Page 28 - 2-20-15 Friday's Edition

National
Black Enrollment At Florida’s White
Kindergarten Teacher Suspended For Allowing, Then Videoing Child Beating Classmates
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A northeast Florida kinder- garten teacher has been sus- pended without pay for 15 days after school officials say she video recorded a child beating other children and did not intervene.
The Duval County schools investigative report found that the teacher, Rita Baci, 65, of Ponte Vedra, also used her foot to push a kindergarten student out of her class and left him unattended at John E. Ford Montessori school.
A school district investiga- tion found that Baci on three occasions used her cellphone video camera to record a boy beating on other students.
Videos show the boy hit- ting another “about his face and body several times,” as well as kicking a second stu- dent and punching a third, the report said.
Largest Welfare Fraud Ring BUSTED
Universities Dropping; UF Is Highest
GAINESVILLE, FL —- It was reported a few weeks ago that enrollment of Black freshmen dipped from a high of 910 students in 2007 to 395 in 2013 at the University of Florida.
Of course, university offi- cials attribute the decline to the man who is considering a run for president, former governor, Jeb Bush.
Bush’s “One Florida” ini- tiative prohibits state univer- sities from using race or gender as a basis for admis- sion.
It’s not that Black stu- dents aren’t applying, UF, and other universities throughout the state are not accepting Black students’ ap- plications.
UF has a recruiting team
that had to develop programs that don’t target race or gen- der, but still allegedly ensure a diverse applicant pool going into the pipeline, according to a UF administrator.
The information on Black enrollment rates, compiled by the Integrated Postsec- ondary Education Data Sys- tem, showed the University of Florida had the second-high- est decline of Black freshmen in the Southeastern Confer- ence. The University of South Carolina had the highest de- cline in black undergraduate enrollment, a 30.6 percent dip from 2004 to 2013.
Overall minority enroll- ment at the University of Florida is up mainly due to continued growth in the His- panic/Latino population.
NEW YORK — After a year-long in- vestigation into the misuse of Supplemen- tal Nutrition Assis- tance Program benefits has, over 30 Franklin County resi- dents were arrested for felony fraud and a variety of other charges, New York State Police an- nounced Monday.
Additional arrests are pending, the state troopers said.
All of the arrests are re- lated to the arrest of 45-year- old Dennis J. Sauve of North Bangor, the owner of the Old Time Butcher Block in Brushton. Sauve was charged Jan. 16 with third-de- gree grand larceny and misuse of food stamps, both felonies, for allegedly allowing cus-
tomers to exchange their food stamps for cash or to purchase alcohol with them.
The investigation was ini- tiated by the Franklin County Department of Social Services Fraud Unit and involved the state police, the Distirct Attor- ney’s Office, the U.S. Depart- ment of Agriculture and the New York State Office of Tem- porary and Disability Assis- tance.
Louisiana’s Budget Cuts
Making It Hard For Grambling
Just Revealed: The Late Coach Dean Smith Tried To Use Influence To Get Wilmington 10 Pardoned
To Find A President
BATON ROUGE – Louisiana’s budget problems are making Grambling State University’s presidential search more difficult, with possible job applicants ap- parently worried they’d be walking into a financial mess.
University of Louisiana System President Sandra Woodley released a letter from the search firm hired to recruit candidates that says the threat of deep budget cuts has stymied efforts to find a new Grambling leader.
Grambling’s former presi- dent Dr. Frank Pogue re- tired in June 2014. The controversial leader made headlines when he fired NFL MVP QB, Doug Williams as head football coach in 2013. The Grambling football team later refused to board a bus for a scheduled game, which led to the firing of the interim coach as well. Dr. Pogue was the 8th president of the university and had been its leader since 2009.
The Hollins Group said some potential candidates
DR. FRANK POGUE ..retired in June
won’t consider applying until the financial future of the his- torically black college is clearer. The search firm said candidates want to make sure Grambling has a “positive fu- ture” before they’d accept a job offer.
Gov. Bobby Jindal’s
administration is expected to propose higher education cuts ranging from $300 mil- lion to $400 million. Wood- ley said the search committee may need to change its time- line for finding a new presi- dent when it meets Feb. 24. She said the search firm has postponed identifying candi- dates for the job until that meeting.
The Wilmington 10
The late Dean Smith. 1971, Smith would have
found himself in the crossfire between civil rights and law enforcement groups who were bitterly divided.
History shows that a few months later, on January 23, 1978, Gov. Hunt went on statewide television, and an- nounced that he would not pardon the Wilmington Ten, but would reduce their harsh sentences.
However, in December 1980, after all of them had been released from prison, the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia over- turned the Wilmington Ten’s convictions citing “gross prosecutorial misconduct,” and ordered North Carolina to either drop the charges, or conduct a new trial.
The state did nothing for 32 years, thus leaving the Ten in legal limbo. Not until the National Newspaper Publish- ers Association, led by the Wilmington Journal, defense attorneys Irving Joyner and James Ferguson, and the NC NAACP, mounted a successful national campaign in 2012 to secure ten pardons of innocence from then Gov. Beverly Perdue, were they finally legally exonerated.
NORTH CAROLINA –As the world continues to mourn the passing of legendary UNC Tar Heel Head Basketball Coach Dean Smith, he is being remembered as a trail- blazer not only for his cham- pionship winning hardwood strategy, but also for standing strong for social justice, and against racial discrimination.
While many know of how Coach Smith recruited Charlie Scott as the first African-American to play At- lantic Coast Conference bas- ketball in the ‘60’s, and how he supported former Chapel Hill Mayor Howard Lee when the Black man tried against all odds to purchase a home in an all-White Chapel Hill neighborhood, it has never been revealed, until now, that Dean Smith also tried to use his considerable influence with then Gov. James B. Hunt in 1977 to secure pardons for ten wrongly convicted civil rights activists known as “the Wilm- ington Ten.”
When Gov. Hunt first took office in 1977, the Wilm- ington Ten – nine young Black males and one White female led by the fiery Rev. Benjamin Chavis (now the
leader of the National News- paper Publishers Associa- tion) – had already been tried, convicted and sen- tenced to a combined 282 years in prison in 1972. Upon taking office, Hunt in- dicated that he wanted to re- view the historic case, and once all of the state appeals ran out, he would step in if needed.
It was during this time that letters from literally all over the country and the world began pouring in to Gov. Hunt’s office, both pro and con.
One of them was from Dean Smith.
The significance of Smith’s July 1977 letter is the fact that he marked the envelope “PERSONAL & CONFIDENTIAL” meaning that he wanted his request to be seen, and considered, only by the governor, and not be made public.
Given the raging national and worldwide controversy about the Wilmington Ten case, and how they were falsely convicted for the arson destruction of a White-owned grocery store in Wilmington during the height of racial tensions there in February
PAGE 16-B FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2015