An Arizona State University junior attending college on scholarship committed suicide on the first day of the spring semester by jumping off the roof of a building on campus. Thomas Wagoner, a 20-year-old economics student, jumped from an unknown building on the Tempe campus at about 2 a.m. His body…
With a few hours left until the official deadline, the Campaign to Recall Diane Douglas, Arizona’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, says it didn’t gather enough signatures to get the recall measure put on a special election ballot. “Our biggest problem was fundraising,” Campaign Chairman Max Goshert tells New Times. “We…
An Arizona State University sorority sister who torched her ex-boyfriend’s condo in May has entered a guilty plea that will put her behind bars for six months. Claudia Rose Drinnan, 21, broke into the home near Hardy Drive and Southern Avenue about 2 a.m. on May 14, climbing into her…
Diane Douglas’ assault case against State School Board President Greg Miller has been slapped down by Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery. Douglas, the Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction who Miller once called “unqualified for the job,” claimed that the board president assaulted her on August 24 at a board meeting…
No open-meeting violation occurred over an order to place anti-abortion stickers in Gilbert Public Schools’ biology textbooks in August, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office ruled. However, the school district’s governing board was set to receive mandatory training last night on Arizona’s Open Meeting Law at a special session because of…
Discovering a huge lack of understanding about the needs of undocumented college students, two Arizona State University students formed a program three years ago to educate campus leaders, staff, and faculty about such challenges and about ways to help. Jesus Cisneros and Davier Rodriguez formed DREAMzone in 2012 with the…
The menacing online poster who threatened to shoot up Arizona State University with an assault rifle Monday is a 12-year-old boy in Canada, law enforcement officials announced today. The boy has “apologized for his actions and the disruption they caused,” according to an ASU police statement. He has been contacted…
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has hired a high-profile Arizona immigration activist to assist his campaign with outreach to Latinos, an increasingly important voting bloc. Erika Anidola, a 28-year-old undocumented immigrant from Mexico, will join the Sanders campaign as a Latino outreach strategist for the southwest states. She starts work…
Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication is lobbying to get its namesake’s face on a postage stamp. Christopher Callahan, the school’s dean, started organizing a letter-writing campaign after the U.S. Postal Service announced last week that it is considering a proposal, submitted by the Society…
When Lily Gallego began attending Carl Hayden Community High School as a freshman, she struggled to keep up with schoolwork and didn’t feel that teachers paid much attention to her. “It was really fast-paced,” she said. “If you didn’t get it, oh well. You moved on to the next lesson…
The number of sexual assaults reported at Arizona State University nearly doubled from 2013 to 2014, according to the university’s annual security report. That may sound ominous, but, according to advocates for victims, it’s actually good news. ASU police investigated 35 cases of rape or forcible fondling in 2014, compared…
People will get offended by anything these days. That’s the hypothesis University of Arizona Alumni Josh Miller set out to test when he launched a tongue-in-cheek petition on Change.org last week calling on rival Arizona State University to stop “using Satan as its mascot.” In the petition, Miller, a 37-year-old…
Rallying under a cry for “no more victims,” a group of Arizona State University students has launched a campaign to pressure the school to repeal its on-campus weapons ban. ASU Students for Self-Defense assembled for its first meeting less than 24 hours before a heavily armed man opened fire on…
Tia Oso, the Black Lives Matter activist — and convicted embezzler — who interrupted a town hall meeting for Democratic presidential candidates in July, will be a guest speaker at an Arizona State University event on Tuesday as part of Ethnic Studies Week. Oso’s scheduled to appear with H.L.T. Quan,…
Former Arizona State University Police Chief John Pickens has been in his new job as director of University Security Initiatives for more than a year now, but it’s unclear what he and the mysterious department he heads have accomplished. In a time of extreme budget cuts among Arizona universities, ASU…
The Arizona Attorney General’s Office has decided not to investigate a complaint it received from the group trying to recall state Superintendent of Education Diane Douglas. Leaders of the Coalition to Recall Diane Douglas filed their complaint on September 8 after learning about an e-mail Douglas’ chief of staff, Michael Bradley,…
Necessity really is, as Plato said, the mother of invention. Arizona State University managed to earn the title “most innovative school” from the prestigious college rankers at U.S. News & World Report this year — despite the fact that Arizona leads the nation in higher education budget cuts. Number 2…
The group trying to recall Arizona Superintendent of Education Diane Douglas filed a complaint with the state Attorney General’s Office this week after an educational nonprofit passed on an e-mail it received from Douglas’ chief of staff, Michael Bradley. Members of the Coalition to Recall Diane Douglas contend that Bradley’s…
The city of Phoenix sent an official demand to a disgraced Arizona State University professor today for the money it paid for police-training material the city alleges actually was an “egregious” copying job. Phoenix’s move is yet another blow to the now-stained reputation of Matthew Whitaker, a history professor and…
Rather than tearing an offensive page out of an honors biology textbook as previously considered, Gilbert Public Schools this month chose to put pro-abstinence, anti-abortion stickers in the book. Laura Conaway, writing for CNN’s Rachel Maddow Show, broke the story last Friday after a viewer tipped her off, and an…
In the neighborhoods surrounding Arizona State University, the first three weekends of school mean big parties, loud music, and streets full of drunk co-eds celebrating new-found freedom from parental control. For the last two years, those weekends have also meant an influx of police force — not just from the…
Seventy-two percent of Arizona fourth-graders can’t read proficiently, according to a new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, nearly 10 percent less than the national average. Mastering reading by fourth grade is critical because at that age children begin reading to learn other subjects, such as social studies, science,…
