Category Archives: Peoria Journal Star

Bradley University, Peoria Journal Star

Did Bradley violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act?

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From my research, it appears that Bradley did not violate Alicia Butler’s privacy by disclosing that she did not receive any degrees at the school. However, Butler is doing the right thing by getting a lawyer anyway. A lawyer will make sure all of Bradley’s t’s were crossed and their i’s dotted.

The U.S. Department of Education has some pretty strict privacy policies on school records. According to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA):

A school MAY disclose education records without consent when:

  • The disclosure is to school officials who have been determined to have legitimate educational interests as set forth in the institution’s annual notification of rights to students;
  • The student is seeking or intending to enroll in another school;
  • The disclosure is to state or local educational authorities auditing or enforcing Federal or State supported education programs or enforcing Federal laws which relate to those programs;
  • The disclosure is to the parents of a student who is a dependent for income tax purposes;
  • The disclosure is in connection with determining eligibility, amounts, and terms for financial aid or enforcing the terms and conditions of financial aid;
  • The disclosure is pursuant to a lawfully issued court order or subpoena; or
  • The information disclosed has been appropriately designated as directory information by the school.

The only possible category under which Bradley could have disclosed info about Alicia Butler to the press is the last bullet point, “directory information.” What is that? The FERPA FAQ answers that (emphasis mine):

FERPA defines “directory information” as information contained in the education records of a student that would not generally be considered harmful or an invasion of privacy if disclosed. Typically, “directory information” includes information such as name, address, telephone listing, date and place of birth, participation in officially recognized activities and sports, and dates of attendance. A school may disclose “directory information” to third parties without consent if it has given public notice of the types of information which it has designated as “directory information,” the parent’s or eligible student’s right to restrict the disclosure of such information, and the period of time within which a parent or eligible student has to notify the school in writing that he or she does not want any or all of those types of information designated as “directory information.” The means of notification could include publication in various sources, including a newsletter, in a local newspaper, or in the student handbook. The school could also include the “directory information” notification as part of the general notification of rights under FERPA. The school does not have to notify a parent or eligible student individually. (34 CFR § 99.37.)

So, Bradley gets to choose what information will be designated “directory information.” And they have. According to Bradley’s website, they consider the following information “directory information,” and thus, able to be disseminated without the consent of the student (emphasis mine):

  • Name and address, including telephone listing, local, permanent, and e-mail.
  • Parent name and address, (for news releases only).
  • Major field of study.
  • Dates of attendence.
  • Class and full-time/part-time status.
  • Approved candidacy for graduation.
  • Degrees and awards received.
  • Most recent institution attended by student.
  • Participation in officially recognized activities and sports.
  • Weight and height of athletic team members.
  • Birthdate will be validated only when furnished by the person making inquiry, for positive identification of the student.

Students can sign a “Stop of Release” form to prevent this information from being disclosed without their consent, but according to the Journal Star, Butler did not sign one.

Elections, Peoria Journal Star, Peoria Public Schools

Alicia Butler’s credentials questioned

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Alicia ButlerThe Journal Star is accusing Alicia Butler of falsely claiming to have a bachelors and masters degree from Bradley University. Butler has not directly denied it.

Anyone know any more about this issue? I mean, Alicia has been on the school board for a while now. No one thought to check out her credentials before this? How did this come up all of sudden, right before the election?

I can’t quite understand Butler’s response as reported. Whether or not you have a degree is easy enough to prove — all you have to do is get out your diploma. If these allegations turn out to be true, it will be not only professionally, but personally devastating to Butler. I’m not a big Alicia Butler fan, but honestly I hate to see this happen to anyone; I hope the allegations are untrue.

Someone out there knows what’s going on — come on… give!

Update (3/31): Now that I’ve read the full article that ran in Saturday’s paper, I have to say this looks very bad for Alicia. All the other candidates were easily able to provide proof of their college degrees. As one commenter pointed out, this is easy to do. In fact, if anyone questioned my degree from ICC or my wife’s degree from Bradley, I could just go to my filing cabinet and pull out our diplomas — it would take me two minutes, tops. Why does Butler claim “she would not have time to verify the information before the election”? The election is 17 days away.

Worse, Bradley’s registrar (it wasn’t clear to me from the previous article that a Bradley official had actually verified this) has gone on record saying Butler does not have any degrees from Bradley. I’m not sure how Butler could “know” she has a degree from Bradley, yet Bradley could somehow not know.

It’s true, as the paper points out, that there is no educational requirement to be on the school board, so the fact that she doesn’t have these degrees does not disqualify Butler from her current seat or the present race. But her integrity and character are seriously in question now, and that doesn’t set well with voters who are already distrustful of sitting school board members. I think this sinks any chance there might have been of her being reelected.

On the one hand, and I’m assuming these allegations are true based on the testimony of the Bradley registrar and Butler’s inability to prove otherwise, Butler has no one to blame but herself. But on the other hand, I’m still bothered by this statement:

Triggered by allegations against Butler, the Journal Star asked all five District 150 School Board candidates to verify their educational credentials.

Who made the allegations against Butler? Was it another candidate? A sitting school board member? Is this political payback for a decision or vote Butler made? Again, I can’t have much sympathy for someone who lied on her resume, but the source of the allegation is still germane. Who wanted to ruin Butler’s reelection bid and why?

Blogosphere, Peoria Journal Star

Journal Star breaking news: People can be cruel!

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In the most shocking news report yet this year, the Journal Star has revealed that people can actually say very cruel things about other people.

Of course I’m being facetious. But what the Journal Star actually reported is almost as ridiculous: that civil discourse has only recently been degraded by the invention of the Internet:

It was yet another example of how the Internet – and the anonymity it affords – has given a public stage to people’s basest thoughts, ones that in earlier eras likely never would have traveled past the watercooler, the kitchen table or the next bar stool…. [I]s a decline in civil discourse simply the price that we pay for the advance of technology?

Which “earlier era” would that be? Before the printing press? Because, as I recall, there were some pretty nasty — and anonymous, I might add — pamphlets published early in our nation’s history, over a century before the wily Internet was invented. (I’m certainly not anywhere near the first person to make such an observation. This article from USA Today is but one example.)

Let’s consider just a couple of examples. Clement Moore (of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” fame) wrote an incendiary pamphlet calling Thomas Jefferson a racist in 1804. (Journal Star columnists would never accuse someone of racism, right?) And Jefferson received further abuse from the Federalist press:

[Jefferson’s] warm appreciation of fellow deist and reputed heavy drinker Thomas Paine presented an easy target for the Federalist press. One newspaper suggested that Jefferson’s interest in agriculture must have been the reason for his willingness to be associated with such “‘manure'” (p. 77). Another publication depicted Paine as wanting Jefferson to loan him his slave Sally Hemings because he had no female companion.

Ah, the halcyon days of high civil discourse . . . the vaunted heritage of newspaper reporting. Of course, no newspapers are like that today, fortunately. Injurious stories are nowadays the exclusive domain of the blogosphere and “message boards,” or so the Journal Star would have you believe:

News organizations, struggling to find ways to keep their readers involved in an increasingly digital and interactive world, are trying to strike the right balance.

Yes, news organizations are very thoughtful and will strike the right balance. They would never fabricate stories or report a false story that could be injurious to someone’s reputation. Just ask Jayson Blair or Dan Rather.

What’s my point? I’m certainly not defending incivility. My only point is that incivility can and does happen in any medium — radio, TV (ever heard of Jerry Springer?), newspapers, and yes, even the Internet. That the Journal Star wants to single out the Internet as somehow novel or worse than any other medium in lowering civil discourse is patently baseless. Putting this “news” on the front-page and above the fold makes the Journal Star look outdated and foolish.

Tomorrow’s Journal Star investigative report: Telephones have increased rudeness!

Peoria Journal Star

GateHouse Media buys Journal Star

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GateHouse Media LogoThe speculating is over. GateHouse Media, owners of the Pekin Daily Times and the Canton Daily Ledger, have agreed to buy the Peoria Journal Star and six other daily newspapers owned by Copley Press for $380 million, according to the Journal Star’s report. The best analysis of this so far is on Billy’s blog — here and here.

As I see it, there are two main concerns with this transaction.

One is competition. By buying the papers in Peoria, Galesburg, Springfield, and Lincoln, while already owning newspapers in Pekin and Canton, they practically have a monopoly on central Illinois dailies, with the notable exception of the Bloomington Pantagraph. Media consolidation is generally not a good thing.

On the other hand, it raises the importance of sites like Peoria Pundits and the Peoria Chronicle. Citizen journalism provides more diversity of opinion in the marketplace and allows more opportunity for minority positions to get information out to the public.

The other concern is quality. As GateHouse consolidates its operations among the newly acquired papers, staff is going to get cut — the concern is whether so much staff will be cut that the paper won’t be able to cover as much local content as it does right now. That would be a real shame.

I do a fair amount of criticizing the editorial positions of the Journal Star, but when it comes to local coverage, no other media does a more thorough job. You get things in the paper that you just don’t get anywhere else — obituaries, real estate transactions, exhaustive coverage of professional and local sports including high school sports, arts coverage, neighborhood coverage, police/fire/courts coverage, etc. This is real asset to the city, and should be preserved.

UPDATE: Paul Gordon is singing GateHouse’s praises now. Well, technically he’s just reporting, but it sounds really upbeat, doesn’t it?

Kellar Branch, Peoria Journal Star, Village of Peoria Heights

Heights hears about trolley; also, I meet a JS editor

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Trolley in MemphisThere was a special meeting of Peoria Heights’ Board of Trustees tonight. The topic? The Kellar Branch. They wanted to hear from Pioneer Railcorp and the Illinois Prairie Railroad Foundation (IPRRF) about the possibility of running a trolley on the embattled line.

Mike Carr, CEO of Pioneer, gave the main presentation to the board and Sharon Deckard, President of IPRRF, gave some additional info at the end. Then they both answered questions from the board and the audience. You can see a PDF copy (2MB file) of their PowerPoint presentation* by clicking here.

Heights Mayor Mark Allen explained that this was an informational meeting meant to help the Village Board make an informed decision about the future of the Kellar Branch. In two weeks, on March 28, there will be another special meeting where the Park District and trail advocates will be allowed to present their plan for a trail only going through the corridor and why they think that will be best for the Heights.

Carr and Deckard explained how trolleys had been successful in large and small cities and had in all cases led to economic development along the trolley rail’s corridor. In addition to the benefits of a tourist trolley, it was also emphasized that increased congestion, city expansion, and rising gas prices would lead to the demand for more public transportation options in the future, and having a rail corridor through town is an asset to preserve for future commuter use.

Judging from the reaction of the audience, which was heavily stacked with trail supporters, not many people believed the presentation. But hey, they all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round, as Gershwin would say. Mayor Allen explained that a feasibility study would have to be done before a final decision was made. But now’s the time to do it — before the tracks are torn up — because once they’re gone, they’re gone forever.

Well, technically, the land lease with the Park District allows the proposed trail to be reconverted back to rail use at any point in the future, but the costs of relaying the tracks and reimbursing the Park District for construction of the trail would be so astronomical as to make that option completely unfeasible.

After the meeting, I went to Peoria Pizza Works with Sharon Deckard, Gary Sandberg, David Jordan, a couple other railfans, and — are you ready for this? — Christine Smith of the Journal Star Editorial Board and her date. It was actually quite fun to get to talk to her, since I regularly lambaste the editorial page of Peoria’s newspaper of record.

You know what? I like her. Even though we don’t agree, and probably never will, about the Kellar Branch, she was very personable and likes to play devil’s advocate, which is one of my favorite pasttimes. I found out that she and Bailey (the senior editor of the PJS) both read my blog, which was flattering, although one could make the argument that they just do that as part of their job. Fair enough. It’s still nice to be read. 🙂

Since Shelley Epstein retired, there have been only two editors — Smith and Bailey. I joked that if one more editor left, we’d all know who was writing the unsigned editorials. I found out that Bailey edits Smith’s editorials, so that’s why they all sound like Bailey’s voice to some degree. I also found out that Smith wrote the “Bradley is not the bogeyman” editorial. We talked a little about that… but I digress.

Smith thinks the trolley idea is completely crazy. She doesn’t think it will get any ridership — that no one is going to be interested in riding a trolley… at least, not enough people to make it profitable. But she did admit that it’s worth doing a feasibility study on it; she just thinks it will vindicate her belief that it’s totally nuts. I say, bring it on.

*Full disclosure: I created the slides for the PowerPoint presentation. And yes, Pioneer will be paying me for my work in creating those slides. This is the first time I’ve done any work for them or received any payment of monetary or non-monetary value.

Dunlap, Peoria Journal Star, Radio

Problem in Dunlap flap is with Journal Star, not library

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The Journal Star has been reporting lately on some controversy surrounding a referendum for the Dunlap library to issue bonds to build a larger library. Today’s paper has this summary:

Since the November election, controversy has surfaced over the referendum. Unofficial results first showed it had passed, but a later tally showed it had failed by 42 votes. However, absentee ballots counted in the two weeks following election day confirmed it actually had passed, with 1,185 people voting in favor of issuing bonds and 1,176 voting against them.

Despite that turnaround, no one in the media was told or reported the final results, leaving some residents to believe they were kept in the dark and, therefore, missed a deadline to seek a “petition for discovery” – essentially, a possible re-count.

However, Jonathan Ahl, news director of WCBU 89.9 FM in Peoria, says that description of the situation doesn’t jibe with his experience:

WCBU obtained the vote total of the referendum from then County Clerk JoAnn Thomas on November 8th, the day after the election. We reported at the time the yes votes outnumbered the no votes by six. Thomas said in an interview that all votes had been counted except for the provisional ballots and absentee ballots that were postmarked by November 5 that had not yet arrived in the mail. The early votes HAD been counted at that time.

We reported again on November 15th that unless there was a challenge, the referendum would pass with the yes position winning by nine votes. In addition to Ms. Thomas willingness to answer our questions on the results, all of this information was available on the Peoria County Clerk’s web site.

With that in mind, it is baffling to me to read sentences in Journal Star reports claiming the numbers were never released to the media, and that the apparent win by the yes votes was not discovered until “a few weeks later.”

Most disturbing is the Journal Star’s sweeping statement that “no one in the media was told or reported the final results.” I guess it depends on what they mean by “final.” If they mean that only certified totals are “final,” then no, probably no one in the media reported on them at that point.

But there’s a reason for that. The “unofficial” tally, which was posted on the county’s website on 11/15/06 and reported on WCBU is identical to the tally that was certified and posted on 11/28/06:

QUESTION TO ISSUE $2,500,000 LIBRARY BONDS, Vote For 1

Early/Absentee Election Total
YES 148 (66.67%) 1,037 (48.48%) 1,185 (50.19%)
NO 74 (33.33%) 1,102 (51.52%) 1,176 (49.81%)

So, why would anyone need to re-report something when the tallies didn’t change? It sounds to me like WCBU reported on the vote totals on the county website, but the Journal Star was evidently sitting around waiting for someone to call up and tell them about it. I thought reporters were supposed to go out and get information, not sit around waiting for news to come to them.

Are they now trying to cover their failure by claiming “no one in the media was told” and blaming the whole thing on the library board?

Peoria Journal Star

Journal Star joins 21st century, adds comments section

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After reading the Journal Star’s Sunday editorial on-line, I was pleasantly surprised (shocked, actually) to find that they’ve added a comments section to their editorial page; don’t know if today is the first day for that or not, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it.

All I can say is: Welcome to the 21st century, Journal Star! Glad you could join us out here in the interactive media. I’m proud to say I got to leave the first comment on Sunday’s editorial. In case you don’t want to click over to their site to read it, here it is:

First of all, congratulations on adding a comments section to your on-line editorial page!

Secondly, you’re not recognizing the fact that these “naysayers,” as you call them, are indeed for something. For example:

(1) Kellar Branch conversion: The opponents of this plan that I know (including myself) are not against a trail per se, but rather for using this rail line for economic development. The path can be built next to the rail or along a different route, but an asset like a rail line with neutral access to eight line-haul carriers can’t be replaced. The rail line not only serves Carver Lumber, but can attract light industry and manufacturing companies (read: jobs) to Pioneer Park and other points along the line, such as the newly-vacant Cohen’s furniture warehouse in the Heights. Already there are two new companies on the Kellar Branch that want to use rail service. It would be foolish to throw away this asset.

(2) Glen Oak School Siting: The East Bluff neighbors have been very clear that they are for a new school in the center of their neighborhood where the current Glen Oak School is located. They’re advocating for it to be at Frye and Wisconsin, and Bob Manning has even offered the school board city money to help site it there! I would think that kind of community involvement and city support would be celebrated by the paper, not denigrated.

(3) Downtown Museum: I have heard very few who are against having a museum downtown. However, there are many who feel that the museum needn’t take up the entire Sears block and encompasses more disciplines than it can adequately support in the space proposed. The “naysayers” are for an adequately-sized Peoria history museum on part of the Sears block with the rest of the block commercially developed with retail and residential components, just like the Heart of Peoria Plan recommended (in fact, that’s why it’s in the Heart of Peoria Plan that way — because of public input received at the charrettes). All they’re against is the ballooning of the project to an art/history/science/nature/sports/hall-of-fame museum in a building that only takes up 1/3 of the square with the rest of the block set aside for open space.

I don’t know much about the ring road, so I can’t speak to that. But in each of the cases I’ve listed, people are indeed for something, not simply against new ideas.

City of Peoria, Peoria Journal Star

No bluffing, the JS got it wrong

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In today’s Journal Star I read this headline: “Peoria woman has purse stolen in West Bluff.”

Well, that’s my neck of the woods, so I wanted to know what happened and where. Imagine my surprise when I next read this (emphasis mine):

The 34-year-old victim told police shortly before 11 p.m. that while she was headed west on Nebraska Avenue approaching Peoria Avenue, the men came up on her from behind.

That would be the East Bluff. You know, it’s this kind of sloppy reporting that will get some reporters/editors fired when Dave Ransburg buys the paper.