Jessica Corry will be a guest on 850 KOA’s Jon Caldara Show to talk about CU’s $22 million diversity budget tonight, Monday, January 23rd from 1o to 11 p.m.

She will also be a guest on 1310 KFKA’s Amy Oliver Show, Tuesday, January 24th from 10 to 11 a.m. to talk about this issue, as well as ongoing concerns about property rights abuses across Colorado.

Due process for CU students long overdue

BY JESSICA PECK CORRY AND BRAD JONES
Appeared in The Colorado Daily
Sunday, January 22, 2006

For a campus infatuated with social justice, CU-Boulder offers very little for its own students. They can be accused of crimes without proof, refused an attorney and expelled from the university - all without ever being convicted in a Court of Law.

In CU’s Judicial Affairs office, many students are denied even an imitation of due process, as was highlighted by a 2000 ruling by Boulder District Judge Daniel Hale in the matter of an expulsion handed down by CU. In his ruling, Hale noted: “A disciplinary system must have the appearance of impartiality and fairness, neither of which was apparent in this case.”

The case in question involved a student’s speech in a dispute with the bursar’s office, which the school deemed to be “hostile and threatening.” His punishment for this unacceptable speech was expulsion - an excessive penalty that took a court to overturn. (for more information on this case, please visit http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/127.html)

CU’s Judicial Affairs inserts its jurisdiction over all aspects of student life - even if an accused student is charged with an off-campus offense on his own time that has absolutely nothing to do with the university, but rather poses an ambiguous “threat to the mission of the university”.

The Boulder police aid this system by forwarding information about alleged crimes to both CU and the District Attorney. It’s unknown how police know the person is a student, as that identification isn’t compulsory. One student accused of unlawful sexual contact with his former girlfriend had his case dropped by the D.A. for lack of evidence; the school, however, suspended the student until the accuser graduated.

Another student, who had no police record for an incident in question, was still suspended with weeks to go in the semester. This decision was made in spite of the student’s legitimate concerns about bias against him on his hearing panel.

While students are allowed an advisor to accompany them in the Judicial Affairs process, the advisor is not even allowed to speak on the student’s behalf at any phase, including hearings. The only exception to this gag order comes if a student is granted special permission from the same administrators who seek to expel the student and even then, the advisor can only speak on the student’s behalf after the university’s investigators have concluded their investigation and conversations with the student.

Accused students are also denied the right to remain silent, with any refusal to speak to university interrogators bringing the potential of charges for “failing to comply with the direction of a university official.” CU’s commitment to fair trials is questionable, with evidence merely needing to demonstrate “what happened more likely than not, or ‘50 percent plus a feather’” - a far cry from the U.S. criminal justice system where guilt must be proven “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

CU’s justification for this system is that being a CU student is a privilege and upon admission, students must agree to a code of conduct and honor system more stringent than state and federal laws. It makes sense that students should be held to the highest standards in the pursuit of higher education - but why deny them basic rights to defend themselves when charged with serious violations? If CU holds its students to a higher standard, why can’t CU meet a higher standard as well?

This system’s reach is almost limitless. Students expelled or suspended without due process, and without being convicted criminally, frequently must report such sanctions on graduate school or job applications, thus stigmatizing the student’s permanent educational records for the rest of their lives. They can lose their student loans or grants and be crushed with debt. Students who haven’t been convicted of any crime, and those who work their out-of-school legal problems out in the courts and in their hometowns, deserve a fair shake from CU.

If university administrators believe in the strength of their system, they should afford all of their students basic civil rights, including access to an attorney, the right to remain silent, and the right to defend oneself fully under the rights granted to him or her as a U.S. citizen or resident.

Due process for CU students is long overdue.

Jessica Peck Corry is the director of the Independence Institute’s Campus Accountability Project. Brad Jones serves as a research assistant for the project. They can be reached at Jessica@i2i.org. The views expressed are theirs alone, and not necessarily those of the Colorado Daily management or staff.

From the Friday, Jan. 20, 2006 Denver Post:

“The liberal website “Media Matters for America” calling CNN’s hiring of conservative talk-show host Glenn Beck “a slap in the face” to the families of victims of Hurricane Katrina and 9/11, whom he’s criticized. Beck’s show airs in Denver on KHOW 760-AM at noon weekdays. … Jon Caldara referees between Jessica Peck Corry and Kerry Kite in a discussion of CU diversity on “Independent Thinking” (8:30 p.m. Friday, KBDI-Channel 12). … Quotable: “There’s no such thing as stock show weather.” Bill Saul ”

Jessica Corry will be on a guest of Mike Rosen on his Friday, January 20th show at 10 a.m.

The radio show, Denver’s most widely listened to, airs on 850 KOA. Topics will center around CU’s $20 million diversity administration and CU President Hank Brown’s recent decision to create a Blue Ribbon Commission to evaluate CU’s diversity programs, for which Jessica was selected to serve on.

Printed in the Aurora Sentinel

Corry: Citizen Coalition Aims to Restore Property Rights

By Jessica Peck Corry

January 15, 2006

In America today, the government can take your home simply because it doesn’t generate enough tax revenue. Seeking to combat this sad reality, a coalition of Coloradans is proposing a state constitutional amendment that would ban this practice.

Eminent domain, or the forcible taking of private property for public use, has become a much abused tool in recent years. Originally outlined as a “despotic power” in the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, eminent domain was intended as a way to make way for public necessities, including roads or schools.

Times have changed, however, in the aftermath of a horrific 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision that grants government the right to force families and small business owners off their land to make way for developments that have the perceived potential to generate more tax revenue. This process, according to Justice Paul Stevens, serves a “public purpose”.

Colorado Citizens For Property Rights, together with state Representative Al White, R-Winter Park, recently announced a proposed ballot initiative that seeks to combat eminent abuse in our state. If passed by voters this November, the initiative would introduce language to the Colorado constitution that would make it illegal to take private property for the sole purpose of generating more revenue through an alternative use. In the aftermath of the court’s decision, more than 30 legislatures around the country have considered, or are considering, similar commonsense measures.

In response to CCPR’s effort, government lobbyists-paid for by our tax dollars-are already attacking the proposal, with the Colorado Municipal League leading the way. According to a Sept. 30th Rocky Mountain News story, its executive director claims that cities rarely use their eminent domain powers to take private property, and when they do, it’s typically done to turn around blighted areas.

Rarely? Typically? So most of us are safe, they want us to believe. Just hope that your home or small business isn’t in the way of a proposed government-initiated development.

Steve Nadler isn’t buying Mamet’s version of the story. Nadler is a hard-working small business owner who faces the ongoing prospect of losing his livelihood to make way for giant retail center in Sheridan. A strong backer of the initiative, Nadler is one of dozens of small business owners across Colorado now being forced to fight for their survival.

In Arvada, in 2004, it took a decision by the Colorado Supreme Court and a nationally-publicized citizen effort to stop the Arvada Urban Renewal Authority from condemning and paving over a privately-owned lake to make way for a proposed Wal-Mart parking lot.

And in 2005, it took thousands of property owners spending their own time and money to save their homes and businesses from forced condemnation to make way for a proposed private 210-mile toll road that would have roared through seven Colorado counties.

These courageous people are the lucky ones; they had a fighting shot against the endless arsenals of government, which include taxpayer-financed lawyers, publicists, and urban planners. For the less fortunate, too often the poor and elderly living in neighborhoods targeted for government-initiated developments, the handwriting is on the wall. When the threat of eminent domain is made, they have no choice but to leave.

Roxie Sorrentino, an elderly former Arvada resident, experienced this first-hand when he was forced out of the only house he’d ever called home. Relocated by the government to Wheat Ridge to make way for a new mixed-use development, Sorrentino says he gave in because he couldn’t risk everything to save his home. “If we hadn’t moved out, they would have sued us,” Sorrentino told a reporter. “With eminent domain, they have the power to do whatever they’d like to do.”

As we move toward a future that promises significant population growth coupled with an inevitable decline in available undeveloped land, the use of eminent domain will only become more tempting. Perhaps bureaucrats will even take a cue from officials in southern California who have justified condemnation of churches because they generate no tax revenue at all.

In 2006, government lobbyists will have a hard time selling us on the beauty of condemnation for private profit and government greed. Americans-conservatives and liberals alike-understand and value an important basic foundation of our system: if a person or corporation wants to acquire private property, they should have to do what any of us have to do-offer the owner a price he or she is willing to take. In the meantime, government should stop putting cFor Sale” signs in the front yards of Colorado’s small business owners and working families.

Jessica Peck Corry serves as the director of the Independence Institute’s Property Rights Project; in her free time she serves as the Front Range Director of Colorado Citizens For Property Rights. She can be reached at jessica@i2i.org.

Make commission a turning point

Saturday, January 7, 2006 8:44 PM MST

Colorado Daily Staff Editorial

While the University community awaits the appointment of student members to the mostly formed Blue Ribbon Commission on Diversity appointed by CU President Hank Brown, it’s a good time for all who are invested in diversity, and all who are about to serve on the panel, to check their agendas at the door, be prepared to listen, and come up with the boldest agenda possible on advancing diversity on the Boulder campus and within the CU system.

Each of those efforts is harder than it sounds. The fear, anger, demoralization and doubt surrounding diversity at CU make the task of talking about it, and then getting beyond the talking, a Sisyphean task. We live in the age of perception as reality, emotion as truth and over-certainty as king, such that any time we sit down at Rev. Martin Luther King’s proverbial table of brotherhood, it’s just as likely we’ll end up speaking only within like-minded cliques and not really to each other (much less listen to one another).

That can’t happen here. The stakes are too high; there is too much to accomplish. Despite excellent programs - ethnic learning communities, summer on-campus enrichment opportunities for minority and disadvantaged students, a more diverse administration at the Boulder campus - CU in general and CU-Boulder in particular still struggle not just with individual acts of racism, but with low numbers of enrolled minorities and minority faculty.

The Commission needs to face this head on, but it can’t afford to get bogged down in anecdotes at the expense of solutions. The formation of the Commission should not be a mere venting exercise, nor a feel-good ongoing photo opportunity, nor a grandstanding festival.

Panel members like Jessica Peck-Corry of the conservative Independence Institute, and Bruce Deboskey of the mostly liberal Anti-Defamation League - both used to the public spotlight and to being effective mouthpieces for their respective organizations - should be able to express their views, but they should also make a commitment to listen to the views of others.

Those from the corporate world, many of whom have success stories to share about how their firms have fostered diversity, shouldn’t be too quick to think what works in the corporate world can be quickly and easily overlaid onto a higher education institution. This is too often the assumption of private sector folk who venture into the more complex and thorny world of higher education.

The student members on the Commission, whoever they might be, have an obligation to give a realistic picture to the Commission’s other members about the true state of diversity at CU, but they also have a duty to recognize that a simple cataloguing of racist incidents - as horrible and difficult as such incidents are - does not represent the entire picture of diversity at CU.

There are programs that are working, people of color who are graduating, faculty of all colors who are working tirelessly to teach and mentor students of color (as well as students at-large), and a vast majority of students of all colors who don’t send racist e-mails, make racial slurs and who want to live in a just, democratic and diverse society. Recognizing this, even amid high-profile hateful acts, might be one starting point to generating optimism and good will about the Commission’s work.

In general, those with open or secret political agendas should be cautioned that diversity at CU defies simple categorization and labeling, and injecting a right-wing crusade to purge the campus of “political correctness,” or a left-wing crusade to find racism in its every corridor, will not serve the greatest need: to figure out how to plant, nurture and permanently grow lasting ethnic, economic and intellectual diversity at CU in a new century that demands it.

We hope the Commission’s work results not just in a long and winding report full of anecdotes or a lifeless set of recommendations written in bureaucratic language, but an actual inspiring blueprint for real progress that can be quickly implemented and creatively funded. The work of the Commission should be a turning point for CU and for the state: a line in the sand that marks the division between what was and what will be.

It should include plans to fund diversity programs, not just with dwindling public monies, but also with a creatively constructed public-private partnership and a CU Foundation funding campaign. It should propose ways to increase the hiring of minority faculty, promote tolerance and understanding in and out of the classroom, and create a permanent, nurturing CU presence in minority and rural communities in Colorado.

Anything less than this will simply mean another report - one that CU can conveniently ignore, like it did the report of the Independent Investigative Commission that investigated CU athletics two years ago. And as anyone who reads the news should realize by now, we’re well past the point where reports are going to do much.

It’s time for action.

Diversity at CU a hot topic
Senator wants outside audit

By Brittany Anas, Camera Staff Writer
January 4, 2006

State Sen. Peter Groff is pushing University of Colorado officials to hire a firm to audit campus diversity programs because, he said, the school can’t do a fair job if it evaluates itself.

“It’s fine and dandy for CU to study itself,” said Groff, D-Denver. “But, I want someone from outside the henhouse to come in and take a look to see what the actual effectiveness of the programs are.”

Groff, along with other black leaders, held a news conference in Denver on Tuesday to call on CU to recruit more minority students and talk about a recently formed blue-ribbon commission that will look at ways to improve diversity on campus.

CU interim President Hank Brown wants to wait on recommendations from the commission before deciding whether an outside company also should look at diversity statistics and programs, a university spokeswoman said.

Forty community and business leaders make up the commission. They will meet on the Boulder campus just one day — Jan. 21 — then pass their suggestions on to interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano. The chancellor will have two months to review the recommendations before telling Brown what action the Boulder campus plans to take.

“If their recommendations warrant a third-party review, President Brown is more than willing to entertain that recommendation,” said spokeswoman Michele McKinney.

Groff is not serving on the commission. But his call for an outside company to audit how well CU recruits and retains minority students is supported by the Rev. Paul Burleson and former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, who are both members.

The names of commission members who have agreed to serve were made public by CU on Tuesday. Others include: former Colorado State University President Al Yates; state Board of Education member Rico Munn; Bruce H. DeBoskey, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League; and Brenda Lyle, executive director of the Family Learning Center of Boulder.

Businesses that are represented include Sun Microsystems Inc., Ball Corp., IBM and Lockheed Martin.

Jessica Peck Corry, a CU alumna and director of the campus accountability project for the Independence Institute, a free-market think tank in Golden, also will serve on the commission.

A coalition of Denver’s black civic and elected leaders will hold a town hall meeting at 4:30 p.m. Jan. 25 on the University of Colorado campus. The meeting will be in the University Memorial Center, Room 235.

Its purpose is for black students and faculty members to voice their concerns about the racial climate on campus and suggest ways it can be improved, according to a news release.

Former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb will moderate the meeting. Also scheduled to participate are members of the Greater Metropolitan Denver Ministerial Alliance, state Sen. Peter Groff, D-Denver, and CU interim President Hank Brown.
In 2000, when Corry was a student, she led an alliance that asked CU to take the “race” box off the university’s application because, the group said, it was inherently discriminatory. At the time, 13 percent of CU students were minorities and The Equal Opportunity Alliance that Corry led said CU was practicing “racial profiling” and lowering its standards to increase that percentage.
This year, 14 percent of CU students are minorities. Of the approximately 28,600 students on the Boulder campus, 6 percent are Hispanic or Latino, 6 percent Asian, 1.4 percent black and 0.6 percent American Indian, according to CU’s Office of Planning, Budget and Analysis.

At the news conference Tuesday, black community leaders said the public-school system needs to do a better job preparing minority students, and CU needs to increase its recruiting efforts of qualified students of color.

“If you want more African-American students, we’ve got to be aggressive,” said the Rev. James Peters Jr., a senior pastor at New Hope Baptist Church in Denver, where the news conference was held.

Peters said minority high school students should be recruited with the same intensity as blue-chip athletes.

Of the 5,047 freshmen who started CU in 2005, 746 — or 15 percent — were students of color. Seventy-three of those freshmen were black, according to CU. Last year, CU hit a 10-year low when only 70 black students started as freshmen.

Make commission a turning point

Saturday, January 7, 2006 8:44 PM MST

Colorado Daily Staff

While the University community awaits the appointment of student members to the mostly formed Blue Ribbon Commission on Diversity appointed by CU President Hank Brown, it’s a good time for all who are invested in diversity, and all who are about to serve on the panel, to check their agendas at the door, be prepared to listen, and come up with the boldest agenda possible on advancing diversity on the Boulder campus and within the CU system.

Each of those efforts is harder than it sounds. The fear, anger, demoralization and doubt surrounding diversity at CU make the task of talking about it, and then getting beyond the talking, a Sisyphean task. We live in the age of perception as reality, emotion as truth and over-certainty as king, such that any time we sit down at Rev. Martin Luther King’s proverbial table of brotherhood, it’s just as likely we’ll end up speaking only within like-minded cliques and not really to each other (much less listen to one another).

That can’t happen here. The stakes are too high; there is too much to accomplish. Despite excellent programs - ethnic learning communities, summer on-campus enrichment opportunities for minority and disadvantaged students, a more diverse administration at the Boulder campus - CU in general and CU-Boulder in particular still struggle not just with individual acts of racism, but with low numbers of enrolled minorities and minority faculty.

The Commission needs to face this head on, but it can’t afford to get bogged down in anecdotes at the expense of solutions. The formation of the Commission should not be a mere venting exercise, nor a feel-good ongoing photo opportunity, nor a grandstanding festival.

Panel members like Jessica Peck-Corry of the conservative Independence Institute, and Bruce Deboskey of the mostly liberal Anti-Defamation League - both used to the public spotlight and to being effective mouthpieces for their respective organizations - should be able to express their views, but they should also make a commitment to listen to the views of others.

Those from the corporate world, many of whom have success stories to share about how their firms have fostered diversity, shouldn’t be too quick to think what works in the corporate world can be quickly and easily overlaid onto a higher education institution. This is too often the assumption of private sector folk who venture into the more complex and thorny world of higher education.

The student members on the Commission, whoever they might be, have an obligation to give a realistic picture to the Commission’s other members about the true state of diversity at CU, but they also have a duty to recognize that a simple cataloguing of racist incidents - as horrible and difficult as such incidents are - does not represent the entire picture of diversity at CU.

There are programs that are working, people of color who are graduating, faculty of all colors who are working tirelessly to teach and mentor students of color (as well as students at-large), and a vast majority of students of all colors who don’t send racist e-mails, make racial slurs and who want to live in a just, democratic and diverse society. Recognizing this, even amid high-profile hateful acts, might be one starting point to generating optimism and good will about the Commission’s work.

In general, those with open or secret political agendas should be cautioned that diversity at CU defies simple categorization and labeling, and injecting a right-wing crusade to purge the campus of “political correctness,” or a left-wing crusade to find racism in its every corridor, will not serve the greatest need: to figure out how to plant, nurture and permanently grow lasting ethnic, economic and intellectual diversity at CU in a new century that demands it.

We hope the Commission’s work results not just in a long and winding report full of anecdotes or a lifeless set of recommendations written in bureaucratic language, but an actual inspiring blueprint for real progress that can be quickly implemented and creatively funded. The work of the Commission should be a turning point for CU and for the state: a line in the sand that marks the division between what was and what will be.

It should include plans to fund diversity programs, not just with dwindling public monies, but also with a creatively constructed public-private partnership and a CU Foundation funding campaign. It should propose ways to increase the hiring of minority faculty, promote tolerance and understanding in and out of the classroom, and create a permanent, nurturing CU presence in minority and rural communities in Colorado.

Anything less than this will simply mean another report - one that CU can conveniently ignore, like it did the report of the Independent Investigative Commission that investigated CU athletics two years ago. And as anyone who reads the news should realize by now, we’re well past the point where reports are going to do much.

It’s time for action.