Tag Archives: University

TruNews: Islamic Extremists Threaten Civilians and Students in Yemen

TRUNEWS – Islamist extremists have hit the streets in Aden threatening civilians and students.

The militants burst into a university telling students they have until Thursday to segregate men and women into different classrooms. The men also charged into stores demanding female employees to cover up and threatened families on a beach.

The city is at risk of falling to the terror groups, which also includes a dangerous sect of al-Qaeda, the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army, Daesh and ISIS. Houthi rebels were forced out in July, leaving a vacuum in leadership.

America Mourns the Deaths of 9 Victims and 7 Injured in Oregon University Shooting

Ten people are dead and seven are injured after a lone gunman opened fire at Umpqua Community College, located in Roseburg, Oregon. The death toll includes the gunman who was shot by police after exchanging gunfire with law enforcement.

Law enforcement identified the 26-year-old shooter Thursday night as Chris Harper Mercer. Police reported that the shooter had three weapons on his person during the shooting. In a news conference after the tragedy, Sheriff Hanlin would not speak the gunman’s name.

“Let me be very clear, I will not name the shooter,” he said. “I will not give him the credit he probably sought prior to this horrific and cowardly act.”

Sheriff Hanlin also asked reporters not to glorify or sensationalize him.

One of the injured students, Anastasia Boylan, told her father that the gunman had been singling out Christians. Before her spinal surgery, her dad relayed his daughter’s story to CNN. The gunman had entered her classroom, firing. After shooting the professor, the students hit the ground. She then recalled how he asked anyone who was a Christian to stand up, and then shot them. Boylan was shot in the back, but she survived by playing dead.

Investigators have reported that the gunman had a long history of resenting organized religion, specifically Christianity. His various social media accounts all had some sort of reference to hating religion.

The attack was among some of the worst mass school shootings over the last two decades including the Virginia Tech tragedy in 2007, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut in 2012, and the Columbine High School shooting in 1999 located in Colorado.

According to data from ShootingTracker.com, mass shootings have taken place hundreds of times over the last several years. The Washington Post reports that only week has passed without a mass shooting incident during President Obama’s second term. A mass shooting is defined as an incident where four or more people are shot. The one week where there was no mass shooting was in April this year. Six days have passed without an incident several times.

On Thursday night, mourners gathered at a park in Roseburg, Oregon. Candles were held up by attendees and the hymn “Amazing Grace” was played. Photos of the vigil showed heartbroken community members huddled together and sharing stories of grief. Oregon Governor Kate Brown attended the vigil and offered her condolences.

“In our sorrow, we will remember and honor those lost today,” she said. “And they will forever be in our hearts.”

All of us at the Jim Bakker Show and Morningside ask that you join us in prayer for everyone involved in this heartbreaking incident. Our thoughts and prayers are with all of the victims’ families, those who are injured and recovering, the law enforcement and medical personnel, and for the entire community of Roseburg, Oregon. May God bless each and every one of you and comfort you during this difficult time.

Shooting at Umpqua Community College, 13 Dead and over 20 Wounded

A shooter opened fire at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon Thursday morning killing 13 people and wounding more than 20.

The unidentified suspect was killed in a gunfight with Douglas County Sheriff’s deputies.

At about 10:38 AM, the 911 center received a report of a shooting at Umpqua Community College. Police immediately responded.

Governor Kate Brown said the shooter was “a 20-year-old male.” She expressed her “profound dismay and unimaginable heartbreak. Our top priority now is the medical treatment of the victims and the security of the campus.”

Umpqua is a two-year school with about 3,300 full-time students and 16,000 part-time students. It started offering classes in 1961.
In audio of the emergency call, a dispatcher is heard saying that at the college’s Snyder Hall: “Somebody is outside one of the doors shooting through the door. A female is inside the computer lab. We do have one female that has been shot at this time.”

Our prayers are with the families of the victims in this horrible tragedy.

Researchers Accidentally Discover Ancient Volcano Range

A group of Australian researchers were looking for lobster larvae.

Instead, they found a huge underwater volcano range they estimate to be millions of years old.

The four are calderas, bowl-shaped craters that happen when the land around an erupting volcano collapses.  The largest is just over half a mile wide and rises about 2300 feet above the ocean floor.

Professor Iain Suthers from the University of New South Wales told the London Guardian newspaper he was stunned by the discovery.

“My jaw just dropped,” Suthers told Guardian Australia. “I immediately said, ‘What are they doing there and why didn’t we know about them before?’ It really backs up the statement that we know more about the surface of the moon than our sea floor.”

Suthers called the trip “enormously successful.”

“The voyage was enormously successful. Not only did we discover a cluster of volcanoes on Sydney’s doorstep, we were amazed to find that an eddy off Sydney was a hotspot for lobster larvae at a time of the year when we were not expecting them,” Professor Suthers said.

Suthers said that their research vessel can scan the ocean’s floor past their previous limit of 3,000 meters, meaning they can find more new structures off the Australian coast.

InterVarsity Allowed Back On California Campuses

A Christian student organization that was banned from official recognition on California state college campuses has been returned to full status.

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship had been banned from the CSU school system because of a decision by CSU that all student groups could not discriminate based on a list of items which included religion.  This meant the Christian organization could not require their leadership to be Christians.  When the group refused to sign an agreement to support the new regulations, they were removed from campus for the 2014-2015 school year.

InterVarsity announced that the school has now reversed course and will officially recognize InterVarsity as a student group.

“Following substantive and cordial ongoing conversations, CSU clarified the intent and reach of Executive Order 1068,” InterVarsity president Jim Lundgren said in the release. “We are confident we can choose leaders who are qualified to lead InterVarsity’s witnessing communities throughout the Cal State system.”

“InterVarsity’s Christian faith compels us to welcome all people,” Lundgren said. “We support CSU in its commitment to serve the diversity of students on its campuses. In fact, InterVarsity communities are some of the most diverse groups on Cal State’s campuses. At the same time, we maintain our commitment to provide campus communities that are clearly Christian, where all students can experience and learn more about Christian community, theology, and practice. We’re grateful for this development and are looking forward to continued ministry on CSU campuses.”

During their time of exile, the group could not recruit students at activity fairs and were banned from free use of school meeting rooms.

The group noted that the fight for Christians to have equal access to school facilities continues at places such as Grinnell College, Tufts University, SUNY Buffalo and Bowdoin College.  In addition, Vanderbilt University drove Christians groups off its campus with a similar policy as that of the CSU system.

Missouri Considering Bill To Protect Religious Student Groups

After Vanderbilt University and others punished Christian organizations and stripped them of their rights to be official student groups if they did not allow non-members of their faith to obtain leadership positions, Missouri legislators are considering action that would protect student groups.

House Bill 104 passed the Missouri House in March and is being considered in the Senate.  The “Student Freedom of Association Act” was introduced by Representative Elijah Haahr who represents a part of Springfield, MO.

“No public institution of higher learning shall [deny] a religious student association any benefit available to any other student association, or discriminate against a religious student association with respect to such benefit, based on that association’s requirement that its leaders or members adhere to the association’s sincerely held religious beliefs, comply with the association’s sincere religious observance requirements,” reads the bill in part.

“No public institution of higher learning shall substantially burden a student’s exercise of religion unless the institution can demonstrate that application of the burden to the student is in furtherance of a compelling interest of the public institution of higher learning and is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling interest.”

The bill is in response to the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in 2010 that allowed a public university to stop funding religious groups if they violate any university “anti-discrimination” policy by requiring the religious group’s leadership to be members of their faith.

Opponents of religious freedom are mobilizing against the potential law.

“HB 104 would give religious student groups unprecedented exemptions regarding anti-discrimination policies,” stated Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

“Like the harmful so-called ‘religious freedom’ bills we’ve seen in the news recently, this bill cloaks discrimination under the guise of religious freedom. This bill has already passed the House, so this is the last chance for you to stop the bill in the Missouri legislature.”

Jewish Student Senate Candidate Faces Anti-Semitic Questions

A group at Stanford University is coming under fire after a Jewish students who was seeking their endorsement for her student senate campaign was given an anti-Semitic question.

Molly Horwitz, during an interview with the school’s Students of Color Coalition, was asked if her strong Jewish identity would influence the way she voted on issues related to Israel.

Horwitz, who was born in Paraguay, had already submitted to the group an application where she had to explain reconciling her identity both as a Latina and a Jew.  She told the Anti-Defamation league and Stanford officials that she felt the questioning of her Jewish identity was “over the line.”

“It is not OK that they brought my Jewish identity into this and implied it might impact my decision-making ability,” Horwitz said in an email to the J. weekly. “I interpreted the question as anti-Semitic.”

Horwitz wrote an op-ed in the Stanford Daily asking for an apology from the group and admitted the question completely rattled her.

“The rest of the interview was a blur to me. I barely kept it together. As soon as I left the interview room I began shaking and hyperventilating. I replayed the incident over and over in my mind.”

The SOCC claims that the question was not a “litmus test” and that religious identity had nothing to do with the question.  The group refused to endorse Horwitz.

“We’ve seen this now on a number of campuses … [Jewish students] feeling like their Jewish identity is being called into question in terms of their ability to serve on various student bodies and to be impartial representatives,” said Vlad Khaykin, associate regional director of the ADL’s San Francisco-based Central Pacific Region.

Supreme Court Justice Grants Abortion Pill Relief

A Supreme Court justice has given temporary relief to two religious groups that objected to the compromise to the abortion pill mandate in the Affordable Care Act.

Geneva College of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania and the Roman Catholic dioceses in Erie and Pittsburgh along with their affiliated organizations.  The groups sued the Obama administration because the so-called “compromise” still required them to provide abortion-inducing drugs.

The University of Notre Dame had previously filed a lawsuit over the same issue.

“Signing such a form or letter facilitates moral evil,” the groups wrote in legal briefs. “This is true whether or not applicants pay for the objectionable coverage.”

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito granted temporary relief and ordered the Obama administration to respond to the appeal by Monday.

The Supreme Court has already remanded the Notre Dame ruling to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals to be reconsidered in light of the 2014 Hobby Lobby stations.

Johns Hopkins Reverses Decision Banning Pro-Life Display

Johns Hopkins has announced they are reversing a decision that banned a pro-life display from campus.

The display, which had been part of the university’s “Spring Fair” for 30 years, was initially banned until a call from Fox News to the school asking why the JHU Voice for Life student group was denied a chance to post the display.

The group’s display, which shows unborn children in various stages of development, was called “disturbing” by a student committee.

“We’ve reviewed your pictures with our advisers and have determined that your display contains triggering and disturbing images and content,” read an email the committee sent to JHU Voice for Life.

Andrew Guernsey, president of the pro-life group, told Fox News that abortion is disturbing and that’s the reason they need to post the display.  He also pointed out that it was odd a school that’s famous for medicine would be calling the display offensive.

“I certainly find it ironic that a university that has dedicated itself to the advancement of medicine and biology would find displaying medically accurate fetal models disturbing and offensive,” Guernsey said.

The committee responded to Fox News’ inquiry by stating “We… were wrong in our initial decision and, upon further reflection, have decided we will not impose restrictions on the displays presented by any community groups at Spring Fair… The committee values free speech.”

Vandals Deface Pro-Life Display At Clarion University

Vandals defaced and destroyed crosses that were part of a pro-life display at a Pennsylvania university.

Students for Life at Clarion University played the crosses.  The 350 crosses were part of a display called “Cemetery of the Innocents” and each represented 10 aborted children that day.

Overnight, a number of the crosses were pulled out of the ground and thrown in trashcans.  Others were defaced with messages indicating their connection to activists against a recent Indiana religious freedom law.

The crosses were also placed in a manner that is a traditional anti-Christian placement.

“[All] 350 crosses were pulled up and re-inserted in inverted fashion, a well-known anti-Christian symbol,” the group Students for Life reported. “Additionally, red paint was splattered on crosses and signs. Even eerier was the mock bloody footprints of an infant painted in front of the display.”

“Pro-Choice” was written on the sidewalk near the mock footprints of an infant.

University police claim they are investigating the act.

“I ask that as a community of educators and students, we come together and reflect upon our commitment to our rights and responsibilities of expression,” university President Karen Whitney said in a statement. “I ask that we use dialogue and discussion to engage very differing viewpoints in ways that leave all of us better for the experience.”

The display has since been restored.