So…now I’ve cleared my buddy list down to 139 people. How low can I go?!? I just find it amazing how many people I had on that buddy list that I haven’t spoken to in years (and that hadn’t signed on in just as long). Again, I encourage everyone to do a cleaning out – besides, if you’re into seeing what people are doing you can get a better idea from Facebook and MySpace.
The Syrian Community in Deal, NJ
Anyone who has lived in Deal, New Jersey that does not practice the Jewish religion has likely been in awe at one point or another at the local and summer communities. This is a large Jewish community that is – by and large – very devoted to their faith and to the strengthening of their community as a whole. Many of us non-Jewish folks who live in town have become friendly with the locals (to some degree), but we all know that they treat us a little bit differently than they treat those who are members of their own faith – and we’re all pretty cool with that.
A few years ago, one of us non-Jewish folks found a book called Postville that shed a LOT of light on many of the business and religious traditions that we see everyday in Deal. Actually, the retired woman who found this book used to be one of my co-workers in an office that was owned by another Jewish guy who just fascinated by the locals. And, believe it or not, she directed me to a recent New York Times Magazine article about the community!
The folks over at the New York Times Magazine put together a GREAT article on the larger Syrian Jewish community that owns a good portion of town and operates between here and Brooklyn, NY. The article is a great look at some of the big players in the community and how the community views themselves in comparison to the rest of the Jewish religion.
This is really a great, educational article and I encourage everyone to take a read of it when you get a chance.
Monmouth University & Long Branch to Formalize Invasion of Student Rights
Today’s Atlanticville had an article about “improving relations” between Monmouth University and its surrounding municipalities – namely Long Branch. I love Long Branch and I think some exciting and creative things are going on over there. I’m also a university alumnus who fought vociferously for students’ rights while an undergraduate. I consider myself privileged to continue that fight as I get older and move up and on through the game of life.
But what always gets me is how the students at Monmouth, by and large, don’t care about this fight. Taken from today’s Atlanticville:
Hayes told the council that the city and the university will be taking their partnership one step further this year and will be sharing information on the addresses of students living off campus.
“We have been able to make some significant headway,” Hayes said at the meeting. “It looks like the university will be willing to share some information with us about where students are housed, for the purpose of safety.”
Anyone who knows the story about the people involved here know that this has nothing to do with student safety. Kevin Hayes is the head of the inspection department in Long Branch. He’s been sued time and time again by local landlords for not granting Certificates of Occupancy for completely well-groomed and maintained houses. And not that it should matter in this particular case, but Hayes’ son was a Long Branch police officer who was one of the major causes of problems between the off-campus students and Long Branch. Hayes, Jr. and another young police officer in Long Branch were shaking down minority students in their off-campus homes and raiding their drug caches…so THEY could sell it on their own!
Of course they got no prison time because they’re politically-connected and this is New Jersey, but it makes me sick to read that the students “get a little better every year” when there are deep, troubling problems on both sides of the argument.
But when you have a student body that doesn’t give a hoot, what are you to do to stop these injustices? Re-read that selection from the article above – that’s illegal, folks. Going to school at a college does not permit that college to share your information with the local police force – especially when that police force has been sued in the past for being overzealous in their enforcement against college students and when they’ve even had to remove officers for shaking students down!
The university surely won’t tell the students anything about this – they relish the fact that 99% of the university community are lemmings who do what they’re told and (even worse) believe what they’re told. This is a tragic reality not just at Monmouth, but many of today’s private colleges and universities. You want to read something even more disgusting?
“If a student is involved in an issue of misconduct off campus, the police will send a copy of the report to us and I will review it,” Nagy said. “We will charge the student under the code of conduct. The student will go through the city’s court and through the Monmouth University court.
“The student is charged twice,” Nagy said. “Just because you do not physically live on campus does not mean you can do whatever you want. A student’s actions affect our reputation.”
That’s right folks – forget about your 5th amendment rights against double jeopardy! You get charged TWICE for the same “crime” in this circus! And having been through that rodeo once or twice, I can tell you that the school’s judicial officers know that this is illegal. Students are often cited by the local police on a Thursday night and expected to go through the university judicial process within a week or two when their actual court date is a month or more away. In essence, the school attempts to find you guilty before the United States legal system!
When you bring this up to the university, they cite their student code of conduct. Most students (with a head on their shoulders) then cite their Constitutional rights. The university ALWAYS comes back with the fact that they are a private university and do not need to respect those rights…which is a lie thanks to President Clinton. President Clinton signed something called the Higher Education Amendments of 1998 which snuck in the provision that if a private university receives ANY federal funding, they MUST respect the Constitutional rights of the students.
That’s generally when you get the university to sit down and start tapping their foot.
But what does it matter? Civil rights have gotten so bad in the Long Branch/Ocean Township area that an article like this can actually be published, describing how the entities intend on destroying students’ rights, and no one will do anything about it. Watch – we’ll get another edition of the Atlanticville next week and there will be no student response…
There’s just no passion any more in undergraduates.
Is Nothing Sacred in New Jersey?
The Daily Record printed an article yesterday that talked about the possibility that up to 25% of the protected land up in the Highlands area of the state may be up for development. For those of you that don’t know, the Highlands are comprised of North and Northwest New Jersey. It’s a beautiful area of the state that blends nicely into Pennsylvania and does NOT resemble the rest of the images that this nation has of New Jersey. In other words, we have no high-density industrial sites in this part of the state; we’re blessed to have such great forests and green-space instead.
Here is what the Daily Record wrote:
About 100,000 of those acres eligible for development are in the preservation area, that half of the region where nearly all large-scale construction was banned by the 2004 Highlands Act, according to a report released by the council. The rest are in the planning area, where lawmakers envisioned development continuing, where appropriate.
The developable acreage is contained in about 22,500 parcels that fall into one of the four major exemptions written into the law. There are 17 exemptions in all, but the four studied are the ones that would permit the most development. They allow for the construction of a house on a lot in existence at the time of the act or for the reconstruction or addition to an existing home.
What is of most importance is the last sentence. Once again, we have legislation in New Jersey that publicly is touted to end a practice that we would otherwise find to be repulsive (knocking down wildlife areas to build more McMansions), yet in reality it does nothing to solve the problem at hand.
This state needs a strong Chief Executive who will look at this problem and look at the potential of ruining the communities in North and Northwest New Jersey. Yes folks, the type of development that could be allowed in the Highlands will ruin that part of the state – no doubt. This is a part of the state with many rural areas. Rural areas, not suburban areas, though there are some great suburban areas, too. Opening up 100,000 acres of this beautiful protected land for development is just asking for those rural areas to suburbanize.
After watching the Mount Arlington, Landing, and Roxbury areas of Morris County go from rural to suburban areas over the last 20 years, I don’t want to see this happen to other areas in neighboring Sussex and Warren counties. The over-development of these parts of Morris County have pushed families out of home and communities that they literally built with their own two hands. It’s been disgusting to watch.
If there is anyone with any sense in Trenton (HA!), they’ll open up the coffers and buy these parcels – making them protected land.
Corruption in Ocean Township!
Many years ago, when I was an undergraduate at Monmouth University, a group of students and I led a public relations battle against Ocean Township and their excessive abuse of our civil rights as residents of the town. Police officers routinely opened our front door at all hours of the day and night and walked through our house “just to see what’s going on.”
We had police officers come to our house with two or three cars during the prime party hours on the weekend and tell us to keep the noise down. When we invited them into our house to see the 3 guys who were hanging out playing Tiger Woods Golf on PlayStation 2, the cops would put their tails between their legs and tell us that they had better not have to come back. Yeah right. And we had better not have to get the FBI to investigate that police station (again). Oh yeah – we had the FBI investigating Ocean Township well before the township’s corrupt Mayor, Terrance Weldon, was indicted.
I am only bringing all of this up because of the recent corruption talk in New Jersey…and because the story hit recently that Ocean Township is considering suing their corrupt former Mayor:
The township is weighing the option of suing former Mayor Terrance D. Weldon for violating his oath of office in accepting $64,000 in bribes from developers.
“We actually have a firm that has approached us about litigation and we are considering that,” Mayor William F. Larkin said at a Township Council meeting Wednesday night. “There is actually a firm that wants to represent us without cost.”
That was from the Asbury Park Press. I feel compelled to bring this stuff up because seven and eight years ago a bunch of college students and I SAW the corruption, we lived through the corruption, and (most importantly) we publicly called these administrators out on their corrupt ways. And what did we get in return? A group of local residents and activist-for-the-sake-of-being-activist students who condemned us for using the word “corrupt.”
Bullshit on them. We were right. The Mayor of the town has been indicted and in his wake the Police Chief left his post and the housing inspector left, too (among other officials). All of these folks were in on the crap going on in Ocean Township and we saw it all before anyone else would believe it. Now we’ve been proven correct.
I want my apology!
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