Univ. of Alabama opens diversity center to promote more inclusion on campus
NBC 5 (Memphis, Tenn.) – Feb. 1
After being criticized in the past for not promoting enough diversity on campus, the University of Alabama takes a step in hopes of changing that. Monday, UA opened an Intercultural Diversity Center on campus. The center will provide diversity resources and training. It’s something the student group “We Are Done” has been pushing for since late last year. The group was formed to push for a more inclusive and diverse campus in the wake of a number of incidents involving allegations of racism on campus.
Fox 6 (Birmingham) – Feb. 1
NBC 13 (Birmingham) – Feb. 1
WAFF-NBC (Huntsville) – Feb. 1
ABC 9 (Columbus, Ga.) – Feb. 1
WDAM 7 (Moselle, Miss.) – Feb. 1
Groundbreaking for new Saban student center at St. Francis University Parrish
NBC 13 (Birmingham) – Feb. 1
Nick and Saban went to church today. They were breaking ground on a new student center at St. Francis Catholic Church that will be named after them.
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – Feb. 1
Tuscaloosa News – Feb. 2
Study: More guns linked to more mass shootings
Real Clear Science – Feb. 1
The United States now has more guns than people, according to estimates published last year in the Washington Post. But even before that disconcerting nugget of information entered the public realm, the U.S. still housed a rather obscene amount of firearms. Though nearly a decade old, the Small Arms Survey of 2007 still offers the most rigorous count of civilian gun ownership worldwide. The U.S. easily placed first, with approximately 88.8 guns per 100 individuals. Yemen came in a distant second with 54.8 firearms per 100 people … Calls to reduce the availability of guns have followed in the wake of these tragic events. But yet to be determined empirically is whether or not gun ownership is even correlated to public mass shootings. Adam Lankford, a professor of criminal justice at University of Alabama, addresses that question with forthcoming research in the journal Violence and Victims.
‘Birth of a Nation’: Who was the real Nat Turner? (Guest Column)
Hollywood Reporter – Feb. 1
Nate Parker’s film The Birth of a Nation, which recently received a rapturous reception, a record distribution deal and the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, tells the story of Nat Turner and the Southampton Rebellion of 1831. To professional scholars, the events at the heart of the film are familiar ones. Indeed, they are standard components of any introductory-level college course in the history of the United States, as the rebellion was easily the most famous and important slave revolt in American history. But it remains unknown to most white Americans, and even to some black Americans. Parker himself has said he had never heard of Nat Turner until he got to college, although he attended high school in the 1990s roughly 50 miles from where Turner lived and died. (Joshua Rothman is professor of history and director of the Summersell Center for the Study of the South at the University of Alabama. He is the author of Flush Times and Fever Dreams: A Story of Capitalism and Slavery in the Age of Jackson and tweets @rothmanistan)
Online voter registration in Alabama
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – Feb. 1
UA student and permanent resident of Muscle Shoals Lauren Casiday, says that this new process made her decide to go ahead and vote.
Nation’s prominent public universities are shifting to out-of-state students
Washington Post – Jan. 30
America’s most prominent public universities were founded to serve the people of their states, but they are enrolling record numbers of students from elsewhere to maximize tuition revenue as state support for higher education withers. The shift has buttressed the finances and reshaped the profile of schools across the country, from the University of California’s famed campuses in Berkeley and Los Angeles to the universities of Arkansas, Oregon, Missouri, South Carolina and numerous other places. Forty-three of the 50 schools known as “state flagships” enrolled a smaller share of freshmen from within their states in 2014 than they had a decade earlier, federal data show. At 10 flagships, state residents formed less than half the freshman class … Nowhere is the trend more pronounced than here at the University of Alabama, where students who cheered this month when the Crimson Tide won its fourth national football championship in seven years were mostly from other states.
Examiner – Feb. 1
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – Feb. 1