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George Washington’s lessons and the future of political civility

A list of 110 rules of civility became associated with the nation’s first president, George Washington, through a notebook that he assembled as a 13-year-old in 1745. At the time, it was common for students in the colonies to copy lists of social rules and morals. Recent presidents, despite the inevitable divisions in society on their watch, have tended to be conciliators rather than agitators. Donald Trump was an agitator from the start, experts said.

Cornell Clayton
Cornell Clayton

“Beginning with his behavior in the Republican primary debates, continuing through the general election, and now in the White House, Donald Trump had not just ignored but delighted in breaking the norms of civil political behavior,” said Cornell W. Clayton, director of the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service at Washington State University and author of Civility and Democracy in America: A Reasonable Understanding.

Examples of Trump acting outside of shared norms for modern presidents include his taunting nicknames for political opponents (“Little Marco,” “Lyin’ Ted”), his chants of “lock her up” against defeated Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, and his consistent exaggerations and falsehoods, scholars said.

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Politifact

Winter Olympics won’t be #OlympicsSoWhite

More than 40 black athletes are competing at the Winter Olympics.

David Leonard
David Leonard

“It demonstrates that there is progress being made through the hard work perseverance and talents of athletes of colour who are making the US Winter Olympic team look like the United States, and that’s something we should celebrate,” said David Leonard, a professor in the Washington State University Department of Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies.

But Leonard and others say the diversity issue is far from settled. Some winter sports, notably biathlon and speedskating, fell short of the United States Olympic Committee leadership’s 2016 diversity and inclusion scorecard benchmarks for athletes of color on U.S. national teams, the most recent data available.

The diversity goals are different for each sport and include criteria such as financial resources, staff size, and a particular sport’s NCAA pipeline.

“The fact that there’s still work to be done demonstrates that issues surrounding access, surrounding inequalities, persist,” Leonard said.

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Foley speaker: Take a deeper look at sexual violence

Paris professor gives insight into international sexual/gender-based violence

An influx of funding to prevent sexual/gender-based violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo may just be scratching the surface of a problem with a deeply complex undercurrent, said Jane Freedman, a professor of politics at the Universite de Paris 8 in Paris who spoke on the issue Monday afternoon as part of the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service’s ongoing Coffee & Politics series at Washington State University Pullman

Gender-based violence, Freedman said, was first brought to the United Nations Security Council’s table at the start of the millennium, when it passed Resolution 1325, considered a landmark resolution for acknowledging the disproportionate impact of war on women in the form of sexual violence.

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Moscow-Pullman Daily News

Yakima Valley families cope with pain as loved ones’ murders remain unsolved

Amelie PedneaultParents of a man murdered in March 2017 expressed frustration with what they called a lack of communication with detectives on how the case is progressing.

That’s a common complaint with families of those killed in unsolved crimes, said Amelie Pedneault, an assistant professor of criminology at Washington State University. The lack of communication makes people think the case is not progressing or lacks importance to law enforcement, Pedneault said.

That leads to some families trying to investigate the crime on their own, she said.

She said researchers found a good solution is to have regular contact between police and the families, and even allowing them to see a case file so they know where the case stands.

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Yakima Herald

Girls Who Code teaches that computer skills aren’t just for boys

Local chapter of national organization builds wall of ideas in first year

Regina McMenomy
McMenomy

Regina McMenomy, an English instructor at Washington State University Vancouver, is facilitating a new chapter of Girls Who Code, a national organization whose mission is to provide computer science instruction to young women and girls through clubs, classes and online programs.

McMenomy isn’t a coder herself. That’s part of the point of Girls Who Code, she said. She’ll be learning along with the group how to write computer-generated music, develop games or design websites. It all depends on their interests.

“The agency is entirely theirs,” she said.

Emma Anderson, 12, and Ivy Isch, 11, are friends who attend Discovery Middle School. The pair huddled around a computer, experimenting with EarSketch, a program that teaches Python and JavaScript through the creation of music.

Emma enjoys learning code in a room of all girls, she said. It’s important that girls don’t “grow up thinking only guys can do” programming.

The girls, who meet once a week on Wednesdays, will over the next 14 weeks develop a virtual murder mystery using a variety of code and programming skills.

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The Columbian