https://www.wsls.com/news/virginia/2021/10/29/meet-princess-blanding-the-third-person-vying-to-be-virginias-next-governor/

Princess Blanding is the sister of deceased police shooting target, Marcus-David Peters. I used to have mixed feelings about his death, but now I see it more as "very much the fault of police." He wasn't that dangerous and didn't need to be killed.

The comments and perspective of Ms. Blanding in the article are worth reading.

Here is an interesting UMW comment: Dr. Stephen Farnsworth, a UMW professor, seems to have sent an email to Princess Blanding. I never met or emailed Dr. Farnsworth when I was as student there, but it is interesting to note, as an anecdote, that one time I remember that as a student, I wrote an email to a UMW professor asking for helping writing an opinion article about psychology for the UMW newspaper, which was called "The Bullet" back then. What strikes me about Dr. Farnsworth's email is that the email I received from the psychology professor in response, which stated that he was declining to help me write the article and advised against me writing it since I wasn't a psychology major (and I also had never taken a psychology class at UMW), sounded like a "much more politely and considerately worded version" of Dr. Farnsworth's email to Princess Blanding.

My observation is just one data point, not a clear pattern...but given the Jasmine Orsted incident and how it was handled by UMW, plus the fact that Dr. Farnsworth appears to have been much less polite to an African-American political leadership candidate in his conversation with her than an analogous UMW professor was to me, a non-psychology major student with white skin, I feel compelled to present the following (very) unoriginal question about UMW: DOES UMW STILL HAVE A SERIOUS STUDENT-AND-FACULTY-BASED PROBLEM WITH DISCRIMINATION, INCLUDING RACIAL DISCRIMINATION????

Wow, I really am glad to have declared my independence from UMW as a community a while ago! Gosh, I really am worried that there is just no improving the discrimination problem at the institution!

(It's not a proof or a study, it's an anecdote about a concern that UMW professors repeatedly fail to address. The guy knew his email would be published, and he knows how to choose his tone. Yeah, he's more polite that Dr. Helmstutler and Dr. Lehman were to me when I submitted my proof of the Hodge Conjecture; however, that still isn't good enough. No I don't see Ms. Blanding's email to Farnsworth in the email, but as I said, he knew his response might be taken out of context. How many UMW professors just don't care about how they are seen after all and also don't care about working to improve discrimination at the school?, that is the question that must be asked, rhetorically.)

On Tuesday, November 2, 2021 at 11:42:39 AM UTC-4, DV wrote:
> https://www.wsls.com/news/virginia/2021/10/29/meet-princess-blanding-the-third-person-vying-to-be-virginias-next-governor/
>
> Princess Blanding is the sister of deceased police shooting target, Marcus-David Peters. I used to have mixed feelings about his death, but now I see it more as "very much the fault of police." He wasn't that dangerous and didn't need to be killed.
>
> The comments and perspective of Ms. Blanding in the article are worth reading.
>
> Here is an interesting UMW comment: Dr. Stephen Farnsworth, a UMW professor, seems to have sent an email to Princess Blanding. I never met or emailed Dr. Farnsworth when I was as student there, but it is interesting to note, as an anecdote, that one time I remember that as a student, I wrote an email to a UMW professor asking for helping writing an opinion article about psychology for the UMW newspaper, which was called "The Bullet" back then. What strikes me about Dr. Farnsworth's email is that the email I received from the psychology professor in response, which stated that he was declining to help me write the article and advised against me writing it since I wasn't a psychology major (and I also had never taken a psychology class at UMW), sounded like a "much more politely and considerately worded version" of Dr. Farnsworth's email to Princess Blanding.
>
> My observation is just one data point, not a clear pattern...but given the Jasmine Orsted incident and how it was handled by UMW, plus the fact that Dr. Farnsworth appears to have been much less polite to an African-American political leadership candidate in his conversation with her than an analogous UMW professor was to me, a non-psychology major student with white skin, I feel compelled to present the following (very) unoriginal question about UMW: DOES UMW STILL HAVE A SERIOUS STUDENT-AND-FACULTY-BASED PROBLEM WITH DISCRIMINATION, INCLUDING RACIAL DISCRIMINATION????
>
> Wow, I really am glad to have declared my independence from UMW as a community a while ago! Gosh, I really am worried that there is just no improving the discrimination problem at the institution!
>
> (It's not a proof or a study, it's an anecdote about a concern that UMW professors repeatedly fail to address. The guy knew his email would be published, and he knows how to choose his tone. Yeah, he's more polite that Dr. Helmstutler and Dr. Lehman were to me when I submitted my proof of the Hodge Conjecture; however, that still isn't good enough. No I don't see Ms. Blanding's email to Farnsworth in the email, but as I said, he knew his response might be taken out of context. How many UMW professors just don't care about how they are seen after all and also don't care about working to improve discrimination at the school?, that is the question that must be asked, rhetorically.)

In the spirit of fairness: The comment in the email wouldn't look bad if UMW community members didn't have a track record of frequently doing/saying things that seem practically designed to irritate or infuriate disabled/minority/LGBTQ students and others from these backgrounds.

Yes, the students and faculty were fairly civil to me when I was a student....I was treated better than I was at TJHSST, by far. Nevertheless, UMW is a "potentially serious school," and I've heard about discussions and efforts to improve diversity and fight discrimination at the institution, which I am indeed not a community-member of; these efforts seem not to have amounted to much to me, although this is just one very minor incident in a collection of many much worse incidents (I won't list any others now).