Further Looks at West Ridge Academy
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Education
When I finished writing my last post about Utah State Senator Chris Buttars, I continued looking into this institution he has been involved with called the West Ridge Academy, formerly the Utah Boys Ranch.
I’ve been doing some reading at website. If you look under “Testimonials“, you will find a lot of heart warming stories about families finding promising and sensational results after sending children there. One account is from parents Debi and Kirk Gilmore, and if you look at the Board of Directors of the Academy, you will find Debi Gilmore is actually the Chairman. If you watch the ten minute trailer (pretty long trailer) for “Clearing Time,” a movie that the UBRN is producing, they show a commercial that the Academy used featuring nothing but people they claim to be staff members giving scripted testimonies of their experience with the Academy. If Debi Gilmore is putting up her own testimony on their website, it isn’t hard to believe that they may decide to pull something like that.
The part that disturbs me the most is the connection to the LDS Church. In the commercial shown in that trailer, they indicate a very close relationship with the church will such people as former President and member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, Jeffrey R. Holland speaking at the Academy and posing in photos with their current Executive Director, Ken Allen. The commercial also shows children studying the scriptures and speaking with service missionaries, this despite the Academy claiming that it is nondenominational. I don’t care if your institution is tied to the Church, it’s not against any principle I hold or any law I know of. But, shouldn’t we at least be honest about it and not tell a blatant lie to the public?
I wonder if the Church is actually aware of the abuse allegations against the Academy from the UBRN. The Church apparently provides the service missionaries and even a Bishop to the Academy. However, I don’t think that the Church wants to be associated with an organization which in recent time has come under fire for controversial practices. I know the Church, and they do operate on a high plane, and if these things are true, then someone at Church headquarters is being kept in the dark. However, I would find it hard to believe that one of these Church volunteers offering services to the Academy wouldn’t know that some of these things are happening and wasn’t saying anything. Unfortunately, high plane or not, Mormons are human beings too.
The UBRN has also posted a two part recording of Norwood and others talking to Ken Allen and trying to obtain a copy of their records from West Ridge. Norwood claims that a staff member of the Academy has been posting a false accusation on the Academy’s Wikipedia article claiming Norwood refuses to share the records of his time as a resident. I looked through the history of the article, and was unable to find any evidence of that. However, when Norwood asks Mr. Allen for a copy of his records, he is asked questions about what his intentions are and is told that Mr. Allen does not know what the Academy’s policy on releasing records are. HIPPA clearly states that any medical records (the Academy being a rehabilitation facility) must be kept at least ten years and that a patient is fully within their rights to request a copy of them.
If this institute is in fact legit and operating with in the confines of the law, then what on earth are they hiding?
Chris Buttars and School Woes in the Beehive
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Education
I don’t have any idea what came over me just now, I have never called Utah “the Beehive.” Especially odd since I haven’t seen a bee since I left New England.
A Utah state senator by the name of Chris Buttars, a Republican representing the 10th district which includes Herriman, South and West Jordan, has proposed cutting 12th grade from high school curriculums and have “accelerated graduation” in order to save $240 million on the state’s budget. Utah has a $700 million budget shortfall that the government is dealing with, and $240 million would certainly help close the gap that the state is currently facing. However, do we really want the first and most brutal cuts to be to education?
Education is the most important thing that our government’s in this country provide, and it is also the only thing that can stop events like the subprime mortgage crisis from happening in the future. It is also the only thing that will allow us to stay competitive with China and the European Union. So, it seems to me that our time should be spent improving the curriculum of 12th grade rather than just cutting 12th grade all together. How are colleges supposed to respond to applicants who only went to three years of high school and how can Utah high schoolers compete with the rest of the country?
We should also consider the man who is proposing this legislature, Chris Buttars. Buttars has been accused, on multiple occasions, of prejudice against the African American community and the homosexual community. He has called the decision in Brown v. Board of Education “wrong to begin with.” He also said concerning a bill concerning school funding, “This baby is black, I’ll tell you. This is a dark, ugly thing.” On homosexuals, he compared them to radical muslims saying that “I believe they will destroy the foundation of the American society.”
Buttars has apologized for his comments concerning the African American community but has not apologized for comments against the homosexual community. Senator Buttars has been a prejudiced fool who has been elected by his constituency in the past three elections only for the fact that he is a Republican. Last February, the State Senate removed Buttars from his chairmanship on the Judicial committee for his comments about homosexuals, but he should have been asked for a full resignation from the Senate. We can no longer allow people like Mr. Buttars to make decisions and push legislation in our governments, especially concerning education in this case.
Buttars has had past involvement in an organization called the West Ridge Academy, formerly known as the Utah Boys Ranch based in West Jordan. Buttars served as the Executive Director of the institute who’s stated purpose is to “to offer hope and healing to families.” However, their has been controversy over the practices of the Academy including one case where a resident claimed that he was abused and filed a lawsuit against them in 2008. You can also find a lot on mormongulag.com about alleged activities going on inside the Academy. If these stories are true, Buttars doesn’t know anything about education and should not be making policy concerning it.
I ask the people of District 10 in Utah not to re-elect this person in 2012 and to even ask for his resignation from the Senate. You should be ashamed and embarrassed that you have elected someone who is undeniably dangerous.
A New Semester at the U
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Education
Is it weird that I know who Angela Merkel is? Or Herman Van Rompuy? They are the German Chancellor and the the former Belgian Prime Minister now serving as the President of the European Union. Apparently, pretty much all Americans, at least the ones I come into contact with don’t. But, I am a European citizen, so I probably should know these things.
I am now taking a class entitled European Politics in an effort to demonstrate my superior knowledge of a subject to my peers who don’t care either way. Don’t worry though, because I am going to be repeatedly humbled by Dr. Dan Jones in his U.S. Public Opinion and Elections class. This is the professor I had last semester for Political Science/U.S. Government something or other. I can’t remember what the class was called. Which brings up the question, what is Democracy?
Dr. Jones asked us this in out second class a few days ago, and it is an interesting question. There have always been people debating whether or not the United States is a democracy of a republic. Democracy is a government that is run directly by the people voting on certain issues, but we elect leaders for local and national government like a republic would, so what exactly are we?
Hopefully, some of these questions may be answered with the help of my American Civilization class. Sounds fancy, doesn’t it? It really is just a class about the history of the United States starting from the colonization of the eastern Atlantic coast up to the second World War. The first thing I learned in this class is the apparently, the Chinese came within a couple hundred yards of the San Francisco bay area, but never bothered to go on the land and check it. Don’t worry though, with the amount of money the U.S. owes to China, they may get a seond chance at owning California.
Last but not least, I am taking a class in World Regional Geography. Again, this is only to demonstrate some sort of superiority over my peers, who don’t care. No actually,I just like looking at maps, I think it’s fun.
Max Hall’s “Classless” Behavior
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Education
If you haven’t heard about this story than most likely you aren’t a fan of either BYU or Utah football. And you most likely don’t know who Max Hall is and if that is the case, don’t continue reading because you are better off not knowing who this ignorant meat head is. He is the quarterback for the BYU Cougars and last weekend he suffered diarrhea of the mouth when he said that he hated everything about the University of Utah and called everyone associated with them “classless.”
Actually, before he said the U was classless, he said “I don’t like Utah. In fact, I hate them. I hate everything about them. I hate their program, their fans, I hate everything.” Continuing on, “I think the whole university and their fans and the organization is classless. They threw beer on my family and stuff last year and did a whole bunch of nasty things. I don’t respect them and they deserved to lose.”
Great, so just because a couple a drunken wazzocks with Ute caps on accidentally spilled beer on his family, we are all “classless.” Max Hall issued an apology for his comments on Sunday saying, “It was not intended to be directed at the entire organization and all of their fans and I apologize that it came out that way.” Excuse me? When you say something like “I don’t like Utah. In fact, I hate them.” and “I think the whole university and their fans and the organization is classless,” I think your comments are in fact directed at the entire university.
But you know who is really classless? BYU if they don’t suspend Hall for their Bowl game. They won’t because they think that the apology they wrote for him would be enough, but the fact remains that he did not act like a sportsman and the Mountain West Conference agrees with me on this.
They need to send a clear message to everyone else currently on their team and any high school juniors and seniors hopeful to join them. They need to show that they will not tolerate this kind of behavior that does not reflect well on BYU of the Church that they represent. Last time I checked, Thomas S. Monson wasn’t telling the press “I hate the Methodists.” By the way, Monson is a Utah alumni and I’m sure Hall thinks he’s classless.
Parking Corruption at the U
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Education
I’m looking to get the following Opinion/Editorial piece in the Daily Utah Chronicle. But that’s unlikely and I want some feedback anyway:
Allow me to begin my piece with a short story. Don’t worry, it’s very exciting and will only take one or two inches of this column. Besides, it’s a good story about the blatant money grabbing corruption going on right here on campus that is being facilitated by administrators. One day, I was walking back to my car after class and was surprised to see a parking ticket on my windshield for $15. I was surprised, because I was in a “U” parking lot and my “U” parking permit was prominently displayed in the window hanging off of the rearview mirror. Not wanting a parking ticket on my car’s record, I went to the Commuter Services office in the Annex to protest my receiving a ticket for no apparent reason.
The person behind the counter (which in case you didn’t know, has a sign above it saying “Cashier,” which I think is part of the problem) said that I either had to pay the fine or appeal it. Why? Why should I, after spending $125 for a parking permit, have to pay another $15 just because one of those men in shorts on a bike was to blind to see that I wasn’t parked illegally? In fact, why after paying thousands of dollars in tuition (I am currently classified as an out of state student, so I pay an obscene amount right now) to become a full time student here have to pay anything at all to park my car here?
But no, there is more to this problem. Last month, my car had to go into the shop for some repairs for a week and so I borrowed a car to use. By accident, I left my parking permit with the original car and so went to the same Commuter Services office and talked to a “Cashier” about getting a temporary permit for the borrowed car. I was told that I would have to buy a temporary permit. Why? I have already paid for a parking permit, why should I pay more?
I can hear their lame excuse right now, “Oh, well, you see, we have to charge for the temporary permits so that you don’t give ‘em out to people and they end up parking for free.” That is simply ridiculous. The temporary permits have expiration dates on them and they are linked back to my UnID, so they certainly should be able to catch something like that. I guess that it’s too hard for them to figure that out though.
And what does it matter anyway? Apparently, they will just stick a parking ticket on any car that they want. Which is why I recommend that no one do anything to upset someone who is a parking patrol officer, or whatever they are actually called (I call them “parking jackals” personally), because if you do, you will get a parking ticket. And from what I can see, there is no way to oversee such activity because you have to go through some appeal process, and how are you supposed to prove that you didn’t deserve the ticket?
Which is why I encourage all the students here on campus to consider the amount of money you are spending to be here. Whether you are full-time or part-time, undergrad or graduate, you are paying a lot of money to be here. Why do you have to pay even more so that you can have a parking permit? And why is there no oversight over the issuing of parking tickets and why do you have to go through an appeal process for wrongfully issued tickets? After considering these things, write to President Young at president@utah.edu, and voice your concerns about this issue.
Why Is This So Hard?
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Education
The first thing you do is fill out a form called a FAFSA, which stands for “For Always Forgetting Students, Always.” You give it some pretty basic information, including your Social Security number, your tax papers for the past year, your parents’ Social Security numbers, where they were born, every parking ticket you’ve ever received, number of times you have sneezed in the past three months, and so on. The whole process can take between two to four weeks, depending on how anal retentive. You then politely ask the Federal Government, who kindly provided you with this form to fill out (big surprise), to send it along to the schools you have applied for.
Well, a few weeks later, you’ve been excepted to a school and are attending there in the Fall. Good for you. But wait, you have to consult with Financial Aid advisors from that school because you don’t have $85,000 to spend on your education. So, you consult with Financial Aid only to discover that for some reason, they don’t have a record of your FAFSA which you kindly asked the Government to send along. You call the school and talk to everyone in the Student Services Department, including several Janitors, until someone finally informs you that the FAFSA they have received from you was not filled out correctly.
So, you have to go back to the FAFSA, and sort through the metric ton of information, and at some point you realize how most of the stuff you gave them are completely irrelevant to getting Financial help with school, nevertheless. You find the one little bit of the form that was wrong, fix it, and then kindly ask the Government (who you hate now) to send the updated form to the school of your choice. By the way, even though they can now do this electronically, it takes even longer then filling it out longhand, and mailing it, for them to process the whole darn thing.
Which brings me to my next point. The school will then take all the time they need to make you an offer. An offer that will be crap by the way. They will offer you a bunch of loans that will have interest applied to them shortly after you graduate. For some reason, it is in the best interest of the school to insure that you enter the workforce already in debt. You are already in debt even before you buy a house, a car, start a family. How does this make sense?
The way I see it, if the Government wants to get out of this economic crisis, then the Government needs to get rid of the FAFSA and Stafford, and the PLUS loans, because they do not work. Here’s an idea, how about putting more money into public Colleges and Universities so that they can lower tuitions? Oh wait, they’ve tried that, it didn’t work. So, here’s a real idea. Give anyone, and I mean anyone, who has been excepted into a College or University an interest free, Government guaranteed, loan. Let’s let everyone who wants to go to college, go to college, and to make the Financial situation a little easier. Hey, if they’re going to throw money at Chase and Citi, why not throw some money to the people who actually have to live with the choices being made today? If anyone deserves the money from TARP and the AIG bailout, it’s the people who are now screwed by the bankers and Insurance people who got us into this mess.
So long as the loan terms require you taking a class called “Ethics in Financial Services” or something to that effect.
BYU Idaho: Hold On, It Gets Better
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Education
If you read this blog, than I most likely like you. And if you agree with what I say in my postings here, than you are clearly a very intelligent individual. I decided I didn’t hand it to BYU Idaho enough on our last outing, so I’m going to tear them down some more. We focused mostly on their “Vision Statement” last time, let’s keep reading from the BYU Idaho Learning Model, shall we?
Principle One: Learners and teachers at BYU–Idaho exercise faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as a principle of action and power.
The whole premise if you don’t get it is that basically people who have faith in Jesus Christ are able to learn on a deeper level. And people who don’t have faith are stupid, that is what they are saying. This is called discrimination. How will having faith help me achieve employment later in life? If you go to engineering school, you can’t just have faith that the machine you designed is going to work, it has to work. If you go into Communications like me, you can’t have faith that the camera is recording, it has to record. Faith doesn’t get you anywhere in the modern world. Does the Church itself hire accountants who just have faith the numbers will add up? Puh-lease.
Principle Two: Learners and teachers at BYU–Idaho understand that true teaching is done by and with the Holy Ghost.
True teaching is done by and with the Holy Ghost? Yeah, if you are wearing a suit and a black badge and getting doors slammed in your face all day. The last time I checked, the Holy Ghost wasn’t giving me advice on what the Pythagorean theorem is and how to use it. This is a concept that should only apply when learning the Gospel, the teachings of the Church. Not when you are preparing yourself for a career and hopefully, financial independence.
Principle Three: Learners and teachers at BYU–Idaho lay hold upon the word of God—as found in the holy scriptures and in the words of the prophets—in all disciplines.
Yes, because Isaiah had a lot to say about the theories of politics and economics held by Karl Marx, founder of Communism. Oh, and have you ever read Paul’s essay about the India’s movement for Independence from the British Empire? Once again, this principle should only apply in a class where you are learning about the Gospel.
The are two more principles included in the Learning Model. If you read them, they only support the first three that I touched on in this post. How will potential employers take a degree from this school seriously if this is the attitude about education that they are sharing publicly? Members of the Church should be concerned about this, especially those who are sending there sons and daughters there. Schools need to focus on academics, not religion or lifestyle.
BYU Idaho: Not Worth It
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Education
I’ve spent the last many weeks looking at colleges to transfer to next Fall seeing as staying here in Maine is driving me crazy and I feel that SMCC really has given me all that it can. Being a member of the Mormon church, naturally some of the options I can look at are BYU in Provo, Utah, BYU Idaho in Rexburg, and BYU Hawaii in Laie. And I did look at all of them, I’ve been to all of there campuses, and they all at face value seem like good schools.
But, then I did some digging. Unfortunately, my top choice for top reasons was BYU Hawaii, but unfortunately, they don’t have a Film or a Communications program, which leaves Provo and Idaho. Provo is a top school, well respected as evidenced by this page on their web site bragging about how well respected they are. Idaho, however, is not well respected, no one even knows where it is except for the 14,000 people who attend there.
And for good reason, you see, they may have the name “Brigham Young University” in their title, but they are no where near the BYU in Provo. In fact, up until 2001, it was called Ricks College and they were just a small and simple junior college. Now, they are bigger and better, building more buildings and offering more programs. All in the effort to become a “Good Mormon Factory.” Read their “Vision Statement” and tell me I’m not wrong:
At BYU–Idaho we foster faith-building and life-changing learning. Our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the gifts of the Holy Ghost, our commitment to the restored gospel, and our effort to build a Zion learning community motivate us to learn and teach by study and by faith. From the BYU Idaho Learning Model
That doesn’t sound like a University, it sounds like a cult. Build a Zion learning community? What the heck does that even mean? I think that the case for Idaho is lost right there in the first sentence of this “Vision Statement” when they put “faith-building” ahead of “life-changing learning.” I don’t go to a school to build faith, I go to a school to learn and to grow. I go to church to build faith. Which is why I applied to BYU in Provo. Because, unlike Idaho, they are more focused on learning as evidenced by this on their web site:
Brigham Young University seeks to develop students of faith, intellect and character who have the skills and the desire to continue learning and to serve others throughout their lives.
No rubbish about building faith or learning in the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. They do, however, go on to say that “the university provides an outstanding education in an atmosphere consistent with the ideals and principles of its sponsor, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Sounds perfectly reasonable, especially when you compare it to the Mission Statement of Notre Dame, a Catholic University:
This statement speaks of the University of Notre Dame as a place of teaching and research, of scholarship and publication, of service and community. These components flow from three characteristics of Roman Catholicism that image Jesus Christ, his Gospel, and his Spirit. From the section “Context”
Now, I should just say that I’m not talking about religion here, I’m talking about Education. I should also say that I’m not trying to bash my church, I’m just trying to bash BYU Idaho. But, honestly, they deserve it. How could anyone take a degree from BYU Idaho seriously if that is what their vision is?