At 17, She Just Passed the State Bar of California [ NYTimes ]

The flava:

Sophia Park, 17, and her family huddled around her laptop one evening this month as she entered her
details onto the State Bar of California’s website and clicked “Check pass list.”

Sophia’s smile grew as she read the results: She passed the July 2024 general bar exam, a requirement to be licensed as a practicing lawyer in the Golden State. Her family clapped and hugged her.

“I am very happy and excited,” Sophia said in a video that the family uploaded to YouTube.

The California bar is among the most difficult licensing requirements exams in the country, and just under 54 percent of the 8,291 people who took it in July passed.

But Sophia’s accomplishment goes beyond that. At 17 years and 8 months old, she is believed to be the youngest person to pass the state’s bar exam, besting the previous record-holder: her older brother, Peter, who passed the exam in November 2023, when he was 17 years and 11 months old.

Sophia achieved this feat while taking advanced courses online from home, enabling her to graduate from high school, college and law school in about four years. . . .

The article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/19/us/california-bar-exam-sophia-park.html

St. Louis Community College soccer star who wants to be a nun [ KSDK News ]

Black University of Alabama students, parents outraged after getting racist text message [ WVTM 13 News ]

Moriarty from Midland emails a thought

Election Day is here on campus. The Student Affairs employees are aroused. Many of the students seem giddy. The faculty are keeping their heads down, somewhat. I'm wondering whether or not my anxieties should be high. What will tomorrow bring?

--Moriarty from Midland

Being a College Athlete Now Means Constant Travel and Missed Classes [ NYTimes ]

The flava:

Playing football this season for the U.C.L.A. Bruins means being a frequent (and distant) flier. The team began the campaign in August with a win at the University of Hawaii. Their next road games sent the Bruins to Louisiana State, then Penn State, and back across the country to Rutgers. Then, a trip to Nebraska on Saturday and a jaunt up to Washington.

Such is the life of the modern-day college athlete, with U.C.L.A. moving into the Big Ten Conference, the erstwhile standard-bearer for Midwest football that now stretches from Piscataway to Puget Sound.

In all, the Bruins will travel 22,226 miles this season — nearly enough to circumnavigate the globe. It is the equivalent of 33 round trips to the Bay Area to play Stanford or U.C. Berkeley, U.C.L.A.’s former rivals that have moved to a newly bicoastal league of their own. . . .

The article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/30/us/college-football-conference-realignment.html

Fewer Black men are attending HBCUs | All Things Considered [ NPR ]

tension

Academic Sexual Misconduct Database

https://academic-sexual-misconduct-database.org/

Far-Right Pastor Wants False Sexual Assault Reports to Be Punishable by Death

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/far-pastor-wants-false-sexual-141959467.html

You can fool yourself

You can cheat until you're blind

You can cut your heart

It can happen

Clemson frat opens its arms to student with special needs [ CBS Sunday Morning ]

Must-read books for 1st-year college students [ Good Morning America ]

Tracking college closures [ The Hechinger Report ]

The flava:

College enrollment has been declining for more than a decade, and that means that many institutions are struggling to pay their bills. A growing number of them are making the difficult decision to close.

In the first nine months of 2024, 28 degree-granting institutions closed, compared with 15 in all of 2023, according to an analysis of federal data provided to The Hechinger Report by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association or SHEEO.

Earlier this year, our colleague Jon Marcus reported that colleges were closing at a rate of nearly one per week. The Hechinger Report has created a tool to track these changes in the higher education landscape. Readers can search through the archive of colleges that have closed since 2008, and we will update it periodically with the latest shutdowns. . . . 

The article:

https://hechingerreport.org/tracking-college-closures/