Once for Women Only, Georgian Court Looks to Men’s Teams to Raise Profile

Ben Solomon for The New York Times

Luka Zgonjanin (5) of Serbia arrived in August at Georgian Court, a liberal arts college on the outskirts of the Jersey Shore.

LAKEWOOD, N.J. — Luka Zgonjanin arrived in the United States from Serbia in August, barely able to speak English. He had accepted a scholarship to play basketball at Georgian Court, a small liberal arts university on the outskirts of the Jersey Shore. A few months earlier, he had never heard of the college.

Ben Solomon for The New York Times

The Georgian Court men’s basketball team, during its first home loss Tuesday, plays its games at the Wellness Center, which holds 1,200 spectators.

Yet Zgonjanin, 19, quickly grew comfortable in his new surroundings.

“For me, it’s a good feeling because there are many girls on the campus,” a smiling Zgonjanin said after Georgian Court’s first men’s basketball home game on Nov. 20, a 87-82 victory against Mercy College.

The sight of male students living in dorms or dribbling basketballs in the gymnasium here remains a novelty. This fall, after 104 years as a women’s college, Georgian Court became a full-time coed institution. Zgonjanin is one of about 50 student-athletes who make up the first men’s athletic teams in university history.

“It’s a great honor to start something from scratch, to make history,” Zgonjanin said. “Everything we do is a first.”

As a coeducational N.C.A.A. Division II program, Georgian Court legally had to include athletics for students of both sexes. Sister Rosemary Jeffries, Georgian Court’s president, described the transition as “like a reverse Title IX,” referring to the 1972 law that has helped female student-athletes gain athletic opportunities.

But the university also hopes the addition of men’s teams will expand awareness of the university beyond the campus gates, shedding old stigmas as it aims to increase its enrollment.

“It will take us some time to get more well known as a coed institution, and I think athletics in some ways helps us do some of that,” Jeffries said. “We’ve been in this region a long time, and people know us as one thing.”

The Sisters of Mercy, an organization of Catholic women dedicated to serving the underprivileged, founded Georgian Court in 1908, as Mount Saint Mary’s College in North Plainfield, N.J. The university moved to Lakewood in 1924, after purchasing land from the Gould family, whose patriarch, Jay Gould, amassed his fortune in America’s growing railroad industry in the late 19th century.

Male students were first allowed to attend evening classes at Georgian Court in 1979 but could not live on campus until this year. According to a university official, there are 301 undergraduate male students, up from 190 in 2012. In total, the university has 1,567 undergraduates.

Athletics had never been a major draw for the student body. A sizable percentage of Georgian Court’s population includes adult commuters who work full time and are returning to college to finish a degree.

Laura Liesman, who was hired as athletic director in 2003, said she never envisioned such an expansion. When she came to Georgian Court, there were about 45 student-athletes participating in six women’s sports at the N.A.I.A. level.

This year, Georgian Court has five men’s teams: soccer, basketball, cross-country, and indoor and outdoor track and field. It fields women’s teams in those sports, as well as in tennis, lacrosse, softball and volleyball.

Recently, the athletic facilities have been upgraded. Liesman’s original office was in the Casino building, an outdated hall where the Goulds held indoor polo matches in the early 1900s. The building, which also hosted Georgian Court’s women’s basketball and volleyball teams, had no bleachers; folding chairs were set up for crowds, usually at a maximum of 100. Today, the hub of athletics is the Wellness Center, which opened in 2008 and has a gymnasium that holds 1,200 spectators.

Still, engaging people outside the campus has been a challenge. Lakewood has more than 90,000 residents and is among the fastest-growing cities in New Jersey. But a majority of its population are Haredi Jews — Beth Medrash Govoha, one of the largest yeshivas in the world, is three blocks from Georgian Court’s main entrance — and there are cultural barriers throughout the town.

Creating name recognition in neighboring locales has also proved challenging.

Once for Women Only, Georgian Court Looks to Men’s Teams to Raise Profile

Battle for Richard III reburial site on hold as high court case is adjourned

Richard III, who was killed at Bosworth in 1485. The dispute between Leicester and York implies his new burial website may possibly not be made a decision by following August. Photograph: Leicester cathedral/EPA

Richard III’s stays might be in search of a home for a although longer after a high court situation was adjourned amid anger and disappointment in London.

Leicester city council’s claim that it has a key role in choosing in which the last Plantagenet king of England must be interred or buried could indicate that the hopes of Leicester University and the city’s cathedral for putting his skeleton in a new tomb by up coming August will be dashed.

The council was an interested celebration in the proceedings, and on Tuesday attorneys for the nearby authority said it was ready to launch its personal consultation.

Lawyers for the Plantagenet Alliance, members of which claim to be descendants of the king, effectively argued that the authority should be a third defendant in the case they are conducting against the Ministry of Justice and the city’s university more than the way they have handled the legal method that facilitated the dig for Richard’s physique and then the selection on its reburial.

No new hearing will be attainable before the new year. The alliance argues that the ministry, which granted an exhumation licence, and Leicester University, did not seek the advice of widely on the situation of in which the king must be laid to rest York and other spots could be choices, they say.

The failure to take into account relatives’ wishes or the king’s “personal preferences” had breached their human rights, the alliance claimed.

The university and cathedral authorities mentioned after the judicial review hearing had broken up that they have been disappointed at the delays.

The authorities, which said they had followed due legal method, would not be drawn on whether they would nonetheless consider leaving the decision on Richard’s stays to an independent panel of professionals .

The university might however face a selection on whether it will have to apply for an extension of the exhumation licence. Any consideration of modifications to the cathedral to accommodate the entire body of the king are presently on hold because of the case.

Matthew Howarth, of the Yorkshire law company Gordons, which is representing the alliance, stated the council’s actions meant there would inevitably be delays. “We are not going to finish by August subsequent year.”

Battle for Richard III reburial site on hold as high court case is adjourned

Court forces student protesters to end occupation

College students have occupied the senate chamber at Birmingham University. Photograph: Defend Education

Student group Defend Training, which has been occupying the University of Birmingham’s senate chamber since Wednesday evening, has been forced to contact off its protest.

The occupation will end right now right after court proceedings concluded with a possession buy to remove the recent occupants and an injunction towards related unauthorised occupational protests.

The recent student union vice-president Hattie Craig, a former vice-president Simon Furse and “individuals unknown” have been named in the injunction, and will face imprisonment if concerned in comparable occupations in the subsequent twelve months.

Defend Schooling is demanding higher university democracy, fairer shell out for university staff and that the vice-chancellor “David Eastwood and the University of Birmingham must publicly take back their position that fees should be increased”.

Calling for a genuine-terms pay improve for university personnel, the group says the Vice Chancellor’s salary of £409,000 is unacceptable when reduced-paid employees encounter a shell out rise of one%. The group blockaded five entrances to the university’s Edgbaston campus earlier this month to increase awareness of the spend ratio among the lowest- and the highest-paid employees.

It is opposing calls for tuition fees to be improved to £16,000 and inisists “staff and students must have more electrical power in each and every level of university selection generating”.

Justifying the occupation, it says: “We are fighting this campaign to consider and put stress on the university to directly accept the demands but also simply because we wish to start a debate and dialogue among students and workers at the university about the type of institution we want it to be, and how we can bring this about.”

In an interview with the University of Birmingham’s pupil newspaper, Redbrick, a spokesperson for Defend Schooling stated: “Inside the occupation, morale is higher.” A protest was organised on Friday to present support for the occupation, which protesters say was filmed by university safety.

Defend Education have been tweeting from inside the occupied senate chamber, the place they have been able to get provisions delivered.

View on campus has been mixed. Charlie Winch, a third-year international relations pupil, says: “This little group of occupiers risk widening the already developing divide amongst the university and its students. The university is not going to modify its basic place in light of this occupation.”

Ben Jackson, a third-12 months English with creative creating pupil, was at the protest. He says: “We discussed on Friday what we as a student local community must do in an easy, friendly and open method. It really is a shame that senior management are proving so challenging to speak to, even to people who’ve sat themselves down and presented their ideas and intentions totally and obviously.”

The occupants’ spokesperson claims the university “completely ignored our demands”. He says they had to make the protest “unmanageable” for the university to pay attention, and that so far it has been “unbelievably productive”.

The University of Birmingham says in a statement: “Universities are spots of cost-free speech and we respect the rights of students to protest peacefully and inside of the law.

“Our priority is the safety and wellbeing of our students, personnel and the wider local community, and we are concerned where any protest poses a prospective hazard to protesters or bystanders, or triggers unwarranted disruptions to study or function, or damage to residence.

“We are especially concerned that the actions of this modest variety of students is diverting safety and security sources and probably diminishing the safety of our 28,000 other college students.”

Court forces student protesters to end occupation

Appeal court referral is a welcome boost for university Innocence Projects | Jon Robins

The Criminal Cases Overview Commission referred the situation of Dwaine George to the court of appeal on Friday Photograph: Graham Turner

The Criminal Situations Review Commission (CCRC) referred the case of Dwaine George to the court of appeal on Friday. Daniel Dale died nearly instantaneously as he ran away from a shooting in the Miles Platting area of Manchester in July 2001. George, then 18 years previous, was sentenced to lifestyle in prison for the murder after a jury at Preston Crown Court located him guilty. He pleaded not guilty.

A handful of weeks ago George, now 29, was launched from prison on existence licence, having studied challenging and been awarded a very first class social sciences degree. “I have explained from day 1 that it wasn’t me. I know there are even now enormous hurdles ahead, but I want to demonstrate my innocence,” George says.

The notable attribute of the referral is that it truly is the 1st time a case has been referred to the court of appeal on application created by a university-based Innocence Task. The first Innocence Undertaking was started in the Uk in 2005 and there are now some 27 projects based at universities in England and Wales.

George had appealed against his conviction in 2004 but the appeal was dismissed. The new referral is primarily based on proof relating to gunshot residue identified by college students at Cardiff University Law College. The CCRC commissioned an skilled analysis of the residue and the referral draws on the report. Cardiff University Law School Innocence Task has manufactured “a extremely important contribution to the situation and to the referral of Mr George’s convictions”, the CCRC says.

George’s case was a single of six instances that students at Cardiff Law College investigated, overseen by its director Julie Price tag and consultant Dr Dennis Eady. “We worked on it for nearly 4 many years, then it was with the CCRC for a additional three”, writes Price. She adds that it is a time for “reflection rather than celebration.”

“A younger particular person was killed. That victim’s loved ones noticed a person convicted and they are now faced with the information that the conviction is below the spotlight twelve many years after the event. A wrongful conviction will imply that the true perpetrator may possibly still be strolling our streets.”

Occasions moves at a glacial pace in the beneath-resourced and overly-complicated planet of criminal appeals, nevertheless it is a shock to discover that this is the initial case to be referred via an application signed off by a university. There was the Simon Hall referral – despite the fact that the function was largely completed by Bristol University, the application was apparently made in the identify of the solicitors’ company who recommended them previously. And, of course, Hall confessed. That bombshell above the summer stunned many campaigners who viewed Hall as a flagship case for the movement and the very first genuine prospect of getting a conviction overturned.

It led to some inner reflection within the university local community – not least by Price tag who has been candid about her frustrations with the lack of progress in her Diary of an Innocence Venture column. “I don’t think that university innocence projects have even scratched the surface of the miscarriage of justice problem. Even though they have played an important portion in educating our potential attorneys about the iniquities of the criminal justice system,” Price tells me. No one particular would doubt the commitment and energy of students doing work difficult to investigate instances of these alleging to be victims of miscarriages who would otherwise have nowhere to flip. As David Robinson, legal advisor at the CCRC, reflected this month at the Innocence Network United kingdom (INUK) conference, some 27 projects are investigating around a hundred instances and “presumably dozens much more” for these innocence tasks who operate outdoors of INUK. The Cardiff project is not portion of INUK.

But Robinson went on to reflect on “the mismatch” among the quantity of cases getting investigated and the amount of applications to the CCRC.

Given that 2005, there has only been applications relating to 17 individual situations from a total 5 universities. There is not significantly adore misplaced between INUK and the CCRC. The conference was the 1st time the Commission had been invited given that 2008 and INUK’s founder Michael Naughton has consistently produced the argument that the watchdog is no longer fit for function. A lot of of the considerations about the money-strapped and overwhelmed CCRC are properly-manufactured, some aren’t.

No doubt with that historical past in mind, David Robinson provided the INUK students “some kind of context” for their figures. Considering that 2005, 266 CCRC referrals have gone back to the courts – almost specifically half of the total amount of situations referred by the Commission. “How several meritorious circumstances may there be out there in the hands of innocence tasks and how numerous far more referrals may possibly we have been ready to make if we had noticed much more applications from them?” Robinson asked the INUK delegates.

Price tag hopes that referral of George’s situation “will give a welcome increase to the morale of Uk Innocence Projects at this time of crossroads and brick walls”. One hopes so.

Appeal court referral is a welcome boost for university Innocence Projects | Jon Robins

Texas University’s Race Admissions Policy Is Debated Before a Federal Court

AUSTIN, Tex. — An affirmative-action program at the University of Texas at Austin that takes applicants’ race into account was needless since the campus had accomplished a “critical mass” of minority college students, lawyers for the white applicant who sued the university advised a federal appeals court right here on Wednesday in a case with large stakes for the potential of race-conscious admissions policies at public colleges and universities.

University attorneys denied a critical mass of underrepresented college students had been reached. They mentioned the institution was entitled to supplement its race-neutral admissions policies with ones that consider race into account to attain diversity. But the response of the appeals judges, who expressed skepticism at occasions about the method in which the university applied race-conscious selections and the university’s abstract definition of “critical mass,” illustrated the complex path for the Texas flagship university, as it tries to present that its admissions plan was necessary.

Bert Rein, the attorney for the white applicant, Abigail Fisher, said the university had no numerical specifications to establish when its pupil physique was sufficiently varied. “They have no metric,” he said. “ ‘We know it when we see it.’ That is the university’s place.”

The attorneys for Ms. Fisher, the university and minority student groups appeared ahead of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Wednesday to type through a tangle of new legal problems raised by the Supreme Court in June. The Supreme Court sent the situation back to the Fifth Circuit, instructing it to apply a greater degree of scrutiny to the university’s race-aware admissions system.

The decision, even though usually upholding the use of race as a factor in the program, jeopardized the future of it at the very same time, by instructing courts to use tougher specifications and to verify that race-neutral options have been not offered to the university.

On Wednesday, the query of no matter whether the university had any race-neutral options obtainable, and regardless of whether the campus had reached a so-named essential mass of minority college students, was the target of debate.

The Fifth Circuit judges, who appeared equally skeptical of some of the arguments created by Ms. Fisher’s attorney, wondered aloud whether or not they need to send the case back to a district court. They listened to arguments from all sides without creating any rulings. A choice is not probably to come for weeks or months.

Lawyers for the university as effectively as these representing black and Hispanic college students argued that there had been no race-neutral choices accessible that would permit it to attain the positive aspects of diversity.

A lot of black college students, they argued, seasoned racial isolation on campus among 1997 and 2004, when the university did not consider race in admissions. Throughout that time period, they mentioned, African-Americans in no way manufactured up more than four.five percent of any freshman class.

The situation was filed by Ms. Fisher, who explained that because she is white the University of Texas had denied her admission in 2008.  The university mentioned she would not have been admitted even with no any policies centered on diversity. She  has because graduated from Louisiana State University.

When the appeals court 1st heard Ms. Fisher’s situation in 2011, it upheld the admissions plan, saying it had been authorized by the Supreme Court’s 2003 choice in Grutter v. Bollinger.  That determination, by a 5-to-four vote, said that public colleges and universities could not use stage systems or quotas to improve minority enrollment but could consider race into account in vaguer approaches. But the Supreme Court was not pleased with the Fifth Circuit’s analysis.  In its seven-to-1 selection in June, it told the court to get a a lot more skeptical look at the university’s admissions practices. 

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, creating for the bulk, reaffirmed that educational diversity is an interest adequate to conquer the common ban on racial classifications by the government. But he additional that public universities need to have excellent factors for the certain strategies they use to accomplish that purpose.  They need to, he wrote, show that “available, workable race-neutral options do not suffice” just before taking account of race in admissions decisions. 

On the situation of vital mass, Gregory Garre, the university’s lawyer, described it to the judges as an abstract method that met Supreme Court standards, and was based mostly on information on minority admissions as effectively as faculty observations. The Supreme Court has utilised the term to describe a university’s qualitative rather than quantitative evaluation of whether it has accomplished ample diversity.

William C. Powers Jr., the university’s president, expressed concern about the impact that losing the case would have. “It would be a setback to diversity, not just at the University of Texas, but at universities across the nation,” he said after the hearing.

Adam Liptak contributed reporting from Washington.

Texas University’s Race Admissions Policy Is Debated Before a Federal Court