As an undergraduate at Stanford, Debbie Sterling once ran out of a mechanical drafting course, crying.
Sterling was one of about five women in the class, and even though she loved drawing, she was having trouble with her final assignment. “I couldn’t get it quite right,” she admitted. But she never thought a struggle with one assignment would lead to what happened next.
During a critique, the two male teaching assistants asked the class, “OK, who thinks that Debbie should pass this class?”
The room remained silent. “Nobody raised their hands. I was mortified,” she said. “That’s the moment where I was really considering just giving up and thinking I didn’t have what it takes.”
On November 28, hundreds of students from Brauch College linked arms and protested outside a City College of New York board meeting in which members authorized, by a 15-to-1 vote, a $300 annual tuition increase until at least 2015. The protest was so disruptive that, according to The New York Times, Brauch canceled classes after 3 p.m. and stopped regular foot traffic going in and out of the building where the meeting was taking place. Three people were arrested.
Judith Ackerman, a mathematics Ph.D., went on the academic job market when the Army transferred her husband to the Washington, D.C., area in the 1970s. She interviewed at many places, both four- and two-year schools, but ultimately landed at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland. "I hadn't planned to have a career at a two-year college," she said, reflecting a common preference among Ph.Ds. to obtain tenure-track positions at four-year institutions with large research budgets. "But here there was an opportunity to innovate, to try new projects."
Each morning, Sherita Rooney wakes up around 6 a.m. She gets her 14-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son ready for the day. She makes breakfast and gets her children to school before driving an hour to West Chester University outside of Philadelphia, where she recently transferred after graduating from Montgomery County Community College.
Every day is difficult, but Tuesdays are especially so. She works from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. before class from 2 to 7. She picks up her kids, then brings them home and puts them to bed. As a math education major, she takes challenging classes that keep her up late studying. She goes to sleep around 2 each night. The next day, she gets up and does it over again.
The illustrious Nick Baumanndives deeper into the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion" bill introduced last week and finds that the proposed bill actually seeks to narrow the definition of rape.
With this legislation, which was introduced last week by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Republicans propose that the rape exemption be limited to "forcible rape." This would rule out federal assistance for abortions in many rape cases, including instances of statutory rape, many of which are non-forcible. For example: If a 13-year-old girl is impregnated by a 24-year-old adult, she would no longer qualify to have Medicaid pay for an abortion.
