Students applying to colleges know that they have to answer lots of questions on applications so the colleges can size you up to see if you fit the profile they’re looking for in their incoming class of freshmen or transfer students. Questions focus on academic records, parent education and employment, school and extracurricular activities, and legacies. At the end of most college applications, students are required to check 2 boxes that inquire about suspensions/expulsions and criminal records. If they check either of the boxes, students are required to write a short essay explaining the circumstances. Louisiana recently barred public colleges from asking about and making admissions decisions based on a student’s criminal past.
There is a growing movement supporting this ban because many students who have criminal records are not dangerous to others (petty theft) and were minors at the time of the incident. By making it difficult for these students to become productive members of society with a college degree, we may be forcing these young people into criminal activity as adults.
Students who check the box about a criminal past are often discriminated in the competitive application process. As a result, many students simply don’t apply to colleges and leave higher education out of their reach for future careers.
On the flipside, should colleges have the right to know about a prospective student’s criminal history? Let’s say the student was involved in violent behavior – or convicted of rape or other heinous activities. Withholding a student’s record of violence, drug abuse, or other activities might prove to be a mistake when colleges build incoming classes.
This is a sensitive issue. One on hand, teens make mistakes and should be given the opportunity to right their wrongs. On the other hand, colleges have the right to know about their students’ past activities (academic, extracurricular, and criminal) so they can make appropriate decisions.
Public colleges already give students the opportunity to explain the criminal record, but it appears that college admissions officers aren’t sympathetic to these types of lessons learned. One of my female clients was sexually assaulted by a teen boy. She punched him when he harassed her in school, and then she tried to scare him with her car as she drove past him in the school parking lot. She was suspended but the boy walked away with no record. Granted, this was not acceptable behavior but she was denied admission from several public colleges.
What are your thoughts about “banning the box”?
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Students applying to colleges know that they have to answer lots of questions on applications so the colleges can size you up to see if you fit the profile they’re looking for in their incoming class of freshmen or transfer students. Questions focus on academic records, parent education and employment, school and extracurricular activities, and legacies. At the end of most college applications, students are required to check 2 boxes that inquire about suspensions/expulsions and criminal records. If they check either of the boxes, students are required to write a short essay explaining the circumstances. Louisiana recently barred public colleges from asking about and making admissions decisions based on a student’s criminal past.
There is a growing movement supporting this ban because many students who have criminal records are not dangerous to others (petty theft) and were minors at the time of the incident. By making it difficult for these students to become productive members of society with a college degree, we may be forcing these young people into criminal activity as adults.
Students who check the box about a criminal past are often discriminated in the competitive application process. As a result, many students simply don’t apply to colleges and leave higher education out of their reach for future careers.
On the flipside, should colleges have the right to know about a prospective student’s criminal history? Let’s say the student was involved in violent behavior – or convicted of rape or other heinous activities. Withholding a student’s record of violence, drug abuse, or other activities might prove to be a mistake when colleges build incoming classes.
This is a sensitive issue. One on hand, teens make mistakes and should be given the opportunity to right their wrongs. On the other hand, colleges have the right to know about their students’ past activities (academic, extracurricular, and criminal) so they can make appropriate decisions.
Public colleges already give students the opportunity to explain the criminal record, but it appears that college admissions officers aren’t sympathetic to these types of lessons learned. One of my female clients was sexually assaulted by a teen boy. She punched him when he harassed her in school, and then she tried to scare him with her car as she drove past him in the school parking lot. She was suspended but the boy walked away with no record. Granted, this was not acceptable behavior but she was denied admission from several public colleges.
What are your thoughts about “banning the box”?
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Five years after we planted 17 new fruit trees, we finally got a bumper crop of peaches. We harvested our first batch recently. There’s nothing as wonderful as biting into a perfectly ripened peach that you just picked off your tree! They’re beautiful, juicy, and sweet!
100% organic with no pesticides! Surprisingly, the bugs and birds didn’t get to them before we did this year.
Come on over for some fresh peaches and peach pies!
Some fruits and veggies require more pesticides that others, and the Environmental Working Group just released the list of the fruits and veggies that have the most pesticide residue. For these, it’s best to buy organic or grow them yourselves. But if you can’t afford organic produce or don’t have time to garden, you can wash them with veggie soaps or select other veggies and fruit that you can peel.
Bottom line: don’t skip the veggies and fruit! Most people don’t get enough in their diets and this message is not intended to scare you into eating less fruits and vegetables!
The Dirty Dozen
1. Strawberries
2. Spinach
3. Nectarines
4. Apples
5. Peaches
6. Pears
7. Cherries
8. Grapes
9. Celery
10. Tomatoes
11. Sweet bell pepper
12. Potatoes
Buy these organic – if you can. Always wash your produce before eating. Eat lots of healthy and fresh vegetables and fruit.
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I’m a simple person. I don’t have fancy furniture; I build functional pieces that have specific purposes. And, I keep my furniture because they have that function and sentimental value. I built my bed 37 years ago when I couldn’t afford a bedroom set. It is one piece of furniture that has 14 drawers, 8 cubbies, 3 storage spaces (for skis and equipment) and a huge space for luggage and quilts. I even need a step stool to get into it because it’s over 3-feet high! Back in the 70’s, it even held a waterbed. Yup! A waterbed…
After 20 years with the same upholstery, I changed it up with an expressionist twist of bright color strokes. I searched for this in every fabric and upholstery store in the Bay Area and Santa Cruz for months. I love the way it brightens the room and it makes me happy when I wake up in the morning. Now I think I’m set for another 20 years!
I’ve been getting angrier and angrier at Monsanto and farmers for using Round-up – a known carcinogen – on the crops we eat. But I just found out that farmers spray crops with weed killer just before they harvest. That means that the chemicals are fresh and they lace the vegetables we serve our families. Yup.
They obviously don’t need to do this to get rid of weeds because they spray 2 weeks before harvest. The reason for adding pesticides that late in the growing season is simply to speed up the drying process. This is prevalent in the Midwest and Canada where they have more wet weather than the south and west.
Are you fuming yet?
If not, you should be. Once again, Monsanto and farmers consider profits before the health and the well being of their customers.
What can we do about it? Buy ORGANIC and buy from local growers you trust. Or, grow your own. The best way to change self-serving practices of large corporations is to hurt them where it counts: their sales. If we don’t buy their products because they’re using Round-up on them, they’ll stop using it!
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Rather than teach individual and isolated subjects like math, language, science, and history, Finnish schools focus on real-world issues – like climate change – and then dissect it from academic perspectives. Sure, we’ve had our share of theme-based classrooms with holistic approaches to education in the past. But the difference here is that the Finnish schools also teach the core foundation classes like mathematics, science, and language in regular class settings and the topic-based courses to stimulate group problem-solving discussions. Their primary school system was ranked #1 in the world in 2016; we were ranked #39. Hmm.
Read this article “Finland’s new, weird school ‘courses’ say a lot about how we teach our kids” by James Gaines. What are your thoughts?
Happy 4th of July! Politics aside, I love 4th of July. It’s always a fun-filled day with family and friends. Besides, who doesn’t like a federal holiday and a reason for a party. Over the years, we’ve had parties on Castle Beach, Twin Lakes Beach, and at our house. Our tent and banners were our base as we celebrated our love for our country in many venues.
The University of California just announced that several of their campuses will accept undergraduate admission applications for students who would like to start in winter or spring 2018. This is good news for those who applied and didn’t get in. By completing the UC application by July 31st, 2017, you could start at a UC as soon as Jan 2018.
Here are the campuses that are accepting applications between July 1-31, 2017:
UC Merced: Accepting applications for first-time freshmen and sophomore, junior, and senior transfer students for spring semester (starts Jan 2018).
UC Riverside: Accepting applications for sophomore, junior, and senior transfer students for winter quarter (starts Jan 2018).
UC Santa Cruz: Accepting applications for junior transfers for winter quarter (starts Jan 2018).
This is a great time to apply to these UCs because the applicant pool will be considerably smaller. Good luck!
We all love helium. My college roommates would inhale helium in science labs and then do hilarious impersonations of Donald Duck. We buy helium tanks to fill birthday balloons to create the festive ambiance at kids’ parties. But according to astrophysicist Ethan Siegel, we will soon exhaust the world’s supply of helium.
Although helium is the second most abundant element in the universe (hydrogen is #1), keeping it on Earth is difficult because it is the second lightest element. This means that it is lighter than air – hence its levitation qualities that we love – so once released, it heads up to outer space.
Unfortunately for us, it takes hundreds of millions of years to produce helium by radioactive decay deep at the core of the earth. In other words, if we don’t conserve helium soon, we will run out and won’t be able to produce it again within our lifetime. Helium is needed as a coolant for particle accelerators, MRI machines, superconductors, and other uses.
So don’t buy helium balloons for parties, graduations, or other celebrations. Instead bundle balloons together creating a bouquet and hang them from the ceiling or attach them to rods as table decorations.
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SIXTEEN CHILDREN – innocent children – are hospitalized everyday due to firearm injuries. That’s almost 6,000 a year. Most of these children who were under 15 years old were ACCIDENTALLY shot. That means that these kids somehow got access to guns that weren’t safely locked up. That also means that those gunshot wounds could have been 100% prevented if the owners of the guns removed the bullets and locked up the guns in their homes.
H E L L O !!! Is anyone listening?
Rather than sit by the sidelines watching the NRA, lobbyist, and politicians drag on the debate about who should or shouldn’t own guns or semi-automatic weapons, if everyone would remove the bullets and lock up their weapons, we could immediately save 6,000 children (under 15 years old) from getting shot every year.
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