2019 was a crazy year at colleges and universities around the country. From teachers planning to remove “racism” in math to parents engaging in elaborate bribery scams to get their kids into the best schools, Breitbart Tech has assembled our top five craziest college stories of the year.
2019 was a crazy year for American colleges and universities. Faculty and administrators at institutions around the country doubled down on their efforts to promote “social justice” dogma. The Department of Justice revealed a wide-ranging college admissions bribery scandal that sent high-profile celebrities, like actress Felicity Huffman, to prison.
Here are just a few of the craziest campus stories of the year:
5. University of Virginia cancels Veterans Day 21-Gun salute tradition over mass shootings
In November, Breitbart News reported that the University of Virginia had decided to end its 21-gun salute tradition over concerns that students would panic if they heard gunshots.
“One is that it would be disruptive to classes and two, unfortunately with gun violence in the U.S., there was some concern that we would cause a panic if someone heard gunshots on grounds,” University of Virginia President Jim Ryan told reporters when he announced the cancellation of the tradition.
Just a few weeks later, Ryan apologized over his decision to cancel the 21-gun salute. “Sometimes you make mistakes. Although motivated by good intentions, I believe we made a mistake this year in excluding the 21-gun salute from our Veterans Day ceremony,” Ryan said in an apology posted to Facebook.
4. Educators work to eradicate ‘racism’ in math
Breitbart News reported in July that leftist educators around the country are working to remove “racism” in mathematics courses around the country.
One educator argued that students only learn about Isaac Newton instead of other influential scholars because Newton was white.
“Calculus was a monumental achievement and deserves to have authorship recognized with Newton. But more students encounter the work of Brahmagupta than Newton,” the educator wrote in the blog post, “but, what if it wasn’t Newton that discovered calculus? What if it was Japanese scholar Seki Takakazu? We will never know. But the bigger idea is why couldn’t this be a possibility? Do we not want to be dislodged from the entrenched Western narrative?”
3. Georgetown establishes $400,000 slavery reparations fund
Earlier this year, students at Georgetown University voted to create an annual reparations fee that was designed to benefit the descendants of slaves once owned by the institution.
Over two-thirds of all students that participated in the referendum voted in favor of the reparations fund. As a result of the vote, students expected to pay an extra $27.20 each semester that would be added to the student’s tuition costs.
Breitbart News reported in November that Georgetown, in response to the referendum, would launch a $400,000 reparation fund that would be distributed to communities in the south were descendants of the slaves once owned by Georgetown live.
2. Washington College cancels award-winning play for being offensive
In December, Breitbart News reported that Washington College had canceled a performance of the award-winning play The Foreigner by Larry Shue after students claimed that its satirization and mocking of Ku Klux Klan members were offensive.
Administrators decided to cancel the public performances of the play just one hour prior to the production’s final dress rehearsal.
1. Department of Justice reveals wide-ranging college admissions bribery scandal, implicating celebrities and business executives.
In the spring, the Department of Justice charged over 40 parents with various crimes over their participating in a wide-ranging college admissions bribery scheme. Some parents paid bribes as much as $1 million to have their children admitted to top universities such as Yale University and the University of Southern California.
Breitbart News reported in September that actress Felicity Huffman was sentenced to 14 days in prison for her decision to pay off an SAT proctor that doctored the results of her daughter’s exam. Huffman served only 11 days of her 14-day sentence in October.
Other parents, such as former Full House actress Lori Loughlin, are still fighting legal battles over their alleged involvement in the scandal.
Stay tuned to Breitbart News for more campus updates.
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