Turning the world upside down: Developing a tool for training about SM

About the book: Psychological and medical perspectives on sadomasochism (SM) have historically been concerned with understanding it as a form of psychopathology. In the past (but still often today) studies of SM have been concerned with extreme and most often non-consensual acts. More recently, however, there has been growing interest in exploring the meaning of sadomasochism in non-pathological ways. Safe, Sane and Consensual includes work from across the social sciences exploring a variety of aspects of SM from a non-pathological perspective. There are discussions of the history and culture of SM, medical and legal understandings, along with theory and original research on the topic. There are also sections on SM and psychotherapy and writing on bridging the academic/activist divide. The book includes contributions from an international group of academics, practitioners and activists and represents some of the most recent cutting edge work in the field by leading scholars

When One Door Closes . . .

Meg Angier discusses student engagement at Linfield College with regard to her participation in Residence Life.https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/inauguration2019_students/1000/thumbnail.jp

Academic Recognition of Military Experience in STEM Education

Recent calls for increases in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education attainment and veterans' education success have created a platform for examining how veterans with military experience in STEM fields can more efficiently complete postsecondary education and training.The American Council on Education (ACE) military evaluation program provides credit recommendations for military courses that align servicemembers' training with postsecondary curricula and competencies. These recommendations,if accepted as transfer credit, can decrease the time it takes servicemembers and veterans to complete STEM certificates and degrees.Numerous challenges exist in considering military credit recommendations for postsecondary courses and degrees. The process is complex, requiring an acute understanding of military transcripts and the resources and tools available to assist institutions of higher education in awarding credit for military training. Additionally, misinformation and lack of awareness regarding the content, scope, and rigor of the ACE review process and resulting credit recommendations create resistance to awarding credit.Successfully increasing acceptance of military credit recommendations at institutions of higher education can be achievedthrough public-private partnerships between colleges and universities, federal agencies, workforce development experts, and other key stakeholders using available resources and tools to build degree pathways that accurately map military training to STEM courses.An education campaign about the ACE review process and the value of the resulting credit recommendations will also help eliminate the stigma surrounding credit awarded for prior learning, and boost support among leaders and institutions for increased acceptance of military credit recommendations. This approach will lead to the developmentof best practices and, ultimately, increases in both STEM attainment and veterans' education success

Shedding Rights, Shredding Rights: A Critical Examination of Students\u27 Privacy Rights and the Special Needs Doctrine After Earls

On June 27, 2002, the United States Supreme Court held that all students participating in extracurricular activities in public schools may be subjected to random, suspicionless drug testing. The holding, in itself, is not terribly remarkable, as the decision in Board of Education of I.S.D. 92 of Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma v. Earls follows a developing pattern among public schools in this country. Further, the Earls case simply broadens the right of the state to randomly drug test students, without individualized suspicion, that this same court announced a mere seven years earlier in Vernonia v. Acton. What is remarkable about Earls, and what may be disconcerting to those clinging to the notion that students\u27 rights entitle them to Fourth Amendment protection at school, is that Earls undoubtedly will be the necessary link between testing those engaging in voluntary activities, as the athletes in Vernonia and the Academic Team member in Earls, to the true target of such expansive suspicionless testing policies: all public school students. Earls represents a problematic break with past application of the Fourth Amendment in school cases. Earls goes beyond the holding in Acton by broadening the application of the special needs doctrine to all students. The justifications underlying Acton--safety in athletic competition and a demonstrated drug problem among students athletes--were not present in Earls. Rather, Earls breaks with precedent by allowing the liberalization of the special needs doctrine in school cases and finding that drug use among American teens and elementary students serves as an appropriate special need to support suspicionless drug testing.\u27 In this manner, Earls is not true to Acton and ignores crucial policy justifications for dispensing with the Fourth Amendment warrant and probable cause requirements that the Acton majority underscored. Likewise, Earls breaks with precedent in the special needs area by allowing the global problem of drug use generally to provide ample basis for the suspicionless drug testing of an identifiable group: elementary and secondary public school students. Accordingly, Earls represents two problematic departures from stare decisis. In addition, the Earls case, written in seemingly limitless breadth, provides the requisite step between testing those involved in athletics and other extracurricular activities and those in the general student population that we fear, due to self-disclosed surveys or medical data, must be using illicit drugs. For this reason, Earls single-handedly sounds the death knell of the assurance that students do not shed their Constitutional rights at the school house gate. Post- Earls, students absolutely shed their constitutional right to be free from suspicionless searches regardless of whether the student\u27s school has any demonstrated drug problem and regardless of whether there is any demonstrated safety or special need attendant to the search. Thus, while the special needs doctrine has consistently been limited to prevent full-scale devaluation of the Fourth Amendment\u27s warrant and probable cause requirements, Earls suggests that students and youth fall outside this general limitation. Neither Acton\u27s limited holding and requirement that a compelling drug or safety problem be actually present at the school nor the special needs doctrine requirement for some specific demonstration of a special safety need as to a particular group will delimit application of the Fourth Amendment at public schools after Earls. With the resurrection and strengthening of the in loco parentis concept, the Supreme Court has given license to schools to continue invading the personal privacy of public school children to ensure that these wards are not using or abusing illicit drugs--either on campus or in the privacy of their homes. This article will trace the devolution of students\u27 rights to privacy, pursuant to the Fourth Amendment, beginning with T.L.O. v. New Jersey. Next, the article will consider the elastic application of the court-created special needs doctrine, particularly as applied in drug testing cases and in school settings. In this section, the author will note the traditional requirements for application of the special needs doctrine and distinguish the Supreme Court\u27s approach to special needs cases when the subjects are children. Finally, the article will consider the recent application of the special needs doctrine in the school setting by comparing the Vernonia and Earls opinions and project their future application. While at one time the Supreme Court assured society that [t]he prisoner and schoolchild stand in wholly different circumstances, that pronouncement is subject to challenge in both letter and spirit. Post-Vernonia, post-Columbine, and now, post-Earls, schools have become a place where safety concerns reign paramount to challenges against zero tolerance policies and Fourth Amendment protections. Schools are increasingly becoming places where police and state presence are both seen and felt. And while safety concerns for students and teachers remain valid, we cannot, we must not, lose sight of the pronouncement in Brown v. Board of Education, that [today, education [remains] perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. The lessons we teach our children--particularly those relating to the protection of their rights in times of fear and crisis--will eventually have broad consequences on our society. After all, we are today educating the leaders of tomorrow

Including the B-word: Reflections on the place of bisexuality within lesbian and gay activism and psychology

Meg Barker in conversation with Jenni Yockney