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Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Over 1,000 Students/Alumni from DeVos’ Alma Mater, Calvin College, Believe She Is Unqualified for US Ed Sec. | deutsch29

Over 1,000 Students/Alumni from DeVos’ Alma Mater, Calvin College, Believe She Is Unqualified for US Ed Sec. | deutsch29:

Over 1,000 Students/Alumni from DeVos’ Alma Mater, Calvin College, Believe She Is Unqualified for US Ed Sec.


An article protesting the nomination of Betsy DeVos was posted in the Calvin College newspaper, Chimes. (Note: I had to play with link to get it to work.)
DeVos is a Calvin College alumna.
I first read about the letter on January 24, 2017, in Valerie Strauss’ column, “The Answer Sheet,” in the Washington Post.
The goal of the letter is for Calvin College alumni to have a document to send to senators.
Since Strauss’ posting, Calvin College has apparently released an official statement:
UPDATE: Calvin College has released the following statement:
Our graduate Betsy DeVos is responding to her sense of call to public service, and more than 60,000 alumni from a variety of political perspectives are discerning the best ways to engage politics and culture in this moment. In all of this, our alumni are living out what we hope our students are learning during their time on campus: to think deeply, to act justly and to live wholeheartedly as Christ’s agents of renewal in the world.
Below are excerpts from what is apparently the original, January 23, 2017, article. The included letter is a strong one, and it indicates that those signing believe that DeVos does not have the background suited to serving as an overseer of public education:
Hundreds of Calvin alumni have signed a letter opposing their fellow alumna Betsy DeVos’s confirmation as United States Secretary of Education.
The letter was drafted and circulated by Sara Moslener, ’96, on Saturday, Jan. 21. As of 11 p.m. Monday night, it had over 700 signatures. …
[Schneider update: According to MLive, by January 24, 2017, the number of signers had exceeded 1,000.]
Alumni of multiple generations have signed the letter, from the class of 1953 to the expected class of 2018. …
The text of the letter is as follows:
As alumni and students of Calvin College we share an educational 
Over 1,000 Students/Alumni from DeVos’ Alma Mater, Calvin College, Believe She Is Unqualified for US Ed Sec. | deutsch29: