Friday, February 28, 2020
www.northhavencitizen.com
Volume 12, Number 49
QU PROF. WEIGHS IN
Arrests over slur prompt review of ridicule law By Dave Collins Associated Press
Ridge Road staff accepted a $500 grant from the ExxonMobil Education Alliance. From left: Ridge Road math coach Christine Willett, ExxonMobil representative Deepak Khatiwada, Ridge Road secretary Randi Scott and librarian John Mayo. Photo courtesy of Randi Scott
Ridge Road school receives educational alliance grant By Everett Bishop The Citizen
Ridge Road Elementary received a helping hand with investing in STEM education.
port science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education within the communities we serve.”
Ridge Road math coach Christine Willett accepted the grant on behalf of the Ridge Road recently received school. the ExxonMobil Education “It's always an honor to reAlliance grant for $500. Acceive outside support from cording to their website, the community,” she said. ExxonMobil aims to fund “math and science programs “Not only will this help in at schools in need” as part of the areas of math and scitheir “ongoing effort to sup- ence, but it will also bring
the students and staff together in a fun, educational way and participate in a project that we otherwise would not have been able to do.” Willett said that she will be working with fourth and fifth graders in the spring in a collaborative STEM project. In the meantime Willett said that she’s still brainstorming with her students to find out what their interests are. ebishop@record-journal.com
dent. They said that they were playing a game that involved saying offensive HARTFORD — Free words and that it was not speech concerns that were directed at anyone in parraised following the arrests ticular. of two University of Connecticut students accused They were charged under of saying a racial slur have a 1917 law that makes it a led state legislators to con- misdemeanor for anyone sider repealing a century- who “ridicules or holds up to contempt any person or old law that bans ridicule class of persons, on acbased on race, religion or count of the creed, relinationality. gion, color, denomination, The episode on campus nationality or race of such involving two white stuperson or class of persons.” dents in October was A bill before the Legislarecorded on video and ture’s Judiciary Commitsparked protests against tee would repeal the law, racism. Many people apwhich has been criticized plauded their arrests, but by law professors around civil liberties groups condemned them as an affront the country and other to First Amendment rights. groups, including the American Civil Liberties Police said the students, Union, which said the stuJarred Karal and Ryan dents’ conduct was offenMucaj, uttered the racial sive but not criminal. slur several times while walking through the park- A public hearing was ing lot of a campus apart- held last week on the bill ment complex and were recorded by a black stu-
See Law, A12
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