Tag Archives: FAU

News, Politics, Government

Florida school sells stadium naming rights to prison company

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By Edmund DeMarche

Florida Atlantic University is christening its football field GEO Group Stadium, but fans on Twitter have a catchier moniker: ‘Owlcatraz’

The Boca Raton school, home of the Owls, sold naming rights to its 29,000-seat stadium to a private prison corporation, a change that has brought the school criticism, controversy and $6 million – the biggest gift ever made to the school’s athletic department. GEO Group, a billion-dollar company which operates an immigration center in nearby Pompano Beach, as well as prisons elsewhere in the U.S., South Africa and the United Kingdom, will pay for the honor in $500,000 yearly installments over the next 12 years, University Press, the school’s paper, reported.

“We are incredibly grateful for this wonderful gift,” Mary Jane Saunders, FAU‘s president. “It is so exciting to now have a name for our beautiful stadium, and I couldn’t think of a better way to do that than by way of philanthropy.”

GEO‘s boss, and the school’s most deep-pocketed booster, George Zoley, is an alum and a former chairman of the school’s Board of Trustees.

“We couldn’t be more local,” Zoley told the student paper. “This is the finest example of community outreach our company has activated in its history.”

Fans know professional and college sports teams rename their fields and arena’s for sponsors who pay for the privilege all the time. The Central Florida Knights kick off at Bright House Networks Stadium, named after a cable provider, and the NFL’s Miami Dolphins play in Sun Life Stadium, named for the financial services company. But some critics question why a school for higher education would want to be associated with a private prison company.

“How many FAU football fans are going to see GEO Group Stadium and think, ‘Oh, next time I need to find someone to run my immigrant detention center, I’ll definitely give them a call!'” quipped Sun-Sentinel columnist Michael Mayo.

GEO is also reportedly facing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit about its treatment of prisoners. A phone call from FoxNews.com inquiring about the lawsuit to the company was not immediately returned.

Dream Activist, which calls itself an “undocumented student action and resource network,” started an online petition asking the school to reconsider the move.

“FAU should not be associating itself with a prison,” the group said on its website, DreamActivist.org.

FAU is building a name for itself on the gridiron, despite being in a state with perennial powerhouses like Florida State, Florida and Miami. Despite struggling to a 3-9 record in the Sun Belt Conference this past season, Owls fans did have the pleasure of seeing former star Alfred Morris star as a rookie for the Washington Redskins after being selected in the sixth round of the 2012 draft.

FAU‘s Athletic Director Pat Chun told the University Press that securing a naming partner was his chief goal this year. At least one pundit thinks the new name – and sponsor – suits the Owls.

“For years, football players and jail have carried bad connotations,” wrote Mayo’s colleague at the Sun-Sentinel, Dave Hyde. “Now FAU is being paid …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

News, Politics, Government

Florida school moves away from professor's claim that Sandy Hook massacre was staged

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A public university in Florida is distancing itself from the controversial claims of a professor who questions whether last month’s horrific school massacre in Connecticut really happened.

James Tracy, an associate professor of media history at Florida Atlantic University, made the bizarre claim on his personal blog memoryholeblog.com, writing that the shooting that left 20 children and six adults dead may have been a government drill — or may have not even occurred. The Boca Raton school said Tracy, who has also questioned the official version of events of the Kennedy assassination, the 9/11 terror attacks and the Aurora, Colo., movie theater massacre, was speaking only for himself.

“James Tracy does not speak for the university,” Lisa Metcalf, FAU‘s director of media relations, told FoxNews.com in an email. “The website on which his post appeared is not affiliated with FAU in any way. As for any previous disciplinary actions at FAU, we do not comment on personnel matters.”

In a posting titled “The Sandy Hook Massacre: Unanswered Questions and Missing Information,” Tracy questioned how Adam Lanza was able to fire off so many shots in such little time and noted a lack of surveillance video or still images from the gruesome crime scene.

“Inconsistencies and anomalies abound when one turns an analytical eye to news of the Newtown school massacre,” Tracy, 47, wrote. “While it sounds like an outrageous claim, one is left to inquire whether the Sandy Hook shooting ever took place — at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the nation’s news media have described.”

Pressed by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Tracy acknowledged that “one is left with the impression that a real tragedy took place,” but suggested the Dec. 14 massacre was some sort of staged event.

“Was this to a certain degree constructed?” he asked. “Was this a drill?

Tracy’s mistrust is aimed equally at authorities and the media.

“A considerable amount of evidence has been withheld by authorities, who in a telling move have successfully postponed public disclosure of items culled from Nancy and Adam Lanza‘s residence and vehicles for an additional 90 days,” Tracy, 47, wrote on his blog on Friday. “At the same time, what has been revealed and captured in press reports suggests how, from missing suspects and evidence to unrevealed corpses, much is still unknown and mainstream news outlets have been at least complicit in what could conceivably be described as the Sandy Hook massacre’s constructed reality,” Tracy continued.

Tracy, who did not return calls for comment, told the Sun-Sentinel he considers his conspiracy mongering a scholarly endeavor.

“I describe myself as a scholar and public intellectual interested in going more deeply into controversial public events,” he said. “Although some may see [my theories] as beyond the pale, I am doing what we should be doing as academics.”

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News