Kopp Offers Hope in Commencement Speech for Better Education Results in Milwaukee

In May 2009, Kalyn Gigot was sitting in the audience at Marquette University’s commencement ceremony as a no-doubt proud graduate. But it was a year later, at Marquette’s commencement Sunday, when Gigot was individually singled out for attention and praise in the graduation address.

What did she do in between? She joined Teach for America, the nationwide organization that puts thousands of high-caliber college graduates into high-needs classrooms for the first two years after graduation. Gigot has been teaching this year at Northwest Secondary School, a Milwaukee Public Schools middle and high school program near North 72nd Street and West Silver Spring Drive.

Wendy Kopp, the founder and CEO of Teach for America, received an honorary degree at the commencement and, in her strongly localized speech, described how much Gigot had accomplished in her year teaching math to sixth and seventh graders.  Students who were generally three years behind in their math skills have made substantial progress, the learning atmosphere in Gigot’s classroom has improved sharply as the year has gone on, and Gigot has gone to lengths to get to know her students and their families, including home visits of seventy-two of them, Kopp said. 

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Playing with Fire and an Obama Effigy

People do imbecilic things when alcohol enters the mix.  It is a fact of life.  On one end of the spectrum, drunkenness promotes relatively harmless buffoonery, whether it is singing along to “Sweet Caroline” completely out of tune at the bars on Water Street or repeatedly professing one’s love for his or her friends and family.  Sometimes, the passions of the moment, coupled with inhibitions lowered, push one to act out ill-conceived ideas that the voice of reason would have prevented, such as drunk-dialing.  On the other end of the spectrum, a beer- and liquor-swilling patron’s conduct may cross the line into the unlawful.

As the story develops, the burning of a statue of President Obama in West Allis may be in the company of the latter behavior.   TMJ4 reported that at the Yester Year’s bar, patrons lit a bust of Obama on fire.  The video footage was blurry given the room’s darkness and only focused on the statue placed on the bar, though “hoots and hollers” can be heard in the background.  Though West Allis is investigating whether the burning violated the city’s municipal fire code, the Milwaukee District Attorney’s Office will not charge anyone involved in this incident, and the Secret Service has terminated its own investigation.

This incident may very well not prompt legal action beyond those for possible fire code violations.  One cannot help but wonder, however, if the First Amendment would provide protection for burning an Obama effigy. 

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Law & Order and the Rise of the Pop Cultural Prosecutor

Years before Law & Order ended its incredible twenty-year run on May 24, 2010, the series had staked its claim to being the longest-running primetime series featuring lawyer characters. In addition, the series included an important change in how the heroic pop cultural lawyer is represented. In earlier lawyer shows with especially lengthy runs, such as Perry Mason in the 1950s and ‘60s and Matlock in the 1980s and ‘90s, the lawyer hero was customarily a criminal defense lawyer. Even the fictional firm of McKenzie, Brackman, Cheney & Kuzak in L.A. Law had a department devoted to criminal defense work. In Law & Order, by contrast, the heroic lawyers are always prosecutors.

What explains this very popular shift in imagery? Part of the reason is the general sense that crime has run amuck. Starting in the 1980s, a commitment to crime control replaced the drive for racial and economic justice as the preeminent domestic policy. Any politician on the local, state, or national level who seems “soft on crime” is doomed at the polls. More generally, the Reagan Presidency marked a national turn to the right, and in subsequent decades even the Democrats who have occupied the White House have been moderates. The heroic pop cultural prosecutor is well suited to crack down on crime and to embody conservative values.

Over the years, Law & Order became a genuine cultural phenomenon. The series’ popularity led to spin-offs and to countless reruns of both the original episodes and the spin-offs. In the end, Law & Order in all its forms not only reflected a public sentiment and emergent politics but also powerfully reinforced that sentiment and politics.

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