Even The Most Progressive University In North America Doesn’t Know How To Handle Sexual Consent

When a tiny liberal arts college in Canada is rocked by sexual assault allegations, none of the students involved feel as if their issues and concerns were fairly addressed:

Helfand said the school educates students on consent during orientation (although multiple students said the “workshop” consisted of a brief PowerPoint on Canadian laws) and recently hired a visiting faculty member to consult on related training and education. He reiterated that Quest allows students to switch classes and residence rooms even if complaints are unsubstantiated.

“It’s simply not true” that Quest students don’t feel listened to, he said.

But the students whose claims were proven false say there’s no more evidence they could’ve provided. Worst of all, they said, was that the school treated them like liars. The police couldn’t press charges when Carrie and Sasha called them, but at least they were sympathetic.

“If I was going to make something up, I would have made it worse,” Carrie said.

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Jun 22, 2014
Length: 15 minutes (3,980 words)

Joe Dorsey’s Big Fight: How An Unknown Boxer Knocked Out Segregation In Louisiana

In 1955, an African-American boxer named Joe Dorsey sued the state of Louisiana for the right to fight white opponents. His legal battles would lead to big changes:

In his dressing room that night, on July 22, 1955, waiting to fight Andy Mayfield, Dorsey was nervous. He dealt with the butterflies in his stomach the usual way: He fell asleep. When he woke up, according to the black newspaper Louisiana Weekly, he strode into the ring and knocked out Mayfield with a left to the midsection in the sixth round.

Then he prepared for his next fight: Six days after beating Mayfield, Joe Dorsey filed suit. He initially intended merely to provide more money for his family. But not only would he wind up avenging more than six decades of wronged African-American athletes, he would also lay the groundwork to integrate musicians and performers in one of the most culturally vibrant — but racially divided — places in America.

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Jun 20, 2014
Length: 20 minutes (5,147 words)

The Worst Day Of My Life Is Now New York’s Hottest Tourist Attraction

Nearly 13 years after his sister’s death, Kandell visits the 9/11 Memorial Museum:

I am allowed to enter the 9/11 Museum a few days before this week’s grand opening for the general public, but why would I want that? Why would I accept an invitation to a roughly $350 million, 110,000-square-foot refutation of everything we tried to practice, a gleaming monument to What Happened, not What Happened to Us? Something snapped while reading about the gift shop — I didn’t want to duck and hide, I wanted to run straight into the absurdity and horror and feel every bit of the righteous indignation and come out the other side raw. I call my mother to tell her I’m doing this but that she shouldn’t come, and she doesn’t disagree. I find the ticket booth, exhale deeply, and say the magic words.

#sept11

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: May 20, 2014
Length: 8 minutes (2,224 words)

The Secret History Of Britney Spears’ Lost Album

Ten years ago Britney Spears said she was working on an album called Original Doll that she hoped would prove herself as a songwriter. What happened to it?

Over the years, fans have put together mock Original Doll album covers and created their own tracklists culled from B-sides and leaked tracks. Message board threads devoted to the album have stirred speculation and conspiracy theories, and every so often, users claiming to have a friend of a friend who worked at Jive would post an alleged detail.

However, multiple former employees of Jive told BuzzFeed they were unfamiliar with the album, and a source who worked with Spears during the time said Original Doll was never scheduled internally; anything Spears said about it was just her talking about her plans. She didn’t say much, just 22 words in a single interview, but Original Doll has become Spears’ Smile, the infamous abandoned Beach Boys’ album, and a fascinating piece of pop folklore.

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Apr 27, 2014
Length: 16 minutes (4,125 words)

Looking For Tom Lehrer, Comedy’s Mysterious Genius

On Tom Lehrer, one of the most influential people in comedy who abruptly stepped away from the spotlight:

He began performing internationally in 1959, when the Palace Theatre in London asked him to perform the first two Sundays in May. “In England in 1959, you couldn’t put on a play, [on Sunday] so the theaters were closed,” Robinson recalled. “But you could put on a concert.”

Lehrer filled the 1,400-seat theater both weekends and was a big enough hit that they kept him on through the end of May, after which he booked several more performances throughout England in June and early July.

Yet despite his enormous success, global popularity, and the release of his second album, More Songs by Tom Lehrer that year, it was exactly at this time that Lehrer first told Robinson he wanted to stop performing. Lehrer has told friends and various interviewers that he didn’t enjoy “anonymous affection.” And while his work was widely enjoyed at the time, it was also something of a scandal — the clever songs about math and language were for everyone, but Lehrer’s clear-eyed contemplation of nuclear apocalypse was straightforwardly disturbing.

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Apr 9, 2014
Length: 22 minutes (5,533 words)

After I Came Out As A Transgender Man, I Was Asked If It Felt Like I Had Died

On the oddly spiritual experience of transitioning:

I have made my transition into a ritual. It’s like church to me, every other Sunday. It takes me about half an hour in the little bathroom. I lay everything out like a makeshift altar: bag of syringes, alcohol wipes, pickle Band-Aids, vial of testosterone. I don’t like to be bothered, but sometimes I think about certain people being there. It seems strange to invite anybody. Sometimes my mouth gets dry in the middle and I go for a glass of water. Or I feel lightheaded so I break and chew some multivitamins. Down in Iowa for Christmas, my mother asks me if my shots are “self-administered”; she means am I doing them on my own, but all I can hear is the word “minister” and I remember when, as a toddler on the brink of baptism, I asked my parents if I was going to be “pasteurized.” Like milk, boiled clean. When we say we are moved, it is always some liquid, as Anne Enright writes in “My Milk.”

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Jan 20, 2014
Length: 5 minutes (1,407 words)

60 Words And A War Without End: The Untold Story Of The Most Dangerous Sentence In U.S. History

Written in the frenzied, emotional days after 9/11, the Authorization for the Use of Military Force was intended to give President Bush the ability to retaliate against whoever orchestrated the attacks. But more than 12 years later, this sentence remains the primary legal justification for nearly every covert operation around the world.

Unbound by time and unlimited by geography, the sentence has been stretched and expanded over the past decade, sprouting new meanings and interpretations as two successive administrations have each attempted to keep pace with an evolving threat while simultaneously maintaining the security of the homeland. In the process, what was initially thought to authorize force against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan has now been used to justify operations in several countries across multiple continents and, at least theoretically, could allow the president — any president — to strike anywhere at anytime. What was written in a few days of fear has now come to govern years of action.

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Jan 17, 2014
Length: 43 minutes (10,806 words)

Why I Bought A House In Detroit For $500

The author, on buying an abandoned house in Detroit and fixing it up, in a city that has seen more busts than booms:

I wanted something nobody wanted, something that was impossible. The city is filled with these structures, houses whose yellowy eyes seem to follow you. It would be only one house out of thousands, but I wanted to prove it could be done, prove that this American vision of torment could be built back into a home. I also decided I would do it the old-fashioned way, without grants or loans or the foundation money pouring into the city. I would work for everything that went into the house, because not everyone has access to those resources. I also wanted to prove to myself and my family I was a man. While they were building things, I had been writing poems.

Author: Drew Philp
Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Jan 9, 2014
Length: 25 minutes (6,333 words)

The Summer I Tried To Save Memphis

Saeed Jones on a painful memory of visiting his grandmother when he was a teenager—and what then happened at her church:

"My grandmother and I still haven’t spoken about what happened during the summer of 1999, or why it was the last time I visited her by myself, and how it came to be that she watched a pastor put a curse on her youngest daughter.

“Mom, a single parent working two jobs in Lewisville, Texas, sent me to Memphis each year because she couldn’t afford to take care of me when I was out of school. During these summer visits, my grandmother took me to Ebenezer Baptist Church every Sunday. She introduced me to people as ‘Saeed, my grandbaby visiting from Texas.’ Her friends would lean down with one hand holding up their extravagant church hats and slip me a strawberry hard candy. I didn’t miss those candies or church introductions until they were suddenly replaced with a new introduction the summer I was 13: ‘This is my grandson, Saeed. His mother is Buddhist.’ She said it like she didn’t know a sentence like that could electrify the air in any Southern church.”

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Oct 20, 2013
Length: 17 minutes (4,408 words)

How A Relationship Brought Me Halfway Around The World And Back Again

The writer on her experience moving halfway around the world for a relationship and a new life:

“I said ‘yes’ to moving but I hadn’t really said “yes” to a location. Because Russell was an urban planner, with experience that was in high demand, he could work almost anywhere. He had been a Peace Corps volunteer and was interested in living abroad again — somewhere English-speaking, he conceded, so I could get a job. He wanted to be close to places to canoe and hike and climb. He wanted to live in a smaller city. Wherever we ended up, it was understood that we would stay there for a year or two before settling down back home in the Midwest. In theory I was on board with all of this, and as he started to look for jobs and then started getting offers, I remained theoretically fine with all of the potential locations; I was in over my head at my own job and barely had time to get coffee in the morning, let alone ruminate on the implications of these very important decisions.”

Author: Ruth Curry
Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Sep 22, 2013
Length: 23 minutes (5,847 words)