Dereon Kelley: Writes of his innocence to hometown newspaper.

Kids, if you're thinking of getting out of that final you never studied for by phoning in a bomb threat to the school, think again.

Dereon Tayronne Kelley, 22, may not have been trying to miss a test, but he communicated a bomb threat to Texas Southern University Texas State University last October, a federal jury found, and the judge ordered him to prison for 33 months. Almost three years, with three years of close supervision upon his release, for essentially a single bomb threat.

The Bryan man was also ordered to pay a $300 fine and pay $15,548.93 in restitution.

It could have been worse in these post-9/11, post-Boston Marathon days -- he could have gotten ten years. So there's that. Not to mention that he's also been accused of following up his Texas State threat with one to A&M, although he's not been convicted of that.

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via Wikipedia

Afterwards, I'll show you where the unemployment line is located!

The four years (or maybe more) of being inside an institution that has probably cost you sleep and forced you to mutilate your liver with alcohol is finally coming to end. You're going to be graduating!

(Cue the Vitamin C song.)

Everyone is going to be there! It's going to be the day that your parents won't fight back any tears as they watch their baby boy or baby girl take his or her first steps into adulthood. It would be a shame if something went wrong...

Right?

Here's a top-four list of things not to do before you walk for graduation.

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Photos by Brazos County Sheriiff's Office

Gig `em, Reggie

College footballer with weed -- you're thinking Mack Brown's Longhorns, right?

Forget it -- we're talking Aggies. Former Aggies. Former Aggies like quarterback Reggie McNeal, currently a Canadian Football League free agent. Currently a CFL free agent who keeps getting arrested for weed.

McNeal was arrested recently for marijuana possession in Bryan, thereby offering proof to our theory that you don't want to smoke dope with him. Here are five reasons why:

5. You will get arrested.
This marked the second time in just four months that McNeil has been arrested for marijuana. That is either some dumb bad luck ir dumb bad behavior.

For the second time in four months. That's UT Style, baby.

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via Wikipedia

The M.D. Anderson Library at UH, only filled up during finals week!

Oh finals week, the time of year when students turn into zombies and energy drink companies make a killing. Some students aspire to do the bare minimum to squeeze out a C, some are going frantic trying to maintain their A. However, this is the week where all students kick themselves, asking themselves if they could've done more so they wouldn't be going paranoid about their final grade.

The answer is yes. Here's a list of the top six regrets students have come finals week.

6. Spending too much time on Facebook and Twitter
It's funny how social media has consumed the lives of students. What's more important, paying attention in class or making sure your homegirl knows that the cookies she baked look soooooooo good? At the beginning of the year, it's the latter. Right now? Probably the former.

It's gotten to the point that Facebook and Twitter have become a necessary crutch to briefly escape from studying or paying attention in class. It becomes a brief break, turned into four hours of lollygagging.

Or, you can tell your friends and favorite celebrities to stop being interesting. Problem solved.

5. Writing illegible notes
You could be the best student in the world, always showing up to class, always asking the best questions, etc. But, when you're absorbing every word and transcribing it to your notebook as fast as you can, you may ask yourself when you're studying for finals, "What the fuck did I just write?"

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Everybody wants one.

A young woman finds an older man on a dating Web site. She's drawn to him. What can it be? His age and experience? His Sean Connery-like looks? The fact that she's got bills to pay at the University of Houston and he has agreed to pay for her education just for the pleasure of her company?

I know what you're thinking, because I was thinking it, too. These two are gonna go get hitched and live in a fairy tale, just like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.
But the sugar daddy (a.k.a. old guy) isn't a john. The sugar baby (a.k.a. young woman) is so not a prostitute. This is just a mutually beneficial dating arrangement.

And it's a handy arrangement for those looking to avoid student loans. According to a release from Seekingarrangement.com, 67 percent of graduating college sugar babies -- yes, it seems there is a statistic for college sugar babies vs. the ones who aren't in school -- graduated debt-free last year. Ranking the schools they graduated from, University of Houston came in at Number 7. That's something to be proud of. I guess.

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The State Board of Education has followed the House Speaker against Patrick's vouchers.

As if there weren't already enough public voices coming out against Sen. Dan Patrick's neo-voucher scheme -- Republican Rep. Joe Strauss, the Speaker of the House, already noted that a bill diverting public dollars to private education would never make it pass his chamber -- there's another prominent conservative organization to add to the list. The State Board of Education, of creationist and controversial acclaim, passed a resolution 10-5 last Friday forgoing the sort of funding schemes Patrick's bill would attempt to implement.

According to the resolution, the SBOE will "reject all vouchers, taxpayer savings grants, tax credits, or any other mechanisms that have the effect of reducing funding to public schools." While the resolution shouldn't have any technical impact on the potential passage of Patrick's favored resolution, it's another public jackboot against what he believed would be the "voter ID" of the session.

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He's just FULL of ideas.

Sen. Dan Patrick continues to emphatically insist his new plan for accountability and high school diplomas will produce rigor; it will just be a different kind of rigor.

Patrick, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, has been slammed in the national media for stepping away from the 4x4 curriculum, which is basically a 16-credit core with four years of math, science, English and social studies. Patrick wants to step away from that pattern so students can pursue diplomas with a greater concentration in courses such as humanities or career/technology.

Patrick blames information that he's "dumbing down the curriculum" on a handful of blatant lobbyists and the national media that is spreading misinformation or false information about his plans for high school diplomas. Those editorials look like this one posted in the Washington Post on April 7.

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Bill Zedler may be the best evidence we have that there's no such thing as intelligent design.

The current legislative session has been, as far as we can tell at Hair Balls, a series of marginal victories for the state's education system. The voucher system state Sen. Dan Patrick attempted to create -- the same kind that's beset Georgia with corrupt conflicts; the same sort that's hollowed Louisiana's public education system -- looks dead in the water. A healthy chunk of the $5.4 billion cut from public coffers in 2011 looks to be reinstated. The state's charter system, which has gathered bipartisan support behind it, seems set for an expansion. And those who have begun opposing the state's CSCOPE system -- the kind that only atheistic, Islamic communists would find enjoyable -- have been mocked and derided from all sides of the political spectrum.

It's been a good few weeks for education in Texas. Fortunately, we have state Rep. Bill Zedler to make sure that swaths of our House of Representatives remain the laughingstock of those who've spent their days reading more than just the first few verses of the Book of Genesis.

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Dereon Kelley faces ten years in prison.

A 22-year-old Bryan man has been found guilty of calling in bomb threats to Texas State University last year, around the same time he was suspected of calling in a bomb threat that evacuated Texas A&M.

A Houston federal jury took about an hour to convict Dereon Tayronne Kelley after a two-day trial, the United States Attorney's Office said today.

Kelley faces up to ten years in federal prison for hacking into his former girlfriend's Yahoo e-mail account and sending three separate e-mails threatening to bomb the TSU Admissions Office in San Marcos, the USAO said.

"The defense attempted to convince the jury that the crime was committed by some other person," the USAO said. "However, this assertion was contradicted by the e-mail header and cell phone service provider records."

Kelley, a high school football player who built up a solid criminal record after graduation, was also suspected in a Texas A&M bomb threat.

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Dan Patrick has a plan.

Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, is determined to get his taxpayer-funded scholarship bill through the Senate, and he's even willing to scale it back to do so.

Patrick, with few members of the Senate Education Committee but plenty of audience, laid out Senate Bill 23 yesterday The bill, co-sponsored with Sen. Donna Campbell, R-San Antonio, would provide taxpayer-funded private- and parochial-school scholarships for low-income children in failing schools.

Patrick, in his substitute, has limited the pot of money for these scholarships to $100 million, which would be culled from donations from participating businesses. Those businesses would earn a tax credit for the franchise tax they deposit in the fund. A total of three non-profit entities would be authorized to distribute the scholarships.

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