Critics accuse petition gatherers of fraud
OKLAHOMA CITY — Critics of an anti-affirmative action petition drive in Oklahoma have accused petition-gatherers of lying to voters about what they’re signing.
“We think we can and will stop it from going on the ballot,” said Shanta Driver, national spokeswoman for By Any Means Necessary, a national coalition aimed at defending affirmative action, integration and immigrant rights. “This was racially-targeted voter fraud. We’ve had people come up to us, who are labor leaders, say they were embarrassed because they signed this petition. They thought they were signing a petition that sought to do the exact opposite.”
The Oklahoma Civil Rights Initiative seeks to put a measure before voters that would ban government-sponsored race and gender preferences in public education, state hiring and the awarding of public contracts.
Ward Connerly, who has spearheaded opposition to affirmative action in employment and education in California and Michigan, told The Oklahoman the opposition group was making “ridiculous charges.”
“If we would have said this initiative bans affirmative action, we would have been throwing out the baby with the bath water,” said Connerly, who heads the American Civil Rights Institute. “This initiative says there should be no preferential treatment to anyone.”
The group also alleged that the petition included unregistered voters and duplicate signatures. There are some pages where all the signatures were in the same handwriting.
Other pages show multiple signers used the same mailing address, Driver said.
Connerly said his campaign is looking into the possibility of duplicate signatures.
The Oklahoma Civil Rights Initiative submitted 2,000 signatures — more than necessary to place the measure on the ballot. The Oklahoma Secretary of State found some duplication and irregularities.
It is still unclear if the office will certify the petition or defer to the state Supreme Court.
Fisk president says it now has money to display art collection
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Fisk University President Hazel O’Leary has told a court that the financially struggling Nashville college now has money to renovate a gallery to house a prized art collection donated by painter Georgia O’Keeffe.
O’Leary testified last week that recent grants, backed by an infusion of donations, give the historically black school enough money to finish the renovations and display the art.
The university is battling with the New Mexico-based Georgia O’Keeffe Museum over control of the 101-piece collection of American works. The Santa Fe museum is the legal representative of the artist’s estate.
Years of financial troubles led Fisk to mortgage all its buildings and drain about $7 million from its endowment. The school’s recent efforts to sell two of its paintings and a stake in the collection have been blocked in court.
The museum is demanding the collection revert to it, saying Fisk has violated the conditions attached to O’Keeffe’s gift. During the trial, the museum has tried to paint a picture of Fisk having total disregard for the collection by not showing it or displaying it intact, loaning out pieces without permission, and trying to sell parts of it.
The artwork has been held in storage in a Nashville museum since November 2005. But last Wednesday, school officials testified the gallery could be open as early as this summer.
Fisk lawyers introduced letters that showed that the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation had been trying to encourage the school to get out from under the conditions of the donation when the painter gave the collection to the school in 1949.
1974 desegregation order lifted for NYC school
NEW YORK — A federal judge has overturned 34-year-old racial quotas that were designed to desegregate a Brooklyn middle school but ended up forcing it to turn away talented minority students after it became a sought-after academy for gifted students.
In the wake of last Friday’s ruling, Mark Twain Intermediate School will adopt a “race-neutral” admissions policy for 2008-2009, city Education Department spokeswoman Debra Wexler said. The agency sought the ruling after a minority couple sued over a student’s rejection.
The Coney Island school “has been desegregated. The court has no further jurisdiction in this case,” U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein wrote.
The court imposed the desegregation order in 1974, finding that the local school board was deliberately steering white, middle-class students away from Mark Twain, although the district it served was 70 percent white. The court said the school’s demographics must roughly mirror those of the district.
Now, whites make up about 40 percent of the district’s middle-school students, and Mark Twain has become a selective and well regarded magnet school. Students must take tests or audition to get in.
Because the court order still dictated the school’s racial balance, white students have effectively competed against one another to get into the school, and minority students separately.
That has resulted in different standards that have put qualified minority students at a disadvantage, according to a lawsuit filed last month by the parents of an Indian American girl. She took the school’s music admissions test last year and scored above the average for white students, but below the average for minority students, and was rejected, according to the lawsuit.
In a starkly divided ruling in June 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court limited voluntary efforts to integrate public schools. The ruling did not affect the several hundred public school districts under court desegregation orders nationwide.
