Wednesday, March 6, 2013

stop owlcatraz!



The GEO Group, a private prison corporation, is willing to pay Florida Atlantic University 6 million dollars for the naming rights to the new university football stadium, and this has sparked demonstrations by FAU students. The protest organization, Stop Owlcatraz, claims the corporation engages in human rights abuses, particularly against minority prisoners, and they don't want it to be associated with their university. A recent story in The Nation has framed the controversy as the "ground zero fight against new Jim Crow."

1 comment:

  1. As a former college athlete I believe that it is not that big of a deal to want to bring in any additional funds that will be beneficial to help recruit some of the best athletes to come to a university. In all reality no one is really going to care that much to even think about the stadium being named after a prison. One of the comments from a student mentioned something about being referred to as “a girl who went to that jail school”, but to be politically correct the school; if in any sense was not named after a prison. It was the athletic stadium, o if any persons would be in the "jail school" category it would be the athletes and not the students.
    I would have loved for my former university to have been donated any type of extra money toward athletics and we were named after a hog. I feel that deserves a few extra bucks toward my scholarship.
    -Samone Lindsey

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