Cell phone seized, but student's privacy saved

SACRAMENTO, CALIF. — Inch schools across the country, cell telephones travel on and cell telephones acquire confiscated, often on a day-to-day basis. Students may lose their darling telephone for the remainder of the school day. But they don't anticipate to lose their privacy.

In a little town east of Stockton, Calif., that is what happened to Justin Tomek, a senior at Basswood High School, last October. Months later, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern Golden State weighed in.

"Schools demand to understand that just because a pupil utilizes a cell telephone when he or she is not supposed to doesn't intend the school have a licence to travel in and read their private messages," said Ann Brick, an ACLU staff lawyer in San Francisco. "It's wish rummaging through their private letters."

Senior broke ruleFor Tomek, a senior who maintains his classes high and is the captain of his baseball game team, Oct. Twenty-Five did not begin out well. He and his female parent had a little statement before school. During his P.E. class, he called her on his cell to apologize.

He knew it was against the regulations at Basswood High to utilize a cell telephone while social classes were running. Sure enough, he got caught. It wasn't until he went to pick up his telephone after school that the existent surprise hit: He couldn't have got his telephone back because a instructor had not finished going through his textual matter messages.

His reaction: "I was embarrassed. They were reading my personal information. They read through all of it."

Mom telephone calls the ACLUEventually he got his phone back. The state of affairs didn't sit down well with his mother: Barbara Tomek called the ACLU.

On March 3, Brick sent a missive to Basswood Incorporate stating that the board's policy permitting hunts of textual matter messages, telephone phone calls and photographs on pupil cell telephones was excessively wide and violated the Fourth Amendment and the Golden State Constitution's commissariat providing privateness for people of all ages.

On Wednesday, the Basswood school board tightened its policy to state pedagogues could read textual matter messages or expression at photographs on pupil cell telephones only if they believe the hunt would demo a school regulation or law was violated.

"We desire to be compliant with the law," Basswood Overseer Ronald Estes said.

Olympics boil down to pride and politics

Say it ain't so, Becky. I and many others around Garrison Wilkie Collins were stunned to hear Becky Hammon - former All-American basketball game participant at Centennial State State University, WNBA all-star and standout with the late Centennial State Chill - programs to play for the Russian national squad at the Peking Olympics.

How could a talented adult female from the great state of South Dakota end up with the Russians?

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It boggles the mind. But it also states you something about Olympic competition.

The Olympic Games are supposed to be about edifice international family and cultural apprehension through friendly competition.

But the Olympic Games often boil down to national pridefulness and decoration counts. It's about winning.

It's also about politics. The planetary phase is a perfect topographic point to do a point. The fad surrounding China, Thibet and the Olympic torch relay is a premier illustration of that.

My uncomfortableness with Becky playing for the Russians is a atavist to the political relation of my young person and the Cold War. Back then, the Soviet Union was the world's bad cat - from the American point of view.

Political latent hostilities carried over to sports, especially the Olympics. Hence all the exhilaration about 1980 and the U.S. field hockey squad whipping the apprehension "Red Machine" on the manner to a gold medal.

Much have changed since then. The United States and Soviet Union are no longer enemies (although they're not all that affectionate of each other).

At some point states have got to allow travel of old struggles and move on. I say that transports over to their citizens as well.

Hammon is playing for a Russian professional squad and recently acquired citizenship. That cleared the manner for her to acquire on the Olympic squad.

Her state of affairs is not unusual with the globalisation of big-time sports. American citizens have got competed for other national squads many times.

Since she is "one of ours" because of her CSU connection, Hammon still have a batch fans around here. We've followed her calling and frozen for her every measure of the way.

We wish you success, Becky, in your up-to-the-minute basketball game adventure.

That could change, of course, if and when the Russians drama the Americans.

We'll root for the place team. We can't allow travel of that.

Kevin Duggan is a Coloradoan senior reporter. He can be reached by telephone at 224-7744. Send e-mail to .

Sexism, Statistics And Changing The World

Six billion people on this planet. A higher ratio of males in China, and a higher ratio of females born human race wide. A higher ratio of male directors in business. A higher ratio of females in wellness care. Every field have a ratio of females to males where there is no equal playing field of 50/50. We dwell in a human race with mostly work force doing mostly male things and mostly women doing mostly female things no substance what the laws are.

When the ratios are greatly unequal, state a infirmary with mostly female employees, or any military subdivision with mostly male employees, or any topographic point you personally cognize or have got experienced as being greatly over a 50/50 ratio, then the methods of keeping the position quo demand to be challenged.

Before ambitious the position quo, imagining the reversal of the statistics and envisioning what the consequences would be is an oculus opener. If most curates were female, if most fulls general were female, if all United States Presidents were female, if most nurses were male, if most instructors were male, if most secretaries were male, if most counsellors were male, if most professors were female, if most men of science were female, and if most husbandmen were female, the human race would look, sound, and experience differently.

The human race is changing and more than than women are working in primarily male dominated fields, and more males are working in primarily female dominated fields, but the alterations are not extremist and the disparity in ratio is still quite high in many fields. The grounds are not always with the applicants. The barriers and inducements are still in topographic point for many countries to keep ratios of disparity.

Former US civil rights activist, now lawmaker, urges passage after House advances coin bill

: United States Congress is advancing statute law to tag the 50th day of remembrance of the U.S. Civil Rights Act with a commemorative Ag dollar.

The House passed the measurement without resistance on Tuesday, and a similar measurement is pending in the Senate, sponsored by Democratic Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Barack Obama, who also is a campaigner for president.

House patron Toilet Lewis, an Capital Of Georgia Democrat, former civil rights leader and associate of slain St Martin Martin Luther King Jr., said the statute law is not just symbolic. Gross Sales of the limited-edition coin would bring forth some $2.5 million (€1.6 million) to be donated to the United Black College Fund for scholarships and other expenses.

The bill, also backed by Rep. Deborah Pryce, a Republican, and Democratic Rep. Vic Snyder, had stalled for two years, partly because United States Congress bounds itself to just two commemorative coins per year.

It directs the U.S. Batch to bring forth 350,000 $1 coins to be sold beginning in 2014, marking the aureate day of remembrance of the landmark law's sign language in 1964. Among other things, the law barred restaurants, hotels and other populace topographic points from denying service to blacknesses and outlawed employment favoritism against women and minorities. Today in Americas

Citing research screening that roughly half of achromatic high school pupils will drop out before graduation, UNCF President Michael Lomax said the coin's return are badly needed, and the money would go on the missionary post of the civil rights movement.

"Dr. King gave his life so that all children could have got the chance to recognize their full potential," he said.

Past coins have got famed Civil War battlefields, assorted Olympic games, the 1994 World Cup association football tourney and the Statue of Liberty. Last year, the Batch began selling a coin marking the 50th day of remembrance of the 1957 integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

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