Commentary Part One:   Is Baker College delivering “college in a can?”  Why one Baker faculty member quit
Mar08

Commentary Part One: Is Baker College delivering “college in a can?” Why one Baker faculty member quit

Editor’s note:  This is the first of a two-part commentary considering how college classes are designed and offered — and the teacher’s role — beginning with retired psychologist and former Baker College instructor James Woolcock’s rumination on why he left teaching at the Flint campus.  A complementary second perspective is offered by retired teacher and EVM staff writer Harold C. Ford, found here....

Read More
Commentary Part Two:  In teaching and course design, “not everyone can cook”
Mar08

Commentary Part Two: In teaching and course design, “not everyone can cook”

Editor’s Note: This is the second of a two-part commentary considering how college classes are designed and offered.  Part One, available here, details retired psychologist and former Baker College instructor James Woolcock’s rumination, “Grandma’s Homemade Soup,” on why he left teaching at the Flint campus.  We requested a response from Baker College, but since our request was never acknowledged or...

Read More
Commentary:  Time to jump-start the new city charter
Mar01

Commentary: Time to jump-start the new city charter

By Paul Rozycki Last August Flint voters set the city on a new course when they approved the city’s new charter—the first since 1974.  In the turmoil over the Flint water crisis, successive emergency managers, and recall elections, the charter sometimes seemed lost in the shuffle.  Yet, the Charter Commission produced a significant and important document. Over a period of many months the Commission met with community groups on...

Read More
Village Life:  Just another drag queen bingo night in Flint cheering things up
Feb18

Village Life: Just another drag queen bingo night in Flint cheering things up

By Jan Worth-Nelson Can Flint be any more itself than combining a crowded bookstore, bingo, and a  curvy six-foot tall drag queen in red sequins hollering out “B-8, bitches!”? I’ve been here more than 35 years and by now there is nothing much that could surprise me about my adopted hometown.  The energy at Totem Bookstore’s Drag Queen Bingo night makes me think no matter how pissed we get at the world, no...

Read More
Gerrymandering Part Three:  going to court
Jan29

Gerrymandering Part Three: going to court

By Paul Rozycki Just when you thought you’ve heard enough about gerrymandering, and the ballot proposals to end it—there is one more line of attack. Now the courts are getting involved. Two previous columns in past issues of East Village Magazine (Part One here, Part Two here)  have outlined the problems and history of gerrymandering, drawing oddly shaped election districts to favor one party over another. A second column also...

Read More
Review/Commentary:  “Destiny of the Republic” a timely look at an honorable president
Jan14

Review/Commentary: “Destiny of the Republic” a timely look at an honorable president

“When he (James Garfield) was still a very young man, he had hidden a runaway slave… In Congress, he fought for equal rights for freed slaves. He argued for a resolution that ended the practice of requiring blacks to carry a pass in the nation’s capital, and he delivered a passionate speech for black suffrage…‘Let us not commit ourselves to the absurd and senseless dogma that the color of the skin shall be the basis of suffrage, the...

Read More