A Marist College Ashgrove schoolboy has established a Bradman-like batting average as the AIC First XI competition premiership race remains on a knifes edge.

AIC First XI: Best since Bradman schoolboy batting average

154
—
Conservatives from across the country are in the Washington, DC area this weekend for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. Some potential 2024 Republican presidential candidates — like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — have been conspicuously absent. But former President Donald Trump will speak at the conference on Saturday, and he’s arriving on a wave of momentum in the polls. Trump is a clear, but not prohibitive, favorite to win next year’s Republican nomination for president. Right now, he’s averaging around 44% in national primary polls. He is 15 points ahead of DeSantis who is 29%. A 15-point lead may not sound impressive at this early stage in the primary campaign, but it is notable for two reasons. The first is that most of the candidates in place of Trump at the moment have won their primary. Take a look at all the candidates who had an average of at least 35% in previous national primary polls during the first half of the year before the primary (e.g. January to June 2019 for the 2020 primary). Since 1972, approximately 75% of these candidates have won the nomination when facing at least one major challenger. Those voting between 35% and 50% at this stage of the primary campaign have won about 67% of the time. It would be easy to dismiss Trump’s numbers as simply the product of high notoriety, but history suggests something different. Potential candidates for this group include, among others, President Gerald Ford for 1976, Vice President George HW Bush for 1988, and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole for 1996. It turns out that name recognition is important for winning nominations and will likely be a strength for Trump, not a weakness. In other words, Trump’s current position in the polls is statistically relevant, even if it’s early. Candidates for DeSantis’ job have not been as successful. Those who vote between 20% and 35% have won their party leadership about 40% of the time since 1972. The second reason Trump’s advantage over DeSantis is notable is that it is growing. It’s a change from where we were for much of last year. Trump was particularly struggling after Republicans’ disappointing performance in last fall’s midterm elections. His once 40-point polling lead over DeSantis fell to 10 points, on average, during the second half from November to December. Trump’s share of GOP support has fallen from 50% to around 40%. The reason was pretty clear: Much of the blame for the GOP’s historic midterm underperformance for an opposition party was placed on Trump. Many of the candidates he backed, including those who supported the lie that the 2020 election was illegitimate, lost winnable races. Due, in part, to midterm results, Trump was no longer considered the most eligible Republican for 2024. A Marist College poll in mid-November found that only 35% of Republicans thought he would gave them the best chance of regaining the presidency. . That was down from 50% at the end of 2021. DeSantis, meanwhile, could point to his nearly 20-point reelection victory in Florida last year as a sign of his eligibility. So what’s been the game changer for Trump so far in 2023? The most basic explanation is that he’s back on the campaign trail, while DeSantis has just been dancing around a presidential bid. Dominating media coverage of the 2016 Republican primary campaign was key for Trump to oust his competitors. Year-to-date, Trump has received more mentions on Fox News than he got immediately after the midterm elections. Meanwhile, mentions of DeSantis are down. By going out and campaigning, Trump can remind Republicans what they liked about him in the first place. He may leave memories of a bad 2022 election behind him. The percentage of Republicans who now believe he represents their best chance of winning in 2024 has risen to more than 40 percent in Marist polls. DeSantis also had to deal with former UN ambassador Nikki Haley declaring her candidacy for president. The twice-elected governor of South Carolina is voting a bit better than she was before (though still below 10 percent), but that only further splits the non-Trump vote. The question going forward is what will happen if and when DeSantis officially announces a 2024 run? This could offer a real clue as to whether Trump remains the frontrunner until the first primary votes are cast. For now, however, Trump will certainly take the position he is in from a few months ago. cnn
Not all news on the site expresses the point of view of the site, but we transmit this news automatically and translate it through programmatic technology on the site and not from a human editor.

GOP 2024 nomination: Why Trump is a clear frontrunner right now

Across Australia child sexual abuse survivors have to contend with church memorials to their abusers and those who protected them
The Catholic church has faced many requests in Australia to remove plaques to perpetrators of child sexual abuse and those who were seen to protect them. Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP
The Catholic church has faced many requests in Australia to remove plaques to perpetrators of child sexual abuse and those who were seen to protect them. Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP
Last modified on Sat 18 Feb 2023 14.01 EST
For the past 10 years, on the grounds of one of Canberra’s most prominent Catholic schools, a small plaque has paid tribute to the service of a man named Brother Jerome Hickman. Under the school sigil of Marist College Canberra, the plaque commemorates the work of the late Hickman, honouring him along what is known as “the Brothers Way”, a walk of appreciation for past clergy and staff. The plaque, quietly removed in recent weeks, gave no hint of his darker past. Hickman was the subject of multiple complaints of child sexual abuse and violence spanning his career in the Marist order. The church has long held knowledge of complaints about him and has offered payouts and apologies to survivors in out-of-court settlements, according to Kelso Lawyers, a firm specialising in clergy abuse cases that has represented Hickman’s multiple victims. In one of the cases run by Kelso Lawyers, a student at a Marist school in the Sydney suburb of Dundas, known by the pseudonym of Matthew, alleged he was violently raped and abused by Hickman from the age of just 10. The church has apologised and paid Matthew a significant settlement. Despite this, the plaque remained on school grounds from 2012, when it was installed, until at least December, according to photos seen by the Guardian. The school says it has now been removed but could not say when, or whether it had only acted this week, after a survivor’s complaint and the Guardian’s questions. A plaque commemorating Brother Jerome Hickman at Marist College Canberra
For survivor Damian De Marco, a former Marist student, local Australian of the Year award winner and advocate for child abuse survivors, the plaque is evidence of a “deeply entrenched cultural problem” still rife across the church. De Marco complained to the ACT government about the continued presence of the plaque this week, describing the commemoration of Hickman as “outrageous” and urging it to intervene. “It is outrageous that yet again, for the third time in six years, Marist College needs to be asked to remove items celebrating paedophiles or those who have protected them,” he wrote. It’s far from an isolated case for the church. In Ballarat, the centre of clergy abuse in Australia, plaques commemorating Bishop Ronald Mulkearns still adorn local buildings. A survivor of paedophile Catholic priest Paul David Ryan, whom Mulkearns protected, says he started campaigning for the removal of the plaques in 2016. The survivor, who wished to be referred to as BPD, as he was during the child abuse royal commission, would constantly see Mulkearns’s name on local churches, schools and halls. Mulkearns had ignored BPD’s complaints about Ryan, allowing him to go on to offend against other children. It was a pattern Mulkearns repeated with other serial offenders, including Gerald Ridsdale, considered one of the worst clerical child sexual abusers in Australian history. BPD says he’s had about 15 plaques with Mulkearns’s name on them removed since 2016. “I’ll just drive around and stop at a church or a school and a hall and if I see the name I’ll call up the parish and ask, ‘Is this kosher?’” he said. “I really don’t mind if I come across as a cockhead. What it comes down to is why do you honour a guy who cuts a ribbon to open a building when he has allowed people to go and hurt others?”
Sometimes action is swift but he has also met resistance. He says when he approached one priest about removing a plaque adorned with Mulkearns’s name and provided him with a victim impact statement that outlined how Ryan’s offending had changed his life, the priest declined to remove the plaque but asked if he could use part of the statement for a sermon. Time and again, it has been left to survivors to pressure the church to remove such plaques. In Hobart’s St Mary’s Cathedral, an artwork honouring the late Catholic priest Philip Green remained on display until 2017 , 13 years after he pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting a former altar boy. Also in Ballarat, survivors complained about the continued honouring of the bishop of Ballarat, James O’Collins, on the town’s buildings. The royal commission heard O’Collins also received complaints about Ridsdale in the 1960s but did nothing to report him to police. In Western Australia, the Catholic church promised to remove a plaque memorialising the late Floreat priest Peter McCudden when it compensated a woman in 2002 after she complained McCudden abused her when she was 13. It was later revealed the church had simply removed the plaque from a church wall and mounted it metres away in a parish office. The plaque has now been completely removed. The Blue Knot Foundation executive director, Cathy Kezelman, says the concept of commemorating such clergy is “annihilating for survivors”. “If churches are really victim-centred and trauma-informed, they will act to remove any public recognition of perpetrators,” Kezelman said. “Without this, survivors will continue to feel that their own needs have not been honoured, nor the impact of the crimes against them truly acknowledged.”
The Safeguarding People Australia founder, Hetty Johnston, says plaques and memorials are trauma inducing for victim-survivors and “flies in the face of common sense, common decency and any kind of empathy”.

‘Annihilating for survivors’: the Catholic church and its plaques to abuse perpetrators

Sam Jeacle grew up hoping to appear on Australian Idol one day. Picture supplied
When Australian Idol debuted in 2003, Sam Jeacle was just a kid from Tuggeranong who loved to watch the show with his mum. By its second season, Sam was at Holy Family Primary School in Gowrie and developing a desire to perform, despite his shyness. "The school kind of did their own version of Idol, I was in year one or kinder, and I got up and did a performance," he said, with a laugh. Now aged 25, Sam is on the real Australian Idol, auditioning on the show on Sunday night in front of judges Harry Connick Jnr, Meghan Trainor, Amy Shark and Kyle Sandilands. "This is the five-year-old me screaming at the moment because it's quite honestly been something I've wanted to do since the first season," he said. The videographer from Canberra sings a Billy Idol song on the re-booted version of the show which returned to screens this year after a 14-year hiatus. Judges Amy Shark and Harry Connick Jnr. Picture supplied
A student at Marist College since year four, Sam developed his passion for music while at school. "I sort of hadn't done a lot of performing post-school which was one of the drawcards for doing the show," he said. Sam went to Sydney to audition, saying it was nerve-wracking and fun. "Everyone was super-supportive," he said. "As soon as I got in there and started singing the nerves kind of subsided." Sam, who loves 1980s pop rock, hopes to secure some gigs in his hometown Canberra after his Idol experience. Picture supplied
The outcome is hush-hush but Sam did win the support of the judges, especially Harry, who loved his look, and Kyle who reckoned the show needed a rock star. "They were all really nice," Sam said. Sam says he is inspired by pop rock from the 1980s, performing covers but also writing his own material. And performing in such a high-pressure environment as Idol in front of music industry professionals was a wonderful experience. "Oh 100 per cent," he said. "Regardless of the outcome, just being in that environment, being able to rub shoulders with the judges, who are obviously very talented in their own fields, and just having a nice mix of people on the panel who were each able to offer advice, that was just so valuable." The judges on the re-booted Australian Idol are Kyle Sandilands, Meghan Trainor, Amy Shark and Harry Connick Jnr. Picture supplied
And he's following in the footsteps of Canberra's Hayley Jensen who was on Idol in 2004 and has gone on to pursue a career in country music, most recently nominated for a Golden Guitar for Female Artist of the Year. "Mum took me to see her at the Westfield in Woden in about 2007, I remember," Sam said. "I remember in her season [of Idol] being really drawn to her as well because a Canberran was on there and it was like, 'I could probably do that one day because she's from Canberra'." Watch Canberra's Sam Jeacle on Australian Idol Sunday at 7pm on Prime7. Share

Former Marist College student auditions on Australian Idol this weekend

Poughkeepsie, NY, January 13, 2023 —- Dr. Craig W. Fisher, who enjoyed a twenty-year career at IBM and also worked as an information systems professor at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, has completed his new book, “By the Scruff of My Neck”: a captivating memoir that explores various situations the author and his siblings found themselves in while navigating growing up in a children’s home. “Without a stable family environment, my unspoken fear was that my life was going nowhere fast,” writes Fisher. “After a miserable move to a rundown farm and no parents there day-to-day to assure we get clean clothes and balanced diets, my three brothers, sister, and I were moved to a children’s home. Over the next six years, we saw our mother twice, yet she lived a mere thirty-six miles away. Pop visited us approximately every two weeks for one hour when we sat in a conference room with nothing to say. “We loved certain adventures that became available since the leaders of the home could not monitor us all the time. We learned how to get along with a lot of kids from a variety of backgrounds. Soon some of our habits bordered on criminal activities. This book highlights the fun activities while barely skimming the top of the potential dangers. As a youngster, I was conscious of certain risks but went along with most activities. “I feel I could have fallen into a pit of despair if it wasn’t for the strong arm of God grabbing me by the scruff of my neck and holding me safely. There are minimal dialogues about that aspect as much of it were afterthoughts.”
Published by Covenant Books of Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, Dr. Craig W. Fisher’s new book is an eye-opening look at what life can be like for children growing up in an unstable environment and a lack of parental supervision to guide them towards making smart choices. Readers can purchase “By the Scruff of My Neck” at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes store, Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Covenant books is an international Christian-owned and operated publishing house based in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina. Covenant Books specializes in all genres of work which appeal to the Christian market. For additional information or media inquiries, contact Covenant Books at 843-507-8373. Contact

Author Dr. Craig W. Fisher’s New Book, “By the Scruff of My Neck,” is the Story of the Adventures and Hardships He Experienced While Being Raised in a Children’s Home

Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX) makes infrastructure invisible, enabling IT to focus on the applications and services that facilitate their business. The Nutanix enterprise cloud platform leverages web-scale engineering and consumer-grade design to natively converge compute, virtualization and storage into a resilient, software-defined solution with rich machine intelligence. The result is predictable performance, cloud-like infrastructure consumption, robust security, and application mobility for a broad range of enterprise applications.

Nutanix

Walton also said he has worked closely with Nutanix partner , Qirx , which has been instrumental in guiding the College during its architecture transformation .

Marist College taps Nutanix to simplify its IT infrastructure

Ex Libris develops cloud-based software solutions for academic and research institutions. It offers tools for the management and discovery of the full spectrum of library and scholarly materials, as well as mobile campus solutions. It is owned by ProQuest.

Ex Libris

LearnQuest offers live and Web-based IT and business-skills training courses tos and government agencies.

LearnQuest

IBM (NYSE: IBM) manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and offers infrastructure services, hosting services, and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. The company was founded in 1911 and is based in Armonk, Newyork.

Blackridge Technology, available online at blackridge.us, is a computer technologies firm specializing in access control and data security technologies.

Blackridge Technology

EXL (NASDAQ: EXLS) is a business solutions provider, offering services that include business process solutions from offshore delivery centers. Headquartered in New York, the company serves the needs of companies in the banking, financial services, insurance, utilities, healthcare, telecommunications, and transportation sectors.

Marist College

Marist College is an academic institution that offers graduate and undergraduate degree programs. It is based in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Wells Fargo Success Story

Professional Services

Platform Overview

Marist College

Compete with Marist College?

Compete with Marist College?

Discover the right solution for your team