Governor Corbett, a life-long Pennsylvania resident, served as Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney, Chair of the Pennsylvania Commission of Crime and Delinquency and Pennsylvania Attorney General before becoming the 46th Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 2011. Throughout his career in public service, Corbett has served as an advisor to Governors and Presidents.

Governor Corbett’s participation in “The New Voices” platform of Philly.com’s notable contributors will be available in the form of photo essays, videos and columns, highlighting the Governor’s perspective in addressing state issues of importance to Philadelphians.

The same article goes on to describe that Philadelphians “will be excited to receive the latest policy news from Harrisburg, directly from the Governor.”  As a response to his new gig, the governor said “I am happy to be a part of Philly.com’s new platform, and allow Pennsylvanians to hear about some of the important issues facing the commonwealth.”

According to a short Q & A posted on the website, Tommy Boy describes himself as an “honest,” and “loyal” person who stands up for what he believes in.  He goes on to describe that he was a high school teacher (for 1 year), an athlete in college and born in the city he and his party sees as a wart on a witches face, Philadelphia.

What’s not reported on the website though are some titles for his first blog piece, so here are some suggestions: “Jerry and Me”; “Audrey and Tom: A True Love Story”; “The Marcellus Candidate.”

Journalist and author Jeremy Scahill spoke this Tuesday to a packed house at the Free Library of Philadelphia while promoting his new book and upcoming film, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield. Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist, two-time recipient of the George Polk Award, correspondent for Democracy Now!, Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, and best-selling author of the book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, discussed our foreign wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen and the new rise of covert operations and assassinations by the U.S. around the globe.

What has changed since Bush was in power? Scahill began, “Here is Obama’s change,” he closed the CIA’s black sites in Poland and Thailand only to take over an old French base, Camp Lemonnier, in Djibouti where many of the covert actions on the African continent are now based out of. Renditions continued. Assassinations have been normalized. Essentially, the Bush-era policies have been rebranded and recast, not changed.

Scahill also touched on the Obama administration’s use of signature strikes in his drone program, as opposed to personality strikes. A personality strike targets a specific person whereas a signature strike targets a certain geographical region. Any military-age males with an even remote connection to a suspicious person or group who is in a geographic location thought to hold terrorist cells is considered a target. “We don’t even know who we’re killing anymore,” Scahill said. Killing people intentionally whose identities we do not know, “that’s murder.” The U.S. is now creating MORE new enemies than killing actual terrorists, Scahill continued, and that has consequences. “There will be blowback.”

September 30, 2011: “For me, we crossed a serious line.” On this day, in an unprecidented move by U.S. forces, a U.S. drone strike killed two U.S. citizens in Yemen. Anwar al-Awlaki, the target of the strike, was killed without ever being formally charged or prosecuted. “Obama served as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner,” Scahill reported. Samir Khan, the second U.S. citizen killed in the same strike, was not an official target, but nevertheless suffered the same fate. As Scahill explained, while Awlaki may have been a deplorable person, while his actions and rhetoric may have been reprehensible, this issue is not about who he is but who we are as a society. “I judge our society by how we treat the most reprehensible of our citizens.”

About two weeks after the drone attack that killed Awlaki and Khan, another drone strike was carried out in Yemen. This time, the victim was 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the son of Anwar and also a U.S. citizen. Abdulrahman was killed shortly after he had run away from his home (living with his mother and grandparents) to find his father Anwar who he had not seen in years. While he was searching for his father, his father was killed. Then, just two weeks following Anwar’s assassination, while the boy was sitting at an outdoor cafe with his young cousins and friends, he along with many others, were killed in a drone strike carried out by his own government. In response to questions as to why this boy was killed, Robert Gibbs, former White House press secretary and a senior adviser to Obama during his reelection campaign said that he “should have a far more responsible father.”

“Make no mistake,” Scahill said, “we should be outraged,” no matter if the people we are killing are United States citizens, Yemenis, Pakistanis, Afghans or whatever, “but if we won’t even grant our own citizens these rights than who are we as a society?”

Dirty Wars is a must-read and the film is likely one that will change the conversation around U.S. foreign occupations and wars. At the least, it will serve to put the stories of the families that have been devastated around the globe by U.S. foreign policy and our supposedly “clean” and “surgical” drone strikes in to the public view. The fact is that war is not clean or surgical. War has many victims whose stories must be told and covered extensively. Scahill has done this with his book and film. As Scahill noted, “We ignore the impact of our policy at our own peril.”

UPDATE: US Attorney’s Office says charges will be filed against NA Poe @thepanichour + @adamkokesh this afternoon. #marijuana #Philly

— Chris Goldstein (@freedomisgreen) May 20, 2013

Adam Kokesh and Na Poe both charged with resisting arrest, interfering, and assault on a federal officer #freepoe

— Kenneth Lipp (@kennethlipp) May 20, 2013

RT @freedomisgreen: NA Poe @thepanic hour + @adamkokesh charged w felonies for #marijuana protest. not released. Detention hearing thurs

— PhillyWeekly (@PhillyWeekly) May 20, 2013

Prosecution claims that Na Poe should continue to be detained because of history of ‘substantial drug use,’ other. His atty was not present

— Kenneth Lipp (@kennethlipp) May 20, 2013

US attorney says Kokesh refused to cooperate, answer questions about his gun ownership, activism, history – thus a threat, deserving no bail

— Kenneth Lipp (@kennethlipp) May 20, 2013

Videos of both arrests

The negative media coverage of Kutztown University must end.

The media day in and day out are slandering the school’s name and ignoring the world-changing accomplishments coming out of the institution.

As student body president-elect, I see every day the accomplishments coming from my fellow students. I see dreams being followed, I see opportunity being created.

When will that be front-page news?

Kutztown University is a state-of-the-art institution for higher education, which allows for students such as me to excel and become community leaders.

I welcome people to our campus to see first-hand the outstanding work being done by Kutztown students.

Kutztown students (are) the future of this nation, and they are working hard to fulfill America’s economic needs.

Imbesi’s appeal comes just three days before Kutztown – and 12 of the 13 other Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) universities – will celebrate the accomplishments of the Class of 2013 during commencement ceremonies. No doubt that the recent controversy over Kutztown’s decision to change its policy and allow guns on campus – a controversy that began right here when I published the first story on the change in Kutztown’s policy.

I know Nick. I have taught at Kutztown University for eleven years now. Nick Imbesi is one of those students that you know is destined to have an impact. Not just get a good job or be “successful” in the ways we think of success these days. When I mean an impact, I mean Nick is one of those students who has decided to stand up and defend public education against PA Governor Tom Corbett’s deep cuts. Nick and I have stood side-by-side on the same podium and rode the same buses to Harrsiburg to protest Corbett’s cuts. I will never forget his words echoing off the walls of Old Main on Kutztown’s campus and the Capitol building in Harrisburg back in the spring of 2011: “The future of Pennsylvania is standing right hear!”

Nick’s frustration with the “negative” media coverage of Kutztown and other PASSHE universities is understandable. As the public – and students, faculty and staff – learn that administrations have been quietly opening up their campuses to guns behind the backs of those very people who work and study at the universities, some people may be concerned that such coverage may eclipse the amazing work that goes on at these universities. Such concerns are only heightened when we approach commencement ceremonies for the class of 2013.

I want to share a slightly different perspective with the class of 2013 and the university community that will remain long after this year’s graduates have left our campuses. If we care to make good on the promise of democracy, of our responsibility as American citizens, we must always be willing to speak truth to power; to demand fairness, transparency, and justice; to not turn our heads and walk away when we witness wrong-doing, lies, and cruelty; to insist that our leaders’ words and those of our own be spoken honestly and are followed up with good faith efforts turn those words into deeds; to never accept “good enough” when we know it’s possible to do better; and, to never, ever, enslave ourselves with the words, “there is nothing we can do, there is no alternative.”

Critique, protest, dissent, refusal, outrage, and resistance fueled by the promise of a deeper democracy, a fairer economy, and a more perfect union have been the engine for progress. And here I don’t simply mean progress in terms of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. I mean progress in the sense of becoming more human – at least a notion of human that accepts that we are more than base instincts and a desire to conquer everyone else around us as some would like us to believe.

In the 1880s when employers could legally force employees to work 16 or 18 hour shifts, workers joined together and successfully fought for the 8 hour day under the slogan, “8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, and 8 hours for what we will!” Women, refusing to accept their roles as second class citizens, joined together and gained the right to vote in 1920. African-Americans fought long and hard to gain full citizenship rights in the face of brutal violence. And today we see gay and lesbian Americans struggling to achieve full equality in marriage. These are some of the big examples, but there are thousands more that happen in every community across this country and world.

What tends to be forgotten about these historic struggles and those that are going on right now is that it took years and decades to win. None of them would have achieved a thing if they gave up when they lost their first argument.

But perhaps even more important is that we forget that these struggles were not fought out in only in abstract ideas, or even in the halls of Congress. They were fought out in specific communities, at people’s places of work, in their churches, and on the streets. Struggles at the local level are uncomfortable. It is one thing, for example, to make an abstract argument for the right for gay and lesbian couples to be able to marry; it is quite another for a gay or lesbian couple to walk into their County Clerk’s Office and demand a wedding license.  It is one thing to complain that nothing is made in America anymore; it is quite another for a family to make a decision to buy only Made in the U.S.A. products. It is one thing to argue about what the mission of a college or university should be; it is quite another to demand that your college or university live up to that mission today.

The week before I started writing about Kutztown University’s new gun policy, I was working on a very different kind of story about the university. And it is part of that story that I want to share with you today.

On my drive home from work on May 1 of this year, I heard a story on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition about the emergence of for-profit “social monitoring companies” over the past two decades. The story, “Factory Audits and Safety Don’t Always Go Hand in Hand,” exposed the ways in which multinational corporations such as Wal-Mart and the Gap hire these firms to “audit” factories that make their clothes at locations around the world in order to “protect their brand” – that is, to assure their customers that the shirt they are about to buy was not made in a sweatshop. However, in most cases these “audits” are audits in name only. The reporter called out these for-profit monitoring companies by name and showed how little auditing these companies actually do. The story ran in the wake of the fire at a factory in Bangledesh that killed more than 400 workers, making it one of the worst manufacturing disasters in history.

Early in the story, there’s a short clip from Scott Nova from an organization called the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC). But, if you didn’t know anything about the WRC, you would most likely think it was one of the for-profit, monitoring companies that the story exposes as frauds. That irritated me. Anyone who has been involved with campus activism or labor activism since the mid-1990s, is likely familiar with the amazing work done by United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) to bring attention to the issue of sweatshop labor by pressuring their college or university administrations to require any company wishing to use their logos certify that their clothing is not made in sweatshop conditions. USAS was instrumental in getting over 175 colleges and universities to sign on to the WRC to do the monitoring of the factories that produced the clothing. That is important because the WRC is independent of the manufactures and actually works closely with local organizations and workers rights groups in the countries in which the clothing is made.

My experience with USAS began when I was a graduate student at Miami University (OH) – now a WRC affiliate. It wasn’t until I began teaching at Kutztown University in 2002 that I became involved with a USAS campaign from the ground up. I was the faculty advisor for a student group called the Campus Greens which was founded by former Kutztown student, Nate Banditelli, in the fall of 2002. Nate’s group grew quickly and by the spring of that academic year, the group was running several petition drives, holding regular meetings, and bringing in speakers. In the fall of 2003, the group brought Dan Calamuci to campus to speak about workers rights and sweatshops. Dan was a former student of mine at The George Washington University and was working at the National Labor Committee [ now the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights] in 2003. Following his talk, three students, Amy Robinson, Miranda Resnick, and Shannon McDonough became very interested in starting a Kutztown Chapter of USAS: KUSAS. They asked me to be their advisor.

In the weeks and months that followed, Amy, Miranda and Shannon dove into the research. They were determined to get Kutztown University to join the WRC. As their faculty advisor and as someone who was familiar with USAS, I was able to answer some of their questions and direct them to some resources as needed. The heavy-lifting was all theirs.

In spring 2004, the students arranged a meeting with then Vice President of Administration and Finance, James Sutherland, and then Vice President of Student Services and Campus Life, Chick Woodard – the two officials responsible for university apparel and licensing. The day of the meeting, each student showed up with a two or three inch binder filled with supporting documents. As I recall, they decided to split the research into three areas and they would each be responsible for answering questions in their area.

The meeting lasted maybe 30-45 minutes if I recall correctly. Sutherland and Woodard asked fairly pointed and specific questions ranging from the cost of joining the WRC to the licensing requirements. For each question, Amy, Miranda and Shannon had answers. About half-way through the meeting, Sutherland announces that the proposal to join the WRC came at the perfect time. As it turned out, Kutztown did not require a licensing agreement for the use of their logo on apparel, but they were right in the middle of doing so for the first time in the university’s history. Both Sutherland and Woodard then said that the students were impressive and that the university would be not just willing, but was enthusiastic about joining the WRC. I think it would be fair to say that all of us were a bit shocked, especially given that many USAS campaigns were not successful until students occupied administration buildings and held campus-wide protests.

So, there is was. Kutztown University would become a member of the WRC. Clothing bearing the Kutztown University name or logo, would not be made by women who were subjected to forced sterilization or by eight-year-old children. Kutztown would join the ranks of universities like the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Miami University (OH), Cornell University, Carnegie Mellon University, Bryn Mawr College and the University of Pennsylvania.

After hearing that NPR story, I was curious if Kutztown was still a member of the WRC. Amy, Miranda, and Shannon have long moved on and, as is often the case in student organizing, there was not another student willing to keep the KUSAS going. Wouldn’t you know it. After 10 years, Kutztown remains a member of the WRC! And, Kutztown remains the only PASSHE university to be a WRC affiliate. I still hear from Amy, Miranda, Nate, and Shannon on occasion. Given the horror of the garment factory disasters in Pakistan and Bangladesh this past year and the fact that we are coming up on the ten-year anniversary of Kutztown signing on to the WRC, I thought I would get back in touch. My idea was to ask each of them to reflect back to that first year and to talk about what they think about what they did. My goal was…and still is…to compile their stories and some artifacts from that year and publish them as part of the anniversary.

Then, Kutztown instituted a new gun policy that virtually no one knew about outside of a small circle of administrators and lawyers. That became my focus for the past week.

After reading Nick Imbesi’s short letter to the editor, however, I thought it might be worth while to share this incredible accomplishment by a handful of motivated Kutztown students who didn’t just believe they could have an impact; they set to work and did it. Given that commencement ceremonies are supposed to focus on students, I want to close by sharing the words of Amy Robinson, one of the students that founded USAS at Kutztown:

May 9, 2013

Hey Kevin,

I just woke up and turned on the Today show.  They reported yet another deadly fire in a Bangladesh garment factory and it reminded me that you had asked the “KUSAS originals” to write a little bit about our work and why we did it.

I don’t think that anything I’m about to say is going to be profound in any way.  But I do think the fact that we as a group, took the time to think about the issue as young 20-somethings is pretty profound.  It was (and still is) so easy to listen to the news, hear the stories, see the bodies etc…and then move on with the rest of our day.  We aren’t faced with those same hardships or struggles, living in the US.  Those workers are after a better life and we dangle this carrot in front of them, really– so they can support our American lifestyle.  They go to work making our over-priced clothes and deal with conditions we would never tolerate.  It’s their basic human right to have the opportunity to make a living and support their families.  The difference is that their lowest standard of living is unimaginable to us in this country.  We are so quick to complain about the “rich getting richer” meanwhile, my $30,000 a year would make a garment worker more than happy.

The reason we felt compelled to start KUSAS and work toward joining the WRC was really simple Kevin: it was just the right thing to do.  We knew we couldn’t change the entire world but we could change our part of it.  The idea that human beings could treat other human beings so poorly was incomprehensible.  We have evolved beyond that and we, as human beings, know better.

It’s so daunting to think about what needs to change in order for there to be peace and comfort and safety–all the things we value in this country for ourselves—but unless it’s right in front of us, we aren’t concerned with who sacrificed what so that we could get those $150 boots.  And Kevin, I’m not totally innocent as I write this!  Seriously, I would have heard that story, felt a bit of sadness for the 60 seconds it was on and then moved on to my green tea and computer screen without giving it much of a thought as to how the running shoes I’m about to put on were probably made in similar conditions.  But in 2004, I wasn’t so concerned with making my own living, getting to work on time, having enough money to pay bills or buy the latest–whatever.  In 2004, I had the luxury of time to THINK.  We keep ourselves so busy… maybe so we can’t think…

Anyways, I feel like I’m rambling a little now.  I just wanted to reflect and hopefully provided you with something….OH!  Ha!  One more thing—(which I think is kind of sad but motivating at the same time)…I’ve gone on from KUSAS to live in the woods and help set some “at-risk” kids straight—I traveled all over southeast Asia and lived in South Korea—came back to Pittsburgh to build relationships with kids who were beyond “at-risk”, aggressive and violent towards me and somehow, I still managed to feel like I helped a few of them, I just earned my masters degree—and when I’m in a job interview, and someone asks me to describe my greatest accomplishment, I still feel like saying it was getting Kutztown to join the WRC!!  We did something purely altruistic and helped people we will never meet.  We may never really fully understand the impact that our work had on someone’s life but we did it because we knew that it was the only way any of us would be proud to wear that KU hoodie.

Amy

There is outstanding work being done by Kutztown students and by students at all of the PASSHE universities. Reading Amy’s words brings tears to my eyes and makes my heart expand just a little bit more. Amy and the other students founded KUSAS and sought to get Kutztown to join the WRC because “it was the right thing to do.” Kutztown students made a lasting impact on their university. And, while they got lucky and found a receptive administration, they were fully prepared to wage a sustained campaign, in the public even if that brought bad press to the university. They wanted their university to be better than it was. They refused to say “there is nothing we can do, there is no alternative.” They didn’t get mired down in cynicism.  They were determined to do more than talk about how sweatshops were bad, they wanted to find a way they could have an impact on the issue in their immediate surroundings.

And they did it because it was the right thing to do and they wanted to be proud to wear that KU hoodie.

Dear ESU-APSCUF Members,

APSCUF and the Administration held a Meet and Discuss meeting on Tuesday, May 14, 2013.  I regret to inform you that the Administration handed APSCUF a letter announcing the possibility of retrenchment of faculty and other employees, in accordance with Article 29 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.  The letter has been shared with State APSCUF, and to date, I believe we are the only campus to have received such a letter from the Administration in Spring 2013.  Such a letter does not mean that retrenchment will definitely happen, but represents a very serious concern for all of us.  ESU-APSCUF received such a letter about three years ago, and three ESU faculty were retrenched.  Those faculty held 12-month positions, and they had the opportunity  to reapply for 9 or 10-month  positions, at a very significant reduction in salary.  That same year in PASSHE, faculty at several other PASSHE universities were also retrenched, some of them losing their positions entirely, in several instances after careers of 20 plus years.  In other cases, retrenched faculty were able to utilize provisions of the CBA and attain positions at other PASSHE universities.  Absolutely no specific retrenchment decisions have been announced, but such a letter triggers the commencement of a process.  ESU-APSCUF encourages faculty to review Article 29 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.  We will keep you informed.

East Stroudsburg University is one of the 14 universities that make up the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE).

In 2010, faculty received such a letter at a sister PASSHE school, Kutztown University. Retrenchment at Kutztown University led to the elimination of the Nursing program, the Theater department, the nationally recognized Advising Center, and other programs. As reported in the Morning Call in October 2010, retrenchment led to the elimination of six faculty positions. The loss of faculty positions announced in October 2010 came after Kutztown University administration had already initiated deep cuts earlier that year:

In May, the school made $4.2 million in cuts, eliminating 39 custodial, administrative, management and temporary faculty jobs — 29 of which were already vacant — and ending a mentoring course for disadvantaged youth. The school also said it would eliminate its vehicle fleet.

“Given the projected budget shortage our institution faces, we must continue with the tough decisions we made earlier this year,” university President F. Javier Cevallos said in a news release. “While moving forward with these reductions is extremely difficult, they are necessary to deal with our financial challenges.”

However, as first reported in the blog APSCUF-KU XChange, the administration’s claims that it was in a deep budget hole turned out to be specious as best. Kutztown University was sitting on a $29.1 million SURPLUS, second only to West Chester University in financial health [to read the full back story on Kutztown's "budget crises" check out "The Persistence of Crisis @ Kutztown U: Work Harder or Fight Back" at Raging Chicken Press].

Of course, the retrenchment experience at Kutztown may prove a poor guide for faculty and staff at East Stroudsburg University. Just two universities that happen to be in the same State System and who fell into budget holes, right? Perhaps.

However, one detail of the timing of East Stroudsburg’s retrenchment announcement should at least raise concern. On May 3, East Stroudsburg announced it hired a new Vice President for Administration and Finance. A man by the name of Ken Long. Here’s the email sent out to the university community:

After an extensive national search, it is my pleasure to announce the appointment of Mr. Kenneth Long, M.B.A., as the Vice President of Administration and Finance for East Stroudsburg University, effective July 1.  Ken comes to us from Kutztown University where he serves as Assistant Vice President for Administration and Finance since 2008.  He also served as Interim Vice President for Finance and Administration at Cheyney University for six months in 2012.  These appointments, in addition to earlier positions with the University of Toledo, and DeVry University, indicate that Ken brings to ESU more than 25 years of progressive work experience in higher education.

Ken earned a bachelor of arts degree in math and political science from Drew University in Madison, N.J. and an M.B.A.  from Monmouth University, West Long Branch, N.J.  He has experience teaching courses in business administration, financial accounting and managerial accounting and has made presentations at a number of regional and national meetings and conferences.  Among  his many accomplishments, Ken initiated KU’s first multi-year financial forecast, re-aligned KU’s operating budget to provide $1 million to support the strategic plan, successfully coordinated over $20 million in expenditure reductions to meet financial and strategic objectives, and participated in the implementation of integrated information systems (Banner, Oracle/PeopleSoft, Lawson and Cognos).

At ESU, Ken will report directly to the President and will serve as ESU’s Chief Financial Officer. Core university operations reporting to the Ken will include the business office (Accounting and Budget), procurement and contracting, facilities management, computing and communication services, public safety, human resources and the office of diversity and equal opportunity.

Sheer coincidence? Maybe.

But maybe we are seeing PASSHE’s version of Ryan Bingham the “corporate downsizing expert” played by George Clooney in the 2009 film, Up in the Air. The fact is, we don’t know at this point and Ken Long will not officially begin to wield his wrecking ball…rrrr…I mean, start his position until July 1, 2013. For the sake of East Stroudsburg University faculty, staff, and students, let’s hope Mr. Long has already “seen the light” and has put his corporate downsizing experience behind him, cashing in his frequent flyer miles for a home in the Poconos.

A faculty member who did not wish to be named because he is not an official spokesperson for ESU-APSCUF or the faculty, described the news this way:

It all feels like yet another McCrisis being invented at ESU by the administration for reasons that have nothing to do with student education. It adds to an increasingly toxic atmosphere on campus, too. There is less than zero mutual trust between faculty and the administration at this point.

Did I mention that East Stroudsburg University will be holding its 2013 Commencement Ceremonies in two days? Happy trails.

No Worries: Retrenchment as an Opportunity to Dream

It’s not surprising that we are finding out now. Upon first glance many of the updated policies seem to prohibit guns on university campuses, unless an individual can demonstrate a “compelling reason” that they should be allowed to carry a weapon. However, as Schackner found in his reporting on Edinboro University’s new policy,

Only after a point-by-point discussion of those rules did Jeffrey Hileman acknowledge in one-word answers this week that “No,” there is no language barring someone from carrying a gun in open campus spaces, and “Yes,” that represents a change from six months ago.

Last week, when I first posted on Kutztown University’s new policy, I contacted every PASSHE university and inquired about their gun policy. Here is the email I sent on May 7th:

This week, Kutztown University modified its campus gun policy on the heels of pressure by a student group called Kutztown University Students for Concealed Carry (see WFMZ story here: http://goo.gl/47SkF). The old university policy banned weapons from “university premises.” The new policy bans weapons only from University buildings and events, effectively allowing the possession of firearms on university property. I have spoken to several other PASSHE universities. Given that there seems to be a range of policies at PASSHE universities, I am contacting the remaining universities as well. I would appreciate it if you could help me answer the following questions:

Have you seen any similar pressure by students, faculty, or outside groups to change your university’s policy?

Does your university currently allow the possession of firearms on campus?

Can your provide me with a copy of the current university policy?

Have your received any directives or advice from PASSHE’s Chancellor’s Office or from the Attorney General to allow guns on your campus?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Best,

Kevin Mahoney
Editor, Raging Chicken Press

Here are the responses I received by the seven PASSHE universities who Kenn Marshall now says have already made changes to their policy:

• California University: Christine Kindl, Director of Communications and Public Relations, replied, “”I’ve heard no concerns about our weapons policy.” She also included a link to the university’s policy.
• Edinboro University: Jeff Pinski, Associate Director of Public Relations and Marketing, did not reply.
• Kutztown University: Matt Santos, Director of University Relations, was responsive and you can read all about KU here.
• Lock Haven University: Rodney Jenkins, Executive Assistant to the President for External Relations and Communications, included a copy of the university’s policy and replied simply, “NO,” to my other three questions.
• Millersville University: Janet Kocskos, Director of Communications, replied, “We haven’t had any rumblings about changing our gun policy.” She also included a link to the university policy.
• Shippensburg University: Peter Gigliotti, Executive Director for University Communications & Marketing, replied that he would respond the following week. He was in charge of Shippensburg’s Commencement (which is a week earlier than all the other PASSHE universities).
• Slippery Rock University: Rita Abent, Executive Director, University Public Relations, included a copy their policy and provided the most detailed response after a follow-up email. I had tracked down their policy by this point and noticed it had been changed. She wrote:
  • The policy was updated as the result of two things: a request by the PASSHE Chief Student Affairs Officers to look at sister school policies for consistency; and as part of a regular review of policies.
  • Yes, as long as the person has a legal concealed carry permit an is in a public area. The University has a weapons protocol where we encourage owners to check their weapons with the University Police while they are visiting campus.
  • I am not aware of any group pressuring the University for a change to the policy.

In my early discussions with Matt Santos from Kutztown, I asked if the following two scenarios would be in compliance with KU’s new policy:

• A student/faculty member/staff member/administrator has a permit to carry a concealed weapon. That individual comes to campus carrying a concealed weapon, walks around campus, sits down by the waterfall, converses with friends. S/he does not enter a university building or participate in an event. Is this individual in compliance with the new policy or in violation?
• A student/faculty member/staff member/administrator drives to campus and parks in a university parking lot. In the trunk of the individual’s car is a rifle, a shotgun, and handgun. The individual gets out of their car, locks the car doors and goes into a university building. The guns remain in the trunk of the car. Is this individual in compliance with the new policy or in violation?

As I wrote in my first post on this issue, Santos replied, “the two scenarios you presented would be compliant under the new policy.  I checked this with our police department.” That seemed to fly in the face of the university’s initial claims that anyone who wanted to carry a weapon on campus would have to get special permission.

After being told that Kutztown University had modeled it’s policy after those from Millersville, West Chester, Shippensburg, and Slippery Rock, I contacted each of those universities again on May 8th to see if I was missing something. This time, I posed the same two scenarios and asked if the individual would be in compliance. To my surprise, I received this back from Janet Kocskos at Millersville:

As in all cases, we would address each case individually and apply the laws and policies accordingly.

Based on the very limited information below, the easy answer would be yes, the individual would be in compliance in both of your scenarios.

On May 13th, Peter Gigliotti of Shippensburg got back to me and wrote of the two scenarios:

The answer to both your scenarios is yes, they would be in compliance.

Christine Kindl from Slippery Rock did not respond to my second inquiry. And, Pam Sheridan, Public Relations & Marketing contact for West Chester University, never responded to any of my inquiries.

Like Schackner, this morning I was told by Matt Santos, the University Relations contact person at Kutztown University, that he has been instructed to refer all media inquiries about PASSHE university gun policies directly to Kenn Marshall, PASSHE official spokesperson in Harrisburg. Marshall has just replied to several of my inquires and I will be posting on those in the next few days.

Following this story is to follow the slow unraveling of an attempt to revise university gun policies quietly and with little input from students, faculty, and staff. As of yesterday, I have filed two right-to-know requests in an attempt to better understand the genesis of PASSHE’s new policy.

Raging Chicken Press will continue to follow this issue. You can check our all of our coverage here.

The story was co-written by reporters Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman along with contributions from Kimberly Dozier, Eileen Sullivan and Alan Fram. They, along with their editor, Ted Bridis, had both their personal and work phone records seized from April-May 2012, in addition to general AP office numbers.

But who could be surprised? From the very start of Obama’s presidency, he and his administration have managed to take the Bush-era attack on civil liberties and not just continue them, but in many cases, significantly expand them (Lena Groeger and Cora Currier of ProPublica have created a fantastic interactive list here). The AP phone records story, while certainly significant, is not the first time the Obama administration has acted above the law. Glenn Greenwald wrote for a piece in The Guardian,

“And then there are the two War on Terror presidents. George Bush seized on the 9/11 attack to usher in radical new surveillance and detention powers in the PATRIOT ACT, spied for years on the communications of US citizens without the warrants required by law, and claimed the power to indefinitely imprison even US citizens without charges in military brigs.

His successor, Barack Obama, went further by claiming the power not merely to detain citizens without judicial review but to assassinate them…He has waged an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, dusting off Wilson’s Espionage Act of 1917 to prosecute more than double the number of whistleblowers than all prior presidents combined. And he has draped his actions with at least as much secrecy, if not more so, than any president in US history.”

What is clear is that Obama’s legacy is shaping up to be one rife with assaults on civil liberties, government secrecy, and broken promises. Here are my top ten:

1. National Defense Authorization Act or NDAA: Signed into law by Obama, it authorizes the U.S. government to carry out “counter-terrorism” domestically and detain INDEFINITELY and WITHOUT TRIAL any U.S. citizen who is suspected of any sort of suspicious activity that could be deemed terrorism or supporting terrorism. And what’s more, these U.S. citizens could be shipped to one of our extraordinary rendition sites across the globe – sites like Guantánamo Bay.
2. Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan: Both U.S. citizens. Both killed in Yemen by a U.S. drone strike on September 30th, 2011. Anwar al-Awlaki was specifically targeted on Obama’s kill list. Neither was officially charged. Neither given a trial. Neither convicted of any crime.
3. Abdulrahman al-Awlaki: Just two weeks after al-Awlaki and Khan were killed, al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was also killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen. Robert Gibbs, former White House press secretary and a senior adviser to Obama during his reelection campaign said, when asked about the boy’s killing, that he “should have a far more responsible father.”
4.  Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA):  In 2008, then-Senator Obama voted for FISA, which allows for warrantless wiretapping of international communications by the NSA. In December of 2012, Obama extended it for another five years.
5. Patriot Act: In May, 2011, Obama renewed much of the Patriot Act, including wiretaps and the “lone wolf” provision which allows government surveillance of individuals even if they are not known to be affiliated with a terrorist organization.
6. Drone Strikes: During Bush’s presidency, there were about 45 drone strikes in Pakistan. During Obama’s first year as president, there were 53. Under Obama’s presidency, drone strikes also expanded to Yemen. Additionally, the New York Times reported that the Obama administration, “counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”
7. Whistleblowers: The Obama administration has charged more people under the Espionage Act than all past presidents…combined. Six have been charged under the law thus far: Thomas Drake, former senior executive at the NSA, Shamai K. Leibowitz, former FBI translator, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a nuclear proliferation specialist, former CIA agent John Kiriakou, Jeffrey Sterling, former CIA officer, and…
8. Bradley Manning: Pfc Bradley Manning, the sixth in the list of those charged under the Espionage Act, has now spent over three years in jail without trial for releasing classified documents to the website Wikileaks. The documents he released exposed lies and corruption by U.S. government officials, killings of civilians, torture in Iraq, drone strike cover-ups, and abuse of children by U.S. government contractors abroad. They included the  Collateral Murder video, showing a U.S. Apache helicopter gunning down over a dozen people in Baghdad in 2007, including civilians and two Reuter’s employees, photojournalist Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver Saeed Chmagh. Also released were the Iraq War Logs, chronicling reports from 2004-2009 of thousands of cases of prisoner torture and abuse filed against coalition forces in Iraq. The reports include gruesome descriptions of people being whipped with cables, sexually assaulted, urinated on, and hung from the ceiling on hooks. In addition, the War Logs added 15,000 civilian deaths to the known body count, totalling over 150,000 people, of which about 80% were civilian.
9. Spying on Muslim Communities: Under the Obama administration, the NYPD and the CIA have joined together to spy on communities of Muslims in the U.S. using “human mapping” or racial and religious profiling, and in 2011, AP reported the use of “mosque crawlers” or informants used to monitor sermons and other areas where groups of Muslims are known to frequent.
10. Guantánamo Bay: During Obama’s first campaign for the presidency, he promised to close down Guantánamo Bay, a promise he quickly abandoned. Now, further controversy is surrounding the prison as prisoners, some who have been detained for over a decade and many who have even been cleared for release, have gone on hunger strike. Of the 166 prisoners at Guantánamo, at least 130 are refusing to eat as part of a hunger strike that began this February. At least 20 prisoners are being force-fed, which the United Nations Human Rights Commission considers torture.

This list is by no means exhaustive. I didn’t mention the 11th anniversary that occurred last October of Operation Enduring Freedom, marking over a decade of involvement in Afghanistan. I didn’t mention the past six years of fighting terror in Somalia. I didn’t mention that we have been dropping drones on Pakistan for the past nine years. Then of course, there is the War on Drugs in Latin America – a war that we have been waging to no end for decades, costing the U.S. billions of dollars and an untold number of lives. I didn’t mention that we are militarily involved in an estimated 60% of the world’s nations. I didn’t mention Obama’s record deportations of illegal immigrants that far exceeds the Bush-era deportations. And these things will continue because we ignore them. The right is distracted by the government “coming for their guns.” The left is complacent because a Democrat is in office. Meanwhile, our government continues to act as if it is above the rule of law. If Obama’s legacy is one of secrecy, egregious assaults on civil liberties, and drone strikes around the world, our legacy is one of ignorance, stupidity and complacency. I’m still not sure which is worse.