These trees turn the color of rainbows as they lose their bark, and the pictures are magical


Erin McDowell 2/11/2020




Slide 1 - 4 of 14: Eucalyptus deglupta trees, otherwise known as rainbow eucalyptus trees or rainbow gum trees, are known around the world for their bright, neon-striped bark. The rainbow effect is created as the bark peels off throughout each season, revealing the fresh, bright-green bark below. As each layer of bark matures, it turns shades of blue, purple, orange, and red. Though rainbow eucalyptus trees are native to the Philippines, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea, they can also be found in the US. Visit Insider's homepage for more stories . No, your eyes aren't playing tricks on you - these trees really are the color of the rainbow. Found mainly in Hawaii, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea, Eucalyptus deglupta trees, otherwise known as rainbow eucalyptus trees, are one of nature's most beautiful natural wonders. If you want to know exactly how the trees' bark becomes rainbow-hued, or just want to look at some beautiful photos of rainbow eucalyptus trees, you're in luck.Next Slide

CHLORINATED CHICKENS

Boris Johnson just gave a clear signal he plans to ditch UK food standards to secure a Trump trade deal

© Reuters
The UK government has given its clearest sign yet that it plans to shift away from accepting EU food standards in order to secure a post-Brexit trade deal with Trump.

The UK farming industry fears that Johnson will ditch current EU standards which forbid the sale of products such as chlorinated chicken and hormone-injected beef.

Johnson is refusing to sign up to maintain EU rules after the end of the Brexit transition period.

The United Kingdom has just given its clearest sign yet that it plans to ditch its commitment to maintaining EU food standards after Brexit in order to secure a post-Brexit trade deal with Donald Trump.

UK officials will break away from strict EU rules on sanitary and phytosanitary measures, which cover food and agricultural goods, at an upcoming meeting of the World Trade Organisation, City AM reports.

The UK is currently in an 11-month, post-Brexit transition period, during which it will continue to follow all EU rules and regulations - including those relating to food standards.

However Johnson's government will at this meeting make a "clear statement about future intentions" on how the UK will approach food standards in its future trade deals with the US and other countries, City AM reports.

Last month, the National Farmers' Union's Brexit director told Business Insider that the industry fears the government will ultimately trade away current UK food standards in talks with "fearsome" US negotiators.

"We all know in a trade negotiation, at some point, it [the UK] is going to need to make concessions," Nick von Westenholz told Business Insider.

"And this isn't a negotiation with a small partner where the UK can flex its muscles.

"This is a negotiation with one of the largest economies in the world with an absolutely fearsome reputation for negotiating trade deals, and one which under the current administration is even more transactional in the way it views trade relationships."

EU rules block US food like chicken and beef from entering its markets due to rules on hygiene and animal welfare.

While Prime Minister Johnson has said the UK will not lower its food standards after leaving the EU, he has also said his government's policy will be dictated "by science and not by mumbo jumbo."Boris Johnson wants to break free from EU rules

© Oli Scarff – WPA Pool/Getty ImagesAny shift away from EU rules at the WTO meeting would irk Brussels. The Brexit deal agreed by the UK ties the country to a "duty of sincere cooperation" clause, which obliges both sides to act in good faith during the departure process.

The NFU is urging the government to include a legal commitment to maintaining current levels of food standards in a piece of legislation called the Agriculture Bill. However, ministers are refusing to do so.

The UK is set to begin negotiating a trade deal with the US in the next few weeks.

The Trump administration has said it will prioritise access to Britain's agricultural markets when trade talks begin.

The US Trade Representative's objectives for negotiations, published last year, said the UK "should remove expeditiously unwarranted barriers that block the export of U.S. food and agricultural products."

It added that "unjustified trade restrictions" enforced in the UK as a result of its recently-expired EU membership "eliminate practices that unfairly decrease U.S. market access opportunities."

Trump water plan blasted by Northern California tribe
The chief of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe of Shasta County blasted President Trump on Wednesday, calling a federal-state water coordination plan a "salmon extinction plan." 

© Ron Holman President Donald Trump visits Bakersfield on Wednesday, February 19, 2020.

During his visit to Bakersfield, Trump signed a reworking of federal rules that some say would allow federal authorities to pump more water from Northern California southward to cities and farms.

It was Trump's fifth visit to the Golden State since taking office, this week stopping in Los Angeles and Rancho Mirage.

During his visit to Bakersfield, he signed a record of decision in water allocation rules that Republican lawmakers and farm and water agencies say will allow for more flexibility in water deliveries.

But fishing and tribal groups said the new environmental rules would hurt salmon and other endangered species.

"The Trump salmon extinction plan would end the current legal requirement to return salmon to our river, set the stage for the raising of Shasta Dam, which would flood more of our tribe’s sacred sites, give the federal Bureau of Reclamation permission to kill off our salmon below Shasta Dam, and allow the Bureau to kill even more salmon in the Delta," Caleen Sisk, chief and spiritual leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe in Shasta County, said in a statement.

The Winnemem have long been advocates for the winter-run chinook salmon that spawn in the Sacramento River as it runs through the Redding area.

Before Shasta and Keswick dams were built, the winter-run salmon spawned upstream of Lake Shasta in the McCloud River, the ancestral home of the Winnemem. And the endangered winter-run numbers have plummeted over the past 20 years.

After an initial study by federal scientists found the rule changes would harm salmon and whales, the Trump Administration ordered a new round of review, the Associated Press reported.

Paul Souza, Pacific Southwest director for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the overall effort "ensured the highest quality" of evaluation of the rule changes.

"We strongly disagree that the proposal will reduce protections for endangered species," Souza said.


Related: Effort to protect Shasta County plant grows into one more Shasta Dam controversy

Beyond operational changes in the federal Central Valley Project water system, the administration's changes allow for more habitat restoration, upgrades in fish hatcheries and the water system itself, monitoring of species and other improvements, Souza said.

Congressman Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, said the rule changes signed by Trump on Wednesday would benefit the North State, farmers, cities and towns and wildlife refuges.

"For too long California water has been utterly wasted by sending vast quantities of it out to the ocean for no environmental benefit or for human use," LaMalfa said. "Today’s Record of Decision begins to change that policy failure that has harmed families, farms, workers, and our economy across the state.”

The record of decision also was endorsed by the California Farm Bureau Federation.

“The federal agencies have taken a holistic look at the California water system and offered an alternative that promises to improve the health of the environment without devastating people whose communities and livelihoods depend on reliable water supplies," Farm Bureau President Jamie Johansson said.

“We should embrace this new approach and give it a chance to succeed,” he said. “We know all too well that the policies of the past 25-plus years haven’t worked.”

While agricultural interests hailed the new environmental rules, fishing groups spoke out against them and urged Gov. Gavin Newsom to stop them from taking effect.

“Months ago, Governor Newsom pledged to fight against the federal plan to suck our rivers dry and irrigate poison-laced deserts in the San Joaquin Valley,” Noah Oppenheim, executive director of Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations said in a statement. 

© Christian Monterrosa, AP California Gov. Gavin Newsom

“The Governor must not allow his agencies to lock arms with the Trump Administration and join the race to the bottom on water policy,” Oppenheim said.

Conservation groups also worry about the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation issuing a permanent water contract to the Fresno-based Westlands Water District, the nation's largest irrigation water district

Shasta Dam raising project runs into legal, congressional roadblocks

The bureau is under the Interior Department, led by Secretary David Bernhardt, who was a lobbyist for Westlands through 2016.

Congress in 2016 approved legislation allowing California water agencies to pay to make their federal water contracts permanent. Westlands has indicated it is interested in doing just that.

Related: Trump rewards San Joaquin Valley farmers with more water, despite protests from fishermen

Conservation groups and some Northern California water agencies fear Westlands' permanent contract — and political power — will help it claim a bigger share of water when drought and over-demand reduce supplies, Patricia Schifferle, an California water-law expert and activist, told the AP.

In December, Newsom's administration said it planned to sue the Trump Administration over its proposed new rules, saying they do not do enough to protect endangered species.

That lawsuit still has not been filed. Wade Crowfoot, secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency, said state officials are still negotiating with the Trump Administration about whether they would change the proposed rules to address the state's environmental concerns.

"From our perspective, if we can resolve our concerns and ensure adequate protection of these endangered species, then we think it would be important to do so and we could avoid probably years of litigation," Crowfoot said.

Shasta Dam puts on a display


Damon Arthur is the Record Searchlight’s resources and environment reporter. He is among the first on the scene at breaking news incidents, reporting real time on Twitter at @damonarthur_RS. Damon is part of a dedicated team of journalists who investigate wrongdoing and find the unheard voices to tell the stories of the North State. He welcomes story tips at 530-225-8226 and damon.arthur@redding.com. Help local journalism thrive by subscribing today!

This article originally appeared on Redding: Trump water plan blasted by Northern California tribe

Firefighters union responds to Toledo councilman's post on response times


Michael Bratton

TOLEDO, Ohio (WTVG) - The message is big and bold, and it's all being directed at Toledo City Councilman Larry Sykes. 

© Provided by Toledo WTVG

"He was out of order, uninformed and very irresponsible," Toledo Firefighters Local 92 president Dan Desmond said of Sykes.


Desmond put the phrase, which reads, "Confused? This is not a fire station either," on the marquee outside his downtown offices on Tuesday after fallout from a Facebook post by Skyes.

In the post, Sykes wrote out concerns about firefighters response time to a woman in a wheelchair who collapsed outside Fire Station 1 last Thursday. Despite signage, the building serves only as administrative space. It's something Desmond says Sykes should have known.

"Very much so in this specific case, councilman Sykes should have done his due diligence," Desmond said. "It doesn't take long — a phone call — 'Hey, what's going on?'"

Despite having no assigned crews, administrators from Station 1 still helped while nearby Station 3 responded three minutes later.

“Looking at this case and looking at the times, it was a good run," Pvt. Sterling Rahe with Toledo Fire and Rescue said.

Sykes attended council's Committee of the Whole meeting Tuesday but left early. 13abc then tried to talk with him outside of Government Center, but he said he was busy.

The councilman released a statement instead that reads in part: "After feedback from our firefighters and community members, I learned that the tone of the post implied that our firefighters do not respond to calls for service in a timely manner. That was not my intent. I am appreciative of their service and will be mindful of the tone of my post to ensure the message does not convey otherwise."

Meanwhile, at Local 92, Desmond says the apology is well deserved. When it comes to signage at Station 1, he says keeping it as is is just fine.

“Leave it up, take it down, it doesn’t make any response time any better," Desmond said. "It doesn’t help that patient that’s lying on the sidewalk.”

TO EXPOSE SEXISM AT UBER, SUSAN FOWLER BLEW UP HER LIFE

The risks and rewards of blowing the whistle at Uber

By Elizabeth Lopatto@mslopatto Feb 19, 2020


SusanSusan Fowler wrote her last real line of code at Uber. It’s not that she hasn’t tried since she left the company in 2016; there was a Coursera course she’d tried to take, just to learn something new. It’s just that she got so anxious she couldn’t even finish a simple program.

Do you miss it? Coding?

“I don’t miss it because I associate it with so many of my negative experiences,” Fowler says. She read Gretchen Carlson’s book, Be Fierce: Stop Harassment and Take Your Power Back, and one thing stuck out to her: women who speak up about harassment in a profession never work in that profession again.

In her case, it’s also true. Fowler is no longer a software engineer.
“I DO LIVE MY LIFE A LOT DIFFERENTLY NOW. I’M ALWAYS LOOKING OVER MY SHOULDER.”

We are sitting at an amusingly named diner-type location in the Bay Area. I will not be more specific, as Fowler has been stalked by private detectives and others in the aftermath of her extremely viral blog post about sexual harassment at Uber. In fact, she would only meet me if I promised not to reveal where.

“I do live my life a lot differently now,” she says. “I’m always looking over my shoulder.”

It is two weeks before her memoir, Whistleblower, will go on sale. In addition to her regular jitters, Fowler now has pre-publication jitters. Though you wouldn’t know it to look at her. She sits very still, with excellent posture, in a black leather jacket, a gray boatneck top, and jeans. She doesn’t appear to be wearing makeup; her hair looks like it’s air-dried. She looks, in other words, like an ordinary upper-middle-class woman in her late 20s who happens to be on her lunch break. She is, in fact, on her lunch break.

YouYou know who this ordinary woman is because she did something extraordinary. In February 2017, Fowler wrote a 2,900-word blog post about the sexism she encountered while working at Uber. When she published it to her personal site, she wasn’t expecting the headlines it generated half an hour later. She never expected that it would lead to Travis Kalanick, the company’s brash CEO and founder, being forced out of his job.
Susan Fowler’s memoir ‘Whistleblower: My Journey to Silicon Valley and Fight for Justice at Uber’

She didn’t just detail sexual harassment — though, her first day, she was fending off a brazen sexual advance from her direct supervisor. In Whistleblower, Fowler writes that she started to feel sick to her stomach when she realized what was happening. But it was unmistakable. “I felt a wave of relief wash over me when I remembered that I worked at a large company, one with a sizable human resources department,” she writes.

If you’re one of the 6 million people who read Fowler’s blog post in the weeks after it was published, you already know how this goes: Fowler was told her boss was a “high performer.” And besides, this was his first offense. It wasn’t until later, when Fowler befriended other female engineers, that she discovered she’d been lied to. Several other women had run-ins with the same man, and all had been told by HR that it was his first offense. “It’s the Uber playbook,” she says. “I always thought, There’s got to be a script, somewhere, right?”

She encountered that over and over, in a Kafkaesque battle with Uber’s human resources department. To read these incidents one by one is to marvel at Fowler’s persistence. At one point, she wondered if it was possible to report HR to HR. She wanted the system to work. She brought her complaints to Thuan Pham, who was — and still is — Uber’s chief technology officer. Pham did nothing, Fowler writes. In fact, he did nothing on several occasions when women, including Fowler, complained about the sexist environment.
“I WASN’T USED TO PEOPLE IN AUTHORITY NOT STANDING UP FOR ME.”

It’s hard not to feel, reading her account at book length, that she kept going because she was convinced someone, somewhere, cared about what was happening to her. Having been homeschooled for most of her childhood in Arizona, the main authority figures Fowler encountered growing up were her parents. “I wasn’t used to people in authority not standing up for me,” she tells me, “and not keeping their word.”

Sexual harassment is often the tip of the iceberg for other kinds of labor violations and misconduct, Fowler says. The cultural problems within Uber started at the top: Kalanick and Pham liked watching their employees battle for status. Mike Isaac’s Super Pumped, a book about Uber, details the ways that rulebreaking and lawbreaking were the norm at the startup under Kalanick.

Uber wore Fowler down. It wasn’t the first time she’d had run-ins with sexual harassment. That started much earlier when she was a student at the University of Pennsylvania and couldn’t get the administration to take her seriously about a classmate who was threatening to kill himself if she didn’t return his affections.

“I LEARNED MORE ABOUT HOW TO DEAL WITH SEXUAL HARASSMENT OR MISTREATMENT AT PENN THAN I LEARNED ABOUT PHYSICS OR PHILOSOPHY.”

When she brought her problems to the school, she was given the runaround by the other student’s adviser, the chair of the physics department, and Penn’s administration staff. Fowler also believes that a graduate degree in philosophy was denied her as a result. This derailed her initial career interest, becoming a physicist, as well as her backup career interest, becoming a philosophy professor. She’d gone into engineering after graduation because she knew how to code. She’d never really meant to be a software engineer in the first place. But that initial encounter was where Fowler learned lessons she’d later use at Uber: how to document mistreatment. “I always kind of joke to myself that I learned more about how to deal with sexual harassment or mistreatment at Penn than I learned about physics or philosophy,” she tells me.

Fowler’s first two jobs in the tech industry were at smaller companies that had no HR departments to do battle with. At her first job, at financial data company Plaid, she discovered that her male colleagues, who worked fewer hours than her, still made $50,000 more than she did. At her next job, PubNub, which made infrastructure for notifications, she had a boss who told her that any man she dated would secretly also have sex with prostitutes and that all women were the same and just wanted to leech money off men. When he told her that PubNub had installed hardware that would allow the company to read employees’ texts and that he was looking forward to reading the intimate texts she might send to someone she was dating, she took an interview with Uber. Perhaps the solution was to work at a place big enough to have a real HR department.
“I WAS TURNING INTO A TERRIFIED, DEFENSIVE, PANICKED PERSON.”

About six months in, Uber’s internal culture began to seriously affect Fowler’s well-being. She wasn’t sleeping much. She was anxious, getting into fights with her boyfriend and mother. She started having panic attacks. “I was so used to being reprimanded in my meetings at work that I was turning into a terrified, defensive, panicked person,” she writes. She wasn’t alone, either; the engineers who’d been employed by Uber the longest “all seemed to have suicidal thoughts.” Fowler discovered she was becoming someone she didn’t like. And so she left Uber — and engineering altogether.

WhistleblowersWhistleblowers are an oddity. The decision to make wrongdoing public is, in some ways, about sacrificing one’s loyalty — to an institution, to an employer, to individuals — for the sake of one’s sense of fairness. People who are willing to do this are rare, not least because there are serious consequences for it. By taking action, certain parts of the whistleblower’s social identity are obliterated.

Fowler told me, in an email after we met, that she’s heard herself identified as “‘a #MeToo’ girl.” She’s been told that the only thing anyone is interested in hearing about from her is sexual harassment. To some degree, her memoir is about staking out other kinds of identity: we see her as a member of her family and falling in love with her husband. Indeed, Fowler’s now-infamous experiences at Uber don’t begin until midway through the book, a kind of structural rebellion against the collapse of her identity.
“BASED ON EVERYTHING I KNEW, SHARING MY STORY WITH THE WORLD WOULD LIKELY RUIN MY LIFE.”

Fowler risked her own status, her livelihood, her safety, and her own privacy. This is a tremendous assumption of danger to make sure the truth is told publicly. “Based on everything I knew, sharing my story with the world would likely ruin my life,” Fowler writes in her book.

She spent days in a state of profound anxiety, knowing that not saying anything would be wrong but unable to compose the post. “I remember so many days when it would be sitting there, and it would be weighing on me. And I would say, ‘Okay, I’m not going to write it today. I’m going to write it tomorrow,’” Fowler says. “And I’d tell myself this. Just one more day.”


The book that pushed her into the blog post was Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, about surviving Nazi concentration camps. “I’m reading this, and I’m thinking, Would I actually be a good person if I was in that situation?” she says. “When we’re in these difficult situations, it’s our character that shows. I had just gone through this, and how dare I walk away and wash my hands of that whole situation.”
“HOW DARE I WALK AWAY AND WASH MY HANDS OF THAT WHOLE SITUATION.”

She sat down to compose and was very careful not to betray any emotion; she was a woman, after all, and her emotions could be used to discredit her. No names, only formal titles. And not a single sentence could be written without evidence. Its publication was months before the #MeToo movement when powerful men were accused of sexual misconduct, and Fowler’s work is different. Most #MeToo stories involved multiple women whose accounts were similar enough for a reporter to establish a pattern. And nearly all #MeToo stories focused closely on specific men, not the entirety of the system that protected them.

Fowler, on the other hand, presented Uber. Not one sexist manager. Not two. But all of them — and the HR system that shielded them. When Fowler wrote it, she didn’t imagine she would change much. She thought, maybe, someone else would be able to use it in a lawsuit. “I still have no idea what happened,” she says.

Uber was already struggling with a reputation that it was unsafe for female passengers; several lawsuits had been filed, and there had already been several rounds of bad press. Kalanick had already done an interview with GQ in 2014 where he said he had women on demand; “We call that Boob-er.” By the time Fowler wrote her post, the misogyny wasn’t a secret. Within 30 minutes, reporters had already picked up the post. It confirmed that Uber’s problems with women were so bad as to be illegal. Fowler’s phone was rendered useless under the weight of the incoming text messages, phone calls, and messages on social media. (Her Gmail and Twitter apps failed first.)
“YOU DON’T WANT YOUR NAME TO BE ASSOCIATED WITH SEXUAL HARASSMENT.”

Fowler heard from the CEO of Stripe, her employer at the time, as well as her direct manager who commended her bravery. The head of communications at Fowler’s new employer was less supportive: “You don’t want your name to be associated with sexual harassment,” she told Fowler.

To try to stop the bleeding, Kalanick opened an investigation into Uber’s culture, but it was already too late. Days after Fowler’s blog post, Mike Isaac published an investigation in The New York Times detailing a “Hobbesian” culture, essentially corroborating Fowler’s complaints about a toxic environment. In March 2017, just a month after Fowler’s blog post, Isaac published a story about “Project Greyball,” which had been created specifically to circumvent authorities that might limit the company.

Fowler’s book opens with her sitting down with former US attorney general Eric Holder, one of the principals of the investigation. But according to Whistleblower, it was not the only investigation that was ongoing at Uber. There was one by Holder, another by law firm Perkins Coie, and a third by Uber’s internal lawyers, which Fowler writes was meant to “destroy evidence and scare and intimidate employees.”
WHEN FOWLER WAS YOUNGER, SHE HAD THE IDEA THAT IF SHE DID THE RIGHT THING, EVERYTHING WOULD WORK OUT

When Fowler was younger, she had the idea — maybe, she says, she got it from the movies — that if she did the right thing, everything would work out. Everything would fall into place; the wrongs would be righted. That is not what happened after the blog post. What happened was that someone also began investigating Fowler.

Besides reporters, someone began contacting friends and family members of Fowler’s, asking for personal information. One woman called Fowler, claiming to be a PI working on a case against Uber; when Fowler got off the phone, she discovered the firm the woman worked for pretty much exclusively helped companies discredit people who’d been sexually harassed or assaulted. Someone was trying to hack Fowler’s social media accounts — and, in the case of her Facebook account, did so successfully several times. Her sister’s Facebook account was also compromised.


And there were fewer people Fowler felt she could talk to about this because her conversations, increasingly, were being leaked to reporters. Plus, someone was engaging in a smear campaign. A reporter contacted Fowler saying a source had told them that she had been paid off by Lyft. (This is not true.) When that rumor didn’t stick, other noxious ones circulated: she’d lied about being sexually harassed; Uber execs had orgies and women, including Fowler, joined them; Fowler was such a terrible writer that her husband had written the post for her.
“THERE ARE TIMES I WISH I HAD NOT DONE IT, BECAUSE OF HOW TERRIBLE IT WAS.”

Then someone started following her. “I was followed and stalked by private investigators up until the writing of this book,” she writes. A former Uber employee, Morgan Richardson, claimed a private investigator for the company had illegally broken into her home, and Fowler was afraid that might happen to her, too. Fowler’s old friends from Uber faded out of her life. One person said that the company had found out she was talking to Fowler, despite the use of encrypted messaging that self-destructed, and that she was afraid of retaliation.

“There are times I wish I had not done it because of how terrible it was,” Fowler says. “But the thing I keep telling myself is that you do the right thing no matter what. Like, yes, it sucks. Yes, it’s terrible. But would I go back and do it again? Absolutely.”

Ultimately, an abridged version of the Holder investigation was released. (The full version has never been made available.) The first recommendation at the top of the list was “Review and Reallocate the Responsibilities of Travis Kalanick.” A day after the investigation’s recommendations were released, Kalanick went on indefinite leave; seven days later, he resigned.

Much has been made of Kalanick’s determination, how hard he drove himself and others, and how forceful he was. In talking to Fowler, I didn’t get the sense that she was a particularly conflict-prone person. Rather, she went out of her way to make me feel comfortable and put me at ease. But throughout the book, several phrases recur: “I was determined,” “I decided,” “I made up my mind.” It is easier to recognize determination in someone like Kalanick. But ultimately, he was ejected from his own company by someone as strong-willed as he was. It is possible to imagine a world in which Fowler would have been an ideal Uber employee.

TheThe harassment did eventually tail off, though Fowler appears to be steeling herself for it to start up again. Fowler asked Dara Khosrowshahi, Kalanick’s replacement as CEO, if there were still investigators following her; he said he’d “killed all that crap.” (“Uber’s use of private investigators, he said, was ‘just insane,’” Fowler writes of her conversation with Khosrowshahi. “It was ‘unreal what was going on.’”)
“THE WAY THAT PEOPLE TREAT THEIR EMPLOYEES IS ALSO HOW THEY VIEW THE REST OF THE WORLD.”

When I ask if there have been real changes to Silicon Valley’s larger culture since her blog post and the #MeToo revelations that followed, she is quiet for a moment, choosing her words. Not all companies are Uber, she tells me. Uber is the obvious bad example of what happens when certain things that are entrenched in Silicon Valley culture go all the way. What drove it to be so harmful was an extreme version of the disruptor mentality — a total lack of accountability and a sense that the laws simply didn’t apply. “I think that attitude has changed a little bit [in Silicon Valley],” she says. “A big part of it is the renewed scrutiny that has come toward the technology companies.”

She hopes it keeps getting better, particularly as journalists do their best to shine a light on these companies, their values, and how they treat their employees. “If I learned anything from working at Uber, it’s that the way that people treat their employees is also how they view the rest of the world,” she says. At Uber, in particular, the contempt with which the employees were treated mirrored the contempt with which the customers were treated.

But Fowler is careful to say that she no longer works in tech. Her view is different now. I ask if Silicon Valley needs a reckoning, if there’s something the technology industry needs to do to come to terms with what it actually is. “I haven’t really thought about that,” Fowler says. Because she doesn’t work in tech anymore, it’s hard for her to gauge how things still need to change. Her last job as an engineer was at Uber, and she left in 2016. Four years is a long time in the tech world, after all.

Don’t feel too bad for Fowler. She feels lucky. Though she’s been prevented by the institutional forces that protect sexual harassers from her first choice of career (physics), her second choice (philosophy), and her third choice (software engineering), she likes journalism and speaks glowingly of her job as an editor at The New York Times. “I’m in the right place,” she says. “I’m exactly where I need to be right now.” She’s working on a big project. It is about privacy.

Bernie Sanders, powered by diverse liberal coalition, forces a reckoning for Democrats

Robert Costa, Philip Rucker


Bernie Sanders has seized a commanding position in the Democratic presidential race, building a diverse coalition that is driving his liberal movement toward the cusp of a takeover of a major political party.


The senator’s ascendancy, though years in the making, is forcing a sudden reckoning in the Democratic Party’s hierarchy, as centrist politicians and their wealthy benefactors grapple with the upheaval brought by an electorate not only hungry to defeat President Trump, but also clamoring for radical change.

Following Sanders’s resounding victory in Saturday’s Nevada caucuses, and with polls showing him on the rise, Democrats are entering a season of open warfare over whether Sanders (I-Vt.) is equipped to beat Trump in what could be a brutal general election. The senator and his allies insist he could, but his detractors say he is too polarizing to win in November — and could severely cost Democrats in congressional or state races if Republicans use Sanders’s self-description as a democratic socialist to paint all Democrats as extreme.

The Sanders insurgency is the culmination of grievances that have simmered for the past decade among liberals who say Washington has all but ignored the problems of income inequality, health-care access and climate change.

“The party has shifted to the left, and I don’t think many of the more traditional, legacy leaders of the party got it,” said Andrew L. Stern, a longtime former president of the Service Employees International Union. “The good news for Bernie Sanders is, he’s like a broken clock. He’s been in the same place for 35 or 40 years in terms of his positions, and the times have found him.”

A headstrong, 78-year-old senator, Sanders has galvanized his supporters with an unwavering commitment to their shared cause and forceful critiques of the “billionaire class.” They in turn see him, despite his unorthodox persona, as a weapon against a governing class that has failed them.

On the campaign trail, there is an unusual intensity to Sanders’s performances, reminiscent of the energy that built around Trump on the right during his 2016 rise. Sanders has emerged as a movement candidate, with his rallies coast to coast drawing thousands of people who wait for hours to see him.

Sanders’s stump speech is a liberal wish list — passing a Green New Deal to combat climate change; wiping out student debt and paying for it by taxing Wall Street; raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour; reforming immigration laws to protect the undocumented; nominating liberals to the Supreme Court and protecting abortion rights; and, of course, his signature health-care idea, Medicare-for-all, which has become a rallying cry on the left.

“People who have been locked out of power are speaking up about corporate influence over the issues that matter in their lives,” said Abdul El-Sayed, a Sanders ally and liberal organizer who ran unsuccessfully for Michigan governor in 2018. “What you’re seeing is a necessary and natural readjustment in the Democratic Party.”





 Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), with his wife Jane, waves to the crowd Saturday at a rally in El Paso.Next Slide4 SLIDES © Paul Ratje/AFP/Getty Images

anders’s emphatic win in Nevada illustrated his potential to expand his coalition far beyond the ceiling of 25 percent or 30 percent that many party-establishment figures and commentators assumed he had. In Nevada, Sanders won with 29 percent of whites, 51 percent of Hispanics and 27 percent of blacks, according to entrance polls of Democratic caucus-goers. He won a staggering 65 percent of caucus-goers under 30 years old, and he carried every other age group except for caucus-goers over 65 years old, which former vice president Joe Biden won.

“In Nevada, we have just put together a multigenerational, multiracial coalition which is going to not only win in Nevada, it’s going to sweep this country,” Sanders said at his rally in San Antonio on Saturday.

“We are bringing our people together — black and white and Latino, Native American, Asian American, gay and straight,” Sanders added. “We are bringing our people together around an agenda that works for the working people of this country.”

Sanders’s dominance among young people, his supporters say, signals his ability to energize this potentially important demographic in November.

“Disregard electability,” said Isabel Lozoya, 19, a Texas State University student who drove for an hour on Saturday to see Sanders campaign in San Antonio. “It should be about picking somebody you really believe in as opposed to somebody you think other people will believe in.”

The race for the nomination is just getting started and remains fluid, with a half-dozen contenders still running, although Sanders has clear momentum after winning Nevada and the New Hampshire primary, while finishing second in the Iowa caucuses by a tiny margin.

The next primary is on Saturday in South Carolina, where the latest polls show Biden leading and Sanders running close behind. The Super Tuesday contests on March 3 may be decisive, with voters in California, Texas and 12 other states determining approximately one-third of the nearly 4,000 pledged delegates to be awarded by primaries and caucuses.

Some other candidates have stepped up their attacks on Sanders in urgent hopes of blunting his rise. Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., has been one of the most aggressive, warning in a speech Saturday night that Sanders as the party standard-bearer could be disastrous for other Democrats on the November ballot.

“Before we rush to nominate Senator Sanders in our one shot to take on this president, let us take a sober look at what is at stake for our party, for our values and for those with the most to lose,” said Buttigieg, who ran third in Nevada following a win in Iowa and a second-place finish in New Hampshire.

Sanders is bracing for a harsher assault to come from his Democratic rivals, including at Tuesday night’s CBS News debate in South Carolina.

“To finally be seeing it all start to catch on is powerful, but he knows they’re going to throw the kitchen sink at him. He’s a realist,” said Sanders’s friend Ben Cohen, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and a Vermont-based liberal activist.

Some Democratic leaders are sounding the alarm about the party’s viability in the November election with Sanders atop the ticket. House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), an ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said Sunday that Sanders could jeopardize the party’s House majority.

“I think it would be a real burden for us in these states or congressional districts that we have to do well in,” Clyburn said on ABC’s “This Week.” “If you look at how well we did the last time [in the 2018 midterm elections] and look at the congressional districts, these were not liberal or what you might call progressive districts. These were basically moderate and conservative districts that we did well in.”







Slide 1- 4 of 39: U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders

 addresses his first campaign rally after the Nevada Caucus in El Paso, Texas, 

U.S. February 22, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Segar

Still, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, the civil rights leader who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 with a message about “economic violence,” said it is clear to him that the party’s liberal wing is asserting control.

“They represent the direction of the party,” said Jackson, who said he has spoken recently with Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). “They’re speaking to the pain that people feel. And Democrats are beginning to understand that democratic socialism doesn’t mean Eastern European socialism.”


Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, compared the disruptive mood of Democratic voters this year to the right-wing tea party movement in 2010.

“They want to shake things up. There is a sense that things are broken, and prioritizing working families has to be at the center of the economic system,” said Weingarten, whose union has not endorsed a candidate but last week approved its members to support Sanders, Warren or Biden.

Former Wisconsin governor Jim Doyle said Sanders “definitely has tapped into the kind of youthful enthusiasm and idealism that’s been at the heart of the Democratic Party for a long, long time.”

“Democrats are always best when the race is one in which it’s change versus status quo, and the Democrats are change,” Doyle added. “You go back historically to Roosevelt, to Kennedy, to Carter, to Clinton, to Obama. That’s how Democrats win.”

Sanders is trying to counter the assumption of many in the so-called Democratic establishment that he is too liberal to win a general election.

“Some of the folks in the corporate media are getting a little bit nervous,” Sanders said at a rally Sunday afternoon in Houston before an enthusiastic crowd of more than 6,200 at the University of Houston. “And they say Bernie can’t beat Trump.”

Sanders then listed the results of a few recent polls that he says show him defeating the president head-to-head nationally as well as in such states as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Steve Rosenthal, a veteran Democratic labor strategist who has been focused on mobilizing working-class white voters in a trio of battleground states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — said it would be foolish to discount Sanders’s appeal there.

“The establishment, which I guess I’m a part of after all these years, seems to know as much about electability as a donkey knows about calculus,” Rosenthal said. “We always get it wrong. . . . The voters are going to tell us who’s electable.”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a national co-chair of the Sanders campaign, said it is expanding its outreach to a broader cross-section of voters.

© Callaghan O'hare/Reuters Sanders speaks at a campaign

 rally in Houston on Sunday.

“He wants to build a coalition like Bobby Kennedy or F.D.R. did — one that is racially diverse and reaches out to everyone,” Khanna said. “We’re going to make a very concerted effort over the next few months to bring all the wings of the Democratic Party onboard.”

Working to Sanders’s advantage is the persistence of several more moderate candidates — Biden, Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg — who appear to be competing for many of the same voters and jockeying to survive as the lone alternative to Sanders.

For the proudly liberal and activist wing of the Democratic Party, Sanders’s ascent has been welcomed as a potentially historic development. Robert Reich, the liberal former labor secretary and a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, said this moment can be traced directly back to the 2008 financial crisis, which he called a galvanizing event that led to a surge in anti-establishment fervor.

“This isn’t like 1972,” when liberal Sen. George McGovern (S.D.) won the Democratic nomination and collapsed in the general election against Richard M. Nixon, Reich said. “In 1972, America’s middle class was still growing. What you see here is a middle class responding to not having a raise in 40 years.”

Even if he fails to secure the nomination outright at the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee this summer, Sanders is unlikely to go away quietly, aides and friends said. They suggested that Sanders’s long run and defiant exit from the 2016 race — doggedly carrying on with his calls for a political revolution until the final primary, weeks after Hillary Clinton had effectively sewn up the nomination — was a revealing glimpse into his character and his desire to move the party to the left.

“He doesn’t quit,” said Sanders confidant and political adviser Jeff Weaver. “He’s campaigning to win.”

Schools should teach black history like history. Because it is.
During Black History Month, students around the state learn about famous African-Americans, and historical facts about black Americans. 

Nancy Kaffer, Detroit Free Press 

© Don Campbell, AP ReUnna Dawson, 9, center, joins students from

 River of Life Christian School, as they play with scarves and drums

 during an African dance Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2020, at the African 

American History & Literature Gallery in Benton Harbor, Mich. Students 

visited the gallery to learn about African American history as part of 

Black History Month.(Don Campbell/The Herald-Palladium via AP) 

THIS IS A RELIGIOUS CHARTER SCHOOL

But that's not enough.

That's something I'm hearing from parents whose children attend suburban schools, and from parents whose kids attend majority African-American city schools.

Michigan Radio reporter Bryce Huffman, host of the podcast "Same Same Different," is hosting panels around the state to talk about black history, what it means for black kids when it's taught as an elective, a nice-to-have, not a need-to-know. I talked to Huffman about why it's important to do better at teaching black history, for all of us.

Huffman will host a panel this Sunday be at Spread Art in Detroit, at 6 p.m.

Nancy Kaffer: You talk about the "book report” model of black history: Students dress up like important historical figures or share history facts. I haven't done a survey, but that seems be the most popular model for schools to check the Black History Month box.

Bryce Huffman: I went to a Catholic school, and every day in homeroom, we would insert black history facts. As a seventh grader, I loved it, because I'm in this predominantly white school where I don't fit in at all, and it just seemed like oh, wow, everyone in the school is hearing these black history facts. By the time I got to 10th grade, I wondered, "Well, why don't we just talk about these things in our U.S. history class? Why don't we just talk about these things in our English class?"

Then you hear horror stories … like the high school teacher who proposed to show movies like "Boyz n the Hood" as part of an African-American history curriculum.

“We're going to show them 'Boys n the Hood' and 'South Central' and we'll call it a day!”

© DON CAMPBELL, AP Aubree Windmon, 8, right and Taylor Washington

, 9, back, play the drums with students from River of Life Christian School 

during an African dance Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2020, at the African American

 History & Literature Gallery in Benton Harbor, Mich. Students visited the

 gallery to learn about African American history as part of Black History Month.

Don Campbell/The Herald-Palladium via AP

So how should schools should be doing this right?

I think the easiest thing schools can do — I want to phrase it that way, because anytime we talk about changes in education, teachers and educators say, "Great, one more thing on this loaded list of things to do" — is to just acknowledge black people's contributions to the lessons you're teaching. Especially if you're in a predominantly black school, whatever lesson you're teaching, whether it's science, math, history or physics, you should be introducing those students to the idea that people who look like you have already done this, so you can do it, too.

And when we don't do that, leaving African-Americans out of the picture . . .

I got this quote from my friend Ebonee West: When you don't teach black kids that black people have contributed to this country, and you don't teach them that people who look like them have done these great, amazing things, you're sending those kids to the potluck empty-handed. My white friends in seventh and eighth grade never had a question about white people's accomplishments in science and technology. … the analogy of coming to this meal empty-handed is the best way to think about it. You're not coming with a sense of pride and who you and your people are.

In my high school, we covered slavery, and we the economy of the south at the time of the Civil War, but there was never a line drawn between them.

There's not that through-line connecting all of the atrocities of slavery to the civil rights movement, and what leaders were fighting for.

We learned about slavery in my predominantly black elementary school in a really raw way. We learned about how terrible it was. What we didn't necessarily learn was that economic trajectory from slavery. I think we kind of had it in the back of our heads that as black kids growing up in Detroit, we could see things around us and make little connections, but we just didn't have that sophisticated understanding that these things are still going on, and still shaping the future of many African Americans and many white Americans, to be quite frank . . .

I was a kid learning about a lot of this stuff thinking, "Wow, these white people were so mean to Dr. King and Rosa Parks all this long time ago," not realizing that was happening in my parents' lifetime. When we put distance between the atrocities of slavery and our current state, we're telling people, it's not that big a deal anymore. We need to help kids understand just how recent some of these things are, and how ongoing a lot of it is.

You've probably noticed that a lot of times white people feel very awkward talking about race. But it seems like the only way to not be awkward is to talk about it a lot more.

What happens in a lot of schools is they put it off until February, so schools are disrupting the flow that the students already have. They're bringing up this often-painful subject that stirs up a lot of different feelings in black people, and it comes off as this forced attempt to have some sort of conversation about racial reconciliation, or racial healing or whatever it might be. And it never really turns into that, because once March 1 rolls around, those conversations end.

If you had it built in from the beginning . . . well, it might still be a little awkward. But if you just have these conversations from the start, and you treat black history as American history, as just as important as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, then you you can avoid a lot of that awkwardness later down the road.

Nancy Kaffer is a Free Press columnist. Contact: nkaffer@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Schools should teach black history like history. Because it is.

WE ARE ALL BAFFLED

College baffled as to how accused sex trafficker lived in daughter's dorm

Sarah Lawrence sex trafficking victims 'young enough to be his children': U.S. attorney
Peter D. Kramer and Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, The Journal News 


The indictment accusing Larry Ray of preying on Sarah Lawrence College students – in a web of manipulation, extortion, sex-trafficking and money-laundering – answered many questions but not THE question.

Sarah Lawrence alumni and even its president have tried to figure out how a dad could move into his daughter's on-campus apartment without the college knowing about it.

They pointed to the private, apartment-style setup of his daughter's Slonim Woods dorm where Ray arrived – straight from prison – in late September 2010 and stayed through the spring semester of 2011.

They said the decentralized layout of the woodsy Yonkers school and the accepting, find-your-way culture at Sarah Lawrence could have helped Ray live under the radar.

Feb. 12: Sarah Lawrence College sex and extortion – inside the federal case against ex-convict

Feb. 11: New York man accused of manipulating daughter's college friends charged with sex trafficking

Prosecutors said Ray's criminal enterprise began on campus in 2010 and spread to New York City and North Carolina over the decade that followed.

According to a New York magazine article last April – "The Stolen Kids of Sarah Lawrence" by Ezra Marcus and James D. Walsh – at least one administrator knew about Ray in the spring of 2011.

New York reported that Dean of Students Allen Green met twice with parents who were alarmed by Ray's presence on campus.

The magazine reported that in the spring of 2011, Green received an email from one of Ray's alleged victims, titled "The Truth," that expressed "fears and concerns about Larry Ray being a bad, dangerous, manipulative, and sexually deviant man."

Green's role in the Ray case was cited in a sexual discrimination and retaliation lawsuit last October against the college involving a former student who claimed the college failed to protect her from a fellow student she accused of rape.

© Peter Carr /The Journal News The Slonim Woods 

student housing at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers Feb. 14, 2020.

The plaintiff, listed as Jane Doe to protect her identity, lives in Dallas.

The suit says Green's actions, including brushing aside parents' concerns in two meetings and being aware of "The Truth" email, suggest a history of mishandling accusations that came to the college's attention. Green is among the defendants in that suit.

"The conduct alleged here is outrageous," William Sweeney, assistant director-in-charge of the FBI in New York, said in announcing the case against Ray, 60. "It makes you angry. If you're not angry, you don't have a soul."

Sweeney and U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman laid out a litany of charges against Ray, including:

Psychologically manipulating and physically abusing a half-dozen victims.

Bilking them and their families out of nearly $1 million. 

Holding a knife to the neck of one male victim and to the genitals of another.
Forcing three female victims to do unpaid labor.

Pushing a female victim into prostitution and splitting nearly $500,000 in proceeds with at least two associates.

Ray pleaded not guilty. Assistant Federal Defender Marne Lenox told U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman that her client might make a bail application at a hearing this month.

"Virtually everybody has got policies that prohibit the student from moving somebody into his or her dorm room, whether it's a relative or not," Dan King, president of the American Association of University Administrators, told The Associated Press.

Enforcing the policies by trying to keep track of everyone staying in every room is a challenge.

"It still doesn't mean somebody can't let them in a door," he said. "That's a perennial problem everywhere. It's unusual to have a family member, but it's not unusual to have a boyfriend or girlfriend."

Sarah Lawrence's 2019-20 student handbook is clear: Guests must register in the Westlands (administration) building.

"Students who have roommates must obtain the permission of the roommate(s) to have an overnight guest," the handbook policy reads. "Guest passes are valid for up to four consecutive days. A guest may not be registered more than twice in a 30-day period, and there must be at least seven days between each pass period."

It is not clear what policy was in place when Ray moved into Slonim Woods, but Mariah Smith, a 2013 Sarah Lawrence graduate who was a resident assistant, wrote on Twitter, "I know a lot about housing/the standards the campus held for visitors. While I was there, the max someone could technically stay was three days."
'Larry's Spell' 

© Stephanie Keith, Getty Images U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman announces the indictment against Lawrence Ray aka "Lawrence Grecco" on Feb. 11.

How Ray was able to outstay his official welcome at Sarah Lawrence is captured in red type on the cover of New York magazine over a black-and-white closeup photo of Ray.

It reads, "Larry's Spell."

The story tells of "therapy sessions" Ray held with his daughter's roommates, of limo rides and "dinners at upscale steakhouses, always paid for with a wad of cash he kept in a backpack that he carried with him at all times."

He went from cooking and cleaning for them to sharing a bedroom before moving into an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for the winter break of 2010-11 where the scheme began to take shape, prosecutors said. He was back on campus in the spring and stayed till students went home for the summer, the article says.

Marcus, co-author of the New York article, was a student at Sarah Lawrence when Ray was on campus and went to school with the alleged victims, though he did not know Ray's daughter and never saw Ray on campus.

“It’s as mind-boggling to me as anyone else that this happened," Marcus said in an interview with The Journal News. “I think a lot of it just had to do with the fact that the people that he was talking to and manipulating were just very vulnerable. And his daughter was kind of his entree into their social group and that, I guessed, greased the wheels for him to just move in.”

Marcus interviewed dozens of sources in reporting the story with Walsh.

“I think there were people living there who felt uncomfortable with it," he said. "I mean, that's in our story, but as to how he was able to stay there for as long as he did, I honestly don't know.”

Ray saw an opening in Slonim Woods, Marcus said.

"They (students) had no reason to be distrustful of a friend’s parent," he said. "If you talk to any of them, you will see very quickly how normal and how smart they are. That’s why this story is so scary. He was able to find their vulnerabilities and exploit them."
A letter to Sarah Lawrence

Sarah Lawrence President Cristle Collins Judd responded to Ray's indictment and arrest the next day in a letter to the campus community.

The letter is the only official response from the college in the wake of the indictment. For more than a week, Brendan O'Callaghan, the college's director of public affairs, has not responded to repeated calls and emails seeking clarification and comment.

In the letter, Judd said she wrestled with how Ray was able to live on campus, “not only as a president, but as a parent" of three daughters of college age.

"How could the college not know this?, has been asked by many, including myself,” Judd wrote. “We are a small college, and while it is not unreasonable to expect that we will know when something is happening on our campus, in fact college officials at the time didn’t know.

"Perhaps because the apartment in question was a small townhouse with its own entrance, students in other housing would not necessarily have been aware of the presence (and have told us they were not) of this student’s father," said Judd, who took her post at the college in 2017.

Anxiety, depression and PTSD: The hidden epidemic of data breaches and cybercrimes

College admissions scandal tracker: Who's pleaded guilty, who's gone to prison and who's still fighting

Judd was adamant that the crimes did not happen at Sarah Lawrence.

"The acts charged in the indictment allegedly started in 2011 – after Ray had stayed with his daughter; they spanned nearly a decade and are not alleged to have taken place on the Sarah Lawrence campus," she wrote.

Judd wrote that the college is different than it was when Ray was on campus. She said one of the college's primary values, "a firm belief in the basic goodness of others," will continue but will need to be tempered "with a clear-eyed and critical assessment of the world around us."
Dads allowed on campus

The magazine reported (and Marcus reiterated) that suspicious parents met with Green in the spring semester of 2011. "The Truth" email was sent just before classes ended for the summer in 2011.

"They met with Allen Green, Sarah Lawrence’s dean of student life," the story says. "Green told them he’d received other complaints about Larry but his hands were tied; a father had a right to visit his daughter on campus, he explained. A second meeting ended similarly."

Repeated efforts to reach Green were unsuccessful. The college did not respond to calls and emails to determine whether Green documented the claims made by the parents and in "The Truth" email.

Green was dean of studies and student life and chief diversity officer from 1999 to 2015, when he was named dean of equity and inclusion and Title IX coordinator, according to his LinkedIn profile. He retired at 65 in May 2019.
'There's no security guard'

The culture of Sarah Lawrence could have abetted Ray, said Kristin Maffei, who graduated from Sarah Lawrence in 2008. She grew up in Mahopac and lived in Slonim Woods in her last year there, three years before Ray moved on campus.

"I keep hearing, 'How could the school not have known about this?' I would just say, having lived in those dorms, it's not a normal dorm," Maffei said. "There's no security guard. They're sort of set up like little houses, almost."

The two-story "cooperative living" units of Slonim Woods have four bedrooms downstairs and four upstairs, with two bathrooms, a large common area and a kitchenette, according to the college's website.

"Obviously, I knew what was going on in mine, and I like to think that if somebody's parent had moved in, I definitely would have said something – or you hope that you would say something," Maffei said. "But I can say I had no idea what was going on in any of the other ones around us."

Maffei, assistant director of marketing and communication at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, said there's a particular mindset at Sarah Lawrence – where one of the slogans is "We’re different, so are you."

"I do think it has something to do with people are happy to let you have your focus, that there's space there to be who you are," Maffei said. "I wonder if that led to things getting missed that absolutely shouldn't have been missed."

Contributing: The Associated Press

Follow Peter Kramer and Swapna Venugopal on Twitter: @peterkramer and @SwapnaVenugopal

PHOTO ESSAY

A nondescript New York City building hides a secretive Freemason meeting space, complete with fake windows and elaborate architecture. Take a look inside.

Frank Olito

Slide 1-4 of 24: The Grand Lodge of New York is located in the Flatiron neighborhood of New York City and it is the headquarters for all Freemasons in the state. Although the building looks like a normal structure from the outside, inside there are elaborate rooms and lodges that hint at what goes on behind the scenes at this secretive organization. Insider recently took a tour of the building, getting a glimpse at rooms like the Grand Lodge Room, which can seat 1,000 people for state-wide meetings. The building is also filled with smaller "lodges" that are themed, like the Gothic Room and the Colonial Room. Visit Insider's homepage for more stories. There are six million Freemasons living in the world right now. With a number that high, it should be easy to find out what exactly a Mason is and what they believe, but the organization has a reputation for keeping tight-lipped about what goes on behind closed doors. Freemasonry can be traced back to the medieval ages, but there are still lodges all over the world that host meetings. In fact, New York City is home to the Grand Lodge of New York, the headquarters for the state. Incredibly, despite being one of the most secretive organizations in the world, they welcome guests into the building every day for tours. Insider took one of these tours and saw firsthand where all their meetings take place. Keep reading to find out what it's like inside.

Mary McLeod Bethune was born the daughter of slaves. She died a retired college president
Tim Walters, Florida Today


Mary McLeod Bethune taught black girls they could be more

To celebrate Black History month, we will be spotlighting key African Americans who had a major impact on Florida.

DAYTONA BEACH — Her solitary grave rests among the serene beauty of Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach.

Yet, the school’s founder — Mary McLeod Bethune — is never alone.

“People walk through here all day,” said Tasha Lucas-Youmans, Dean of the Carl S. Swisher Library on the Bethune-Cookman campus. “Some people just sit on the benches and meditate. Others will even talk to her.”

It's fitting considering the campus wouldn't be here if it weren't for Bethune's dream — and commitment — to making education available to black students.
Growing up in South Carolina

Her journey to found a college for black people seemed near-impossible for the African-American daughter of former slaves at the turn of the 20th century.

“Her parents instilled in her a strong work ethic and they also encouraged her to get an education,” Lucas-Youmans said. “Census records show she was reading by the time she was 4 years old.”

Born in Mayesville, South Carolina, in 1875, Mary McCleod was the 15th of 17 children born to former slaves Sam and Patsy McLeod. She was the first of her siblings to be born into freedom.

Early on, Mary would accompany her mother to the homes of white people where they would deliver laundry. On one occasion, a young Mary picked up a book but as she opened it, a white child took it away from her, saying Mary didn't know how to read.

Mary decided the only difference between white and black people was the ability to read and write. So, she set out to get an education.

Mary had to walk five miles to and from school. Being the only one of her siblings to attend school, she taught her brothers and sisters each day what she had learned.

It was clear then that being an educator would be part of her future.
Mary McLeod Bethune's dream

“Dr. Bethune had a dream that she would be an educator or missionary,” Lucas-Youmans said. “So, her initial career plight was to be a missionary in Africa, but she was unable to do that because of colonization. She decided to become an educator.”

Thanks to the help of her teacher, Mary got a scholarship and was able to attend Scotia Seminary, now Barber-Scotia College, in North Carolina, where she graduated in 1893.

In 1898, she married Albertus Bethune and moved to Savannah, Georgia. A year later they moved to Florida where they settled in Palatka and ran a mission school.

“It was there she heard about Henry Flagler building the Florida East Coast Railroad and she knew the railroad workers would need for the children to be educated,” Lucas-Youmans said. “So, she came to Daytona Beach in 1904 and founded this campus with only $1.50, five little girls and her faith in God.”

Bethune's school in Daytona Beach

The original school was nothing more than a small rented house where Bethune made benches and desks from discarded crates and acquired other items through charity. It bordered the city dump.

Bethune was quoted as saying: “I considered cash money as the smallest part of my resources. I had faith in a loving God, faith in myself, and a desire to serve."

The school grew immediately. By the end of the first year Bethune was teaching 30 girls.

In 1907, Albertus left Mary and moved to South Carolina. Undeterred, Mary continued to pour her soul into the school and its students.

As the school grew, so did Bethune’s gumption in asking for help.

“She had the audacity to go to beachside and be brazen enough to confront these people, a lot of the wealthy white people that would come here for summer vacation, and talk to them and encourage them to help,” Lucas-Youmans said. “And the fact that they would even listen to this poor little black girl from Mayesville, South Carolina, that said she had a dream that she was going to build a school on a city dump. They did. They believed her.”

In 1914, Thomas White of White Sewing Machine and James Gamble of Proctor and Gamble donated money to buy a Victorian-style two-story house for Bethune, which still stands at the northeast corner of the campus.

The house, open for tours from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily, is listed on the National Register of Historical places. Beside it lies Bethune’s grave, which is surrounded by flowers with white benches on either side. Near the headstone is a large iron bell that she used to round up students in the early days of the school.

Expansion of the school continued throughout the next decade and in 1923 her school merged with Cookman Institute of Jacksonville and became co-ed while also gaining the United Methodist Church affiliation.

In 1925 the combined school’s name was changed to Daytona-Cookman Collegiate Institute.

It wasn’t until 1931 that the school’s name was officially changed to Bethune-Cookman College to reflect the leadership of Bethune.
A school president — who met the president

It was at this time that she became the school’s president, a post she held until 1942, when she retired.

Along the way, she befriended First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who stayed at her home on the Bethune-Cookman campus on three different occasions.

“When the First Lady came, she traveled with Secret Service,” said India Woods, who works for the Mary McLeod Bethune Foundation. “The room once had a door but secret service had to take the door down because they had to watch over her as she slept.”

Through their friendship, Bethune met President Franklin Roosevelt and he named her to be chair of the National Youth Administration, a federal agency.

At different points of her life Bethune served as the Florida Chapter president of the National Association of Colored Women, founded the National Council of Negro Women and she co-founded the United Negro College Fund in 1944.

Bethune died of a heart attack in 1955 at age 79.

Her legacy is already cemented in history, but it will be further etched in granite when a statue of her is placed in the National Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol as a representative of Florida.

It will be the first state-commissioned statue of an African American placed in National Statuary Hall.

Her statue will replace that of Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith.

“I think her legacy speaks for itself,” Lucas-Youmans said. “Words cannot describe what she has done and I don’t know another woman who was able to do what she did during that time in history, but she did it.”