Rape Myths on Trial

This week, the local rape trial that I wrote about here and here reached its end. The defendant was found not guilty. Though I wasn’t in the courtroom, the media reports on the trial make me seriously wonder if justice was served. The defense relied heavily on rape myths. Apparently the jury was convinced. For [...]

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The Risks of Outsourcing Immunity to the Private Sector

On the phone, during a short break from comforting her daughter who was suffering from swine flu, my sister tells me: “I am so angry at our government!” Now, this is not a woman who routinely turns to the government for help. She votes Republican, largely on fiscal grounds. But my sis has been trying [...]

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Local Election Endorsement: Chris Fahl for City Council!

I don’t typically endorse candidates here, because I like to be an equal-opportunity critic, and because honestly Kittywampus is hardly the New York Times or even the Athens News. However, we’ve got a contested election in my ward, and a friend of mine is ably defending her seat on city council. For once, I’ve got [...]

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Swine Flu Hits Home

No, I’m not sick, nor are my kids – and my husband got the swine flu shot this morning, as one of those “lucky” people who are likely more vulnerable than average. But as I was stirring the dinner pots this evening, my sister called to tell me that her daughter (my six-year-old niece) has [...]

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Will Blackboard Save Us? The Folly of Swine Flu Planning in Higher Education

One of my vivid memories of graduate school is also one of the darkest. And I mean that literally. One day I showed up to discuss modern German history with my adviser and a few of my fellow students, only to find the lights off and the curtains dimmed. My professor was there, though, and [...]

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Separate Spheres … for Recess?

I’m grateful that officials at my kids’ elementary school have far more sense than this:
Boys and girls at Sedalia Elementary returned to school Monday with some unexpected changes: They had to play in separate areas during recess and eat at different tables during lunch.
The decision to divide the two groups did not stem from an [...]

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Ohio to Nursing Mothers: Get Those Breasts on a Schedule!

If you’re a nursing mother in Ohio and your employer doesn’t allow you time to pump, you might as well quit before you’re fired. Here’s how the Columbus Dispatch reports a decision by the state’s highest court that, at least on its face, would appear to make breastfeeding incompatible with full-time employment if you’ve got [...]

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Why My “Good” Insurance Needs the Public Option

My family and I have “good” insurance. Oh, sure, I’ve spent dozens of hours fighting our insurer to reimburse us for life-saving cancer drugs that my husband had the temerity to need while he was in Germany, where those drugs cost somewhere between a tenth and half the price that they would have been in [...]

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News Flash: Teachers Are Overpaid!

Today’s Columbus Dispatch features an article entitled “Teacher Salaries Raising Eyebrows.” As the child of two public school teachers, I had to wonder what could cause such eyebrow twitching. According to the Dispatch, teachers in “some districts” (note the weasel word “some”) aren’t bearing their share of the state’s fiscal pain. They’re still getting pay [...]

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Can’t This Joint Run without Me?

I leave the state of Ohio for a few measly weeks, and it threatens to shut down?
The state is bouncing from one temporary budget to the next. Governor Strickland has now threateed to shut down state government if Republicans won’t compromise with him. I’m having nasty flashbacks to the Republican Revolution of the 1990s – [...]

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A Colleague of Mine Goes on Colbert

A colleague of mine, Kevin Mattson, appeared on Stephen Colbert last night. He’s one of those people who proves what a small town we live in: He works in the history department, so I know him through professional channels. He lives just two blocks away from me. I worked with his wife on the Obama [...]

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Judges and Rape: The Case for Empathy on the Bench

This sort of crap should never, ever happen anymore. And yet, a Columbus judge is still on the bench after behaving cruelly toward victims of sexual assault:
Rape cases are often settled without a trial so that the victim can avoid testifying and reliving the ordeal.
But Common Pleas Judge Tim Horton recently ordered two victims to [...]

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This Is Vulnerability

You’re on a table, eight acupuncture needles pinning you in place, three of them attached to mild electrical pulses …
… and the table moves. It sways, briefly, for maybe three seconds. And the Californian in you realizes: We’re having an earthquake. I should be sprinting to the nearest doorframe.
Then you think, nah! This is Ohio. [...]

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Strip Searches in Schools: Not Just for Girls!

Is it ever okay to strip-search a student? The SCOTUS is hearing arguments on this, and if so, under what limitations. Justice Stephen Breyer – normally a good ally to liberals – managed to trivialize the issue in a dudely way, and both Historiann and Amanda Marcotte are taking him to task for it. Historiann [...]

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Watching the University Crumble – Literally

A few days back, when I posted on my university’s duplicitous way of dealing with layoffs, commenter Jake expanded the discussion in a direction that’s really crucial. While my original post dealt with the university’s obfuscation of the impact of cuts on teaching staff, it’s important to note that the announced layoffs will hit facilities [...]

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Petting Ohio’s New State Fruit

My hands smell like summer. More precisely, they smell like tomatoes – which, to my mind, is the same thing.
I’ve been petting my tomato seedlings, most of which now have one set of true leaves.

I pet them because they smell yummy, but also so they’ll grow stouter and stronger. A fan blowing on them would [...]

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Rape Trials: Still Being Conducted in the Media

(Trigger warning: You may want to skip this post if you’ve been sexually assaulted or felt revictimized by a callous criminal justice system.)
Last September 28, a young woman was allegedly raped in her dorm room on my college campus. I don’t know the people involved, but the local newspapers are bristling with the defense attorney’s [...]

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Medical Abortion under Pressure in Ohio

Ohio’s Democratic, pro-choice Attorney General, Richard Cordray, is sticking up for a state law that restricts the use of medical abortion (RU-486, aka mifepristone or the “abortion pill”) to a narrower window of time than good medical practice currently requires.
According to the Columbus Dispatch, a 2004 Ohio law limits the use of RU-486 to the [...]

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Ohio’s Baffling Sexual Politics

Ohio politics mystify me. I’ve lived here for over eight years now, and the contradictions still leave me spinning. We may be known as a swing state, but don’t be fooled. Ohio is often immoderate, a patchwork of extremes. My own little town is a progressive island in the midst of Appalachia, surrounded by the [...]

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A Sweeter Gig than Wall Street Tycoon

“Money” by FLickr user TW Collins, used under a Creative Commons license.
So the poor Wall-Street fat-cats are wincing at a $500,000 pay cap? They just picked the wrong job. A recent article in the Columbus Dispatch reported that the presidents of Ohio’s public universities and their senior henchmen advisers won’t see pay cuts this year [...]

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