everything to do with our rights as citizens and as human beings. There are Republicans who believe in civil rights, and quite a few Democrats who do not. Were it, for example, our current lieutenant governor speaking at graduation, we would be just as upset. There are things about which it is time for people to stop agreeing to disagree and to start calling what it is: prejudice.

Graduation day is going to be a day of celebration for our classmates, our families, and our friends. We have all worked hard, and regardless of our political persuasion, we deserve to have this day to enjoy free of disruption and disorder. However, we will not sit silently on a stage listening to someone who has time and again acted to prevent some of our classmates, and indeed community members, from achieving equality under the eyes of the law. We will each be wearing a button on our graduation robes to register our dissent. You may speak for a bare majority of Kentuckians right now, but you do not speak for us, nor do you speak for the future of where our state or country is headed.

The sign outside the school says Brandeis School of Law, not School of Justice or School of Fair. Certainly the law is not always just or fair. Still, it seems to us that justice is what the country has been moving toward in the law since our humble beginnings. On the day of our law school convocation, as law students and future attorneys, it is up to us to stand for justice and equality. Every time a law has been challenged to bring justice for someone who was previously not allowed full participation in society, it made us a better country. Sen. McConnell, you are on the wrong side of history here, for LGBT people, for women, for immigrants, for the poor, and for people who honor peace and civil liberties.

Our school’s namesake, Justice Louis D. Brandeis, said, “America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief; it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered.” The day is coming, sooner than you can imagine, when it will be unthinkable for a school to invite someone who does not believe in equality to speak at a commencement. When that day comes, it will also be unimaginable that someone who works against the full rights and liberties of all Americans could ever speak for the citizens of the Commonwealth. Until that day comes, know that you do not speak for us.

Christopher McDavid
Rebecca O’Neill
Lucie Small
University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law
Class of 2009

How Much Does a Dropout Cost?

This from the Ashland Daily Independent:

The real cost

The entire state loses when teenager drops out of school

Believe it or not, high school dropout rates are among the most difficult numbers to accurately determine.

That’s because the rates annually reported by individual schools and school districts show only a small percentage of students quitting school. But one gets a much different picture when comparisons are made in the number of students in a high school’s freshman class and the number of graduating seniors four years later. Those numbers show that as many as 30 percent of the students in a freshman class fail to complete high school.

A 2006 report by the Southern Regional Education Board found that a higher percentage of Kentucky teenagers are dropping out of school than their counterparts in other states, and the numbers are even more alarming when broken down by race and gender.

For example, in 2003, 83 percent of the white females and 76 of white males graduated from high school in the U.S. However, in Kentucky, the graduation rates for white females was a dismal 69 percent and an even lower 63 percent for white males. A higher percentage of black males and female and Hispanic males did graduate in Kentucky than the national average, but the numbers in both Kentucky and the nation as a whole were dismal.

Nationwide, the SREB reports that only 45 percent of black males and 50 percent of Hispanic males completed high school in 2003. In Kentucky, the graduation rate was 56 percent for black males and 62 percent for Hispanic males. Kentucky also reported that almost two out of every three black females (65 percent) completed high school, compared to the national average of 59 percent.But those are just faceless numbers.

Other statistics show that those lacking at least a high school degree are destined to spend their lives on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. Today’s economy demands more and more college graduates; those without high school degrees simply cannot qualify for most jobs. And that impacts not just the economic stability of the dropouts but also the economy of an entire state and region.

In fact, according to an estimate by the Alliance for Excellent Education — a privately funded education advocacy organization headed by former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise — the more than 16,000 dropouts from the class of 2007 in Kentucky cost the federal government some $788.1 million in additional tax revenue.Nationwide, Wise adds that “had all of the dropouts from the class of 2007 received their high school diplomas, they could have contributed enough money in additional tax revenue over the course of their lifetimes to match the amount of discretionary funding that the U.S. Department of Education received for an entire year. If that isn’t the best example of how education pays for itself, I don’t know what is.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average annual income for a high school dropout in 2005 was almost $10,000 less than for a high school graduate. In a single year the average high school dropout pays $1,302 in federal income taxes compared to $3,085 for a high school graduate.

The message is clear: When young people drop out of high school, it not only negatively impacts their economic status for the rest of their lives, it affects us all. Nowhere else is that more evident than in this region where a poorly educated adult population is a major obstacle to economic development.

170 Los Angeles students to pay a price for absence

Tougher attendance rules will force more than one-quarter of eligible Carson High graduates to sit out commencement ceremonies.

More than one-fourth of Carson High's graduates will miss commencement ceremonies because they missed too much school.

About 170 of 665 eligible graduates won't don a cap and gown because they failed to show up for more than 60 hours of instruction this year or were late to class more than 15 times.

This from the Los Angeles Times.

Harvard dropout finally gets degree

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Reuters) -- Bill Gates attended to a bit of unfinished business Thursday.

Gates, who dropped out of Harvard and co-founded Microsoft Corp. (Charts, Fortune 500) to become the world's richest person, stopped off at his former stomping grounds to collect an honorary law degree.

"We recognize the most illustrious member of the Harvard College class of 1977 never to have graduated from Harvard," said Harvard University Provost Steven Hyman. "It seems high time that his alma mater hand over the diploma."

"I've been waiting for more than 30 years to say this: Dad, I always told you I'd come back and get my degree," Gates, 51, told the crowd, which included his father, also named Bill.

"I'll be changing my job next year, and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume," said Gates in a reference to his plan to shift full time into philanthropy.

This from CNNMoney.com.

Cheering ban costs five students their H.S. diplomas

GALESBURG, Illinois (AP) -- Caisha Gayles graduated with honors last month, but she is still waiting for her diploma. The reason: the whoops of joy from the audience as she crossed the stage.

Gayles was one of five students denied diplomas from the lone public high school in Galesburg after enthusiastic friends or family members cheered for them during commencement.

About a month before the May 27 ceremony, Galesburg High students and their parents had to sign a contract promising to act in dignified way. Violators were warned they could be denied their diplomas and barred from the after-graduation party.

Many schools across the country ask spectators to hold applause and cheers until the end of graduation. But few of them enforce the policy with what some in Galesburg say are strong-arm tactics.

This from CNN, Photo by Kent Kriegshauser, The Register Mail / AP