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An Arts College Trapped Between Campus Culture and Fiscal Responsibility

Ted C. Fishman | Chicago magazine

Faced with tens of millions in lost tuition dollars, the [Columbia College Chicago] administration has cut budgets, trimmed personnel, pared back academic programs, enlarged class sizes, and, in a risky gambit intended to attract new students, promised new facilities that will cost tens of millions more. ...

The impending changes haven’t quelled unrest at the school; in 2015 some part-time faculty and students occupied the new president’s offices and had to be escorted out by campus security.* And many faculty members question whether the turnaround, if it happens, will cost the college the quirky identity that has been its calling card for half a century.

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A Real-Life Addiction to a Virtual Identity

Caitlin Gibson | The Washington Post

Their voices got louder. She doesn’t remember exactly what made him reach for the glass on his bedside table. He threw it with such force that it spun across the room and shattered against his closet door, carving a two-inch gash in the white painted wood. Tiny shards glinted on the striped rug.

By then, the family’s stately home in New York was riddled with such scars—nicks in the walls, scratches in the floor, a divot in the marble countertop lining the kitchen sink. All remnants of the boy’s outbursts, which had intensified over the years, almost always triggered by a simple request from his parents: Byrne, please turn off the game. Please get off the computer.

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The Decades-Old Busing Program with Bipartisan Support

Gene Demby and Audie Cornish | NPR’s Code Switch

Gene Demby: “Even in Boston, there was this one school-integration program—a busing program, as it turns out—that wasn’t controversial at all. In fact, that program is still around today, and it has support from Democrats and Republicans. It’s called METCO, which stands for the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity.” ...

Audie Cornish: “What I knew is that one year I had been going to a school with mostly black students, and then one year, I was on a bus and I was going to school with mostly white students. And you’re told you’re going to a better place, which sounds creepy when you say it like that, but the implication is you’re about to get an upgrade. And then you get there, and for me, I distinctly remember this being the first time I understood the concept of class. It was the first time I saw bigger houses and a nice, carpeted classroom, and toys, and colors.”

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Choosing Between Shelter and School

Sascha Brodsky | The Atlantic

The Duncan family has been living in Flatlands since April. Their journey into the shelter system began when Duncan was forced to give up her job as a registered nurse to care for her 4-year-old son Dayle, who has Down syndrome and health problems that include breathing difficulties. After she separated from her husband, a bank foreclosed on her house and she ended up in Flatlands.