Gainesville High School Students' Racist YouTube Rant Forces Girls To Leave School, Apologize

After two minors from Gainesville High School in Gainesville, Fla., posted a nearly 14-minute-long racist rant on YouTube, the girls are "no longer students at the school," WCJB-TV reports.
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Last week, eight police officers were brought to the campus in light of death threats the girls were receiving in response to their videos. The videos included comments like, "You can understand what we are saying, our accents, we use actual words. Black people do not."

Gainesville High School principal David Shelnutt did not go into detail on the extent of the disciplinary action taken against the girls, but did tell WCJB that their comments were not welcome at the school.

"There's no place for comments like that, that video here at GHS," Shelnutt told the station. "There's no place for that in the Alachua County Public School System, and my opinion, no place for that in society in general."

Since the video went viral last week, the girls have experienced harassment and said they feared for their safety. According to one report by the Gainesville Sun, one of the students involved was hiding out at a relative's house while her mother was at work.

“Our lives have changed totally, 180 degrees," her mother told the paper. "This has made her an adult really quick.”

The girls and one of their parents issued a formal apology in the paper Monday:

"I am one of the girls who were in the racist video that got posted. I’m writing this so that I can tell people how truly sorry I am. I could never, in a million years, have pictured this happening with me involved. I wasn’t raised to hate people for their race, and I still don’t. I made a horrible decision in being a part of this video ... "

The girl also writes that she won't make excuses, but hopes the community will eventually forgive her.

In another apology, the second girl's mother says her daughter has gone into a depression following the backlash of the video, and hopes that the community will forgive her and end the harassment:

"While we can never take back the words and actions that these two children have said, we have to start to heal and forgive IMMEDIATELY. Stop the violent threats to our homes and our children, stop the anger, because this will solve absolutely nothing, and most importantly, look at yourself for change and love."

According to the Gainesville Sun, the high school will wear orange, the color of racial tolerance, this week as a sign of solidarity.

The response to the girls' videos echos sentiments of racial issues in school communities across the country.
Just last summer, 18-year-old Kymberly Wimberly of Arkansas filed suit against McGehee Secondary School after four years of nearly straight-

As, honors and Advanced Placement classes had placed her at the top of her graduating class. The suit alleges that though she earned the marks, the school denied her valedictorian status because she is black.

A separate suit filed against a Minnesota school district last August claimed that a Red Wing High School homecoming event called "Wigger Day" caused a black student "severe emotional distress including depression, loss of sleep, stress, crying, humiliation, anxiety, and shame."

"Wigger is a pejorative slang term for a white person who emulates the mannerisms, language and fashions associated with African-American culture," the complaint explains.

Students were encouraged to dress in oversized sports jerseys, low-slung pants, baseball hats cocked to the side and 'doo rags.

Most recently in Norcross, Ga., a Beaver Ridge Elementary School teacher resigned after outcry over a third grade math assignment that used slavery examples in word problems.

Parents were outraged at both the assignment and the school district's response to the reports of those math problems, which included references to cotton, orange picking and beatings.

One problem read: "If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week?"

On the other end of the spectrum, this sensitivity -- or sometimes, lack thereof -- seems to create a bit of an identity crisis among schoolchildren.

Some black students say they feel ostracized for acting "too white." One Connecticut middle school student said he was stabbed in the back with a pencil by a peer who thought he wasn't acting "black enough."

Moshe Kai Cavalin, 14-Year-Old Boy Genius, Writes Book Revealing Life In College At Age 8 (VIDEO)

LOS ANGELES — The one thing 14-year-old Moshe Kai Cavalin dislikes is being called a genius.

All he did, after all, was enroll in college at age 8 and earn his first of two Associate of Arts degrees from East Los Angeles Community College in 2009 at age 11, graduating with a perfect 4.0 grade point average.

Now, at 14, he's poised to graduate from UCLA this year. He's also just published an English edition of his first book, "We Can Do."

The 100-page guideline explains how other young people can accomplish what Cavalin did through such simple acts as keeping themselves focused and approaching everything with total commitment. He's hoping it will show people there's no genius involved, just hard work.

"That's always the question that bothers me," Cavalin, who turned 14 on Valentine's Day, says when the G-word is raised. "People need to know you don't really need to be a genius. You just have to work hard and you can accomplish anything."

And maybe cut out some of the TV.

Although he's a big fan of Jackie Chan movies, Cavalin says he limits his television time to four hours a week.

Not that he lacks for recreational activities or feels that his parents pressured him into studying constantly. He writes in "We Can Do" of learning to scuba dive, and he loves soccer and martial arts.

 He used to participate in the latter sport when he was younger, winning trophies for his age group, until his UCLA studies and his writing made things a little too hectic.

Indeed one of the key messages of his book is to stay focused and to not take on any endeavor half-heartedly.

"I was able to reach the stars, but others can reach the `Milky Way," he tells readers.

It was a professor at his first institution of higher learning, East Los Angeles City College, who inspired him, Cavalin says. He didn't like the subject but managed to get an A in it anyway, by applying himself and seeing how enthusiastic his teacher, Richard Avila, was about the subject.

Avila, he says, inspired him to write a book explaining his methods for success so he could motivate others.

It took four years to finish, in part because Cavalin, whose mother is Chinese, decided to publish it in Chinese, and doing the translation himself was laborious.

Han Shian Culture Publishing of Taiwan put the book in print, and it did well in Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, as well in several bookstores in Southern California's Asian communities. He then brought it out in English for the U.S. market.

Because of his heavy study load, Cavalin has had little opportunity to promote the book, other than a signing at UCLA, where he also lives in student housing with his parents and attends the school on a scholarship.

After earning his bachelor's degree, the math major plans to enroll in graduate school with hopes of eventually earning a doctorate.

After that, he's not so sure. He points out that he's still just barely a teenager.

"Who knows?" he says, chuckling at the thought of what lies ahead in adulthood. "That's a very distant future, and I'm pretty much planning for just the next few years. That's too far into the future for me to see."

Charlie and Braden Powell: Family, Teachers Remember Powell Boys At Tacoma Funeral

TACOMA, Wash. -- More than a thousand people mourned the deaths of Charlie and Braden Powell at a public funeral Saturday, nearly a week after the young boys' father killed them and himself in a gas-fueled blaze.

"We want to celebrate their innocence today," said the Rev. Dean Curry, lead pastor of Life Center Church in Tacoma. "We want to be grateful for the moments we had with these children."

The boys' grandfather Chuck Cox thanked police, social workers, teachers and everyone who cared for Charlie, 7, and Braden, 5, as well as people who had prayed for the boys after they died.

It "helps us to know that there are good people in the world – good people who fight against evil," Cox said.

At the front of the church's sanctuary, the boys were in a single casket topped with a large flower arrangement that included daisies, roses and sunflowers.

"We know that they're with their mother," Cox said, remembering his daughter, Susan Powell, who has been missing for two years and is presumed dead.

The boys' father, Josh Powell, was in the middle of a custody battle with Cox when he torched his rental home in Graham last Sunday.

Josh Powell was a person of interest in his wife's disappearance in Utah two years ago, and prosecutors consider the fire an admission that he killed her.

Cox gained custody of the children more than five months ago after police arrested Josh Powell's father, Steve, on voyeurism and child pornography charges.

The kids were arriving for a supervised visit when Josh Powell blocked a social worker from entering the home. He then attacked the boys with a hatchet and torched the house, authorities said.

Pierce County sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said Saturday that Josh Powell's body will be released to a cousin Monday.

About 1,200 people attended the boys' funeral at Life Center Church in Tacoma. Many of them wore purple and blue ribbons in memory of Susan, Charlie and Braden.

Two teachers shared their memories and read letters from other instructors who had interacted with the boys.

Charlie was remembered as a boy fascinated with science and insects, often trying to sneak worms or caterpillars into the classroom. He was about to get glasses and loved to write, dreaming up plans to market his books.

"At an early age, Charlie displayed a keen intellect and compassionate heart," said Tammy Ougheon, Charlie's kindergarten teacher in Utah. "He was an amazing young man."

His younger brother, Braden, preferred cars and trains, teachers remembered, and last Halloween got to dress up as a Transformer. Braden, teachers said, loved to be tickled.

"Braden walked through the doors every day with a big smile on his face," said Kristie King, an instructor at a YMCA where Braden was enrolled in a pre-kindergarten program.

King said Braden "had a heart of gold, always wanting to show affection."

"Braden liked to hold his teacher's hand and not let go," she said.

Three projection screens inside the church showed photos of the boys: pictures of them smiling with their mother, laughing with their grandparents and playing outside.

"We are grateful for the opportunity that we've each had to have felt the joy that these two small children have brought into our lives in their short lives," family member Kirk Graves said in the funeral's closing prayer.

People started lining up outside the church more than an hour before the service was set to begin.

Tony Deponte, 39, said he was in "total shock" when he heard of the boys' deaths.

"The first thing I did was stop and pray for these children," said Deponte, of Tacoma. "The whole community 

is feeling their loss."

Amanda Morse, of Seattle, was standing outside the church, holding her 5-month-old son, Ronan. She said she wanted the family to know that they weren't alone.

"It was a tragedy that shouldn't have happened," she said.

A private interment will take place Monday at Woodbine Cemetery in Puyallup.

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Top 10 Most Expensive Colleges in USA

How much is too much to pay for college?


US News and World Report recently named the 10 most expensive private colleges. Columbia University topped the list with New York's Vassar College coming in second.

Getting vicariously depressed for the student body of Columbia? Hold your horses! It is not all financial doom and gloom for the students of these schools.

 

# 1. Columbia University, $45,290

 

# 2. Vassar College $44,705

 

 

 

# 3. Trinity College $44,070

 

 

 

# 4. St. John's College $44,056

 

 

 

# 5. Connecticut College $43,990  

 

 

# 6. Bucknell University $43,866 

 

 

 

 # 7. Bard College at Simon's Rock $43,840

 

 

 

# 8. Wesleyan University (CT) $43,674 

 

 

 

# 9. Tulane University $43,434

 

 

 

# 10. Carnegie Mellon University $43,396