it looks like purdue is now going to be in a bit of hot water. wade steffey was found electrocuted, having been in the high voltage utility room in the basement of owen for more than two months. there was no warning sign on the door alerting students to high voltage transformers; a thorough search of the room was not conducted, as it would mean turning off power to the building.

and for the first time wade's story has made the front page of cnn.

what a nightmare.

my thoughts are with his family.

as i was driving with the crew for our annual two-for-one veggie burger night at denny's (gotta love hump day), i was struck by a billboard at the intersection of 52 and union street. wade steffey's image was branded on the sky, and i couldn't help but feel simultaneously elated, awed, and devastated.

the exponent called today to ask for a few lines for a story they were writing on media outlets and how (and if) they are still addressing the case: http://www.purdueexponent.org/?module=article&story_id=4374  the exponent is one of the few papers (if not the only paper) which is still publicizing steffey's case as front-page news. what the article did not mention was my critique of the media's focus on the 'white female abductee,' but that's old hat. everyone knows about it, and most people still feed into it. so if you're not white, or if you're born with a y-chromosome, you're s.o.l. cbs was also on campus, filming the dorms and interviewing students for an upcoming segment.

at least someone is still watching.

another morning was spent on the river bank this morning, searching for wade steffey. his mother was sitting in the cafe at the end zone, at a small table. i saw her, and broke down.

the flood plain was icy and dense, having cleared twenty feet of water. but they pulled us in after two hours because of predicted wind chills of minus-twenty and forty mile per hour winds.

and my ugly mug ended up on wlfi six-o'clock news after getting ambushed by the channel eighteen news crew.

nothing was found.

 Missing Person

Purdue University police are looking for Wade S. Steffey, 19, a Purdue freshman from Bloomington, Ind., who was last seen during the early morning hours of January 13.

At that time he was wearing a white long-sleeved shirt with light blue stripes and light-colored jeans. Steffey is white with short brown hair and brown eyes, is 5 feet, 10 inches tall and weighs about 150 pounds.

Persons with information about Steffey should contact Purdue Police

765-494-8221 or 765-496-3784 (anonymous tip line)

http://www.purdue.edu/police

hi all,

awhile back, i posted on jessica wieker's battle with a denver high school over title ix violations. today, i received a request (from herb - i had an uncle herb) to post a link to the equity in athletics website developed for the office for civil rights, the office of the state superintendent of public instruction for washington state, and the washington interscholastic athletics association. the site is based on equity education for all kids in the k-through-12. so, here you go, herb:  http://www.k12.wa.us/Equity/default.aspx

news has it that a jaundiced newborn was kidnapped in texas by a woman posing as a nurse. this woman visited the hospital, dressed in scrubs and fooling with the environmental machinery, uninterrogated by the actual nurses running the joint, and then visited the mother's house after she was discharged. and...this is how the mother was roped:

On Sunday, the woman visited the family's home and told the mother she wanted to put the newborn in a baby pageant. "I said, `No, my baby is sick. She can't be out in public,'" Ysasaga said. "She said they would pay me $100 and my baby would win stuff."

ugh. ugh ugh ugh. social darwinism, people. social darwininsm.

lest we forget last year's winner....

like an adult, a paralyzed, five-year old kai leigh harriott, robbed of a childhood, robbed of adulthood, robbed of everything, broke down before the man who was pleading guilty to shooting her several years earlier.

• At first, she broke down, crying harder than she ever had since the night nearly three years ago when Anthony Warren fired three rounds at the house where she was sitting on a porch.

  After a sip of water and some consoling from her mother, Kai spoke. "What you done to me was wrong," she said to the man seated just 10 feet away. "But I still forgive him."

what incredible courage and grace. bless you, kai.

the following are the most heartwrenching words fell from the mouth of a child forced to sleep in cages constructed with chickenwire by his adoptive parents. when questioned regarding potential experienced abuse and whether or not the "school aged boy"  wanted to remain with michael and sharen gravelle, he said:

"It doesn't matter," he said. "There's no sense getting comfortable at any place."

the gravelles desire to regain custody of the 11 children, ages 1-15, which were removed from the home after two years after another under-rug-swept social worker report of potential abuse. the children are afflicted with various afflictions, including fas, hiv, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. the child above reported various occasions of abuse that would make dave pelzer squirm:

In earlier testimony, the boy said most of his brothers and sisters slept on wood with blankets but no pillows or mattresses in the cages.

One girl's head was shoved in a toilet by a parent because she was drinking water out of it, and another had her head pushed into a toilet because she urinated in bed, the boy said.

The boy testified that he had to sleep in the bathroom for nearly three months because he wet his bed at night.

"Another time, I spent a good portion of my life in there," he said. "If I was really good, I'd get to come out for an hour."...

"I couldn't come out of my room until I wrote the whole book of Deuteronomy," he said. "I was up there for like a month."

and, of course, the child's voice is immediately accompanied by doubt....

The boy admitted lying often when he was younger and being violent and abusive toward his siblings....

Sharen Gravelle shook her head "no" frequently during his testimony and has said the children have lied to investigators.

thanks to false memory syndrome and the labeling of adopted children with various psychoses, as elaine scarry notes, another's pain is always accompanied by doubt. and from which well springs doubt? denial.

a british teenager was murdered with an axe in a park in huyton, merseyside, on friday night after being taunted by a gang.

Mr Walker was taunted while at a bus stop on St John's Road with his girlfriend and a male cousin. They moved but were attacked in a park.

His girlfriend and cousin, both 17, ran to get help, but when they returned he was slumped on the ground with serious head injuries.

'Unprovoked, racist attack'

Merseyside Police Assistant Chief Constable Bernard Lawson said: "What we are dealing with here is an unprovoked and vicious attack on a young black man which we believe to be racially motivated.

"This was a despicable act and we're absolutely determined to find the people responsible.

"Our first thoughts go out to his family and we have met his mother and his sister and they are bearing up tremendously.

There are a lot of decent people in the local area who are absolutely shocked at what has happened Assistant Chief Constable Bernard Lawson

"Anthony was a young Christian studying for his A levels and wanting to be a lawyer."

Mr Walker was taken to Whiston Hospital but transferred to Walton neurological centre where he died of his injuries after being attacked with an axe.

Mr Lawson urged local people to help catch the killers.

what a beautiful boy. what a sick, stupid world.

twelve-year-old mickenzie, when accosted by twenty-two-year-old damon crist in a car on a deserted road she had been walking with her brother, kicked the crap out of her abductor once he pulled her into the car:

She said, "I was hitting him and doing whatever I could do to try to make him mad. I didn't want my kidnapping to have the same ending as others."
 
Crist became fed up with Mickenzie and told her to get out of the truck.

Mickenzie and her brother were able to give police a detailed description of Crist.  It eventually led to his arrest at a Centerville home early Thursday morning.  He was booked in jail on felony kidnapping charges.

Police believe Crist may have tried the same approach on several kids in Davis and Weber Counties earlier on Tuesday. 

the report stirred media attention, and in the video interview afterward, the father wept and claimed the "heavenly father" must have ensured the safe return of his child. the claim was reiterated by the mother. regardless of whether they were mormon or not, you'd think the parents would give some credit to the kid, who had the intelligence and the circumstance to willfully decide to defend her life.

that little bit they have there, stapled beside your mouth..."victim speaks"...is bullshit. you're no victim. good for you, mickenzie. set a precedent. and good for you to be educated enough to be aware of your abilities and your surroundings. as for your parents, forgive them for being closeted rolling stones fans.

an ump ruled out kids speaking spanish on a little league field in lake(mud)ville, ma, during a state tournament this week. coaches are now claiming loss of game due to demoralization:

"It appears the umpire was concerned that the coach or manager may have been using a language other than English ... to communicate potentially 'illegal' instructions to his players," Van Auken said in an e-mail to The Associated Press Friday. "The umpire simply overstepped his authority, and there was no malicious intent."...

"All I could hear was, 'We cannot allow this,"' Mosher said. "At this point I was baffled why we could only speak English."...

sounds a lot like the colonized caribbean, colonized africa, colonized anywhere. anyone know how this rule applies to major league?

well, at least he didn't fondle him or strangle him. but he paid off another kid on the team to throw a baseball at the disabled kid's head to keep him from entering the game. mark r. downs jr., of dunbar, pa, was arrested on charges of criminal solicitation to commit aggravated assault and corruption of minors:

The boy's mother asked state police to investigate her son's injuries because she suspected Downs wanted to keep the boy off the field, despite a league rule that required each player to participate in three innings a game, Broadwater said.

kind of reminds you of this, right?

as baseball's motto goes, "If you ain't cheatin', you ain't competin'." except for the red sox, who knocked the yankees into next week tonight.

a mother was charged with felony child abuse and cruelty after forcing her two daughters, ages eight and ten, to 'take turns' riding in the trunk on an eight-hour drive from alabama to virginia because, evidently, there wasn't enough 'room' in the car. the girls confessed to their father, cheryl ann schoonmaker's ex-husband (yes, folks, not only her name is stupid), and cheryl was arrested the next day (the whole thing is doubly sick and stupid considering the deaths of the three children in camden last month).

after missing for six weeks, from her home, where her mother and oldest brother were beaten to death, shasta groene was found with a convicted sex offender at a denny's in coeur d'alene. her missing older brother dylan wasn't with the two.

hopefully, he will be found 'safe' - although i think that 'safe' will be a word redefined in their vocabulary for the rest of their lives.

via boingboing

satellite image of mugabe's destruction of 200,000 person squatter camp (before....and after). today, bbc reported that mugabe defended the destruction, despite three children being crushed when walls fell on them:

...In remarks broadcast on state television, Mr Mugabe said: "As much as 3 trillion [Zimbabwe dollars - about $3bn] has been committed to this programme... There is a clear construction and reconstruction programme.

"We pledged to revitalise our cities and towns and to deliver as many as 1.2 million housing units and residential stands by the year 2008. We also undertook to reorganise our SMEs [small and medium business enterprises] so they could grow and expand in an environment that is supportive, clean and decent." ...

and the ever-sensitive to oppression south africa even had its say, through presidential spokesperson bheki khumalo:

..."South Africa refuses to accept the notion that because suddenly we're going to a G8 summit, we must be reminded that we must look good and appease the G8 leaders," he said.

"We will do things because we believe they are correct and right."....Right.

and, in the article's small sidebar:

"She was killed when the walls collapsed on top of her"

Lavender Nyika
Mother of Charmaine, 2

 see previous posts here and here and here.