Northam’s “Anti-Asian, Anti-Immigrant” School Initiative

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I cannot believe the VA Secretary of Education isn’t allowing the TJ PTSA to participate in the PTSA part of the listening tour! That is not a democratic process. And we watched the student listening tour event. There was no listening — we were just being talked at by Qarni and a panel of students who all had the same viewpoint (and we don’t know why they were chosen). Qarni spoke like an activist not a Secretary of Education. He also seemed fully unaware of the TJ/FCPS process or history. It is clearly an agenda not a fact finding mission.

Maybe he didn't make it into TJ when he applied and is still pissed off about it..

[Anonymous]

Wow. I can't believe Qarni has the power to "ban" Asra. This doesn't seem legal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I cannot believe the VA Secretary of Education isn’t allowing the TJ PTSA to participate in the PTSA part of the listening tour! That is not a democratic process. And we watched the student listening tour event. There was no listening — we were just being talked at by Qarni and a panel of students who all had the same viewpoint (and we don’t know why they were chosen). Qarni spoke like an activist not a Secretary of Education. He also seemed fully unaware of the TJ/FCPS process or history. It is clearly an agenda not a fact finding mission.

Maybe he didn't make it into TJ when he applied and is still pissed off about it..

Or maybe you just pull things out of your arse. Qarni went to high school in Baltimore County, not NoVa.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I cannot believe the VA Secretary of Education isn’t allowing the TJ PTSA to participate in the PTSA part of the listening tour! That is not a democratic process. And we watched the student listening tour event. There was no listening — we were just being talked at by Qarni and a panel of students who all had the same viewpoint (and we don’t know why they were chosen). Qarni spoke like an activist not a Secretary of Education. He also seemed fully unaware of the TJ/FCPS process or history. It is clearly an agenda not a fact finding mission.

Maybe he didn't make it into TJ when he applied and is still pissed off about it..

Or maybe you just pull things out of your arse. Qarni went to high school in Baltimore County, not NoVa.

And looks like you like to analyze things that come out of my arse..

[Anonymous]

Asra Nomani is a nominally Muslim woman born in Mumbai who voted for Donald Trump, argued in favor of his ban on immigration from select Muslim-majority countries, and supports racial profiling against Muslims. Her views on Islam are fairly well-understood as "Islam should change fundamentally from what it has been for millenia" - why she feels the need to continue to self-identify with a religion she disagrees with on such a visceral level is a mystery to most who follow her career.

She currently has a senior at TJ and has been, very vocally and very recently, thunderously in support of the very narrow definition of merit that has been peddled by those seeking to maintain the status quo with respect to TJ admissions, and those seeking to break down the recent improvements in elite college admissions. It is no accident that she has taken up this mantle as her son begins the college application process.

She carries over 50,000 followers on Twitter due to her past as a professor at Georgetown and as a Wall Street Journal contributor. Both associations ended poorly. Her Twitter feed reads very much like Trump's - vicious, insecure, self-serving, jingoistic, and full of retweets of literally any account (human or bot) that appears to agree with her. Seemingly her favorite tactic is to intentionally misinterpret the arguments and intentions of anyone who disagrees with her and to lampoon them publicly.

Key example - she is claiming right now that the TJ PTSA is banned from these conversations. It is only Asra who is banned, but her intent is to inflame public opinion against meaningful change by claiming that Secy. Qarni is banning the entire TJ PTSA from the sessions. It's a clever tactic, and one that might be successful with an increasingly myopic community, but it's severely disingenuous and a perfect example of how she operates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow. I can't believe Qarni has the power to "ban" Asra. This doesn't seem legal.

Exactly. I am going to write the Governor today. Qarni is running rogue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow. I can't believe Qarni has the power to "ban" Asra. This doesn't seem legal.

Exactly. I am going to write the Governor today. Qarni is running rogue.

She openly writes hate speech, and material that indirectly disparages the entire Black and Hispanic communities on her Twitter profile with regularity. The work session is not about whether to solve the TJ admissions issue, but rather how.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Asra Nomani is a nominally Muslim woman born in Mumbai who voted for Donald Trump, argued in favor of his ban on immigration from select Muslim-majority countries, and supports racial profiling against Muslims. Her views on Islam are fairly well-understood as "Islam should change fundamentally from what it has been for millenia" - why she feels the need to continue to self-identify with a religion she disagrees with on such a visceral level is a mystery to most who follow her career.

She currently has a senior at TJ and has been, very vocally and very recently, thunderously in support of the very narrow definition of merit that has been peddled by those seeking to maintain the status quo with respect to TJ admissions, and those seeking to break down the recent improvements in elite college admissions. It is no accident that she has taken up this mantle as her son begins the college application process.

She carries over 50,000 followers on Twitter due to her past as a professor at Georgetown and as a Wall Street Journal contributor. Both associations ended poorly. Her Twitter feed reads very much like Trump's - vicious, insecure, self-serving, jingoistic, and full of retweets of literally any account (human or bot) that appears to agree with her. Seemingly her favorite tactic is to intentionally misinterpret the arguments and intentions of anyone who disagrees with her and to lampoon them publicly.

Key example - she is claiming right now that the TJ PTSA is banned from these conversations. It is only Asra who is banned, but her intent is to inflame public opinion against meaningful change by claiming that Secy. Qarni is banning the entire TJ PTSA from the sessions. It's a clever tactic, and one that might be successful with an increasingly myopic community, but it's severely disingenuous and a perfect example of how she operates.

Neither her views on Islam (I mean, what exactly are your credentials to assess them) nor her political affiliation should be a factor in the decision to allow or to ban her from these proceedings. Half the country voted for Trump - will you ban them too? What is this discrimination based on political views?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow. I can't believe Qarni has the power to "ban" Asra. This doesn't seem legal.

Exactly. I am going to write the Governor today. Qarni is running rogue.

She openly writes hate speech, and material that indirectly disparages the entire Black and Hispanic communities on her Twitter profile with regularity. The work session is not about whether to solve the TJ admissions issue, but rather how.

Er...didn't you just write 25 pages worth of material that DIRECTLY disparages the entire Asian community? Calling them prep robots, suicide candidates, bad parents, selfish, inflexible and god knows what else? Compared to you, Asma seems like an improved version.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Getting rid of TJHSST is the right thing to do. TJ attracts a really elitist, gross set of parents and we'd be better without their kids, who can't help but parrot their parents' attitudes, polluting the educational atmosphere.

I certainly understand this perspective but still believe that it's possible to boldly improve the admissions process to improve the caliber of kids and families that arrive.

If the School Board won't take these steps, though, then yes, burn it all down as it does more harm than good in its current form.

My child is a junior at TJ, takes 4 post-AP classes this year and so much enjoys studying. So much looked forward to these challenging classes that aren’t offered at any other local high school. What harm does this do to you?

First of all, it doesn't matter what harm it does to ME, it matters what harm it does to the community. That's called giving a sh!t about other people.

The harm it does to the community is deep and destructive. You have literally thousands of families that are spending thousands of dollars every year on prep courses, placing an incredible amount of pressure on students to be able to get into a school that has extremely limited seating for the amount of interest in it.

Students feel the need to give up on their legitimate passions so that they can maximize their STEM profile, and end up less happy as a result - and many of those students don't even get into TJ after doing all of that. Kids should be able to engage in whatever productive and enjoyable activities they want when they're 10, 11, 12 years old, but right now there are only a few of them that seem to grant access to TJ.

Never mind the issues of access for underrepresented groups - the way the admissions process is currently constructed incentivizes destructive parenting behavior. Parents will always engage in destructive behavior that leads to kids hating their life and resenting their parents' choices, even to the point of suicide - but if the TJ admissions process didn't reward this type of behavior, you'd see far less of it than you do right now.

Behold the savior telling other people how to parent.

You see enough suicides in the TJ community, at some point enough is enough. Ignore at your own peril.

Is TJ clocking more suicides than average? Or is it your savior complex kicking in?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Asra Nomani is a nominally Muslim woman born in Mumbai who voted for Donald Trump, argued in favor of his ban on immigration from select Muslim-majority countries, and supports racial profiling against Muslims. Her views on Islam are fairly well-understood as "Islam should change fundamentally from what it has been for millenia" - why she feels the need to continue to self-identify with a religion she disagrees with on such a visceral level is a mystery to most who follow her career.

She currently has a senior at TJ and has been, very vocally and very recently, thunderously in support of the very narrow definition of merit that has been peddled by those seeking to maintain the status quo with respect to TJ admissions, and those seeking to break down the recent improvements in elite college admissions. It is no accident that she has taken up this mantle as her son begins the college application process.

She carries over 50,000 followers on Twitter due to her past as a professor at Georgetown and as a Wall Street Journal contributor. Both associations ended poorly. Her Twitter feed reads very much like Trump's - vicious, insecure, self-serving, jingoistic, and full of retweets of literally any account (human or bot) that appears to agree with her. Seemingly her favorite tactic is to intentionally misinterpret the arguments and intentions of anyone who disagrees with her and to lampoon them publicly.

Key example - she is claiming right now that the TJ PTSA is banned from these conversations. It is only Asra who is banned, but her intent is to inflame public opinion against meaningful change by claiming that Secy. Qarni is banning the entire TJ PTSA from the sessions. It's a clever tactic, and one that might be successful with an increasingly myopic community, but it's severely disingenuous and a perfect example of how she operates.

Neither her views on Islam (I mean, what exactly are your credentials to assess them) nor her political affiliation should be a factor in the decision to allow or to ban her from these proceedings. Half the country voted for Trump - will you ban them too? What is this discrimination based on political views?

Did I say anything about the merits of her being banned? Crucially, I did not. The purpose of the biographical information is to provide context for her perspective. I am in favor of her being banned because of her inflammatory and derogatory rhetoric on various social media platforms which insinuates that Black and Hispanic students are inherently less qualified than Asian students - which I view as a moral rather than a political issue - but in this particular post I did not reference the merits of her being banned.

I would similarly argue that anyone who believes that slavery was a good thing should probably not have a voice in conversations about Confederate monuments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow. I can't believe Qarni has the power to "ban" Asra. This doesn't seem legal.

Exactly. I am going to write the Governor today. Qarni is running rogue.

She openly writes hate speech, and material that indirectly disparages the entire Black and Hispanic communities on her Twitter profile with regularity. The work session is not about whether to solve the TJ admissions issue, but rather how.

Er...didn't you just write 25 pages worth of material that DIRECTLY disparages the entire Asian community? Calling them prep robots, suicide candidates, bad parents, selfish, inflexible and god knows what else? Compared to you, Asma seems like an improved version.

Where did I do that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow. I can't believe Qarni has the power to "ban" Asra. This doesn't seem legal.

Exactly. I am going to write the Governor today. Qarni is running rogue.

She openly writes hate speech, and material that indirectly disparages the entire Black and Hispanic communities on her Twitter profile with regularity. The work session is not about whether to solve the TJ admissions issue, but rather how.

Er...didn't you just write 25 pages worth of material that DIRECTLY disparages the entire Asian community? Calling them prep robots, suicide candidates, bad parents, selfish, inflexible and god knows what else? Compared to you, Asma seems like an improved version.

i love when people assume there's just ONE person on all of these threads who disagrees with them

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow. I can't believe Qarni has the power to "ban" Asra. This doesn't seem legal.

Exactly. I am going to write the Governor today. Qarni is running rogue.

She openly writes hate speech, and material that indirectly disparages the entire Black and Hispanic communities on her Twitter profile with regularity. The work session is not about whether to solve the TJ admissions issue, but rather how.

Er...didn't you just write 25 pages worth of material that DIRECTLY disparages the entire Asian community? Calling them prep robots, suicide candidates, bad parents, selfish, inflexible and god knows what else? Compared to you, Asma seems like an improved version.

Where did I do that?

We aren't really gonna play that game, are we. This entire thread reeks of nothing but contempt toward Asian students and their parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow. I can't believe Qarni has the power to "ban" Asra. This doesn't seem legal.

Exactly. I am going to write the Governor today. Qarni is running rogue.

She openly writes hate speech, and material that indirectly disparages the entire Black and Hispanic communities on her Twitter profile with regularity. The work session is not about whether to solve the TJ admissions issue, but rather how.

Er...didn't you just write 25 pages worth of material that DIRECTLY disparages the entire Asian community? Calling them prep robots, suicide candidates, bad parents, selfish, inflexible and god knows what else? Compared to you, Asma seems like an improved version.

i love when people assume there's just ONE person on all of these threads who disagrees with them

It's easy when the writing style is so transparent.