UM News
Elections Commission announces SG Senate election results
The following senators will begin their terms of office Wednesday:
Apartment Area: Dan Ohrenstein
Hecht: Romy Portuondo
Stanford: Nastacia Chavannes
Mahoney: Rachel Smith
Pearson: Christina Farmer
Commuter: Anita Viciana, Ramsey Villalon, Zachary Chan
Freshman: Christopher Indelicato, Stephanie Karapetian
Sophomore: Brian Borisman, Jacob Powell
Junior: Michael Bookman, Christopher Swift-Perez
Senior: Rickesh Patel, Morgan Cantrell
Business: Christopher Casella
Communication: Anthony Wojtkowiac
Education: Sharifa Gayle
Elsewhere
Colorado State University student editorial sparks national uproar
By Aaron Hedge
Rocky Mountain Collegian (Colorado State U.)
(U-WIRE) FORT COLLINS, Colo. — After a Friday editorial in the Collegian that said “Taser this…F—BUSH” sparked national uproar and controversy regarding free speech, editor in chief J. David McSwane will go before Colorado State University’s Board of Student Communications (BSC) Tuesday to defend his job. The expletive was spelled out about twice the size of a headline.
McSwane and the Collegian Editorial Board are standing by the decision.
“The Editorial Board felt very strongly that it’s time college students, especially CSU students, start talking about issues,” McSwane said. “We’re zealots for freedom of speech and we felt that after Andrew Meyers on the University of Florida campus was pulled from his mike and abused…that we started getting people to talk.”
But he added that the board didn’t realize the full consequences of the decision.
“There were some unintended consequences,” he said. “I think we’ve caused a lot of grief to the advisers and we’ve certainly affected our own advertising.”
McSwane said that the editorial wasn’t about the president, but about freedom of speech.
“I think it’s been blown a little bit out of proportion, it’s been turned into more of a political issue,” he said. “Historically our ‘Our Views’ are not in favor of President Bush. Very often we slam him on that same section, so the issue wasn’t what we said, it was how we said it. To us, it was a free speech issue.”
CSU President Larry Penley issued a statement regarding the editorial that said while the university doesn’t have the authority to halt printing of the publication, it expects deeper journalistic integrity from its student journalists and does not support the editorial.
“While student journalists enjoy all the privileges and protections of the First Amendment, they must also accept full responsibility for the choices they make,” Penley said in the statement.
CSU College Republicans issued a written request Saturday for McSwane to resign his position.
“This is not a free speech issue,” the request stated. “[I]t is an issue of journalistic integrity.”
Etc.
First-time test-takers across Florida passed the General Bar Examination with the highest pass rate since 1993. The July 2007 examination’s statewide average was 80.4 percent. Of the state schools, UM law school graduates came in fifth place with an 85.8 percent pass rate.