Author: Jerry Leger

Every fall, a certain type of student appears on the Southern Virginia University campus in Buena Vista. They are older than the freshmen around them, frequently quieter, and occasionally have the subtle impression that they have already experienced a chapter of adulthood before picking up a textbook. missionaries who have returned. young veterans. Late-twenties mothers balancing a chemistry syllabus and a stroller. For years, they received the same treatment as everyone else at the university. That’s going to change. Knight’s CREST, which stands for Credit for Recognized Experience, Service, or Training, is a program that SVU announced this week that…

When a top seed is three outs away from losing a game it was never supposed to lose, a certain kind of silence descends upon a college baseball stadium. When UCLA, the nation’s top overall seed, faced Saint Mary’s on Friday night in Westwood, you could practically hear it as they left the field in disbelief. The Bruins were defeated 3-2. They were on the verge of becoming the first top overall seed in the super regional era to leave the tournament without a single victory by Saturday afternoon. Naturally, they didn’t. They were saved by back-to-back home runs and…

The kind of early-summer haze that covers Devon Park an hour before first pitch and makes the outfield lights appear softer than they should is currently present in Oklahoma City. The Women’s College World Series is in its peculiar middle phase, where the games are crucial but the attendance hasn’t yet reached its peak. On Thursday, eight teams showed up. Only six remain by Sunday afternoon, and two of them will be leaving before supper. If you read the schedule slowly, it tells a story. There will be two crucial elimination games on Sunday, May 31. Nobody in the Longhorns’…

The video is brief. Depending on which clip was shared the most, it could be nine or ten seconds. With a fiberglass pole that appears excessively long for her body, a child wearing red shorts and swinging her ponytail jogs down the runway. She grows plants. She gets up. The pole then bends in an unexpected direction close to the top of the arc, causing her to land on a strip of rubber track that was only intended to catch spikes rather than the foam pit. She made it out alive. That is the important part. However, the discussion that…

On a Friday afternoon, you’ll hear the typical sounds in almost every high school locker room: cleats slapping concrete, a coach berating someone for being late for the bus, or someone arguing over a missed tackle from the previous week. However, if you listen a bit longer, something else comes through. Parlays and spreads. over-unders. Before warming up, a sophomore frowns at a screen while checking his phone. No one recoils. Now it’s just a part of the atmosphere. Although it took time for that change to occur, most adults were unaware of how quickly it was happening. A 28-year-old…

On Monday mornings, when the students arrive in my middle school classroom still half asleep and clutch laptops they hardly remember to charge, the fluorescent lights hum a little louder. I teach a writing course that was created from the ground up last year after someone in the district finally acknowledged that fifty minutes of English wasn’t sufficient to accomplish all that English is meant to do. The pupils are still unsure of how to interpret it. To be honest, neither do I. The way they bargain with the page is what most strikes me. With the gravity of a…

Tucked away in a press release that most parents likely glanced at on their phones during the school run, the announcement was made on a Tuesday morning. A section on AI literacy will be added to the SAT by the College Board, a nonprofit that has influenced American college admissions for almost a century. In the fall of 2027, the new section will go live. 18 months. Students have that runway, which already seems shorter than it actually is. This seems different to anyone who has seen the SAT evolve over the years—the calculator changes, the essay coming and going,…

Parents waited in line outside a community center on a muggy afternoon in Northwest Houston to learn more about an unapproved charter school. It was Heritage Classical Academy’s fourth attempt to receive approval from the Texas State Board of Education. The application was hardly altered. However, the political landscape had changed significantly. Speaking with those engaged in these initiatives gives the impression that the public has hardly noticed as the game’s rules are being changed in real time. Americans were once persuaded that the charter school movement was an impartial, nearly technocratic experiment. Competition leads to better schools. Children in…

The Denison University campus in Granville, Ohio, on a somewhat cloudy Tuesday, appears to be the perfect setting for a low-key political science revolution. historic brick structures. Half-listening to podcasts, students pass by with coffee cups. There is no indication in the scene that a small group of undergraduates has been working on one of the more difficult issues in American democracy somewhere within the Alford Community Leadership and Involvement Center. However, that is precisely what is taking place. Driven by DU Votes, a nonpartisan student organization on campus since the 2018 cycle, the study aimed to comprehend a topic…

Before most people had finished their morning coffee, the picture went viral. Chris Brown accepts an honorary doctorate from Harvest Christian University while wearing academic regalia. The image carried a strange weight for an artist whose name has been associated with courtroom records and chart records in nearly equal measure. The image spread so quickly because it seemed like no one knew exactly how to respond. The contrast is where the strangeness lies. When Brown was sixteen in the winter of 2004, his formal education came to an end. He packed up his life in Tappahannock, Virginia, and moved north…