The Pendulum

NEIT getting a break from town

May 2, 2011

By DAVID PEPIN

Amendments to the town Zoning Ordinance and Comprehensive Plan to assist New England Institute of Technology received unanimous second reading approval from the Town Council Monday night after college representatives updated town officials on their plans for the growing campus on the former Rocky Hill Fairgrounds site.

Hoedgson filling some big shoes

April 4, 2011

With the state's economic stakes raised so high, Dawson Hodgson is not exactly getting a leisurely-paced orientation into the ways and mores of the R.I. General Assembly this year.
“I picked a heck of a year to go into the Senate,” Hodgson, (D-Dist. 35, North Kingstown, East Greenwich), said jokingly after holding a constituent forum at Town Hall Monday afternoon.

OPINION: Monsters among us

March 24, 2011

BY JONATHAN GIBBS

Looking at my five-year-old son’s fingers triggered a chain of thoughts about the Michael Woodmansee case in church this past Sunday. His are small fingers that have recently lost the dimple near the knuckle that seems to mark his passage out of toddlerhood into full-fledged boyhood. They were wrapped gently around the back of his mother’s neck; and those fingers – and that loving gesture – struck me as heartbreakingly innocent. Unfortunately, I saw them as not just the perfect hands of my beloved son but as vulnerable entities as well.

Policy to help cops recognize medical needs

March 21, 2011

By DAVID PEPIN

A simple sheet of paper may be a potent new tool for the East Greenwich Police Department to help deal with children with autism or Asperger’s syndrome.
Sgt. John Carter, the department’s juvenile officer, has completed a sheet that parents can submit to police, who will put the information in their database so in the event that officers are called to their home, police will know about the children.