Wyatt Silverman and Jules Staib, both 20, were arrested on a variety of drug charges after allegedly accepting a delivery of a package with illegal drugs inside at the Kappa Sigma house on Broadway Street, and a search of their rooms afterward turned up more psychedelics for a total street value of $10,000, according to a report by Tania Dall of our partners at WWL-TV.
jewel bush
As a graduate of Xavier University Preparatory School, I long dreamed that if I ever had a daughter she would attend “The Prep” like I did. This will likely never happen.
Last week, the Sisters of Blessed Sacrament, a Pennsylvania-based religious order, announced that my alma mater would close at the end of the school year. “The figures do not reflect that the future of the Prep will be financially sustainable,” stated a letter I received in the mail on Monday, February 25. Continue reading »
Veteran Democratic strategist and New Orleans native Donna Brazile is the featured speaker for the Institute of Politics at Loyola University New Orleans March 5 at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. The CNN and ABC political commentator and vice chair for voter registration and participation at the Democratic National Convention will offer a behind-the-scenes look at the top political issues of the day in “Stirring the Political Pot with CNN’s Donna Brazile.” Continue reading »
A 46-year-old man was killed and a 23-year-old man was wounded Monday evening in the Gert Town area of Audubon Street, continuing a recent rash of street violence in the area since the weekend. Continue reading »
City Councilwoman Susan Guidry speaks at a town hall meeting Monday night at Lafayette Academy in Carrollton. (Robert Morris, UptownMessenger.com)
The prolonged stretches of darkness that have regularly fallen over Carrollton Avenue after sunset will soon be a thing of the past, City Councilwoman Susan Guidry told residents Monday night, reporting that the city plans to have all of the thoroughfare’s streetlights repaired within 90 days. Continue reading »
New Orleans Film Society director Jolene Pinder (from left) and “Django Unchained” actresses Laura Cayouette and Dana Gourrier pose at the society’s annual Oscar-watching party at the Prytania Theatre on Sunday evening. (photo via the New Orleans Film Society Facebook page).
In a trio of recent news stories showing the spicier side of student life, the Hullabaloo student newspaper reports that NOPD officers used pepper spray to break up an off-campus party on Willow Street, that the university is investigating a separate episode in which seven fraternity pledges were allegedly found swimming in the Audubon Park lagoon, and that the decades-old tradition of screening a high-budget porn film in McAlister Auditorium has come to a quiet end since 2011.
The Manhattan Jack bakery on Prytania Street and the Kobe Teriyaki Japanese fast-food concept on Earhart Boulevard have both opened of late, and both Dominique’s and Baie Rouge are opening soon on adjacent blocks of Magazine Street. Continue reading »
Nearly 10 years ago, Joseph Street resident Roy Fausset came home to find a hole from the roof of his home through the second and first floors, at the bottom of which were fragments of a 45-pound, bowling-ball-sized rock that tests by Tulane professor Steve Nelson confirmed to be a meteorite, according to a report by Scott Satchfield of our partners at WWL-TV.
Troy Williams, now 42, is accused of robbing a woman at gunpoint in the 2700 block of Dante Street, then forcing her into an alley for sex in August of 1985 after NOPD investigators learned of a match to his DNA last November, according to a report by Ramon Antonio Vargas of The Times-Picayune.
Owen Courreges
At this point, there should be little doubt in anyone’s mind that the City of New Orleans opposes the Louisiana Science Education Act of 2008, an “academic freedom” act transparently designed to facilitate the teaching of creationism in public schools. In May of 2011, the New Orleans City Council voted unanimously to support legislation aimed at repealing the LSEA, and just this past December, the Orleans Parish School Board unanimously voted to ban the teaching of “creationism or intelligent design in classes designated as science classes.”
The actual language of the LSEA seems relatively innocuous at first blush. It merely allows schools to “foster an environment … that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” It later provides that that the LSEA “shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion.”
Still, that last bit is just a fig leaf. Creationism can still be introduced into the classroom as an alternative “science,” and the fact remains that evolutionary biology is specifically targeted. Continue reading »
A new neighborhood association that aims to serve a central section of Uptown New Orleans will hold its first general meeting this week, its organizers announced. Continue reading »
Susan Guidry
Leona Tate, who was one of three young girls to integrate the McDonogh 19 school in 1961, discusses her continuing efforts to improve public education in New Orleans at a Sunday night mixer at Oak Wine Bar. (Robert Morris, UptownMessenger.com)
A “unity piece” given to civil-rights hero Leona Tate by members of the Orleans Public Education Network on Sunday. (Robert Morris, UptownMessenger.com)
Allan Katz and Danae Columbus
Back in the early days of his mayoral tenure, before things began to fall apart, Clarence Ray Nagin was a rock star. He didn’t know much about city government but he was cool, glib and very optimistic.
Did the city need an infusion of money? He’d sell the airport. Continue reading »
The Uptown Jewish Community Center will hold its 44th annual Adloyadah Community Wide Purim Carnival on Sunday afternoon. Continue reading »
Runners on St. Charles Avenue show Mardi Gras spirit in the 2011 Rock’n'Roll Marathon. (UptownMessenger.com file photo by Sabree Hill)
A woman was robbed on Laurel Street in the Irish Channel on her way home after the Bacchus parade last week, and police are now looking for the public’s help turning up any additional information that may lead them to an arrest in the case, authorities said. Continue reading »
James Weldon Johnson Elementary School on Monroe Street.
The residents were also told that cost estimates have been reached for renovations to the long-abandoned Priestley site in their own neighborhood, they say.
RSD officials have not responded to requests to confirm accounts of the meetings this week. Continue reading »
A Hoffman Triangle resident fought off a scam artist who turned violent last week, and a Garden District resident escaped from a burglar she found in her home — and who appears to have left a pair of underwear behind, police said. Continue reading »